‘What’s wrong?’ said Rekka.
‘If you want anything here, let me buy it, and give me the money afterwards.’
‘Because …?’
‘There’s such a thing as preferential pricing. I’d pay less. You’d pay more, but not as much as those two.’
She meant the young couple.
‘Why would they be charged more?’
Angela shrugged.
‘They’re Japanese.’
Afterwards they took the mag-lev to Changi station, transferred to a bus, and travelled along white-paved streets through an upmarket residential area: gardens an explosion of tropical colour, scarlet blossoms bigger than Rekka’s head, the ubiquitous palm trees surrounding beautiful homes. When they got off at the stop, it was just the two of them. As they walked, to their right rose a tall fortified wall with razor wire rotating non-stop, coated with neurotoxin nanovectors according to Angela. The establishment was Changi Prison, and its security was the best that modern tech could provide.
‘Let’s carry on,’ said Angela.
There was a white one-storey building outside the prison wall.
‘During World War II, that building would have been inside’ – Angela pointed – ‘because it’s one of the original prison buildings. The Japanese treatment of prisoners was notorious, that’s European prisoners as well us.’
Rekka noted the pronoun – us – and wondered why events of two centuries earlier should be so manifest in the present.
They went inside, to see the exhibits and to experience the dark claustrophobia of a cell – Rekka thought that perhaps ultrasonics magnified the effect – and return to the display cases. Angela pointed to a diary whose entries, in twentieth-century handwriting, were hard to make out.
‘“We thought the Europeans to be superior,”’ she read aloud, ‘“yet they seemed as lost and bewildered as we were.” That’s a world-view being shattered, right there.’
No history buff, Rekka was intrigued.
‘At school we learned that white people used to think themselves superior.’ She looked down at her dark hands, then up at Angela. ‘I hadn’t realized that the rest of us agreed with them.’
‘Disquieting, isn’t it?’
As they left, Rekka wondered what negative beliefs she might subconsciously hold, constraining her life now as people two centuries ago had limited theirs.
Simon. Why don’t you call?
Waiting for the return bus, Angela asked: ‘What about your family, Rekka? Were you born in India?’
‘Born, yes.’ She tried to tell it objectively. ‘My father fell victim to the Changeling Plague when I was a baby. Maybe even while my mother was pregnant with me. And with so many people starving in those days … She took me to a Suttee Pavilion – you know about those? – for a last wonderful meal and music and all the rest, intending to kill me along with herself.’
‘Oh, my God.’
Rekka had not talked about this so openly with Simon. Perhaps because Angela was a near-stranger – or a brand-new friend with no shared history between them – the facts had been easier to verbalize.
‘My adoptive parents were Canadian. Pulled me out of the Pavilion before the flames went up. They took care of me. Took me with them when they left India.’
Angela’s eyes were wet.
‘Oh, Rekka. That’s … But good for them. Good work.’
‘Yes.’
Not knowing why Angela was so affected, Rekka patted her shoulder.
‘We …’ Angela stopped, stared down the street, then looked at Rekka. ‘We can’t have kids, Randolf and I. We’ve been talking about adopting, and your story …’
She pulled out a tissue and blew her nose.
‘Sorry,’ she added.
Rekka shook her head, then hugged Angela.
It was three in the morning when Amber called. In the grey semi-darkness, wrenching herself out of sleep, Rekka blurted: ‘Simon?’
Silver metallic sockets in place of eyes. Not Simon.
‘Rekka, what time is it with you? I’m sorry.’
‘Amber, no.’ Rekka rubbed her face. ‘Are you all right? How’s Jared?’
At four months old, he would still be a worry. When did a mother start taking her child for granted? Ever? A real, caring mother, that was. Not like—
‘He’s … Oh, shit. He’s OK.’
‘Well,’ said Rekka. ‘Good.’
She was still trying to pull her faculties together. Amber was in a bad state and not saying why.
‘How have you been coping, Rekka?’
‘Me? Er, working hard. Too many hours to leave time for thinking.’
‘Enough to forget the bastard? You do it, girl.’
This felt like Rekka’s first night in Singapore, with the timelag messing up her perceptions, the world appearing off-balance when really it was herself out of kilter.
‘I hate them,’ said Amber. ‘I hate them for leaving me no choice, even if it’s the right one for Jared.’
‘Oh. UNSA.’ Rekka was beginning to understand. ‘You’re going back to UNSA, to your ship. And sending Jared to an UNSA school?’
But he was only four months old.
‘I don’t have tear ducts, you know that? Well of course you do.’ Amber shook her head. ‘Makes it worse. Maybe it makes me a worse person, too. Maybe if I could cry, I’d still have a partner and so would you.’
What?
Rekka tried to ask: ‘P-partner?’
‘Fucking Mary,’ said Amber. ‘Fucking Mary fucking fucking Simon, that’s the problem, isn’t it? And vice versa. Shit, I hate them.’
Rekka coughed as if punched.
‘I … Rekka?’ In the image, Amber reached up with one hand. ‘You knew, didn’t you?’
‘N-no.’
Mary. Simon and Mary.
‘Simon didn’t call you? Didn’t …? Oh, God, Rekka.’
Six thousand miles apart, linked only by technology, the two women bawled; and for the next twenty minutes, Rekka produced enough burning tears for them both.
FORTY-NINE
MOLSIN 2603 AD
He ought to kill Hansen, assuming he found her.
I want to. I really want to.
Roger knew he could kill. Or perhaps he only thought he knew. Maybe he had the emotional toughness, or whatever you called it, but lacked the physical ability. After all, Helsen had got away with so much already. She had killed an entire world.
Rhianna was staring at him, her black Pilot eyes glittering.
‘Maybe I can’t,’ he told her.
‘What’s stopping you?’ she asked.
It was a classic question from neurorhetoric studies, and she must have known it would trigger the traditional counterpart: What would it be like if you could?
‘Helsen can alter your thoughts,’ he said. ‘Make you see things that aren’t really there.’
‘My thoughts?’
‘Well, mine, I guess. But—’
‘How do you know? What evidence do you have?’
Her eyes were vast, deep-space obsidian.
‘The medics who failed to see her walk past them. The, the …’
In his mind he saw enthralled men in brownshirt uniforms staring at collective visions of helmed warriors wielding blood-axes and war-hammers, and a one-eyed poet casting armed men into confusion as they slew one of their own, a young man tied by leather ropes to a longhall’s entrance-post, crying out as tumbling axes chopped into his body, butchery ended only by the casting of a mercy-spear, releasing the poor man’s—
‘… deeper and deeper,’ came Rhianna’s voice, ‘into this relaxed and dreaming state, and my voice will go with you as you sink ever …’
—shade to be borne on dread Naglfar, Hel’s vast ship formed of corpses’ fingernails – such a multitude of the dead – to the realm of Niflheim, unless by chance the Death-Choosers of Óthinn had taken Jarl to train among the bravest of warriors, to prepare for the distant future when Ragnarök would be upon them—
‘… because your unconscious now can keep you safe as you find the trance inside the trance to go deeper than you ever have before your eyes can close again, that’s right …’