There was some Sky’s Edge currency in large-denomination Southlander bills; about half a million Australs. Amelia had told me it amounted to a reasonable fortune on Sky’s Edge — based on the information she had, anyway — though it had negligible value here in the Yellowstone system. Why had I brought it with me, then? The answer seemed obvious enough. Even allowing for inflation, the Sky’s Edge money would still be worth something thirty years after my departure, though perhaps only enough to buy a room for the night. The fact that I had carried the money with me suggested that I had planned on returning home some day.
So I wasn’t emigrating then. I’d come here on business.
To do something.
I had also brought experientials: pencil-sized data sticks crammed with recorded memories. They must have been what I was planning to sell on my revival. Unless you were an Ultra trader specialising in esoteric high-technologies, experientials were about the only way a rich individual could preserve some of their wealth while crossing interstellar space. A market always existed for them, no matter how advanced or primitive the buyer — provided, of course, that they had the basic technology to make use of the experientials. Yellowstone would be no problem in that regard. It had been the wellspring of all major technological and social advances across human space for the last two centuries.
The experientials had been sealed in clear plastic. Without playback equipment, there was no way I could tell what they contained.
What else?
Some money which felt truly unfamiliar to me: strangely textured banknotes with unfamiliar faces on them and surreal, random denominations.
I had asked Amelia what they were.
‘That’s local money, Tanner. From Chasm City.’ She pointed to a man on one side of each bill. ‘That’s Lorean Sylveste, I think. Or it could be Marco Ferris. It’s ancient history, anyway.’
‘The money must have travelled from Yellowstone to Sky’s Edge and then back again — it’s at least thirty years old. Is it worth anything at all now?’
‘Oh, a little. I’m no expert in these matters, of course, but I think this would be enough to get you to Chasm City. Not much more than that, though.’
‘And how would I get to Chasm City?’
‘It’s not difficult, even now. There’s a slowboat shuttle which makes the run down to New Vancouver, in orbit around Yellowstone. From there you’d need to buy a place on a behemoth, to get down to the surface. I think what you have should be enough, if you were prepared to abstain from some luxuries.’
‘Such as?’
‘Well, any guarantee of arriving safely, for a start.’
I smiled. ‘I’d better hope my luck’s in, then.’
‘But you’re not planning on leaving us yet, are you, Tanner?’
‘No,’ I answered. ‘Not just yet.’
There were two other things in the briefcase: a dark, flat envelope and another, fatter one. Amelia had left me alone by the time I tipped the flatter of the two onto the chalet’s bed. The contents spilled out; less in it than I had expected and nothing that seemed like a revelatory message from my past. If anything, the contents were designed to confuse me even more: a dozen passports and laminated ID cards for myself, all valid at the time I had boarded the ship, and all applicable to some part of Sky’s Edge and its surrounding space. Some were simply printed; others had computer systems embedded into them.
I suspected that most people could have managed with only one or two such documents, accepting that there were areas they could not legally enter — but from what I gathered from the documents’ small print, I would have been able to travel more or less freely, in and out of war zones and militia-controlled states, into the neutral zones and into the low-orbital space around the planet. They were the documents of someone who needed to get around without interference. There were some anomalies, though: what appeared to be trifling inconsistencies in the personal data in each document, places of birth and places I had visited. In some of the documents I was listed as having been a soldier in the Southland Militia, whereas in others I was affiliated to the Northern Coalition as a tactical specialist. Other documents failed to mention any soldiering history at all — listing me only as a personal security consultant or an agent for an import/export firm.
Suddenly the documents stopped being a confusing jumble and cohered into a clear indication of the kind of man I had been. I was someone who needed to be able to slip across borders like a ghost; a man of many guises and pasts — most of them probably fictitious. I sensed that I had been a man who lived dangerously; someone who probably made enemies the way most people made acquaintances. I guessed that it had seldom bothered me much. I was a man who could think about killing a pervert monk without breaking sweat, and then refrain from the act because the monk was not worth the tiny expenditure of energy it would have taken.
But there were three other things in the envelope, tucked at the back so that they had not fallen out at first. I pulled them out carefully, my fingers feeling the gloss surfaces of photographs.
The first picture showed a woman of striking, dark beauty, a nervous smile on her face, backdropped by what looked like the edge of a jungle clearing. The picture had been taken at night. Angling the picture to look past her, I could just see the back of another man examining a gun. It could almost have been me — but then who had taken the picture, and why did I have it with me?
‘Gitta,’ I said; without any effort I had remembered her name. ‘You’re Gitta, aren’t you?’
The second picture showed a man standing in what might once have been a road, but which was little more than a pot-holed trail, curtained on either side by jungle. The man was walking towards the person taking the picture, a huge black weapon slung over his shoulder. He wore a shirt and a bandolier, and though his build and age were more or less the same as mine, his face was not quite the same. Behind the man, there was what seemed to be a fallen tree blocking the road, except that the tree ended in a bloodied stump, and much of the road was covered in a thick impasto of gore.
‘Dieterling,’ I said, the name springing from somewhere. ‘Miguel Dieterling.’
And knew that he had been a good friend of mine who was dead now.
Then I looked at the third picture. There was no trace of the intimacy of the first about this image, or even the dubious triumph of the second, since the man did not seem to be aware that his picture had been taken. It was a flat-image, taken with a long lens. The man was moving quickly through a mall, the neon lights of stores blurred into hyphens by the panned exposure. The man was slightly blurred too, but sharp enough for recognition. Sharp enough for acquisition, I thought.
I remembered his name, too.
I picked up the heavier of the two envelopes and allowed it to empty itself on the bed. The sharp-edged, intricately shaped pieces that fell out of it seemed to invite me to fit them together. I could feel the thing squeezed into my palm, ready to be used. It would be difficult to see; pearly in colour, like opaque glass.
Or diamond.
‘This is a blocking move,’ I said to Amelia. ‘You’ve immobilised me now. I may be taller and stronger than you, but there’s nothing I can do at this point which won’t cause me a lot of pain.’
She looked at me expectantly. ‘What now?’
‘Now you take the weapon from me.’ I nodded down towards the little trowel we were using as an ersatz weapon. She removed it from my grip softly with her free hand, then flung it away as if it were poisoned.
‘You’re letting go too easily.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘With the pressure you’re putting on that nerve, it’s all I could do not to drop it. It’s simple biomechanics, Amelia. I think you’ll find Alexei even easier to deal with.’