The Naked God — Flight

up from the legs, and down from her bare shoulders. That just left the taste of her as he ran his tongue along her belly and down between her thighs. The correct pitch as she cried out in gratitude, the praise she would moan to him, her greatest ever lover.

Andy hated himself for resorting to sensenviron sprites. It was the final humiliating proof that he was a complete loser. But she was so fantastic. Better to have loved and lost, than never loved at all. Even if that love was purely digital.

“What’s the matter with him?” Genevieve asked loudly. “Why’s he looking at you all funny?”

Andy’s smile was a thin mask over his horror as her piping voice broke through his distracted thoughts. Cool sweat was beading across his flushed skin. His neural nanonics couldn’t help dispel the blush, they were too busy fighting down his erection.

Louise gave him a vaguely suspicious look. “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” Andy mumbled. He scurried back behind the counter, ignoring Genevieve’s frown. “I think the person you want is Ivanov Robson. He specializes in missing persons, both kinds.”

“Both kinds?”

“Yeah. Some people are genuinely missing; they drop out of life, or haven’t updated their directory entries—like your friend. Then there’s the kind who’re deliberately trying to vanish; debtors, unfaithful partners, criminals. You know.”

“I see. Well thank you, this Mr Robson sounds about right.”

Andy datavised the detective’s address and eddress over. Louise smiled and gave him an uncertain wave as she walked out. Breath whistled out between Andy’s crooked teeth. His hands were shaking again, forcing him to grip the edge of the counter. Idiot. Idiot. Idiot! But she hadn’t stormed out, or made an issue of his stupid erotic daydreaming. There was still a chance.

Yeah, about the same as me getting crowned King of Kulu.

He looked down to double check. The counter’s middle shelf held a stack of fifteen Hyperpeadia fleks, all with their wrapping intact. His one and only excuse to see her again.

The taxi pulled up at the end of Fernshaw Road, where it intersected with Edith Terrace. Louise and Genevieve stepped out, and the door slid shut behind them. The vehicle accelerated away silently down the road. It had deposited them in a quiet residential street, where the pavements were actually made from slabs of stone rather than a simple band of carbon-concrete. Silver birch and sycamore trees that must have been a couple of centuries old lined both sides of the road, their giant boughs merging together to provide a gentle emerald shield against the fierce sunlight. The houses were all ancient two or three storey affairs, painted white or cream. Bricks and slate roofs were betraying their age by sagging and bulging; centuries of subsidence and environmental decline had distorted every wall and support timber. Window frames were tilted at the oddest angles. There wasn’t a straight line to be seen anywhere in the street. Each house had a tiny front garden, though they’d all been paved over; the massive trees absorbed so much light they prevented any shrubs or vines from growing underneath.

“This must be it,” Louise said dubiously. She faced a high wall with a single golden oak door in it, heavily tarnished with age. There was a brass panel with a grill on one side. It looked far too primitive to datavise at. She pressed the ivory button on top.

“Yes?” the grille squealed.

“I’m here to see Mr Robson,” she said. “I called before. I’m Louise Kavanagh.”

The door buzzed loudly, and she pushed it open. There was a rectangular patio beyond, running along the front of the building; home to a set of wrought iron furniture and a couple of dead conifer bushes in cracked pots. The front door, a duplicate of the one behind, was open. Louise peered cautiously into the small hallway. A blonde girl, barely older than she, was standing behind a reception desk whose surface was smothered with folders, flek cases, and china coffee mugs. She was staring into a small AV pillar that protruded from the top of a very expensive-looking stack of processor blocks. Pale turquoise light from the sparkling pillar was reflected in her narrow, brown eyes. Her frozen posture was one of shock.

Her only acknowledgement of the sisters’ entry was to ask: “Have you accessed it?” in a hoarse voice.

“What?” Genevieve asked.

The receptionist gestured at the pillar. “The news.”

Both sisters stared straight into the pillar’s haze of light. They were looking out across a broad park under a typical arcology dome. Right across the centre of their view, a big tapering tower of metal girders had collapsed to lie in a lengthy sprawl of contorted wreckage across the immaculate emerald grass. Several of the tall, cheerfully shaggy trees that surrounded it had been smashed and buried beneath the splinters of rusty metal. A vast crowd encircled the wreckage, with thousands more making their way along the paths to swell their numbers. They were people in profound mourning, as if the tower had been some precious relative. Louise could see they all had their heads bowed, most were weeping. Thin cries of grief wove together through the air.

“Bastards,” the receptionist said. “Those utter bastards.”

“What is that thing?” Genevieve asked. The receptionist gave her a startled look.

“We’re from Norfolk,” Louise explained.

“That’s the Eiffel Tower,” the receptionist said. “In Paris. And the Nightfall anarchists blew it up. They’re a bunch of crazies who’re going round wrecking things over there. It’s their mission, they say, preparing the world for the fall of Night. But everyone knows they’re just a front for the possessed. Bastards.”

“Was the tower really important?” Genevieve asked.

“The Eiffel Tower was over seven hundred years old. What do you think?”

The little girl looked back into the projection. “How horrid of them.”

“Yes. I think that’s why there is a beyond. So that people who do things like that can suffer in it until the end of time.”

A glassed-in spiral stair took Louise up to the first floor. Ivanov Robson was waiting for the sisters on the landing. Travelling in the Far Realm had accustomed Louise to people who didn’t share the bodyform template she’d grown up with. And of course, London had an astonishing variety of people. Even so, she nearly jumped when she first saw Robson. He was the biggest man she’d ever seen. Easily over seven feet tall, and a body that seemed bulky even for that height. Not that any of it was fat, she noticed. He was frighteningly powerful, with arms thicker than her legs. His skin was the deepest ebony, glossy from a health club’s spar treatment. With thick gold-tinted auburn hair twirled into a tiny pony tail, and wearing a stylish yellow silk business suit, he looked amazingly dapper.

“Miss Kavanagh, welcome.” From the confident humour in his smooth voice, it was obvious he knew the effect he had on people.

Floorboards creaked under his feet as showed them into his office. The bookcases reminded Louise of her father’s study, although there were very few leather-bound volumes here. Ivanov Robson eased himself into a wide chair behind a smoked-glass desk. The surface was empty apart from a slimline processor block and a peculiar chrome-topped glass tube, eighteen inches high, that was full of clear liquid and illuminated from underneath. Orange blobs glided slowly up and down inside it, oscillating as they went.

“Are they xenoc fish?” Genevieve asked. It was the first time she’d spoken. The huge man had even managed to quash her usual bravado. She’d kept well behind Louise the whole time.

“Nothing as spectacular,” Ivanov said. “It’s an antique, a genuine Twentieth Century lava lamp. Cost me a fortune, but I love it. Now, what can I do for you?” he tented his fingers, and looked directly at Louise.

“I have to find somebody,” she said. “Um, if you don’t want to take the case when I’ve told you who, I’ll understand. I think she’s called Banneth.” Louise launched into a recital of her journey since leaving Cricklade, not quite as heavily edited as usual.

“I’m impressed,” Ivanov said softly when she’d finished. “You’ve come face to face with the possessed, and survived. That’s quite a feat. If you ever need money, I know a few people in the news media.”

“I don’t want money, Mr Robson. I just want to find Banneth. None of the questors seem to be able to do that for me.”

“I’m almost embarrassed to take your money, but I will, of course.” He grinned broadly, revealing teeth that had been plated entirely in gold. “My retainer will be two thousand fuseodollars, payable in advance. If I locate Banneth, that will be another five thousand. Plus any expenses. I will provide receipts where possible.”