Stamping after the Japanese woman, Fixx didn’t notice at first that the vegetation was changing. But when maquis and blue-leafed hyssop began to replace meadow grass the change became impossible to ignore, even for Fixx. The fauna was different, too. Wild hopi called from rough-barked cork and stunted wild oak while feral cats pressed themselves to the ground, ears back as Shiori and Fixx strode by. There were twisted olive trunks, so fat and so badly split with age it was hard not to believe the trees had been there for hundreds of years.
The green slopes were giving way to endless tiny terraces cut into the olive-grey hillside and held in place by drystone walls. There were even dark wells, circled by pumice-hued brick and covered with flat roofs made from rough planks. Though Fixx knew that, on the lower slopes at least, the well shafts couldn’t go down more than three or four metres at the most.
Fixx saw the goat boy, loping down a slope. Shiori didn’t. Shiori was too busy staring moodily into the distance, following the floating-focus map that unrolled in front of her grey eyes. Both Walkwear and wraprounds were so hot from overuse they stank of burning electrics but she didn’t even notice. Discomfort was something Shiori regarded as a luxury, her nervous system viral-rewired so that most pain didn’t even register until it hit the middle reaches.
Pain was a distraction for working ballerinas. Most, things were.
Shiori sighed and kept climbing across scrub, edging round a granite bolder flecked with mica. The huge stone was probably treated polycrete unless Sister Aaron had found a way to crystallize stone, and where that bitch was concerned anything was possible.
Shiori wasn’t worried about meeting Sister Aaron: iga-training ensured her heart beat stayed at a steady sixty-five and her blood pressure kept to a balanced 100/80, but somewhere at the back of her mind, banished beyond consciousness, Shiori still allowed herself to be aware of the other woman’s reputation.
Psionics was a dangerous art, not least because apart of Shiori’s mind refused to admit it had a right to exist. The General needed his shrine back and it was Shiori’s job to get it — swiftly, cleanly, neatly. The only problem so far was that the shrine wasn’t showing up clearly on her screen — though it was here all right, she was getting a positive on that. But then, most of what was on file for Sister Aaron had be the product of trickery, so maybe she was keeping it hidden.
Sleight of hand and hypnotism... mekuramashi and kawarimi, both of those Shiori respected, they were core to the kunoichi tradition. Her tradition. But what the General kept on file for Sister Aaron wasn’t sleight of hand, at least it didn’t seem so. And so, if not actually worried, Shiori wasn’t as rested as she would have liked.
“Keep up,” Shiori snapped over her shoulder, but Fixx just muttered something offensive.
Had she looked back, Shiori would have seen Fixx come face to face with the goat boy, who slid to a halt on the scree, scrawny goats jostling round his bare legs like dogs round their master. Though it was the boy who looked dog-like, his heavy jaw protruding from below a slack mouth.
“Hi,” said Fixx.
The boy just looked at him. Brown eyes flicked between Fixx and the shadow that still strode on, waist-deep in scrub, muttering to itself.
“These your goats?”
All Fixx got was a suspicious nod.
“They look really happy,” said Fixx. “They must like you.”
The boy smiled, showing sharp canines.
Fixx sketched a line level with his shoulder. “You seen a girl, ‘bout this high, wavy black hair and weird violet eyes? She can be...” Fixx searched for the right word and gave up. LizAlec could be a fucking pain in the arse, but as descriptions went that didn’t seem appropriate.
The goat boy had seen her. Fixx could see it in his wide face and Fixx didn’t know what LizAlec had done to him, but the goat boy wasn’t happy with her. Except it turned out that it wasn’t what she’d done that had upset Lars, it was where LizAlec had gone.
“Girl not here,” he said simply. “Brother Michael not here either.” The goat boy wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, sweat smearing into dirt. Fixx offered him the bubble flask and Lars took a pull, gathering his thoughts. “Gone,” he said at last. “Brother Michael dead, girl gone...”
“Shiori,” Fixx shouted and the shadow stopped climbing, one grey hand reaching up towards a grey boulder, her weight taken on her left leg, the right already raised to find a new foothold. A human climbing machine, Fixx thought. Though she had a great arse, he reminded himself: even if it was impossible to see properly now she was wearing that bloody chameleon suit.
“Down here,” Fixx shouted.
She came back down the slope, mouth hard, eyes hidden behind the wraprounds.
“This better be good.”
Fixx turned to Lars but the boy was gone and the goats with him. All Fixx could hear was the distant tinkle of bells behind a ridge in the distance. “There was a dogboy,” Fixx began...
“Yeah,” said Shiori as she looked at the trodden-down scrub and pellet-like goat droppings. “LizAlec’s sandrat. Something was said about it... That fat woman in the bar. Remember?”
Fixx did, vaguely. As much as he was likely to remember anything through the haze of long-vanished Electric Soup and the trauma of nearly having his skull cracked open by a clone. Yeah, sometime after Fixx had got truly mashed, Jude had been saying something about some sandrat... Fixx didn’t like Shiori calling Jude fat, though.
“Brother Michael’s dead,” said Fixx and stopped... Half of Shiori’s expression swung between pity and amusement, the rest just registered open contempt.
“Of course he’s dead,” Shiori said shortly, “You saw his cathedral. No one survives being vacuum-trashed. Not even self-proclaimed little Christian messiahs.”
Fixx nodded and raised his hand to wipe his lips. Which was when he realized the vanishing goat boy had taken not just his animals but the silver water flask too. More or less guaranteed to piss Shiori off, except Fixx was getting to the point where he no longer cared what the Japanese woman thought. Bigger problems were crowding in.
“If Brother Michael’s dead...”
“Then maybe LizAlec is, too,” Shiori finished for him. “Well done.” Her voice was so brittle, so bleakly ironic that Fixx had clenched his metal hand before he realized. Only Fixx never got near to throwing the punch. Shiori just stepped in close, one hand flicking up towards his chin. The razor-sharp point of her biente-neube slid a quarter of an inch into his flesh and then stopped dead as blood beaded around the tiny wound.
“Next time...”
There were threats and there were promises, and Fixx knew the difference. She would kill him too and without hesitation if it came to it, if he got in the way. Maybe Shiori didn’t trash colleagues unless forced, but Fixx wasn’t non-com any more than she was, not up here on The Arc. Shiori needed that shrine and she intended to get it. Impatiently, the Japanese woman tapped the Sony Walkwear on her belt with the fingers of her left hand, the butterfly knife in her other hand never leaving Fixx’s throat.
Sweet Jesus, thought Fixx. When am I going to learn that just because I’ve fucked some woman it doesn’t mean she isn’t still dangerous? I mean, I could type up a list... Still, the waves from this one were going to splatter the surface of a dozen lives like buckshot. There was Lady Clare, Anchee, kids at that stupid school, then there was him. Inside his head, Fixx was already lighting a candle for LizAlec before he remembered he wasn’t Catholic. And there was another thought, coming at him out of the back of his head. If Shiori already knew LizAlec was dead, then what the fuck was she looking for as she scrambled about like a fool inside The Arc?