“Bozzie?” Kubo Flammarion was struggling to make an intelligible record of the conversation, but the last exchange was too much. “Find him in the Garry-what’s?”
“Bozzie. The Duke of Bosny. Also Viscount Roosevelt, Count Mellon, Baron Rockwell, and the Earl of Potomac.” Tatty’s face said what she thought of all those titles. “Upstart houses, every one. But I’ll say this for him, he prefers to be called plain Bosny, or just Bozzie, He hasn’t lived in Bosny City for years, though he claims to have been born there. He certainly has consanguinity with every major royal line in the Northeast, and he’s a big mover and shaker down in the Gallimaufries — the basement warrens” (She had seen Flammarion’s mouth starting to open again) ” — two hundred levels below where we are now.
Tatty glanced at King Bester. “More your stamping-grounds than mine. Think we might get him today?”
“You’ll have to hurry. Never find Bozzie there after dark — he’ll be topside with his Scavvies, scouting the surface.”
Luther Brachis was looking at his watch. “Then we’re too late. It’s already dark up on the surface.”
But Tatty was shaking her head. “It’s dark now where you landed, in Africa, but we came a long way west through the Links. We picked up six hours. Local time is only two in the afternoon.”
“Sorry.” Brachis sounded annoyed — with himself. “I’ll keep my mouth shut until I know what I’m talking about.”
“You’re not so far wrong as you think,” replied Tatty. “We’re in the northern hemisphere, and it’s winter. It gets dark early — something else you’re not used to.” She paused for a moment, calculating. “I think we can do it — just. Provided that we take the fastest routes. Hold onto your hats, and let’s go.”
Tatty lived on the sixtieth under-level. It was prime real estate, minutes from the surface and within easy reach of a Link entry point. But because it was prime, it by design had no direct drop connection with the deeper and poorer levels of the Gallimaufries. To descend, the group had to travel far north, then double back. Led by Tatty, they travelled half a continent horizontally in order to descend five thousand meters vertically. They did it in thirty minutes. For the off-Earth visitors it was a confused race along networks of high-speed slideways, a plunge along vertiginous corkscrews of spiraling ramps, and finally a series of long dives through the black depths of vertical drop-shafts.
“First time I’ve felt comfortable since I got here,” said Flammarion, savoring the long moments of free-fall.
The last drop was a long one, down a curving chute that expelled them into a vaulted chamber, hundreds of meters across. The smoothed rocky roof was studded with powerful sun-simulators that lit the whole enclosure. The chamber’s volume was enormous, and crammed full. The newcomers were surrounded by a baffling jumble of stalls, corridors, partitions, tents, and guy-ropes. And development was not confined to two dimensions. Slender support columns ran from floor to roof at twenty meter intervals. Their steel pylons supported shish kebabs of ramshackle multi-level platforms, many of them open-sided, with rope ladders hanging down to the ground beneath.
The floor of the chamber was not rock, but rich black earth. Bright-blossomed flowers thrived everywhere, growing profusely along the zigzagging walkways and festooning every wall and column.
“Bozzie’s imperial court,” said Tatty. “As you can see, he’s a flower buff. Stick close to the King, now. If you get lost down here I don’t know if you’d ever find your own way back.”
The human population of the Gallimaufries was packed as densely as the plant life, and no less colorful. Gaudy jackets of saffron, purple and vermillion were favored, trimmed with sequins and piped with blue, silver, and gold. The clothes were all dirty, and the smell — to a spacer’s nose — appalling. King Bester s costume, garish and grubby-seeming when they had first seen it, now appeared clean, modest, and conservative.
The first impression was of continuous noise and clashing color. And then the submerged second element of the Gallimaufries slowly emerged, in quiet counterpoint to the vivid brawl. Mingled in with the eye-catching bright clothes and bustling movement, and almost invisible among them, were the others. Like pale lilies hidden among orchids, people sat in small groups on benches, or walked slowly through the alleys. Their clothes were simple, monochrome tunics of white or grey. They did not seem to speak, even to each other.
“Commoners,” said Tatty. She had followed Luther Brachis’ look, to a group of three women dressed in plain ivory tunics. “The raw material for your Pursuit Teams, if you can make the deal. Bozzie has contract rights over almost everyone here in grey or white, like those women.”
“But they get nothing out of it? They’ll never agree to go.”
“They can’t say no. Bozzie owns their contracts. Anyway, some of them might be glad to get out of here, no matter how bad your deal sounds. Take a look. I’ll go find Bozzie and bring him back to you.”
She ducked under a guy rope, rounded a tent, and headed for the edge of the chamber. Her height allowed them to follow her progress for the first thirty meters, then she was lost in the tangle of people and buildings.
Brachis turned to Esro Mondrian.
“Want to change your mind about that wager? If not, I’m ready to go ahead with it.”
“I don’t know. It depends if I can find someone suitable here.”
“Hey, you’re weaseling out. Come off it, Esro. You know you’ll never find someone suitable, not when nothing good has come out from Earth in three hundred years. They’re all losers, every one of them too decadent and spineless to do anything right. You didn’t talk about ‘someone suitable’ before — you said you could train anyone to be acceptable as a Pursuit Team member.”
“I can. I’ll make the bet. Just name the terms.”
Even though Brachis had been pushing Mondrian again, he was surprised by the rapid acceptance. But he was too experienced to let it show.
“All right, then. Let’s keep it simple. You select any pair of candidates that you like. You do it today, and you do it down here. You train them any way you want to. In a reasonable time — say, six months? — you get them accepted as Pursuit Team members. You do it, you win. You fail to do it, for anything short of candidate death, you lose. Simple enough?”
“Simple enough.” Mondrian paused. “What about stakes?”
“I’ll stake my personnel monitoring system against yours. Don’t pretend you haven’t got one. You’ve been tracking my people for years, same as I’ve been tracking yours.”
“Right. Accepted. In front of witnesses.” Mondrian turned to Bester and Kubo Flammarion. “I will select two people. Here, today. I will train them. When their training is complete, they will be accepted — ”
“Both be accepted. One won’t do.”
“ — both be accepted as Pursuit Team members. Commander Brachis has my hand on it.”
Brachis shook Mondrian’s hand for only a split-second, then turned to examine the bustling court around him. He made a big point of holding his nose. “There they are. Take your pick. White or grey, Princess Tatiana said, and I’m glad you’ll be doing the training, not me — I couldn’t stand the smell.”
The courtiers were all grubby energy and extravagance. By contrast, the commoners were listless and subdued. A team of three was passing Brachis as he spoke, leading an odd-looking beast on a steel chain. Its muzzle was blunt and its forehead low, but the animal stared around with sparkling hazel eyes, and showed more interest in the scene than its keepers did. It paused by Flammarion and sniffed at him inquiringly.