The Rosetta Codex (10 page)

The room was small, furnished with a bed and nothing else. Cale's rucksack was on the floor at the foot of the bed. A window looked out onto the street below.

“Morningstar,” Blackburn said. “Is that where you want to go?”

Cale shrugged, then said, “Yes.” Better to give him an answer, he thought.

“In the morning we'll have breakfast, and then I'll help you make arrangements. I know some people who can take care of it.”

“All right.” He took hold of the door and stood looking at Blackburn until the big man nodded once and stepped back into the hall. “Thanks,” Cale added, then closed the door, and locked it.

He turned off the light, then went to the window and opened it, letting in the cool fresh air of night and the steady clatter of rain on the streets and rooftops. Two people ran stumbling across the street, laughing and bumping into each other as they tried to avoid the deeper water-filled holes. But once on the other side, they became silent, and walked carefully to a shadowed doorway. One of them opened the door, allowing smoky light to spill out into the street, and they hurried inside, shutting the door quietly but firmly behind them.

He stood at the window for a long time and watched, studying the life of the streets below. People, wagons, carts, ponies, and a few motorized vehicles made their way through the rain; the smell of fish cooked over a fire, the aroma of burning incense very much like what the anchorite had used, and the dank odor of rotting garbage all rose to him from below. The rain let up, but never completely ceased.

He lay in the dark for an hour or more, listening to the sounds drifting in through the open window, then got up from the bed, put on his coat and poncho, picked up his
rucksack, and left the room. He stood motionless in the dimly lit hall, afraid Blackburn would appear; when he didn't, Cale moved quietly down the hall and descended the stairs. The clerk asked for his room key. Cale gave it to him, then stepped out into the humid night.

It was still dark when he reached the outskirts of the town. Here there were no longer clearly marked streets, just well-worn pathways meandering among sparse and dilapidated dwellings that smelled of hopelessness and decay. He picked up his pace, marching through the mud and rain, and soon left even those ruins behind.

He had come all this way on foot—or at least most of the way; a few days on the pony hardly counted—and he saw no reason to stop now. He didn't need a pony, he didn't need Blackburn's “arrangements.” It might take weeks, or months—he had no idea how far it was—but that didn't matter. There was no hurry. He would walk to Morningstar.

 

It was night the first time Cale saw the city. For more than an hour a distant glow had been visible in the sky, flickering slightly like some immense fire. When he eventually crested a rise, Morningstar came into full view before him and the glow blossomed, dazzling him with lights that seemed more numerous than the stars above. Crimson lights like those on the bridge across the Divide, but dozens of them moving in and out of darkness and other lights; green and blue lights flashing rhythmically to some unheard beat; stationary lights of gold pulsed in matching patterns; and thousands upon thousands of silver squares, shimmering
lights that seemed to hang weightless above the ground, marking the tall, massive buildings at the heart of the city.

Excitement and wonder lifted his heart. Atop the rise he was exposed to a bitter wind, but he hardly noticed it. He was five weeks from Karadum, five weeks from the Divide, but it felt like five years and another world separated him from those places and those times. Smiling to himself for the first time in many, many days, Cale headed toward the city.

The moon came up off the slick surface of the canal in deep gold slices, reminding him of the night he'd met Aglaia at the lake shore. Cale stood on deck with both hands on the stern rail, watching the reflections flip and turn and slide in the boat's wake. They'd just come into the Grand Canal from the river, and when he lifted his gaze he could see the river's wide flowing current in the moonlight, slowly receding from them as they headed into Morningstar.

Terrel joined him at the stern and leaned against the rail. “You worried about something?” he asked.

Cale shook his head, keeping his eyes on the water and the city reflections that now joined the moon's in a sparkling kaleidoscope of colors. Then he looked up to see the now
familiar lamps and signs and lighted windows lining the canal. He'd been in Morningstar for more than a year, but he still felt a sense of wonderment upon seeing the lights of the city at night. Near the river it was mostly residential, single homes with private docks, patrolled by security drones, shield-shimmers faintly visible in the darkness. As they neared the heart of the city, commercial establishments began to appear, restaurants and retail shops, and the homes gave way to apartment buildings and day roomers. Message streamers floated in the air, multicolored ribbons of neon text and images drifting from one street to the next, a few even gliding out over the canal before transmuting into different messages and reversing course.

A small motorized skiff, less than a third the size of the
Skyute
and manned by a solitary figure, slid past them on the left, headed out toward the river, breaking up the wake and shattering the patterned reflections. Cale watched the skiff recede from them, then turned to Terrel.

“You've seemed nervous all day about something,” he said.

Terrel lowered his voice so that Cale could barely hear him. “I have something special going after we make our regular deliveries. Need your help—if you're willing.”

Cale closed his eyes. Terrel's last “something special” got them beaten and robbed and pissed on before they managed to crawl through a window of the Serpent Club and get out onto the street. This time it almost certainly involved the layer of thermoplast crates hidden under the false floor of the cargo hold. He had no idea what was in them. But Terrel had done too much for him—gave him work, found a room for him, taught him how to make his way in this city,
as much as Feegan had—so Cale couldn't refuse him. He opened his eyes and nodded in resignation.

Terrel grinned and wrapped an arm around Cale's shoulders. “Knew you would,” he said. “I'm going to go check on Mikki, make sure she doesn't run us aground.” He released Cale and started forward, then stopped and turned back. “Mikki says you were asking about the Resurrectionists.”

Cale shrugged and nodded. “Someone's got to know how to find them.”

Terrel shook his head. “You don't
want
to find them. They're crazy people, and you're crazy looking for them. Sometimes I don't understand you at all.” Then he grinned again and said, “Well, I guess we all have our own kind of crazy.” He turned and hurried forward, ducking into the tiny pilothouse.

 

As they pulled into Delany Wharf, the canal swarmed with boats of all sizes, the water illuminated by white and yellow running lights, the docks by silver-blue halo lamps, and the streets by long chains of red and green dragon-lanterns. Dock workers waited for them at Pier 18, and Mikki maneuvered the
Skyute
into the slip, reversed the engines, and cut back on the throttle, narrowly missing a water taxi and a mosquito boat. Cale and Terrel threw ropes onto the dock and the stevies quickly tied up the boat.

Mikki, Cale, and the three other crew members began unloading the star-labeled crates and bundles from the hold—boxes of cold-packed fish, fruits, and tubers from towns along the river; baskets of dried seed pods collected and transported on foot by recluses who lived deep in the
jungle far upstream above a series of impassable cataracts; long garlands of shiny brown and orange riverweed especially prized by the Leungtchi communities in the southern districts of Morningstar; and carefully packed glass vessels of rare and highly desirable live mollusks some mad woman who lived in a hut by the sea always managed to supply Terrel.

A cargo jit waited at the end of the dock, its long wide bed now empty. The stevies set up a loading track between the deck and dock, started the motor, and the track began moving as Mikki swung the first crate onto it. As the packages reached the other end of the track, the stevies began carefully stacking them on the jit. Terrel jumped onto the dock and shook hands with his broker Manca, then the two of them huddled a few paces away. Terrel had a contract with the man—so many crates of fish, so many beds of riverweed, and so on—but the cargo hold was now filled with far more than the contract quantities, and he wanted to sell as much of the excess to Manca as he could; the prices would be better here than at most of the docks farther in.

A woman pedaling a cart-bike pulled up beside the
Skyute
and offered cold bottles of Monkeypaw beer for sale. Terrel broke off his conversation for a moment and bought beer for the crew and all the stevies, as well as one each for himself and Manca. The crew took a break long enough to pop open the bottles and take a long drink or two, then returned to work.

As he helped unload the cargo, Cale watched the negotiations and wondered if they were discussing the hidden cargo. Manca shook his head more than nodded, but Terrel kept at it, gesturing with his hands and laughing. Finally they
reached agreement, shook hands, then walked over to the bursar's terminal, where they completed the transaction, the two of them punching codes and instructions into terminal panels. Part of the payment was apparently in cash, and Cale saw Manca pass a thick packet of currency to Terrel.

By the time Terrel had finished up and returned to the boat, all of the star-labeled cargo was packed onto the jit bed. Terrel pointed out the extra crates and packages that Manca was taking—the excess riverweed and live mollusks, as Cale had expected, as well as some of the fish and other foods—and helped them load it into the jit. The stevies broke down the loading track, swung it back into and under the dock, and untied the
Skyute.
Terrel waved to Manca, who was snapping instructions to the jit driver; Manca waved halfheartedly without pausing. Mikki started the engines, and they eased away from the docks.

 

Not long afterward they approached Belladonna Canal, which opened up to a clear and striking view of The Island. Ablaze with lights, the towering skyscrapers of The Island rose into the night sky like beacons of the world. Terrel maintained the
Skyute
's speed as they passed the Belladonna's big commercial docks, and Cale looked at him.

“I won't deal with them anymore,” Terrel said, answering Cale's unspoken question.

“You won't deal with them, or they won't deal with
you
anymore?” Cale asked.

Terrel grinned and shrugged. “Ah, it amounts to the same thing.”

Cale nodded. “That's what I thought.”

 

They left the Grand Canal and motored along Gibson Channel, a smaller waterway that was still bright and noisy, though it was nearing midnight. Cale recognized the lights of Cutter's Station, a small but busy commercial wharf that supplied a lot of smaller shops and restaurants and cafés in the Basilisk District. Cale lived just a few blocks away, and he thought he could see a corner window of Junko's building, where he rented a room. Mikki slowed the boat and angled in toward the main dock, which was crowded with people; a woman stood in the lamplight waving at Terrel, gesturing at a gap between boats.

“She'll take the rest,” Terrel said. “Everything we've got left.”

Not everything, Cale thought.

They tied up and went to work. There was no loading track here, and no stevies, so they did everything themselves, hauling the cargo across the gangway and loading it onto stationary pallets at the woman's direction. Terrel and the woman went into the pilothouse, and when they reemerged a few minutes later, Terrel's eyes were wide and bright, the pupils dilated so that he blinked spasmodically when he looked at the dock lights.

After offloading the last of the packed fish and leaving the cargo hold apparently empty, Terrel paid off Mikki and the others in cash, then went belowdecks once they'd disembarked. When he emerged ten minutes later, he was wearing his stasi boots and handed another pair to Cale; now Cale knew there would be trouble. The boots were calf-length
and armor-plated, with a charged lava knife tucked into each, camouflaged but easily accessible.

“Don't worry,” Terrel said. “I just want to be prepared. We motor in, make a nice, quick and quiet delivery, then leave. In and out in less than an hour. Ice.” He patted Cale's shoulder, then helped untie the boat before he retreated into the pilothouse to guide the boat away from Cutter's Station.

 

By now it was well after midnight, and the
Skyute
motored slowly and almost silently along a dark narrow canal in the far western reaches of Morningstar. The moon had set, leaving behind an added shade of darkness. Cale had never been in this part of the city before, and everything about it was unfamiliar. Pale lights hung in loops from tall, flexible rods that dipped and swung about in some intermittent breeze or other mysterious force, radiating dark aquamarine hues that seemed somehow different from other lights in Morningstar. Buildings were low and sparse, most surrounded by dense vegetation, and from what little Cale could see of them appeared to have been designed and built by people from some other world, some other era—the walls and corners were all sharp, jagged edges of metal and glass webbed by sparkling sheets of wire mesh. Pained animal growls floated across the water, and the air felt and smelled heavy with the odor of smoke from distant or unseen fires.

Cale stood silently beside Terrel as he guided the
Skyute
into a channel so tight that there would be barely enough room to turn the boat around. On both sides, the banks were dark, with only an occasional lamp or sheltered fire
casting faint illumination and shadows, just enough to hint at shanties and hulks of abandoned machinery, rotting personal docks and half-sunken boats; wavering lights flickered behind smoky windows. The air was still and quiet.

Ahead of them a stone quay had been built into the left bank. Two cool white lanterns burned at the end of the deserted quay. Cale turned to ask Terrel if that was their destination, but seeing the man's intense concentration, he remained silent. Terrel had one hand on the throttle, the other on the wheel, grip tense, muscles standing out on his forearms.

Terrel shifted the engines to idle, and the
Skyute
drifted slowly toward the quay. His skin was tight and shiny with sweat.

“Where is he?” Terrel whispered with clenched teeth. He glanced up at the ship's clock, nervously kicking one boot against the wheel housing.

Cale searched the shadows along the bank, but detected no figures, no signs of movement. The Island's lights in the distance seemed incredibly far away, hovering above solid blocks of darkness, so the buildings appeared to literally float in the sky.

“Shit,” Terrel said. “Got to get out of here.” He put the engines into reverse, increased the throttle, and began to turn the wheel.

The loud buzzing whine of motors exploded behind them, bursting in all directions as brilliant spotlights flooded the
Skyute
with painfully bright illumination. Cale spun around to see half a dozen small jetboats zigzagging around them, two or three crouching figures in each; the boats then slowed as they formed a ring around the bigger boat.

Terrel had already cut the throttle, idling the boat once again, but kept his hands on the wheel and throttle as he glanced anxiously in all directions, taking in the boats and lights that had so quickly appeared.

“Fucking pirates,” he said, voice harsh and pissed. “Fucker sold me out, I'm gonna rip his hole wide open when I catch up to him, goddamn . . .” His cursing continued, but low and unintelligible.

A man's voice called out from one of the jetboats. “Don't need to see anyone hurt or killed. You let us take the stash, everyone leaves in one piece. All right in there?”

“Not a chance,” Terrel muttered.

“Terrel . . .” Cale started.

Terrel snapped his head around and glared at Cale. “You don't know anything about this, so don't say a fucking word. Sorry, but it's too late now, so just shut it.” He reached surreptitiously under the wheel housing, something snapped, then he pulled out two guns, Spitzer jim-jim automatics, and thrust one at Cale with a grin. Cale reluctantly took it from him, then Terrel stuck the other gun in his belt behind his back.

Terrel stepped to the side, where he stood in full illumination, and raised both hands. “All right!” he shouted, blinking against the glare. One of the jetboats moved forward and bumped against the stern of the
Skyute.
A man reached out to pull himself aboard, and Terrel made his move.

He stepped back to the wheel, jammed the engines into full reverse, and cranked the wheel hard to the right. The boat bucked and swerved with the sudden backward acceleration and Cale went sprawling across the deck, somehow hanging on to the Spitzer, then scrambled to his hands and
knees. Glancing out through the cabin's open doorway, he could see the jetboat rising and twisting up out of the water as the
Skyute
overran it; there was no sign of the man who had been trying to board.