Context (84 page)

The driver looked back—a dark red
dagger symbol upon her cheek: special forces tattoo—and fired a sentence in
rapid Russki.

Zoë nodded, gave a clipped
command, of which Ro picked up only one word: XenoMir.

More than one assassin, then.

Ro was not as scared as she ought
to have been: things were moving too fast.

Who are they? And now what?

They were on the snow-laden
Yeltsin Hills. Moscow lay to the south, on the other side of the icy river, as
though nestling in a titanic crater.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Ro clutched her
seat as the TDV tipped nose down, on the same slope where students had been
sledding, and gunned downwards, accelerating hard, as the river’s churning
metal-grey waves grew larger at sickening speed.

I’m going to die.

Waves, growing impossibly close ...then
there was a swerve to the right, smashing into water with a white cloud of
spume, jolting Ro’s spine as the TDV shot downstream, spewing water in all
directions.

Another swerve, and they were
tearing upwards, into the city.

Beside Ro, Zoë was clinging to a
grab handle, white-faced, tears of fear unnoticed upon her bloodless cheeks.

Someone’s trying to kill me.

Past
the stadium. Armoured bikes, strobing blue, fell into place beside them,
matching the TDV’s velocity.

‘Police escort.’ Zoë stared at
them. ‘If they can keep up.’

As though responding to the
challenge, the TDV’s driver maxed her controls, red-planing the output, zipping
past pedestrians. Streets and people looked static—flicked past, were gone—like
momentary snapshots, frozen glimpses of the world.

Dzerzhinski Square, and they took
the turn at frightening speed.

Ground traffic used the
centuries-old no-left-turn rule: use a designated U-turn gap, go back, turn
right. But the TDV ignored the niceties, hooking across a hover-bus’s path,
sending it into a panicked swerve.

Then the bus was behind them—they
had lost the police bikes—and an entranceway was looming.

Slam of jet-brakes, a hard turn
which sent Ro sliding across the bench, then snapping downwards, into the
tunnel ramp which led into basement bunkers beneath XenoMir’s vast bulk.

White lights strobing.

Then a howling screech as they
whipped into the floodlit underground garage and spun to a halt.

A
heavy clang, echoing: steel doors closing off the basement. But the sound
failed to mask Zoë’s muttered: ‘... a Zajinet, sighting confirmed.’

Clamour of soldiers running to
their guard positions; but Ro’s hearing could be finer-focused than a normal
person’s.

‘... saw its light traces, for
sure.’ Zoë touched her throat: upping the volume of her embedded mike. ‘The
escaped one, yes. It really is a renegade.’

Then she caught sight of Ro
observing her.

‘We’re going to talk to the
ambassador, what else? Out.’

Zoë beckoned Ro. ‘As of now, you’ve
all-areas access. Come with me.’

‘Not until you tell me what—’

‘You’ll recall there’s a rogue
Zajinet, one that’s loose outside the embassies without authorization?’

Zoë was walking at a rapid clip;
Ro hurried to keep up.

‘That story,’ Ro said, ‘was part
of the bait that got me here.’

‘But very real. And it wants your
life, girl, though I’ve only half an idea why. It has more than human assassins
in its employ.’

They stopped before a lift-tube.

‘It has something,’ Zoë added, ‘to
do with mu-space, we think. All right? Now come with me.’

The lift-tube door slid open.
Stale warm air drifted out.

‘OK,’ said Ro.

They stepped inside.

Piotr,
overweight and gasping, was waiting for them on the top floor.

‘The ambassador,’ he said, ‘is a
little agitated.’

Zoë grimaced. ‘Wait till we’ve
had a word with it. Then you’ll see agitated.’

Piotr handed a resp-mask each to Zoë
and Ro, then pulled his own from a voluminous pocket.

‘We can take the quick route.’

Through
low-lit labs, to a background of gentle susurration, and bubbling from the long
liquid-filled tanks. A whiff of ammoniac vapours, and Piotr’s cough was a
sudden barking intrusion among the shadows.

Inchoate purple shapes drifted in
the tanks, but it was the crystalline sediments, growing and reconfiguring too
slowly for human eyes to register, who were the Felakhim: the intelligent,
dormant species of their world.

Only stop-motion analysis
revealed the coral-like pattern-language which greeted the first exploration
station, and deciphered the initial question once the basics were established:
Do
you not hum the Earth-stones’ song, and dance the waltz tectonic?

Twelve years later, semantic
arguments among Terran translators and philosophers continued to rage.

‘This way.’

The
next zone was worse.

Some rooms were dark, others
brightly lit, but each was unsettling: whispers just beyond the edge of
hearing, a sense of not-touch upon the skin—hairs rising—of almost-caresses
upon cheeks, of brushing lips.

When they exited, through an ultrasonic
vibrashield, Ro felt as though she were being stripped clean, yet still felt
violated. In the corridor, she stopped and looked back inside, trying to catch
a glimpse of the Ephemerae, ghost-rulers of the world called Limbo, seeing
nothing until she turned her head away. Then ... something.

Hint of— No.

‘Come on, Ro. We’re in a hurry.’

Nothing like that could exist.

They
made a detour around the Floaters zone—it would take too long to pull on the
necessary env-suits—and left Piotr, wheezing, leaning against a pitted glass
panel. Behind it, an eye sphere drifted among corrosive clouds.

‘I’ll catch you up,’ he said.

‘Take it easy.’ Ro thought of
calling medics, but Zoë’ was already hurrying on. ‘You’ve got a strand?’