La Femme Read online

  Mornings she cleansed her face with a salt facial scrub in the bathroom mirror, washed her skin clean until it was as smooth as stone. She wore the professional skirt suit in which she had attended Grantham’s interview, and imagined the one-way exchange she had with the computer as if she were dealing with clients in a tax office. Come evening, she glammed up from the contents of her make-up bag, overly rouging her lips, choosing clothes she reserved for the occasional decadent party, using the corridor as a catwalk as she sauntered back and forth towards the earthenware pot and the mirror above it. Wondered if Roche could witness her transformation, or whether it was only Grantham who wondered what he had done.

  9-2-4-3-2

  4-4-6-7-2

  0-9-7-2-7

  2-8-2-7-4

  7-4-8-6-3

  *

  Apricot began to find her relationship with Vespertine was a destructive one. Compared to her mundane lifestyle waiting around for something to happen, Vespertine’s was one of glamour and public presence. Vespertine was the one who existed beyond the corridor and its four rooms. Vespertine had a life which extended to all corners of the globe, her voice reaching anyone who tuned in, and possibly affecting some of those listeners deeply, personally; whereas Apricot’s circle of influence was limited, her interactions all one way: either electronically through email or via the dumb waiter returning empty plates.

  One morning, after a shower, after wondering how many showers she had taken downstairs during how many mornings, Apricot remembered that Roche wasn’t simply an object of fantasy for Vespertine’s occasionally tremulous outbursts, but that he had been a linguist working with her to solve the Linear A code.

  The language was written on fragments of stone tablets, a Cretan writing system found at Knossos alongside a later language eventually decoded and known as Linear B.

  It was then that Apricot gathered together the printed lists of numbers she had retained in what she had designated to be an out-tray beside the broadcasting equipment and gave herself the task of deciphering the meaning.

  Within the confines of the rooms which now constituted her existence, she began to unravel the meaning of her life.

  A smile returned to Apricot’s face which was borrowed from Vespertine’s.

  She poured herself into the numbers. Made lists of those which occurred more frequently than others. Equated the frequent numbers with some of the more popular vowels. Broke each set of numbers into smaller sets and merged some of the sequences together. She had to do this literally, tearing up the paper and reforming it in a collage. Before she left Softwood she was determined to know its secrets. Her days began to recapture the intrigue she had first found at being there. Apricot began to consider herself a match for Vespertine.

  After a number of indeterminate days fraught with frustration, she returned her breakfast toast to the dumb waiter with the crusts shaped to spell pen.

  The implement arrived with her evening meal.

  5-5-6-4-3

  7-8-3-6-3

  1-1-2-3-2

  1-8-7-6-3

  0-3-5-0-0

  Vespertine signed off, removed her headphones, and gazed into her image dulled by the blackness of the monitor. She listened intently. As usual, apart from a low hum associated with the equipment, her rooms were silent. She focussed on the image of a spy she had created, the one who was eagerly listening to and transcribing her broadcasts. He was broad shouldered, carried humour with his intelligence, not unlike Roche. She wondered what Roche would think of her now, if she ascended the stairs and found the door open. Surely he couldn’t equate her with the mousy Apricot? Surely there would be no holding back.

  She rose from the desk and went to stand in the corridor before the mirror. She wore an ankle length black dress, low cut at the front and also at the back. Her lips were rouged and mascara visibly dripped from her eyelashes. She wanted to dye her brunette hair black, to complete the ensemble. Instead she leant forwards and imprinted a kiss on the mirror, left it for Apricot to clean, before she made her way languorously to bed, wishing Roche were watching her every step.

  *

  Start with the number you first thought of.

  Apricot woke to find her head laying on a sheaf of papers. The printed numbers were underscored in blue ink. Arrows pointed from one to another, like a map of international airways. She rubbed sleep out of the corners of her eyes and stumbled across to the bathroom to splash water on her face, stepping over a black dress she couldn’t remember discarding.

  Emerging from the bathroom in vest top and pants she returned to the numbers. They swam independently of her gaze. She squeezed her eyes tight, opened them again. The numbers refused to remain static. She shook her head, but the jumbling remained. I’m going crazy, she thought. There’s something I’m not seeing.

  The realisation made her sit bolt upright.

  Might it not be the numbers which were the key to the code, but the spaces between?

  She ran down the corridor to the radio room. Vespertine had recorded each and every broadcast. Apricot donned her headphones and played them back, as many as she could to confirm her suspicions. She could hear tones in the background which hadn’t been evident when the broadcasts were made. Could it be that the voice was simply an aid to tuning into the correct frequency, with the actual coded message being sent by modulating the tones, such as with burst transmission?

  She shook her head. There was more to it than that. She focused on the spaces between the sets of numbers, on the hiss of white noise, the gradation in tones. She suddenly tore off the headset. She had heard voices, she had heard words being transmitted between the numbers.

  Still in her vest and pants she ran up the spiral staircase and banged her fists on the door until the skin came off her knuckles.

  She slid to the ground, leant tight into the corner. Vespertine found her that way when evening came.

  She picked her up. Carried her down the staircase. Into the domain of ghosts.

  3-4-5-6-7

  3-2-5-6-7

  7-8-6-2-2

  When Apricot woke she found herself on the floor of the broadcasting suite. Adjacent to her, Vespertine was reading numbers off a sheet of paper, her voice inflecting at the end of each series of five.

  2-3-2-3-1

  7-6-5-4-3

  2-4-5-7-8

  Apricot moved into a sitting position, her back against the wall. She rubbed her eyes, bit the inside of her mouth. Vespertine kept reading numbers, until eventually she signed off with that single word.

  She turned to face her. “We’re working on different things,” she said, her voice echoed, as if in a dream. “Your job is to understand the numbers, mine is to detect ghosts through electronic voice perception. Whilst I read the numbers, the machine records. The machine records everything. The voice tunes the channel. Don’t you see how that works?”

  “I need out,” said Apricot, softly.

  “We both need out, darling.”

  Vespertine’s voice was low and throaty. Apricot goosebumped.

  “You’re not on the floor,” Vespertine said.

  *

  Apricot’s hair was tied tight at the back of her head. She sat in the chair in Grantham’s office. Roche stood behind her, with one hand on her shoulder as if he were holding her down. In reality, she appreciated the comfort.

  “Because of you,” Grantham was saying, “a lot of lives have been saved. I’m sorry we had to keep details from you. Roche and I considered that if you had simply been given the task of decoding the numbers from the outset, then the chances of success would be lessened. Your talents are not inconsiderable, but Roche was right when he insinuated a frisson of absolute determination should be injected into the work. I hope – in retrospect – that makes sense.”

  Apricot nodded. It had been two days since she was released from the cellar, over five weeks since her conversation with Vespertine. She considered charges of unlawful detention, but with the brains of the country against her and issue
s of national security at risk, she knew nothing would come of it.

  She had never been broadcasting the numbers. She had been given numbers already broadcast, and then coerced into a situation where she felt compelled to decode them. But this didn’t explain the voices. Grantham and Roche knew nothing about them. She kept them as quiet as Vespertine.

  “A vacation is needed,” smiled Grantham; the look sat odd on his face. “Your choice.”

  Away, thought Apricot. Away, thought Vespertine. They needed to be away from Softwood and all the covert activities it contained, some of which only they knew.

  But away wasn’t where the discoveries would be made, where the satisfaction would come. They had tapped into knowledge that couldn’t be hidden, which they needed to nurture to reap its full potential. That was where the acclaim lay: not with Linear A, nor decoding the numbers. But in the terrible secrets of Softwood revealed by the ghosts. Those harboured by Grantham and Roche.

  “I’ll stay,” Apricot said. She saw Vespertine nod. They would remain to destroy that which they loved.

  Soleil

  Adele Kirby

  I

  She went by the name of Soleil. Previous aliases included the masculine as well as the feminine, not to mention various honorific titles and impersonal alpha-numeric codes. She was ‘Wanted’ – with definite capitalisation – although quietly, on secret databases seen only by the Sauris System’s version of the 00 agent: serious people with polite words such as ‘enforcer’, ‘counter-intelligence’ and ‘exempt from the rules of law’ in their job descriptions. She had been one of those also, in her time.

  She was terrifyingly competent in all matters of violence. She was difficult to find and harder still to bait. And on this particular occasion, she was wearing a dress that made her impossible to miss. It did not so much hug as caress the female form, of which hers was a fine example; the kind of creation that made every woman subconsciously tug down or hoist up her own dress as appropriate, and made every man want to dig his fingers through its sleek, shining folds to experience the terrain of the taut body below.

  In short, the dress was as subtle as a punch to the stomach. And it had a similar physiological impact on the world at large: whether of lust or envy, it caused many a shortening of breath as Soleil proceeded, with the sort of sensual grace liable to cause traffic accidents, between the space dock and the Excelsius Pavilion. Someone had thrown a gala party in the most prestigious venue in the Galactic State for the sole purpose of gaining her attention. It seemed only fair to dress to impress, so she had done so in a colour that was the bold match of her nails, the exact shade of her lips, the vivid scarlet of blood spilled on snow.

  II

  He answered to the name Eclipse. Even he could not recall all the names he had assumed in a lifetime that exceeded the cycle of stars. He had watched civilisations rise and fall, like so many waves erasing footprints in sand. Few folk knew enough about him to know how Wanted he would be if they did. Names he had worn and deeds he had done echoed through stories shared between the planets of the Sauris System – but individually, unconnected, as anonymous as the face he wore now.

  He knew everything there was to know about staying alive in the physical sense; it was staving off the mental boredom of ages that presented the challenge. There was little that he wanted and only one thing that he needed. On the occasion of their historic encounter, he was working as a waiter at the most famous venue in the Sauris Galactic State. At a party, arranged at his behest solely for the benefit of a woman who was not even technically invited. The event had been unwittingly funded by several powerful figures with shadowy connections to Sauris’ largest organised crime syndicates, all of whom were present and drinking away in blissful ignorance of their own generosity.

  He was a very good waiter, and worked the room like an artiste. Flowing amongst his guests, he casually spread misinformation about their mysterious host, flirted good-naturedly with women, irrespective of their beauty, mentally archived juicy gossip for future use, and eavesdropped on many a conversation not meant for his ears. Within half an hour he was perfectly attuned to the pulse of the crystalline space pavilion, such that he was aware of the cardiac spikes caused by the new arrival long before he laid eyes on her himself.

  Eclipse first stood very still, absently wiping pristine crystal glasses with a soft cloth, feeling the subtle – and, in some cases, less subtle – shifts in the soul of the party as it reacted to the presence of Soleil. He nodded approvingly to himself, for before even seeing her, he knew the colour of her dress: scarlet red. Like lying lips, the blood of the dying, or the flaming heart of a sun.

  III

  Eclipse subtly shifted his serving patterns to follow the ripples left by his prey: an old and practiced strategy which ought to have brought him into her vicinity in minutes. Instead, she proved inspiringly elusive. It would not, of course, be within the rules of the engagement to ask his guests whether they had seen the woman in the killer red dress. He had expected her to loiter with elegant intent, allowing her innate magnetism to draw him to her – but instead, she seemed to be working the room herself, and better even than he did. He was quietly pleased to have to work for this. Everywhere he went, she had already been, leaving a trail of bothered women forced to work at competing for the attention of their distracted men. Masking sheer joy under a professionally polished veneer, Eclipse paused at a buffet table to reload his tray with eye-wateringly expensive champagne, distilled from the vapours of a supernova, while mentally mapping the crowded space.

  He sensed her presence behind him just a fraction before he noticed the distracted ripple spreading out ahead. Oh, she was good. She had made herself both easy and impossible to track. That she had found him in the meantime was so much more impressive than he could have hoped.

  Savouring the moment, he continued precisely as he was, meticulously placing the last six glasses onto his tray. She had caught him out, but he would make her wait for her prize.

  “Champagne, my lady?” he asked, turning and proffering the tray in one movement. And there she was: exactly as magnificent as he had imagined. Tall, proud, patient. A woman with all the time in the world.

  “Too kind.”

  Her voice was rich and smooth, like the brush of newly spun silk against bare skin, and without the throaty purr which often cut the tone of powerful women. She took the nearest glass, but did not drink, which made it harder for Eclipse to examine her within the bounds of polite behaviour. He was, after all, still a servant, until proven otherwise. But look he did, and what he saw were flinty silver eyes set into a sculpted face that was, disconcertingly, both familiar and strange. Soleil had deftly twisted her hair into an impressive arrangement from which rogue strands escaped, falling in fine amber ringlets over pale skin.

  “Perhaps you would prefer another drink?” he asked, indicating a wider selection of choices from the buffet table. “An Orion Starburst? Some distilled amphimel nectar? Or perhaps this rather unusual beverage?” He poured from an elegant silver tube. Two liquids emerged, one a rich dark brown, the other white. The two mixed in the glass, swirling together to release both steam and the most tantalising aroma. “I believe it’s called ‘coffee’,” he said.

  Soleil curiously exchanged her champagne for the proffered glass, a delicate crystal flute, now warm to the touch. She sipped, cautiously – and though her face immediately contorted, she admirably managed to swallow.

  “Where did you find that?” she gasped, examining the aftertaste with a kind of fascinated horror.

  “A small planet across the galaxy, accessible via wormhole only every decade or so,” Eclipse replied, charmingly servile. “Your host has spared no expense.”

  “He could have spared us all this,” she said, exchanging the flute for the champagne glass once more. “Tell me, is our mysterious host as reclusive as they say?” She fixed Eclipse with the most direct look woman has ever bestowed upon man. He felt exposed in its path, but had no idea
just how sub the text might be. If she was indeed his target, probably not very. If she wasn’t, her efforts would, alas, be wasted on him.

  “I believe ‘private’ is a more accurate term,” he said diplomatically.

  She sipped the delicate liquid, but her eyes never left him. “Only a determinedly lonely man would choose to inflict the joy of others upon his solitude so.”

  “You see this as an occasion of joy?” Eclipse asked, genuinely curious. Soleil finally released him from her piercing attention, turning her gaze instead on the party at large. Eclipse followed suit, taking in the faces surrounding them. What he saw was the Sauris upper crust at its most pretentious, the women decked in gaudy dresses and glittering jewels, the men working the current dark and mysterious look as though colour were a crime against cool. Soleil wore colour fearlessly, like a beacon in the darkness, and Eclipse – he wore black as though he were a living shadow, which was not so far from the truth.

  IV

  Looking upon the exact same room, but through her golden eyes, Soleil saw a different scene altogether. She was entertained by the manner in which her dress disarmed men, felt sympathy for the women she disconcerted, wished relief for those whose party was not going as planned, and was pleased by the laughter that rang around her. She smiled upon most of what she saw – a strange little expression, broken at the edges by sadness and envy.

  “I do see joy,” she said finally, turning back to the waiter. “Just because I cannot share in such lightness of spirit myself, does not mean I resent it in others.”

  He took that well enough instead of falling back on the defensiveness typical of most men, and this strengthened her suspicions. She was not yet, after all, certain he was her target. Images of Eclipse did not exist, but her research had been comprehensive.