Use of Weapons (6 page)

Nothing
happened. The young man was watching him, hands still behind his neck, body
rocking slowly back and forward in the chair.

The
Ethnarch clicked the trigger a few more times.

'Works
better with these,' the man said, reaching into a shirt pocket, and throwing a
dozen bullets onto the bed at the Ethnarch's feet.

The
gleaming bullets snicked at they rolled and gathered in a fold in the
bedclothes. The Ethnarch Kerian stared at them.

'...
I'll give you anything,' he said, over a thick and dry tongue. He sensed his
bowels start to relax, and squeezed desperately, feeling suddenly like a child
again, as though the retro-ageing had taken him even further back. 'Anything.
Anything. I can give you more than you ever dreamed of; I can -'

'Not
interested in that,' the man said, shaking his head. 'The story isn't finished
yet. You see, these people; these nice kind people who are so soft and prefer
to deal in life... when somebody goes back on a deal with them, even when
somebody kills after they've said they wouldn't, they still don't like to kill
in return. They'd rather use their magic and their precious compassion to do
the next best thing. And so people disappear.' The man sat forward again,
leaning on the footboard. The Ethnarch stared, shaking, at him.

'They
- these nice people - they disappear bad people,' the young man said. 'And they
employ people to come and collect these bad men and take them away. And these
people - these collectors - they like to put the fear of death into their
collectees, and they tend to dress...' he gestured at his own colour-fully
motley clothes, '... casually; and of course - thanks to the magic - they never
have any problems getting into even the most heavily guarded palace.'

The
Ethnarch swallowed, and with one furiously shaking hand, finally put down the
useless gun he was holding.

'Wait,'
he said, trying to control his voice. His sweat soaked the sheets. 'Are you
saying -'

'We're
nearly at the end of the story,' the young man interrupted. 'These nice people
- who you would call soft, like I say - they remove the bad people, and they
take them away. They put them somewhere they can't do any harm. Not a paradise,
but not somewhere that feels like a prison, either. And these bad people, they
might have to listen sometimes to the nice people telling them how bad they've
been, and they never again get the chance to change histories, but they live a
comfortable, safe life, and they die peacefully... thanks to the nice people.

'And
though some would say the nice people are too soft, the soft, nice people would
say that the crimes committed by the bad people are usually so terrible there
is no known way of making the bad people start to suffer even a millionth of
the agony and despair they have produced, so what is the point in retribution?
It would be just another obscenity to cap the tyrant's life with his own
death.' The young man looked briefly troubled, then shrugged. 'Like I say; some
people would say they're too soft.' He took the little gun from he footboard
and put it into a pocket of his pantaloons.

The
man stood slowly. The Ethnarch's heart still pounded, but in his eyes there
were tears. The young man leant down, picked up some clothes and threw them at
the Ethnarch, who grabbed at them, held them to his chest.

'My
offer stands,' the Ethnarch Kerian said. 'I can give you -'

'Job
satisfaction,' the young man sighed, staring at one set of fingernails. 'That's
all you can give me, Ethnarch. I'm not interested in anything else. Get
dressed; you're leaving.'

The
Ethnarch started to pull on his shirt. 'Are you sure? I believe I have invented
some new vices even the old Empire didn't know about. I'd be willing to share
them with you.'

'No,
thank you.'

'Who
are these people you're talking about, anyway?' The Ethnarch fastened his
buttons. 'And may I yet know your name?'

'Just
get dressed.'

'Well,
I still think we can come to some sort of arrangement...' The Ethnarch secured
his collar. 'And this is all really quite ridiculous, but I suppose I ought to
be thankful you're not an assassin, eh?'

The
young man smiled, seemed to pick something from a fingernail. He put his hands
in the pantaloon pockets as the Ethnarch kicked the bedclothes down and picked
up his britches.

'Yes,'
the young man said. 'Must be rather awful, thinking you're about to die.'

'Not
the most pleasant experience,' agreed the Ethnarch, putting one leg, then
another, into his trousers.

'But
such a relief, I imagine, when you get the reprieve.'

'Hmm.'
The Ethnarch gave a small laugh.

'A
bit like being rounded up in a village and thinking you're going to be shot...'
the young man mused, facing the Ethnarch from the foot of the bed. '... and
then being told your fate is nothing worse than resettlement.' He smiled. The
Ethnarch hesitated.

'Resettled;
by train,' the man said, taking the little black gun out of his pocket. 'By a
train which contains your family; your street; your village...'

The
young man adjusted something on the small black gun. '... And then ends up
containing nothing but engine fumes, and lots of dead people.' He smiled,
thinly. 'What do you think, Ethnarch Kerian? Something like that?'

The
Ethnarch stopped moving, staring wide-eyed at the gun.

'The
nice people are called the Culture,' the young man explained, 'And I always did
think they were too soft.' He stretched his arm out, holding the gun. 'I
stopped working for them some time ago. I'm freelance now.'

The
Ethnarch looked, speechless, into the dark, ancient eyes above the barrel of
the black gun.

'I,'
said the man, 'am called Cheradenine Zakalwe.' He levelled the gun at the Ethnnarch's
nose. 'You are called dead.'

He
fired the gun... The Ethnarch had put his head back and started to scream; so
the single shot pierced the roof of his mouth before it exploded inside his
skull.

Brain's
splattered over the ornate headboard. The body thumped into the skin-soft
bedclothes and twitched once, spreading blood.

He
watched the blood as it pooled. He blinked, a couple of times.

Then,
moving slowly, he peeled off the gaudy clothes. He put them in a small black
rucksack. Underneath, the one-piece suit was shadow-dark.

He
took the matt-black mask from the rucksack and put it round his neck, though
not yet over his face. He moved to the head of the bed and peeled a little
transparent patch from the neck of the sleeping girl, then went back into the
dark depths of the room, slipping the mask over his face as he did so.

Using
the nightsight, he undipped the panel over the security systems control unit,
and carefully removed several small boxes. Then, walking very softly and slowly
now, he crossed to the wall-sized pornographic painting which concealed the
door to the Ethnarch's emergency escape route to the sewers and the palace
roof.

He
turned back, before he slowly closed the door, and looked at the bloody mess on
the curved carved surface of the headboard. He smiled his thin smile, a little
uncertainly.

Then
he slipped away into the stone-black depths of the palace, like a piece of the
night.

Two

The
dam lay wedged between the tree-studded hills like a fragment from some
enormous shattered cup. The morning sunshine shone up the valley, hit the
concave grey face of the dam, and produced a white reflecting flood of light.
Behind the dam, the long diminished lake was dark and cold. The water came less
than halfway up the massive concrete bulwark, and the forests beyond had long
since reclaimed over half the slopes the dam's rising water had once drowned.
Sail-boats lay tethered to jetties strung along one side of the lake, the
chopping waters slapping at their glistening hulls.

High
overhead, birds carved the air, circling in the warmth of the sunlight above
the shadow of the dam. One of the birds dipped and swooped, gliding down
towards the lip of the dam and the deserted roadway which ran along its curved
summit. The bird pulled its wings in just as it seemed it was about to collide
with the white railings which ran on either side of the road; it flashed
between the dew-sparkled stanchions, executed a half roll, partially opened its
wings again, and plummeted towards the obsolete power station that had become
the grandly eccentric - not to mention pointedly symbolic - home of the woman
called Diziet Sma.

The
bird settled belly-down to the swoop, and, level with the roof garden, flung
out its wings, grasping at the air and fluttering to a precipitous halt,
talons tacketing down on a window ledge set in the highest storey of the old
admin block apartments.

Wings
folded, soot-dark head to one side, one beady eye reflecting the concrete
light, the bird hopped forward to a slid-open window, where soft red curtains
rippled out into the breeze. It stuck its head under the fluttering hem of the
material and peered into the darkened room beyond.

'You
missed it.' Sma said with quiet scorn, happening to pad past the window just at
that moment. She sipped from a glass of water she held. Droplets from her
shower beaded her tawny body.

The
bird's head swivelled, following her as she crossed to the closet and commenced
to dress. Swivelling back, the bird's gaze shifted to the male body lying in
the air a little less than a metre above the floor-mounted bed-base. Inside the
dim haze of the bed's AG field, the pale figure of Relstoch Sussepin stirred,
and rolled over in mid-air. His arms floated out to either side, until the weak
centering field on his side of the bed brought them slowly back in towards his
body again. In the dressing room, Sma gargled with some water, then swallowed
it.

Fifty
metres east, Skaffen-Amtiskaw floated high in the air above the floor of the
turbine hall, surveying the wreckage of the party. The section of the drone's
mind that was controlling the guard-drone disguised as a bird took a last look
at the filigree of scratches on Sussepin's buttocks, and the already fading
bite-marks on Sma's shoulders (as she covered them with a gauzy shirt), and
then released the guard-drone from its control.

The
bird squawked, jumped back from the curtain, and fell fluttering and frenzied
off the ledge, before opening its wings and beating back up past the gleaming
face of the dam, its shrill alarm-cries echoing back from the concrete slopes
and disturbing it further. Sma heard the distant feedback of commotion as she
buttoned her waistcoat, and smiled.

'Good
night's sleep?' Skaffen-Amtiskaw inquired as it met her at the portico of the
old admin block.

'Good
night, no sleep,' Sma yawned, shooing the whining hralzs back into the
building's marble hall, where Maikril the major-domo stood unhappily with a
bunch of leads. She stepped out into the sunlight, pulling on gloves. The drone
held the car door open for her. She filled her lungs with the fresh morning air
and ran down the steps, boot heels clattering. She jumped into the car, winced
a little as she settled in the driver's seat, then flicked a switch that
started the roof folding back, while the drone loaded her luggage into the
trunk. She tapped the battery gauges on the vehicle's dash and blipped the
accelerator, just to feel the wheel motors strain against the brakes. The drone
secured the trunk and floated into the rear seats. She waved to Maikril, who
was chasing one of the hralzs along the steps outside the turbine hall, and
didn't notice. Sma laughed, stood on the throttle and slipped the brakes.

The
car leapt off in a spray of gravel, took the right-hander beneath the trees
with centimetres to spare, shot out through the station's granite gates with a
farewell shimmy of its rear end, and accelerated hard down Riverside Drive.

'We
could have flown,' the drone pointed out, over the rush of air.

But
it suspected Sma wasn't listening.

The
semantics of fortification were pan-cultural, she thought, as she descended the
stone steps from the curtain wall of the castle, gazing up at the drum-shaped
keep, hazy in the distance on its hill behind several more layers of walls. She
walked across the grass, Skaffen-Amtiskaw at her shoulder, and exited the fort
through a postern.