Century Rain Part 22

"I wonder why she didn't simply get on the first train to Berlin, rather than book pa.s.sage on one that wasn't due to leave for four or five days?"

"Maybe she had other business she had to attend to first, or maybe she'd called ahead and made an arrangement to visit the factory on a particular day. Either way, she knew she wasn't getting on that train for a few days, but she also knew she was in danger and that the tin might fall into the wrong hands."

"Has it occurred to you, Floyd, that if someone killed her because of what was in that tin, they might do it again?"

The party with the elderly man had retreated from the duck pond, the wheelchair crunching away across the gravelled promenade in the general direction of the Orangerie. Beyond the party, looming above the trees lining the Seine, the slick, wet roof of the Gare d'Orsay on the Left Bank shone in the sunlight. Despite its name, it was many years since the Gare d'Orsay had been a railway station. There had been vague plans to turn it into a museum, but in the end the city authorities had decided that the most effective use of the grand old building would be as a prison for high-profile political detainees. Seeing the prison, something tugged at this memory, some elusive connection waiting to be completed.

He dished out the remainder of the bread to the few ducks that had stayed loyal. "I know there are risks. But I can't just drop the case because some people might not want me to succeed."

Greta studied him carefully. "How much does this dogged determination have to do with what Marguerite just told you?"

"Hey," Floyd said defensively, "this isn't about anything other than getting a job done for a client. A job that happens to pay pretty well, I might add."

"So that's all it boils down to: money?"

"Money and curiosity," he admitted.

"No amount of money will make up for a broken neck. Take what you have and go to the authorities. Give them all the evidence and let them piece things together."

"Now you sound like Custine."

"Maybe he has a point. Think about it, Floyd. Don't get in too deep. You're a big man, but you're not a strong swimmer."

"I'll know when I'm in too deep," he said.

Greta shook her head. "I know you too well. You'll only realise you're in too deep when you start drowning. But what's the point of arguing? I'm hungry. Let's walk to the Champs-Elysees: there's a place there that does good pancakes. You can buy me an Esquimo ice cream along the way. Then you can take me back to Montparna.s.se."

Floyd surrendered, offering her a hand. They set off in the direction of the avenue, Floyd watching as the wind whipped up in the distance and hoisted someone's umbrella into the sky.

"How's the band doing?" Greta asked.

"The band ceased to exist when you left," Floyd said. "Since then we've not exactly been snowed under with offers."

"I was only ever one part of it."

"You're a d.a.m.ned good singer and a d.a.m.ned good guitar player. You left a big hole."

"You and Custine are both good musicians."

"Good doesn't cut it."

"Well, then you're better than good."

"Custine, maybe."

"It's not as if you're the worst ba.s.s player in the world, either. You always knew you could make it

work if you only wanted it badly enough."

"I make the moves. I can lay down a pretty steady beat."

"You say that like it's a bad thing. There are a hundred bands in Nice who could use a ba.s.s player like

you, Floyd."

"But I can't do anything you haven't seen before. I can't make it new."

"Not everyone wants it new."

"But that's the point. All we ever do is play the same old swing numbers in the same old way. I'm tired

of it. Custine can barely bring himself to take out his saxophone."

"So do something different."

"Custine keeps trying. You know how he was always trying to get us to play that fast eight-beat stuff, when all we ever wanted to do was stay in four-four?"

"Maybe Custine was on to something."

"He heard a guy playing here a few years ago," Floyd said. "Some heroin fiend from Kansas City.

Looked sixty, but he was really about my age. Called himself Yardhound or Yard-dog or something. He kept playing that crazy improvisational stuff, like it was the wave of the future. But no one wanted to know."

"Except Custine."

"Custine said it was the music he'd always had in his head."

"So find a way to help him play it."

"Too fast for me," Floyd said. "And anyway, even if it wasn't, no one else wants to hear it. It's not stuff

you can dance to."

"You shouldn't give up that easily," Greta admonished.

"It's too late. They don't even want straight jazz anymore. Half the clubs we played last year are out of

business now. Maybe it's different in the States, but-"

"Some people won't ever get it," Greta said. "They don't want to see black people and white people

getting along, let alone playing the same music. Because there's always a danger that the world might actually become a better place because of it."

Floyd smiled. "Your point being?"

"Those of us who care shouldn't give up that easily. Maybe we need to stick our necks out from time to

time."

"I stick my neck out for no one."

"Not even for the music you love?"

"Maybe there was a time when I used to think jazz could save the world," Floyd said. "But I'm older

and wiser now."

Walking the gravel path, they pa.s.sed the party with the elderly man again and something in Floyd's

head clicked like a key in a well-oiled lock. Maybe it was the conversation he'd had with Marguerite, or perhaps the juxtaposition of the man and the political prison across the river, but Floyd suddenly recognised him. The man lolled forward in the wheelchair, his jaw slack, a thin worm of drool curling down his chin. His skin was glued to his skull like a single layer of papier mache. His hands trembled with some kind of palsy. Beneath his blanket, it was said that the doctors had hacked away more than they had left behind. Whatever trickled through his veins was now more chemical than blood. But he had survived the cancers, just as he had survived that a.s.sa.s.sination attempt in May 1940, when the advance into the Ardennes had come to an inglorious end. The shape of the face was still recognisable, along with the outdated, priggish little moustache and the vain swoop of thinning hair, white now where once it had been black. It was almost twenty years since his ambitions had crashed and burnt during that disastrous summer. In the carnival of monsters that the century had produced, he was only one amongst many. He'd talked hate back then-but who hadn't? Hate was how you made things happen in those years. It was the lever that moved things. It didn't necessarily mean he believed it, or that he would have been any worse for France than any of the men who had come after him. Who could begrudge him a morning in the Tuileries Gardens, after all the time he had served in the Gare d'Orsay? He was just a sad old man now, less a figure of revulsion than one of pity.

Let him feed the ducks.

"Floyd?"

"What?"

"You were miles away."

"Years away," he said. "Not quite the same thing."

She steered him towards an ice-cream stand. Floyd dug into his pocket for a few coins.

TEN.

Auger awoke to the rapid metallic popping of thruster jets, like a rivet gun. Her first thought was that something must have gone wrong, but Aveling and Skellsgard both looked alert and focused rather than alarmed, as if this was something they had encountered before.

"What's happening?" she asked groggily.

"Go back to sleep," Aveling said.

"I want to know."

"We're just dealing with some tunnel irregularity," Skellsgard said, using her free hand to point to the contoured display in front of her joystick panel. She was flying now, while Aveling took a rest. The moving lines on the display panel were bunched and crimped together. "The walls are pretty smooth most of the way through, but every now and then we come across some structure or other, which we have to steer around."

"Structures? Inside a wormhole?"

"It isn't a wormhole," Skellsgard began. "It's a-"

"I know: it's a quasi-pseudo-para-whatnot. What I mean is, how can there be any kind of structures inside this thing, whatever it is? Isn't it smooth s.p.a.ce-time all the way through?"

"That's what you'd expect."

"You're the theorist. You tell me."

"Actually, there's a good measure of guesswork involved here. The Slashers didn't tell us everything, and they probably don't have all the answers themselves."

"So give me your best guess."

"OK. Theory one. You see these stress-energy readings? They relate to changes in the local tunnel geometry ahead of us."

"What are you sensing them with? Radar?"

Skellsgard shook her head. "No. Radar-or any EM-based sensor, for that matter-doesn't work too well in the hyperweb. Photons are absorbed into the walls or scattered chaotically by interaction with the pathological matter. And looking ahead is like trying to see sunspots with your naked eye. Neutrinos or gravity-wave sensors might work better, but there isn't enough room for them in the transport. All that's left is sonar."

"Sound?" Auger asked. "But we're moving through a near-perfect vacuum, aren't we?"

"As near as dammit, yes. But we can persuade a kind of acoustic signal to propagate through the lining of the walls. It's like the compression wave that the transport's surfing, only about a billion times faster. It propagates through a stiffer layer, a different phase of pathological matter with a much higher rigidity. It's how we send signals down the pipe, so that we can talk to the portal at the E2 end. Trouble is, it doesn't work when a s.h.i.+p is in the pipe: we act as a kind of mirror, bouncing any signals back the way they came. But we can send our own signals up the line. They're not strong enough to reach all the way to the far portal, but they do act as a kind of feeler, sounding out obstructions and irregularities in the walls."

"That still doesn't tell me what causes those irregularities in the first place."