‘Maybe not here,’ I said. I reached out with my free hand and snagged the fabric of his coat. The rough quilted patches were as cool and dry as snakeskin. ‘But what about all the other passengers on the slowboat? Chances are you’ve already fleeced a few of them since we left Idlewild.’
‘So what if I did?’ he said, almost whispering. ‘It is none of your concern, is it?’ Now his tone was changing by the second. He was squirming before me, shifting into something infinitely more pliant than when he had first entered the commons. ‘What do you want to stay out of this? What is it worth to you to back out and leave me alone?’
I had to laugh. ‘Are you actually trying to buy me off?’
‘It’s always worth try.’
Something inside me snapped. I dragged Vadim back, slamming him against the wall so hard that he was winded again, and began to pummel him. The enveloping red haze of my anger washed over me like a warm, welcoming fog. I felt ribs shatter under my fists. Vadim tried to fight back, but I was faster, stronger, my fury more righteous.
‘Stop!’ said a voice, sounding like it came from halfway to infinity. ‘Stop it; he’s had enough!’
It was Quirrenbach, pulling me away from Vadim. A couple of other passengers had arced over to the scene of violence, studying the work I had inflicted on Vadim with horrified fascination. His face was a single ugly bruise, his mouth weeping shiny scarlet seeds of blood. I must have looked about the same when the Mendicants had finished with me.
‘You want me to be lenient with him?’ I said.
‘You’ve already gone beyond leniency,’ Quirrenbach said. ‘I don’t think you need to kill him. What if he’s telling the truth and he really does have friends?’
‘He’s nothing,’ I said. ‘He doesn’t have any more influence than you or I. Even if he did… this is the Glitter Band we’re headed to, not some lawless frontier settlement.’
Quirrenbach gave me the oddest of looks. ‘You’re serious, aren’t you? You really think we’re headed to the Glitter Band.’
‘We’re not?’
‘The Glitter Band doesn’t exist,’ Quirrenbach said. ‘It hasn’t existed for years. We’re heading for something else entirely.’
From out of the bruise which was Vadim’s face came something unexpected: a gurgle which might have been him clearing his mouth of blood. Or it might just have been a chuckle of vindication.
TWELVE
‘What did you mean by that?’
‘By what, Tanner?’
‘That little throwaway remark about the Glitter Band not existing. Are you planning on just leaving it hanging there enigmatically? ’
Quirrenbach and I were working our way through the bowels of the Strelnikov to Vadim’s hideaway, my progress made all the harder because I had my suitcase with me. We were alone; I’d locked Vadim in my quarters once he had revealed the location of his berth. I assumed that if we searched his quarters we’d find whatever he had stolen from the other passengers. I had already helped myself to his coat and had no immediate plans to return it to him.
‘Let’s just say there have been some changes, Tanner.’ Quirrenbach was wriggling awkwardly behind me, like a dog chasing something down a hole.
‘I didn’t hear about anything.’
‘You wouldn’t have. The changes happened recently, when you were on your way here. Occupational hazard of interstellar travel, I’m afraid.’
‘One of several,’ I said, thinking of my bruised face. ‘Well, what kind of changes?’
‘Rather drastic ones, I’m afraid.’ He paused, his breathing coming in hard, sawlike rasps. ‘Look, I’m sorry to shatter all your perceptions in one go, but you’d better start dealing with the fact that Yellowstone isn’t anything like the world it used to be. And that, Tanner, is something of an understatement.’
I thought back to what Amelia had said about where I would find Reivich. ‘Is Chasm City still there?’
‘Yes… yes. Nothing that drastic. It’s still there; still inhabited; still reasonably prosperous by the standards of this system.’
‘A statement you’re about to qualify, I suspect.’ I looked ahead and saw that the crawlway was widening out into a cylindrical corridor with oval doors spaced along one side. It was still dark and claustrophobic, the whole experience feeling unpleasantly familiar.
‘Regrettably… yes,’ Quirrenbach said. ‘The city’s become very different. It’s almost unrecognisable, and I gather much the same goes for the Glitter Band. There used to be ten thousand habitats in it, thrown around Yellowstone like — and here I’m going to indulge in some shameless mixing of metaphors — a garland of fabulously rare and artfully cut gems, each burning with its own hard radiance.’ Quirrenbach stopped and wheezed for a moment before continuing, ‘Now there are perhaps a hundred or so which still hold enough pressure to support life. The rest are derelict, vacuum-filled husks, silent and dead as driftwood, attended by vast and lethal shoals of orbital debris. They call it the Rust Belt.’
When that had sunk in, I said, ‘What was it? A war? Did someone insult someone else’s taste in habitat design?’
‘No, it wasn’t any war. Though it might have been better if it had been. You can always claw back from a war, after all. They’re not as bad as they’re cracked up to be, wars…’
‘Quirrenbach…’ My patience was wearing thin.
‘It was a plague,’ he said hastily. ‘A very bad one, but a plague nonetheless. But before you start asking deep questions, remember that I know scarcely any more details than you do — I only just arrived here as well, you realise.’
‘You’re a lot better informed than I am.’ I passed two doors and arrived at a third, comparing the number with the key Vadim had given me. ‘How did a plague manage to do so much damage?’
‘It wasn’t just a plague. I mean, not in the usual sense. It was more… fecund, I suppose. Imaginative. Artistic. Quite deviously so, at times. Um, have we arrived?’
‘I think this is his cabin, yes.’
‘Careful, Tanner. There might be traps or something.’
‘I doubt it; Vadim didn’t look like the kind to indulge in any kind of longterm planning. You need a developed frontal cortex for that.’
I slipped Vadim’s pass into the lock, gratified when the door opened. Feeble, muck-encrusted lights stammered on as I pushed through, revealing a cylindrical berth three or four times as large as the place I’d been assigned. Quirrenbach followed me and stationed himself at one of end of the cabin, like a man not quite ready to descend into a sewer.
I couldn’t blame him for not wanting to come much further in.
The place had the smell of months of accumulated bodily emissions, a greasy film of dead skin cells glued to every yellowing plastic surface. Pornographic holograms on the walls had come alive at our arrival, twelve naked women contorting themselves into anatomically unlikely postures. They’d begun talking as well; a dozen subtly different contraltos offering an enthusiastic appraisal of Vadim’s sexual prowess. I thought of him bound and gagged back in my quarters, oblivious to this flattery. The women never stopped talking, but after a while their gestures and imprecations became repetitive enough to ignore.
‘I think, on balance, this is probably the right room,’ Quirrenbach said.
I nodded. ‘Not going to win any awards, is it?’
‘Oh, I don’t know — some of the stains are quite interestingly arranged. It’s just a pity he went in for the smeared-excrement look — it’s just so last century.’ He pulled aside a little sliding hatch at his end — touching it only with the very tips of his fingers — revealing a grubby, micrometeorite-crazed porthole. ‘Still, he had a room with a view. Not entirely sure it was worth it, though.’