Even as the implications of what he had read settled upon him, Vikram realized he had no time to ponder the consequences. It would be insanity to give Adelaide such material minutes before they appeared before the Council. He slipped the envelope and the necklace inside his jacket pocket. He would reseal it later.
In the hallway he paused, catching his reflections once more. A young man in a smart suit met his gaze, clean shaven, his dark hair combed neatly back, a necktie at his throat. Vikram stared at this stranger. The clothes had done their work; he did not appear, at first glance, like a man with a history of violence. Truth was in the eye, wasn’t it? He moved closer to the mirror. His breath, quicker than usual with nervousness, made a patch of condensation. He looked deep, but found no history there. The belief that you were able to see a person’s soul in their eyes was false after all. The eye was only matter. Axel Rechnov had known that, once. Just another example of human frailty.
25 ¦ ADELAIDE
She looked at all the fish in the elevator aquarium and chose the angelfish. It was an old game. If it followed, they would have good luck. As the lift doors closed, the nose of the angelfish edged up. It looked for a moment as though it might launch, then dived suddenly down into the depths of the scraper. The lift began to move.
At level fifty-four a man intent upon his Surfboard got out and a young woman in a long skirt got in. Her glance took in Adelaide’s costume, then floated, as those dull, earnest types always did, up to Adelaide’s face. Adelaide stared blandly back.
She knew why she was helping Vikram. It was because she was bored. And boredom in Osiris was dangerous, boredom was a one-way ticket to insanity. Liaising with a westerner, on the other hand, could not be described as anything other than reckless.
As the lift rose she was overwhelmed by a sense of vertigo, a sense that her involvement was about to become far bigger, far wider than she had accounted for. Level eighty-one. The lift doors paused, the doors parted. There was still time. She could get out now. She could walk away.
But she didn’t. Adelaide had been accused of many things, but no-one had ever said she was a coward.
26 ¦ VIKRAM
He waited in an aisle approaching the podium, just out of sight. The Chambers looked different today. The viewing balconies bulged with noisy spectators whilst below, the crescent rows of seats were unoccupied and expectant.
In his jacket pocket, next to Axel’s letter, was a pine needle. He had taken it from one of the conifer trees in the lobby, for luck, and he could still sniff the aroma of the trees; the scent of mystery and far away places. Adelaide stood beside him. She was wearing a white trouser suit and tinted glasses and she’d done something to her hair, a new fringe that fell to her eyebrows. Vikram could not have imagined a more unlikely partner.
She pointed to the balcony.
“Your new fan base, that’s the Haze, are installed up there. The Council will be shuffling in shortly. So tell me, Mr Bai, how does it feel in the green room?”
Vikram grinned in spite of himself, and the tie at his throat felt a little looser. Today, Adelaide’s irreverence was a tonic.
Behind the podium, a gowned man was enthroned in a circular turret about two metres high. The Speaker, Vikram thought.
Three long, sonorous notes flooded the Chambers. There was a rustling as everyone on the balcony got to their feet. The great wooden doors of the Chambers swung open. One by one, the Councillors filed in, silent and solemn faced. They wore purple surcoats over their suits which swished on the pale marble floor.
“These public events are so theatrical,” whispered Adelaide in Vikram’s ear.
He nodded, nervous, but his eyes were more astute now. He looked around the filling rows and he could divide the Council into their five, distinctive segments. On the left, the reactionary heavyweights, second generation, responsible for implementing the border thirty-nine years ago. He found Feodor Rechnov straight away and studied him closely. Feodor’s face was entrenched with lines, but there was Adelaide’s perfectly straight nose, her strong brows, the set of her shoulders. It was a predator’s face, but not a reckless predator. Feodor Rechnov was like a high soaring bird, manipulating the thermals to scan all possible territories. Vikram knew he had to emulate that clear sightedness.
Taking his seat, Feodor leaned over and muttered something to the man next to him, who nodded. Next along were the Executors, as Adelaide called them. He located the Board of Four in the second row, where their position enabled them to lean forward and whisper the things they wished to be announced into the ears of their subordinates.
“That’s Security on the left,” murmured Adelaide. “After her it’s Finance, and after him Resources, then Health and Science at the end.”
Behind them gathered other departmental heads. Adelaide pointed out Climate, Education, and Estates. The Executors were not communicating much between themselves, but each of them looked ready to do battle. Opposite and over to the right were the two factions of liberals, the Nucleites and the antis. Vikram spotted Linus speaking very quickly to the man and woman behind him.
“There’s Dmitri,” Adelaide said. “In the second row, wearing a red-striped necktie. Doesn’t look much like the rest of us, does he? If I didn’t know my mother, I’d say she’d had an affair.”
“She never wanted to join the Council, I take it?”
“She was too busy designing invitations. Actually, she’s a better politician than any of them, but she prefers to exert her influence over raqua and dessert.”
“That might not be such a bad idea,” Vikram said drily.
He had forgotten the way the pale stone of the Chambers whispered. Scuffles and muttered words chased one another around the indoor amphitheatre. As the Council settled with a flurry of surcoats, his gaze was drawn to the final faction on the far right. The first generation Councillors were stooped, always one of them shaking, like so many pine needles disturbed by a breeze. Their hair was as white as snow. The women’s coiffeurs were cropped short or drawn into wispy buns. Their earrings were bright chandeliers against the soft folds of their necks. The men had jackets under their surcoats in moss green or mulberry red. Many wore glasses that both magnified their eyes and disguised them. Adelaide had warned Vikram not to be fooled by their antique appearance; a lack of sharpness, she said, only increased their obduracy.
Despite their inevitable antipathy towards him, it was these veterans that interested Vikram the most. As their hair had gained streaks of grey and finally was bleached of all colour, they had watched their city change. They had witnessed it pass from elite, technological masterpiece, to benevolent rescue centre, to reluctant tyrant. Finally they had seen it become two cities. Perhaps that wall gave them the illusion that the thing they had created retained its beauty and its integrity, but Vikram doubted it.
The three notes sounded again. Only when the entire Chambers had hushed did the Speaker begin.
“On the second Thursday of the month of Mae, I declare witness to the gathering of the Osiris Council, guardians of the city of Osiris, one hundred and forty-five years after the founding of the Osiris Board, the city being now in its seventieth year as an independent state. This session opens at the hour of two minutes past eleven hundred. This session is held in the domain of the public eye, although the public shall not contribute to the issues discussed today which are for the consideration of the esteemed Councillors and them alone. As Speaker, I invoke the Eleni Clause which orders that all words spoken in this session are words of truth.”