The Great Wheel

by Ian R. MacLeod

  “The reason I came here,” John said, “was to find out about the distribution of the koiyl leaf. Felipe suggested to me that it might come here first from the mountains.”

  “Of course. The koiyl comes here. East dock, sector three.”

  John nodded—although he didn’t think that east dock, sector three, would be what the Borderers called it. The leather chair squealed as he shifted position. Should he simply say that the koiyl from Lall was contaminated? The silence began to weigh, yet there was no real sense of tension: Ryat was a Borderer, used to not filling in every pause with empty babbling. John asked, “Have you heard of Lall?”

  “Lall?” Ryat thought, nodded. “A place in the mountains where the leaf is grown. Yes?”

  “I’ve been trying to trace the crop from there. This year’s should be in the Endless City by now if it’s going to be cured and marketed.”

  “I presume it is.”

  “There seems to be surprisingly little.”

  “Perhaps you came here on the wrong night?”

  “Is there a way you could find out?”

  “Ah…” Ryat kicked back his chair and walked over to the neat rows of tiny brass-plated drawers that reached floor to ceiling on the unwindowed wall to his right. His fingers clicked down the wood and brass. One and then another drawer slid open. The cards buzzed, and the scenes of the empty market in the windows flickered and changed. Once, John thought he glimpsed Felipe lying in the boat, then a flock of caroni birds. Another drawer flew open. Ryat’s hands were quick and graceful here—working in a way that no human hands could—but something was wrong. Why hadn’t he asked John what he was after?

  “Yes…” A drawer flashed. “I think we have something. But I see what you mean. There was much leaf from Lall five years ago…” Another drawer. “But now, each year, less.”

  “Do you have any idea why?”

  Ryat turned to him. “I provide only facilities here.” He still had one card in his hand. The tip of a finger traced the magnetic strip along the back. He seemed to be reading it. “And, of course, Seagates is just a staging post, a channel. The main sales are always at Tiir.”

  “I’ve been to Tiir.”

  “You did not get an answer?”

  “I wasn’t there long. And perhaps I didn’t ask the right questions.”

  “These things are difficult, Father John. You ask a simple question in the Endless City and get no answer—or get many. Too many. But never just the one.”

  Ryat returned the final card to its drawer. Linking his metal hands behind his back, he crossed to the far window and stood looking out. Despite its depth and clarity, the view through the glass was pixel-based. From the distance he was standing, it had to have been little more than a blur.

  “But I will ask for you,” he said. “Of course, I will make inquiries.”

  Folding his own hands, John felt the adhesion of his gloves. “Do you know,” he asked, “why I’m doing this? Why I’m asking?”

  Ryat raised his shoulders. His fingers slid. “The curiosity of a European fatoo is explanation enough.”

  John told him about Ifri Gotal, the strontium 90, the tests, and the cases of bludrut at the clinic. Ryat nodded and listened, but he didn’t seem surprised.

  When John finished, Ryat spread his hands. “There have been rumors,” he said. “Even allowing for the poor standard of the leaf from Lall that is available, I understand that the price is down.”

  “But you didn’t know?”

  The corners of Ryat’s mouth twitched. In profile against the changing window, his face flickered slightly. “These things always do come out, Father John. Why do you think I go to the Zone? I do not expect I will ever get very far with the tennis…” He grinned. “And these ancient weapons are terrible, yes? To be feared even now. The laws of nature have not changed. Why, think what would happen if the weapons were to be developed again—here, for example, in the Endless City. Of course, it would require a different culture, the kind of organization and government that I sometimes suspect that your people in the Zone are here to discourage. To keep us dependent, moderately happy, but not too wise…”

  “But at least there are no wars.”

  “No,” Ryat said. “There are no wars.”

  “And now that you know there is a poison in the Lall leaves, will you help?”

  Ryat pointed to the racks of drawers. “As you see, I cannot stop something that is already—”

  “The leaves will still eventually come through Seagates—at least some of them.”

  “What do you expect me to do? Destroy them? Or should I speak out, intentionally devalue them, as you or someone else seems to have done already? You tell me that a few people die here in the Endless City, but how many people live in Lall? And do you imagine you can warn about the leaf from one area and not harm the trade as a whole? And the traders, what will you do for them?”

  “It isn’t—”

  “Father John, let me tell you I once spoke with another European. Someone who came from the Zone here to this room and explained that we Borderers must not sell Quicklunch, that it causes the stomachs of our children to ulcer. Do you not see that too, at your clinic?”

  John nodded, but the symmetry of someone else sitting here and arguing about food contamination was too neat. It was true that Quicklunch had been dumped on the Magulf after a scare in Europe, but that had been a recombinant-precipitated reaction, and the figures at the clinic for stomach problems had never stood out.

  “I am sorry.” Ryat sighed. “I only wish to tell you that the answer is not easy.”

  “I understand there are problems. I agree with at least some of what you say about the hypocrisy of the Zone. But you haven’t seen these people dying. They’re young people, Ryat—children, sometimes—and many haven’t even chewed the leaf themselves. I know there are other injustices, but will you at least help me to do something about this one? Will you look out for the Lall leaf in Seagates, and keep me informed?”

  Ryat pursed his lips. “Yes,” he said. “If I can.”

  “I’m grateful.” John stood up from his chair. The ache in his back had returned. He felt weary, dazed. The light at the end of the tunnel, he remembered Hal once saying, can be an oncoming train.

  “Come on, Father John.” Ryat strode around the table and placed a hand on his shoulder. The metal clenched, and John forced himself not to pull back. “This crop from Lall will turn up. And from here…There will be ways to change things. Have you thought perhaps that you are trying too hard? A material thing can sometimes be as elusive as a feeling. If you seek too strongly, it may disappear…”

  John looked at Ryat as the hand released and withdrew. He felt a sudden twist of anger. At close quarters, as with everyone else here in the Endless City, Ryat’s breath reeked of kelp.

  Finding his own way out from Ryat’s office, John wiped a Magulf dollar and tossed it at the beggar on the steps. Now that there was no point in keeping it secret, he had half a mind to ask her too what she knew about the leaf, but she shrank from the coin as it spun on the eroded marble between them. He walked back to the boat through the market where the glowing cartons flapped and soggy balls of litter scuttled towards him. The world was dimmer than ever this morning. Even the wind and heat seemed frail.

  He turned the corner. A thick scum of lobster husks, sodden kelp, koiyl leaves, and the twisting body of an animated doll broke and slapped at the concrete wharf. Beyond the wharf, a path of flames trailed across the water. He stared at it for a moment, rubbing his back, his feet slowing. Then he broke into a run. Farther up, past where the boat should have been, gray figures clustered at the water’s edge. Filaments of their clothing unfurled, and he could hear them shouting and whooping. Chicahta…Scuro…Rojo…

  Tumbling, nearly falling, he yelled Felipe’s name.

  He found Felipe propped against the boat’s mooring post. His shoes were off, and his sodden bandages had been unraveled. Oily bolts and screws had been re
moved from the boat’s torn-off outboard and pushed between his toes. John shook Felipe’s shoulders, but the old priest only muttered and smacked his lips, still deep in trisoma dreams. John slumped down beside him. Smoke was rising across the water, stinging his eyes as the wind drew at the flames. For a while, the boat shone as brightly as the sun that was so rare in these Magulf skies. Then the blaze died, as the boat, raising its blackened prow like a drowning hand, slid beneath the water.

  Down the wharf, the witchwoman cackled and waved.

  THE BAR REALLY WAS CALLED Red Heat. He saw the letters—no longer straight, and colored a chill powdery blue—framed above the doorway. And, as always with the places he and Laurie visited at lunchtime, there were few diners. A wealthy-looking Borderer sat eating alone, and two European males who’d bothered to make the journey out past the shockwire were hunched over a table; from what John caught of their conversation, he guessed that they were engineers at the phosphate plant. They probably hadn’t been in the Magulf long, either, from the sullen way they kept looking around. As well as being cold, the Red Heat was big, dim, and empty, and smelled of damp and burnt fat.

  John glanced up at the high ceiling, which glinted with the gilded light of stars. Not stars as you might see them, but pointed, filament-waving, storybook stars. Those stars, and the way that all the tumblers had frosted to a driftglass translucence from frequent washing, had been his main memories of their last visit here. Certainly not the name.

  He glanced at his watch. Laurie was ten minutes late. Worried about going to the wrong place and missing her, he’d arrived early. She was usually early too, but now she was ten minutes late. With anyone else, that would be…

  The door swung open, and there was Laurie, peering around for a moment as her eyes adjusted from the gloom outside to the Red Heat’s greater gloom. He watched as she stood with her face and body still unfocused, still not conscious of him—he had, after all, chosen the farthest, darkest corner. She looked strange and lovely, gawky and yet strong. For a moment, he thought, she was like a new and different person; like an actress in that unguarded moment when her face relaxes as she walks offstage.

  “Laurie…” He raised an arm. The two phosphate engineers looked over.

  She truly seemed different today. As she moved between the empty tables and chairs, he saw that she was wearing a newer, shorter dress. Something that he’d never seen her in before. Pale red stockings. Shoes with raised heels. She came and stood by him.

  “Sorry I’m late. I…” She gestured at the outfit. Now that he’d finished noticing her legs, he also saw that she was wearing a short navy jacket brocaded at the edges. Her eyes seemed wider, too, her lips redder, and she smelled of the primitive dab-on perfume that he once saw on the shelf in her bathroom but had never actually caught her wearing. And her hair—even though the wind had got to it—was held back by two gold bands. All this for me? he thought, quite overwhelmed as she sat down. He felt clumsy and unworthy. The ache had come back into his throat.

  “You look great, incredible.”

  “Thanks. So do you.” She looked at him and tilted her head, changing her mind. “Are you hungry? Have you ordered?”

  He shook his head. The tiredness of the long night at Sea-gates and this more-than-alcohol drink were starting to have an effect.

  “Well?” she asked, feeling in her bag. “What was it like?”

  “After Paris, I went back to England—to Herefordshire. Home.”

  “I had wondered why you returned on the London shuttle.”

  “You knew that?”

  “I asked the net to check the flight lists for me. Why?”

  His eyes stung a little as the tubegas reached him.

  “You know I missed you.”

  “I missed you too.”

  She reached her hand across the table, and he took it. The two phosphate engineers watched in silence. John was dressed in secular civvies, but perhaps they knew he was a priest. Or it could have been just the sight of a European male and a Borderer female touching—although if every story he’d heard was to be believed, most expats paid at least one visit to do more than just touch the flesh at Agouna, if only so that they could say that they’d been. But that was different. Just another transaction.

  They ordered food. Mainly bread and fungi. Laurie said she wasn’t hungry, and John could still taste the koiyl he’d chewed before he went to Seagates. It wasn’t actually unpleasant, but it dulled his appetite.

  “You got the afternoon off?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “I don’t have Mass till six this evening.”

  “Anyway”—her cheeks hollowed as she drew on her tube—“some things don’t change.”

  “In Paris,” he said, “when I saw the bishop, it was pretty obvious that everyone in the Zone had been talking.”

  “Everyone?”

  “Well, you know.”

  “I suppose we could have been more careful. But I’m used to being…” She thought for a moment. “Ignored and noticed at the same time.”

  “We both stand out, Laurie. I don’t know what I was bothering to hide from anyway. I’m not ashamed.”

  “You’ve said that before.”

  “It’s true.”

  “From the bishop, did you get a telling off?”

  “It’s not like that. When all is said and done, my vows are between me and God. She—”

  “She?”

  “It does happen. She was sympathetic, really, Laurie. She asked about you. She knows about the problems I’ve had with my faith. She wanted to know how I felt. She wanted to know if I was in love.”

  “Are you?”

  “I don’t know. I’m still not sure…” He blinked. This was all coming out too quickly. Laurie was watching him, and part of him wanted to shout yes, to hug her and hold her. “Anyway,” he said, “the ache’s in my throat again, and even my back is now aching—”

  “That’s lust,” Laurie said, “not love.”

  Seeing the change in his expression, she sat back a little.

  “You don’t know either, do you?” he said. “Where this is taking us?”

  He picked at his food. He asked Laurie what she’d been doing. She shifted her second or third tube between her fingers.

  “Nothing much,” she said. “Just working.”

  The two phosphate engineers left. Someone else came in, but this place was so dark, it was impossible to tell the person’s sex or even whether the person was Borderer or European. The door swung forward, back. Outside, some kind of procession was going on—a funeral, to judge by the witchwoman wails and the jangling music. It was headed straight for the incinerator at El Teuf. Nothing that he would be involved in.

  “How are your parents?” Laurie asked. “How’s Hal?”

  “Hemhill’s the same. Nothing seems to have changed.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’ll give the three or so months I have left here to the priesthood,” he said, feeling suddenly breathless, his heart racing. “Then I’ll quit. Laurie, I’m going to leave.”

  She made to say something, then stopped, gazing over his shoulder as her hands fiddled with the tube. “This is for me? You can’t throw away…”

  “No, Laurie, it isn’t for you, it’s for me. Nothing else is clear to me at the moment, but I do know that it’s for me. I don’t feel free. I don’t understand myself. I can’t even come to terms with God…”

  Laurie ground out her tube in the saucer between them. As she leaned forward, a soft hollow formed at the base of her throat.

  He asked, “Why do they call this place Red Heat?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? It’s because it’s so big and cold.”

  They paid the bill and left. Outside, she walked away from him, moving quickly. He shouted after her. The street was overfull. There were women carrying great swaying bundles of kelp-sausage on their heads. A screaming child was snatched into a doorway. Someone muttered something-outer—and from somewher
e there was a deep, growling rumble. It was early afternoon, but the lights were on in the rooms above the shops, and it could almost have been twilight. He looked at a passing koiyl vendor, trying to see if he remembered the face. The displays on a stall that sold Magulf lace were flapping madly. The chemical smoke from the hot pans of a dye maker whipped around them. A Halcycon-logoed Elysian whispered by, its windows blanked.

  “Come on.” She pulled him around the corner, where her van sat in the dust between the windowless sides of two tenements. The rumbling came again, and the wind was suddenly stronger. Up ahead, supported by a post between the two buildings, a child’s swing rocked wildly.

  They tumbled into the van, and the wind banged the doors shut behind them as Laurie leaned over and began to kiss him. He placed his arms gently around her shoulders, feeling the intricate stitching of the collar, the press of her tongue into his mouth. He could smell the perfume she wore, the way the chemicals had reacted with and almost drowned out the Laurie scent of sea and mist and rain and her skin. He opened his eyes and saw her closed lids and the delicate whorl of her ear, the lobe pierced by a gold stud. The wind boomed. Her stockings sighed as she shifted her legs. The van creaked and rocked slightly. He felt the nub of an old tube pressing into his right thigh. When Laurie kissed, there was always a faint grunt in the back of her throat. She was making it now. Then suddenly she pulled back.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m really not here.”

  “Where are you, then?” She fished in her bag.

  “No.” He took her hand. “Wait a minute. Look…” He squeezed her hand. “I’m sorry. This whole thing needs explaining.”

  “You mean kissing? I thought it was a straightforward process for two people.”

  “It’s…” He shook his head. Laurie looked crumpled now, with her makeup smudged and her skirt no longer straight. “I don’t think it’s something that I’m ready for yet. I mean, sex,” he said. “I’d like to call a truce.”

  “Truce?”

  “I know it’s the wrong word—a stupid word.” He laughed. The wind rattled over the van. “I want to see you, Laurie. I long to see you—you know that. But can’t we just keep it the way it is for now, Laurie? Just being together until I’ve finished here, as a priest?”