Red Shadows (14 page)

"Crystal. You want to get into a pissing contest with Psi Division, go right ahead. But, if you want my opinion, it sounds like you're digging your own grave."

"If I want your opinion I'll ask for it, Control. Weller over and out."

SEVEN

WILD BLUE YONDER

The sky was waiting for him. As he stepped out through the maintenance exit onto the deserted rooftop of his block, Lenny Kaspasian felt his heart quicken in exhilaration as he paused for a moment to admire the view. It was everything he could have wished for. The moon was round and full, the sky was clear and cloudless. He was standing two hundred storeys up with the night-time landscape of Mega-City One laid out before him like some perfect dream of what a city should look like. During the day you could see all the grime and dust, the cracked plascrete, the angry and restless traffic, the gaudy pastel shades with which the Housing Department insisted on painting its buildings. Come the fall of night though, things were different. Bathed in silver moonlight, the city seemed special. It seemed tranquil, yet somehow more alive. It was as though the dull humdrum world of the day had been transformed by some strange sorcery of the night into a magical kingdom where anything could happen.

I should have done this years ago, Lenny thought, staring at the cityscape as a bubbling excitement grew gently within him. To think, I spent all that time shuffling around in the dirt at ground level with every other poor schmuck when I could have been soaring through the skies. He felt a lump rise at the base of his throat, the beginnings of tears stinging wetly at the corners of his eyes. Tonight, everything changes. Tonight, my life begins a whole new chapter. Tonight, I'm going to fly like an eagle.

"Heh, or like a
bat
, at least." He had said the last words aloud, whispering them quietly to himself in childlike glee. In contrast to the serene stillness of the rooftop, they sounded almost loud enough to be gunshots. On any other night, having inadvertently broken the silence, Lenny might have squirmed in embarrassment as he cast nervous eyes at the shadows around him to make sure there was no one nearby to hear him. Tonight he felt a bigger man than that. He had thrown off the shackles of his usual fears and insecurities, refusing to bend any longer beneath the weight of other people's expectations. His horizons had broadened, pushing wide their boundaries to become limitless vistas. Tonight, for the first time in his life, the entire world literally lay at his feet.

Jeez, but it sure is cold up here. As he moved from the centre of the roof towards its edge, Lenny found his thoughts momentarily tugged back from the heavens by more mundane concerns. Maybe I should've worn something warmer, he thought. He was shivering, the cold biting through the thin fabric of his vest as a chill wind rose up from the city streets below and blew its way across the rooftop. Even as he watched his breath turn to white mist in the air, it suddenly occurred to him that the cold was a blessing. With it, he felt revitalised and reawakened, his physical senses enhanced to pristine sharpness by the subtle workings of the wind, the frigid temperature on the rooftop, and his own new-found sense of freedom. He could see things more clearly now than he ever had before. It was as though he saw the world with new eyes, gazing at all the things around him for the first time. He saw the moon. He saw the stars. He saw the sky, the city, the night.

Most of all, he saw his own life. His years behind him, wasted and misused, his days spent staring listlessly at the Tri-D in his living room like untold millions of other bored and dejected souls elsewhere in the city. Now he stood on the brink of a brighter and more attractive future. Briefly he thought of his girlfriend, Melanie, back in their apartment. He found himself wishing she could be there with him to enjoy the moment. For an instant he wondered why she was not there, a troubling sense of disquiet suddenly picking at the edges of his mind. Then he cast such earthbound cares aside. Melanie's absence hardly mattered. This moment was not one to be shared with others. It was his and his alone. He was at the threshold of a new life. The long twilight of his existence was finally about to give way to the brilliance of a brand new dawn.

A new dawn...

Captivated by that thought, an idle fancy crossed his mind. He could wait for the real dawn, pausing until the first rosy glimmer of morning appeared in the east, before taking his maiden flight. The symmetry was appealing. He and the city would experience their respective dawns together. For the city, the dawning of a new day; for him, the dawning of a new life. In the end he was forced to reject the idea as swiftly as it had come to him. Symmetry or not, the rising of the sun was still an hour or more away, and he could not bear to wait so long before taking flight. The excitement growing inside him would not allow it. He had waited too long already. He must fly. Here, now, immediately. Every minute wasted was another minute lost.

Stepping on to the parapet of the roof, Lenny felt a sudden giddiness as he looked over the edge at the streets far below him. It was a long way down. For an instant, his nerve almost failed him. He nearly succumbed to the temptation to turn around, leave the rooftop, and write the whole thing off as a bad idea to begin with. Then, unbidden, the memory of the impulse that had first brought him to the rooftop returned to him and hardened his resolve. The sky was waiting for him. He knew every word of it was true. He felt it in the core of his being. The sky was waiting for him. He would not disappoint it. He would not give in to his fears. Tonight, Lenny Kaspasian would fly.

Moving closer to the edge, he drew in a deep breath, spread his arms wide and prepared for take-off. The wind had risen, growing stronger, whipping around him in a dozen different directions at once. He swallowed hard. His mouth had gone dry. His knees were shaking. He felt curiously light-headed. He inched his way forward until the toes of his shoes were in line with the roof edge. It's now or never, Lenny, he told himself. Remember, they say the first flight is the hardest. It's time for you to earn your wings. Summoning every ounce of his courage, he jumped, his voice all but lost to the wind as he shouted out a last message in defiance of his fears.

"Look out, world! Here I come!"

It soon became clear that the Arnwold woman was far more trusting than most people in Mega-City One. For William, entering her apartment could not have been easier. He had simply rung the doorbell, calling out that he was from Synthi-Flora in response to her query from the other side of the door. Then, even before he had been given the opportunity to mention the flowers and candy, Melanie Arnwold had opened the door to him. An auburn-haired woman with a pear-shaped figure, she had greeted him with a smile, the shifting sanguine shades of her soulshadow swirling rapidly in the air around her as she stood in the doorway.

"A delivery?" she asked. Her tone was excited, almost breathless. "For me? Really?"

"Yes," William replied. The light spilling from her aura was painful to him. It seemed to burn through his eyes. He felt a sick, queasy sensation in the pit of his stomach, the unwelcome companion to a throbbing urgent headache that felt like it was about to split open his skull. He forced himself to maintain his own smile, concentrating on preventing the pain coursing through him from showing on his face. If the woman were to become alarmed too soon it could ruin everything. "It's flowers and candy. You have to sign for it."

"Of course I do!" She seemed delighted. Her smile growing ever broader, she gabbled excitedly. "Yes, of course. He sent me flowers and candy, of course! Please, won't you come in?" Gesturing for William to follow her, she turned to head from the hallway into the living room. "I just have to fetch my purse."

"There's really no need for that." Finding himself strangely unnerved by the woman's manner, William closed the door behind him and stepped into the apartment hallway. "To pay me, I mean. It's all been taken care of. The delivery charge was paid by your secret admirer."

"My secret admirer?" As William made his way towards the living room, he heard the woman laughing. "Oh no, really, that's priceless. Did you hear that, Lenny? He called you my secret admirer! You, you big bear! And to think I thought you'd forgotten it was our six-month anniversary."

Suddenly, realising there must be someone else in the apartment with them, William froze. As he stood in the hallway, unsure what to do next, he heard a man's voice call out from elsewhere in the apartment.

"What was that? I was in the can. I couldn't hear what you were saying."

"I said the delivery man's arrived with the flowers and candy you ordered from Synthi-Flora," the woman's voice called out from the living room in reply. "I said, until he showed up, I thought you'd forgotten our anniversary."

"Our anniversary?" Momentarily, the man's voice paused. "Uh... No, Mel... You know me... I wouldn't forget a thing like that."

There was the sound of a vacuum pan flushing. Then a chubby man in a stained vest appeared in a doorway off the hall, and looked at William in suspicion.

"I thought she said you were a delivery guy?" The man stared at William, the expression of suspicion on his face slowly giving way to belligerence. "From Synthi-Flora, she said. Where's your uniform?"

"I'm wearing it," William said. Returning the stare, he saw the man's soulshadow was composed of varied and murky shades of brown. The colours of shit, William thought, feeling a hard kernel of stony anger forming in his heart. The man's presence was an unnecessary complication, a distraction, an annoyance. William wanted to be alone with Melanie Arnwold. The boyfriend would just have to go. "I'm wearing my uniform, Lenny." He repeated himself, letting his voice become more forceful. "Lenny? That's your name, isn't it? Lenny."

"Yeah," the man nodded dully, his earlier belligerence replaced by slack-jawed agreement. "Lenny. That's my name."

"And you can see my uniform," William said to him. "I'm wearing a Synthi-Flora delivery uniform. You can see it, can't you, Lenny?"

"Uh, sure." For a second the man stared at him in dumb confusion, before nodding once more in obedience. "Yeah, you're wearing a uniform. Synthi-Flora. I can see it."

"Good. You know what I think, Lenny? I think you look bored. You look like a man with too much time on his hands. Like a man who doesn't know what to do with himself."

"Yeah, that's true," Lenny nodded with more vigour. "I'm bored. I got too much time on my hands. I don't know what to do with myself."

"Bat-gliding is a fun and rewarding hobby," William told him. "Why don't you try it? Right now. After all, you are wearing your wings and a lo-grav unit already."

"I'm wearing my wings?" Raising an arm, the man looked at it in incomprehension. "S'funny. I don't remember putting them on, or even having any."

"It doesn't matter whether or not you remember it, Lenny." William's voice grew yet more forceful. "There they are. You can see them." Seeing the man nodding, he continued. "So, what are you doing here? The sky is waiting for you, Lenny, and you want to fly. Go upstairs to the roof and do it. Now!"

"The sky is waiting for me," Lenny muttered. "I want to fly." A contented smile lifting the corners of his mouth, he hurried past William and opened the door to leave the apartment. As the man stepped out into the corridor, William closed the door behind him, catching a last glimpse of the man as he wandered to the elevator, towards his great adventure.

"Where's Lenny?" Turning, William saw that the woman had emerged from the living room with a purse in her hand and was now looking at him quizzically. "I thought I heard him talking to you?"

"He's gone, Melanie," William smiled at her. Inwardly, he was still fuming. Granted, he had managed to get rid of the boyfriend, but it had only bought him a small window of opportunity. He would have to do this one quickly, before the idiot Lenny met his inevitable fate, and the Judges or some busybody neighbour came to tell his girlfriend the news. "But you can see that it doesn't matter, can't you? It's better that we're alone. You understand that, don't you?"

"Yes." She nodded happily. She was smiling, obedient. He could see she would not trouble him like the Sharn woman had.

"Good." Somehow, he found her simpering agreeableness almost as aggravating as Velma Sharn's disobedience had been. He wanted to punish her, to hurt her. The killing urge grew stronger inside him. The light of her soulshadow stung his eyes. His heart was pounding, his head throbbing in a painful and competing rhythm. He wanted to take his time with her, but circumstance would not allow it. He would have to work quickly. "Stay where you are, Melanie," he told her as his hand went to the knife and he moved closer to her. "Stand still and lift your chin up. Higher, higher, that's it. There's a good girl. A little bit higher and soon it will all be over."

She was a Red. He had a knife.

What happened next came naturally.

He was falling. Falling like a skydiver, the floors and windows of the block beside him whipping past him at breakneck speed, the wind whistling by his ears. Falling, diving headfirst towards the pavement; head down, his arms tucked into his body, his legs pushed out straight behind him, gravity pulling him ever faster towards the Earth. He was falling like a stone.

It was the greatest feeling ever. Falling, Lenny heard his own voice scream in exhilaration. Adrenaline surged through his body. He felt like he was made of steel. He was a bullet falling from the heavens. He wanted to shout out in joy to the streets below him. Look at me! This is what it is to feel like an eagle! This is what it is to fly! Seeing the ground rushing closer, he realised the time had come to correct his course. He had only to adjust the position of his wings to break out of the dive and his momentum would slingshot him up towards the sky. The smallest of movements and he would soar above the city, along the way bidding all of his earthly woes goodbye. He extended his arms, expecting the sudden wrench of G forces as the wind caught his wings and he changed direction.