Against A Dark Background (3 page)

Sharrow nodded, gritting her teeth as she walked onwards. She looked out to sea, where the last glow of the sun was vanishing fast on the bare curve of the horizon. ‘Oh, great,’ she said.

Geis studied the back of his hands. ‘I have a security concern with contracts for certain corporate clients’ installations in Lip; it wouldn’t be impossible for Mu to . . . travel inadvertently to somewhere beyond the city limits . . .’

‘No, Geis,’ she told him. ‘That won’t work; kidnapping would just antagonise him. I’ll find Cenuij. Maybe I can persuade my darling half-sister to help; I think they’re still in touch.’

‘Breyguhn?’ Geis looked dubious. ‘She may not want to talk to you.’

‘It’s worth a try.’ Sharrow looked thoughtful. ‘She might even have some idea about where the Universal Principles is.’

Geis glanced at Sharrow. ‘That was what she was looking for in the Sea House, wasn’t it?’

Sharrow nodded. ‘She sent me a letter last year with some garbled nonsense about finding out how to get to the book.’

Geis looked surprised. ‘She did?’ he said.

Sharrow hoisted one eyebrow. ‘Yes, and claimed to have discovered the meaning of life as well, if I remember rightly.’

‘Ali,’ Geis said.

They stopped, not far from the dark bulk of the old beachcomber machine. She breathed deeply, looking around at the faint curve of beach; it was dark enough for the phosphorescence in the waves to show as ghostly green lines rippling on the shore. ‘So, Geis, any more good news for me, or is that it?’

‘Oh, I think that’s enough for now, don’t you?’ he said, a small, sad smile on his face.

‘Well, I appreciate you telling me, Geis. But I’m going to have to move fairly rapidly from now on; it might be best for you and the rest of the family if you all kept out of my way for the next year. I’ll need room to manoeuvre, know what I mean?’

‘If you insist.’ He sounded hurt.

‘It’ll be all right,’ she told him, holding her hand out to his. He looked at her hand, then shook it. ‘Really, Geis, I’ll be fine. I know what I’m doing. Thanks again.’ She leaned forward and quickly kissed his cheek.

She stepped back, releasing his hand. His smile was pale. He nodded, swallowing.

‘I am, as ever, your faithful servant, cousin.’

Geis managed to make the stilted statement sound both sad and sincere. He took a step back, closer to the water; a wave washed over one boot and its spur terminal gave a little blue flash of light as it shorted. Geis flinched and stepped smartly away. Sharrow gave a small, involuntary laugh.

Geis smiled ruefully and scratched the side of his head. ‘Just can’t get my dramatic exits right when you’re around,’ he sighed. ‘Well, if ever you need me; if ever I can do anything . . . just call me.’

‘I shall. Goodbye.’

‘Farewell, Sharrow.’ He turned abruptly and walked quickly back to the bandamyion.

She watched him go, heading into the dunes. She heard him calling for the animal, and laughed quietly when she saw him chasing the lolloping beast over the summit of a distant dune.

Finally she shook her head and turned away, towards the hydrofoil moored a hundred metres away along the deserted shore.

‘Ah, hello there,’ said a voice, right behind her.

She froze, then turned smoothly, left hand sliding into the pocket of her jacket.

There were a couple of tiny red lights high up on the front of the beachcombing machine, ten metres away; the lights winked slowly, on and off. They hadn’t been there a few seconds earlier.

‘Yes?’ she said.

‘Am I addressing Lady Sharrow?’ said the machine. Its voice was deep, with the distinctive chime at the start of each word which was supposed to ensure that people knew it was a machine doing the talking.

Her eyes narrowed. The machine sensed her left arm tensing. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘you know who I am.’

‘Well, indeed. Allow me to introduce myself . . .’The machine made a whining noise and lurched towards her, the rubber treads on its leftside tracks splashing through the small waves.

She backed away; two quick, long steps. The machine stopped suddenly. ‘Oh; I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean to startle you. just a second. . .’The machine trundled back a couple of metres to where it had been. ‘There. As I was saying; allow me to introduce myself; I am a-’

‘I don’t care who you are; what are you doing spying on me and my cousin?’

‘A necessary subterfuge, dear lady, to ensure that I had the relevant personages - namely yourself and Count Geis correctly identified. Also, having unintentionally found myself in such close proximity to your conference, I thought it prudent and indeed only polite to delay making myself known to you until the said noble gentleman had bade you farewell, as considerations of good manners apart - my instructions are to reveal myself to you and you alone, initially at any rate.’

‘You’re hellish talkative for a beachcomber.’

‘Ah, dear lady, let not this rude appearance deceive you; beneath my tatterdemalion disguise lurk several brand spanking new components of a Suprotector (TradeMark) Personal Escort Suite, Mark Seventeen, Class Five, certified civil space legal in all but a handful of jurisdictions and battlefield limited to the remainder. And I-that is the aforesaid system, in full, combined with the services of various highly trained human operatives am at your service, my lady, exclusively, for as long as you may desire.’

‘Really?’ She sounded warily amused.

‘Indeed,’ said the machine. ‘A mere beachcomber - for example - would not be able to tell you that the gun which you are currently holding in the left hand pocket of your jacket, with your index finger on the trigger and your thumb ready to flick the safety catch, is a silenced FrintArms ten-millimetre HandCannon with eleven ten-seven coaxial depleted-uranium-casing mercury-core general-purpose rounds in the magazine plus one in the breech, and that you have another -doubleended - magazine in the opposite pocket, containing five armour-piercing and six wire-flechette rounds.’

Sharrow laughed out loud, taking her hand from her pocket and swivelling on her heel. She walked away down the beach. The machine lumbered after her, keeping a handful of paces behind.

‘And I feel I must point out,’ the machine continued, ‘that FrintArms Inc. strongly recommends that its hand weapons are never carried with a round in the breech.’

‘The gun has,’ she said tartly, glancing behind as she walked, ‘a safety catch.’

‘Yes, but I think if you read the Instruction Manual-’

‘So,’ she interrupted. ‘You’re mine to command, are you?’ she said.

1. 1. Absolutely.’
      

‘Wonderful. So who are you working for?’

‘Why, you, mistress!’

‘Yes, but who hired you?’

‘Ah, dear lady, it is with the greatest embarrassment that I have to confess that in this matter I must - with a degree of anguish you may well find hard to credit - relinquish my absolute commitment to the fulfilment of your every whim. Put plainly, I am not at liberty to divulge that information. There, it is said. Let us quickly move on from this unfortunate quantum of dissonance to the ground-state of accord which I trust will inform our future relationship.’

‘So you’re not going to tell me.’ Sharrow nodded.

‘My dear lady,’ the machine said, continuing to trundle after her. ‘Without saying so in so many words . . . correct.’

‘Right .

‘May I take it that you do wish my services?’

‘Thanks, but I don’t really need any help when it comes to looking after myself.’

‘Well,’ the machine chimed, with what sounded like amusement in its voice, ‘you did hire an escort unit the last time you visited the city of Arkosseur, and you do have a contract with a commercial army concern to guard your dwelling house on Jorve.’

She glanced back at the machine. ‘Well, aren’t we well informed.’

‘Thank you; I like to think so.’

‘So what’s my favourite colour?’

‘Ultraviolet, you once told one of your tutors.’

She stopped; so did the machine. She turned and looked up at the beachcomber’s battered casing. She shook her head. `Shit, even I’d forgotten I said that.’ She looked down at the glass beach.
Ultraviolet, eh? Huh, so I did.’ She shrugged.
That’s almost witty.’

She turned and walked on, the beachcomber at her heel.
You seem to know me better than I do myself, machine,’ she said.
Anything else about me you think I should know? I mean, just in case I’ve forgotten.’

`Your name is Sharrow

`No, I rarely forget that.’

‘-of the first house of Dascen Major, Golterian. You were born in 9965, in house Tzant, on the estate of the same name, since sold along with most of the rest of the Dascen Major fortune following the settlement required by the World Court after the dismemberment of your grandfather Gorko’s unhappily illegal - commercial network, rumoured to be the greatest of its day:

`We’ve always thought big, as a family. Especially when it comes to disasters.’

`Following the unfortunate death of your mother-’

`Murder, I think, is the technical term.’ She slowed her pace and clasped her hands behind her back.

• murdered by Huhsz zealots, you were brought up by your father in a . . . peripatetic existence, I think one might fairly say.’
  

`When we weren’t making a nuisance of ourselves at the homes of rich relations, it was equal parts casinos and courts; father had an obsession with screwing money out of one of them. Mostly they did it to him.’

`You had . . . various tutors-’

`Singularly lacking in a sense of humour, all of them.’

• and what might most charitably be called a chequered school history.’
  

`A lot of those records really shouldn’t be trusted.’

`Yes, there is a quite remarkable disparity between the written reports and most of the associated computer files. Several of the institutions you attended seemed to feel there might be a causal link between this phenomenon and your uncharacteristic keenness for the subject of computing.’

`Coincidence; they couldn’t prove a thing.’

‘Indeed, I don’t think I’ve heard of anybody suing a school yearbook before.’

‘A matter of principle; family honour was at stake. And anyway, litigiousness runs in our family. Gorko issued a writ against his father for more pocket money when he was five and Geis has almost sued himself several times.’

`At your finishing schools in Claav you developed an interest in politics, and became . . . popular with the local young men.’

She shrugged. `I’d been a difficult child; I became an easy adolescent. ‘

‘To the surprise of everybody except, apparently yourself, you won entrance to the diplomatic faculty of the University of Yadayeypon, but left after two years, on the outbreak of the Five Per Cent War.’

`Another coincidence; the professor I was fucking to get good grades died on me and I couldn’t be bothered starting again from scratch.’

‘You crewed on an anti-Tax cruiser operating out of TP 105, a moon of Roaval, then-along with a group of seven other junior officers -became one of the first humans for three hundred years to take the then newly re-released symbiovirus SNBv3. With you as leader, you and your fellow synchroneurobondees flew a squadron of single-seat modified excise clippers out of HomeAtLast, a military-commercial habitat stationed in near-Miykenns orbit, becoming the most successful squadron of the seventeen operating in the midsystem.’

`Please; I’m blushing.’

`Three of your team died in your last action, at the very end of the war while the surrender was being negotiated. Your own craft was seriously damaged and you crash-landed on Nachtel’s Ghost, suffering near-fatal injuries on top of the extreme irradiation and already serious wounds you had sustained during the original engagement.’

`Nothing by halves; should be the family motto.’

`You were cut from the wreck and treated under the warinternment regulations in the Tax-neutral hospital of a mining concern on Nachtel’s Ghost-’

`Ghastly food.’

‘- where you lost the fetus of the child you were carrying by another of your team, Miz Gattse Ensil Kuma.’

She stopped for a moment and looked up to see the hydrofoil, twenty metres away. She pursed her lips, breathed deeply and walked slowly on. ‘Yes; terribly complicated way of going about getting an abortion. But then I was sterilised at the same time, so it was practically a bargain.’

‘You spent the months immediately after the war in Tenaus prison hospital, Nachtel. You were liberated - on your twentieth birthday - under the terms of the Lunchbar Agreement; you and the four surviving members of your team formed a limited company and undertook occasionally legal commercial surveillance and industrial espionage work, then branched out into Antiquities research and retrieval, a profession you shared with your sister, Breyguhn.’

‘Half-sister. And we never got caught.’

‘Your team’s last successful contract was the location and disposal of what is believed to have been the second-last Lazy Gun, which resulted in the Gun’s auto-annihilation while under deconstruction in the physics department of Lip City University.’

‘Their methodology had been suspect for years.’

‘The resulting detonation destroyed approximately twenty per cent of the city and resulted in the deaths of nearly half a million people.’

She stopped walking. They had arrived at the piece of roughly cylindrical wreckage embedded in the fused silicate of the beach to which the hydrofoil was moored. She stared at the dark lump of half-melted metal.

‘Your team split up immediately afterwards,’ the machine went on. ‘You currently own one third of a tropical fish breeding and retail business on the island of Jorve.’

‘Hmm,’ she said, thoughtfully. ‘Sounds so banal, that last part. The approach of middle age; I’m losing my panache.’

She shrugged and waded into the water, waves washing around her boots. She unlocked the hydrofoil’s painter and let the rope reel back into its housing in the stem.

She looked at the beachcomber. ‘Well, thanks, but I don’t think so,’ she said.

‘You don’t think what?’