‘Doesn’t anyone from the cities ever come out here?’ asked Jacob.
Kulic shivered. ‘The people in the cities don’t care about us, and I’m glad of it. Sometimes they . . . they watch us, from a distance. But not in human form.’
Jacob stepped closer to him. ‘There’s something I need to find,’ said Jacob. ‘It’s the reason I was sent here, but it could mean travelling to one of the cities.’
Kulic stared back at him with bright damp eyes. ‘I can help you.’
‘You don’t like it here, do you?’ Jacob had been able to feel the old man’s hatred for the people he lived amongst, seeping through the words he had spoken to the transceiver, here in the quiet dark beneath his house.
‘I despise them all,’ said Kulic. ‘Ever since I learned of my father’s true nature, I realized why I never felt like I belonged. There are fewer and fewer of the Left-Behind each year – most of those houses you saw when we arrived have been boarded up and abandoned for a long, long time. There are scarcely any children born these days.’ Kulic swallowed. ‘Even so, the cities frighten me. I’m scared that if I went there, they might change me into something that isn’t really human.’
Jacob placed his hands on the old man’s shoulders, thinking how easy it would be to snap his neck in an instant. Instead he patted him.
‘Your father and his colleagues would have maintained a cache of equipment I can use,’ said Jacob. ‘Do you know of it, and where it’s located?’
In truth, he already knew where it was, thanks to the transceiver, but he wanted to test the old man, see if he told the truth. If he lied or acted evasive in any way, he would prove himself useless, and Jacob would be left with no alternative but to dispose of him immediately.
‘I know where it is,’ said Kulic. ‘It’s not far from here, buried at the bottom of an abandoned well.’
Just as well you told the truth, thought Jacob, patting Kulic’s shoulders one last time before stepping back and letting his hands fall by his side.
‘We’ll get some sleep and leave in the morning,’ said Jacob, and led the way back up the steps.
THIRTEEN
Luc arrived back at his apartment without incident and found several messages waiting for him from Eleanor. This time, instead of ignoring them he sent back an immediate response. He had a sudden desperate urge to see her, to hold her in his arms.
While he waited, he spent a few minutes checking up on Ambassador Sach’s movements. De Almeida’s networks showed him the Ambassador had most recently paid a visit to the Vanaheim residence of Meinhard Carter, another member of the Council.
When Luc tried to direct one of de Almeida’s countless micro-mechants to approach Carter’s home, he discovered the precise limits to how far de Almeida’s networks could reach, when it got to within only a few metres of a window before its signal faded to static. After that, it dropped permanently out of contact, presumably victim to Carter’s own army of personal security devices.
Luc thought again of all that Ambassador Sachs had said to him on board the Sequoia, including the revelation that the Ambassador had been able to see him during Vasili’s funeral service. Somehow Sachs tied into all of this, and it was clear the Ambassador knew far more than he was letting on.
Even so, he appeared to be doing nothing more than he might be expected to do – taking part in scheduled meetings and paving the way for Reunification, while perhaps also smoothing over the ripples caused by Vasili’s sudden disappearance from public view.
Despite the limitations de Almeida had placed on Luc’s access to her networks, he found he could nonetheless access a basic summary of Meinhard Carter’s role within the Council. It proved, however, to be bafflingly vague. Carter was involved in some kind of research and development, and chaired an advisory body on deep-space exploration. That advisory body included several other Councillors charged with constructing the starships used to carry new transfer gates between old and new colonies. Several of them had worked on Founder research prior to the Schism.
Whatever Carter’s current role in the Council might be, the Ambassador had caught him on what was apparently one of his rare visits to Vanaheim. And when Luc tried to find out where Meinhard Carter spent the rest of his time, he found himself blocked at every turn.
It wasn’t long before Eleanor appeared to him as a data-ghost.
‘I’m not even going to start on the fact you’ve been ignoring me,’ she snapped as he shifted uncomfortably in his chair, ‘but I think you should know people have been looking for you. First that whole debacle at the White Palace, then Cripps sneaking into your apartment, and now Lethe’s been asking questions ever since you went to talk to Offenbach. I don’t care if you’re allowed to talk about it or not – were you on Vanaheim?’
He tried and failed to blank from his thoughts the image of a shambling figure climbing into a white-hot furnace.
‘I think that’s probably not hard to guess,’ he admitted.
‘That’s where you were taken right after we arrived inside the White Palace, isn’t it? Where else could you have gone for so long?’ She paced before him, looking tense and harried. ‘Lethe told me about some raid on a building on Kirov Avenue. He knows you were there, Luc – you were seen. It had something to do with a man named Reto Falla, right?’
Luc nodded.
‘Then there’s the way you keep disappearing from sight with no way to contact you,’ she went on. ‘It’s clear you’re involved in something as big as Aeschere – maybe even bigger, I don’t know.’
‘I don’t understand why you’re upset,’ he said. ‘You know how these things are. It’s not like the first time either one of us has been involved in something we can’t talk about—’
‘Because even then I knew at some point we wouldn’t have to do it any more!’ she shouted, pressing one hand against her head. ‘I’m not taking part in any more high-risk fieldwork, and you told me things were going to be different after you’d caught Antonov.’ She shook her head. ‘But that’s not the case, is it?’
‘Look, this was a direct request from a member of the Temur Council,’ he said, forcing himself to breathe slowly. ‘Believe me when I say it’s really not something I had any choice in. Why do I have to tell you that, when you know it already?’
‘Do you remember what I said to you?’ she said, rounding on him. ‘That there’s only one of you; but that still didn’t stop you charging into an unknown situation with a bunch of Sandoz who at least had the advantage of backups.’ She shook her head. ‘You still don’t understand how lucky to be alive you are after all that’s happened, do you?’
‘So what do you expect me to do?’ he said irritably. ‘Go marching back up to the Palace and say, “Sorry, I’m quitting because my girlfriend isn’t happy”?’
She sank down onto a chair he couldn’t see, hands clasped above her knees, head slightly bent forward and eyes closed as if in prayer. ‘No. I know you can’t do that,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s just that I nearly lost you once before, and I thought I was never going to have to deal with something like that again.’
He pulled himself out of his chair and reached out to put a hand on her shoulder, momentarily forgetting she wasn’t physically present. Even so, she leaned towards him, acknowledging the gesture.
‘I thought it was all going to be over too,’ he said, letting his hand drop back by his side. ‘But it’s not. Not yet, anyway.’
‘There’s a rumour going around that Falla was connected with some kind of assassination attempt,’ she said, the anger of a moment ago now drained from her voice. ‘Lethe made enquiries after you were seen on Kirov Avenue, and got Offenbach to admit you’d been asking questions about Sevgeny Vasili, who no one’s seen in days. Everyone at Archives knows there’s something big going on, and you’re connected with it.’