They had been stuck there for the better part of a month, chasing after lines of enquiry that led nowhere. Demonstrations and riots stirred up by Black Lotus had made the city streets too dangerous to venture onto. Boredom and alcohol had combined with inevitable effect.
He recalled in vivid detail the curve of her small, high breasts beneath the thin blouse she wore that evening, the curve of her spine when she leaned against the railing beside him. Falling into bed had seemed the obvious thing to do on such a long and lonely night, but neither of them had anticipated how quickly and how deeply their feelings for each other would develop. He wanted to keep her at a safe distance from anything that involved Cripps, yet at the same time, he knew there was no one he could trust more than Eleanor.
‘I had a visitor yesterday evening,’ he told her. ‘Bailey Cripps. He spent the whole time quizzing me about my loyalties.’
Her eyes became round and she stepped back a little. ‘Bailey Cripps? Visited you where, here?’
‘He turned up in my home.’
She had a look in her eyes like she wasn’t quite sure she could believe him.
‘Listen, I swear on Cheng’s teeth he was there,’ Luc insisted.
‘He doesn’t strike me as the type to make impromptu house calls.’
‘There was nothing impromptu about it. He data-ghosted into my apartment without any warning. I guess Council privileges extend to home security overrides.’
‘He questioned your loyalties?’ Her eyes darted to the side and then back again, and he guessed what she was about to ask. ‘Are you sure it was really him?’
‘I checked. It was him, all right. He seemed to think I couldn’t be trusted because I’m from Benares. He also mentioned something about an investigation, but I have no idea what investigation he was talking about.’
Her expression became more alarmed. ‘Investigation? Into what? Aeschere?’
‘No, he seemed to mean something else, but he didn’t seem interested in telling me precisely what.’
‘We need to tell someone about this.’
He shook his head. ‘No.’
She shook her head in disbelief. ‘For God’s sake, why not?’
‘This is Bailey Cripps we’re talking about. There has to be a reason he approached me directly, instead of going through Lethe or Hetaera. If I tell them or anyone else, I might not get to find out what that reason is.’
She sighed, tilting her head back to stare up at the Palace’s illuminated underside. ‘I don’t like this,’ she said, bringing her gaze back down. ‘You should tell someone.’
‘I’m telling you, aren’t I?’
She shook her head in exasperation. ‘Don’t you think you’ve been through enough already?’
‘Look, maybe Cripps came to me in the way he did because he knows something about Black Lotus. Besides . . . he’s one of the Eighty-Five. What they want, they get.’
‘There are some members of the Council,’ she said, speaking to him as if he were dim-witted, ‘you don’t want to get tangled up with.’ Her eyes slid to one side, and he followed the direction of her gaze until he alighted on Garda, still working the crowd.
‘I just want to find out what Cripps wants. Then I’ll go talk to Lethe.’
He could sense the anger brewing behind her thinned lips. ‘Is that a promise?’
He nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘Good,’ she replied, ‘because this is starting to feel like Aeschere all over again.’
Garda mounted a stage set up at the centre of the plaza and began to speak, while mechants from half a dozen different news agencies buzzed through the air, jostling for the best vantage point.
Luc’s attention soon drifted back to the Palace floating overhead. Something about the sight of all those millions of tons of metal floating unsupported in the air always felt like a test of one’s faith in technology. He wondered, not for the first time, just how many seconds he’d have left to live should the AG pods holding it in place suddenly fail to function.
Glancing at Eleanor beside him, he saw she had an expression like she’d swallowed something nasty. She hadn’t taken the news about Cripps well. But during his recovery, left with little to do but think, it had come to Luc that so much of his life had been devoted to finding Antonov that there hadn’t been room left for much else. He’d sometimes wondered what kind of life he might have led if the Battle of Sunderland hadn’t brought everything to a crashing halt at such a young age.
Maybe now was the time to find out. And as much as he hated to admit it even to himself, Cripps’ vague allusion to an unspecified investigation had awoken within him a sense of purpose he had not felt since his departure for Aeschere.
Garda’s speech finally came to an end, and Luc realized he hadn’t taken in a single word. Two massive doors in the Palace’s underside, positioned directly above the plaza, slowly swung apart on cue. All around the park, fliers thrummed into life while low, sonorous music flowed out of hidden speakers.
The interior of a docking bay became visible beyond the doors. Dozens of mechants rose towards it, as if the Palace were in actuality a moon, the mechants drawn upwards by the tug of its gravity.
‘This is it,’ said Eleanor, taking his arm and flashing him a smile that looked only half-genuine.
A mechant approached and asked them to follow it. They trailed after it towards a sleek-looking craft onto which at least a dozen other people were already filing.
They boarded and took their seats, Eleanor taking his hand and holding it tightly.
‘Nervous?’ she asked.
‘A little,’ he admitted. He wondered if Cripps would be present during the ceremony. He leaned back, half-listening to the people chattering around them as the flier waited for clearance. Most of them were ordinary citizens, on their way to be granted privileges and rewards for services rendered. It was all part of the Temur Council’s unceasing public relations campaign designed to remind people how good life was under Father Cheng.
The upper part of the hull was transparent, and Luc watched as other fliers scattered around the plaza took off, one after the other, rising straight up and disappearing into the blaze of the docking bay’s lights. Then, finally, they were on their way, landing inside the Palace after a trip that lasted barely a minute.
Once they disembarked, more mechants, decorated in the gold and blue livery of the Temur Council, took care of guiding the flier’s passengers towards an auditorium located on the Palace’s lowest tier. One of the mechants flew towards Luc and Eleanor, coming to a halt immediately before them and bringing them to a startled halt.
‘Mr Gabion,’ said the mechant in a smooth contralto. ‘If you would follow me, please.’
Luc saw the curious glances of the other passengers as they passed by. He felt strangely embarrassed, as if he’d been caught gatecrashing.
‘Why?’
‘It concerns a matter of the utmost seriousness,’ the mechant informed him. ‘One that requires your absolute discretion.’
‘Required by whom?’ asked Eleanor.
‘I am not at liberty to say, but the request comes from within the Temur Council.’
‘Then we’ll both come,’ said Eleanor.
The mechant’s AG fields buzzed quietly for a moment before it answered. ‘I’m afraid this is a matter for Mr Gabion only, Miss Jaq. Director Lethe has been informed of your necessary absence from the ceremony. Mr Gabion, please follow me.’
Eleanor opened and closed her mouth, then stared at Luc with a concerned expression.
‘I don’t like it,’ she finally said in a low voice. ‘Why now, of all times?’
‘I’ll be fine,’ he said, reaching out to squeeze her arm.
She tried to force a smile, but the strain was clear on her face.
He nodded to the mechant and it led the way, gliding towards an AG platform at the far end of the bay. The platform began to accelerate upwards as soon as he stepped onto it, the mechant rising at the same rate in order to keep even with him. He glanced down once to see Eleanor looking back up at him, and tried to ignore the deep unease lurking at the back of his thoughts.
The platform kept rising, and Luc realized with a shock it was going all the way to the top, to the Hall of Gates. He made a point of not stepping too close to the edge of the platform. Its AG fields would prevent him from falling off, but he had little desire to see just how far he had risen.
‘The matter for which your presence has been requested rates a C category under the Security review of 285 P.A.,’ said the mechant, turning towards him as the platform began to decelerate. ‘You may not disclose the nature, location or any other pertinent aspect of your final destination to anyone with a less than C-category security rating, under penalty of the permanent loss of all granted privileges, and possible detention or permanent discorporation at the pleasure of a court assembled from select members of the Temur Council. The same penalties also apply to anyone with whom you share this information, and anyone amongst their immediate family, social or work groups suspected of coming into possession of this information.’
Luc nodded dumbly, thinking: a C-level security rating. There weren’t many that were higher.
‘Please acknowledge, before we reach our destination, that you understand and accept these terms,’ the mechant finished.
‘I don’t have the rank for that level of security rating,’ said Luc. ‘I’m not sure I’ve even met anyone who does.’ Outside of members of the Council, anyway.
‘You have been granted a temporary C-rating security clearance,’ the mechant replied. ‘Do you agree to the stated terms?’
Luc stared at the machine. ‘I do.’
The platform passed through a circular opening in the atrium’s ceiling before finally coming to a halt at the centre of a low-ceilinged circular hall. Luc saw more than a dozen transfer gates spaced equidistant from each other set into the walls: private transfer gates, each one leading to a major Tian Di colony and reserved for the sole use of members of the Temur Council. One other gate led to Vanaheim.
The mechant moved towards the Vanaheim gate. Luc hesitated once he realized where it was leading him.
‘I just want to be clear on this,’ he called after the machine. ‘I’ve been requested to travel to Vanaheim?’
‘Yes,’ the mechant confirmed, pausing briefly before gliding onwards and through the gate. Luc followed, feeling increasingly out of his depth.
He felt some of his weight fall away when he stepped through a pressure-field on the far side of the gate. Vanaheim’s gravity was almost a fifth less than that of Temur.
He had never been to Vanaheim before; few outside of the Temur Council ever had. The air felt dense, almost soupy, and had a curiously honeyed scent to it. He glanced back through the gate to the interior of the White Palace, thinking of his home somewhere on the far side, so very close and yet so very far away. Then he turned around to regard the concourse on which he now found himself, and the greenish-blue sky visible through a curved glass ceiling several metres overhead.
There was no sign of anyone else.
The complex of which the concourse was part stood on raised ground on one slope of a river valley that was home to Liebenau, the single largest settlement on the entire planet. Luc saw a Gothic mansion at the centre of a vast, rolling estate, bordering what appeared to be an ancient Hindu temple; there were other buildings of varying and clashing architectural styles, most drawn from old Earth, although a cluster of grey-and-brown, utilitarian-looking structures were clearly inspired by post-Abandonment biome architecture. A few crystalline towers, not so different from those found on Temur and the capitals of other Tian Di colonies, rose towards the sky like upright spears.
Most of these were the homes of Cheng’s inner circle, the Eighty-Five; they all orbited a single, vast complex of ancient-looking buildings, which were in turn surrounded by a high, rectangular wall topped at each corner by pagoda-style roofs. A moat surrounded this wall. Extensive gardens helped to further separate and distinguish the Red Palace – as it was known – from the rest of the settlement. It had been modelled, he vaguely recalled, on a palace built on Earth many centuries before the Abandonment.
The mechant moved ahead of him and towards a single flier parked just beyond an exit. A door in the craft’s side swung open as they approached.
‘Now we’re here,’ he called after the mechant, ‘would you mind at least giving me some idea what the hell this is about?’
‘You are required,’ the mechant informed him, coming to a halt next to the flier, ‘to assist in the investigation of a murder.’