Southey nodded. ‘It must have been done by experts, because there was no sign that it was the trawl itself that killed him. But again, they were Ultras.’
‘And you think they have the means to implant the memories into their assassin?’
‘I’ve heard of such things,’ Southey said. ‘Tiny machines which swarm through the subject’s mind, laying down new neural connections. Eidetic imprinting, they call it. The NCs tried it for training purposes, but they never got it to work really well. But if Ultras were involved…’
‘It would have been child’s play. It wasn’t just that the man had access to Rodriguez’s memories, though — it went deeper than that. Like he had almost become Rodriguez in the process.’
‘Maybe that’s why he was so convincing. Those new memory structures would have been fragile, though — the assassin’s own personality would have begun to emerge sooner or later. But by then Rodriguez would have gained your confidence.’
Southey was right: it was only in the last day or so that Rodriguez had seemed more than usually evasive. Was that the point when the assassin’s buried mind began to shine through the veil of camouflaging memories?
‘He gained it pretty well,’ I said. ‘If it wasn’t for Vicuna warning us…’ I told him about what had happened around the tree.
‘Bring the bodies back,’ Southey said. ‘I want to see how well they really disguised their man — whether it was cosmetic, or whether they tried to change his DNA as well.’
‘You think they went to that much trouble?’
‘That’s the point, Tanner. If they went to the right kind of people, it wouldn’t have been much trouble at all.’
‘To the best of my knowledge, there’s only one group of Ultras in orbit around the planet at the moment.’
‘Yes. I’m fairly sure that Orcagna’s people must have been involved in this. You met them, didn’t you? Did you think they could be trusted?’
‘They were Ultras,’ I said, as if that were answer enough. ‘I couldn’t read them like one of Cahuella’s usual contacts. That doesn’t mean they’d automatically betray us, though.’
‘What would they have to gain by not betraying us?’
That, I realised, was the one question I had never really asked. I had made the error of treating Orcagna like any other of Cahuella’s business contacts — someone who would not want to exclude dealing with Cahuella again in the future. But what if Orcagna’s crew had no intention of returning to Sky’s Edge for decades, even centuries? They could burn all their bridges with impunity.
‘Orcagna might not have known that the assassin was aimed at us,’ I said. ‘Someone affiliated to Reivich just presented them with a man who needed his appearance changed; another man who needed his memories transferred into the first…’
‘And you think it didn’t even occur to Orcagna to ask questions? ’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, even my own argument sounding weak.
Southey sighed. I knew what he was thinking. It was what I was thinking myself. ‘Tanner, I think we need to play it very carefully from here on in.’
‘At least one good thing’s come out of it,’ I said. ‘Now that the doctor’s dead, Cahuella’s had to abandon his snake quest. He just hasn’t realised it yet.’
Southey forced a thin smile. ‘We’ve already dug half the new pit.’
‘I wouldn’t worry about finishing the rest by the time we get back.’ I paused and checked the map again, the blinking dot which represented Reivich’s progress. ‘We’ll camp again tonight, about sixty klicks north of here. Tomorrow we’ll be on our way home.’
‘Tonight’s the night?’
With Rodriguez and the doctor dead, we would be undermanned when it came to the ambush. But there would be still be enough of us to make victory a near-mathematical certainty.
‘Tomorrow morning. Reivich should enter our trap two hours before noon, if he maintains his progress.’
‘Good luck, Tanner.’
I nodded and closed the connection with the Reptile House. Outside, I found Cahuella and told him what I had learned from Southey. Cahuella had calmed down a little since our last conversation, while his men worked around us packing up the rest of the camp. He was strapping a black leather bandolier from waist to shoulder, with numerous little leather pockets for cartridges, clips, ammo-cells and other paraphernalia.
‘They can do that kind of shit as well? Memory transfer?’
‘I’m not sure how permanent it would have been, but — yes — I’m reasonably sure they could have trawled Rodriguez so that Reivich’s man had enough of his knowledge not to arouse our suspicions. You’re less surprised that they could change his shape so convincingly?’
He seemed unwilling to answer me immediately. ‘I know they can… change things, Tanner.’
There were times when I felt I knew Cahuella as well as anyone; that at times we were as close as brothers. I knew him to be capable of a cruelty more imaginative and instinctive than anything I could devise. I had to work at being cruel, like a hard-working musician who lacked the easy, virtuoso flair of the true-born genius. But we saw things similarly, judged people with the same jaundiced eye and were both possessed of an innate skill with weapons. Yet there were times, like now, that it was as if Cahuella and I had never met; that there were infinite secrets he would never share with me. I thought back to what Gitta had told me the night before; her implication that what I knew about him was only the tip of the iceberg.
An hour later and we were on our way, with the two bodies — Vicuna and the bipartite Rodriguez — in refrigerated coffins, stowed in the last vehicle. The hard-shelled coffins had doubled as rations stores until now. Predictably enough, the hunting trip no longer felt like much of a holiday. I had never seen it like that, of course, but Cahuella certainly had, and I could read the tension in the muscles of his neck as he strained to look forward along the trail. Reivich had been a step ahead of us.
Later, when we stopped to fix a turbine, he said, ‘I’m sorry I blamed you back there, Tanner.’
‘I’d have done the same.’
‘That’s not the point, is it? I trust you like a brother. I did and I still do. You saved us all when you killed Rodriguez.’
Something green and leathery flapped over the road. ‘I prefer not to think of that impostor as Rodriguez. Rodriguez was a good man.’
‘Of course… it was just verbal shorthand. You — um — don’t think there are likely to be any more of them, do you?’
I had given the matter some thought. ‘We can’t rule it out, but I don’t think it’s very likely. Rodriguez had come back from a trip, whereas everyone else on the expedition hasn’t left the Reptile House for weeks — apart from you and me, of course, when we visited Orcagna. I think we can remove ourselves from suspicion. Vicuna might have been a possibility, but he’s neatly removed himself as well.’
‘All right. One other thing.’ He paused, casting a wary eye over his men as they hammered at something under an engine cowling with what looked like less than professional care. ‘You don’t think that might have actually been Reivich, do you?’
‘Disguised as Rodriguez?’
Cahuella nodded. ‘He did say he was going to get me.’
‘Yes… but my guess is he’s with the main party. That’s what Orcagna told us. The imposter might even have planned to lie low with us, not compromising his cover until the rest of the party came through.’
‘It could have been him, though.’
‘I don’t think so; not unless the Ultras are even cleverer than we thought. Reivich and Rodriguez were nowhere near the same size. I can believe they altered his face, but I can’t see them having the time to change his entire skeleton and musculature — not in a few days. Then they’d still have to adjust his body-image so he didn’t keep bumping into ceilings. No; their assassin must have been a man of similar build to Rodriguez.’