Engineman - Eric Brown [80]
Hunter stared about him. He could almost believe he'd been miniaturised and set down in the Amazon jungle. On all sides, great blooms and vines had grown through rents in the mesh, impeding their progress.
He came to the number forty-six painted on a board wired to the mesh on his left. He ducked into the narrow corridor. The collar of mesh finished before the door, and the jungle had poured into the gap as if intent on invading the building. The door was ajar, admitting vines and creepers. Hunter pushed it further open. In the dark hallway he could just make out the shadowy shape of a flight of stairs. He noticed the entrance of a lift, but decided not to trust the mechanical apparatus of such a dilapidated building.
Sassoon entered behind him.
"I'll be able to look after myself now, thank you, Mr Sassoon," Hunter said.
His bodyguard nodded. "I'll stay down here."
Hunter climbed the stairs, broken glass and perished linoleum crunching underfoot. Spectacular drifts of fungus covered the walls, flock-textured. Hunter came to the first landing and climbed the second flight of stairs. By the time he reached the fourth floor he was out of breath and more than a little nervous. Dying sunlight slanted through a window, illuminating damp and unpainted walls. Hunter approached a door daubed with the number twenty-four. The words of greeting he had rehearsed over and over were a jumble in his head. Heart hammering, he knocked. At his first touch the door swung open. He found a light switch on the wall and turned it on. For a second he feared that she had indeed moved out, but then revised his opinion. Had she moved out, she would surely have taken her possessions. The narrow hall was stacked with cardboard boxes full of clothes, in lieu of wardrobes; wooden cartons containing chipped cups and plates, pristine canvasses and plastic back-boards for plasma-graphics. He cleared his throat, called out, "Ella?" He moved down the corridor, squeezing past the boxes. Dust covered every horizontal surface, but he suspected that this was more the artist's aversion to housework than any indication that she'd moved out, for whatever reason, and left her possessions - at least, he hoped so. Of course, there were always other possibilities in a neighbourhood like this...
"Ella!" His call lingered in the sultry air.
He pushed open the first door on the left and entered a lounge. It was furnished with an ancient four-piece suite, none of the pieces matching. No carpet, just bare floorboards. The walls were daubed with a yellow and green psychedelic mural. In the corner of the room was a small area of wall-paper, carpet, and a new-looking recliner, situated before a power point and the antenna of a communications vid-screen, but there was no sign of a set. The pathetic show of respectability brought tears to his good eye. He wondered if the screen had been stolen - certainly it would be the only thing in the room worth taking.
Then he saw the stack of photographs wedged between the cushion and the back-rest of the settee. He sat down, sorted through the thick drift. There were a few pictures of Ella before she left home, at school, on holiday; a slim, pretty olive-skinned girl with long black hair, so painfully like her mother. Most of the photographs were of Ella since arriving on Earth: with a crowd of her bizarre artist friends, at parties and street performances, with the solid, stolid Engineman she lived with. In these pictures, she was a pale, starved-looking shaveskull, and in none of them was she smiling.
At the very bottom of the pile, Hunter found a picture of Marie, his wife...
Its sudden appearance, after so many photos of Ella standing seriously beside her work, caused him to gasp. He stared at the photograph. It showed Marie leaning over a sea-wall on braced arms, her shoulders hunched, her