The Far Shores (The Central Series) (73 page)

***

“Ériu?”

“Yes,” Eerie said,
barely able to raise her head from the floor. “Do it. But I will come for him.”

“Of course. I expect
nothing less.”

***

Alex couldn’t understand why he didn’t
lose consciousness. Wasn’t that supposed to happen at a certain point? Was it
even possible to experience so much pain?

It must have been, he
reflected groggily. After all, as much as this seemed like a horrible
nightmare, it was happening.

Alistair left the knife
embedded in Alex’s leg, turning to face him with one outstretched hand.

“Oh, very well,” Alistair
said, sounding like a child whose toys have been taken away. “You’re all so
damn boring. Goodbye, Alex. It was fun.”

Shining Cloud.

***

Samnang stood over Alex, the tattoos
on her cheeks flaring in sequence. The brilliant cloud of nanometer blades that
emerged from Alistair’s hand blossomed and died, falling to the ground as
gently as snowflakes.

“I won’t let you,”
Samnang explained simply, brushing aside the sparkling remains of the protocol.
“He is mine, after all.”

“What?” Alistair glanced
from Samnang to Parson, and then back. “What do you mean, Yaojing? You were
meant to collect the Changeling. This wasn’t the deal.”

“I have changed the
deal. This is more intriguing.”

“Nonsense,” Alistair
sputtered. “This is absurd. You cannot change the terms of a deal once it is
struck. Stand aside now. I am warning you.”

“It would be the height
of foolishness to challenge me, Anathema,” Samnang said, eye sockets burning
with a disquieting greenish-white radiance. “You forget yourself.”

“Enough,” Parson
commanded. “You have indulged your bloodlust more than sufficiently, Alistair.
We will discuss this later, at length. Lady Samnang, I will have Emily Muir aid
you in transporting the boy back to the Outer Dark, if that will truly settle
our debt.”

Alistair stood aside, white
faced and with shaky hands. Samnang nodded absently, having apparently lost
interest in the proceedings.

“Fine.” Alistair folded
his arms across his chest. “Take him and go, then.”

“Is the World Tree ready
for transport, Talia?”

The technician nodded,
her hands still tapping away at the keyboard.

“Almost, sir. Nearly
there.”

“Good. Emily, if you
would?”

A swell of water lifted
Alex from the ground and raised him toward the portal, Samnang following
closely. Emily glared at Alistair from the platform.

“You are a beast,
Alistair. A monster. I hope you get what you deserve.”

They disappeared into
the portal. John Parson gave Alistair one final disapproving glance, then
followed, leaving Alistair to fume and the Anathema soldiers to shift from one
foot to the other and exchange nervous glances in the silence.

“What I deserve? That’s
all that I want as well,” Alistair fumed. “Why is it that I never get it?”

He snapped his fingers,
and the Anathema came uneasily to attention. From beyond the chamber door, the
sound of the water rushing out of the hallway was audible.

“Let’s finish this,
then,” Alistair said, glancing at the soldiers. “We’re moving into Central
proper. You all have your targets. I want no survivors, no prisoners. We’ve had
enough of that today.”

Katya dragged herself
slowly up from the ground, shaking her head woozily.

“Where’s Alex?” Katya
asked, glancing around the room as her head cleared and her eyes focused. “What’s
going on – oh.” Katya stood slowly, looking from one Anathema to the next. “This
is fucked.”

“What a brilliant
observation,” Alistair snarled, turning his attention to Talia and the
equipment while gesturing vaguely in Katya’s direction. “Start with this one.”

The door to the chamber
opened. The girl in the doorway cleared her throat politely, then entered, Timor
and a pair of black Weir following close behind, stepping carefully around the puddles
of blood and the unconscious Changeling.

“I think not,” Anastasia
said with a half-smile. She wore a matte black dress that had been tailored for
her in Harajuku, hand-stitched by her favorite tailor to accentuate her very
subtle curves, laced at the chest and tight around the hips, flaring into a
long skirt with custom Italian heels to match. Her hair was
perfect
. “You
are done here, Anathema. There will be no trip to Central, no further violence
– unless you believe yourself ready to face me?”

Alistair hesitated for a
moment, then he laughed uproariously.

“I think I’ve had about
enough for today, thanks. After all, we can come back anytime we want, now that
we have a World Tree,” Alistair said brightly, gesturing to Talia, who began
tapping at the tablet in front of her. First the Anathema flickered, then the
World Tree behind them. “Take a rain check?”

Then they were gone, and
the only sound was the sobbing Changeling.

“Just as well,”
Anastasia sighed, fanning herself and leaning against the wall while her Weir
circled the perimeter of her dress anxiously. “I’m far too exhausted for any
further excitement. Timor, be a dear and bring Eerie along with us, won’t you?”

***

Renton rendered Vivik neatly oblivious.
It was an exacting procedure, requiring the aid of one of the special
transdermal patches to accomplish. The Sikh would remain conscious, his
protocol in operation, but without him noticing or remembering anything that
occurred in the numerous points of view he provided. Instead, Vivik would
broadcast a false view that Renton carefully implanted in his consciousness,
subtly altering the feed of what was happening at the Far Shores.

“Here,” Renton said,
pointing at a window that showed a portly man frantically running through a
hallway and bursting through a swinging door into a dormant laboratory. “We
need to go here, Svetlana.”

***

It had all gone wrong.

There was no denying that,
no use disputing it or crying over spilled milk. The events of the day would
cost him years of work, the Far Shores, everything he had accomplished and
earned over decades, but that was beyond fixing. The important thing now was to
make sure that it didn’t cost Dr. Graaf his life, and therefore that was where
his energies were focused.

The Anathema must have
had their own World Tree, to allow them to sidestep the barrier that protected
Central from direct apports. That they had come to the Far Shores with such a
clear understanding only confirmed Dr. Graaf’s suspicions – they had both been
provided technology from the same benefactor. He had no idea why the Anathema
required the World Tree he had planted and nurtured at the Far Shores, if they
already had one of their own, but the bee line they had made to the concealed
control room made their intentions obvious. He was curious, despite his anger,
as to the nature of the Anathema World Tree, and would have given much to see
it. It was a decided pity that he would never have the opportunity to reverse
engineer it, given all he could learn.

Then again, that could
hardly be his priority at the moment. There were more time-sensitive concerns.

Like getting out of the
Far Shores before the Auditors arrived.

Succeeding in life meant
preparing for the worst, no matter how confident one was in the success of his
plans. It was certainly unfortunate that things had worked out in the manner
they had, but even unfortunate possibilities have to be explored and compensated
for, in case the worse does in fact happen.

This was the reason he
had negotiated an out for this very contingency. Hidden carefully in a disused
seismology laboratory in the Geophysics building, taped to the back of a
cabinet door in a bleached white envelope, there was a beacon. He had used it
twice in the past, and was thus assured that seconds after he employed the
beacon, he would be safely distant from the ongoing disaster at the Far Shores.

Of course, eventually
everyone runs out of contingencies.

Dr. Graaf burst through
the laboratory doors, operational codes in hand for the device, to find the
seismology lab occupied a young man in a suit with a salesman’s smile, and a
young lady watching with polite disinterest beside the ransacked cabinet.

 “Dr. Graaf. Please do
come in.” Renton greeted him, waving him into the room with a friendliness that
conveyed just the slightest hint that not accepting whatever he was graciously
offering would be very unwise indeed. “I am afraid that the guest you were expecting
won’t be coming.”

“I had guessed as much,”
Dr. Graaf agreed sadly. “You have seen to that, I imagine.”

“It was not our doing,”
the young man said, tossing him the beacon. “We found the package you had
concealed, and examined it, as we are also eager to talk to your friends.
Unfortunately, it appears to be nothing more than an empty plastic tube. Unless
you have some special knowledge?”

Dr. Graaf tore open the
envelope, and then examined the beacon with trembling hands. Externally, it was
exactly as he remembered, excepting only the weight – flat black, with a
texture that was similar to glass, similar in shape and slightly larger than a
pencil. It had no joints or panels, no obvious joining or points of separation.
There were no signs of tampering or damage. Dr. Graaf wasn’t even sure how one
would go about accessing the interior. Nonetheless, he was forced to agree with
the young man’s conclusion – the beacon was hollow, and therefore useless.

“None, I am afraid.” Dr.
Graaf tossed the useless shell aside, his shoulders slumped, resigning himself.
“If not you, then who did this?”

“Your benefactors, I
imagine. The Church of Sleep. They seem to have abandoned you.”

Dr. Graaf didn’t bother
to look shocked. It seemed a little late in the game for such fictions.

Truthfully, he had never
understood why the Church of Sleep had contacted him, or why they had been
willing to exchange the data that would allow for both the power plant and the
nearly finished World Tree, in exchange for a few pointless communication experiments.
The relationship benefited him tremendously, however, providing access to
research decades beyond anything in Central and allowing for the astounding
progress at the Far Shores, so he didn’t worry overly much about what they
might be getting out of it.

In retrospect, Dr. Graaf
wished he had put more thought into that aspect.

“How did you discover
the project? And their involvement? I was careful to cover my tracks...”

“Katya Zharova,” the
young man said, with a smile. “She suspected you from day one. You may recall
that she observed a portion of one of your night experiments? Under hypnosis,
she was able to recall every detail. The Black Sun has formidable scientific
resources of its own, Dr. Graaf. It did not take long to deduce that you were
assembling some sort of array, for discreet communications with a distant
party. The rest was inferred.”

Dr. Graaf nodded slowly.

“If I understand
correctly, you intend to leave the employ of the Far Shores,” the young man
suggested, “effective immediately?”

“That was my intention,
yes,” Dr. Graaf admitted weakly. “I see that has been rendered impossible,
however.”

“Impossible? Nonsense,”
Renton said, putting his arm around Dr. Graaf’s broad shoulders. “I wouldn’t
let a small thing like a disabled communication device bother you, Doctor. Not
when such a staggeringly convenient and well-timed opportunity has just dropped
in your lap.”

“Oh?” Dr. Graaf said,
warily encouraged. “What opportunity is that?”

“I would assume that you
wish to depart before the Auditors locate you, Dr. Graaf. Am I correct?”

“Utterly.”

“Well, they have just
arrived, so I will make this brief.” Renton urged him gently in Svetlana’s
direction. “As it happens, Doctor, there is an opening in the Black Sun at this
very moment, perfect for a man of your talents. An opportunity that should
afford you access to the very best in research and experimental resources, and
a sufficient degree of freedom to pursue your creativity to satisfy even your
demanding intellect. Would you not call that good fortune?”

“Very fortunate,” Dr.
Graaf agreed. “However, as you mention, I am anticipating certain difficulties
with the authorities of Central and the Auditors – based entirely on a
misunderstanding, I might add – which may prove difficult even for the Black
Sun Cartel to clear up without a certain amount of unpleasantly intrusive
inquiry.”

“Then today is truly
your lucky day, Dr. Graaf. The position I mentioned,” Renton explained, nodding
to Svetlana, “is, shall we say, off the books. Very secret, very secure. And I
assure you, Doctor, we are
very
good at keeping secrets. Can I assume
that you are interested?”