The Valhalla Covenant
Chapter Seven — Art and Soul

Reimas urged the McLaren out onto the road and accelerated quickly up to a pace fast enough to lose any possible tails.

“Thanks,” she said, looking up at him anxiously as she settled into her seat. “I wasn’t counting on having to run for it.”

“If you set out to kill people, you’d have to be out of your head if you weren’t prepared to run afterwards,” he replied. “Anyway, what did they do to you?”

A memory of pain passed like a shadow across her face. She ignored his question and instead introduced herself — in a strangely formal manner given the circumstances, as if at pains to establish herself as someone of significance.

Her rescuer was after all an unknown quantity and it wouldn’t hurt to have him understand that she, at least, felt she counted for something.

On the surface, Sasha Raleigh, twenty-two and really very inexperienced, managed to keep her cool, but Reimas knew that much about her was hidden. Though dressed and made up to look like an old woman she was actually quite young — just how young he wasn’t sure. Little of her was visible, barring a heavily made up face but her agility gave her away in rough terms on the matter of age. A slight tremor in her voice also gave away her nerves.

“I feel terrible,” she said next in a subdued tone, as if sensing his reservations. “What I’ve done just now makes me a murderer — but I had to do it.”

The yielding in her voice made him rather more suspicious than less, but at least her admission opened the way for him to question her actions.

“You must have known who they were then,” he said as he clicked out a last code on the two-way to inform his friends of the negative outcome.

“Xoldin and his cronies.”

“Should have been, but Xoldin wasn’t there.”

“Really?” she replied, instantly stricken by doubts that she couldn’t hide. “So I killed those men for nothing? How do you know he wasn’t there? My tip-off said it was a sure thing.”

“Don’t fret. My guess is that none of them died. You left it too long and threw it too high. Lucky it didn’t go off in your hand.”

“Shit,” she said quietly, turning pale, but a wave of relief quickly swept over her, “but Xoldin, how do you know he wasn’t there?”

“Special recognition equipment. Not a positive ID.”

“So you were looking for him too?”

“Yeah, some tip off, eh? Set up — and we took the bait.”

“You were the one with the rockets,” she said in a moment of realization. “I didn’t really think I had a chance until then. Why didn’t they completely destroy those vehicles?”

“We don’t kill all these guys — and they know it. It helps. But if you didn’t think you had a chance, why did you try? You must have known they’d get you.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered. Xoldin had my father shot in cold blood. My brother went after him then, but they got him too and tortured him until he died.”

Reimas was silent.

“I’m sorry,” he said after a while, “but that sort of thing’s no surprise to me. A good friend of mine is in a bad way now because of Xoldin. That cockroach has been in my sights for some time but as you can see, he’s difficult to pin down.”

“I didn’t ever think I could really get him, until a few minutes ago, but now …”

She visibly fought back tears.

“Okay, so nothing’s gained,” said Reimas, a bit surprised by her emotion, “but you’re still in one piece. You can’t win everything, and even when you don’t, there can be bonuses. In my case, all this tells me that he knows a lot more than we thought he did.”

“You’re right, and I am alive.”

“And free.”

“Really?”

Reimas slowed to a more moderate pace, the McLaren slipping through the decrepit streets like a touring ray in dying coral cities of submarine twilight, Laurence’s discreet navigation system offering directions in smooth, seductive female tones whenever a required turn or speed change was imminent.

“Where can I take you?” he asked, as if to answer her doubts

“I’m not sure. I’m from Tas, but I’ve no family now, and most of my friends in the River have disappeared over the years. I really don’t know what I’m going to do. I just thought I was going to die.”

“So you’re in the Little River?”

“What’s left of it.”

“I heard there was trouble down your way. Word was they thought they could clean you all out.”

“And they nearly have, so there’s no point in going back. I heard that up this way the River gets help from something called the Institute.”

“Best way, if you can manage it — two fronts for two purposes.”

“Sounds like you know from experience.”

“I’m headed south now, if that’s any help,” he said, ignoring her last comment.

“I don’t know where I want to go. I suppose I’d be grateful if you could just get me to a bus station.”

“I could do that.”

She looked at him again.

“Well, I suppose — you’re really heading south?”

“Sure.”

Now, for the first time, she pushed back the hood that covered most of her face and smiled a little. Despite the heavy makeup, he could tell she was pretty in a soft edged sort of way, and there was warmth in her unusually brilliant emerald eyes.

“So what do you do?” Reimas asked when their eyes met for the second time in less than half a minute.

“I’m an artist — and a writer. I have a few sheets here — works in progress,” she said, reaching inside her coat.

“Don’t show me now,” he said, but he thought that her creative bent, especially as a writer, might do much to explain the curiously formal way she spoke, and wondered what might be found in her head. “I’d like to have a look, later. Your being an artist is interesting — something, maybe, that’s wanting in me.”

“Well, no wonder,” she replied. “I mean, no offence, but you are an assassin aren’t you?”

Reimas was surprised at her gall but also impressed; she was direct and unafraid. She had a clear mind, well under control. The manner of her conversation said so — the clear self-expression and her readiness to accept even the most confronting truth.

“I can see why you might see me that way,” he replied eventually, “but the reality’s more complex. I might also add that I had no intention of killing them all. I — we oppose the Global Unity, but we rarely use such extreme violence and lately — well I’d just like to find another way.”

“I didn’t mean to offend you,” said Sasha, a little stunned in retrospect at how blunt she’d been. “I am in the Little River after all, and I’ve got every reason to know why people are fighting them. My father was a free-lance journalist and they killed him just because he said things they didn’t like.”

“All the same,” Reimas replied, “you only have to live that fight for a while to want to make it end. I’m beginning to think there might be other better ways.”

“Really? If you’re in that deep, you must be Institute. No one should know better than you that something has to be done about the worst of the GU in the end, no matter what.”

“Sure, but better methods will speed things up.”

“What methods?”

“I can’t say much right now, except that art and other similar creative things might help find the way.”

The level of noise and fumes increased and congested traffic slowed their progress, but eventually they left the ugly wasteland of the deteriorating southern suburbs behind them, and joined the main southern freeway.

“How would you know that if you’re really so ignorant about art?”

Reimas laughed.

“I wrote for a living once, so my brain’s not a total desert. The thing is, we’ve been working in a lab on this — a dream lab actually, but it all seems too clinical, too technical. I’m sure the research could be better done in a place that helps you focus — on beauty, and that, I think, is where art and ambience might come in.”

“Makes sense.”

“I’ve had a thirst for it lately …”

“For what, beauty?”

All of a sudden Reimas felt a spontaneous surge of trust for this bizarrely clothed girl.

“Mm … but the more closely I look around me the more I can see ugliness in the beauty and, sometimes, fascination in the ugliness that seems to me — yes, to almost seem beautiful, at least in the way it affects me.”

“An artistic insight, if you ask me,” Sasha observed, “but why are you using a dream lab? It sounds like a contradiction in terms.”

“Not my choice.”

Sparse settlement turned to bush before the sun passed over the deepening silhouette of the dividing range to the west. Reimas closed the roof until there was only a narrow opening, and switched on the heater.

A slightly delayed chortle came from the turbine exhaust as he sharply quickened their pace. The road surface was even, the weather fine and it was the sort of car that was safe, or at least much more so than the average, travelling at speed. Jos had assured him nothing could outrun it, and it soon became obvious he’d not been exaggerating.

Sasha, relaxing a little more, found herself overwhelmed by a wave of euphoric relief; an amazing tonic after the truncated future she’d been trying so hard not to face. It was beautiful instead just to be nowhere in particular, driving through the blustery indigo evening.

“The thing is,” Reimas said, resuming their conversation after a few minutes, “I know my limitations or at least I’m beginning to know them, and artistic insight or not, without the right kind of assistance … I mean, there are mysteries, and at least one is the co-incidence of meeting you when I’m contemplating entering such unfamiliar territory.”

“This research — it’s more than some idle fancy, then?”

“I don’t really know yet, but if all goes well, it could make all the difference, and I suspect there’s much more than simply practical benefits at stake. Our world’s in real danger on numerous fronts and still the blind are leading the blind, but there’s more. It’s about how we choose to live, what we think is important. Anyway, conventional approaches routinely fail to set us back on anything like the right track — so it makes perfect sense to look for something totally different.”

“A little escapism’s forgivable, though, isn’t it?” she said.

“I suppose, and maybe there is a little of that about the project as well but really, for me it’s only a fringe benefit. Maybe it could be for you, too.”

“Is that an invitation?”

Reimas searched her eyes.

“Uhuh. After all, why not? You fit the profile. If someone like you won’t fight, then who will?”

“You won’t need to ask me a second time. I’ve dreamed of being able to do something… but I’m sorry. I’m so rude. I just realized that I don’t even know your name.”

Reimas laughed.

“Blaze.”

“Do you think you make a difference, Blaze?”

“That’s what I’ve been wondering about so much. We are in there with a chance but right now things are starting to go berserk and it looks like we’re going to have to make some tough choices. That’s why we’re searching for alternatives.”

At first, Sasha had not known what to think of him. It had crossed her mind that he was simply someone like her with a personal grudge or vendetta, but the car could have indicated a criminal background, no matter how respectable he might have seemed at first sight. Now, however, she knew what he was.

Bending her head for a moment, she whispered something like a prayer of thanks to the vast unknowable pagan god that she revered, before turning again to speak.

“So, you’re really looking for people?”

“The right ones.”

“You think I could help?”

“Maybe, once you get the hang of not letting hand-grenades near go off in you hand.”

She shivered and said:

“I was so scared.”

“No shame in that.”

“So what are you looking for?”

“Information, perspective, awareness and maybe even strategic advantage.”

Sasha looked surprised for a moment — then triumphant.

“It’s remote viewing, isn’t it,” she said.

For a moment, Reimas was concerned that she’d guessed so well but, on reflection, her openness and unrestrained delight at her own cleverness were inconsistent with suspect motives.

“Good guess,” he replied, eventually, “but there’s more to it. Lately, I can’t help feeling there’s something else out there, totally unexpected but important.”

Sasha was tense now, not with fear, but with pleasure at having fallen in so serendipitously with the right person — someone who was ready to act and that she could help. The ramifications would echo through the rest of her life, but her old life was gone — obliterated by the rigid plutocracy that he and the Institute were so set against.

“So where are we headed?” she asked.

“The mountains. I need some time off.”

“No wonder in that, but for how long?”

“A few days.”

“Is that all? I could do with some rest myself, but hey, it’s not like I’m arguing.”

Reimas wondered. Her remaining with him solved the problem of her immediate destination but that in itself was likely to bring further complications.

Sasha fell into a comfortable silence. She drifted in and out of sleep, feeling more secure than she had done perhaps in weeks or even months despite the speed at which they sped along.

After the end of the freeway and the Canberra bypass, the buckling old Monaro Highway made the car move uncertainly, and it brought Sasha right back into the present. She leaned over to look at the speedo as they decelerated at the end of a long, bumpy straight and saw the needle drift down past two hundred and forty.

The shrieking of the wind was almost too loud for conversation even with the roof almost closed. Putting any thought of protest from her mind and looking ahead as the road veered left, she saw the moon floating free amongst the scudding clouds in the sky ahead; a sickle shaped vision that instantly filled her mind with a wave of artistic fervour.

“It gets better,” Reimas said, sensing her pleasure. “The mountain highway’s a treat in a car like this, and don’t be worrying yourself about the speed. Satellite sensing gives a great view ahead.”

“Even at night?”

“Especially. Just like an amusement park ride. In this little beauty, it’s like you’re on rails.”

Right then, however, a fox cub ran out in front of the car as if to test the assertion, and he had to pull up hard. “Damn foxes … too small to show up.”

Even so, he avoided the cub and it sprang off into the darkness.

A tight curve appeared ahead in the glare. Reimas slipped the selector back through a couple of ranges of regenerative braking then accelerated into a nice drift through the bend. On the following rise, he pushed quickly up past a hundred and seventy.

A surge of new pleasure filled Sasha as the car wove a path through the unknown darkness. Keen to revel in the sharp contrast between the cold wind in her face and the hot air pouring up around her, she lowered the window a little.

Quiet terror had consumed her earlier in the day as she had faced almost certain death. Before that, she’d watched helpless people beaten to a pulp and had seen gang leaders walking young women like herself around almost naked on chains, like dogs.

Now it was different. She felt confident that Blaze was not like that. At no point had she truly thought she’d need to leap out and make a break for it when the car slowed. Nor did she wish she had now, despite the extravagant speed at which they travelled.

Accelerating up a sharp new rise in the road, all four power plants hummed in competition with the subdued howl of the generator. Ahead, the dark mountain seemed to grow as they climbed, and the road became ever steeper.

The summit of the main range was abrupt and the road dropped away suddenly beneath them, but the sophisticated hybrid’s active suspension responded with amazing rapidity and absorbed the difference; a safety feature designed to maximize grip and stability.

A low moan escaped from Sasha’s lips then she giggled quietly as the car sank smoothly back into its lower road-hugging stance on the first of several stages in the long descent.

Dropping then into a hollow between the main range and a lower peak, Reimas floored it again. The lights blazed onto the rise ahead and the exhaust note of the generator turbine pitched in sharply again.

By the time they fell into the next meandering descent, Sasha had adjusted to the motion and experienced it with an active imagination — feeling it like the flow of water through a winding river. Shooting ever faster down through the widening bends with easy movements from side to side, the illusion evolved further and it became like some ancient tribal dance.

Most women were willing to acknowledge that men should have their toys. Sasha was not ‘most women’ but she was prepared, now, to concede that they might have a hidden value. Human life had always depended to some extent on women having admiration for their mates, and machines such as this were, after all, a legitimate expression of male creativity.

Speed, power, accuracy and technical superiority were attractive attributes, no matter how much some of the less adventurous of both genders might deny it. She knew that people enjoyed such things but could now begin to understand why.

There was a strong sense of liberation associated with extreme speed. She could see that controlling it was an exacting challenge — a challenge that also had the significant spiritual merit of tearing away those corrosive, constricting bonds of normality.

After all, she reflected, that was the artist’s primary ambition. Any true artist would acknowledge a potential means of awakening no matter what form it took.

She was surprised but after the initial rush of adrenalin, she felt no fear. She knew very little about the man to whom she was entrusting her life but sensed the great depth of his calm and knew that he was not driven by any self-destructive complex.

Then, she mused, there was the prickly issue of the gender dynamic, but simply because he drove fast didn’t necessarily mean he wished to impress her. Such things in the male world were sometimes simply a personal test of self, or even a habit, probably no more a prelude to sex than a woman wishing to dress well and present herself attractively. In any case, she was well aware that at present she did not look attractive.

After having travelled a couple of hours or more on the freeway Blaze had seemed tired, but in the wake of that sprint over the mountain, he was clearly refreshed. He was more observant and precise with his driving than he had been in the foothills.

Not knowing how much more there was to come, she kept her focus fully on enjoying the sweeping road, the buffeting gusts and the brilliant stars, which every so often were briefly obscured by hard-driven clouds.

Some time later, Blaze slowed the car for a turnoff, and the road narrowed. It was tortuous and over-arched virtually everywhere by trees — big beautiful old trees. At last, they stopped with the headlights illuminating a pair of large steel and timber gates and mossy sandstone pillars.

After opening the gates, Reimas accelerated the dark blue McLaren up the shrub-bordered gravel drive. Once they reached the top and cleared the forest, Sasha caught her first glimpse of a large building on the opposite hillside.

As they came closer she could see that it was a rambling three-storied structure, built from stone and timber, and set in old formal gardens.

Faintly illuminated as it was in the last of the thin moonlight, the sight of it stirred her soul with mixed feelings.

A strangely intense sense of déjavue came over her as she contemplated the suggestive ambience of its beautiful yet wandering lines, but it wasn’t all comfortable.

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