Selling Out Page 35

  Lila shrugged. “I’m through with you, though I can’t speak for my friends and relations. I’m going to be getting married to Teazle Sikarza by the way. I’ll try and talk him out of taking you up.” Where the last part had come from she wasn’t entirely sure, it more or less appeared in her mind and out of her mouth simultaneously and as she said it she realised she was smiling and that part of her, a large part, was pleased with the idea. Of course, a second later the other parts of her that considered it a shocking and dreadful and impetuously insane idea started clamouring for attention but they didn’t manage to dislodge her smile nor the small glow of satisfaction she felt deep inside.

  You are an education, Tath whispered to her, mild as the Sahara.

  The demon clearly thought so too. It jumped up anxiously and paced after her through the lovely grass, carrying its vials carefully. “Supposing I were to return your parents to you now . . . might we consider the matter concluded honourably? You have murdered me twice, attempted, but I am still alive and here they are, also, capable of being returned to life. Quite unharmed.”

  “Well, but that’s not certain, is it?”

  “Only days have elapsed in the physical dimensions. As long as the bodies live there should be only minor . . . discombobulations. Consider—necromancers and yourself are all spending time travelling away from the world of the living material objects . . . and we shall return, many times.”

  Nobody truly living spends more than hours here, Tath told her privately. The upper limit recommended by the undead is four hours of time passing in the world of the physical body. The astral form of the self loses its ability to connect with the physical body effectively very rapidly once it moves beyond the immediate threshold of the timeline, as we have, in moving here. There is a half-life period of six hours in relative time. He paused, and then added with a quiet but clinical perfection. I know how you feel, but I advise against any attempt to resurrect your parents after this interval.

  The demon waited anxiously as Lila pretended to consider, though she was responding to the elf.

  People in comas come back after years, she said.

  People in comas are not in this region, he replied. They rest or travel within the world of the body silently, until they are able to reconnect or they remain on the same timeline boundary with their physical world, like ghosts. When we first crossed over, we might have stayed there without suffering decay of this sort, but I have witnessed untimely resurrection of people who had travelled far from the Material Rim. Do not think that his offer is a fair exchange.

  Can I talk to them, here? she asked.

  It is possible, Tath said.

  Lila held out her hand. The demon gave her one vial, a blue, teardrop shape the size of a small beer bottle with a stopper on a fine golden chain. As she took it from him she felt its peculiar substance more like her energy body than not. It might have been true glass in the physical world but here it was a tough knot of energies, cold to the touch, impermeable, and dense as lead.

  “We’re quits,” she said, without sparing another glance at the creature. “Get lost.”

  The demon backed off a couple of steps and gazed with resentful precision at Tath. It bowed with grudging respect and then vanished abruptly in midstraighten.

  Tath’s nervous tension eased slightly although he retained a vigilance Lila didn’t care for.

  “Isn’t it safe here?” she asked him, looking at the bottle, at the stopper, at the chain. She wondered what she’d do if the demon had stiffed her and there was nothing inside it.

  “It is not safe anywhere here,” the elf replied.

  Briefly, Lila caught the impression of a thoughtscape—Tath’s experience of this world. She saw the light forms of the Bright Ones and the spirits of the newly dead, but also regions so vast and strange there were no words to adequately name them. In those places were other beings, akin to the Bright Ones, but dark, or coloured with flickering sprite fires, their fields of energy shifting unpredictably to forms the eye could tolerate and forms that became flat fields of unknown dimension because they had topographies too alien to be understood. This was a world of intent, of consciousness reduced to its purest form, before words and images took hold of it and marshalled it into orderly possibilities or familiar dreams. Many of these other forms did not have the pleasant aspects of the Bright Ones. They shifted, subtle and ill-willed, self-absorbed, beyond appeal or understanding. Those were the things he feared, their billion forms and their unknown states. It was a wild place, with one border on the akashic region of true pure interstitial aether, one on the material realms of possibility, and one that was made of pure consciousness or mind where the only limits were the limits of imagination. Within that region worlds took shape and were born, as here across this visionary ocean they lost organisation and died into the chaos of raw energy.

  Against such a place one elf and one human were simply brief instants of passing organisation and potential interest, for chaos was all the same, but actualised entities were unique and peculiar, perhaps with minds that could make or direct. They were prey; tiny fish in the sea.

  Great spirits may survive well here, Tath said, but his voice didn’t hold out the conviction that either he or she were among this sacred number.

  And what makes a great spirit? Lila asked defiantly.

  Perfect Realisation and Conviction, came the reply. Be quick with your dealings. We are far from the Rim, and time is running fast there, at the edge of the wheel.

  Lila didn’t move. She didn’t have much conviction herself that opening this bottle wasn’t akin to some kind of murder, since surely she held the power to save them? Would Max understand the difference? Did she herself? And then, that fleeting black little whisper in her mind that said, oh, maybe the elf is lying to you. Don’t you remember Alfheim? How they can wait, and turn and trick you and lie? To whose advantage does this turn?

  And then again, in her hands, Mom and Dad, their entire lives and hers and Max’s all in the balance of that bottle. Would they want to go back? Did she want them to know that their fate here was her fault; an awful, stupid mistake?

  A sudden rage gripped her. No, it was not her doing that any of them were here at the end of everything with their ordinary lives undone. She had not asked to be the agency’s ignorant pawn in that first ill-fated journey to Alfheim. She had never asked for her own metal resurrection. She would not give the people who were responsible for this a moment more of her suffering—and then her heart hardened with a clever determination she did not like—and she would not give them any more leverage against her.

  With shaking hands she uncorked the bottle, surprised at how ordinary it felt, a little action that meant so much. It felt like nothing.

  They were there in the field with her. Mom, looking faintly astonished, as though she’d suddenly been dealt five aces. Dad, a little dishevelled as ever, slightly blundering, staring around him with relief and a touch of despair.

  “Lila?” said her mother. “Is that you?” She was peering, as though she couldn’t quite see, the beginnings of a hopeful smile on her face.

  “Lila’s here?” said her father, turning and only then appearing to see her. “Oh my god! It really is! Lila! Lila!” and he swept her into his arms, crying and lifting her up at the same time.

  “Oh no,” said her mother, joining the hug fiercely. “If you’re here then you must be dead after all. We hoped so much that you were out there, somewhere.”

  “I’m not dead,” Lila said, feeling torn apart by joy and heartbreak, happiness and despair. “I’m alive and I came here to find you.”

  “My baby,” said her mother softly, proudly, holding tight. Nobody said anything or moved for a long time but Lila felt the growing unease of the elf, withdrawn inside her, and finally she made herself speak.

  “Mom, Dad, do you know what happened to you?”

  They let her go slowly and looked at one another with faces that were full of trouble. “Not exactly,” s
aid her father first. “But we know . . . this is death, isn’t it? Something came and killed us. Hardly felt a thing, just a cold cut, and then we were gone. Caught us arguing . . .” He looked ashamed.

  “Don’t,” said her mother, taking her father’s arm gently. “Not now.” She gazed at Lila with eyes that were suddenly much more acute and with it than Lila was used to, as though with losing her bodily existence she had shed all the frustrations that had held her back in life and forgotten them in the same instant.

  “I wanted,” Lila stammered, “t-to rescue you. But I-I don’t think I can after all. In fact. I have to go in a moment and . . . I wanted to . . .” But she was crying too hard to continue and her throat was full of feelings that were too big to say.

  There was a moment of silent communication between her parents, fast as light, and she thought for an instant that Tath reached across and spoke to them in some way but it was too quick to be certain.

  “No,” her father said and put his arm around her shoulders and his face against the top of her head. His voice was steady. “We talked about this when we realised what was happening. I don’t know how we knew that but we did. Soon as we crossed here. It was like we just had known it all our lives. When you cross over, really cross, you see things differently. How it was, what you were, what you did. We don’t want to have to go back and carry on with that now that we’ve been here.”

  “But you could change things, fix things,” Lila sniffled. “If you can see, then it could be so much better.”

  “Maybe,” her mother said, and glanced at the ships. “But your spirit guide here doesn’t think so. And I feel so calm here. It’s peaceful.”

  “But if you go, you’ll just disappear!” Lila cried. “And there’s so much I wanted . . . wanted to . . .”

  “Lila, this was the right thing,” her father said. “God knows, after all the mistakes we’ve made it’s kind of a miracle that one of us could make this choice, and it’s a terrible thing, I know. But you didn’t cause our deaths, Lila. You aren’t to blame. And we’re not unhappy, look at us. We had our moment and we had you and Max and those were the best times anyone could have, even if they were shitty sometimes.”

  “You could hang around and be ghosts,” Lila said. “You can live along the timeline. You’d see us.”

  “And do what? Haunt your every waking minute?” Her mother stroked her back. “I know you don’t want to say good-bye. But think about it this way—how many people never get this moment and wish they’d had it all their lives long? We could have just been flattened in a car crash and you’d never see us again.”

  “But I have to . . . I want to say so many . . .”

  “We know,” her father said, smiling with the ease of quite a different man, the one that she knew he had always wanted to be, and had drunk to forget. It was strange to have that person suddenly there, as if all the broken pieces of his life had suddenly fit together in a second. It was a great mercy, Lila felt, a grace that none of them had ever expected could exist in any world they might see. Her tears were happy, as well as sad. “We love each other. We understand it all. There’s nothing to forgive and no reason to be sad now.”

  “But I won’t see you!” Lila said pathetically. She didn’t want to admit in that second just how much and for how long and how badly she yearned to be held close and safe in the comforting touch of their embrace, nor that she didn’t know how to go on if it would never exist again.

  “Lila,” her mother said, taking her hand. “Oh.” She touched it carefully, then held it as she always had. “What a clever thing . . .” She glanced with concern at Lila’s tear-stained face. “Better than the original I bet. Anyway, it’s not important. Your guide is saying that you will die too if you stay here any longer. It’s time. I know you’re not ready, but we are. You must never worry about that. Go on home now. We have other things we have to do and better places to go.”

  “No, I can’t,” Lila whimpered, as weak as she had ever been, longing to be different, longing to be stronger and better and more sure. She thought that they would remonstrate with her as they always had, and say things like she should look after Max and had work to do and must be strong and look after her sister and do well . . . but they didn’t. They held her quietly and their calm slowly passed into her, she didn’t know how, and finally she was able to let go of her own free will. She still felt all the terrible feelings of loss and fear, but they were not in control of her any more, and she realised for the first time that it did not matter that she had those feelings, instead of other ones that she thought she ought to have. She was as she was; not the perfect older sister, or the best daughter, or a credit to them, or a good girl, or a feisty hero, or a perfect and unruffled cyborg servant, or any of those things. There was no description that fit and it was not important.

  Her parents took one another’s hands, rather awkwardly as their union hadn’t been the most amicable of things, and they held on with the carefulness of little children. Then her mother paused and turned back for one instant, a faint smile on her face although Lila could see tears there too. “Always remember,” she said, with a wink and a wicked grin. “Aces high.”

  Please, Tath whispered.

  Lila closed her eyes and thought of home.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  She was cold as ice, heavy as stone, dry and aching as though she had run to the point of collapse. There were shooting pains in her shoulders and thighs. Tath curled up slowly like a decrepit and arthritic cat in her leaden chest. Lila opened her eyes and found herself staring into the face of one of the agency technicians. He shrieked and dropped some small piece of handheld technology on her stomach. Above her lights glared from a low, white ceiling. Cables of various colours snaked down from tracks above her. The stink of overcleaned vinyl was overlaid with the curiously out of place odours of fresh forests, spicy musk, and garlic.

  “She’s awake.” It was Zal’s voice, coming from above and behind her. She tried to move but her body didn’t fancy the idea much and made her wince with pain and stop. Belatedly she realised she was lying on a gurney, but her head and upper body were cradled on the pillow of Zal’s legs, his hair long enough to tickle her forehead as he leant over to look. He laid his hand gently against her cheek and she pressed into his touch, amazed to find herself comforted by it more than she could say.

  She heard someone sobbing. “Max?”

  “She’s with me,” Malachi reported from a short distance away.

  Lila slowly tilted her head to look but was distracted by a shimmer above her. Between the light fittings, so camouflaged he had been invisible, Teazle hung from the roof as lightly as spiderweb. His long, dragonish neck uncoiled and twisted so that his head came down close to hers. His eyes were the white of arctic winter, with just the faintest hint of blue. His triangular ears pricked up and he made a distinctly doggy whining sound, then opened his long, fang-lined mouth and let his indigo tongue hang out. He licked her nose. “There are a lot of other people coming and going with devices and so forth. Do you want me to kill them for you?”

  “No,” she said reflexively although she privately liked the idea. “What are you all . . . doing here?”

  “While you were gone Max found you and thought you were dead so she called the agency and they came along but Teazle, Okie, Rusty, and Buster kept doing a good job of maiming anyone who came near the house until I came to talk them out of it,” Zal explained patiently. “After that we were all under arrest and agreed to accompany you here to the medical facility. Well, they didn’t want us to, but we insisted, didn’t we, Mal?”

  “A lot of people insisted,” said another familiar voice from a different side of the room. Lila grudgingly and with difficulty pushed herself up a little so she could look around. Sarasilien was there, sitting back with an expression of mild amusement on his face. Dr. Williams was beside him, a world-weary kind of smile attached to her as though she had stuck it there for a party. Several technicians were loiterin
g next to her, including the one who had recovered his instrument from her blanket. The dogs were lying around underneath their seats, bored to sleep.

  “We’re difficult to resist, when we insist,” said Zal, pulling her back against his body and holding her close in his arms, his face next to hers. His andalune body wove around her like smoke. She could feel a grim determination in him that was completely at odds with his facile surface.

  “If all the reserves weren’t out dealing with this crisis I can assure you resistance would have been highly effective.” Cara Delaware stepped forwards, her face as icy as her tone of voice. She held herself upright as though she was starched, though her face was almost grey underneath her makeup and her eyes were rimmed with the red of exhaustion.

  Teazle snickered, a highly unpleasant sound, and began to stalk Delaware with his gaze. She gave no sign of noticing which Lila took as a sign of extreme fatigue or stupidity.

  “What crisis?” Lila murmured, closing her eyes so she didn’t have to see something so unpleasant as Cara staring at her. She felt sore and tired in every possible way. Zal crooned softly into her ear. She wondered if he knew about Adai.

  “You can concern yourself with that once you are certified fit to return to work,” Cara was saying. “Everyone else may be released after interview if they are satisfactory.”

  “The Otopians are experiencing many strange night haunts and encounters with what they think are extraterrestrial beings,” Teazle hissed. “Creatures which defy all natural law.” He drawled the word “natural” with extreme contempt. “They suppose they are under attack or the threat of it and have sent all their forces to capture and command one of these creatures.”

  Cara’s lip curled, “You are not here to speculate upon classified . . .”

  Zal coughed and interrupted. “I don’t want to spoil your party or anything but don’t you think it’s time you dropped the bullshit and adapted to what you’ve got in front of you?”