She could see only one blemish, the brilliantly lit observation deck of an airship as it cast off from its skyscraper mooring. It angled upward to slide into the clear air above Tridelta’s towers, and set out across the river to begin its night-long flight over the jungle.
Mellanie reached the intersection and walked down to the Logrosan south high quay where the ferries docked. The last short avenue leading to the embankment slowly opened out, its buildings reducing in size. There was a large flow of people heading down to the ferries, bustling along together in a carnival atmosphere. Her pace began to slow as she saw what was ahead. Just about all the first-night tourists in the crowd around her had stopped to stare.
In front of her the Logrosan was a kilometer wide, a sheet of black ripples gurgling with quiet power as it raced along the edge of the city. On the other side, the jungle cloaked the undulating mountains. Every tree gleamed with opalescent splendor.
Unlike terrestrial plants that competed to produce bigger and more colorful flowers to attract insects, vegetation on Illuminatus had evolved bioluminescence to vie for the attention of local insects. The dark leaves that had spent the day soaking up sunlight now radiated the energy away in a soft lambent glow. With each tree in the forest cloaked in its own cold nimbus of iridescence the jungle was bright enough to rival the sleepy light of a dawn sun.
An entranced Mellanie hurried forward to the quay with its long row of angled jetties. Her ferry was the Goldhawk, a big old metal-hull craft that chugged over the water once every hour, night and day. On board, she jostled with the other two hundred fifty passengers for a view near the bow as it headed over to the Crossquay. Three more massive airships passed high overhead during the short trip. Mellanie waved foolishly at them, laughing at herself for doing so, but she was in that kind of mood.
Looking at the shimmering jungle ahead of her allowed her to relax. She’d spent the last forty-eight hours on a nervous high as she performed her reconnaissance of the Saffron Clinic. Michelangelo had been right, it was discreet. In the morning she moved between the pavement cafés on Allwyn Street so that the Greenford Tower was always in view. It was a kilometer-high cone of burnished steel and purple glass that housed stores, factories, offices, hotels, bars, spas, and apartments. The top floor was an airship dock, which had one of the big dark ovoids floating passively on the end of its gantry. Set back from the street in its own plaza, the Greenford’s base was made up of tall arching windows that rose to the fifth floor. Each one was an entrance to a different section. Given her purpose, she could hardly walk around them all trying to find which one belonged to the clinic. So she drank herbal teas and mineral water under the café awnings as her programs and inserts slowly infiltrated the Greenford Tower’s internal network.
With her software milking data from the management arrays on each floor, she soon found the Saffron Clinic, spread out over seven floors, starting thirty-eight stories up. When the information came in, she tilted her head back to see the actual windows, her virtual vision designating the blank panes with a slender neon-green outline. It was as near as she could get, visually or electronically. Access to the clinic’s own arrays was securely guarded. She didn’t have the skill to hack them.
A review of the Tower’s registered structural plans showed her the clinic had its own garage in the third level of the big fifteen-level underground garage. There was also an entrance through one of the tall archways on the west side, which led to a private lobby and lift. Mellanie moved to a bar in a side alley just off Allwyn Street that gave her a narrow view of the entrance. That was where she found the one weakness in the clinic’s electronic protection; the Tower’s own security software identified and cleared all authorized personnel going through the outside door to the Saffron’s lobby before they reached the clinic’s modern internal security systems.
She settled back in a chair and bought herself a second hot chocolate. There were several big fountains playing in the Greenford’s plaza, their tumbling jets of foam occasionally blowing across the small clinic door, but apart from that she had a good view of everyone who came and went. Each time the door opened her inserts recorded the image of the person coming through, cataloguing it with the information and name she gleaned from the Tower’s security array. Three hours later, she cocked her head to one side as a bulky figure emerged into the late afternoon. Funnily enough, it was her time with Alessandra Baron that had given her the most insight into people, learning to recognize what they were in the first few moments. Instant stereotyping, Michelangelo had called it glibly, but she knew instinctively that this was the one she was looking for. Data from the security array rolled down her virtual vision, identifying the man as one Kaspar Murdo and confirming some of the things she’d already guessed at. She was already standing, leaving a couple of Illuminatus ten-pound notes on her table to cover the drinks. She began to follow Kaspar Murdo along the street, unleashing a flock of monitor programs into the public arrays around him as she went.
The crowds were thicker on Southside Crossquay, which was nothing but a wide strip of enzyme-bonded concrete holding the river and jungle apart, extending for fifty kilometers. On the central section, opposite Tridelta, eighty stone and concrete jetties bristled out into the water, angled back to provide some protection against the flow for the boats moored along them. Mellanie wandered down the broad avenue along the top, looking for the jetty where Cyprus Island was docked. On her left, Tridelta’s silhouette was a slim band of gaudy light just above the river, topped by the black towers that cut a sharp profile against the sheen of the jungle on the far side of the city. To her right, the trees towered over the walkway, casting a pale ever-shifting radiance across the admiring faces of the tourists as they searched for their jetty.
The Cypress Island was one of a dozen nightcruise boats tied up at the jetty; longer and slimmer than the ferries that plowed across the river from the city, it had a flat, open top deck with a bar in the center. Inside, the upper two passenger decks had transparent bulkheads, so that the restaurant and casino patrons could still have an excellent view of the jungle; only the third deck where the stage was installed had a normal hull. Mellanie walked along the short gangplank amid a gaggle of clubbers barely older than she was. Several of the boys gave her encouraging smiles, which she had to ignore. It was a shame; the kids here all looked terrific, taking a lot of care with what they wore and how they styled themselves.
She confirmed her ticket with the steward as she stepped on board. He took in her appearance with a fast expert glance. “Are you sure you want to be here?” he asked with a mildly concerned smile. “It gets a bit rowdy later on. Can be upsetting if you’re not used to it. The Galapagos will accept your ticket if you want, it’s the same company; they take out a nicer bunch of passengers.”
“I’ll be all right,” she said, practicing a high-pitched giggle. She was privately delighted by his reaction.
“Okay then.” He waved her on.
The first drink was free. She took an imported light beer from Munich and squeezed her way to the top-deck rail.
The Cypress Island cast off twenty minutes later. Out of the lee of the jetty, its engines pushed it against the swift current producing a pronounced rocking motion. The ride changed for the better two kilometers upriver when they turned into one of the hundreds of tributary rivers feeding the Logrosan. A cheer ran along the boat as the water settled down and Tridelta vanished around a curve behind them. The engine noise faded away to a quiet murmur.