‘Consider yourself pencilled in, at least on a provisional basis.’
He vanished back into the tunnel, leaving Dieterling and me standing together in the terminal. For a few moments neither of us said anything, overwhelmed by the strangeness of the place.
We were in the surface-level concourse, a ring-shaped hall which encircled the embarkation and disembarkation chamber at the base of the thread. The concourse’s ceiling was many levels above, the intervening space criss-crossed by suspended walkways and transit tubes, with what had once been luxury shops, boutiques and restaurants set into the outer wall. Most of them were closed now, or had been converted into minor shrines or places where religious material could be purchased. There were very few people moving around, with hardly anyone arriving from orbit and only a handful of people walking towards the elevators. The concourse was darker than its designers must have intended, the ceiling scarcely visible, and the whole place had the quality of a cathedral in which, unseen but sensed, some sacred ceremony was taking place; an atmosphere that invited neither haste nor raised voices. At the very edge of hearing was a constant low hum, like a basement full of generators. Or, I thought, like a room full of chanting monks holding the same sepulchral note.
‘Has it always been like this?’ I said.
‘No. I mean, it’s always been a shithole, but it’s definitely worse than the last time I was here. It must have been different a month or so ago. The place would have been heaving. Most of the people for the ship would have had to come through here.’
The arrival of a starship around Sky’s Edge was always something of an event. Being a poor and moderately backwards planet compared with many of the other settled worlds, we were not exactly a key player in the shifting spectrum of interstellar trade. We didn’t export much, except the experience of war itself and a few uninteresting bio-products culled from the jungles. We would have happily bought all manner of exotic technological goods and services from the Demarchist worlds, but only the very wealthiest people on Sky’s Edge could afford them. When ships paid us a visit, speculation usually had it that they had been been frozen out of the more lucrative markets - the Yellowstone-Sol run, or the Fand-Yellowstone-Grand Teton run - or they had to stop anyway to make repairs. It happened about once every ten standard years, on average, and they always screwed us.
‘Is this really where Haussmann died?’ I asked Dieterling.
‘It was somewhere near here,’ he said as we crossed the concourse’s great, echoing floor. ‘They’ll never know exactly where because they didn’t have accurate maps back then. But it must have been within a few kilometres of here; definitely within the outskirts of Nueva Valparaiso. At first they were going to burn the body, but then they decided to embalm him; make it easier to hold him up as an example to others.’
‘But there was no cult then?’
‘No. He had a few fruitcake sympathisers, of course - but there was nothing ecclesiastical about it. That came afterwards. The Santiago was largely secular, but they couldn’t engineer religion out of the human psyche that easily. They took what Sky had done and fused his deeds with what they chose to remember from home; saving this and discarding that as they saw fit. It took a few generations until they had all the details worked out, but then there was no stopping them.’
‘And after the bridge was built?’
‘By then one of the Haussmann cults had gained possession of the body. The Church of Sky, they called themselves. And - for reasons of convenience, if nothing else - they’d decided that he must have died not just near the bridge but right under it. And that the bridge was not really a space elevator at all - or if it was, that was just a superficial function - but really a sign from God: a ready-made shrine to the crime and glory of Sky Haussmann.’
‘But people designed and built the bridge.’
‘Under God’s will. Don’t you understand? It’s nothing you can argue with, Tanner. Give up now.’
We passed a few cultists moving in the opposite direction, two men and a woman. I felt a jolt of familiarity when I saw them, but I couldn’t remember if I had ever seen any in the flesh before. They wore ash-coloured smocks and both sexes tended to wear their hair long. One man had a kind of mechanical coronet fixed on his skull - maybe some kind of pain-inducing device - while the other man’s left sleeve was pinned flatly to his side. The woman had a small dolphin-shaped mark on her forehead, and I remembered the way in which Sky Haussmann had befriended the dolphins aboard the Santiago; spending time with the creatures that the other crew shunned.
Recollection of that detail struck me as odd. Had someone told it to me before?
‘Have you got that gun ready?’ Dieterling said. ‘You never know. We might walk round the corner and find the bastard tying his shoelaces.’
I patted the gun to reassure myself that it was still there, then said, ‘I don’t think it’s our day to be lucky, Miguel.’
We stepped through a door set into the concourse’s inner wall, the sound of chanting monks now quite unmistakably human; sustaining a note that was almost but not quite perfect.
For the first time since entering the anchorpoint terminal, we could see the thread. The embarkation area into which we’d stepped was a huge circular room encircled by a balcony on which we stood. The true floor was hundreds of metres below us, and the thread plunged from above, emerging through the ceiling via an irised entrance door, then stretching down towards the point where it was truly anchored and where servicing machinery lurked to refurbish and repair the elevators. It was somewhere down there that the sound of the chanting was coming from; voices carried higher by the odd acoustics of the place.
The bridge was a single thin thread of hyperdiamond stretching all the way from ground to synchronous orbit. For almost its entire length it was only five metres in diameter (and most of that was hollow), except for the very last kilometre which dropped into the terminal itself. The thread here was thirty metres wide, tapering subtly as it rose. The extra width served a purely psychological function: too many passengers had balked at taking the journey to orbit when they saw how slender the thread they would be riding really was, so the bridge owners made the visible portion in the terminal much wider than it needed to be.
Elevator cars arrived and departed every few minutes or so, ascending and descending on opposite sides of the column. Each was a sleek cylinder curved to grip nearly half the thread, attached magnetically. The cars were multi-storeyed, with separate levels for dining, recreation and sleeping. They were mostly empty, their passenger compartments unlit as they glided up or down. There were a handful of people in only every fifth or sixth car. The empty cars were symptomatic of the bridge’s economic woes, but not a great problem in themselves. The expense of running them was tiny compared with the cost of the bridge; they had no impact on the schedule of the inhabited cars, and from a distance they looked as full as the others, conveying an illusion of busy prosperity which the bridge owners had long given up hoping would one day approach reality, since the Church had assumed tenancy. And the monsoon season may have given the illusion that the war was in its dog days, but plans were already drawn for the new season’s campaigns: the pushes and incursions already simulated in the battle-planners’ wargame computers.
A dizzyingly unsupported tongue of glass reached from the balcony to a point just short of the thread, leaving enough space for an elevator to arrive. Some passengers were already waiting on the tongue with their belongings, including a group of well-dressed aristocrats. But no Reivich, and no one in the party who resembled any of Reivich’s associates. They were talking amongst themselves or watching news reports on screens which floated around the chamber like square, narrow-bodied tropical fish, flickering with market reports and celebrity interviews.
Near the base of the tongue was a booth where elevator tickets were being sold; a bored-looking woman was behind the desk.
‘Wait here,’ I said to Dieterling.
The woman looked up at
me as I approached the desk. She wore a crumpled Bridge Authority uniform and had purple crescents under her eyes, which were themselves bloodshot and swollen.
‘Yes?’
‘I’m a friend of Argent Reivich. I need to contact him urgently.’
‘I’m afraid that isn’t possible.’
It was no more than I was expecting. ‘When did he leave?’
Her voice was nasal; the consonants indistinct. ‘I’m afraid I can’t give out that information.’
I nodded shrewdly. ‘But you don’t deny that he passed through the terminal.’
‘I’m afraid I . . .’
‘Look, give it a rest, will you?’ I softened the remark with what I hoped was an accommodating smile. ‘Sorry, it wasn’t my intention to sound rude, but this happens to be very urgent. I have something for him, you see - a valuable Reivich family heirloom. Is there any way I can speak to him while he’s still ascending, or am I going to have to wait until he reaches orbit?’
The woman hesitated. Almost any information she divulged at this point would have contravened protocol - but I must have seemed so honest, so genuinely distressed by my friend’s omission. And so clearly rich.
She glanced down at a display. ‘You’ll be able to place a message for him to contact you when he arrives at the orbital terminus.’ Implying that he hadn’t yet arrived; that he was still somewhere above me, ascending the thread.
‘I think perhaps I’d better just follow him,’ I said. ‘That way, there’ll be the minimum of delay when he reaches orbit. I can just deliver the relevant item and return.’
‘I suppose that would make sense, yes.’ She looked at me, perhaps sensing something in my manner that was not as it should have been, but not trusting her own instincts sufficiently to obstruct my progress. ‘But you’ll have to hurry. The next departure’s almost ready for boarding.’
I looked back to the point where the tongue extended out to the thread, seeing an empty elevator slide up from the servicing area.
‘You’d better issue me with a ticket then.’
‘You’ll be needing a return, I presume?’ The woman rubbed at her eyes. ‘That’ll be five hundred and fifty Australs.’
I opened my wallet and pinched out the money, printed in crisp Southlander bills. ‘Scandalous,’ I said. ‘The amount of energy it actually costs the Bridge Authority to carry me to orbit, it should be a tenth the price. But I suppose some of that gets skimmed off by the Church of Sky.’
‘I’m not saying that doesn’t happen, but you shouldn’t speak ill of the Church, sir. Not here.’
‘No; that was what I heard. But you’re not one of them, are you?’
‘No,’ she said, handing me the change in smaller bills. ‘I just work here.’
The cultists had taken over the bridge a decade or so back, after they had convinced themselves that this place was where Sky had been crucified. They had stormed the place one evening before anyone realised quite what was happening. Haussmann’s followers claimed to have rigged the whole terminal with booby-trapped canisters primed with their virus, threatening to discharge them if there was any attempt at an eviction. The virus would carry far enough on the wind to infect half the Peninsula, if there was as much of it in the bridge as the cultists said. They might have been bluffing, but no one was prepared to take the risk of the cult forcing itself on millions of bystanders. So they held the bridge, and allowed the Bridge Authority to continue running it, even if it meant that the staff had to be constantly inoculated against any trace contamination. Given the side-effects of the anti-viral therapy, it obviously wasn’t the most popular work on the Peninsula - especially as it meant listening to the endless chanting of the cultists.
She handed me the ticket.
‘I hope I make it to orbit in time,’ I said.
‘The last elevator only left an hour ago. If your friend was on that one . . .’ She paused, and I knew there was no if about it. ‘The chances are very good that he’ll still be in the orbital terminal when you arrive.’
‘Let’s just hope he’s grateful, after all this.’
She almost smiled, then seemed to give up halfway through. It was a lot of effort, after all.
‘I’m sure he’ll be blown away.’
I pocketed the ticket, thanked the woman - miserable as she was, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her having to work here - and then walked back to Dieterling. He was leaning on the low glass wall that surrounded the connecting tongue, looking down at the cultists. His expression was one of detached, watchful calm. I thought back to the time in the jungle when he had saved my life, during the hamadryad attack. He had worn the same neutral expression then: like a man engaged in a chess match against a completely outclassed opponent.
‘Well?’ he mouthed, when we were within earshot.
‘He’s already taken an elevator.’
‘When?’
‘About an hour ago. I’ve just bought a ticket for myself. Go and buy one as well, but don’t act as if we’re travelling together.’
‘Maybe I shouldn’t come with you, bro.’
‘You’ll be safe.’ I lowered my voice. ‘There won’t be any emigration checkpoints between here and the exit from the orbital terminal. You can ride up and down without getting arrested.’
‘Easy for you to say, Tanner.’
‘Yes, but still I’m telling you it’ll be safe.’
Dieterling shook his head. ‘Maybe it will be, but it still doesn’t make much sense for us to travel together; even in the same elevator. There’s no guessing how well Reivich has this place under surveillance.’
I was about to argue, but part of me knew that what he said was right. Like Cahuella, Dieterling couldn’t safely leave the surface of Sky’s Edge without running the risk of being arrested on war crimes charges. They were both listed in systemwide databases and - save for the fact that Cahuella was dead - they both had hefty bounties on their heads.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘I suppose there’s another reason for you to stay. I’ll be away from the Reptile House for some time now: three days at the very least. There should be someone competent looking after things back home.’
‘Are you certain you can handle Reivich on your own?’
I shrugged. ‘It takes only one shot, Miguel.’
‘And you’re the man to deliver it.’ He was visibly relieved. ‘Fine then; I’ll drive back to the Reptile House tonight. And I’ll be watching the newsfeeds avidly.’
‘I’ll try not to disappoint. Wish me well.’
‘I do.’ Dieterling reached out and shook my hand. ‘Be careful, Tanner. Just because there’s no bounty on your head, it doesn’t mean you’ll be able to walk away without doing a little explaining first. I’ll leave it to you to work out how to dispose of the gun.’
I nodded.
‘You miss it so badly, I’ll buy you one for your birthday.’
He looked at me for a long moment, as if on the point of saying something more, then nodded and turned away from the thread. I watched him leave the chamber, exiting back into the shadowed gloom of the concourse. He began to adjust the coloration of his coat as he walked; his broad-backed figure shimmered as it receded.
I turned around myself, facing the elevator, waiting for my ride. And then slipped my hand into my pocket, resting it against the diamond-hard coolness of the gun.
THREE
‘Sir? Dinner will be served on the lower deck in fifteen minutes, if you intend to join the other passengers.’
I jumped, not having heard anyone’s footsteps on the staircase which led up to the observation deck. I’d assumed I was completely alone. All the other passengers had retired to their rooms immediately upon boarding - the journey just long enough to justify unpacking their luggage - but I had gone up onto the observation deck to watch our departure. I had a room, but nothing that I needed to unpack.
The ascent had begun with ghostly smoothness. At first it hardly seemed like we were moving at all. There had
been no sound, no vibration; just an eerily smooth glide moving imperceptibly slowly, but which was always gaining speed. I had looked down, trying to see the cultists, but the angle of the view made it impossible to see more than a few stragglers, rather than the mass that must have been directly below. We had just been passing through the ceiling iris when the voice had startled me.
I turned around. A servitor had spoken to me, not a man. It had extensible arms and an excessively stylised head, but instead of legs or wheels, its torso tapered to a point below the machine’s waist, like a wasp’s thorax. It moved around on a rail attached to the ceiling, to which the robot was coupled via a curved spar protruding from its back.
‘Sir?’ It began again, this time in Norte. ‘Dinner will be served . . .’
‘No; I understood you first time.’ I thought about the risk involved in mixing with real aristocrats, then decided that it was probably less than that involved in remaining suspiciously aloof. At least if I sat down with them I could provide them with a fictitious persona which might pass muster, rather than allowing their imaginations free rein to sketch in whatever details they wished to impose on this uncommunicative stranger. Speaking Norte now - I needed the practice - I said, ‘I’ll join the others in a quarter of an hour. I’d like to watch the view for a little while.’
‘Very well, sir. I shall prepare a place for you at the table.’
The robot rotated around and glided silently out of the observation deck.
I looked back to the view.
I’m not sure quite what I was expecting at that point, but it couldn’t have been anything at all like the thing that confronted me. We had passed through the upper ceiling of the embarkation chamber, but the anchorpoint terminal was much taller than that, so that we were still ascending through the upper reaches of the building. And it was here, I realised, that the cultists had achieved the highest expression of their obsession with Sky Haussmann. After his crucifixion they had preserved the body, embalming it and then encasing it in something that had the grey-green lustre of lead, and they had mounted him here, on a great, upthrusting prow that extended inward from one interior wall until it almost touched the thread. It made Haussmann’s corpse look like the figurehead fixed beneath the bowsprit of a great sailing ship.
The Revelation Space Collection Page 71