‘Where are you going?’ Vasko asked.
‘To have a chat with the Captain,’ she said.
In another part of the High Conch, several floors below, a series of partially linked, scalloplike chambers had been opened out of the conch matter with laborious slowness and much expenditure of energy. The chambers now formed the wards of the main infirmary for First Camp, where the citizenry received what limited medical services the administration could provide.
The doctor’s two green servitors budged aside as Scorpio entered, their spindly jointed limbs clicking against each other. He pushed between them. The bed was positioned centrally, with an incubator set on a trolley next to it on one side and a chair on the other.
Valensin stood up from the chair, placing aside a compad he had been consulting.
‘How is she?’ Scorpio asked.
‘Mother or daughter?’
‘Don’t be clever, doc. I’m not in the mood.’
‘Mother is fine — except, of course, for the obvious and predictable side effects of stress and fatigue.’ Milky-grey daylight filtered into the room from one high slit of a window, which was actually a part of the conch material left unpainted; the light flared off the glass in Valensin’s rhomboid spectacles. ‘I do not believe she requires any particular care other than time and rest.’
‘And Aura?’
‘The child is as well as can be expected.’
Scorpio looked at the small thing in the incubator. It was surprisingly shrivelled and red. It twitched like some beached thing struggling for air.
‘That doesn’t tell me much.’
‘Then I’ll spell it out for you,’ Valensin said. Highlights in the doctor’s slicked-back hair gleamed cobalt blue. ‘The child has already undergone four potentially traumatic procedures. The first was Remontoire’s insertion of the Conjoiner implants to permit communication with the child’s natural mother. Then the child was surgically kidnapped, removed from her mother’s womb. Then she was implanted inside Skade, perhaps following another period in an incubator. Finally, she was removed from Skade under less than optimal field surgical conditions.’
Scorpio assumed Valensin had heard the full story of what happened in the iceberg. ‘Take my word for it: there wasn’t a lot of choice.’
Valensin laced his fingers. ‘Well, she is resting. That’s good. And there do not appear to be any immediate and obvious complications. But in the long run? Who can tell? If what Khouri tells us is true, then it isn’t as if she was ever destined for a normal development.’ Valensin lowered himself back down into the seat. His legs folded like long hinged stilts, the crease in his trousers razor-sharp. ‘On a related matter, Khouri had a request. I thought it best to refer it to you first.’
‘Go on.’
‘She wants the girl put back into her womb.’
Scorpio looked again at the incubator and the child within it. It was a larger, more sophisticated version of the portable unit they had taken to the iceberg. Incubators were amongst the most valued technological artefacts on Ararat, and great care was taken to keep them running.
‘Could it be done?’ he asked.
‘Under ordinary circumstances, I would never contemplate such a thing.’
‘These aren’t ordinary circumstances.’
‘Putting a child back inside a mother isn’t like putting a loaf of bread back into an oven,’ Valensin said. ‘It would require delicate microsurgery, hormonal readjustment… a host of complex procedures. ’
Scorpio let the doctor’s condescension wash over him. ‘But it could be done?’
‘Yes, if she wants it badly enough.’
‘But it would be risky?’
Valensin nodded after a moment, as if until then he had considered only the technical hurdles, rather than the hazards. ‘Yes. To mother and child both.’
‘Then it doesn’t happen,’ Scorpio said.
‘You seem rather certain.’
‘That child cost the life of my friend. Now that we’ve got her back, I’m not planning on losing her.’
‘I hope you’ll be the one to break the news to the mother, in that case.’
‘Leave it to me,’ Scorpio said.
‘Very well.’ Scorpio had the feeling that the doctor was disappointed. ‘One other thing: she mentioned that word again, in her sleep.’
‘What word?’
‘Hella,’ Valensin said. ‘Or something like it.’
Hela, 2727
Rashmika’s estimate turned out to have been optimistic. She had expected another two or three hours of travel before the caravan reached the eastern side of the bridge, but after four hours they appeared only to have made up half the distance. There had been many frustrating periods where the caravan doubled back on itself, following sinuous reverse-loops in the walls. There were times when they had to squeeze through tunnels in the cliff, moving at little more than walking pace while the ice scraped against either side of the procession. Two or three times they had come to a complete halt while some technical matter was attended to — no explanation was ever forthcoming. She had the impression that the drivers tried to make up time after these delays, but the subsequent recklessness — which caused the vehicles to bounce and swerve perilously close to the edge — only added to her anxiety. When the quaestor had told her that they would be taking the bridge she had felt great apprehension, but now she was inclined to think it preferable to the many hazards of the ledge traverse. The road along the ledge was a human artefact: it had been blasted or cut into the cliffs within the last century and had probably been repaired and realigned several times since then. Doubtless bits of it had collapsed over the years, and many vehicles must have taken the long, ballistic plunge to the bottom of the Rift. But the bridge was surely older than that. Now that she had given the matter some thought, it struck her as highly unlikely that it would choose her lifetime in which to come crashing down. It would actually be a remarkable privilege were that to happen.
Even so, she would still be glad when they reached the other side.
She was looking out of the viewing window when she saw another quick succession of flashes, like those she had observed from the roof. They were brighter now — she was undoubtedly closer to the source of whatever they were — and they left hemispherical purple after-images on her eyes, even when she blinked.
‘You’re wondering what they are,’ a voice said.
She turned. She was expecting to see Quaestor Jones, but the voice did not quite have his timbre. It was the voice of a younger man, with an accent from somewhere in the badlands.
Harbin, she wondered for an instant? Could it possibly be Harbin?
But it wasn’t her brother.
She didn’t recognise the man at all. He was taller than her and a little older, she guessed, although there was something in his expression — something in his eyes, now that she narrowed it down — that made him appear to be a lot older. He was not really bad-looking, she supposed. He had a thin, serious face, with prominent cheekbones and a jawline so sharp it hurt. His hair was cut very short, shorter than she liked it, so that she could see the exact shape of his skull: a phrenologist’s dream date. He had small ears that stuck out more than he might have wished. His neck was thin and his Adam’s apple was prominent in a way that always alarmed her in men, as if something inside his neck had popped out of alignment and needed to be pushed back before harm was done.
‘How do you know what I’m wondering?’ Rashmika asked.
‘Well, you are, aren’t you?’
She half-scowled. ‘And you’d know all about them, I suppose?’
‘They’re charges,’ he said amicably, as if he was accustomed to this kind of rudeness. ‘Nuclear demolition charges. They’re being used by Permanent Way teams clearing the road ahead of the cathedrals. God’s Fire.’
She had already guessed that the explosions had something to do with the Way. ‘I didn’t think they ever used anything like that.’
‘Mostl
y they don’t. I haven’t been keeping up with the news, but they must have hit some unusually heavy obstructions. They could clear it with conventional charges and digging, if they had all the time in the world. But of course that’s the one thing they never have, not when those cathedrals are coming closer all the while. My guess is it was a rearguard spoiler action.’
‘Oh, do please enlighten me.’
‘It’s what happens when the cathedrals at the back begin to lose ground. Sometimes they sabotage the Way behind them to cause trouble for the leading cathedrals when they come round again on the next loop. Of course, it’s nothing anyone can ever prove…’
She studied his clothing: trousers and a high-collared loose-sleeved shirt; light, flat-soled shoes; everything grey and nondescript. No indication of rank, status, wealth or religious affiliation.
‘Who are you?’ Rashmika asked. ‘You’re talking to me as if we’ve already met, but I don’t know you at all.’
‘But you do know me,’ the young man said.
His face said that he was telling the truth, or at least not believing himself to be lying. His certainty made her all the less willing to give ground, irrational as that was.
‘I think you’re mistaken.’
‘What I mean is, we have met. And I believe you owe me a debt of gratitude.’
‘Do I, now?’
‘I saved your life — when you were on the roof, looking down the access shaft. You nearly fell, and I caught you.’
‘That wasn’t you,’ she said. ‘That was…’
‘An Observer? Yes, it was. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t me.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Rashmika said.
‘Why don’t you believe me? Did you see my face?’
‘Not clearly, no.’
‘Then you have no reason to think it wasn’t me, either. Yes, I know it could have been anyone up there. But who else saw what happened?’
‘You can’t be an Observer.’
‘No, not now I can’t.’
She did not want his company. Not specifically his company, but company in general. She wanted only to observe the slow approach to the bridge, to compose her thoughts as they made the crossing, mentally mapping the difficult terrain that lay ahead of her. She did not want idle conversation or distraction, most certainly not with the sort of person he claimed to be.
‘What do you mean by that?’ she asked. ‘Are you an Observer or aren’t you?’
‘I was, but now I’m not.’
She felt a flicker of sympathy. ‘Because of what happened on the roof?’
‘No. That didn’t help, certainly, but my doubts had already set in before that happened.’
‘Oh.’ Then her conscience was clear.
‘I can’t say you didn’t play a small part in it, though.’
‘What?’
‘I saw you the first time you came up. I was on the viewing platform, with the others. We were supposed to be concentrating on Haldora, blocking out all external distractions. They could make it easy for us by physically restricting our view, forcing our eyes to stay locked on the planet, but that’s not the way it’s done. There has to be an element of discipline, an element of self-control. We’re supposed to look at Haldora for every instant of the day, despite the distractions. There are devices in the helmets that monitor how well we do that, recording every twitch of the eye. And I saw you. Only in my peripheral vision, to begin with. My eye made an involuntary movement to bring you into focus and I lost contact with Haldora for a fraction of a second.’
‘Naughty,’ she said.
‘Naughtier than you think. There would have been a disciplinary measure for just that violation. It’s not so much the fact that I looked away as that I was occupying a space on the roof that might have been used by someone more vigilant. That was the sin, because in that instant there was always a chance — no matter how small — that Haldora might vanish. And someone else would have been denied the chance of witnessing that miracle because I had the weakness of mind to look away.’
‘But it didn’t vanish. You’re off the hook.’
‘I assure you that isn’t the way they see it.’ He looked down, sheepishly, she thought. ‘Anyway, it’s academic: I made things a lot worse. I didn’t look back towards Haldora even when I was consciously aware that I’d lost contact. I just watched you, straining to hold you in focus, not daring to move any part of my body. I couldn’t see your face, but I could see the way you moved. I knew you were a woman, and when I realised that it just made it worse. It wasn’t idle curiosity any more. I wasn’t simply being distracted by some oddity in the landscape.’
When he said ‘woman’ she felt a quiet thrill that she hoped did not show in her face. When had anyone ever called her that before without prefacing it with ‘young’, or something equally diminishing?
She blushed. ‘You can’t possibly have known who I was, though.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘not for certain. But when you came up again, I thought, “She must be a very independent-minded person.” Nobody else had come up on to the roof the whole time I was there. And when you nearly had your accident… well, then I did see your face. Not clearly, but enough to know I’d recognise you again.’ He paused, and for a moment watched the rolling view himself. ‘I did have my doubts,’ he said, ‘even when I saw you here. But when I saw the flashes, I knew I had to take the chance. I’m glad I did. You seem like a nice person, and now you’ve as good as admitted you were the same person I helped up on the roof. Do you mind if I ask your name?’
‘Provided you tell me yours.’
‘Pietr,’ he said. ‘Pietr Vale. I’m from Skull Cliff, in the Hyrrokkin lowlands.’
‘Rashmika Els,’ she said guardedly. ‘From High Scree, in the Vigrid badlands.’
‘I thought I recognised the accent. I guess I’m not really a badlander myself, but we’re not from places so very far apart, are we?’
Rashmika felt torn between politeness and hostility. ‘I think you’ll find we’re a lot further apart than you realise.’
‘Why do you say that? We’re both going south, aren’t we? Both taking the caravan towards the Way. How different can we be?’
‘Very,’ Rashmika said. ‘I’m not on a pilgrimage. I’m on an… enquiry.’
He smiled. ‘Call it what you will.’
‘I’m on personal business. Personal secular business. Business that has nothing to do with your religion — which, incidentally, I do not believe in — but which has everything to do with right and wrong.’
‘I was right. You really are a serious and determined person.’
She didn’t like that. ‘Shouldn’t you be getting back to your friends?’ ‘They won’t let me back,’ he said. ‘They might have tolerated a moment of inattention; they might even have forgiven me a lapse of the kind I mentioned before. But once you leave them, that’s it. You’re poisoned. There is no way back.’
‘Why did you leave?’
‘Because of you, as I said. Because seeing you up there opened a glint of doubt in my armour. I don’t suppose it was ever very secure, or I wouldn’t have noticed you in the first place. But by the second occasion, when you nearly fell, I was already doubting that I had the conviction to continue.’ At that, Rashmika started to say something, but he held up his hand and continued. ‘You shouldn’t blame yourself. Really, it could have been anyone up there. My faith was never as strong as the others’. And when I thought about what lay ahead, what I was setting myself up for, I knew I didn’t have the strength to go through with it.’
She knew what he meant. The rigours of this part of the pilgrimage were as nothing compared to what would happen when Pietr reached the cathedral that was his destination. There, his faith would be irreversibly consolidated by chemical means. And as an Observer he would be surgically and neurologically adapted to enable him to witness Haldora for every instant of his existence. No sleep, no inattention, not even the respite of blinking.
Only mute
observance, until he died.
‘I wouldn’t have the strength either,’ she said. ‘Even if I believed.’
‘Why don’t you?’
‘Because I believe in rational explanations. I do not believe planets simply cease to exist without good reason.’
‘But there is a good reason. The best possible reason.’
‘The work of God?’
Pietr nodded. Fascinated, she watched the bob of his Adam’s apple pushing against the high edge of his collar. ‘What better explanation can you ask for?’
‘But why here, why now?’
‘Because these are End Times,’ Pietr said. ‘We’ve had human war and human plagues. Then we had stranger plagues and reports of stranger wars. Don’t you wonder where the refugees come from? Don’t you wonder why they come here, of all places? They know it. They know this is the place where it will begin. This is the place where it will happen.’
‘I thought you said you weren’t a believer.’
‘I said I wasn’t sure of the strength of my faith. That isn’t quite the same thing.’
‘I think if God wanted to make a point, He’d find a better way to do it than through the random vanishing of a gas-giant planet light-years from Earth.’
‘But it isn’t random,’ Pietr countered, evading the rest of her point. ‘That’s what everyone thinks, but it isn’t true. The churches know it, and those who take the time to study the records know it, too.’
Now, despite herself, she found that she wanted to hear what he had to say. Pietr was correct: the vanishings of Haldora were always spoken of by the churches as if they were random events, subject to inscrutable divine scheduling. And the shameful thing was that she had always taken this information at face value, without questioning it. She had never stopped to think that the truth might be more complex. She had been far too preoccupied with her academic study of the scuttlers to look further afield.
‘If it isn’t random,’ she asked, ‘then what is it?’
‘I don’t know what you’d call it if you were a mathematician or a scholar. I’m neither. I only know what such people have told me. It’s true that you can never predict when a vanishing will occur — in that sense they are random. But the average gap between vanishings has been growing shorter ever since Quaiche witnessed the first one. It’s just that until recently no one could see it clearly. Now you can’t miss it, if you study the evidence.’
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