‘Seeking me?’
‘If you would care to leave a message where Amelia may reach you…’
I killed the connection to the Hospice before Alexei had completed his sentence. I imagined him standing in the vineyard, staring glumly down at whichever deadened screen he had been addressing, his words trailing off. He had failed. He had failed to trace me, as must have been his intention. Reivich’s people, it appeared, had also reached and infiltrated the Mendicants. They had been waiting for me to resume contact, hoping that by some indiscretion I would reveal my location.
It had almost worked.
It took me a few minutes to find Zebra’s number, remembering that she had called herself Taryn before revealing the name used by her contacts in the sabotage movement. I had no idea if Taryn was a common first name in Chasm City, but for once luck was on my side — there were less than a dozen people with that as first name. There was no need to phone them all, since the phone showed me a map of the city and only one number was anywhere near the chasm. The connection was much swifter than the one to the Hospice, but it was far from instantaneous, and still plagued by episodes of static, as if the signal had to worm along a continent-spanning telegraphic cable, rather than jump through a few kilometres of smog-laden air.
‘Tanner, where are you? Why did you leave?’
‘I…’ I paused, on the verge of telling her I was near Grand Central Station, if that was not adequately obvious from the view behind me. ‘No, I’d better not. I think I trust you, Zebra, but you’re too close to the Game. It’s better if you don’t know.’
‘You think I’d betray you?’
‘No, although I wouldn’t blame you if you did. But I can’t risk anyone finding out via you.’
‘Who’s left to find out? You did a fairly comprehensive job on Waverly, I hear.’ Her striped face filled the screen, monochrome skin tone offset by the bloodshot pink of her eyes.
‘He played the Game from both sides. He must have known it would get him killed sooner or later.’
‘He may have been a sadist, but he was one of us.’
‘What was I supposed to do — smile nicely and ask them to desist?’ A warm squall of harder rain lashed out of the sky, and I moved under the ledged side of a building for protection, cupping my hand over the phone, Zebra’s image dancing like a reflection in water. ‘I had nothing personal against Waverly, in case you wondered. Nothing that a warm bullet wouldn’t have fixed.’
‘You didn’t use a bullet, from what I heard.’
‘He put me in a position where killing him was my only option. And I did it efficiently, in case you were wondering.’ I spared her the details of what I had found when I caught up with Waverly on the ground; it would not change anything to know he had been harvested by the Mulch.
‘You’re quite capable of looking after yourself, aren’t you? I began to wonder when I found you in that building. Mostly, they don’t even make it that far. Certainly not if they’ve been shot. Who are you, Tanner Mirabel?’
‘Someone trying to survive,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry about what I took from you. You took care of me, and I’m grateful, and if I can find a way of repaying you for that and the things I took, I will.’
‘You didn’t have to go anywhere,’ Zebra said. ‘I said I’d offer you sanctuary until the Game was over.’
‘I’m afraid I had business I had to attend to.’ It was a mistake; the last thing Zebra needed to know about was the business with Reivich, but now I had invited her to speculate about just what it would take to bring a man out of hiding.
‘The odd thing is,’ she said, ‘I almost believe you when you say you’ll pay me back. I don’t know why, but I think you’re a man of your word, Tanner.’
‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘And I think one day it’ll be the death of me.’
‘What’s that meant to mean?’
‘Never mind. Is there a hunt tonight, Zebra? I thought you might know, if anyone would.’
‘There is,’ she said, after consideration. ‘But I don’t see how it concerns you, Tanner. Haven’t you learned your lesson yet? You’re lucky to be alive.’
I smiled. ‘I guess I’m just not sick enough of Chasm City yet.’
I returned the rented phone to its owner and considered my options. Zebra’s face and the timbre of her voice lurked behind every conscious thought. Why had I called her? There had been no reason for it, except to apologise, and even that was pointless; a gesture more aimed at ameliorating my conscience than aiding the woman from whom I had stolen. I had been well aware how much my betrayal would hurt her, and well aware that I was not going to be able to pay her back at any point in the foreseeable future. Yet something had made me make that call, and when I tried to pare away my superficial motives to find what really lay below them, all I found was a melange of emotions and impulses: her smell; the sound of her laugh, the curve of her hips and the way the stripes on her back had contorted and released when she rolled aside from me after our lovemaking. I did not like what I found, so I slammed the lid on those thoughts just as if I had opened a box of vipers…
I walked back into the crowds of the bazaar, letting their noise oppress my thoughts into submission, concentrating instead on the now. I still had money; I was still a rich man by Mulch standards, no matter how little influence it counted for in the Canopy. Asking around and comparing prices, I found a room for rent, a few blocks across the Mulch, in what was apparently one of the less rundown districts.
The room was shabby, even by Mulch standards. It was one cubic corner element in a teetering eight- storeyed encrustation of structures lashed around the footslopes of a major structure. On the other hand, it also looked very old and established, having gained its own parasitic layer of encrustations in the form of ladders, staircases, horizontal landings, drainage conduits, trellises and animal cages, so while the complex might not be the safest in the Mulch, it had obviously endured for some years and was unlikely to choose my arrival as a sign to start collapsing. I accessed my room via a series of ladders and landing traverses, my feet padding over rents in the wattlelike bamboo flooring, street level dizzyingly far below. The room was lit by gas lamps, although I noticed that other parts of the complex were furnished with electricity, served by constantly droning methane-powered generators somewhere below, machines which were locked in furious competition with the local street musicians, criers, muezzins, vendors and animals. But I soon stopped noticing the sounds, and when I drew the room’s blinds, it became tolerably dark.
The room contained no furniture except a bed, but that was all that I needed.
I sat down on it and thought about all that had happened. I felt myself free of any Haussmann episodes for the time being and that allowed me to look back on those that I had experienced so far, with something bordering on cool, clinical detachment.
There was something wrong about them.
I’d come to kill Reivich and yet — almost accidentally — I was getting glimpses of something larger, something I didn’t like the shape of. It wasn’t just the Haussmann episodes, although they were a large part of it. Certainly they had begun normally enough. I hadn’t exactly welcomed them, but given that I already knew roughly what form they were going to take, I thought I could ride them out.
But it wasn’t happening like that.
The dreams — episodes now, since they had begun to invade daylight — were revealing a deeper history: additional crimes which no one even suspected Sky had committed. There was the question of the infiltrator’s continued existence; the sixth ship — the fabled Caleuche — and the fact that Titus Haussmann had believed Sky to be one of the immortals. But Sky Haussman was dead, wasn’t he? Hadn’t I seen his crucified body in Nueva Valparaiso? Even if that body had been faked, it was a matter of public record that, in the dark days following the landing, he had been captured, imprisoned, tried, sentenced and executed, all in full view of the people.
So why did I have my doubts that he was really dead?
It’s just the indoctrinal virus screwing with your head, I told myself.
But Sky wasn’t the only thing troubling me as I fell asleep.
I was overlooking a rectangular room, as if the chamber were a dungeon or baiting pit, and I was standing on some balconied observation gallery. The room was blindingly white, walled and floored in shiny ceramic tiles, but strewn with large glossy green ferns and artfully arranged tree branches, creating a tableau of jungle vegetation.
