Use of Weapons (20 page)

'When
you're awake you move, and I miss things.'

'What
things?' He felt her kissing his head.

'Everything
you do. When you're asleep you hardly move, and I can take it all in. There's
enough time.'

'Strange.'
Her voice was slow.

'You
smell the same awake as you do asleep, did you know that?' He propped up his
head and looked into her face, grinning.

'You...'
she started, then looked down. Her smile looked very sad when she looked back
up. 'I love hearing that sort of nonsense,' she said.

He
heard the unsaid part. 'You mean; you love hearing that sort of nonsense now,
but won't at some indeterminate point in the future.' (He hated the awful
triteness of it, but she had her own scars.)

'I
suppose,' she said, holding one of his hands.

'You
think too much about the future.'

'Maybe
we cancel out each other's obsessions, then.'

He
laughed. 'I suppose I walked into that one.'

She
touched his face, studied his eyes. 'I really shouldn't fall in love with you,
Zakalwe.'

'Why
not?'

'Lots
of reasons. All the past and all the future; because you are who you are, and I
am who I am. Just everything.'

'Details,'
he said, waving one hand.

She
laughed, shaking her head and burying it in her own hair. She surfaced and
gazed up at him.

'I
just worry it won't last.'

'Nothing
lasts, remember?'

'I
remember,' she nodded slowly.

'You
think this won't last?'

'Right
now... it feels... I don't know. But if we ever want to hurt each other...'

'Then
let's not do that,' he said.

She
lowered her eyelids, bent her head to him, and he put out his hand and cradled
her head.

'Maybe
it is that simple,' she said. 'Perhaps I like to dwell on what might happen so
as never to be surprised.' She brought her face up to his. 'Does that worry
you?' she said, her head shaking, an expression very like pain around here
eyes.

'What?'
He leant forward to kiss her, smiling, but she moved her head to indicate she
did not want to, and he drew back while she said:

'That
I... can't believe enough not have doubts.'

'No.
I don't worry about that.' He did kiss her.

'Strange
that taste-buds have no taste,' she murmured into his neck. They laughed
together.

Sometimes,
at night, lying there in the dark when she was asleep or silent, he thought he
saw the real ghost of Cheradenine Zakalwe come walking through the curtain
walls, dark and hard and holding some huge deadly gun, loaded and set; the
figure would look at him, and the air around him seemed to drip with... worse
than hate; derision. At such moments, he was conscious of himself lying there
with her, lying as love-struck and besotted as any youth, lying there wrapping
his arms around a beautiful girl, talented and young, for whom there was
nothing he wouldn't do, and he knew perfectly and completely that to what he
had been - to what he had become or always was - that sort of unequivocal,
selfless, retreating devotion was an act of shame, something that had to be
wiped out. And the real Zakalwe would raise his gun, look him in the eye
through the sights and fire, calmly and unhesitatingly.

But
then he would laugh and turn to her, kiss her or be kissed, and there was no
threat and no danger under this sun or any other that could take him from her
then.

'Don't
forget we've got to go up to that krih today. This morning, in fact.'

'Oh
yes,' he said. He rolled onto his back, she sat up and stretched her arms out,
yawning, forcing her eyes wide and glaring up at the fabric roof. Her eyes
relaxed, her mouth closed, she looked at him, rested her elbow on the head of
the bed, and combed his hair with her fingers. 'It probably isn't stuck
though.'

'Mmm,
maybe not,' he agreed.

'It
might not be there when we look today.'

'Indeed.'

'If
it is still there we'll go up, though.'

He
nodded, reached up, took her hand, clasped.

She
smiled, quickly kissed him and then sprang out of the bed and walked to the far
level. She opened the waving translucent drapes and unslung a pair of field
glasses from a hook on a frame-pole. He lay and watched her as she brought the
glasses to her eyes, surveyed the hillside above.

'Still
there,' she said. Her voice was far away. He closed his eyes.

'We'll
go up today. Maybe in the afternoon.'

'We
should.' Far away.

'All
right.'

Probably
the stupid animal hadn't got stuck at all; more than likely it had dozed off
into an absent-minded hibernation. They did that, so he heard; they just
stopped eating and looked ahead and stared with their big dumb eyes at
something, and closed them sleepily and went into a coma, purely by accident.
The first rain, or a bird landing on it would probably wake it. Perhaps it was
stuck though; the krih had thick coats and they got entangled with the bushes
and tree branches sometimes, and couldn't move. They would go up today; the
view was pleasant, and anyway he could do with some exercise that wasn't mostly
horizontal. They would lie on the grass and talk, and look out to the sea
sparkling in the haze, and maybe they would have to free the animal, or wake it
up, and she would look after it with a look he knew not to disturb, and in the
evening she would write, and that would be another poem.

As
a nameless lover, he had appeared in many of her recent works, though as usual
she would throw the bulk of them away. She said she would write a poem
specifically about him, one day, maybe when he had told her more about his
life.

The
house whispered, moved in its parts, waving and flowing, spreading light and
dimming it; the varying thicknesses and strengths of drape and curtain that formed
the walls and divisions of the place rustled against each other secretly, like
half-heard conversations.

Far
away, she put her hand to her hair, pulled one side absently as she moved
papers on the desk around with one finger. He watched. Her finger stirred
through what she'd written yesterday, toying with the parchments; circling them
around slowly; slowly flexing and turning, watched by her, watched by him.

The
glasses hung from her other hand, straps down, forgotten, and he wandered a
long slow gaze over her as she stood against the light; feet, legs, behind,
belly, chest, breasts, shoulders, neck; face and head and hair.

The
finger moved on the desk top where she would write a short poem about him in
the evening, one he would copy secretly in case she wasn't happy with it and
threw it out, and as his desire grew and her calm face saw no finger move, one
of them was just a passing thing, just a leaf pressed between the pages of the
other's diary, and what they had talked themselves into, they could be silent
out of.

'I
must do some work today,' she said to herself.

There
was a pause.

'Hey?'
he said.

'Hmm?'
Her voice was far away.

'Let's
waste a little time, hmm?'

'A
nice euphemism, sir,' she mused, distantly.

He
smiled. 'Come and help me think of better ones.'

She
smiled, and they both looked at each other.

There
was a long pause.

Six

Swaying
slightly, scratching his head, he put the gun stock-down on the floor of the
smallbay, held the weapon by its barrel, and squinted one-eyed into the muzzle,
muttering.

'Zakalwe,'
Diziet Sma said, 'we diverted twenty-eight million people and a trillion tonnes
of space ship two months off course to get you to Voerenhutz on time; I'd
appreciate it if you'd wait until the job is done before you blow your brains
out.'

He
turned round to see Sma and the drone entering the rear of the smallbay; a
traveltube capsule flicked away behind them.

'Eh?'
he said, then waved. 'Oh, hi.' He wore a white shirt - sleeves rolled up -
black pantaloons, and nothing on his feet. He picked the plasma rifle up, shook
it, banged it on the side with his free hand, and sighted down the length of
the smallbay. He steadied, squeezed the trigger.

Light
flared briefly, the gun leapt back at him, and there was an echoing snap of
noise. He looked down to the far end of the bay, two hundred metres away, where
a glittering black cube perhaps fifteen metres to a side sat under the overhead
lights. He peered at the distant black object, pointed the gun at it again, and
inspected the magnified view on one of the gun's screens. 'Weird,' he muttered,
and scratched his head.

There
was a small tray floating at his side; it held an ornate metal jug and a
crystal goblet. He took a drink from the goblet, staring intently at the gun.

'Zakalwe,'
Sma said. 'What, exactly, are you doing?'

'Target
practice,' he said. He drank from the goblet again. 'You want a drink, Sma?
I'll order another glass...'

'No
thanks.' Sma looked down to the far end of the bay, at the strange and gleaming
black cube. 'And what is
that
?'

'Ice,'
Skaffen-Amtiskaw said.

'Yeah,'
he nodded, putting the goblet down to adjust something on the plasma rifle.
'Ice.'

'Dyed
black ice,' the drone said.

'Ice,'
Sma said, nodding, but none the wiser. 'Why ice?'

'Because,'
he said, sounding annoyed, 'this... this
ship
with the incredibly silly name and its twenty-eight trillion people and its
hyper-zillion billion squintillion tonnage hasn't got any decent
rubbish
, that's why.' He flicked a
couple of switches on the side of the rifle, aimed again. 'Trillion fucking
tonnes and it hasn't got any goddamn garbage; apart from its brain, I suppose.'
He squeezed the trigger again. His shoulder and arm were pushed back once more,
while the light flickered from the weapon's muzzle and sound stuttered. He
stared at the view in the sight-screen. 'This is ridiculous!' he said.

'But
why are you shooting at ice?' Sma insisted.

'Sma,'
he cried, 'are you deaf? Because this parsimonious pile of junk claims it
hasn't got any rubbish on board it can let me shoot at.' He shook his head,
opened an inspection panel on the side of the weapon.

'Why
not shoot at target holos like everybody else?' Sma asked.

'Holos
are all very well, Diziet, but...' He turned and presented her with the gun.
'Here; hold this a minute, will you? Thanks.' He fiddled with something inside
the inspection panel while Sma held the gun in both hands. The plasma rifle was
a metre and a quarter long, and very heavy. 'Holos are all right for
calibration and that sort of crap, but for... for getting the
feel
of a weapon, you have to really...
really
waste
something, you know?' He
glanced at her. 'You have to feel the kick, and see the debris. Real debris.
Not this holographic shit; the real stuff.'

Sma
and the drone exchanged looks.

'You
hold this... cannon,' Sma said to the machine. Skaffen-Amtiskaw's fields were
glowing pink with amusement. It took the weight of the gun from her while the
man continued to tinker with the weapon's insides.

'I
don't think a General Systems Vehicle thinks in terms of junk, Zakalwe,' Sma
said, sniffing dubiously at the contents of the ornately-worked metal jug. She
wrinkled her nose. 'Just matter that's currently in use and matter that's
available to be recycled and turned into something else to be used. No such
thing as rubbish.'

'Yeah,'
he muttered. 'That's the crap it came out with as well.'

'Gave
you ice instead, eh?' the drone said.

'Had
to settle for it.' He nodded, clicking the armoured inspection panel back into
place and lifting the gun out of the drone's grip. 'Should take a hit all
right, but now I can't get the damn gun to work.'