‘I've been doing a little digging,' Sergey said, leaning across the table towards Ben, his breath heavy with wine. ‘And guess what I found out?' He laughed coldly. ‘Our friend here bought his way into Oxford. Just like he buys up everything. They waived the rules to let him in.'
Catherine shook her head. ‘I don't follow you...'
Sergey huffed, disgust writ large on his face. ‘He's a charlatan, that's what he is. He shouldn't be here. He's like all the other parasites. The only difference is that he's not a Han.' He laughed brutally, then turned and looked at her again, angry now. ‘Unlike the rest of us, Shepherd here has no qualifications. He's never passed an exam in his life. As for work...' The laugh was broken, the sneer in the voice pointed. At nearby tables people had broken off their own conversations to see what was going on. ‘He's never attended a single tutorial. Never handed in a single essay. And as for sitting the end of year exams, forget it. He goes home before all that. He's above it, you see. Or at least, his money is.'
There was a flutter of laughter at that. But Sergey was not to be distracted by it. He was in full flow now, one hand pointing at his target as he spoke.
‘Yes, he's a strange one, this one. He's rich and he's obviously connected. Right up to the top, so they say. But he's something of a mystery, too. He's not from the City. And that's why he despises us.'
She stared at Sergey, not understanding. What did he mean? Everyone came from the City. There was nowhere else to come from. Unless... She thought of the handwritten letters – of the strangeness of so many things connected with Ben – and for a moment felt uncertainty wash over her. Then she remembered what he was doing: recollected what she herself had experienced in the frame.
‘You're wrong, Sergey. You don't understand...'
Sergey pulled himself up and went round the table, then stood there, leaning over Shepherd. ‘No. I understand only too well. He's a fucking toad, that's what he is. A piece of slime.'
She watched the two of them anxiously, terrified of what was going to happen. ‘He's drunk,' she said pleadingly. ‘He doesn't mean it, Ben. It's the drink talking.' But she was afraid for him. He didn't know Sergey; didn't know how vicious his temper was.
Ben was looking at her, ignoring the other man. He seemed calm, unaffected by the words, by the physical presence of the other man above him.
‘Let him have his say, my love. It's only words.'
It was the first time he had called her love, but she scarcely noticed it. All she could see was that the very mildness of Ben's words acted to inflame Sergey's anger.
‘You're wrong,' he said icily. ‘It's more than words.'
Ben turned and looked up at him, undaunted. ‘When a fool tells you you're wrong, you rejoice.'
It was too much. Sergey lunged at him with both hands, trying to get a grip on his neck, but Ben pushed him away and stood, facing him. Sergey was breathing heavily, furious now. He made a second grab at Ben and got hold of his right arm, trying to twist it round behind his back and force him down on to his knees.
Cae h, th Qem">Cae htherine was on her feet, screaming. ‘No! Please, Sergey! Don't hurt him! Please don't hurt him!'
Waiters were running towards them, trying to force a way through the crowd and break it up, but the press about the table was too great.
Using brute strength Sergey forced Ben down, grunting with the effort. Then, suddenly, Ben seemed to yield and roll forward, throwing his opponent off balance. Sergey stumbled and fell against a chair. When he got up there was blood running from beneath his eye.
‘You bastard...'
With a bellow of rage he threw himself at Ben again, but Ben's reflexes were much quicker. As Sergey lunged past him, he moved aside and caught hold of Sergey's right hand, turning the wrist.
The snap of breaking bones was audible. Sergey shrieked and went down on to his knees, cradling the useless hand.
For a moment Ben stood over him, his legs planted firmly apart, his chest rising and falling erratically, then he shuddered.
‘I didn't mean...'
But it was done. The sculptor's hand was crushed and broken. Useless, it began to swell. Sergey pushed at it tenderly with one finger of the other hand, then moaned and slumped forward, unconscious.
Ben stepped back, away, his eyes taking in everything. Then he turned and looked back at Catherine. She was standing there, her hands up to her mouth, staring down at the injured man.
‘Ben...' she said softly, her voice barely in control. ‘Oh, Ben. What have you done?'
Meg looked about her as they walked down Main towards the transit. The air was still, like the air inside a sealed box. It was the first thing she had noticed. There was no movement in the air, no rustling of leaves, none of the small, soft sounds that moving water makes, no hum of insects. Instead, small boys went between the flower boxes with spray cans, pollinating the flowers, or watered the huge oaks which rested in deep troughs set into the floor. From their branches hung cages: huge, ornately gilded cages filled with bright-coloured birds. But nothing flew here. Nothing bent and danced in the open wind.
‘They like it like this,' Ben said, as if that explained it all. Then he frowned and turned to look at her. ‘But it doesn't satisfy. Nothing here satisfies. It's all surfaces. There's nothing deep here. Nothing rooted.'
It was Meg's first full morning in the City, though morning here meant little more than a change in the intensity of the overhead lighting. Outside, beyond the City's walls, it was still dark. But here that fact of nature did not matter. Throughout City Europe, time was uniform, governed not by local variation but in accordance with the rising and setting of the sun over the City's eastern edge.
Morning. It was one more imperfect mimicry. Like the trees, the flowers, the birds, the word lost its sharp precision here without a sun to make it real.
They went up fifty levels to the college grounds. This was what they termed an ‘open deck' and there was a sense of space and openness. Here there were no tight warrens of corridors, no ceiling almost within touch wherever one went; even so, Meg felt stifled. It was not like being in a house, where the door opened out on to the freshness of a garden. Here the eyes met walls with every movement. She had forgotten how awful it was. Like being in a cage.
‘How can you stand it here?'
He looked about him, then reached out, taking her hand. ‘I've missed you, you know. It's been... difficult.'
‘Difficult?'
They had stopped in the central hexagonal space. On every side greatto sat Q greatto tiers of balconies sloped back gently towards the ceiling, their surfaces transparent, reflecting and refracting light.
‘You should come home, Ben. All this...' She looked about her, shaking her head. ‘It's no good for you.'
‘Maybe,' he said, looking away from her. ‘And yet I've got to try to understand it. It may be awful, but this is what is, Meg. This is all that remains of the world we made.'
She went to shake her head, to remind him of home, but checked herself. It was not the time to tell him why she'd come. Besides, talking of home would only infuriate him. And perhaps he was right. Perhaps he did have to try to understand it. So that he could return, satisfied, knowing there was nothing else – nothing missing from his world.
‘You seem depressed, Ben. Is it just the place? Or is it something else?'
He turned, half-smiling. ‘No. You're right. It's not just the place.' He made a small despairing gesture, then looked up at one of the great tiers of balconies. Through the glass-like walls one could see people – dozens, hundreds, thousands of people. People, everywhere you looked. One was never alone here. Even in his rooms he felt the press of them against the walls.
He looked back at her, his face suddenly naked, open to her. ‘I get lonely here, Meg. More lonely than I thought it possible to feel.'
She stared at him, then lowered her eyes, disturbed by the sudden insight into what he had been feeling. She would never have guessed.
As they walked on he began to tell her about the fight. When he had finished she turned to face him, horrified.
‘But they can't blame you for that, Ben. He provoked you. You were only defending yourself, surely?'
He smiled tightly. ‘Yes. And the authorities have accepted that. Several witnesses came forward to defend me against his accusation. But that only makes it worse, somehow.'
‘But why? If it happened as you say it did?'
He looked away, staring across the open space. ‘I offered to pay full costs. For a new synthetic, if necessary. But he refused. It seems he plans to wear his broken hand like a badge.'
He looked back at her, his eyes filled with pain and hurt and anger. And something else.
‘You shouldn't blame yourself, Ben. It was his fault, not yours.'
He hesitated, then shook his head. ‘So it seems. So I made it seem. But the truth is, I enjoyed it, Meg. I enjoyed pushing him. To the limit and then...' He made a small pushing movement with one hand. ‘I enjoyed it. Do you understand that, Meg?'
She watched her brother, not understanding. It was a side of him she had never seen, and for all his words she couldn't quite believe it.
‘It's guilt, Ben. You're feeling guilty for something that wasn't your fault.'
He laughed and looked away. ‘Guilt? No, it wasn't guilt. I snapped his hand like a rotten twig. Knowing I could do it. Don't you understand? I could see how drunk he was, how easily he could be handled.'