Now, though, I knew that there was some deep genetic shift taking place in my eyes, and that nothing which had happened before had been my imagination. Perhaps the changes were already complete, irrespective of the degree of genetic fragmentation which the Mixmaster had observed.
‘Whatever he told you,’ Chanterelle said, ‘it wasn’t what you wanted to hear, was it?’
‘He didn’t tell me anything. You were there; you heard every word he said.’
‘I thought maybe some of it would make sense to you.’
‘That was my hope, but none of it did.’
We ambled back to the open area where the teahouse was, my mind running like an unchecked flywheel. Someone had tampered with my eyes on the genetic level, reprogramming them to grow in an alien manner. Could it have been initiated by the Haussmann virus? Perhaps — but what did seeing in the dark have to do with Sky? Sky hated the dark; feared it totally.
But he couldn’t see in it.
The change could not have happened since I had arrived on Yellowstone, unless Dominika had done it when I was having the implant removed. I had been conscious, but sufficiently disorientated that she might have been able to do it. But that didn’t fit. I had experienced the night-vision before that.
What about Waverly?
It was possible, especially from the chronological aspect. I’d been unconscious in the Canopy while Waverly installed the implant. That would have allowed only a few hours between administration of the genetic treatment and the onset of physical changes in the eye. Given that the changes could be thought of as a kind of controlled growth, it seemed nowhere near long enough, but maybe it was, given that only a relatively small area of cells was affected, rather than a major organ or large region of the anatomy. And suddenly I saw that it was at least possible from the point of view of motivation. Waverly had been working for both sides, and he had tipped off Zebra about me, giving me a sporting chance of making it alive through the game. Was it also possible that he had opted to give me another advantage, that of night-vision?
It was possible, yes. It was even comforting.
But nothing I was ready to believe in.
‘You wanted to look at Methuselah,’ Chanterelle said, pointing towards the large metal-framed tank I had seen earlier. ‘Well, now’s your chance.’
‘Methuselah?’
‘You’ll see.’
I pushed my way through the throng of people rimming the tank. Actually, it was not necessary to do much pushing. People tended to get out of my way before I even made eye contact, pulling the same look of nasal insult that I had seen on the face of the Mixmaster. I sympathised with them.
‘Methuselah’s a fish,’ Chanterelle said, joining me against the smoky-green glass. ‘A very big and very old one. The oldest, actually.’
‘How old?’
‘No one knows, except that he’s at least as old as the Amerikano era. That makes him comfortably older than any organism alive on this planet, with the possible exception of a few bacterial cultures. ’
The huge and bloated koi, unspeakably ancient, filled the tank like a basking sea-cow. His eye, as large as a plate, observed us with a complete lack of sentience; as if we were looking into a slightly tarnished mirror. Whitish cataracts spanned the eye like chains of islands on a slate-grey sea. His scales were pale and almost entirely colourless, and the distended bulk of his body was marred by odd protrusions and lacunae of diseased flesh. His gills opened and closed with a slowness that suggested it was only the stirring of the currents in the tank that animated the fish.
‘How come Methuselah didn’t die like the other koi?’
‘Maybe they remade his heart for him, or gave him other hearts, or a mechanical one. Or maybe he just doesn’t need to use it very much. I understand it’s very cold in there. The water’s nearly freezing, so they put something in his blood to keep it liquid. His metabolism is about as slow as it can get without stopping altogether. ’ Chanterelle touched the glass, her fingers leaving a frosty imprint against the chill. ‘He’s worshipped, though. The old venerate him. They think that by communing with him — by touching his glass — they ensure their own longevity.’
‘What about you, Chanterelle?’
She nodded. ‘I did once, Tanner. But like everything, it’s just a phase you grow out of.’
I gazed into that mirrorlike eye again, wondering what Methuselah had seen in all his years, and whether any of that data had percolated down to whatever passed for memory in a bloated old fish. I had read somewhere that goldfish had exceptionally short spans of recall; that they were incapable of remembering something for more than a few seconds.
I was sick of eyes for one day; even the unknowing, uncomprehending eyes of an immortal and venerated koi. So my gaze wandered momentarily down, beneath the sagging curve of Methuselah’s jaw, to the wavering bottle-green gloom which was the other side of the tank, where a dozen or so faces were crowded against the glass.
And saw Reivich.
It was impossible, but there he was; standing almost exactly opposite me on the other side of the tank, his face registering supreme calm, as if lost in the contemplation of the ancient animal between us. Methuselah stirred a fin — a movement indescribably languid — and the current caused the face of Reivich to swirl and distort. When the water calmed, I dared to imagine that what I would see would be only one of the locals who possessed the same set of genes for bland aristocratic hand-someness.
But when the water settled, I was still looking at Reivich.
He hadn’t seen me; though we were standing opposite each other, his gaze hadn’t yet intersected mine. I averted mine, while still holding him in peripheral vision, then reached in my pocket for the ice-slug gun, almost shocked to find that it was still there. I flicked off the safety.
Reivich still stood there, unreacting.
He was very close. Despite what I had said to Chanterelle earlier in the evening, I felt reasonably sure I could put a slug through him now, without removing the gun from the concealment of my coat. If I fired three slugs I could even allow for the distortion caused by the intervening water; bracketing my angle of fire. Would the slugs leave the gun with sufficient muzzle velocity to pass through two sheets of armoured glass and the water in between them? I couldn’t guess, and maybe it was academic anyway. From the angle at which I’d need to fire to take out Reivich, there was something else in the way.
I couldn’t simply kill Methuselah… could I?
Of course I could. It was just a question of pulling the trigger and putting the giant koi out of whatever extremely simplistic mental state it was currently in, certainly nothing sophisticated enough to be termed misery, I was sure. It would be a crime no more heinous than damaging some prized work of art.
The unseeing silver bowl of Methuselah’s eye drew my gaze.
There was no way I could do it.
‘Damn,’ I said.
‘What is it?’ Chanterelle said, almost blocking me as I pulled away from the side of the glass, reversing into the press of jostlers behind me, rubbernecking to get a glimpse of the fabled fish.
‘Someone I just saw. On the other side of Methuselah.’ I had the gun half out of the pocket now; it would only take an inadvertent glimpse for someone to see what I was about to do.