In the Mouth of the Whale

by Paul McAuley

  ‘Now you’re marked with the eye, and you’re one with each other and with the station,’ Commander Tenkiller said, when she had finished. ‘Get to your quarters, and get to work.’

  That was their first day aboard their new home, after days riding inside the spartan hold of an argosy out from the Whale, a long voyage that spanned a quarter of Cthuga’s fat globe, all the way to the mother station that had spawned The Eye of the Righteous. The mother station rode the permanent gales above the tops of the clouds where high pressure and temperature drove complex carbon-sulphur cycles of synthesis and dissolution. It was a vast irregular raft hung beneath a tall cluster of hot-hydrogen balloons; boom arms radiated in every direction from its edges, like a snowflake or a squashed spider, and from the boom arms vast trawl nets ten kilometres wide were shot down into the clouds. The nets – called dew catchers for some obscure reason – were spun and maintained by tiny machines, and the threads of their fine but diamond-tough mesh were coated with tags which reacted with and bound to specific compounds. When enough tags were saturated, the nets were reeled in and fed through the try works along the edges of the station’s raft, where the bound organic compounds were stripped and sorted and processed and dispatched to batteries of makers that spun and assembled new stations which were launched into Cthuga’s unceasing rivers of air.

  The Eye of the Righteous was the newest of more than six hundred pelagic stations responsible for patrolling the entirety of the outer atmospheric layer of the gas giant, some eighty billion square kilometres. It carried a pod of predators, and three pods of combat drones that acted as both scouts and lures for enemy activity. An elite cadre of Trues piloted the predators; Ori and the other new recruits were tasked with flying drones, and performing every kind of routine maintenance work besides.

  Ori didn’t mind the induction ceremony. She’d had worse hazings when she’d transferred from one part of the Whale to the other, and her humiliation was shared by the other recruits. It was far less troubling than what had happened between her and Commissar Doctor Wilm Pentangel in the garden at the top of his train. She’d heard of such things, but she’d always discounted them as fables. The kind of stories Quicks liked to tell each other, delighting in visceral horrors that made their own situation seem almost homely. Ritual murders. Consumption of the flesh of Quicks. A ceremony involving a table with a hole in its centre, large enough to accommodate the top of the head of the Quick victim, which was surgically opened so Trues could dine on her living brain. Ori’s possession by Commissar Doctor Pentangel was less horrific but more sordid than these fairy stories. The awful desperate grappling and the penetration of her body. The corruption of the act of love. She knew that she was property, like all Quicks. An asset rather than a person. A working unit without rights. But no other True had ever used her with such brutal intimacy. It was as if he had stained her soul. She had been the victim, and yet it was she who felt ashamed.

  Worst of all, she couldn’t escape him. He’d forced her to become a spy, making daily reports that the device implanted by his philosopher-soldiers encrypted and sent via the military net. She hated this duty and was permanently scared of being discovered, but she had no choice. She had been warned that if she failed to make a report by the appointed time, the device would induce crippling headaches that, according to the philosopher-soldiers, would grow increasingly worse until they killed her.

  Anger about the way he’d used her, was still using her, fuelled lurid fantasies of revenge. Ori was scared that the device would detect and report them, and was angry with herself for being scared. A vicious cycle. Work was her only comfort. She discovered that she’d missed the comfortable routines of work, and the comforts of companionship, the noisy squabbles and laughter of the commons, the familiar games and jokes. It was a sharp reminder of what she’d lost, of Inas and her friends and companions in jockey crew #87, especially as most of the recruits quickly paired up, but she discovered that she didn’t mind being alone in the crowd.

  She didn’t even mind much that one of the new recruits was sour little Hira. Who’d told Ori as soon as she could, after they’d been loaded on to the argosy, that she would have had her turn down in the hot black dark if the war hadn’t grown worse, and she would have succeeded where everyone else had failed. And told everyone else that Ori thought that she was special because she’d been selected to spend time in a tank down in the depths, talking to sprites. Ori tried her best to shrug it off, although she worried that Hira would somehow find out about what had happened between her and Commissar Doctor Pentangel, or even that she had found out and had told everyone. That everyone knew. That every glance and conversation was tinged with speculation and pity.

  Fortunately, Hira soon found another target for her petty jibes. Another recruit, Hereata, who’d also spent time in one of Commissar Doctor Pentangel’s observation posts, and had supposedly suffered some kind of mystical union or vision. Hereata wouldn’t be drawn on this rumour. She possessed a weird gentle serenity, seemed to scarcely notice Hira’s increasingly aggressive goading or the mocking of other Quicks, and was given to sudden piercing insights. Once, she told Hira that she was angry because she was too scared to open herself up to the sprite which had bonded with her; Hira scoffed loudly at this, but Ori noticed that she was uncharacteristically quiet and thoughtful for a day afterwards.

  Ori couldn’t help wondering if Hereata had also been abused by the commissar, if she’d also been recruited to spy for him, but was too ashamed to ask. That shame also stopped her from talking to Hereata about their common experience of serving in the observation posts. In the end it was Hereata who brought it up, one day down in the chill bright drone hangar. Saying, as they checked the systems of the launch cradles, ‘You were touched too.’

  For a horrible moment, Ori thought that Hereata was talking about the commissar, and she blushed hotly and turned away. But Hereata followed her and said, ‘It was in a dream, wasn’t it? A dream about looking for a sprite and finding it in a room. A room in the post that didn’t exist.’

  ‘You had that dream too?’

  ‘I had all kinds of dreams. Although they weren’t really dreams.’

  ‘What were they, then?’

  ‘Messages at first. And then conversations.’ Hereata spoke in a matter-of-fact manner, as if discussing the weather.

  ‘You talked to the sprites?’

  ‘The sprites were the messages. Or rather, they were both messenger and message. Their simple presence tells us that the Mind exists. And that it wants to talk to us.’ Hereata smiled her sweet and simple smile.

  ‘Did you tell them?’

  ‘Trues want to understand. But I don’t think they can, not really. Their minds aren’t like our minds.’

  ‘You mean they’re too stupid?’

  ‘They’re too complicated. Our ancestors stripped away some of the agents of consciousness when we became what we are. Removed the dangerous ones. The Trues still have everything. They are unchanged. Like our common ancestors, who walked out of the dry plains of Africa into the rest of the world, and then walked beyond the sky. They have all kinds of voices in their heads. We have one.’

  ‘Not any more.’

  Hereata smiled. ‘What do you hear? What does it say to you?’

  ‘I looked for it,’ Ori said. ‘In my dream. And I didn’t find it. Maybe if I’d found it, it would have explained itself to me. All I know is that it’s there.’

  ‘Yes,’ Hereata said. ‘That’s the message.’

  Ori wanted so much to tell this strange, calm, kind person about what had happened to her. What had been done to her, by the commissar. It was like a physical pressure.

  Hereata said, ‘Did you look for the room, after you woke up?’

  Ori nodded. ‘I think I was a little crazy. Or scared. And it was only a dream, but it seemed so real at the time that when I woke up I thought the room was real, too.’

  ‘It’s real,’ Hereata said, and reached out and placed he
r cool palm on Ori’s forehead. ‘Here. It’s here.’

  ‘In my head?’

  ‘In your mind,’ Hereata said, and that was when their conversation was broken up by Hira and her friends, and Hira loudly denounced them for wrecker activity.

  It was a ludicrous charge, but Ori and Hereata were subjected to a self-confession session with the rest of the recruits who shared their shift – an informal court run by Quicks that dealt with every kind of minor infraction amongst the Quick crew. Hira accused Ori and Hereata of plotting and conspiracy, saying that they both believed themselves superior to the rest of the Quick crew. She couldn’t explain what they’d been conspiring to do, and her accusation was a ridiculous self-righteous rant that most of the Quicks didn’t take seriously, but in only a few days Hira had acquired several acolytes who were almost as vindictive and small-minded as she was, and besides, everyone was anxious to show that they were loyal to their new commander. In the end, it was decided that Ori and Hereata should be tasked with additional cleaning work, to give them time to reflect on their crime of selfish and superfluous thought, and Hereata was transferred to the second shift to minimise any further contact between the two of them.

  Ori had to report this humiliation to Commissar Doctor Pentangel, and did her best to keep out of Hira’s way after that. Whenever she saw Hereata, they exchanged looks, and once they passed in a companionway and Hereata told her to remember that her dream hadn’t been a dream. That she would understand if she looked inside herself.

  ‘If I tried to talk to the thing in my head, you mean?’

  ‘You have to go deeper,’ Hereata said, and might have said more, but Ori heard someone coming and moved on.

  Hereata couldn’t seem to help answering questions and accusations as truthfully and honestly as she could, and Hira and her acolytes went out of their way to ask her leading questions, mocking her answers, inflicting all kinds of petty humiliations on her. Soon, almost everyone agreed that Hereata was both dangerous and pathetic. A holy fool who could get them all into trouble by claiming that Quicks were somehow superior to Trues. Sooner or later, she would do something to anger the Trues, and that would be it, she’d be for the long drop.

  Ori hated this group thinking. The idea that ideas were dangerous. But she didn’t speak up for Hereata because she’d already been accused of conspiracy and couldn’t risk being accused again. More shame; more guilt; a deepening feeling of loneliness worse than anything she’d experienced in the observation station.

  Yet she was not entirely unhappy. There were the comforting routines, maintenance and scut work, the twice-daily prayer sessions led by Commander Tenkiller. And there was the flying.

  Ori and the others flew fast, long-range drones equipped with lures designed to attract enemy activity, and sensors designed to detect it. Ori had to fly her drone in strict formation, and keep in contact with the other jockeys, and of course she never left the station because she flew it by wire from an immersion chair, but for six hours every other day she escaped into the endless sky. It almost made up for everything else.

  10

  One night, a few hours after she had gone to bed, the Child was shocked awake by a distant explosion. It rattled the pebbles and skulls and specimen jars on her shelves, and several luminous star-shaped stars in the constellations glued to the ceiling fluttered down to the sheet that covered her. She swung out of bed and padded to the window and swiped it clear. Beyond the dark line of the compound’s boundary wall, a huge orange glow shifted and flickered in the sky.

  The door opened behind her and her mother said, ‘Come away from there. It isn’t safe.’

  ‘Something blew up,’ the Child said. ‘Was it wildsiders?’

  ‘Clearly,’ her mother said, and with a quick gesture blanked the window. There was enough light in the room from the open door to sketch their reflections in the dark glass. They looked very alike, the Child realised. Her mother’s hair was light brown and cut short and her skin was several shades darker, but they had the same narrow face, the same small mouth and high cheekbones, the same pinch at the inner corners of their eyes.

  ‘Listen,’ her mother said. ‘I have to go over to the hospital. In case they bring in casualties. You’ll have to come with me, so get dressed.’

  Whenever there was trouble, Maria Hong-Owen took charge of the emergency room. And tonight Ama Paulinho was at her father’s house; the old man had suffered a small stroke several days ago.

  The orange light was lower in the sky when they crossed the courtyard. A siren wailed far off. Maria took the Child’s hand in a firm grip and they walked quickly, shadows wheeling around them. Two nurses were waiting in the bleak emergency room, with its green walls and three short benches, tiled floor with the drain in the centre, curtained treatment alcoves. The Child helped one of the nurses lay out sterile bandages and dressings and instruments on a trolley while Maria woke various scanners. One of the junior doctors came in, dressed in a ratty T-shirt and grey jogging pants; he spoke briefly with Maria and went out again. After that, nothing happened for a long time. One of the nurses sat at the desk, his slate tuned to the town’s emergency channel. Spurts of voices, long silences.

  The Child was half-asleep when two young men helped in a much older man, followed by a trio of anxious women. The Child recognised the older man: he worked in the hardware store, a kindly fellow with a bushy white moustache who always expressed interest in the Child’s special orders. He was looking around as if bewildered to find himself there; then Maria and one of the nurses took charge, guiding him into an alcove, drawing the curtain. The Child watched the old man’s relatives huddled in a knot, talking in low anxious voices with the second nurse, breaking apart when Maria pulled open the curtain and told them that she would keep their father overnight for observation but he would be fine.

  The nurses and the Child and Maria shared tea from a flask. Maria told the Child, ‘It wasn’t anything. A panic attack that exacerbated existing angina pectoralis. I gave him aspirin to thin his blood. Why?’

  ‘In case he has a heart attack.’

  ‘To make it less likely, yes.’ The Child’s mother smoothed the skin under her eyes. ‘That’s all the excitement we’re likely to get. No civilian casualties – we can be grateful for that.’

  Later, after Maria had gone upstairs to check the surgical ward, the nurse told the Child that the old man lived with his family on the side of the town close to the army base.

  ‘A drone came down the street. It saw something it didn’t like and exploded, and shrapnel smashed the window of the old man’s bedroom.’

  ‘It was chasing wildsiders?’

  ‘Shadows, most likely,’ the nurse said. ‘Or a stray dog or some other animal. The wildsiders were probably long gone when the ammunition dump blew up.’

  He let the Child listen to the emergency channel until Maria returned and said they could go back to bed. An hour later, the Child was just beginning to doze off when she heard voices. Her mother and Ama Paulinho talking elsewhere in the bungalow, both speaking quietly but with some force. Ama Paulinho saying that he was only a child. No more than a child. Her mother saying that of course she would come but first she needed to know. She must know. She had the right. A pause, and then a choked sound. After a moment the Child realised that her ama was crying, and felt a strange kink in her chest. She swung out of bed and in bare feet padded to the door of her bedroom and cracked it open. Stood there listening, her mother saying again that she had the right to know.

  ‘I would never put you in danger. I swear that.’

  ‘They should bring him here.’

  ‘I told them. They say he is too badly injured to move. So bad, so bad. And so young . . .’

  There was a long silence. The Child, listening at the door, scarcely dared to breathe. She could feel her heart thumping in her chest.

  At last her mother said, with the cold snap in her voice that meant she had come to a decision and didn’t like it, ‘I’ll go. B
ut I’ll take one of the nurses.’

  ‘They said to come alone.’

  ‘That’s the deal. Tell them that.’

  ‘They will not like it.’

  ‘They can take it or leave it.’

  Another pause. Then Ama Paulinho said, ‘I will ask them.’

  Ama Paulhino talked to someone on her phone in the choppy patois that she used around her family. The Child understood most of it, a one-sided argument about whether or not the doctor – the Child’s mother – should or should not come alone. Ama Paulinho pleaded with the person at the other end of the phone, swore on the life of her father that it was not a trick or trap, and at last told the Child’s mother, ‘They agree.’

  ‘All right. How do I get there?’

  ‘They wait for you, outside. It is all right. Really. They trust you. They will not do anything foolish.’

  ‘Nothing more than they have already done. You will stay here. Look after my daughter.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘If anything happens to me—’

  ‘It will not. I swear.’

  ‘There will be a note on the hospital system. I will erase it when I come back. But if I don’t . . . then it will explain everything.’

  ‘It won’t be necessary. But I understand.’

  ‘I hope you do.’

  The two women speaking formally, not as friends.

  ‘I have to talk to my daughter,’ Maria Hong-Owen said, and the Child barely had time to fly back to bed before her mother slipped inside the room. She sat on the side of the bed, telling the Child that she knew she was awake, saying, ‘I have to go out. Someone is badly hurt. His friends can’t or won’t bring him here, so I have to go to him. To do what I can. I’ll be back soon. Try to sleep. Paulinho will be here if you need anything.’

  The scent of her mother, as she bent over her. The brush of her mother’s hair on her cheek, the quick dry touch of her mother’s lips. The Child lay still, feigning sleep. Her mother saying softly, ‘I love you, and I will be back before you know it.’ Her weight leaving the bed, the light from the door going out as it closed.