Evening's Empires (Quiet War 3) (20 page)

‘You know that I can’t.’

‘Then perhaps you should meet an acquaintance of mine. A business acquaintance. Mr D.V. Mussa, a free trader. I purchase vacuum organism strains from him, but he deals in many other
things. I happened to talk to him today, and mentioned your predicament. And it turns out that Mr Mussa supplied Salx Minnot Flores with certain pieces of apparatus, and may know something about
his research.’

Hari wanted to trust his uncle. He’d been raised to believe that no bond was stronger than blood on blood. That genes sing to genes, as his father liked to say. But although Tamonash lived
like an eccentric recluse in the ruins of his family’s compound and his family’s history, he was a shrewd and manipulative businessman, and Hari suspected that he’d have to pay
this free trader for information about Salx Minnot Flores, and Tamonash would take a cut. But he didn’t care. He needed to know. He needed to know everything.

‘I think I should meet this friend of yours as soon as possible,’ he said.

Tamonash smiled. ‘Can you contain your impatience until tomorrow?’

‘Salx Minnot Flores was a regular customer of mine,’ Mr D.V. Mussa told Hari, ‘but I didn’t pay much attention to his work. Frankly, I didn’t
think much of it. He was a little like one of those end-time cultists who examines images of the Bright Moment for hidden messages. More than a little.’

The philosopher had been trying to replicate the Bright Moment, according to Mr Mussa. The image it triggered.

‘My avatar was not affected by his apparatus, of course, but he once showed me a clip he claimed to have transmitted into the visual centre of his own brain. A kind of jerky stick figure
that was, apparently, the cue or seed that stimulated a more complex image. Baseline human memory is a construct, patched together from real memories, approximations, and stock images. Only part of
it is true, and none of it is real. As with memory, so with his version of the Bright Moment. Or so Flores said.’

Mr D.V. Mussa was a tanky, an adherent of an old form of amortality that involved extracting the brain and essential parts of the organ-tree and maintaining them in amniotic fluid laced with
mites and engineered bacteria. His avatar was a fist-sized glob of white light like a cut diamond with a dark cross in its centre: a nucleus or hive of microbots that could each act independently,
or merge with as many of its neighbours as necessary to perform tasks involving gross manipulation of objects and materials. It slowly revolved as it hung in the air, casting swarms of fleeting
stars across the floor and walls and overhead of the long room (it was night, on Earth, dark waves rolling across a dark sea, cloud-shadows scudding across a star-spattered sky).

Hari asked if the philosopher had ever talked about Dr Gagarian’s work.

‘I supplied him with components for his apparatus, and he told me about the progress of his work. That’s as far as it went,’ Mr Mussa said. ‘I didn’t know that he
was collaborating with your Dr Gagarian until Tamonash told me about the hijack of your family’s ship.’

They talked about the assistance that Hari’s family had given to the tick-tock philosopher. Hari was careful not to reveal too much, parried the free trader’s questions as best he
could, and turned the conversation back to Salx Minnot Flores and his work.

Mr Mussa gave a portrait of a harmless obsessive who lived on the residue of a long-lost family business, was estranged from his partner and children, and had given himself entirely to his
work.

‘I’d see him in town,’ Mr Mussa said. His avatar had a soft, mellifluous baritone voice. It sounded amused, indulgent. Like a parent recalling the harmless transgressions of a
small child. ‘Talking to street preachers and end-timers. Sometimes in quiet discussion, sometimes in fierce argument. Hard to tell, I would think to myself, which was the philosopher and
which the fanatical cultist.’

Hari said, ‘Did he ever talk with any of the Saints?’

‘Not that I know of. You are thinking of the woman who killed him, of course. Who you think might have been a Saint. What did
they
have to say to you about that, by the
way?’

Hari gave Tamonash a sharp look; Tamonash looked away.

‘Your uncle mentioned your encounter,’ Mr Mussa said, ‘but I had already heard about it. I have, let us say, my sources.’

‘In the Saints?’

‘In the government. Someone like me, in the import/export business, benefits from friends who can influence decisions about the movement of goods, obtain answers to urgent questions, and
so on. Friends who can do all kinds of favours, for the right price.’

There it was. The hook. Hari saw it plain and clear, but took it anyway.

‘Perhaps your friends could help me find out a little more about Salx Minnot Flores’ research.’

‘Of course,’ Mr Mussa said. ‘Although you will have to cover certain expenses. Bribes, that kind of thing.’

Tamonash cleared his throat. ‘There’s a saying that Ophir has the best government and police that credit can buy. And it’s absolutely true.’

Hari shot Mr D.V. Mussa half the credit he’d transferred from the ship’s account in Tannhauser Gate. The next day, Tamonash and the free trader took him to meet Chum
Vahsny, the Under-Minister for External Traffic. She shook Hari’s hand and introduced him to one of her secretaries, who listened to Hari’s story with absent-minded politeness, took
many notes, and told him that the under-minister would attempt to ask the police about progress regarding the investigation into the most regrettable death of the philosopher, and try to trace any
relevant files.

Hari, who had been taught enough about negotiations to recognise the secretary’s evasive tactics – answering questions not asked, countering direct questions with other questions,
managing expectations with ambiguous promises – was convinced that the under-minister would do nothing of the kind. Two days passed. These things take time, Tamonash said. There were complex
webs of checks and balances to be negotiated, protocols to be followed.

‘On another matter, Mr D.V. Mussa tells me that he knows several tick-tock philosophers. Any one of them could open the files in Dr Gagarian’s head.’

‘Do they live here, in Ophir?’

‘One lives in Gan ’Éden, which is presently just two days’ travel away.’

‘If Gun Ako Akoi is unsuccessful,’ Hari said, ‘I’ll certainly consider it.’

‘Why put your trust in strangers, Gajananvihari? We should keep this in the family.’

‘With respect, Uncle, everyone is a stranger to me.’

Tamonash put on a credible display of wounded indignation. ‘Your father and I had our differences, nephew. But that’s ancient history. I hope things can be different between
us.’

‘I hope so too.’

Hari felt sorry for him, really: his petty scheming, his circumscribed life in the wreckage of his dreams.

‘Mr Mussa also told me that he is making good progress,’ Tamonash said. ‘He hopes to talk with a senior police officer tomorrow. So if you could supply just a little more
credit . . .’

Hari supplied it, although he was certain that it wouldn’t buy him anything more than another pointless meeting with some official equipped with a sheaf of excuses and evasions.

He sat in his little room in the little tower, reading in Kinson Ib Kana’s book, his book now, watching the road from Down Town’s elevator stack, waiting for Rav to return from his
visit with the tick-tock matriarch Gun Ako Akoi. At night, he imagined an assassin sneaking across the ruined perimeter wall of the compound, a flickering shadow in a camo cloak, a knife gleaming
in her teeth.

He trawled the cluttered wreckage of the compound’s workshop, but found no weapons, and nothing that could be repurposed as a weapon.

He had Tamonash’s maker print off a batch of shuriken, and practised throwing them at a target pinned to a tree at one end of the overgrown lawn. It wasn’t easy: they flew in arcs
instead of straight lines.

The Saint, Esme, didn’t call, and he couldn’t call her because it would show weakness.

He spoke to the p-suit’s eidolon. She had nothing to report.

And then, late in the afternoon of the second day, Rav returned and told Hari that Gun Ako Akoi had agreed to meet him.

‘Did she say that she can open the files?’

‘She made Dr Gagarian what he is,’ Rav said. ‘If she can’t unlock him, no one can. But there is something we must do for her, first. A small favour. A little task.
Something you’ll appreciate, what with being in the salvage trade. She covets a trinket she gave away long ago, and wants back. A fragment taken from a QI just before it vastened into a
seraph. I’ve spent the past two days tracking it down. All we have to do now is get hold of it.’

‘You want me to what? Negotiate a price with the owner?’

‘Not exactly. The present owners of this trinket, the Masters of the Measureless Mind, are a gypsy sect who for some reason believe it to be a holy relic. They aren’t about to sell
it, so we’ll have steal it instead,’ Rav said. ‘It should be simple enough. A little distraction, a little legerdemain, and hey presto! The trinket will fall into our
hands.’

‘Just like that,’ Hari said.

‘Why not? You baseliners see what you want to see. Everything follows from that.’

Hari told the Ardenist about Mr D.V. Mussa, and his visit with the under-minister. Trying to turn it into a joke about himself. Saying, ‘I knew there was a good chance that I would be
swindled, but fortunately I didn’t have much to lose.’

‘If you mean the credit you were able to transfer to Ophir’s bourse, you’re right. You won’t need or miss it because as soon as Gun Ako Akoi cracks open the
tick-tock’s head we can be on our way. But what about the credit still on deposit in Tannhauser Gate?’

‘There isn’t much left. My father used most of it to fund Dr Gagarian’s research.’

Rav fixed Hari with his lambent gaze and recited a string of numbers of increasing size, pausing after the last and then choosing one somewhere in the mid-range of the string, repeating it three
times as if relishing the sound it made.

‘It’s nothing like that,’ Hari said, trying to hide his dismay. Rav’s guess had been scarily close.

‘It isn’t a fortune, but it’s a useful little sum,’ Rav said. ‘It has heft. It has leverage. Don’t worry. Unlike your uncle, I’m not interested in it.
If I was, I would have taken it long ago. In addition to mind-reading, I’m adept at legerdemain, hypnotism, and illusions grand and small. Luckily for you, I’m on your side. Luckily for
you, we have interests in common.’

Hari felt a prickling unease, wondering if Rav knew about his contact with the Saints.

He said, ‘I don’t mind losing a little credit. It repays my uncle’s hospitality.’

‘Such as it is.’

‘But I am disappointed that I haven’t been able to access Salx Minnot Flores’ files.’

‘He was a good friend of your father and Dr Gagarian, wasn’t he? I’m sure he shared his secrets with them. So anything in his files will also be inside the tick-tock’s
head.’

‘They talked freely with all their collaborators,’ Hari said. ‘But I can’t be sure that their collaborators talked freely with them. And it isn’t only his files. Mr
Mussa told me that he had built something that duplicated the experience of the Bright Moment. It would be interesting, I think, to examine that.’

Hari watched Rav think about it.

‘I suppose we might learn something,’ the Ardenist said. ‘Also, it would annoy your uncle. Let me see what I can do.’

He came back a few hours later, striding into the long room where Hari and Tamonash were sharing a frugal supper of dahl, chapatis and pickled vegetables, sitting down uninvited at the
table.

‘It’s arranged,’ he told Hari. ‘The inspector in charge of the investigation will show you the dead philosopher’s possessions first thing tomorrow
morning.’

‘Just like that?’

Rav shrugged. ‘I’m a barbarian. I’m not interested in etiquette and formality. And neither, as it turns out, is our police inspector.’

‘You do not have to live with the consequences of your actions,’ Tamonash said. ‘You barge in, cause trouble, and leave others to repair the damage.’

‘And how was your way of doing things working out? There aren’t any files,’ Rav told Hari. ‘No physical records were found in the house, and its mind had been destroyed.
Salx Minnot Flores rented storage space in the commons, but that was wiped clean by a djinn. And there isn’t much left of his experimental equipment, after the fire. But maybe you’ll
spot something useful.’

‘And how much will this cost my nephew?’ Tamonash said.

‘A trifling bribe,’ Rav said. ‘Nothing like the credit you and your tanky friend have been bleeding from him.’

Tamonash drew himself up and said that he deeply resented the implication that he was profiting from helping his nephew.

‘Oh, I’ve noticed that you have little liking for the truth,’ Rav said.

He was vivid and vital, as if lit by the radiance of another, better world. Sitting on the floor with one leg crooked beneath the other, hands clasping his knee. Wings falling on either side of
his bare, scarred torso, his silver-capped teeth gleaming in his easy smile, his green eyes flashing as the myrmidon behind Tamonash stirred.

‘That’s rented, isn’t it?’ Rav said.

‘It is bonded to me, and completely under my control,’ Tamonash said.

‘Tell it to stand down, or you’ll have to find the credit to repair it,’ Rav said, and stood with a swift, fluid motion. ‘Meet me at the elevators at first light,
youngblood. And say goodbye to your uncle. We’ll set out on our little adventure as soon as we’ve checked out the wreckage.’

That was before the message came. The message that came in the night, like an assassin.

After Hari’s bios had checked the message for djinns and tried and failed to track its origin, after he had watched it with mounting dismay, after he had rewatched it
with furious concentration, he rose from his bed and walked around and around his little room, trying to make sense of what he’d seen. He punched the wall, and the pain surprised him. The
shock and the sting of it. He punched the wall again, and again, and felt calmer. He stood at the unglazed port. Cool air blowing across his face; cool flowstone pressing against his thighs. It was
an hour before dawn. Everything in shades of grey. The sunstrip was a pearlescent ribbon running across the overhead from horizon to horizon. Down Town’s tiers were defined by lights
scattered amongst the buildings along their edges. A few lights were shuttling up and down the elevator stalk that connected it to the floor.