Or had there been another purpose?
‘Second thoughts?’
Sylveste was jolted suddenly from his contemplation.
‘You still don’t think this is a good idea, do you?’
He turned around from the balustrade which looked across the city.
‘It’s a little late to voice my objections, I think.’
‘On your wedding day?’ Girardieau smiled. ‘Well, you’re not home and dry yet, Dan. You could always back out.’
‘How would you take that?’
‘Very badly indeed, I suspect.’
Girardieau was dressed in starched city finery, cheeks lightly rouged for the attendant swarms of float-cams. He took Sylveste by the forearm and led him away from the edge.
‘How long have we been friends, Dan?’
‘I wouldn’t exactly call it friendship; more a kind of mutual parasitism.’
‘Oh come on,’ Girardieau said, looking disappointed. ‘Have I made your life any more of a misery these last twenty years than was strictly necessary? Do you think I took any great pleasure in locking you away?’
‘Let’s say you approached the task with no little enthusiasm.’
‘Only because I had your best interests at heart.’ They stepped off the balcony into one of the low tunnels which threaded the black shell around the city. Cushioned flooring absorbed their footsteps. ‘Besides,’ Girardieau continued, ‘if it wasn’t transparently obvious, Dan, there was something of a feeding frenzy at the time. If I hadn’t put you in custody, some mob would eventually have taken out their anger on you.’
Sylveste listened without speaking. He knew much of what Girardieau said was true on a theoretical level, but that there was no guarantee that it reflected the man’s actual motives at the time.
‘The political situation at the time was much simpler. Back then we didn’t have True Path making trouble.’ They reached an elevator shaft and entered the carriage, its interior antiseptically clean and new. Prints hung on the wall, showing various Resurgam vistas before and after the Inundationist transformations. There was even one of Mantell. The mesa in which the research outpost was embedded was draped in foliage, a waterfall running off the top, blue, cloud-streaked skies beyond it. In Cuvier, there was a whole sub-industry devoted to creating images and simulations of the future Resurgam, ranging from water-colour artists to skilled sensorium designers.
‘And on the other hand,’ Girardieau said, ‘there are radical scientific elements coming out of the woodwork. Only last week, one of True Path’s representatives was shot dead in Mantell, and believe me, it wasn’t one of our agents who did it.’
Sylveste felt the carriage begin to convey them down, towards the city level.
‘What are you saying?’
‘I’m saying that with fanatics on both sides, you and I are beginning to look like distinct moderates. Depressing thought, isn’t it?’
‘Out-radicalised on both fronts, you mean.’
‘Something like that.’
They emerged through the black, graven wall of the city-shell into a small crowd of media types who were running through last-minute preparations for the event. Reporters wore buff-coloured float-cam glasses, choreographing the cams which hovered around them like drab party balloons. One of Janequin’s genetically engineered peacocks was pecking around the group, its tail hissing behind it. Two security officers stepped forwards garbed in black with gold Inundationist sigils on their shoulders, surrounded by flocks of deliberately threatening entoptics. Servitors loitered behind them. They ran full-spectrum ident scans on Sylveste and Girardieau, then motioned them to a small temporary structure which had been placed near a nestlike froth of Amarantin dwellings.
The inside was almost bare, apart from a table and two skeletal chairs. There was a bottle of Amerikano red wine on the table, next to a pair of wine goblets, engraved with frosted-glass landscapes.
‘Sit down,’ Girardieau said. He swaggered around the table and decanted measures of wine into both glasses. ‘I don’t know why you’re so damned nervous. It isn’t as if this is your first time.’
‘My fourth, actually.’
‘All Stoner ceremonies?’
Sylveste nodded. He thought of the first two: small-scale affairs, to minor-league Stoner women, the faces of whom he could almost not separate in his memory. Both had withered under the glare of publicity that the family name attracted. By contrast, his marriage to Alicia — his last wife — had been sculpted as a publicity move from the onset. It had focused attention on the upcoming Resurgam expedition, giving it the final monetary push it needed. The fact that they had been in love had been almost inconsequential, merely a happy addendum to the existing arrangement.
‘That’s a lot of baggage to be carrying around in your head now,’ Girardieau said. ‘Don’t you ever wish you could be rid of the past each time?’
‘You find the ceremony unusual.’
‘Perhaps I do.’ Girardieau wiped a red smear of wine from his lips. ‘I was never part of Stoner culture, you see.’
‘You came with us from Yellowstone.’
‘Yes, but I wasn’t born there. My family were from Grand Teton. I only arrived on Yellowstone seven years before the Resurgam expedition departed. Not really enough time to become culturally adapted to Stoner tradition. My daughter, on the other hand… well, Pascale’s never known anything but Stoner society. Or at least the version of it we imported when we came here.’ He lowered his voice. ‘You must have the vial with you now, I suppose. May I see it?’
‘I could hardly refuse you.’
Sylveste reached in his pocket and removed the little glass cylinder he had been carrying with him all day. He passed it to Girardieau, who nervously tinkered with it, tipping it this way and that. He watched the bubbles within, slipping to and fro as if in a spirit level. Something darker hung within the fluid, fibrous and tendrilled.
He placed the vial down; it made a delicate glassy chime as it settled on the tabletop. Girardieau studied it with barely masked horror.
‘Was it painful?’
‘Of course not. We’re not sadists, you know.’ Sylveste smiled, secretly enjoying Girardieau’s discomfort. ‘Would you rather we exchanged camels, perhaps?’
‘Put it away.’
Sylveste slipped the vial back into his pocket. ‘Now tell me who’s the nervous one, Nils.’
Girardieau poured himself another measure of wine. ‘Sorry. Security are edgy as hell. Don’t know what’s got them so bothered, but it’s rubbing off on me, I suppose.’
‘I didn’t notice anything.’
‘You wouldn’t.’ Girardieau shrugged; a bellows-like movement that began somewhere below his abdomen. ‘They claim everything’s normal, but after twenty years I read them better than they imagine.’
‘I wouldn’t worry. Your police are very efficient people.’
Girardieau shook his head briefly, as if he had taken a bite from a particularly sour lemon. ‘I don’t expect the air between us to ever be completely cleared, Dan. But you could at least give me the benefit of the doubt.’ He nodded towards the open door. ‘Didn’t I give you complete access to this place?’