Revenger 9780575090569
Read Revenger 9780575090569 Online
Authors: Alastair Reynolds
Adrana had always hated Doctor Morcenx. He’d been the family physician since our parents landed on Mazarile, before we were born. He’d been there as Adrana and I grew up, and he’d been there when the plague took our mother. The plague was what turned my father against men like Captain Rackamore, because he reckoned they were meddling in things that were better off being locked up, but as far as I know no one ever proved the plague came out of a bauble.
None of that stopped him from being talked into a stupid investment in exactly the thing he disapproved of.
He was like that: easily persuaded against his own judgement. And it came to a head in the Hall of History one Forgeday evening in spring 1799. Father had gone to see what had come of his investment, and because he wanted to make a good showing among all the monied bigwigs in the Mazarile chamber of commerce, he’d brought both of us along for the evening. We were meant to be on our best behaviour. Prim and proper educated young ladies.
Adrana wasn’t having any of it.
‘Doctor Morcenx,’ called Father, noticing the family phys
ician a few tables away. ‘Come and join us. It’s been too long since you’ve seen Adrana and Arafura. Look how much they’ve grown.’
Doctor Morcenx limped over. He was a
pepperpot-
shaped man who always wore black, and too many layers of it. ‘Always a pleasure, Mr Ness,’ he said, in his gruff, greasy voice, touching a hand to his forehead. Then he started humming a little tune. Doctor Morcenx was always humming little tunes, as if his own thoughts needed blacking out, the way one skull can smother the signal from another. ‘Your daughters are a credit to you,’ he said, buttering his words until they were soggy. ‘They must be a great consolation, given the disappointments of Captain Lar’s expedition. Your investment wasn’t too burdensome, I presume?’
‘We’ll weather it,’ Father said, putting a brave face on things.
‘You always do, Mister Ness, and it’s to your credit. As are your daughters. Fine specimens, both. It’s been my pleasure and my privilege to have seen them through their development.’ He carried on with the humming, and started digging his short, fat fingers into his pocket. ‘Would you like a . . .’
‘We’re a bit old for sweets now,’ Adrana said. ‘I’m eighteen and Fura’s not far off it.’
‘It’s all right,’ I said, allowing the doctor to take out his bag of sweets and pop a crystallised ginger into my palm.
‘I’ve been meaning to visit,’ Doctor Morcenx said to our father. ‘I wanted to talk to you about something that might be of interest . . . especially in Arafura’s case. These childhood years are so precious . . .’
‘She’s not a child,’ Adrana said. ‘And I know what you’ve got in mind. It’s that drug, isn’t it? The one that slows things down? Well, you can—’
‘There’s no need for that tone,’ Father said, cutting across her. ‘The doctor’s been very good to you and Fura, over the years.’
‘Oh yes,’ Adrana said. ‘And not that there’s ever been anything odd about him skulking around the house like he lives there. It’s no good now, Doctor Moonface.’ She had a way of slipping that out as if it was his actual name, so casually that sometimes you barely noticed it at all. ‘I’m old enough to know better, and Fura soon will be.’
‘Apologise to the doctor right now,’ Father said.
‘I won’t,’ Adrana answered. ‘You can’t make me, just as you can’t make me enjoy this stupid evening with the stupid captain and all your stupid friends, trying to pretend they haven’t blown half their fortunes.’
‘I can have Paladin take you home,’ Father said in a warning tone.
Our old red robot swivelled its glass dome of a head, trying to follow the conversation. Lights flashed on and off in the dome. Paladin often got confused when its name was mentioned, unless it was given simple, direct orders.
‘I’ll be in touch,’ Doctor Morcenx said, tucking his sweets back into his pocket.
‘I’m sorry for my daughter’s rudeness,’ Father said.
‘Think nothing of it, Mr Ness. The emotional lability of the young is nothing new to me.’
We watched him turn and waddle back to his table. He had a roll of flesh on the back of his neck like an inflated tube. He was still humming.
‘There was no call for that,’ Father said. ‘I’ve never been so—’
‘Humiliated?’ Adrana finished for him. ‘You know what the real humiliation is? Being a Ness, that’s what. Grovelling our way up the Mazarile social ladder, trying to pretend we’re something we’re not.’
In a way, I was glad when a drunkard started shouting obscenities from the audience. Up on the podium, Captain Malang Lar kept talking, and then someone from the chamber of commerce stood up and tried to shout down the drunk man, but by then it was too late. Constables in pillbox hats and flashing blue epaulettes came bursting through the audience from the back of the room and started wrestling the drunkard away from the proceedings. But he was determined to put up a fight, brawling with the constables and staggering into a table, sending it toppling.
Paladin swivelled around. ‘Disturbance detected,’ it kept saying. ‘Disturbance detected.’
Father started rolling up his sleeves. ‘I suppose I’d better . . .’ he was saying, making a show of letting everyone know he was at least considering getting involved, even though he was happier behind a desk than wrestling with drunks.
Then we both realised that Adrana had slipped away from the table.
‘Find her!’ Father snapped at Paladin.
The robot swivelled its head and rolled away from the table, picking a path through the brawl. Someone gave Paladin a kick, just for the fun of kicking a sentient machine. Paladin was used to that sort of thing. It wobbled a lot, but managed to stay upright.
‘It should have kept a better eye on her,’ Father said, fuming as he tugged his sleeves back down again.
‘Paladin can’t help it,’ I said. ‘It’s just an old robot trying its best. Look, I’ll go and see if I can find her. They were only letting people in through the north entrance, weren’t they?’
‘No,’ Father said, wiping a hand across a
sweat-
glistened brow. ‘They were using both entrances, and you can bet your sister’s headed for one of them.’
Paladin was still sweeping the room, its dome spinning around, lights flashing agitatedly behind the glass.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘You go back to the cloakroom, where we came in. I’ll go to the south entrance.’
‘Can I trust you to come back?’ Father asked.
‘Of course.’
I meant it, too. I had no intention of disobeying him. I wanted all of us to get back on the tram and ride along Jauncery Road to the house, away from the drunken chaos that had started out as a polite civic function. I wanted to be back in my room on the third floor, next to the parlour with all our books and maps and games.
‘Then be quick about it,’ Father said.
I left the table, skirting around the brawl – which was quietening down now, as more constables arrived – and began to make my way along the length of the Hall of History.
A clammy cold hand closed on my wrist.
‘That sister of yours is a disruptive influence. The sooner she’s out of your life, the better. Shall we look for her together?’
‘I’m all right, Doctor,’ I said, slipping from his grasp as if his fingers were coated in slime. ‘You keep a watch on this room. The robot’s trying to find her, but its vision system isn’t very effective.’
‘You’re a good girl, Arafura. At least one of you’s turning out the right way; a fitting memorial to your mother.’
‘Thank you, Doctor Moon . . . Morcenx.’ The insult had slipped out accidentally, almost as if Adrana was inside me, stirring up mischief. I flashed an awkward smile and broke away from him, knowing that with his limp he could never keep up with me. We had our best dresses and boots on, Adrana and I, but we could hitch up our hems and run in them if we needed to.
The Hall was much longer than it was wide. It needed to be, with so much history to cover. To begin with, before I knew what it was all about, I liked the fact that the Hall of History was pretty, with that long black wall running the height and length of the room, and the coloured bars that were lit up along its length, like irregularly spaced fence posts. It was easy to be impressed by the glowing colours and the writing in them. I was fixated on what was known.
It was years later before I stopped to think about the black intervals between the bars, and what they meant.
Soon I was at the south door. It was open and the warm evening was pushing in from outside. Constables were trying to impose order and stopping people from coming back in. A man was insisting that he needed to get back to the cloakroom where his wife was waiting, and an argument was brewing as they told him to go around the front of the building, which he felt was too much trouble.
A hand closed around mine.
I twisted it away, half expecting to see Doctor Morcenx again. But it was Adrana.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘Now we can have some fun.’
Adrana started dragging me to the door. ‘I’m supposed to take you back to Father,’ I said.
‘Oh, come on, Fura.’ Her eyes were wide with anticipation. I knew she’d had a glass of wine when we came in but there was nothing foggy or reddened about them. ‘We’re a stone’s throw from Neural Alley. I’ve got some quoins. Let’s go and live a little.’
‘I’m not interested in Neural Alley.’
‘How can you know, if you’ve never been there?’
‘And you have?’
But we were through the door now, into the evening, and there was no chance of the constables letting us back in through the south door. I glanced back in time to catch a glimpse of Paladin, still sweeping the room, working its way gradually to the open door.
‘C’mon,’ Adrana said. ‘They won’t blame you. I’m always the one setting a bad example, aren’t I?’
We went down the steps at the entrance, followed a line of lanterns through the museum gardens, then crossed the tram tracks at Jauncery Road. The Dragon Gate was a neon portal before us, with the narrow winding passage of Neural Alley extending beyond it, curling its way south in the general direction of Hadramaw Station. I stared a bit at the Dragon Gate, just as I always stared at flickerboxes and screens when I caught them in the public spaces. It was a burst of brightness and colour like nothing we had at home.
‘You weren’t very nice to Moonface,’ I said. Adrana had a hand around my sleeve and was dragging me towards the Dragon Gate.
‘And you have no idea what a creep he really is. I know what he wants to do to you. They’ve come up with this medicine now. It slows down biological growth, allows adults to stop their children from ever growing up.’
‘Why would anyone want that?’
She looked back at me with an exasperated expression. ‘You’re so naïve, Fura.’
‘And you’re only a bit older than me.’
We ducked through Dragon Gate, into the glow and swelter of Neural Alley. Adrana grinned back at me. ‘We’re in! Look at us, Fura – dressed up to the nines and out on the town! Here.’ And she dug out her purse and passed me a
two-
bar quoin. ‘That’s half of what I’ve got on me, so make it count.’
I stared down at the heavy metal disc of the quoin, not sure what to make of this gift. ‘Thanks,’ I said doubtfully. ‘But I’ve caught up with you, haven’t I? We should go back. You can still say you’ve seen Neural Alley.’
But Adrana was moving forward, confident as if she already knew the place.
‘Watch out for pickpockets and gropers now,’ Adrana said, as if my words counted for nothing. ‘We’ll go all the way along, then come out at Cat Gate.’
‘Then we go home?’
‘Of course.’ She grinned back at me. ‘Where else?’
A fortune teller studied a man’s palm. A barefoot girl with mad eyes and a glow coming from her skin begged on a corner. Two
rheumy-
eyed men slouched past wearing drab brown spacesuits – everything except the helmets, which they held under their arms. Behind the men came someone dressed as a Crawly, shuffling upright on too many limbs, wearing a sash in the colours of the Bank of Hadramaw, with a big
goggle-
eyed mask on their head. Then I saw that it was a real Crawly, not fancy dress, and the alien was with the men in spacesuits.
I stared and stared, until I caught my
slack-
jawed expression in the opposite window.
‘Yes, aliens,’ Adrana said, like it was old news. ‘They come here. It’s close enough to the dock that they can do business, especially those of them in the banking line. Speaking of aliens, aren’t these clothes beautiful?’
I tore myself away from the Crawly as it shuffled past, trying not to stare at the little whiskery appendages that came in and out of its proboscis. Adrana, unimpressed by the alien, was standing at a shopfront. Behind the glass were mannequins done up in glittery dresses and skirts made of tiny shimmering facets. ‘That’s Rattler skin,’ Adrana said. ‘They discard it.
Used
to discard it, anyway. Turns up in baubles, sometimes enough of it to make a dress out of. It’s illegal on some worlds – they don’t want to offend the Rattlers if they ever come back.’
‘I don’t think the Rattlers are coming back,’ I said, remembering the bar in the Hall of History. The Rattlers had come and gone during the Fourth Occupation, about nine million years ago, and nothing had been heard of them since.
‘Probably fake anyway,’ Adrana said, with a knowing sniff, as if she had plenty of experience in this area. ‘C’mon. Don’t want to dawdle, not when there’s so much to see. The next one’s a Limb Broker.’
‘A what?’
She raced ahead of me. ‘You’ll see.’
The window of the next shop was full of hands and arms and legs, stuck on velvet plinths or glass brackets or kept in bubbling vats. Some of them were alive and some of them were artificial, made of metal and motors and circuitry.
‘That’s horrible,’ I said, watching as a tin hand opened and closed its fist in slow motion, like it was catching an invisible ball.
‘You wouldn’t say that if you needed a hand. Out on the ships people are always having accidents. More so in the baubles, when doors close on them or something, and they can’t get out quickly enough. They can buy a new one here, if they need one – metal or flesh, doesn’t matter. They can fix them all on.’ Adrana eyed me with lingering disappointment. ‘Doesn’t take much to make you wilt.’