Morning mist shrouded the lower slopes of the city and veiled the lake; the city’s pastel houselamps were fuzzy patches in the gloom. Offworld visitors found Venus intolerably drab with its sulphurous mists and lowering rainclouds, but to Tunde it was the very breath of life. He rode unhurriedly, knowing he had set off in plenty of time.
On the higher slopes the houses were elaborate labyrinthine affairs, ribbed domes and knuckled towers, tentacular corridors leading to the polyps of outbuildings, hazy under their weatherdomes, surrounded by ample well-tended gardens. But as he descended buildings grew smaller, mere blisters huddled together as if for warmth, their breathing often raucous, decrepit walls streaked with algae or blotched with tenement-rot. Most were still slumbering, and the only sign of life Tunde passed was a streetcleaner busy slurping gutter litter through its several writhing mouths.
It was some years since he had last visited the waterfront. He had not kept in touch with his family there when he married Yolande, deliberately shutting himself off from that world, knowing the two could never mix. There was no going back now, even if he had wanted to. But he felt at home in the old surroundings, the looming broad backed warehouses that wafted the stink of fish; the huts and hovels that had multiplied around them; the twisting thoroughfares crowded with workers and pleasure-seekers, riotous with bargaining and bartering while a multitude of boats bobbed at busy wharves in the leaden water—trawlers, leisure craft, dredgers with their weed-matted snouts. At this hour, though, the waterfront was deserted except for a few crews readying their fishers at the end of the wharves. Tunde felt like a ghost, abandoned by the living.
He followed the road to the isolated cove where he had arranged his rendezvous with Pavel. It was an old haunt of his childhood, a place of rampant reeds and leprous waterplants, hemmed in by blisterbushes, visited by few.
The place had scarcely changed in almost twenty years. Beneath the water on the shoreline outlet arteries from an illicit fabricatory inland still pulsed murky organics into the water. A riot of malformed growth matted the shoreline: blood rushes with their spiked crimson heads, bilecreeper whose bloated bladders reeked of vomit. Strange creatures scuttled over the rocks or lurked in the stagnant shallows. This was the place where he had fished as a child and caught many marvels.
He dismounted and led the horse into one of the derelict warehouses fronting the water. The air was stale, the building long dead, its walls slick with rust-coloured growths. He tethered the horse, removed a long package from the saddlebag, unstrapped the shoulderbag containing the womb and carried both along the wharf, treading carefully to avoid the lake-spiders and squirtcrabs that darted across it. He was wearing thick leatherene boots, but everything that lived here was unpredictable …
He went to the edge of the wharf, where the water was clear of vegetation, and found a suitable spot to sit. Unwrapping the package, he took out a segmented fishing rod. With great care and deliberation, he began to fit it together.
Not long afterwards he was ready. But while he had been assembling the rod an uneasy feeling had grown that someone was watching him. He caught a movement at the edge of his eye, and turned his head.
A short figure was standing near the warehouse.
It was Cori.
Propping the rod between two rocks, Tunde hurried over to her. She was dressed in a hood and cape, her boots mud-splattered.
“I followed you,” she said. “What are you doing here, Father?”
He scooped her up in his arms.
“You’re running away, aren’t you?”
“Did you come on your own?”
She nodded vigorously.
“On foot?”
“It was easy to follow you. You rode so slowly.”
“Do you realize how dangerous that was?”
“I want to come with you. Please, Father, can I?”
This was completely unexpected. He enfolded her in his arms, relishing her presence.
“I know you aren’t happy with Mother. She can have Es and Maxim. I’ll come with you.”
Tunde felt a confusion of emotions—relief, even joy, and great concern for her safety.
“Do they know?” he asked. “Esme and Max?”
“They don’t know you’ve run away. Or that I came after you. Why are you fishing here?”
He looked into her dark, serious eyes. “There’s something I have to do,” he said. “Something that might be very dangerous. You can’t stay here.”
But at that very moment, he heard the distant whine of an approaching gravlev.
He hurried her into the warehouse and bundled her on to the horse.
“Don’t come out of here on any account,” he said urgently. “If anything bad happens, I want your promise that you’ll ride home as fast as you can.”
“What’s going to happen?”
“I don’t know. It may be nothing. When it’s safe I’ll call for you, but you must stay hidden here till then.”
“What is it you have to do?”
“I’ll explain everything later. There really is no time now. Will you promise?”
Like the other two, Cori would rarely do things on trust, without a good reason. There always had to be a debate. But she surprised him by bobbing her head under her hood.
“Good,” he said. “Stay here until I call you.”
“I will.”
“I love you very much.”
There were tears in her eyes. “Please don’t die.”
Tunde went outside and returned to his rod. The line dangled into the closed petals of a flashlily, a big chrome-yellow flower that phosphoresced softly on its bed of warty leaves. He saw the gravlev come over the ridgeroad and settle a short distance from the wharf.
It was a big black and silver Nagatech with mirrored windows that sealed and secured its occupants from the outside world. Its door irised open and Pavel himself clambered out.
Tunde did not move. He held the line steady and waited.
Pavel scanned the surroundings, then began walking towards him. The other door of the car opened and Metin got out.
Tunde eyed the dunes behind the car and the sky overhead. There was no sign of anyone else. It was as he had hoped: though Pavel always liked to boast, his was essentially a two-man operation, furtive and small-scale. The authorities of Hesperus probably left him alone because his activities were usually too petty to concern them. Which didn’t mean that Tunde was about to underestimate him.
Pavel was carrying a small black case. He was grimacing as he approached Tunde.
Still Tunde remained seated.
“It was supposed to be just me and you,” he remarked.
“Come on,” Pavel said. “It’s only Metin. Think I’d meet you here on my own?”
He looked distinctly uncomfortable, constantly searching the ground around his booted feet and retreating hastily from anything that moved.
“Why’d you pick this place?” he went on. “Fucking hell’s kitchen. Stinks worse than anywhere I’ve been on this dungheap.”
Tunde had picked it precisely because Pavel was a biophobe. He hoped it would give him an edge.
Metin was now following him along the wharf, chewing gum and popping bubbles as he came.
“Didn’t you trust me?” Tunde said.
Pavel dodged a brownish splatter that was twitching.
“I made the trip down, didn’t I, like you asked? Have you got it?”
Tunde resisted the urge to confirm it. “I want to see the money.”
Pavel stood a short distance from him. He set the case down and flipped it open. It was packed with credit notes.
“It’s all there,” he said. “Fifty thousand solars, like you asked. Take it.”
He pushed it towards Tunde with his foot. Still holding the rod, Tunde reached out with his free hand and grabbed it. He removed a credit note and held it up to the light. The stylized sun hologram in the plastic spiralled around, rainbow-hued: it was genuine.
“Where is
it?” Pavel said.
Tunde pointed to the flashlily. “It’s in there.”
“In the water?” Pavel said incredulously. “You put it in the fucking water? For crissakes, why?”
“It isn’t in the water. It’s in the flower.”
Pavel looked appalled. “There’s monsters in there, you cretin.”
“It’s quite safe. I put it in a waterproof bag. Nothing’s going to touch it.”
“It’ll suffocate.”
Tunde shook his head.
“Get it the hell out.”
While they had been talking, Metin had been moving towards them. Tunde closed the case and picked it up with one hand.
“There’s a problem,” he said, backing away to the very edge of the wharf. “The moment I hand it over to you, I’m disposable.”
Pavel contrived to appear surprised. “What are you giving me? Why should I do that? We’ve always dealt straight with one another.”
“But I’m not going to be any use to you any longer, am I? And I think this womb is so important you’d prefer to cover your tracks.”
Pavel crushed a purple spider under his boot with considerable disgust. Tunde was now holding the rod out over the water.
“This is stupid,” Pavel said. “If you drop that rod in the water, you can be sure I’ll fucking kill you.”
“The womb’s no use to me,” Tunde said. “You can have it. But I have to be sure you’ll let me get away safely.”
Pavel shook his head. “I’m disappointed in you, Tunde. This is really stupid.”
“Maybe. But that’s the way I want it.”
Metin moved forward, chewing furiously. He was holding a stub-gun.
“I know you can simply shoot me,” Tunde said; there was a quaver in his voice. “But I’ll make sure the rod goes into the water and takes the womb with it. There’s things in there that’d make a meal of it in seconds.”
Tunde could see the fury in Pavel’s eyes. He was barely controlling himself.
“What do you want, Tunde?”
“I want you to go back to the car and wait. I’ll follow, reeling out the line. When I’m a safe distance, I’ll drop it and be on my way.”
“I think maybe we should just fucking shoot you,” Pavel said.
Tunde’s mouth went dry. “Don’t underestimate how desperate I am,” he managed to say. “It’s all or nothing for me. The same for you. You can have the womb. It’s a good price, and you know it. I’m only asking that you let me get away. You’ll never see or hear from me again.”
Metin was eager to kill him, Tunde was certain. But Pavel was less hasty, more calculating. He took the gun off Metin.
“How do I know it’s even in there? Why the fuck should I swallow any of this?”
“It’s there,” Tunde said.
Very gently, he twitched the line. The flashlily’s petals opened slowly, flattening themselves. The womb could clearly been seen, wrapped in a transparent film.
Pavel raised the stub-gun and fired.
The energy bolt seared through the rod close to the handgrip, the force of the blast sending Tunde spinning back so that he fell to his knees on the wharf’s edge, the case flying from his hand.
The rod had spun away and dropped into the shallows. The flashlily was folding up again, enveloping the womb.
“You stupid fucker,” Pavel said, standing over him with the gun. “Think we’re going to play your games?” He turned to Metin. “Go and get it.”
Metin was less than thrilled at the prospect. The rod and line were already drifting out towards the lily.
“It’s alive in there,” he said.
“Use his boots, for crissake. It’ll only take a few seconds.”
Metin chewed it over; he still wasn’t convinced.
“Why don’t you send him out for it?”
Pavel sighed. “And then what’s to stop him dumping it in the water? Do like I say. Move it!”
Metin came forward and tugged Tunde’s long boots from his feet. They fitted easily over his own footwear, stretching right up to his groin. He looked at Tunde with pure malice.
“Get the hell on with it,” Pavel said.
Metin clambered down over the rocks, then, very tentatively, he waded into the shallows.
The line had drifted out and was caught in the lily leaves. Metin would have to go right to the plant itself to retrieve the womb. He moved slowly, with extreme caution, pushing his way through slimy weed, the water rising higher with each step. Pavel divided his attention between watching him and keeping the stub-gun trained on Tunde.
The water was at Metin’s thighs by the time he reached the lily. He delicately manoeuvred himself past the leaves, keeping his hands high, then reached in and touched the flower.
Its petals opened. Metin grabbed the womb and lifted it out. As he did so, two long green flails arced up from the water and swiped him across the face.
He screamed and staggered back, the womb spilling from his hands. It hit the water but bobbed to the surface. Metin, already retreating in terror, made a grab for it but missed.
“You fucker!” Pavel said in fury, levelling the stub-gun at Tunde’s face.
There was a thunderous sound behind them as Cori spurred the horse out of the warehouse, padded feet pounding on stone.
Pavel jerked his head around. Tunde lashed out with his foot, hitting him hard on the knee. He toppled over, the gun rolling off the edge of the wharf and clattering on the rocks below. Tunde leapt up, but Pavel just lay there, clutching his leg.
Tunde managed to grab the reins and halt the horse. Metin was thrashing about in the shallows, yelling with terror and pain. He had recovered the womb and was holding it aloft. A crimson crown-leech was stuck to his head.
Pavel sat crouched and unmoving. Tunde realized that he was afraid of him, that he had no stomach for violence when the odds were equal. Tunde retrieved the case and clambered into the saddle, wrapping his arms around Cori.
“I think Metin needs some help,” Tunde said to Pavel. He swung the horse around and urged it along the wharf.
Cori clung on tight. Glancing back, Tunde saw Pavel stumbling in over the rocks towards Metin. He had recovered the stub-gun, and he began to blast the water around the short man, furiously swearing and hopping about as he did so while Metin continued to cry out in pain and disgust. Pavel snatched the womb from his hands as he teetered out of the water, festooned with leeches and waterweed.
Tunde reined in the horse at the gravlev. The driver’s door was open, the engine on idle. Hastily he bundled Cori into the passenger seat then climbed behind the wheel. He activated the engine, shouted “Drive!”, and the car moved swiftly off. He caught a final glimpse of Pavel crouched over the womb while Metin frantically stripped off his infested clothes.
Tunde steered the car down the rough track towards the causeway.
“Did I do well, Father?” Cori asked.
“Your timing was perfect. You were a life-saver.”
She beamed. “You see, sometimes it pays not to follow your parents’ advice. You’re not going to take me home, are you?”
“Not if you don’t want me to.”
“I don’t. I’m coming with you.”
They turned on to the causeway, heading away from Nephthys. Tunde switched the car to automatic and slotted the case into a baggage niche. With fifty thousand solars they would be able to start anew somewhere, find a quiet corner where neither Yolande nor anyone else would ever find them. Of course it wouldn’t be easy; but at least it would be a real life.
After a short time, Cori said, “You’ve lost your boots.”
“Better than losing my marbles.”
It was a weak joke, but she laughed. “Where are we going?”
A big sunbird, carnelian and gold, rose from the dunescrub along the shore and soared over their heads like an apparition, a blessing. Cori’s eyes widened with delight.
“Let’s just follow it,” Tunde said, “and see where it takes us.
”
Three
Her Graciousness Bezile Reeta Miushme-Adewoyin, High Arbiter of Melisande and the continent of Aphrodite, shifted her stocky frame in her favourite fur chair as her secretary went through her list of duties for the day. In addition to the daily analysis of current public opinion on issues arising, there was a meeting with a quartet of High Intercessors from Hyperion district, a dedicatory service for the new shrine on Abelard, a luncheon with civic leaders, beneficence visits to a poor quarter, and a sermon on the transubstantiation of the psyche to be recorded for public transmission. Last but far from least, she was giving the final rites of passage to Hidukei, an old friend who had finally decided to take death.
Bezile gave a distracted sigh and contemplated the model Noosphere suspended on her desk, an ebony globe laced with spiderwebs of ivory and gold.
“And the Phalarope meeting?” she said.
Luis spread his hands. “It may still be possible. If the sermon can be written, we might be able to record it while you’re travelling between engagements.”
“I’ll do it on the hoof,” Bezile told him. “Make the necessary arrangements.”
Luis picked up his compad and rose. But he did not immediately leave.
“Was there something else?”
He fiddled with the pad. “It’s probably nothing. But there was a call. From a man who refused to identify himself. He claimed he had something very important he wished to pass on to you. For an appropriate price, he said.”
“What sort of something?”
“A biological object of great curiosity and importance. And even sanctity, he claimed.”
She eyed him. “Is there anything in it?”
Luis looked pained that they even had to discuss it: he was a fastidious man. “We don’t have much to go on—it was an audio call. But he’s an offworlder with a transplanetary accent. Voice-pattern analysis suggests he was telling the truth and that he believes in the worth of what he has. Apparently it comes from Mars.”
Mortal Remains Page 5