‘And why was the apple you threw me poisoned?’
‘It wasn’t!’
‘It was.’
‘Then it must be the spell! The spell the wizard put on you, Asura! Please; I’m going to fall!’
‘What wizard is this?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know!’ the prince cried. She could see his hands and arms quivering as he gripped the rope. ‘Merlin!’ he said. ‘That was his name! I remembered. Merlin! Now, my love; please; I must come up or I’ll fall. Please…’ he said, and his gaze fixed upon her, beseeching and beautiful and tender.
She shook her head.
‘You are not real,’ she told him, and let the rope go.
The rope flicked across the balcony and into the room as the prince fell screaming towards the ground. She stepped back to let the end of the rope whip past her and plummet to the ground.
The prince hit with a terrible thud. She looked over the parapet. He lay, still and broken-looking on the grass at the foot of the tower; the rope fell loosely about and on top of him.
She picked up the grappling iron and dropped that on him for good measure; it missed his head and whacked into his back, bouncing off across the ground.
She looked up at the sky and said, ‘Not that way, either.’
Darkness.
The young Cryptographer rose up from the couch, stretching as she rubbed her back. ‘Ouch,’ she said. She was small and dark and wore a disposable one-piece suit. She rubbed her eyes with her knuckles as she swung her legs off the couch and sat there for a moment. Then she looked over at the two Security people who’d brought the girl in. She shook her head.
‘Your woman’s fucking impregnable,’ she told them.
The tall woman looked at the square-built man she’d called Lunce. The three were in a bland but comfortable staff suite in the minus-one cistern-level Security complex, deep beneath the fastness. The girl they’d called Asura was being held in a cell within the building’s basement.
‘Nobody’s impregnable,’ the woman with the blue gloves said.
‘Nobody’s indestructible,’ the girl corrected her, getting up from the couch. ‘But some people are impregnable.’ She went across to the curtains and drew them open. She was still rubbing her back, and stretching. She looked out at the light-strewn darkness. A ship moved in the distance, lights glittering on the black waters at the end of the Ocean Tunnel. The port was a multi-strand necklace in the distance.
She gave a half-laugh as she rubbed her back. ‘What a bitch!’ she muttered, but sounded almost admiring.
‘You’re saying you can’t get through to her?’ the man said.
‘Right,’ the girl said. She looked back at them. ‘I’ve tried all the obvious scenarios and I’ve tried a few pretty obscure ones, too.’ She shrugged, looking away. ‘She’s wise to all of them. That last one – the princess in the tower: fairy story, legend; but it was like she’d never heard of it before, just accepted it on her own terms. And so suspicious! There was nothing nasty in the apple; it was a nice crunchy, scrumptious little piece of code; tasty and nutritious, dammit. If there was anything ulterior about it, it might have distracted her a bit while I climbed up, though what the hell… but she imagined the worm or the maggot or whatever in it; just threw it away.’ The girl shook her head again, first at her reflection, then, turning, at the two Security people. ‘You can keep trying, but you won’t get anywhere; she’s even learning as she goes along, she’s remembering. Fuck knows how.’
‘Clearly you don’t, anyway,’ the man said. The woman looked at him sharply.
The girl laughed. ‘Perhaps you’d like to try, Mr Lunce?’ She shook her head. ‘That… ingénue you brought in could skin you alive in there, if she wanted. She’s a natural. There’s nothing you can give her she won’t work out and exploit. You can destroy her – you can wake her up and start torturing her if you like – but it’d be strictly for your own enjoyment. Don’t kid yourself you’d have any chance of getting at her core; that’ll stay hidden until it’s triggered. Strip her brain molecule by molecule and you still won’t find out what was in there. I’d stake my life it’ll destruct.’ She snorted. ‘Well, I’d stake your life on it.’
‘But she is the asura?’ the woman with the blue gloves asked.
‘She’s an asura,’ the girl said, sitting back on the window sill. ‘But frankly if she is this rogue piece of chaos come to infect all our precious higher functions, announcing she is an asura – using it as a name – is a pretty strange way of going about it.’
‘A decoy, then?’ the woman asked, looking troubled.
‘Or an incredibly confident double-bluff.’
The woman nodded, looking away. ‘Well, we have her now,’ she said, as if to herself.
‘Indeed you do,’ the girl said, yawning. ‘And, thankfully, she’s your problem. I’m just a hired hand and I’ve done all I’m going to do. I need some sleep.’ She pushed away from the window. ‘Probably have nightmares about that vicious little bitch,’ she muttered, heading for the door.
‘Well, pity you failed. Thank you for your help,’ the man said, sounding bored. ‘We’ll expect a full report; it may help your successors. Let’s hope their approach is a little less negative than yours was.’
The girl stopped in front of him. She looked up at him and smiled broadly. ‘Honey, you’ll get your report,’ she told him, ‘but I’m the best there is. You’re on to the proxime accesserunt after me and if you persist with them your new toy down there might start getting annoyed and really chew one of them up.’ She tapped the man on his chest. ‘Don’t say you weren’t warned, big boy.’ She turned to the woman with the blue gloves. ‘Charming working with you. Let me know how you get on.’
She left.
The other two exchanged looks.
‘You know what I think? I think we should kill her.’
‘No one cares what you think. Contact the next one on the list.’
‘Oh, yes, ma’am.’
* * *
2
Gadfium left the traumparlour. The door clunked shut and she heard bolts snick home, locking it.
-Left.
She turned left and started walking.
– Hurry.
She walked faster.
Gadfium couldn’t stop shaking. It was so bad it was affecting her eyesight and she could not believe other people weren’t able to see her quivering from fifty or more metres away.
– You’re breathing too quickly and too shallowly. Calm down. Take longer, deeper breaths.
– Am I this bossy with other people? she asked, taking a long, deep breath.
– Yes, you are. Turn right, here; take the lift. It’ll arrive in twelve seconds.
– Where are you taking me?
– Away from here; out of the Palace.
– After that?
– Don’t ask.
– Oh, grief! I’m too old to be on the lam.
– No you’re not. You’re only too old when you’re dead, and you aren’t that either, not yet.
– Yet. Oh, thanks.
– Here’s the lift. Ignore the display; I’ve told it where to go.
– Oh, grief!
– Will you calm down? And wipe your eyes; I can hardly see when I look out of them.
She wiped her eyes while the lift zoomed. They were heading for the ceiling level.
– I know; I’m already dead, there is a hell and you’re my punishment.
– Stop gibbering. I’m your guardian angel, Gadfium.
The elevator stopped at a luxuriously appointed tube station.
– Straight ahead. And try to look arrogant, and cruel, like nobody’d better interfere with you. We’re taking a Security service carriage.
– Oh, grief!
– Head up ! Arrogant! Cruel!
– If I get out of this I swear I’ll never order anybody about ever again.
– Arrogant! Cruel!
She marched to the carriage with her nose in the air and a sneer on her lips, passing between potted palms standing on gleaming marble beneath a ceiling of polished hardwood. She sensed a few other people around but nobody challenged her. The carriage opened its doors, she stepped aboard and it rolled away immediately, through some points, across other tracks and into a tunnel where it accelerated quickly. She sat down on a leather couch, shaking again.
– We’re out of the Palace.
Gadfium put her head between her knees.
– I feel faint.
– Yes, you do, don’t you?
– That was awful, awful, awful.
– You did fine.
– I meant in the shop; those women. The man.
– Oh. Of course. I’m sorry. But you didn’t have to watch it in slow motion.
– I suppose it was a long time ago, for you.
– Quite. I’ve been through the process.
Gadfium straightened. She sniffed and took the gun, ammunition and knife out of her pockets, holding them in shaking hands. The gun was a long, thick black flexible tube. It was weighty; it felt like metal covered by some tough, almost sticky foam. It straightened into a cosh or curved into a comfortable hand-gun shape with a finger-sculpted grip, depending on how she held it.