kilometre further around the ring. She didn’t have that much time. Instead she jogged along the line of railings until she reached a break that admitted entry to a staircase that descended the steep inner wall of the Moat. The steps and handrails had been helpfully greased with anti-rot, which made her descent that much more treacherous. There were five hundred steps down to sea level but she took them two or three at a time, sliding down the handrails until she reached the grilled platforms where the stairways reversed direction. All the while she watched the tiny white speck of the boat, seemingly immobile now that it was so far away, but undoubtedly narrowing the distance to the node with each minute. As she worked her way down she had plenty of time to think about what was going through the delegate’s head. She was sure now that it was Weir. It did not really surprise her that he wanted to swim: it was what everyone who studied the Jugglers yearned for. But why make this unofficial attempt now when a little gentle persuasion would have made it possible anyway? Given Tak Thonburi’s eagerness to please the delegates, it would not have been beyond the bounds of possibility for a swimming expedition to be organised… The corps would have protested, but just like Naqi they would have been given a forceful lesson in the refined art of political compromise.
But evidently Weir hadn’t been prepared to wait. It all made sense, at any rate: the times when he had dodged away from the party before must have all been abortive attempts to reach the Jugglers. But only now had he been able to seize his opportunity.
Naqi reached the water level, where jetties floated on ceramic-sheathed pontoons. Most of the boats were suspended out of the water on cradles, to save their hulls from unnecessary degradation. Fortunately, there was an emergency rescue boat already afloat. Its formerly white hull had the flaking, pea-green scab patterning of advanced rot, but it still had a dozen or so hours of seaworthiness in it. Naqi jumped aboard, released the boat from its moorings and fired up the thruster. In a moment she was racing away from the jetty, away from the vast, stained edifice of the Moat itself. She steered a course through the least viscous stretches of water, avoiding conspicuous rafts of green matter.
She peered ahead through the boat’s spray-drenched shield. It had been easy to keep track of Weir’s boat when she had been a hundred metres higher, but now she kept losing him behind swells or miniature islands of Juggler matter. After a minute or so she gave up trying to follow the boat, and instead diverted her concentration to finding the quickest route to the node.
She flipped on the radio. ‘Jotah? This is Naqi. I’m in the water, closing on Weir.’
There was a pause, a crackle, then: ‘What’s the status?’
She had to shout over the abrasive thump, thump, thump of the boat, even though the thruster was nearly silent.
‘I’ll reach the node in four or five minutes. Can’t see Weir, but I don’t think it matters.’
‘We can see him. He’s still headed for the node.’
‘Good. Can you spare some more boats, in case he decides to make a run for another node?’
‘They’ll be leaving in a minute or so. I’m waking everyone I can.’
‘What about the other delegates?’
Sivaraksa did not answer her immediately. ‘Most are still asleep. I have Amesha Crane and Simon Matsubara in my office, however.’
‘Let me speak to them.’
‘Just a moment,’ he said, after the same brief hesitation.
‘Crane here,’ said the woman.
‘I think I’m chasing Weir. Can you confirm that?’
‘He isn’t accounted for,’ she told Naqi. ‘But it’ll be a few minutes until we can be certain it’s him.’
‘I’m not expecting a surprise. Weir already had a question mark over him, Amesha. We were waiting for him to try something.’
‘Were you?’ Perhaps it was her imagination, but Crane sounded genuinely surprised. ‘Why? What had he done?’
‘You don’t know?’
‘No…’ Crane trailed off.
‘He was one of us,’ Matsubara said. ‘A good… delegate. We had no reason to distrust him.’
Perhaps Naqi was imagining this as well, but it almost sounded as if Matsubara had intended to say ‘disciple’ rather than ‘delegate’.
Crane came back on the radio. ‘Please do your best to apprehend him, Naqi. This is a source of great embarrassment to us. He mustn’t do any harm.’
Naqi gunned the boat harder, no longer bothering to avoid the smaller patches of organic matter. ‘No,’ she said. ‘He mustn’t.’
THREE
Something changed ahead.
‘Naqi?’ It was Jotah Sivaraksa’s voice.
‘What?’
‘Weir’s slowed his boat. From our vantage point it looks as if he’s reached the perimeter of the node. He seems to be circumnavigating it.’
‘I can’t see him yet. He must be picking the best spot to dive in.’
‘But it won’t work, will it?’ Sivaraksa asked. ‘There has to be an element of co-operation with the Jugglers. They have to invite the swimmer to enter the sea, or nothing happens.’
‘Maybe he doesn’t realise that,’ Naqi said, under her breath. It was of no concern to her how closely Weir was adhering to the usual method of initiating Juggler communion. Even if the Jugglers did not co-operate — even if all Weir did was flounder in thick green water — there was no telling the hidden harm that might be done. She had already grudgingly accepted the acceleration of the closure operation. There was no way she was going to tolerate another upset, another unwanted perturbation of the experimental system. Not on her watch.
‘He’s stopped,’ Sivaraksa said excitedly. ‘Can you see him yet?’
Naqi stood up in her seat, even though she felt perilously unbalanced. ‘Wait. Yes, I think so. I’ll be there in a minute or so.’
‘What are you going to do?’ Crane asked. ‘I hesitate to say it, but Weir may not respond to rational argument at this point. Simply requesting that he leave the water won’t necessarily work. Um, do you have a weapon?’
‘Yes,’ Naqi said. ‘I’m sitting in it.’
She did not allow herself to relax, but at least now she felt that the situation was slipping back into her control. She would kill Weir rather than have him contaminate the node.
His boat was visible now only as a smudge of white, intermittently popping up between folds and hummocks of shifting green. Her imagination sketched in the details. Weir would be preparing to swim, stripping off until he was naked, or nearly so. Perhaps he would feel some kind of erotic charge as he prepared for immersion. She did not doubt that he would be apprehensive, and perhaps he would hesitate on the threshold of the act, teetering on the edge of the boat before committing himself to the water. But a fanatic desire had driven him this far and she doubted that it would fail him.
‘Naqi—’
‘Jotah?’
‘Naqi, he’s moving again. He didn’t enter the water. He didn’t even look like he had any intention of swimming.’
‘He saw I was coming. I take it he’s heading for the next closest node?’
‘Perhaps…’ But Jotah Sivaraksa sounded far from certain.
She saw the boat again. It was moving fast — much faster than it had appeared before — but that was only because she was now seeing lateral motion.
The next node was a distant island framed by the background of the Moat’s encircling rim. If he headed that way she would be hard behind him all the way there as well. No matter his desire to swim, he must realise that she
