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  With any luck I’d get mainlined with tequila.

  As it strapped me down, Leesa Tulu’s face filled my vision. I wanted to smack her satisfaction away.

  ‘Why do you want me?’ I demanded.

  ‘You’ll work that out for yourself . . . eventually. Meanwhile I get to play with the rest of you—’I

  I didn’t hear it all. The ’Terro slammed a mask over my face. A fine dust invaded my lungs.

  Smart dust.

  Reporting on my vitals. I tried not to breathe it. Useless, I knew. But hey . . .

  Hot pinpricks of flesh-questing bio-ware pierced my skull. The real world ceased to exist.

  It wasn’t like waking up. More like dreaming just under the surface of wakefulness. I could see and think but had a nagging feeling there was more to it.

  And what could I see?

  Nothing comfortable or familiar, just blur.

  For how long?

  Slowly my focus sharpened.

  Campfire. Flames licked in shadow tongues across low, dense scrub. Starless night sky. A solitary figure sat cross-legged, sucking a pipe. Rainbow skirt, scarlet headscarf, jackboots, junky bling.

  Marinette wishes to mount you. Leesa Tulu raised a jealous gaze to me. She likes your flavour.

  ‘What are you about?’ I shouted.

  She flung an arm wide. She believes you to be a stronger host than these.

  I squinted into the dark, to the scrub perimeter. A circle of translucent figures stood inside the bushes. I’d looked straight past them before. Dim outlines of bodies with faded visages and subdued, pulsing lights within. As I stared longer, I somehow knew them. I sensed the karadji emanating their hot, earth-red light. With each pulse they faded a little.

  Scanning quickly, I recognised others - all shaman. One I knew better than the rest. Mei’s light pulsed an angry orange, bright and defiant alongside diminished greys and browns.

  Instinctively I looked down at myself. My being flowed violet beneath my gaze with the energy of an electrical storm.

  Spiritual essence. Tulu tongued her upper lip. Eau-delife.

  Anger shot through me, translating into a streak of brilliant red amongst the throbbing violet. I felt undressed, utterly transparent. With that thought came a pink flush.

  I glanced nervously toward Tulu but her eyes had glazed over, shining in the firelight. Her body began to twitch, arms flapping like bird wings. Her head rocked unnaturally on her neck. She hooted and cawed. I heard drums without seeing them.

  Marinette was coming.

  The night sky spun, the campfire distorted. I found myself pulled to the outside of the circle to take my place amongst the other shaman.

  Get out of here! the Eskaalim commanded.

  Coherency faded. I felt my self-control ebb and let out an almighty roar. ‘MEI!’

  Across the circle Mei’s fiery orange light contracted into a tight ball like a collapsing sun. With a ferocious tenacity it began to enlarge. I reached out for her, desperately arcing my energy like a supernova, plundering the boundaries of her psyche. Our mingled essences skittered around the circle, empowering the others. An explosion rendered me into a thousand shards of light. I tasted tea with sugar. And thought how ‘enemy’ was a relative word.

  This time I did wake, hiccoughy, but in a reality I knew, and at this moment loved. My entire body burned on the inside, a fire that wove through my muscles and flamed along my blood. I breathed lightly for fear of fanning it.

  ‘Be quiet and drink this.’

  The voice was raspy and low, but I knew it.

  I opened my eyes. Loyl Daac. His face was blotched with lesions. The only time I’d seen him less than wonderful. Part of me wanted to cheer. Another part bemoaned the loss of perfection.

  Next to him stood Mei Sheong looking like two-week-old chow mein.

  He freed her first! Next thought: how long has it been?

  ‘Where’s Tulu?’ I managed.

  ‘Hurry. Anna’s detaching the others.’

  I didn’t like his tone. ‘You’ve done something?’

  He nodded. ‘I burned some things.’

  ‘What about the vats in the frijs?’

  ‘Uhuh. I cut the power supply and opened the doors. They should burn too.’

  I shook my head knowing that didn’t sound right. ‘I don’t think you should—’

  But he’d already moved away to join Schaum.

  ‘You’re one careless piece of work, Plessis.’ Mei bore down on me before I could pursue it. ‘You could have killed us all. You breach another shaman’s boundary like that and their spirit leaks away. No spirit. No person. It’s called death, Parrish.’

  ‘Oh,’ was all I could offer. ‘So what happened?’

  ‘Tulu invoked a bitch loa, but the loa was angry because her sacrifices weren’t what she wanted. Marinette likes her chickens plucked alive. She wanted to mount you instead but you slammed her.’ Mei’s whisper held a trace of awe.

  ‘I slammed a loa?’

  ‘I helped,’ she added sullenly. ‘Tulu got distracted by something. It gave your guides the chance to show us the way back.’

  ‘My guides?’

  ‘Yeah, you got three of them. You had some scrawny dograt thing, and a python. There was one other but I couldn’t see it properly. Most of us only get one guide. How come you’re so lucky?’

  Lucky? I didn’t think that was the word for it, but relief swamped for no good reason. Maybe Loser and the python had forgiven me after all. Except, of course, I didn’t believe in that crap.

  Around me shamans were sitting up, starting to help each other. I prised a ’foam of water from Mei’s fingers, swallowed some and smothered a cough as it went down the wrong way. I wanted to ask Daac how long I’d been here, but he was bent over bodies in the middle of the room, his thigh rubbing against Schaum.

  I stood and staggered a little. The stink of unwashed bodies - including mine - made me gag. My knees wouldn’t bend when I told them to, nor would my back straighten properly. I felt at least two thousand years old.

  I lurched over to the happy couple as they stood reviving the four karadji. The Cabal shamans lay head to toe like body batteries. I looked into their faces to memorise them.

  Two of them were muscular and lean, indistinguishable from the Cabal warriors except for an absence of scars on their faces and torsos. A third, older one gasped softly as if he was having trouble breathing. The three were naked aside from filthy denim cut-offs. The fourth, though, was overweight and flabby, like the soft, city cousin come to visit. He even wore the remnants of an expensive three-piece and sneakers.

  Daac spoke to them in a dialect I couldn’t understand. Telling them what he wanted them to know - that they owed him their souls, no doubt.

  I sat by the older, gasping one and held the ’foam to his lips.

  He took a sip and moistened his cracked lips. ‘You burned like the sun,’ he whispered.

  ‘No,’ I corrected. ‘That was Mei.’ I pointed to her.

  He dismissed my reply with a steady blink over opaque, aged pupils. ‘She is strong, that one. But you . . . glowed like . . . creation.’

  Loyl glanced sharply at me and I looked away. I did NOT want to have this sort of conversation. Not now. Not ever. EVER! Oya was bad enough. Creation. Euchh! What a word.

  The old karadji’s hollowed cheeks quivered. ‘You must help us in the battle.’

  Battle? Deep inside I felt the Eskaalim strengthen on that word. I laid the old karadji down and moved away from yet another conversation I did not want to have.

  Schaum began handing out glucose tabs and fluids. Daac hurried her along.

  I itched to cut and run. My choices had multiplied and I didn’t know which way to jump. It left me restless. I sidled closer to the flat stack of hardware and ran over my options again.

  Should I bolt with the stack and risk Ike nuking the lot when I tried to access the data? Or should I help get Schaum out of here and trust Daac to help me? What abou
t my deal with the Cabal? Could they be trusted to meet their promise now the information was in Daac’s hands?

  My head hurt with the frustration of not knowing the answer to anything. I moved away from the stack and went and grabbed a handful of glucose tabs from Schaum.

  ‘I’ll scout out some transport,’ I told them.

  Mei gave the narrow-eyed treatment. ‘You gonna split now, I s’pose?’

  I rewarded her with pure Parrish belligerence. ‘If it suits.’ I had no intention of it, but Mei - like Loyl - brought out the worst in me.

  ‘You know them?’ She nodded over at the karadji.

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Don’t mess with them, Parrish. They suck wannabes like you up through a straw.’

  I tried to keep my voice down, but it had its own ideas. ‘And I got some advice for you . . .’

  She cocked a smudged eyebrow.

  ‘Don’t mess with me. I skin backstabbers.’

  OK, OK so we had some old issues. And this wasn’t the time. It’s never the time for issues. They just sometimes force their ugly way to the top. Like scum floating out of a sewerage outlet.

  Or was the fact that Loyl kept rubbing his hand across Schaum’s back the reason for my aggro?

  Mei’s eyes glittered. I could see her casting around for a weapon. Maybe she had a bit of her own anger displacement going on as well.

  ‘This is about Loyl, isn’t it? You want him,’ she said in a shrill whisper.

  ‘No. This is about something much more precious. Trust. You sold me out, Mei. Back in the beginning and now—’

  She leapt, hissing like a mad cat, claws extended.

  I flicked her away with one heavy swipe, but she was back a second later. We grappled, crashing over cots.

  She scratched me under the eye. As I recoiled, she pounced, wrapping herself around my throat and shoulders. We lay together on the floor locked in an untidy impasse.

  A furious voice interrupted. ‘Parrish, you’ll bring them!’

  I craned my neck to see him. ‘Get - her - off me,’ I rasped.

  He obliged, scooping Mei up like she was a kitten and with the other arm steering Anna, he headed towards the door. They both instantly cuddled into him and I wanted to chop them all into little pieces.

  Enemy is such a relative word.

  Twitchers materialised before he could get through the door. They jumped him, knocking Mei and Schaum from his arms.

  He tripped one up but another whacked a shok against his ribs.

  As Daac went into muscle spasm I sprang up from the floor. The Twitcher bared his teeth and beckoned me with the rod like it was candy. I nodded, smiled, stepped over Loyl and threw the Cabal knife from point blank. He keeled at my feet.

  Stop, Parrish.

  The command was a thought, not spoken. Behind me the karadji had fanned out in a line, crouching on unsteady legs, chanting.

  The Twitchers circled them, becoming submissive as the strength of the chanting increased. One by one they sat down, tranced like they’d jacked cold into one of Irene’s neurostims. Schaum scrambled into action, whacking each one of them with all the seds she could lay her hands on.

  ‘That’s a handy tune.’ I knelt down next to Loyl. ‘Where are the rest of them?’

  ‘They are all that’s left,’ he said. ‘Ike’s gone. The invasion’s begun.’

  I beat everyone to the door. Outside it was dusk. I couldn’t see the veiling grid but something told me it was down. The air smelt different. Fewer ions. The pad was empty of ’copts. Even the UL and the Prier had gone. A huge full moon was rising. I’d lost too much time coupled to Tulu’s juice extractor.

  ‘By morning it will be King Tide. This place will no longer be safe,’ pronounced one of the karadji.

  Daac pushed alongside me into the doorway, leaning on Mei and Schaum. They weren’t exactly adequate as a prop for someone his size - but I wasn’t offering. His body still tremored but his eyes were hooded, almost like an attack of fanaticism but not quite, because I also glimpsed fear. When Daac really went off, there was no fear. Only belief.

  ‘What is it? What invasion?’ My heart pumped like a hydraulic ram.

  ‘The Cabal have come to take back the Heart.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  That was it! Enough!

  I thumped Daac on the chest. ‘Outside, Loyl - you and me.’

  Outside was the three-by-three concrete lip that served as a doorstep, but I hauled him out there and slammed the door in the others’ faces.

  ‘Make it quick, Parrish.’

  ‘That depends on what you’ve got to say. First a room full of freakshow. Next a room full of spirit-sucked shamans. And then there’s the small matter of a ’Terro being here. Now the Cabal are the newest breed of colonials. Which bit aren’t you telling me?’

  I watched his face twitch, as he sifted through what he would reveal. At this stage I’d take anything. ‘The Cabal used you.’

  I let out a snort of disgust. ‘Something I don’t know would be better.’

  ‘They needed a distraction to buy time, but when Tulu kidnapped Mei and injured Sto, it got personal for me. I couldn’t stand back and wait.’

  ‘What I don’t get is how you know what the Cabal are thinking and doing. You’re an outcast.’ Yet hadn’t Ike called him the heir apparent?

  This time he did smile.

  Despite everything, I felt like my insides had been X-rayed.

  ‘You look for a straight line through life, Parrish. There isn’t one. The cord that binds us is cut and knotted in many places. You can’t be part of something like the Cabal and then not. It’s a family.’

  At last he’d admitted his connection with them, but it told me nothing. ‘But they say they want you—’ I broke off, shutting my traitorous mouth.

  ‘Dead? No, I don’t think so. Maybe they’re telling you that.’

  Well, actually, yeah . . . My brain felt seriously cross-wired. Who to believe? How many lies had I been fed? If ‘enemy’ was a relative word - where did that leave a bendy little concept like ‘truth’? Truth seemed to be the invisible line that nobody but me was interested in walking.

  ‘The Cabal knew what I was doing with Anna, and how the codes were stolen by Lang. When the karadji went missing they knew it had to be connected.’

  ‘So what happens at King Tide?’

  He glanced around uneasily at the rising moon. ‘I’m not sure exactly. So many of our myths have been distorted over time. Whatever is predicted, the Cabal have hung their invasion on it so we need to move. Get this data and Anna somewhere safe. Are you in?’

  Was I in? I certainly wanted to help Daac preserve the data. But there was the small matter of the karadji. I’d agreed to deliver them to the Cabal by King Tide - only a few hours away. With the Cabal nearly on the doorstep, maybe I could still fulfil my deal.

  Did I need that deal any more? I could go with Daac now: he had what I wanted.

  But what about the other shamans and the ma’soops? They’d never make it to Torley’s without me.

  I put my conscience on the scales. It was freaking heavy. ‘I don’t know,’ I said, because I didn’t.

  He brought his hand around from behind his back. It held the Cabal dagger. He’d pulled it from the dead Twitcher. ‘Will this help you make up your mind?’

  I stared in fury. ‘Give me the knife.’

  He moved it away from my reach. ‘This is sacred. How did you get it?’

  ‘How do you think I got it?’ I snapped.

  I seriously considered taking him then and there. If it came down to hand to hand between us I wasn’t confident I’d win, but his arrogance and his baiting had pissed me off enough to give it a go. The trouble was I might still need him to get out of here. ‘When I made a deal with the Cabal,’ I said, ‘they gave it to me.’

  ‘They gave it to you,’ he echoed.

  ‘Surprised? ‘

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘I thought you’d stolen it. Tell me w
hy you agreed to work for them, Parrish. What do you owe them?’

  ‘You must know that.’ I stared down at my worn boots, filthy clothes and scratched and bleeding arms. Then, finally, back at him. ‘Such as it is, I owe them my life. I pay my debts. What’s it to you anyway?’

  He blinked. ‘I care what happens to my people.’

  My people. Those two words stopped my heart. He considered me one of his people. What gave him the right to do that? And why, perversely, did the idea make me want to thread myself through him like macramé?

  I pulled the door open. ‘You and I got a bit of a problem with definition, Loyl.’

  ‘We got more than that.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  The quad was where I’d left it. We ferried the first few shamans across the poison dirt, leaving Mei and Schaum to watch the rest. Mei sulked openly and that improved my humour.

  Smoke from Daac’s arson adventures made my eyes itch and weep but the flames helped to light our path. I wondered what the heat would do to Ike’s polycephalum.

  When we reached the wall, I had my answer. The hatchway, destroyed by the cellar fire, was now covered in a thickening layer of crawl that glistened strangely in the moonlight.

  I held out my hand. ‘Let me use the sacred dagger on it.’

  He refused and began carving into the crawl like it was a fresh carcass. ‘You know what this dagger represents, don’t you?’

  I shrugged, watching. He was going to tell me anyway.

  ‘Goma. Blood debt. You can never repay goma.’

  I stiffened. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘You owe goma for life. You can’t buy it back.’

  I narrowed my eyes at him. ‘You’re lying.’

  He stuck his fingers in and sloughed bits of crawl off. The hole was big enough to open the hatch, but the crawl was already resealing it.

  ‘Quick.’ I gestured to a small Polynesian kapna called Ness, and a young boy with startling blue eyes and feathers implanted in his scalp instead of hair. ‘Cover your nose and mouth, the smoke is still strong in there.’

  ‘Where do we go?’ Ness asked.