“What will they do now?” she asked.
“Don’t know. Don’t care,” said Dmitri. “Stars, it’s freezing out here. We must be done by now.”
Feodor glanced across at the Ngozis, who were being shepherded back inside. He nodded gruffly.
“Goran will take you back, Adelaide.”
“I don’t need an escort,” she said coldly. She hated Goran, and the way he crept about the family lodgings like a soft amphibian.
Feodor looked like he might hit her, but Linus stepped in. “Let her go, Father.”
“Thank you, Linus.”
A blast of wind hurried her inside. She collected her handbag from a carrier girl. She never came this far west; she would have to take the Crocodile shuttle line.
“Adelaide.” Linus caught up with her in the stairwell outside. His tone was stern but not unkind. She gave him a blank look. There was no point in offering words. Words were ammunition.
Linus hesitated before speaking again.
“Empty threats are useless,” he said at last. “I may not always agree with Father’s policies, but sometimes action is inevitable. I just want you to know that I wish it hadn’t been necessary.”
“I see.”
“And Adelaide.” His voice was different this time.
“What?”
“Be careful.”
“Why should I need to be careful, Linus?”
Her brother did not answer, but she did not require a reply. Her thoughts were elsewhere. The dead were dead, but the missing were still out there, waiting to be found. The investigator she had employed was even now at work. In seven days, they would meet.
The shuttle lines were busy on her way home. As the pod skimmed east through its glowing chute, Adelaide leaned against the smooth fibreglass sides, watching her reflection flicker. She wondered who else on board had been watching the execution.
She wondered what Eirik 9968’s last thought had been.
I’d remember — I’d have to remember—
Axel, crouched in a myriad of broken glass.
Hiding behind a curtain, in the Domain with Axel, at the theatre with Tyr.
The Roof. The double-A parties.
Horses’ hooves.
Don’t think.
She knew that from tomorrow she could not remember this day. She would relive it as she drank her late night voqua and watched without taking in a reel on the o’vis. If she slept tonight, the scene would haunt her dreams. But after tomorrow, today had to go. Today had never happened.
4 ¦ VIKRAM
Vikram woke to a morning that was almost colourless in its brightness. He stretched, gradually persuading his reluctant limbs to leave blankets that were warm with body heat. The window-wall was wet with condensation and he wiped a patch clear. His hand came back dirty with grease.
In a couple of months, ice would freeze the window-wall shut. Days would come when he barely left the flat. He had let the place go. Mould sprouted in a corner of the ceiling and meandered down the walls. The tiny room pressed on his sanity.
With a jolt, he remembered that today was different. Today he was going east. Into the City.
His heartbeat quickened even as he tried to relax.
Can I really do this? Do I even want to?
You don’t have a choice, he told himself firmly. He’d screwed up the order when it was delivered by hand — reading its solid formal prose had filled him with rage. But later he’d smoothed the letter out, read it again, thought about the implications. He’d wanted a political opportunity and here it was. Clearly it was no coincidence that after twelve months of writing letters, he had been granted an audience with the Council less than a week after the execution — but that did not give him an excuse.
The mayhem surrounding Eirik’s death must have struck a chord with the City as well as the west. Vikram — what was left of Horizon — was finally being taken seriously.
He made himself as presentable as he could, washing with cold water from a bucket and pulling on the best clothes he possessed. He used his knife and a sliver of mirror to shave. Brown eyes glanced back at him, a tiny scar above the right. Wariness was their resting expression. Couldn’t change that if he tried. His coat was a shapeless affair that would not impress anybody, but he was damned if he would sacrifice warmth for appearance. In any case, the coat came with Vikram, or Vikram had come with the coat. Somebody once told him it belonged to his father, and it might have done, but it might have belonged to some anonymous figure who had no connection to him at all.
He wound a scarf around his neck and rooted through his bag for gloves. He found only one. It seemed impossible to have lost the other amongst so few belongings, but time was tight and he had to leave without them. On the way out, he noticed again that the lock was weak.
It was a long trek downstairs. The lower lift had failed last month and so far nobody in the skyscraper had managed to lure out an engineer. The stairwells and corridors were busy. People sat smoking on the stairs and lounged in empty door frames, idly reiterating yesterday’s conversations. He smelled the distinctive aroma of manta. Eyes grazed Vikram as he passed. He kept his watch hidden beneath his sleeve. He could have flogged it for several hundred peng or a few City credits, but he loved the watch and he wouldn’t give it up until he was desperate.
Ten floors down, he banged on an even less secure door. There was no response. He banged again, and this time heard an answering curse and someone staggering across the room. The door opened and Nils peered out. His eyes were bleary. A week-long beard shadowed his jaw.
“Vik. What are you doing here? It’s morning.”
“I’m going to the Eye Tower,” Vikram said. “To speak to the Council. The order came through two days ago, remember?”
Nils looked surprised. “I thought you weren’t going to go… I mean, after…”
Neither of them said Eirik’s name.
“I changed my mind,” said Vikram shortly.
“Oh. Okay.”
“You coming?”
Nils yawned. “Think you might be better off on your own.” There was a crash from the floor above. Nils winced and roared, “Shut the fuck up!” He turned back to Vikram, forced a laugh. “Floor twenty-six. I’m moving to twenty-nine, I hear they’ve got a working shower. Anyway, good luck, I suppose. You nervous?”
“Not exactly. What can they do to me?”
“Wouldn’t like to guess. Send you underwater?”
“Tried that already.”
The light-hearted tone fell flat. Nils’s fingers curled around the doorframe.
“Well, let me know how it goes. I’ll catch you later.”
The door shut. Another crash came from upstairs, followed by a yell. Vikram jogged down the remaining twenty-five floors to ocean level. He thought about Nils’s reaction. He wasn’t sure that his friend was entirely happy with Vikram’s decision — he hadn’t said so, not outright, but there had been an ambivalence in his eyes that was unlike Nils.
Outside, the cold punched him like a Tarctic wind. He cinched the belt of his coat tighter; the buckle was broken and it kept slipping. The floating deck that encircled each tower shifted beneath his feet. A man was shouting that his boat had been blocked in, but nobody could find the owner of the vehicle responsible. Squinting in the bright light, Vikram made his way to the east side of the decking, where a vandalized signpost marked the waterbus stop.
The queue jostled around him. As the decking rose and fell on the swells, those waiting kept their balance as one. He found himself looking at other people more carefully than usual. They were all ages and all heights, because the majority of westerners were unemployed, surviving on handouts from the City and their wits. Under hats and hoods the odd Boreal face stood out amongst the southerners, but they were all dressed the same, bulked up with as many layers as they could beg, borrow or otherwise acquire. Could he tell the Council that people had to steal clothes in order to keep warm, or would they assume that everyone in the west was a thief?