Down to the Bone: Quantum Gravity Book Five (19 page)

‘And you didn’t mention Xavi.’

‘Hello? Head of the Secret Service here, not eager-beaver placement student.’ He huffed and put both hands to his face to
rub his eyes in a gesture that looked as though he might rub them out entirely. It looked painful. ‘He isn’t really an elf
is he?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Lila said. Her prospects for getting out of the place anytime soon were beginning to look dangerously
slim. Queue notifications, red alarms, message streams were popping up in her AI like fireworks on Chinese New Year. She knew
that Greer had an implant not unlike hers and that his inbox could only be much worse. ‘Seriously, are you okay?’

There was a pause. She thought he’d fallen asleep. Then he said glumly, ‘The ex-Mrs Greer has a gentleman caller. He didn’t
take too kindly to my serenading her at four o’clock in the morning with a rousing march on the bagpipes.’

‘Don’t you ever sleep?’

‘Only at Christmas and birthdays.’ He lifted his ragged, lengthening hair and showed her his ear, which had a narrow cut across
it and a medium-sized bruise beside it on his cheek, mostly hidden by his sideburns. ‘Cat’s dish. He throws like a girl.’

Lila nodded, as ever unsure what to say to this. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘So am I, Blackie, so am I. You won’t forget to phone me and tell me what’s going on if you find out, will you? I know how
distracting black ops elves in spandex can be to you young girls.’

‘No, sir.’

He turned at this and looked at her, a pained expression on his large, rugged features, making him look like an alarmed basset
hound. ‘Sir? What’s this? Has that Bentley woman been talking to you? Sir. I’m not a goddamned policeman. Sir. Sir!’

‘Sorry.’

He made a grumbling sound and slowly, painfully, sat up, resting his elbows on his knees. ‘Get lost, would you. Oh, and congratulations
on the new house. Etcetera.’

‘Thanks.’

This time his grumbled response was more of a grunt, accompanied by a vigorous attempt at a soapless shampoo. Lila fought
an inclination to go and kiss him as if he were some lovely grumpy uncle, because even though that was the effect he was going
for she wasn’t buying it and this last ordinary step of their defensive dance took her breath away as its turns revealed their
common pain.

She took a few steps backward before turning on her heel and leaving via the already open door. Her throat hurt her and she
shook her head crossly, almost hitting Bentley who was standing, rock steady and rock patient, just where she’d left her.

They flashed machine messages at each other, verifying and exchanging news not important enough to put into words. A burst
of rapport strings finished the moment, one misplaced digit in a key position sounding their common bum note about Sandra
Lane.

Anxiety ticked in Lila’s mind, repeating the suspicion that Lane had gone and evolved when nobody was looking, and now had
a capacity they couldn’t detect that was going to get them. She knew things like that were possible. It was in the Signal’s
whisper.

She had to fight the paranoia that wanted to gallop away with her. Now was not the moment. Now was so not the moment.

She passed the queues of people outside doors, the huddles at corners, the quickly sidestepping aides with nods of recognition,
watching the surprise on their faces as their AIs and links updated each one of them personally with her replies to their
enquiries. She created links and groupfeeds on the run, forming new collaboration teams, which she couldn’t personally oversee,
designating chair-people and delegating her authority, notifying them that her AI would be acting for her, a subself, never
sleeping, never tiring as it passed only the important news to her waking mind.

The AI whispered to her as she walked, digging out its little secrets from the hoards, assembling its bombshells from scattered
debris: all magical and supernatural activity in Otopia was accelerating in frequency and magnitude; fracture lines in the
Otopian space-time
fabric were opening in proportion to their proximity with Returner origin points; Hunter children and the humans made psionic
by moth exposure were falling in number, but gaining in their particular aptitudes.

Someone had posted images of Zal behind her on the bike in that traffic jam downtown. He looked dark, surrounded in private
shadow. She was only partly visible, just the line of her back and the edge of Tatters’ embroidery crusade tattoos. It was
different to the way the dress had become when they had fought later, at the diner, but it was too close a resemblance to
go entirely missed. As she finished her polite circulation among the agents she turned into her own corridor, finding a pocket
of calm and a moment in which her heart hammered and her breath tried to choke her.

They found Zal. They saw us together. The diner. What will it mean?

Fear for him flooded her. Without thinking she infiltrated the network and erased the pixels that showed her hair, the shape
of her head, the colours and patterns of the faery on her back. She got out undetected. Priority protocols helped a lot. It
wouldn’t last, she knew. Eyes had already seen it. Copies were out there. She must assume that her anonymity was finite. Zal’s
celebrity, faded as it was, would be enough to expose her as the diner knight. Eventually someone would wonder how it was
that some Returner rockstar’s girlfriend had bent a shotgun into bracelets. And after that it would be open season.

By the time she reached her own door she had resigned and Greer had deleted the resignation and filled the reply space with
expletives.

‘It’s too late,’ he said, his voice left of centre in her head as the AI relayed it. ‘Ops will fudge the information as much
as they can. We might get a few more months before we have to come clean-ish in the public eye. That’s a long time.’

Lila said nothing to this but sent a sad face emote and closed the line. She remembered how much she’d wanted to kill everyone
in the parking lot, the pulse of blood in her veins loading the magazines in her arms, changing her hands into guns. Then
she opened the door to her offices.

The anterooms were full of Bentley’s exquisitely packed and filed boxes where she had been collating evidence from old cases
and clearing magical items that were too dangerous or outdated to be left around. Their monumental order rebuked her silently.
The lab was spotless, surfaces gleaming. Lila moved quietly between the stacks of
items, following the path to the last room where the door was ajar and lights glowed in soft, moving colours through the
gap.

Sarasilien, as elven as any creature she’d ever seen, was standing watching the wall where a display of the solar system was
slowly revolving. Besides the nine planets, sun and moons a host of other objects were drawn in, some small and distinct,
others streaks and strips. She recognised none of them. Behind his tall figure the broadcaster of these images, Lane’s clone,
stood impassively, her hand held palm forward. Light shone out of it.

Lila knew that there was no need to speak as they were both well aware of her entry into their company, but she wasn’t the
girl who would once have waited patiently for them to give her their attention. A feeling like Greer’s world weariness – a
rumpled, tired feeling – spread over her as she kept her composure. She crossed to the couch where Sarsilien had once laid
in splendour with Sorcha the Scorcher’s foot in his hands and sat down, crossing her own booted feet up onto its elegant cushions.

‘Spill it.’

‘We are here because of a crisis in Alfheim,’ Sarasilien said, turning to face her with that little polite bow of his coming
automatically, though he didn’t duck his eyes. They sought her gaze and held it steadily. There was real force in his look.
She matched it, pushing back strongly across the gap between them.

‘Not just Alfheim.’ Lila quirked an eyebrow in the Lane clone’s direction – she wouldn’t be here for something like that.

‘Its effects will most likely be felt everywhere,’ he said. His face was compassionate again. It made her angry and she didn’t
appreciate the suspense.

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Not you,’ Lane said, closing her fingers into a gentle fist and letting her arm fall to her side so that the projected cosmos
swept across the room and vanished.

Lila turned up the lights, brilliant.
No softness for you,
she thought, and saw the elf blink and squint for a second.

‘We need Zal,’ Sarasilien said in his most gentle voice, the one that had calmed and soothed her through hundreds of pain-filled
nights in the first days of her machine life.

‘Oh?’ Lila tipped her head to the side and folded her arms across her chest. She noticed the Lane clone adopt the same posture
as Sarasilien, hands folded gently in front of her black and grey shining
form, chin down, like children obediently ready for the lesson. Her teeth closed against themselves.

‘A great tragedy has befallen . . .’ Sarasilien began but Lane interrupted him with her more precise articulation.

‘Alfheim has gone dark.’ She didn’t need to append details of the meaning of this phrase. Lila knew what dark meant: out of
contact. The humans wouldn’t have noticed it; Alfheim had gone dark for them decades ago. Only the elves who stayed in Otopia
and Faery remained to act as reminders that the place existed and there were few of them.

She glanced at Sarasilien. ‘You know why.’

He gave that slight nod again and this time his eyelids followed suit. ‘For every action an equal and opposite reaction. An
age ago when the shadowkin were created – that was an action of great aetheric force, a collective action using techniques
that were fraught with dangers. In an effort to mitigate the effects—’

Lane broke in again. ‘They used dampening systems that absorbed the backlash of the worst mistakes that they made during their
research, but these only had the effect of deferring the results, perhaps altering their nature.’

Lila narrowed her eyes, ‘Deferred to the future?’

‘Yes,’ Sarasilien said. ‘It was thought at the time that this delay period could be extended—’

‘Oh wait!’ Lila held up her hand. ‘I’m ahead of you. The Lady of the Lake, Arie, that’s why she wanted Zal isn’t it? She said
it was to separate Alfheim . . .’

‘. . . from the other dimensions, yes,’ Sarasilien finished for her. ‘That was not exactly honest however. She was intending
to divide Alfheim from the rest in order to protect it from her real intent, should it fail, which was to continue deferring
the backlash of that earlier act indefinitely into the future. And when you took Zal back then she had no way to maintain
the disjuncture and her efforts failed indeed. So it was left to others to isolate Alfheim as best they could, once it was
certain that the reaction could not be put off. She was the only one with the resource to even attempt such a thing.’

Lila raised her eyebrows, ‘Except you, I take it.’ She was unable to conceal her bitter disappointment or continue the cool
act in the face of it.

‘Except me,’ he bowed again in agreement, unbending in every other way.

‘And this . . . whatever you want to do . . .’

‘Will be the final attempt, that is correct. The last attempt to prevent a catastrophe.’

‘And you want Zal’s blood for your evil little spell?’

‘No,’ Lane said. ‘That method cannot work any longer. Circumstances have changed. We want Zal to go into Alfheim as our operative.
We think that he will be immune to what has happened there because of his demon nature.’

Lila’s mind worked fast. ‘And I guess it doesn’t hurt that he got reprocessed by Jack and the Fates, does it? Or were you
behind that?’

Sarasilien was shaking his head.

‘Never mind,’ Lila cut off what he was about to say with a slice of her hand through the air. ‘I think it’s time you took
me back to the beginning and told me the whole sorry story. And then we can see if there’s a shred of evidence in any of it
that would prompt me to believe a word you’re saying.’

Lane took a half-step forward. ‘There is no benefit to bringing your personal grievances into this matter, sad or difficult
as they may be.’

Lila leaned back on the chaise and looked at the cyborg. She could see herself in the polished reflectiveness of its vinyl
body. She looked stretched and deformed in different ways depending on the part. Lane herself was smooth and perfect as a
doll. ‘Were you this much of a bitch when you were human?’

‘Coming from you I take that as a compliment,’ and for the first time there was an edge in the voice that sounded comprehensively
pissed off.

‘Finally we have lift-off,’ Lila said, rolling her eyes. ‘And before he starts just fill me in on your part of this beautiful
diorama.’

‘Sandra is my scientific advisor,’ Sarasilien said, impeccably gentle. ‘In your absence she has been invaluable in relating
my aetheric knowledge to the laws that govern the strictly physical.’

But Lila was still paused on the words ‘in your absence’. She held them, filed them, considered them and their potential meanings
very carefully and then said, ‘I’m mad as hell at you.’ She pointed at him. ‘And I am about as likely to warm to you as liquid
nitrogen,’ she pointed at Lane. ‘But I’ll shove it where the sun doesn’t shine if you can make the next twenty minutes I’m
spending away from what I want worth the wait.’

‘Your petty personal grievances!’ began Lane with spite but she was cut off by the elf putting a hand onto her shiny arm.

‘Are long overdue for attention is what you mean,’ Lila said into his restrained silence. She stared at Lane, all her outlets
closed, all systems shut, with real dislike. Sarasilien paused and she knew it for carte blanche to continue. Very well then,
let it be done.

‘You,’ Lila turned fully to the cyborg. ‘You are the voice of the machine. That’s why I don’t like you and why I don’t trust
you. I see vested interest whether or not I understand it. I see a devil’s pact.’

Lane’s non-functional nostrils flared. ‘I went where you fear to go.’