She looked at all the fish in the elevator aquarium and chose the angelfish. It was an old game. If it followed, they would have good luck. As the lift doors closed, the nose of the angelfish edged up. It looked for a moment as though it might launch, then dived suddenly down into the depths of the scraper. The lift began to move.
At level fifty-four a man intent upon his Surfboard got out and a young woman in a long skirt got in. Her glance took in Adelaide’s costume, then floated, as those dull, earnest types always did, up to Adelaide’s face. Adelaide stared blandly back.
She knew why she was helping Vikram. It was because she was bored. And boredom in Osiris was dangerous, boredom was a one-way ticket to insanity. Liaising with a westerner, on the other hand, could not be described as anything other than reckless.
As the lift rose she was overwhelmed by a sense of vertigo, a sense that her involvement was about to become far bigger, far wider than she had accounted for. Level eighty-one. The lift doors paused, the doors parted. There was still time. She could get out now. She could walk away.
But she didn’t. Adelaide had been accused of many things, but no-one had ever said she was a coward.