However, Maliha felt quite the reverse. The flush she felt turned into a sweat and the food she could smell—she could not quite tell what it was—caught in her throat. A feeling that her stomach was about to revolt spread through her.
Conflicting emotions tore at her. The desire to remain where she was and not embarrass her hosts was at war with the need to move immediately, otherwise embarrassments would be felt all around.
She jumped as Françoise’s hand came down on hers. “Are you all right, Maliha?”
Maliha did not trust herself to open her mouth lest the limited contents of her stomach came back. She turned her head and stared into Françoise’s eyes, shaking her head vehemently.
Françoise threw her napkin on the table and jumped to her feet. She pulled Maliha to her feet.
“What’s going on?” said Constance. “Françoise? Maliha?”
Supporting Maliha so she did not need to retrieve her stick, Françoise rushed her from the room, past the serving staff to a set of stairs. The carpeting gave way to a wooden surface.
Maliha bent over and retched several times, then could not hold back the contents of her stomach any longer. She was mortified for a few seconds as her stomach acids burnt her throat, then a wave of lightheadedness swept through her and she collapsed against Françoise.
Chapter 7
i
Maliha could tell from the way the sheets were pressed down on one side there was something heavy on the bed next to her. She heard the quiet breathing of Izak. From behind her closed eyes she knew it was full day, though on Venus that started any time after the equivalent of three in the morning.
The memory of the previous night caught up with her and she groaned. She just wanted to pull the sheets over her head and stay here forever. Or just die now. To become ill at her hosts’ table? So embarrassing.
How did she feel now? She felt fine, though her thigh ached a little. There was something about Venus that disagreed with her old injury. It reminded her of the tales of old sailors who could tell the changes in the weather from the way their joints ached. But she was barely twenty. And she was hungry.
What had that been last night? She went cold at the possibility that perhaps her precautions with Lilith or the attack on the ship had failed and she had become infected. There was no way she could know until later. The mere smell of quinine, when Dr Lemming had shown her, turned her stomach and made her retch.
Perhaps that would be a fitting end, as long as she could exact her vengeance on Timmons and his cohorts.
Did Leonard Mayberry know that he had been directed to fetch his wife just so that she could be implicated in a murder? Did he care? Was it some initiation ceremony into Timmons’ inner group? Did Timmons even have his own clique?
Was it just a coincidence? She shook her head, she had been over this before. It could not be a coincidence, not when the Spencers, Françoise and Constance had all been on the ship.
Why had she not asked the steward for his reasons? Why had he allowed himself to be infected? Why was he so willing to die? What was wrong with her? She had become forgetful, inefficient, and had almost failed to save Françoise when she had had the answer.
If she was going to be this forgetful perhaps she should begin to make notes.
She checked to ensure she was wearing night clothes. Silk. Constance would have nothing less. She slid out from between the sheets. Izak lay fast asleep. The clock on the mantel showed the time to be around five-thirty.
She found her clothes in a dressing room, along with her walking stick. Beyond the dressing room was a bathroom. She washed and dressed. Then she woke Izak and instructed him to clean up; no one had told him to undress and it was not something he did automatically as yet.
She was not sure whether it would elicit a response, but she rang the bell anyway. It took a few minutes before one of the kitchen staff arrived at the door. Maliha instructed her to fetch some bread and water—her stomach felt normal, but she did not trust it—and see about arranging transport back to Regina.
The girl curtsied and left.
It took five minutes for Izak to emerge. He had not removed his shirt to wash and it was wet around the collar and cuffs.
They were on the middle floor and the windows of their room gave out onto the atrium. Nothing moved. There was not the slightest breeze, since it was enclosed, and there were no birds, nor any chance of the flowering plants or apple trees becoming pollinated, since no native insects had been brought here.
They should have at least had a beehive. That would have helped.
With Izak, Maliha left the room and made her way downstairs to the main entrance. Several of the male staff had been roused from their beds and were preparing a steam carriage while holding back yawns.
“Where are you going in such a terrible hurry, cherie?”
It seemed that Maliha’s instruction not to disturb the Mayberrys had been obeyed, but she had not mentioned Françoise.
“We need to get back. I have forgotten something.”
“You?”
“Don’t laugh at me, Françoise.”
“I am not laughing,” she said, drifting in wearing a diaphanous dressing gown that hinted at the elegant body beneath but showed nothing. Maliha could imagine what the male servants were thinking, and the female ones as well—though they would be less complimentary. “I am worried about you.”
“There’s no need.”
“I do not know whether to slap you or to kiss you.”
“I seem to recall you enjoyed both,” said Maliha.
“Oh, you remember that. So your rememberings are selective?”
“I have forgotten to do what I do best,” said Maliha. “There are questions I have not answered.”
“And I said I would help you in all things.”
Maliha took a step that closed the gap between them. She put her arms around Françoise and pulled her in close. Françoise seemed initially surprised, but Maliha felt the slim arms reach around her waist and shoulders. She rested her chin at the base of Françoise’s neck.
Making her words as quiet as possible, she whispered. “Then make sure you mention, in front of Leonard, that I seemed very ill and that there was something wrong with my eyes.”
Françoise pushed her back and held her by her shoulders. “This is what you want?”
“It’s important.”
Françoise nodded. “As you wish.” She hesitated for a moment and then planted a kiss on Maliha’s lips. They had an audience, so it was not as passionate as Maliha suspected Françoise would have preferred. But it would no doubt be the talk of the staff quarters for some time. And would distract them from what had really just occurred.
“Don’t forget,” said Maliha.
“It seems I am not the one who has been forgetting things,” said Françoise. “But do not fear—it shall be done.”
Maliha gave her another peck on the cheek and extricated herself from her ex-lover’s arms. Without Valentine, Maliha felt that perhaps she would not mind being back in those arms. But that was all in the past. Things had changed.
A wave of heat flooded through the door when it was opened for Maliha and Izak to pass through. Maliha paused to turn and wave, but Françoise was already gone.
ii
The journey back to the hotel was without incident, though the sky went black at one point as a cloud of creatures passed across. She had seen huge flocks of starlings in the autumn in England—enough to know that this was a flock of something that twisted and folded through the sky—but they were too high to see precisely what they were, and so numerous they must number in the millions.
The moment Maliha entered the suite, she knew something was different. She had left her carpetbag closed by the chair. It was open. She shook her head—what if she was wrong? What if she was misremembering?
No. If she could not trust her own judgement she was completely lost.
She would look at the bag in a moment; the first thing to be do
ne was to check the rest of the suite. She cautioned Izak to take care, though truthfully she suspected he would be better at survival than her if confronted by a thug.
However, the rest of the room seemed untouched, which made her doubt herself even more. Who would touch only her bag?
Timmons played games, lethal ones it was true, but games nonetheless. This would be his doing. Something in the bag. Cautiously she examined it and saw the offending item sitting right there on top. A book.
She took it out and perched on the armchair. Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. She had read both books and enjoyed their outrageous flights of fancy. There was a bookmark at the end of Chapter Six; she knew the text without looking, but read it anyway:
“‘Oh, how glad I am to get here! And what IS this on my head?’ Alice exclaimed in a tone of dismay as she put her hands up to something very heavy and fitted tight all round her head.
“‘But how CAN it have got there without my knowing it?’ she said to herself as she lifted it off and set it on her lap to make out what it could possibly be.
“It was a golden crown.”
This was the point in the story where ‘pawn’ Alice is promoted to a queen in the crazy chess game when she reaches the eighth square. What could it mean? Did it mean anything? Was it a game within a game simply intended to distract?
Maliha tossed the book away onto the bed. She was not interested. There was proper work to be done. But first she really did need some breakfast.
* * *
Room service delivered promptly and she ate voraciously. Izak was more circumspect, and practised the use of his eating utensils. He sawed his food into small chunks and used the fork for each piece.
Maliha knew he was lonely. Lilith had been his only family, even though they were probably not related. Separation from loved ones was something with which Maliha was acutely familiar. Those first years at the school had been like Dante’s Circles of Hell.
At least Izak did not have to put up with the hate and the abuse.
She knew it had changed her.
“When I was a child in India,” she said, “my mother and I used to play games. Would you like to play a game?”
Izak looked up from his plate. “I want you to bring vengeance to the one who killed Lilith, Goddess. I am not a child.”
She nodded. “Very well, Izak. But when this is over, you and I will play games.”
He went back to his food and Maliha wondered whether he was cutting food or slicing into his enemies.
Maliha dressed for the Venusian day in a loose-fitting dress that permitted the circulation of air and still managed to cover most of her skin. Izak’s male attire was similar in style and purpose.
The early explorers of the planet had suffered badly from rotting skin conditions and preventative steps had had to be taken, the most disgusting part being the application of Vaseline to the feet before putting on stockings and long, waterproof boots. It had been found to be the most potent protection available, since it prevented the ingress of water and spores.
Maliha handed the outdoor glasses to Izak and picked up her own. Then she snapped off one of its arms.
“Oh dear,” she said. “I appear to have broken them.”
That, at least, brought a smile to Izak’s dour face. His past on the streets of Johannesburg had given him an appreciation of subterfuge. Maliha placed the broken glass on her face, with the one remaining arm over her earlobe.
“Come, Izak, let us go in search of a repairer of spectacles.”
They stepped out into a downpour. Umbrellas on Venus were a whole size larger than those typically found in London or Manchester, but their uniform black colour remained the usual. Maliha erected hers, though her clothes were already wet through from the few seconds of exposure.
The temperature seemed to rise by the minute as they plodded along the raised walkways. Since Regina had been built from scratch, the town planners had taken the trouble to separate pedestrian traffic from mechanical.
The walkways were higher than the roads themselves, creating a delicate spiderweb through the buildings, which now possessed access on two or three separate levels. Both pedestrian and mechanical paths were built from the ubiquitous grainless, black granite-wood bound together with steel hawsers. The metal seemed to be holding up well against the wet environment and she assumed it was made from the new ‘stainless’ alloy.
Even so, the flora and fungi of Venus were trying hard to infest the city: Along the walkways and across the buildings greenery was taking hold everywhere. It gave the place a curiously soft appearance, somehow more natural than a city usually looked.
Signposts marked every junction and, as instructed by the hotel staff, they followed the route towards the city market. This was a relatively new construction funded by the benevolence of the rich merchants. The walkway they were on widened out and descended to a four-storey building.
Great rotating doors gave them access to the interior, where Maliha furled her umbrella. The grand market was a single open space with broad skylights to illuminate the interior. Around all four sides were three levels of wide balconies housing shops of all sorts, and on the floor of the building were demountable market stalls.
Maliha frowned. A cacophony assailed their ears—the ebb and flow of thousands of people laughing, shouting and negotiating their bargains. The most prominent smell was tobacco smoke, with underlying scents of bread, herbs, cooking meat and other things completely unrecognisable.
But so many people. The sheer quantity emphasised her concerns about the extent of the suburbs. It made a mockery of the official estimates of Regina’s population, which was said to boast no more than ten thousand people at the last—admittedly imprecise—count. For every one person here there must be ten or twenty that were elsewhere in the city.
That would mean the population was more likely to be fifty thousand, perhaps even twice that.
She walked forward and leaned on the ornate ironwork of the rail overlooking the market. The air had the bluish haze of tobacco smoke. There were native flying creatures twisting and looping near the skylights.
The humidity was far less in here, but the heat was more intense than outside.
Izak moved up beside her.
“Someone follows us, Goddess.”
Maliha did not turn. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Is it just one person?”
“Just one.”
“Come along.”
iii
She wandered without any urgency along the balcony. The shops here were jewellers and watchmakers. She paused to look in at each window. Every now and then she would point out something to Izak. In the reflection of the glass, she caught more than one glimpse of a working-class man in tall boots and dungarees, with a white shirt but no jacket. He had a peaked cap that cast a shadow across his face. She could not think what his trade might be.
Having established the man, she walked into a watchmaker. She discussed adjustments to her watch and swapped it for a temporary replacement already adjusted for Venus time. She asked for, and received, a pen, some paper and an envelope. She wrote out a set of instructions and put them in an envelope, which she placed in one of her own pockets.
She thanked the watchmaker, who informed her the watch would be ready that afternoon.
She and Izak then continued their promenade. She jumped as a deluge of rain thundered onto the roof. Looking up, it seemed as if a wave had landed on the building and was slowly dissipating. Thin streams of water cascaded down into the market below.
The concept of a cloudburst existed on Earth, but she was aware the Venusian equivalent was similar to tipping a bucket of water onto a sandcastle. Everything here was so much more extreme.
She sighed and moved on.
They approached the first corner and, scanning the shops ahead, she saw on the next lower floor a sign with the name of the spectacle-maker she wanted. A double flight of steps, busy with shopp
ers and traders, led that way. As they went around the first bend in the stairs, she resisted the temptation to glance up at the man but instead pulled out the envelope.
“Take this, Izak, and hide it about your person.”
His years of pickpocketing made it disappear in a moment. She doubted the man would have seen anything of their transaction.
“When we get to the shop I’ll give you a shilling for a couple of pies; you go to the market and fetch them. I will head back to the entrance after buying new spectacles. The man will follow me. You bring the letter back to spectacle-maker and give it to the person behind the counter. I will have forewarned them of your arrival.”
“Yes, Goddess.”
Maliha pulled out her purse and took out two shillings instead, just in case the prices here were inflated. Izak might not be able to read, but he knew his numbers, at least when it came to money.
She watched as he ran off into the crowd. She felt a pang of fear, like any mother seeing their child heading into the unknown, even though he had a far better chance of survival than she would have had at his age. Besides, there was no reason to suppose there was any danger.
The door to the shop was open, but there was no one behind the counter. The sound of the market faded a little as she entered. The floor was polished wood and an electric light illuminated the cramped space. Dozens of completed spectacles lined the walls. All of them had the tinted blue glass, though some were of a deeper hue than others. One or two were completely black.
There was a handbell on the counter. Maliha picked it up by its wooden handle and gave it a gentle ring. The sound penetrated the place and moments later a woman with magnifying goggles pushed up to her forehead stepped out from the back, holding an unfinished pair of frames.
“Can I help you, miss?”
Maliha held out the broken glasses. “I broke these.”
The woman took them. Her fingers were thin and delicate; they almost seemed too large for the rest of her. “Why?”
“I’m sorry?”
“You say you broke them,” she said with a tone of accusation. “My frames do not snap like this.”
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