The Revelation Space Collection (152 page)

‘You do come out with the oddest things, Haussmann.’ Ramirez tapped him on the nose and leaned closer. There had never been any danger of the other officers overhearing the conversation, but now he was whispering. ‘Word of advice. I wasn’t joking when I said your name had been bandied about - but you aren’t the only candidate, and one wrong word from you could have a disastrous effect on your chances. Am I making myself clear?’

‘Crystal, sir.’

‘Good. Then watch your step, keep your head about you at all times, and you may be in with a chance.’

Sky nodded. He imagined that Ramirez expected him to feel grateful for this titbit of confidentiality, but what Sky actually felt - and did his level best to hide - was unmitigated contempt. As if the wishes of Ramirez and his cronies in any way influenced him! As if they actually had any say in whether he became Captain or not. The poor, blind fools.

‘He’s nothing,’ Sky breathed. ‘But I’ve got to let him feel he is useful to us.’

‘Of course,’ Clown said, for Clown had never been far away. ‘It’s what I would do.’

TWENTY-FIVE

After the episode had happened, I walked around the concourse until I found a tent where I could rent the use of a telephone for a few minutes. Everyone relied on phones now that the city’s original elegantly swift data networks had stopped working. It was something of a comedown for a society whose machines had once elevated the art of communication into an effortless form of near-telepathy, but the phones had become a minor fashion accessory in their own right. The poor didn’t have them and so the rich flaunted them, the larger and more conspicuous the better. The phone I rented looked like a crude, military-hardened walkie-talkie: a bulky black handheld unit with a popup two-d screen and a matrix of scuffed push-buttons marked with Canasian characters.

I asked the man renting the phone what I needed to do to reach both an orbital number and someone in the Canopy. He gave me a long and involved explanation about both, the details of which I struggled to hold in my head. The orbital number was easier since I already knew it - engraved onto the Mendicant business card which Sister Amelia had left me - but I had to get through four or five temperamental network layers before I reached it.

The Mendicants conducted their business in an interesting manner. They maintained ties with many of their clients long after they had left Hospice Idlewild. Some of those clients, on ascending to positions of power in the system, returned favours to the Mendicants - donations which allowed them to keep their habitat solvent. But it went beyond that. The Mendicants relied on their clients returning to them for additional services - information and the something which could only be described as the politest kind of espionage, so it was always in their interests to be in easy reach.

I had to walk out of the station, into the rain, before the phone was able to hook into any of the city’s surviving data systems. Even then it took many seconds of stuttering attempts before an informational route was established to the Hospice, and once our conversation began it was punctuated by significant timelags and dropouts as data packets ricocheted around near-Yellowstone space, occasionally arcing off on parabolas which never returned.

‘Brother Alexei of the Ice Mendicants, how may I serve God through you?’

The face which had appeared on the screen was gaunt and lantern-jawed, the man’s eyes gleaming with calm benevolence, like an owl. One of the eyes, I noticed, was surrounded by a deep purple bruise.

‘Well, well,’ I said. ‘Brother Alexei. How nice. What happened? Fell on your trowel?’

‘I’m not sure I follow you, friend.’

‘Well, I’ll jog your memory for you. My name is Tanner Mirabel. I came through the Hospice a few days ago, from the Orvieto.’

‘I’m . . . not sure I recall you, brother.’

‘Funny. Don’t you remember how we exchanged vows in the cave?’

He gritted his teeth, all the while maintaining that benevolent half-smile. ‘No . . . sorry. Drawing a blank there. But please continue. ’

He was wearing an Ice Mendicant smock, hands clasped across his stomach. Behind him, I was afforded a view of climbing stepped vineyards which rose up and up until they curved overhead, bathed in the mirrored light of the habitat’s sunscreens. Little chalets and rest places dotted the steps, blocks of cool white amidst the overwhelmingly florid green, like icebergs on a briny sea.

‘I need to speak to Sister Amelia,’ I said. ‘She was very kind to me during our stay and she dealt with my personal affairs. I seem to remember you and she are acquainted?’

The look of placidity did not diminish. ‘Sister Amelia is one of our kindest souls. It does not surprise me that you wish to show your gratitude. But I am afraid she is indisposed in the cryocrypts. Perhaps I can - in my own way - at least be of service, even if my own ministerings can not even begin to approximate the degree of devotion tended you by the divine Sister Amelia?’

‘Have you hurt her, Alexei?’

‘God forgive you.’

‘Cut the pious act. I’ll break your spine if you’ve hurt her. You realise that, don’t you? I should have done it while I had the chance.’

He chewed on that for a few moments before responding, ‘No, Tanner . . . I haven’t hurt her. Does that satisfy you?’

‘Then get me Amelia.’

‘Why is it so urgent that you speak to her, and not me?’

‘I know from the conversations we had that Sister Amelia dealt with a lot of newcomers coming through the Hospice, and I’d like to know if she ever remembered dealing with a Mister . . .’ I started saying Quirrenbach, then bit my tongue.

‘Sorry, didn’t quite catch the name.’

‘Never mind. Just put me through to Amelia.’

He hesitated, then asked me to repeat my own name again. ‘Tanner,’ I said, gritting my teeth.

It was like we had only just been introduced. ‘Just a moment of your - um - patience, brother.’ The look was still in place, but his voice had an edge of strain to it now. He lifted one sleeve of his frock, exposing a bronze bracelet into which he spoke, very softly and possibly in a tongue specific only to the Mendicants. I watched an image appear on the bracelet, but it was far too small for me to identify anything other than a pink blur which might have been a human face, and which might also have been Sister Amelia. There was a pause of five or six seconds before Alexei lowered the sleeve of his smock.

‘Well?’

‘I cannot reach her immediately, brother. She is tending to the slush . . . to the sick, and one would be sorely inadvised to interrupt her when she is so engaged. But I have been informed that she has been seeking you as much as you seek her.’

‘Seeking me?’

‘If you would care to leave a message where Amelia may reach you . . .’

I killed the connection to the Hospice before Alexei had completed his sentence. I imagined him standing in the vineyard, staring glumly down at whichever deadened screen he had been addressing, his words trailing off. He had failed. He had failed to trace me, as must have been his intention. Reivich’s people, it appeared, had also reached and infiltrated the Mendicants. They had been waiting for me to resume contact, hoping that by some indiscretion I would reveal my location.

It had almost worked.

It took me a few minutes to find Zebra’s number, remembering that she had called herself Taryn before revealing the name used by her contacts in the sabotage movement. I had no idea if Taryn was a common first name in Chasm City, but for once luck was on my side - there were less than a dozen people with that as first name. There was no need to phone them all, since the phone showed me a map of the city and only one number was anywhere near the chasm. The connection was much swifter than the one to the Hospice, but it was far from instantaneous, and still plagued by episodes of static, as if the signal had to worm along a continent-spanning telegraphic cable, rather than jump through a few kilometres of smog-laden air.

‘Tanner, where are you? Why did you leave?’

‘I . . .’ I paused, on the verge of telling her I was near Grand Central Station, if that was not adequately obvious from the view behind me. ‘No, I’d better not. I think I trust you, Zebra, but you’re too close to the Game. It’s better if you don’t know.’

‘You think I’d betray you?’

‘No, although I wouldn’t blame you if you did. But I can’t risk anyone finding out via you.’

‘Who’s left to find out? You did a fairly comprehensive job on Waverly, I hear.’ Her striped face filled the screen, monochrome skin tone offset by the bloodshot pink of her eyes.

‘He played the Game from both sides. He must have known it would get him killed sooner or later.’

‘He may have been a sadist, but he was one of us.’

‘What was I supposed to do - smile nicely and ask them to desist?’ A warm squall of harder rain lashed out of the sky, and I moved under the ledged side of a building for protection, cupping my hand over the phone, Zebra’s image dancing like a reflection in water. ‘I had nothing personal against Waverly, in case you wondered. Nothing that a warm bullet wouldn’t have fixed.’

‘You didn’t use a bullet, from what I heard.’

‘He put me in a position where killing him was my only option. And I did it efficiently, in case you were wondering.’ I spared her the details of what I had found when I caught up with Waverly on the ground; it would not change anything to know he had been harvested by the Mulch.

‘You’re quite capable of looking after yourself, aren’t you? I began to wonder when I found you in that building. Mostly, they don’t even make it that far. Certainly not if they’ve been shot. Who are you, Tanner Mirabel?’

‘Someone trying to survive,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry about what I took from you. You took care of me, and I’m grateful, and if I can find a way of repaying you for that and the things I took, I will.’

‘You didn’t have to go anywhere,’ Zebra said. ‘I said I’d offer you sanctuary until the Game was over.’

‘I’m afraid I had business I had to attend to.’ It was a mistake; the last thing Zebra needed to know about was the business with Reivich, but now I had invited her to speculate about just what it would take to bring a man out of hiding.

‘The odd thing is,’ she said, ‘I almost believe you when you say you’ll pay me back. I don’t know why, but I think you’re a man of your word, Tanner.’

‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘And I think one day it’ll be the death of me.’

‘What’s that meant to mean?’

‘Never mind. Is there a hunt tonight, Zebra? I thought you might know, if anyone would.’

‘There is,’ she said, after consideration. ‘But I don’t see how it concerns you, Tanner. Haven’t you learned your lesson yet? You’re lucky to be alive.’

I smiled. ‘I guess I’m just not sick enough of Chasm City yet.’

I returned the rented phone to its owner and considered my options. Zebra’s face and the timbre of her voice lurked behind every conscious thought. Why had I called her? There had been no reason for it, except to apologise, and even that was pointless; a gesture more aimed at ameliorating my conscience than aiding the woman from whom I had stolen. I had been well aware how much my betrayal would hurt her, and well aware that I was not going to be able to pay her back at any point in the foreseeable future. Yet something had made me make that call, and when I tried to pare away my superficial motives to find what really lay below them, all I found was a mélange of emotions and impulses: her smell; the sound of her laugh, the curve of her hips and the way the stripes on her back had contorted and released when she rolled aside from me after our lovemaking. I did not like what I found, so I slammed the lid on those thoughts just as if I had opened a box of vipers . . .

I walked back into the crowds of the bazaar, letting their noise oppress my thoughts into submission, concentrating instead on the now. I still had money; I was still a rich man by Mulch standards, no matter how little influence it counted for in the Canopy. Asking around and comparing prices, I found a room for rent, a few blocks across the Mulch, in what was apparently one of the less rundown districts.

The room was shabby, even by Mulch standards. It was one cubic corner element in a teetering eight-storeyed encrustation of structures lashed around the footslopes of a major structure. On the other hand, it also looked very old and established, having gained its own parasitic layer of encrustations in the form of ladders, staircases, horizontal landings, drainage conduits, trellises and animal cages, so while the complex might not be the safest in the Mulch, it had obviously endured for some years and was unlikely to choose my arrival as a sign to start collapsing. I accessed my room via a series of ladders and landing traverses, my feet padding over rents in the wattlelike bamboo flooring, street level dizzyingly far below. The room was lit by gas lamps, although I noticed that other parts of the complex were furnished with electricity, served by constantly droning methane-powered generators somewhere below, machines which were locked in furious competition with the local street musicians, criers, muezzins, vendors and animals. But I soon stopped noticing the sounds, and when I drew the room’s blinds, it became tolerably dark.

The room contained no furniture except a bed, but that was all that I needed.

I sat down on it and thought about all that had happened. I felt myself free of any Haussmann episodes for the time being and that allowed me to look back on those that I had experienced so far, with something bordering on cool, clinical detachment.