The ride became ghostly quiet.
The passenger compartment was as cramped as a prison transport, and the passengers seemed subdued to the point of somnolence, like drugged prisoners being carried to a detention centre. Screens had dropped down from the ceiling and were now cycling through adverts, but they referred to products and services which were very unlikely to have survived the plague. Near one end I could see a huddle of palanquins, grouped together like a collection of coffins in an undertaker's backroom.
"The first thing we've got to do is get these implants out," Quirrenbach said, leaning conspiratorially towards me. "I can't bear the idea of the things still sitting in my head now."
"We should be able to find someone who'll do it quickly," I said.
"And safely, too-the one's not much good without the other."
I smiled. "I think it's probably a little late to worry about safely , don't you?"
Quirrenbach pursed his lips.
The screen next to us was showing an advert for a particularly sleek-looking flying machine, something like one of our volantors, except it seemed to have been made out of insect parts. But then the screen flashed with static and a geisha-like woman appeared on it instead.
"Welcome aboard the Chasm City Zephyr." The woman's face resembled a china doll with painted lips and rosy cheeks. She wore an absurdly elaborate silver outfit which curved up behind her head. "We are currently transiting the Trans-Caldera Tunnel and will be arriving at Grand Central Station in eight minutes. We hope you will enjoy your journey with us and that your time in Chasm City will be both pleasant and prosperous. In the meantime, in anticipation of our arrival, we invite you to share some of our city's highlights."
"This'll be interesting," Quirrenbach said.
The windows of the train carriage flickered and became holographic displays, no longer showing the rushing walls, but an impressive vista of the city, just as if the train had tunnelled through seven years of history. The train was threading between dreamlike structures, rising vertiginously on either side like mountains sculpted out of solid opal or obsidian. Below us was a series of stepped levels, landscaped with beautiful gardens and lakes, entwined with walkways and civic transit tubes. They dwindled into a haze of blue depth, riven by plunging abysses full of neon light, immense tiered plazas and rockfaces. The air was thick with a constant swarm of colourful aerial vehicles, some of which were shaped like exotic dragonflies or hummingbirds. Passenger dirigibles nosed indolently through the swarms; scores of tiny revellers peered over the railed edges of their gondolas. Above them, the largest buildings loomed like geometric clouds. The sky was a pure electric blue woven with the fine, regular matrix of the dome.
And all around the city marched into terrible distance, wonder upon wonder receding as far as the eye could see. It was only sixty kilometres, but it could have been infinity. There appeared to be enough marvels in Chasm City to last a lifetime. Even a modern one.
But no one had told the simulation about the plague. I had to remind myself that we were still rushing through the tunnel under the crater wall; that in fact we had yet to arrive in the city itself.
"I can see why they called it a Belle Epoque ," I said.
Quirrenbach nodded. "They had it all. And you know the worst of it? They damn well knew it. Unlike any other golden age in history . . . they knew they were living through it."
"It must have made them pretty insufferable."
"Well, they certainly paid for it."
It was round about then that we burst into what passed for daylight in Chasm City. The train must have crossed under the crater rim and passed through the boundary of the dome. It was racing through a suspended tube just like the one which had been suggested by the hologram, but this tube was covered in dirt which only gave way fleetingly; just enough to show that we were passing through what looked like a series of densely packed slums. The holographic recording was still playing, so that the old city was superimposed on the new one like a faint ghost. Ahead, the tube curved round and vanished into a tiered cylindrical building from which other tubes radiated, threading out across the city. The train was slowing as we approached the tiered building.
Grand Central Station, Chasm City.
As we entered the building, the holographic mirage faded, taking with it the last faint memory of the Belle Epoque . Yet for all its glory, only Quirrenbach and I seemed to have taken much notice of the hologram. The other passengers stood silent, scrutinising the scorched and littered floor.
"Still think you can make it here?" I asked Quirrenbach. "After what you've seen now?"
He gave the question a lot of thought before answering.
"Who's to say I won't? Maybe there are more opportunities now than ever before. Maybe it's just a question of adaptation. One thing's for sure, though."
"What's that?"
"Whatever music I write here, it isn't going to cheer anyone up."
Grand Central Station was as humid as deep Peninsula jungle, just as starved of light as the forest floor. Sweltering, I removed Vadim's coat and bundled it under one arm.
"We've got to get these implants out," Quirrenbach said yet again, tugging at my sleeve.
"Don't worry," I said. "It hadn't slipped my mind."
The roof was supported by fluted pillars which rose up like hamadryad trees before thrusting their fingers through the roof into the brown gloom beyond. In between these pillars was a densely packed bazaar: a motley city of tents and stalls, through which passed only the narrowest and most twisting of passageways. Stalls had been built or piled above each other, so that some of the passageways became backbreakingly low, lamplit tunnels through which people were forced to stoop like hunchbacks. There were several dozen vendors and many hundreds of people, very few of whom were accompanied by servitors. There were exotic pets on leashes; genetically enhanced servants; caged birds and snakes. A few hermetics had made the error of trying to force their way through the bazaar rather than finding a route around it, and now their palanquins were mired, harried by traders and tricksters.
"Well?" I said. "Do we risk it, or find a way around?"
Quirrenbach clutched his briefcase closer to his chest. "Much against my better judgement, I think we should risk it. I have a hunch-merely a hunch, mind-that we may be pointed towards the services we both so urgently require."
"It might be a mistake."
"And it probably won't be the first of the day, either. I'm somewhat on the ravenous side, anyway. There's bound to be something edible around here-and it might not be immediately toxic."
We pushed our way into the bazaar. Quirrenbach and I had taken barely a dozen steps before we had attracted a mob of optimistic kids and surly beggars.
"Do I have affluent and gullible written in conspicuous neon letters on my forehead?" Quirrenbach said.
"It's our clothes," I said, pushing another urchin back into the throng. "I recognised yours as being Mendicant-made, and I wasn't even paying you much attention."
"I don't see why that should make much difference."
"Because it means we're from outside," I said. "Beyond the system. Who else would be wearing Mendicant clothing? That automatically guarantees a certain prosperity, or at least the possibility of it."
Quirrenbach clutched his luggage to his chest with renewed protectiveness. We pushed our way deeper into the bazaar until we found a stall selling something which looked edible. In Hospice Idlewild they'd treated my gut flora for Yellowstone compatibility, but it had been a fairly broad-spectrum treatment, not guaranteed to be any use against anything specific . Now was my chance to test exactly how non-specific it had been.
What we bought were hot, greasy pastries filled with some unidentifiable, semi-cooked meat. It was heavily spiced, probably to disguise the meat's underlying rancidity. But I had eaten less appetising rations on Sky's Edge and found it more or less palatable. Quirrenbach wolfed down his, then bought another, and finished that one off with equal recklessness.
>
"Hey, you," said a voice. "Implants, out?"
A kid tugged the hem of Quirrenbach's Mendicant jacket, dragging him deeper into the bazaar. The kid's clothes would be graduating to raghood in a week or two, but were now lingering on the edge of dilapidation.
"Implants, out," the kid said again. "You new here, you no need implants, misters. Madame Dominika, she get them out, good price, fast, not much blood or pain. You too, big guy."
The kid had hooked his fingers around my belt and was dragging me as well.
"It's, um, not necessary," Quirrenbach said, pointlessly.
"You new here, got Mendicant suits, need implants out now, before they go wacko. You know what that mean, misters? Big scream, head explode, brain everywhere, get real mess on clothes . . . you not want that, I think."
"No, thank you very much."
Another kid had appeared, tugging at Quirrenbach's other sleeve. "Hey, mister, don't listen to Tom-come and see Doctor Jackal! He only kill one in twenty! Lowest mortality rate in Grand Central! Don't go wacko; see the jackal!"
"Yeah, and get free permanent brain damage," said Dominika's kid. "Don't listen; ev'ryone know Dominika best in Chasm City!"
I said, "Why are you hesitating? Isn't this exactly what you were hoping to find?"
"Yes!" Quirrenbach hissed. "But not like this! Not in some filthy damned tent! I was anticipating a reasonably sterile and well-equipped clinic. In fact I know there are better places we can use, Tanner, just trust me on this . . ."
I shrugged, allowing Tom to haul me along. "Maybe a tent is as good as it gets, Quirrenbach.
"No! It can't be. There must be . . ." He looked at me helplessly, willing me to take control and drag him away, but I simply smiled and nodded towards the tent: a blue and white box with a slightly cambered roof, guylines attached to iron pins driven into the floor.
"In you go," I said, inviting Quirrenbach to step ahead of me. We were in an ante-room to the tent's main chamber, just us and the kid. Tom, I saw now, had a kind of elfin beauty; gender indeterminate beneath tattered clothes, the face was framed by curtains of lank black hair. The kid's name could have been Thomas or Thomasina, but I decided it was probably the former. Tom swayed in time to sitar music emanating from a little malachite box which rested on a table set with perfumed candles.
"This isn't too bad," I said. "I mean, there's no actual blood anywhere. No actual brain tissue lying around."
"No," Quirrenbach said, suddenly making a decision. "Not here; not how. I'm leaving, Tanner. You can stay or follow me; it's entirely up to you."
I spoke to him as quietly as I could manage: "What Tom says is true. You need to have your implants out now, if the Mendicants didn't already do it for you."
He reached up and rasped a hand across his scalp stubble. "Maybe they were just trying to scare up business with those stories."
"Perhaps-but do you really want to take that risk? The hardware's just going to be sitting in your head like a time-bomb. Might as well have it out. You can always have it put back in again, after all."
"By a woman in a tent who calls herself Madame Dominika? I'd rather take my chances with a rusty penknife and a mirror."
"Whatever. Just so long as you do it before you go wacko."
The kid was already dragging Quirrenbach through the partition into the room beyond. "Talking of money, Tanner-neither of us are exactly flush. We don't know we can afford Dominika's services, do we?"
"That's a very good point." I grabbed Tom by the collar, hauling him gently back into the ante-room. "My friend and I need to sell some goods in a hurry, unless your Madame Dominika is given to charity." When that remark had no effect on Tom, I opened my suitcase and showed him some of what was inside. "Sell, for cash. Where?"
That seemed to work. "Green and silver tent,'cross market. Say Dominika sent you, you no get major sting."
"Hey, wait a minute." Quirrenbach was halfway through the gash now. I could see into the main room, where a phenomenally bulky woman sat behind a long couch, consulting her fingernails, medical equipment suspended over the couch on articulated booms, metal glinting in candlelight.
"What?"
"Why should I be the guinea pig? I thought you said you needed to have your implants removed as well."
"You're right. And I'll be back shortly. I just need to convert some of my possessions into cash. Tom said I could do it in the bazaar."
His face turned from incomprehension to fury.
"But you can't go now! I thought we were in this together! Travelling companions! Don't betray a friendship almost before it's begun, Tanner . . ."
"Hey, calm down. I'm not betraying anything. By the time she's finished with you, I'll have got enough cash together." I clicked a finger towards the fat woman. "Dominika!"
Languidly, she turned to face me, her lips forming a silent interrogative.
"How long will it take with him?"
"One hour," she answered. "Dominika real quick."
I nodded. "That's more than enough time, Quirrenbach. Just sit back and let her do her job."
He looked into Dominika's face and seemed to calm slightly.
"Really? You will be back?"
"Of course. I'm not stepping into the city with implants still in my head. What do you think I am, insane? But I do need money."
"What are you planning to sell?"
"Some of my own goods. Some of the stuff I lifted from our mutual friend Vadim. There's got to be a market for that kind of thing or he wouldn't have been hoarding it."
Dominika was trying to pull him onto her couch, but Quirrenbach was still managing to stay on his feet. I remembered how he had impulsively changed his mind when we began looting Vadim's quarters-at first resisting the theft, then throwing himself enthusiastically into the process. I saw a similar sea-change now.
"Dammit," he murmured, shaking his head. He looked at me curiously, then cracked open his own case, riffling through sheet music until he reached a set of compartments below it. He fished out some of the experientials he had taken from Vadim. "I'm no good at bartering anyway. Take these and get a good price on them, Tanner. I'm assuming they'll cover the cost of this."
"You trust me to do that?"
He looked at me through squinted eyes. "Just get a good price."
I took the items and placed them amongst my own.
Behind him, the bulky woman hovered across the room like an unmoored dirigible, her feet skimming inches from the ground. She was cradled in a black metal harness, attached to one wall by a complexly-jointed pneumatic arm, hissing steam as it articulated and flexed. Rolls of fat disguised the indeterminate region where her head and torso merged. Her hands were spread out as if she was drying recently painted fingernails. Each fingertip vanished into-or possibly became -a kind of thimble. Each thimble was tipped with something medical and specialised.
"No; him first," she said, extending a little finger in my direction, its thimble adorned with what looked like a tiny sterile harpoon.
"Thank you, Dominika," I said. "But you'd best attend to Quirrenbach first."
"You come back?"
"Yes-once I've acquired some finance."
I smiled and left the tent, hearing the sound of drills whining up to speed.
Chapter Fourteen
THE MAN who looked through my belongings had a whirring and clicking eyeglass strapped to his head. His hairless scalp was quilted with fine scars, like a broken vase that had been inexpertly mended. He examined everything I showed him with tweezers, holding the items up to his eyeglass in the manner of an aged lepidopterist. Next to him, smoking a handmade cigarette, was a youth wearing the same kind of helmet I'd taken from Vadim.
"I can use some of this shit," the man with the eyeglass said. "Probably. You say it's all real, huh? All factual?"
"The military episodes were trawled from soldiers' memories after the combat situations in question, as part of the normal intelligence-gathering process."
"Yeah? And how
'd they fall into your hands?"
Without waiting for an answer, he reached under the table, pulled out a little tin sealed with an elastic band and counted out a few dozen bills of the local currency. As I had noticed before, the bills seemed to have been printed in strange denominations-thirteens, fours, twenty-sevens, threes.
"It's none of your damned business where I got them from," I said.
"No, but that doesn't stop me asking." He pursed his lips. "Anything else, now that you're wasting my time?"
I allowed him to examine the experientials I'd taken from Quirrenbach, watching as his lip curled first into contempt and then disgust.
"Well?"
"Now you're insulting me, and I don't like it."
"If the items are worthless," I said, "just tell me and I'll leave."
"The items aren't worthless," he said, after examining them again. "Fact is, they're exactly the kind of the thing I might have bought, a month or two ago. Grand Teton's popular. People can't get enough of those slime-tower formations."
"So what's the problem?"
"This shit has already hit the market, that's what. These experientials are already out there, depreciating. These must be-what? Third- or fourth-generation bootlegs? Real cheapass crap."
He still tore off a few more bills, but nowhere near as much as he'd paid for my own experientials.
"Anything else up your sleeve?"
I shrugged. "Depends what you're after, doesn't it."
"Use your imagination." He passed one of the military experientials to his sidekick. The youth's chin was fuzzed by the first tentative wisps of a beard. He ejected the experiential he was running at the time and slipped mine in instead, without once lifting the goggles from his eyes. "Anything black. Matte-black. You know what I mean, don't you?"
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