The Great Wheel (6 page)

A rotund man in a flashy suit picked his way towards the mike. John knew he was a Borderer from the way the cheers grew louder as he stumbled over one of the music stands. Mister Mero would be some wealthy builder who would supervise the actual work on the new kelpbeds. He began to speak in clear and virtually unaccented European, expressing gratitude to the fundraisers. How the new kelpbeds at Medersa would provide much needed food, fuel, jobs…He seemed to be rounding off quickly, but then stopped glancing down at his screen and began to talk about A New Spirit of Cooperation. Attention wandered. Fresh drinks and smokes were found. Conversations started up again.

“Father John! So you made it.”

A firm bony hand drew him by the elbow, through the honeysuckle arch and back into the crowd.

“Look, you haven’t got a drink.
Have
you eaten? The food’s not spectacular, but you may as well make the most of something that doesn’t taste of kelp.”

Father Orteau took a step back to study John. He didn’t exactly tut.

“I’m fine,” John said. “How are you?”

“Oh,
me,”
Father Orteau laughed. “I’ll be on top of the world when the bishop lets me out of here.”

John nodded, trying not to smile. It had been Felipe who’d explained how the bishop in Paris, against the policy of regularly shifting priests around in the Magulf, had now reappointed Father Orteau to the Zone parish for a third consecutive year. The Church’s usual fear was that, even in the Zones, priests would go odd, get an addiction, grow ill, mad—or go peculiarly native. But there was no chance of that happening to Father Orteau. Father Orteau was already peculiarly Father Orteau.

He dabbed at his forehead with a white handkerchief. His fingers strayed to check the precision of his center parting, the discreet diamond pinned to his right ear. He reinserted the handkerchief into his pocket, smoothed the crease of his suit.

“Well,” he asked, “what do you think?”

“I’m sure,” John said, surprised to discover just how easy it was to get into the ironic doublespeak of the Zone, “that more kelpbeds are just what the Borderers need.”

“Really?” Father Orteau studied him for a moment, then looked up. “You know, what I wouldn’t give for some blue sky…a few mare’s tails. And don’t you think it looks particularly poisonous up there today? All that smoke and sand. Some more rainforest must have gone up, don’t you think?”

John shrugged.

“One of the few things I have learned about Bab Mensor is that the wind always blows straight at my rooms in the Hyatt. I’m told the warm air has to go north to balance the Gulf Stream or something. That’s the maître d’s excuse for all the muck that gets blown onto my balcony, anyway.” He peered up at the sky. “And I have a terrible feeling today that the net has bungled—or some satellite’s gone down. I know it’s not the time of year for it, but I really do think it’s going to rain.”

“Halcycon’s probably got more important things to worry about than rainfall over Bab Mensor.”

Father Orteau blinked at the suggestion, obviously taken aback.

John blinked back. “You must come and visit us at the Pandera presbytery,” he said. “I’m sure Felipe would love to see you.”

“I don’t know what I’m thinking of—you still haven’t got that drink. Hey, you…” A jeweled cuff fell back from an elegant wrist as Father Orteau raised his arm and snapped his fingers. “Over here. Quick! We have a man in thirst.”

One of the Borderer waiters walked briskly over. John silently urged him to show some sign of reluctance or insolence, but the man kept up his unwavering smile, offering a choice of Chardonnay or Font de Michelle, neither of which John wanted.

Father Orteau was right: the low red sky really did signify rain.

It came chattering across the lake, obscuring the Hyatt, roiling the waters with reddish gray streamers of desert sand, drowning out the end of Mister Mero’s speech, sailing hats over the trees and the bandstand, sending the guests scurrying to shelter.

John sat alone on a marble bench in the Temple of Winds. He could have made it into one of the big marquees or the tropical houses with everyone else. They’d be there now. Drinking, smoking, laughing, eating…

The path that wound through the pear trees to the sunken garden ahead of him was now a brown stream cascading down stone steps where roses and clematis raised drowning hands. Every now and then, the wind sucked in on itself, spraying water from the temple’s sand-clogged gutters.

Still, it wasn’t a mudstorm. Just ordinary rainfall by Magulf standards, turning the world rusty brown. And outside the Zone, the filters for the water butts would be clogging, overflowing, the sewers would be backing up, the streets running thick and fast. The Endless City would be sinking into mud. It was the same in the Zone. On the way from the carpark with Tim, John had seen the lines of yellow tractors that the Borderer gardeners used to cut and vacuum the lawns; the crabs and ladders for cleaning the tropical houses’ acreage of glass; the pumping gear.

He shivered and shook his head, rubbing at the flesh around his watch, which still ached slightly from his examination, as it had when his recombinant was reformatted before he came here, to provide the viral barriers that lined his mouth and throat and lungs. The rain was thinning, but he was soaked by now anyway. The wind rocked the trees. A few more heavy droplets splattered down into his face. He could taste oxidized grit. Still, the gardens looked beautiful. The rain had almost stopped. And now, of all things, the sun was making a rare appearance. Bright rays, the lawns a sudden haze of steaming green, involving every sense. Tame birds started to squawk and sing. He saw a pair of the Trinity Gardens’ famous blue macaws. Squabbling, perhaps mating, fluttering together from branch to branch down the pear tree avenue like tangled flags.

The air was heavy, wet, earthy, and alive. The sunken garden was already draining, rescued by hidden pumps. The paths gleamed. The sky was arched with a rainbow.

Standing up, feeling his wet trousers shift and cling, John saw a blue-striped umbrella approaching along the avenue of pear trees. He wondered if he should wander off to avoid the encounter, but decided that he’d already taken the easy option once too often this afternoon. And it would probably only be Tim, drunk by now on Armagnac.

But it wasn’t Tim. It was a woman.

She climbed the steps, shook and folded her umbrella, and turned to sit on the bench.

“I wouldn’t sit there,” John said. “Everything here is soaked. Me included.”

“All right.” She straightened, twirling her umbrella. “Shall we walk? There’s little else to do here.”

He didn’t recognize her. She was dressed in a blue business jacket, the cuffs hanging down to her knuckles, and a skirt that looked creased and a little less than new. Like him, she probably felt out of place this afternoon.

He got up. “I’m John Alston.”

“The priest? I thought so.”

“Is it that obvious?”

“Someone pointed you out.”

His shoes squelched as he and she descended the steps towards the sunken garden. “The rain,” he said. “It must have ruined the party.”

“I thought it was rather picturesque, everyone running for shelter. Like an old movie.”

“Or a sepia print.”

“Hmmm.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know your name.”

“Laurie Kalmar. I work the net.”

He raised his eyes from the puddles, expecting her to offer a hand for him to shake. She didn’t.

“I’m based at the presbytery beside Gran Vía,” he said, “about ten kils from here…” He stopped there. Few people in the Zone knew or cared where he lived.

“Really? The Pandera presbytery? You live with old Father Felipe?”

“That’s right.” Surprised, he looked at her again. She was younger than he, no more than in her mid-twenties, which in itself was rare among expats, who generally came to the Zone after years of doing—or attempting to do—something else. Her dark hair was cut shoulder-length, and her thinnish face was dominated by wide, slightly protuberant silver eyes and a square jaw. “You seem to know your way around the Magulf a little better than most people,” he said.

She laughed. Like her voice, her laughter was soft yet oddly precise. Both warm and constricted. “Just because I’ve heard of your presbytery? The truth is, I do sometimes get involved in charity things like this one. I would be a leading light if they’d let me.”

“I guess it’s got to be the way forward. More kelpbeds.”

“That doesn’t impress you.”

“It doesn’t matter whether I’m impressed. The Medersa project will feed more people than I’ll ever be able to help. It’s big money, high profile…”

“And all the Europeans sitting at home will be able to feel good for a little while longer about helping the poor bloody Gogs…” She shook her head. “This doesn’t seem to be doing either of us any good, does it? Let’s talk about something else.”

They followed the path around the top of the lake. At first, they did talk about other things—about Father Orteau, the staff at Magulf Liaison; it seemed that he could mention any name and she would know who he meant—but mostly they still talked about the Endless City. Or he did: complaining about the antique doctor at the clinic, the erratic supplies, and the stupidity and ignorance that he encountered in the Zone—and outside, among the Borderers. What it was like to be forever alone in a crowded place: the sense of distant nearness.

“Your Church has always been obsessed with poverty,” she said. “Like all those appeal leaflets—as though starvation had some kind of inherent dignity. You work in a clinic, you must realize that money and medicine could do so much more…”

She opened her umbrella as they passed beneath the dripping canopy of willows beside the boathouse. He was puzzled by her attitude. People were expected to argue with and question priests—it was one of priests’ functions—but they rarely did. Workers on the net were notoriously eccentric—but
your
Church? As if there were some other.

“How long will you be staying here, Father John?”

“Just a year, unless the bishop extends my term.”

“You think that’s enough?”

“No, of course not. But the experience is that priests in the Endless City grow weary after a time.”

“Is that how you feel?”

“Weary?” He raised his shoulders and shrugged. “Not yet. Confused, maybe. A year isn’t anything like long enough. But how long would be enough—and for what?”

“And then, of course, you have your whole life in the Church.”

He nodded. The grass and the lake were gleaming and steaming. He was walking with a young and apparently charming woman, but he felt weary and alone.

“You didn’t happen to meet any of my predecessors?” he asked.

“I suppose I did. I meet a lot of people. You must know what it’s like in the Zone. You really never get to know them.”

“I passed the one before me, on the ferry,” John said. “He was going out to the shuttle as I came in.”

“That sounds quite typical.”

“There’s no continuity.”

“Of course. No…”

“It’s absurd, really, that so little attention is paid. Even the people you meet here seem in a dream—most of them, anyway.”

“They probably wish they were somewhere else.”

“Do you?”

She smiled and shook her head. Over the lake, blackish clouds were starting to ambush the sun. “And what would happen?”

“What?”

“If everyone woke up.”

“I’ve noticed…” He paused. “Things about the people who come to the clinic. The kind of illnesses they have, disease rates. I’m sure that something could be done—simply—to help.” Just then, the clouds met over the sun. As though someone had turned off a switch, the whole of Trinity Gardens darkened. The effect only lasted a moment. Stimulated by the change, all the lights around the gardens came on. The lake was suddenly glowing. Shadows flared out across the grass from the dripping trees.

In silence, they walked back up the slope to the noise and light of the tropical houses. The southerly wind had picked up too, almost as quickly as the change in the light, tumbling fallen branches, flailing the sodden beds of tulips and black daffodils, throwing scattershots of desert sand.

Suddenly Laurie Kalmar stooped, her hand to her face.

“What is it?” he asked. “Your eye?”

Leaning over the puddled path, she waved him away. “Just grit…”

Fumbling in the pocket of her dress, she produced a small vial. Tilting her head back, lifting the vial, she squeezed out a drop into her right eye.

“There.” She blinked and looked at him. By the second blink, the green of her right iris had turned silver again. “You didn’t realize,” she said. “Did you?”

“No…”

“You thought we Gogs were all waiters, gardeners, cleaners, or peasants, right?”

“Of course I don’t—”

“Come on. Let’s go inside.”

A uniformed waiter had seen them approach the tropical houses and was holding the door open. As it swung shut behind them, John was enclosed in a green wash of heat and the clink of glasses, the smell of European sweat, perfume, citrus fruit, wet clothes, buffet food, and tubes. He attempted to push through, but Laurie Kalmar was already squeezing away from him, between the hats and suits and dresses, between the birds and palm trees. The backs of her legs, John saw as she vanished, were striped with mud.

W
EDNESDAY BREAKFAST AT THE
Pandera presbytery, and Father Felipe was spruced up in a much-mended brown suit, a silk tie and gold brooch, his best silver cross and chain, and polished black brogues that were cut along the soles to accommodate his feet. Felipe loved Wednesdays; they were his days at the Mirimar Bar.

He rumbled with pleasure and cracked his knuckles as Bella brought in trays of coffee and toast. The bread, the butter, and the coffee beans were all real, not a kelp synthesis but from one of the mysterious packages that often arrived on the presbytery doorstep. John had tried to refuse once or twice, but the smell of toast and fresh-ground coffee was persuasive.

Felipe lifted his slice of toast. Inspecting it, he pulled an elaborate face and replaced it on the plate. “Bella, my dear,” he said, “I think you might find there’s some of that rough-cut marmalade if you look top left in the kitchen.”