For answer, she gave me a significant look and tugged at a single lock of her hair that had escaped from the cling of the headscarf. I shrugged.
‘Alright then.’ I hefted a sealpack of amphetamine cola. ‘Cherry-flavoured okay?’
‘No. It tastes like shit. Get the plain.’
We bought packs to carry the provisions, picked an upward-sloping street out of the wharf district, more or less at random, and walked. In under an hour, the noise and buildings began to fade out behind us and the incline grew steeper. I kept glancing across at Sylvie as our pace slacked off and our steps became more deliberate, but she showed no sign of wavering. If anything, the crisp air and cold sunlight seemed to be doing her good. The tense frown that had flitted on and off her face all morning ironed out and she even smiled once or twice. As we climbed higher, the sun glinted off exposed mineral traces in the surrounding rocks, and the view became worth stopping for. We rested a couple of times to drink water and gaze out over the shoreline sprawl of Tekitomura and the sea beyond.
‘Must have been cool to be a Martian,’ she said at one point.
‘I suppose.’
The first eyrie crept into view on the other side of a vast rock buttress. It towered the best part of a kilometre straight up, all twists and swellings that were hard to look at comfortably. Landing flanges rolled out like tongues with slices cut out of them, spires sported wide, vented roofing hung with roost-bars and other less identifiable projections. Entrances gaped, an anarchic variety of oval-derived openings from long, slim, vaginal to plumped-up heart shape and everything between. Cabling dangled everywhere. You got the fleeting but repeating impression that the whole structure would sing in a high wind, and maybe somehow revolve like a gargantuan windchime.
On the approach track, the human structures huddled small and solid, like ugly puppies at the feet of a fairytale princess. Five cabins in a style not much more recent than the relics on New Hok, all showing the faint blue interior light of damped-down automated systems. We stopped at the first one we came to and dumped our packs. I squinted back and forth at angles of fire, tagging potential cover for any attackers and thinking about delivery solutions that would beat it. It was a more or less automatic process, the Envoy conditioning killing time the way some people whistle through their teeth.
Sylvie ripped off her headscarf and shook her hair free with obvious relief.
‘Be a minute,’ she said.
I considered my semi-instinctive assessment of the dig site’s defensibility. On any planet where you could go up in the air easily, we’d be a sitting target. But on Harlan’s World, the normal rules don’t apply. Top mass limit on flying machines is a six-seat helicopter running an antique rotor-motor lift, no smart systems and no mounted beam weaponry. Anything else gets turned into mid-air ash. Likewise individual flyers in antigrav harnesses or nanocopters. The angelfire restrictions are, it appears, as much about a level of technology as physical mass. Add to that a height limit of about four hundred metres, which we were already well above, and it was safe to assume that the only way anyone would be approaching us was on foot up the path. Or climbing the sheer drop alongside, which they were very welcome to do.
Behind me, Sylvie grunted in satisfaction and I turned to see the cabin door flex itself open. She gestured ironically.
‘After you, professor.’
The blue standby light flickered and blinked up to white as we carried our packs inside, and from somewhere I heard the whisper of aircon kicking in. A datacoil spiralled awake on the table in one corner. The air reeked of antibacterials, but you could smell that it was shifting as the systems registered occupancy. I shoved my pack into a corner, peeled off my jacket and grabbed a chair.
‘Kitchen facilities are in one of the others,’ Sylvie said, wandering about and opening internal doors. ‘But most of this stuff we bought is self-heating anyway. And everything else we need, we’ve got. Bathroom there. Beds in there, there and there. No automould, sorry. Specs I ran into when I was doing the locks say it sleeps six. Data systems wired in, linked directly into the global net through the Millsport University stack.’
I nodded and passed my hand idly through the datacoil. Opposite me, a severely dressed young woman shimmered into sudden existence. She made a quaint formal bow.
‘Professor Serendipity.’
I glanced at Sylvie. ‘Very funny.’
‘I am Dig 301. How may I help you?’
I yawned and looked round the room. ‘Does this place run any defensive systems, Dig?’
‘If you are referring to weapons,’ said the construct delicately, ‘I am afraid not. Discharge of projectiles or ungoverned energy so close to a site of such xenological significance would be unpardonable. However, all site units do lock on a coding system that is extremely hard to break.’
I shot another glance at Sylvie. She grinned. I cleared my throat.
‘Right. What about surveillance? How far down the mountain do your sensors reach?’
‘My awareness range covers only the site and ancillary buildings. However, through the totality of the global datalink, I can access—’
‘Yeah, thanks. That’ll be all.’
The construct winked out, leaving the room behind looking momentarily gloomy and still. Sylvie stepped across to the main door and thumbed it closed. She gestured around.
‘Think we’ll be safe here?’
I shrugged, remembering Tanaseda’s threat. A global writ for your capture. ‘As safe as anywhere else I can think of right now. Personally, I’d be heading out for Millsport tonight, but that’s exactly why—’
I stopped. She looked at me curiously.
‘Exactly why what?’
Exactly why we’re sticking with an idea you came up with and not me. Because anything I come up with, there’s a good chance he’s going to come up with too.
‘Exactly what they’ll expect us to do,’ I amended. ‘If we’re lucky they’ll skip right past us on the fastest transport south they can arrange.’
She took the chair opposite me and straddled it.
‘Yeah. Leaving us to do what meantime?’
‘Is that a proposition?’
It was out before I realised I’d said it. Her eyes widened.
‘You—’
‘Sorry. I’m sorry, that was. A joke.’
As a lie, it would have got me thrown out of the Envoys to howls of derision. I could almost see Virginia Vidaura shaking her head in disbelief. It wouldn’t have convinced a Loyko monk shot up with credence sacrament for Acceptance Fortnight. And it certainly didn’t convince Sylvie Oshima.
‘Look, Micky,’ she said slowly. ‘I know I owe you for that night with the Beards. And I like you. A lot. But—’
‘Hey, seriously. It was a joke, okay. A bad joke.’
‘I’m not saying I haven’t thought about it. I think I even dreamed about it a couple of nights ago.’ She grinned and something happened in my stomach. ‘You believe that?’
I manufactured another shrug. ‘If you say so.’
‘It’s just.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t know you, Micky. I don’t know you any better than I did six weeks ago, and that’s a little scary.’
‘Yeah well; changed sleeves. That can—’
‘No. That’s not it. You’re locked up, Micky. Tighter than anyone I’ve ever met, and believe me I’ve met some fucked-up cases in this business. You walked into that bar, Tokyo Crow, with nothing but that knife you carry and you killed them all like it was a habit. And all the time, you had this little smile.’ She touched her hair, awkwardly it seemed to me. ‘This stuff, I get pretty much total recall when I want it. I saw your face, I can still see it now. You were smiling, Micky.’