Keeping It Real Read online

  A few moments later, as she stood in her own room, he’d opened the door that joined their two rooms, stuck his head around it and said, “Goodnight Ms Black,” and shut it again.

  “Goodnight,” Lila had just said to the door and the satin bedsheets and the silk throws and the platinum-coated bath taps in the Italian marble bathroom. She listened all the way out to the shoreline, and then set her sentry senses on automatic, connecting herself wirelessly to the building’s security systems, so that her Al-self could do the work and she didn’t have to stay awake all night. When she’d finished that she felt the weight of responsibility lift enough to let her relax a little.

  Her cases had been placed at the foot of the bed. Their security locks blinked green, untouched. But Jolene had done her homework. The toiletries in the bathroom were the ones Lila always used. The robe and slippers in the room matched the ones she last bought for herself—although the ones put out for her here were of superior quality. A vase of freesias stood on the bedside table, and there was a silver-framed photograph of Okie on the wall, his black labrador coat shining in last summer’s sun. Never in her life had anybody taken so much trouble to make her feel at home. Now a perfect stranger had done it because it was the business thing to do.

  Lila folded the robe and put it away with the rest of the gifts in the closet, even the picture of Okie. She put the freesias into the huge bathtub that she wouldn’t be using—the idea of lying naked anywhere appalled her, even if she wasn’t visible to anybody, and besides, a bath was hardly the spot from which to spring into action. She took her own Berrypic from her innermost pocket and looked through her pictures the one time that she allowed herself each day. She was afraid that if she let her mind turn back any more often she’d never find the strength to get up and go forward again.

  Lila’s pictures: Mum and Dad and Lila and her sister Maxine standing under the trees at Windover just above the golf course that backed onto their garden. Everyone smiling. Rusty and Buster, the two retrievers, standing at the front, tongues lolling in the heat. The sun out, making everyone pink.

  Julia and Beatrix, her best girlfriends, at Lila’s fifteenth birthday party. In the background Dad walking out of shot holding a giant handful of balloons. Julie and Beatrix excited, holding their first glasses of sparkling wine. On the table the hands of Bryan, Mike and Sophie from school, the rest of them cut out of shot.

  Buster on his own. He’s just rolled in a lot of mud and is being given a bath. He is gleefully savaging the hosepipe and water is spraying everywhere.

  Rusty and Buster on the couch with Maxine’s feet. Why did my family never manage to put everyone in the picture? Lila wondered. But she’d taken this one, so she only had herself to blame.

  Roberto at night on the porch, a couple of years ago, the flashlight all shiny on the cellophane wrapper of the flowers he’s holding and next to him… Lila skipped past that one really fast. She didn’t need to see herself in a ridiculous cocoa-coloured prom dress.

  The last one was of the family garden. Nobody in it. It’s summer and the roses are out. This is a very bad shot of a nice rose gone all blurred in close-up.

  Lila put the slim wafer of the Berrypic back in her pocket. She closed her eyes and tuned to her Al-self briefly. It trawled the Otopia Tree’s domestic data drags for her on a nightly basis, picking out all the news about her family and friends. Everyone was fine. Rusty was at the vet’s for a thorn in his paw. Julia was getting married… oh my god…

  Lila’s eyes flashed open. She saw an image of her own memorial, shiny and fresh, black marble spangled with rain at the summit of the cemetery on Windover Hill. Here lies Lila Amanda Black…

  There wasn’t really such a thing, not yet. It was her imagination. Her family believed her missing in action. Her room at home was still there. They kept it in case she returned, knowing she would if she could. Agreeing to a contract of silence with Incon had seemed the easy and obvious thing for Lila when she was lying in bed at the hospital, under heavy sedation. Later, during her long, painful rehabilitation at the clinic, it had seemed less certain. When she realised the extent of her injuries and the consequences of her Mending, she’d made up this image of the memorial as a way of coping with what she came to see as her death. She expected, somehow, to be the same Lila, in spite of the fact that she was now a one-woman walking army, but when she looked inside she didn’t find her old self there. Even the pictures had a strange look to them, like they were things she’d been handed from someone else’s life. She could never walk back into her old world, but there was consolation of a kind in thinking that it hadn’t changed a bit. Except that Julia was getting married and Lila would not be there.

  Julia had been her best friend all through school and college and they’d kept in touch through their later lives. They had planned their weddings and divorce settlements in meticulous, ridiculous detail a thousand times. All very silly, but now her heart squeezed tightly.

  She heard Zal turn the shower on. One of the guards checked in with her to report everything quiet. Technically she was now permitted to sleep.

  Lila took her suit off. When she went to hang it up she found three more the same waiting in plastic wrappers on their hangers. “Cute,” she said aloud and left them there. She took a fast shower and examined herself carefully where her skin was grafted to the biometallic structures that had saved her. Some of them were red and angry where she’d sat too long or where cloth had rubbed them, but nothing too bad, nothing worth reporting. Her internal medical systems informed her she needed rest. All adaptations were proceeding at expected pace. Half her body and brain might be metal and synthetics but that didn’t change basic requirements.

  Lila was used to the routines of self-checking, tending and managing herself. She was fast and efficient with the machines stored in her smaller case; a toolkit for self-maintenance. The last one was a power unit diagnostic that tested her reactor block. It was running sweetly. The fist-sized tokamak would outlast her, if nobody blew it up.

  She brushed her teeth and then, so that she could sleep properly, checked and cleaned the medical equipment that she carried inside her thigh armour on both sides. Then the guns. Everything moved silently and smoothly. All her systems greenlighted.

  She dressed herself with the measured, gentle movements of Zen ritual in black, close-fitting fatigues and put on her upper body armour with its third gun and other supplies, brushed out her wet hair and lay down on top of the hand-painted satin coverlet. Her boots felt clunky and uncomfortable on the soft surface, but that couldn’t be helped.

  She heard Zal get out of the shower—that took ages, she thought; check for elfy fastidiousness—and then there was silence.

  Julia is getting married, Lila said to herself, curling up. She wanted sleep because she longed to escape, but at the same time, she didn’t want to sleep. Sleep meant dreams. She lay quietly. Her eyes were sore and tired, so she closed them to let them rest.

  Two hours later she heard a tiny, odd noise. She woke hearing it and knowing it was trouble from a distance, alert and fully able, though only a split second before she had been deeply asleep. The jolt of her heart was the only symptom of her sudden transition and even that was soon gone into the smooth, cold world of action. She was only a beginner in fighter terms, but her AI was a master and it seamlessly moved her from sleeping to waking before sliding back to lie in her nerves like an obedient pet. She felt a frisson of anxiety—it was a rebellious pet—but the AI absorbed that too.

  Lila slid off the bed and crossed to the door, put her ear to it and turned up all her sensors. The slight sounds that had disturbed her were very small, very stealthy and far distant. Her Al-self showed her a plotted location—right at the back wall of the building.

  There was no reason for Lila to sneak, but she moved quickly and reasonably quietly out of her room and through the ocean room, where nightlights in recesses close to the floor showed her that there was nobody there. The sounds had stopped. Perhap
s their maker had heard her? But then they began again and Lila pinpointed them at the other end of the house, where the second storey backed into the hillside and it would be easy to hop onto the flat roofs of the kitchens once the guards had been passed.

  She accessed the house controls, using her Doublesafe code, and turned off all interior lights. Instantly she was plunged into darkness, but she could see relatively well on infra-red, well enough that she could better a human attacker, and match a magical one. In response to her action another silence ensued, broken only by the sounds of various sleepers and the natural noises of the night.

  Lila checked in with the perimeter guard, but they’d seen nothing. The one at the back of the house was a witch, so she shouldn’t have missed a trick out there, even in the thickest forest cover. There were a couple of things that might get past her: an elf, or a faery of one or other kind. Lila hoped it wasn’t either of those as she ran the length of the house, passing through rooms in a blur. She passed the guest bedrooms which were semi-permanently occupied by the band, but only DJ Boom had come back so far. Her door was locked and there were quiet snores brushing up against it.

  Lila reached an end wall with an arched window that overlooked some of the lower roofs and was on eye level with the forest canopy some hundred metres away. Above the black line of trees the stars shone brightly, and the heat rising in vapours from the kitchen vents was almost blinding. Nevertheless she was just able to see the agile, small form of a black-clad humanoid figure jump the gap between the kitchen stores and the main building. There was a soft thump as it landed on a window ledge—so soft it could have been a night bird alighting. Lila strained to see. It went right on up the wall, climbing swiftly. By the quality and speed of movement, its relative quiet and the fact that it was hard to see—and therefore contained most of its body heat because of an aura—Lila guessed it was an elf.

  As she turned to monitor its progress, she heard the front door open and voices talking about the lights—a guard explaining it was only temporary, nothing to worry about. Poppy had come back. The sudden inrush of noise deafened Lila to the sounds on the roof. She did the only thing she could do, and doubled back towards Zal’s room as fast as she could.

  DJ Boom must have heard her. As she reached that room the door opened. Boom’s sleepy shape turned into the corridor, facing the wrong way. Lila was going too fast. She had to leap through the gap between Boom’s head and the ceiling in order to miss her—a power-assisted dive that cracked the floorboards when she took off. Lila landed on her hands, flipped once to regain her feet and was gone even as she heard Boom calling out fearfully and then the slam of her door.

  In spite of her speed she was not the first person to reach the ocean room. Poppy already stood there in front of the huge glass wall opening one of the sliding doors which led out onto the broad balcony. She was so occupied with the care of this task that she didn’t notice Lila’s arrival.

  Lila ducked behind one of the settees as she saw that Poppy was expecting someone. That someone dropped off the roof and came in quickly. There was a flash of metal that Lila saw as deep blue against the careless red glare from a chink in the intruder’s aetherial self. Poppy showed brilliantly, like a yellow ghost.

  “Are you sure about this?” Lila heard Poppy whisper.

  The other put their finger up to the faery’s mouth and pressed it there for a moment. To Lila’s surprise Poppy yawned prodigiously and backed away, but there was no time to think on it.

  The new figure darted forward suddenly, towards Zal’s door, so focused on its purpose that it barely flinched aside when Lila stuck her leg out and tripped it in mid-flight. There was a gasp and whoever it was went rolling. Lila jumped, caught a handful of cloth and felt it rip out of her hand as the other sprang up and turned. It whipped out the knife it had been carrying and faced her for a second, then looked back and forth in clear indecision. Lila took her chance at that moment and dived forward at full stretch. She landed on top, the attacker’s knife hand trapped between both of hers. She dug her reinforced fingers into the narrow wrist she was holding with maximum strength, and was rewarded by a gasp of pain. The knife fell.

  Then Lila felt Poppy’s hands on her shoulders, rather fumbling. The faery’s proximity sent a slow shudder through her circuits and Lila felt like she was moving through treacle. The body underneath hers made a great, fishlike effort and wriggled free. It caught up the knife again. Lila threw Poppy off backwards onto one of the sofas and heard her land there with a protesting cry, but already the black-robed elf was halfway back to the balcony.

  Lila freed a line in the palm of her right hand and made a desperate cast. The coils of thin braid, weighted at their flight end, wrapped around the figure’s waist in a whip action. Lila yanked on half power and the figure went down on the carpet and began struggling to slash the cord. Before Poppy had a chance to recover herself, Lila spooled back the line and jumped down across the small body to pin it flat with the simple fact of her weight again. The elf stopped trying to cut the line and instead made a desperate slash at Lila’s face. Lila leaned back easily only to find Poppy’s hands over her eyes suddenly. The faery tried to pull her sideways, off her prisoner, but only succeeded in hurting herself as Lila was far too strong for her. As Lila brushed Poppy’s hands away the elf made a lunge and she felt a sharp, fiery pain score across her side. Lila trapped the offending arm on its retreat, catching it between her own arm and her damaged ribs and punched the elf hard in the guts. They doubled up with a near-silent aahh of agony and released the knife a second time. Then Poppy hit Lila’s head with a plant pot.

  Lila found herself sitting in a scatter of soil and broken crockery, holding the knife. The door to the balcony stood wide and she could hear the sea. There was no sign of her attacker.

  “Oh cat’s piss,” she heard Poppy say despairingly from the settee. “I just knew you’d ruin it”

  Lila got up, went across and pulled the faery up by one arm. Poppy slowed her down again, but now it hardly mattered since Poppy had clearly quit any ideas of further violence.” What the hell was that?” Lila hissed at her.

  “That is you, Lila?” Poppy said. She sounded terrified.

  Lila coded the house to put the lights back on. “Of course it’s me! Who were you expecting? The Lone Ranger?”

  “It’s not what it looks like,” Poppy sniffed, frowning and crying at the same time. She didn’t want to meet Lila’s gaze and added without any conviction, “Let me go. You’re hurting me.”

  Lila tightened her hold and brandished the knife in her other hand. “What’s this for? And who was that?”

  “Oww! Please!” She plucked at Lila’s fingers. “It was nothing really. It wasn’t going to hurt anybody. It’s a magical weapon, you see? It was charmed to put him to sleep so that he couldn’t go on the tour and they wouldn’t be able to get him. It wouldn’t have really hurt him. Now you’ve spoiled everything.”

  Lila let her go. “I’ve never heard anything so stupid.”

  Poppy rubbed her arm and looked around but nobody had yet come running. “Please,” she said quietly, “Can’t we forget it? Just between us. Don’t tell him. Please, Lila. There’s nobody else. Just the two of us. It was her and me. We’re the only ones in on it.”

  “Who was your friend?” Now Lila could feel a trickle of blood on her skin. She felt unreasonably, unexpectedly tired.

  “Nobody.”

  “Consider yourself under arrest.”

  “All right, all right!” Poppy rubbed her face and stamped her foot in pique. “It was his cousin. Okay? His cousin from Alfheim. She doesn’t want him dead either—only one of his family that doesn’t. You’d better leave her out of it, please, Lila, she’s only twelve.” The faery looked at Lila with desperate, beseeching eyes.

  “Twelve!”

  “Please, Lila.” Poppy was floating two feet over the floor with anxiety. Her hands were together, begging.

  Lila was suddenly too exhausted to mo
ve. Even her anger wasn’t enough to keep her awake. “Poppy,” she managed to say, slurring her words. “Help me.” And then she fell over, her eyes closing of their own accord, and she knew no more.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  It was sunny. The sky was blue with streaks of high cloud. The warm air was full of the sound of splashing and the smell of freshwater and seawater alike. Lila was awake but could barely open her eyes. She was lying down on some padded kind of flat couch, and couldn’t move. She could feel her body, but only the human parts. The robotics were utterly dead. There was no reaction to her thoughts to summon it to life. She struggled to make a connection, wishing she could rouse it as effortlessly as it roused her but she realised that the power was out. What she could feel was heavy, the way she felt during the worst attack of flu she’d ever had. The only reason she could see anything was because one of her eyelids was slightly open. The blinding glare hurt because the apertures on her irises were set wide-open, where they’d been when the sleep charm had taken effect. There was nothing she could do. A tear formed and ran down her temple. Compared to the clinic it wasn’t so bad though. And miraculously there had been no dreams. Water was running nearby.

  After a minute or two she gathered that she was lying on a sun lounger beside the large, unevenly shaped swimming pool at the front of the house, not far from where it was fed by streamwater from a little forest cascade. The light was very warm but the air was full of the forest cool, so it was still early in the morning, perhaps before seven. Lila tried moving, nothing happened.