Paradigm (8 page)

It knew his name. How could it know his name? He hadn’t used it anywhere in Century City. How could it know his name?

He closed his eyes and let the cool breeze play over his face.

Wait a minute...

Even as the thought came to his head, his heart sank.

I closed the window!

He opened his eyes just in time to see the dark figure swing through the window from above. The boots hit him square in the chest, sending him staggering backwards to the floor. Then his attacker was on him, his full weight on his chest and two razor sharp knives at his throat like scissors.

Sam closed his eyes. So this was how it ended. At least it would be quick.

But nothing happened.

He opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was the tattoo. It seemed to writhe on her face in the pale dawn light. The second was the dark sparkling eyes. The third was the disappointment.

“Shit.”

Sam grinned.

“You just can’t stay away, can you?”

“I don’t believe it.”

Alma slid the knives into sheathes behind her back. She examined Sam narrowly.

“You look different.”

“I had a shower. Two, actually.”

“Are you trying to be funny?”

“Not particularly. I really have had two showers. Washed my clothes, too.”

One side of Alma’s mouth tipped up in what Sam could have sworn was almost a smile. He reached up and touched her face. She slapped his hand away and recoiled.

“What did you do that for?”

“Well, you’re not moving, so I thought maybe this was what passed for foreplay in New Zealand.”

“Aotaearoa.”

“Whatever.”

Alma stared at him.

“You’re still not moving.”

She stood up and strode straight to the bathroom, checked it out, then checked the closets and under the bed.

“There’s no one else here,” said Sam.

“Where’s your little friend?”

“Next door.”

“Is the box here?”

“No.”

She stopped and glanced at him.

“Not as stupid as you look, then.”

“Not really possible.”

The half-smile glimmered for a split second and was gone again.

“I suggest you leave…now.”

Sam stood up, straightened the chair and picked up his coat.

“Funnily enough, that’s exactly what I was thinking right before you arrived. But probably not for the same reason.”

“And your reason is…?”

“It’s personal. What’s yours?”

“I was sent to get the box and kill you.”

“Huh. I was right.”

“About what?”

“There was some talk in the bar last night about Carolyn Bast bringing in a killer. Stone-cold assassin was the phrase used, I think.”

“And you assumed that was me?”

“I had a feeling.”

“Well, you’re right. And I have a reputation to protect, so you’d be doing us both a favor if you just vanished.”

“How old are you?”

“What?”

“Well, you seem a bit…young to have that kind of a rep.”

“I’ve seen sixteen summers,” she replied indignantly.

“That’s not really—”

“I was raised in the Makahua and lived with death as my friend. I took my first life at twelve. It is what I do. It is what we all do.”

“Did.”

She stared hard at him, then turned and checked the room again, leaving Sam to regret saying anything. He knew what it felt like to lose everything but at least he was still in the country where he was born. Most of the Hakadun fighters had been wiped out in the final days of the Antipodean Wars and their once-beautiful country left barren and bleak.

She strode to the window, looked down, then closed it and drew the curtains.

“Perhaps you should wait a short while. Until there are more people on the street.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What for?”

“Sometimes my mouth works ahead of my brain.”

Alma looked at him and the half smile flickered again.

“The men of the Makahua do not apologize.”

“More fool them,” said Sam, smiling. “It usually works like a charm.”

“Do you take anything seriously?”

“I take lots of things seriously. It doesn’t mean I can’t have a laugh as well. The world’s a pretty ridiculous place when you think about it.”

He hung his coat over the Muthascreen again, taking care to obscure the whole thing. When he turned around she was standing right in front of him.

“Is that why you took the box? For a laugh?”

“Jeeze, you move quietly! You should wear a bell like a cat. No, I didn’t take the box for a laugh. I didn’t take it at all.”

“Then how—?”

“There was an old man. A monk, I think. He took it, but I think maybe Carolyn Bast had taken it from him, or from his monastery. Anyway, he’d got it back, but he was shot. Dying. He gave it to me.”

“He was being chased?”

“Yes. There wasn’t really time to think. I wanted to try to save him but he refused.”

“How could you have saved him? You carry no weapons.”

“How do you know that?”

“You had none in town, nor in the camp in the Wilds when anyone with sense would have been armed to the teeth.”

“Maybe I don’t believe in them.”

Alma stared at him for a moment then rolled her eyes. “Oh, I see, you think you’ve seen enough violence.”

“Maybe.”

“Okay. So you took the box. Do you know what it is?”

“Yes.”

“And…?”

“They didn’t tell you, did they?”

Alma hesitated for a moment and when she spoke Sam had the feeling it wasn’t what she’d been going to say.

“It wasn’t necessary. My orders were to retrieve the box and dispose of the man that took it.”

“Right,” he said, staring into her face in a vain attempt to discover some sign, some flicker that would explain why she’d bothered lying.

“So,” said Alma, staring back calmly. “What are you going to do with it?”

Sam shrugged. “Hide it, I guess. Somewhere no one will ever find it.”

“Your eyes are different colors.”

“What?”

“It’s very disconcerting. Where are you going to hide it?”

“I’m…I don’t know. Somewhere with a blue sky. And stars at night.”

“There’s no such place.”

“So everyone says.”

A shaft of light crept across the floor between them as the new day finally arrived.

“But you don’t believe them?”

“Dunno,” said Sam. “It’s just…I like the thought that somewhere there’s a place that’s still okay, that didn’t get messed up.”

“There isn’t. Get over it.”

Sam glanced at her, then strode across the room and pulled the curtains wide. At night the city had looked beautiful but in the cold light of early morning it lost much of its luster. The yellow sky loomed over the utilitarian concrete housing blocks, while the sleek black skyscrapers took on an air of ambivalence rather than majesty and the distant refinery spewed black smoke into the clouds…as if things weren’t bad enough already.

“There has to be something better than this,” he muttered.

“We should go,” said Alma. “I’ll go first. You wait fifteen minutes then leave by the back of the hotel. I’ll take out the cameras but they’ll have them up and running again pretty soon.”

“Right,” said Sam, returning to the dresser and retrieving his coat. He folded up the old plastic keyboard and returned it to his pocket. “You know it’s been listening, right?”

Alma smiled her sideways smile, and held up a small octagonal pendant that hung on a chain around her neck.

“You’re joking! A jammer? Where on earth did you get that?”

“Carolyn Bast makes sure all her operatives have one. Perk of the job.”

“Can you get me one?”

“No.” She opened the door and glanced up and down the corridor.

“Remember—fifteen minutes.”

“Why are you doing this? Helping me.”

“I’m not sure,” whispered Alma. “I guess…I don’t like them. This Bast woman and her people…they have no honor. I am Hakkadun. For us, honor is all, and…”

She hesitated for a moment, then looked straight into his eyes. Sam thought he glimpsed something in the depths of hers. A sadness that she hid far away in the recesses of her soul.

“You are taking a dangerous thing to a place that probably doesn’t exist because you believe it is the right thing. It’s good to know there are still some people as crazy as you, Sam Cooper. So I will not kill you.”

He stepped toward her, wanting to say something else, to explain that he wasn’t that person. Not really. But she opened the door and disappeared down the corridor, moving swiftly and without a sound. Sam sighed, glanced around the room to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything, then stepped into the corridor and knocked on Nathan’s door.

There was a long pause before a bleary-eyed Nathan opened it a crack.

“What? I’m sleeping.”

“Well, wake up,” said Sam, pushing his way into the room and closing the door. “We’ve got to go.”

“Right now?”

“Fifteen minutes. Enough time for you to have a shower.”

“But…”

“Really. A shower. Now. You are seriously rank.”

Nathan sloped off to the bathroom, too hungover to protest. Sam put his coat over the Mutha screen and wandered out to the balcony. He could feel the acrid factory output in the back of his throat and sighed. One day. That was all he wanted. Just one day of blue skies and one night of stars before he died.

“What are you looking at?”

Nathan was grabbing his belongings and shoving them into his small backpack.

“Nothing,” Sam turned and walked back into the room. “Ready?”

Nathan nodded.

“We have to go out the back.”

“Why? What happened?”

“Someone tried to kill me.”

“Again? Man, for someone who does nothing but read you’ve certainly pissed off a lot of people.”

They stepped onto the elevator and rode it down to the ground floor, then ducked through various service corridors until they arrived at the vast kitchens. Sam had to ask directions twice, but they eventually emerged into the paltry sunlight near the hotel’s composting tanks.

“This way.” Sam set off again.

“Sam, wait! Where’s the box? The box that you had last night. You said it was important.”

“It is. We’re going to get it now. I hid it.”

“You hid it?”

“Yeah. I couldn’t risk someone finding it in the hotel.”

“I don’t remember you hiding anything.”

“Big surprise there.” He grinned at Nathan and pushed on, leaving the wide streets in the city center for the narrower lanes of the poorer residential district.

“We went this far and I don’t remember it?” Nathan sounded worried.

“It’s not that far, really. Just a couple of blocks from the bar. See—there’s the parking lot.”

Nathan looked up and saw the huge parking structure a few streets away. The relief on his face was palpable. He followed Sam through a short alley and across an empty lot to a row of derelict buildings.

“Wow. I wouldn’t have expected any empty houses. Everyone’s so packed in.”

“They’re old. I’m guessing the city is planning something grey, faceless and tall. You wait out here. Yell if you see anyone coming.”

Nathan nodded and crouched near the entrance while Sam stepped into the cool darkness of the old house.

It reminded him of the San Francisco house: narrow and built of brick, with a wide bay window in the front and the remains of a large kitchen toward the back. It was the kitchen in the San Francisco house that he remembered most. There had been marvelous smells and toys and laughter. Elkanah and Marion had laughed a lot back then. And it seemed that the house was always full of their friends from the research institute, or people they’d met at the various classes they took. They had made friends easily and were always taking classes—Italian cooking, yoga, French, poetry. Sam looked around the Century City kitchen at the rusting oven and broken, stained sink but he saw that other kitchen: yellow and green and bright with flowers.

“Sam? What are you doing in there?”

“Nothing! I’ll be right out.”

He ran up the rickety staircase to the top floor and into the back bedroom. There was a old narrow fireplace that had been boarded up, though the nails holding the boards had long since worked their way loose of the surrounding mortar and fallen away, leaving a slender black hole in the wall.

Sam dropped to his knees and reached up the chimney to the small shelf created by the damper. He slid the box down, blew the soot off it and tucked it under one arm.

“Got it!”

He ran down the stairs, taking the last flight by sliding down the aged banister and hurtling through the door and into the sunlight, giddy with the thought that they were on their way to the GTO and the Wilds once more.

He should have known better.