The Jennifer Morgue - Charles Stross [63]
I don’t know quite what I was expecting. Explosions of sparks, spinning heads, a startling spewage of ectoplasm? I get none of it. But Marc the doorman, who managed to die of one of the effects of terminal cocaine abuse just before Ramona’s succubus could suck him dry, sighs and slumps like a dropped puppet. Unfortunately he’s not belted in so he falls across my lap, which is deeply inconvenient because we’re doing fifty kilometers an hour and he’s blocking the steering wheel. Life gets very exciting for a few seconds until I bring the car to rest by the roadside, next to a stand of palm trees.
I wind down the window and stick my head out, taking in deep gasping breaths of blessedly wormwood- and fetorfree ocean air. The fear is just beginning to register: I did it again, I realize, I nearly got myself killed. Sticking my nose into something that isn’t strictly any of my business. I shove Marc out of my lap, then stop. What am I going to do with him?
It is generally not a good idea when visiting foreign countries to be found by the cops keeping company with a corpse and a gun. An autopsy will show he had a cardiac arrest about a day ago, but he’s in my car and that’s the sort of thing that gives them exactly the wrong idea—talk about circumstantial evidence! “Shit,” I mutter, looking around. Ramona’s on her way but she’s driving a two-seater. Double-shit. My eyes fasten on the stand of trees. Hmm.
I restart the engine and reverse up to the trees. I park, then get out and start wrestling with Marc’s body. He’s surprisingly heavy and inflexible, and the seats are inconveniently form-fitting, but I manage to drag him across to the driver’s side with a modicum of sweating and swearing. He leans against the door as if he’s sleeping off a bender. I retrieve the Treo, blip the door shut, then start doodling schematics in a small application I carry for designing field-expedient incantations. There’s no need to draw a grid round the car—the Smart’s already wired—so as soon as I’m sure I’ve got it right I hit the upload button and look away. When I look back I know there’s something there, but it makes the back of my scalp itch and my vision blur. If I hadn’t parked the car there myself I could drive right past without seeing it.
I shamble back to the roadside and look both ways—there’s no pavement—then start walking along the hard shoulder towards Orient Beach.
IT’S STILL MORNING BUT THE DAY IS GOING TO BE baking hot. Trudging along a dusty road beneath a spark-plug sky without a cloud in sight gets old fast. There are beaches and sand off to one side, and on the other a gently rising hill-side covered with what passes for a forest hereabouts—but I’m either overdressed (according to my sweating armpits) or underdressed (if I acknowledge the impending sunburn on the back of my neck and arms). I’m also in a foul mood.
De-animating Marc has brought back the sense of guilt from Darmstadt: the conviction that if I’d just been slightly faster off the ball I could have saved Franz and Sophie and the others. It’s also confirmed that my dreams of Ramona are the real thing: so much for keeping a fig leaf of deniability. She was right: I’m an idiot. Finally there’s Billington, and the activities of his minions. Seeing that long, hungry hull in the distance, recognizing the watcher on the quay, has given me an ugly, small feeling. It’s as if I’m an ant chewing away at a scab on an elephant’s foot—a foot that can be raised and brought down on my head with crushing force should the pachyderm ever notice my existence.
After I’ve been walking for about half an hour, a bright red convertible rumbles out of the heat haze and pulls up beside me. I think it’s a Ferrari, though I’m not much good at car spotting; anyway, Ramona waves at me from the driver’s seat. She’s wearing aviator mirrorshades, a bikini, and a see-through silk sarong. If my libido wasn’t on the ropes from the events of the past twelve