Shadow Captain

by Alastair Reynolds

  “Somethin’ troublin’ you?”

  I smiled quickly. “Just wondering how we’re going to get through this, if we don’t keep our story straight.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it too much.” She was giving me a doubtful look, making me think she’d seen how forced my smile was. “Half the business of crews is lyin’ about their pasts, coverin’ up mistakes and makin’ their successes seem bigger than they really were. Even a good cove like Rackamore wasn’t above the odd bit of embroiderin’, if it helped us along.”

  “We’re doing a bit more than embroidering, Proz.”

  “We’ll be all right. It’s not like we have any complicated dealings do we? Some recruitin’, if need be. Stockin’ up on stores. Fixing Strambli, if she doesn’t snap out of that fever on her own. That’s normal business. Nothin’ for any cove to raise an eyebrow over.”

  “We’d best hope not.”

  “If there’s somethin’ else about this place that has you bothered, girlie, I hope you’d share it with me rather’n let it fester.”

  “No … I …” I tried to fasten on a more convincing smile than my previous attempt. “I suppose it’s just that we’ve been out here so long, skulking around, that it’s going to feel a bit odd going back to civilisation.”

  “I know what you mean,” she said, surprising me a bit with her agreement. “But you didn’t sign up with the Monetta’s Mourn to run away from your old lives forever, did you? None of us really does, no matter what we might say. We just want to see a bit more of the worlds, earn a quoin or two. Even old Proz had thoughts of settlin’ down, until that bank run turned her savings to slush. Civilisation ain’t a thing to run from, girlie. It’s the reason we’re out here riskin’ our necks with baubles. But just now and then we need remindin’ of that.”

  *

  Fura and I were in the sighting room. She had her eye to one of the larger scopes, puckering her lips with tremendous concentration as she made a tiny alteration to one of the pointing dials. When she drew in breath to speak, it was as if she had not been breathing for at least a minute.

  “There. I have it. Momentarily, at least. Our position’s shifting and it won’t hold for long.” She squeezed aside, giving me room to lean over and squint through the same eyepiece.

  Stars, a smattering of worlds. More worlds than a few weeks ago, and some of them showing flecks of colour. Glimmers of purple and red. The nearest worlds were still many tens of thousands of leagues away but with the best instruments it would have been feasible to identify them, picking out noteworthy features.

  That was not our business today.

  “I don’t see it,” I said.

  “Watch the bright star in the middle. It’s a true star, not a world. The swallower is exactly between us.”

  The star twinkled—swelling and fading in brightness—in a way that I had never associated with the lights of the fixed firmament, far beyond the jostle of the Congregation. The star regained its stability for a few seconds, then sparkled again, and for an instant it seemed to smear into a sort of crescent.

  “Then it’s real. Bosa’s swallower.”

  “I never doubted it for an instant. The ephemeris was a little off, but not enough to upset our plan. Paladin’s revising the schedule as we speak.”

  “How did you find it, if it wasn’t where it should have been?”

  “It was very close. Otherwise it would have been quite impossible. A tiny, dark thing like that—barely showing itself unless it happens to trick the light of another object, like a lens. I wonder how many ships have been lost, running into naked swallowers? Perhaps some of those thought lost to Bosa.”

  “There can’t be many of these things floating around.”

  “We might hope.”

  “You said they only escaped when worlds were destroyed. We know there’s a little dust and debris surrounding the Congregation, but there are still fifty million worlds that haven’t been smashed up. There can’t have been that many lost over the years, or we’d be swimming in dust.”

  “Doesn’t it trouble you that it happened at all?” she asked.

  “Of course it troubles me. If there’s anything dependable in this Congregation of ours, it’s the worlds we’re born on. They’ve outlasted us and they’ll outlast our descendants. If I’m on such a place, I’d sooner sleep in my bed knowing the world will still be there in the morning. Wouldn’t you?”

  “If I meant to spend much more time on worlds, I suppose I might.” She paused, while I eased my eye away from the scope, now that the star had settled down again. “I don’t like the idea of worlds being destroyed, of course. But it’s the greater fate of the Congregation that concerns me more. Our Occupation, and how it will end. I thought it silly of Rackamore to be troubled by such a distant concern, but I find it much harder to dismiss his fears now. What is the point of any deed, good or otherwise, if this little window of civilisation of ours will soon have its end?”

  “We don’t know that it will.”

  “True. Perhaps we will be the fortunate ones. The lucky Thirteenth. If indeed we can truly call this the Thirteenth Occupation.”

  “Back to that, are we? I was hoping that shooting her body to smithereens would have purged you of Bosa’s obsessions.”

  Purged you, if not me, I added silently to myself.

  “Then you thought incorrectly.” But she ameliorated her tone. “I’m glad to be rid of that body. But those obsessions of hers, as you call them, are questions that any sensible person would be drawn to.” She gestured beyond the glass of the sighting room. “Think of all those worlds, Adrana—all the millions of lives going on in the Congregation. All the petty distractions of our so-called civilisation. The things we used to think mattered, like a proper education and ‘getting on’ in life. Moving in the right circles, and having enough money to be comfortable. Prestige and ambition. Finding the right man or woman. Being dressed properly for the season. Knowing when to speak, and when not to. Having opinions, but never too many of ’em. And all of it built on thin ice. A system of commerce, run by aliens for their own convenience. Occupations that end as soon as they begin, as if ours will be any different. A host of Shadow Occupations that were stillborn before they had—”

  “I don’t believe it,” I said curtly. “I looked at those scribblings, and I see that they fit, and I still don’t believe it. As far as I’m concerned, it’s just scraps of madness that Bosa left behind, to pollute our minds and make us doubt things we never needed to doubt. And I include the quoins in that, in case you were wondering. We’re done with her crew, done with her body, and in case it’s escaped your attention we’ve very nearly transformed her ship. She’s loosening her hold on us by the day, and yet you cling to these fancies of hers as if you owe her some sort of loyalty.” I pointed a finger at my chest. “I am the one she meant to take her place. And I reject her, wholly and without compunction. She’s dead and gone. We turned her body to splinters. Now let us both be finished with everything she stood for.”

  “You really feel you’re rid of her?”

  “Yes,” I answered. “Beyond any doubt.”

  I think she might have been formulating a response—something barbed, no doubt—when Paladin buzzed across the intercom.

  “Begging your pardon, Miss Arafura, Miss Adrana, I have the new calculations for our approach. We should begin striking sail in twelve hours, and in twenty-four we round the swallower.”

  10

  I reached under the galley table, where I had bundled up six pieces of paper, of the same leathery constitution as the sheets Fura used in her True and Accurate Testimony. Each sheet had paragraphs of writing on, in my tolerably neat hand, which was the false history Prozor and I had come up with, beginning on Indragol, where our ship had first been commissioned and named.

  There was a name at the top of each sheet. I passed them around, starting with Tindouf, continuing with Prozor and Surt, taking one for myself and leaving Fura to last. She hesitated for a
second, then clasped her tin fingers around the sheet, nearly ripping it from my grip.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  “Your favourite thing in the world,” I said. “Homework. Something to take our minds off the swallower. It’s the history Proz and I cobbled together for this ship. But since each of us is supposed to have found our way onto the crew by different means, each sheet is a little different. It’s got your name, the world you came from, any ships you crewed on before this one, the baubles you’ve cracked and so on. Anything pertinent—but not so much that it’ll bog us down.”

  “The Grey Lady, under Captain Tessily Marance,” Surt said, reading carefully, her lips moving as she formed the words. “And which of us is Tessily Marance, exactly?”

  “Fura,” I said.

  “I don’t remember the part where we agreed to that,” Surt replied, meeting my eyes, twisting her head just enough that the weals on her skin showed above her collar, as if I required a reminder of what had transpired between us.

  “It’s a cover story, nothing more,” I answered, brazening out her look. “One of us has to be captain, and Fura looks the part.”

  Surt nodded slowly. “So you’d be her sister, would you?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m Tragen Imbery—Trage to her crewmates. No relation to good Cap’n Tessily, although many’s the cove who’s remarked on our distant likeness.”

  “Distant likeness my—” Surt began.

  “We’ll wear our hair differently when we’re ashore, and no one’ll jump to the assumption that we must be sisters.”

  “In fairness,” Prozor said, “you don’t look half as alike as when you first showed up.”

  Surt was still reading. “Liz-zil. Lizzil Taine. Am I sayin’ that right?”

  “Perfectly,” I said.

  “I’d sooner be called somethin’ else.”

  “So would we all, but those are your names. You’re an Integrator, of course—we all stick to our given professions. Originally from Imanderil, which is a tubeworld in the eighteenth processional.”

  “What if I start bumping gums with a cove from Imanderil?”

  “It’s unlikely, but if you do there’s enough on that sheet to throw most people off the scent. You crewed on the Whispering Witch, under Captain Mundry, then after a run of bad strikes you switched to the Grey Lady, hoping a change of ship would improve your luck. You’ve never run into Bosa Sennen, and truth be told you don’t really think she exists. Those ships that have been lost, you’re more inclined to put it down to mistakes and accidents.”

  “’Cept that’s not how I feel.”

  “Not how any of us feel,” Prozor said. “But we’re a hardened crew who don’t have time for fairytales and rumours. We don’t mention Bosa Sennen unless we’re drawn into it, and even then we’re not that interested.”

  I tapped my own sheet. “Learning these identities will take some work. But that’s only half of it. We’ve also got to know each other’s stories, at least as well as if we’d been crewing together for a few months. It’s going to be very important that we don’t make a slip.” I turned to look at Fura. “Are you agreed with that, Cap’n Tessily?”

  “Cap’n Marance fits better,” she said after a moment’s consideration, her metal fingernails scraping against the paper. “Tessily would be the name I reserved for friends, wouldn’t it? And I don’t think this Cap’n Marance would be the sort to have too many of those.”

  *

  It was an act of faith that the other ship was still behind us, but after the shot that hurt Strambli there had been no further sign of it. We had not been swept, there had been no sail-flash and nothing but routine traffic on the squawk. Fura and I had been to the skull, but beyond that first encounter I had nothing to prove that the Sympathetic in the other bone room was sending, much less showing an interest in us. But I believed that they were real, nonetheless. I had not imagined that distinct connection when the name Nightjammer ghosted between us like a curse, nor the sharp sense of withdrawal when the other mind sensed my own.

  We would have proof of their presence soon enough.

  As the hour drew upon us, the atmosphere on Revenger grew tenser, with the jokes and banter falling gradually away, leaving only clipped exchanges and muttered observations. We had tested the guns, we had prepared the sweeper, we had rehearsed the striking of sail a thousand times in our heads. Paladin had continued to refine the details of our approach to the swallower, taking us damnably close but not so close as to be suicidal. The ship would moan and groan when the strains hit it, so when we were not busy with control gear or vacuum suit checks, we were testing every bulkhead or hull-plate that had ever given cause for doubt, checking circuits and tightening the lagging on every pipe that might burst under pressure. Gauges and compasses were tapped until their dials and needles moved freely, and each of us verified that supplies of lungstuff were exactly where they were meant to be stowed, and in the intended quantities.

  We were ready. We could not be more ready.

  “It’s not an act of aggression,” I said aloud, even when I was alone. “It’s reasonable self-defence. If we cripple their sails, and stop at that, they’ll know we’re not operating under Bosa’s rules. They’ll have all the evidence they need to decide that we’re an innocent party.”

  Meanwhile, Strambli worsened.

  Her fever deepened and the inflammation around the Ghostie wound became hot and swollen. When Surt changed the dressing we all waited for good news, but it only took one glance at her expression to set our minds straight.

  “The sooner we’re at that wheel, the better.”

  Strambli had been spending more time unconscious than awake, and if she was not sleeping she writhed and mumbled, making us shudder to think of the carnival of spectres haunting her dreams. We tried to take turns being with her, to ease her suffering with cold towels on her forehead, but she was having to get used to being on her own.

  I felt bad, but I was never sorry to be out of the kindness room. All my arguments against the life Bosa had meant for me softened if I spent too long in that place. I would start thinking that perhaps I was not so grateful to have been rescued after all; that Fura had denied me my own future just as it was opening, demanding that I play a secondary role in her own ascendance instead. I knew it was wrong of me; that these thoughts were merely the delayed consequences of Bosa’s conditioning, but that did not lessen them or their sting.

  *

  “If she has to lose the leg,” Fura said, as we prepared to strike sail, “there’re worse things. I went to the Limb Broker, didn’t I?” She gave an admiring look at her forearm and hand. “Reckon I’m better off now than I was before. You saw how I knew when that ball was coming, in the Rumbler.”

  “It’s a pretty arm,” I said. “But you were able to trade in the old one without a scratch on it. Strambli’s not likely to be so fortunate.” I decided to test her resolve a little. “I’m concerned that she’ll slip into delirium and start spouting stuff when we’re in company. She could be a liability.”

  “What are you suggesting—that we throw her away like we did Bosa?”

  “I’m just trying to anticipate a problem.”

  “Then I’ll set your mind at ease. As long as we stick to our stories—your very excellent stories—we’ll have no cause for trouble. You said it yourself. She’ll be delirious. No one pays the slightest heed to delirious people, especially doctors. They hear enough craziness to last a lifetime. By the way, I rather approve of the role you’ve made for me. Captain Marance … there’s a certain ring to it, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “It’s time to haul-in,” I said.

  I should have liked it if Tindouf were the one to remain inside the ship while Fura joined us in the rigging. But Tindouf had gained too much secondary knowledge of the sails to be wasted on house-keeping, and since Surt, Prozor and I were also needed outside, it fell to Fura to keep vigil with Paladin.

  It was hard on the nerves to be ou
tside, knowing that a salvo of sail-shot could come in at any moment, harder still to think of the swallower being so close, and yet completely invisible to our natural faculties. Was it better to know of its position, I wondered, or was I happier in my former ignorance? I wondered if I would ever again view any piece of empty space with anything but apprehension, knowing the traps it might contain.

  It was not even a large swallower. At the centre of the Swirly, so the old books taught us, especially the kind we’d gobbled up in childhood, with lots of pictures and diagrams and pages that folded out twice, was a swallower made up of the crushed corpses of a million Old Suns—maybe more. Even single stars, when they died, might leave behind swallowers that were at least as massive as our own progenitor. The naked swallower, if it followed the same rules as those inside the worlds of the Congregation, would be very much smaller. When they took apart the Earth, so it was said, there was enough material to make a hundred thousand swallowers, and if all the eight worlds were taken into account there was easily enough to make many millions of swallowers and still have enough rubble left over for all the new worlds and baubles.

  You might think a swallower made up of a hundred thousandth part of one of the old worlds would be no small thing, perhaps the size of a little mountain or a big mansion, or at least as big as the ball that nearly killed us in the Rumbler. But the mathematics of swallowers was exceedingly slippery. I thought back to those books again, the coloured plates and charts, comparing the sizes of swallowers to various things such as railway stations, whales, horses, dogs, canaries, beetles, grains of rice and so on. Although we had seen the light of a distant star smeared and contorted by it, it was the space around the swallower that was acting like a lens, not the entity itself. The swallower was a black speck, tinier than the tiniest drop of ink on a page. I would have needed a magnifying glass to see it.

  But if I had been within four leagues of that swallower, I’d have felt myself pulled to it with exactly the same force as if I were walking around on Mazarile. That was how close Paladin meant to take us; necessary if we were going to use the swallower to our advantage, and yet the slightest error in our course would be calamitous. A league nearer, and the swallower’s pull on us would nearly double, and the strain on the ship would be proportionately greater the deeper we slid into that gravity well. Even if Paladin put us on the optimum course, the difference in pull from one sail to the next would be more than they were made to withstand, and even a slight error would make it uncomfortable inside the hull.