The Abyss Beyond Dreams (38 page)

*

Slvasta took a cab to the Hewlitt Hospital at midday the next day to visit Arnice. He knew something was wrong as soon as the driver turned on to Lichester Street. Several
people were standing together outside the entrance, their minds flashing with shock and distress. In growing alarm, he realized two of them were Jaix and Lanicia. Jaix was sobbing uncontrollably,
her shell gone, her thoughts incoherent with grief. He climbed out of the cab.

‘What’s happened?’

The look Lanicia gave him was brutal; without any ’path it told him what a useless, worthless piece of human-shaped shit he was. And not just because he’d turned her down.
‘It’s Arnice,’ she said.

Slvasta just stared at the wailing Jaix. He didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to be told the horrible truth. ‘What?’

‘I’m afraid Major Arnice has passed away,’ the man in the doctor’s coat said gently.

‘Oh, no. Jaix, I’m so sorry,’ Slvasta said. He stepped over to hug her, to offer his meagre comfort.

‘You were good to him,’ Jaix said through her tears. ‘He really liked you. He said you were real, not like the rest of them.’

‘He was a wonderful man. Truly.’

‘We were engaged,’ Jaix said. ‘He proposed to me two days ago. I said yes.’

Slvasta closed his eyes in grief. ‘The news. He said he had news for me. He was going to tell me today.’

‘Arnice wanted you to be his best man.’

Slvasta turned to the doctor. ‘What happened?’

It was the wrong thing to say, he knew it at once. Jaix immediately stiffened inside his embrace.

The highly agitated doctor said: ‘I’m afraid the major committed suicide.’

‘What? No!’

‘He didn’t,’ Jaix snarled, she turned and pointed at the other man standing with them. ‘You murdered him!’

‘Jaix—’ Lanicia began.

‘No! I will not calm down, and I will not recant the truth. Slvasta,
this
man murdered Arnice.’

‘Who are you?’ Slvasta asked.

‘Davalta. I’m an assistant attorney for the city prosecutor’s office. And I do understand, and sympathize with, Ms Jaix’s grief. However, I must insist that this calumny
is not to be perpetuated.’

‘I’ll perpetuate as much as I like, you boywhore scum,’ Jaix spat. ‘You think working for the prosecutor is going to save you? When my family’s lawyers are through
with you, you’ll wish you’d plea bargained for the Pidrui mines and a nightly gang rape! It’ll be a trip to Giu compared to what I’ll have done to you.’

‘Ms Jaix—’

‘All right,’ Slvasta held his hand up. He gave the assistant attorney in his smart expensive suit a suspicious gaze. ‘What are you doing here? Why is Jaix blaming you for my
friend’s death?’

Davalta took a breath. ‘I was serving papers on Major Arnice. Soon afterwards, he jumped from the fourth-floor window.’

‘Papers? What sort of papers?’

‘The prosecutor decided he should be charged with Haranne’s shooting.’

‘You’ve got to be out of your Uracus fucking mind!’ Even as he said it, Slvasta could put together the tricky political reasoning behind it. Someone had to be the scapegoat for
the girl’s ordeal, someone in authority. You couldn’t blame the mob in this case, that would only aggravate the resentment – and enough people were being carted off to serve in
the Pidrui mines to keep that cranked up high right now. The other side had to take a hit, too; there was always a penance to be served in order to restore equilibrium. From a strategic point of
view, Arnice was a perfect candidate. The Meor officer in charge of the troops when the shot was fired – even though he’d been knocked unconscious and was having his face burnt off at
the time.

‘I assure you, captain—’ Davalta began.

‘You served papers on a man who’d just had his face firebombed? What did you think that would do to his state of mind?’

‘There was no legal reason to delay the court summons.’

‘Legal . . .’ Slvasta shaped his formidable teekay into a giant fist.

Davalta sensed it and took a frightened step back. ‘I assure you, sir, assaulting an officer of the court is a serious offence and will be pursued vigorously.’

Slvasta gave him an icy smile, then turned to Jaix. ‘Make sure your lawyer collects my statement on Arnice’s mental state, and how he should not have been persecuted by a malicious
lawsuit. I’ll also be giving testimony that he was unconscious when Haranne was shot, and that I personally witnessed his last order, which was to aim above the heads of the crowd.’

‘Thank you,’ Jaix whispered.

Slvasta gave Davalta a final contemptuous glance. ‘You are not fulfilled, and your profession will prevent you from ever becoming so. Your soul will spend eternity lost amid the nebulas,
diminishing with every passing year.’ With that he climbed back into the cab. As his teekay shut the door, he caught Lanicia’s approving gaze. It didn’t make him feel any
better.

*

Slvasta walked down the east side of Tarleton Gardens, a terraced square on the edge of the Nalani borough, with a small iron-fenced park in the middle where ancient malbue
trees dangled long skirt branches of their dark grey-red leaves from crowns twenty metres above the cracked pavements. The brick house he stopped at was no different from the others which made up
the terrace walls of the square. Five storeys high, with bay windows up the front and a wide wooden door painted a cheerful blue. Like most around the square, each floor had been divided up into
separate apartments. The structure had a simple psychic fuzz, no different from any other home in the city, preventing anyone from casual prying with their ex-sight. He felt a faint perception wash
across him as he went up the three steps to the door.

‘Come on up,’ Bethaneve ’pathed.

The inside was more timeworn than the outside, with a stone stairwell that echoed to the sound of his feet. With whitewashed walls and a grimy roof lantern high above, the air was noticeably
cooler than the square outside. He climbed up to the third floor. Bethaneve opened the door and beckoned him across the small landing, her ex-sight sweeping round.

‘Nobody followed me,’ he said.

‘The Captain’s police use mod-eagles,’ she replied. ‘Mod-dogs and cats, too. There are rumours of other adaptations we’ve not seen before.’

He almost said:
So how do you know that, if you don’t know what they look like?
But for once he had the smarts to keep his mouth shut.

The flat was as bare as the stairwell outside. Its walls had been painted a pale green decades ago, and had faded further under layers of dust and dirt. Dark floorboards creaked under his feet.
There was no furniture. Javier was lying on a mattress in the back room, covered by a thin sheet. Coulan sat on a fold-up chair beside him. The young man looked exhausted, his hair limp, stubble
shading his chin and cheeks, shirt criss-crossed with streaks of dried blood.

‘Hey, you,’ Javier ’pathed. There was a strong seepage of distress within the simple thought, despite his tight shell. The amount of tissue bruising was worrying. On his dark
skin, the swelling was like a purple and bronze stain, leaving every limb puffy and discoloured. Wounds still leaked pustulant fluid, though they were drying out and scabbing over. Both eyes were
completely swollen shut from the bruising, and his cheeks had ballooned out as if his mouth was full of nuts.

Slvasta smiled and held up the satchel he’d taken from the office’s deployment bunker. ‘Brought you something.’

‘Is that amanarnik?’ an incredulous Coulan asked.

‘I got hold of some phials, yes. Clean bandages and dressings, too; they’re important.’

‘Thank you,’ Coulan’s hand was trembling as he took the satchel. ‘He spends so much energy fighting the pain.’

‘Ha, you don’t have to tell Slvasta about pain,’ Javier ’pathed. ‘This is just a few bruises. You had it worse, right?’

‘The doctors kept telling me it wasn’t as bad as kidney stones,’ Slvasta said. ‘I pray to Giu every night I never have any of those.’

‘Doctors!’

Coulan knelt beside his lover and prepared a syringe of amanarnik.

‘I don’t know the dosage,’ Slvasta said.

‘Don’t worry, I do,’ Coulan said.

‘He’s like a walking encyclopaedia,’ Javier ’pathed. ‘Despite that, I still quite like him.’

Clearly fighting back tears, Coulan slid the needle into Javier’s arm. ‘There. That should shut you up. Honestly, the whingeing I’ve had to put up with . . .’ He caressed
the big man’s sweat-soaked forehead.

It was only a short while before Javier sighed. A profound sense of relief pulsed out from his thoughts. ‘Oh, wow, that feels better.’ A minute later he was asleep.

‘I’ll change his dressings while he’s out,’ Coulan said. ‘I don’t want to risk infection. There are some nasty germs on this world.’ He smiled up at
Slvasta. ‘Thank you so much. Without you . . .’ he choked.

Bethaneve put her arm round his shoulders, and gave him a reassuring hug. ‘He’ll be okay, the big old fool.’

‘Yes.’ Coulan started to busy himself with the satchel.

Bethaneve inclined her head, and Slvasta followed her out. The front room was a lot bigger, with warm afternoon sunlight streaming in through the big bay window. Like the rest of the flat, the
room was devoid of furniture or decoration. There was a single mattress on the floor, covered by a rumpled sheet. Bethaneve sat on it and patted her hand for him to join her. He did, with a sigh of
his own.

‘You did good,’ she said. ‘Strike one against the system.’

‘And the system strikes back even harder.’

She put her hand on his cheek. ‘What’s happened?’

‘My friend. My one and only friend in the office, Arnice. You remember, the major who got burnt by a firebomb?’

‘I remember him, yes.’

‘He’s dead.’

‘Oh, Slvasta.’ She hugged him tight. ‘I’m so sorry. But you said the burns were pretty bad.’

‘It wasn’t the burns,’ he said hoarsely, and told her what had happened.

‘Those people!’ she said in dismay when he’d finished. ‘He was one of them, and they were going to use him like that?’

‘Yeah.’ Somehow they had wound up pressed together, holding each other. ‘That little shit Davalta, who served Arnice with the summons, he didn’t even care. Suicide was
actually more convenient for
them
. Now everything can be blamed on my friend, and nobody will clear his name. Jaix will try, but they’ll stall her and discredit her, I know it. If
she ever does get her day in court, everyone will have forgotten. This whole disturbance, everything that happened, will be blamed on Arnice.’

‘They can’t blame the Wurzen nest on him.’

‘No. That was the district governor, who conveniently for the Captain is swinging from the end of a mob’s rope. Nothing will change. Everything will carry on as before.’

‘Not you,’ she said with conviction. ‘I know you won’t give up. You won’t, will you?’

‘Give up what?’ he asked bitterly. ‘Trying to get the regiments to use terrestrial horses instead of mod-horses on a sweep? Yeah, that’s going to change everything,
isn’t it? It’s just so petty, a pitiful act of bureaucracy.
I
am pathetic. I can’t change a Uracus damned thing. I might as well join them, all those families and
officials that rule this world. That way, if I’m going to live a worthless life, at least I’ll be comfortable doing it.’

‘Stop it. Stop thinking like that. I can’t take them winning. They always win, Slvasta, every time. They broke my friend, they killed yours, and there is never any justice, not for
people like us. Why? Why can’t they be brought down? Why can’t the world change?’

‘It’s all right,’ he said, stroking her neck. ‘I’m just messed up by Arnice. I won’t give up.’

‘Promise me! Promise, Slvasta.’ Her face was pushed up against his. Desperation and urgency were swelling out from a mind which no longer had any shell.

He kissed her. ‘I promise.’ He kissed her again. ‘I promise I won’t give up.’

Her hands were fumbling with his shirt. He used his teekay to lift her dress off. They fell back onto the mattress, touching and caressing skin as it was freed from the restriction of clothes.
When they were naked, she straddled him, surrounded by bright sunlight pouring in through the bay window behind her. He used his teekay to pull her down, impaling her. The sunlight seemed to flow
around her, turning his world to a glorious white blaze as she cried out. Then she was riding him, letting him into her thoughts to reveal her body’s secret demands, pleading with him to
perform them. He responded with equal intimacy, sharing his physical appetite. And a completely uninhibited Bethaneve used her hands and mouth and tongue and teekay to delight him in all the ways
he’d always fantasized she would.

He held nothing back from her, and felt no shame in exposing himself in such a fashion, for she reciprocated with equal enthusiasm.

All that afternoon in the hot light they made love on the slim mattress, intent on just one thing: satisfying each other’s cravings. And all the while, thoughts churned in his mind,
notions he’d thought impossible. Everything was free for consideration now, liberated from his reticence, rushing out of its cage amid the sunlight and joy.

*

‘I’m scared,’ he told her eventually.

Bethaneve was lying on top of him, hot sweaty skin pressed into his. The smell of sex in every breath. The feeling of intimacy was unsurpassed.

‘Don’t be,’ she told him. ‘This will happen again and again. As much as you want. Because I want it too – you know that. I held nothing from you.’

‘Yes. I know. But that’s not what scares me.’

‘Then what?’

‘What we both know and are too afraid to say.’

‘Then say it. To me. You can say anything to me.’

‘If there is to be change, I know of no one who is going to bring it about.’

‘So many want it. Someone will—’

‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘Not
someone
. If this is to be done, then we must do it. Right here. Right now. This is where it begins. This is the revolution. We will
organize, and we will overcome.’

Bethaneve lifted herself up so she could look into his eyes. Her own were moist with emotion. ‘I am with you to the very end,’ she swore. ‘Whatever that brings us.’