Use of Weapons (58 page)

He
slunk back through the drapes, guilty at the thought. At the desk he turned the
room lights off and sat back in the seat. His throne, he thought and, for the
first time in days, laughed a little, because it was such an image of power and
he felt so utterly powerless.

He
heard a truck draw up outside the window, where it was not supposed to. He sat
still, suddenly thinking; a massive bomb, just out there... and was suddenly
terrified. He heard a sergeant barking, some talk, and then the truck moved a
little way off, though he could still hear its engine.

After
a while, he heard raised voices in the hall stair-well. There was something
about the tone of the voices that chilled him. He tried to tell himself he was
being foolish, and turned all the lights back on, but he could still hear them.
Then there was something like a scream, cut-off abruptly. He shook. He
unholstered his pistol, wishing he had something more lethal than this slim
little dress-uniform gun. He went to the door. The voices sounded odd; some
were raised, while some people were apparently trying to keep theirs quiet. He
opened the door a crack, then went through; his ADC was at the far door, onto
the stairs, looking down.

He
put the pistol back in his holster. He walked out to join the ADC, and followed
his gaze, down into the hall. He saw Livueta, staring wide-eyed back up at him;
there were a few other soldiers, one of the other commanders. They stood round
a small white chair. He frowned; Livueta looked upset.He went quickly down the
steps; Livueta suddenly came bounding up to meet him, skirt hem flying. She
pushed into him, both hands against his chest. He staggered back, amazed.

'No,'
she said. Her eyes were bright and staring; her face looked more pale than he'd
ever seen before. 'Go back,' she said. Her voice sounded thick, like it was not
her own.

'Livueta...'
he said, annoyed, and pushed himself away from the wall, trying to glance round
her at whatever was happening in the hall round the little white chair.

She
pushed him again. 'Go back,' the thick, strange voice said.

He
took her wrists in his hands, '
Livueta
,'
he said, voice low, eyes flicking to indicate the people standing beneath in
the hall.

'Go
back,' the strange, terrifying voice said.

He
pushed her away, annoyed at her, tried to go past her. She attempted to grab
him from behind. 'Back!' she gasped.

'Livueta,
stop this!' he shook her off, embarrassed now. He clattered quickly down the
steps before she could grab him again.

Still
she threw herself down after him, clutched at his waist. 'Go
back
!' she wailed.

He
turned round. 'Get off me! I want to see what's going on!' He was stronger than
her; he tore her arms free, threw her down on the stairs. He went down, walked
across the flagstones to where the silent group of men stood round the little
white chair.

It
was very small; it looked so delicate that an adult might have broken it. It
was small and white, and as he took a couple of more paces forwards, as the
rest of the people and the hall and the castle and the world and the universe
disappeared into the darkness and the silence and he came closer and slowly
closer to the chair, he saw that it had been made out of the bones of Darckense
Zakalwe.

Femora
formed the back legs, tibiae and some other bones the front. Arm bones made the
seat frame; the ribs were the back. Beneath them was the pelvis; the pelvis
that had been shattered years earlier, in the stone boat, its bone fragments
rejoined; the darker material the surgeons had used quite visible too. Above
the ribs, there was the collar bone, also broken and healed, memoir of a riding
accident.

They
had tanned her skin and made a little cushion out of it; a tiny plain button in
her navel, and at one corner, just the hint, the start of some dark but
slightly red-tinged hair.

There
were stairs, and Livueta, and the ADC, and the ADC's office, between there and
here, he found himself thinking, as he stood at his desk again.

He
tasted blood in his mouth, looked down at his right hand. He seemed to recall
having punched Livueta on his way up the stairs. What a terrible thing to do to
one's own sister.

He
looked about, distracted, for a moment. Everything looked blurred.

Intending
to rub his eyes, he raised one hand and found the pistol in it.

He
put it to his right temple.

This
was, of course, he realised, exactly what Elethiomel wanted him to do, but
then, what chance did one have against such a monster? There was only so much a
man could take, after all.

He
smiled at the doors (somebody was thumping on them, calling out a word that
might have been his name; he couldn't remember now). So silly. Doing the Right
Thing; the Only Way Out. The Honourable Exit. What a load of nonsense. Just
despair, just the last laugh to have, opening a mouth through the bone to
confront the world direct; here.

But
such consummate skill, such ability, such adaptability, such numbing
ruthlessness, such a use of weapons when anything could become
weapon
...

His
hand was shaking. He could see the doors starting to give way; somebody must be
hitting them very hard. He supposed he must have locked them; there was nobody
else in the room. He ought to have chosen a bigger gun, he realised; this one
might not be big enough to do the job.

His
mouth was very dry.

He
pressed the gun hard against his temple and pulled the trigger.

The
besieged forces round the
Staberinde
broke out within the hour, while the surgeons were still fighting for his life.
It was a good battle, and they nearly won.

Fourteen

'Zakalwe...'

'No.'

Still
the same refusal. They stood in a park, at the edge of a large, neatly mown
lawn, under some tall, pollarded trees. The warm breeze carried the ocean scent
and a hint of flowers, whispering through the copse. The clearing morning mist
still veiled two suns. Sma shook her head in exasperation, and walked off a
little way.

He
leant against a tree, clutching at his chest, breathing with difficulty.
Skaffen-Amtiskaw hovered nearby, keeping a watch on the man, but playing with
an insect on the trunk of another tree.

Skaffen-Amtiskaw
thought the man was mad; certainly he was weird. He had never really explained
why he'd gone wandering through the mayhem of the citadel-storming. When Sma
and the drone had finally found him and picked him up, bullet-riddled, half-dead
and raving from the top of the curtain wall, he had insisted they stabilise his
condition; no more. He did not want to be made well. He would not listen to
sense, and still the
Xenophobe -
when
it had picked them all up - had refused to pronounce the man insane and
incapable of making up his own mind, and so had dutifully put him into a
low-metabolism sleep for the fifteen day journey to the planet where the women
called Livueta Zakalwe now lived.

He'd
come out of his slow-sleep as ill as he'd gone into it. The man was a walking
mess and there were still two bullets inside him, but he refused to accept any
treatment until he'd seen this woman. Bizarre, Skaffen-Amtiskaw thought, using
an extended field to block the path of a small insect as it felt and picked its
way up the trunk of the tree. The insect changed direction, feelers waving.
There was another type of insect further up the trunk, and Skaffen-Amtiskaw was
trying to get them to meet, to see what would happen.

Bizarre,
and even - indeed - perverse.

'Okay.'
He coughed (one lung, the drone knew, filling up with blood). 'Let's go.' He
pushed himself away from the tree. Skaffen-Amtiskaw abandoned its game with the
two insects regretfully. The drone felt odd, being here; the planet was known
about but had not yet been fully investigated by Contact. It had been
discovered through research rather than physical exploration, and - while there
was nothing obviously outlandish about the place, and a very rudimentary survey
had been carried out - technically it was still terra incognita, and
Skaffen-Amtiskaw was on a relatively high state of alert, just in case the
place held any nasty surprises.

Sma
went to the bald-headed man and put her arm round his waist, helping to support
him. Together they walked up the small slope of lawn towards a low ridge.
Skaffen-Amtiskaw watched them go, from the cover of the tree tops, then swooped
slowly down towards them as they walked to the summit of the gentle slope.

The
man staggered when he saw what was on the far side, in the distance. The drone
suspected he would have fallen to the grass if Sma hadn't been there to hold
him up.

'Shiiit,'
he breathed, and tried to straighten, blinking in a sudden slant of sunlight as
the mists continued to evaporate.

He
stumbled another couple of steps, shook Sma off, and turned round once, taking
in the parkland; shaped trees and manicured lawns, ornamental walls and
delicate pergolas, stone-bordered ponds and shady paths through quiet groves.
And, in the distance, set amongst mature trees, the tattered black shape of the
Staberinde.

'They've
made a fucking park out of it,' he breathed, and stood, swaying, bent slightly
at the waist, looking at the battered silhouette of the old warship. Sma walked
to his side. He seemed to sag a little, and she put her arm round his waist
again. He grimaced with pain; they walked on, down towards a path which led to
the ship.

'Why
did you want to see this, Cheradenine?' Sma said quietly as they crunched along
the gravel. The drone floated behind and above.

'Hmm?'
the man said, taking his eyes off the ship for a second.

'Why
did you want to come here, Cheradenine?' Sma asked. 'She isn't here. This isn't
where she is.'

'I
know,' he breathed. 'I know that.'

'So
why do you want to see this wreck?'

He
was silent for a little while. It was as though he hadn't heard, but then he
took a deep breath - flinching with pain as he did so - and shook his
sweat-sheened head as he said, 'Oh; just for... old times' sake...' They passed
through another copse of trees. He shook his shaved head again as they came out
of the grove, and saw the ship better. 'I just didn't think... they'd do this
to it,' he said.

'Do
what?' Sma asked.

'This.'
He nodded at the blackened hulk.

'What
have they done, Cheradenine?' Sma said patiently.

'Made
it.' He began, then stopped, coughed, body tense with pain. 'Made the damn
thing... an ornament. Preserved it.'

'What,
the ship?'

He
looked at her as though she were crazy. 'Yes,' he said. 'Yes; the ship.'

Just
a big old battleship hulk cemented into a dock, as far as Skaffen-Amtiskaw
could see. It contacted the
Xenophobe
,
which was passing the time by making a detailed map of the planet.

-
Hello, ship. This ship-ruin in the park; Zakalwe seems very interested. Just
wondering why. Care to do some research?

-
In a while; I've still got one continent, the deep sea beds and the sub-surface
to do.

-
They'll still be there later; this could prove interesting now.

-
Patience, Skaffen-Amtiskaw.

Pedant,
thought the drone, breaking off.

The
two humans walked down twisty paths past litter bins and benches, picnic tables
and information points. Skaffen-Amtiskaw activated one of the old information
points as it passed. A slow and crackly tape started up; "The vessel you
see before you..." This was going to take ages, Skaffen-Amtiksaw thought.
It used its effector to speed the machine up, winding the voice up into a
high-pitched warble. The tape broke. Skaffen-Amtiskaw delivered the effector
equivalent of an annoyed slap, and left the information machine smoking and
dripping burning plastic onto the gravel beneath, as the two humans walked into
the shadow of the battered ship.

The
ship had been left as it was; bombed, shelled, strafed, blasted and ripped but
not destroyed. Where hands could not reach and rain did not strike, traces of
the original soot from flames two centuries old still marked the armour plate.
Gun turrets lay peeled open like tin cans; gun barrels and range-finders
bristled askew all over the mounting levels of deck; tangled stays and fallen
aeriels lay strewn over shattered search lights and lop-sided radar dishes; the
single great funnel looked tipped and subsided, metal pitted and flayed.