Vengeance (12 page)

"Unless they travel a lot, as those who have business downstairs
and
upstairs do."

The spellhound thought about what the guide said. Buyers, sellers. They would be the sort of people to travel and therefore visit O'Malley's Magic Emporium. It had its first lead on the Atlantican it had sketched for Jocasta.

Over lunch in a quiet diner Jacques and Evelyn became better acquainted. He was senior enough at the lab that he could stretch his break a little.

Every other day Eve travelled into the city from an outlying homestead to work on her thesis on trauma injuries. An accident had left her husband, Reynard, wheelchair-bound. Jacques thought,
That explains her thesis
. He was surprised that an injury wouldn't respond to the healers.

"It's probably psychological,” Eve admitted. “But he doesn't care to let people go rummaging in his head. That's one of the reasons for my research.” Jacques had visions of an eccentric, ageing patriarch from an unusual background. There was that
something
about her. Old money, he thought, and a timelessness about the woman herself.

"Reynard the Fox,” he said. “Wasn't that an old legend?"

She stared at him, delighted. “Good God. You're the first man I've met in years to know that. I thought education was dead."

"Just heavily sedated.” He grinned back. “People have been saying that education was dead ever since it started."

He told her about the move from a dead-end job on land to Atlantica, how what should have been a great opportunity had somehow simply become another rut. Then he admitted to Brie and the two boys.

Her eyes narrowed. “I don't like the thought of hurting little children. A grown woman, now, she should be capable of taking care of herself. But children, that's different."

"Pardon?” He felt the conversation lurch out of control, the same feeling of imminent danger he'd had the first time he'd swum over a chasm.

"Come on,” she said fiercely. “I saw the way you looked at me. Don't play the innocent with me.” She laughed at the look on his face. “You look so worried."

Brie would never say something like that
, he thought. She was more interested in cooking than in sex.

Eve grew serious. “I'll never leave Reynard. He can't give me what I need, but I still love him, deep down."

"I'm not looking to hurt anyone,” he assured her.

"Sometimes,” she said darkly, “people get hurt anyway."

The spellhound's cynicism about the need for the induction was confirmed when, after walking only a few metres, they approached a tethered waterbike.

As if reading the spellhound's mind the guide switched to Subspeak and explained, “We use tiny transceivers in our teeth and communicate by clicking our tongues against them. One of the back teeth is used to provide spaces, another full stops. The transceiver's microminds are sophisticated enough to build the clicks into words. To provide a soundtrack the device uses the speaker's own voice."

The spellhound said,—It seems simply a variant on a familiar, but I assume that there is some major difference?—

The guide didn't answer.

Whilst the spellhound could understand familiars above the meniscus, previous attempts for it to speak had failed, for several reasons. Now, having had transceivers implanted, it wondered how it sounded to a local. It looked forward to being able to ‘speak’ for the first time with a mixture of eagerness and anxiety, and wondered if it could use the same technique when it returned to dry land.

"See, if we just dove in, the tab wouldn't have time to adapt. There needs to be a few minutes for the adaptation to set parameters and react. A sudden immersion can have serious results when you change environments."

The bike was very, very simple. It was a cylinder three metres long by a half metre wide. Water was sucked in the front and shot out the back. It was also fast. The guide sat in front. The spellhound thought it would be difficult to ask questions, since the guide would be concentrating on driving.

They travelled at a steady depth, so when they left the island and the sea floor fell away, the city proper dropped with it. The water above them gradually darkened as they kept midway between floor and sea level. As they descended the light from the city below increased, while the light from above decreased, so the murk was lit from below rather than above, as if they had suddenly tipped over. Out of the gloom swam indistinct shapes, many of which quickly withdrew, but braver fish of many shapes and sizes examined the brightly-lit interloper.

The spellhound got the standard tour, dry facts and figures enlivened by the scenery. It learned there were thirteen million people in Atlantica, spread across a thousand square kilometres. Most of them worked in kelp and weed farming, the principal basis of their diet, and most of the rest were in commerce. It screened out the duller statistics. At last, the tour over, they descended to the brightly lit city below.

Lamps mounted on metal carvings of fronds of seaweed and sea creatures illuminated long, wide, regular boulevards. “I'll take you to your lodgings,” the guide said. The bike followed local law, keeping well above the streets, which were thronged with people, while avoiding occasional watertaxis and other bikes.

When they alighted, the spellhound asked, “Are you available tomorrow? I'd pay the standard rates, of course, with a bonus."

"Sure.” The guide was delighted. “Nine hundred hours okay?"

"Good. I'll have lots of questions tomorrow."

"That's no problem.” The guide bowed. “The name's Ben. If I don't know the answers, we'll ask someone who does."

Jacques fantasised about going away with Eve, but she made it clear there was no chance of that happening. It was clear that but for Reynard's impotence, there would have been no affair at all.

So they went to places that were quiet, held hands, and talked and kissed, his frustration growing daily, making the limited physical contact even more erotic. Maybe secrecy was part of the enchantment. Sometimes they got odd looks from passersby, and he wanted to ask what they were staring at.

"It doesn't matter,” she insisted.

When they kissed, her tongue was like an electric eel jolting him. He joked of ‘killer kisses’ then stopped, realising how profoundly any talk of illness upset her.
Insensitive fool
, he thought.
Reynard's probably at death's door.

"Can't we go to a hotel?” he pressed. “It's my year-day on Monday. It'd be a nice present."

"Maybe.” She sounded doubtful, then brightened. “We might be able to use a friend's place one afternoon, maybe next week."

"Good.” He could hardly wait.

They always parted well away from the labs so there was less chance of arousing suspicion, but his colleagues quickly noticed how distracted he was. “Everything okay at home?” one of the directors asked. He nodded, dropped hints it wasn't but that delicacy forbade him elaborating further. The director made sympathetic noises and moved on. Jacques knew he would have to get a grip on himself.

Brie was giving him odd looks at home as well. “Daddy's got a lot on his mind,” she said coolly to the children when they complained of being ignored. Whatever she thought—and sometimes he caught her almond eyes watching him—she said nothing. Perhaps she thought if she ignored the affair, it would burn itself out.

When he'd met Brie, it surprised him how easy being with her was. They were more friends than lovers, though their love grew out of their friendship. Brie and he were comfortable, he told his friends; they wouldn't have it any other way. But now comfortable had become boring, and he was a prisoner in a cage of domesticity. Being with Eve was a glimpse of freedom.

Ben was more useful to the spellhound than it had thought he would be. It could normally conjure images effortlessly, but now they were distorted beyond recognition, as if it had regressed being to a puppy.

"Could be a side effect of the tab scrambling your systems,” Ben suggested. “Or maybe you're not allowing for the different medium."

Worse, many people wouldn't answer its questions, pretending they couldn't understand—yet Ben seemed to have no such problem. It had never had such a problem anywhere else. The people down here were altered and wore their changeling status with pride and more than a hint of defiance. Tourists from above the meniscus were tolerated—just. Nosy tourists were a different matter. The locals simply would not talk to a stranger, particularly one as different as the spellhound. So Ben had to act as interpreter.

The spellhound had always worked alone or with Jocasta, and now it had to adjust to working with a stranger, one who was unused to its methods and tended to question everything it did. The spellhound was unsure how much it could trust Ben, and it found the situation frustrating. It had always been so self-sufficient.

But they made slow, steady progress. Those who had purchased a temporary in the last few months could be traced and interviewed on a pretext. Ben discovered an unexpected talent for acting and took pleasure in playing the lead. People talked to him, once he reassured them.

"Just routine checks on the tabs themselves,” he soothed them. “We've been using a new setup, and we want to check the reversion to water's taken okay. Where did you go, by the way, anywhere nice? Ah, Mackley. Don't know it. I got relatives near Quelforn. You know it? No. Oh, it's a nice place. This is my assistant, by the way. Don't say much, but he's friendlier than he looks."

"Assistant?” the spellhound muttered when they were alone.

Ben chuckled. “I can hardly tell them the truth, now, can I?"

Not that Ben knew the whole truth. The spellhound had told him a very edited story, about a will and a legacy, if they could prove the claimant's connection.

"Of course, if they think they'd benefit, someone dishonest might lie, so we mustn't let them know the truth."

They continued their slow, steady progress, but were rudely interrupted on the fourth day when their bike was pulled over by a militia patrol.

"You,” the militiaman said to the spellhound, “are gonna answer some questions."

The militia cruiser was a big, ugly lump parked next to the bike.
Much like the militiaman himself,
the spellhound thought.
Bred specially, no doubt
.

"I'll bring him back safe and sound,” the militiaman said.

Jacques's thirty-sixth year-day arrived. He tried to keep locked onto the moment with his family, but it was hard not to think about the time he and Eve would spend together. Brie looked momentarily sad, as if she'd read his thoughts.

He slipped away from the lab that lunchtime and clambered onto Eve's bike.

"We're going for a picnic,” Eve said. “They won't mind you taking a long lunch break, will they?"

"No.” He grinned wolfishly.

It took almost twenty minutes to reach their destination—a park on the edge of the city. Eve parked the bike and produced a basket from the back. Within it was an envelope, two mini bottles of champagne, and a small pot of strawberries with waterproof cream coating. They broke open the strawberries, fed them to one another, and then raised a toast.

"To birthdays.” They sucked the nipples on the bottles.

"It's not much, I know,” she said shyly.

"It's wonderful."

She said hoarsely, “Lie down."

He did so, his heart pounding, and slowly, making every second last, she slid down him, took him in her mouth. He felt as though someone had plugged him into an electric cable. He convulsed, arching his back, as she sucked him, her head bobbing up and down. When he came inside his skinsuit, it was as if his head was clamped in a vice. He whimpered and lay shaking, as she smiled up at him.

"Happy birthday,” she whispered.

That evening he tried to concentrate, but flashbacks of his time with Eve haunted him even while he sat with the children. To make love to Brie, he had to pretend it was Eve and barely managed not to cry her name. He fell into an uneasy sleep, plagued by strange images of aliens and something buried.

The next day he worked on autopilot, unable to concentrate. There was a major panic when the results on a new strain of seaweed were mixed up with another set, placing the lab at risk of a major lawsuit from the farming combines. He tried to focus but barely minutes later was thinking of Eve again.

He got home exhausted from sorting out the problems at work to find Danny, his younger son, in a fractious mood and Hestyn, his older son, all sulks and shrugs. Adolescence seemed to have hit early. A row erupted, and he and Brie started to snipe at one another. When they went to bed she was cold, stiff, and unbending. In some ways it was a relief—he didn't have to act.

He awoke next day feeling extremely weary, with a sour taste in his mouth. Despite being exhausted, he slept badly all week. At least work passed without further incidents, though he suffered an outbreak of mouth ulcers along the jawline. A sure sign of stress, his healer advised him. He told himself it was the same fatigue that made him snap at Brie and the children.

Things were a little calmer by the next week when he and Eve finally got some time to themselves. He took the afternoon off, claiming an appointment with a healer. If he didn't get better, he might have to make one for real.

The spellhound was taken to City Hall, a building that reared out of an abyss, towering over those around it, a public, ostentatious display of power.

The spellhound swam between the militiamen through the main doors. They led it through the twisting maze of corridors. It watched their route carefully, memorising every turn, in case it had to leave quickly.

They came to a stop in a large reception area, and one said, “Wait here."

They floated, the militiamen silent, until at last a voice crackled, “Enter,” and the militiamen nodded at a door to one side of the room.

A man within floated behind a desk fixed halfway up a wall. A nameplate on his desk read ‘Gregor Vassalls'.