Engineman - Eric Brown [76]
Or perhaps, she told herself, I'm trying to convince myself that he knew nothing of the origins of the plague in the first place.
She descended through the cacti garden, which in her childhood she had considered so symbolic of her father: dry, prickly, and menacing.
Her heart pounding, she walked up the timber steps to the front door. Hesitantly, she pushed the call-bell and waited. The seconds seemed to last forever. How should I greet him, she wondered? Just breeze in shit-tough, or stand here smiling at him like Daddy's little girl returned?
Minutes passed, and she reached up hesitantly and touched the sensor pad. Ten years ago it had been programmed to accept her palm-print... and now the door swung slowly open. She stepped inside, crossed the hall and paused outside her father's study.
The door was open, and she glanced into the room.
The painting... her painting. Conversion.
As if in a daze, she moved into the room and crossed to the painting.
She experienced once again the sense of transcendence that had overwhelmed her in the cave of the Lho and, again, three years later when she had converted in the Church at Montparnasse. The oil showed a woman in rapture, laid out naked, being transported through an effulgent starscape by shadowy bearers who might have been aliens or cowled Disciples.
On the wall below it was the photograph of Eddie and herself she had sent her father on her conversion.
As if she needed any further proof she saw, across the room on his desk, a leather-bound volume of the Book of The Lho.
Ella stared at the painting again, and wept.
The realisation of the danger she was in came too late.
She heard the flier, the crunch of boots on gravel, and only then did she begin to feel afraid.
A voice, amplified through a loud-speaker: "Ella Hunter - come out with your hands in the air!"
She looked through the window. Armed militia stood between the cacti in the front garden. She slipped from the study, moved to the back of the house. Was it too much to hope that the militia would not have the back garden covered? There was a bolt-hole in the igneous rock beside the lagoon. If she could reach it, lose them, make her way up the track to where her bike was hidden...
She opened the door and slipped out.
A dozen militia-men trained rifles on her. She heard movement in the villa behind her.
"Put your hands in the air," said one of the guards in a slow, bored drawl, "and get the fuck down here now!"
Ella raised her hands and walked calmly down the steps to where the militia waited on the racquet-ball court. The only hope she had was to make them think she would come without a struggle.
Then she made a run for it towards the lagoon.
The first bullet hit her in the thigh, the second in her shoulder. She fell, screaming - hardly able to believe they'd shot her. A phalanx of legs came into view, blurred through tears of pain. She tried to climb to her knees. Something solid slammed into the back of her head. She hit the ground, face first. A small voice told her that the only way to oppose them was with defiance. She knelt, attempted to climb to her feet. Another blow cracked the base of her skull, almost knocking her senseless. She collapsed again and moaned. Someone swung a boot and kicked her in the face. She felt her jaw crack, tasted blood. More kicks from the crazed militia registered like starbursts in her head. She wondered how much more pain she could take before she passed out.
But more than the pain - more than the agony of bullet wounds and broken bones - what hurt most of all was the sound of their laughter.
Chapter Thirteen
The Chagal was an exclusive restaurant on the Left Bank overlooking the river. The scene through the window from Hunter's table - the central dome and the hydrofoils on the Seine - contrasted with the restaurant's old-fashioned interior of polished brass, rosewood and potted palms. The waiters wore white and were discreet, and the brandy was the finest he'd tasted in years.
Hunter felt calm and relaxed for the first time in a long while.