30
“No…!” I screamed.
Too late. The soldiers grabbed Lucas, the muzzles of their rifles pressing into him on all sides. Nothing we could do—everyone nearby had seen him step over that line of his own free will.
An argument immediately broke out among the soldiers—someone had forgotten the cuffs. Lucas stood passively—but his eyes moved constantly, wandering here and there, and despite the fact he’d just handed himself over, surely he was analyzing his chances of escape?
Ignoring the blame-casting soldiers, the Lieutenant raised a wristCell to his ear for a moment, then turned to an expensive limo pulled up on the double red lines just the other side of the road. At his command, the soldiers marched Lucas across to it. The window slid down, revealing—shudder—Reginald Hill. Lucas’s shoulders hunched; his head lowered slightly.
“Well, Mr. Everington, here we are once more.” Reginald Hill’s chill, smug tone carried to our ears. “Think you’re going to get your way again, do you?”
Lucas’s spine straightened, that instinctive fear draining away, and something rather like a smirk settled on his face. “Too late. I’ve got what I want.”
“Have you,” said Reginald Hill savagely. “We’ll see.” He beckoned to the Lieutenant and said a few quick, quiet words. The Lieutenant started, then saluted and turned on his heel. Barked an order to the soldiers. Lucas looked faintly amused—the smug expression slipped almost entirely from Reginald Hill’s face.
I was dimly aware of Unicorn filling in Bane in an undertone, but my attention was riveted to the slender figure being hustled over to the windowless wall of the building facing St. Peter’s Square. The soldiers stood him in the middle of it and backed up, forming a line. Lucas’s head turned one way, then the other—thinking of making a break for it? But the distance was too great.
Another order from the Lieutenant and the rifles came up. I started forward—Bane’s arms wrapped tightly around me, his hand pressing my belly—I lurched to a halt, held hostage by the tiny life inside me. What could I do, anyway? Pull out my nonLee and make an unprovoked attack on EuroGov troops? Throw everything away.
Lucas…
I stared as though sheer wanting could spirit him to safety. He stood quietly, the breeze ruffling his neat blond hair, looking down the muzzles of those guns, his head high and his face unafraid. Noticing my gaze he smiled at me—everything is all right, Margaret…
The Lieutenant’s voice cracked again, and so did the rifles.
The bullets slammed Lucas back against the wall; he left a smear of scarlet on the white stone as he fell, landing face down on the pavement. His head moved, turning slightly, his arm crept out towards something. With a muttered curse, the Lieutenant strode forward, jerked his pistol from its holster and fired twice into the center of Lucas’s back. The reaching hand fell to the ground and was still.
Dimly, I heard another order, saw out of the corner of my eye the soldiers march away, get into their transport up the main street, drive off…but I couldn’t look away from that forlorn figure, lying on the ground. Finally my head turned, almost against my own volition, and I stared into a cruel, lined face, smiling malignant triumph as it disappeared behind a rising window. The limo followed the soldiers’ truck, and I slipped free of Bane and ran across the line, ran as fast as I could, though it was far too late.
A circle of guards managed to outrun me, rushing to secure the area… I dropped to my knees beside the blood-splashed wall, caught Lucas’s shoulder and rolled him over. His green eyes stared blankly, his chest smashed, once crisp shirt bloody and torn. His hand trailed…I followed his last line of sight…a cafe…hanging baskets…and a little fuchsia with purple flowers.
My heart shook, my mind blank with horror and bewilderment. I was whispering “Why?” over and over.
Bane’s arms wrapped around my shoulders, hand knocking the box my left hand clutched, forgotten, to my chest. He was speaking, but I couldn’t make out the words.
Peeling the box from where it was practically imbedded in my flesh, I fumbled with the clasps. A solar panel nestled on the lid—it was a powered transit box of some kind. I got the lid up at last, and a cloud of cold vapor escaped. A freezer box. Some sort of plastic packet lay nestled in the ice and beside it the little gadget Lucas had been looking at—a DNA probe? The beginning of the last readout still showed on the screen:
Blake BLANK~BLANK
Then the first line of Bane’s genetic code.
It felt like my heart had been hooked on a fishing line and yanked up my throat and out of my body. I slammed the box lid down, wrestled with the clasps until they closed, and shoved it into Bane’s hands.
“What is it, Margo?” he asked again.
“Your eyes,” I choked, then the pain overwhelmed me and I threw myself on Lucas’s body. Someone was wailing in inarticulate anguish. Me…
Eventually hands began to try and drag me away, but I clung to him, trying to gather his broken form in my arms as though I could somehow protect him. I held his head in my hands and stared into his empty eyes and said his name over and over again…
“Margo! Please! We have to go, it’s not safe!”
The anguish in that beloved voice finally penetrated my grief. The hands were getting ruthless, I was about to be lifted off the ground, corpse and all. Tears blinding me, I slid the lids down over the unresponsive green eyes—let Bane drag me to my feet and away.
When we got across the white line I stopped…did I still have legs? Couldn’t tell.
“Lucas, what have you done?” I whispered.
The guards were carrying that limp form quickly across the square. I threw up on the ancient paving stones, and when I tried to straighten again, I just fell into blackness…
My head lay in Bane’s lap. The coffee table was just in front of my nose—we were on the sofa. A dull fog surrounded me…what was wrong?
Then I remembered. Lucas was dead, his chest smashed by EuroArmy bullets. Dead, because he’d sold himself to the EuroGov to get Bane’s eyes…for me.
I’d never felt anything like this agony. I’d heard guilt made any grief a hundred times worse, but I’d not understood. I clung to Bane, I sobbed, I cried out, couldn’t stop because I couldn’t get away from that crushing knowledge—my friend is dead because of me. I’d have given fifty years of my life to get that knowledge out of my head.
“Should I get Doctor Frederick?” Jon’s voice eventually, soft and anxious.
“No, leave it a bit longer.” Bane. Sounding terribly subdued, but his hands didn’t stop their efforts to gentle me. “You know what he said. She’s had the most terrible, terrible shock. Let her get it out.”
Sheer exhaustion eventually dropped me back into his lap, not my efforts to get hold of myself or his to comfort me.
…The coffee table again. The memory was there this time and so was the exhaustion. I lay staring at the table without seeing it.
Bane fussed with the blanket he’d laid over me, cocking an ear. “Are you awake, Margo?”
“Umhmm.”
“D’you want to just…lie quietly?”
“Umhmm,” I managed again.
“Okay.” He began to stroke my hair.
Don’t know how long I lay there, felt like hours. His hands ran over me soothingly, on and on. My mind seemed almost at a standstill, the awful truth slowly, slowly soaking in like water dripping onto dry soil.
Lucas.
Dead.
For.
Me.
At long last a few agonized words squeezed from my lips. “Why did he do that?”
Bane made no reply for so long I actually looked up at him. Saw his tortured face.
“I would never have wanted that, Margo. Haven’t I said all along I wouldn’t risk anyone getting killed?”
Another long moment of pain, and I managed to reply. “It’s not your fault, Bane. You didn’t put him up to it.”
I stared at the coffee table some more. Eventually Jon came back from wherever he’d been and made hot drinks. Bane sat me up a bit and began pouring weak tea down my throat. It revived me a little—not sure if that was a good thing just then. I rested my head on Bane’s shoulder and tried not to think, period.
After a while Jon began to speak quietly to Bane. “Seems it’s actually a simple operation. Doctor Frederick can perform it, no problem. The really important thing is the nerveFusion solution and the muscle stimConnect gel; you can’t do it without them. But there’s a small amount of both here and Pope Cornelius has authorized a dose—both obscenely expensive, apparently.”
“So how long will it take?” asked Bane. Then pressed a kiss to my hair. “Margo, I hope you don’t mind. I just thought it would be nice if I had them in for…for the funeral. If it’s okay with you…”
Afraid I’d think he was being insensitive, arranging things before my tears had dried?
“It’s all right, Bane,” I said tiredly. “He didn’t do that so you could put them in the freezer and forget about them.”
He looked relieved. “So, Jon?”
“Well, you have to have a general anesthetic. That’s as risky as it gets. After the operation they have to keep you deeply sedated for twenty-four hours, to prevent your brain trying to move your eyes while the solutions get your nerves and muscles together properly. Once they wake you up, your eyes will be sore for a few days, but the muscles will finish healing quickly.”
“So if I had the op tomorrow morning…I’d be awake again a little later the next day?”
“Yes. I asked Pope Cornelius about the funeral and he said it can wait until evening the day after tomorrow, no problem. He’s going to leave Margo in charge of all that, providing that’s what she wants.”
“Right. When would Doctor Frederick need to know? ’Cause I want to see how Margo is…”
That jerked me from my daze of misery again. “I’ll be fine, Bane. Arrange the op.”
“I just don’t like to think of me lying there for a day and night, useless as a lump of lard, when you’re feeling like this.”
“Just make the arrangements, Bane. I’ll be busy organizing the funeral, anyway.”
“Well…I suppose I could still put it off if I really felt I had to.”
“I’ll go and sort it out, shall I?” offered Jon.
“Yes…” Bane had a very intense look on his face, but spoke haltingly. “Wait…Jon, I…I’ve been thinking…well, after having no eyes, anything’s better…and they’re out of my head already. Would you…like one?”
Jon froze, eyes widening. A long, frozen silence. I hardly dared breathe.
“Bane,” said Jon softly at last, “if I live to be a hundred and fifty, I’ll never forget what you just said. But I’m content as I am. The Lord gave me a pair of eyes, remember. Attractive ones, so everyone tells me. Anyway,” he laughed, “you’re a wonderful friend, but you’re rubbish at biology.”
“Huh?”
“We’re not the same tissue type, silly.”
Bane’s empty eyes widened. “Didn’t even think of that. So busy wrestling with myself…”
“Thank you, Bane, anyway. And I promise never to reveal your intellectual lapse to another living soul!”
Thanks to the herbal tea Bane coaxed down me before bed, I actually slept for most of the night. Awaking at dawn, I wept into my pillow for a while, reluctant to wake Bane by crying on him. It would put him off having the operation. And however much I might wish Lucas hadn’t done it, I knew he’d like it if Bane was there at the funeral with that oh-so-expensive gift already in his head.
Taking a couple of painkillers in the vague hope it might numb my pain—my head was pounding anyway, a minor discomfort in comparison—I managed a reasonable degree of composure when Bane woke up. He’d had some of the herbal tea himself, because he might be less grief-stricken, but he felt pretty bad about this.
Bane wasn’t supposed to have breakfast before the anesthetic, but I managed to make and eat some plain toast to demonstrate that I was okay to be left to my own devices for twenty-four hours, then it was time to go.
“Ah, Bane, hello,” said Doctor Frederick, when we arrived at the hospital, Bane with his dressing gown on over the patient gown they’d given him. “We’re all ready. If you just get yourself onto that trolley in front of you, we can get started.”
“All right, all right.” He hopped on. “Oh, I’m going to feel like a numpty lying on this thing.”
“If you’ll lie down,” said Doctor Frederick, “we can get you anaesthetized and you won’t know anymore about it.”
“Yes, all right.”
Nervous about the op, poor love. However safe people tell you it is, not a nice thing to have to offer oneself up to in cold blood.
He found my hand, drew me in for a kiss. “See you tomorrow, Margo. Literally, please God.”
I kissed him again, fiercely. “See you tomorrow, Bane.”
“Nighty-night, Bane, have a good sleep,” said Jon.
“Ha ha,” said Bane. “Look after Margo.”
“She’ll be fine, Bane. Lie down.”
“All right, but I feel like a prat.” He lay down at last, the doctors converged, and the nurses hustled me and Jon from the room. Soon they wheeled Bane out and away.
Jon slipped an arm around me and gave me a quick squeeze. “Okay, Margo?”
“Yeah. You said the op would take less than an hour?”
“That’s right.”
“I’ll just wait here then, find out how it went.”
We sat in the waiting area and I tried not to think too hard about what’d happened yesterday. Tried to pray instead, for Bane, for Lucas, for this new world we suddenly lived in. After a while I turned my thoughts to the funeral I was supposed to be arranging. What would Lucas want?
It was less than forty-five minutes before they trundled Bane back from the operating theater, and we followed them to a private room. Bane was still completely out of it, of course, and something like a sleep mask had been put over his eyes.
“Everything went fine, Margaret,” Doctor Frederick reassured me. “The eyes were in perfect condition, they went back in nicely, we used plenty of gel and solution; should heal up well. Nothing for you to worry about. We’ll wake him this time tomorrow, and he should be able to see again.”
I checked my watch. Ten o’clock. It would be a long twenty-four hours. I kissed my sleeping husband’s cheek, and Jon and I headed off at last.
“So, um, what do you want to do now?” asked Jon.
“I’m really not sure. I’ve never organized a funeral before.”
“Well, there’s all the stuff like hymns, readings and so on. Need to pick a spot for the grave; don’t imagine he’d want to go in the catacombs. And, uh, you’ll need to give them some instructions for laying out the body.”
“I’ll do it,” I said shortly.
“Margo…won’t that be rather…upsetting?”
“I’ll do it. Should be someone who…who gives a fig!”
“Margo, I’m sure there’s hardly anyone here now who doesn’t give a fig, y’know.”
“I’ll do it. And I suppose I’d better do that first. I’ll need some things from his room. You really don’t have to trail around after me, you know. Actually…d’you think you could find a piece of wicker trellis or something, for a bier? Reckon he’d rather go straight in the soil than be shut in a box.”
Jon hesitated, clearly feeling he ought to stick to me like glue. “Okay. I’ll see what the head gardener’s got.”
Eerie silence gripped Lucas’s room. No scuff of shoes on carpet as he hurried to fill the kettle. No rustle of plant or Office book leaves.
A fat envelope stood propped against the purple fuchsia’s pot—on it, in curly handwriting familiar from long hours poring over a certain manual, was written one word.
Margaret