arm and drove his fist into the man’s stomach, just below the ribcage. The man coughed hoarsely, his eyes bloodshot; he tried to catch his breath before Vadim delivered another blow.
But Vadim was done with him. He paused only to wipe his arm against the fabric walling of the commons, then unhooked himself, ready to kick off towards one of the exits.
I calculated my arc and kicked off first, savouring an instant of breezy free-fall before I impacted with the wall a metre from Vadim and his victim. For a moment Vadim looked at me in shock.
‘Meera-Bell… I thought we concluded negotiations?’
I smiled.
‘I just reopened them, Vadim.’
I had myself nicely anchored. With the same casual ease with which Vadim had struck the man, I struck Vadim, in more or less the same place. Vadim folded in on himself like a soggy origami figure, emitting a soft moan.
By now the rest of the people were less interested in minding their own business.
I addressed them. ‘I don’t know if any of you have been approached by this man yet, but I don’t think he’s the professional he’d like you to think. If you’ve bought protection from him, you’ve almost certainly wasted your money.’
Vadim managed a sentence. ‘You’re dead man, Meera-Bell.’
‘Then I’ve very little to fear.’ I looked at the other man. He had regained some of his colour now, wiping his sleeve across his mouth. ‘Are you all right? I didn’t see how the fight started.’
The man spoke Norte, but with a thick accent which it took me a moment to penetrate. He was a small man, with the compact build of a bulldog. The bulldog look didn’t stop at his physique, either. He had a pugnacious, permanently argumentative face, a flat nose and a scalp bristling sparsely with extremely short hairs.
He unrumpled his clothes. ‘Yes… I’m quite all right, thank you. The oaf started threatening me verbally, then started actually hurting me. At that point I was hoping someone would do something, but it was like I’d suddenly become part of the decor.’
‘Yes, I noticed.’ I looked around at the other passengers disparagingly. ‘You fought back, though.’
‘Fat lot of good it did me.’
‘I’m afraid Vadim here doesn’t look the type to recognise a valiant gesture when he sees one. Are you sure you’re all right?’
‘I think so. A little nausea, that’s all.’
‘Wait.’
I snapped my fingers at the servitor, hovering in cybernetic indecision some metres away. When it came closer I tried to buy another shot of scop-dex, but I had exhausted my shipboard funds.
‘Thank you,’ the man said, setting his jaw. ‘But I think I’ve sufficient funds in my own account.’ He spoke to the machine in Canasian, too quickly and softly for me to follow, and a fresh hypo popped out for use.
I turned to Vadim while the other man fumbled the hypo into a vein. ‘Vadim; I’m going to be generous and let you leave now. But I don’t want to see you in this room again.’
He looked at me with his lips curled, flecks of vomit glued to his face like snowflakes.
‘Is not over between you and me, Meera-Bell.’
He unhooked himself, paused and looked around at the other passengers, obviously trying to regain some margin of dignity before he departed. It was a pretty wasted effort, since I had something else planned for him.
Vadim tensed, ready to kick off.
‘Wait,’ I said. ‘You don’t think I’m going to let you leave before you pay back whatever you’ve stolen, do you?’
He hesitated, looking back at me. ‘I have not stolen anything from you.’ Then to the other man. ‘Or you, Mister Quirrenbach…’
‘Is that true?’ I asked the man he’d just addressed.
Quirrenbach hesitated too, glancing at Vadim before answering. ‘Yes… yes. He hasn’t stolen anything from me. I didn’t speak to him until now.’
I raised my voice. ‘What about the rest of you? Did this bastard con you out of anything?’
Silence. It was more or less what I had expected. No one was going to be the first to admit that they had been duped by a small-time rat like Vadim, now that they had seen how pitiful he could become.
‘See,’ Vadim said, ‘there isn’t anyone, Meera-Bell.’
‘Maybe not here,’ I said. I reached out with my free hand and snagged the fabric of his coat. The rough quilted patches were as cool and dry as snakeskin. ‘But what about all the other passengers on the slowboat? Chances are you’ve already fleeced a few of them since we left Idlewild.’
‘So what if I did?’ he said, almost whispering. ‘It is none of your concern, is it?’ Now his tone was changing by the second. He was squirming before me, shifting into something infinitely more pliant than when he had first entered the commons. ‘What do you want to stay out of this? What is it worth to you to back out and leave me alone?’
I had to laugh. ‘Are you actually trying to buy me off?’
‘It’s always worth try.’
Something inside me snapped. I dragged Vadim back, slamming him against the wall so hard that he was winded again, and began to pummel him. The enveloping red haze of my anger washed over me like a warm, welcoming fog. I felt ribs shatter under my fists. Vadim tried to fight back, but I was faster, stronger, my fury more righteous.
‘Stop!’ said a voice, sounding like it came from halfway to infinity. ‘Stop it; he’s had enough!’
It was Quirrenbach, pulling me away from Vadim. A couple of other passengers had arced over to the scene of violence, studying the work I had inflicted on Vadim with horrified fascination. His face was a single ugly bruise, his mouth weeping shiny scarlet seeds of blood. I must have looked about the same when the Mendicants had finished with me.
‘You want me to be lenient with him?’ I said.
‘You’ve already gone beyond leniency,’ Quirrenbach said. ‘I don’t think you need to kill him. What if he’s telling the truth and he really does have friends?’
‘He’s nothing,’ I said. ‘He doesn’t have any more influence than you or I. Even if he did… this is the Glitter Band we’re headed to, not some lawless frontier settlement.’
Quirrenbach gave me the oddest of looks. ‘You’re serious, aren’t you? You really think we’re headed to the Glitter Band.’
‘We’re not?’
‘The Glitter Band doesn’t exist,’ Quirrenbach said. ‘It hasn’t existed for years. We’re heading for something else entirely.’
From out of the bruise which was Vadim’s face came something unexpected: a gurgle which might have been him clearing his mouth of blood. Or it might just have been a chuckle of vindication.
TWELVE
‘What did you mean by that?’
‘By what, Tanner?’
‘That little throwaway remark about the Glitter Band not existing. Are you planning on just leaving it hanging there enigmatically? ’
Quirrenbach and I were working our way through the bowels of the Strelnikov to Vadim’s hideaway, my progress made all the harder because I had my suitcase with me. We were alone; I’d locked Vadim in my quarters once he had revealed the location of his berth. I assumed that if we searched his quarters we’d find whatever he had stolen from the other passengers. I had already helped myself to his coat and had no immediate plans to return it to him.
