i’m going to put you under, Mr Clavain. While you’re unconscious I’ll run some neurological tests, just to verify that you really are a Conjoiner. I won’t wake you until we’ve arrived at our destination.‘
‘There’s no need to do that.’
‘Ah, but there is. My boss is very protective of his secrets. He’ll want to decide for himself what you get to know.’ Zebra leaned over him. ‘I can get this into your neck, I think, without getting you out of that suit.’
Clavain saw that there was no point in arguing. He closed his eyes and felt the cold tip of the hypodermic prick his skin. Zebra was good, no doubt about that. He felt a second flush of cold as the drug hit his bloodstream.
‘What does your boss want with me?’ he asked.
I don’t think he really knows yet,‘ Zebra said. ’He’s just curious. You can’t blame him for that, can you?‘
Clavain had already willed his implants to neutralise whatever agent Zebra had injected into him. There might be a slight loss of clarity as the medichines filtered his blood — he might even lapse into brief unconsciousness — but it would not last. Conjoiner medichines were good against any…
He was sitting upright in an elegant chair fashioned from scrolls of rough black iron. The chair was anchored to something tremendously solid and ancient. He was on planetary ground, no longer in Zebra’s ship. The blue-grey marble beneath the chair was fabulously veined, streaked and whorled like the gas flows in some impossibly gaudy interstellar nebula.
‘Good afternoon, Mr Clavain. How are you feeling now?’
It was not Zebra’s voice this time. Footsteps padded across the marble without haste. Clavain looked up, taking in more of his surroundings.
He had been brought to what appeared to be an immense conservatory or greenhouse. Between pillars of veined black marble were finely mullioned windows that reached tens of metres high before curving over to intersect above him. Trellised sheets climbed nearly to the apex of the structure, tangled with vivid green vines. Between the trellises were many large pots or banks of earth that held too many kinds of plant for Clavain to identify, beyond a few orange trees and what he thought was some kind of eucalyptus. Something like a willow loomed over his seat, its dangling vegetation forming a fine green curtain that effectively blocked his vision in a number of directions. Ladders and spiral staircases provided access to aerial walkways spanning and encircling the conservatory. Somewhere, out of Clavain’s field of view, water trickled constantly, as if from a miniature fountain. The air was cool and fresh rather than cold and thin.
The man who had spoken stepped softly before him. He was Clavain’s height and dressed in similarly dark clothes — Clavain had been divested of his spacesuit — though there the resemblance ended. The man’s apparent physiological age was two or three decades younger than Clavain’s, his slick backcombed black hair merely feathered by grey. He was muscular, but not to the point where it looked ridiculous. He wore narrow black trousers and a knee-length black gown cinched above his waist. His feet and chest were bare, and he stood before Clavain with his arms folded, looking down on him with an expression somewhere between amusement and mild disappointment.
‘I asked…’ the man began again.
‘You have obviously examined me,’ Clavain said. ‘What more can I tell you that you don’t already know?’
‘You seem displeased.’ The man spoke Canasian, but with a trace of stiffness.
‘I don’t know who you are or what you want, but you have no idea of the damage you have done.’
‘Damage?’ the man asked.
‘I was in the process of defecting to the Demarchists. But of course you know all that, don’t you?’
‘I’m not sure how much Zebra told you,’ the man said. ‘It’s true we know something about you, but not as much as we’d like to know. That’s why you’re here now, as our guest.’
‘Guest?’ Clavain snorted.
‘Well, that may be stretching the usual definition of the term, I admit. But I do not want you to consider yourself our prisoner. You are not. Nor are you our hostage. It is entirely possible that we will decide to release you very shortly. What harm will have been done then?’
‘Tell me who you are,’ Clavain said.
‘I will in a moment. But first, why don’t you come with me? I think you will find the view most rewarding. Zebra told me this wasn’t your first visit to Chasm City, but I am not sure you’ll have ever seen it from quite this perspective.’ The man leaned down and offered Clavain his hand. ‘Come, please. I assure you I will answer all of your questions.’
‘All of them?’
‘Most of them.’
Clavain pushed himself from the iron seat with the man’s assistance. He realised that he was still a little weak, now that he had to stand on his own, but he was able to walk without difficulty, his own bare feet cold against the marble. He remembered that he had removed his shoes before getting into the Demarchist spacesuit.
