The Sky Road

what they were talking about; and as for Denis Gubanov, he was leaning back with a smug smile, as if he’d known it for years. Probably had.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Myra said. “He’s a devious son of a bitch. He says his side don’t know what we’ve got, and he might still hold out a hope of winning us over—or using us as a threat to keep his own side in order.”

She inhaled again.

“Besides,” she added, “he doesn’t know all we’ve got. Or so I gathered. He thinks it’s all in Earth orbit.”

“It isnW Denis’s smile faded instantly. “So where is it?”

“Good question,” Myra said. “See if you can find out.”

Valentina was intently studying the reflection of the chandelier in the bar mirror.

“Is this a joke, or what?” Denis demanded.

Myra shook her head, laid her palm on the back of his hand. “Easy, man. Don’t waste too much time on it— just treat it as an exercise, see what you can find out about what people know or suspect—”

“And I’m not to know myself?”

“Double-blind,” Myra said firmly. “And double-bluff. I’ll let you know after you’ve brought back some results, but I don’t want your investigation dropping any inadvertent hints.”

Denis scowled. “OK,” he allowed, “I see the point of that.” He looked at his watch, sighed and stood up. “Three-fifteen,” he said. “Time I was back at the office.”

“The unsleeping sword of the Cheka,” Myra said. “Time we all went back, I guess.”

“No,” said Andrei. Tou and Valentina stay here and get drunk.” He pushed back his chair and raised himself ponderously to his feet. “We Russian men will take care of the rest of the day’s business.”

“Sure?”

“Sure.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “Relax, Davidova. The coup won’t come today, or tomorrow.”

“I know that,” she said. “But we just lost one more commissar today—”

“Alex, huh, son of a bitch. No loss. I cleared his desktop and locked him out the second he mentioned he was leaving us.”

“He was good at his job, and we don’t have a replacement.”

“The economy can get along fine without a commissar for a while,” Andrei said. “The free market, don’t knock it. It’s all in Ricardo.”

The two men walked to the bar. Andrei gallantly laid a wad of currency on it, indicating Myra and Valentina with a glance, nodded to them and left with Denis.

“So,” said Valentina, looking after them, “what do you suppose they’re up to?”

“Anything but going back to work, I hope,” Myra laughed. “Hitting the spaceport bars, or plotting our demise. Whatever. What the fuck.” She downed another vodka; stared at the tip of a cigarette that had burnt down, unregarded; lit another.

“You’re drunk already,” Valentina accused.

“And bitter and twisted. Yeah, I know.”

“I’ll tell you why they left,” Valentina said. “Apart from the space-port attractions, that is.”

“Yeah?”

“They’re giving us space, my dear. For a caucus.”

“Women’s caucus? Bit dated, that.”

Valentina loosened her uniform jacket, removed her tie and rolled it up carefully. “Not—what was it called?— feminism, Myra. Socialism. A Party caucus.”

“But I’m not even in the Party!”

“Are you so sure about that?” Valentina asked. “I’ve never seen a resignation letter from you. And I would have, you know. I’m sure you’re at least a sympathiser, even if—” she giggled “—you’ve been missing branch meetings lately.”

Myra had to think about it. She supposed there was still a direct-debit mandate paying her dues to some anonymous Caribbean data-haven account. She still got the mailings, filed unread. She still wrote for Analysis, the International’s online theoretical journal. (Its contributors had nicknamed it Dialysis, because of its insistent theme that everything was going down the tubes.)

Myra frowned at Valentina. The noise in the bar was louder than it had been. People were drifting in from other functions going on in the hotel: a business conference, an anime con, and at least two weddings.

“What does it matter?” she asked. “We’re nothing, we’re probably among the last Internationalists in the whole fucking world,”

“Indeed we are,” said Valentina. “But there’s still a couple of things we can do. One is give our comrade a good send-off, by getting absolutely smashed in his memory.”

They knocked glasses, drank.

“And the other thing?”

“Oh, yes. We can see if there’s anything the International is planning to do about the coup.”

Tou must be fucking joking.”

“I am not. If you want my guess, that’s what they wanted the assets for.”

“Whoever thought of that must be out of their tiny fucking minds. Talk about adventurism.”

“I’m not so sure. Remember, there may not be many of us left in the world, but—” Valentina leaned closer “—there isn’t only one world.”

“Oh, don’t be—” Myra gave it a second thought. “Oh,” she said. “Our friends in the sky.”

“Yeah,” said Valentina. “The space fraction.”

“I don’t want to discuss this right now,” Myra said. She looked around, wildly. The place was jumping. One beautiful Kazakh girl whom she’d thought was a bride yelled something in what sounded like Japanese. Her big white dress shrank like shrink-wrap to her body, changing colour and hardening to a costume of pastel-shaded plastic armour. A smart-suit—made from, rather than by, nanotech—was a heinously expensive novelty, offering a limited menu of programmed transformations. Myra wondered how long it would be before its price plummeted, its repertoire exploded; how long it would be before people could as readily transform their bodies. A world of comic- book super-heroes—it didn’t bear thinking about. The girl struck a combative pose, to a scatter of applause from the other anime fans.

“Let’s get drunk,” Myra said.

5 The Church of Man

Merrial was, as promised, waiting. She sat on the plinth, as I had done, under the Deliverer’s equestrian statue. She wore a loose summer dress with a colourful tiered skirt. Something stirred in my memory, then vanished like a dream in the morning. She was in animated conversation with a man sitting beside her. They both looked up as I arrived.

“Hello,” I said warily.

He was a tall, thin man, about thirty, I reckoned; quite brown, with sharp features and dark eyes which had a sort of quirky, questioning look in them; black hair curly on top, short at the back and sides; dressed in leather trousers and jacket and a white cotton T-shirt with a red bandana. A fine chain hung around his throat beneath the bandana, its pendant—if any—below the T-shirt’s round collar.

“Hello,” Menial said warmly. “Clovis, this is Fergal.”

The man stuck his right hand out and I shook it, noticing as I did so that one of his thumbs pressed the back of my hand and that he held on, as though waiting for some response, for about a second longer than I subconsciously expected, before letting go.

“Pleased to meet you, Clovis,” he said. His voice was low and deep, his accent was hard to place: correct, but by that very correctness of intonation in each syllable, somehow foreign; it reminded me of a Zanu prince I’d once heard speak at the University.