Going Under Page 3

  “That was sarcasm,” Lila said.

  “Allow me some benefits,” the imp replied dourly. “I am facing my doom.”

  They had arrived at Madame’s house.

  The door opened as they reached it, not a step too soon and not a step too late. It revealed a lofty hallway lit with golden lights and decorated with filigree of golden wire in onyx. They were greeted with a silent bow by one of Madame’s potential suitors, who had now become her minion following his rejection rather than face exile from the object of his desire. This one was very tall, very thin with skin like antique paper. He was basically human in shape save for his long tattered tail and his green reptilian eyes. Lila was briefly grateful to have missed Madame’s favourites, the pair of hulking monsters with dead raven heads, but regretted the thought as soon as she had had it, for at this range there was nothing she could think or remember that Madame would not know.

  “Greetings Ms. Ahriman Sikarza Black, Friendslayer,” the doorkeeper murmured, beckoning with a soft, slow underwater gesture of his hand. “This way.”

  Madame Des Loupes was, as Lila remembered her, hideously beautiful in the way of demons. Her massive carrion bird’s head was angled to look out of the window where she leaned against her special backless chair, the train of her peacock tail sweeping gracefully to the wooden floor. Her woman’s body was wearing a delicate white lace blouse and skirt that looked like sea foam. It covered her legs to the knee, concealing the snakelike phallus that Lila knew she also possessed. Her feet were clad in delicate silk slippers.

  She adjusted the open window as Lila entered and beckoned with one of her simple human hands on its slender, powerful arm. “Look,” she said. “Did you ever see so many faeries here? And for once not high on powder and spells. Their bags are full of rare artefacts and essences.” Her voice came from her beak, perfectly articulated despite the fact that neither beak nor tongue were suited for speech. Lila had no idea how she made the sound. On her shoulder Thingamajig clutched and shivered.

  Lila was stuck for an answer, since she had not noticed much of anything at the Souk in her preoccupation with not noticing the things she particularly wanted not to notice. “Is there a special occasion?”

  “They are preparing for war.” Madame did not seem particularly to care if this was the case. She showed Lila to the guest couch, a slender chaise, and waited for her to sit down. Lila did so cautiously, keeping most of her weight on her feet in case the delicate furniture didn’t want to take the weight of her machineries. The couch creaked faintly but seemed to hold firm.

  “How do the Otopians care for the moths?” Madame asked then, finally turning her attentive gaze towards Lila. She left the window and brought her own chair to a more easy position for talking, slightly to Lila’s side rather than opposite her.

  Lila knew she was referring to the invasion of creatures that were causing havoc across the human world and which, if she had been in Otopia still, she would be tracking down and capturing, attempting to talk with, perhaps killing if things were bad. And reports said sometimes things were bad even, though most of the incidents on record were of people being terrified rather than properly menaced or killed. “Not much. Do you know where they are from?”

  “But of course, they are fey,” the demon replied as if it were common knowledge. “Hence my cause to mention it. Faeries everywhere. Most unusual to see such clusters of activity. The moths are not true faeries, merely a part of the fey world. They may take up the form of others and speak in words sometimes but they are more truly beasts than self-aware beings. A plague of them is an occasional phenomenon. It signals something important, though who can say what?”

  “I’m not here about them,” Lila said, though she hoped she seemed grateful for information which was already more than the secret service had managed to provide her with.

  “I know,” Madame said and for the first time fixed a gleaming black eye on the imp cowering on Lila’s shoulder. “You are here to request deliverance, such as Zal must have told you he received from me, but I hope it is not as a forerunner of an attempt to become demonic, because you are not capable of that.”

  Lila stiffened, feeling insulted for a moment.

  “You are human,” pointed out the demon with simple fairness. “You might conceivably copy our ways or be possessed by some of our vigor, but you cannot be one of us because the humans have no true affinity to the aether. Your connection to that aspect is passive. You are materially bound. Besides, two demon partners is more than enough of a connection to our spirit. You will do well to survive them.”

  “Madame,” Lila said simply. “Can I be released now?”

  “From Hell, you mean.” Madame signalled to the minion who had remained at the door and he went off. “But at any time of course. Simply stop pretending. You don’t need me.”

  “But I thought…”

  “Yes,” the demon continued, picking up on that thought, “you thought that if I gave Zal clearsight I should have to give it to you. But for the same reason I am unable to satisfy your wish to know what it is to be demonic, I can’t grant you the sight. It’s not a power that is transferable. Zal already had it himself, all I did was to open it fully. I didn’t make anything new.”

  “And I don’t have it.” Lila remained composed, though underneath she felt an impending crush of disappointment and attempted to fend it off, searching for a scrap of pride with which to feel better.

  “That,” Madame said, moving her beak and somehow pointing directly at Lila’s attempt to shore herself up, “would be the wrong way.”

  “Humans are pathetic. Can’t see, can’t know, can’t do magic, can’t do anything,” Lila said, realising as she did so how childish it sounded. “I get it.”

  “You don’t like it, but don’t pretend,” the demon agreed. “That’s just how it is. As for the seeing, well anyone can do that to the end of their own nose but most don’t. My kind of sight goes much further but it is no different. You have as much sight as you need. No, you came here wanting me to fix something about you, because you think that to escape the clutches of Hell means an eternal ticket to being right.

  Or to have the world turn the way you think it ought to. But I must emphasise that it will change nothing. Not one bit.”

  “I…” Lila began but had nothing to say suddenly because Madame was, of course, right. “What does it mean, for a human?”

  “Two things,” Madame said gently. “First that you are free to accept or reject the influence of others, and secondly that you are no longer prey for the devils.”

  “The devils,” Lila repeated. “I thought devils and demons…”

  It was Madame’s turn to stiffen, this time with repulsion.

  “Are they different?”

  “Your ignorance is that of all your kind—loathsome yet inescapable given your sorry history of misinformation, deceit, and general blindness to the aether so I may overlook the remark…” Madame laughed at her own outrage briefly, a girlish and oddly carefree sound that, coming from her huge beak as it did, was chilling. “My dear wretch, no. The devils and the demons are most certainly different. A demon might torment you via possession, but a demon is always passionate and vibrant and full of life, even if that is a kind of life and vigour that becomes destructive. Demons consume with fire and excess.

  “A devil has no form outside the host except its ghost trace. They have no lives of their own. They are part of the undead realm, but also part of Zoomenon, a form of elemental negativity. Unlife. Where a mind is struck with self-hatred, where it would rather be moral than gentle, or right than compassionate… there you will find a devil at work.

  “As you may see, no demon could be possessed by such a creature and function as a demon in any way. Demons are pro-life. Devils enjoy withering life where they may, and most of all they enjoy withering it when they encourage the host to spread the contagion and seed devils in the minds of others. Evangelism is their modus and moralising their watchword. Hel
l is the making of devils, and escape the work of demons. Elves and humans are frequently infested, and spread the infection to their descendants and associates without attempt to stem the plague. The more devilment in the world, the more miserable it is. It is why we despise those races the most.”

  Lila nodded, recording everything and trying not to think of whether this did or did not qualify her for escape. “And how do you identify a devil?”

  “It is simple. A voice in your mind will say that suffering leads to virtue or that virtue requires a sacrifice. It will justify misery in terms of a greater good coming later, or as the resulting karma from previous misdeeds—a deserved punishment. If the person afflicted with the devils is not religious, it will explain its ways in terms of social acceptability and personal pride. Thus you may know its work.”

  Lila fought an urge to squirm on her seat. Thingamajig was stock still as Madame turned to him with her bright black eye.

  “Imps are able to recognise devils in others because they are themselves possessed. They are a kind of immune system for our society. But where a person is not beset by evil then imps have no use at all.”

  “He keeps saying you will make him leave.”

  “Dead useful I am!” piped the imp suddenly, leaping into life and striking a swashbuckling kind of pose beside Lila’s head. “You know full well that it’s not easy to be rid of devils. They’re always lurking. Always coming back in that moment of doubt, that niggling feeling… you can’t be certain of your own mind once you’ve had them in. You gets in the way of them just now and then, and even if they go you carry on like they were there if you’re not careful: then they come back.”

  Madame stared inscrutably. “Wantonly consorting with an imp is unheard of. We discard them. If you wish to amuse yourself or engage his services as a prophylactic, be warned it will be considered a weakness of character. Imps that do not leave once the devils are routed are generally slain on the spot. It is traditional.”

  “I couldn’t keep him as a… pet?”

  “You must realise that to linger around those infected with the devils is very dangerous. They will jump across at any opportunity. And as the imp says, there are few individuals who never suffer a second of doubt into which a devil might leap.”

  Thingamajig sat up eagerly in the begging position and smiled.

  There was a moment of pause and in it Lila felt Madame’s energy shift as clearly as though it were her own. The demon brimmed with power, ascending, because Lila had shown her a chink in her armour. Madame preened a feather on her tail with one hand and said coldly, “We do not have pets, only minions or, for parties, slaves. But an imp is already both; a public variety of scum.”

  “And he’s an imp because he’s a demon with a devil?” Lila felt quite proud of herself for figuring this out.

  “Yes. Who could be freed, if he had the balls for it, although that almost never happens. But enough talk about this sad creature. Tell me, how do you like your married state?”

  Lila straightened her back and flicked the long scarlet swatch of hair out of her eyes. “Well now, I don’t know if two husbands will be enough.”

  The surge of Madame’s power rise abated somewhat with this swagger and the demon laughed. “Glad to hear it. Did you want something more of me?”

  “Since I’m here, I don’t suppose you know anything about this,” Lila held out her right arm, cued her AI, and activated it. The metal and weapons flickered, and they were so fast and so perfectly liquid in their movement that they looked like a blur of soft, watery things shifting in the light for a second. After that second there was simply the stark, oily blackness of strange metal, the blade and the gun of what the AI knew as Standard Offensive Mode for the Right Arm. What remained of the shape of a human hand grasped the blade and the skin which had looked so perfectly ordinary was simply gone. There was no blood and it happened in silence.

  Madame did not blink. She cocked her head with a fast, birdy movement to look more closely. Then she looked up at Lila and sat back again, “Am I to understand, given that you anticipate my reading, that this is not how it used to be?”

  “Damn straight,” Lila said. “Used to be slower, messier, and I had to do some of the maintenance myself. There was just one mode and I had to equip it the slow way. Actually, I still have to equip it with various bits of ammunition and so on, but not like I used to. Let’s say it’s undergone some kind of upgrade. And the part that freaks me out the most is the skin. Watch.”

  Lila wished for her ordinary arm back. There was the liquid movement, the blur of grey becoming soft beige and red, and then there was her arm, quite ordinary looking, with skin that creased in the right places, short nails, and warmth.

  “But no maker on the human side has touched it?”

  Lila nodded. “I get the impression that they don’t want to touch it any more.”

  Thingamajig crouched, silent and unmoving. In her chest Lila felt Tath’s relief and her own surprise; he was relieved that she had finally spoken about what was going on.

  In Alfheim she had been “cured” of the medical difficulties of becoming a cyborg. Where her body had been weakened and threatened to break under the strain of fusion to metal prostheses, it flourished with health and strength. But lately, pain had started to return. A new kind of pain, it had at first seemed that the magical process of her restoration was reversing itself and she and Tath had both assumed grimly that without more treatments in Alfheim it must surely revert entirely. She had prepared herself to begin once again the daily treatments, drugs and practices that allowed her to survive; a wearying series of ministrations that took hours. But when she looked for the damage and let the AI analyse her blood, she didn’t find any sign of deterioration. But the pain was there… and then a trip to the Security Agency medical centre revealed the cause. The machine was growing, and so was she. They were growing into each other slowly, but surely. At some points she was stronger, at some points it was. New lines of tissue were appearing, neither human made stronger by the exposure to elfin energies nor metal made animate by its weird fusion with metal elementals, but something new. Something that was both.

  Well, that’s what they said and she thought. It was new. So you could say what you liked about it. It was only theory. The reality had no name and so far, no explanation.

  The demon closed her bird eyes and sighed a heavy sigh that lifted her beautiful bosom and let it drop slowly. For a moment her heartbeat was visible in the slight tremor of the skin. If she was reading Lila’s thoughts, Lila had no sense of it.

  “You wear a talisman,” Madame said at last, in a quiet voice.

  Tath tensed. Lila had forgotten it, it was so familiar. Now she touched it without thinking. There were two necklaces: one given by the faeries, which looked like it ought to fall off the chain any second but never did—a silver spiral. The other was a smooth jewel held in a wooden circle hanging from a leather cord. This was the one Lila thought of first. It had been given to her to prevent demons from detecting Tath. The spiral had been passed to her via Zal and he’d said nothing about special powers, though he did mention that Poppy seemed to think it was useful for something. The problem, as ever, was with the fey vagueness of that “something.”

  “Yes,” she said, since the matter was impossible to deny.

  “This interests me as much as your strange biology,” Madame moved on her seat and her tail fanned out. A thousand eyes, all different, all alive, opened upon the pattern of the feathers. Some blinked and some did not. They all stared into distances beyond Lila’s appreciation and seeing them do so made a cold shudder run down her spine. Madame clacked her beak, “I have seen such items before, though not for a long, long time. And I have seen something like your arm before also, with my other eyes, in other minds and other places. So I am minded to say—if you tell me where one came from, I will tell you about the other.”

  Lila frowned slightly, “I thought you knew all my thoughts.”

 
“I know who gave you the talisman and that he placed some added charm upon it, but not how he came by it, for you do not know that either. I am sure he did not make it. If you tell me its story, I will tell you where you can find another piece of the machine. Meanwhile I can tell you that the talisman itself, however and by whom it was apparently made, is the creation of no demon, human, faery, elf, or deadwalker. Their hands might have put it together, but their minds did not. It blinds me.”

  Lila was momentarily nonplussed. “Then who?”

  “There are others,” the demon said. “If I were you and I wanted to find the answers I would search out a strandloper. They are most likely to be willing to talk about these things as they feel no allegiances to those who would prefer their silence.” She brushed her hand almost carelessly against the plumage of her tail and plucked off an eye from the masses that blinked there. With a conjuror’s flourish she opened her hand and held it out to Lila. A smooth stone lay there, clouded and softly coloured in shades of brown and cream. It looked like a pebble from the beach. “Take this. When you have news for me place it on a feather.”

  The imp on her shoulder went rigid but didn’t speak.

  Tath whispered, She asks you to become one of her Eyes… he sounded very doubtful and more than a touch frightened. By his tone of it Lila judged that becoming one of Madame’s eyes might well entail a lot more than a few conversations. And now she must weigh where she stood and where the demon stood and if the deal was true and as it appeared, or was much more. Through the window Lila saw traces of sparkling lemon vapour brim momentarily and spill out of thin air. They brushed softly through the hanging veils of fabric there. Above them on the guttering a raven cawed suddenly, harshly, and there was a brief, deafening clatter of wings.