‘I’m sure he’ll be blown away.’
I pocketed the ticket, thanked the woman — miserable as she was, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her having to work here — and then walked back to Dieterling. He was leaning on the low glass wall that surrounded the connecting tongue, looking down at the cultists. His expression was one of detached, watchful calm. I thought back to the time in the jungle when he had saved my life, during the hamadryad attack. He had worn the same neutral expression then: like a man engaged in a chess match against a completely outclassed opponent.
‘Well?’ he mouthed, when we were within earshot.
‘He’s already taken an elevator.’
‘When?’
‘About an hour ago. I’ve just bought a ticket for myself. Go and buy one as well, but don’t act as if we’re travelling together.’
‘Maybe I shouldn’t come with you, bro.’
‘You’ll be safe.’ I lowered my voice. ‘There won’t be any emigration checkpoints between here and the exit from the orbital terminal. You can ride up and down without getting arrested.’
‘Easy for you to say, Tanner.’
‘Yes, but still I’m telling you it’ll be safe.’
Dieterling shook his head. ‘Maybe it will be, but it still doesn’t make much sense for us to travel together; even in the same elevator. There’s no guessing how well Reivich has this place under surveillance.’
I was about to argue, but part of me knew that what he said was right. Like Cahuella, Dieterling couldn’t safely leave the surface of Sky’s Edge without running the risk of being arrested on war crimes charges. They were both listed in systemwide databases and — save for the fact that Cahuella was dead — they both had hefty bounties on their heads.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘I suppose there’s another reason for you to stay. I’ll be away from the Reptile House for some time now: three days at the very least. There should be someone competent looking after things back home.’
‘Are you certain you can handle Reivich on your own?’
I shrugged. ‘It takes only one shot, Miguel.’
‘And you’re the man to deliver it.’ He was visibly relieved. ‘Fine then; I’ll drive back to the Reptile House tonight. And I’ll be watching the newsfeeds avidly.’
‘I’ll try not to disappoint. Wish me well.’
‘I do.’ Dieterling reached out and shook my hand. ‘Be careful, Tanner. Just because there’s no bounty on your head, it doesn’t mean you’ll be able to walk away without doing a little explaining first. I’ll leave it to you to work out how to dispose of the gun.’
I nodded.
‘You miss it so badly, I’ll buy you one for your birthday.’
He looked at me for a long moment, as if on the point of saying something more, then nodded and turned away from the thread. I watched him leave the chamber, exiting back into the shadowed gloom of the concourse. He began to adjust the coloration of his coat as he walked; his broad-backed figure shimmered as it receded.
I turned around myself, facing the elevator, waiting for my ride. And then slipped my hand into my pocket, resting it against the diamond-hard coolness of the gun.
THREE
‘Sir? Dinner will be served on the lower deck in fifteen minutes, if you intend to join the other passengers.’
I jumped, not having heard anyone’s footsteps on the staircase which led up to the observation deck. I’d assumed I was completely alone. All the other passengers had retired to their rooms immediately upon boarding — the journey just long enough to justify unpacking their luggage — but I had gone up onto the observation deck to watch our departure. I had a room, but nothing that I needed to unpack.
The ascent had begun with ghostly smoothness. At first it hardly seemed like we were moving at all. There had been no sound, no vibration; just an eerily smooth glide moving imperceptibly slowly, but which was always gaining speed. I had looked down, trying to see the cultists, but the angle of the view made it impossible to see more than a few stragglers, rather than the mass that must have been directly below. We had just been passing through the ceiling iris when the voice had startled me.
I turned around. A servitor had spoken to me, not a man. It had extensible arms and an excessively stylised head, but instead of legs or wheels, its torso tapered to a point below the machine’s waist, like a wasp’s thorax. It moved around on a rail attached to the ceiling, to which the robot was coupled via a curved spar protruding from its back.
‘Sir?’ It began again, this time in Norte. ‘Dinner will be served…’
‘No; I understood you first time.’ I thought about the risk involved in mixing with real aristocrats, then decided that it was probably less than that involved in remaining suspiciously aloof. At least if I sat down with them I could provide them with a fictitious persona which might pass muster, rather than allowing their imaginations free rein to sketch in whatever details they wished to impose on this uncommunicative stranger. Speaking Norte now — I needed the practice — I said, ‘I’ll join the others in a quarter of an hour. I’d like to watch the view for a little while.’
‘Very well, sir. I shall prepare a place for you at the table.’
The robot rotated around and glided silently out of the observation deck.
I looked back to the view.
I’m not sure quite what I was expecting at that point, but it couldn’t have been anything at all like the thing that confronted me. We had passed through the upper ceiling of the embarkation chamber, but the anchorpoint terminal was much taller than that, so that we were still ascending through the upper reaches of the building. And it was here, I realised, that the cultists had achieved the highest expression of their obsession with Sky Haussmann. After his crucifixion they had preserved the body, embalming it and then encasing it in something that had the grey-green lustre of lead, and they had mounted him here, on a great, upthrusting prow that extended inward from one interior wall until it almost touched the thread. It made Haussmann’s corpse look like the figurehead fixed beneath the bowsprit of a great sailing ship.
They had stripped him to the waist, spread his arms wide and fixed him to a cross-shaped alloy spar. His legs were bound together, but a nail had been driven through the wrist of his right hand (not the palm; that was a detail the stigma-inducing virus got wrong) and a much larger piece of metal had been rammed through the upper part of his severed left arm. These details, and the expression of numb agony on Haussmann’s face, had been rendered mercifully indistinct by the encasing process. But while it was not really possible to read his features, every nuance of his pain was written into the arc of his neck; the way his jaw was clenched as if in the throes of electrocution. They should have electrocuted him, I thought. It would have been kinder, no matter the crimes he had committed.
But that would have been too simple. They were not just executing a man who had done terrible things, but glorifying a man who had also given them a whole world. In crucifying him, they were showing their adoration as fervently as their hate.
It had been like that ever since.
The elevator tracked past Sky, coming within metres of him, and I felt myself flinching; wishing that we could be clear of him as quickly as possible. It was as if the vast space was an echo chamber, reverberating with endless pain.
My palm itched. I rubbed it against the hand-rail, closing my eyes until we were free of the anchorpoint terminal; rising through night.
‘More wine, Mr Mirabel?’ asked the foxlike wife of the aristocrat sitting opposite me.
‘No,’ I said, dabbing my lips politely with the napkin. ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll retire. I’d like to watch the view while we climb.’