Tea From an Empty Cup by Cadigan Pat

Author:Cadigan, Pat [Cadigan, Pat]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780575120273
Publisher: Orion Publishing Group
Published: 2011-09-29T00:00:00+00:00

DEATH IN THE PROMISED LAND [III]

Ten (billable) minutes later, Konstantin stepped through a doorway onto the street where she had first seen Shantih Love. The feel of the Love persona in her ’suit was pleasurable in a way that kept her on edge. Being Shantih Love was close to seductive, even with the sliced throat, something she had not taken into consideration.

Real easy to go native in a Gang Wars module. The night manager’s words came back to her. None too helpfully, since this wasn’t a Gang Wars module. That she knew of.

She was wondering now if she really knew anything at all. The piles of wreckage in the street were all aflame, burning in jewel tones, now and then sending sparks skyward, where they seemed to mingle with the stars. The glitter she had seen on the monitor looked somehow less gritty from the inside and more like delicate sprays of tiny lights, too exquisitely fragile not to shatter in even the slightest puff of a breeze, yet remaining, twinkling and shimmering against the black street, the pitted brick and the web-cracked glass of the buildings facing the burning wrecks, the cold-stone texture of the barrier between the street and the alien shore of the Hudson River.

Konstantin went to the barrier and strolled along it in the direction Shantih Love had taken, looking around for anything like the figure of a shaggy beast that might be interested in killing her.

Rather than anything approaching, however, Konstantin had a sense of things drawing away from her, many eyes watching with the knowledge that she was an impostor. And then again, she thought suddenly, how would anyone know, if the Shantih Love persona had gone on for another four hours after Iguchi’s death? Maybe the only one who knew was the creature who had attacked and hijacked Shantih Love here in the first place.

She paused, leaning on the barrier and looking toward where she estimated the party had been. It was long over now, or perhaps this was no longer one of the hot Sitty spots. But then, her purpose was not to find a party, nor to act as a decoy to attract a creature that might not even be real. Funny how easy it was to forget things, to forget to keep focused here. If she waited much longer, her concentration might dissolve altogether, just break into tiny fragments and float away up to the stars with the sparks from the burning wreckage.

‘Icon cat?’ she asked.

It was there before her on the barrier, preening itself, smoothing its whiskers with its paws and lashing its tail in a sort of all-purpose warning – a classic tabby.

‘Oh, no,’ Konstantin groaned. ‘Not really.’

The tabby looked up at her, offended. A moment later, it was a thick book, open to a page showing a flame within a halo; as she looked at it, it went from a drawing to a vivid holo. The word Enlightenment came out of the flame and rippled for a moment.

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