The Haussmann virus was really screwing me up.
I was starting to see Sky as myself and Tanner Mirabel was increasingly becoming… what? A detached third person, not really me at all?
I remembered my confusion at Zebra’s, after I had been playing the chess game over in my mind, time and time again. How sometimes I appeared to win and sometimes I appeared to lose.
But it had always been the same game.
That must have been the start of it. The slip of the tongue just meant that the process had taken a step beyond my dreams, just like the Haussmann virus.
Disturbed, I tried to recapture the thread of the conversation.
‘All I’m saying is, when I get back, I’m not expecting to find what I left. But it won’t be any worse. The people who mattered to me were dead before I left.’
‘I think it’s about satisfaction,’ she said. ‘Like in the old experientials, where the nobleman throws down his glove and says he demands satisfaction. That’s how you function. I thought it was absurd at first, when I used to indulge in those experientials. I thought it was too comical to even be part of history. But I was wrong. It wasn’t just part of history. It was still alive and well, reincarnated in Tanner Mirabel.’ She had replaced her cat’s-eye mask now, an act which served to focus attention onto the sneer of her mouth, a mouth I suddenly wanted to kiss, even though I knew the moment — if it had ever existed — was gone for ever. ‘Tanner demands satisfaction. And he’s going to go to any lengths to get it. No matter how absurd. No matter how stupid or pointless, or how much of a prick he ends up making himself look.’
‘Please don’t insult me, Chanterelle. Not for what I believe in.’
‘It’s got nothing to do with belief, you pompous oaf. It’s just stupid male pride.’ Her eyes narrowed to slits and her voice took on a new vindictiveness which I still managed to find attractive, from some quiet retreat where I observed our argument like a neutral spectator. ‘Tell me one thing, Tanner. One little thing which in all of this you haven’t explained.’
‘Only the best for you, little rich girl.’
‘Oh, very incisive. Don’t give up the day job for the cut and thrust of debate, Tanner — your rapier wit might be too much for all of us.’
‘You were about to ask me a question.’
‘It’s about this boss of yours — Cahuella. He felt this urge to hunt for Reivich himself, when he learned that Reivich was moving south towards the — what did you call it? The Reptile House?’
‘Go on,’ I said, testily.
‘So why didn’t Cahuella feel he had to end the job? Surely the fact that Reivich killed Gitta would have made it even more of a personal thing for Cahuella. Even more a case of — dare I say it — demanding satisfaction?’
‘Get on with it.’
‘I’m wondering why I’m talking to you, and not Cahuella. Why didn’t Cahuella come here?’
I found it hard to answer, at least not to my own satisfaction. Cahuella had been a hard man, but he had never been a soldier. There were skills which I had learned on a level below recall, which Cahuella simply lacked — and would have taken half a lifetime to gain. He knew weapons, but he did not really know war. His understanding of tactics and strategy was strictly theoretical — he played the game well, and understood the subtleties buried in its rules — but he had never been thrown into the dirt by the concussion of a shell, or seen a part of himself lying beyond reach on the ground, quivering like a beached jellyfish. Experiences like that did not necessarily improve one — but they certainly changed one. But would any of those deficits have handicapped him? This was not war, after all. And I had hardly come well equipped for it myself. It was a sobering thought, but I found it hard to entirely dismiss the idea that Cahuella might have already succeeded by now.
So why had I come here, rather than him?
‘He would have found it difficult to get off the planet,’ I said. ‘He was a war criminal. His freedom of movement was restricted.’
‘He’d have found a way round it,’ Chanterelle said.
The troubling thing was, I thought she was right. And it was the last thing in the world I wanted to think about.
‘It’s been nice knowing you, Tanner. I think.’
‘Chanterelle, don’t—’
As the door of the cable-car sealed us from each other, I saw her shake her head, expressionless behind that mask of cattish indifference. Her cable-car lofted, hauling itself away with a series of whisking noises, underpinned by the musical creaking as the cables stressed and released like catgut.
At least she had resisted the temptation to dump me in the Mulch.
But she had dumped me in a part of the Canopy I had no knowledge of. What exactly had I been expecting? I suppose, somewhere at the back of my mind was the thought that we might have ended up sharing a bed by the end of the evening. Given that we had commenced our affair by pointing weapons at each other and trading threats, it would certainly have been an unanticipated coda. She was beautiful enough as well — less exotic than Zebra; perhaps less sure of herself — a trait which undoubtedly brought out the protector in me. She would have laughed in my face at that — stupid male pride — and of course she would have been correct. But so what. I liked her, and if I needed justification for that attraction, it hardly mattered how irrational it was.
‘Damn you, Chanterelle,’ I said, without very much conviction.
She had left me on a landing ledge, similar to the touchdown point outside Escher Heights, but significantly less busy — Chanterelle’s car had been the only one here, and now that was gone. A muted rain was descending, like a constant moist exhalation from some great dragon poised over the Canopy.
I walked to the edge, feeling Sky come down with the rain.
TWENTY-NINE
He was doing his rounds of the sleepers.
Sky and Norquinco were far along one of the train tunnels that stretched along the ship’s spine, their feet clanging against catwalked flooring. Occasionally strings of robot freight pods clattered past along the track, ferrying supplies to and from the small band of technicians who lived at the far end of the ship, studying the engines night and day like worshipping acolytes. Here came one now, its orange hazard lights flashing as it rumbled towards them. The train almost filled the corridor. Sky and Norquinco stepped into a recess while the shipment went past. Sky noticed Norquinco slipping something into a shirt pocket, a piece of paper covered with what looked like a series of numbers partially crossed-out.
‘Come on,’ Sky said. ‘I want to make it to node three before the next shipment comes along.’
‘No problem,’ the other man said. ‘The next one isn’t due for… seventeen minutes.’
Sky looked at him oddly. ‘You know that?’
‘Of course. They do run to a timetable, Sky.’
‘Of course; I knew that. I just couldn’t see why anyone in their right mind would actually memorise the times.’
They walked on in silence to the next node. This far from the main living areas, the ship was uncommonly quiet, with hardly any sound of air-pumps or any of the other chugging systems of life-support. The sleepers, for all that they needed constant cybernetic supervision, drew very little power from the ship’s grid. The momios’ refrigeration systems did not have to work hard, for the sleepers had been deliberately situated close to naked space; slumbering only metres from the absolute chill of interstellar vacuum. Sky wore a thermal suit, his breath blasting out in white gouts with each exhalation. Periodically he lifted the hood over his head until he felt warm again. Norquinco, by contrast, kept his hood permanently up.
It was a long time since he’d had any contact with Norquinco. They had barely spoken since Balcazar’s death, after which Sky had spent time establishing himself in a position of considerable seniority within the crew.
