Keeping It Real (4 page)

building.

Poppy had been quite right
when she said that
the letters sent
to Zal care of Ozo Records had been

hideoso. They were also, as far as Incon were concerned, of possible relevance to national security.

Although some of them were crackpot in nature, hating Zal for his race, for his taste in music or for his

betrayal of all matters precious to Alfheim, those were easy to deal with: from elves or from humans they

went straight in the bin. But the dangerous ones that
had sparked Lila's operation weren't like that.

These few were letters that had been delivered on magical vellum, and what they said changed

according to who read them. When the manager of the fan club had opened them they read like regular

fan mail. The senders had even included cheques to join through special promotional rates promised

through an ad in
Vani
t
y Fair
which had accompanied a big article on Zal. But in Zal's hands the words

and letters spun themselves around. It wasn't possible for Lila to read what he saw, but she'd been

provided with Zal's brief report on it. The letter read:

Return by the lost way or not at all, Return by the longest day or not at all:

Else be lost and ever wander, Life and limb and spirit squander
.

It was a general kind of magical threat that
any of the non-Otopian realms might
have employed, but

unlike most spellcast items it bore no telltales of its origin that Incon's aetherial forensics had been able to

decipher. Since magic was created through the spirit of the creator, it was technically not possible to

have traceless magic. Magic bore the signatures of the maker all through it, like a hallmark. But
the letter

had proven completely flavourless.

The lost way part referred to the elf-only gateway out of Otopia to Alfheim
.
The longest day was easy:

that
was Midsummer Solstice, two days away. The rest
of it
seemed to indicate less favourable

conditions. Other Incon agents had been dispatched into Alfheim to see if they could find out whether it

had come from someone there. Lila, glad to be in Otopia, didn't know what she was looking for now, so

she looked for anything
.

The studio was set
up in an underground room, insulated for sound. Above that, on the ground level, the

administrative offices filled the space. Most of the areas were populated, so Lila used her day clearance

pass on the Fire Escape door and went up another flight
.
Through the concrete and steel of the walls it

was hard to obtain any accurate scans but
she did her best, searching another empty office, a storage

cup-board, a room full of old equipment. It was here that
she detected a trace of illegitimate radio

transmission-Inside, junk was stacked to the roof. Lila lifted boxes and crates and old packaging. It was

covered in dust and soon she was quite filthy but
she persisted. The transmitter was behind a filing

cabinet which was full to the top with broken mikes, old amplifier stacks and lumps of electronics that

must have been made before Lila was bom. She couldn't be bothered to unpack it for its trip to the

corridor so, after checking that nobody was near, she engaged her internal hydraulics and lifted the entire

thing, sliding it along the carpet on one edge until it
snagged on the lintel. Breathing out, sucking her

stomach in, Lila sneaked past it into the corner of the room, felt a tug against her leg and heard a ripping

sound.

'Ah, crap,' she said and looked down at the burst stitches on her new pants. It
was just
a whole day of

too-late, she thought.

With more force than necessary she bent down and yanked up the carpet. In a billow of dust
and dead

flies she sneezed and reached down, carefully letting the little finger of her right
hand rest
against
the tiny

object
which looked like a pebble. Intricate receptors housed where a knucklebone would have been

identified it as a Faery device, part silicon and part metal. It was using bounce-retort techniques to get a

reasonably clear sound pickup from the studio, and was broadcasting on a coded frequency to

somewhere quite local. It must have been here a long time for its battery power was almost
exhausted.

Lila listened through the bug for a moment or two.

She could hear Zal and the band. The raw energy of the music reached up and caught her. Zal's voice

was a shamanic, self-destructive growl - t
he pleasure is
t
o play, makes no difference wha
t
you say
...

It
made a strange, dark exultation rise in her chest, the sensation so clear and quick that she jerked in

surprise. Her Al-self picked up frequencies that her human ears couldn't hear. She wondered for a split

second if there were lots of dogs and cats in the intended audience, but her AI

corrected her. Zal's anomalous sounds were in the sub-audible band, not the high pitches of specialized

whistles.

Lila stored the information to send back to the lab later, in case it was an important slice of data, and

took her finger away from the bug, deciding to let it lie there for the time being. It
took a few minutes to

replace all the crap where it
had been. When she'd done she dusted herself down and tried washing in

the Ladies. The soap and water did a reasonably good job but there was nothing to be done about the

tiny tear she'd made in the outside seam of her trousers where it
had caught
against
the corner of the filing

cabinet. She patched the inside with a piece of sample tape which she carried along with the rest of her

field forensics kit in a capsule container that
fitted inside her jacket
pocket
like a wallet, and went
back to

the studio
.

What
she really wanted to do was get
outside and trace the broadcast
to its reception unit, but
that

would mean getting too far out of range of His Highness. Lila had to settle for a seat
next to Jelly in the

recording booth where she watched everyone except
Zal do ten repeats of the same song whilst Jelly

fiddled levels and mix and his assistants dashed around making much of nothing to do.

During the repeats she watched everyone closely. The musicians were so used to the regime that they

patiently repeated everything. Poppy smiled once to Lila and they had to stop that
take.

Jelly screamed at
her, 'Stop grinning! We're self-destructing here, not
selling hamburgers!'

Zal looked briefly at
Lila through the glass, when he turned around from talking to the DJ between

takes of Luke's bass track. He mouthed something at
her which she wasn't
meant
to hear, but
Lila could

read his lips even if she hadn't
been able to instantly recalibrate her hearing filters to pick up the actual

sound. It
was elvish words saying a thing she was reasonably certain no elf had ever said before.

Zo na kinkirien.
I love your pants.

She was puzzled for a moment
but
pleased she didn't
actually look down as she realised the tear on

her seam must be visible and that he was taunting her for going off instead of sticking like glue to his side.

He'd turned away before she could give him her frosty look.

Jelly listened through his private headphones, jouncing on his seat. 'One more time. Everyone except

the lord of darkness himself - Zal, you're done,' he said through the connecting mike and added. 'Ear

bleeding effort
ladies and gennlemen.' He cued the intricate, slamming drum line with a fingertip and

glanced at
Lila. 'Hey, don't
go getting ideas about Zal. You know I have to say it. Every girl comes in

here and the boys . . . okay they're like mostly engineers or admin and shit
. . . they always end up getting

. . . you know what I mean?'

Lila had no idea but she could guess. She nodded, rather interested that
this was still standard practice

after so many years - warn the new girl off, insult
the bodyguard's intelligence, make sure she knows she

doesn't
count. She smiled vacantly at him with agreement
whilst
inwardly seething.

'Good. Cos you have to like be around him all the time and that's not
gonna be a picnic. Don't
tell him

what to do. And don't tell him what to take. In fact, don't speak, because that
all pisses him off and we

have to start touring on Monday and I can't hand him over to Jolene all pissed because good tour

managers are like rocking horse shit and if she quits we're all screwed
.
Don't
let
him go on another

goddamned bender
.
He missed two dates last month, off his head out in the woods somewhere, and it

took four days to find him even and we never found whatever it was he took, maybe it was mushrooms

or some elfy thing he dug up, you know? And he'll resent you. Oh man, he already resents you. He'd

resent you more if you was a guy, though, if that makes it any better. That's all I can say.' Jelly paused as

the music started and then turned back. 'Do you have to shower with him?'

'No,' Lila said.

Jelly made a face that said it was a sport he was sorry he was going to miss, and then he slapped his

headphones back on.

Lila tested her patience to the limit by sitting quietly for the next hour simply watching, learning that

when Jelly said it was the last take, it wasn't. She used the time to sharpen up her intelligence on Alfheim

and tried to use the extensive database of genealogical data given her by Incon to try and place Zal.

The only thing he'd ever said about where he came from was in the
Vani
t
y Fair
piece and it read:

'There's no reason for me to be here other than the music. I like to sing.'

He'd lived in Queenstown, in the north of the Bay City area, for six months before The No Shows got

their act together. Before that
there was no record of anything unusual. He'd entered Otopia from the

Alfheim gateway under the usual restrictions and all his paperwork

was in order. Lila thought Zal must be a shortened version of his real name, but the database contained

no elvish names beginning with a Z. He was good at talking in Otopian, but so were many elves, who

picked up languages and accents like good carpet picks up dog hair. Lila couldn't genome test him

without
his permission according to inter-national law, so that was out of the question for the time being,

unless he were involved in a provable criminal action
.
It really looked like he was just an elf who wanted

to be a rock star. If only that weren't against every chosen or given trait
of Elfdom she'd ever known. But

then nobody here seemed to have a problem with it, probably because they were all getting rich off it.

Lila was grimly aware that stereotyping had provided the majority of her own attitudes towards his

species, and what
had happened to her in Lilirien, the Second Realm of Alfheim, two years ago hadn't

done anything to broaden her mind. The problem with Alfheim had always been that
the elves had very

little contact
with humans in or out of Otopia. They didn't mix with faery much either, and they had active

rules of avoidance regarding demons - it
was something to do with the magic systems each used.

Ancients and elementals moved freely among elves and were even welcome, but this was because all of

them had derived from similar magical roots. To Otopia they were neigh-bours; cordial and distant, as

out of Lila's league as though they belonged to a country club that
she could never afford to go to.

To the rest
of the elves Zal must
look like he was slumming it. She wouldn't
be surprised to find all the

threats of any substance coming from resentful authorities and individuals there. 'Ace of Spades', in its

Mode-X format, was comprehensively about as opposed to the serenity and rarefied values of elven

society as you could get. Which is why she took the letters seriously. She knew that
the elves'

protectiveness over their precious culture extended well beyond simply keeping secrets and writing

letters.

At last everything had been done according to Jelly's incomprehens-ible standards
.
The engineers

began to pack their equipment, and the band decided they all wanted to go out and eat, with a view to

staying out all night It was the last
thing Lila felt
like doing but
it
wasn't
her place to argue
.
Only as they settled down in their private dining room at the Lizard Lounge did she realise how hungry she was. She

found herself placed next
to Jolene and Luke, across from Zal.

'Cool 'tacts,' Luke said, grinning at
her
.
'Good hair too
.
'

'Thanks
.
' His flirting with her made her sorry her suit
was so ordinary.