Expatria: The Box Set (13 page)

Chapter 16

He wanted to head for his apartment in Hitachi Tower. He wanted to sink into his soft bed and let the tiredness seep away from his body. He shuddered.

He was losing control.

He could not allow that to happen. He was Kasimir Sukui, man of science, principal adviser to the Prime of Alabama City. He was shivering a little, even though the sun was still warm on his shoulders. He concentrated on lifting and placing his feet in the correct sequence, on walking slowly through the jostling streets of the city.

Gradually, his breathing steadied itself and he began to feel refreshed. His mind was disciplined; from past experience he knew that sufficient concentration could make his body feel however he desired it to feel.

He still wanted to return to his apartment and sleep, but now that desire was isolated in a remote part of his mind: it existed but he paid it no heed.

His position demanded such discipline of him.

Passing through a wooden archway, he stepped out on to Grand Rue Street. A glance at the position of the sun confirmed what a public timepiece above a small Harrod-store told him: he was due shortly at the Capitol. Prime Salvo had commanded a dusk consultation. The Prime's equerry had passed on a warning with the message. 'The Lord is insistent,' he had said.

'Things are tight in the Capitol—the Lord is causing havoc among the domestics.' Sukui had chastised the equerry for his loose tongue, but privately he was grateful for the warning. He had planned to broach the subject of the Orbitals this evening; now that would have to wait until the Prime was in a more receptive mood.

Grand Rue Street took Sukui into the heart of the city, through the fringes of Soho and then on to the Route Magnificat that fronted the Capitol. The streets here were even busier than the rest of Alabama City. Sukui surveyed the excited faces, wondering what had awoken the crowd. Soon it became hard to move for the press of bodies. Spicy, sweaty scents drifted on the air, along with bawls and screams and cascades of laughter. The faces were quizzical and happy, mostly looking up at Canebrake House, a tall building that faced the Capitol across the Magnificat. The people were merely curious, there was no hysteria to this crowd. Sukui relaxed and waited; the currents of bodies had drawn him to the heart of the gathering and he could barely move. He drew out his diary and then tucked it back inside his robes—writing would be impractical within such constrictions.

Canebrake House had a fourth-floor balcony, wide and overgrown with flowering clematis, fronted by a bowed metal railing. A big-bodied man stood on the balcony; there were others in the background, but this man was clearly the focus of attention. He was tall and broad shouldered, his hair rusty brown and standing angrily out from his skull. His face was clean-shaven and flushed and he was waving expansively at the crowd.

He was wearing a violet robe, tied with a chequered sash, and a matching skullcap.

They were the clothes of a scientist.

Sukui forced a path through the crowd but there was no need. He already knew what the closer view confirmed: the man on the balcony was Siggy Axelmeyer.

Axelmeyer was holding something in front of his face and, with a start, Sukui recognised what it was: a microphone. He thought of the Project. What if Axelmeyer knew of the Orbitals?

But then Sukui relaxed. The microphone was only part of a voice amplification system, what Mathias had once called a 'PA' system. Axelmeyer was talking into the device and his voice was being blurred and distorted and thrown out in a jumbled torrent. Sukui tried but he could barely make out Axelmeyer's words. Only the occasional phrase came through—words of dissent and revolution—but somehow it was enough to feed the crowd's curiosity.

Axelmeyer continued to gesture and wave for a time, and the listeners continued to laugh and talk over his words. He did not appear to be put off by this reception, in fact he looked to be in his element.

Unable to move, Sukui watched the Prime's cousin. No matter how hard he tried, he could find little in Axelmeyer's nature that he liked. He was the only person Sukui knew that irritated him even more than Mathias Hanrahan.

With Hanrahan it had been a conflict of egos: Sukui had tried to instil discipline into a potentially able scientist and he had succeeded, at least to a degree. But Axelmeyer was different: he had turned to the Project purely for access to power. Science, for him, had merely been a way to win the Lord Salvo's favour. He had used the Project, he had used Sukui; it was inevitable that he had failed.

Squashed between hot bodies, Kasimir Sukui concentrated on slowing the pattern of his breathing. No one had the ability to make him angry in the way Axelmeyer did. He inhaled and counted, exhaled and counted, inhaled, exhaled. Inhaled. Exhaled. As his pulse returned to normal he surveyed the crowd again, noting expressions, the faces he recognised. All would be entered in his notebook when he had the time and the space to record them.

Up on the balcony, Axelmeyer was coming to a conclusion, or so it appeared. His arms were held wide and his voice boomed out of his crudely assembled loudspeakers. '...a position of power to one of defeat,' he said. '...time to get together and...
play the mother-fucking blues!
'

Sukui jerked to attention. Had he just said...?

Up on the balcony, Siggy Axelmeyer pressed something to his mouth and the sound of music came out of the loudspeakers. First there was a rising and then descending chromatic scale, then a 'One, two, a one-two-three-and-a.' Axelmeyer played his mouth-organ and some of the people behind him must have had instruments too, for the sound was that of a full band.

The music was ragged and undisciplined. There was none of the precision Sukui knew well from the streets of Orlyons. But there was something, there was most certainly
something
.

The tones were fuzzy and distorted, but the PA system was better suited to music than to words and the sound held together remarkably well. There was an energy to the music, a flood of raw aggression. Sukui looked around at the gathered faces, their attention finally focused on the onslaught of sound and rhythm. The crowd was beginning to take on a mood of its own, fed by the music. Sukui felt himself caught up in it, too, his dislike of Axelmeyer coming to the fore once again.

The crowd was moving. Spaces were opening and people were dancing. Sukui slipped through the gaps, plagued by the thought that Axelmeyer probably did not even have an entertainments licence, but then, looking around at the manic faces of the people, the masks the crowd had given them, he wondered if this could really count as entertainment.

Gratefully, Sukui broke free of the mass of people and found himself only a few tens of metres from the Capitol gates. He presented himself to the guard who waved him through with an impatient flick of his bayoneted rifle. He glanced at the colouring sky and was relieved to see that it was not yet dusk, he was not late for his appointment.

~

'Have you seen what that worthless cluck of a cousin of mine is doing out there?' demanded the Prime, when Sukui entered the

High Office. 'He's mad! They're all mad. Tell me, Kasimir: do you think I'm mad? Everyone else is, so why shouldn't I be? Will you answer me that? Will you? No, don't. You are an honest man, I don't want your answer.'

Prime Salvo marched around the large office at a frantic pace. He kicked a chair at the central desk and cursed when its back splintered under the impact. 'What did they make it from, anyway?' he mumbled, as he resumed his pacing.

His long, red beard hung in tangled strands on his chest from where he had been twisting it through his fingers, pulling at it and smoothing it with food-greasy hands. 'I tell you, Sukui, he's pulling the mat from under his own feet—he won't get my continued support now. He must know that!'

Sukui thought that as Axelmeyer was being so open in his dissent he would, at least, be aware that the Prime would no longer pay his endowment.

Prime Salvo took a bottle from his desk, proffered it to Sukui, and then drained it himself. 'Have you seen him? Have you seen him out there?' Sukui bowed his head and waited. 'He's taken up rooms in Canebrake House. He's got himself a balcony and he stands on it, whinging at the people, telling them I'm no good. And they listen! After all I've done for him, after all I've done for
them
. I've given them street-lighting, haven't I? Hmm? We have a fishing fleet that catches three times as much as when I came to the Primacy. We have farms that grow
four
times as much. We have the grandest capital city on all Expatria! Hmm?'

'Sir, it is not me that needs convincing.'

The Prime glared at Sukui and then grunted. 'You're right, Kasimir. As ever. Did you know there are Conventist chapels springing up in Alabama City? They came with the Hanrahan mob and some of them have stayed. They're moving damned fast. Captain Mahler tells me they've linked up with some of our own churches—the smaller ones—and there's a lot of scope for them. Cousin Siggy has been stirring them up, too. He marched into their inaugural Gathering and told them to pick up their weapons and fight if they wanted to get anywhere.

'They picked up their weapons and they threw him out of their chapel, but that won't stop him. Listen, Kasimir: why is he mixing with them? They're fundamentalists and he's a scientist—opposite extremes. Why is he doing it?'

This was all disturbing news to Sukui. Was this the peace Mathias had sacrificed himself to preserve? 'Sir,' he said. 'I fear young Axelmeyer is looking for someone to fight. I feel certain that the Primacy's least positive move would be to rise to his bait and offer him such conflict.'

Prime Salvo sat heavily on his big desk. 'You're right again, Kasimir: he wants a fight. And by the gods will he get one!
He cannot do this in my city
. I cannot let him challenge the Conventists—that would only lend them some sort of credibility among the people of the city. I think it is time my young cousin learnt something of his real place in this world.'

Sukui bowed his bead even lower. The Prime was trapped: by his own nature he could not sit back and let things fade away, as they would, but by intervening he would only escalate matters. That way he would be giving credibility to Axelmeyer and then the struggle for power would become genuine. 'Sir, were there any matters that we should deal with now?'

'Huh? No, no. Nothing that has to be done now. It seems my cousin has rearranged my schedule. Very impolite.' The Prime laughed loudly, but it was forced. 'You can go,' he said. Then: 'Oh, there was one small matter. Tell me: what is it that commands so much of your attention up at Dixie Hill? Hmm?'

'The finds from our last trip to Orlyons.' He had not meant to lie. It would only make things more difficult in the long term. 'My best team works at that installation—we have a number of projects in hand.' The words slipped off his tongue so easily.

'Hah!' The Prime had found another half-full bottle and he took a long swig from it. 'Hmm. You're lying, Kasimir. I bet you really brought that whore back with you from Orlyons and you've got her hidden away in that hut. Hah! Ha hah!' He took another drink and Sukui gratefully slipped out of the High Office and into the still coolness of one of the many corridors of the Capitol.

As he walked, his heart beat slowly and calmly. He was thinking, running through the endless possibilities and permutations arising from what he had just learnt about the political upheavals occurring all around. He would have to consider matters carefully. The Project must survive. Progress must continue, at whatever cost.

~

'We've met before.' The tall, dark-skinned woman dismissed Sukui's junior with the casual wave of one big hand.

A night's sleep had refreshed Kasimir Sukui. His head had been clear, his responses reasoned and rational.

And then Lucilla Ngota had entered the office he was using in the Merchant Chapel.

Her voice sent ripples of tension across his skin, her eyes pinned his own in place and he felt that she could read his thoughts as clearly as if they were painted across his forehead. Over the years of monitoring the functioning of his own body, Sukui was certain that he had never felt this way before and he did not want to feel it now.

But her eyes drew him on and he gestured to a seat and offered her a small glass of minted mulberry. 'You asked to see me,' she said.

Sukui nodded. 'You recall faces well,' he said.

'The Woodrow Gates, Greene Gardens, Orlyons.' Lucilla smiled, a strange expression in such strong features. 'You made me remember. An untrained mind out-manoeuvred me.'

'Untrained in a military sense, perhaps,' said Sukui, wondering why he had summoned her from her work with the observation unit. 'I hope the incident will not impair our relationship.' He felt his face flush, something he was not accustomed to. He resisted the impulse to seize a notebook and write it all down.

'At that time we were on opposing sides,' said Lucilla. 'Now we are not. And anyway, justice is being done and I will return for the trial. A grudge would serve no purpose; it would be irrational.' She looked around the small office. 'Is this a social invitation, or did you have something to tell me?'

'Let us label it a social call in the cause of our respective duties,' said Sukui. 'If we are better acquainted then both our jobs will be more straightforward. I trust you are receiving adequate co-operation in your duties? I will arrange a tour of our scientific establishments for you, if you require. Unless, of course, you object on...'

'On religious grounds?' Lucilla laughed. 'No, I'm not a cultist—I have little preference as far as the old technologies are concerned. I live in whatever world I am put in, technology or no. Greta calls me a pragmatic bore.' She shrugged.

'Perhaps I can convince you of the value of the scientific view of life,' said Sukui. 'Or maybe
I
am the bore.' He wanted to stop but could not. This woman was corrupting the self-control he had taken years to accumulate. He talked on, about nothing in particular. He poured Lucilla a liqueur and had one himself. She told him what it was like to be a successful figure in government, coming from a backward valley in the Massif Gris as she did.