Meridian Days (6 page)

I rose and strode quickly from the hollow. As the giant, frozen image of Steiner's caricatured face faded from the screen, cloaking my retreat in welcome darkness, I was amazed to hear the beginnings of applause behind me, then louder as the audience gave their full support to Trevellion's twisted catalogue of spite. I needed to get away, to be alone for a time. It was as if the greensward was contaminated by Trevellion's inhumanity, as if by remaining there I might tacitly condone her creation.

I hurried from the gathering and found myself on a cliff-top path overlooking a deserted beach. I followed it down to the sheltered cove, then walked along the firm stretch of sand beside the ocean. The only illumination was from the massed stars above Darkside.

In the gloom before me I heard a small sound of surprise, then, "Mr Benedict?"

I peered. "Fire?"

She quickly backhanded what might have been a tear from her cheek. She perched on a rock, her knees drawn up to her chin. She smiled as I approached. "I thought it was you, Mr Benedict."

I sat beside her. In the cold light of the stars she seemed reduced in size and substance, a two-dimensional silver engraving. On her left knee I made out the sheen of saliva and the imprint of teeth.

I gestured towards the hilltop. "Listen," I began, "I'm sorry."

She looked away. "Forget it."

"I wanted to say something to your mother, tell her what I felt."

"What could you have said?" Her tone was hopeless.

"Perhaps I might have made her see how rude she was..."

Fire turned large green eyes on me, curiously innocent beneath the high fringe. "You're talking about earlier, when Tamara got mad at me for interrupting?"

"Of course."

She laughed. "I'm not bothered about that! She treats me like that all the time. Of course, in front of strangers..." She shrugged with a kind of determined resolve. "I can handle it."

"You mean...?" I gestured. "You saw your mother's show?" I had hoped that she might have been spared witnessing the event.

Without meeting my gaze, she nodded. "I sneaked out of my room. Pretty cruel, wasn't it?" She went on, with a forced gaiety which I guessed belied her true feelings, "Did you see how she portrayed me, Mr Benedict? I've known all along that she would rather I'd gone instead of my father — I can live with that. But to portray me as ugly as she did... there was no reason for that."

"I'm sorry," I said, inadequately.

She stared out at the waves, silver crested in the starlight. "And in front of all those people," she said almost wistfully. "That was the worst thing of all. I can put up with her hatred in private — but in public like that it just makes both of us look small."

I wondered then if she had heard the applause.

A silence came between us. I was suddenly afraid that she might regret sharing her pain with a perfect stranger and decide to leave, so I said the first thing that came into my head.

"How old are you, Fire?"

She had to think about it. "Nineteen standard."

I shrugged. "So what's keeping you here? Why don't you get out, if you don't like the way your mother's treating you?"

"Is that an offer, Mr Benedict? Shall we elope? We could go to Earth. I'd like nothing more."

I smiled. "I can't see why you just don't pack your bags and move to another island."

"Listen, I know you mean well, but you don't know the half of it. I'm sick and I need my treatment and it's expensive and only Tamara can afford it, okay? If it wasn't for Tamara and fats up there, I'd be dead."

"I had no idea... I'm sorry."

She turned on me. "Hey, don't you think I want to escape? I'm sometimes tempted to leave and to hell with the consequences. I often think a month or two of freedom, away from Tamara, would be worth dying for. But I always chicken out, stay here and take the abuse."

I attempted to lighten the tone of the conversation. "What do you do here? Do you work?"

She sighed. "I run after Tamara. I'm her secretary, housemaid, cook. I make sure she has all the right materials to hand. I've done all this since I was ten."

"Can't you get out a bit, explore the islands?"

She seemed to shrink into herself. "Tamara wouldn't like that," she said in a small voice.

I wanted to tell her, to hell with what Tamara would or wouldn't like. Then I reminded myself that she had had almost twenty years of this conditioning, was subservient beyond the point where mere verbal coaxing would stir thoughts of rebellion.

I was aware that she was looking at me.

I was shocked by what she said next.

"How long have you been taking frost, Mr Benedict?"

I stared at her. "How do you know—?"

She smiled. "Tamara was dependent, once. I recognise the signs. Pale skin, the eyes. You look like you take a lot."

I was momentarily non-plussed. I had discussed my use of the drug with no one before now. "A little," I said.

"Are you hooked?"

I hesitated. "Habituated, let's say. I could stop tomorrow."

"That's what Tamara said—"

"Then how did she get off it?"

"Her surgeon weaned her off. Then he Altered her. She doesn't need the stuff now. Her metabolism manufactures a different drug which gives her a safer, permanent high."

She paused, then said, "Who supplies you, Mr Benedict?"

"No one. I gather it and prepare it myself."

"From Brightside?" There was surprise in her tone.

"It grows wild out there," I began.

"So... you get lots of the stuff?"

I shrugged, uneasy at her questions. "A fair amount."

She was watching me closely. "Mr Benedict... I don't suppose you'd consider getting me some frost, would you?"

"I don't know..."

"Why not? You said I ought to get away from here. I can't

do it physically, so what's wrong with the alternative? We could meet here, same time tomorrow. You could stay with me while I take it, make sure I do nothing stupid. I'd pay you for it."

"I don't want paying."

"Then you'll bring me some?" Her smile, at the thought of it, won me over.

"Just enough for one trip," I told her, wondering what I was getting myself into. "No more."

"Great! Moor your launch in the next cove, Mr Benedict. It can't be seen from the dome."

She started suddenly at a sound from along the beach. "Shhh! I think it's Tamara."

I smiled. I wanted to tell her that she was being paranoid.

"If she found me down here, talking to you, when I should be in my room..." Her face in the starlight wore a mask of fright.

"I must go, Mr Benedict!"

I had expected her to take the cliff path, but instead she dashed to the undergrowth at the foot of the cliff. I followed her. She had parted the fronds of a fern and was squirming into a narrow gap between two rocks.

"Fire...?"

She turned her head awkwardly. "It's a tunnel I found," she panted. "It leads up to the garden outside my room. It's the only secret I have from Tamara. I'll see you tomorrow!" And with that she was gone.

I left the beach, passing as I did so not Trevellion, as Fire had feared, but a couple of Augmented lovers, strolling in the starlight. I took the path to the top of the cliff and rejoined the party on the illuminated lawn, considering Fire Trevellion and her situation.

I had no wish to make the acquaintance of Tamara Trevellion again tonight, and when I located Abe I was relieved when he suggested that we leave.

"Where've you been, Bob? I've been ready to go since that so called event. Tamara's been obnoxious. She seems to think she's created something of lasting importance. And what's all the more sickening, her sycophants tend to agree."

~

Back at my dome in the early hours, I sat on the patio and thought through the events of the evening, the screen-show and my meeting with Trevellion's daughter. Then I found the frost flowers where I'd flung them that afternoon and set about preparing the drug. I made a dilute solution for Fire tomorrow, filled the half-shell for my immediate use and stashed away the remainder.

I returned to the patio with a small dose in the burner to see me through the night. I thought about reliving my meeting with Fire, but decided against it. It was too recent in my mind, and surrounded by too many ugly incidents — the discovery of the technician's remains, the night's event, the way Trevellion had treated her daughter. If any of these intruded while I concentrated on my time with Fire, I risked subjecting myself to the nightmare of a bad trip. Instead, I thought of that holiday twenty years ago, the beach and the slim blonde girl, not at all unlike Fire Trevellion. I applied a light to the sparkling pink powder and it ignited with a hiss, giving off thick, acrid fumes.

I inhaled deeply, and dreamed.

THREE///JADE

I was awoken the following afternoon by some insistent but indefinable sound working at the edge of my consciousness.

For perhaps thirty seconds after coming to my senses, all I could recall was the dream I had lived through during the night. I remembered the sand and the sunlight, the taste of feta and olives, the sound of cicadas chirruping and a girl, laughing. It was as if no time at all had elapsed since the idyll of my youth, as if I had awoken from a drunken sleep and could return to the beach merely by stepping from the dome. Then I recalled the reality to which the dome belonged, and I was suddenly overwhelmed by the fact of who and where I was. Recollection of the accident descended like a sudden migraine. I took frost to banish the nightmares and to give me a period of forgetting, but always upon awakening the remembering was intensified.

I was in the lounge. At some point, perhaps when the effect of the frost had worn off and exhaustion took over, I must have dragged myself from the patio and collapsed on the chesterfield, but I had no recollection of doing so. I forced myself into a sitting position and groaned. My initial thought was that I should take refuge in another frost-induced escape, but I knew that a second dose, so soon after the first, would not prove as effective — and anyway I was due to meet Fire Trevellion that evening.

I sat and stared through the clear wall of the dome at the flickering aurora of Brightside, contemplating the move I should make to take a shower and fix a meal. I managed to convince myself that there was no hurry. I might have been asleep for most of the day, but there was still plenty of time before the fall of darkness and the rendezvous. I lay back and closed my eyes, and only then did I become fully aware of the noise which had awoken me.

I stepped from the lounge onto the patio and stared down at the brilliant blue sea. The wake of a hover-scooter scored a direct, white slash across the surface of the ocean, mirroring the con-trail of a jet overhead. As I watched, the vehicle hit the island and negotiated the winding path up to my dome.

Doug lowered his scooter to the ground beyond the patio, removed his helmet and strolled over. Unlike last night, today he wore his navy blue uniform and jackboots, and unlike last night, when the euphor-fumes had made him genial, he was grave. His face was bright red from over-exposure to the sun.

"Doug, can I get you a drink?"

"I could do with a long, cool juice. I've been Brightside all day. That's what I came to see you about."

I fixed two juices from the dispenser and carried them across the patio to a foam-form overlooking the sea. "Have you found out who the tech was?" I asked.

He leaned against the balcony rail. "Well, as a matter of fact we haven't. That's going to be a little difficult. You see, we didn't find the remains."

"You did know where to look?"

"Abe gave me the co-ordinates last night. We searched the whole area. I still have three men out there. We found where the cage was set down, and the displaced sand from Abe's launch. But no bones—"

"But there had to be something there. What about disturbed ground, tracks?"

"Nothing. There were no tracks, no signs of any disturbance. The area was clean."

"Maybe some scavenger made off with the remains?"

"Fine. But where are the tracks?"

I shrugged. "A strong wind could have obliterated them."

"And left the imprint of Abe's cage, and all your footprints, a hundred metres away, completely undisturbed? Bob, are you absolutely sure that you saw a body out there?"

"Doug, we saw the damned thing being torn to pieces—"

"Brightside can do strange things to the mind," Doug said, "play tricks with a man's vision..."

"If you doubt what we saw, Abe has all the evidence you need." I told him about scrap of uniform bearing the Telemass logo.

He remained unconvinced. "I know about that. Abe told me all about it when I contacted him an hour ago. Thing is, it's quite conceivable that you found that out there and nothing else. The rest could have been... I don't know — a mirage. Stranger things have happened."

I shook my head. "I know what I saw."

"Then how do you explain the total absence of
anything
out there now?"

I avoided his stare and gestured lamely.

"I have someone checking the whereabouts of every Telemass technician on Meridian," he went on. "If they're all present and accounted for, then as far as I'm concerned the case is closed."

"I see your point. But what about the remains of the uniform we found? How did that get out there?"

He shrugged, disinterested. "Search me, Bob. Does it matter? If we can't find a body, and it turns out that no-one's missing..."

"I suppose that's fair enough." I indicated his empty glass. "How about another drink?"

I fixed two more juices.

"What did you think of the party last night?" he asked when I returned.

"Well... the actual event was one of the most shallow and spiteful things I've ever witnessed."

"I have to agree. Didn't I tell you that there was something odd about Trevellion taking Steiner as her lover? But I must admit, I never expected that to happen. I didn't think Trevellion could sink so low. Did you stay to the end?"

"We left about an hour after the event."

"Then you missed the confrontation between Trevellion and Steiner?"

"I'm not sure I want to hear about it."

"Steiner didn't leave the island after stalking from the performance area. A couple of hours later he returned to the garden and found Trevellion. She was holding forth to a group of admirers, explaining some involved metaphor of the bloody event. Anyway, Steiner accused her of libel, defamation of character. I could see that he was angry, even though he handled himself with dignity. It was the first time I'd seen him remotely moved."

"What happened?"

"Well, they didn't quite come to blows. Steiner said he was thinking of prosecuting Trevellion, and she replied that he wouldn't dare. It sounded like a threat—"

I stopped him. "Just like that — 'You wouldn't dare'? As if she might have something on him?"

Doug shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe — something he doesn't want making public? Anyway, at this Steiner just shut up and strode off. I must admit, I don't much care for him, but he had my sympathies yesterday."

"It was pretty obvious that you two don't get on."

He smiled. "We've had our differences in the past," he said. "The last being on the subject of the Telemass scaledown."

"I thought that was just a rumour?"

He looked up from his drink. "It's official policy, Bob. The authorities on Meridian have been told, but Steiner hasn't made it public yet. I suggested that he should, and he more or less told me to mind my own business. I think he's biding his time until he leaves, and then he'll leave the dirty work of making the thing public to his successor. Steiner is, in essence, a very weak man. He's a puppet of his commanders on Earth."

"I thought you were rather hard on him last night," I said. "How drastic is the scaledown?"

"The shots'll be reduced to one a month, each way. Meridian has been designated a backwater world."

I thought about it. "Could Trevellion have known about this? Perhaps she was threatening she'd make it public if Steiner prosecuted for libel?"

"I don't think so. It has to come out sooner or later, it's just a matter of who'll make the announcement."

I considered my drink. "How well do you know Tamara Trevellion?" I asked.

"Not very well at all, Bob. She's a very private person, even more so since the death of her husband. After last night, I'm beginning to think that the loss affected her more than it seemed at the time."

"I don't suppose you know her daughter?" I asked casually.

"Fire?" He shook his head. "Can't say I've really taken much notice of her. She's a nervous wreck and she's scared stiff of her mother. Trevellion treats her like dirt. After last night's performance it's pretty obvious why."

"Someone told me that Fire's ill," I said.

"First I've heard about it."

"Apparently that's why she remains on the island. She's receiving treatment from Trevellion's surgeon and can't do without it."

"Poor wretch! She really should leave the island. The place must hold terrible memories for her."

I looked at him. "Why? What happened?"

"You haven't heard about it?" He sounded surprised. "Fire had a sister, Jade, a few years her elder. Five years ago she was killed in an accident on the island. Apparently, Fire saw it happen. I don't know the full details. I was only a sergeant then. My superior handled the affair. But I do know that Fire was in trauma for a long time."

"My God, the poor kid."

"The family's had more than its fair share of bad luck. No wonder Tamara's such an unlikable person, she's the product of one tragedy after another."

Doug looked at his watch. He finished his drink. "I really must be getting off, Bob. I want to call in on Abe before dark. Hey — and how about we get some gliding in soon?"

I murmured something in agreement and Doug ambled over to his machine. I watched him replace his helmet, mount the scooter and set off down the hillside. When he hit the sea, he accelerated from the bay in the direction of Abe's island.

I remained on the patio until the shield appeared in the distance, presaging the fall of night. Over Darkside, the stars slowly brightened in the darkness of deep space, but tonight the sight left me curiously untroubled.

I returned to the lounge, sat down and considered the sachet of frost I had prepared for Fire.

~

One hour later, as twilight descended, I cast off from the jetty and steered the launch out across the open sea towards Trevellion's island.

The crossing was calm. At this time in the evening, with the leading edge of the orbital shield rapidly shutting out the sunlight, the sea had the peculiar property of being lighter than the sky as it reflected the aurora of Brightside. As the darkness deepened, the ocean took on the colour of blood. Thirty minutes after setting out, I manoeuvred the launch around Trevellion's island, a dark wedge of land studded with the occasional laser sculpture and
objet d' art
scintillating in the dying light. On the summit of the island, Trevellion's dome glowed like a diamond. The thought that she might have seen my arrival, and so would not allow Fire to meet me, created a hard knot of apprehension in my chest.

I steered into the cove, which Fire had pointed out last night, and moored the launch to a tumbledown pier. A sandy footpath rounded the headland to the bay where we had arranged to meet.

I followed the path and paused when I came to the beach. In the light of the stars I made out the small figure of Fire Trevellion. She was strolling along the margin of wet sand beside the sea, with a negligence born of either boredom or dejection. She wore a pair of shorts and a halter top, and she carried a thin computer board. From time to time she paused, allowing the incoming waves to foam around her ankles, consulted the glowing screen and then continued strolling, addressing words to the ocean.

I walked across the sand and followed her footsteps. Fire paused again, but this time tossed the computer board up the beach as if she had had quite enough of that for one night. She stared out to sea, her hands pocketed behind her. As I approached, she turned suddenly without moving her legs, and the torque of her torso was at once awkward and becoming. Her smile was genuine. "Mr Benedict, I thought you'd never get here."

I was, perhaps, ten minutes late — but I was realistic enough to realise that her pleasure at seeing me had more to do with the promise of frost than anything else.

I indicated the computer board, projecting from the sand like a headstone. "What were you reciting?"

"Nothing interesting. Only poetry." She smiled. "I'm glad you came."

Her long hair was gathered and tied in a pony-tail. I noticed that the pink material of her halter top and shorts had the worn, second-hand look of hand-me-downs, and I wondered if they had once belonged to her mother, before her alteration.

As if uneasy under my scrutiny, she looked away, up the hillside, to where the apex of the lighted dome could just be seen. She took my arm in a surprisingly strong grip. "Come on. If Tamara comes out she'll see us. Can you imagine what she might say...?" We hurried across the beach to a path which continued around the island.

"My mother likes only invited guests to visit. She even has security men guarding the island. It's okay, though," she reassured me, "they're patrolling the marina tonight. I hope you aren't angry with me for putting you in this situation?"

I laughed. "Of course I'm not. I'm glad to be here."

I could tell that Fire was nervous. Her chatter was an attempt to disguise the fact. "If Tamara asks me where I've been when I get in, I'll... I'll say that I needed a long walk to learn the lines. I can recite most of them off by heart already, so she can't complain."

Not for the first time I wanted to tell her to forget her mother.

Once out of sight of the dome, we slowed and strolled along the cliff-top path. Fire said, "If I remember rightly, I did all the talking yesterday. Now it's your turn. I asked Tamara about you today. She knows all about everyone on Meridian. She told me that you came here after a smallship accident. Is that right?"

"How much did she tell you?"

She seemed to flinch at my tone. Her smile faltered. "Only that much. She said you'd survived an accident, then retired. That's all."

"I'm sorry. It's something I don't usually talk about." I shrugged. "That's about all there is to tell. I survived a freak accident and decided to get out. You don't often survive accidents like that. I was lucky. I didn't want to push that luck."

I prayed, then, that she would not ask me why I took frost. I had lied to her once today and did not want to do so again. She was so ingenuous and believing that to lie to her was like committing physical violence.

We sat on a bench overlooking the sea, watching as a flight of pterosaurs made for Brightside. A warm breeze lapped around the island.