Angel Stations

by Gary Gibson

  ‘The river flows fast, and hard, before it re-emerges far from the walls of the city,’ said Turthe from somewhere behind him. ‘It would be a dangerous journey even for someone as young as you.’

  ‘This is why you brought me down here?’ Ursu turned and stared at the old priest, his features hidden in the thin light. But he was already contemplating the journey ahead, regardless of the obvious dangers. But what chance was there of survival? Slim, certainly – more likely non-existent.

  ‘I am not suggesting it,’ said Turthe. ‘I am merely saying that there are . . . alternatives to be considered, should circumstances here grow much worse.’

  ‘I don’t understand why Shecumpeh cannot protect us,’ said Ursu. ‘Why he doesn’t repel the invaders.’

  ‘Some might suggest,’ said Turthe, his voice mild, ‘it’s because we haven’t shown ourselves worthy of Shecumpeh.’

  ‘No!’ Ursu said. ‘I mean . . . there is no difference between us and any other generation of Nubalans since the beginning of time. We are a good people. We don’t deserve this.’

  ‘Then consider Xan’s claim to represent the fulfillment of the Prophecy of the Fidhe.’ Turthe’s voice was still calm and reasoning, and Ursu had to strain to hear him over the sound of the rushing water. The thin mist that filled the air all around had left them drenched, their robes heavy with moisture. ‘He does reveal some of the major qualifications,’ Turthe continued. ‘He has, after all, conquered much of the known world. Under such circumstances, it might seem a given that we should yield the god Shecumpeh to him.’

  ‘You don’t believe that,’ Ursu said, turning to face him. So far beneath the earth, he was sure no one else could hear him, except perhaps Shecumpeh himself. And what Shecumpeh had asked him to do was a heresy against the god itself. It was almost funny, and he felt his ears begin to twitch at the humour of it, but suppressed that reaction quickly when he saw the annoyance on Turthe’s face. ‘There are still questions that have to be asked,’ said Turthe. ‘Outside the rooms occupied by the City Council, this is one of the few places I’d say is safe to discuss them without the risk of anyone overhearing and accusing us of treason.’

  ‘Would they really? Give Shecumpeh to Xan?’

  Turthe’s ears twitched in thought. ‘Perhaps – if it meant the survival of the city. However, I suspect many members of the Council fear what would happen to them if they did so. Some of our more devout citizens’d happily see them torn apart for giving away the beating life and soul of our city to any crass invaders. And if they survived Xan’s army, what would happen if what few crops we manage to grow then failed, or our hunting expeditions brought back no game? Who would be to blame then but the Council, for letting our enemies take our god away from us?’

  And what of my own torment? thought Ursu. Knowing that he might be the one to remove Shecumpeh from Nubala, wouldn’t that mean abandoning his own people to death at the hands of the invader – unprotected now by the god he’d stolen from them?

  But it was Shecumpeh himself who had commanded Ursu to carry the god’s effigy beyond the confines of the city, and whatever Shecumpeh directed, any acolyte or Master-in-Waiting hurried to undertake. Or so Ursu had always been brought up to believe. Now, he wasn’t quite so sure.

  And Turthe – what drove him to bring Ursu here now, to this place? Ursu’s mind was filled with a horror that somehow the old man knew what Shecumpeh had asked of him. Yet . . . Turthe was showing him a safe way out.

  ‘But what of Shecumpeh?’ Ursu said carefully. ‘Shecumpeh must have spoken of this, must have seen this coming?’

  Turthe had been staring deep into the churning water; now he turned back to Ursu, looking suddenly weary. ‘Yes, I think he must have realized in some way. I think he might have spoken to someone.’

  Ursu found himself trembling, only partly from the cold and damp. ‘Do you think so?’

  Turthe studied him carefully. ‘Whenever there has been a crisis in our history, the god has spoken to someone – whereupon Shecumpeh’s word is carried out.’

  ‘Because that is the way things always have been, Master Turthe?’

  ‘Yes, Ursu, always.’

  Five

  Kim

  Kim studied the tiny vial of Books in her hand. She knew she’d taken up Bill’s offer without really thinking it through, and only because he’d hinted how he might be able to help her if she did. The Books were an unknown quantity, possibly even dangerous. Maybe I’m in over my head, she thought. Maybe I should take them back.

  The guilt was starting to return – and with the guilt came the reason for her guilt. And with that reason for her overwhelming, almost unbearable guilt came everything else – a tidal wave of dark memories and sorrow that might well suck her under. She stopped her progress, found her way into a convenient toilet which was thankfully deserted, and leaned her head against a wall.

  ‘My name is Kim Amoto,’ she whispered. She pressed her hands against the cool surface of the bulkhead and studied her wrists, turning them so as to study the healed-over slash marks that had created narrow white strips of insensate flesh. There had been a reason for her not having surgery to hide these marks, but that reason had been lost in some other life. That other life – that other person – was gone now, dead and buried forever, along with all the things she had achieved, as well as all the guilt and pain and terror that same person had been forced to carry and that, even as she struggled against them, were threatening to overwhelm Kim all over again, for the first time in so many months.

  No. She brought her arms down, pulling at the long sleeves of her jerkin until the scars were well hidden again. Most of her fellow rock hermits had their own, far worse, secrets to hide.

  She headed back into the Hub, but now the noise and movement all around her acted like an intolerable pressure on her, like too much information was being thrust towards her and she was drowning in sensations. She felt a constriction in her chest, like some invisible giant had wrapped one enormous hand around her chest and was beginning, ever so gently, to squeeze her. As panic rose in her, she thought perhaps she’d been out here in the middle of nowhere for too long, forgetting what it could be like with other people around. And here she was surrounded by hundreds of them, pushing and jostling, drinking and dancing and hanging out all at once. She thought about stumbling back out of the Hub, but where was there to go, where the oppressive thoughts and memories wouldn’t follow her?

  So she found her way to a bar and ordered a tequila. And then another one. She tried to think. Bill couldn’t be the only one in this place who could give her what she wanted. But she’d left it almost too late. She ordered another tequila, a double this time. After that, the room began comfortably swaying. Better, she thought: the anxiety had dropped, she was feeling calmer. But still the pressure of all the bodies and noise around her was hard to take.

  She pushed away from the bar, thinking there had to be somewhere better to go. A brief image came to her of somehow opening one of the triple-security airlocks scattered around the Station and throwing herself into the naked vacuum, but she pushed it away.

  There were better ways than that – less painful ways.

  Elias

  Two days later, Elias was on his way out of London forever.

  He’d taken Hollis’s car deeper into the Camden Maze, a horizontal and vertical mishmash of building units and crumbling megatowers, filled with low-rent residences and makeshift shops, built on top of the Old Camden. There were so many access points between the Maze and the relatively unpopulated lower levels, it was one of the easiest places to disappear in at very short notice. Elias had been telling the truth when he’d told Hollis he had friends. Not only through favours owed – of which there were many – but through payments that had been made to Elias, all saved up towards that inevitable day when he knew he would have had to make a break for it.

  He took some of the money accumulated and paid to have Hollis iced for at least a week, allowing enough time f
or him to get away. There were those who knew how to track the streams of data passing through the complex computer networks of the City Authority, and they confirmed what Elias had found on the diskette Josh had given him: Trencher was still alive, iced down, and already offworld.

  Trencher was on his way, in fact, to the Kaspian system. It was as far from Earth as it was possible to get. But if that was where Trencher was going, Elias would go after him. He couldn’t even begin to guess why anyone wanted to take Trencher there, or to what purpose. He owed it to the old man to find him, and bring him back.

  And so Elias found himself, here and now, on a landing pad on top of one of the mighty towers of the city, surrounded by helicopters and VTOL craft. A cold February wind whipped across his face like a frozen blade. Smelling smoke, he peered out across the great, semi-translucent panels that partially roofed over the streets of London, separated by dully gleaming metal interstices.

  Dozens of other buildings rose above him, their windows now reflecting the early morning sun. The smoke, he realized, was drifting up from campfires below, and he could see a huddle of makeshift dwellings erected between two great exhaust towers. Although Elias knew about these rooftop shanties, this was the first time he’d ever seen one. It made the city seem that much more forbidding, even more like a medieval walled fortress surrounded by starving supplicants being refused shelter.

  A sign pointed to an office where someone in the uniform of the city’s militia came out and studied the smartsheet with Elias’s passport details. Elias waited, not sure if his fake ID would pass muster, but all that happened was that he was escorted to one of the larger VTOLs, a great black aircar with curving mirrored windshield obscuring the cockpit.

  Stubby black wings protruded towards the rear of the craft, and the fuselage flared outwards at four points, partially shielding from view enormous jet nozzles, now folded neatly away but still visible. The vehicle rested on four fat wheels.

  As Elias got in, he found Vaughn inside, waiting for him. Elias stared at him for a long, long moment then took a seat across from the ghost, but ignored him. Vaughn seemed happy to say nothing for the moment. The pilot was separated from them by a blank wall.

  The aircar banked as it lifted, so Elias could see London shrinking away below him. He had now accepted that his chances of ever seeing the city again were slim, but he didn’t feel as depressed about that as he’d imagined. It was a place he had lived in for much of his life, and when he’d been younger, the city had seemed a complete universe in itself. Now, as it fell away, it seemed to fade in his memory as well, becoming merely a part of the past.

  The curved glass of the exterior looked almost transparent from the inside, and every time the aircar tilted in its flight Elias found himself gripping the material of the couch, as if he might fall out.

  Vaughn observed this reaction with a bemused expression. ‘Don’t worry, Elias, I’m only here to give you some advice.’

  ‘Oh, lucky me.’

  ‘Always so hostile.’

  Elias looked out of the window rather than reply.

  ‘You owe those people nothing,’ Vaughn continued, adopting the same light conversational tone as before. ‘The unaltereds, I mean. To them you’re nothing but an Illegal, a criminal simply for existing – the product of dangerous alien biotechnology.’

  Elias felt his face grow hot. ‘I’m not a criminal. And I didn’t ask to be this way.’

  ‘Really? I thought you’d volunteered. But as far as the people back there are concerned’ – he pointed over Elias’s shoulder, as if back at the city of London – ‘you may turn out to be a vector for something they can’t predict. Nobody expected the Blight either, and that came about as a result of meddling with Angel biotechnology. You, Mr Murray, are the result of Angel biotechnology, and that makes you dangerous – to them.’

  ‘Fuck them. I’m gone now. You might as well go away too, Vaughn. I can make my own path through life.’

  Then, to Elias’s confusion, Vaughn started to laugh. ‘What happened to you back there in that Arcology wasn’t an accident. There are no accidents. Everything that happens, occurs because it’s part of a plan and, unlike most, you’re privileged to see glimpses of that plan, some little brief snatches of the future. And you still persist in thinking you can change things? Why is that?’

  Elias pursed his lips, studied the smartsheets he had brought with him. Kasper – Trencher’s destination – was the seventh solar system to be discovered by humans exploring through the Angel Stations’ network. It was the only system in which intelligent life had been found. The Kaspians themselves had been declared off-limits in order – so went the official line – to allow their culture to evolve uninterrupted. They had been studied ever since nonetheless, either by long-range satellite or by microscopic spycams that could eavesdrop on their daily lives.

  It was also publicly known that researchers landed in unpopulated areas there, to collect flora and fauna or retrieve artefacts from abandoned buildings and ruins. Yet the Kaspians had no idea they were no longer alone in the universe. However, Elias continued reading, those studies had been interrupted by the Hiatus until someone managed to figure out the arcane alien technology of the Oort Station, thereby re-establishing its singularity.

  Elias glanced out of the window. All he could now see below was endless grey sea, cut through with long pink streaks which glittered and undulated through the water.

  ‘You won’t find any details of that in those smartsheets,’ Vaughn said. Elias glanced up to find the ghost was still there.

  ‘Details of what?’ Elias asked, not sure if Vaughn was referring to the pink streaks he had noticed below.

  ‘Details of the Blight. It’s everywhere, Elias. It’s gone too far. Pollution, environmental disaster after disaster, and now the Blight spreading across the globe, and either transforming or killing everything it touches. There’s no turning back – not now. The Primalists have known this for a long time.’

  Elias stared down at the Atlantic far below, not wanting to believe what Vaughn was telling him. ‘What does that have to do with Trencher?’ he asked uncertainly.

  ‘You care about him? I suppose he was the nearest thing you had to a real father.’

  ‘He saved my life,’ said Elias, ‘more than once.’

  ‘But you let him go, let him get captured. Not a good way of demonstrating your gratitude.’

  Elias struggled not to let Vaughn see how deeply he was affected by these words. The worst thing Elias could think was that, somewhere down in that drug-induced state, Trencher himself believed Elias had betrayed him.

  ‘Since you know so much, then I’m sure you know exactly what happened.’

  ‘Trencher was a failure: he betrayed the Primalists, and he betrayed himself. Mentally unbalanced, all he could tell you was the vilest nonsense.’ Vaughn leaned forward then, as if peering into Elias’s soul. ‘You still see glimpses of things to come, Elias? Tell me what you see.’

  Nothing, bleak, dark nothing, an absolute negation.

  ‘Nothing,’ Elias said carefully. It was probably the truest thing he could say.

  ‘I see things, too,’ said Vaughn. ‘Sometimes it’s one thing, sometimes it’s something else, only slightly different. That’s the problem with being one of the chosen, one of God’s true children. All you see are glimpses of the truth, of the grand masterplan. He allows us that much. Sometimes what you see seems to confound more than inform. We are still only mortals, tiny things in the eyes of God.’

  ‘I’m not a Primalist,’ Elias replied. ‘I don’t think Kasper is the new Eden. I don’t think it’s anything other than what it is.’ Elias looked at the Ghost with tortured eyes. ‘Why me, Vaughn? Do you think any of this stops me wanting to look for Trencher? Or is this the only way a sick fuck like you can enjoy any kind of entertainment?’

  Vaughn leaned back and gazed at him coolly for a few seconds before replying. ‘Because it’s been seen, Elias. It’s been seen. God has
chosen us. Godless you may be, but nonetheless you do God’s purpose, as do we all. Remember that when the time comes.’

  And then Vaughn was gone, and Elias found himself staring at an empty seat.

  Sam Roy

  Sam tasted blood on his lips. He could see his own essence, red against stark white, where blood had touched snow and ice.

  ‘Go to hell,’ he said weakly. He lay half stretched out across the boulder that was his world, his universe. Blood ran down his back and his body from the fresh wounds. He was past the threshold of being able to feel anything now, and Vaughn knew it. He’d wait for a while, until he was sure Sam would be able to feel again.

  ‘You think I didn’t know?’ rasped Vaughn. ‘You thought I wouldn’t find out?’

  ‘Of course I knew,’ he said weakly. ‘More than you ever could understand.’

  Vaughn coughed in the chill mountain air. He’d pushed Sam and the boulder back down the steep path that led to the top of the plateau; he lay crumpled like a rag doll.

  Vaughn coughed, was silent for several minutes. Sam waited, something he’d become very good at. ‘You were behind it,’ Vaughn said, more quietly now. ‘You pushed them to it, turned them away from the path they should have been on.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ said Sam when he felt he had the strength. His bones had begun to knit back together, with extraordinary speed. It was quiet, the night as still as death, and Sam imagined he could hear his own bones creaking like oak trees swaying in a heavy wind as shattered fragments found each other, re-knitted.

  Vaughn cocked his head towards Sam, in a motion that was extraordinarily bird-like.

  ‘I had nothing to do with it,’ Sam said, forcing the words through his throat. ‘I only advised them. As I knew I would. As I always have known. The impetus, the desire was theirs. They would have done it anyway.’ He tried to clear his throat, spat blood onto pristine white snow. ‘Or couldn’t you see it coming?’ Sam said, unable to keep the taunt out of his own voice.