‘He put me in a position where killing him was my only option. And I did it efficiently, in case you were wondering.’ I spared her the details of what I had found when I caught up with Waverly on the ground; it would not change anything to know he had been harvested by the Mulch.
‘You’re quite capable of looking after yourself, aren’t you? I began to wonder when I found you in that building. Mostly, they don’t even make it that far. Certainly not if they’ve been shot. Who are you, Tanner Mirabel?’
‘Someone trying to survive,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry about what I took from you. You took care of me, and I’m grateful, and if I can find a way of repaying you for that and the things I took, I will.’
‘You didn’t have to go anywhere,’ Zebra said. ‘I said I’d offer you sanctuary until the Game was over.’
‘I’m afraid I had business I had to attend to.’ It was a mistake; the last thing Zebra needed to know about was the business with Reivich, but now I had invited her to speculate about just what it would take to bring a man out of hiding.
‘The odd thing is,’ she said, ‘I almost believe you when you say you’ll pay me back. I don’t know why, but I think you’re a man of your word, Tanner.’
‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘And I think one day it’ll be the death of me.’
‘What’s that meant to mean?’
‘Never mind. Is there a hunt tonight, Zebra? I thought you might know, if anyone would.’
‘There is,’ she said, after consideration. ‘But I don’t see how it concerns you, Tanner. Haven’t you learned your lesson yet? You’re lucky to be alive.’
I smiled. ‘I guess I’m just not sick enough of Chasm City yet.’
I returned the rented phone to its owner and considered my options. Zebra’s face and the timbre of her voice lurked behind every conscious thought. Why had I called her? There had been no reason for it, except to apologise, and even that was pointless; a gesture more aimed at ameliorating my conscience than aiding the woman from whom I had stolen. I had been well aware how much my betrayal would hurt her, and well aware that I was not going to be able to pay her back at any point in the foreseeable future. Yet something had made me make that call, and when I tried to pare away my superficial motives to find what really lay below them, all I found was a mélange of emotions and impulses: her smell; the sound of her laugh, the curve of her hips and the way the stripes on her back had contorted and released when she rolled aside from me after our lovemaking. I did not like what I found, so I slammed the lid on those thoughts just as if I had opened a box of vipers…
I walked back into the crowds of the bazaar, letting their noise oppress my thoughts into submission, concentrating instead on the now. I still had money; I was still a rich man by Mulch standards, no matter how little influence it counted for in the Canopy. Asking around and comparing prices, I found a room for rent, a few blocks across the Mulch, in what was apparently one of the less rundown districts.
The room was shabby, even by Mulch standards. It was one cubic corner element in a teetering eight-storeyed encrustation of structures lashed around the footslopes of a major structure. On the other hand, it also looked very old and established, having gained its own parasitic layer of encrustations in the form of ladders, staircases, horizontal landings, drainage conduits, trellises and animal cages, so while the complex might not be the safest in the Mulch, it had obviously endured for some years and was unlikely to choose my arrival as a sign to start collapsing. I accessed my room via a series of ladders and landing traverses, my feet padding over rents in the wattlelike bamboo flooring, street level dizzyingly far below. The room was lit by gas lamps, although I noticed that other parts of the complex were furnished with electricity, served by constantly droning methane-powered generators somewhere below, machines which were locked in furious competition with the local street musicians, criers, muezzins, vendors and animals. But I soon stopped noticing the sounds, and when I drew the room’s blinds, it became tolerably dark.
The room contained no furniture except a bed, but that was all that I needed.
I sat down on it and thought about all that had happened. I felt myself free of any Haussmann episodes for the time being and that allowed me to look back on those that I had experienced so far, with something bordering on cool, clinical detachment.
There was something wrong about them.
I’d come to kill Reivich and yet — almost accidentally — I was getting glimpses of something larger, something I didn’t like the shape of. It wasn’t just the Haussmann episodes, although they were a large part of it. Certainly they had begun normally enough. I hadn’t exactly welcomed them, but given that I already knew roughly what form they were going to take, I thought I could ride them out.
But it wasn’t happening like that.
The dreams — episodes now, since they had begun to invade daylight — were revealing a deeper history: additional crimes which no one even suspected Sky had committed. There was the question of the infiltrator’s continued existence; the sixth ship — the fabled Caleuche — and the fact that Titus Haussmann had believed Sky to be one of the immortals. But Sky Haussman was dead, wasn’t he? Hadn’t I seen his crucified body in Nueva Valparaiso? Even if that body had been faked, it was a matter of public record that, in the dark days following the landing, he had been captured, imprisoned, tried, sentenced and executed, all in full view of the people.
So why did I have my doubts that he was really dead?
It’s just the indoctrinal virus screwing with your head, I told myself.
But Sky wasn’t the only thing troubling me as I fell asleep.
I was overlooking a rectangular room, as if the chamber were a dungeon or baiting pit, and I was standing on some balconied observation gallery. The room was blindingly white, walled and floored in shiny ceramic tiles, but strewn with large glossy green ferns and artfully arranged tree branches, creating a tableau of jungle vegetation. And there was a man on the floor.
I thought I recognised the chamber.
The man was curled up in a foetal position, naked, as if he had just been placed there and been allowed to wake. His skin was pallid and was covered in a sheen of sweat, like sugar glazing. Gradually he raised his head and opened his eyes, looking around, and tried slowly rising to his feet — tried, and then stumbled into another permutation of the huddle in which he had begun. He could not stand because one of his legs ended in a clean, bloodless stump just below the ankle, like the sewn-up end of a sausage. He tried again, and this time managed to reach a wall, hopping to get there, before balance deserted him. There was a look of inexpressible terror on his face. The man started shouting, and then his shouts became more frantic.
I watched him shiver. And then something moved on the other side of the room, in a dark alcove situated in one of the white walls. Whatever it was moved slowly and silently, but the man was aware of its presence, and now his shouts became shrieks, like the squealing of a pig being slaughtered. The thing emerged from the alcove on the other side of the room, dropping in a bundle of dark coils, thick as a human thigh. It still moved languidly, hooded head rising to test the air, and yet more of it struggled from the alcove. By now the man’s screams were punctuated by sharp silences as he drew breath, a contrast which only served to heighten the dread in the sounds he made. And I felt nothing, except a kind of expectancy, my heart tight in my chest, as the hamadryad moved towards the man, and there was nowhere he could run to.
I woke, sweating.
A while later I hit the streets. I had slept for most of the afternoon, and while I did not exactly feel refreshed — my mind, certainly, was in a worse state of turmoil than it had been before — I was at least not so crippled with tiredness. I moved through lazy Mulch traffic: pedestrians, rickshaws, steam and methane-driven contraptions; the occasional palanquin, volantor or cable-car passing through, though never lingering for very long. I noticed that I attracted less attention than when I had first entered the city. Unshaven, my eyes sunk into tired sockets, I was looking more like I belonged in the Mulch.