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

caught outside on the tree – brushed. But shedealt either in true physical transformation, or delusion. She could,demonstrably, cope with all things, put anything personally physical right.Probably she would not even need a toilet. It seemed not. She appeared at ease,and did not mention any necessary excursion from the shed.

He had locked her in – to protect her? Maybe. He did not analysethe fact. Coming back in and finding her, he left the door unlocked.

“They’ve gone,” she said, “yes?”

“They ran away. When I went out to them.”

“Yes. That could happen. Drawn near to you, or scared off. Ananimal with a campfire.”

Carver did not ask her why, or deny what she said. That was over. Hecrossed to the remainder of the food, took a roll with ham and began to eat it.At this she too reached out and selected the last of the salad. She ate it withher fingers.There was nothing left to drink.

He was not thirsty, the air was lush with moisture. She perhapsdid not need to drink. Or eat, come to that. She did such stuff only ascamouflage. Passing for human...

The flamboyantly ridiculous idea hopped about his brain, glad notto be either challenged or confirmed.

He stood, leaning back on the shed wall. He finished the dry breadand ham.

“Well,” he said. “What next, Silvia?”

She looked sidelong up at him. So you have noticed,her look seemed to say.

“Or,” Carver said, unemphatic and banal, “I suppose you couldexplain why you now look like her. Sound like her. Silvia Dusa, I mean. She’sdead. You’re aware of that, you told me you were. So is this some sort ofmemorial tribute? The way ordinary people might send a card, or leave a floweror a teddy bear? Like that?”

“Or,” she said, “while you slept Anjeela Merville slunk out ofthis shed, and Silvia Dusa took her place.”

“That’s a chance, certainly,” he said. “You looked this way when Ifirst saw you earlier this morning. So you two swapped over. But she’s stilldead. So I take it, Ms Dusa, you are a fucking corpse.” His tone was onlyconversationally interested, as if to be civil.

Equally everyday she replied, “But how do you know Silvia Dusa isdead, Car?”

“I saw her.” As he said it, surprising him – he had thoughthimself past such an inevitable hurdle – a coldness sank through his brain andspine.

“I believe, Car, you saw a picture of her. On a computer screen.”

“I saw the picture of her dead. She’d cut through the veinof her left arm.”

“No. She appeared to have done so.”

“It wasn’t some make-up job – some cosmetic mock-up for a filmeffect, CGI – it–” Carver broke off.

As the young woman rose and moved towards him, he retreated astep. But his back was already to the wall.

Silvia Dusa rolled up her left sleeve, and held out her leftforearm.

“Don’t” hesaid. His voice vibrated with fury and threat.

But she shook her head, a delicate party-girl quivering. And onthe creamy honey her skin now was, the vein in her arm seared up blue and unzippeditself with the swift ease of a party dress –

The blood ran. It was red. Red. It was red.

Then the blood stopped. The vein puckered, gaped, (emptied), ariver-bed in drought, blistered and ruined.

“I can cry at will. Bleed at will. I can do this, Car. And while Ido bleed, I can also apply an internal tourniquet to safeguard my life –invisibly. Plus, if you wish, I can turn my face and body, every inch, to thelook-alike of a dead woman on a mortuary slab. I can reduce my breathing andheart-rate to match. And I can hold that persona, that pose, for anything up tothirteen minutes, while the authentication is accurately collected.”

Carver made a sound. He sprang forward. He took her by the throat,with a killer’s clutch. Glaring into her face, her eyes – But here, with and inher, someone was athome. Oh yes. Behind the face and eyes of dead Silvia Dusa, a very livingcreature watched him. Her eyes were black, gold, bronze. His hands turned toputty and dropped from her. His legs gave way. It wasshe who caught him, eased him down. They kneeled together now on the floor. Sheput both her arms – each of them alike, whole and unmarked – around him.

“Car,” she said. “Again, I am so sorry. But you have to know.There’s only one way now, for any of us. Lies don’t help. Lies are over, atleast between us.”

Twenty-Four

One,two of them, buzzing across the open sky, giant insects with firm grey bodiesand long tails and a windmill each of spinning wings above their backs. Thefirst chopper was bigger, heavier.

Carver stood out on the hillside, watching them circle, far abovethe trees.

Below, once only, he saw what he guessed must be people running,the way startled antelope or zebra might out on the African plains. No one elsewas near, accept for the woman. She had stayed farther up the hill, beside thesheds. In full daylight, a softly lambent late summer’s morning, nothinglooked particularly unusual here. Just the helicopters. And a quarter mileoff, through the vegetation, the black jagged stain over the up-and-downbuilding.

She had said, the woman, they should remain on the rise, and wait.The new arrivals would deal with the rest of it. His work, her work, had beenaccomplished.

(He thought he had asked her questions, as they kneeled togetherin the shed and she held him in her arms. But, as before, very possibly he hadnot. She must only have told him other – things, elucidating what she hadalready said. There were bits of information seemingly pushed randomly intocompartments of his mind... Mantik and Croft’s outfit were rivals, Croft’speople not theguards that guarded the guards, but an undermining force set to spy on, corruptand ruin Mantik’s function of guardianship. Life-Long Enemies for sure. YetCroft’s force had not been active for the assistance of enemy foreigngovernments, instead they operated on behalf of the more obscure interiorinterests – commercial, political, religious – inherent in the Free Democracyof the sprawled British Composite – these words, Carver seemed to recall, thewoman who was now Silvia Dusa had stressed