Landfall (The Reach, Book 2) (31 page)

“Not anymore.”  Ursie sat on the other end of the bench.  “At least, I never thought of it that way.”

“A shame,” Tobias said distantly, his thoughts obviously somewhere else.  He went quiet and Ursie fidgeted, unsure what to say next.

“You’re a cleaner here, Tobias?”

“I do a bit of everything,” Tobias said.  “Sometimes maintenance or odd jobs.  This week one of the damn sweepdrones broke down, so they shoved a broom at me.  That’s life for old Tobias, no?”

“Do you like it here?”

The old man shrugged.  “It’s all I know these days.”

Ursie glanced back at the arch.  “I’m curious about that thing outside.  What did you say it was?”

“The Skywalk?  You ain’t heard of it before?”

“No.  What is it?”

“Well, it’s like a platform or a tube, I guess, a connector between the elevators.”

Ursie’s eyes widened.  “There’s more elevators?”

“Yeah,” Tobias said casually, “not that they work anymore.  Back when all the elevators were in operation, the Skywalks were like a link between them.”  He waved his hand at the arch.  “But there ain’t no more elevators runnin’ apart from the Reach, so the Skywalks were all shut down.”

Ursie thought back to her arrival on the railcar, when she had seen bright flares extending from the sides of the habitat.  Those must have been the Skywalks, she realised, these tube-like tunnels that stretched out into space, high above the planet.

“How far does this Skywalk go?”

“This one?  About two hundred clicks, I reckon.  That’s if memory serves.  But like I said, it was shut down a long time ago.  Not much point heading that way.  Nothing out there.”

Ursie saw him take something out of his pocket.  It flashed golden in the reflected sunlight from above, startling her.  She blinked and looked away, and when she looked back, something curious had happened.

He wasn’t holding anything in his hands at all.

Shit
, she thought
.  Dammit.  That wasn’t real.  It was a memory.  Stay out of his head!

“Can I ask you somethin’?” Tobias said, oblivious to her internal conflict.

“Yeah, sure.”  Against her wishes, she saw the object again, more clearly this time.  It was a gold pocket watch on the end of a chain.  Tobias’ thoughts were coming at her with such potency, such force, that she found them almost impossible to resist.

“I like to collect stuff from old mother Earth,” he said, his voice thick with sentimentality.  “Just little knick-knacks, y’know.  Little trinkets.  Reminds me of the old times.”

“Okay.”  Ursie turned away from him in an attempt to block his thoughts.

“You didn’t happen to bring anything with you, I don’t expect?  Something you’d be willing to sell?”

“Uh, a few things,” Ursie said, struggling to keep her voice even.  “Anything in particular you’re after?”

Another surge of memories came flooding from Tobias, and this time there was something else – something Ursie had seen only a few times before.  Strewn amongst the memories and thoughts were massive clumps of cold, inky blackness that seethed with pure malevolence.  Ursie reeled backward and gasped.

“A pocket watch,” Tobias went on, still unaware of Ursie’s discomfort, her shocked reaction.  “A gold pocket watch.  My father used to have one, y’see.  It was a family heirloom passed down through the years, a tiny little thing, but a thing of importance to me.”

“Can’t help you,” Ursie all but choked out, her face still turned away.

“I’m not after that one in partic’lar, of course.  I know it’s lost.  If I had one like it, that would be enough.”

Ursie slowly began to regain control of herself, blocking out both Tobias’ thoughts and that malevolent blackness at the same time.  She took a deep breath and looked back at the old man.

“I’ll keep my eye out.”

He nodded.  “Appreciate it.”

Ursie knew what was lurking in the depths of Tobias’ mind, what the blackness signified.  It was a disease, some condition that was in the process of destroying his mind, eating away at his memories and churning out an empty nothingness in its wake.  Ursie had always been disconcerted by these diseases, or cancers, or whatever they were.  They were despicable things, destroyers of people’s lives, not only tearing apart a person’s future but their past as well.

No human should have to go through something like that, she thought sadly.

She suddenly felt sorry for the old man.  He probably didn’t have long before the condition claimed him entirely, rendering him unable to tie his shoelaces or even dress himself properly.  Although she couldn’t see the full extent of it after such a cursory appraisal, she figured there was a good chance the disease might take his life in the near future.

She needed to get her mind off his condition, change the topic.

“So what other stuff do you collect?” she said.

“Not as much as I’d like.  Got a little elephant beast carved outta marble last month from a fella came through here on his way to Mars, I think it was.  He bought it for his daughter, but there were two of ’em, so he gave me one.  Put it on the shelf next to my cot with the others.  I like to look at
’em as I go to sleep.”

“I don’t have anything like that,” Ursie said apologetically.

“Well, that’s fine, Ursie.  I don’t expect you’d be lugging around stuff that’s fit for an old codger like me.”  He struggled to his feet.  “In any case, I need to keep movin’.  This place don’t clean itself.”

“Sure.  It was nice meeting you, Tobias.”

“Likewise.”  He clasped the broom in his hand.  “You come see me over in maintenance if you come across anything you think I might like.  I’m down on Level Two, under the canteen.”

“Sure.  I’ll do that.”

Tobias nodded and gave her another kindly smile, then shuffled over to a hatch in the wall and disappeared inside.  Ursie was left alone again in this deserted corner of the concourse, a dead end
that only outcasts and forgetful cleaners frequented, it seemed.

With Tobias gone, she was no longer confronted by his memories.  That was always the way of it.  When the target slipped out of visual contact, their memories invariably faded away, the link between the psycher and their quarry broken.

However, the encounter with the old man had left Ursie thinking about someone else entirely.  She now recalled a man whose mind had been filled with many impenetrable roadblocks which had acted much like those churning black holes into which Ursie had been unable to see.

That man had been Knile Oberend.

But Knile hadn’t been sick or diseased.  His mind had been healthy.  There had been something different about him, something that she had never seen in anyone else before – the ability to hide many of his thoughts and memories away from her gentle probing.  Ursie couldn’t explain it, not entirely, but she figured he had somehow disciplined his mind to prevent memories from leaking outward to where a psycher could snare them.  It was probably not even something he had done consciously, but instead the by-product of the way he arranged and sorted that vast array of knowledge he seemed to keep inside his head.

That was the reason Ursie had failed to find out the truth about his lost love Mianda, why she had failed to manipulate him the way she intended.

At that moment she also realised that Knile Oberend might be the only person she’d ever met whose mind she hadn’t ransacked within the first hour of meeting.  Much of what was in Knile’s head was, even now, still a mystery to her.

Perhaps he was the only person she’d met with whom she could have truly been friends, the only one she could have looked in the eye and honestly said that she hadn’t violated.

He might have appreciated that if only you hadn’t betrayed him and stolen his lifelong dream of leaving Earth
, she thought bitterly.

She ran a hand through her hair and expelled a deep breath, struggling once again to bring her feelings under control.  Now that Knile was in her head again, she began to worry that she would be unable to think of anything else.

But her thoughts of Knile did not linger for long.

Down the concourse she could see van Asch striding toward her, his jaw set with grim purpose.

30

Silvestri led Knile and Roman through the streets of Link as midday came and went, and the Reach loomed ever closer.

“If this plan of yours turns out to be nothing more than showing up at the gates and asking to be taken to the Infirmary, I’m not going to be happy,” Knile said.

Silvestri glanced over his shoulder at him.  “I understand your scepticism, Knile, but I can assure you that this is the real deal.”

Knile had been pondering the implications of a double-cross since the moment Silvestri had escorted him out of the Skybreach complex.  After all, the guy had freely admitted he was a businessman, an opportunist.  What if one of Knile’s many enemies had placed a bounty on his head, and Silvestri had decided this was the perfect chance to cash it in?  Silvestri wasn’t doing this because of some sort of sense of altruism or compassion.  That wasn’t his
modus operandi
.  If he were the kind of man to go around helping others out of the goodness of his heart, he’d have come to Talia’s aid when she’d sought him out in the tavern.

Knile couldn’t trust Silvestri, that much was clear.  But right now he had no option but to follow him.  Roman wouldn’t make it otherwise.

Knile glanced over at the boy.  Roman had initially kept up a good pace, talking and even cracking a couple of nervous jokes as he had tried to alleviate his own anxiety.  As time had worn on, however, he had grown pale and his chatter had dried up, his breathing becoming laboured.  Now he was struggling to keep pace, and Knile wondered how long it would be before he was forced to carry the boy.

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on now?” Knile said, turning back to Silvestri.

“I told you, I can’t,” Silvestri said.  “Not yet.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Because I swore an oath not to.  I keep my word.”

“Your word means nothing to me.”

Silvestri rounded on him.  “I don’t know who or what you think I am, but I am not some penny-stealing cutthroat who chases after little old ladies in order to take their cred chips.  I–”

There was a loud retching sound, and the two of them turned to see Roman doubled over by the side of the avenue, heaving the contents of his stomach into the gutter.  Knile went to him and placed a hand gently on his back.

“Roman?”

“Feel like shit,” Roman gasped, his respirator pulled to one side.  He heaved again, dry retching, then went down on one knee.

“Hey, I’m here,” Knile said, stooping by his side.  “We’re going to get you some help, okay?”

Roman nodded but said nothing.  Instead he hocked noisily and loosed a stringy yellow wad of phlegm that dangled from his lips before dropping into the gutter.

Knile felt a hand on his shoulder.

“We need to make haste,” Silvestri murmured.  “The toxin is advancing.”

Knile nodded.  “Roman, can you walk?”

“Yeah.”  Roman spat again, then got shakily to his feet.

“Put your arm over my shoulder,” Knile offered, but Roman waved him away.

“I’m not a cripple.  I can deal with a sore tummy.”

They continued on, the Reach drawing ever closer as Roman’s condition worsened.  Silvestri led them away from the more crowded areas into the backstreets, and before long Roman began to lean heavily on Knile despite his obvious desire to stand on his own two feet.  His footsteps were soon dragging and his breathing became more ragged, his skin more clammy.

“How much further, goddammit?” Knile hissed at Silvestri.

“Almost there,” Silvestri said.  He pointed down the street.  “This way.”

They had entered a neighbourhood that was largely residential in nature, dominated by old-fashioned homes and smaller dwellings rather than the monolithic apartment blocks that were more common in other parts of Link.  The denizens of the place sat on the steps of their porches and watched from behind closed windows, silently observing the newcomers over steaming mugs of broth and foul-smelling clouds of cigarette smoke.  Their eyes were beady and untrusting, their mouths hard lines of discontent.

Children milled around the sides of the street, clamorous and frenetic, a stark contrast to their older counterparts.  Some banged on an old rusted car husk that had been discarded on the side of the road many years before, creating an arrhythmic cacophony to which they attempted to sing along without much success.  A group of boys not far away had discarded their shirts and formed a loose ring, within which two more shirtless boys wrestled to the cheers of those gathered around. 

“What’s in this for you, Silvestri?” Knile said over the noise.  “Why are you helping us?”

“I won’t deny I have something to gain from this arrangement,” Silvestri said.  “It’s beneficial to both of us, as it turns out.”

“Creds?  Is that it?”