The buildings, shrines and figures slipped from horizon to horizon with indecent speed. With a broad, straight road ahead of it, the caravan had been able to move at maximum velocity for several hours, and now it seemed to have settled into a rhythm, an unstoppable stampede of machinery. Wheels rolled, tracks whirled around, traction limbs disappeared in a blur of pistoning motion. Visibly, Haldora moved closer to the zenith, until - by Rashmika’s estimation - they could not be more than a few tens of kilometres from the Way.
Very soon the cathedrals would be visible, their spires clawing above the horizon.
But before she saw the cathedrals she saw other machines. They began as dots in the distance, throwing up pure white ballistic plumes from their rumbling wheels and treads. For many minutes they did not appear to move at all. Rashmika wondered if the caravan was simply catching up with similar processions arriving at the Way from elsewhere on Hela. This seemed reasonable, for many roads had joined up with the one they were on since they had climbed out of the Rift.
But then she realised that the vehicles were actually racing towards them. Even this did not strike her as particularly noteworthy, but then she felt the caravan slow and begin to oscillate from one side of the road to the other, as if uncertain which side it ought to be on. The swerves made her feel nauseous. She had the viewing area largely to herself, but the few caravan personnel that she saw also appeared ill at ease with developments.
The other machines continued to sweep towards them. In a few moments they had swelled to enormous size. They were much larger than any of the caravan’s components. Rashmika saw a blur of treads and wide meshwork road wheels, with a superstructure of vicious ice-and-rock-moving machinery. The machines were painted a dusty yellow, with bee-stripes and rotating warning beacons. Many of the components were half-familiar to her: massively scaled-up counterparts of the heavy excavation equipment her fellow villagers used in the scuttler digs.
She recognised the function, even if the size was daunting. There were toothed claws and gaping lantern-jawed dragline buckets. There were grader blades and mighty percussive hammers. There were angled conveyor belts like the ridged spines of dinosaurs. There were rotating shield drills: huge toothed discs as wide as any one of the caravan’s vehicles. There were fusion torches, lasers, bosers, highpressure water cutters, steam-borers. There were tiny cabins jacked high on articulated gantries. There were vast ore hoppers and grilled, chimneyed machines she couldn’t even begin to identify. There were generators, equipment carriers and accommodation cabins painted the same dusty yellow.
All of it rolled by, machine after machine, hogging the road while the caravan bounced along in a rut on one side of it.
She sensed grinding humiliation.
Later, when the caravan was on the move again, she tried to find out what had happened. She thought Pietr might know, but he was nowhere to be found. Quaestor Jones, when she tracked him down, dismissed the matter as one of trifling importance. But he still did not tell her what she wanted to know.
‘That wasn’t a caravan like ours,’ she said.
‘Your powers of observation do you credit.’
‘So might I ask where it was going?’
‘I would have thought that was obvious, especially given your chosen intention to work on the Permanent Way. Very evidently, those machines were part of a major Way taskforce. Doubtless they were on their way to clear a blockage, or to make good a defect in the infrastructure.’ Quaestor Rutland Jones folded his arms, as if the matter was settled.
‘Then they’d be affiliated to a church, wouldn’t they? I may not know much, but I know that all the gangs are tied to specific churches.’
‘Most certainly.’ He drummed his fingers on the desk before him.
‘In which case, what church was it? I watched every one of those machines go past and I didn’t see a single clerical symbol on any of them.’
The quaestor shrugged, a little too emphatically for Rashmika’s tastes. ‘It’s dirty work - as you will soon discover. When the clock is against a team, I doubt that touching-up painted insignia is very high on the list of priorities.’
She recalled that the excavation machines had been dusty and faded. What the quaestor said was undoubtedly true in a general sense, but in Rashmika’s opinion, not one of those machines had ever carried a clerical symbol - not since they were last painted, at least.
‘One other thing, Quaestor.’
‘Yes,’ he said, tiredly.
‘We’re heading down towards the Way because we took a short cut across Absolution Gap. We’d come from the north. It seems to me that if those machines really were on their way to clear a blockage, they’d hardly be taking the same route we did, even in reverse.’
‘What are you suggesting, Miss Els?’
‘It strikes me as much more likely that they were headed somewhere else entirely. Somewhere that has nothing to do with the Way.’
‘And that’s your considered opinion, is it? Based on all your many years of experience with matters of the Way and the operational complexities of its maintenance?’
‘There’s no call for sarcasm, Quaestor.’
He shook his head and reached for a compad, making an exaggerated show of finding his place in whatever work he had been engaged in before her interruption. ‘Based on my own limited experience, you will do one of two things, Miss Els. You will either go very far, or you will shortly meet a very unfortunate end in what on the face of it might resemble a regrettable accident out on the ice. One thing I am certain about, however: in the process of reaching either outcome, you will still manage to irritate a great many people.’
‘Then at least I’ll have made a difference,’ she said, with vastly more bravado than she felt. She turned to go.
‘Miss Els.’
‘Quaestor?’
‘Should you at any point decide to return to the badlands . . . would you do me a singular favour?’
‘What?’ she asked.
‘Find some other mode of transport to take you back,’ the quaestor said, before returning to his duties.
THIRTY-ONE
Near Ararat, 2675
Scorpio cycled through the airlock as soon as the shuttle had engaged with its docking cradle, latching itself securely into place in the reception bay. The other ship that had accompanied them - it was much smaller and sleeker - was a wedge of darkness parked alongside. All he could see was its silhouette, a flint-shaped splash of ink like one of the random blots sometimes used in a psychological examination. It just sat there, hissing, its smell sharp and antiseptic, like a medicine cabinet. It looked completely two-dimensional, as if stamped from a sheet of thin black metal.
It looked like something you could cut yourself on.
Security Arm militia had already cordoned off both craft. They recognised the shuttle, but they were wary of the other arrival. Scorpio assumed it had received the same invitation, but the guards were still taking no chances. He stood most of them down, keeping only a couple handy just in case the ship really did contain an unpleasant surprise.
He raised his sleeve and spoke into his communicator. ‘Antoinette? You around?’
‘I’m on my way up, Scorp. Be there in a minute or so. Do you have our guest?’
‘I’m not sure,’ he said.
He moved over to the black ship. It was not much larger than the capsule Khouri had come down in. Room in it for one or two people at the very most, he estimated. He rapped a knuckle against the black surface. It was cold to the touch. The hairs on his knuckle tingled with shock.
A dogleg of pink light split the black machine down the middle and a section of the hull slid aside, revealing a dim interior. A man was already extricating himself from the prison of an acceleration couch and fold-around controls. It was Remontoire, just as Scorpio had suspected. He was a little older than Scorpio remembered, but still fundamentally the same: a very thin, very tall, very bald man, dressed entirely in tight black clothes that served only to emp
hasise his arachnoid qualities. His skull was a peculiar shape: elongated, like a teardrop.
Scorpio leaned into the cavity to help him out.
‘Mr Pink, I presume,’ Remontoire said.
Scorpio hesitated a moment. The name meant something, but the association was buried decades in the past. He tugged at the strands of his memory until one came loose. He recalled the time when Remontoire and he had travelled incognito through the Rust Belt and Chasm City, pursuing Clavain when he had first defected from the Conjoiners. Mr Pink had been the name Scorpio had travelled under. What had Remontoire called himself? Scorpio tried to remember.
‘Mr Clock,’ he said at last, just at the point when the pause would have become uncomfortable.
They had hated each other’s guts back then. It had been inevitable, really. Remontoire did not like pigs (there had been something unpleasant in his past, some incident in which he had been tortured by one of them) but had been forced to employ Scorpio because of his useful local knowledge. Scorpio did not like Conjoiners (no one did, unless they were already Conjoiners) and he particularly did not like Remontoire. But he had been blackmailed into assisting them, promised his freedom if he did. To refuse meant being handed over to the authorities, who had a nice little pre-scripted show trial planned for him.
No; they hadn’t exactly started out as friends, but the hatred had gradually evaporated, aided by their mutual respect for Clavain. Now Scorpio was actually glad to see the man, a reaction that would have stunned and appalled his younger self.
‘We’re quite a pair of relics, you and I,’ Remontoire said. He stood up, stretching his limbs, turning them this way and that as if ascertaining that none of them had become dislocated.
‘I’m afraid I have some bad news,’ Scorpio said.
‘Clavain?’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I guessed, of course. The moment I saw you, I knew he must be dead. When did it happen?’
‘A couple of days ago.’
‘And how did he die?’
‘Very badly. But he died for Ararat. He was a hero to the end, Rem.’
For a moment Remontoire was somewhere else, wandering through a landscape of mental reflection accessible only to Conjoiners. He closed his eyes, remained that way for perhaps ten seconds and then opened them again. They were now gleaming with bright alertness, no trace of sorrow visible.
‘Well, I’ve grieved,’ he said.
Scorpio knew better than to doubt Remontoire’s word; that was just how Conjoiners did things. It was a measure of Remontoire’s respect for his old friend and ally that he had even deemed a period of grieving necessary in the first place. It would have been trivial for him to edit his own mind into a state of serene acceptance. By going through the motions of grief he had paid a great, humbling tribute to Clavain. Even if it had only taken ten or twelve seconds.
‘Are we safe?’ Scorpio asked.
‘For now. We planned your escape carefully, creating a major diversion using the remaining assets. We knew the wolves would be able to reallocate some of their resources to bring you down, but our forecasts showed that we could handle them, provided you left exactly on schedule.’
‘You can beat the wolves?’
‘No, not beat them, Scorpio.’ Remontoire’s tone was school-masterly, gently reproachful. ‘We can overwhelm a small number of wolf machines in a specific location by using a deliberate concentration of power. We can inflict some damage, push them back, force them to regroup. But really, it’s like throwing pebbles at pack dogs. Against a large grouping, there is still little we can do. And in the longer term - so our forecasts tell us - we will lose.’
‘But you’ve survived until now.’
‘With the weapons and techniques Aura gave us, yes. But that well is nearly dry now. And the wolves have shown a remarkable propensity for matching us.’ Remontoire’s eyes sparkled with admiration. ‘They are very efficient, these machines.’
Scorpio laughed. After everything that he had been through, this was the outcome Remontoire was spelling out? ‘Then we’re screwed, right?’
‘In the long run, at least according to the current forecasts, the prognosis is not good.’
Behind Remontoire, the black ship sealed itself, becoming once again a sharp-edged chunk of shadow.
‘Then why don’t we just give up now?’
‘Because there is a chance - albeit a small one - that the forecasts may be badly wrong.’
‘I think we need to talk,’ Scorpio said.
‘And I know just the place,’ said Antoinette Bax, stepping into the bay. She inclined her head towards Remontoire, as if they had seen each other only minutes earlier. ‘Follow me, you two. I think you’re going to love this.’
Hela, 2727
Rashmika saw the cathedrals.
It was not how she had imagined it, when she had rehearsed in her head her arrival at the Way. In her mind’s eye she was always simply there, with no approach, no opportunity to see the cathedrals small and neat in the distance, perched like ornaments on the horizon. But here they were, still a dozen or more kilometres away, yet clearly visible. It was like looking at the sailing ships of olden days, the way their topgallants came over the horizon long before their hulls. She could reach out her hand, open her fist and trap any one of those cathedrals in the curve between finger and thumb. She could close one eye so that the lack of perspective made the cathedral appear like a small and lovely toy, a thing of magical jewelled delicacy.
And she could just as easily imagine closing her fist on it.
There were too many of them to count. Thirty, forty, easily. Some were bunched up into tight clusters, like galleons exchanging close-quarters cannon fire. When they were so close, it was not easy to separate the resulting confusion of towers and spires into individual structures. Some cathedrals were single-spired or single-towered; others resembled whole city parishes joined together and set adrift. There were elbowed towers and lavish minarets. There were spires - barbed, flanged and buttressed. There were stained-glass windows hundreds of metres tall. There were rose windows wide enough to fly a ship through. There were glints of rare metals, acres of fabulous alloys. There were things like barnacles climbing halfway up the skins of some of the cathedrals, things whose scale she completely misjudged until she was close enough to realise that they were actually buildings in their own right, piled higgledy-piggledy atop one another.
Again, she thought of Brueghel.
As the caravan continued its approach to the Way, a greater proportion of each cathedral gradually became visible. Yet more sailed over the horizon, far to their rear, but this was the main group, Rashmika knew: the vanguard of the procession.
Above, Haldora sat perfectly at the zenith, at the apex of the celestial dome.
She had nearly arrived.
Near Ararat, 2675
Scorpio sat on the wooden table in the glade. He looked around, anxious to absorb every detail, but at the same time hoping not to appear too overwhelmed. It was really like no place he had ever been. The sky was a pure corneal blue, richer and deeper than anything he recalled from Ararat. The trees were amazingly intricate, shimmering with detail. They breathed. He had only ever seen pictures of trees, but the pictures had failed utterly to convey the enormous dizzying complexity of the things. It was like the first time he had seen the ocean: the gulf between expectation and reality was vast and nauseating. It wasn’t simply a question of scaling up some local, familiar thing, like a cup of water. There was a whole essence of seaness that he could never have predicted.
Frankly, the trees alarmed him. They were so huge, so alive. What if they decided they didn’t like him?
‘Scorp,’ Antoinette said. ‘Put these on, will you?’
He took the goggles, frowning at them. ‘Any particular reason why?’
‘So you can talk to John. Those of us without machines in our heads can’t see him most of the time. Don’t worry, you won’t be the only one looking silly.’
He fixed the goggles in place. They were designed for people, not pigs, but they were not too uncomfortable when he adjusted them for the shape of his face. Nothing happened when he looked through them.
‘John’ll be here in a moment,’ Antoinette reassured him.
This meeting had been convened very quickly. Around the table, in addition to Antoinette and himself, sat Vasko Malinin, Ana Khouri and her daughter - still inside a portable incubator, which Khouri rested on her lap - Dr Valensin and three low-ranking colony representatives. The three representatives were simply the most senior of the fourteen thousand or so citizens who were already aboard the Nostalgia for Infinity. The usual senior members - Orca Cruz, Blood, Xavier Liu, amongst others - were still on Ararat. Remontoire took the place opposite Scorpio, leaving only one vacant position.
‘This will have to be brief,’ Remontoire said. ‘In less than an hour I must be on my way.’
‘You won’t be staying for lunch?’ Scorpio asked, remembering belatedly that Remontoire had no sense of humour.
The Conjoiner shook the delicately veined egg that was his head. ‘I’m afraid not. The Zodiacal Light and the other Conjoiner assets will remain in this system, at least until you are into clear interstellar space. We will draw the Inhibitors away from you. Some elements may follow you, but they will almost certainly not constitute the main force.’ He had made a thin-boned church of his fingers. ‘You should be able to handle them.’
The Revelation Space Collection Page 281