Chasm City

by Alastair Reynolds

  "If you used Sylveste's equipment," I said carefully, remembering what I'd been told of those experiments, "you shouldn't even be breathing."

  "It was an updated process, based on Sylveste's original work. But you're right-even allowing for technical refinements, I should be quite dead. As it happens, I was administered with enough broad-spectrum medichinery to survive the scan-at least temporarily." He waved his hand at the life-support module and the three attendant servitors. "Refuge supplies these machines. They're trying to stabilise the cellular damage and introduce more refined variants of medichines, but I suspect they're only doing it out of obligation."

  "You think you're going to die?" I said.

  "I feel it in my bones."

  I tried to imagine what it would have been like for him; that agonising instant of neural capture, like being caught in the glare of the brightest flare imaginable; a radiance which shone beneath the skin, into the marrow itself, turning him into a smoky glass sculpture of himself, for that piercing instant.

  The rapid analytic beams of the scan, focused down to cellular-resolution, would have swept through his brain at a speed only fractionally faster than the speed of synaptic impulses, keeping slightly ahead of the cortical messages proclaiming the havoc spreading through his mind. By the time the scan reached his brain-stem, no information would have yet reached that part regarding the disruption being suffered by the layers of his mind situated above. Because of that slight edge, the overall snapshot of his brain would have been completely normal, apart from the slight blurring caused by the finite spatio-temporal resolution of the process. The scan would have been finished before Reivich had recognised that it had begun-and by the time his mind began to keel over under the shock of the procedure, whole neural routines crashing into coma, it would not matter at all.

  He would have been captured.

  And even the damage should not have mattered ; should not have been anything which the medichines could not have repaired, almost as swiftly as the injuries took place. Like shelling a building, dislodging bricks, but with a team of fanatical builders inside, putting right the harm before the next shell arrived . . .

  But Reivich had never taken that path.

  Reivich had opted to die; had opted to suffer assault on every cell in his brain and surrounding tissue, but knowing that, no matter what the consequences for his physical body, his essence would remain, captured for eternity and-at last-recorded in a form which could not be erased by anything as trivial as assassination or war.

  Part of him had made it.

  But not the part we were looking at.

  "If you're going to die," I said, "if you accept that it's inevitable-and that you must have known this would happen before the scan-why didn't you just die in the scan?"

  "I did," Reivich said. "By at least a dozen medical criteria which would satisfy courts of law in other systems. But I also knew that Refuge's machines could bring me back to life, albeit transiently."

  "You could have waited," Quirrenbach said. "Another few days, and they could have matched your medichine requirements perfectly."

  Reivich's bony shoulders moved beneath the quilt; a shrug. "But then I would have been forced to accept a less accurate scan, in order to give the medichines a chance to function. It wouldn't have been me ."

  "I don't suppose Tanner's arrival had anything to do with it?" I asked.

  Reivich seemed to find that amusing; the curve of his smile increasing minutely. Soon, I thought, we would all see the real smile beneath his face; the one written in bone. He could not have very long left now.

  "Tanner made my choice rather easier," Reivich said. "I won't dignify him with any influence on my circumstances beyond that."

  "Where is he?" Chanterelle asked.

  "He's here," the withered creature in the chair said. "He's been here-in Refuge-for more than a day. We haven't met yet, though."

  "You haven't met ?" I shook my head. "What the hell's he been up to since he arrived, in that case? And what about the woman with him?"

  "Tanner underestimated my influence here," Reivich said. "Not just here in Refuge, but in the vicinity of Yellowstone as a whole. You did too, didn't you?"

  "Forget me. Let's talk about Tanner. He's a much more interesting subject."

  Reivich's fingers caressed the edge of the quilt. One hand remained entirely concealed beneath it-assuming there was another hand. I tried to reconcile this apparition with the young aristocrat I had been following, but there was nothing they seemed to have in common. The machine even stripped Reivich of his Sky's Edge accent.

  "Tanner came to Refuge intending to kill me," he said. "But his main reason for coming here was to draw you from the shadows."

  "You think I don't know that?"

  "I'm rather surprised you came, put it like that."

  "Tanner and I have unfinished business."

  "Such as?"

  "I can't let him kill you, even as an incidental detail. You don't deserve it. You acted in revenge-stupidly, even-but not dishonourably."

  The head canted forward again, this time in mute acknowledgement of what I had just said. "If Cahuella hadn't tried to ambush my squad, Gitta would never have died. And he deserved worse than he got." The eyeless sockets lifted to me, as if some reflex demanded that he "look" in the direction of whoever he was addressing, even though his vision was undoubtedly being relayed from some hidden camera situated in the chair. Reivich said, "But of course, it's you I'm talking to, isn't it. Or do you still pretend otherwise?"

  "I don't pretend anything. I'm just not Cahuella. Not any more. Cahuella died the day he stole Tanner's memories. What's left is . . . someone else. Someone who didn't exist before."

  An eyebrow raised above one of the enucleated sockets. "A better man?"

  "Gitta asked me a question once. How long would you have to live; how much good would you need to do, to compensate for one act of pure evil you'd committed as a younger man? It struck me as an odd question at the time, but I understand now. She knew, I think. She knew exactly who Cahuella was; exactly what he'd done. Well, I don't know the answer to that question, even now. But I think I'm going to find out."

  Reivich seemed unimpressed. "Is that the entirety of your unfinished business with Tanner?"

  "No," I said. "The woman with him. Amelia. She's a Mendicant, no matter what disguise she's travelling under. I believe Tanner will kill her the instant she ceases to be of use to him."

  "You came to save her, putting yourself in danger? How gallant."

  "Gallantry doesn't come into it. It's . . . human goodness." The words sounded completely alien to me, but I wasn't ashamed of speaking them. "Maybe this place could use a little more of it, don't you think?"

  "You'd kill him-the man whose memories you carry? Isn't that a little close to suicide?"

  "I'll worry about the ethical problems when I've cleaned the blood up."

  "I admire your clarity of mind," Reivich said. "It makes what's about to happen all the more interesting."

  I tensed. "What are you talking about?"

  "I told you Tanner was here, didn't I? I meant here; literally here . I've had him entertained at my pleasure until you arrived."

  A rectangle of deeper shadow interrupted the gloom behind Reivich. From out of it stepped a man who looked very much like myself.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  ONCE AGAIN I felt the spasm of need; the soldier's instinct to reach for an instrument of death. But there was nothing to hand, and in any case, for all my bravado, I knew that the one thing that I would not be able to do would be to kill Tanner Mirabel in cold blood. It would be too much like shooting myself.

  Sister Amelia of the Ice Mendicants came behind him, emerging from the darkness into the chamber's glade of golden light. She was no longer dressed as a Mendicant-her clothes were functionally dowdy-but she was unmistakable. She wore a symbolic snowflake pendant around her neck.

  Tanner stepped forward until he towered over Reivich's se
at. Dressed in a dark greatcoat which almost reached the floor, he was taller than I had been expecting-an inch or so above me-and deported himself differently: a swagger which was just one element of a bodily choreography we barely shared, for all our physical similarity. We did not exactly look like twins, but we could have been brothers, or the same man seen in different illumination, where the changed aspects of shadows subtly differentiated our characters. There was a cruel set to Tanner's face which I thought I had never seen in my own, but maybe I had just not looked in the mirror at the right times.

  Amelia was the first to speak. "What's going on? I don't understand."

  "Good question," Tanner said, placing a gloved hand on the high, scrolled back of Reivich's chair. "Very good question indeed." Then he peered over the back of the chair until he was looking down into the sightless face of the man he had come to kill. "Any time you feel like answering that, you go ahead and do it, handsome."

  "You realise who I am, then?" Reivich said.

  "Yeah. You went for the quick and dirty, obviously. Let me guess. Extensive neural, cellular and genetic trauma. The goons here probably buffered you with medichines, but that would have been like trying to shore up a collapsing building with drinking straws. I'd say-judging by the look of things-you've probably only got a few hours left, maybe not even that. Am I right?"

  "Unerringly so," Reivich said. "I hope that gives you some consolation."

  "Consolation for what?" Tanner was fingering Reivich's head now, tracing it as one might trace the texture of an antique globe.

  "You arrived too late to kill me."

  "I could make amends."

  "Very good. But what use would it be? You could crush this body of mine and I'd thank you for it with my dying breath. Everything that I am-everything I ever knew or felt-is preserved for eternity."

  Tanner stepped back. His tone was businesslike now. "The scan was successful?"

  "Entirely. I'm running even as we speak, somewhere in Refuge's vast distributed architecture of processors. Backup copies of me have already been transmitted to five other habitats even I can't name. You could detonate a nuclear weapon in Refuge and it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference."

  It was obvious now that the version of Reivich I had spoken to only an hour earlier had been the scanned copy. The two were playing a game together; co-conspirators. Reivich was right. Nothing that Tanner could do now would have any meaning. And maybe that did not matter to Tanner, since in drawing me here, he'd already achieved his primary aim.

  "You'd die," Tanner said. "You expect me to believe that doesn't matter to you?"

  "I don't know what you believe. Frankly, Tanner, it's of no real interest to me either way."

  "Who are you?" Amelia said, incomprehension flooding her face. I realised that even until now, he'd maintained her trust, concealing the true nature of his mission. "Why are you talking about killing?"

  "Because it's what we do," I said. "We've both lied to you. The difference is I never had any plans to kill you."

  Tanner reached for her. But he was not quite fast enough; too keen to linger around Reivich. Amelia padded across the floor's chevrons, bewilderment on her face. "Please tell me what's going on!"

  "No time," I said. "You just have to trust us. I lied to you and I'm sorry-but I wasn't myself when I did it."

  Chanterelle said, "You'd better believe him. He risked his life to come here, and it was mainly to save you."

  "She's telling the truth," Zebra said.

  I looked into Tanner's eyes. He was still stationed behind Reivich's chair. The three servitors stood inert, as if oblivious to all that was happening around them.

  "There's just one of you, Tanner," I said. "I think your number's finally up." I turned to the others. "We can take him, if you let me lead. I've got his memories. I'll anticipate every move he makes."

  Quirrenbach and Zebra flanked me, Chanterelle slightly to my rear, while Amelia retreated further behind us.

  "Be careful," I whispered. "He might have smuggled a weapon into Refuge, even if we didn't."

  I took two steps closer to Reivich's throne.

  Something moved under the quilt. His other hand, unseen until now, emerged from darkness, clutching a tiny jewelled gun. He levelled it with impressive speed, all frailty gone in the instant of aiming, and squeezed off three shots. The projectiles slammed past me, leaving silver smears on my retina.

  Quirrenbach, Zebra and Chanterelle dropped to the floor.

  "Remove them," Reivich croaked.

  The servitors came to life, all three of them gliding silently past me like ghosts, before kneeling down to pick up the bodies. They carried them away from the light, like spirits returning to the dark of a forest, laden with trophies.

  "You piece of shit," I said.

  "They'll live," Reivich said, returning his hand beneath the quilt. "They're just tranquillised."

  "Why?"

  "I was wondering the same thing myself," Tanner said.

  "They spoilt the symmetry. Now it's just the two of you, don't you see? The perfect conclusion to your hunt." He tilted his skull towards me. "You must admit, the simplicity is appealing."

  "What is it you want?" Tanner said.

  "What I want is what I already have. The two of you in the same room. It's been a while, hasn't it?"

  "Not long enough," I said. "You know more than you admitted, don't you?"

  "Let's just say that the intelligence I gained before leaving Sky's Edge was intriguing, to say the least."

  "Maybe you know more than me," I said.

  Reivich poked the nozzle of the gun from under the quilt again, this time directing it back towards Tanner. His aim was no more than approximate, but it seemed to have the desired effect, causing Tanner to step away from the chair until we were equidistant from it. Then he said, "Why don't the two of you tell me what you remember? Then I'll fill in the gaps." He nodded at Tanner. "You can start, I think."

  "Where would you like me to begin?"

  "You can start with the death of Cahuella's wife, since you brought it about."

  I felt a weird instinct to defend him. "He didn't kill her deliberately, you shit. He was trying to save her life."

  "Does it matter?" Tanner said, contemptuously. "I just did what I had to do."

  "Unfortunately you missed," Reivich said.

  Tanner seemed not to hear. He was speaking now, recounting what he remembered. "Maybe I missed; maybe I didn't. Maybe I knew I'd rather kill her than have her live without her being mine."

  "No," I said. "That isn't how it happened. You tried to save her . . ."

  But I wondered if I really knew.

  Tanner continued, "Aftewards, I knew Gitta was finished. I could save Cahuella, though. His injuries weren't that bad. So I kept them both on life-support until I got back to the Reptile House."

  I nodded involuntarily, remembering the hellish length of the journey back through the jungle, suppressing the pain of my own severed foot. Except it never happened to me . . . it happened to Tanner, and I only knew about it from his memories . . .

  "When I got back I was met by some of Cahuella's other staff. They took the bodies from me and did what they could for Gitta, even though they knew it was pointless. Cahuella was in a coma for a few days, but he came round eventually. He didn't remember too much of what had happened, though."

  I remembered waking after a long and dreamless sleep, choked by fever, consumed with the knowledge that I'd been impaled . And remembered not remembering what had happened. I called for Tanner, and was told that he was injured but alive. No one mentioned Gitta.

  "Tanner came to see me," I said, taking over the narrative. "I saw that he had lost a foot, and knew that something very bad had happened to us. But I hardly remembered anything, except that we had gone north to set up an ambush for Reivich's party."

  "You asked for Gitta. You remembered she'd been with us."

  Fragments of that long-forgotten conversation were coming back
to me now, as if recalled through layers of gauze.

  "And you told me. Everything. You could have lied-made up some story which protected you; said that Reivich's man had killed her-but you didn't. You told it exactly as it happened."

  "What would have been the point?" Tanner said. "You'd have remembered it all eventually."

  "But you must have known."

  "Must have known what?" Reivich said.

  "That I'd kill you for it."

  "Ah," Reivich said, a soft phlegmatic chuckle emerging from his life-support module. "Now we're almost there. The crux of it all."

  "I didn't think you'd kill me," Tanner said. "I thought you'd forgive me. I didn't even think I'd need forgiveness."

  "Maybe you didn't know me quite as well as you thought."

  "Maybe I didn't."

  Reivich tapped his empty hand against the ornate armrest of his chair, his blackened nails clicking against the metalwork. "So you had him murdered," he said, addressing me. "But in a manner tailored to your own obsessions."

  "I don't really remember," I said.

  And it was almost the truth.

  I recalled looking down on Tanner, imprisoned within that ceilingless white enclosure. I remembered the way he slowly became aware of his predicament; aware that he was not alone. That something else shared the space with him.

  "Tell me what you remember," Reivich said, turning to Tanner.

  His voice was as flat and devoid of emotion as Reivich's synthetic tones. "I remember being eaten alive. It's not something you forget in a hurry, believe me."

  And I remembered how the hamadryad had died almost instantly, killed by the alien poisons which every human carried; a fatal clash of metabolisms. The creature had spasmed and curled like a loose firehose.

  "We slit it open," I said. "Removed Tanner from its throat. He wasn't breathing. But his heart was still beating."

  "You could have ended it there and then," Reivich said. "A knife to the heart, and it would have been over. But you had to take one more thing from him, didn't you?"