“Mm.” He touched his little finger to the corner of his mouth. “Perhaps it should be.”
I turned to Cahuella. “Is there a point to this meeting?”
“Yes, as always,” Orcagna snapped. “Trade, of course, you tiresome man. Why else do you think I would risk contaminating my ship with planetary dirt?”
So it was a business meeting after all.
“What are you selling?” I asked.
“Oh, the usual—weaponry. That’s all your master ever wants from us. It’s the usual local attitude. Time and again, my trading associates have offered your planet access to the longevity techniques commonplace on other worlds, but on each occasion the offer has been declined in favour of sordid military goods . . .”
“That’s because what you ask for the longevity tech would bankrupt half the Peninsula,” Cahuella said. “It’d put quite a dent in my assets, too.”
“Not as big a dent as death,” Orcagna mused. “Still; it’s your funeral. Something I have to say, though: whatever we give you, look after it, will you? It would be quite unfortunate if it were to fall into the wrong hands again.”
Cahuella sighed. “It’s not my fault if terrorists rob my clients.”
The incident he was talking about had happened a month earlier. Amongst those who knew something about the transactional web of black market commerce on Sky’s Edge, it was something of a talking point even now. I had set up the deal with a legitimate, treaty-abiding military faction. The exchange had been conducted through an elaborate series of fronts, with the ultimate source of the arms—Cahuella—dis creetly concealed. I had handled the swap, too, conducted in a clearing similar to the one where the Ultras had met us—and that was where my involvement ended. But someone had tipped off one of the less-legitimate factions about the arms transfer, and they had ambushed the first faction on their way home from the deal.
Cahuella called the new faction terrorists, but that was to place too great a distinction between them and their legitimate victims. In a war in which the rules of engagement and the definitions of criminality changed by the week, what distinguished a legitimate faction from a less-legitimate one was often only the quality of the former’s legal advice. Alliances were always shifting, past actions constantly being rewritten to cast a revisionist light on the participants. It was true that Cahuella was regarded as a war criminal now by many observers. In a century, they might be fêting him as a hero . . . me his trusty man-at-arms.
Stranger things had happened.
But it would be very hard to see the outcome of that terrorist ambush in anything but a negative light. Within a week of the ambush, they had used the same stolen weapons to murder most of an aristocratic family in Nueva Santiago.
“I don’t remember the family’s name.”
“Reivich, or something,” Cahuella said. “But listen. Those terrorists were animals, agreed. If I could, I’d skin them for wallpaper and make furniture out their bones. But that doesn’t mean I’m overflowing with sympathy for Reivich’s clan. They were rich enough to get off-world. The whole planet’s a shithole. They want somewhere safe to live, there’s a whole galaxy out there.”
“We have some intelligence that might interest you,” said Orcagna. “The youngest surviving son—Argent Reivich—has sworn vengeance against you.”
“Sworn vengeance. What is this, a morality play?” Cahuella held out a hand in front of him. “Hey, look. I’m trembling.”
“It doesn’t mean anything,” I said. “If I had thought it was worth bothering you about, you’d already have known. That’s another thing you pay me for: so you don’t have to worry about every crank with a grudge against us.”
“But we don’t think the fellow is, as you say, a crank.” Orcagna examined his black-gloved fingers, pulling each sequentially until there was a tiny pop. “Our intelligence suggests that the gentleman has recovered weapons from the same militia which murdered his family. Heavy-particle armaments—suitable for a full-scale assault against a fortified stronghold. We’ve detected signatures from these devices, indicating that they are still operational.” The Ultra paused, then added, almost casually, “It may amuse you to know that the signatures are moving south, down the Peninsula, towards the Reptile House.”
“Give the positions to me,” I said. “I’ll meet the kid and find out what he wants. It’s possible he just wants to negotiate more arms—he may not have fingered you as the supplier.”
“Yeah,” Cahuella said. “And I deal in fine wines. Forget it, Tanner. You think I need someone like you to handle a louse like Reivich? You don’t send a pro against an amateur.” To Orcagna, he said, “He’s up country, you say? How far, what kind of territory?”
“That information can, of course, be provided.”
“Fucking bloodsucker.” For a moment his face was blank, then he smiled and pointed at the Ultra. “I like you, I really like you. You’re a fucking leech. Name your price, then. I don’t need to know exactly where he is. Give me a positional fix accurate to—oh—a few kilometres. Otherwise it just wouldn’t be fun, would it?”
“What the hell are you thinking of?” The words had jumped out of my mouth before I had time to censor them. “Reivich may be inexperienced, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t dangerous—especially if he has the kind of weapons the militia used against his family.”
“So it’ll be sporting, then. A real safari. Maybe we’ll catch us a hamadryad while we’re at it.”
“You like sport,” Orcagna said, knowingly.
I understood it, then. If Cahuella had not had this audience, he would never have acted like this. If we’d been back in the Reptile House, alone, he would have done the logical thing: ordered me or one of the men under me to take Reivich out with no more ceremony than flushing a toilet. It would have been beneath him to waste his time with someone like Reivich. But in front of the Ultras he could not be seen to show any weakness. He had to play the hunter.
When all was over; when our ambush against Reivich had failed, and when Gitta had been murdered, Cahuella with her, and Dieterling and myself injured, one thing became clearer than anything I had ever known in my life.
It was my fault.
I had allowed Gitta to die through my ineptitude. I had allowed Cahuella to die at the same time. The two deaths were horribly wedded. And Reivich, his hands bloodied with the wife of the man he had really sworn vengeance against, had walked away unharmed, valiant. He must have thought Cahuella would survive, too—his wounds couldn’t have seemed as life-threatening as mine. Had Cahuella survived, Reivich would have inflicted maximum pain on him over the maximum span of time; a victory far less trivial than simply killing the man. In Reivich’s plan, Cahuella would have had the rest of his life to miss Gitta. The pain of that loss would have been beyond words. I think she was the only living creature in the universe he was capable of loving.
But Reivich had taken her from me instead.
I thought of the way Cahuella had laughed at Reivich swearing vengeance. There had always been a fine line between the absurd and the chivalric. But that was exactly what I did: swearing that I would dedicate the rest of my life to killing Reivich; avenging Gitta. If someone had told me then that I would have to die before bringing death to Reivich, I think I would have quietly accepted that as part of the bargain.
In Nueva Valparaiso he had slipped through my fingers. At that point I’d been forced to take the gravest of decisions—whether to abandon Reivich or continue chasing him beyond the system entirely.
In hindsight, it hadn’t been too difficult.
“I don’t remember there being any particular problems with Mister Reivich,” Amelia said. “He had some transient amnesia, but it wasn’t as severe a case as yours—it only lasted a few hours and then he began to piece himself back together. Duscha wanted him to stay and have his implants attended to, but he was in quite a hurry to leave.”
“Really?” I did my best to sound surprised.
“Yes. God onl
y knows what we did to offend him.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t anything.” I wondered what it was about his implants that needed fixing, but decided the question could wait. “I suppose there’s a good chance he’s already on Yellowstone, or nearly there. I wouldn’t want to be too late following him down. I can’t let him have all the fun, can I?”
She eyed me judiciously. “You were friends with him, Tanner?”
“Well, sort of.”
“Travelling companions, then?”
“I suppose that about sums it up, yes.”
“I see.” Her face was serenely impassive, but I could imagine what she was thinking: that Reivich had never mentioned travelling with anyone else, and that if our friendship had existed at all, it must have been lopsided.
“Actually, I was rather hoping he’d have waited for me.”
“Well, he probably didn’t want to burden the infirmary with someone who had no need of its ministrations. Either that, or there was some amnesia after all. We can try and contact him, of course. It won’t be simple, but we do our best to keep tabs on those we revive—just in case there are complications.”
And, I thought, because some of them repay the Idlewild hospitality, when they are rich and secure on Yellowstone, and they see the Mendicants as a means of gaining influence over newcomers.
But I only said, “No, that’s kind but not at all necessary. Best if I meet him in person, I think.”
She regarded me carefully before answering. “You’ll be wanting his address on the surface, then.”
I nodded. “I appreciate there are matters of confidentiality to be considered, but . . .”
“He’ll be in Chasm City,” Amelia said, as if the utterance itself was a heresy; as if the place was the vilest pit of degradation imaginable. “That’s our largest settlement; the oldest one.”
“Yes; I’ve already heard of Chasm City. Can you narrow it down slightly?” I did my best not to sound sarcastic. “A district would help.”
“I can’t really help you very much—he didn’t tell us exactly where he was going. But you could start in the Canopy, I suppose.”
“The Canopy?”
“I’ve never been there. But they say you can’t miss it.”
I discharged myself the day after.
I wasn’t under any illusion that I was totally well, but I knew that if I waited any longer the chances of my picking up Reivich’s trail again would dwindle to zero. And while some parts of my memory had still not come back into absolutely sharp focus, there was enough there to function with; enough to let me get on with the job in hand.
I went back into the chalet to gather my things—the documents, the clothes they had given me and the pieces of the diamond gun—and once again found my attention drawn to the alcove in the wall which had so disturbed me upon waking. I’d managed to sleep in the chalet since then, and while I wouldn’t have described my dreams as restful, the images and thoughts that had raced through them were of Sky Haussmann. The blood on my sheets each morning testified to that. But when I woke, there was still something about the alcove that chilled me, and which was as irrational as ever. I thought of what Duscha had told me about the indoctrinal virus, and wondered if there was anything in my infection which could cause such a baseless phobia—the virally generated structures linking to the wrong brain centres, perhaps. But at the same time I wondered if the two things might not be connected at all.
Afterwards, Amelia met me and walked with me up the long, meandering trail which led to heaven, climbing higher and higher towards one of the habitat’s conic end-points. The gradient was so mild that walking was barely an effort, but there was a feeling of euphoric relief as my weight diminished and each step seemed to send me a little higher and further.
When we had walked in silence for ten or fifteen minutes, I said, “Is it true what you hinted at earlier, Amelia? That you were once one of us?”
“A passenger, you mean? Yes, but I was just a child when it happened—I barely knew how to speak. The ship which brought us in had been damaged, and they’d lost most of the identifying records for their sleepers. They’d been picking up passengers in more than one system, too, so there was no real way to tell where I’d ever come from.”
“You mean you don’t know what world you were born on?”
“Oh, I can make a few guesses—not that it interests me greatly these days.” The path steepened momentarily, and Amelia suddenly bounded ahead of me to take the rise. “This is my world now, Tanner. It’s a blessedly small place, but it isn’t a bad one, I think. Who else can say that they’ve seen all their world has to offer?”
“That must make it very boring.”
“Not at all. Things always change.” She pointed across the curve of the habitat. “That waterfall wasn’t always there. Oh, and there was a little hamlet down there once, where we’ve made a lake now. It’s like that all the time. We keep having to change these paths to stop erosion—every year it’s like I have to remember the place anew. We have seasons, and years when our crops don’t grow as well as in other years. Some years we get a glut, too, God willing. And there’s always something to explore. We get new people coming through all the time, of course—and some of them do join the Order.” She lowered her voice. “Thankfully, they’re not all like Brother Alexei.”
“There’s always one bad apple.”
“I know. And I shouldn’t say this . . . but after what you’ve taught me, I’m almost hoping Alexei tries it on again.”
I understood how she must have felt. “I doubt that he will, but I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes if he does.”
“I’ll be gentle with him, don’t worry.”
There was an uncomfortable silence, during which we scaled the last slope towards the end of the cone. My weight had probably dropped to a tenth of what it had been in the chalet, but walking was still possible—it just felt like the ground was receding beneath each footfall. Ahead, discreetly veiled by a copse of trees which had grown haphazardly in the low gravity, was an armoured door leading out of the chamber.
“You’re serious about leaving, aren’t you?” Amelia said.
“The sooner I get to Chasm City the better.”
“It won’t be all that you’re expecting, Tanner. I wish you’d stay with us a little longer, just so that we could bring you up to speed . . .” She trailed off, evidently realising that I was not going to be persuaded.
“Don’t worry about me; I’ll catch up on my history.” I smiled at her; hating myself at the same time for the way I had been forced to lie to her, but knowing there was no other way. “Thank you for your kindness, Amelia.”
“It was my pleasure, Tanner.”
“Actually . . .” I looked around to see if anyone was observing us, but we were alone. “There’s something I’d be happy if you were to accept from me.” I reached into the pocket of my trousers and pulled out the fully assembled clockwork gun. “It’s probably best if you don’t ask why I was carrying this, Amelia. It won’t do me much good to carry it any further, I think.”
“I don’t think I should take that from you, Tanner.”
I pushed it into her palm. “Then confiscate it.”
“I should, I suppose. Does it work?”
I nodded; there was no need to go into details. “It will do you some good if you ever get into real trouble.”
She slipped the gun away. “I’m confiscating it, that’s all.”
“I understand.”
She reached out and shook my hand. “God go with you, Tanner. I hope you find your friend.”
I turned away before she could see my face.
NINE
I stepped through the armoured door.
Beyond lay a corridor walled in burnished steel, eradicating any lingering impression that Idlewild was a place, rather than an engineered human construct spinning in vacuum. Instead of the distant simmer of bonsai waterfalls, I heard the drone of circulation fans and power generators, The air had
a medicinal smell it had lacked a moment earlier.
“Mister Mirabel? We heard you were leaving. This way, please.”
The first of the two Mendicants who waited for me gestured that I should follow him along the corridor. We walked along it with springy steps. At the end was an elevator which carried us the short vertical distance to the true axis of rotation of Idlewild, followed by the considerably longer horizontal distance to the true endpoint of the discarded hull which formed this half of the structure. We rode the elevator in silence, which was fine by me. I imagined the Mendicants had long since exhausted every possible conversation with the revived; that there was no answer I could give them to any question which they would not have heard a hundred times previously. But what if they had asked me what my business was, and what if I had answered truthfully?
“My business? I’m planning to kill someone, actually.”
It would have been worth it, I think, just to see their faces.
But they probably would have assumed I was just some delusional case who was discharging myself too soon.
Soon the elevator was threading its way along the inside of a glass-walled tube that ran along the outside of Idlewild. There was almost no gravity now, so we had to station ourselves by hooking limbs into padded staples sewn onto the elevator’s walling. The Mendicants did this with ease, quietly amused by my fumbling attempts to anchor myself.
The view beyond was worth it, though.
More clearly now, I could see the parking swarm Amelia had shown me two days earlier—the vast shoal of starships, each tiny barbed sliver a vessel almost as large as Idlewild, yet made to seem tiny by the size of the swarm itself. Now and then violet light edged the whole swarm for an instant, as one of the ships fired its hull thrusters to adjust its lazy orbit around the other ships; a matter of etiquette, sly positioning or an urgent collision-avoidance manoeuvre. There was something heartbreakingly beautiful about the lights of distant ships, I thought. It was something that touched both on human achievement and the vastness against which those achievements seemed so frail. It was the same thing whether the lights belonged to a caravel battling the swell on a stormy horizon or a diamond-hulled starship which had just sliced its way through interstellar space.