War in Heaven (45 page)

Eating took much longer than Danlo had hoped. Three of the restaurants that he found had run out of food, and at the fourth he had to stand outside on the street for two hours waiting in line with scores of other hungry people. When he finally took his place at a long plastic table inside the restaurant and sat down to his breakfast — one bowl of boiled kurmash as thin and pale as soapy water — his belly writhed and howled for more food. But he was not allowed a second helping; the restaurant's ushers quickly collected his empty bowl and fairly pushed him back out on to the street. There, he saw, the line of hungry people waiting down the red ice had grown even longer.

He spent the rest of the morning making inquiries as to the whereabouts of a once-famous cutter named Mehtar Hajime in the district's various cutting shops. Although many of the cutters whom he questioned offered to sculpt his body at the most reasonable of prices — changing his blue eyes to green, enlarging his sexual organs, or carving his vocal cords so that he could sing like a Fravashi alien — no one seemed to know where Mehtar might be found.

And so he extended his quest into other districts, working down through the Farsider's Quarter from the Merripen Green along the Street of Cutters and Splicers to the Diamond District. He entered the Bell and searched the shabby shops on the glidderies near the Street of Neurosingers; he skated back along the Serpentine and explored the dangerous neighbourhoods just south of Rollo's Ring. There, in a little shop protected with iron doors, he spoke with a cutter who had once known Mehtar. This cutter, a plump and proud-seeming man wearing the white cottons of his profession, eyed Danlo suspiciously and wouldn't let him through his doorway. "What do you want of Mehtar Hajime?" he asked.

"I seek his services," Danlo said.

"Who are you?" the cutter asked. "Why don't you remove your mask so that I can see who I'm talking to?"

"I am sorry," Danlo said, standing in the open doorway like a beggar. "I cannot do that."

"Why not? Do you suffer from the tabes? Perhaps one of the fleshrotting funguses? Or are you one of the unfortunates burned in the blast of the food factories?"

"I suffer only from the cold," Danlo said. "It has fallen cold early this year, yes?"

"Well, I can't just invite inside some faceless man wearing a mask."

"But can you tell me where I might find Mehtar Hajime, then?"

"It's been almost twenty years since he practised his art," the cutter said evasively. "He used to have the finest shop on the Street of the Cutters."

"Yes, I stopped there," Danlo said. "The shopfront is blue obsidian carved with figures of exemplars and the double-sexed. A cutter named Alvarez had taken over the shop."

"That's the place — did you happen to see the carving above the door?"

"The carving of an Alaloi man killing a mammoth with his spear?"

"You've a good eye," the cutter said. "Mehtar was most famous for sculpting men into the shape of the Alaloi. It seemed that almost everyone wanted to be as hardy and strong as these primitives. Such transformations were quite popular a generation ago."

"But no longer, yes?"

"Are you interested in such a sculpting for yourself ?" the cutter asked.

Danlo kept silent for a moment, and then answered his question with one of his own. "Do you know if Mehtar might have trained any apprentices in his art?"

"Perhaps he did, perhaps he didn't," the cutter grumbled, suddenly beginning to lose interest in Danlo. "How should I remember? It's been almost twenty-five years."

"But do you know of any other cutters who might have his skill in this kind of sculpting?"

"Have you tried Paulivik's shop? I've heard that Paulivik the Younger is almost as good a cutter as his father."

"I
have
tried that shop," Danlo said, gently knocking his boots against the doorframe to keep his feet warm.

"Well, I can't help you further. I can regraft a burned face or make an exemplar, but to make a man into a beast-man, no, no — I won't do such barbaric sculptings."

"The Alaloi are not beast-men," Danlo said quietly.

"I won't argue with a faceless man," the cutter said. "If you seek Mehtar Hajime, seek in the stars. I heard that he left Neverness years ago."

So saying, he bowed his head quickly as if forced to acknowledge an autist or some other lesser human being. And then he slammed shut the door.

The Alaloi are not beasts
, Danlo thought as he stood in there in the cold.
They are human beings — true human beings.

Because he was cold, tired and very hungry, he decided to abandon his quest for the day. On a gliddery just off the Serpentine, he was very lucky to discover a restaurant fairly overflowing with food. Although he had to wait in line for most of three hours, when he sat down with other hungry strangers in their furs and half-frozen faces, he found that he could eat as much as he liked. This was a great deal. When Danlo was truly hungry, he could eat like a ravenous tiger. And so he gorged on kurmash and blacknuts — and ming beans in curry sauce, and fried snow apples, and, most miraculously, coffee and glazed crescent bread for dessert. He ate so much that his belly bulged like that of a woman gravid with child. When he had finished this feast, he could barely stand up. Skating through the windy, night-time streets was a torment. Twice he had to sit down on snow-covered benches and breathe deeply lest he lose his meal. It was late when he finally entered the City Wild and found his skis in the snow where he had left them. And by the time he found his house in the clearing beneath the ridge, it was very late: although he had memorized his path along the crusts of snow — every rock, root and tree — the forest was dark and deep, and he had to ski with great care. At last, however, he crawled into his house and lit the flame globe and stove. He threw off his clothes and settled down naked into the warmth of his sleeping furs. When he awoke the next morning to the warbling of the loons, he found himself as hungry as any bird and ready to begin eating once again.

In the days that followed, Danlo searched almost the entire city for the lost cutter named Mehtar Hajime. The alien districts of the Zoo, of course, he avoided, as he did the streets surrounding the academy. And he left the Ashtoreth District alone; the astriers and Architects of the various cybernetic churches who made their homes there would never have allowed anything so sordid as a cutting shop to blight their stately neighbourhoods. As the weather grew colder — and it was very cold, almost the coldest winter in memory — he considered contracting for the services of Alvarez or Paulivik the Younger or some other cutter who might be able to sculpt a rugged Alaloi hunter out of the softer clay of a more modern man. But Danlo did not like to give up so easily. And so as the season's storms blew clouds of snow down the icy coloured streets, he dared the neighbourhoods of the Old City and the Pilots' Quarter, but to no avail. Each day he would set forth into the city with the highest of hopes, and each night he would return to his house a little more tired and discouraged. And a little hungrier. Almost daily, it seemed, another score of restaurants closed their doors, and the lines outside the remaining open ones grew even longer — in truth, so long that on some days he had to choose between eating or continuing his quest. That he often chose the latter bespoke the calling of his fate; deep inside he sensed that, like sands through an hourglass, time was quickly running out.

He made one other quest as well. He took advantage of his days on the streets to ask after a former courtesan named Tamara Ten Ashtoreth. To every cutter he spoke with — and every harijan, wormrunner or whore — he asked if they knew of this beautiful woman who had once promised to marry him. But no one did. He searched for her in every shop or cafe that he entered, on every glissade or gliddery. He would look deeply (and much too boldly) at every passing woman, hoping to catch sight of her lovely face. Once, on the East-West Sliddery, in the bold stare of an astrier woman adorned in her brilliant blonde hair, he thought that he had found her. But when he looked more closely, he saw that this woman's lips were not so full as Tamara's nor did she carry herself with Tamara's natural grace; her eyes were cold and blue, not warm and brown as Tamara's, not alive with all Tamara's fierce inner fire and pride.

By the 45th of winter, he was almost ready to abandon both these quests when he had what seemed a stroke of luck. Because Tamara had once possessed a great skill in the arts of pleasure — before Hanuman had raped her mind and ruined her as a courtesan — Danlo feared that she might have left this sublime profession for the much less exalted practice of a common whore. And so he searched for her on the Street of the Common Whores; he searched as well the nearby Street of Musicians and the Street of Ten Thousand Bars. He even knocked at the doors of the body shops down on Strawberry Street, and was almost glad that none of whores there knew of her. But one of these tired-looking women knew something else that interested him greatly. Her name was Sumi Gurit, an older woman with many living tattoos that writhed beneath her fair skin in the most lurid of ways. She overheard him talking with a cutter whose shop specialized in bringing women (and men) back to their youth. And when this cutter, too, sent him away unenlightened as to the whereabouts of Mehtar Hajime, she approached him on the street and said, "Perhaps I can help you."

"Yes?" Danlo said, moving towards the side of the street away from the other skaters. Many wormrunners and wealthy people promenaded past the brothels, stopping here and there to bargain with evil-looking procurers who stood outside windowless doors. "Do you know where I might find Mehtar Hajime?"

"Perhaps I do," Sumi Gurit said. "Why don't you take off your mask so that we can speak more intimately?"

"I am sorry, but I cannot do that."

"You've a handsome voice and handsome way of moving," she said. "Why won't you let me see if you've a handsome face to accompany all this handsomeness?"

"I am sorry," Danlo said again. He looked at Sumi's naked arms, belly and legs, and for a moment he marvelled at her ability to withstand the cold. But then he remembered that many whores carked their blood with juf and other glycol drugs, the better to be able to display their wares. "I am seeking only this cutter — not company."

"I'm sorry, too," Sumi said as she brushed up against Danlo and ran her fingers through the furry hood covering his head. "And I'd like to help you — perhaps we can help each other."

"How ... can I help you, then?"

"Would you like to have dinner with me? I know of a restaurant not far from here that serves the finest of cultured meats."

"This is a private restaurant, yes?"

"Of course — did you really think I'd want to stand outside a free one all night just to be served a bowl of watery kurmash?"

"I am sorry, but I haven't any money."

Sumi eyed Danlo's dark, rich furs and his fine kamelaika, and she said, "Of course you must have money."

"No, truly, I do not."

"Then how did you hope to gain the services of a cutter such as Hajime Mehtar?"

Danlo dropped his hand down into his fur's great pocket, and he felt for the silken pouch that he had secreted there earlier. But he said nothing.

"It's been hard to make contracts with everyone hoarding money just to buy a little food," Sumi told him.

Danlo squeezed the silken pouch and felt the curving hardness of what lay inside, but still he didn't speak.

"I'm hungry," Sumi said.

For a long time, Danlo just stood there on the street gazing at her in silence.

"I'm cold," Sumi said, looking at him with her sad, old eyes.

At last, Danlo drew his hand from his pocket. He held the silken pouch tightly, like a thallow gripping an egg in its talons. And then, with his other hand, he unfastened his furs and shrugged them off in one fluid motion. He came up to Sumi; he touched her ice-cold arm. "Here," he said, gently draping his furs over her shoulders. "It is very cold tonight, yes?"

In the dim light of the cold stone row houses, he stood there with nothing more to cover him than his thin wool kamelaika and his facemask. The wind whipped down the street, pulling at his hair with its long, icy fingers. Many days earlier, he had removed the white owl's feather that he liked to wear in his hair. And now, with every whore who skated by seeming to appraise him as she might a diamond ring, he hoped that no one would take note of his hair. He remembered Bardo once telling him that he had unique hair inherited from his father; it was long and glossy and black — and shot with rare strands of red.

"Thank you," Sumi said as she looked at him, searching beneath his mask for his deep blue eyes. She seemed almost ready to cry. "I think you're very kind. You didn't just give me your furs because you want to find an old cutter, did you?"

"No," Danlo said softly. He watched his steamy breath hang in the air.

"This is a beautiful fur," Sumi said as she ran her fingers over it. Although she looked down at the silk pouch that Danlo still gripped in his hand, she made no comment about it. "And I think you must be a beautiful man."

"And I think that you are a beautiful woman."

"Oh, no, I'm too old to be beautiful like I was," she said. "But I can still try to repay a little kindness."

Danlo smiled at her, then, all the while thinking that she truly shone with
shibui;
a kind of deeper beauty that only time can reveal, much as the wind and water sculpt the rocks above a stormy sea.

"Mehtar Hajime once sculpted a friend of mine," Sumi said. "She had already been brought back to youth at least five times, and all the other cutters had told her that they couldn't help her. But Mehtar Hajime made her young again — young and beautiful."

"I have heard that he was the best cutter in the city," Danlo said.

"There's no sculpting he couldn't make," Sumi said. "I was very sad when he closed his shop."

"I am sorry."

"I kept hoping that he might open another one; but instead he bought a house on the Tycho's Street."

"The Tycho's Street ... that lies in the Pilots' Quarter?"