I asked the man renting the phone what I needed to do to reach both an orbital number and someone in the Canopy. He gave me a long and involved explanation about both, the details of which I struggled to hold in my head. The orbital number was easier since I already knew it — engraved onto the Mendicant business card which Sister Amelia had left me — but I had to get through four or five temperamental network layers before I reached it.
The Mendicants conducted their business in an interesting manner. They maintained ties with many of their clients long after they had left Hospice Idlewild. Some of those clients, on ascending to positions of power in the system, returned favours to the Mendicants — donations which allowed them to keep their habitat solvent. But it went beyond that. The Mendicants relied on their clients returning to them for additional services — information and the something which could only be described as the politest kind of espionage, so it was always in their interests to be in easy reach.
I had to walk out of the station, into the rain, before the phone was able to hook into any of the city’s surviving data systems. Even then it took many seconds of stuttering attempts before an informational route was established to the Hospice, and once our conversation began it was punctuated by significant timelags and dropouts as data packets ricocheted around near-Yellowstone space, occasionally arcing off on parabolas which never returned.
‘Brother Alexei of the Ice Mendicants, how may I serve God through you?’
The face which had appeared on the screen was gaunt and lantern-jawed, the man’s eyes gleaming with calm benevolence, like an owl. One of the eyes, I noticed, was surrounded by a deep purple bruise.
‘Well, well,’ I said. ‘Brother Alexei. How nice. What happened? Fell on your trowel?’
‘I’m not sure I follow you, friend.’
‘Well, I’ll jog your memory for you. My name is Tanner Mirabel. I came through the Hospice a few days ago, from the Orvieto.’
‘I’m… not sure I recall you, brother.’
‘Funny. Don’t you remember how we exchanged vows in the cave?’
He gritted his teeth, all the while maintaining that benevolent half-smile. ‘No… sorry. Drawing a blank there. But please continue. ’
He was wearing an Ice Mendicant smock, hands clasped across his stomach. Behind him, I was afforded a view of climbing stepped vineyards which rose up and up until they curved overhead, bathed in the mirrored light of the habitat’s sunscreens. Little chalets and rest places dotted the steps, blocks of cool white amidst the overwhelmingly florid green, like icebergs on a briny sea.
‘I need to speak to Sister Amelia,’ I said. ‘She was very kind to me during our stay and she dealt with my personal affairs. I seem to remember you and she are acquainted?’
The look of placidity did not diminish. ‘Sister Amelia is one of our kindest souls. It does not surprise me that you wish to show your gratitude. But I am afraid she is indisposed in the cryocrypts. Perhaps I can — in my own way — at least be of service, even if my own ministerings can not even begin to approximate the degree of devotion tended you by the divine Sister Amelia?’
‘Have you hurt her, Alexei?’
‘God forgive you.’
‘Cut the pious act. I’ll break your spine if you’ve hurt her. You realise that, don’t you? I should have done it while I had the chance.’
He chewed on that for a few moments before responding, ‘No, Tanner… I haven’t hurt her. Does that satisfy you?’
‘Then get me Amelia.’
‘Why is it so urgent that you speak to her, and not me?’
‘I know from the conversations we had that Sister Amelia dealt with a lot of newcomers coming through the Hospice, and I’d like to know if she ever remembered dealing with a Mister…’ I started saying Quirrenbach, then bit my tongue.
‘Sorry, didn’t quite catch the name.’
‘Never mind. Just put me through to Amelia.’
He hesitated, then asked me to repeat my own name again. ‘Tanner,’ I said, gritting my teeth.
It was like we had only just been introduced. ‘Just a moment of your — um — patience, brother.’ The look was still in place, but his voice had an edge of strain to it now. He lifted one sleeve of his frock, exposing a bronze bracelet into which he spoke, very softly and possibly in a tongue specific only to the Mendicants. I watched an image appear on the bracelet, but it was far too small for me to identify anything other than a pink blur which might have been a human face, and which might also have been Sister Amelia. There was a pause of five or six seconds before Alexei lowered the sleeve of his smock.
‘Well?’
‘I cannot reach her immediately, brother. She is tending to the slush… to the sick, and one would be sorely inadvised to interrupt her when she is so engaged. But I have been informed that she has been seeking you as much as you seek her.’
‘Seeking me?’
‘If you would care to leave a message where Amelia may reach you…’
I killed the connection to the Hospice before Alexei had completed his sentence. I imagined him standing in the vineyard, staring glumly down at whichever deadened screen he had been addressing, his words trailing off. He had failed. He had failed to trace me, as must have been his intention. Reivich’s people, it appeared, had also reached and infiltrated the Mendicants. They had been waiting for me to resume contact, hoping that by some indiscretion I would reveal my location.
It had almost worked.
It took me a few minutes to find Zebra’s number, remembering that she had called herself Taryn before revealing the name used by her contacts in the sabotage movement. I had no idea if Taryn was a common first name in Chasm City, but for once luck was on my side — there were less than a dozen people with that as first name. There was no need to phone them all, since the phone showed me a map of the city and only one number was anywhere near the chasm. The connection was much swifter than the one to the Hospice, but it was far from instantaneous, and still plagued by episodes of static, as if the signal had to worm along a continent-spanning telegraphic cable, rather than jump through a few kilometres of smog-laden air.
‘Tanner, where are you? Why did you leave?’
‘I…’ I paused, on the verge of telling her I was near Grand Central Station, if that was not adequately obvious from the view behind me. ‘No, I’d better not. I think I trust you, Zebra, but you’re too close to the Game. It’s better if you don’t know.’
‘You think I’d betray you?’
‘No, although I wouldn’t blame you if you did. But I can’t risk anyone finding out via you.’
‘Who’s left to find out? You did a fairly comprehensive job on Waverly, I hear.’ Her striped face filled the screen, monochrome skin tone offset by the bloodshot pink of her eyes.
‘He played the Game from both sides. He must have known it would get him killed sooner or later.’
‘He may have been a sadist, but he was one of us.’
‘What was I supposed to do — smile nicely and ask them to desist?’ A warm squall of harder rain lashed out of the sky, and I moved under the ledged side of a building for protection, cupping my hand over the phone, Zebra’s image dancing like a reflection in water. ‘I had nothing personal against Waverly, in case you wondered. Nothing that a warm bullet wouldn’t have fixed.’
‘You didn’t use a bullet, from what I heard.’