But a city was not a shuttle. Even if the Juggler material started eating away the fabric of the shuttle, it would still take hours to do any serious damage . . . And that was assuming the Ultras had no better protection than the ceramic shielding used on Turquoise boats and machines . . .
But the shuttle was already tilting over.
Naqi watched it pitch, attempt to regain stability and then pitch again. She understood, belatedly. The organic matter was clogging the shuttle’s whisking propulsion systems, limiting its ability to hover. The shuttle was curving inexorably closer to the sea, spiralling steeply away from the node. It approached the surface and then, just before the moment of impact, another misshapen fist of organised matter thrust from the sea, seizing the hull in its entirety. That was the last Naqi saw of it.
A troubled calm fell on the scene. The sky overhead was un-marred by questing machinery. Only the thin whisper of smoke rising from the horizon, in the direction of the Moat, hinted of the day’s events.
Minutes passed, and then tens of minutes. Then a rapid series of bright flashes strobed from beneath the surface of the sea itself.
‘That was the shuttle,’ Weir said, wonderingly.
Naqi nodded. ‘The Jugglers are fighting back. This is more or less what I hoped would happen.’
‘You asked for this?’
‘I think Mina understood what was needed. Evidently she managed to convince the rest of the ocean, or at least this part of it.’
‘Let’s see.’
They searched the airwaves again. The comsat network was dead, or silent. Even fewer cities were transmitting now. But those that were - those that had not been overrun by Ormazd’s disciples - told a frightening story. The ocean was clawing at them, trying to drag them into the sea. Weather patterns were shifting, entire storms being conjured into existence by the orchestrated circulation of vast ocean currents. It was happening in concentric waves, racing away from the precise point in the ocean where Naqi had swum. Some cities had already fallen into the sea, though it was not clear whether this had been brought about by the Jugglers themselves or because of damage to their vacuum-bladders. There were people in the water: hundreds, thousands of them. They were swimming, trying to stay afloat, trying not to drown.
But what exactly did it mean to drown on Turquoise?
‘It’s happening all over the planet,’ Naqi said. She was still shivering, but now it was as much a shiver of awe as one of cold. ‘It’s denying itself to us by smashing our cities.’
‘Your cities never harmed it.’
‘I don’t think it’s really that interested in making a distinction between one bunch of people and another, Rafael. It’s just getting rid of us all, disciples or not. You can’t really blame it for that, can you?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Weir said.
He cracked the globe, spilled its contents into the sea.
Naqi knew there was nothing she could do now; there was no prospect of recovering the tiny black grains. She would only have to miss one, and it would be as bad as missing them all.
The little black grains vanished beneath the olive surface of the water.
It was done.
Weir looked at her, his eyes desperate for forgiveness.
‘You understand that I had to do this, don’t you? It isn’t something I do lightly.’
‘I know. But it wasn’t necessary. The ocean’s already turned against us. Crane has lost. Ormazd has lost.’
‘Perhaps you’re right,’ Weir said. ‘But I couldn’t take the chance that we might be wrong. At least this way I know for sure.’
‘You’ve murdered a world.’
He nodded. ‘It’s exactly what I came here to do. Please don’t blame me for it.’
Naqi opened the equipment locker where she had stowed the broken vial of Juggler toxin. She removed the flare pistol, snatched away its safety pin and pointed it at Weir. ‘I don’t blame you, no. Don’t even hate you for it.’
He started to say something, but Naqi cut him off.
‘But it’s not something I can forgive.’
She sat in silence, alone, until the node became active. The organic structures around her were beginning to show the same kinds of frantic rearrangement Naqi had seen within the Moat. There was a cold sharp breeze from the node’s heart.
It was time to leave.
She steered the boat away from the node, cautiously, still not completely convinced that she was safe from the delegates even though the first shuttle had been destroyed. Undoubtedly the loss of that craft would have been communicated to the others, and before very long some more of them would arrive, bristling with belligerence. The ocean might attempt to destroy the new arrivals, but this time the delegates would be profoundly suspicious.
She brought the boat to a halt when she was a kilometre from the fringe of the node. By then it was running through the same crazed alterations she had previously witnessed. She felt the same howling wind of change. In a moment the end would come. The toxin would seep into the node’s controlling core, instructing the entire biomass to degrade itself to a lump of dumb vegetable matter. The same killing instructions would already be travelling along the internode tendril connections, winging their way over the horizon. Allowing for the topology of the network, it would only take fifteen or twenty hours for the message to reach every node on the planet. Within a day it would be over. The Jugglers would be gone, the information they’d encoded erased beyond recall. And Turquoise itself would begin to die at the same time, its oxygen atmosphere no longer maintained by the oceanic organisms.
Another five minutes passed, then ten.
The node’s transformations were growing less hectic. She recalled this moment of false calm. It meant only that the node had given up trying to counteract the toxin, accepting the logical inevitability of its fate. A thousand times over this would be repeated around Turquoise. Towards the end, she guessed, there would be less resistance, for the sheer futility of it would have been obvious. The world would accept its fate.
Another five minutes passed.
The node remained. The structures were changing, but only gently. There was no sign of the emerging mound of undifferentiated matter she had seen before.
What was happening?
She waited another quarter of an hour and then steered the boat back towards the node, bumping past Weir’s floating corpse on the way. Tentatively, an idea was forming in her mind. It appeared that the node had absorbed the toxin without dying. Was it possible that Weir had made a mistake? Was it possible that the toxin’s effectiveness depended only on it being used once?
Perhaps.
There still had to be tendril connections between the Moat and the rest of the ocean at the time that the first wave of transformations had taken place. They had been severed later - either when the doors closed, or by some autonomic process within the extended organism itself - but until that moment, there would still have been informational links with the wider network of nodes. Could the dying nodes have sent sufficient warning that the other nodes were now able to find a strategy for protecting themselves?
Again, perhaps.
It never paid to take anything for granted where the Jugglers were concerned.
She parked the boat by the node’s periphery. Naqi stood up and removed her clothes for the final time, certain that she would not need them again. She looked down at herself, astonished at the vivid tracery of green that now covered her body. On one level, the evidence of alien cellular invasion was quite horrific.
On another, it was startlingly beautiful.
Smoke licked from the horizon. Machines clawed through the sky, hunting nervously. She stepped to the edge of the boat, tensing herself at the moment of commitment. Her fear subsided, replaced by an intense, loving calm. She stood on the threshold of something alien, but in place of terror what she felt was only an imminent sense of homecoming. Mina was waiting for her below. Together, nothing could stop them.
Naqi smile
d, spread her arms and returned to the sea.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Contents
Dedication
GREAT WALL OF MARS
GLACIAL
A SPY IN EUROPA
WEATHER
DILATION SLEEP
GRAFENWALDER’S BESTIARY
NIGHTINGALE
GALACTIC NORTH
AFTERWORD
For David Pringle
GREAT WALL OF MARS
‘You realise you might die down there,’ said Warren.
Nevil Clavain looked into his brother’s one good eye; the one the Conjoiners had left him with after the Battle of Tharsis Bulge. ‘Yes, I know,’ he said. ‘But if there’s another war, we might all die. I’d rather take that risk, if there’s a chance for peace.’
Warren shook his head, slowly and patiently. ‘No matter how many times we’ve been over this, you just don’t seem to get it, do you? There can’t ever be any kind of peace while they’re still down there. That’s what you don’t understand, Nevil. The only long-term solution here is . . .’ he trailed off.
‘Go on,’ Clavain goaded. ‘Say it. Genocide.’
Warren might have been about to answer when there was a bustle of activity along the docking tube, at the far end from the waiting spacecraft. Through the door Clavain saw a throng of media people, then someone gliding through them, fielding questions with only the curtest of answers. That was Sandra Voi, the Demarchist woman who would be accompanying him to Mars.
‘It’s not genocide when they’re just a faction, not an ethnically distinct race,’ Warren said, before Voi was within earshot.
‘What is it, then?’
‘I don’t know. Prudence?’
Voi approached. She carried herself stiffly, her face a mask of quiet resignation. Her ship had only just docked from Circum-Jove after a three-week transit at maximum burn. During that time the prospects for a peaceful resolution of the current crisis had steadily deteriorated.
‘Welcome to Deimos,’ Warren said.
‘Marshals,’ she said, addressing them both. ‘I wish the circumstances were better. Let’s get straight to business. Warren - how long do you think we have to find a solution?’
‘Not long. If Galiana maintains the pattern she’s been following for the last six months, we’re due another escape attempt in . . .’ Warren glanced at a read-out buried in his cuff. ‘About three days. If she does try to get another shuttle off Mars, we’ll really have no option but to escalate.’
They all knew what that would mean: a military strike against the Conjoiner nest.
‘You’ve tolerated her attempts so far,’ Voi said, ‘and each time you’ve successfully destroyed her ship with all the people in it. The net risk of a successful breakout hasn’t increased. So why retaliate now?’
‘It’s very simple,’ Warren said. ‘After each violation we issued Galiana a stronger warning than the one before. Our last was absolute and final.’
‘You’ll be in violation of treaty if you attack.’
Warren’s smile was one of quiet triumph. ‘Not quite, Sandra. You may not be completely conversant with the treaty’s fine print, but we’ve discovered that it allows us to storm Galiana’s nest without breaking any terms. The technical phrase is a “police action”, I believe.’
Clavain saw that Voi was momentarily lost for words. That was hardly surprising. The treaty between the Coalition and the Conjoiners - which Voi’s neutral Demarchists had helped draft - was the longest document in existence, apart from some obscure, computer-generated mathematical proofs. It was supposed to be watertight, though only machines had ever read it from beginning to end, and only machines had ever stood a chance of finding the kind of loophole Warren was now brandishing.
‘No . . .’ she said. ‘There’s some mistake.’
‘I’m afraid he’s right,’ Clavain said. ‘I’ve seen the natural-language summaries, and there’s no doubt about the legality of a police action. But it needn’t come to that. I’m sure I can persuade Galiana not to make another escape attempt.’
‘But if we should fail?’ Voi looked at Warren now. ‘Nevil and I could still be on Mars in three days.’
‘Don’t be, is my advice.’
Disgusted, Voi turned and stepped into the green cool of the shuttle. Clavain was left alone with his brother for a moment. Warren fingered the leathery patch over his ruined eye with the chrome gauntlet of his prosthetic arm, as if to remind Clavain of what the war had cost him; how little love he had for the enemy, even now.
‘We haven’t got a chance of succeeding, have we?’ Clavain said. ‘We’re only going down there so you can say you explored all avenues of negotiation before sending in the troops. You actually want another damned war.’
‘Don’t be so defeatist,’ Warren said, shaking his head sadly, forever the older brother disappointed at his sibling’s failings. ‘It really doesn’t become you.’
‘It’s not me who’s defeatist,’ Clavain said.
‘No, of course not. Just do your best, little brother.’
Warren extended his hand for his brother to shake. Hesitating, Clavain looked again into his brother’s good eye. What he saw there was an interrogator’s eye: as pale, colourless and cold as a midwinter sun. There was hatred in it. Warren despised Clavain’s pacifism; Clavain’s belief that any kind of peace, even a peace that consisted only of stumbling episodes of mistrust between crises, was always better than war. That schism had fractured any lingering fraternal feelings they might have retained. Now, when Warren reminded Clavain that they were brothers, he never entirely concealed the disgust in his voice.
‘You misjudge me,’ Clavain whispered, before quietly shaking Warren’s hand.
‘No. I honestly don’t think I do.’
Clavain stepped through the airlock just before it sphinctered shut. Voi had already buckled herself in; she had a glazed look now, as if staring into infinity. Clavain guessed she was uploading a copy of the treaty through her implants, scrolling it across her visual field, trying to find the loophole; probably running a global search for any references to police actions.
The ship recognised Clavain, its interior shivering to his preferences. The green was closer to turquoise now, the read-outs and controls minimalist in layout, displaying only the most mission-critical systems. Though the shuttle was the tiniest peacetime vessel Clavain had been in, it was a cathedral compared to the dropships he had flown during the war; vessels so small that they were assembled around their occupants like medieval armour before a joust.
‘Don’t worry about the treaty,’ Clavain said. ‘I promise you, Warren won’t get his chance to exploit that loophole.’
Voi snapped out of her trance irritatedly. ‘You’d better be right, Nevil. Is it me, or is your brother hoping we fail?’ She was speaking Quebecois French now, Clavain shifting mental gears to follow her. ‘If my people discover there’s a hidden agenda here, there’ll be hell to pay.’
‘The Conjoiners gave Warren plenty of reasons to hate them after the Battle of the Bulge,’ Clavain said. ‘And he’s a tactician, not a field specialist. After the ceasefire, my knowledge of worms was even more valuable than before, so I had a role. But Warren’s skills were a lot less transferable.’
‘So that gives him a right to edge us closer to another war?’ The way Voi spoke, it was as if her own side had not been neutral during the last exchange. But Clavain knew she was right. If hostilities between the Conjoiners and the Coalition re-ignited, the Demarchy would not be able to stand on the sidelines as they had fifteen years ago. And it was anyone’s guess how they would align themselves this time around.
‘There won’t be war.’
‘And if you can’t reason with Galiana? Or are you going to play on your personal connection?’
‘I was just her prisoner, that’s all.’ Clavain took the controls - Voi said piloting was a bore - and unlatched the shuttle from Deimos.
They dropped away at a tangent to the rotation of the equatorial ring that girdled the moon, instantly in free fall. Clavain sketched a porthole in the wall with his fingertip, outlining a rectangle that instantly became transparent.
For a moment he saw his reflection in the glass: older than he felt he had any right to look, the grey beard and hair making him appear ancient rather than patriarchal; a man deeply wearied by recent circumstance. With some relief, he darkened the cabin so that he could see Deimos, dwindling at surprising speed. The higher of the two Martian moons was a dark, bristling lump infested with armaments, belted by the bright, window-studded band of the moving ring. For the last nine years, Deimos was all he had known, but now he could encompass it within the arc of his fist.
‘Not just her prisoner,’ Voi said. ‘No one else came back sane from the Conjoiners. She never even tried to infect you with her machines.’
‘No, she didn’t, but only because the timing was on my side.’ Clavain was reciting an old argument now, as much for his own benefit as Voi’s. ‘I was the only prisoner she had. She was losing the war by then; one more recruit to her side wouldn’t have made any real difference. The terms of ceasefire were being thrashed out and she knew she could buy herself favours by releasing me unharmed. There was something else, too: Conjoiners weren’t supposed to be capable of anything so primitive as mercy. They were Spiders, as far as we were concerned. Galiana’s act threw a wrench into our thinking. It divided alliances within high command. If she hadn’t released me, they might well have nuked her out of existence.’
The Revelation Space Collection Page 333