The skate imaged my body core, learning my inner secrets via a manifold of sensory techniques. The machine was really just a highly modified form of trawl, adjusted to cope with the cellular and genetic structure of the whole body, rather than the specialised flavours of neural tissue alone. Given time, it could resolve matter down to the atomic level; right to the border of quantum fuzziness, but there was no need for such precision now, and the scan was commensurately rapid.
And what it showed chilled me to the core. Something which should have been there was missing.
Something which should have been missing was there.
THIRTY-TWO
‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ Zebra said.
She had forced me to sit down in the atrium and drink something hot and sweet and nondescript.
‘You can’t begin to imagine.’
‘What was so bad, Tanner? It must have been something you were expecting, or you wouldn’t have asked the Mixmaster to give you the scan.’
‘Let’s say fearing, rather than expecting, shall we?’
I didn’t know where or when to begin, or even with whom. Ever since arriving around Yellowstone my memories had been damaged, and I’d had the added complication of the indoctrinal virus to deal with. The virus had given me unwelcome glimpses into the psyche of Sky Haussmann, and yet at the same time aspects of my own past had begun to come back into focus; who I was; what I was doing; why I wanted to kill Reivich. All of those things, disturbing as they’d been, I could have come to terms with. But it hadn’t stopped there. It hadn’t even stopped when I started thinking and feeling my way through Sky’s past; vouchsafed secrets no one else knew about his crimes. Nor had it stopped when I started having confused thoughts about Gitta; remembering her from Cahuella’s viewpoint rather than my own.
Even that I could have begun to rationalise, with some effort. Contamination of my own memories by Cahuella’s? Well, it was possible. Memories could be recorded and transferred, after all. I couldn’t begin to imagine why some of Cahuella’s experiences should have become intermingled with my own, but it wasn’t unthinkable that it had happened.
But the truth — the truth that I was beginning to glimpse — was more disturbing than that.
I wasn’t even wearing the right body.
‘It isn’t easy to explain,’ I said.
Zebra answered in a hiss, ‘People don’t just walk into Mixmaster parlours and ask to be scanned for internal tissue damage — not unless they half expect to find something.’
‘No, I…’ I stopped. Had I imagined it, or had I just seen that face again, near the mingling crowds around Methuselah? Perhaps now I was really hallucinating, pushed over the edge by what the Mixmaster had shown me. Perhaps it was my destiny to see Reivich everywhere I looked now, no matter what the circumstances.
‘Tanner… ?’
I dared not look any deeper into the crowd. ‘There should have been something there,’ I said. ‘A wound which should have been present, but wasn’t. Something which happened to me once. It was healed… but nothing heals that perfectly.’
‘What type of wound?’
‘My memories tell me I lost a foot. I can tell you exactly how it happened; exactly how it felt. But there’s no sign of the injury.’
‘Well, the regrowth procedure must have been very sophisticated. ’
‘What about the other wound, then? A wound the man I was working for sustained at the same time? He took a beam-weapon discharge right through him, Zebra. That showed up.’
‘You’re losing me, Tanner.’ She looked around, her gaze catching on something or someone for an instant before returning to me. ‘Are you trying to tell me you’re not who you think you are?’
‘I’m giving it some serious consideration, let’s say that much.’ I waited a moment, then added, ‘You’ve seen him too, haven’t you?’
‘What?’
‘Reivich. I just saw him; for a moment I thought I might be imagining him. But I wasn’t, was I?’
Zebra opened her mouth to say something — a denial, quick and fluid, but it just didn’t come. Her veneer had cracked. ‘Everything I told you is true,’ she said quietly, when words returned. ‘I’m not working for him any more. But you’re right. You did just see him.’ After a pause, she said, ‘Except that isn’t really Reivich.’
I nodded; I’d half guessed the truth already. ‘A lure?’
‘Something like that, yes.’ She consulted her tea. ‘You knew there’d be time for him to change his appearance as soon as he arrived in the city. In fact, it would be the only sensible thing for him to do. And that’s exactly what he did. The real Reivich is out there now, somewhere in the city, but you’d need to take a tissue sample, or get him under a Mixmaster scanner before you’d know for sure. And even then you might not be certain. They can change everything, you know, given time. Even Reivich’s DNA might not betray him, given enough money.’ Zebra paused. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the man, still hovering at the fringe of the crowd gathered round the big fish. It was him, yes — or at least an extremely good facsimile. Zebra said, ‘Reivich knew his cover was good, but he still wanted to flush you out. That way he could sleep at night and — if he wished — revert to his old appearance and identity.’
‘So he persuaded someone to assume his shape.’
‘There was no persuasion involved. The man was more than willing.’
‘Someone with a death wish?’
She shook her head. ‘No more than any other immortal in the Canopy. His name is Voronoff, I believe, although I don’t know for sure, since I was never that close to Reivich. You won’t have heard of Voronoff, but his name’s fairly well-known in Canopy circles. He’s one of the most extreme Gamers; someone for whom the hunt was always going to be too tame. He’s good, too — or else he wouldn’t still be alive.’
‘You’re wrong,’ I said. ‘I have heard of Voronoff.’
I told her about the man I had seen jumping into the mist in the chasm, when Sybilline had taken me to the restaurant at the end of the stalk.
‘That makes sense,’ she said. ‘Voronoff’s into anything involving extreme personal risk, provided there’s a large element of skill involved. Dangerous sports, anything which gives a genuine adrenalin kick, and which forces him to confront the thin border between mortality and his own longevity. He would never stoop to hunting now; he’d just regard it as an amusement, not a real game. Not because of its unfairness, but because there’s no personal risk to the participants.’
‘Except for one participant, of course.’
‘You know what I mean.’
She was silent for a moment before continuing, ‘People like Voronoff are extremists. For them the usual methods of controlling boredom just don’t work any more. It’s like they developed a tolerance for it. They need something stronger.’
‘And putting himself in the firing line was just the ticket.’
‘It was controlled. Voronoff had a network of spies and informers keeping track of you. When you first thought you’d seen him, he’d already seen you.’ She swallowed. ‘The first time, he kept Methuselah between you and himself. It wasn’t any accident. He was more in control than you ever realised.’
‘It was a mistake, though. He made it too easy. He made me wonder what was going on.’
‘Yes,’ Zebra said, knowingly. ‘But by then it was far too late to stop him. Voronoff was out of our control.’
I looked into her faintly striped face, not needing to prompt her further. She said, ‘Voronoff liked his role too much. It suited him too well. For a long time he acted the way he was meant to — keeping a discreet distance; never letting you see him. The idea was that he would plant a trail of clues which would lead you to him, but in such a way that you thought you’d done all the work yourself. But he wanted more than that.’