The Revelation Space Collection (168 page)

‘More danger.’

‘Yes.’ She said it with deep finality. ‘Laying down clues and waiting for you to follow them wasn’t enough for Voronoff. He started to make himself more prominent - placing himself at ever greater risk, but always maintaining an edge of control. That’s why I said he’s good. But Reivich didn’t like it, for obvious reasons. Voronoff was no longer serving him. He was serving himself; finding a new way to stave off the boredom. And I think it worked, being in that role.’

‘Not for me it didn’t.’

I stood up, almost upsetting the table as I did so. And one hand was already beginning the journey to my pocket.

‘Tanner,’ Zebra said, quickly, reaching for the hem of my coat as I stepped away from her, ‘killing him won’t change a thing.’

‘Voronoff,’ I said, at the top of my voice - not actually shouting it, but projecting like an actor of great reknown. ‘Voronoff - turn around and step away from the crowd.’

The gun gleamed in my hand, and now people began to notice it for the first time.

The man who looked like Reivich met my gaze and managed not to look too surprised. But he was not the only one who met my gaze. I had managed to get everyone’s attention by now, and those who were not trying to read my expression were fixated by the gun. If the hunt was as endemic amongst Canopy dwellers as I had been led to believe, many of these people would have seen and handled weapons of far greater potency than the pistol I hefted now. But never in a place as public as this; never with such crass vulgarity. Judging by the looks of shock and bewilderment and revulsion I saw, I might as well have been pissing on the ornamental lawn which fringed the koi pond.

‘Maybe you didn’t hear me, Voronoff.’ I sounded sweetly reasonable to my own ears. ‘I know who you are and what this is all about. If you know anything about me you’ll also know that I’m fully capable of using this.’ I had the gun aimed in his direction now, double-handed stance with my feet slightly spread.

‘Drop it, Mirabel.’

It was not a voice I had heard recently, nor had it come from the crowd. I felt a touch of soft metallic cold against the nape of my neck.

‘Are you deaf? I said drop the piece. Do it fast or your head’ll be following it down.’

I started lowering the piece, but that wasn’t good enough for the speaker standing behind me. He increased the pressure against my neck in a manner which strongly suggested it would be in my best interest to let the gun drop.

I did.

‘You,’ the man said, evidently addressing Zebra. ‘Kick the gun to me, and don’t even think about trying anything creative.’

She did as she was told.

I saw a hand reach out in my peripheral vision and snatch the gun from the ground; the pressure of the weapon against my neck changed slightly as the man knelt. But he was good; I could tell that, so - like Zebra - I wasn’t tempted to even think about trying anything creative. That was good, because I was all out of creativity.

‘Voronoff, you fool,’ said the voice. ‘Look what you nearly got us into.’ And then I heard clicking sounds as the gun was inspected, followed by a tut of amusement from the hidden speaker, whose voice I almost recognised. ‘It’s empty. The damn thing was empty all along.’

‘News to me,’ I said.

‘I did it,’ Zebra said, shrugging. ‘You can’t blame me, can you? I had a feeling you might end up pointing it at me, so I just took a precaution.’

‘Next time, don’t bother,’ I said.

‘Not that it exactly mattered,’ Zebra said, doing a poor job of masking her annoyance. ‘You never even tried to fire the fucking thing, Tanner.’

I angled my eyes upwards, as if I was trying to look behind my own head. ‘Are you involved with this clown?’

That got me an acute stabbing pain between the ears. The man said, projecting his voice out to the people who were staring at us, ‘All right; this is Canopy security; the situation is under control.’ I saw a flash of identity in my peripheral vision; a leatherbound card embossed with scrolling data which he waved at the crowd.

It seemed to have the desired effect; about half the people drifted away and the others tried to pretend that they had never really been interested in what was going on. The pressure eased and the man sidled around to my front, pulling up a seat for himself. Voronoff had also joined us, the exact facsimile of Reivich disporting himself opposite me with a scowl of displeasure written across his face.

‘Sorry for spoiling your little game,’ I said.

The other man was Quirrenbach, although he had changed his appearance since our last encounter, looking meaner, leaner and a great deal less patient and bewildered. The gun in his hand was small and dainty enough to have been a gimmicky cigarette-lighter.

‘How’s the symphony coming on?’

‘That was a very sneaky thing you did, Mirabel; leaving me like that. I suppose I should thank you for returning the money that you made on my experientials, but you’ll excuse me if I don’t overwhelm you with a flood of gratitude.’

I shrugged. ‘I had a job to do. You didn’t figure in it.’

‘How’s that job looking now?’ Voronoff said, still sneering at me. ‘Time for a rethink, Mirabel?’

‘You tell me.’

Quirrenbach flashed a quick grin at me, like an aggressive ape. ‘Tough talk from someone who didn’t even know his gun wasn’t loaded. Maybe you’re not quite the professional hotshot we’ve been led to believe.’ He reached over and helped himself to my tea, maintaining eye contact all the while. ‘How did you know he wasn’t Reivich, by the way?’

‘Have a guess,’ Zebra said.

‘I could kill you for betraying us,’ Quirrenbach said to her. ‘But right now I’m not sure I can muster the enthusiasm.’

‘Why don’t you start with Voronoff, dickhead?’

He looked at Zebra, then at the man disguised as Reivich, as if weighing the idea seriously. ‘That really wouldn’t do, would it?’ Then his attention returned to me. ‘We caused quite a stir back there, Mirabel. It won’t be long before what passes for authority here comes to take a look, and I really don’t think any of us want to be around when that happens.’

‘So you’re really not Canopy security?’

‘Sorry to shatter your illusions.’

‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ I said. ‘They were shattered quite some time ago.’

Quirrenbach smiled and stood up, the tiny little gun still nestling in his fist, as if with one spasm of his fingers he might crush it to shreds. He danced the barrel between Zebra and myself, holding his fake ID in the other hand like a talisman. Voronoff, meanwhile, produced a weapon of his own; between them they had us comprehensively covered. We walked through the crowd, Quirrenbach daring anyone to pay us anything more than glancing interest. Neither Zebra or myself made any attempt to resist or escape; it would not have been worth it.

Only three vehicles were parked on the landing ledge, cowled dark shapes glossy with rainwater, roof-mounted arms partially extended in readiness for flight, like three upturned dead spiders. One was the car in which Zebra and I had arrived. I recognised one of the other cars as well, but not the one to which Quirrenbach was leading us.

‘Are you going to kill me now?’ I asked. ‘Because if you are, you could save yourself a lot of trouble by throwing me over the edge here. There’s no need to spice up my last moments with a ride through the Canopy.’

‘I don’t know how I’ve managed without your brilliant shards of wit, Mirabel,’ Quirrenbach said, with a long-suffering sigh. ‘And, incidentally - not that you care - the symphony happens to be coming along rather splendidly, thank you.’

‘That wasn’t a cover?’

‘Ask me about it in a hundred years.’

‘If we’re going to talk about people who hesitate to kill others,’ Voronoff said, ‘you might crop up in the discussion, Mirabel. You could have dropped me when we first met around Methuselah. I’m rather puzzled that you didn’t at least try. And don’t say there was a fish in the way. You may be many things, Mirabel, but sentimental isn’t one of them.’

He was right: I had hesitated, much as I preferred not to admit it to myself. In another life - at least on another world - I would have dropped Reivich (or Voronoff) almost before I had mentally acknowledged their presence. There would have been no ethical debates about the value of an immortal fish.

‘Maybe I knew you weren’t the right man,’ I said.

‘Then again, maybe you just didn’t have the nerve.’ It was dark, but I caught the quick flash of Quirrenbach’s grin. ‘I know your background, Mirabel. We all do. You were pretty good, once, back on Sky’s Edge. Trouble was, you just didn’t know when to pack it in.’

‘If I’m so washed up, why the special attention?’

‘Because you’re a fly,’ Voronoff said. ‘Sometimes they need swatting.’

The vehicle readied itself as we approached, a door opening in one side like a drooling tongue, plush steps set into its inner surface. A pair of heavies shadowed the door, packing indecently large weapons. Any lingering thoughts I had entertained of resistance vanished at that point. They were professionals. I had a feeling they wouldn’t even allow me the dignity of jumping over the side; that if I tried it they would put a pair of slugs in my spine on the way down.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked, not sure if I really wanted to know the answer, or if I could even expect an honest reply.

‘Space,’ Quirrenbach said. ‘For a meeting with Mister Reivich.’

‘Space?’

‘Sorry to disappoint you, Mirabel. But Reivich isn’t in Chasm City at all. You’ve been chasing shadows.’

THIRTY-THREE

I looked at Zebra. She looked at me. Neither of us said anything.

The vehicle into which the heavies escorted us had the reek of newness, leather trim sweating sumptuousness. There was an isolated rear compartment with six seats and a moundlike central table, with soft muzak filling the air and elegant neon designs worked into the ceiling. Voronoff and one of the heavies sat opposite us, weapons still at readiness. Quirrenbach and the other man entered the front compartment, visible only as smoky shadows through the partition.

The car rose very smoothly, with a soft snicking from the roof arms, like someone crocheting at great speed.

‘What did he mean, space?’ I asked.

‘A place called Refuge. One of the high orbital carousels,’ Voronoff said. ‘Not that it makes any real difference to you. I mean, it’s not as if you’re just tagging along for the ride, is it?’

Someone had mentioned Refuge since my arrival in the city, but I could not quite place the reference.

‘What happens when we get there?’

‘That’s for Mister Reivich to know and you to find out. You might call it negotiation. But don’t expect to take too many bargaining chips to the table, Mirabel. From what I hear, you’re all cleaned out.’

‘I’ve still got a few surprises up my sleeve.’ But I sounded about as convincing as a drunk tramp boasting of his sexual prowess. Through the side windows I watched the hovering crystalline mass of Escher Heights recede, and - not inconsequentially - I saw the other car, the vehicle which did not belong to Zebra, unfurl its arms to maximum extension and commence following us at a polite distance.

‘What now?’ I asked, ignoring the heavy. ‘Your game’s up, Voronoff. You’re going to have to find a new mode of pleasure.’

‘It isn’t about pleasure, you idiot. It’s about pain.’ He leaned forward, imposing his bulk across the table. He looked like Reivich, but his body language and manner of speaking was all wrong. There was no hint of a Sky’s Edge accent and his physicality would have been alien to Reivich’s aristocracy. ‘It’s about pain,’ he repeated. ‘Because pain is what it keeps away. Do you understand?’

‘Not really, but go ahead.’

‘You don’t usually think of boredom as something similar to pain. That’s because you’ve only been exposed to it in relatively small doses. You don’t know its true colour. The difference between the boredom you know and the boredom I know is like the difference between touching snow and putting your hand in a vat of liquid nitrogen.’

‘Boredom isn’t a stimulus, Voronoff.’

‘I’m less sure,’ he said. ‘There is, after all, a part of the human brain which is responsible for the sensation we call boredom. You can’t argue with that. And it must logically be made active by some external stimulus, just like the brain centre for taste or sound.’ He raised a hand. ‘I anticipate your next point. That’s one of my talents, you see - anticipation. You might say it’s symptomatic of my condition. I’m a neural net which is so well adapted to its input that it hasn’t evolved in years. But to return to the point in hand. You were doubtless going to say that boredom is an absence of stimulus, not the presence of a particular one. I say there is no difference; that the glass is both half empty and half full. You hear silence between notes; I hear music. You see a pattern of black on white; I see a pattern of white on black. More than that, in fact - I see both.’ He grinned again, like a maniac who had been chained in a dungeon for years and was now having a meaningful conversation with his own shadow. ‘I see everything. You can’t help it when you reach my - what shall I call it? - depth of experience?’

‘You’re quite mad, aren’t you?’

‘I’ve been mad,’ Voronoff said, apparently not taking it as an insult. ‘I’ve been through madness and come out the other side. Now being mad would bore me as much as sanity.’