Shadow Captain

by Alastair Reynolds

  Then Surt said, in a very low voice: “It’s back, Adrana. I saw it again, when you were down in that bauble. We’ve got company.”

  4

  The sighting room was a little bubble-shaped chamber situated high on the back of the ship. It was constructed mostly of glass, the only point of ingress being a rib-pinching door that looked as if it would be a tight squeeze for a very skinny child. Once the door was sealed—even Tindouf got through that opening by some means—the whole sighting room could be raised out of the body of the ship, pushed up on the end of a stalk that ran off the same hydraulic circuits as the sail-control gear, but which might also be operated manually, using a hand-pump in the room itself. Thus extended, the sighting room afforded an unobstructed view of a greater area of the sky, without the bulk of the ship blocking half the panorama.

  Alone in one of the two seats that faced the banks of clustered eyepieces, I employed a small red lamp to read through the most recent set of entries in the sighting log. The first time she saw the sail-flash, if that was indeed the cause of it, Surt had been searching the sky in an unmethodical and slipshod manner. By the time she realised the possible significance of that flash, the telescope had swung on its well-oiled gimbals and she had lost any sense of the transitory pointing angle. I had swept the suspected area while she sat in the adjoining seat, but there had been nothing to confirm or refute her observation. Not surprisingly, perhaps, for if it had been sail-flash it would still have been an exceedingly momentary event.

  But Surt had seen something like it again, and this time she had been diligent in her observation and note-keeping. Her hand was still not the neatest, but she had laboriously entered the time and coordinates, as well as appending a commendably legible note to the effect of what she had seen.

  Poss. flash, duration one half sec. or less, not repeated.

  Surt still had difficulty with reading and writing, but she was improving, and there was a formula to the keeping of these log notes which meant she need only refer back to what had been written previously, and adjust as she saw fit.

  She made mention that this was the second such flash seen from that area of the sky, and perhaps that would have been better kept between Surt and I. With the lamp extinguished, I allowed my own eyes to adjust to darkness, selected a telescope with medium magnification, and began scrutinising the same area of sky, with a certain margin of error to either side. There was sense in that, because if the origin of that flash were indeed another ship, it would have had time to move with respect to the fixed stars, and by quite a margin if it were close to us. Of course I very much hoped it was not close, but I had to consider the possibility.

  I saw nothing. I had not doubted Surt the first time, though, and I did not doubt her the second.

  I glanced back through the earlier entries, in our varying hands. No one else had reported anything, not since we had been in orbit around this bauble, but again that offered no reason to think we were safe. Equally, the flash could still have some alternative origin, or it might be from a ship that was engaged in some innocent pursuit, with no improper designs against us.

  But as I settled my hand on the lever that would return the sighting room to the ship, I knew where I stood on the subject.

  *

  “Adrana,” she said, sitting at her desk—strapped into it, I should say—and bent over as she wrote something in one of her journals, with the only significant source of light being the red glow of Paladin’s head, fixed to the desk like a curious lantern. “I’m very glad you came. I wanted to show you something—a little puzzle I dug out of Bosa’s things.”

  I studied her for a second or two. Even though she had acknowledged my presence, and in friendly terms, her face was still fierce with concentration. The glowy, which could at times shine from her skin with great prominence, was subdued now, and rendered nearly invisible under Paladin’s dusky glow. Her wild black hair billowed around her head in our near-weightlessness—we were under sail, escaping the bauble’s pull—but aside from that detail I might have been looking back at my younger sister lost in some childhood reverie of intense but inconsequential concentration, composing a story or tinting an illustration.

  She had taken over Bosa’s private quarters. It was a chamber with angled walls, situated next to the main control room, where we attended to the larger and more complicated navigation and communication devices. Both of these rooms were in turn accessible from the galley, being located above the mouth and jaws of the docking bay. Now Fura spent many hours at Bosa’s desk, surrounding herself with the former pirate’s belongings, many of which were exceedingly cryptic.

  Numerous control circuits ran through this part of the ship, making it the most convenient place to install Paladin. What remained of him was wired into the desk, which was in turn connected to the navigation, squawk, ion-emitter, sail-control and coil-gun batteries, meaning there was almost no part of Revenger that Paladin could not operate for himself. But Paladin was damaged, and it had required patience and kind attention to help him relearn his capabilities. Fura had always been fonder of him than I, although I had taken strident pains to revise my ways, and now regretted my earlier disdain, so it was natural that she should be the one nearest to him, helping him rebuild his logic pathways and adjust to this vast and unwieldy new body he had now inherited.

  That arrangement—innocent and agreeable at first—had hardened into formality now, though, with Fura assuming residence of this room just as if she were our captain, properly appointed.

  “Surt’s seen something,” I said.

  She dipped her pen back into a pressure-tight inkwell. “In the sighting room?”

  “Yes. A scintillation, consistent in length and brightness with sail-flash.”

  “She mopes around trying to find her homeworld. I expect she saw a flash from the Congregation.”

  “No,” I answered carefully, feeling I needed to stand up for Surt. “It was toward the Empty, with the Old Sun well over her shoulder when she made the sighting. I’ve consulted the Glass Armillary, as well as the charts and almanacs. There are no worlds or baubles that she could have mistaken for the flash.”

  “If there were another ship out here we’d know it. We’d have picked up squawk and skull chatter and glimpsed much more than a single sail-flash. If she’d seen it on more than one occasion I might credit it, but—”

  I interjected: “It was seen on more than one occasion.”

  She looked at me sharply. “During the same watch?”

  “No. When I saw Surt’s observation I swept the same area of sky, just as a precaution. I believe I saw something as well.”

  “Then you made a note of it?”

  I had drawn myself into a lie, both to protect Surt and to impress the seriousness of the situation upon Fura. But I did not wish to make it worse for myself. “It was a momentary thing, and not bright enough to merit an entry in the sighting log. Under other circumstances, I would have made nothing of it. But Surt’s earlier observation makes it harder to dismiss. I’m minded to think another ship is stalking us.”

  “Sail-flash is very hard to range, even if I accept that this phantom’s real. Under the right conditions, with sufficient magnification and dark adaptation, a flash like that might be seen across ten million leagues—far too far away to be of any concern to us.”

  For someone who had never left a world a year ago, my sister was prone to act if she’d been born and raised on a sunjammer, with a life’s worth of experience in all matters of navigation and spacefaring. She spoke with certainty about things that were doubtful, and yet when I voiced a similarly confident opinion she would be the first to pick at it, shaking her head like an old hand.

  “Or,” I answered patiently, knowing I had practically as much experience as she did, “it could be very much nearer.”

  She turned her gaze to the glassy globe that was Paladin’s head. “Did you understand all that Adrana just reported, Paladin?”

  “Yes,” he replie
d, in his deep, dignified voice, which I now knew to belong to a robot that was once a soldier, as well as a friend and protector to people, who had served his masters with loyalty and courage and then been punished for that fealty. “I understand sail-flash. When one or more elements of the mass of sail is out of alignment, or damaged, or subject to deliberate deflection, it may serve as a mirror, disclosing the presence of a vessel beyond the usual methods of detection.”

  “It needn’t indicate indifferent mastery of a ship,” I said.

  “Not at all, Miss Adrana. Under ordinary circumstances, it is all but unavoidable—an occupational hazard of celestial navigation. But a captain or master of sail, should they seek stealth, will do their best not to allow sail-flash to intercept the line-of-sight of another vessel.”

  “Paladin,” Fura said. “You’d have reported if we’d been hailed, or swept in the usual sense, wouldn’t you?”

  “No sweeper has been detected, Miss Arafura, nor have we been using our own instrument at anything but the lowest setting. Nor have we intercepted squawk transmissions, encoded or otherwise, which appear to be meant for any other vessel in our locality.”

  “And we certainly ain’t been putting out squawks, other than the low-gain communications we use for bauble operations,” Fura said. “And our sails don’t flash. So there’s no way another ship could have smoked us out, even if they had an inkling we were operating in this sector.”

  “There is the bauble,” Paladin said, in a diffident tone, as it were bad form to remind us of this point.

  “The bauble’s always been here,” Fura said.

  “But we have not,” Paladin replied. “When its field was raised, the bauble was the brightest object in the vicinity, and we have been orbiting it. Might you have the coordinates of the sail-flash incidents, Miss Adrana?”

  “Yes. Both sightings were close to one hundred and sixty-six degrees east, twenty-two south.”

  The lights in his head spangled with a sudden flurry of computation. “Then it is possible we were seen as we passed across the face of the bauble. Our sails may be dark but they are not invisible, and even with a reduced spread of sail we are much larger than the bauble. There is another factor, too. If that other ship was paying close attention to this bauble it may have seen the rocket plume from our launch, as we came and went.”

  I chose my reply carefully, making no mention of Surt having seen the first sail-flash before we sent out the launch. “Someone fixating on this bauble for a reason, you mean?”

  “If one wished to find a ship operating on the margins of the Empty, it would be much more efficient to maintain vigil on a number of carefully-chosen baubles, rather than trying to search every cubic league of empty space.”

  “I don’t care for this,” Fura said, shaking her head. “One ship stumbling on us blind out here, I’ll curse my bad luck but accept that it happens. But the way Paladin’s speaking, it’s as if there’s a deliberate plan.”

  “If that’s the case, then we may pick up a hint of it from the skull. I know you’ve been reluctant to use it lately …”

  “With excellent reason. It’s our only skull, and it is damaged. I should rather ration our time on it, while it still functions. We might also risk giving away our identity, even an unintentional disclosure of our position.”

  “I know those dangers, but if we don’t use one of our primary assets, we might as well smash it to pieces ourselves.” I looked at her sharply. “What is is that makes you so resolved not to go into the Bone Room, Fura? You were so keen, when we crewed under Rackamore—always trying to prove your abilities over mine. If one of us should be reticent, it ought to be me.”

  “It was not a competition,” Fura stated coldly. “And if I have reticence, as you put it … you cannot know what it’s like, having this in me.” As her temperament darkened, so the glowy began to flare out of her skin, where it had been subdued before. “I can—will—control it. But I do not need alien spectres screaming through my dreams, when I already have a headful of phantoms to contend with. Are you not satisfied, to have this role to yourself? A ship really only needs one Bone Reader, does it not? And you are so very capable.”

  “As you say, it is not a competition.” But wishing to put matters into a less troubing light, and dissuade her mood from further deterioration, I added: “It was just sail-flash, and there are other things that can produce a similar phenomenon. We haven’t been swept, and no one’s tried to jump us. We’re moving into open space now, and we’ll soon set a definite course. More than likely we won’t see another trace of that ship.”

  “I’m sure you’re right, Adrana.” She reached across the desk and moved a magnetic paperweight off the back of a heavy, rectangular book whose pages were wider than they were tall. “No point dwelling on it now, in any case, not until we have more information.” She looked at me with apparent concern. “I see that you’re unsettled. Would you care for something else to puzzle over?”

  I wondered where she was leading, but at the same time could not ignore my curiosity.

  “I take it this is another of Bosa’s things?”

  “One of her possessions, yes, although I don’t think she had any part in the writing of it.” She slid the heavy book over to me and opened it at a page that was set with a bookmark. “Something she came by, looted from another ship.”

  “Or a bauble?”

  “No, it’s the work of the present Occupation, as you’ll see, so I reckon it doubtful that it was written, then put in a bauble, then found again, all in the last few hundred years.”

  The book was spread wide. The left and right pages were both of the kind that could be unfolded out several times, but for the moment Fura was directing my attention to the one on the right, made of denser, creamier paper than the other, which looked thin and translucent.

  “Open it. Tell me what you see.”

  I lifted an eye. “Giving me orders again?”

  “No—giving you a gift, something to take your mind off our other troubles.” She studied me with an increased intensity. “Do you think I’d be so full of myself as to treat you as an inferior? It was me that came for you, Adrana—me that quite literally risked life and limb for your salvation. Would I have done that if I didn’t love you as any sister would?”

  “Of course not,” I said, chastened to one small degree, and irritated to another. “I shan’t ever forget what you did.”

  Nor stand much chance of forgetting, I added silently.

  “Very well. Now do as I insist: open the book.”

  I obeyed her, taking pains not to tear the stiff paper as I straightened it out. It unfolded to four times its original width, nearly spilling off the edge of the table, and I had to jam a paperweight on it to prevent it springing back. I recognised it instantly, and wondered how it could be any sort of puzzle. It was the timeline of the Occupations, perfectly familiar to us from the long wall at the Hall of History in Mazarile. Familiar to any cove from almost any world in the Congregation, too, because there were museums like that all over the place, as well as thousands of books in schools and libraries, with the same representation.

  A red line went from left to right, marked with big ticks and little ticks—gradations of millions of years, then hundreds of thousands. Rising up from this line at irregular intervals, like the last broken posts of a rotten fence, were the thirteen Occupations—the thirteen times since the Sundering that people had spread out into the Congregation and established a civilisation. The uprights were very narrow, as they had to be. The Occupations only ever lasted a few thousand years at best.

  Normally in such figures there was some annotation to the uprights. The third Occupation, for instance, was sometimes called “The Epoch of the Baublemakers” because no one had ever found any bauble older than that. The eighth Occupation was often referred to as “The Time of the Two-Headed Princes.” The eleventh was either “The Council of Clouds,” or “The Empire of the Ever-Breaking Wave,” or both, depending on
who was speaking. It was complicated, because crews had their own terminology and historians several others, and they didn’t always marry up.

  No such annotation here, though—just those uprights, inked in the same red as the baseline.

  “I suppose there’s a catch,” I said. “Or you wouldn’t be asking me to identify something we both know as well as the alphabet.”

  “Unfold the page on the left, dear heart. It’s made so that it spreads out over the page you’ve already extended.”

  I pinched the edge of the translucent sheet and unfolded it, using the same paperweight to anchor it down once it had reached its fullest extent. Then I frowned.

  “What is this?”

  “The puzzle I was hoping you’d be able to explain. ’Cept it isn’t really a puzzle, I suppose, as the meaning of it’s plain enough. But I don’t quite get the meaning of the meaning, so to speak.”

  “Neither do I.”

  The translucent sheet had a red baseline as well, and its tick marks lined up exactly with the ones on the underlying page. The same span of time, in other words. But rising up from the baseline on the translucent sheet was a veritable forest of uprights, far more than the paltry thirteen on the main timeline. They were marked out evenly, too, not in step with the ticks, but still with an equal spacing between them.

  “There are hundreds of these,” I said.

  “Four hundred ’n’ forty, near as it matters,” Fura said. “Paladin’s examined the same figure. Remind me, Paladin, how far apart those intervals are?”

  “Each vertical stroke is twenty-two thousand, five hundred years from the preceding one,” he said.

  “Now do you see how they correspond with the thirteen big marks below?” Fura asked me.