Absolution Gap

by Alastair Reynolds

  “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 Hal-dora were always spoken of by the churches a
s 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 scut-tlers 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.”

  The back of Rashmika’s neck prickled. “Then show me the evidence. I want to see it.”

  The caravan swerved sharply as it entered another of the tunnels bored through the side of the cliff.

  “I can show you evidence,” he said, “but whether it’s the right evidence or not is another matter entirely.”

  “You’re losing me, Pietr.”

  The caravan scraped and gouged its way through the narrow confines of the tunnel. Rashmika heard thumps as dislodged ceiling materials—rocks and ice—hammered against the roof. She thought of the Observers up there and wondered what it was like for them.

  “We’ll reach the bridge in four or five hours,” he said. “When we’re halfway across, meet me on the roof, where we were before. I’ll have something interesting to show you.”

  “Why would I want to meet you on the roof, Pietr? Can I trust you?”

  “Of course,” he said.

  But she only accepted his word because she knew that he believed what he said.

  Ararat, 2675

  KHOURI AWOKE. SCORPIO was with her when she opened her eyes, sitting in the seat next to her bed where Valensin had been earlier. Another hour had passed, and he had missed the meeting in the High Conch. He considered this an acceptable trade-off.

  The woman blinked and rubbed sleep gum from her eyes. Her lips were caked in the stringy white residue of dried saliva. “How long have I been out?”

  “It’s the morning of the day after we rescued Aura. You’ve been out for most of it. Doc says it’s just fatigue catching up with you. That whole time you were with us, you must have been running on vapour.”

  Khouri’s head turned to the other side of the bed. “Aura?”

  “Doc says she’s doing OK. Like you, she just needs rest. Considering ail the crap she’s been through, she’s doing pretty well.”

  Khouri closed her eyes. She sighed. In that moment Scorpio saw tension flood out of her. It was as if the whole time she had been with them, ever since they had pulled her out of the capsule, she had been wearing a mask. Now the mask had been discarded.

  She opened her eyes again. They were like windows into a younger woman. He remembered, forcefully, the way Khouri had been before the two ships had separated in the Resurgam system. Half his life ago.

  “I’m glad she’s safe,” she said. “Thank you for helping me. And I’m sorry for what happened to Clavain.”

  “So am I, but there was no choice. Skade has us. She set the trap, we walked into it. Once she knew she couldn’t benefit from holding on to Aura, she was ready to give her back to us. But she wasn’t going to let us leave without paying. She felt Clavain still owed her.”

  “But what she did to him…”

  Scorpio touched her head gently. “Don’t think about it now. Don’t ever think about it, if you can help it.”

  “He was your friend, wasn’t he?”

  “Guess so. Inasmuch as I’ve ever had friends.”

  “I think you’ve had friends, Scorp. I think you still have friends. Two more now, if you want them.”

  “Mother and daughter?”

  “We both owe you.”

  “I’ll take it under advisement.”

  She laughed. It was good to hear someone laugh. Khouri was the last one he’d have expected it from. Before the trip to the iceberg she had struck him as monomanically driven, like a purposeful preprogrammed weapon sent down from the heavens. But he understood now that she was as fragile and human as the rest of them. Whatever “human” meant for a pig.

  “Mind if I ask you something?” he said. “If you’re sleepy, I can come back in a little while.”

  “Fetch me that water, will you?”

  He brought her the beaker of water she’d indicated. She drank half of it down, then wiped the white scurf from her moistened lips. “Go on, Scorp.”

  “You have a link to Aura, don’t you? A mental connection, via the implants Remontoire put in both of you?”

  “Yes,” she said;, guardedly.

  “Do you understand everything that comes through it?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “You said that Aura speaks through you. Fine, I think I understand that. But do you ever pick up unintentional stuff?”

  “Like what?”

  “You know the leakage we have from the wolf war? Stuff slipping through the defences? Do you ever get leakage from Aura, things that cross over the gap between you, but which you can’t process?”

  “I wouldn’t know.” She sounded less happy now than she had a minute earlier. She was frowning. The windows had slammed shut again. “What sort of thing were you thinking of, exactly?”

  “Not sure,” he said. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s just a shot in the dark. When we pulled you out of that capsule, Valensin hit you with sedatives because you wouldn’t let us examine you. Knocked you out good and cold. But in your sleep you still kept saying something.”

  “I did, did I?”

  “The word was ‘Hella,’ or something like that. It appeared to mean something to you, but when we asked you about it, you gave me what I’d call a plausible denial. I’m inclined to believe you were telling the truth, that the word doesn’t mean anything to you. But I’m wondering if it might mean something to Aura.”

  She looked at him with suspicion and interest. “Does it mean anything to you?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. Certainly doesn’t mean anything to anyone on Ararat. But in the wider sphere of human culture? Could mean almost anything. Lot of languages out there. Lot of people, lot of places.“

  “Still can’t help you.”

  “I understand. But the thing is, while I was sitting here waiting for you to wake up, you said something else.”

  “What did I say?”

  “Quaiche.”

  She lifted the beaker to her lips and finished what remained of the water. “Still doesn’t mean anything to me,” she said.

  “Pity. I was hoping it might ring some bells.” .

  “Well, maybe it means something to Aura. I don’t know, all right? I’m just her mother. Remontoire wasn’t a miracle worker. He linked us together, but it’s not as if everything she thinks is accessible to me. I’d go mad if that was the case.” Khouri paused. “You’ve got databases and things. Why don’t you query them?”

  “I will, when things quieten down.” Scorpio pushed himself up from the seat. “One other thing: I understand you communicated a particular desire to Doctor Valensin?”

  “Yeah, I talked to the doc.” She said it in a lilting voice, parodying his earlier tone.

  “I understand why you want that to happen. I respect your wish and sympathise with you. If there was a safe way…”

  She closed her eyes. “She’s my baby. They stole her from me. Now I want to give birth to her, the way it was meant to happen.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I just can’t allow it.”

  “There’s no room for argument, is there?”

  “None at all, I’m afraid.”

  She did not reply, did not even turn away from him, but there was a withdrawal and the sliding down of a barrier he didn’t have to see to feel.
<
br />   Scorpio turned from the bed and walked slowly out of the room. He had expected her to weep when he broke the news. If not weeping, then hysterics or insults or pleading. But she remained still, silent, as if she had always known it would happen this way. As he walked away, the force of her dignity made the back of his neck tingle. But it changed nothing.

  Aura was a child. But she was also a tactical asset.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Ararat, 2675

  IN THE DEEP cloisters of the ship, Antoinette halted. “John?” she said. “It’s me again. I’ve come down to talk to you.”

  Antoinette knew he was nearby. She knew that he was watching her, alert to her every gesture. When the wall moved, pushing itself into the bas-relief image of a spacesuited figure, she controlled her natural instinct to flinch. It was not quite what she had been expecting, but it was still an apparition.

  “Thanks,” she said. “Good to see you again.”

  The figure was a suggestion rather than an accurate sketch. The image shimmered, the wall’s deformations undergoing constant and rapid change, fluttering and rippling like a flag in a stiff gale. When the image occasionally broke up, fading back into the rough texture of the wall, it was as if the figure was being hidden by scarves of windblown Martian dust cutting horizontally across the field of view.

  The figure gestured to her, raising an arm, touching one gloved hand to the narrow visor of its space helmet.

  Antoinette raised her own hand in greeting, but the figure on the wall merely repeated the gesture, more emphatically this time.

  Then she remembered the goggles that the Captain had given her the time before. She slipped them from her pocket and settled them over her eyes. Again the view through the goggles was synthetic, but this time—for now, at least—nothing was being edited out of her visual field. This reassured her. She had not enjoyed the feeling that large and possibly dangerous elements in her vicinity were being masked from her perception. It was shocking to think that for centuries people had accepted such manipulation of their environment as a perfectly normal aspect of life, regarding such perceptual filtering as no more remarkable than the wearing of sunglasses or earmuffs. It was even more shocking to think that they had allowed the machinery controlling that filtering to creep into their skulls, where it could make the trickery even more seamless. The Demarchists—and, for that matter, the Conjoiners—truly were strange people. She was sad about many things, but not the fact that she had been born too late to participate in such reality-modifying games. She liked to reach out for something and know it was really there.