He feinted, then flung himself in the other direction. He jumped up as Mollen's fist hit the kerb stones.
"Hello," said Mollen's voice box as it clattered into the road surface.
He tried to steady, aiming a kick at Mollen's head, but he was off-balance. Mollen caught his foot with his good hand. He wriggled out of the grip, but only by turning away.
"Pleased to meet you," the box said, swinging again as Mollen rose, shaking his head.
He aimed another kick at Mollen's head. "What do you require?" The machine said, as Mollen dodged the kick and threw himself forwards. He dived, skidded across the concrete road surface, rolled and stood.
Mollen faced him; his neck was bloody. He staggered, then seemed to remember something, and dug inside his tunic.
"I am here to help you," said the voice box.
He flung himself forward, smashing a fist into Mollen's head as the big man turned, loosing a small gun from his tunic. He was too far away to grab it, so he pivoted and swung one foot, connecting with the gun in the man's fist and forcing his hand up. The grey-haired man staggered back, looking pained and rubbing his wrist.
"My name is Mollen. I cannot speak."
He'd hoped the kick might have dislodged the gun from Mollen's grip but it didn't. Then he realised that directly behind him were Beychae and the unconscious Shiol; he stood for a second while Mollen aimed the gun at him, waggling his body one way then the other, so that Mollen, shaking his head again, let his hand waver on the gun.
"Pleased to meet you."
He dived at Mollen's legs. Collided satisfactorily.
"No, thank you." They crashed into the kerb-side. "Excuse me…"
He brought his fist up, tried to whack the man across the head again.
"Could you tell me where this is?"
But Mollen rolled. His punch sailed through air. Mollen shifted and almost head-butted him. He had to duck, hitting his head against the kerb-stones.
"Yes, please."
He splayed his fingers as his head rang with light, flung them out where he thought Mollen's eyes ought to be, and felt something connect liquidly. Mollen screamed.
"I cannot reply to that."
He bounced up using hands and feet, kicking out at Mollen as he did so.
"Thank you." His foot slammed into Mollen's head. "Would you repeat that, please?"
Mollen rolled slowly into the gutter and lay still. "What time is it?" What time is it? What time is it?"
He stood up shakily on the sidewalk.
"My name is Mollen. Can I help you? You are not allowed in here. This is private property. Where do you think you are going? Stop or I shoot. Money is no object. We have powerful friends. Could you direct me to the nearest telephone? I'll fuck you harder all right, bitch; feel this."
He smashed Mollen's voice machine with one boot.
"Graap! No user-serviceable components ins —»
Another stamp silenced it.
He looked up at Beychae, who was crouched by the side of the car, Ubrel Shiol's head cradled in his lap.
"Zakalwe! You madman!" Beychae screeched.
He dusted himself down, looked back in the direction of the hotel. "Tsoldrin," he said calmly. "This is an emergency."
"What have you done?" Beychae — eyes wide, face aghast — screamed at him, glancing from Shiol's inert form to Mollen's, then taking a detour via the slumped feet of the woman lying unconscious in the car, flowers scattered around her feet, before returning to Shiol's already bruised neck.
He looked to the sky. He saw a speck. Relieved, he turned back to Beychae. "They were about to kill you," he told him. "I was sent to stop them. We have about…"
There was a noise beyond the buildings shielding the river and the Flower Market; a bang and a whoosh. They both looked to the sky; the enlarging speck that was the capsule blossomed with light on a stalk that led back behind the buildings towards the Flower Market. The capsule sailed through the resulting incandescent bloom, seemed to shake itself, then a lance of light darted from it back down the same line, as though in reply.
The sky above the Flower Market flared; the road underneath them bounced, and a terrific crack of sound burst over the roadway and rolled back from cliffs further up the slope city.
"We had about a minute," he said, breathless, "before we had to leave." The capsule swooped from the sky, a four-metre cylinder of darkness impacting on the road surface. Its hatches opened. He went to it and took out a very large gun. He touched a couple of controls. "Now we have no time."
"Zakalwe!" Beychae said, voice suddenly controlled. "Are you insane?"
A tearing, screaming noise came above the city, from up-canyon. They both looked up at a slim shape streaking towards them, bellying down through the air.
He spat into the gutter. He raised the plasma rifle, sighted at the fast approaching dot, and fired.
A bolt of light leapt from gun to sky; the aircraft burst smoke, and veered away on a helix of debris, crashing somewhere down-canyon in a scream that became thunder, echoes rolling back from all over the city.
He looked back at the old man.
"What was the question again?"
V
The black fabric of the tent roof was above him and yet he could see through it to the sky, which was the shaded blue of day, and bright, but black as well because he could see through that easy blueness, and beyond was a darkness more profound than that inside the tent, a darkness where the scattered suns burned, tiny firefly lights in the cold black empty deserts of the night.
A dark crop of stars reached out towards him, picked him up softly between vast fingers like some delicate ripe fruit. In that immense enfolding he felt deliriously sane, and understood then that in an instant — any instant, and with only the most minute of efforts — he might understand everything, but did not desire to. He felt as though some awesome galaxy-quaking machinery, always hidden under the surface of the universe, had somehow connected itself to him, and dusted him with its power.
He sat in a tent. His legs were crossed, his eyes were closed. He had sat like this for days now. He wore a loose-fitting robe, like the nomad people. His uniform lay neatly folded a metre behind him. His hair was short; stubble grew on his face, and there was a sheen of sweat on his skin. It seemed to him that sometimes he was outside of himself, looking back at his body, sitting there on the cushions under the dark fabric roof. His face grew darker because the black hairs grew through the skin, yet looked lighter because the film of sweat on it glistened in the lights of the lamps and the smoke-hole in the roof. This adversarial symbiosis, competition creating stasis, amused him. He would rejoin his body, or set off further afield, with a sense of Tightness at the core of things.
The tent was dark inside, filled with a thick and heavy atmosphere at once stale and sweet; heavy with perfume, smoky with incense. All was sweet and rich and highly decorated; the hanging rugs were thick and picked out with many colours and precious metal thread; the carpet was piled like a field of golden grain, and the plump, scented cushions and languorously thick coverings made a fabulously patterned landscape under the dark flute of roof. Small censers smoked lazily; little night-heaters sat extinguished, dream-leaf holders and crystal chalices, jewelled boxes and clasped books were strewn across the undulating fabric landscape like glittering temples on the plains.
Lies. The tent was bare and he sat on a sack stuffed with straw.
The girl watched him move. It was a hypnotic movement, barely noticeable at first, but once you had seen it, once the eye grew accustomed to it, it became very obvious and quite fascinating. He moved from the waist, round and round, neither slowly nor quickly, his head describing a flattened circle. It reminded the girl of the way that, sometimes, rising smoke would begin to twist as it rose towards the hole in the roof of a tent. The man's eyes seemed to move in compensation for this subtle, ceaseless motion, shifting tinily behind the brown-pink lids.