their own interjected suggestions for how events had probably proceeded. Later, eavesdropping elsewhere, Vasko observed that these embellishments had been seamlessly embroidered into the main account. It did not seem to bother anyone that many of the stories were contradictory, or at best difficult to reconcile with the same set of events. More than once, with incredulity, he heard that Scorpio or some other colony senior had died alongside Clavain. The fact that some of those individuals had already appeared in public to make short, calming speeches counted for nothing. With a sinking feeling, a cavernous resignation, Vasko realised that even if he were to start recounting events exactly as they had happened, his own version would have no more immediate currency than any of the lies now doing the rounds. He hadn’t actually witnessed the death himself, so even if he told the truth of things it would still only be from his point of view, and his story would of necessity have a damning taint of second- hand reportage about it. It would be dismissed, its content unpalatable, the details too vague.
Tonight, the people wanted an unequivocal hero. By some mysterious self-organising process of story creation, that was precisely what they were going to get.
He was shouldering his way through the lantern-carrying mob when he heard his own name called out.
‘Malinin.’
It took him a moment to locate the source of the voice in the crowd. A woman was standing in a little circle of stillness. The rabble flowed around her, never once violating the immediate volume of private space she had defined. She wore a long-hemmed black coat, the collar an explosion of black fur, the black peak of an unmarked cap obscuring the upper part of her face.
‘Urton?’ he asked, doubtfully.
‘It’s me,’ she said, stepping nearer to him. ‘I guess you got the night off as well. Why aren’t you at home resting?’
There was something in her tone that made him defensive. In her presence he still felt that he was continually being measured and found wanting.
‘I could ask you the same question.’
‘Because I know there wouldn’t be any point. Not after what happened out there.’
Provisionally, he decided to go along with this pretence at civility. He wondered where it was going to lead him. ‘I did try to sleep this afternoon,’ he said, ‘but all I heard were screams. All I saw was blood and ice.’
‘You weren’t even in there when it happened.’
‘I know. So imagine what it must be like for Scorpio.’
Now that Urton was next to him he shared the same little pocket of quiet that she had defined. He wondered how she did it. He did not think it very likely that the people flowing around them had any idea who Urton was. They must have sensed something about her: an electric prickle of foreboding.
‘I feel sorry for what he had to do,’ Urton said.
‘I’m not sure how he’s going to take it, in the long run. They were very close friends.’
‘I know that.’
‘It wasn’t just any old friendship,’ Vasko replied. ‘Clavain saved Scorpio’s life once, when he was due to be executed. There was a bond between them that went right back to Chasm City. I don’t think there was anyone else on this planet that Clavain respected quite as much as Scorpio. And Scorpio also knew that. I went with him to the island where Clavain was waiting. I saw them talking together. It wasn’t the way I’d imagined it to be. They were more like two old adventurers who’d seen a lot of the same things, and knew no one else quite understood them.’
‘Scorpio isn’t that old.’
‘He is,’ Vasko said. ‘For a pig, anyway.’
Urton led him through the crowd, towards the shore. The crowd began to thin out, and a warm night breeze salted with brine made his eyes tingle. Overhead, the strange lights etched arcane motifs from horizon to horizon. It was less like a firework display or aurora and more like a vast, painstaking geometry lesson.
‘You’re worried it’ll have done something to him, aren’t you?’ Urton asked.
‘How would you take it if you had to murder your best friend in cold blood? And slowly, with an audience?’
‘I don’t think I’d take it too well. But then I’m not Scorpio.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘He’s led us competently while Clavain was away, Vasko, and I know that you think well of him, but that doesn’t make him an angel. You already said that the pig and Clavain went all the way back to Chasm City.’
Vasko watched lights slide across the zenith, trailing annular rings like the pattern he sometimes saw when he pressed his fingertips against his own closed eyelids. ‘Yes,’ he said, grudgingly.
‘Well, what do you think Scorpio was doing in Chasm City in the first place? It wasn’t feeding the needy and the poor. He was a criminal, a murderer.’
‘He broke the law in a time when the law was brutal and inhuman,’ Vasko said. ‘That’s not quite the same thing, is it?’
‘So there was a war on. I’ve studied the same history books as you have. Yes, the emergency rule verged on the Draconian, but does that excuse murder? We’re not just talking about self-preservation or self-interest here. Scorpio killed for sport.’
‘He was enslaved and tortured by humans,’ Vasko said. ‘And humans made him what he is: a genetic dead end.’
‘So that lets him off the hook?’
‘I don’t quite see where you’re going with this, Urton.’
‘All I’m saying is, Scorpio isn’t the thin-skinned individual you like to think. Yes, I’m sure he’s upset by what he did to Clavain…’
‘What he was
‘Whatever. The point is the same: he’ll get over it, just like he got over every other atrocity he perpetrated.’ She lifted the peak of her cap, scrutinising him, her eyes flicking from point to point as if alert for any betraying facial tics. ‘You believe that, don’t you?’
‘Right now I’m not sure.’
‘You have to believe it, Vasko.’ He noticed that she had stopped calling him Malinin. ‘Because the alternative is to doubt his fitness for leadership. You wouldn’t go that far, would you?’
‘No, of course not. I’ve got total faith in his leadership. Ask anyone here tonight and you’ll get the same answer. And guess what? We’re all right.’
‘Of course we are.’
‘What about you, Urton? Do you doubt him?’
‘Not in the slightest,’ she said. ‘Frankly, I doubt that he’ll have lost much sleep at all over anything that happened today.’
‘That sounds incredibly callous.’
‘I want it to be callous. I want
‘I don’t know,’ he said, feeling a huge weariness begin to slide over him. ‘All I know is that I didn’t come out here tonight to talk about what happened today. I came out here to clear my head and try to forget some of it.’
‘So did I,’ Urton said. Her voice had softened. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to rake over what happened. I suppose talking about it is my way of coping with it. It was pretty harrowing for all of us.’
‘Yes, it was. Are you done now?’ He felt his temper rising, a scarlet tide lapping against the defences of civility. ‘For most of yesterday and today you looked as if you couldn’t stand to be in the same hemisphere as me, let alone the same room. Why the sudden change of heart?’
‘Because I regret the way I acted,’ she said.
‘If you don’t mind my saying, it’s a little late in the day for second thoughts.’
‘It’s the way I cope, Vasko. Cut me some slack, all right? There was nothing personal about it.’
‘Well, that makes me feel a lot better.’
‘We were going into a dangerous situation. We were all trained for it. We all knew each other, and we all knew we could count on each other. And then you show up at the last minute, someone I don’t know, yet whom I’m suddenly expected to trust with my life. I can name a dozen SA officers who could have taken your position in that
