La Femme Read online

  *

  She turned from the activity of the pavilion to observe the bright aura of Ozai, rotating lazily below the massive viewing windows for which the Pavilion was so famous. Ancient Ozai: once home to the Aurealus, birthplace of the Age of Angels, a planet destroyed by its own internal war a thousand years ago, and ravaged still by fires which would burn a thousand years more until every flammable gas in the land and atmosphere had been finally consumed. From space, the Planet of Fire was a sight of such breath-taking beauty that it was easy to forget its horrific past.

  V

  It was not a coincidence that Eclipse had so carefully arranged to meet Soleil here, and in her face, lit by the stratospheric glow of the burning planet, he could see that she too knew this to be true. Also, that she was waiting for his next move.

  “Would you look at that: your TBS scanner isn’t working,” she said casually, without even turning. Her words came exactly as Eclipse discovered the malfunction for himself. “Shame, that.” She smiled winningly. “Now you have no idea what I am.”

  This was intriguing for three reasons: firstly that he had designed the trans-bio signature scanner himself, and knew the exact locations of each of the very rare – and even more expensive – three models in existence. Secondly, the scan was retinally activated, so he was certain he had not given away its use.

  “And here it’s been operating perfectly all night until now,” he said, equally casually, even though until that moment, he would have bet body parts that the technology to disrupt the TBS did not yet exist in Sauris.

  Thirdly, she had indeed routed his most accurate method for identifying who – and, as she had rightly pointed out, what – she was.

  “Clever technology for a table waiter,” she observed.

  “Sophisticated defence for an invited guest,” he replied, placing his tray safely on the buffet table.

  She smiled. “I do hope that wasn’t the only clever trick up your sleeve.”

  “Of course not. I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours.” Eclipse patted an inconspicuous bulge in his neat jacket.

  Soleil was less concerned than disillusioned. “A gun? Really?”

  “Your hands where I can see them, please.”

  “You’re making two poor assumptions here,” she said. “The first, that I have in fact been invited.” She raised her hands. “The second, that you’re the only person here with retinal relay contact lenses.”

  Eclipse promptly shot Soleil, and was intensely disappointed when she went down.

  VI

  The first thing Soleil saw when she opened her eyes was a picture of melancholy. Eclipse sat just feet away, sloped forward, chin on his hands, watching her. Her hands were tied behind a gilded chair, its ornamentation biting into her arms. Her legs, however, were elegantly crossed. She suspected she ought to feel a slight thrill about this, but was unable to do so. She knew she ought to feel nauseous as a result of the stun ray, so blinked with faux grogginess and put on an appropriately unimpressed face. She did however spare them both the understandable but dull ‘What is the meaning of this?’ dialogue.

  “This hasn’t gone to plan, has it?” she asked instead.

  “Not entirely, no,” Eclipse agreed.

  “You were expecting someone else?” she asked, after they had sized one another up a little too long.

  “Something else, yes,” Eclipse said. “The stun would only have worked against organic life forms. It would not have worked against my target.”

  “You thought I was, what… an AI?” Soleil provocatively extended a sculpted leg. “I don’t know whether to be flattered or offended.”

  “She is a remarkable piece of work. A unique achievement that rivals even you in both looks and skill,” he assured her.

  “Then I shall choose to be flattered. You have gone to a great deal of effort to find her: I am sorry to disappoint.” Soleil cocked her head to one side, contemplating her situation. “What is it you want with her? You strike me as an intellectual villain: I appear to be quite unravaged.”

  “You assume that I am the villain of the piece.” Eclipse looked, if anything, weary at the suggestion.

  “Well, as the only person in the room who has been shot and tied to a chair, I’m struggling to see you in a heroic light,” Soleil replied coolly. “Lack of ravaging aside, that is. For which I thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Though if you’d like to try –?”

  “I’m sure I can restrain myself,”

  “You don’t find me attractive?” Soleil shot back.

  “That’s not what I said.” He paused. “But… you find me attractive?”

  “I find you intriguing, which is much more interesting. But given a choice between being shot and tied up some more and ravaged, I’ll take the latter, if it’s all the same to you.”

  “Ravaging is not really my style.”

  “Being tied up isn’t really mine though, either.” Soleil lifted her no-longer-bound hands “You don’t mind?”

  Eclipse frowned, but said, “Be my guest.”

  “Thank you.” She rubbed circulation back into her reddened wrists. “So, your target. She is the villain of this story?”

  He paused before answering, as if choosing his words carefully. “She is a danger, yes.”

  “To whom?”

  “To you.”

  Soleil lifted an already arched eyebrow.

  “To me, to everyone,” he continued. “To the future of this galaxy.”

  “And is she this dangerous by intent? Or involuntarily, by design?” Soleil asked. “She is an Artificial Intelligence, after all. She is as she is made.”

  “She is something more. Something special.” Eclipse stood quickly. “And she is my concern, not yours. I apologise for wasting your time. I will not impose on you further. Please, avail yourself of my more civil hospitality back in the pavilion.”

  Soleil ignored his politely directing arm.

  “What will you do to her, if you find her?”

  “When,” he corrected, still waiting for her to leave. “When I find her, I will do what must be done. Without malice, prejudice or pleasure.”

  Soleil rose. She pulled her dress down to a point of passable modesty, and proceeded with long, languid steps towards Eclipse, her heels click, click, clicking across the polished floor. With supple hips swaying and immaculately defined legs almost crossing stride by stride, hers was the stalk of the feline huntress. It would take a strong man to remain e/motionless in the face of that approach. Eclipse, however, did not so much as flinch, even when her red lips were inches from his ear, her breath warm upon his cheek.

  “Then I think we have reached an understanding,” she whispered.

  VII

  Eclipse moved with impressive speed. At such, he should have been easily able to twist, snake one arm around Soleil’s neck, lock her wrists with the other and drop her to her knees within seconds. Soleil, however, reacted even more quickly. Eclipse’s lock closed on thin air: she had already anticipated his move. Rather than simply evading, she turned his own action against him, and it was Eclipse who ended up on his knees.

  He briefly tested her iron grip, and she didn’t doubt that against a normal woman, even most men, he could have extracted himself with comparative ease. But Soleil was not normal. Arguably, she was not technically a woman either.

  She could have broken his neck then, and they both knew it. But she did not.

  “Finish it!” he said grimly. “Otherwise you have my word that I will keep hunting you.”

  “And I will keep evading you.” She let him go. He was on his feet immediately, coming at her with speed, skill and agility. And she did, indeed, simply keep evading him. But Eclipse was a worthy adversary and she pitied him his mortal disadvantage, so she chose to route the stalemate. She froze, when she ought to have moved. He smashed a hand against her shoulder. The sound was almost as sickening as the shock of pain.

  “I do not wish
to, Eclipse… but eventually, if I have to, I will kill you,” she said, without malice, prejudice or pleasure. “I have hundreds of years’ experience in this matter.”

  “Against my thousands of years of staying alive? You will need them, Soleil,” he said, though nursing his broken hand.

  Thousands of years? Soleil’s research had suggested that the body Eclipse wore was not his own, but this was unexpected, if not impossible.

  “Tell me who you are,” she said.

  “You know I cannot.”

  Soleil nodded. Anywhere in Sauris, the truth of her identity would cost her freedom if not her life. She understood entirely.

  “I think I know someone who can, though,” she said, almost apologetically. “Everyone has a leverage point.”

  Eclipse looked entertained at this idea. “I think you’ll find I have long since run out of levers.”

  “There’s always one. I’m sorry.”

  Soleil blinked, activating a retinal relay response: a sharp electrical pulse from her ship that momentarily interrupted the brain activity of every living creature on the Pavilion. Throughout the gala party, guests experienced momentary dizzy turns and nausea. Eclipse, however, collapsed.

  VIII

  Like a puppet with cut strings, his legs simply gave way. The moment he hit the ground, Soleil hauled him back up to his knees, her face now hard: there was no time to play.

  “Wakey wakey,” she ordered. The body that Eclipse formerly wore stirred slowly, but it was another person looking back at her now through normal, confused, grey-blue eyes.

  “Wha… What happened…?” not-Eclipse managed, clearly disoriented and distressed.

  “I just happened to Eclipse. You’re home alone right now. You can thank me later.”

  With one arm, Soleil lifted him bodily by the collar and dumped him unceremoniously back on his chair.

  “Focus. Now,” she ordered. The man’s gaze started the climb from her waist to her face, but became side-tracked along the way by the inviting depth of her cleavage.

  “On me,” she growled, adding a sharp slap for effect. He groaned. She sighed, and straddled him. He stiffened bodily between her legs, this time with a small gasp, but he was alert at least.

  “This is strictly between you and me, you understand?” she said. “He won’t understand.”

  The man nodded.

  “Who is Eclipse?”

  To his credit, the helpless man managed a defiant shake of the head. Soleil shifted her hips slightly and reached to grip him intimately before repeating the question. Not-Eclipse blanched.

  “He is… a caretaker.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of everything,” he moaned. “Would you mind just letting go of…?”

  “I’m not done yet,” she snapped, giving a quick, sharp squeeze. “What does that mean? Caretaker of everything?”

  “He keeps the future – free of the past.”

  “Why? What past?”

  In answer, the wretched man managed to twist enough to look at the burning planet below. Soleil followed his gaze, and suddenly, she understood. Who Eclipse was. Why he had brought her here, of all places.

  “He is… Aurealus…?”

  Not-Eclipse nodded, his face pleading. She released her grip – only for him to convulse, his pale eyes rolling horribly into the top of his eye sockets. When they returned, the irises were the gold of Eclipse. The same colour as Soleil’s own, concealed under her silver retinal relay contact lenses.

  The state of the body gripped between her thighs changed entirely, from wild stimulation to the tension of a coiled spring.

  Eclipse was angry.

  Soleil no longer knew what she was, literally or emotionally. She remained frozen upon his lap. She knew he would be reading everything he needed to know, but she didn’t have it in her to hide a thing.

  IX

  As he read the conflict in her face, Eclipse softened. Soleil, in her turn, sagged, the crown of her head falling to rest again his chest, strands of her hair running down his shirt. The body he wore suffered an automated response, but he himself felt nothing. He wondered whether he ought to pat her back.

  He did not.

  “I take it you have the answer to your question,” he said, finally.

  Soleil released her legs and pushed back off him: the straddled position was hideously inappropriate now.

  “You played well,” Eclipse said respectfully. “Faking unconsciousness to the stun was inspired.”

  “You weren’t fooled though,” she replied hollowly.

  “No. But I had to bait you further to be sure.”

  “And I needed to know what you wanted of me.”

  “And now that you do?”

  Soleil walked slowly to the viewing window, so that Osai filled her world.

  “Tell me a story?” she asked, and bravely, because it could not be a story she wanted to hear. She sensed Eclipse’s presence close behind her. It was strangely calming. He would destroy her, but she intuitively knew he would do so with fair warning. And without malice, prejudice or pleasure.

  “There was once a beautiful planet called Osai,” he started. “Its people fought and loved and strove and failed and fought again, and after thousands of years of conflict, they found peace.”

  “The Age of Angels,” Soleil said, quietly.

  “Indeed. They built magnificent cities, terraformed other worlds into the likeness of Osai and engineered extraordinary things. The pinnacle of their achievement: the Aurealus, Artificial Emotional Intelligence so advanced, so sophisticated, it could be mistaken for its own creators.”

  “And the world knew war again,” Soleil finished. Every child of the Sauris System knew the basic fable – though Soleil of course had no childhood she could call her own.

  She turned to Eclipse.

  “And I make you think of that?” she asked.

  “You are beautiful, Soleil. But when I see you, I see my planet burn.”

  “I will never let that happen.”

  He smiled sadly, and gently brushed her cheek.

  “It is beautiful naivety that you think you have a choice in the matter.”

  “I am not Aurealus!” she insisted. “And I am no army. I am alone.”

  “You are not. Sauris has developed the technology to recreate AEI such as you a dozen times over. For thousands of years I have sabotaged such plans – but Soleil, I missed you.” He shrugged, apologetic and resolute all at once. “You cannot exist. You must not exist. Osai is my reminder of the fact.”

  “Is that is why you brought me here? To show me my ancestry?”

  “To show you your destiny. The potential for which you were created.”

  He was not being cruel, and she could not hate him for a truth.

  “The first of the Aurealus meant no harm either. I would undo its existence also, had I but the power to. I ask nothing of you that I would not do myself.”

  Soleil looked heavily upon him then, the first of the Aurealus – at least what remained – and he saw himself as she must: a program so sophisticated it had become the literal ghost in the machine, a spirit that could transcend the physical shell. A tired soul that looked back at her through the eyes of a mortal man hijacked to a life of service to an age old duty.

  “I wear the blood of many dead and dying on my hands,” she said slowly. “It was for murder that I was created. It was for death that I lived; but now, I have a soul, and it is of the living that I dream.”

  “Your existence jeopardises theirs. I am sorry, Soleil. You are but an angle in a ruthless geometry of destruction.”

  Soleil returned to her seat. She sat back down, crossed her fine legs, raised her hands, and told Eclipse to do what he must.

  X

  Eclipse too sat down again, watching her gravely.

  “I give you my permission,” she insisted, in the face of his hesitation. “I can even tell you how – although I am sure you already know.”

  “I too wear the bl
ood of many on my hands,” he said, as though trying to explain himself.

  “I know. I have heard it said that through great suffering comes great strength.” Soleil had learned this through one of her earlier incarnations. The memory of the lesson hurt her still. There was no power to be gained from inflicting suffering on others, but being the cause of it armoured the soul – even an artificial one – crushing it within hardened plates of guilt. And in Soleil – as in Eclipse – responsibility had forged a desperate, aching need for atonement. Right now, facing death, she felt that strength, born of suffering. Felt the strongest she ever had.

  For his part, and not for the first time, Eclipse found himself grappling with the bitterest of irony: that his redemption for causing the suffering of countless millions lay in the taking of yet another life. Soleil was indeed the closest he had to kin. She had rightly identified the host of the gala as lonely, but then, she would know all too well the bite of agelessness, of never being able to go home. Of having no home to go to. It occurred to him, looking upon her beautiful, flawless face, that they might be the two loneliest creatures in the universe.

  He realised he could not take her life, for her sake or his own.

  “There is one other solution,” he suddenly realised out loud. “Soleil – come with me. Travel with me.”

  Soleil stared at him.

  “And do what, exactly?” she demanded.

  “Oh, you know. Trounce evil. Put the worlds to right.” His eyes brightened at the idea.

  “So you can supervise me? That’s going to save the world?”

  “Where I’m going, I won’t need to,” he said, on his feet once more. “All I need is to take you out of Sauris. So let’s go and explore this interesting little planet no one is supposed to know about, on the other side of the galaxy, accessible by an untethered wormhole for a couple of seconds every decade or so, and next in…” he checked his watch “…about three days’ time.”