"You can keep the knife you stole," he said. "I've got this." And he produced the pistol, an intricate fusion of crystal and metal, so delicate that it could have been made by a spider itself.
Tris looked embarrassed.
"See you," he said.
"Will you?" Tris asked.
The man shook his head. "Probably not."
One step became another as Tris had walked her way through half a dozen daydreams and a fistful of memories, most of them making about as much sense in replay as they did the first time round.
The light, meanwhile, remained in the distance and with morning it vanished altogether. Tris wasn't too sure she could maintain her direction without the light to guide her. Equally, staying put meant losing a whole day's walking. So in the end Tris compromised. She walked all morning across grassland that climbed towards distant hills and then, come midday, she stopped, mostly because that way if she'd got the direction wrong she wouldn't have too far to walk back.
As compromises went it was barely adequate.
Making camp took Tris less time than it might have done if she'd been sensible enough to rescue anything useful from the yacht. "Get over it," Tris told herself. She'd had this discussion already and been forced to admit that rescuing more than herself would have been impossible. So she walked slowly around a huge boulder that protruded from the grass like weathered bone until she was sure which way the wind blew and then settled herself on the opposite side.
The third nightfall was less impressive than the second, which mirrored a rule Tris had already identified; new emotions devalued, going from intense through familiar to reach a kind of ghost state where one no longer really noticed them at all.
With darkness came the light and Tris was grateful, because it meant she'd been walking in the right direction after all. And the light might appear to be in the same place but Tris wasn't, because she was closer and that made her happy too.
Straightening her top and hitching up her frayed trousers, Tris set off uphill and walked until her foot hurt and then walked some more. The grass beneath her toes, having become soft, became rough again and began to alternate with heather and thorn. Tris had seen neither in real life. Heliconid lacked soil or open places where unnecessary plants could grow and had no ambassador to the Celestial Throne who could request help from the Library. All of the food in Heliconid came from the boxes or was raised on the levels under strip light.
And just when Tris had got used to tripping over clumps of heather in the dark and feeling wet thorn lash against her hips, the surface over which she walked changed again, becoming hard and warm with the heat it had retained from the recent day.
It was the remains of an ancient road, fifteen paces wide and so long that Tris reached five thousand, five hundred and fifty before she stopped counting, having lost her place enough times to know this figure might not be entirely accurate.
To break the monotony of the road, Tris began to count her paces again and then took a break from that to sing to herself, having become certain she was being followed. When the fifth peek over her shoulder revealed nothing but silvery darkness and a short stretch of black that faded swiftly from her sight, Tris decided not to look round again, though she sang a little louder and stamped her feet that much harder as she walked.
Shoulders loose, arms loose, stay alert. Tris knew how to walk the walk and she'd won more fights on Rip than she'd lost, the last of them against a grown man with a knife.
One thousand, two thousand... Her heels hurt so much the blisters must have burst and then burst again. Hunger ate at her stomach and she was dizzy with exhaustion. As if this wasn't enough, sweat was gathering beneath her latex top and running down the crack in her bottom.
"You're no bowl of rose petals either," said a voice.
Tris stopped. Looking round, she saw nothing but darkness and somewhere ahead the distant light.
"Flames," said the voice. "They're flames."
She looked again, seeing nothing.
"She heard you," a different voice said.
"Of course I did," said Tris.
"Well," said the first voice a moment later. "Now there's a surprise. Maybe she's from the Tsungli Yamen."
"The Bureau of Foreign Affairs? I doubt it. She's probably a thief. We should deal with her."
"I'm not afraid of you," Tris said.
"You should be."
"Well, I'm not."
"She's beyond being afraid," said the first voice. "I'm not sure it's worth my time being here any longer."
"I'm not talking to you anymore," Tris said. She did her thing with one foot in front of the other, and pretty soon she was striding ahead as if nothing had happened. And maybe nothing had because hunger and tiredness can do funny things. Hallucinations were the least of it.
"We should stop her." That was the first voice.
"No," said the second. "I think it's too late."
Tris stamped one foot in front of the other, ten thousand and one, ten thousand and two, ten thousand and three, ten thousand and four...
"It's not your choice," Tris told the blank air. "I'm leaving now." She said this with a certainty she didn't feel.
"Going where?" The voice seemed to come from far behind her.
"To the palace."
"Palace?" said a voice in front.
"She thinks he'll save her. They always do."
Tris grinned. It was a hard grin that bared most of her teeth. "No," she said, "I'm going to kill him."
"Interesting," said the voice in front. "If a little stupid."
"Tell me something," Tris said. "Do you two actually exist?"
There was a silence.
"You know," a voice said finally, "you're not really meant to be asking us questions."
"Well, I am," Tris said crossly. "So the least you can do is answer them."
"Oh, we're real enough," said the other voice, sounding amused. And behind her the night moved slightly, coming closer. Only it wasn't night, merely something that swallowed all light and left an improbable afterburn on the surface of the air.
"Come back," said the voice. "We're not finished yet."
CHAPTER 38
Marrakech, Summer 1977 [Then]
The steps down were dark with stains and a water pipe lay snake-like along one edge of the stairs. At the top the door had been old-fashioned, the kind which had panels and a knob that turned, although someone had nailed sound insulation to both sides of the door and painted the surfaces with cheap white paint.
At the bottom was another door. Only this one had no handle. Merely a fat bolt riveted crudely to the outside. At shoulder height on the wall next to the door someone had wired a bank of switches, each labelled in red plastic strip.
"Soldering iron," said one. "Saw," said another. "Water pump." None of them was on.
"You're in trouble," Major Abbas said, as if there was any chance Moz had missed this point. "And I'm not sure I can protect you."
Moz stared at the Major, seeing a face as dark and crumpled as walnut membrane. It had never occurred to Moz that anyone might protect him or that there could be something from which he might need serious protection.
"You understand me?"
Moz shook his head and Major Abbas sighed.
"There was an explosion," he began. "Last Wednesday..."
That, at least, Moz understood.
The Polisario had bombed an upstairs office on Boulevard Abdussallam. It had been on the radio, first as a denial, then as a qualified maybe and finally, seventy-six hours later, when gas explosions, failed foundations and acts of God had been discounted, as a guaranteed hundred per cent terrorist outrage. Two French lawyers had died and Paris was demanding action.