Everything seemed normal; no security blanket thrown over the local data corpus, no obvious gaps in local traffic, no closed-off circuits. Certainly the Palace crypt-space was supposed to be completely unrestricted – once you were in, which was the hard bit – but she had half expected to find some sort of crypt presence linked to the assassin. Perhaps the Palace’s private channels really were inviolable; perhaps that was why simply sending in a man with a gun was considered the best way of dealing with a problem. She wondered briefly why all this was being done, what had triggered this ghastly, murderous act, but decided to leave investigating that for later.
She looked into the hardware surrounding her head. You turned off the restrainer field… well, just here… but she hesitated. Perhaps she could save her base-reality self.
She glanced back through Gadfium’s eyes. The view was still, like a photograph. Running her own vision round the picture in Gadfium’s mind exposed both the weakness of the human sight system and its cleverness. Looked at closely from inside with an independent ability to focus and concentrate on different parts of the view, you could see the lack of clarity and colour at the edges of vision; the view was grey and smeared everywhere about the lucid central portion. And so slow! What torture to watch somebody being killed and know your turn was next; the woman in white was still turning, the gun in the man’s hand still moving to point to where her head would be in a moment’s time…
She sucked herself away from the view. First she had to double-check the headset release mechanism, then decide what her physical self ought to do next, then work out the right moves to get her out of this situation, then form it into a plan that could be dropped instantly into her base-reality self’s head and be acted upon without the slightest flicker of hesitation… she had less than a second, real time; a couple of hours, in here. It might be a close run thing…
The gun came up to point at the middle of her forehead. Gadfium watched it, helpless.
Then it was as though the bomb she had felt dropping away from herself earlier had somehow slammed straight back into the top of her head.
Move!
Her head was free and suddenly there was a whole choreographed pattern inside her head; a slotted-in four-dimensional sculpture in which all she had to do was follow the tunnel-shape her body made through that sculpture.
The lights in the booth would go out now. They went out.
It was almost as though the pattern moved her body for her. She ducked her head and flicked it to one side as the shot cracked into the head unit. She levered herself forward with her elbows while drawing her right leg back. She snapped it forward and up just here…
The impact was appreciably two-fold, as both the bones in the man’s fore-arm broke. She added to the momentum of her still swinging leg with a two-handed push off the couch and landed already swivelling on the floor. She punched upwards but the man hadn’t reacted quite as she’d expected; cloth brushed her fist as he fell away, a sudden soughing noise coming from his mouth.
Something thudded into her head and for an instant she thought he had clubbed her, but the blow was light and the thing that fell from her head and bounced off her hip was the gun; she caught it on the floor.
The lights went on again. She turned the gun towards the man. He was crouched entangled within some of the room curtains, holding his broken arm and looking at her. Then his eyes rolled back in his head and he fell over on his side.
She started over towards him.
‘… Gadfium,’ said a voice, whispering.
She turned and stared in horror at the white-coated woman on the floor. Blood was still flowing from the dark hole in her temple; her eyes stared straight up. Her jaw moved again, looking stiff and mechanical, like a puppet’s. ‘Gadfium!’ the voice croaked.
She spared the collapsed man a glance then went over to the woman, kneeling so that she could still see the man crumpled in the corner.
‘This one’s still not quite dead,’ said the voice. ‘She’s been crypted, but she’s still alive. It’s me; you,’ said the voice. ‘Listen; he’s faking a faint; the man. He’s faking it. You must kick or cosh him in the head; now. Use the gun if you must, but if you want to avoid killing him do it now.’
Gadfium felt she was going to faint. The room was spinning, or her brain was. ‘I can’t,’ she said to the woman, watching in horrified fascination as the rich, dark red blood oozed slower and slower and the jaws and tongue moved beneath the open, staring eyes.
‘You must; now,’ the soft voice said.
‘But he might just have- ‘
‘Too late,’ sighed the voice.
The man was whirling round, bringing his good hand back. Gadfium reached out with the gun and squeezed, closing her eyes. The gun shuddered once in her hands.
When she opened her eyes again the man was sprawled face down in front of her, a small thin knife still clutched in one hand.
She wasn’t sure she’d hit him until the blood started to well blackly from beneath his hidden face.
She dropped the gun, then started when the woman said, ‘… I’m losing her. The girl’s comb… quickly, Gad…’
She could not do it immediately. Gadfium sat against the curtain-concealed wall of the room for a few minutes, shaking and staring at the three bodies in the room, watching the blood flowing slowly across the tiled floor.
When the blood from the fallen man reached the pool spilled from the woman who’d spoken after her death, something broke within Gadfium, and she cried.
She had not shed tears since she’d been a teenager.
Then she sniffed, wiped her nose and went to the girl in red. She pulled the comb from the dead girl’s tied-back hair. There were flecks of blood on it. She ignored them and shoved the comb into her own hair at the back of her head.
-… can you hear me? said her own voice.
‘Yes,’ Gadfium said, her voice trembling.
– Just think it, Gadfium; no need to vocalise.
– I can hear you. Are you me?
– I am. I’m the construct.
– You planned… all that?
– Yes. Are you all right?
– Oh, far from it. But what do I do now?
– Take the knife, its sheath, which is in his pocket, the gun and any extra ammunition and equipment the man has, then leave the shop. If you do exactly as I say I think I can get you out of there.
– Wait. Why was he trying to kill me?
– Because the conspiracy’s been betrayed and you were about to enter the crypt. Please; there isn’t much time; hurry.
Gadfium went shakily back to the young man. She fought the urge to vomit as she caught sight of her face reflected in the dark pool of blood. She felt in the man’s pockets.
– Is he from Security? she asked her crypt-self.
– Yes.
– How did they know?
– I told you, you were betrayed. I don’t know by whom.
Gadfium stopped, her hand clasping the bullet magazine.
– Betrayed? What about the others?
– I don’t know what’s happened to them. I haven’t dared to try and contact them in case I’m being watched somehow and my movements are being traced. Look, hurry up, will you?
– Betrayed. Gadfium stared at the intricate pattern on the curtain in front of her. Betrayed.
– Yes; now please; you must hurry now. Take what you can and leave. Turn left when you leave the shop.
– Betrayed, Gadfium thought, pocketing the knife, sheath, gun and ammunition. Betrayed.
– Yes, yes, yes; betrayed. Now move!
* * *
3
Sessine was dressed in plain, utilitarian clothes and carried a light rucksack across his shoulder. He stood on the last ridge of the hills, where the land sloped away like some huge wave powering towards a beach. The dusty plain extended before him, the colour of a lion; not featureless, but almost so. Hints of hills lay upon the horizon, and patches of reflection promised water that probably was not there. The trees behind him, above him, made giant shushing noises.
The light came from every part of the sky, shining without a sun. The sky was light blue to the glance, darker blue then purple on closer inspection, and utterly black when stared at. On that blackness – just by willing it into existence – a network of shining lines appeared, and what looked like brightly coloured stars and fat planets shone beyond, in constellations and patterns never seen from the real Earth. He knew what these meant without having to think about it. He looked away, and the sky was light blue again.