‘Which leaves the Mulch?’
‘I suppose so.’ She squinted, the vertical pupils of her eyes becoming thin slivers. ‘Who are you, anyway?’
‘Now that,’ I said, ‘would take rather too long to explain. But I’m sure you’ve guessed the essentials.’
She nodded at the controls. ‘We can’t circle for ever.’
‘Then take us to the Canopy. Somewhere public, not too far from Escher Heights.’
‘What?’
I showed Chanterelle the place name Dominika had given me, hoping that my ignorance of the nature of the address - whether it constituted a domicile or a whole district - was not too obvious.
‘I’m not sure I know that place.’
‘My, but my finger is growing tense. Rack your memory, Chanterelle. Failing that, there has to be map somewhere in this thing. Why don’t you look it up?’
Grudgingly she did as I asked. I hadn’t known about the existence of a map of the Canopy, but I figured such a thing had to exist, even if it was buried deep in the processor of the cable-car.
‘I remember it now,’ she said. The map glowing on the console looked like an enlargement of the synaptic connections in part of the human brain, labelled in eye-hurting Canasian script. ‘But I don’t know that district too well. The plague took on strange forms there. It’s different - not like the rest of the Canopy, and some of us don’t like it.’
‘No one’s asking you to. Just take me there.’
It was a half-hour’s travel through the interstices, skirting the chasm in a long undulating arc. It was visible only as an absence, a circular black occlusion in the luminous sprawl of the Canopy. It was ringed in the lights of the undomed peripheral structures, like phosphorescent lures around the jaw of some monstrous benthic predator. The occasional ledged structure was visible deeper into the maw, down for a depth of a kilometre, and the city’s enormous taplines extended even deeper, sucking air, power and moisture, but they were hardly visible at all. Even at night, a constant dark exhalation rose from the maw.
‘There it is,’ Chanterelle said, eventually. ‘Escher Heights.’
‘I understand now,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘Why you don’t like it.’
For several square kilometres, with a vertical extent of several hundred metres, the forestlike tangle of the Canopy transmuted into something very different: a jumbled agglomeration of freakish crystalline shapes, like something magnified from a geology textbook, or a photomicrograph of a fantastically adapted virus. The colours were glorious, pinks and greens and blues picked out by the lanterns of dug-out rooms and tunnels and public spaces threading the crystals. Great layered sheets of greyish-gold, like muscovite, rose in tiers above the topmost layer of the Canopy. Brittle turquoise encrustations of tourmaline curled into spires; there were pinkish rods of quartz the size of mansions. Crystals threaded and interpenetrated one another, their complex geometries folding around each other in ways no mind could ever have purposefully intended. It almost hurt to look at Escher Heights.
‘It’s insane,’ I said.
‘Hollow, mostly,’ Chanterelle said. ‘Otherwise it could never hang so high. The parts which broke away were absorbed into the Mulch years ago.’ I looked down, under the looming, luminous crystalline mass, and saw what she meant: blocky, overly-geometric concentrations of Mulch, like a carpet of lichen, covering the shards of the fallen city.
‘Can you find somewhere public nearby where we can land?’
‘I’m doing it,’ Chanterelle said. ‘Although I don’t know what good it will do. You can hardly walk into a plaza with a gun at my head.’
‘Maybe people will assume we’re a living exhibit and leave us alone.’
‘Is that as far as your plan goes?’ She sounded disappointed in me.
‘No, actually. It goes a bit further than that. This coat, for instance, has very capacious pockets. I know I can conceal the gun in one without any difficulty, and I can keep it pointed at you without it looking as if I’m just exceptionally pleased to see you.’
‘You’re serious, aren’t you? You’re going to walk through the plaza with a gun at my back.’
‘It would look a little silly if I pointed it at your front. One of us would have to walk backwards, and that wouldn’t do. We might bump into one of your friends.’
TWENTY-SEVEN
We landed with the absolute minimum of ceremony.
Chanterelle’s cable-car had come to rest on a ledge of flat metal buttressed out from the side of Escher Heights, large enough to accommodate about a dozen other vehicles. Most of them were cable-cars, but there were a couple of stubby-winged volantors. Like all the other flying machines I had seen in the city, they had the sleek, hyper-adapted look which told me they had been built before the plague. It must have been difficult, flying them through the warped thicket the city had become, but perhaps the owners just enjoyed the challenge of flying through the tangle. Perhaps it was even a kind of high-risk sport.
People were coming and going from their vehicles, some of which were private and some of which carried the insignia of taxi firms. Other people were just standing around the edge of the landing pad, peering at the rest of the city through pedestal-mounted telescopes. Everyone, without exception, was outlandishly dressed, in billowing capes or overcoats, offset with studiedly bizarre headgear, patterned in a riot of colours and textures which made even the surrounding architecture look a little on the restrained side. People wore masks or hid behind shimmering veils or elegant fans and parasols. There were bio-engineered pets on leashes, creatures which conformed to no known taxonomy, like cats with lizard crests. And some of the pets were not even as strange as their owners. There were people who had become centaurs; fully quadrupedal. There were people who, while still basically conforming to the standard-issue human shape, had twisted and stretched it so far that they looked like avant garde statues. One woman had elongated her skull to such an extent that it resembled the horned beak of an exotic bird. Another man had transformed himself into one of the ancient mythic prototypes of an extraterrestrial, his body preposterously thin and elongated, his dark slitted eyes like almonds.
Chanterelle told me these kind of changes could be effected in days; weeks at the most. It was possible that someone who was sufficiently determined could reshape their body image a dozen times in a year; with the same frequency with which I thought about cutting my hair.
And I expected to find Reivich in such a place?
‘If I were you,’ Chanterelle said, ‘I wouldn’t stand around staring all day. I take it you don’t want people to realise you aren’t from around here?’
I felt the ice-slug gun in my pocket and hoped that she saw my arm tense as I found it. ‘Just walk on. When I want advice I’ll ask for it.’ Chanterelle continued wordlessly, but after a few steps I began to feel guilty at snapping at her so strongly. ‘I’m sorry; I realise you were trying to help.’
‘It’s in my interests,’ the woman said, out of the corner of her mouth, as if sharing an anecdote. ‘I don’t want you attracting so much attention that someone makes a move on you and I end up getting caught in the crossfire.’
‘Thanks for the concern.’
‘It’s self-preservation. How could I feel concerned for you when you’ve just hurt my friends and I don’t even know your name?’
‘Your friends will be okay,’ I said. ‘This time tomorrow they won’t even be limping, unless they choose to keep their injuries for show. And they’ll have a very good story to tell in hunt circles.’
‘What about your name, then?’
‘Call me Tanner,’ I said, and forced her on.
A warm, moist wind blew across us as we crossed the pad towards the arched entrance which led back into Escher Heights. A few palanquins darted ahead of us like moving tombstones. At least it had decided not to rain. Perhaps rain was less frequent in this part of the city, or perhaps we were sufficiently high to escape the worst of it.
My clothes were still wet from standing in the Mulch, but in this respect Chanterelle looked no better than I.
The arch led into a brightly lit enclosure cool with perfumed air, the ceiling strung with lanterns and banners and slowly spinning circulators. The corridor followed a gentle curve to the right, crossing ornamental pools via stone bridges. For the second time since arriving in the city I saw koi gaping up at me.
‘What’s the big deal with the fish?’ I asked.
‘You shouldn’t talk about them like that. They mean a lot to us.’
‘But they’re just koi.’
‘Yes, and it was just koi that gave us immortality. Or the first steps towards it, anyway. They live a long time, koi. Even in the wild, they don’t really die of old age. They just get larger and larger until their hearts can’t cope. But it’s not the same as dying of old age.’
I heard Chanterelle murmur something which might have been ‘koi be blessed’ as she crossed the bridge, and allowed my own lips to echo the sentiment. I didn’t want to be seen or doing anything unusual.
The walls were crystalline, an endlessly repeating motif of bustling octagons, but at intermittent distances they had been hollowed out to admit little boutiques and parlours, offering services in florid scrawls of neon or pulsing holographic light. Canopy people were shopping or strolling, most of them couples who at least looked young, although there were very few children present, and those I saw might well have been neotenous adults in their latest body image, or even androform pets programmed with a few childlike phrases.
Chanterelle led me into a much larger chamber, a huge vaulted hall of crystalline magnificence, into which several malls and plazas converged on multiple levels. Chandeliers the size of re-entry capsules hung from the ceiling. The paths tangled around each other, meandering past koi ponds and ornamental waterfalls, encircling pagodas and teahouses. The centre of the atrium was given over to a huge glass tank, encased in smoked filigreed metal. There was something in the tank, but there were too many people packed around the perimeter, jostling parasols and fans and leashed pets, for me to see what it was.
‘I’m going to sit down at that table,’ I said, waiting until Chanterelle acknowledged me. ‘You’re going to walk over to that teahouse and order a cup of tea for me and something for yourself. Then you’re going to walk back to the table and you’re going to look like you’re enjoying it.’
‘You’re going to keep that gun on me the whole time?’
‘Look on it as a compliment. I just can’t keep my eyes off you.’
‘You’re hilarious, Tanner.’
I smiled and eased myself into the chair, suddenly conscious of the Mulch filth in which I was caked, and the fact that, surrounded by the gaudily dressed canopy strollers, I looked like an undertaker at a carnival.
I half expected Chanterelle not to return with the tea. Did she really think I would shoot her here, in the back? Did she also imagine I had the skill to be able to aim the gun from my pocket, and not run the risk of hitting someone else? She should have just strolled away from me, and that would have been the end of our acquaintance. And - like her friends - she would have a very good story to tell, even if the night’s hunting had not gone quite as planned. I would not have blamed her. I tried to summon up some dislike for her, but nothing much welled up. I could see things from Zebra’s side clearly enough, but what Chanterelle had said also made sense to me. She believed the people they hunted were bad people who ought to die for what they had done. Chanterelle was wrong about the victims, but how was she to know? From her point of view - denied the exquisite viewpoint which I had experienced thanks to Waverly - Chanterelle’s actions were almost laudable. Wasn’t she doing the Mulch a favour by culling its sickest?
It was enough that I allowed this notion into my head, even if I stopped short of preparing a bed for it.
Sky Haussmann would have been very proud of me.
‘Don’t look so grateful, Tanner.’
Chanterelle had returned with the tea.
‘Why did you come back?’
She placed the two cups on the ironwork top of the table, then lowered herself into the seat opposite me, as sinuously as any cat. I wondered if Chanterelle’s nervous system had been adjusted to give her that edge of felinity, or whether it just came from a lot of practice. ‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘I wasn’t quite bored with you yet. Quite the opposite, perhaps. Intrigued. And now that we’re somewhere public, I don’t find you half as threatening.’
I sipped the tea. It was almost tasteless, the oral equivalent of an exquisitely pale watercolour.
‘There must be more to it than that.’
‘You kept your word about my friends. And you could have killed them, I think. But instead you did them a favour. You showed them what pain is really like - real pain; not the soft-edged approximation you get from experientials - and, like you said, you gave them something to brag about afterwards. I’m right, aren’t I? You could have killed them just as easily, and it would not have made any difference to your plans.’
‘What makes you think I have plans?’
‘The way you ask questions. I also think that, whatever it is you need to do, you don’t have long to do it.’
‘Can I ask another question?’
Chanterelle nodded, and used the moment to remove the cat’s-eye mask from her face. Her eyes were leonine, inset with a vertical pupil, but other than that her face was rather human, broad and open, with high cheekbones, framed by a halo of auburn curls which tumbled to her neckline.
‘What is it, Tanner?’
‘Just before I shot your friends, one of them said something. It might have been you, but I don’t remember so well.’
‘Go on. What was it?’
‘That there was something wrong with my eyes.’
‘That was me,’ Chanterelle said, uneasily.
So I had not been imagining it. ‘What did you say? What was it you saw?’
Her voice lowered now, as if she was conscious of how strange the whole conversation had become.
‘It was like they were glowing, like there were two glowing dots in your face.’ She spoke quickly, nervously. ‘I assumed you must have been wearing some kind of mask, and that you discarded it before you emerged again. But you weren’t, were you?’
‘No. No, I wasn’t. But I wish I was.’
She looked into my eyes, the vertical slits of her own eyes narrowing as she focused intently. ‘Whatever it was, it isn’t there now. Are you telling me you don’t know why that happened?’
‘I guess,’ I said, finishing the watery tea with no great enthusiasm, ‘it will have to remain one of life’s little mysteries.’
‘What kind of an answer is that?’
‘The best I’m capable of giving at this moment in time. And if that sounds like the kind of thing someone who was a little scared of what the truth might hold might say, maybe you’re not entirely wrong.’ I reached under the coat and scratched my chest, my skin itching beneath the sweat-sodden Mendicant clothes. ‘I’d rather drop the subject for now.’
‘Sorry I raised it,’ Chanterelle said, heavy with irony. ‘Well, what happens now, Tanner? You’ve already told me you were surprised that I came back. That suggests to me that my presence isn’t vital to you, or you’d have done something about it. Does it mean we go our separate ways now?’
‘You almost sound disappointed.’ I wondered if Chanterelle was aware that my hand had not been on the hilt of the gun for several minutes now, and that the weapon had barely entered my thoughts during that time. ‘Am I that fascinating to you, or are you just more bored than I imagined?’
‘A bit of both, probably. But you are fascinating, Tanner. Worse than that, you’re a puzzle I’ve only half solved.’
‘Half already? You’d better slow down. I’m not as unfathomable as you think. Scratch the surface and you might be surprised at how little lies beneath. I’m just—’
What was I going to tell her - just a s
oldier, just a man keeping his word? Just a fool who did not even know when it was time to break it?
I stood up, conspicuously removing my hand from the gun pocket. ‘I could use your help, Chanterelle, that’s all. But there’s not much more to me than meets the eye. If you want to show me something of this place, I’d be grateful. But you can walk away now.’
‘Do you have any money, Tanner?’
‘A little. Nothing that would amount to much here, I’m afraid.’
‘Show me what you have.’
I pulled out a fistful of greasy Ferris notes, laying them in their sad entirety on the table. ‘What does that buy me, another cup of tea if I’m lucky?’
‘I don’t know. It’s enough to buy you another set of clothes, which I think you could use if you want to blend in at least approximately.’
‘Do I look that out of place?’
‘You look so out of place, Tanner, you might be in serious danger of starting a fashion. But somehow I don’t think that’s quite what you had in mind.’
‘Not really, no.’
‘I don’t know Escher Heights well enough to recommend the best, but I saw some boutiques on the way in which we should be able to outfit you.’
‘I’d like to look at that tank first, if you don’t mind.’
‘Oh, I know what that is. That’s Methuselah. I’d forgotten they kept him here.’
I knew the name, vaguely, and I had the impression it had already been half-remembered once this evening. But Chanterelle was leading me away. ‘We can come back later, when you don’t stand out so much.’
I sighed and put up my hands in surrender. ‘You can show me the rest of Escher Heights as well.’
‘Why not. The night’s still young, after all.’
Chanterelle made some calls while we walked to a nearby boutique, chasing up her friends and establishing that they were all alive and safe in the Canopy, but she did not leave a message for any of them, and then never mentioned them again. That, I supposed, was how it went: many of the people I saw in Escher Heights would be cognisant of the Game, and might even follow it avidly, but none would admit it to themselves, beyond the private parlours where the sport’s existence was acknowledged and celebrated.
The Revelation Space Collection Page 115