The Revelation Space Collection (156 page)

‘If I were you,’ Chanterelle said, ‘I wouldn’t stand around staring all day. I take it you don’t want people to realise you aren’t from around here?’

I felt the ice-slug gun in my pocket and hoped that she saw my arm tense as I found it. ‘Just walk on. When I want advice I’ll ask for it.’ Chanterelle continued wordlessly, but after a few steps I began to feel guilty at snapping at her so strongly. ‘I’m sorry; I realise you were trying to help.’

‘It’s in my interests,’ the woman said, out of the corner of her mouth, as if sharing an anecdote. ‘I don’t want you attracting so much attention that someone makes a move on you and I end up getting caught in the crossfire.’

‘Thanks for the concern.’

‘It’s self-preservation. How could I feel concerned for you when you’ve just hurt my friends and I don’t even know your name?’

‘Your friends will be okay,’ I said. ‘This time tomorrow they won’t even be limping, unless they choose to keep their injuries for show. And they’ll have a very good story to tell in hunt circles.’

‘What about your name, then?’

‘Call me Tanner,’ I said, and forced her on.

A warm, moist wind blew across us as we crossed the pad towards the arched entrance which led back into Escher Heights. A few palanquins darted ahead of us like moving tombstones. At least it had decided not to rain. Perhaps rain was less frequent in this part of the city, or perhaps we were sufficiently high to escape the worst of it. My clothes were still wet from standing in the Mulch, but in this respect Chanterelle looked no better than I.

The arch led into a brightly lit enclosure cool with perfumed air, the ceiling strung with lanterns and banners and slowly spinning circulators. The corridor followed a gentle curve to the right, crossing ornamental pools via stone bridges. For the second time since arriving in the city I saw koi gaping up at me.

‘What’s the big deal with the fish?’ I asked.

‘You shouldn’t talk about them like that. They mean a lot to us.’

‘But they’re just koi.’

‘Yes, and it was just koi that gave us immortality. Or the first steps towards it, anyway. They live a long time, koi. Even in the wild, they don’t really die of old age. They just get larger and larger until their hearts can’t cope. But it’s not the same as dying of old age.’

I heard Chanterelle murmur something which might have been ‘koi be blessed’ as she crossed the bridge, and allowed my own lips to echo the sentiment. I didn’t want to be seen or doing anything unusual.

The walls were crystalline, an endlessly repeating motif of bustling octagons, but at intermittent distances they had been hollowed out to admit little boutiques and parlours, offering services in florid scrawls of neon or pulsing holographic light. Canopy people were shopping or strolling, most of them couples who at least looked young, although there were very few children present, and those I saw might well have been neotenous adults in their latest body image, or even androform pets programmed with a few childlike phrases.

Chanterelle led me into a much larger chamber, a huge vaulted hall of crystalline magnificence, into which several malls and plazas converged on multiple levels. Chandeliers the size of re-entry capsules hung from the ceiling. The paths tangled around each other, meandering past koi ponds and ornamental waterfalls, encircling pagodas and teahouses. The centre of the atrium was given over to a huge glass tank, encased in smoked filigreed metal. There was something in the tank, but there were too many people packed around the perimeter, jostling parasols and fans and leashed pets, for me to see what it was.

‘I’m going to sit down at that table,’ I said, waiting until Chanterelle acknowledged me. ‘You’re going to walk over to that teahouse and order a cup of tea for me and something for yourself. Then you’re going to walk back to the table and you’re going to look like you’re enjoying it.’

‘You’re going to keep that gun on me the whole time?’

‘Look on it as a compliment. I just can’t keep my eyes off you.’

‘You’re hilarious, Tanner.’

I smiled and eased myself into the chair, suddenly conscious of the Mulch filth in which I was caked, and the fact that, surrounded by the gaudily dressed canopy strollers, I looked like an undertaker at a carnival.

I half expected Chanterelle not to return with the tea. Did she really think I would shoot her here, in the back? Did she also imagine I had the skill to be able to aim the gun from my pocket, and not run the risk of hitting someone else? She should have just strolled away from me, and that would have been the end of our acquaintance. And - like her friends - she would have a very good story to tell, even if the night’s hunting had not gone quite as planned. I would not have blamed her. I tried to summon up some dislike for her, but nothing much welled up. I could see things from Zebra’s side clearly enough, but what Chanterelle had said also made sense to me. She believed the people they hunted were bad people who ought to die for what they had done. Chanterelle was wrong about the victims, but how was she to know? From her point of view - denied the exquisite viewpoint which I had experienced thanks to Waverly - Chanterelle’s actions were almost laudable. Wasn’t she doing the Mulch a favour by culling its sickest?

It was enough that I allowed this notion into my head, even if I stopped short of preparing a bed for it.

Sky Haussmann would have been very proud of me.

‘Don’t look so grateful, Tanner.’

Chanterelle had returned with the tea.

‘Why did you come back?’

She placed the two cups on the ironwork top of the table, then lowered herself into the seat opposite me, as sinuously as any cat. I wondered if Chanterelle’s nervous system had been adjusted to give her that edge of felinity, or whether it just came from a lot of practice. ‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘I wasn’t quite bored with you yet. Quite the opposite, perhaps. Intrigued. And now that we’re somewhere public, I don’t find you half as threatening.’

I sipped the tea. It was almost tasteless, the oral equivalent of an exquisitely pale watercolour.

‘There must be more to it than that.’

‘You kept your word about my friends. And you could have killed them, I think. But instead you did them a favour. You showed them what pain is really like - real pain; not the soft-edged approximation you get from experientials - and, like you said, you gave them something to brag about afterwards. I’m right, aren’t I? You could have killed them just as easily, and it would not have made any difference to your plans.’

‘What makes you think I have plans?’

‘The way you ask questions. I also think that, whatever it is you need to do, you don’t have long to do it.’

‘Can I ask another question?’

Chanterelle nodded, and used the moment to remove the cat’s-eye mask from her face. Her eyes were leonine, inset with a vertical pupil, but other than that her face was rather human, broad and open, with high cheekbones, framed by a halo of auburn curls which tumbled to her neckline.

‘What is it, Tanner?’

‘Just before I shot your friends, one of them said something. It might have been you, but I don’t remember so well.’

‘Go on. What was it?’

‘That there was something wrong with my eyes.’

‘That was me,’ Chanterelle said, uneasily.

So I had not been imagining it. ‘What did you say? What was it you saw?’

Her voice lowered now, as if she was conscious of how strange the whole conversation had become.

‘It was like they were glowing, like there were two glowing dots in your face.’ She spoke quickly, nervously. ‘I assumed you must have been wearing some kind of mask, and that you discarded it before you emerged again. But you weren’t, were you?’

‘No. No, I wasn’t. But I wish I was.’

She looked into my eyes, the vertical slits of her own eyes narrowing as she focused intently. ‘Whatever it was, it isn’t there now. Are you telling me you don’t know why that happened?’

‘I guess,’ I said, finishing the watery tea with no great enthusiasm, ‘it will have to remain one of life’s little mysteries.’

‘What kind of an answer is that?’

‘The best I’m capable of giving at this moment in time. And if that sounds like the kind of thing someone who was a little scared of what the truth might hold might say, maybe you’re not entirely wrong.’ I reached under the coat and scratched my chest, my skin itching beneath the sweat-sodden Mendicant clothes. ‘I’d rather drop the subject for now.’

‘Sorry I raised it,’ Chanterelle said, heavy with irony. ‘Well, what happens now, Tanner? You’ve already told me you were surprised that I came back. That suggests to me that my presence isn’t vital to you, or you’d have done something about it. Does it mean we go our separate ways now?’

‘You almost sound disappointed.’ I wondered if Chanterelle was aware that my hand had not been on the hilt of the gun for several minutes now, and that the weapon had barely entered my thoughts during that time. ‘Am I that fascinating to you, or are you just more bored than I imagined?’

‘A bit of both, probably. But you are fascinating, Tanner. Worse than that, you’re a puzzle I’ve only half solved.’

‘Half already? You’d better slow down. I’m not as unfathomable as you think. Scratch the surface and you might be surprised at how little lies beneath. I’m just—’

What was I going to tell her - just a soldier, just a man keeping his word? Just a fool who did not even know when it was time to break it?

I stood up, conspicuously removing my hand from the gun pocket. ‘I could use your help, Chanterelle, that’s all. But there’s not much more to me than meets the eye. If you want to show me something of this place, I’d be grateful. But you can walk away now.’

‘Do you have any money, Tanner?’

‘A little. Nothing that would amount to much here, I’m afraid.’

‘Show me what you have.’

I pulled out a fistful of greasy Ferris notes, laying them in their sad entirety on the table. ‘What does that buy me, another cup of tea if I’m lucky?’

‘I don’t know. It’s enough to buy you another set of clothes, which I think you could use if you want to blend in at least approximately.’

‘Do I look that out of place?’

‘You look so out of place, Tanner, you might be in serious danger of starting a fashion. But somehow I don’t think that’s quite what you had in mind.’

‘Not really, no.’

‘I don’t know Escher Heights well enough to recommend the best, but I saw some boutiques on the way in which we should be able to outfit you.’

‘I’d like to look at that tank first, if you don’t mind.’

‘Oh, I know what that is. That’s Methuselah. I’d forgotten they kept him here.’

I knew the name, vaguely, and I had the impression it had already been half-remembered once this evening. But Chanterelle was leading me away. ‘We can come back later, when you don’t stand out so much.’

I sighed and put up my hands in surrender. ‘You can show me the rest of Escher Heights as well.’

‘Why not. The night’s still young, after all.’

Chanterelle made some calls while we walked to a nearby boutique, chasing up her friends and establishing that they were all alive and safe in the Canopy, but she did not leave a message for any of them, and then never mentioned them again. That, I supposed, was how it went: many of the people I saw in Escher Heights would be cognisant of the Game, and might even follow it avidly, but none would admit it to themselves, beyond the private parlours where the sport’s existence was acknowledged and celebrated.

The boutique was staffed by two gloss-black bipedal servitors, far more sophisticated than any I had seen in the city so far. They kept oozing insincere compliments, even when I knew that I looked like a gorilla which had accidentally broken into a theatrical supplier’s. With Chanterelle’s guidance, I settled on a combination which wouldn’t offend or bankrupt me. The trousers and jacket were of similar cut to the Mendicant clothes I now gratefully discarded, but were cut from fabrics which were wildly ostentatious by comparison, all dancing metallic threads in coruscant golds and silvers. I felt conspicuous, but when we left the boutique - Vadim’s coat billowing raffishly behind me - people gave me no more than a fleeting glance, rather than the studied suspicion I’d elicited before.

‘So,’ Chanterelle said, ‘are you going to tell me where you’re from?’

‘What have you worked out for yourself?’

‘Well, you’re not from around here. Not from Yellowstone; almost certainly not from the Rust Belt; probably not from any other enclave in the system.’

‘I’m from Sky’s Edge,’ I said. ‘I came in on the Orvieto. Actually, I assumed you’d have figured out that much from my Mendicant clothes.’

‘I did, except the coat confused me.’

‘This old thing? It was donated to me by an old friend in the Rust Belt.’

‘Sorry, but no one donates a coat like that.’ Chanterelle fingered one of the lustrous, rough-cut patches which had been quilted over it. ‘You have no idea what this signifies, have you?’

‘All right; I stole it. From someone who had stolen it himself, I expect. A man who had worse coming to him.’

‘That’s fractionally more plausible. But when I first saw it, it made me wonder. And then when you mentioned Dream Fuel . . .’ She had lowered her voice to speak the last two words, barely breathing them.