‘You still can’t win,’ I told Armesto.
Armesto deigned to reply, though I’d half expected the other ships to maintain radio silence from here on in. ‘We can and we will.’
‘You said it yourself. You don’t have as many dead as us. No matter how many you throw away, it’ll never be sufficient.’
‘We’ll find a way to make it sufficient.’
Later, I guessed at what kind of strategy that might be. No matter what happened next, the ships were no more than two or three months from Journey’s End. With carefully rationed supplies, some colonists could be woken ahead of schedule. The revived momios could be kept alive on board the ship with the crew, albeit in conditions which would border on the dehumanising, but it might be sufficient. Every ten colonists that were woken meant a sleeper ring which could be ejected, and a concomitant reduction in ship’s mass, allowing a sharper deceleration profile.
It would be slow and dangerous — and I expected that they would lose perhaps one in ten that they tried to revive under such sub-optimal conditions — but it might be just enough to offset the mass difference.
Enough to give them, if not an edge over me, than at least parity.
‘I know what you intend,’ I told Armesto.
‘I doubt it very much,’ the old man answered.
But I soon saw that he was right. After the initial flurry of sleeper ring ejections, there followed a pattern: one ejection every ten hours or so. That was exactly what I would have expected, ten hours to thaw every colonist in a ring. There would only be a handful of people on each ship with the expertise to do that, so they would have to work sequentially.
‘It won’t save you,’ I said.
‘I think it will, Sky… I think it will.’
Which was when I knew what had to be done.
THIRTY-EIGHT
‘What do you mean, you killed her?’ Zebra asked, the five of us still studying the grotesque tableau of Dominika’s death.
‘That’s not what I said,’ I answered. ‘I said Tanner Mirabel killed her.’
‘And you are?’ Chanterelle said.
‘If I told you, I’m not completely sure you’d believe me. As a matter of fact I’m having a little trouble dealing with it myself.’
Pransky, who had been listening to our exchange, raised his voice and spoke with solemn surety. ‘Dominika’s still warm. And rigor mortis hasn’t set in yet. If your whereabouts can be accounted for over the last few hours — which I suspect is strongly the case — you’re hardly a prime suspect.’
Zebra tugged at my sleeve. ‘What about the two people I said were after you, Tanner? They acted like outsiders, according to Dominika. They might have killed her for snitching about them.’
‘I don’t even know who they are,’ I said. ‘At least, I can’t be sure. Not about the woman, anyway, but I’m willing to hazard a guess about the man.’
‘Who do you think it is?’ Zebra said.
Quirrenbach cut in, ‘I really don’t think we should spend too long here; not unless you want to tangle with what passes for authority here. And believe me, that’s not especially high on my agenda.’
‘Much as it grieves me to agree with him,’ Chanterelle said, ‘he has a fairly good point, Tanner.’
‘I don’t think you should call me that any more,’ I said.
Zebra shook her head slowly. ‘Who do we call you, then?’
‘Not Tanner Mirabel, anyway.’ I nodded at Dominika’s body. ‘It must have been Mirabel who killed her. The man who’s following me is Mirabel. He did this; not me.’
‘This is insane,’ Chanterelle said, to general nods of agreement, although no one much looked like they were enjoying proceedings. ‘If you’re not Tanner Mirabel, then who are you?’
‘A man called Cahuella,’ I said, knowing that this was only half of the truth.
Zebra placed her hands against her hips. ‘And you didn’t feel like telling any of us this until now?’
‘Until recently I didn’t realise it.’
‘No? Just slipped your mind, did it?’
I shook my head. ‘I think Cahuella altered my memories — his memories — to suppress his own identity. He needed to do it temporarily, to escape from Sky’s Edge. His own memories and face would have incriminated him. Except when I say “he”, I mean “me”, really.’
Zebra squinted at me, as if trying to tell if her earlier judgements had been fatally incorrect. ‘You actually believe this, don’t you?’
‘It’s taken me a little while to come to terms with it, believe me.’
‘He’s clearly snapped,’ Quirrenbach said. ‘The odd thing is, I assumed it would take rather more than the sight of one dead fat woman to push him over the edge.’
I punched him. It was quick; I allowed him no warning at all, and in any case, under the permanent threat of Chanterelle’s gun, he was in no position to fight back. I watched him fall, slipping on the floor which was slick with some spilled medical fluid, one hand rising to nurse his jaw before he even hit the ground.
Quirrenbach slipped into the shadow beneath the couch, yelping as he made contact with something.
For a moment I wondered if he had touched a snake which had found its way to the floor. But instead, something much larger emerged from the shadow. It was Dominika’s kid, Tom.
I reached a hand out towards him. ‘Come here. You’re safe with us.’
She had been killed by the same man who had visited her before, asking questions about me. An offworlder, yes — much like you, Tom said, casually at first, and then repeating himself in a tone that was altogether more suspicious. Not just much like Tanner — but very like him indeed.
‘It’s all right,’ I said, putting a hand on his shoulder. ‘The man who killed Dominika only looked like me. It doesn’t mean I’m him.’
Tom nodded his head slowly. ‘You no sound like him.’
‘He talked differently?’
‘You talk fancy, mister. The other man — the man who look like you — he don’t use so many words.’
‘The strong silent type,’ Zebra said. Then she drew the kid away from me, wrapping her long lean limbs around him protectively. I was touched, for a moment. It was the first time I had seen any hint of compassion shown by someone from the Canopy for a Mulch-born; the first time I had seen any hint that either party regarded the other as human. Of course I knew what Zebra believed — that the game was evil — but it was another matter to see that belief acted out in a simple gesture of giving comfort. ‘We’re sorry about Dominika,’ she said. ‘You have to believe it wasn’t us.’
Tom sniffed. He was upset, but the shock of her death had yet to set in, and he was still reasonably coherent and eager to help us. At least I hoped it was because the shock had not set in; the other possibility — that he was just immunised against that kind of pain — was too unpleasant to contemplate. I could handle it in a soldier, but not in a kid.
‘Was he alone?’ I asked. ‘I was told that two people were looking for me; a man and a woman. Do you know if this was the same man?’
‘Same guy,’ the kid said, turning his face away from the suspended corpse of Dominika. ‘And he not alone this time either. Woman with him, but she no look happy this time.’
‘She looked happy the first time?’ I said.
‘Not happy, but…’ The kid faltered, and I could see that we were making unreasonable demands on his vocabulary. ‘She look like she comfortable with guy; like friends. He nicer then — more like you.’
It made sense. The first time he’d paid a trip to Dominika’s would have been a fishing trip; gathering what information he could about the city and — hopefully — where he could find the man he wanted to kill, whether that man was me or Reivich or both of us. It might have made sense to kill Dominika there and then, but he must have suspected she could be of use to him in the future. So he had let her live, until he returned, with the snakes he must have bought in the bazaar.