Vicious Circle

It was a face you couldn’t do much about, like it or not, except maybe commiserate with the owner. It was pale and flat and had the slight grayness of unbaked dough. The messiest tangle of spiky light-brown hair I’d ever seen stood up on top of it like couch grass on a sand dune. You couldn’t tell whether the body attached to a face like that would be young, old, or somewhere in between. The furthest you’d want to go would be to say that it was—on the balance of probabilities—male.

“Morning,” I said, with a winning smile. “Is Reggie in?”

The face just stared. I considered the possibility that it was on the end of a pole rather than a neck. But then the guy opened the door a fraction more and I could see for myself that he was alive and intact. He was the same height as me but skinny as a rake. He was dressed in ragged jeans and an op-art T-shirt, and on his feet he wore novelty slippers in the shape of Gromit the dog. “Reggie?” he said, sounding slightly baffled, as if he was hearing the name for the first time. There was an Essex lilt to his voice.

“Yeah, Reggie Tang. You’re from the Collective, right? I heard he was living there right now.”

The guy didn’t concede the point by so much as a nod. After a loaded pause, he said, “Who are you?”

“I’m Felix Castor.” I stuck out my hand. He shook it without much interest, but the momentary emotional flash I got while our hands were touching had some odd harmonics in it: unease, resentment, and something like alarm.

There was no trace of any of that in his voice, which was disengaged if not downright lugubrious. “Greg Lockyear,” he said. “So you’re Castor? Heard your name, here and there. Lot of people seem to reckon you.” His gaze went down to my feet as he said this, as if he were checking my shoes against health and safety standards, and then back up to meet mine.

“Reggie’s inside,” he said, sounding resigned now. “Come on in.”

He turned and led the way along the pier to the Collective’s gangplank. The ship had been a floating mansion once: now she was a wreck. I hadn’t seen her in six years, and I could see there were at least that many years’ worth of dirt on her sides. Lower down there was a slimy ring of algae, and below that, winking redly up at me as the water slopped against the hull, a little rust. At this rate the Collective wasn’t going to last out too many more winters.

Lockyear went on board, and I followed him—along a short companionway and then sharp left into a stairwell that led down to the lower level of the deckhouse. “Mind the steps,” he called out, without looking back. “One of them’s loose.” The warning came a fraction of a second too late: a plank turned under my heel and I just about managed to avoid going over on my face. I was starting to feel a little bit like an Egyptian tomb robber.

The deckhouse was about the only space on board the Collective that was still the same size and shape as it had started out. It was on two levels, connected by a spiral staircase in carefully matched dark woods, and it still had a sort of faded elegance about it. Very faded: the original leather and built-in tables and couches were sort of overwhelmed now by bootlockers and cupboard units from the provisional wing of MFI—and there was a smell of stale grease in the air from the galley in the corner, which had an arc of smoke-blackened ceiling above it like the hovering spirit of fried meals long since past. The only other door out of the room was there, and it was half off its hinges. The balcony rails edging the deckhouse’s upper level, about eight feet above us, were missing in places, so that a casual promenade could become a life-or-death affair if you didn’t look where you were going.

There was a kind of breakfast bar in the galley area, with a counter bolted to the wall and a few high stools scattered along its length. The same tastefully blended cherry and walnut paneling decorated the area around the bar, showing up the rest of the room for the tip it now was. The guy sitting there, tucking into a sausage and egg breakfast, was Reggie Tang. Actually he wasn’t so much tucking into it as playing with it. He looked up as I came in, and he gave me a cold nod as he shoved the plate away from him decisively. He did cold very well, being the spitting image of Bruce Lee circa Enter the Dragon. He was ten years my junior. Since he was wearing only an undershirt and a pair of boxers, I could see that he was in taut, wiry good shape.

“Sorry,” he said, standing up. “I know the face, so I’m assuming we’ve met somewhere. But I can’t remember your name.” I’d forgotten his voice until I heard it again now: it was deep and vibrant, with an almost musical lilt to it.

“No reason why you should,” I said. “We only met the once. I’m Felix Castor. I’m sorry if I disturbed your breakfast.”