Spares - Michael Marshall Smith [133]
Like everyone else, at first I did nothing more than stare. Arlond Maxen looked stern, and distant; but that’s the way we like them. We’re all just looking for Daddy, and sometimes fathers are unkind. Maxen was of medium height, wearing a dark suit, and his graying hair was swept back from his temples. The glasses he wore made his eyes oblique, as if even in the flesh you couldn’t touch them, as if he’d always be behind a screen. There was something so lustrous about his power and wealth, even from that distance, that for a second I was taken aback, made to wonder whether people like me could ever really affect the world of someone like him.
The moment when I stood up reminded me of something, as if the echo of a shot I’d once fired had finally rebounded off all the mountains in the world and come back into my head for good. I guess people assumed my standing up was part of the memorial service, at first, or maybe that a guest had simply lost his mind. I walked with my head up and shoulders back, straight down the center of the aisle.
The chapel was utterly silent, and my footsteps clapped like a slow knocking on some heavy door. By the time I was halfway there I began to hear murmurings, and sensed movement in the shadows over to one side of the chapel. I relied upon my prediction that the guards would not risk sending a shot off across the chapel when New Richmond’s finest citizens were hunkered down on each side, and kept on walking, my eyes fixed on Maxen, his staring back at me.
When I was a few yards away I pulled out my gun, and the atmosphere behind me changed immediately. But then it was too late. Two short paces put me a couple of steps below Maxen, the muzzle of my weapon pointed squarely at his forehead Now there was definite movement in the corners of the room, as security men came out of nowhere on the peripheries of the chapel, and rifles appeared on their shoulders. They stayed out of sight of the guests, but I could feel the red points of laser sights all over my back. They had a clear shot at me, but were waiting for a signal. Like everyone else in New Richmond, Maxen had them well trained. Added to which, if they shot me there was a real danger the shells would pass through my body and make it into Maxen, traveling much slower by then, and doing a lot of damage to their lord and master. Not a risk any of them was prepared to take.
“Tell them,” I said to Maxen. “Tell them that if anyone shoots I’ll have more than enough time to smear the back of your head all over the wall behind you.”
Maxen stared down at me, his face impassive. Though only five years my senior, he looked as if he were made out of tectonic plates. His face was tired and stoic, and reminded me of something I’d seen in his wife’s.
“You’re going to shoot me anyway, Randall,” he said. “So what difference does it make?”
“No,” I said. “I’m not going to shoot you. I was going to, but instead I’m going to do something worse. I’m going to tell these people a little story, and then I’ll let you live.”
“Then you’ll die.”
I shrugged. “It happens.”
Maxen flicked his eyes to the corners of the room and held his hands out. I walked the remaining steps toward him, my gun still centered on Maxen’s face, then turned to face the congregation.
In front of me were five hundred pairs of eyes, all unblinking. I grabbed Maxen around the neck and pressed my gun up under his chin. It fit there neatly, as if it had been waiting for this moment most of its life. Perhaps we all had—me, Maxen, and a gun. The crowd gasped quietly, too shocked to do anything except let their bodies unconsciously