Keeping It Real (16 page)

and elvish words in the song had called it out of the Interstitial. She felt like protecting Zal from

Sarasilien's

intellect, for the time being. Instead she flicked her gaze inward, to the cameras at
the Arena, and saw

The No Shows going on stage. 'Maybe it
has something to do with the demon connection?'

Sarasilien nodded, 'Maybe. If that is true . . .' But
he got
lost
in thought.

They opened with a version of'Mama Told Me Not To Come', treated with heavy expanded Mode-X

bass, funky rock guitar and curious disco backing
.
They started in the dark until Zal sang, 'Don't rum on

the lights . . .' and then, in a blaze of photonic glory, the crowd went
mental at the still unusual sight of a

High Elf singing and dancing like he grew up in a Queenstown ghetto bar.

She flicked back to reality. 'Who's at
the Arena?'

'We sent
Malachi.' Sarasilien hesitated as Lila watched the band shift into one of their own numbers.

'He's really very good, isn't
he?'

Lila blinked. 'You can use magic to listen to the concert?'

'It is on television,' he admitted and touched the side of his head where a slim Fruitfly was pinned

beside his ear, feeding images and sound directly to him. 'I have Bluetooth.'

'Oh.' She took in this unexpected adaptation of his, decided it was okay, and watched Zal, wondering

if there was going to be some larger shift of elves into the waters of technology
.
'He's okay
.
' She thought

Sarasilien was going to make another Finish It
crack, but he didn't. He stood beside her and absently

rested his fingertips on her forehead. She felt a trickle of magic, like cool water, run out of his
andalune

and down through her skull into her head. Suddenly everything seemed much calmer and lighter, and the

burden of the Game and the last
few hours of strange violence lifted.

'We have arranged to move your gear from Solomon's Folly tonight,' he said. 'It will be on the tour bus

when you join it later tomorrow
.
Jolene put up a fuss about your absence and Mr Sakamoto was

extremely vociferous in his complaints, although the threat of a peremptory audit by the Otopia Revenue

Service has dampened his ire. The official story is that you pursued Zal into the forest on one of his

marathon training runs and were injured by a fall into a hidden ravine.' He sounded less than impressed.

'Ravine?' Lila whispered.

'You called for help and were taken from the accident site straight to hospital. Zal went with you.'

"That's ridiculous. My cover won't hold.'

'It
is still holding, Zal and Sorcha notwithstanding, although they have no interest
in outing you. Money

has spoken to Mr Sakamoto and well-placed lies multiply faster than flies.'

'They have to take Battle Standard out,' Lila pleaded
.

"They're debugging it,' Sarasilien said. He squeezed her hand, a gesture she could feel but not

reciprocate. 'It's out of my jurisdiction anyway.'

'It
is
a bug,' she said, but she was too tired to say more. She watched Zal dance and prance and leap

and shriek and sing like the devil himself. She could see what
the elves flinched at
in his expression. He

was sexy, and he showed that he knew it. It was the second part
they didn't care for.

She scanned the crowd and there, of course, like the cool creature he was, ears concealed by a

bandanna and eyes made up to look human, she saw the unmistakably aloof features of Dar. He was

midway back on the ground floor level, a little taller than most, and strangely still and tranquil in the

general mayhem. His dark eyes were fixed intently on the stage.

'Dar's there,' she croaked.

T see him,' Sarasilien said and took his hand from hers. 'Malachi will too.'

But Lila wasn't so sure. And there wasn't just one agent, there were two of them. Where was the

woman?

'Rest, Lila,' Sarasilien ordered. 'If you want
to be useful again you have to get well enough first.'

But she hadn't got a choice, because they wouldn't return her insystem anyway
.
She watched Zal, and

she watched Dar watching him, and slowly, with waves of sleep struggling to drag her down, it came to

her that there was more in what was going on that she could make out, something that tugged at
the edge

of her consciousness but would not come forward into the light
.

Nothing happened. Zal sang and the words of his songs filtered into her dreams here and there, like a

secret
code appearing and vanishing from the noise.

. . . sorry that I'm not calling you,

Didn't get the things you ask me to,

A thousand disappointments building up into this wave ...

The music gave the words power they would never have owned alone, but when the alarm came at

five a.m
.
and her insystem woke her up those secret meanings which had seemed so profound to her at

the time dissipated like smoke.

In spite of her inclination to do the contrary Lila didn't
rush to join the tour en route up the coast
as soon

as it
was light. One part of her training had been in the subtle arts of fine-tuning ordinary human intuition,

because the near-instant
subconscious processes of the mind were often as effective as any lengthy study,

and her intuition kept putting pressure between her shoulder blades every time she thought of the bug

she'd found the other day. She decided to take one more look, even without
knowing what for.

After checking through medical and getting a clear from Dr Williams, she put on jeans and a T-shirt

and rode her bike back to the recording studio. She parked three blocks away this time and walked

through the grey dawn, taking a slight
dog's leg that brought her up behind the bugged sedan. As

reported by her subordinates, nobody had come to replace or claim the data tape. Lila figured that
the

cat
charm must have alerted them to the discovery and could have even identified her using that
hair it

snatched, so they probably were never going to come back.

She picked the locks and sat down in the driver's seat, leaving the door ajar and her foot on the sill.

She extended metal pincers from the fingertips of her left hand, created pliers and got a grip on the radio.

With a jerk that
barely jolted her sore muscles she ripped the whole unit free of the dash and then

glanced around, but the noise hadn't attracted attention. The street slept on. As if anybody there would

have got
up for a radio theft
anyway.

Lila took the tape out of the wrecked unit and checked the wiring over for any unusual features. It was

simple recording gear. The only addition was the fix that set
it
to listen in to the old bugging device. She

powered the system off a port in her arm and played the tape,

stopping at
random to try and find anything that
might
be worth hearing. There was the usual stuff -

people in the studio, talking, setting up equipment, playing
.
Nothing they said seemed important outside

of the immediate moment
.
She speed-listened as the voices came and went and the light in the sky grew

stronger, brighter, cloud clearing to the west
.
She listened as the studio went quiet and everyone left for

home,

Lila heard the static shuffle of the tape wheels turning, and the sounds of the building, soft like dust, and

the sound of the tape itself brushing the pickups, and beneath all of that
a faint
trace, like the imaginary

echo of a million-year-old voice talking intently in a lan-guage long forgotten before the human race or

the quantum bomb had been devised
.
She remembered what
Malachi had said about
the possibility of a

bomb fault in the area and took the tape herself, leaving the radio on the passenger seat
and the door

open, so that her break-in resembled a simple theft
.

Her shoulders bothered her less as she walked along to the main street a block away and bought
a

Krispy Kreme donut and some coffee. She put the donut in the pannier of her bike when she got back to

it and drank the coffee there, resting her foot
on the kickstand as she called Sarasilien with her discovery
.

'Good work,' he said, as standard
.
'Send the tape to me and I'll process it for you. The buses have

already arrived in Frisco, according to Malachi and the team, so you can catch up there anytime from

now on.'

'Any more sightings of Dar?' she asked.

'He left
with the rest
of the crowd. Our agent
lost
him after about
two hundred metres. I think you can

expect to see him again.'

Lila pulled a face. 'Okay. I'll keep an eye out for him.'

'How are you doing?'

'I'm fine,' she said. 'Could use more sleep like you said, but fine. Gonna blow the webs out of my head

now. See you later.'

'Travel safely,' he said in elvish.

Lila put the tape into a smartseal pack and rode it across to a local bike courier company to get it

taken straight
to the Incon Agency drop. Then she put
her visor down and made for the coastal highway.

The inland freeway was faster, but she wanted some time to herself and to play with her fears as she laid

the bike over in the tight corners where the road traced the shore.

It was lunchtime when she arrived at her destination in the hot, sun-scorched lot outside the Cherry

Park Hotel
.
No tour bus duty for Zal and the others, strictly hotels with security and every luxury

money could buy. There couldn't be a room in the place that
didn't rent for more than an average

weekly pay packet.

Lila left the bike in the shade of the new post-colonial-styled building and met up with Malachi in a

tiled courtyard at the heart of the complex, where palm trees and fountains shaded the big outdoor

pool. He promised to look into the faultline personally when he got
back to town, but then pushed

down his trendy fly-eye sunglasses and said, 'I did some background checks on the Faery fellowship of

song there. Sandy's all cool but
Viridia and Poppy aren't
straight gemstone darlings. My old ash-tree

heart tells me that one or both of them are Each-Uisge, but
I can't prove it. That's one tough act Zal's

got backing him up.'

'Ek Ooshkah?' Lila repeated quietly, not
making the pronunciation of the strange Faery name very

well, despite some AI assistance. 'What's that?'

'Like kelpies, only more so. Kelpies like to drown victims but Each-Uisge are the kind who eat

everything but your liver afterwards.' Malachi shrugged, his compatriots' extreme and varied

idiosyncrasies as unremarkable to him as a liking for peanut butter was to Lila. 'All faeries have pretty

faces and walk wingless in Otopia, but not in every realm. You'd have to see them at home or in their

element to be sure.'

'You got secrets, Malachi?' Lila teased him gently. She was reason-ably sure she was not imagining

the fact that
the plants near to him in the decorative border were leaning in his direction.

'Many,' he assured her, feet firmly on the ground.

'You think they're dangerous?'

'Hell, no. As long as you don't show them big lakes or the sea. And even then, you're probably all

right here in Otopia. It's a pretty juiceless kind of place, y'know?'

Lila glanced at the pool, remembered Poppy kissing Zal by the last
one.

Malachi shrugged, 'Pools won't
do it. Too many chemicals and not enough deep, dark water. Trust

me. And in their human forms they'll be their fey, sweet
selves, even on more pixie dust
than you can

eat.'

'All right' ^ 'Everyone else is doing okay. A few minor drug raps, some parking

fines, a bad credit
history and a few misspent
youthful moments. Nothing to get worked up over. And

before you ask, no sign of those Jayon Daga agents, but that means nothing. Unlike most
faeries in

Otopia, bad news elves stay bad. I gotta go get
onto that
tape situation. Zal's all yours again. My tip this

time - trip him up before he gets to the door and hold him down.'

'Thanks,' Lila said, making a gun of her right
forefinger and thumb and shooting him for his insolence.

She checked in and found Jolene in the reception area, two Berryphones and a Fruitfly commset on the

go. With sign language Lila attempted to explain that
she was back and was going up to Zal's suite.

Jolene looked irritated, but it could have been from any of the conversations
.
She handed Lila a security

card. Lila picked up the pack Malachi had taken from Solomon's Folly for her, considered the elevator,

and then hauled it
up the stairs. She didn't
like having to explain that she and her bag tipped the scales