Jack Glass: The Story of a Murderer (40 page)

‘I don’t mean to sound ungrateful,’ she said, wriggling herself through the air to give him a hug. ‘I’m still getting used to being, you know. Off the grid.
I’ll adjust.’

‘There’s plenty of time,’ said Iago.

He was wrong, though. In the event, there was very little time. They had a day and a night, both equally bright, and that was all. They spent the time tidying, eating stores
and chatting, playing games. But it was early on the second day when the authorities caught up with them.

You spend six months fleeing, keeping out of the way of the Law. Finally you arrive at a safe place, and that is when the Law catches you.

It is frustrating.

The first Diana, Sapho and Iago knew was a flash, visible very clearly through the house walls. They were weeding, and all three stopped what they were doing and looked. ‘What was
that?’ Diana asked. She had that sudden tingling intimation that things were about to change.

Iago checked the House AI. ‘Very close. Between twenty and thirty thousand kilometres away – no more,’ he said. ‘That’s not good news.’

‘What is it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Something’s not right,’ said Diana.

‘Could it be the exhaust of a ship accelerating?’ asked Sapho.

‘Rather bright for that,’ said Iago, looking troubled. He peered into the palms of his hands, as if the answer were written there. ‘Also much too close – too close for
comfort.’

‘Was it something blowing up?’ Diana suggested.

Iago ran a more detailed check on space in that direction. The AI was slow, relatively, but it turned up the ship quickly enough.

‘A sloop,’ said Iago. He sighed. ‘A police sloop, and coming towards us. It’s pretty well chameleonised; but when you look straight at it you can make it out. And
it’s
definitely
coming this way.’

‘How?’ Diana squealed. ‘You said this place was—’

‘It is!’ Pride gave his voice sudden ferocity.

‘Then how have they found us?’

‘I don’t
know
how. But they’re definitely coming. If it weren’t for the flash, I wouldn’t have noticed the approach.’

‘Why would they give themselves away like that?’

‘I
don’t
know.’

‘Thirty thousand kilometres, you said,’ Diana pressed. ‘Does that give us time to evacuate? Into the
Red Rum
– can they outrun us, if we make a sprint for
it?’

‘They’d catch us easily,’ said Iago. ‘And anyway, they’re almost here! This ship isn’t connected with the flash. At least I don’t think so – a
different direction.’ He cursed. ‘We don’t have time even to
try
and get away.’

‘But then what
is
the flash? The two things must be connected.’

‘It would be an improbable coincidence otherwise,’ said Iago. ‘Although it’s hard to see what could connect them.’

‘Was it a . . . flare, perhaps?’

‘Police sloops are not in the habit of alerting their prey by firing flares,’ said Iago.

‘Well then – some other ship, some friendly individual is trying to warn us – to help us. Is there
another
ship out there?’

‘No,’ said Iago, checking the House AI again. ‘Nothing else out there. Just the police sloop.’ He closed his eyes. ‘I feel very old,’ he said. ‘This is
terrible news. We
cannot
fall into the hands of the Ulanovs. It would be a disaster for your family if
you
do, Diana. And if
I
do – well, it would be a disaster for all
humanity.’

‘Not,’ said Diana, drily, ‘to overstate it.’

‘No!’ said Iago, with sudden vehemence. ‘For years I have gone to extreme lengths to avoid falling into the hands of the Ulanovs. I have done some genuinely terrible things.
And I have done so not to save my own skin – what does my own skin, matter, after all? I have
done
so because the entire future of the human race is at stake! It has not been a
personal matter. It has been a species imperative. I have never found anything I could, in conscience, put before that imperative. Not,’ he added, looking around at his own bubble, ‘not
until now.’

‘What can we do?’

‘Our options,’ Iago said, in a low voice, ‘
are
limited. We can’t fight them. We can’t run away.’

‘We’re caught!’ cried Sapho.

Iago stretched himself in mid-air. ‘We need,’ he said. ‘We need more information.’

But he did nothing more active than floating to a spigot, washing his hands, rubbing them in a cluster of pearl-bright beads of water and drying them. Dia and Sapho followed suit. Then Iago
kicked off from the guy-rope and flew to the door to set up such defences as the house possessed. ‘It’s not much,’ he said. ‘I have two rail-guns, but they aren’t
going to trouble something as large as a police sloop.’

Then, as Sapho and Diana floated beside him, he dialled a line through to the ship.

A face appeared: long-featured and lugubrious-looking. ‘Jack Glass as I live and breathe,’ said the face, in an unsurprised voice.

‘Bar-le-duc,’ replied Iago. ‘It
is
you!’ He sounded so energised by the sight of him that Diana, momentarily, thought this newcomer might not be a threat after
all. This impression did not last long, however.

‘I was going to say
it’s been a long time, Jack
,’ Bar-le-duc replied, slowly. ‘But time is a slippery concept, where you’re concerned – isn’t
it?’

‘You have come to arrest me,’ said Iago.

‘I have. The authorities
have
you now, my friend. They’ll torture you, and probably kill you, and that will be your end. But you’ve known for a long while that
that’s where you’re heading. No need for me to Tiresias excessively on
that
score.’

‘You haven’t taken me yet, Bar,’ said Iago. But he spoke without defiance. He sounded, on the contrary, rather worn down and weary.

‘True! Somehow, despite our stealth approach, you spotted us a little
ahead
of time. My plan was to board you, utilising the element of surprise – burn through some emergency
entrance holes and rush you. But you spotted us! Well done.’

‘If you didn’t want to be spotted, why let off that flare?’

‘Flare?’ said Bar-le-duc. ‘We let off no flare! Do you think we’re idiots? I assumed
you
let off that flare, to inform us that you had
seen
us. I’m
more interested in – what gave us away? I was coming in, silent running, very cautious. Another few minutes and we would have
had
you.’

‘Serendipity favours the angels,’ said Iago.

‘I congratulate you, anyway,’ said Bar-le-duc. ‘I can afford to be magnanimous, now! Now that I have finally caught you!’

‘Your career hasn’t suffered, Bar, since the last time we met?’ Iago asked, with mock solicitude.

‘What?’

‘I was anxious that our previous encounter might have harmed your prospects. Perhaps you have heard about Ms Joad? She used to be one of the Ulanovs’ favoured agents. Then she failed
to arrest me, and now she’s been banished to the outer darkness.’

‘I heard about her, yes,’ replied Bar-le-duc, with respectful gloom in his voice. ‘A shame. To go from being a somebody to being a nobody would be hard for anyone; it is doubly
so for her. Well, thank you for your concern, my friend! Having you slip through my fingers certainly didn’t
help
my promotion possibilities.’ He spoke with a slow, deliberate,
rather depressive intonation, as if any kind of communication with other people was a mournful duty. ‘Still,’ he added, smiling thinly, ‘I have you now.’

‘Who
is
this man?’ Diana asked.

‘You haven’t heard of the celebrated Bar-le-duc?’ said the hologrammatic representation of the celebrated Bar-le-duc, mournfully.

‘He’s
police
, is who he is,’ said Iago.

‘Really!’ objected the head. ‘Much
more
than police.’

‘He works for the Ulanovs. He specialises in arrests. Search and capture. He tried to arrest me once before. He failed, though.’

‘I’ve tried more than
once
, dear man,’ said Bar-le-duc.

‘And you failed more than once, too. Maybe you’ll fail again.’

‘I don’t think
so
,’ Bar-le-duc murmured. ‘Not this time. You can’t run. You can’t fight. There’s nothing you
can
do.’

‘I could match your bounty, and pay you more,’ suggested Iago. ‘Pay you – shall we say, three times?’

‘No,’ said Bar-le-duc, simply.

Something structural in Iago’s spirit sagged, visibly; you could see it in his face. ‘Well, here’s another option. I simply shan’t let you into my house. Huff and puff
all you like.’

‘I think you
will
let us in,’ said Bar-le-duc, sadly. ‘From where I’m sitting your bubble looks eminently poppable.’

‘Pop the bubble?’ Iago said, peering through the window to get a glimpse of the sloop. ‘Do that and we’ll die, and if we die you get nothing.’

‘I’m confident we could fish you out of the vacuum. Though I couldn’t say the same for your friend. Or we could harpoon you. This sloop has Tachyon Thrust you know –
plenty powerful enough to tow you all the way back Lagrangeward.’

‘You try that, and I’ll burst the bubble
myself
,’ Iago warned.

‘I believe you would, too,’ said Bar-le-duc, in his slow, mournful voice. ‘You’re very blinkered when it comes to the possibilities of life, Jack. In that respect
you’re almost a
child
. One thing at a time in your mind, eh? Oh so ignorant about life; although of course there’s nothing about death you
don’t
know. Of course
you’d kill yourself. But – her?’

Iago glanced over at the
her
, and Diana felt a ghastly tightening in her stomach. It occurred to her suddenly:
this is really happening
. It had crept up so unexpectedly; and her
life lately had been such a succession of weird meetings and unexpected developments that it took an effort to persuade herself this was different. But, suddenly, Diana was aware of the possibility
that
she could die
. They could all die, here and right now. This could be where it ends. She tried to think through the options – that being her speciality, of course – but she
couldn’t see past it. There are only two ways this plays out, she thought: either the police arrest us, and turn us over to who-knows-what horrors; or we all die, right here and now.

Neither alternative was good.

‘How do you know about her, anyway?’ Iago snapped. ‘How did you find out where I live? How have you
done
this, Bar?’

‘I have my sources,’ said Bar-le-duc. ‘You don’t need to worry about them. But you
do
have to come along with me, my little thomas-rhymer. You
have
to
harp-and-carp. Options exhausted, I’m sorry to say.’ He did sound sorry, too.

Iago looked about himself, turned himself entirely about in mid-air. He appeared to be surveying his domain. But there was nothing in here that could help him. ‘It was foolish of me to
come here,’ he said, perhaps to himself. ‘We should simply have gone on from bubble to bubble – we should have kept moving. If I could turn back time I’d do it
differently.’

‘Not even you can turn back time,’ said Bar-le-duc.

Iago faced the hologram again. ‘I want this absolutely clear,’ he said, decisively. ‘I will go with you so long as you guarantee that
she
be untouched – left
alive, and free.’

‘Iago!’ said Diana.

‘
If
,’ Iago said again, not looking at her. ‘She can go free.’

‘Free,’ said Bar-le-duc, as if the word were literally incomprehensible to him.

‘You know what I mean. Able to go where she chooses, at liberty.’

‘Why should I?’

‘Because otherwise I’ll kill us all.’

‘But if I agree to let her go?’

‘Then,’ said Iago, ‘I’ll come willingly with you.’

The projection was of a head weighing up his options. Then, Bar-le-duc smiled his thin smile. ‘By all means,’ he said. ‘If that concept means anything to you – or to her
– then fair enough. But after all, we’re
all
in prison. What is it the old poet said, about the solar system being a prison, with many cells in it, existentially equivalent to
living inside a walnut shell? Who was that – Shakespeare? It’s usually Shakespeare.’

‘No equivocation,’ said Iago. ‘I’m happy to agree the Solar System is, in the largest sense, a prison. But you must agree that you will permit Diana to go into whichever
portion of it she chooses, unmolested.’

‘Very well. But do you know what, my friend?’

‘What?’

‘If what they say about you is true – why, then the System will no longer
be
a prison! You can open the door, and humanity can flood out into the cosmos as a whole!’

‘I wouldn’t believe everything they say about me,’ Iago muttered. Then, speaking directly: ‘how shall I trust you? Do you have a RACdroid aboard that sloop?’

‘Of course I do. I am an accredited senior officer of the Lex Ulanova. It can witness our contract. Still: a contract to let a wanted criminal go free? I’m not sure that’s
wholly legal.’

‘It’s not the legality I’m worried about,’ said Iago. ‘It’s having it
recorded
. So that, at a later date, it is not simply your word against
mine.’

Even Bar-le-duc’s laugh sounded sad; a slow series of clucking noises. ‘And you think there will
be
any later date, for you! My poor friend.’

‘Just bring the RACdroid with you.’

‘So then we are clear,’ said Bar-le-duc. ‘I shall leave your Clan Argent friend to her own destiny, and in return I shall take
you
off to the authorities, and
they
will dismantle you organ by organ, in a welter of blood, to get at what is in your head. You’re quite sure you want to go ahead with this? I ask, for old time’s
sake.’

Iago took a deep breath. ‘Just bring the RACdroid. I’ll deal with, with the
rest
of it if-and-when.’

‘Deal with it!’ repeated Bar-le-duc, chuckling sorrowfully. ‘My dear friend. I’ve spent such a portion of my life hunting you! I’m almost sorry it comes to
this.’

‘
You
can come through, Bar. Bring the droid. There’s only one entrance to this globe, and my sloop is already docked there; so you’ll have to dock with the rear hatch of
my ship and come through that to get inside. I’ll instruct the AI to unlock it.’