War in Heaven (54 page)

Danlo touched his tongue to the inside of his throbbing jaw, which Constancio had been working on in preparation for implanting huge new teeth. He tried to beam a smile towards Tamara, and he said, "It will not be much longer."

"What do you mean?" she asked, clearly alarmed.

"Only that soon the war will be over and there will be food again."

"But the war could go on for
years
!"

No, I will not let that happen
, he thought.
I must end it all and soon.

"I think that things are coming to an end," he said. "But this will be only a kind of beginning, yes? Where all things are possible."

He closed his eyes then, and the trillions of separate flames inside each of his cells seemed to flare in a single direction, straight towards his heart. The light of this marvellous fire grew ever deeper and more brilliant until it shone like the sun.

"I can feel it beginning," he said. "I ... can almost see it."

"Oh, Danlo — what are you talking about? The war? Do you really think that anything good could come out of this stupid war?"

"I know that it will."

"I'll never understand you. Your son is
dying.
" Tamara's jaw was trembling, and she swallowed again and again, perhaps trying to fight back her tears.

"He is not dying. I will not let him die."

"But he's so hungry!"

"We are all hungry, yes?"

"But most of us grow thinner, not thicker."

As Danlo sat looking at her, he was very aware of how his arms and legs beneath his kamelaika fairly rippled with thick new muscles. Although he was still very lean, his chest and shoulders had been deepened so that he exuded all the power and vitality of a great white bear. His hands, too, were no longer the hands of a modern human being. So long and thick were his fingers, so massive his palm bones, that it seemed he could easily crush a man's skull merely by squeezing it to splinters.

"Truly, I have not starved as others have," he said. "But to eat while others go hungry, to
need
to eat — sometimes this is even harder, yes?"

He told her then of the terrible necessities of life among the Alaloi. Sometimes, once every hundred winters, when some disaster befell the shagshay herds and seals could not be found, meat would become so scarce that a whole tribe might face starvation. During these 'hunger days', it became the duty of each hunter to eat in order to keep up his strength — otherwise he would soon grow too wasted to bring back food for the rest of the tribe. This need of the men to eat robbed food from the mouths of the women and children. Sometimes the weakest of them starved and died. Watching a young child's limbs turn to sticks while one's belly churned with fresh meat was said to be almost the worst agony that a man could ever know. But it was better, much better, than letting the whole tribe go over to the other side of day.

"I know you've brought all the food that you could," Tamara said. "And I know that you're doing what you're doing because you have to. I just wish I understood why."

"Would understanding make the hunger go away?"

"No, of course not. But if we're to starve to death, I'd at least like to know how you plan to bring Hanuman down."

"I will not let you die, Tamara."

"I
can't
die, you know, as long as Jonathan still lives."

"I ... would do anything that I can so that you do not starve."

"Would you really?" So saying, she bent over and pulled a leather purse from beneath the rug. She opened it and shook out a handful of diamond disks. "Would you take these, then?"

"If you'd like," he said, as she poured the city disks into his hand. "But why?"

"I've heard that the wormrunners are selling fresh meat. If you should chance to find one of these wormrunners on the street, you'll need money."

"I see."

"It's just money, you know."

Danlo stared at the glittering disks in his hand and said, "I have never had any money of my own."

"From what I've heard, it should be enough to buy at least ten pounds."

"Ten pounds ... of shagshay meat? Or snow tigers murdered from the air without a prayer for their spirits?"

"It's just meat, you know. It's already dead — stored in some wormrunner's cellar. You'll have done nothing to cause the animal's dying."

"Do you truly believe this?" he asked. "Isn't it the diamond coins of men such as I that cause the wormrunners to murder the animals?"

"But they're
my
coins, not yours," she said. "And the meat would be for me and Jonathan."

Suddenly, with a click of diamond against diamond, Danlo closed his fist. He said, "I will take your money, then. But I must think about this — I cannot promise that when the time comes I will buy this meat."

Tamara looked off into the other room where Jonathan lay breathing heavily and occasionally moaning in his sleep. Then she looked back at Danlo and said, "I'd do anything to keep him from starving."

"And I have said that I will do what I can do. What I
can
, Tamara."

"I understand," she said. "How could I ever ask any more of you?"

"Do you know where these wormrunners with meat to sell might be found?"

"Pilar told me that her friend, Averil, bought some on the Serpentine just above the Winter Ring."

"That is a dangerous neighbourhood."

She nodded her head. "I know. I've been afraid to go there after dark, but I think that's when the wormrunners make most of their trades."

"You, afraid? You used to skate anywhere in the City wearing your spikhaxo."

He was referring to the finger-gun that she once wore built into a leather glove. The spikhaxo fired little darts tipped with naittare, a poison so deadly that it could reduce a strong man to a quivering wreck of a human being within seconds.

"Well," she said, "that was before the war — before I had Jonathan."

"I see."

"I was hoping that
you
might be willing to return home by way of the Serpentine some night."

"I ... think that I would be willing."

"Thank you, Danlo. And if you
do
find one of these wormrunners, please be watchful. I'd want to die if anything were to happen to you."

It was two nights later, as Danlo was skating home along the Serpentine, that he found his wormrunner. Or rather, his wormrunner found him. Because it was very cold, he had stopped inside a warming pavilion to take advantage of the hot air jets blowing up from beneath the street in measured pulses. The restaurants along the great sliddery were all closed, as were most of the cafes and shops. Only a few hard men and women braved journeys this time of night, and few skaters passed him by. Although the Serpentine was usually well-lit, the cluster of flame globes above the warming pavilion had been broken, causing the orange ice and the nearby shops to be almost swallowed up in darkness. It was a place of shadows and shattered glass and warm sussing air. Despite the warmth, Danlo would not have remained long if a large man dressed in rich sable furs hadn't called out a greeting and skated straight up to him.

"It's a cold night, isn't it?" the man said. He had a thick blond beard and bloodshot blue eyes — Danlo caught sight of the wormrunner's rather handsome face as he stepped into the pavilion and used a flame light to ignite a pipe packed with brownish twists of seaweed. "Do you mind if I join you? Would you like to smoke a little toalache with me?"

"Thank you, no," Danlo said. "I do not smoke."

"That's too bad, then. It's a great pleasure in such hard times. And it eases the pain of an empty stomach."

Just then a cloud of greyish smoke billowed out from the wormrunner's pipe and mouth. Danlo stepped back a few feet, trying to find a space of fresh air. Although the pungence of the burning toalache was almost overpowering, Danlo smelled something that disturbed him even more. It was a fainter smell — but thick and deep and slightly sickening. It seemed to steam off the wormrunner's furs and beard and breath. Danlo let the terrible scent play through his nostrils. There came a moment, then, when he knew that the wormrunner had recently handled a quantity of meat; and had possibly secreted a part of some dead animal beneath his flowing furs.

"I remember when that place used to serve the best cultured carnig in the city," the wormrunner said as he pointed across the street at a restaurant with blue awnings and broken windows. "And now it's closed — now it's almost impossible to find any kind of meat, even in the underground restaurants."

"Truly it is," Danlo said.

"Would
you
be interested in acquiring some meat?" the wormrunner asked, stepping closer to Danlo. He opened his furs, then, and drew out a lumpy thinskin the size of a large bloodfruit. "I've a good piece of fresh shagshay that I could sell to you."

Danlo looked down at the clear plastic wrapping and the dark red mass of meat that lay inside. He sniffed the air again. Although the meat didn't seem overly decayed, he didn't like the smell of it. There was something strange about its scent, something dark and deep that disquieted him and made his belly churn even as hot juices began spurting in his mouth.

"May I ... see this meat?" Danlo asked.

"Of course," the wormrunner said, unwrapping the thinskin. "I wish I had more to show you, but it's been a busy night."

In the faint light of the one flame globe that still burned, Danlo looked at the meat that the wormrunner held in his hands. He had hoped that he might identify a thigh or perhaps shoulder joint — or anything that might tell him which part of the shagshay this meat had been cut from. But it was too dark to see much more than a bulging, shapeless wad of flesh.

"It's minced shagshay," the wormrunner said, almost apologetically. He looked at Danlo looking at the meat. And then, as a cold wind whooshed down the street, he began to look at Danlo strangely, and more closely, taking note of his tallness, appraising his huge shoulders and the massive muscles of his chest and arms. He looked for Danlo's eyes beneath his facemask, apparently trying to decide if he could trust Danlo with what he had to say next. "If you'd like more meat than this, or a finer cut, I keep an apartment near here."

For a long time Danlo stared at the meat and let its terrible quick essence pierce his nostrils and eat into his brain.

Never killing
, he thought,
never harming another.

"I ... would like more meat," he suddenly said. He remembered Jonathan sitting on his lap, looking at him so trustfully with his bright, hungry eyes, and he said, "I would like to buy at least twenty pounds."

"So much, then? Do you have that much money?"

"How much will I need, then?"

For a while, they stood there in the warming pavilion discussing the cost of meat. Although Danlo had little experience in negotiating the price of anything, he knew enough not to tell this handsome-looking wormrunner how many city disks he kept in his pocket.

"Why don't you return with me to my apartment?" the wormrunner finally said. "That way you can choose your cut, and we can complete our negotiations there."

Danlo gazed at the wormrunner's eyes, wondering if he meant to cheat him, or worse. The wormrunner smiled nicely, openly, warmly. Danlo sensed, then, that the wormrunner's main purpose was not robbery. Truly, the wormrunner sought profit, an exorbitant one, and perhaps this was all that Danlo had to fear.

Even so, he hesitated a moment, thinking,
There is something here that I do not see.

"Why don't I wait while you bring it here?" he said.

"Twenty pounds of meat?" the wormrunner said. "No, no — I won't carry so much through the streets."

"This is a dangerous neighbourhood, yes?"

Again, the wormrunner smiled and said, "I understand your reluctance — what we do is illegal and you don't know me. But there are many about here who do. I never have any trouble selling meat."

So saying, he folded up his lump of meat and put it back inside his furs. Then he glanced down the street towards the closed restaurant; he smiled, again quite nicely. Danlo turned that way, too, and he saw a man standing beneath the light of a flame globe. He had the look of an astrier: the sharp, arrogant face, the calculating eyes, the well-tended body covered in a splendid fur of rare white ermine, with matching hat and gloves. He seemed quite nervous, as any astrier would be in such a place at that time of night.

"Ah, one of my patrons," the wormrunner said. "Would you please excuse me while you decide what you want to do?"

He struck off down the street, then, leaving Danlo standing alone in the warming pavilion. Danlo watched him skate straight up to the astrier. He saw him bow and then lay his hand on the astrier's shoulder as if they were old friends. But the astrier seemed to loathe being touched by one of such low estate; he backed away from the wormrunner as from a rotting corpse, and looked down at the ice.

These are terrible times, even for the rich and proud
, Danlo thought.

And then, from a distance of thirty yards, he watched the wormrunner open his cache of murdered meat and show it to the astrier. He saw the astrier wince as if he had been shown a still-throbbing heart ripped from a child's chest; he saw the wormrunner holding up four fingers as the astrier man shook his head and pointed towards the meat with only his fore and middle fingers. And now it was the wormrunner's turn to decline the astrier's offer. He sighed and then he held up three fingers; after a while, the astrier reluctantly inclined his head. With a smile splitting his broad, bearded face, the wormrunner wrapped up the meat and handed it to the astrier. Then he bowed and skated back towards the warming pavilion.

"It seems that everyone wants more meat tonight than I can carry," he told Danlo. "My patron has agreed to follow me back to my apartment. You're welcome to come too, if you wish."

"To bid against each other?"

"No, of course not," the wormrunner said, clearly offended. "I've more than enough meat for both of you. In any case, my patron and I have already agreed on our price."

"I see," Danlo said. And then, "But I saw no money exchange hands."