12 New London III

"What are you going to do with him?" asked a worried Tasha, as we shut the basement door behind us.

"I'm not sure." I confessed.

"You're not going to... kill him, are you?"

I held her at arms length, and looked into her clear, blue eyes, thinking of the words that the old Knight had spoken. Words that told of a destiny that would blaze for a thousand years. And I thought of what his pupil had done. He had known my sister was going to die, had sat and waited while it happened, but he had not killed her. He may have committed many wrongs, but that was not one of them. Whatever he had done, the torment his soul was going through now was punishment enough. I only knew one thing: That his destiny, whatever it was, was not yet complete. I could not stand in the face of that destiny. I had to let the missile fly.

I brushed some curls away from Tasha's frowning forehead. "No. I'm not going to kill him."

"Even after what he's done?"

That surprised me. "You understood what we were saying?"

"Some of it," she said quietly, "enough to know that he let your sister be killed."

"He did. But... this is bigger than her death. Events are happening around us, that are beyond our control. And he is part of those events. I remember something my theology teacher at school used to say, that when the Gods call you, you must follow that call."

"But what does that mean?"

"I think the Gods are calling him, so we musn't stand in his way."

"Even if those Gods say that we're... abominations?" She said the word clumsily, as though she was having to remember the syllables.

"They don't say that," I reassured her, although I was not certain myself.

"The Knights do."

"Not all of them. Most of them, perhaps - but not all of them. Why? Do you want me to kill him?"

The shudder that rippled through her answered the question. "No. No, of course not. I just thought you might."

"So would I have, once," I admitted, shrugging in confusion. "But now I don't want his blood on my hands. You see, I know now who the enemy is. I could have known all along."

She drew slightly away from my loose embrace. "So you haven't finished? You still haven't got your revenge?"

"It's not revenge, it never was. Things need to be resolved, and at the moment they aren't. So yes, I haven't finished."

She spun away from me, picking up the med-pack from the floor. "I'd better do something for that elbow of his."

The food was excellent, but the mood was cold, as we ate together at the dining room table.

I dug my fork deep into the rice concoction, and took another mouthful. "This is really good!"

"Thanks," she replied icily, taking another tiny forkful from her small portion.

I laid the plasti-glass fork on the side of the plate and looked across the table at her. "What's up?"

"You have to ask?"

"Look I'm sorry about what I did to him, and said to him down there, but I had to do it. And it was you who wanted to be there."

From the sharp glare that washed across her face, it was obvious that I'd completely failed to see the source of her anger. "It wasn't that - it isn't that!"

I took another mouthful of rice, giving myself a few seconds to think. Why the hell was she so angry? Apart from anything else, the genes that would have been given to her when she was created would have been selected for docility and passiveness. Anything that might cause anger would be very carefully screened out. That left two possibilities. It could be that they screwed up, but from what I had seen of her, she seemed an ideal product. In which case, I must have done something really insensitive.

"You don't know why I'm upset do you?" she asked perceptively.

"Well..." I dithered.

"Do you?"

"No," I confessed, quietly.

She carefully pushed a small quantity of rice onto her fork, a smooth, elegant manoeuvre, just as she'd been taught at her nursery. "It's because you're going."

"Going?" I queried, confused.

She sighed, clamping her tiny mouth shut, then spoke: "Going away. From here!"

"Well of course I'm going," I stated defensively. "I can't stay here. There are things I need to do. And besides - I don't think Mr and Ms Harkes would be particularly thrilled to find me here."

"No, but ----"

"---- and," I broke in, "I wouldn't want to get you into trouble."

"Look!" she shouted, shattering the forced calm. "I might just be some coder girl - but I'm not stupid, and I'm not a child!"

"No."

"And it's pretty bloody obvious the reason why you're going - to finish your revenge, or resolving, or whatever it was you called it. It's got nothing to do with protecting me, and it never did. If you were that worried about me - then you'd never have came!"

"I'm sorry." There didn't seem to be much else to say. We continued eating the meal in silence. A few, tense minutes later I teased the last moist chunk of rice from my plate, chewed, swallowed, and pushed the empty plate away across the table.

"That was great... honestly." I tried.

"It was just something Ms Harkes taught me," she replied, the hurt still clear in her voice.

I looked at my watch. 6.59, glowed the digital letters. Across from me, Tasha finished her much smaller portion, and lifted her empty plate onto mine, depositing the cutlery on top. Then she eased off her chair, and set off for the kitchen. I got up and followed, watching her bare feet as they stepped briskly across the carpet. She dropped the plates and the cutlery into the dishwasher's drawer, slid the drawer shut, and thumbed it onto its light-load cycle, before turning to face me, wrapping one slim leg around the other as she leant against a worktop.

I looked at my watch - 7.00. "Is there... erm... a vid down here, that I could watch?"

"There's one in the living room."

"Through there?" I asked, pointing down the passageway. She pushed away from the unit and set off down the passageway, and through one of the side doors, leading me into the large, skilfully furnished main room, and motioning to me to sit on the long, low couch set in front of the large, free-standing vid unit. She flicked the vid-unit on, allowing the last few seconds of the NewHaven Levels theme tune to boom from the speakers mounted around the room.

"I guess this is what you want to watch?"

"Yeah. Thanks."

She sat down at the end of the couch, curling her bare legs beneath her, as we began to watch events unfold.

It was Jack Anderson that did it, drawing and focussing her anger as he shafted his latest business victim.

"Don't listen to him," she cried at the screen, withdrawing her tiny, balled fists from her mouth while she spoke the words, then jamming them back against her lips. More exclamations of anguish erupted over her knuckles as the victims failed to take her advice; girlish cries that would normally have grated, but that now sounded like the chords of angels.

Anderson turned as the suckers left his office, and looked out through the large, glass window to the buried plaza beyond, a snarling laugh emerging from his harsh, thin lips, the camera view switching to the other side of the window to capture his piercing gaze. Then the spell was broken as the image froze, and the white letters of the titles began scrolling up the screen across his fixed grin, the loud theme music crashing around the lounge.

"Bastard!" muttered Tasha, pushing against the limits of her programming. I shuffled along the couch and draped my arm across her shoulders.

"Hey! It's just vid, you know?"

"I know that," she sung, a pretended angry smile on her face. "It's just that he..."

"I read a magazine article that said that most women secretly fancy him?"

She looked away giggling. "I do not fancy him... much. Anyway, it's fine to watch him on the screen and think about, you know. But to have him, for real..." She shook her head.

"Am I forgiven?" I asked cautiously.

"Yeah," she chanted, snuggling against me.

"I'm sorry if I upset you."

"It's okay. It's just..."

"Just what?"

She stiffened slightly in my arms, then relaxed. "When I first saw you, I thought - maybe? I don't know why. It might have been because you seemed familiar. But there was something that made me think that perhaps it would be different this time. That maybe you were the one, if that was possible. And I actually managed to get to you, to talk to you."

"And you hate doing that?"

"Yeah. And I was talking to you, and I knew you weren't really listening, but I thought, maybe he's not bothered about that sort of thing, maybe he's depressed. Maybe I can help him. And then..."

"The shit hit the fan."

"You just left. You just went. As though it was nothing to you - because it was nothing to you. After that, I thought, forget it. Just settle for what you've got. Stop being so selfish, and disloyal. And then ----"

"---- I turned up."

She let her head fall back on my arm and covered her eyes, smiling at the ceiling. "And then you turned up!" She laughed for a moment, then lifted her head back up. "There you were, just standing on my doorstep, with like, blood, all over you. And then again, I though - maybe? At Kerensky's I'd been scared, in a place I hated. But here, this was my place, and you were asking me for help. It was like I was in charge. So I could show you me, instead of trying to show you what I thought you expected to see. And this time, it seemed different. It was like on the vid - when they say two people have clicked."

"It was, we did."

"And now you're just going to go away, just like before."

"Not like before. And I have to go."

"I know."

"And can you really say that you've enjoyed having me here?"

She considered that for a moment. "Since you came here, I've been scared."

"Of what?"

She twisted round to lay across me and gave me an incredulous look. "Of everything! This situation. You! How the Harkes would feel if they knew what I was doing."

I shifted into a more comfortable position, feeling her smooth body sliding across me, her thin tunic doing little to disguise her contours as the side of her head slipped into place on my shoulder and my arm wrapped around her slim waist. "But have you enjoyed it?"

"Not enjoy, that's not the word. It's like, I've never helped anyone before." She rested a hand on my chest to forestall my inevitable reply. "I know I've helped the Harkes, and little Stevie, and I used to help at the nursery. But that was just doing my job. It was why I was created. It was my duty. But helping you..."

She paused, so I rested my hand on hers, hoping to reassure her.

"Helping you, it isn't my duty. I'm not even supposed to do it. In fact, it's probably wrong for me to do it. But I still did it."

"Why?"

"Because the only place I had friends was at nursery. Since then, there's been loads of people who've been really nice to me, but they weren't friends. They were people that I had to be nice to. Even with little Stevie it's the same. I love him to death, I really do - but then I'm supposed to. That's why I was created. But you... You weren't telling me to help you, or ordering me to help you, or even expecting me to help you. You were asking me to help you. Not as a slave, just as someone you knew."

"As a friend?" I suggested.

Light sparkled across her eyes. "Is that what I am?"

"This is my home city, I've lived here, or around here, for all my life. But when I arrived back here to get your other guest, I realised that there was no-one I could turn to. I knew lots of people, but there wasn't a single one of them that I could call a friend. Then after I'd been shot, and I needed help, it was you that I thought of. So yeah, I'd call you a friend."

"Me too," she whispered, lifting up her head and planting a kiss on my cheek.

"What was the phone call?" I asked when she came back up the stairs. She breezed into the bedroom and dropped onto the foot of the bed.

"Just the Harkes, calling to see if I'm okay."

"So what did you say?"

She poked her tongue into her cheek. "I said I was okay. Why? What did you expect me to say?"

I shrugged one shoulder. "That you had a friend staying over?"

She lunged towards me to deliver a mock blow, but slipped, and ended up lying on the bed alongside me. "Did you see to your friend?"

"Yeah, he's okay."

"Did he say anything?" she whispered.

"No. He just lay there. I mean he can move about a bit, I changed the tethers this afternoon. But he just lay there."

She looked across to her clock. "It's getting on a bit. We ought to get to sleep."

"Yeah," I agreed, looking around for the sleeping mat. "I can take the mat tonight. Where is it anyway?"

She looked away, focussing on her feet. "I put it away. I thought that we could..."

I looked at her, and felt unfamiliar feelings - concern, protectiveness; feelings I'd been taught to suppress, to despise. "Are you sure? I don't want you to feel that you have to."

She snapped her face back to me, and rolled off her back onto her side to rest against me. "I don't, that's the point. I don't have to do it, and I don't feel that I have to try and please you, or reward you. And that's why I want to."

I flicked off the light, and pulled her into my arms.

"No promises," she ordered, laying a finger across my lips. "Whatever happens, happens. Just don't make me any promises."

"Okay," I declared, giving her a final, lingering kiss. I turned to the Rook who was standing beside us in the doorway, his previously tormented face now calm and serene. "Do you know what you'll do?"

He nodded grimly. "I know. Everything is clear now. I can see it before me, all of it."

"It?" questioned Tasha.

"My destiny. It is nearly complete. I know that now. I just have to complete the circle." A look of joy flowed onto his face. "And then I shall be released, to ride amongst the solar fusion, until I am called again. He looked back to me. "I will not wish that you may walk with God, citizen, for I do not believe that he walks with your kind. But you have walked with me, so I wish you good luck."

"And I wish you luck also," I replied, "that you may complete your destiny."

I gave Tasha a last squeeze, then hit the exit stud. The door slid open, revealing the corridor outside. "Let's go."

Return to article...