‘It’s a complicated issue,’ I said, more than once.
Or: ‘Well, obviously there are deeper issues at stake here.’
Or: ‘It would be unethical of me to speak further on this topic, I’m afraid — confidentiality agreements and all that. You do understand, don’t you?’
After an hour or so of that, I was ready for some time on my own.
I stood from the table, made my excuses and left, stepping up the spiral staircase which led to the observation deck above the habitation and dining levels. The prospect of shedding the aristocratic skin pleased me, and for the first time in hours I felt the tiniest glow of professional contentment. Everything was in hand. When I reached the top I had the compartment’s servitor prepare me a guindado. Even the way the drink fogged my normal clarity of mind was not unpleasing. There was plenty of time to become sober again: it would be at least seven hours before I needed an assassin’s edge.
We were ascending quickly now. The elevator had accelerated to a climb rate of five hundred kilometres per hour as soon as it cleared the terminal, but even at that rate it would still have taken forty hours to make it to the orbital terminal, many thousands of kilometres above our heads. However, the elevator had quadrupled its speed once it no longer had to punch through atmosphere, which had happened somewhere during our first course.
I had the observation deck to myself.
The other passengers, when they had finished dining, would disperse through the five compartments above the dining area. The elevator could comfortably carry fifty people and not appear crowded, but there were only seven of us today, including myself. The total trip time was ten hours. The station’s revolution around Sky’s Edge was synchronised to the planet’s own daily rotation so that it always hung exactly over Nueva Valparaiso, dead above the equator. They had starbridges on Earth, I knew, which reached thirty-six thousand kilometres high — but because Sky’s Edge rotated a little faster and had a slightly weaker gravitational pull, synchronous orbit was sixteen thousand kilometres lower. The thread, nonetheless, was still twenty thousand kilometres long — and that meant that the top kilometre of thread was under quite shocking tension from the deadweight of the nineteen thousand kilometres of thread below it. The thread was hollow, the walls a lattice of piezo-electrically reinforced hyperdiamond, but the weight of it, I had heard, was still close to twenty million tonnes. Every time I made a footfall, as I moved around the compartment, I thought of the tiny additional stress my motion was imparting to the thread. Sipping my guindado, I wondered how close to its breaking strain the thread was engineered; how much tolerance the engineers built into the system. Then a more rational part of my mind reminded me that the thread was carrying only a tiny fraction of the traffic it could handle. I stepped with more confidence around the picture window.
I wondered if Reivich was calm enough to take a drink now.
The view should have been spectacular, but even where night had yet to fall the Peninsula was hidden under a blanket of monsoon cloud. Since the world huddled close to Swan in its orbit, monsoon season came once every hundred days or so, lasting no more than ten or fifteen days each short year. Above the sharply curved horizon the sky had darkened through shades of blue towards a deep navy. I could see bright stars now, and overhead lay the single fixed star of the orbital station at the high end of the thread, still a long way above us. I considered sleeping for a few hours, my soldiering years having given me an almost animal ability to snap into a state of total alertness. I swirled what remained of the drink and took another sip. Now that I had made up my mind, I felt fatigue rushing over me like a damburst. It was always there, waiting for the slightest relaxation in my guard.
‘Sir?’
I flinched again, only slightly this time, for I recognised the voice of the servitor. The machine’s cultured voice continued, ‘Sir, there is a call for you from the surface. I can have it sent through to your quarters, or you may view it here.’
I thought about going back to my room, but it was a shame to lose the view. ‘Put it through,’ I said. ‘But terminate the call should anyone else start coming up the stairs.’
‘Very well, sir.’
Dieterling, of course — it had to be. He wouldn’t have had time to get back to the Reptile House, although by my estimate he should have been about two-thirds of the way there. A shade early for him to try and contact me — and I hadn’t expected any contact anyway — but it was nothing to feel any anxiety about.
But instead, the face and shoulders that appeared in the elevator’s window belonged to Red Hand Vasquez. Somewhere in the room a camera must have been capturing me and adjusting my image to make it seem as if we were standing face to face, for he looked me straight in the eye.
‘Tanner. Listen to me, man.’
‘I’m listening,’ I said, wondering if the irritation I felt was obvious in my voice. ‘What was so important that you needed to reach me here, Red?’
‘Fuck you, Mirabel. You won’t be smiling in about thirty seconds. ’ But the way he said it made it seem less like a threat than a warning to prepare for bad news.
‘What is it? Reivich pulled another fast one on us?’
‘I don’t know. I had some guys make some more enquiries and I’m damn sure he’s on that thread, the way you think he is — a car or two ahead of you.’
‘Then that isn’t why you’re calling.’
‘No. I’m calling because someone’s killed Snake.’
I answered reflexively, ‘Dieterling?’
As if it could be anyone else.
Vasquez nodded. ‘Yeah. One of my guys found him about an hour ago, but he didn’t know who he was dealing with, so it took a while for the news to get back to me.’
My mouth seemed to form the words without conscious input from my mind. ‘Where was he? What had happened?’
‘He was in your car, the wheeler — still parked on Norquinco. You couldn’t see there was anyone in it from the street; you had to look inside deliberately. My guy was just checking out the machine. He found Dieterling slumped down inside. He was still breathing.’
‘What happened?’
‘Someone shot him. Must’ve waited near where the wheeler was parked, then hung around until Dieterling got back from the bridge. Dieterling must have just got in the wheeler, getting ready to leave.’
‘How was he shot?’
‘I don’t know man; it’s not like I’m running an autopsy clinic here, you know?’ Vasquez bit his lip before continuing, ‘Some kind of beam job, I think. Close range into the chest.’
I glanced down at the guindado I still held. It felt absurd to be standing here talking about my friend’s death with a cocktail drink in one hand, as if the matter was only a piece of easy smalltalk. But there was nowhere nearby to put the drink down.
I took a sip and answered him with a coldness that surprised me. ‘I prefer beam weapons myself, but they’re not what I’d use if I wanted to kill someone without making a fuss. A beam weapon creates more flash than most projectile weapons.’
‘Unless it’s very close range; like a stabbing. Look, I’m sorry, man, but it looks like that’s how it happened. The barrel must’ve been pushed right into his clothes. Hardly any light or noise — and what there was would’ve been hidden by the wheeler. There was a lot of partying going on anyway tonight. Somebody started a fire near the bridge, and that was all the excuse the locals needed for a wild night. I don’t think anyone would’ve noticed a beam discharge, Tanner.’
‘Dieterling wouldn’t have just sat back and let someone do that.’
‘Maybe he didn’t get much warning.’
I thought about that. On some level the fact of his death was beginning to register, but the implications — not to mention the emotional shock — would take a lot longer. But I could at least force myself to ask the right questions now. ‘If he didn’t get much warning, either he wasn’t paying attention or he thought the person who killed him was someone he knew. He was still breathing, did you say?’
‘Yeah, but he wasn’t conscious. I don’t think we could have done much for him, Tanner.’
‘You’re sure he didn’t say anything?’
‘Not to me or the guy who found him.’
‘The guy — the man — who found him. Was he someone we’d met tonight?’
