‘Damn,’ he said. ‘I should have had them removed in the parking swarm, I knew it. But I hesitated — didn’t like the looks of anyone who was prepared to do it. And now I’ll have to find some blood-spattered butcher in Chasm City to do it.’
‘I’m sure there’ll be plenty of people willing to help with that. I’d need to speak to the same people myself, as it happens.’
The stocky little man scratched at the stubble across his scalp.
‘Oh, you too? Then it really does make sense for us to travel together, doesn’t it.’
I was about to answer — to try and wheedle my way out of his company — when an arm locked itself around my throat.
I was pulled backwards, out of my seat, hitting the ground painfully. The breath exited my lungs like a flock of startled birds. I floundered on the edge of consciousness, too winded to move, although every instinct screamed that moving might be my best course of action.
But Vadim was already leaning over me, his knee pressed across my ribcage.
‘You didn’t expect to see Vadim again, did you Meera-Bell? I think you are sorry you did not kill Vadim now.’
‘I haven’t…’ I tried to complete the sentence, but there was no air left in my lungs. Vadim examined his fingernails, doing a good impression of boredom. My peripheral vision was turning dark, but I could see Quirrenbach standing to one side with his arms pinned behind him, another figure holding him hostage. Beyond that, an indifferent blur of passers-by. No one was paying the slightest attention to Vadim’s ambush.
He released the pressure on me. I caught my breath.
‘You have not what?’ Vadim said. ‘Go on, say it. I am all ears.’
‘You owe me a debt of gratitude that I didn’t kill you, Vadim. And you know it, too. But scum like you aren’t worth the bother.’
He feigned a smile and reapplied the weight on my chest. I was beginning to have my doubts about Vadim. Now that I saw he had an accomplice — the man pinning down Quirrenbach — his story about a wider network of associates began to look a little more likely.
‘Scum, is it? I see you were not above cleaning my watch, nasty little thief that you are.’ He fiddled with the strap on my wrist, wriggling the watch off with a grin of triumph. Vadim held it up to one of his eyes, for all the world like a horologist studying some fabulous movement. ‘No scratches, I hope…’
‘You’re welcome to it. It wasn’t really me.’
Vadim slipped the watch back over his hand, turning his wrist this way and that to inspect his reclaimed prize. ‘Good. Anything else you would like to declare?’
‘Something, yes.’
Because I had not tried to push him off me with my other arm, he had ignored it completely. I had not even removed my hand from the pocket in which I had slipped it as I fell back from the chair. Vadim might have contacts, but he was still no more of a professional than when we had tussled on the slowboat.
Now I removed my arm. The movement was quick, fluid, like a striking hamadryad. It was nothing Vadim was prepared for.
In my fist I held one of his black experientials. He played his part perfectly — his gaze shifting minutely as my arm came up, just enough to bring his nearest eye into my reach. The eye was opened in surprise; an easy target, almost as if Vadim was complicit in what I was about to do to him.
I pushed the experiential into his eye.
I remembered wondering if his one good eye had in fact been glass, but as the experiential’s white haft sunk in, I saw that it had only seemed glassy.
Vadim fell back off me and started screaming, blood jetting from his eye like a dying red sliver of sunset. He was flailing around insanely, not wanting to reach up and confront the foreign thing parked in his eye-socket.
‘Shit!’ the other man said, while I scrambled to my feet. Quirrenbach wrestled with him for an instant, and then he was free, and running.
Moaning, Vadim was bent double over our table. The other man was holding him, whispering frantically in his ear. He appeared to be saying it was time the both of them left.
I had a message of my own for him.
‘I know it hurts like hell, but there’s something you need to know, Vadim. I could have driven that thing straight into your brain. It wouldn’t have been any harder for me. You know what that means, don’t you?’
Eyeless now, his face a mask of blood, he still managed to turn towards me.
‘… what?’
‘It means that’s another one you owe me, Vadim.’
Then I carefully removed the watch from his wrist and replaced it on my own.
THIRTEEN
If there was any kind of law enforcement operating in New Vancouver’s plumbing-filled interstices, it was subtle to the point of invisibility. Vadim and his accomplice stumbled away from the scene unquestioned. I lingered, almost honour-bound to explain myself — but nothing happened. The table where Quirrenbach and I had been sipping coffee only minutes earlier was in a deplorable state now, but what was I supposed to do? Leave a tip for the cleaning servitor that would doubtless amble round shortly, so dim-witted that it would probably clean up the pools of blood, aqueous and vitreous humours with the same mindless efficiency as it tackled the coffee stains?
No one stopped me leaving.
I slipped into a washroom to slap some cold water on my face and clean the blood from my fist. Inside, I forced slow and deliberate calm. The room was empty, furnished with a long row of lavatories, the doors of which were marked with complicated diagrams to show how they were meant to be used.
I poked and prodded my chest until I’d satisfied myself that nothing was more than bruised, then completed the rest of my walk to the departure area. The behemoth — the manta-shaped spacecraft — was attached like a lamprey to the rotating skin of the habitat. Up close, the thing looked a lot less smooth and aerodynamic than it had from a distance. The hull was pitted and scarred, with streaks of sooty black discoloration.
Two streams of humanity were being fed aboard the ship from opposing sides. My stream was a shuffling, dun-coloured slurry of despondency: people trudging down the spiralling access tunnel as if to the gallows. The other stream looked only slightly more enthusiastic, but through the transparent connecting tube I saw people attended by servitors, bizarrely enhanced pets, even people shaped towards animal forms themselves. The palanquins of hermetics glided amongst them: dark, upright boxes like metronomes.
There was a commotion behind me; someone pushing past.
‘Tanner!’ he said, in a hoarse stage-whisper. ‘You made it too! When you disappeared, I was worried that more of Vadim’s thugs had found you!’
‘He’s pushing in,’ I heard someone mutter behind me. ‘Did you see that? I’ve a good mind to…’
I turned back, locking eyes with the person I instinctively knew had been speaking. ‘He’s with me. If you’ve got a problem with it, you deal with me. Otherwise, shut up and stand in line.’
Quirrenbach slipped in to the line next to me. ‘Thanks…’
‘All right. Just keep your voice down, and don’t mention Vadim again.’
‘So you think he really might have friends all over the place?’
‘I don’t know. But I could do without any kind of trouble for a while.’
‘I can imagine, especially after…’ He blanched. ‘I don’t even want to think about what happened back there.’
‘Then don’t. With any luck, you’ll never have to.’
The line pushed forward, completing the final spiral into the top of the behemoth. Inside it was vast and tastefully lit, like the lobby of a particularly grand hotel. The walkway made several more loops before it reached the floor. People were wandering around with drinks in their hands, their luggage scooting ahead of them or being handled by monkeys. Sloping windows arced away in either direction, roughly defining the edge of one of the
