Ian Hocking - The Amber Rooms

The sea air blew the drapes across his face. He stepped onto the balcony, avoiding the window. The balcony floor was cold against his bare feet. He crouched in the darkness. His pyjama cuffs fluttered. He imagined himself in the crosshairs of a weapon. The night was a vast, empty darkness. He could hear the thump of the mainland nightclubs.

Something touched his hand. He started, but it was only the smart matter returning. It resumed is massy, comforting shape.

The door to his bedroom burst from its hinges and a tinnitus filled his head.

Move it, Beckmann , he thought. Jump the gap.

He looked towards the end of the balcony.

The lights went out. All he could see was the jewelled line of the shore to his right.

This is it.

The acknowledgement of his death gave him no mastery. He felt scared, old and weak. He would die in his pyjamas, never mind Dr Hsieh’s i-Core. The technology was advanced enough to repair most bodily injury, but he did not doubt that his assailant could defeat it just as she had defeated Klutikov.

But not me , he thought. Not yet.

He hurried forward. His nerves grew tighter in anticipation of a bullet or plasma strike. He was sure that the first injury would not be fatal. It would give his assailant time to gloat. Why else kill him last?

He heard footfalls behind him. Deliberate; cold; heel-to-toe.

Beckmann pointed the gun over his shoulder, imparted full remit on target selection, and pulled the trigger. The kick hurt his wrist.

He did not turn to see the effect of the shot. He remained focused on the gap between the balconies. If he could make it across, and shoot through the window, he would be two doors away from the secure room, where he could await the Croatian authorities.

His heart thumped. Beckmann put his left fist against it once, as though marking his solidarity, and then reached for the rail. He would vault the gap like the man he had been thirty years before.

‘Beckmann,’ said a voice that might have been woven from the night itself: a wintery, thin voice, probably female. It seemed to come from all around him.

Beckmann would not stop. He told himself that he had enough forward momentum to make the jump. He remembered it as narrow, but when the dark lines of the other balcony became visible, he saw that the distance was more than two metres.

He jumped. There was enough time to feel foolish. He knew that the balcony overhung the house and the cliff; down there would be the ghostly surf, forever away, pinked by the lights of shore.

Beckmann understood, half way across, that he would not make it. The gap was too wide. He was going to fall. On instinct, his arms reached out for the rail and his fingers splayed. He released the smart matter.

There was a jolt in his shoulder. Had he been struck by a ballistic weapon, perhaps a projectile from the Moonflower automatic defences?

But it took an instant to see that the thump had come from the deploying smart matter, which had formed a cuff around his wrist. It had sent three grapnels towards the rail of the balcony. The grapnel had struck, held, and even now Beckmann was swinging painfully into the glass.

He cried out at the impact. Somehow, his arm did not break. His chest, however, slammed flush. Ribs cracked. For long seconds he hung there. He had no strength to lift himself over the rail.

The shock passed. He turned to look at his bedroom balcony. The drapes billowed. And there was something else there: a shape made of darkness. It was moving towards him.

No.

The silhouette was the perfect, final piece of puzzle he had spent his life trying to solve. He could neither articulate the puzzle nor describe its solution; but the sense of revelation overwhelmed him.

His satisfaction did not linger. It was superseded by a fear greater than any he had experienced. The fear catalysed his will. He put his left hand over his right and hauled himself up far enough for his bare toes to find an indentation on the side of the balcony.

He roared at this victory—though the sound emerged as a scream—and flopped over the rail. The smart matter grapnels rotated elegantly and released his arm before it could be wrenched. Then, in his hand, it transmuted into the gun.

Beckmann did not bother standing. He scuttled round to face the bedroom balcony and sent an intention to the smart matter: twelve projectiles, clustered.

Now.

They ablated the glass and—tech willing—his assailant.

Beckmann lay there, panting, evaluating himself. He was on his back, old, balls freezing. He was holding the gun above his belly. It shook in his grip.

He had been shouting something. The sound diminished.

There was no evidence of his assailant, but the night maintained too many shadows for him to be sure. He pictured a cloud passing from the sun and the i-Core improved his vision: to reveal a blazing, shifting scene. The bedroom drapes moved like white fire. The balcony was empty.

“Fuck,” he whispered.

With a second, the spent projectiles began returning to the gun. It kicked as the matter pebbles finished their lazy arcs and rejoined, carefully avoiding his fingers. When mass was restored, he made to pull the trigger again; this time, he intended to fire through the supports that attached the bedroom balcony to the building.

Something landed with a thud behind him.

A black hand reached down and gripped the smart matter. His hands were trapped. Before Beckmann could look up, he was lifted to his feet with irresistible force.

Beckmann whined with outrage. He was unable to move the gun or detach his hands from it. Another hand gripped his shoulder and spun him to face his assailant. The woman he saw was a distorted, kaleidoscopic caricature.

Turn off enhanced vision, he thought in desperation, but it was not a metaphor; the i-Core did not understand.

‘Sleep, sleep, sleep,’ she whispered. Her breath was foul. Her head was tilted in malignant curiosity.

Beckmann was maddened by her familiarity. He was certain that they had met before. This meeting was extraordinary in a manner he could not articulate. Had he dreamed of her? Who was she? Her name, and her role, was on the tip of his tongue.

‘I know you.’

‘Sleep,’ she repeated. ‘But don’t lie on the edge of the bed. Or a grey wolf will come and get you.’

The tinnitus increased in volume. At the same time, the woman released him and stepped back. Beckmann had no control over his body. He could only stand in the night and seethe as his right arm raised the gun to his temple. It was under her control.

‘No,’ he said, ‘not like this.’

The idea that posterity would view his death as suicide, when he had fallen in murder, gave him enough frustration to surmount his fear.

Think, Beckmann, he told himself. If I can talk, if I can move my mouth, she can’t have full control of me.

‘This is easier,’ she said.

‘Who are you?’

‘A reflection of yourself. We all were.’

He sent a discrete intention to his i-Core: an image of this woman as a scarecrow, set upon by birds, each bird pulling out her straw and until only her ragged clothes remained.

Just as Beckmann felt the i-Core within him mobilise, his vision darkened. The night seemed to fall in upon the face of the woman. Shadowed, she staggered, clutching her heart. Beckmann grinned. He smelled her perfume, incredibly familiar, but unnameable. The way her hair moved and caught the light: again, her identity unlocked a box of the greatest importance.

And then he was free. His arm dropped to his side. He swayed and stumbled against the rail. Somehow, his i-Core’s attack had worked. He looked down at his arm. It would not lift. It was still weak. It took all that remained of his will to hold the smart matter.