‘I think about it.’
The servitor lingered near us. Oblivious to the increasing tension between us, its dumb processor soldiered on, addressing us as a pair of fellow travellers, asking what services we might require. Before the huge man could say anything, or even move, I told the servitor to supply me with a scopolamine-dextrose shot. It was the oldest and cheapest anti-nausea drug in the book. Like all the passengers I had established a shipboard credit account for the duration of the journey, although I was only half-certain I had the funds to cover the scop-dex. But the servitor obliged, a hatch popping open to reveal a disposable hypodermic.
I took the hypo, rolled up my sleeve and slammed the needle into a vein, just as if I was readying myself for a possible biological warfare attack.
‘Hey, you do that like pro. No hesitation.’ The man spoke with what sounded like genuine admiration, shifting to slow, slurred Norte. ‘What are you, doctor?’
I rolled my sleeve over the upwelling mark where the needle had gone in.
‘Not quite. I work with sick people, though.’
‘Yes?’
I nodded. ‘I’d be happy to give you a demonstration.’
‘I am not sick.’
‘Trust me, that’s never been a problem in the past.’
I wondered if he was getting the message just yet; that I was not his ideal choice for a conversation partner for the next day. I popped the used hypo back into the servitor, the scop-dex already beginning to blast my nausea into a fog of merely mild unpleasantness. There were almost certainly more effective treatments for space sickness — anti-agonists — but even if they had been available, I doubted that I had the funds to cover them.
‘Tough guy,’ the man said, nodding, an articulation for which his neck was not really engineered. ‘I like it. But how tough you really?’
‘I don’t think it’s any of your business, but you’re welcome to try me.’
The servitor loitered near us for a few more moments before deciding to float to the next cluster. A few other people had just drifted into the commons, looking around with sickly expressions. It was ironic that after crossing so many light-years between stars, this little slowboat transfer was for many of us our first conscious taste of space travel.
He eyed me. I could almost hear the little gears working away in his skull, grinding laboriously. No doubt most of the people he approached were more easily intimidated than I was.
‘Like I say, I am Vadim. Everyone calls me that. Just Vadim. I’m quite character — part of what you might call local colour. And you are?’
‘Tanner,’ I said. ‘Tanner Mirabel.’
He nodded slowly, wisely, as if my name meant something to him.
‘That real name?’
‘Yes.’
It was my real name, but I lost nothing by using it. There was no way Reivich could have learned my name yet, even though it was clear that he knew someone was following him. Cahuella kept a very tight lid on his operation, sheltering the identities of his employees. The best Reivich could have managed was to weasel out of the Mendicants a list of everyone else who had been on the Orvieto — but that would still not have told him who amongst those people was the man who intended to kill him.
Vadim tried to inject a tone of comradely interest into his voice. ‘Where you come from, Meera-Bell?’
‘You don’t need to know,’ I said. ‘And please, Vadim — I was serious just now. I don’t want to talk to you, local colour or not.’
‘But I have business proposition, Meera-Bell. One you should hear, I think.’ He continued to stare through me with one eye. The other gazed obliquely past my shoulder, unfocused.
‘I’m not interested in business, Vadim.’
‘I think you should be.’ He had lowered his voice now. ‘It is dangerous place where we are headed, Meera-Bell. Dangerous, dangerous place. Especially for newcomers.’
‘What’s so dangerous about the Glitter Band?’
He smiled, then cancelled the smile. ‘Glitter Band… yes. That is really quite interesting. I am sure you’ll find it at odds with… expectations.’ He paused, caressing his stubbled chin with one hand. ‘And we have not even mentioned Chasm City, nyet?’
‘Danger’s a relative term, Vadim. I don’t know what it means here, but where I come from, it implies more than just the ever-present hazard of committing a social gaffe. Trust me, I think I can handle the Glitter Band. And Chasm City, for that matter.’
‘You think you know about danger? I do not think you have first idea what you are walking into, Meera-Bell. I think you are very ignorant man.’ He paused, toying with the rough fabric patches of his quilted coat, refraction patterns racing away under the pressure of his fingertips. ‘Which is why I am talking to you now, understand? I am being good Samaritan to you.’
I could see where this was heading. ‘You’re going to offer me protection, aren’t you?’
Vadim winced. ‘Such crude term. Please, do not say it again. I would much rather we talk about benefits of mutual security agreement, Meera-Bell.’
I nodded. ‘Let me speculate here, Vadim. You really are local, aren’t you? You haven’t come off a ship at all. My guess is you’re pretty much a permanent fixture on this slowboat — am I right?’
He grinned, quickly and nervously. ‘Let us just say I know my way around ship better than average recently defrosted slush puppy. And let us just say I have influential associates in neighbourhood of Yellowstone. Associates with muscle. People who can take care of newcomer, make sure he — or she — does not get into any trouble.’
‘And if this newcomer were to decline your services, what would happen then? Would these self-same associates just possibly become the source of the same trouble?’
‘Now you are being very cynical man.’
Now it was my turn to grin. ‘You know what, Vadim? I think you’re just a slimy little con-artist. This network of associates of yours doesn’t really exist, does it? Your influence extends about as far as the hull of this ship — and even then, it isn’t exactly all-pervasive, is it?’
He unfolded his colossal arms and then refolded them. ‘Watch your step, Meera-Bell — I am warning you.’
‘No, I’m warning you, Vadim. I could have killed you already if I thought you were any more than an irritant. Go away and try your routine on someone else.’ I nodded around the commons. ‘There are plenty of candidates. Better still, why don’t you crawl back to your smelly little cabin and work on your technique a bit? I really think you need to come up with something more convincing than the threat of violence in the Glitter Band, you know. Maybe if you were to offer fashion advice?’
‘You really do not know, do you, Meera-Bell?’
‘Know what?’
He looked at me pityingly, and for the tiniest of instants I wondered if I had fatally misjudged the situation. But then Vadim shook his head, unhooked himself from the commons wall and propelled himself across the sphere, his coat flapping behind him like a mirage. The slowboat had ramped up its thrust again now, so his trajectory was a lazy arc, bringing him expertly close to another solitary traveller who had just arrived: a short, overweight, balding man who looked pasty-faced and dejected.
I watched Vadim shake hands with the man, beginning to run through the same spiel he had tried out on me.
I almost wished him better luck.
The other passengers were an equal mixture of male and female, with an egalitarian blend of genetic types. I felt sure that two or three people were from Sky’s Edge, aristocrats by the look of them, but no one I was interested in. Bored, I tried to listen in on their conversation, but the acoustics of the commons blurred their words into a mush, from which only the occasional word emerged when one or other of the party raised their voice. I could still tell they were speaking Norte. Very few people on Sky’s Edge spoke Norte with great fluency, but almost everyone understood it to some extent: it was the only language which spanned all the factions, and was therefore used for diplomatic overtures and trade with external parties. In the south we spoke Castellano, the principal language of the Santiago, with of course some contamination from the other languages spoken in the Flotilla. In the north they spoke a shifting Creole of Hebrew, Farsi, Urdu, Punjabi and the old ancestor tongue of Norte called English, but mainly Portuguese and Arabic. Aristocrats tended to have a better grasp of Norte than the average citizen; fluency in it was a badge of sophistication. I had to speak it well for professional reasons — which is why I also spoke most of the northern tongues, as well as having a passable ability in Russish and Canasian.