Doctor Who_ Cat's Cradle_ Warhead - Andrew Cartmel [44]
‘Off.’ The halogen bulbs went off instantly above Ace, dimming to warm orange for an instant before they died. She stood in the dark room listening to the hiss of the inflation apparatus and the sighing air conditioning. Then she locked the door and descended in the elevator, leaving the hotel through the restaurant entrance.
The automatic glass door slid open for her and she stepped out of the air conditioning into a solid wall of Mediterranean heat.
The pension where she slept that night was called the Blue House. It was a residential dwelling converted to a small hotel, centred on a system of narrow ancient alleys. Her room was high ceilinged, with tall cupboards and gleaming wooden floors. The sheets on the four‐poster bed smelled of mothballs. Outside there was an old iron lamp post and a tree full of sleeping birds. From the buildings on every side Ace could hear televisions and, later in the evening, the mosques starting up. From across the dark city the recorded prayers blared, echoing and frail with distortion. Ace listened at the window that looked out on to the tree, the eerie rise and fall of the voices raising the hair on her forearms. A bird moved in the dark foliage outside. Someone shouted around the corner in an alley, followed by the frantic slap of running footsteps. Another cry.
Trouble, but someone else’s. Ace listened dispassionately. She stood at the window a long time but she didn’t hear any motor scooters.
The shower was a thin lukewarm drizzle, coughing rust before running clean. It was wonderful. Ace stood under it for half an hour. Her fingertips were pale and shrivelled when she came out. She wrapped her hair in a towel, pulled on a baggy teeshirt big enough to act as a robe. ‘Thirteen Years Left,’ said the tee‐shirt in heavy black lettering. Ace unzipped the airline bag, dumping it out on the bed. The pistol was a modified Python, a heavy American handgun with a distinctive flared sight running along the top of the barrel. This model had a MIDI control system which allowed linkage with the Vickers helmet. The gun could fire upon a target selected in the helmet system. You didn’t have to pull the trigger. You just blinked your eye. It was a terrifically dangerous arrangement and a lot of people had been killed by mistake. Banned by military organizations all over the world, the system was still a best seller in the private sector.
Ace put the gun into the bed, deep under the sheets where it would be difficult for someone to see her reaching for it. The ritual reminded her of putting her teddy bear to bed, down deep where he’d be warm, when she was a child. She unknotted the towel and sat in front of the window, feet up on the cold iron radiator. When she went to bed she slept deeply, dreaming of eyes that were just holograms.
Ace woke up when she rolled over in the bed and felt the cold solid shape of the pistol pressing against her naked stomach. It left an imprint in her flesh when she got up. The echoing morning prayers drifted in through the tall windows as she dressed. She breakfasted on eggs and bread in a pideci near the pension, then walked in the direction of the sea, the direction of the Novotel. At the hotel she crossed the air‐conditioned lobby without glancing towards the front desk. The elevator was programmed to understand English. She asked for her floor and the smooth sudden rush of acceleration dragged the blood from her brain. She rode up alone, counting the flashing lights on