The Great Wheel (34 page)

Apart from the checkered tiles, the stumps of gaslights, and the broken mosaic of a frieze, most of the interior had given way to scaffolding and rubble. Bats clattered high in the roof, and the few unbroken panes of the domed skylight filtered the already reddish light of the sky with the green of their scum, turning everything gray. Yet, perched at the top of a new set of stairs, Ryat’s office was as rich as the whole building must once have been when harbormasters and customs officers sweated in their uniforms in this colonial rim of Empire.

John sat down. Everything in the office seemed to be made of brass, leather, or wood, and the air smelled of old varnish. There were sash-framed windows looking out on three sides, although the room lay in the middle of the building. John traced the stitching on the arm of his high-backed chair. The spines of his gloves were two-thirds red now.

“From here,” Ryat said, stretching out his booted legs on the desk. “I can watch things.” Outside, it was mostly quiet on the canals and walkways, although a dredger was working offshore and a large tanker was nosing in to port. The scene switched to a view from a high crane, and the tanker became a toy, spreading a white V across the water.

“The reason I came here,” John said, “was to find out about the distribution of the koiyl leaf. Felipe suggested to me that it might come here first from the mountains.”

“Of course. The koiyl comes here. East dock, sector three.”

John nodded—although he didn’t think that east dock, sector three, would be what the Borderers called it. The leather chair squealed as he shifted position. Should he simply say that the koiyl from Lall was contaminated? The silence began to weigh, yet there was no real sense of tension: Ryat was a Borderer, used to not filling in every pause with empty babbling. John asked, “Have you heard of Lall?”

“Lall?” Ryat thought, nodded. “A place in the mountains where the leaf is grown. Yes?”

“I’ve been trying to trace the crop from there. This year’s should be in the Endless City by now if it’s going to be cured and marketed.”

“I presume it is.”

“There seems to be surprisingly little.”

“Perhaps you came here on the wrong night?”

“Is there a way you could find out?”

“Ah…” Ryat kicked back his chair and walked over to the neat rows of tiny brass-plated drawers that reached floor to ceiling on the unwindowed wall to his right. His fingers clicked down the wood and brass. One and then another drawer slid open. The cards buzzed, and the scenes of the empty market in the windows flickered and changed. Once, John thought he glimpsed Felipe lying in the boat, then a flock of caroni birds. Another drawer flew open. Ryat’s hands were quick and graceful here—working in a way that no human hands could—but something was wrong. Why hadn’t he asked John what he was after?

“Yes…” A drawer flashed. “I think we have something. But I see what you mean. There was much leaf from Lall five years ago…” Another drawer. “But now, each year, less.”

“Do you have any idea why?”

Ryat turned to him. “I provide only facilities here.” He still had one card in his hand. The tip of a finger traced the magnetic strip along the back. He seemed to be reading it. “And, of course, Seagates is just a staging post, a channel. The main sales are always at Tiir.”

“I’ve been to Tiir.”

“You did not get an answer?”

“I wasn’t there long. And perhaps I didn’t ask the right questions.”

“These things are difficult, Father John. You ask a simple question in the Endless City and get no answer—or get many. Too many. But never just the one.”

Ryat returned the final card to its drawer. Linking his metal hands behind his back, he crossed to the far window and stood looking out. Despite its depth and clarity, the view through the glass was pixel-based. From the distance he was standing, it had to have been little more than a blur.

“But I will ask for you,” he said. “Of course, I will make inquiries.”

Folding his own hands, John felt the adhesion of his gloves. “Do you know,” he asked, “why I’m doing this? Why I’m asking?”

Ryat raised his shoulders. His fingers slid. “The curiosity of a European fatoo is explanation enough.”

John told him about Ifri Gotal, the strontium 90, the tests, and the cases of
bludrut
at the clinic. Ryat nodded and listened, but he didn’t seem surprised.

When John finished, Ryat spread his hands. “There have been rumors,” he said. “Even allowing for the poor standard of the leaf from Lall that is available, I understand that the price is down.”

“But you didn’t know?”

The corners of Ryat’s mouth twitched. In profile against the changing window, his face flickered slightly. “These things always do come out, Father John. Why do you think I go to the Zone? I do not expect I will ever get very far with the tennis…” He grinned. “And these ancient weapons are terrible, yes? To be feared even now. The laws of nature have not changed. Why, think what would happen if the weapons were to be developed again—here, for example, in the Endless City. Of course, it would require a different culture, the kind of organization and government that I sometimes suspect that your people in the Zone are here to discourage. To keep us dependent, moderately happy, but not too wise…”

“But at least there are no wars.”

“No,” Ryat said. “There are no wars.”

“And now that you know there is a poison in the Lall leaves, will you help?”

Ryat pointed to the racks of drawers. “As you see, I cannot stop something that is already—”

“The leaves will still eventually come through Seagates—at least some of them.”

“What do you expect me to do? Destroy them? Or should I speak out, intentionally devalue them, as you or someone else seems to have done already? You tell me that a few people die here in the Endless City, but how many people live in Lall? And do you imagine you can warn about the leaf from one area and not harm the trade as a whole? And the traders, what will you do for them?”

“It isn’t—”

“Father John, let me tell you I once spoke with another European. Someone who came from the Zone here to this room and explained that we Borderers must not sell Quicklunch, that it causes the stomachs of our children to ulcer. Do you not see that too, at your clinic?”

John nodded, but the symmetry of someone else sitting here and arguing about food contamination was too neat. It was true that Quicklunch had been dumped on the Magulf after a scare in Europe, but that had been a recombinant-precipitated reaction, and the figures at the clinic for stomach problems had never stood out.

“I am sorry.” Ryat sighed. “I only wish to tell you that the answer is not easy.”

“I understand there are problems. I agree with at least some of what you say about the hypocrisy of the Zone. But you haven’t seen these people dying. They’re young people, Ryat—children, sometimes—and many haven’t even chewed the leaf themselves. I know there are other injustices, but will you at least help me to do something about this one? Will you look out for the Lall leaf in Seagates, and keep me informed?”

Ryat pursed his lips. “Yes,” he said. “If I can.”

“I’m grateful.” John stood up from his chair. The ache in his back had returned. He felt weary, dazed. The light at the end of the tunnel, he remembered Hal once saying, can be an oncoming train.

“Come on, Father John.” Ryat strode around the table and placed a hand on his shoulder. The metal clenched, and John forced himself not to pull back. “This crop from Lall will turn up. And from here…There will be ways to change things. Have you thought perhaps that you are trying too hard? A material thing can sometimes be as elusive as a feeling. If you seek too strongly, it may disappear…”

John looked at Ryat as the hand released and withdrew. He felt a sudden twist of anger. At close quarters, as with everyone else here in the Endless City, Ryat’s breath reeked of kelp.

Finding his own way out from Ryat’s office, John wiped a Magulf dollar and tossed it at the beggar on the steps. Now that there was no point in keeping it secret, he had half a mind to ask her too what she knew about the leaf, but she shrank from the coin as it spun on the eroded marble between them. He walked back to the boat through the market where the glowing cartons flapped and soggy balls of litter scuttled towards him. The world was dimmer than ever this morning. Even the wind and heat seemed frail.

He turned the corner. A thick scum of lobster husks, sodden kelp, koiyl leaves, and the twisting body of an animated doll broke and slapped at the concrete wharf. Beyond the wharf, a path of flames trailed across the water. He stared at it for a moment, rubbing his back, his feet slowing. Then he broke into a run. Farther up, past where the boat should have been, gray figures clustered at the water’s edge. Filaments of their clothing unfurled, and he could hear them shouting and whooping.
Chicahta
…
Scuro
…
Rojo
…

Tumbling, nearly falling, he yelled Felipe’s name.

He found Felipe propped against the boat’s mooring post. His shoes were off, and his sodden bandages had been unraveled. Oily bolts and screws had been removed from the boat’s torn-off outboard and pushed between his toes. John shook Felipe’s shoulders, but the old priest only muttered and smacked his lips, still deep in trisoma dreams. John slumped down beside him. Smoke was rising across the water, stinging his eyes as the wind drew at the flames. For a while, the boat shone as brightly as the sun that was so rare in these Magulf skies. Then the blaze died, as the boat, raising its blackened prow like a drowning hand, slid beneath the water.

Down the wharf, the witchwoman cackled and waved.

T
HE BAR REALLY WAS CALLED
Red Heat. He saw the letters—no longer straight, and colored a chill powdery blue—framed above the doorway. And, as always with the places he and Laurie visited at lunchtime, there were few diners. A wealthy-looking Borderer sat eating alone, and two European males who’d bothered to make the journey out past the shockwire were hunched over a table; from what John caught of their conversation, he guessed that they were engineers at the phosphate plant. They probably hadn’t been in the Magulf long, either, from the sullen way they kept looking around. As well as being cold, the Red Heat was big, dim, and empty, and smelled of damp and burnt fat.

John glanced up at the high ceiling, which glinted with the gilded light of stars. Not stars as you might see them, but pointed, filament-waving, storybook stars. Those stars, and the way that all the tumblers had frosted to a driftglass translucence from frequent washing, had been his main memories of their last visit here. Certainly not the name.

He glanced at his watch. Laurie was ten minutes late. Worried about going to the wrong place and missing her, he’d arrived early. She was usually early too, but now she was ten minutes late. With anyone else, that would be…

The door swung open, and there was Laurie, peering around for a moment as her eyes adjusted from the gloom outside to the Red Heat’s greater gloom. He watched as she stood with her face and body still unfocused, still not conscious of him—he had, after all, chosen the farthest, darkest corner. She looked strange and lovely, gawky and yet strong. For a moment, he thought, she was like a new and different person; like an actress in that unguarded moment when her face relaxes as she walks offstage.

“Laurie…” He raised an arm. The two phosphate engineers looked over.

She truly seemed different today. As she moved between the empty tables and chairs, he saw that she was wearing a newer, shorter dress. Something that he’d never seen her in before. Pale red stockings. Shoes with raised heels. She came and stood by him.

“Sorry I’m late. I…” She gestured at the outfit. Now that he’d finished noticing her legs, he also saw that she was wearing a short navy jacket brocaded at the edges. Her eyes seemed wider, too, her lips redder, and she smelled of the primitive dab-on perfume that he once saw on the shelf in her bathroom but had never actually caught her wearing. And her hair—even though the wind had got to it—was held back by two gold bands. All this for me? he thought, quite overwhelmed as she sat down. He felt clumsy and unworthy. The ache had come back into his throat.

“You look great, incredible.”

“Thanks. So do you.” She looked at him and tilted her head, changing her mind. “Are you hungry? Have you ordered?”

He shook his head. The tiredness of the long night at Sea-gates and this more-than-alcohol drink were starting to have an effect.

“Well?” she asked, feeling in her bag. “What was it like?”

“After Paris, I went back to England—to Herefordshire. Home.”

“I had wondered why you returned on the London shuttle.”

“You knew that?”

“I asked the net to check the flight lists for me. Why?”

His eyes stung a little as the tubegas reached him.

“You know I missed you.”

“I missed you too.”

She reached her hand across the table, and he took it. The two phosphate engineers watched in silence. John was dressed in secular civvies, but perhaps they knew he was a priest. Or it could have been just the sight of a European male and a Borderer female touching—although if every story he’d heard was to be believed, most expats paid at least one visit to do more than just touch the flesh at Agouna, if only so that they could say that they’d been. But that was different. Just another transaction.

They ordered food. Mainly bread and fungi. Laurie said she wasn’t hungry, and John could still taste the koiyl he’d chewed before he went to Seagates. It wasn’t actually unpleasant, but it dulled his appetite.

“You got the afternoon off?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “I don’t have Mass till six this evening.”

“Anyway”—her cheeks hollowed as she drew on her tube—“some things don’t change.”

“In Paris,” he said, “when I saw the bishop, it was pretty obvious that everyone in the Zone had been talking.”

“Everyone?”

“Well, you know.”

“I suppose we could have been more careful. But I’m used to being…” She thought for a moment. “Ignored and noticed at the same time.”