‘I don’t agree with your stance,’ Remontoire said, ‘but I respect it. You remind me of Nevil, in some ways.’
Scorpio recalled the ludicrously brief episode of ‘grieving’ Remontoire had undergone. ‘I thought you were over him now.’
‘None of us are over him,’ Remontoire said curtly. Then he gestured to the flask again and his mood lightened visibly. ‘More tea, Mr Pink?’
Scorpio didn’t know what to say. He looked at the bland-faced man and shrugged. ‘If you don’t mind, Mr Clock.’
Hela, 2727
The surgeon-general ushered Rashmika through the labyrinthine Lady Morwenna. It was clearly not a sightseeing trip. Though she dawdled when she was able — slowing down to look at the windows, or something of equal interest — Grelier always chivvied her on with polite insistence, tapping his cane against the walls and floor to emphasise the urgency of his mission. ‘Time is of the essence, Miss Els,’ he kept saying. That and, ‘We’re in a wee bit of a hurry.’
‘It would help if you told me what all this is about,’ she said.
‘No, it wouldn’t,’ he replied. ‘Why would it help? You’re here and we’re on our way.’
He had a point, she supposed. She just didn’t like it very much.
‘What happened with the Catherine of Iron?’ she asked, determined not to give up too easily.
‘Nothing that I’m aware of. There was a change of assignment. Nothing significant. You’re still being employed by the First Adventist Church, after all. We’ve just relocated you from one cathedral to another.’ He tapped the side of his nose, as if sharing a grand confidence. ‘Frankly, you’ve done rather well out of it. You don’t know how difficult it is to get into the Lady Mor these days. Everyone wants to work in the Way’s most historic cathedral.’
‘I was given to understand that its popularity had taken a bit of a knock lately,’ she said.
Grelier looked back at her. ‘Whatever do you mean, Miss Els?’
‘The dean is taking it over the bridge. At least, that’s what people are saying.’
‘And if that were the case?’
‘I wouldn’t be too surprised if people aren’t all that keen to stay aboard. How far from the crossing are we, Surgeon-General?’
‘Navigation’s not really my thing.’
‘You know exactly how far away we are,’ she said.
He flashed a smile back at her. She decided that she did not like his smile at all. It looked altogether too feral. ‘You’re good, Miss Els. As good as I’d hoped.’
‘Good, Surgeon-General?’
‘The lying thing. The ability to read faces. That’s your little stock in trade, isn’t it? Your little party trick?’
They had arrived at what Rashmika judged to be the base of the Clocktower. The surgeon-general pulled out a key, slipped it into a lock next to a wooden door and admitted them into what was obviously a private compartment. The walls were made of trellised iron. Inside he pressed a sequence of brass knobs and they began to rise. Through the trelliswork, Rashmika watched the walls of the elevator shaft glide by. Then the walls became stained glass, and as they ascended past each coloured facet the light changed in the compartment: green to red, red to gold, gold to a cobalt blue that made the surgeon-general’s shock of white hair glow as if electrified.
‘I still don’t know what this is about,’ she persisted.
‘Are you frightened?’
‘A bit.’
‘You needn’t be.’ She saw that he was telling the truth, at least as he perceived it. This calmed her slightly. ‘We’re going to treat you very well,’ he added. ‘You’re too valuable to us to be treated otherwise. ’
‘And if I decide I don’t want to stay here?’
He looked away from her, glancing out of the window. The light traced the outline of his face with dying fire. There was something about him — a muscular compactness to his body, that bulldog face — that made her think of circus performers she had seen in the badlands, who were actually unemployed miners touring from village to village to supplement their income. He could have been a fire-eater or an acrobat.
‘You can leave,’ he said, turning back to her. ‘There’d be no point keeping you here without your permission. Your usefulness to us depends entirely on your good will.’
Perhaps she was reading him incorrectly, but she did not think he was lying about that, either.
‘I still don’t see…’ she said.
‘I’ve done my homework,’ he told her. ‘You’re a rara avis, Miss Els.
You have a gift shared by fewer than one in a thousand people. And you have the gift to a remarkable degree. You’re off the scale. I doubt that there’s anyone else quite like you on the whole of Hela.’
‘I just see when people lie,’ she said.
‘You see more than that. Look at me now.’ He smiled at her again. ‘Am I smiling because I am genuinely happy, Miss Els?’
It was the same feral smile she had seen before. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘You’re right. Do you know why you can tell?’
‘Because it’s obvious,’ she said.
‘But not to everyone. When I smile on demand — as I did just then — I make use of only one muscle in my face: the zygomaticus major. When I smile spontaneously — which I confess does not happen very often — I flex not only my zygomaticus major but I also tighten the orbicularis oculi, pars lateralis.’ Grelier touched a finger to the side of his temple. ‘That’s the muscle that encircles the eye. The majority of us cannot tighten that muscle voluntarily. I certainly can’t. By the same token the majority of us cannot stop it tightening when we are genuinely pleased.’ He smiled again; the elevator was slowing. ‘Many people do not see the difference. If they notice it, they notice it subliminally, and the information is lost in the welter of other sensory inputs. The crucial data is ignored. But to you these things come screaming through. They sound trumpets. You are incapable of ignoring them.’
‘I remember you now,’ she said.
‘I was there when they interviewed your brother, yes. I remember the fuss you made when they lied to him.’
‘Then they did lie.’
‘You always knew it.’
She looked at him: square in the face, alert to every nuance. ‘Do you know what happened to Harbin?’
‘Yes,’ he replied.
The trelliswork carriage rattled to a halt.
Grelier led her into the dean’s garret. The six-sided room was alive with mirrors. She saw her own startled expression jangling back at her, fragmented like a cubist portrait. In the confusion of reflections she did not immediately notice the dean himself. She saw the view through the windows, the white curve of Hela’s horizon reminding her of the smallness of her world, and she saw the suit — the strange, roughly welded one — that she recognised from the Adventist insignia. Rashmika’s skin prickled: just looking at the suit disturbed her. There was something about it, an impression of evil radiating from it in invisible lines, flooding the room; a powerful sense of presence, as if the suit itself embodied another visitor to the garret.
Rashmika walked past the suit. As she neared it the impression of evil became perceptibly stronger, almost as if invisible rays of malevolence were boring into her head, fingering their way into the private cavities of her mind. It was not like her to respond so irrationally to something so obviously inanimate, but the suit had an undeniable power. Perhaps, buried inside it, was a mechanism for inducing disquiet. She had heard of such things: vital tools in certain spheres of negotiation. They tickled the parts of the brain responsible for stimulating dread and the registering of hidden presences.
Now that she thought she could explain the suit’s power she felt less disturbed by it. All the same, she was glad when she reached the other side of the garret, into full view of the dean. At first she thought he was dead. He was lying back on his couch, hands clasped across his blanketed chest like a man in the repose of the recently deceased. But t
hen the chest moved. And the eyes — splayed open for examination — were horribly alive within their sockets. They trembled like little warm eggs about to hatch.
‘Miss Els,’ the dean said. ‘I hope your trip here was an enjoyable one.’
She couldn’t believe she was in his presence. ‘Dean Quaiche,’ she said. ‘I heard… I thought…’
‘That I was dead?’ His voice was a rasp, the kind of sound an insect might have manufactured by the deft rubbing of chitinous surfaces. ‘I have never made any secret of my continued existence, Miss Els… for all these years. The congregation has seen me regularly.’
‘The rumours are understandable,’ Grelier said. The surgeon-general had opened a medical cabinet on the wall and was now fishing through its innards. ‘You don’t show your face outside of the Lady Morwenna, so how are the rest of the population expected to know?’
‘Travel is difficult for me.’ Quaiche pointed with one hand towards a small hexagonal table set amid the mirrors. ‘Have some tea, Miss Els. And sit down, take the weight off your feet. We have much to talk about.’
‘I have no idea why I am here, Dean.’
‘Didn’t Grelier tell you anything? I told you to brief the young lady, Grelier. I told you not to keep her in the dark.’
Grelier turned from the wall and walked towards Quaiche, carrying bottles and swabs. ‘I told her precisely what you asked me to tell her: that her services were required, and that our use for her depended critically on her sensitivity to facial microexpressions.’
‘What else did you tell her?’
‘Absolutely nothing.’
Rashmika sat down and poured herself some tea. There appeared little point in refusing. And now that she was being offered a drink she realised that she was very thirsty.
‘I presume you want me to help you,’ she ventured. ‘You need my skill, for some reason or other. There is someone you’re not sure if you trust or not.’ She sipped at the tea: whatever she thought of her hosts, it tasted decent enough. ‘Am I warm?’
‘You’re more than warm, Miss Els,’ Quaiche remarked. ‘Have you always been this astute?’
‘Were I truly astute, I’m not sure I’d be sitting here.’
Grelier leant over the Dean and began dabbing at the exposed whites of his eyes. She could see neither of their faces.
‘You sound as if you have misgivings,’ the dean said. ‘And yet all the evidence suggests you were rather keen on reaching the Lady Morwenna.’
‘That was before I found out where it was going. How close are we to the bridge, Dean? If you don’t mind my asking.’
‘Two hundred and fifty-six kilometres distant,’ he said.
Rashmika allowed herself a moment of relief. She sipped another mouthful of the tea. At the crawling pace the cathedrals maintained, that was sufficiently far away not to be of immediate concern. But even as she enjoyed that solace, another part of her mind quietly informed her that it was really much closer than she feared. A third of a metre a second did not sound very fast, but there were a lot of seconds in a day.
‘We’ll be there in ten days,’ the dean added.
Rashmika put down her tea. ‘Ten days isn’t very long, Dean. Is it true what they say, that you’ll be taking the Lady Morwenna over Absolution Gap?’
‘God willing.’
That was the last thing she wanted to hear. ‘Forgive me, Dean, but the one thing I didn’t have in mind when I came here was dying in some suicidal folly.’
‘No one’s going to die,’ he told her. ‘The bridge has been proven able to take the weight of an entire supply caravan. Measurements have never detected an ångström of deflection under any load.’
‘But no cathedral has ever crossed it.’
‘Only one has ever tried, and it failed because of guidance control, not any structural problem with the bridge.’
‘You think you’ll be more successful, I take it?’
‘I have the finest cathedral engineers on the Way. And the finest cathedral, too. Yes, we’ll make it, Miss Els. We’ll make it and one day you’ll tell your children how fortunate you were to enter my employment at such an auspicious time.’
‘I sincerely hope you’re right.’
‘Did Grelier tell you that you could leave at any time?’
‘Yes,’ she said, hesitantly.
‘It was the truth. Go now, Miss Els. Finish your tea and go. No one will stop you, and I will make arrangements for your employment in the Catherine. Good work, too.’
She was about to ask: the same good work you promised my brother? But she stopped herself. It was too soon to go barging in with another question about Harbin. She had come this far, and either extraordinary luck or extraordinary misfortune had propelled her into the heart of Quaiche’s order. She still did not know exactly what they wanted of her, but she knew she had been granted a chance that she must not throw away with one idle, ill-tempered question. Besides, there was another reason not to ask: she was frightened of what the answer might be.
‘I’ll stay,’ she said, adding quickly, ‘For now. Until we’ve talked things over properly.’
‘Very wise, Miss Els,’ Quaiche said. ‘Now, would you do me a small favour?’
‘That would depend,’ she said.
‘I only want you to sit there and drink your tea. A gentleman is going to come into this room and he and I are going to have a little chat. I want you to observe the gentleman in question — carefully, but not obtrusively — and report your observations to me when the gentleman has departed. It won’t take long, and there’s no need for you to say anything while the man is present. In fact, it would be better if you didn’t.’
‘Is that what you want me for?’
‘That is part of it, yes. We can discuss terms of employment later. Consider this part of your interview.’
‘And if I fail?’
‘It isn’t a test. You’ve already been tested on your basic skills, Miss Els. You came through with flying colours. In this instance, I just want honest observation. Grelier, are you done yet? Stop fussing around. You’re like a little girl playing with her dolly.’
Grelier began to put away his swabs and ointments. ‘I’m done,’ he said curtly. ‘That abscess has nearly stopped weeping pus.’
‘Would you care for more tea before the gentleman arrives, Miss Els?’
‘I’m fine with this,’ she said, holding on to her empty cup.
‘Grelier, make yourself scarce, then have the Ultra representative shown in.’
The surgeon-general locked the medical cabinet, said goodbye to Rashmika and walked out of the room by a different door than the one through which they had entered. His cane tapped into the distance.
Rashmika waited. Now that Grelier had gone she felt uncomfortable in Quaiche’s presence. She did not know what to say. She had never wanted to reach him specifically. She found the very idea distasteful. It was his order she had wanted to infiltrate, and then only to the point necessary to find Harbin. It was true that she did not care how much damage she did along the way, but Quaiche himself had never been of interest to her. Her mission was selfish, concerned only with the fate of her brother. If the Adventist church continued to inflict misery and hardship on the population of Hela, that was their problem, not hers. They were complicit in it, as much a part of the problem as Quaiche. And she had not come to change any of that, unless it stood in her way.
Eventually the representative arrived. Rashmika observed his entry, remembering that she had been told to say nothing. She presumed that extended to not even greeting the Ultra.
‘Come in, Triumvir,’ Quaiche said, his couch elevating to something approximating a normal sitting position. ‘Come in and don’t be alarmed. Triumvir, this is Rashmika Els, my assistant. Rashmika, this is Triumvir Guro Harlake of the lighthugger That Which Passes, recently arrived from Sky’s Edge.’
The Ultra arrived in a shuffling red mobility contraption. His skin had the smooth whiteness of a baby reptile’
s, faintly tattooed with scales, and his eyes were partially concealed behind slitted yellow contacts. His short white hair fell over his face in a stiff, foppish fringe. His fingernails were long, green, vicious as scythes, and they kept clicking against the armature of his mobility device.
‘We were the last ship out during the evacuation,’ the Triumvir said. ‘There were ships behind us, but they didn’t make it.’
‘How many systems have fallen so far?’ Quaiche asked.
‘Eight… nine. Maybe more by now. News takes decades to reach us. They say Earth is still intact, but there have been confirmed attacks against Mars and the Jovian polities, including the Europan Demarchy and Gilgamesh Isis. No one has heard anything from Zion or Prospekt. They say every system will fall eventually. It’ll just be a matter of time until they find us all.’
‘In which case, why did you stop here? Wouldn’t it have been better to keep moving outwards, away from the threat?’
‘We had no choice,’ the Ultra said. His voice was deeper than Rashmika had expected. ‘Our contract required that we bring our passengers to Hela. Contracts mean a great deal to us.’
‘An honest Ultra? What is the world coming to?’
‘We’re not all vampires. Anyway, we had to stop for another reason, not just because our sleepers wanted to come here as pilgrims. We had shield difficulties. We can’t make another interstellar transit without major repairs.’
‘Costly ones, I’d imagine,’ Quaiche said.
The Triumvir bowed his head. ‘That is why we are having this conversation, Dean Quaiche. We heard that you had need of the services of a good ship. A matter of protection. You feel yourself threatened.’
‘It’s not a question of feeling threatened,’ he said. ‘It’s just that in these times… we’d be foolish not to want to protect our assets, wouldn’t we?’
‘Wolves at the door,’ the Ultra said.
‘Wolves?’
‘That’s what the Conjoiners named the Inhibitor machines, just before they evacuated human space. That was a century ago. If we’d had any sense we’d all have followed them.’
The Revelation Space Collection (revelation space) Page 284