Phoenix Café (32 page)

She showed him the bracelet. “In the forest, near to L’Airial. This belongs, or it ought to, to an officer the American Special Exterior Force. The Atlantic Ocean is a short jeep ride away, and those Wings have immense range, don’t they? This morning I was reminded of something else I’d known but I’d forgotten. A party of Aleutians is about to visit the USSA, breaking the Great Quarantine. Now I have to wonder
what the hell
does it all mean—?”

She took a gulp of wine. “Did you call that cab?”

Misha shook his head. “Truly, I’m not
getting
this, Catherine. These, um, ‘empty centered sores,’ or ‘chancres’ did you call them? How can you be so sure? Suppose you weren’t hallucinating, how would Kevala the Pure know what proliferating-weapons disease looks like?”

“I’m an Aleutian,” she snapped. “I know all kinds of things, I have access to our records—” She stopped, disgusted at herself. “Because I’ve seen them before, what did you think? A long time ago, but I remember. I’ve been alive in some bad times, Misha. I’ve seen weapons used.”

“But you’ve always been on the right side of them.”

“Obviously. So far.” She set down her glass, which she had been clutching so hard she was in danger of breaking the stem. “Why didn’t you
tell
me?” she burst out. “I don’t understand, I can’t understand. I knew there was something badly wrong, I thought it was personal. I knew that you, Misha, were terribly unhappy. I knew the others were hiding something, I thought it was about your Movement. You didn’t
tell me,
neither in Silence nor in words. You didn’t give me anything to act on. If you’ve discovered a plot to build proliferating weapons—”

She shuddered, and wanted to revert to the Common Tongue: none of this should be formally spoken. But he wouldn’t understand her. What locals could understand, and what they couldn’t: one could never be sure. She continued, speaking very softly but with controlled violence.

“I’m guessing they smuggled out a sample before hard quarantine was imposed. I’m guessing it wouldn’t have been impossible. Lugha, I mean Dr. Bright, despises humans so much—don’t be offended, he despises everyone—he didn’t give a damn about security until we forced it on him. So: somebody on the human science team is involved. But that’s irrelevant. Your father is involved, and Helen is involved, WorldSelf help her. And the trade delegation to the Americas…. Is that where it’s going to happen, is that when the conspiracy plans to strike? But
it’s the rest of you,
the people I met here at the Phoenix Café. I don’t understand your part. If you like the idea of genocide, why did you come to me? Because you
did
come to me. If you wanted me to stop what was going on,
why didn’t you tell me?”

“Catherine, are you actually saying somebody’s going to attack the Aleutians? Humans who’ve secretly been making proliferating weapons to turn against the superbeings themselves? Is that what you think?”

She was furious. “How long are you going to keep this up? Why are you playing this stupid game?
Why else
would humans want a sample of weapons starter?
Why else
would they be doing experiments that left young ladies infected with those sores? Don’t tell me they were trying to build their own private Buonarotti engine. That’s impossible, humans can’t build self-aware machines. They don’t have the physical capacity—”

“But why would anyone want to do such a thing, Catherine? Why destroy the aliens now? You’re leaving. And before you leave you’re going to hand over the Buonarotti technology, this hybrid technology we can’t possibly develop for ourselves, so that we can have interstellar travel too.”

She glared at him, took another gulp of wine and set the glass down.

“We’re not.”

She stared at him in defiance.

“I’m sorry,” said Misha. “Could you repeat that. I didn’t quite understand.”

“We are not going to give you the instantaneous transit technology. It would be too dangerous.”

His whole presence breathed his triumph: so that she understood that this moment was the point of the charade, the climax. He had made her say it.

“We know.”

He nodded: relaxed now, the real tension, the fake concern and the fake puzzlement all wiped away. “Surprise! We know the secret that’s been driving liberal Aleutians crazy with helpless fury. Actually plenty of us dumb humans, planet-wide, have guessed the truth. It’s not being openly discussed, for the same reason that’s kept you gagged: because all hell would break loose.”

He leaned back, smiling. “Me, I think fears of panic on the streets are exaggerated. There
will
be panic on the streets, but not over that. The fear that the human race may soon, in a few generations, literally run out of food and water and
die out
if we’re left stuck on this rock, is beyond most of us. People think yeah, we’re doomed, then go back to their own concerns. If you’re not immortal, it’s hard to care about futurity. It probably isn’t true, anyway.”

Catherine remembered the night he’d raped her for the first time, here in this closeted little space. How she’d gone back to the Giratoire house, escaped to her room. Staring at spots of blood on her white underskirts. Thinking about the empty sores, about proliferating weapons in human hands. Thinking, if it is true,
then let it happen.
It’s what we deserve. The terrible cold of that moment. But nobody deserves to have proliferating weapons turned on them.

“We’ll squeeze through the crunch,” went on Misha, dispassionately. “We’ll lose a chunk of genetic variance, but we’ll come through. In
your
terms, that means permanent death for most of the Brood. Who cares? We’re not Aleutians. We’re all going to die anyway.”

She put the silver bracelet away.

“All right. I’ll tell you what I think. It was your father, it was Helen. Whatever you knew or suspected, how could you betray them? So you came to me instead of going to the authorities, led me up to clues and waited for me to ask the right questions—”

“You’re supposed to be a telepath,” agreed Misha, smiling. “We thought you’d catch on. Couldn’t understand it when you acted so dumb.”

She nodded, nostalgically accepting another Misha barb. “Can we get on with this, Mr. Whiplash? I’m here, I’m asking. Tell me, if that’s what you want.”

“Traditionalist young ladies live very private lives, but my sister Helen used to be one of us. She came to the Café; she was committed to the Renaissance. Dad let her come out with me, from when I was old enough to look after her. It was flattering to him in a way, it was stylish. But he didn’t like it: and he was difficult. He wouldn’t let us use his credit for transport. All we could afford on my pocket money was the standard lev, and of course she was harassed. I couldn’t protect her. Things like that. Then there was one particular incident with my Dad, and Helen stopped coming out. But Thérèse still came, and…she started telling us that something was going on, in the secret world of the young ladies. Girls were disappearing from that little scene: the closed cars, the shopping trips, the infantile parties, the telecalls. Daughters of rich, influential people, treasured property. What could have happened to them? Agathe heard the same story in her poor ward, from a different angle. I realized that though she hadn’t totally vanished, Helen was one of the disappeared. Then I found out what Dad was doing: what he’d let his friends do to her.”

He broke off. “You think I should have called the police?” he demanded. “What could our police do, suppose they wanted to do anything, about an inner-circle Traditionalist conspiracy? You think I should have told the Expedition Management? It was Helen, as well as my father.”

Catherine shook her head. “Don’t bother about all that. Just tell me.”

Misha controlled himself, his golden eyes cast down (typical Misha, dripping insincerity). “Okay. There’s a conspiracy. It involves important people using Traditionalist young ladies—vulgarly known as sextoys—as what you call ‘breeding ground,’ I think, for Aleutian-style proliferating weapons. As far as we know Helen’s the only one of them still alive. Except for one other, but she’s out of our reach. Helen’s the only person who knows how the strike’s going to be carried out. But she doesn’t leave Arden any more, not by any means. She stays in her room.”

“You took me to L’Airial so I could talk to her. Had she agreed to that meeting? Then why didn’t it happen?”

“She kept changing her mind,” he said. “She’s dying, Catherine. Maybe she’s not thinking very clearly.” He tugged a small dark vial out of his jeans pocket. “She gave me this, last night. I would have told you, but you rushed away this morning. She used to build games, I don’t know if you knew that. She’s an
auteur.
I don’t do games myself, but she taught me all I know about virtual art. She won’t talk to you, or to anyone now, because she can’t, because it’s too late. I don’t think I’ll ever see her again, in the real. We’re to go into this. This is where she’s hidden the truth—”

He looked over Catherine’s shoulder. “Here they are.”

She turned. Rajath, Mâtho, and Joset were behind her. Lydie, Imran, and Thérèse Khan had come into the little room. Lydie struggling out of the chador. They all looked at Misha, and he nodded.

“We’re sorry,” said Lydie to Catherine. She spread her hands, shrugged her muscular little shoulders. “We didn’t know what to do. We were scared that if we managed to tell someone like the City Manager, he’d have all the humans in the department killed, or something. But we thought you’d help us.”

Thérèse opened her hood. “I warned you against my mother.” Her hands were shaking. “She isn’t in the plot, but she knows about it. They wouldn’t let her any deeper in because she wouldn’t let them infect me. A living young lady is the only stake that gets you into their game. But Mama loves me, in a kind of a way. She
does,”
insisted Thérèse. “After you’d been to see us, she said some things that scared me. You’re Lord Maitri’s ward, maybe she wouldn’t have dared. But people disappear in Youro: sometimes no one ever finds out why. Your car could have vanished on its way to our house, something like that.”

“We shouldn’t talk anymore, out here,” said Joset. “Helen gave us a game because games-rooms are the best for privacy. We’ve booked a slot. Let’s go.”

Rajath picked up Misha’s glass from the floor and drained it. Mâtho went to Catherine, ducking his head self-consciously. “Very sorry about your father.” He blushed. “Your guardian. We could do a piece on the funerary respects—?”

“Mâtho!”
they all groaned. Imran hauled him away.

iii

In the antechamber Thérèse stripped off her chador and Catherine her robe. Misha administered the eyedrops, they passed through the gate. Catherine fell through infinite space.

She was standing in a cloakroom. No particular cloakroom, any one of such rooms, transition places. There was a faint dead smell of human sweat, urine, feet, digestive gases: the ever-present taint she had learned to ignore. All the décor, the details that were outside her immediate focus, were unplaceably familiar—a dreamlike effect that Catherine knew, where the player’s own memories weaken the game-world instead of reinforcing the illusion. It was called bleeding, a sign of amateur work. But the wall in front of her appeared solid. It had a
trompe l’oeil
effect of aged greenish-blue paintwork: a blister here and there, a network of tiny cracks. On a bar at about head height—the same antiqued finish—a row of cloaks hung on pegs. Above the bar was a message, layered onto the paintwork in neat, fluorescent green capitals: WEAR ME. The gamers looked at each other. Lydie shrugged, took down a cloak and put it on. “I don’t expect to have to do this in a
game,”
she grumbled. The hood fell over her face, hiding her eyes. Each of them took down cloaks and put them on. They were all of the same design, not the head to foot bag-shape of the chador but the classic domino of old Europe. Chins and mouths and hidden eyes: Catherine saw her friends disguised, not made naked, by concealment. Everyone’s cloak fitted exactly, though they’d seemed identical in length and volume on the pegs. Joset wore purple, Misha black, Thérèse had chosen dark gold. Catherine’s cloak was burgundy red velvet. She looked round for a clue as to what they should do next, and in that moment she lost the others.

There was only one door. It stood open. A figure was walking away from her—Joset or Misha, depthless black or the rich indigo of a moonless night.

She followed, into Old Earth. She was in a large, bright room. It was windowless and felt as if it was underground; but well lit by piped daylight. It was a kitchen. Down the center ran a long, massive table. The blond wood had the bloom of hundreds of years of scrubbing and scouring. Varnished dressers were set around the walls, laden with plates and dishes, salvers and tureens. The kitchen staff, unmoved by the antique splendor of their surroundings, were at work preparing a meal for a small army, using the most practical and up-to-date hybrid appliances. They wore dark green overalls, mostly labeled female. Catherine and her guide had just stepped through a wall, but none of the people busy at their tasks took any notice. She followed the domino shape (cut from black void or night sky) across the kitchen and into a walk-in closet, where cleaning machines were humbly waiting to be needed. At the far end there was a hatch so low that she had to bend double. Then up a winding narrow stairway, and through another door. Now they were in a different part of the house. They were above ground; there was carpet on the floor and decoration on the walls.