“Nothing. Just, coming from you…”
Was that a joke? She wondered.
“Actually, I don’t mind dirt. It’s people who piss me off.”
“You should come to the west some time,” he said.
“Maybe if we win.”
“Deal.”
“I think we’ve made enough deals, don’t you?” One look at his face told her this time he was definitely joking. “Oh. Very funny. Anyway, the Executors tend to be the ones to suggest any new laws, but it doesn’t happen often. They’ll be violently against you.”
Vikram rested his chin on one hand, looking at the beads.
“Do Citizens hate the west that much?”
The question surprised her. “Not hate, no. We don’t really think about you.” She considered for a moment. “I suppose it’s seen as a lost cause. We’ll have to pull out a few sob stories, Vikram, get the newsreels on side. Maybe you should tell them about Mikkeli. Do you have a photograph of her? A drawing?”
Vikram looked uneasy. He shook his head. His silence indicated her transgression more clearly than any words would have done. Adelaide took off another ring and placed it next to the bracelet.
“The liberal set. But rivals of Linus. They’re Nucleites-they believe we’re the last city on Earth,” she explained. Her other earring went beside the ring. “And Linus and co. Who are anti-Nucleite. They believe-”
“In survivors outside Osiris.” Vikram looked at her. “What are you?”
“Pro, of course. It’s only Linus who’s gone on this wacky spiritual kick. Why, aren’t you?”
“I suppose I don’t see things quite so black and white. Things are different in the west.”
Adelaide thought about Linus’s strange weather experiments. Less than a year ago she would have said he was mad, without question, but she knew better than anyone that madness could not be qualified.
“I suppose you think we should renew expeditions too.”
Vikram picked up the earring she’d just set down, toying with it. “That’s an interesting idea. Is that what your brother wants?”
“I don’t know what Linus wants,” she admitted. “But I can tell you one thing. Whatever he says or does, there’s an ulterior motive behind it.”
“How do you know all this, anyway?”
“It’s amazing what you hear once you’ve become an alcoholic.” Adelaide spoke flippantly, although she thought once more of her grandfather, and his patient, determined explanations to the twins. They used to have lunch once a month. But Leonid had grown frailer, he ventured out less, and then everything with Axel… their lunches had become infrequent.
She missed him.
“Can I have your watch?” she said.
Vikram undid the clasp and handed it over wordlessly. The steel links sat heavy in her palm. She placed the watch at the other end of the arch.
“My grandfather’s contemporaries. Old and mostly deaf, or they only hear the bits they want, which is my personal theory. They saw the City finished. They built it, really. And they don’t like it threatened.” She paused. “Have you thought about what you’re going to call yourself?”
“Yes. The New Horizon Movement.”
He said the name hesitantly, with a hint of shy pride. It must be important to him.
“Very ambitious,” she said. “And are there more of you?”
“There were. There will be.” He did not explain further. “How will you get me an address?”
She smiled serenely. “I have a plan.”
Vikram sat back and folded his arms, clearly appraising her. His watch ticked gently amongst the glittering collection of jewels. Neither of them had touched the tea.
“Are you helping me to get at your father?”
Adelaide was getting used to his directness. She thought about confronting him about his intentions last night, but did not quite dare. Today he needed her, but who knew how he would feel tomorrow?
“Sadly, getting at him usually means helping out Linus in some way. So it’s a catch-no-fish situation.”
He nodded, smiled to himself as though he found something funny. “Should have figured.”
She set up an account for Vikram on her Neptune and showed him the o’vis catalogue for when he got bored of working on his presentation. He displayed some signs of interest in that, asking her if she had Neon Age filmreels and what she would recommend. She found his enthusiasm oddly touching. She left him in the apartment and went to see Radir.
On the shuttle journey she thought about what she had uncovered so far. Axel was not in the hospitals; according to the official investigation, he was nowhere to be found in Osiris. A westerner had come to see him, an airlift. Axel had been planning something. He intended to make a balloon. She thought of Vikram’s story about the last balloon flight. A western thing, he said. Her brother must have heard the story from the airlift. No doubt the horses had told him to do it. Axel had gathered all the resources, but something had interrupted his plans.
Radir was the next card in the deck.
The psychiatrist’s office was in the northern quarter, on the tenth floor of a low rise scraper. It was a surprisingly industrial area for a private practitioner. The squat, adjacent pyramids housed on one side botanical gardens which grew the plants for cosmetics and anaesthetic, and on the other a reef farm.
The reef farm had been Adelaide’s favourite haunt as a teenager. She used to go there when she was angry. Axel used to go with her, although he would inevitably wander off to talk to one of the wardens or marine biologists. Not for the first time, she considered the irony that his last psychiatrist had been there all along, seeing patients in the tower next door.
The receptionist was easy. After a sharp knock on Radir’s door, Adelaide announced herself. “Good morning, Doctor.”
The psychiatrist, a large man with an arched nose and fair hair who had so far repelled all of Adelaide’s efforts to flirt with him, looked up and sighed. He did not seem surprised to see Adelaide. On the contrary, he had the expression of a man resigned to his fate.
“Good morning, Miss Rechnov.” His voice was mid-range, the sort of voice you trusted without asking why, although if Adelaide had been asked, she would have said she trusted his eyes. They were blue and turned down at the corners. Seeing him again in the flesh, the lack of resemblance between Radir and Sanjay Hanif could not have been more marked.
Adelaide slid into the seat opposite him with a charming smile. It was not returned. That was another reason she trusted Radir. She had no effect on him.
“You can call me Adelaide,” she said. “I told you that before.”
“Miss Rechnov,” he said implacably. “I must remind you that I have patients to see.”
“I’m aware of that, Doctor. I’m also aware that this is your lunch break. Now don’t think me amiss, but your receptionist was kind enough to get me a glass of water and I confess I did take a look at your appointment book whilst she was gone. You’re free until half fourteen.”
Radir tapped the activation strip of his Neptune with an air of finality, abandoning whatever he had been working on.
“I should also remind you, Miss Rechnov, that in light of the current investigation, I’m not sure you should be speaking to me.”
“Right,” said Adelaide. “Now we’ve got the formalities out the way. You may be wondering why I’ve come.”
“I have an inkling.”
“Well, Doctor, I suppose I want your opinion as to what has happened to my brother.”
She sat back casually, as though she had just remarked on the rising price of raqua, and crossed one leg over the other, waiting.
“I cannot possibly conjecture. My sessions with Axel were cancelled six months before he disappeared. Over that period, his state of mind may have undergone a drastic transformation, or none at all. You will remember our last conversation.”
