They had tanned her skin and made a little cushion out of it; a tiny plain button in her navel, and at one corner, just the hint, the start of some dark but slightly red-tinged hair.
There were stairs, and Livueta, and the ADC, and the ADC's office, between there and here, he found himself thinking, as he stood at his desk again.
He tasted blood in his mouth, looked down at his right hand. He seemed to recall having punched Livueta on his way up the stairs. What a terrible thing to do to one's own sister.
He looked about, distracted, for a moment. Everything looked blurred.
Intending to rub his eyes, he raised one hand and found the pistol in it.
He put it to his right temple.
This was, of course, he realised, exactly what Elethiomel wanted him to do, but then, what chance did one have against such a monster? There was only so much a man could take, after all.
He smiled at the doors (somebody was thumping on them, calling out a word that might have been his name; he couldn't remember now). So silly. Doing the Right Thing; the Only Way Out. The Honourable Exit. What a load of nonsense. Just despair, just the last laugh to have, opening a mouth through the bone to confront the world direct; here.
But such consummate skill, such ability, such adaptability, such numbing ruthlessness, such a use of weapons when anything could become weapon…
His hand was shaking. He could see the doors starting to give way; somebody must be hitting them very hard. He supposed he must have locked them; there was nobody else in the room. He ought to have chosen a bigger gun, he realised; this one might not be big enough to do the job.
His mouth was very dry.
He pressed the gun hard against his temple and pulled the trigger.
The besieged forces round the Staberinde broke out within the hour, while the surgeons were still fighting for his life. It was a good battle, and they nearly won.
Fourteen
"Zakalwe…"
"No."
Still the same refusal. They stood in a park, at the edge of a large, neatly mown lawn, under some tall, pollarded trees. The warm breeze carried the ocean scent and a hint of flowers, whispering through the copse. The clearing morning mist still veiled two suns. Sma shook her head in exasperation, and walked off a little way.
He leant against a tree, clutching at his chest, breathing with difficulty. Skaffen-Amtiskaw hovered nearby, keeping a watch on the man, but playing with an insect on the trunk of another tree.
Skaffen-Amtiskaw thought the man was mad; certainly he was weird. He had never really explained why he'd gone wandering through the mayhem of the citadel-storming. When Sma and the drone had finally found him and picked him up, bullet-riddled, half-dead and raving from the top of the curtain wall, he had insisted they stabilise his condition; no more. He did not want to be made well. He would not listen to sense, and still the Xenophobe — when it had picked them all up — had refused to pronounce the man insane and incapable of making up his own mind, and so had dutifully put him into a low-metabolism sleep for the fifteen day journey to the planet where the women called Livueta Zakalwe now lived.
He'd come out of his slow-sleep as ill as he'd gone into it. The man was a walking mess and there were still two bullets inside him, but he refused to accept any treatment until he'd seen this woman. Bizarre, Skaffen-Amtiskaw thought, using an extended field to block the path of a small insect as it felt and picked its way up the trunk of the tree. The insect changed direction, feelers waving. There was another type of insect further up the trunk, and Skaffen-Amtiskaw was trying to get them to meet, to see what would happen.
Bizarre, and even — indeed — perverse.
"Okay." He coughed (one lung, the drone knew, filling up with blood). "Let's go." He pushed himself away from the tree. Skaffen-Amtiskaw abandoned its game with the two insects regretfully. The drone felt odd, being here; the planet was known about but had not yet been fully investigated by Contact. It had been discovered through research rather than physical exploration, and — while there was nothing obviously outlandish about the place, and a very rudimentary survey had been carried out — technically it was still terra incognita, and Skaffen-Amtiskaw was on a relatively high state of alert, just in case the place held any nasty surprises.
Sma went to the bald-headed man and put her arm round his waist, helping to support him. Together they walked up the small slope of lawn towards a low ridge. Skaffen-Amtiskaw watched them go, from the cover of the tree tops, then swooped slowly down towards them as they walked to the summit of the gentle slope.
The man staggered when he saw what was on the far side, in the distance. The drone suspected he would have fallen to the grass if Sma hadn't been there to hold him up.
"Shiiit," he breathed, and tried to straighten, blinking in a sudden slant of sunlight as the mists continued to evaporate.
He stumbled another couple of steps, shook Sma off, and turned round once, taking in the parkland; shaped trees and manicured lawns, ornamental walls and delicate pergolas, stone-bordered ponds and shady paths through quiet groves. And, in the distance, set amongst mature trees, the tattered black shape of the Staberinde.
"They've made a fucking park out of it," he breathed, and stood, swaying, bent slightly at the waist, looking at the battered silhouette of the old warship. Sma walked to his side. He seemed to sag a little, and she put her arm round his waist again. He grimaced with pain; they walked on, down towards a path which led to the ship.
"Why did you want to see this, Cheradenine?" Sma said quietly as they crunched along the gravel. The drone floated behind and above.
"Hmm?" the man said, taking his eyes off the ship for a second.
"Why did you want to come here, Cheradenine?" Sma asked. "She isn't here. This isn't where she is."
"I know," he breathed. "I know that."
"So why do you want to see this wreck?"
He was silent for a little while. It was as though he hadn't heard, but then he took a deep breath — flinching with pain as he did so — and shook his sweat-sheened head as he said, "Oh; just for… old times" sake…" They passed through another copse of trees. He shook his shaved head again as they came out of the grove, and saw the ship better. "I just didn't think… they'd do this to it," he said.
"Do what?" Sma asked.
"This." He nodded at the blackened hulk.
"What have they done, Cheradenine?" Sma said patiently.
"Made it." He began, then stopped, coughed, body tense with pain. "Made the damn thing… an ornament. Preserved it."
"What, the ship?"
He looked at her as though she were crazy. "Yes," he said. "Yes; the ship."
Just a big old battleship hulk cemented into a dock, as far as Skaffen-Amtiskaw could see. It contacted the Xenophobe, which was passing the time by making a detailed map of the planet.
— Hello, ship. This ship-ruin in the park; Zakalwe seems very interested. Just wondering why. Care to do some research?
— In a while; I've still got one continent, the deep sea beds and the sub-surface to do.
— They'll still be there later; this could prove interesting now.
— Patience, Skaffen-Amtiskaw.
Pedant, thought the drone, breaking off.
The two humans walked down twisty paths past litter bins and benches, picnic tables and information points. Skaffen-Amtiskaw activated one of the old information points as it passed. A slow and crackly tape started up; "The vessel you see before you…" This was going to take ages, Skaffen-Amtiksaw thought. It used its effector to speed the machine up, winding the voice up into a high-pitched warble. The tape broke. Skaffen-Amtiskaw delivered the effector equivalent of an annoyed slap, and left the information machine smoking and dripping burning plastic onto the gravel beneath, as the two humans walked into the shadow of the battered ship.