I had my recurring nightmare, reliving the demonstration I was caught up in three years ago; looking, horrified, at a wall of drifting, sun-struck stun gas and seeing a line of police mounts come charging out of it, somehow more appalling than armoured cars or even tanks, not because of the visored riders with their long shock-batons, but because the tall animals were also armoured and gas-masked; monsters from a ready-made, mass-produced dream; terrorizing.
Maust found me there hours later, when he got back.The club had been raided and he hadn’t been allowed to contact me.He held me as I cried, shushing me back to sleep.
‘Wrobik, I can’t.Risaret’s putting on a new show next season and he’s looking for new faces; it’ll be big-time, straight stuff.A High City deal.I can’t leave now; I’ve got my foot in the door.Please understand.’ He reached over the table to take my hand.I pulled it away.
‘I can’t do what they’re asking me to do.I can’t stay.So I have to go; there’s nothing else I can do.’ My voice was dull.Maust started to clear away the plates and containers, shaking his long, graceful head.I hadn’t eaten much; partly hangover, partly nerves.It was a muggy, enervating mid-morning; the tenement’s conditioning plant had broken down again.
‘Is what they’re asking really so terrible?’ Maust pulled his robe tighter, balancing plates expertly.I watched his slim back as he moved to the kitchen. ‘I mean, you won’t even tell me.Don’t you trust me?’ His voice echoed.
What could I say?That I didn’t know if I did trust him?That I loved him but: only he had known I was an outworlder.That had been my secret, and I’d told only him.So how did Kaddus and Cruizell know?How did Bright Path know?My sinuous, erotic, faithless dancer.Did you think because I always remained silent that I didn’t know of all the times you deceived me?
‘Maust, please; it’s better that you don’t know.’
‘Oh,’ Maust laughed distantly; that aching, beautiful sound, tearing at me. ‘How terribly dramatic.You’re protecting me.How awfully gallant.’
‘Maust, this is serious.These people want me to do something I just can’t do.If I don’t do it they’ll they’ll at least hurt me, badly.I don’t know what they’ll do.They they might even try to hurt me through you.That was why I was so worried when you were late; I thought maybe they’d taken you.’
‘My dear, poor Wrobbie,’ Maust said, looking out from the kitchen, ‘it has been a long day; I think I pulled a muscle during my last number, we may not get paid after the raid – Stelmer’s sure to use that as an excuse even if the filth didn’t swipe the takings – and my ass is still sore from having one of those queer-bashing pigs poking his finger around inside me.Not as romantic as your dealings with gangsters and baddies, but important to me.I’ve enough to worry about.You’re overreacting.Take a pill or something; go back to sleep; it’ll look better later.’ He winked at me, disappeared.I listened to him moving about in the kitchen.A police siren moaned overhead.Music filtered through from the apartment below.
I went to the door of the kitchen.Maust was drying his hands. ‘They want me to shoot down the starship bringing the Admiral of the Fleet back on Ninthday,’ I told him.Maust looked blank for a second, then sniggered.He came up to me, held me by the shoulders.
‘Really?And then what?Climb the outside of the Lev and fly to the sun on your magic bicycle?’ He smiled tolerantly, amused.I put my hands on his and removed them slowly from my shoulders.
‘No.I just have to shoot down the ship, that’s all.I have they gave me a gun that can do it.’ I took the gun from the jacket.He frowned, shaking his head, looked puzzled from a second, then laughed again.
‘With that, my love?I doubt you could stop a motorized pogo-stick with that little -‘
‘Maust, please; believe me.This can do it.My people made it and the ship the state has no defence against something like this.’
Maust snorted, then took the gun from me.Its lights flicked off. ‘How do you switch it on?’ He turned it over in his hand.
‘By touching it; but only I can do it.It reads the genetic make-up of my skin, knows I am Culture.Don’t look at me like that; it’s true.Look.’ I showed him.I had the gun recite the first part of its monologue and switched the tiny screen to holo.Maust inspected the gun while I held it.
‘You know,’ he said after a while, ‘this might be rather valuable.’
‘No, it’s worthless to anyone else.It’ll only work for me, and you can’t get round its fidelities; it’ll deactivate.’
‘How faithful,’ Maust said, sitting down and looking steadily at me. ‘How neatly everything must be arranged in your Culture .I didn’t really believe you when you told me that tale, did you know that, my love?I thought you were just trying to impress me.Now I think I believe you.’
I crouched down in front of him, put the gun on the table and my hands on his lap.’Then believe me that I can’t do what they’re asking, and that I am in danger; perhaps we both are.We have to leave.Now.Today or tomorrow.Before they think of another way to make me do this.’
Maust smiled, ruffled my hair. ‘So fearful, eh?So desperately anxious.’ He bent, kissed my forehead. ‘Wrobbie, Wrobbie; I can’t come with you.Go if you feel you must, but I can’t come with you.Don’t you know what this chance means to me?All my life I’ve wanted this; I may not get another opportunity.I have to stay, whatever.You go; go for as long as you must and don’t tell me where you’ve gone.That way they can’t use me, can they?Get in touch through a friend, once the dust has settled.Then we’ll see.Perhaps you can come back; perhaps I’ll have missed my big chance anyway and I’ll come to join you.It’ll be all right.We’ll work something out.’
I let my head fall to his lap, wanting to cry. ‘I can’t leave you.’
He hugged me, rocking me. ‘Oh, you’ll probably find you’re glad of the change.You’ll be a hit wherever you go, my beauty; I’ll probably have to kill some knife-fighter to win you back.’
‘Please, please come with me,’ I sobbed into his gown.
‘I can’t, my love, I just can’t.I’ll come to wave you goodbye, but I can’t come with you.’
He held me while I cried; the gun lay silent and dull on the table at his side, surrounded by the debris of our meal.
I was leaving.Fire escape from the flat just before dawn, over two walls clutching my travelling bag, a taxi from General Thetropsis Avenue to Intercontinental Station then I’d catch a Railtube train to Bryme and take the Lev there, hoping for a standby on almost anything heading Out, either trans or inter.Maust had lent me some of his savings, and I still had a little high-rate credit left; I could make it.I left my terminal in the apartment.It would have been useful, but the rumours are true; the police can trace them, and I wouldn’t put it past Kaddus and Cruizell to have a tame cop in the relevant department.
The station was crowded.I felt fairly safe in the high, echoing halls, surrounded by people and business.Maust was coming from the club to see me off; he’d promised to make sure he wasn’t followed.I had just enough time to leave the gun at Left Luggage.I’d post the key to Kaddus, try to leave him a little less murderous.
There was a long queue at Left Luggage; I stood, exasperated, behind some naval cadets.They told me the delay was caused by the porters searching all bags and cases for bombs; a new security measure.I left the queue to go and meet Maust; I’d have to get rid of the gun somewhere else.Post the damn thing, or even just drop it in a waste bin.
I waited in the bar, sipping at something innocuous.I kept looking at my wrist, then feeling foolish.The terminal was back at the apartment; use a public phone, look for a clock.Maust was late.
There was a screen in the bar, showing a news bulletin.I shook off the absurd feeling that somehow I was already a wanted man, face liable to appear on the news broadcast, and watched today’s lies to take my mind off the time.
They mentioned the return of the Admiral of the Fleet, due in two days.I looked at the screen, smiling nervously. Yeah, and you’ll never know how close the bastard came to getting blown out of the skies. For a moment or two I felt important, almost heroic.
Then the bombshell; just a mention – an aside, tacked on, the sort of thing they’d have cut had the programme been a few seconds over – that the Admiral would be bringing a guest with him; an ambassador from the Culture.I choked on my drink.