The party lingered, but the incident had obviously taken the shine off their immediate plans for the night. Before very long they’d all vanished into a pair of private cable-cars, and I’d had no chance to insinuate myself.
But I noticed something on the ground, near where the moon-faced man had been standing. At first I thought it was another vial of Dream Fuel, but as I moved closer—before anyone else saw it—I realised that it was an experiential. It had probably fallen out of his pocket when he retrieved his cachet of Fuel.
I knelt down and picked it up. It was slim and black, and the only marking on it was a tiny silver maggot near the top.
With Vadim, I’d found a similar set of experientials at the same time that I’d found his supply of Dream Fuel.
“Tanner Mirabel?”
The voice held only the slightest hint of curiosity.
I looked around, because the voice had come from behind me. The man who’d spoken was dressed in a dark coat, making the minimum necessary concession to Canopy fashion. His face was unsmiling and grey, like an undertaker on a bad day. There was also a martial tautness to his posture, evidenced in the way the muscles in his neck were rigidly defined.
Not a man to be trifled with, whoever he was.
He spoke softly, hardly moving his lips now that he had my complete attention. “I am a professional security specialist,” he said. “I am armed with a neurotoxic weapon which can kill you in under three seconds, silently, and without drawing the slightest attention to myself. You would not even have time to blink in my direction.”
“Well, enough pleasantries,” I said.
“You recognise that I am a professional,” the man said, nodding to emphasise his words. “Like you, I have been trained to kill in the most efficient manner possible. I hope that gives us some common ground and that we can now discuss matters reasonably.”
“I don’t know who you are or what you want.”
“You don’t have to know who I am. Even if I told you, I’d be forced to lie, and what would be the point of that?”
“Fair point.”
“Good. In which case, my name’s Pransky. As for the other matter, that’s easier. I’m here to escort you to someone who wants to meet you.”
“What if I don’t want to be escorted?”
“That’s entirely your choice.” He still spoke calmly and quietly, like a young monk reciting his Breviary. “But you will have to satisfy yourself that you can absorb a dose of tetrodotoxin of sufficient potency to kill twenty people. Of course, it’s entirely possible that your membrane biochemistry is unlike that of any other living human being—or advanced vertebrate, for that matter.” He smiled, flashing a row of brilliant white teeth. “But you’ll have to be the judge of that, I’m afraid.”
“I probably wouldn’t want to run that risk.”
“Sensible fellow.”
Pransky beckoned with an open palm that I should walk on, past the kidney-shaped koi-pond which was the focal point of this annex of the building.
“Before you get too cocky,” I said, standing my ground, “you might like to know that I’m also armed.”
“I do know,” he said. “I could tell you the specification of your weapon now, if you wanted me to. I could also tell you the probability of one of your iceslugs managing to kill me before I inject you with the toxin, and I don’t think you’d be very impressed by the odds. Failing that, I could tell you that your gun is currently in your right pocket and your hand isn’t, which does rather limit its usefulness. Shall we proceed?”
I started moving. “You’re working for Reivich, aren’t you?”
For the first time something in his face told me he wasn’t in total control of the situation. “Never heard of him,” he said, irritated. And I allowed myself a smile. It wasn’t much of a victory, but it was better than nothing. Of course, Pransky could have been lying. But had he wanted to, I was sure he could have concealed it more effectively. But I’d caught him off guard.
Inside the plaza, there was a vacant silver palanquin waiting for me. Pransky waited until no one was paying us any attention, then had the palanquin clam open, revealing a plush red seat.
“You’ll never guess what I’m about to ask,” Pransky said.
I got into the machine, easing myself into the seat. After the door had closed I experimented with some of the controls set into the interior, but none of them did anything. Then, in deathly silence, the palanquin started moving. I looked through the little green window and watched the plaza glide by, Pransky walking slightly ahead of me.
Then I started feeling drowsy.
Zebra looked me over, a long and cool appraisal such as I might have expended on a new rifle. Her expression was difficult to judge. All the theories I’d concocted had depended on her either looking very pleased or very annoyed to be reac quainted with me.
Instead she just looked worried.
“What the hell’s going on?” I said. “If you don’t mind my asking.”
She stood legs akimbo, shaking her head slowly as she answered me, “You’ve got one hell of a nerve to ask me what I’m doing, after all you did to me.”
“Right now I’d say we’re even.”
“Where’d you find him, and what was he doing?” she asked Pransky.
“Hanging around,” the man said. “Attracting too much attention.”
“I was trying to get to you,” I said to Zebra.
Pransky gestured towards one of the markedly utilitarian chairs which served for furniture in the room to which I had been brought. “Have a seat, Mirabel. You’re not going anywhere in a hurry.”
“I’m surprised you were in any rush to meet me again,” Zebra said. “After all, you didn’t exactly overstay your welcome last time.”
My gaze tracked over Pransky, trying to place him in this and figure out how much he knew.
“I left a note,” I said, plaintively. “And I called you back to apologise.”
“And the fact that you thought I might know where a Game was going down was sheer coincidence.”
I shrugged, exploring the parameter space of discomforts offered by the stiffly unyielding seat. “Who else was I going to call?”
“You piece of shit, Mirabel. I don’t know why I’m doing this, you know. You don’t deserve it at all.”
Zebra still looked like Zebra, unless you focused on the specifics. She had muted her skin-tone now, so that the stripes were little more than rushlike grey blades folded around the contours of her face, delineations that vanished altogether in a certain light. The frill of rigid black hair had become a blonde bob, trimmed in a blunt fringe across her forehead. Her clothes were unostentatious and she wore a coat of similar cut to my own, one which reached past her stiletto-booted ankles and trailed into a pool of dark fabric around her feet. The only thing it lacked was the matrix of rough patches which adorned Vadim’s original.
“I never pretended to deserve anything,” I said. “Although I do think the one thing I might deserve is an explanation. Can we take it as read that you and I almost met earlier this evening, except that there was a substantial bulk of fish between us, name of Methuselah?”
“I was standing behind you,” Zebra said. “If you saw me, you saw my reflection. It’s not my fault you didn’t turn around.”
“You could have said something.”
“You were hardly excessively loquacious yourself, Tanner.”
“All right; can we start at the beginning?” I looked at Pransky, soliciting his permission as much as Zebra’s. “How about I tell you what I think, and we take it from there?”
“Sounds eminently reasonable to me,” said the little security expert.
I drew in a deep breath, aware that I was comitting myself further than at any point since my arrival. But here, now, it had to be done. “You’re working for Reivich,” I said. “Both of you.”
Pransky looked at Zebra. “He mentioned that name earlier. I don’t know who he means.”
?
??It’s all right,” Zebra said. “I do.”
I nodded, feeling a paradoxical sense of relief, resignation, I supposed. It didn’t greatly comfort me to find out that Zebra was working for the man I had been sent to assassinate—most especially now that she had captured me. But there was also a defeatist pleasure in seeing one particular mystery cleared up.
“Reivich must have contacted you as soon as he got here,” I said. “You’re—what—some kind of freelancer? A security specialist in your own right, like Pransky here? It would make sense. You knew how to handle a weapon, and you were a step ahead of Waverly’s people when they were hunting me down. The whole hunt sabotage story was just a screen. For all I know you play it every night with the best of them. There. How am I doing?”
“It’s fascinating stuff,” Zebra said. “Please continue.”
“You were detailed by Reivich to find me. He had a suspicion someone had been sent from Sky’s Edge, so it was just a matter of putting your ears to the ground and listening. The musician was part of the operation as well—the front man who trailed me down from the Mendicant habitat.”
“Who’s the musician?” Pransky said. “First Reivich, now the musician. Do these people actually exist?”
“Shut up,” Zebra said. “And let Tanner continue.”
“The musician was good,” I said. “But I’m not sure whether I gave him enough to go on; whether I allowed him to establish beyond any doubt that I was the man he wanted, and not just some innocent immigrant.” I looked towards Zebra for confirmation, but since none was forthcoming, I continued, “Maybe all the musician could tell Reivich was that I was still a possibility. So you kept tabs on me. Somehow you had contacts in the hunt movement—maybe connections with a group of genuine saboteurs, for all I know. And via Waverly, you found out I’d been recruited as a victim.”
“What is he talking about?” Pransky said.
“The truth, unfortunately,” Zebra said, dispensing a withering look towards the security specialist, who was probably her subordinate, her understudy or dogsbody. “At least regarding the hunt. Tanner wandered into the wrong part of the Mulch and got himself captured. He put up a good fight, too, but they might have killed him if I hadn’t made it in time.”
“She had to save me,” I said. “There wasn’t anything noble about it, though. Zebra only wanted information. If I died, no one would be able to establish whether or not I’d really been the man sent to kill Reivich. That would put Reivich in an uncomfortable situation; he wouldn’t be able to relax for the rest of his life. There’d always be the danger that the real assassin was closing in. A lot of sleepless nights. That’s how it went, wasn’t it Zebra?”
“It might,” she said. “If I happened to be colluding in your own delusions.”
“Then why did you save me, if it wasn’t to keep me alive and find out if I was really the man?”
“For the same reasons I told you. Because I hate the hunt, and I wanted to help you live.” She shook her head, almost apologetically. “Sorry, Tanner. Much as I’d love to help you with your particular paranoid construct, it doesn’t go any deeper than that. I’m who I said I was, and I acted for the reasons I said. And I’d be grateful if you restricted discussion of the sabs to an absolute minimum, even in Pransky’s esteemed company.”
“But you just told me—him—you know who Reivich is.”
“I do, now. But I didn’t then. Shall we continue? Maybe you ought to hear my side of things.”
“I can’t wait.”
Zebra inhaled, looking interestedly around the doughlike acreage of the ceiling before her gaze snapped back to me. I had a feeling what she was about to say was not unrehearsed.
“I rescued you from Waverly’s hunt clique,” Zebra said. “Don’t fool yourself into imagining that you might have made it out alive yourself, Tanner. You’re good—that’s obvious—but no one’s that good.”
“Maybe you just don’t know me well enough.”
“I’m not sure I want to. May I continue?”
“I’m all ears.”
“You stole things from me. Not just clothes and money, but a weapon you shouldn’t have known how to use. I won’t even mention the cable-car. You could have stayed where you were until the implant stopped transmitting, but for some reason you thought you’d be safer on your own.”
I shrugged. “I’m still alive, aren’t I?”
“For the moment,” Zebra conceded. “But Waverly isn’t, and he was one of the few allies we had at the core of the movement. I know you killed him, Tanner—the trail you left was so hot you might as well have sprinkled plutonium wherever you went.” She strolled around the room, the stiletto heels of her boots clicking against the floor like a pair of matched metronomes. “That was unfortunate, you know.”
“Waverly just got in the way. It’s not like the sadistic bastard was on my Christmas list.”
“Why didn’t you wait?”
“I had other business to attend to.”
“Reivich, right? I expect you’re dying to know where I got that name from, and how I know what it means to you.”
“I think you were in the process of telling me.”
“After you ditched my car,” Zebra said. “You showed up in Grand Central Station. It’s where you called me from.”
“Go on.”
“I was curious, Tanner. By then I already knew Waverly was dead, and that didn’t make sense. You should have been the dead man—even with the gun you stole from me. So I began to wonder just who it was I’d been sheltering. I had to find out.” She stopped pacing; the clicking of her heels abated. “It wasn’t difficult. You were inordinately interested in finding out where the night’s Game was going to happen. So I told you. If you were there, I thought I’d be there myself.”
I thought back to what seemed like hundreds of hours earlier, but was in fact only the evening of the long night in which I was still immersed. “You were there, when I caught Chanterelle?”
“It wasn’t what I was expecting.”
Of course not—how could it have been? I said, “Then what about Reivich? How does he come into it?”
“Via a mutual acquaintance of ours by the name of Dominika.” Zebra smiled, knowing she had surprised me with that.
“You went to Dominika?”
“It made sense. I had Pransky tail you to Escher Heights while I went to the bazaar and talked to the old woman. I knew you’d had the device removed, you see. And since you’d been at the bazaar earlier in the day, Dominika was bound to know who’d done the operation, if it wasn’t her. Which of course it was, which simplified matters enormously.”
“Is there anyone in Chasm City she hasn’t deceived?”
“Possibly, somewhere, but only as an extreme theoretical possibility. Actually, Dominika is a rather pure expression of our city’s driving paradigm, which is that there is nothing and no one who can’t be bought, given the right price.”
“What did she tell you?”
“Only that you are a very interesting man, Tanner, and that you had a particular interest in locating a gentleman named Argent Reivich. A man who happened to have arrived in Escher Heights only a few days earlier. Now, isn’t that a coincidence, given that Pransky just happens to have followed you to that part of the Canopy?”
The svelte little security man felt it was his time to take over the narrative. “I tailed you for most of the night, Tanner. You really began to hit it off with Chanterelle Sammartini, didn’t you? Who’d have thought it—you and her.” He shook his head, as if some basic physical law of the universe had been violated. “But you wandered around like old friends. I even saw you at the palanquin races.”
“How tiresomely romantic,” Zebra drawled, without interrupting Pransky’s flow.
“I called Taryn and had her meet me,” the man said. “Then we followed the two of you—discreetly, of course. You visited a boutique and came out looking a new man—or at least not quite your old self. Then you went to the Mix-Maste
r. Now he was a tougher nut to crack. He wouldn’t tell me what you wanted in there and I’m awfully keen to find out.”
“Just a check-up,” I said.
“Well, maybe.” Pransky knitted together his long and elegant fingers and then made knuckle-popping sounds. “Perhaps it doesn’t matter. It’s certainly hard to see how it could relate to what happened next.”
I tried to sound interested. “Which was?”
“That you nearly killed someone,” Zebra said, silencing her associate with a soundless cuff of the air. “I saw you, Tanner. I was on the point of approaching you and asking you what you were doing and then suddenly you were taking a gun out of your pocket. I couldn’t see your face, but I’d been following you long enough to know it was you. I watched you move with the gun in your hand; smoothly and calmly, as if this was all you’d ever been born to do.” She paused. “And then you put the gun away, and no one else had been paying enough attention to you to notice what you’d done. I watched you look around, but it was obvious that whoever it was you’d seen was gone—if he’d ever been there. It was Reivich, wasn’t it?”
“You seem to know so much, you tell me.”
“I think you came here to kill him,” Zebra said. “Why, I don’t know. Reivich is an old family in the Canopy, but they don’t have as many enemies as some. Yet it makes sense. That would explain why you were so desperate to get into the Canopy that you’d wander into a hunt. And why you were so reluctant to stay in the safety of my home. It was because you were scared of losing Reivich’s trail. Tell me I’m right, Tanner.”
“Would there be any point denying it?”
“Not a great deal, no, but you’re welcome to try.”
She was right. Just as I had unburdened myself to Chanterelle earlier in the night, I did the same for Zebra. But it felt less intimate. Perhaps it was the fact that Pransky was standing there absorbing it all. Or the feeling that the two of them actually knew more about me than they had said, and that very little of what I was telling them was news. I told them that Reivich was someone from my homeworld, not a genuinely bad man, but one who had done something very bad out of foolishness or weakness, and had to be punished for that with no less severity than if he had been born a snarling knife-twisting psychopath.