Cloud Castles (15 page)

There was. When the lift I hitched dropped me outside, I saw the glass scattered on the
pavement. ‘That your window?’ enquired the young driver. ‘Bad luck, mate – look, not another in the whole damn block touched!’ He glanced around. ‘In fact, it all looks pretty quiet around here – never know there’d been a riot! An’ I always thought it must be tough, down by the docks.’

‘It is, in some parts. Round here it’s yuppified enough.’

‘Yah. Maybe they sent some cops down here, or something, and that stopped the riot gettin’ hold. Well, gotta get off, don’t want the wife worrying. See yer!’

I looked around, considering. He was right. Most of the town had got off very lightly, even near this end; but here the stillness was almost uncanny. It felt very restful, after the hysterias of the night. I thought suddenly of those great unseen potencies that enforced and guarded the safety of trade in the great Ports of the Spiral, such as this. Could it be their hands that had held this area so safe? They would guess something of where it sprang from; the Wardens it might be.

What would they have made of me this evening? An interfering idiot, probably. They never tried to solve every little problem. They probably knew better than to try. And yet … and yet. The girl might still die; the fanatics might find another victim, the witches might still hang. But if I hadn’t intervened? I might never know. But this much I felt sure of at last, that I’d been bound to try. Without me things might have been worse – a lot worse. And I wouldn’t have been able to sleep the way I was going to, now.

I was too tired to think any more, and the lift, inevitably, wasn’t working. I trudged up and up the floors to my penthouse; and when I reached it I could barely get the key in the door. The burglar alarm would be running on its batteries, so I’d better disable it from the inside; but when the familiar singsong warning whine didn’t start, I simply assumed it was one more damn thing broken down, and left it at that. I let the heavy door slip shut and leaned gratefully against it, looking down the length of my enormous living room.

There was the mantel, all right, but the sword wasn’t there. It lay on the floor to one side, among a spray of glass fragments, brought in on its return, no doubt. I went forward and stooped to pick it up – then, weary as I was, I stiffened painfully. Maybe I’d sensed something – a sound, a movement. But nothing like that could account for how I knew a gun was
pointing at the back of my neck. I just felt it, and that was all. ‘Nice place!’ said the harsh unsteady voice. ‘Wish I could afford it. But it’s just a cold shell; it could use some warmth. And a better burglar alarm too. Stand up. Face to the wall, hands above your
head.
Move!’

I stood up, very slowly; but I turned around, also very slowly. There was the gun, all right, tipped now with a short silencer, just enough to take the edge off the bang. It jerked up to level with my face, but nothing else happened. I looked the woman up and down. She stood in the classic range posture, legs akimbo, arms outstretched, the gun clasped tight in both hands. It was as steady as ever, and as hard to ignore; but now she looked dangerously disturbed. Or, to put it scientifically, barking mad. Her shaggy black hair stuck up in spikes, her dark shell-suit was crumpled and torn. She was a soot-streaked, battered mess; but then so was I, probably. It was her face: her features were slack, her eyes wild, with that tic still beating away at one corner, and her mouth was working so much she could hardly speak.

I shook my head in awe. ‘You’re really determined, aren’t you? Tailing me through all that – how long for?’

She gathered her breath and spoke with an effort. ‘Since the heliport! You were late! Didn’t spot me, did you? No! Too bloody confident after your famous
coup!’

‘Well, I did feel—’

But once started she went ploughing on, as if she’d something bursting to get out. ‘And then the riot, and you heading off down all those back-streets – I lost you then, but it was obvious you knew something, you were going somewhere! I
knew
it was too close to be a coincidence – so I started searching. I knew how to find you. I just looked for the worst trouble, and there you were, right in there with those creatures, whipping it up! Just like in Germany!’ Her voice was pitching higher, near cracking. ‘Oh, you scored a real coup
there, congratulations, yes! It made you careless, over-confident, so you thought you’d be safe to come out from under your stone at last, didn’t you? Get it off with a bit of rape and pillage!’ A trickle of saliva oozed from the corner of her mouth and made its way down her chin. ‘Get your lousy rocks off! Thought you had us whipped, didn’t you?
Didn’t you, damn you?’

She was close to raving. ‘Look—’ I began soothingly. I didn’t get any further.

‘Thought it was clever, didn’t you, getting me suspended like that? Well, you were wrong, weren’t you, bloody well wrong, wrong,
wrong!
Because it just gave me more time to go after you! Yes, and more freedom to deal with you the way you should be dealt with – you and
scheissdreck’
like you!’ She stopped, gulped in air. Her voice dropped suddenly, almost to a croon. ‘We don’t need you,’ she said softly.

‘Can I just—’

‘Whatever you’ve done, it’ll unravel when you’re not around anymore. And after you that bastard von Amerningen—’

‘Look—’

She sucked in her breath and spoke briskly, as if steeling herself for something. ‘The hell with the law – stamp on you like cockroaches, it’s the only way—’

‘Christ, woman!’
I roared in her face. ‘Will you
listen
?’

I suppose I was lucky the gun didn’t go off just from reflex. But I’d guessed that mad or not, she was too much in control of it for that. All the same, she jumped violently, and stood blinking and gaping at me like an idiot. ‘You’, I shouted, forgetting all the ideas I’d had about being calm and collected and soothing, ‘are an obsessive, self-righteous, self-centred, small-minded monomaniac! You jump to conclusions, you do the damnedest things, and you never stop to consider that just once, in any way, Little Miss Crusader might be
wrong!
Wrong wrong bloody well
wrong!
You never stop to listen, you never admit it’s possible! That’s not conviction, that’s mental illness! Who d’you think you are – God?’

She swallowed, and smiled an appallingly sweet smile. ‘You’ve given me all the proof I need!’ she said brightly. ‘But sure, do go on. I haven’t had many laughs lately.’ Almost lazily, like a cat, she stretched out the gun again.

I slumped against the wall. The way I
felt, being shot might almost be merciful. ‘I don’t know where to start!’ I protested. ‘Look – those back-streets – of course I was going somewhere, I was trying to get home – round the riot! You didn’t see what happened afterwards, did you? No! You lost me. Well, you won’t find my car in the garage here; it’s lying burnt out in the middle of the road up by the shopping centre. I got turned around by petrol bombs and then tipped out by rioters. They nearly killed me. Think I staged that?’

She stared at me in scorn. ‘You could afford a hundred of those little sports cars!’

That made me really furious. ‘Yes, you stupid bitch, but they wouldn’t be
mine!
I liked that car, really liked it. It was the first thing I bought when I got the deputy MD’s job. There’ll never be another like it – and, Christ, I don’t suppose you know there’s a ten-year waiting list for those things? They’re practically hand built. Think I went that far just to keep up appearances?’

‘You might,’ she said, with even contempt. Smoothly sure of herself, unexpectedly enjoying the battle of words, as if it only made her feel more secure, not less. ‘Or it might just have been a convenient accident. If the rioters nearly killed you, why’d I find you with those creatures at the church?’

‘You didn’t find me
with
them! I was
with
a bunch of locals I’d rousted out and organized to stop them! If you don’t believe me, look up some of them – a builder called Sean, a trucker called Billy something, I can give you their addresses. They’ll tell you what I was doing.’

‘Just playing it cleverer than I thought, maybe. Stirring up two lots of trouble – vigilantes—’

‘Or there was the girl – raped and left for dead. I’d like to know if she was all right. And listen, woman, when you shot that … character, he was running, wasn’t he? With a broken sword. What d’you think broke it? Who do you think he was running from?’

‘
You
?’ Her laugh was as humourless as ever, the brick wall I was banging my head against.

‘Me,’ I said quietly. ‘With that sword behind you on the carpet.’

‘If you think I’m going to look back at it, think again. It was there when I came in. I suppose it just flew home
ahead of you.’

‘It did, in a sense. But I could never make you understand about that. Any more than—’

‘Yes?’ There was a change in her tone, but I couldn’t tell what.

‘Well … there’s just one way you may have been right. I found out that Lutz is mixed up in something – but it’s not what you think. Not just – if anything, it’s worse, but … Oh, crap, what’s the use? You’d never believe it. It’s right outside any frame of reference you’ll ever have.’

She was silent. I looked up, and saw a very odd look on her face. For a moment it lost some of its ingrained lines, and about ten years with them. I caught a glimpse of what she might have been; it was more striking than I’d have expected. Then suspicion stiffened her features again. ‘Just Lutz. Not you. Right.’

‘Yes,’ I said, meeting the sarcasm head on. ‘Some of the board members, but principally Lutz. He did want to have a go at drawing me in, that night you called. For various reasons it went off half cocked. Probably would have anyway. I like to think so. I don’t think he was too confident either, because he waited to try until it didn’t mean so much. He chose that night because C-Tran was all set up, launched, everything. It was only then he was ready to risk alienating me – and having to get rid of me.’

‘What d’you mean?’ she demanded sharply.

‘I mean I had an interesting ride home from his place. First somebody takes a pot at me with a high-powered rifle and a laser gunsight while I’m still coming down the drive.’ Her face had taken on another odd look. ‘You don’t bloody believe me? Well, after
that
somebody tried to knock my block off on the
Autobahn
– a car, a heavy with a slingshot. Nearly did it, too, except a truck got mixed up in it. You should see the car I was driving there, as well. I don’t think they’re going to hire me one again in a hurry—’

I stopped dead. The woman was looking positively sheepish. ‘That bloody rifle …’ I breathed. ‘That was
you!
I should’ve guessed Lutz wouldn’t want a killing on his own home grounds, or anywhere traceable to him. But you would! It was
you
, you – you self-righteous little—’ Words failed me, and I clenched my fists. Instantly the gun jabbed into my face again.

‘Me and my team, yes,’ she said sourly. ‘Pity I’ve never used that model before. It was the only one we could get in a hurry, and it had to be at extreme range.’

‘You’re apologizing? And that was your team
in the car, too?’

She shook her head. ‘No. Not us. But it fits the pattern of other—’ She pursed her lips suddenly. She’d realized she was implicitly going along with my story; and there was something underneath that still made her determined to disbelieve me. Obsession, maybe, or something more solid – but what?

‘So,’ I said, watching the sweat streak her smudged face, ‘you may not believe me, but oddly enough I believe you. Lutz took a lot of trouble to make sure I was seen leaving safely. If you’d killed me then, you’d only have been doing his work for him. Maybe you’re only doing it now—’

That firing stance is all very well, a nice stable platform; but when you have to hold it too long it becomes a bit stiff. And so do you. I wasn’t in prime condition myself right now; but I’d been relaxing. Suddenly, careful not to send any vocal or physical signals, I bent my knees and dropped, fast, to a crouch. I expected the shot to part my hair, but she didn’t even get one off before I’d sprung. Not up but forward, catching the outstretched arms as they swung down towards me and forcing them aside, bringing the wrists down hard across my knee, like breaking wood—

The gun made a clattering mess of my floorboards, but mercifully didn’t go off. I let the woman go, pushed her back and grabbed it. Then I stepped hastily between her and my sword, but she was still doubled over, hugging her aching wrists. She looked up, biting her lip hard; she seemed to be waiting for something. ‘Turn around,’ I ordered, and with a slow weary smile, her shoulders sagging, she turned.

I thrust the pistol in my belt and grabbed her by the scruff of her neck and the seat of her pants. She gave a wild yelp; that wasn’t what she’d been expecting at all. I more or less raced her towards the door.
‘Open it!’
I ordered. Still sobbing with shock, she fumbled with the lock, but managed it. I ran her out onto the landing, and she gave a wild scream and grabbed the balustrade, evidently expecting to be flung over. I tore her loose and rushed her to the stairs, and she grabbed the rail again, thinking I was going to throw her down this time. She was in a state of complete gibbering panic, and that only made me angrier. I don’t know where I got the strength, but I gave her the classic bum’s rush all the way down sixteen flights of shadowy stairs, with her flailing and kicking and squealing and getting her leg stuck in the railings. From time to time one of my worthy neighbours
looked out. ‘Mormons!’ I explained, and they all nodded sagely. Finally I reached the ground floor hallway, and more or less dropped her on her backside while I got my breath back.

She got hers back first; she hadn’t been carrying the weight, after all. She squinted up at me, the way you might look up at a dodgy-looking tree, wondering which way it was going to fall. ‘You could have shot me more easily up there. Or just quietly wrung my neck. I couldn’t have stopped you.’