Turquoiselle, Tanith Lee [100 best novels of all time .TXT] 📗

Themen were all weights, all kinds, and of four clear racial types.

Theentire composite ranged from around the age of twenty-five-seven, (the thinwoman), to late fifties, early sixties (the tall slim black man in the Oxbridgetie).

Itreminded Carver of job interviews he had sometimes, years ago, attended onerrands to do with Mantik. Or panels on TV – except for the amount ofinterviewers in proportion to the – what were they, in fact – candidates?

Candidatesthen for what?

Punishment?

Therehad been excessive alcohol and a punch-up.

Aman had ridden his bicycle at, and himself over, the brink of a cliff.

(Nightand flight, soaring, arcing down. Seconds of utter release – terror – mesmericunknowing. After which the hard floor of the world.)

VanSedden had muttered, as they waited here twenty minutes or so for theinterviewing panel to arrive, “Ride come comes before a fall.”

AndBall had whispered, “Can it, cunt.”

AndSedden had put his head in his hands and wept. And Ball had got up, sat down,put his arm round Sedden, sat there staring into nowhere as Sedden cried on hisshoulder, and Fiddy grunted, and once or twice belched from hangover and badnerves.

Afterthe panel came in, everyone was pulled together, stiff-upper-lipped, yetquiescent. Soldiers, Carver thought, who would get a beating, (another one), ifthey did not shine up their gear, stand to attention, wear the masks ofdiscipline, of violence, under total subjugation.

Whatdid he look like then, he, Andreas Cava, child of psychopath moron andcrazy fool. He who had let the fight go on until its sheer futility had causedhim to intervene. And, as the bicycle ran, too late. Poised there, foreseeingwhat came next, not attempting– Useless. It was not the drugs that had slowedhim down. Not the drink, which he had only reluctantly sipped.

Hewas removed, was Carver. Always stood a little aside, a step or twoback. Uninvolved. Not wanting involvement. The lizard on the wall. The errandboy. The cool partner. The quiet one. The watcher. A spy-machine.

Even if well-hidden,the surveillance cameras and audio-relay had obviously picked up the scene onthe terrace. That nobody had hastened from the building in time to prevent atragedy was due to – it was suggested – an unforeseen glitch in wiring. (Or perhaps,unrevealed laxity on someone’s part?)

Theyhad, nevertheless, been on the spot some two minutes after Charlie descendedfrom view. A ruffled company of men in shirts and jeans, not overtly armed, butunmistakably Security. They had not come from the closedmain door.

Everyonepresent on the terrace, including, till woken, the still-snoring Fiddy, hadbeen ‘escorted’ inside.

Theywere shut in a narrow side room, that luckily (or logistically) had access to alavatory, and here Sedden went to vomit, and then Fiddy, and then around andaround again, one by one, bothpolitely taking their turns, waiting, gagging in tissues, until the otherstaggered out from each bout.

Ballhad, it seemed, got rid of everything he needed to that way. He sat on thefloor – the room had only one chair, and democratically none of them used it.

Whoeverwas there, aside from seeking and exiting the toilet, kept static and silent.The only noises issued from the lavatory.

(Carverhad thought briefly of his father’s aggressive, expressive vomitings. Pushedthe memory away.)

Aboutan hour after, all of them were ushered to yet another area, a sort ofdormitory with ten bunks, and another adjacent wash-room.

Carverlay down, and watched the darkness, which was only a darker light. (None ofthis was like the period when this ‘place’ had first taken him.) He drifted asleeponce or twice, once woken by one more bout of strenuous puking in the washroom.Donna came to mind now, at the house.

Inthe first light – dawn presumably – how long had they been here, it seemed morehours than maybe dawn would take to return – five o’clock? Six? – Carver wasspoken to quietly by one of the jeaned security men. No names were awardedeither way. “Get up, please. I’ll take you up.” And one more of this labyrinthinewarren’s steel lifts, and then another succession of corridors, and after thesethe opening sky in windows, yellowish overcast today, and a view of trees, andsurely – the sheds – And then his own allotted room, with its sea view and time-panel.

“Beready for 10 a.m., please,” said the man. “Somebody will be up to take you.”

“Where?”said Carver.

Theman said nothing. The door was shut behind him. But not locked.

Carverdid as he was told, naturally.

By10 a.m., unbreakfasted, but clean, dressed and ‘ready’, two men entered whowaved him out, and down, and around, (lifts, corridors, annexes, blindedwindows), to the hot room with the wooden floor, and the three others and thebicycle and the judging panel. (And Any Judge’s Main Verdict would be what?)

The thin womanwith the slight Italian accent said, “Well, we have listened to you all. Fromwhat has been recorded by Security – aside from the interruptive glitching,when sight and sound were lost – your accounts seem to tally with our own.”

Shewas – was she? – a little like Silvia. Silvia Dusa.

Whowas dead. Also dead. But no. Too thin. Yet the hair, eyes – that circlinggesture of her right hand, expressive and non-English despite the inevitable probabilityboth she, and at least one of her parents, had been born in Britain –

Theinterrogation/interview/trial had lasted three hours. During the first hourthey had been told, over and over, in varying forms, and as if they had notbeen present, the facts of Charlie (Charles Michael Slade Hemel)’s finalbicycle ride. After that a recess was called. The panel walked out of the doorbehind the desk, three skirt-suited women entered, and Sedden, Ball, Fiddy andCarver were offered by them water, tea, coffee, crisps and sandwiches. OnlyCarver and Fiddy accepted. Carver ate a little. Fiddy, made more capacious ittranspired by barfing, ate three sandwiches and drank a large bottle ofPerrier, only then going off decorously to crap and or pee, returning hale andhearty, so Van Sedden cursed him, before being shushed by Ball. (This lavatory layjust outside the hot room. You had to knock on the hot room’s outer door,explain your mission, and were then let through and subsequently back in. Fiddyhad done all without shame. Practiced?)

Thenext one hour and forty-four minutes,