Zebra cuffed the phone open; Pandora opening the lid of her box, fearful of what might lie within. Speckles of rain dimpled the screen, like a parade of tiny glass beetles. Zebra lifted the phone to her face and said something quietly.
Someone answered her. She said something back — her tone uncertain — and then turned her face to mine.
‘You were right, Tanner. It’s for you.’
I took the phone from her, wondering how something so innocent could contain so much evil. Then I looked into a face which was very much like my own.
‘Tanner,’ I said quietly.
There was an appreciable delay before the man answered, amusement in his voice. ‘Are you asking or telling?’
‘Very funny.’
‘I’ve got something to tell you, you know.’ The voice was faint, backdropped by sounds of machinery. ‘I don’t know if you’ve quite put the pieces together yet.’
‘I’m beginning to.’
Another delay. Tanner was in space, I realised — somewhere near Yellowstone, but appreciable fractions of a light-second away from low-orbit; probably out near the belt of habitats where the Mendicants held tenancy. ‘Good. I won’t insult you by using your real name; not just yet. But this much I will tell you.’
I felt myself stiffen.
‘I’ve come to do what Tanner Mirabel does, which is to complete something he started. I’ve come to kill you — just as you came to kill Reivich. Symmetric, don’t you think?’
‘If you’re in space then you’re already going in the wrong direction. I know you were here before. I found your calling card with Dominika.’
‘Nice touch with the snakes, wasn’t it? Or haven’t you quite figured that part out yet?’
‘I’m doing my best.’
‘I’d love to chat, I really would.’ The face smiled. ‘And maybe we’ll still get the chance.’
I knew it was bait, but I fell for it anyway. ‘Where are you?’
‘On my way to an engagement with someone dear to your heart.’
‘Reivich,’ Quirrenbach said quietly, and I nodded, remembering how Quirrenbach had claimed to be taking us into space — for a meeting with Reivich — before Chanterelle rescued us.
One of the high carousels, he had said. A place called Refuge.
‘Reivich doesn’t figure in this,’ I said. ‘He’s an accessory; nothing more. This is only about you and me. We don’t have to make it any more than it already is.’
‘Quite a change of tune from a man who was intent on killing Reivich up to only a few hours ago,’ Tanner said.
‘Maybe I’m not the man I thought I was. But why do you have to go after Reivich?’
‘Because he’s an innocent.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means he’ll bring you to me.’ Tanner’s smile flashed on the screen, daring me to find fault with his logic. ‘I’m right, aren’t I? You came here to kill him, but you’d rather save him than have me do the job for you.’
I had no idea how I felt, in all truth. Tanner was forcing me to confront questions I had skirted around until now while I dealt with the schism in my memories. But that schism had opened into a cleft which had ripped my past from me and left something poisonous in its place. If I was Cahuella — and everything now pointed to that — then I hated myself to the core.
But I could not hate Tanner any less. He had killed Gitta.
No: we killed her.
The thought — the crushing logic of it — hit home. We shared memories now, whole intermingled strands of past. Tanner’s memories were not truly mine, but now that I’d carried them in my head, I could never be entirely free of their influence. He had killed Gitta; now I carried the memory of having done it myself; the memory of having killed the most precious entity in my universe. But it was worse; far worse than that. Tanner’s crimes were nothing compared to those that I’d suppressed; buried in the memories I had hidden beneath Tanner’s, but which were now upwelling into my consciousness. I still felt like Tanner; still felt that his past was the right one, but I’d glimpsed enough of the truth to know that this was only an illusion which would grow less and less convincing with time; that it was Cahuella’s past and memories which really belonged in this body. And even that was not the end of it, for Cahuella himself was only a kind of shell, overlaying an even deeper set of memories.
I didn’t want to think about that, but I could see the way things were headed.
I had stolen Tanner’s memories; made myself think — temporarily — that I was really him. Then — as I began to shrug aside this disguise — began to suffer the effects of the indoctrinal virus, catalysing the release of even deeper layers of memory; glimpses into my hidden history; one that went back centuries.
Back to Sky Haussmann.
Something gave in me as the full realisation of what I was sunk in. My knees buckled; I dropped to the rain-slicked ground and felt the urge to vomit. I had dropped the phone; now it lay beside me, up-ended so that I could still see Tanner’s face, his expression quizzical.
‘Something the matter?’ he asked.
I spoke into the phone.
‘Amelia,’ I said, at first barely a whisper, then repeating her name more audibly. ‘She’s with you, isn’t she? You tricked her.’
‘Let’s just say she’s been very useful to me.’
‘She doesn’t know what you mean to do, does she?’
Tanner seemed to find this amusing. ‘She’s a very trusting soul. She had her doubts about you, you know. Apparently, after you’d discharged yourself from the Mendicants, she became aware of certain irregularities in your genetic code — evidence of what she naturally thought was congenital illnesses. She tried to contact you, but you were already becoming a very slippery customer.’ Tanner smiled again. ‘By then I’d revived and recovered my faculties. I remembered who I was and why I was on that flight from Sky’s Edge. That I was after you, because you’d stolen my identity and memories. Of course, I didn’t let Amelia know any of that. I just told her that you and I were brothers and that you were just a little confused. A little harmless deception. You can’t blame me for it.’
No; that was true enough. I had also lied to Amelia; hoping that she’d give me a lead on Reivich.
‘Let her go,’ I said. ‘She’s nothing to you.’
‘Oh, but she’s much more than that. She’s another reason to bring you here. Another reason why we should meet, Cahuella.’
His face was frozen for a moment, then the link terminated, leaving us standing in the rain. I passed the phone back to Zebra.
‘What about the other injury?’ she asked, as we scudded back across the city in her car. ‘You said Tanner had lost a foot, and now there was no evidence of that ever happening. But that wasn’t the only thing you had the Mixmaster look for.’ She shook her head. ‘You know, I want to keep calling you Tanner. It isn’t easy, you know — talking to someone who denies their own name.’
‘Believe me, it isn’t easy from my side of the conversation, either.’
‘Tell us about the other injury, then.’
I drew in breath. This was the hardest part of all. ‘Tanner shot someone once. A man who he was working for. A man called Cahuella.’
‘Nice of him,’ Chanterelle said.
‘No; it wasn’t like that. Tanner was actually doing this man a favour when he shot him. It was a hostage situation. Tanner had to fire a weapon through the man to…’ My voice gained a crack, ‘to kill one of the gunmen, who had Cahuella’s wife at knifepoint. It wasn’t going to kill Cahuella. Tanner knew that with the angle of the beam, it wouldn’t seriously injure the man.’
‘And?’
‘Tanner made the shot.’