Derrin’s feet kicked the empty air as he gasped. His eyes pleaded.
‘Don’t make me get professional,’ said Syn, his voice dangerous. ‘Tell me what happened.’
‘Put him down,’ said Cale.
The mercenary gave a snort of disgust. He held on for another second, then let go. Derrin crumpled into a heap and sucked in a few breaths.
‘I was just coming back over,’ he gasped. ‘I bumped into him, spilled his drink. It went all down him, and also another man. Big, with tattoos. There was shouting and pushing… I couldn’t see. Then there was this big knife and the one with the tattoos he stabbed the other one, the one you were talking to. He fell but he grabbed my shirt; it was slippery, I fell on him. Skies, there was so much blood… I didn’t know what to do.’ He shivered, then looked up at Cale and Syn. ‘I didn’t mean it. I know how it looks. You have to believe me.’
Cale watched him, waiting. ‘Get up,’ he said.
Syn rounded on him. ‘Tell me you’re going to pack this gobshite on the next train. He’s a fucking liability.’
‘You said it yourself,’ said Cale. ‘We need another hand. I don’t have time to wait for this to die down.’
Derrin looked like he was about to cry.
Syn kicked over a crate with a grunt of frustration. Then he stomped over and dragged Derrin to his feet. ‘One more balls-up and I’ll show you why I’m not a very nice man. Get it?’
Derrin nodded.
Cale turned his back on them and strode off into the darkness of the rat-runs.
Wake 20 – 499
The more time I spend around this thing, the more I fear it. There are days when I wish we’d left it alone – that I’d had the sense to leave before the bad snows set in with the rest of the imbeciles. Oh, to be languishing in obscurity along a dusty hallway in the Elucidon!
I would go mad if it weren’t for Mason. The cold months have brought us close, much more than I could have anticipated. At first it was the rush of exultation that threw us together, and it was fine. But then it kept happening, time and time again – he’d lean over me while I was working on a sample and I’d smell his neck and before I knew it we were naked and coiled around each other, and damn the scattering of notes on the floor. Then – the greater surprise – came tenderness. Little things like his palm resting between my shoulder blades, a squeeze of the hand or a light kiss without expectation, that carried with it nothing more complicated than companionship. He was better at it than me at first; he must have thought me dreadfully buttoned-up in those early weeks, but the truth is this: I had never truly done affection before. I can hear my old self snorting with derision even as I write those words, but the old me was a cold fool.
It’s not just the solitude and the ice storms (endless, even after the Death passed!) that pushed us together: it is the very fact that we are not alone. It squats down there like a leech-thing, waiting.
My journal has been patchy these last months, so I will attempt to sum up events, if only to give my own thoughts some kind of clarity.
After the headiness of that first time, when the chamber seemed to activate around us, there was nothing for a long while. We tried in vain to repeat each step of the process that had led us there – scratching at the same spot where I had collected samples, setting the brightness of the lights just right. I even had Mason stand in the exact place he’d been, then walk over to me in case he’d stepped on something that had caused the event. Nothing. In desperation I even extracted a vial of my blood and poured it over the spot like a twisted libation, yet the torus remained cold and dead.
Mason was the one who came up with the solution. It was not the blood, he said, but the fact that my bare hand had touched the surface. Heat, perhaps. Before I could stop him he’d unclipped his glove and placed his palm on the surface. There was nothing for a moment, and I was getting ready to tease him, then it happened again! Lights dipped as though drained of power, then the source-less blue haze lit the chamber.
Mason kept his hand pressed down and shrugged off the other glove, laying both hands flat against the surface. There was another delay, but this time my breath was caught in my breast. A low hum began that seemed to emanate from the very air itself. The pillar pulsed, imperceptible at first, then increasing in frequency as it began to glow. I told him to stop, felt fear overtake my curiosity, but he held on as the glow running over the pillar seemed to concentrate in a single bright blue dot halfway up. It was so bright that I couldn’t look directly at it, then the glare subsided. Mason came to stand by me; I took his hand, barely daring to breathe.
It spoke then, for the first time.
It was unintelligible, an insane jumble of words pouring out at first, some comprehensible, others gibberish. The voice sounded like the grating of a hundred engines running behind a thick curtain, a choir of unnatural voices all speaking in synchronicity. I tried to address the thing but it continued, oblivious to either of us. Then it shut off, the silence deafening.
When it spoke again, it was like being addressed by someone who’d heard language once, from afar, and was trying to ape the sounds as best it could. It asked when it was. Not where, but when, the year. I replied, but it said it didn’t understand. Then it asked a perplexing question:
Had we come to join?
I asked it what it meant, but it only repeated the question as many times as I asked for clarification. I looked at Mason in frustration, expecting the same, but his face was lit with curiosity. He took a step forwards and asked what it was.
Spark, it replied. Then it went silent.
We discussed what we’d seen at length before returning to the chamber. I’d overcome my initial shock and was keen to return, but he advised caution. He noted that physical contact with the surface of the torus had caused ‘activation’ of whatever it was – the Spark, we began calling it, for want of a better name – and that we had no way of knowing if prolonged exposure could be harmful – either to us or the thing itself. There were too many unknowns, so we resolved to go back to the basics. We’d rigorously document each contact, starting small and increasing the time spent with it, checking ourselves over for signs of injury afterwards. In the face of such an unknown, we would need to be painstaking.
Mason set up recording devices all around the pillar, so we could play back and analyse our interactions, and we would run a comprehensive debriefing after each. I’m glad we chose to do it this way – taking a slow, methodical approach – because the scale of what we were about to experience dwarfed any expectation, terrifying and intoxicating all at once.
I need to rest now. Trying to make sense of it all drains me.
Wake 37 – 499
Once we understood how to move beyond simple question and answer came the moment of revelation. I can think of no better way to describe it. The data corpus is vast.
On perhaps our third visit, when we’d dared to increase the duration just a little further, I asked it who had built it, expecting another cryptic answer. Instead, it told me to close my eyes and then I was somewhere else, a nowhere place. I saw a man’s face in front of me, bearded, tall, dressed in an odd suit of white clothes. It was as if I knew him, his life rushing in like a torrent: where he was born, where he trained, his wife and children, his field of study. A neuro-cryptologist with a specialisation in synthetic logic – words that were meaningless mere seconds earlier but now seemed as normal as my own name. This ‘Dr Eales’ had been in charge of the construction of this facility and had died not long after its completion. Then he was gone, and I opened my eyes, breathing fast, the knowledge a ghost in my mind. In just a few seconds the details of what I’d learned (no, not learned – what had been forced into my head!) faded, leaving behind only the outline points. One look at Mason told me that he’d seen it all too.
That was our first true foray into this ‘archive’. There was so much of it, so many centuries of knowledge just waiting for the right questions. At first I was aghast at the way it worked, h
ow the information seemed to pump itself into my mind (it felt like an invasion) but soon that feeling was supplanted by elation. Here I was, a woman whose life’s work amounted to a few papers on dusty ruins, now sitting on top of a reservoir of ancient knowledge that shattered all my preconceptions.
We were bred for it, we discovered – not just me or Mason, but everyone. Our ancestors had tinkered with themselves, with the brain itself, back before the Ruin. Every newborn child inherited its parents’ ability to connect with the data corpus, not limited by proximity like we were, but able to do so anywhere on the planet.
Planet – another new word. So much of which we were certain, now overturned in such a short time! My head ached from it, still does; at times I thought I might be sick. Imagine the sense of disorientation to find that the sky is not a domed barrier but just empty space, each light that pricks it another Ras! That we are not the only globe that spins its way around our ‘sun’, that comforting warmth now revealed as a monstrous, violent gas furnace.
A small part of me wants to rail against this usurpation of the fundamentals – that our base notion of reality is so flawed – but I know it is the truth. The evidence is there; all enquiries are circular and mutually supporting, no matter how terrifying or vertigo-inducing it is. And for some reason I can’t substantiate (perhaps this biological link at work) I just know.
Mason is good at dissembling but I can spot the little nuances of him now; it’s plain that he’s also afraid of the implications. How will the masses cope when the veil is ripped away from their eyes? Worse still, what if the Hegemony simply bury this place and everything in it? It is too vertiginous to grasp all at once, so, as with all the great problems, we must take our time.
Mason murmurs in his sleep sometimes. The wind roars beyond the walls and we hold each other a little tighter at night.
v. Hush
They sat side by side in the waiting room. The Lance Colonel’s fingers drummed an impatient tattoo on his knee. Kelbee kept her eyes on the bolma wood wall panelling, trying to shut out the faint odour of disinfectant. The dead-eyed receptionist had taken their names with disinterested formality and waved them towards the rows of plastic seats. Every so often the door to the clinic proper would open and nurses would call patients through. None of them returned, so Kelbee assumed there was an exit somewhere else.
After the best part of an hour the Lance Colonel’s patience was almost up. The rhythm of his gloved fingers had sped up and the furrow in his brow had deepened with annoyance. At least it wasn’t directed at her. He didn’t dare, not any more.
He’d not tried to take her since that night – she’d become something else, something he was afraid to break. His attempts at affection were as awkward as they were surprising; she felt more like a precious vase than a person. Not that being treated with such attention was entirely without benefit – it was better than wondering where the next bark, the next slap was coming from. More than this, she wouldn’t be returning to the clothes manufactory, it not being seemly for a man of his rank to have her ordered around by monitors and mixing with the common folk.
This was only the latest of his self-conscious gestures, meant in his mind to spoil her, no doubt: this quiet waiting room – and what lay beyond the door – was all for her.
He’d sprung it on her the day before. She’d only been home a scant few minutes after a trip to see Nebn – via the food market – before he came bustling through the door, waving papers. She arranged her face in the usual bland smile, but it had been too close for comfort. He announced he’d pulled some strings and got an appointment with one of the best birth clinics in Karume – she could tell that he thought this would please her, but more that he was delighted with his own ingenuity. Her thanks had been toneless, unnoticed.
A real privilege, he’d said, to be using the Galamb clinic. Just to be seen there was proof of his rise. People would notice, the right people. Not long until better living quarters, more room. One day, maybe, even a house in the Galamb itself! He only needed to bend the right ears, show them he was their sort of man. And the child, only the best for his child, he’d said. He’d rushed her out of the door the next morning and they took his newly assigned, gleaming black chauffeured car.
The clinic was on the very edge of the Galamb. The women back at the garment factory had occasionally gossiped about the area, always hushed, full of admiration for the great houses, some with their own parks. Reserved for the select few, the highest of the Seeker’s servants. It had sounded like paradise. The streets were swept and in good repair, bordered with well-tended grass verges. Over trimmed hedges, mansions showed their steep, red-tiled roofs. They passed one with its own lake; gardeners with wide hats and rucked-up trousers waded in the shallow water, scooping up weeds and twigs with long nets.
The clinic was an impressive pile of steel and glass; the interior was cool with floors of polished stone, a welcome relief from the heat. She’d watched as the Lance Colonel tried to maintain reserved detachment, but the excitement shone through in the wideness of his eyes and the briskness of his step, his hands clenching and unclenching.
The long wait had brought him back down to earth.
She could tell now, even without looking, that his body was stiff. His breath had begun to rasp in his nostrils. There were two other couples quietly waiting in the room with them, minding their own business, and she hoped he wouldn’t make a scene. Just as she was about to say something quiet and soothing to him the door at the far end of the room swung open and a woman in a white tunic peered through.
‘Lance Colonel,’ she said, ‘the medico will see you.’
‘About time,’ he huffed. He stood and took Kelbee’s wrist.
Beyond the door, wood panelling gave way to artificial lighting and rubber floors. The walls were brushed stone inlaid at waist level with a strip that gave off a soft, pinkish light. The nurse led them down the corridor then turned into a wider passage. They passed other corridors as they went, branching off in all directions; Kelbee saw nurses and medicos in white tunics coming and going, conversing with lowered heads. Orderlies, distinct in scarlet, pushed rattling steel trolleys. No other patients were to be seen. The place was so much bigger than it had seemed from the outside.
The nurse took them around a corner and into another, smaller waiting area. The Lance Colonel looked with distaste at the chairs, but the nurse walked straight up to one of the adjoining doors and opened it, beckoning them over.
Inside, the first thing Kelbee saw was the chair. Bolted to the floor, it was inclined backwards at an angle and was plush: thick hide upholstery laid over a metal frame. The well-kept leather was lustrous even though it showed the cracks and creases of age. Her eye was drawn to the foot of the chair, then to the armrests where she saw restraints. These looked newer, metal and plastic, out of place on such an antique piece of furniture. The buckled straps lay open like jaws and the chair loomed, as if everything else in the room had suddenly blurred out of focus.
Restraints? she thought. What is this place?
She shot the Lance Colonel a questioning look, but he didn’t notice, staring straight ahead. She followed his gaze and saw a small man in a white coat sat behind a desk, scribbling on a chart.
‘Your wife can take a seat on the examination chair,’ he said without looking up. ‘Then wait over there, if you would.’ The little man’s voice was thin and reedy, but confident as he waved a hand at the chairs against the far wall. ‘Pull the curtain across, there’s a good fellow.’ The medico stood and pushed his tiny spectacles up his nose with his index finger, his eyes fixed on Kelbee. His thin hair traced a crescent around the back of his head, the bare egg of his scalp gleaming as though polished.
The Lance Colonel stiffened at the order. The medico ignored him and took Kelbee’s elbow and led her to the chair. ‘This shouldn’t take long,’ he said.
She sank into deep cushions that seemed to envelop her. She felt the soft resistance against her legs and b
ack, settled, then remembered the restraints. She pressed her elbows against her sides, keeping her wrists as far away from them as possible.
‘Make yourself comfortable,’ said the medico, then saw her eying the restraints. He gave her a thin smile with no warmth. ‘Those shan’t be necessary.’
Hesitant, Kelbee placed her hands on the armrests. Her wrists itched.
The Lance Colonel hadn’t moved. ‘I will stay,’ he snapped. ‘That,’ he pointed to her belly, ‘is my child.’
The medico looked over his shoulder at him as if he’d appeared from thin air. ‘Ah, you’re still with us.’ He went over to the desk and picked up a clipboard, his eyes scanning as he continued. ‘Do you consider a simple curtain an impassable barrier, I wonder?’
‘It is my—’
The medico cut him off with a deep sigh. ‘Yes, yes. Rights, duties and all that.’ He looked up over the top of his clipboard. ‘I’m going to examine her and take some samples to ensure the pregnancy is as it should be. You are in this room for the sake of propriety, but I won’t have you interfering with my work.’ He paused. ‘Or perhaps you’d rather wait outside?’
Kelbee could see the Lance Colonel’s face going red, found herself sinking back into the chair and away from the impending explosion. He opened his mouth to bark a retort, but the medico cut him off again, this time his voice cracking like a whip.
‘Do as I say, Lance Colonel, or I’ll have you thrown out.’ The reediness had gained a steely edge. ‘In here I outrank you, so you’ll damned well take a seat and pull the curtain so I can get this over with.’
That snapped the Lance Colonel to attention. The flush in his cheeks remained but he jerked a nod and did as he was told, pulling the plastic curtain across and leaving Kelbee with the little medico, who was rubbing his eyes as if the force of his words had tired him.
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