David Gunn - Death's head

Somehow we all end up in bed roughly an hour after the bar closes. It’s Angelique’s bed, so maybe Lisa is nervous about taking me back to her room at Golden Memories, not that I care whose bed we use. Lisa and Angelique are young, they’re blond, and both have obviously long since discarded their inhibitions, assuming they had any to begin with.

We fuck, we sleep, they drink cachaca and I nurse a beer until the cousins are sprawled in a tangle of naked limbs on a filthy mattress and I’m standing at the window watching the sun come up over the capital of my world.

Somewhere out there is a girl not that much younger than these two. She should be dead, because I should have killed her. The fact that this hasn’t happened is obviously worrying deCharge, because I can feel his voice tugging at the edge of my mind.

What? I ask.

Voices break through, far too many voices, and I find myself on my knees. When I look around the girls are still sleeping, but the sun is a little higher in the sky. Mr. deCharge is in the mix inside my head, his voice more urgent than the others.

Where are you, he says.

Sick, I tell him.

His voice comes from a distance, bleached of its worry and anger. Only the length of time it’s been demanding my attention lets me know he’s upset.

What do you mean sick?

I feed him a memory of my vomiting, so real and vivid I can almost feel him lurch back to escape its full horror.

Shit, he says.

Yeah, I agree. And then I ask a question that’s been troubling me. How do I get rid of the kyp?

You don’t, he tells me, but in asking I’ve reassured him. Mr. deCharge thinks I’m worrying about the fact that my kyp is not working properly and is making me vomit…well, as far as he knows.

Where are you now?

Something stops me from telling him the truth. Out for a walk. Where are you?

Waiting for you.

I nod, slipping three fat silver coins from my pocket. One goes on Lisa’s side of the bed, another goes on Angelique’s side, and the last goes into Lisa’s shoe. She’ll know to keep quiet about that one.

“Buy a dress,” I scrawl on a scrap of paper.

And then I’m out of there, eyes scanning the street to check if anyone’s been waiting for me. Dogs and a hen, a cat on a high roof, and a broken-tailed skink chewing a fly halfway up a filthy wall. It’s still early and I need to be somewhere else.

Can you hear me?

Just about, I say. It’s erratic. I can’t believe it’s meant to be like this.

It isn’t.

And I can’t get it out?

No, he tells me, sounding reassured by my repeated questions. You’re just going to have to work with that one. He listens to me swear and agrees that a faulty kyp is not ideal.

I’m on my way back, I tell him.

He hesitates.

Unless you want me to go straight there?

Where?

The Thomassis’ villa.

I can almost hear him wrestle with the questions, and behind his anxiety lie other voices, a mix of direct questions and fragments of thought. It’s like listening to a badly tuned military radio with everyone talking at the same time. Somehow that doesn’t seem right to me.

The voices, I say to him before he’s had time to answer my previous question. Should I be able to hear them?

And it’s his turn to swear. You can hear other voices?

Hundreds, I say. It’s like a permanent headache. It’s one of the things that’s making me sick… This is a lie obviously, but it’s a good lie.

You can turn them off…

A wind almost sweeps me from my feet. When it’s gone, I’m sagged against a wall being watched by a puzzled boy who’s clutching a broken stick of bread. Seeing me stare back, the child makes off before I can steal his family’s breakfast.

You there? deCharge asks. I lost you for a moment.

Yeah, I tell him. Still here.

I can turn it off?

Voices get louder in my head as I think about them and then fade, leaving silence and the voice of the little man who came to see me the night before. I turn him off completely, and then turn him back on again. A hundred voices, one voice, no voices. It’s all possible. I can hear deCharge properly now, complete with nuances.

What happened? he asks.

Don’t know. Although I do. OctoV’s just taken time out of conquering some part of the known galaxy to show me how to turn down the volume on knobs and sliders I didn’t even know existed.

Got you, says the man.

Yeah…

How does it feel?

Clear, I tell him. Like we’re in the same room.

His relief is obvious. And the voices?

Gone. All I can hear now is you.

Fuck, he says, then repeats it, and for the first time I understand how worried he’s been, how scared for himself as well as for me. First time that’s ever happened, he tells me. Didn’t even know kyp could glitch. He thinks we’re bound together by adversity, so I throw him another crumb, something to feed back up the line.

My biology’s fucked, I tell him. Self-repairing. I guess it’s been fighting the kyp, that’s probably why it glitched, but everything’s cool now.

That stuff about my biology is checkable, and I know for a fact someone will check; they’d better, because I’m not going to forgive the general my experience with the slug for some time, if ever…

You wait, he tells me, while I check where we go from here.

I shake my head, watched only by the black cat, which is busy necking what’s left of that broken-tailed skink. As the skink’s head disappears into the cat’s gullet, I remember that deCharge can’t see me, and realize he’s probably still waiting for my answer.

No, I say, I’m going in.

Wait, he tells me, but I’ve already broken the connection.

History is like a sandstorm. I can’t remember who told me that. But you need to choose carefully where you sit it out, because the silent center is often more dangerous than out on the noisy edge.

I’m in a bar on the far edge of Zabo Square when word comes in that a day’s work is available, a bar favored by ex-soldiers.

A dozen men stand up as one.

The work is available because I’ve called ahead to warn Senator Thomassi that a rival faction intends to upset his wedding. He probably still has people trying to track my call.

We’re to gather outside Villa Thomassi. The money will be good but only professionals need apply.

“Where have you worked?” asks a hard-faced man when I finally get to the front of the line. He’s head of security for the Thomassis, an ex-legionnaire judging by the way he holds himself.

“That’s confidential.”

The head of security glares at me. “You’ll need to do better than that.”

The Death’s Head dagger is in my hand before he has time to blink. In my other hand is the laser blade, although he doesn’t realize what it is until I cut a chunk out of a sandstone gatepost beside him.

“Does it really matter?”

His eyes flick from blade to blade, widening. “Is that real?”

“Which one?”

“The dagger.”

I nod, flip it over in my hand, and offer it to him hilt-first. He takes it gingerly, as if the handle might be poisoned.

“This really yours?” he asks, and then tells me the rate of pay before I’ve had time to answer.

Give terror a black uniform and a grinning logo, and let superstition do the rest. It’s a neat trick if you can pull it off. Just suggesting I’m ex-Death’s Head is enough to get me this gig.

So now I’m outside an ornate cathedral, trying not to melt in the heat as sweat trickles down my ribs inside my leather coat and a crowd of ragged children gather to watch the show. They’re drawn by the decorated hover and the music from inside, and by the weapons in the hands of the hard-eyed men lined up around me.