So why had I come here, rather than him?
‘He would have found it difficult to get off the planet,’ I said. ‘He was a war criminal. His freedom of movement was restricted.’
‘He’d have found a way round it,’ Chanterelle said.
The troubling thing was, I thought she was right. And it was the last thing in the world I wanted to think about.
‘It’s been nice knowing you, Tanner. I think.’
‘Chanterelle, don’t—’
As the door of the cable-car sealed us from each other, I saw her shake her head, expressionless behind that mask of cattish indifference. Her cable-car lofted, hauling itself away with a series of whisking noises, underpinned by the musical creaking as the cables stressed and released like catgut.
At least she had resisted the temptation to dump me in the Mulch.
But she had dumped me in a part of the Canopy I had no knowledge of. What exactly had I been expecting? I suppose, somewhere at the back of my mind was the thought that we might have ended up sharing a bed by the end of the evening. Given that we had commenced our affair by pointing weapons at each other and trading threats, it would certainly have been an unanticipated coda. She was beautiful enough as well — less exotic than Zebra; perhaps less sure of herself — a trait which undoubtedly brought out the protector in me. She would have laughed in my face at that — stupid male pride — and of course she would have been correct. But so what. I liked her, and if I needed justification for that attraction, it hardly mattered how irrational it was.
‘Damn you, Chanterelle,’ I said, without very much conviction.
She had left me on a landing ledge, similar to the touchdown point outside Escher Heights, but significantly less busy — Chanterelle’s car had been the only one here, and now that was gone. A muted rain was descending, like a constant moist exhalation from some great dragon poised over the Canopy.
I walked to the edge, feeling Sky come down with the rain.
TWENTY-NINE
He was doing his rounds of the sleepers.
Sky and Norquinco were far along one of the train tunnels that stretched along the ship’s spine, their feet clanging against catwalked flooring. Occasionally strings of robot freight pods clattered past along the track, ferrying supplies to and from the small band of technicians who lived at the far end of the ship, studying the engines night and day like worshipping acolytes. Here came one now, its orange hazard lights flashing as it rumbled towards them. The train almost filled the corridor. Sky and Norquinco stepped into a recess while the shipment went past. Sky noticed Norquinco slipping something into a shirt pocket, a piece of paper covered with what looked like a series of numbers partially crossed-out.
‘Come on,’ Sky said. ‘I want to make it to node three before the next shipment comes along.’
‘No problem,’ the other man said. ‘The next one isn’t due for… seventeen minutes.’
Sky looked at him oddly. ‘You know that?’
‘Of course. They do run to a timetable, Sky.’
‘Of course; I knew that. I just couldn’t see why anyone in their right mind would actually memorise the times.’
They walked on in silence to the next node. This far from the main living areas, the ship was uncommonly quiet, with hardly any sound of air-pumps or any of the other chugging systems of life-support. The sleepers, for all that they needed constant cybernetic supervision, drew very little power from the ship’s grid. The momios’ refrigeration systems did not have to work hard, for the sleepers had been deliberately situated close to naked space; slumbering only metres from the absolute chill of interstellar vacuum. Sky wore a thermal suit, his breath blasting out in white gouts with each exhalation. Periodically he lifted the hood over his head until he felt warm again. Norquinco, by contrast, kept his hood permanently up.
It was a long time since he’d had any contact with Norquinco. They had barely spoken since Balcazar’s death, after which Sky had spent time establishing himself in a position of considerable seniority within the crew. From head of security he had moved to overall third-in-command, and now second-in-command, with only Ramirez standing between him and absolute control of the Santiago. Constanza was still problematic, of course, even though he had relegated her to a minor role in security — but he would not allow her to upset his plans. In the new regime, Captain was an extremely precarious position. A state of cold war existed between all the ships; internal shipboard politics were a web of paranoia in which errors of judgement were punished mercilessly. It would take only one carefully engineered scandal to oust Ramirez; murdering him would begin to look just a little too suspicious. Sky had something in mind; a scandal that would remove Ramirez and provide a convenient cover for his own plans.
They reached the node and descended to one of the six sleeper modules situated at that point on the spine. Each module held ten berths, and accessing each berth was itself an awkward process, so it wasn’t possible to visit more than a small fraction of the momios in a single day. Yet throughout his climb to second-in-command, Sky had never allowed himself to spend too much time away from the sleepers.
The task of visiting them all, checking on their progress, had, however, become easier with each year. Now and then one of the sleeper berths failed, ensuring that the momio could never be revived. Sky had mapped the dead laboriously, noting clusters which might signify some rogue support system. But by and large the deaths were distributed randomly along the spine. It was all that could be expected from such ancient machinery, both delicate and highly experimental at the time the Flotilla had departed. Messages from back home suggested that they had made great improvements in cryonics technology — advances which would have made these sleeper caskets look scarcely more civilised than Egyptian sarcophagi. But that didn’t help anyone on the Flotilla. It was far too risky to try to improve the existing berths.
Sky and Norquinco crawled through the hull until they reached the first sleeper module. They emerged into one of the ten berths spaced around its circumference. Sensing them, pressure had flooded into the chamber, lights warmed and status displays came alive, but it remained deathly cold.
‘This one’s dead, Sky…’
‘I know.’ Norquinco had not visited many of the sleepers before; this was the first time Sky had felt it necessary to have him along. ‘I marked this one down as a failure on one of my earlier inspections.’
The casket’s warning icons were pulsing all the shades of hell, to no avail. The glass cover remained hermetic, and Sky had to peer close to satisfy himself that the sleeper really was dead, and not about to become the victim of malfunctioning readouts. But there was no arguing with the mummified form he glimpsed within. He glanced at the sleeper’s nameplate, checked it against his list and was satisfied that his judgement before had been wise.
Sky left the chamber, Norquinco following him, and they moved along to the next.
Similar story. Another dead passenger, killed by a similar error. No point even thinking about keeping this one thawed. There was unlikely to be a single intact cell anywhere in her body.
‘What a waste,’ Norquinco said.
‘I don’t know,’ Sky said. ‘Maybe some good can come of these deaths. Norquinco, I’ve brought you here for a reason. I want you to listen carefully and be very certain that nothing I say goes beyond these walls. Understand?’