The Great Wheel (32 page)

He nodded. He still hadn’t told her what he did for a living. If she asked now, he’d lie.

“I aimed too low, I guess. I had the right marks to be a pilot, all the synapses. I should have studied harder. Spent less time…less time…” Her gaze faded as he wondered what it was she’d spent her time doing. “Should have studied structural communication, like my father used to say.”

“That’s for controlling the satellites, isn’t it?”

“That’s changed too. A lot of the people are switching over to cloudpickers now. It’s all so automated and implanted that you hardly need the old special aptitudes to fly. It’s all part of the net.”

“Studying structural communication would get you a job flying a cloudpicker?”

“I should have seen it coming. Me, up in the sky with the angels instead of down here. You want another drink?”

“I’d better be going.”

“Me too.” She took his hand and squeezed it. There was a surprising softness in the touch of her broad palm and fingers. “You know, it’s the story of my life…”

His parents had a comedy show on in the lounge when he got back. It looked, in fact, like part of the same broadcast that the better Southlands patients had been running. The characters paced, and the audience’s ragged laughter sighed and broke like the sea. But his parents seemed uninvolved. He guessed that they’d been waiting for him.

“Ah, it’s you. Where have you been?”

He sat down, feeling the years of his youth tumbling back over him again as he fumbled for an excuse. But when he looked at their faces, he saw that they were showing a polite interest, nothing more.

“If this is what you’re telling me,” the fading man in the comedy said, “then I…” And he was gone. The room seemed very large and quiet without him.

“I went to see Annie.”

“Yes. How is she?”

“She’s fine. She has a new baby. A boy.”

“How lovely. What’s he called?”

John did his best to spin out a story of the way the farm was now. His parents leaned forward, smiling. From there, the conversation wandered back to the Magulf, the Endless City.

“Where do you think they’ll send you next?” his father asked.

“I don’t know. I may choose to stay on. Try something—something a bit different…with my life.” He looked for a reaction. There was none.

Soon it was bedtime. John went to his room. His mother followed him and stood there as he undressed. He saw how selfish he’d been this visit, how little time he’d spent with them, trying to get beneath the surface of this life they were living.

She touched his shoulder and smiled. “Are you happy, Son? Something’s changed about you this time.”

He smiled back and kissed her cheek.

“Here.” She gave him his old pajamas. The tang of fresh linen.

“Thanks.” He pulled them on and climbed into bed, conscious now that they were both reenacting a childhood ritual. She looked down at him, then her hand went to her wrist. The red standby light that linked her with Hal. He wondered if she was turning something off, or checking.

She sat down on the edge of the bed. It was still early; the windows were clear, and the passing cars beat waves of light across her face and hands. The effect made her seem old, then young again.

“You know if there’s anything—
anything,
Mum. When you need me, you know I’ll come back.”

She leaned down and kissed him. “Now it’s time for sleep.” When she stood up, the center of gravity didn’t shift the way it had with his old mattress.

“Goodnight, John.”

She left the room.

He lay there, watching the lights, counting the cars. Soon he was asleep, dreaming about something he couldn’t remember. Even as he dreamed, he knew that he was losing it.

T
HE BROWNSTONE BUILDINGS ALONG
Gran Vía seemed translucent where the big-bellied clouds hung above them like swathes of soiled velvet. As John backed through the screeching door and the wind-stirred dust and clotted cobwebs of the presbytery hallway, he decided that the Magulf light really had thickened and changed. He climbed the stairs. The presbytery was quiet, and there was no sign of Bella—it was, he remembered, her afternoon off—but his bed was freshly made, the sheets taut. He dropped his bag with a clink of the bottles he’d bought for Felipe and sat down, peeling off and destroying his gloves, kicking off his shoes. The koiyl leaves he’d collected still lay in the corner, in a Quicklunch box he’d found. Part of the welcoming aura of the room, he realized, came from the smoky undertow that emanated from them. He sorted out his bag, then climbed the stairs and found Felipe in the top room overlooking Gran Vía. The old priest sat with his feet up on a stool, the fan circling, whisky and trisoma on the low table.

“There you are,” Felipe said. “A good trip?”

“Good enough.” John handed him the bottles. “I brought you these.”

Felipe studied the labels. “Herefordshire. So you’ve been home?”

“The bishop suggested it. She wanted to give me time to think. To readjust.”

“She would…” Felipe sighed and put the bottles down. “Although I’d have thought that home would be a poor place for contemplation.”

“She gave me an ultimatum,” John said. “About my seeing Laurie Kalmar.”

Felipe nodded.

“But I’ve decided now what I’m going to do.”

“That’s good, my son.” With a wince, Felipe shifted in his chair. “Of course, you’ll still be staying your term here?”

“Yes, I plan to remain a priest until then.”

“And after that?”

“I don’t think so. No.”

“Do you have any plans?”

“Not really, Felipe. It’s a big step. I can still hardly see as far as my taking it, let alone beyond.”

“These things are sometimes for the best.”

“That’s pretty much what the bishop said.”

Felipe nodded, and crinkled his eyes. The fan on the roof creaked and circled. “And Laurie?”

“I don’t know. But I don’t want to lose her.” Outside, a truck went by. John looked down at the green spines of his gloves; the tiny Halcycon logo, which he noticed for the first time, was incorporated into the thread of the cuff, with the blur of his flesh beneath.

“Up to the west,” Felipe said, “where the coast of Africa meets the River Ocean, the climate is better. Things grow unaided. Life is said to be easier there. I mean”—Felipe made a face and waved his hand at a fly—“that society between Europeans and Borderers is more relaxed. They work jointly, and there’s no fence around the Zone. The freighters that head from there for Australasia have mixed crews. After all, if people live closely enough together, they forget their prejudices, they develop a physical and a mental tolerance…”

John nodded. He’d heard this before—from Borderers here in the Endless City, from priests at Millbrooke Seminary—but it was always about another place, some part of the Endless City they’d heard about but never actually seen.

“You managed,” John asked, “when I was away?”

“Oh, you know.”

“I’m sorry if I’ve been…a little preoccupied.”

He heard the bang of a door and the tramp of footsteps on the stairs. That would be Bella returning. Although this was her afternoon off, she’d have managed to come back laden with shopping.

“I’ve been thinking about that leaf while you were away,” Felipe said. “The koiyl. Not really the kind of thing that a European priest—even I—would be expected to show any curiosity about. Still, I made my inquiries.” He smiled. “I think we should go out later tonight, my son, after you’ve done Mass. See what we can see…”

Nuru was waiting at the church for him, his hands clamped under his armpits, his dapper black clothes flapping in the wind. They were both early, and the door was unlocked, but Nuru hadn’t bothered to go in: here, unlike at the clinic, he had no plans to take over.

“Fatoo John.” Nuru spread his hands and followed John into the church as a cawing black squall clattered up from the roof. The emphasis was on the
John.
Who had he expected to see? Some new priest? He knew, after all, that John had been called back unexpectedly by the Fatoo Bishop. He probably knew about Laurie, too.

Dim light and cool air. John went alone into the vestry and dressed for Mass. The damp surplice was torn at the hem and smelled of incense and Felipe; even after Paris and Hemhill, the smell of a European was instantly recognizable to him. He tried to remember who had said to him that he hadn’t really come back at all, and where it had been. He drew a breath and attempted to compose himself as the sound of footsteps and laughter came through the open doorway with the first of the arriving congregation. He changed his gloves and unlocked the sealed box that contained the Sacrament, wishing that Laurie would come at least once to the church during a service.

When he returned to the presbytery, he went into the backroom and called her on the airwave. All he got was her answerer. He stared at the answerer’s face and said, “You’ve changed the color of your eyes.”

“We thought it was time.”

“We?”

“It was causing confusion. I always told Laurie that it would.”

“Blue eyes make you look very different.”

“I know.”

“Almost the same as Laurie.”

The answerer smiled.

“I’d like to meet her tomorrow,” he said.

“I’m sure she’ll be free. Would it be lunchtime, as usual?”

“I was thinking of that bar just outside the Zone.”

“Which one? Is it one that you’ve been to before?”

“It has stars on the roof. A big place—”

“It’s called Red Heat.”

“Red Heat? Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Back in his room, waiting for whatever it was that Felipe had arranged to happen that night, John settled on the bed with the Quicklunch box of koiyl leaves beside him. The window was open. Across the street, the lights of most of the tenements were on and people were moving. Bella had certainly got their generator started by now, but he decided to work in darkness. The black shapes of the leaves in the box reminded him of figs at Christmas. Even the smell. And of old-fashioned Christmas soap, the kind shaped to look like something else. Touching one of the cards he’d attached to the leaves, he heard the sound of his own voice and the rumble of the taxi’s engine in the background. A street name, and a description—deeply unflattering—of the vendor.

As he worked through the box, he found that the leaves were surprisingly varied. Of course, Laurie had pointed that out long ago. There were other high valleys that grew a product that was harmless and pure. This fat leaf, for example, was almost wider than his palm. And the stem was cut farther down—another local variation. He licked the rough and slightly oily skin. Sweet and tarry. He took a bite, and his mouth flooded with juice—or was it his own saliva? He pulled the wastebin over to the bed and spat out the reddish lump.

The next leaf was thinner, cut higher up the stem. Less sweet, more astringent. He spat that out too, aiming and hitting the bin from a slight distance, beginning to see that this would be part of the pleasure of the chewing: expectorating as a sport. His mouth, initially numb, seemed to swell and regain sensation.

It was fully dark now. Little stars rose and expired inside his eyes. Another leaf. Another. He heard his voice from the cards describing the taste and sensation, heard the wet smacking of his lips. Here, now, was a leaf from Lall. Not a particularly good specimen. Smaller than the rest. Almost shriveled. His voice on the card told him that he’d even managed to buy it at a slightly lower price. It was nothing like the fat green specimen that he’d been offered in the village, and after the others it seemed to have little effect on him. Perhaps he’d reached the maximum active dose, or was developing a tolerance. He got up and went to the window.

The lights were off in many of the tenements across the street, and the sky was a deep impenetrable crimson. He looked at his watch. Time was barely moving, and even the tiny flickering quaternary lines seemed half frozen, but it was too late now to try Laurie again—the real Laurie—without waking her. Off to the east, towards the coast, his eyes caught a flicker of blue-white. Probably lightning, but no rumble came on the wind, and it seemed too low even for these skies. His fingers picked at the paint of the windowledge as he tried to remember something that someone had once said…

A low rumble, long delayed, broke over the rooftops. It came, with typical Borderer lack of logic, from the direction opposite to the lightning flicker. The sound continued, then grew and resolved, sending the cats and rats and the few people who were still out scurrying to the edges of Gran Vía. He watched as a big forty-wheeler came churning between the houses, spewing a fog of dust and exhaust. The baroque cabin and the rusty fuselage slid by, then stopped, still thrumming, beneath his window, blocking the frontage of the presbytery and its neighbors.

In the corridor, John could hear Felipe shouting. He pulled on fresh gloves, grabbed his translat, and ran to help the old priest down the stairs and outside into the street, where the local children had reawakened and were already climbing over the truck as yawning adults looked on. A forty-wheeler had no place here on Gran Vía, especially this late, but it was hard for the people not to smile, especially as Felipe was winched, waving and turning, to the cabin. John clambered up the ladder alongside him, almost losing his footing as he helped lift Felipe in.

The horn moaned, the door swung shut. The engine roared, and the truck began to roll forward, tumbling John across a screeslope of cushions and rags at the back of the cabin. He climbed over the long front seat at the far end while the driver sat at some distance from him in the middle, with Felipe on the other side. The driver was a small man, grinning and elfin, with sharp bones and pointed ears. John vaguely recognized him as one of Felipe’s drinking cronies, but the man wasn’t a churchgoer. They rarely were.

Windows and walls slid by close enough to touch. Watching Felipe through the swaying forest of cables and screens that filled the cabin, John saw him gulp from his flask, swallow one tablet, and start sucking at the next. As he did so, his eyelids quivered, his hands trembled. He was also humming snatches of a psalm, and belching between verses. John had noticed before that the haze of alcohol and trisoma was always stronger on the occasions that Felipe went out, and he wondered why it had never occurred to him before that the old priest was probably agoraphobic.