Revenger 9780575090569 (22 page)

I started to kneel down next to Prozor.

‘She ain’t dead, you dope. Just stunned. I was anticipatin’ bother and she didn’t let me down.’

‘You’ll pay for this.’

‘No, girlie. I’ll
be
paid for it. Crucial difference. And now you’ve seen what I can do – what I will do – you’ll come quietly, won’t you? Well, maybe not. But we’ll see about that.’ He dug into another pocket and threw a black bracelet onto the table. ‘Clap that on yourself, dearie, or I’ll give Prozor another dose for her troubles.’

‘No.’

He aimed the
slug-
gun at her and seemed about to follow up on his threat. I hissed in anger and snatched up the bracelet. It hinged open. I slid it over my wrist – my left wrist – and snapped it shut. The bracelet tightened onto me and some lights flashed under the black. ‘Doctor Morcenx gave me that little beauty,’ Quindar said. ‘But don’t worry. I won’t be using it to put any nasty medicine into you. It’s just to keep tabs on you, if you was to try giving me the slip again. It says you’re under my guardianship, see, so don’t even think of trying to sneak your way off Trevenza Reach without me.’ Quindar relaxed his hand and the
slug-
gun oozed back into his sleeve. It was out of sight now, but I still sensed its bulging, malignant presence.

I stared at the bracelet, its heavy bulge making my wrist look thin.

‘What’s its range?’

‘Far enough, girlie. But stick with Vidin and you’ll soon forget it’s ever on you.’

‘I’m really sorry about this,’ Hasper Quell said, offering his hands in surrender, like he’d played no part in my woes.

I finished off the drink I’d barely touched until then. ‘Take care of Prozor when she comes round. Tell her I’m sorry I got her into this mess, but I’ll be all right. Also: tell her I haven’t changed my mind.’

Hasper Quell looked at me with his
chimneys-for-
eyes. ‘About what?’

‘She’ll know,’ I said.

THREE

MAZARILE

11

On the tram back to the docking port I’d been meaning to keep up a surly silence, not feeling the need to make him feel any more welcome. But something had been building and building in me and there came a point when I couldn’t bottle it in any longer. ‘This isn’t going to work, Quindar. You think you know me but you don’t.’

‘You’ve gone off and had yourself a little adventure, girlie. But that don’t change what you are, and what you ain’t.’

‘It does. And every second you keep me your prisoner, you’re storing up trouble for yourself.’

‘You can take that up with the legal gentlemen,’ Quindar said.

At the outbound customs the officials were suddenly awake enough to take notice of this skinny, cadaverous man and the young woman he had with him. I don’t suppose my scowling, pouting demeanour helped very much. But Quindar had complete faith in his documentation, and no amount of protestation from me was going to put him off his patter.

‘It’s all there, boys, all regular and
proper-
like,’ he said, beaming at his questioners, thumbs hooked into his belt, allowing his coat to billow open in the cocky certainty that no one would find the
slug-
gun. ‘Girlie don’t like it much, that’s a fact, but if she were prone to coming peaceably, her mummy and daddy wouldn’t’ve needed to involve these fine legal people. Anyway, don’t you worry yourselves. It’s a straight sail back to Maz, the accommodation’s respectable, and then she’ll be back in the loving bosom of her family. None too soon, either, judging by that
piss-
coloured shine coming off her!’

Don’t think for a second I’d given in. What he’d done to Prozor had taken the photons out of my sails, true, but that was only right and proper given the harm he could have done to both of us if pushed to it. And I jammed my fingers into that bracelet until my nails were bleeding, trying to get it off me. I couldn’t budge it, though, and with it stuck on my arm like that, running away wasn’t much of an option. I could probably have lost him in Trevenza Reach, for the time being anyway, but cowering here wasn’t going to help me get to Bosa. Besides, the dim outline of a new and better plan had started forming in my noggin, getting slowly sharper like the return on a sweeper screen. I didn’t have the whole of it yet, just bits and pieces. But I knew part of it was going to involve biding my time. There was something else, too. Here it wouldn’t be long before everyone knew what had happened to Prozor and me, and right now I didn’t want coves thinking of Bosa Sennen the minute they saw my face. It wasn’t just the way I looked. Having the glowy wasn’t so rare as to be unheard of, especially among sailing folk, but then you wouldn’t exactly call it common either. If I went to another world – which I’d been planning anyway – I’d have a chance of breaking that connection.

It occurred to me that world might as well be Mazarile.

‘Don’t fret, girlie,’ Quindar said, as he had to drag me along. ‘That fine print’s got both of us in a bind. I harm a hair on your head, I’ll be looking for a new line of work.’

‘Harm a hair on my head,’ I told him, ‘and you’ll be looking for a new way to go to the toilet.’

‘Is that any way to talk? You were all fine and educated when you left Mazarile. I’ll be accused of bringing back soiled goods, won’t I?’

‘You’ll be the one soiling something, Vidin. Just show me to the ship. And then stay away from me.’

‘Given your idea of ladylike conversation, it’d be a pleasure.’

As soon as Quindar got me aboard, the hard part of his job was done. He didn’t think I could get up to any mischief on the ship, so I didn’t need to be locked in my room for the whole trip, which would have been against the rules anyway. I couldn’t get off the ship, not when it was under way, and if I tried hiding from him he only had to follow the signal from the bracelet that Dr Morcenx had kindly provided. I had a bundle of belongings, my quoins – he hadn’t touched them – and that was my lot. I had one little room, really not much more than a cupboard, and he had a larger one next to it. The partition was thin enough that I had to put up with his snoring and gurgling all night. I’d have taken Garval’s screaming over that any day.

The transport was a bulk clipper with passenger accommodation offered as an afterthought. It was much bigger and slower than either the
Monetta
or the
Courtesan
, with a larger crew in the pay of one of the commercial lines, and they’d gone to the trouble of making bits of the ship turn around like meat on a spit so that you could walk up and down the promenade decks and eat and sleep just as you would on a world. Beyond that, though, the principles of operation weren’t too different. We set off on ions, then flung out sails to knock some speed off our orbit and begin the long fall back to the Congregation. When we’d been under way for six hours I found a porthole that looked back to the spindle of Trevenza Reach, getting smaller and smaller, and I felt a surge of sadness and regret that things had taken the pretty turn they had. I’d spent half my life
day-
dreaming of Trevenza Reach and all the giddy possibilities of the place, and now they’d been snatched away, along with the only person in all the worlds – besides my sister – that I dared count as a true and honest friend.

Without them, I had to play it cool.

Trevenza Reach turned to a pinprick and then it was just a star, and a glimmery one at that. Days and days passed while I played the good girl. I went to the galley with Quindar and we ate at the same table, although to be frank there wasn’t much in the way of warm banter. When he was off doing his own shady business – whatever
that
was – I’d borrow books from the clipper’s library and sit by a porthole, reading. It wasn’t anything to put against Rack’s library but a book was a book and I wasn’t one to sniff. Now and then I’d strike up some sort of conversation with one of the other passengers or crew, but I could tell my glowy made them wary, like they might catch it or something.

There were all sorts on the ship. It wasn’t just monkeys like me. There were a few aliens, a couple of Crawlies and at least one Clacker – although since they all looked the same it was hard to know if there was just the one. I found my thoughts drifting back to the Crawly in Quell’s room, and how it had sniffed and fondled my money. Avaricious wasn’t quite the word for it. There was something
in
that money that almost drove the Crawly mad with desire and anticipation. It wasn’t what the money was worth, but what the quoins actually were.

Since I didn’t trust the lock on my room, I kept that bag of quoins with me all the time. I took one of them out now, holding it in my fingers, feeling the heaviness of it, and looking down past the pattern of bars into the dizzy depths of it. One of the things coves like Rackamore or Jastrabarsk were hoping to find in baubles was a trove of quoins, left there by someone else. Now and then it happened. Every quoin in circulation now, no matter the value of it, had been found by someone, either on a world or a bauble. And it was anyone’s guess as to how many more of them were out there. You hoped no one found too many in one go or that would upset the economy, devaluing what was already going around. Though a little now and then was all right, and it made up for the quoins that got lost or damaged. But it wasn’t the Crawlies or the Clackers going around finding those quoins, it was us, ordinary monkeys, with our ships and expeditions. The quoins didn’t come into contact with the aliens until they got deposited in their banks. Often that was where they stayed, with the aliens issuing notes and bonds and so on in exchange for the actual quoins, almost like they were doing us a favour so we didn’t have to lug the heavy things around.

But now I wondered. If the Crawlies (and the Clackers and the Hardshells too) liked our quoins for some
other
reason than them being money – and what that reason was I couldn’t yet fathom – then it was all too handy that they’d ended up operating our banks. And it was all too handy that the Crawlies had shown up in the Congregations just before our own big banking crash.

Oh, Cap’n Rack, I said to myself. What have you set loose in my head? Then I started thinking back to Prozor, and what she’d said about the glowy making you think mean, suspicious thoughts, and I worked myself into such a tizzy I didn’t know what to think.

More days passed. There were robots on the ship as well as aliens. Some of the robots were just along to help their monkey owners, trundling after them with luggage and so on, if they had to move cabins. One or two of the robots didn’t seem to be with anybody at all. Now and then robots get to be considered citizens, and have rights and bank accounts and so on, but that only happens rarely, when a robot turns out to be a lot cleverer than the average kind. When they made robots, in the Occupation or two before ours, they made some of them stupid and some of them smart, and often from the outside you can’t tell which from which. But the smart ones have minds of their own, ideas and plans if you will. Paladin wasn’t like that. All Paladin ever did was what it was told. The whole time we were growing up I never knew it to question its place in things. That didn’t mean I wasn’t sad about what had happened to Paladin, but it was like feeling sad about a dog rather than a person.

The funny thing was that there was a robot just like Paladin, and it was busy going about its own business on the clipper like it owned the place. I watched it come and go for a day or two, before deciding I wanted a natter with it.

‘Excuse me, sir,’ I said, laying aside my book, and making sure Quindar wasn’t anywhere nearby. ‘Do you mind if I ask you something?’

‘Why should I mind?’

The robot had a voice like Paladin’s, deep and commanding, but whereas Paladin spoke like it was playing back snippets, this time I had the impression I was having an actual conversation.

‘I know a robot a bit like you, sir, only you’re not the same. Begging my pardon, but you don’t seem to belong to anyone.’

‘I belong to everyone and no one. What is your name, if I might ask?’

‘Fura, sir. Fura Ness.’

‘Are you some sort of prisoner? I detected the device on your wrist, and the transponder signal it emits.’

‘No, I’m not exactly a prisoner. I am in a sort of trouble, though – that’s what the bracelet’s all about. I’m on my way back to Mazarile, and I suppose you are as well.’

‘I have business in Incer, but I shan’t be staying long. Robots aren’t common on your world, and I’ll feel less out of place in the Sunwards. I should introduce myself, seeing as you’ve been good enough to tell me your name. I am Peregrine, a robot of the Twelfth Occupation. You say you know a machine like me?’

‘Yes, sir. Only not quite the same. You’ve got the same body and head, if it isn’t too rude of me to say, but Paladin has wheels where you have got legs, and Paladin’s arms don’t look as strong as yours. Also there isn’t a scratch on you, and Paladin’s all dented and bumped.’ Worse than that, I thought, reflecting back on the sorry state Paladin had been when I saw him last.

‘Put a finger to my casing, Fura. Go on. I won’t hurt you.’

I’d faced worse than a robot in recent weeks, so I didn’t hesitate. I jabbed out my finger and was about to touch my nail against him when something made my finger tingle hard, and it wasn’t the glowy. The more I pressed, the harder that tingle got.

‘I generate a protective aura,’ Peregrine said. ‘It was designed into me from the outset. I was a soldier, you see. During the Epoch of the Robots, the people of the Twelfth Occupation turned to machines to assist them through a time of great troubles. We were given all the powers of people and some more. Those of us who served the most usefully were gifted with freedom and free will. You say this other machine is called Paladin?’

‘Yes, but he doesn’t have that aura like you. And – although I don’t mean to speak ill of him – he’s not as clever. You seem like a proper cove, whereas Paladin . . . well, it’s not the same.’

‘I do not know this name. But if I might speculate? You say this robot resembles me in some ways, but carries more damage. The reason for that might be that Paladin’s aura generator is damaged or disabled. That might also explain why he differs from me in other respects. Without the aura generator he would be much more vulnerable to peripheral damage, so parts of him would have needed to be replaced over the years.’

‘But that wouldn’t affect what goes on inside him, would it?’

‘No, but there could be a reason for that as well. Many robots served people during the great troubles. But not all were rewarded as generously as others. In some instances, machines that had served well and been granted free will during the troubles had logic blockades installed in them, to rescind the capacity for free will, because there was a sudden need for unquestioning servants.’

‘That’s horrible.’

‘That,’ Peregrine said, ‘is civilisation. Not all who were rewarded deserved to be; not all who should have been were.’

I felt as if my world – my worlds – had shifted a bit, just as if the Old Sun had turned over in its long, lazy sleep. ‘Did you live through it all, sir? All the years since the Twelfth?’

‘No, even my repair systems would not have endured six hundred and sixty thousand years of interstitial time. I was trapped in a bauble. Time flows normally in such a place, no matter what you may have heard. I put myself into a state of extreme hibernation and waited for some new Occupation to arise and find me, as I knew it would.’

‘Do you ever think about it, sir? How we keep starting up over and over again, only it never lasts?’

‘All the time, Fura Ness – in my situation it is difficult not to.’ The robot paused, and I had the sense that it was anxious to be off on some other engagement but didn’t care to come across as too rude. ‘Will you be seeing this Paladin soon?’

‘He’s all broken, sir. He got smashed up in Neural Alley, trying to help the family.’

‘I am sorry to hear that. You must pass on my regards, if you get the chance. Tell him that Peregrine sends his best wishes, and asks if he remembers the Last Rains of Sestramor.’