Angel Stations

by Gary Gibson

  Past expeditions had run into similar problems, so now pressure suits had become standard issue. She looked at the other two, Odell and Susan. Neither looked like they would object to entering the corridor. Susan’s expression was carefully noncommittal, lacking in any emotion. Perhaps we could still come out of this as friends, Kim thought, knowing even as she thought this that it would never be enough. She needed Susan a lot more than Susan needed her. That would be a problem, but she’d deal with it. She promised herself she would.

  The first of the fresh tremors came as she stepped, in her pressure suit, towards the now partly cleared corridor. The blue light was strange, because it seemed to come from all places at once. There were no shadows at all, as if the molecules of the air itself were glowing slightly. Amorphous brighter patches billowed gently, almost like smoke, and continued to do so even once they passed through the pressure barrier and entered near-vacuum.

  Susan was beside her now, her face only half-visible inside the helmet of her suit. Fitz and Odell had stayed behind to monitor their progress from around the corridor’s far bend. She knew Susan wanted to ‘Observe’ everything, to get it all down for posterity. Kim blanched at the thought of how future Observers would see herself, in this moment, through Susan’s eyes. The thought made her feel awkward, clumsy. She chose her words carefully.

  ‘We’ll go on past this rubble, keep following the curve. Take some pictures, recordings, stuff like that. See if we can figure out what we’ve got here.’ Susan turned her helmeted head, and Kim caught the hint of a small smile, like Susan had found something ironic in what Kim said. Even to herself, Kim sounded a little stilted, too much playing a role.

  ‘Fine by me,’ said Susan. Kim was still looking towards her when Susan frowned. ‘Hey, did you feel—?’

  Kim did. She had felt it even as Susan spoke, at first mistaking it for some aberration of her own body, then realizing there was something external: a vibration, no, a roar.

  I was wrong, Kim had thought, about what the tremors sounded like before. This is what two mountains sounded like when being ground together.

  For one heart-rending moment Kim was sure the whole corridor was about to collapse on top of them. It didn’t, but its walls – the super-strong walls created by an alien race to last an eternity – sagged inwards. What’s causing this? wondered Kim. She glanced at Susan who, like her, had frozen, waiting to see what would happen next.

  Kim listened. Nothing more. ‘Fitz? Odell? Can you hear me?’

  ‘Odell here,’ crackled her helmet comm. ‘That was bad. We lost some of our equipment. There’s been some kind of major shift. We’re getting messages down the wire from the guys at the research station. They picked up the shaking too, and want to know if we’ve experienced anything significant.’

  Have we experienced anything? thought Kim. Some joke.

  ‘Listen,’ said Odell. ‘I’m taking readings here. This whole section of the Citadel, it’s . . . I don’t know, it’s like it’s sagged or something. You need to get out of there.’

  ‘Maybe it’s settled now,’ said Kim. It had been tens of thousands of years since the last corridor collapse. Why now, just as they were approaching that particular curve in the corridor? More than ever, Kim ached to see what lay around there. Going back and sending in cameras wouldn’t be enough. She wanted to see.

  ‘Maybe it has, maybe it hasn’t,’ said another voice over the radio, Fitz this time. ‘Just get out of there.’

  ‘I’m still in charge of this expedition, Fitz.’

  ‘Kim, I’m sorry, I’ve already spoken to the Station Command via the outpost relay. They want you to pull back, abort.’

  Anger flared through her. He’d gone behind her back. ‘Fitz, you can’t do that. What’s through this corridor will change our lives forever. It’s Angel tech.’

  ‘Not much use to us if we’re dead,’ came back the reply. ‘Look, I’m sorry. But we’ve already broken too many rules, and the rules are there for a reason.’

  There weren’t any words to describe the emotions she felt: an awful kind of betrayal. She turned to Susan.

  ‘I guess you had something to do with this,’ said Kim. ‘Feel better for it?’

  Susan looked back at her with clear, calm eyes. ‘Kim, this is as much news to me as it is to you, believe me.’

  But I don’t want to believe, thought Kim. Her reputation would be destroyed by this, she was sure, and she’d barely even started out. ‘We’re going ahead,’ said Kim.

  Susan looked as if she was about to say something, but Kim turned away and started ahead.

  ‘Fitz, if there’s a real chance of tremors causing some kind of collapse, it’s all the more important we rescue what we can before it gets lost forever. Do you understand?’ Say yes, you little bastard, she thought.

  But the radio merely crackled; then silence. Whatever had affected the cameras was affecting that too.

  They moved forward in silence, now unable to communicate except by gesture. Kim turned the corner first, blinking at the haze beyond her helmet. The air seemed to glow more intensely. There were objects visible ahead, machines of some kind. She felt her scalp tingle. Then something moved. Something alive? She tried to peer through the haze. It was like someone had taken the very air and twisted it in a fist, like a piece of cloth bunched between fingers.

  The air twisted again, and the ground shuddered. Kim stumbled, slapping one gloved hand against a wall for support. She felt a sudden rush of vertigo, as if down was suddenly becoming up. There were objects lying nearby, glowing with that same unearthly light. She reached out for one, grabbed it. She looked to Susan, nodded towards them. Take some, she gestured. Kim looked about, grabbing whatever she could of the random junk that seemed to be scattered around them.

  Not much time, she thought. Susan was doing the same, picking up whatever she could. They carried it back around the curve of the corridor where they had approached. Ominous tremors rolled through the dust beneath their feet. Kim thought again of the miles of layered rock above them, then tried not to think about that.

  When they had got far away enough, Fitz came back online.

  ‘. . . hell have you been?’

  ‘It’s the corridor that’s blocking transmission,’ said Kim quickly. She was sweating inside her suit, but only partly because of physical effort.

  ‘Odell’s on her way,’ said Fitz. ‘She’s fetching one of the tractors.’

  ‘Thanks, Fitz.’

  ‘This is under protest, Kim. We’ve already taken too big a chance.’

  Kim didn’t reply. Odell appeared a few moments later, the tiny electric tractor whirring down the gentle incline leading to the corridor. ‘Load it all in,’ Kim heard her say over the intercom. ‘Is there more?’

  ‘Lots more,’ said Kim. Odell was close enough for her to see the uncertainty in the geologist’s face. Kim was scared, but they had to get it all out. ‘Fitz is right,’ said Odell. ‘It’s too dangerous. I’d rather be alive and poor than rich and dead.’

  ‘Just take this stuff up to Fitz. We’re going back for more.’ Susan said nothing, just watching, ‘Observing’.

  They tramped back into the corridor and out of communications range again. This time they found something that looked roughly like a lathe. It also looked big, heavy, but when they tried to move it, it turned out to be as light as a feather. They took either end of it, and by the time they shifted it out of the corridor, Odell was back; her mouth now set in a hard thin line. Two strong tremors rolled consecutively through the ground beneath them.

  Susan kept twisting her head around, trying to record everything she saw. Her memories alone could be worth a fortune by the time they got out of there. They loaded the lathe-thing onto the tractor. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here,’ insisted Odell, her voice shaky as the ground shifted again beneath their feet.

  ‘Just one more trip,’ said Kim.

  ‘She’s right,’ said Susan. ‘It’s time to go.’

 
‘Only one more trip, I swear. It’ll take just a minute or two. I’m not being crazy here, I’m being realistic. We could find something that jumps science forward a century or more. These corridors aren’t going to collapse a second time just because we turned up.’

  ‘Kim, look around you,’ Susan almost shouted over the intercom. ‘The place is falling down around our ears. We have got to get out of here.’

  Kim turned away, moving as fast as she could in her heavy suit.

  ‘Kim,’ Susan called after her. ‘Kim.’ Then her voice crackled out of range as Kim entered the glowing corridor. One more trip. Bring back just one thing more. Maybe the secret of living forever. Maybe something like the Observer bioware, yet even more amazing. One more thing.

  She found something, started to carry it back out. And saw to her surprise, as she turned, that Susan had followed her in. She caught a glimpse of Susan’s face: the mask of passivity had slipped, and Kim felt curiously relieved to see the anger there. She realized it was something she’d been trying to achieve, to break through that mask of calmness. They both carried out whatever they could in silence.

  ‘Okay, that’s it,’ said Kim. ‘Let’s get out of here. I—’

  The world caved in. Kim watched in horror as the end of the corridor nearest to the scattered artefacts first sagged, then collapsed, the ceiling rushing down to meet the ground.

  ‘Go now!’ said Kim, and they jumped on board the tractor, Odell already pulling away up the long ramp towards where Fitz was stationed. A rumbling surged up through the wheels, through their pressure suits, almost rattling the brains in their skulls.

  Fitz had the other tractor’s engine already running when they found him. ‘Forget the stuff, forget everything,’ he said. ‘Just come on.’ Behind him, a screen strobed through the empty darkness: an icon flashing emergency red.

  Kim glanced at the first load of artefacts Odell had fetched up from the corridor. She moved towards them, picked one up.

  ‘Kim, we have to get out of here now,’ said Fitz, his voice sounding high and cracked.

  ‘No, wait. We can’t leave all of this behind.’ She looked warily at the great stone slabs that surrounded her, their surfaces rough with carved symbols and alien scriptures. ‘We can load up both tractors.’

  She turned, looking at Susan, and remembered . . . remembered she wasn’t really here. And then the foreknowledge came to her, of what was about to happen. Kim glanced up, saw the high ceiling fragmenting, then falling towards them, and time seemed to slow down to a crawl, so that she witnessed it all, as the great slabs of stone crashed down upon Odell and Susan. Research equipment spat sparks and died under that crushing weight . . . and they fell into darkness. She felt a hand grab her and yank her away.

  ‘Kim! Give me a hand!’ It was Fitz. The collapsing stonework had crushed both Odell and Susan and one of the tractors beneath it. The lights had shorted out, leaving them in total darkness.

  Kim remembered she had a flashlight strapped to her thigh, and she pulled it out, switched it on. What she saw wasn’t pleasant. Odell had been horribly crushed under a great boulder. Blood pooled around what little she could see of her. Susan lay under some smaller rocks, but the faceplate of her helmet was shattered, her open eyes staring out. Kim stepped forward, too numb to feel real horror yet. Fitz began shoving a rock from on top of Susan.

  Kim moved forward to help him. It’s too late, she thought, looking at the shattered faceplate. Susan’s dead eyes stared back at her, accusing. She busily helped, nevertheless. Medical technology could do wonders – you never knew. She kept that thought in her mind as she helped Fitz pull Susan free.

  Fitz ran back to the surviving tractor, and pulled out a survival cocoon. This was a long tube of flexible plastic, which could also monitor vital signs. But will it keep her warm? Kim wondered. She didn’t know. She helped strip the pressure suit from Susan, doing whatever she could.

  We’re putting a corpse in this thing, she thought, manoeuvring Susan’s body into the bag. It was like handling a sack of loose rocks. The ground trembled again. They then loaded Susan and whatever else they could strap onto the tractor, and shot back up the long ramp to the next highest level, aiming for the exit.

  We did this, thought Kim suddenly, as the corridor walls slid by them. There were still miles to go, but a roar sounded from far behind them, and she could swear it was getting closer. She glanced to one side, at Fitz mounted in the open driver’s seat, his expression grim. He glanced back at her briefly, then away again.

  She thought again of Howard Carter, and all the other explorers who had gone before her. Of the dead kings who had left traps to catch thieves and the curious. We did this, she thought, just by being here. Maybe someone doesn’t want us here. She wasn’t so sure later, but that idea still stuck.

  All my fault, she thought, and realized there was blood running down her arm, partly drying now. She hadn’t even realized she’d been injured. A dull ache filled the arm and she felt dizzy. Looking around her, she saw the fold-down table and the contours of the tiny room she lived in, so claustrophobic and so narrow.

  The effects of the Book were still clinging to her, so that it seemed in some way she was still racing through the lost corridors of the Citadel, her dead lover beside her. Who am I? she wondered, and was not sure what the answer was.

  Elias

  Three days after he reached the Angel Station, Elias located Eduardez.

  The micro-gravity environment brought back unpleasant memories.

  He carefully watched the people who lived there, who didn’t seem to walk so much as hop from wall to ceiling to wall in their movements around the pressurized zones of the torus. Then he followed their lead, and soon got the hang of it. Just like old times.

  Eduardez was scraping a living carrying out odd jobs in and around the Station. He’d spent several years outside as a rock hermit, then moved into the local black market, supplying unregulated gene treatments and drugs to soldiers as they were rotated through. The Station seemed to provide excellent opportunities for black marketeers: every six months or so a whole new clientele turned up with nowhere to spend their money but the Angel Station.

  Like Elias, Eduardez had lived under a dozen false names, finding his own niche somewhere along the way. For Elias it was a lucky break that Eduardez happened to be in the same system he’d arrived at.

  ‘Never heard of the guy,’ said Eduardez, flipping the picture back at him. ‘What you doing out here, anyway?’ he asked. ‘Get in trouble with the law?’

  ‘Something like that, yeah.’

  Eduardez studied him for a long moment. ‘Gene treatment did nothing for me, man, not that the military authorities seem to think that makes a difference. You’re the one with superpowers – you and Pachenko. If you’ve cut some kind of a deal with anyone to hand me over, I got a lot of friends who’ll cut you down ’fore you even know you’re mincemeat, you hear me, Elias?’

  ‘I hear you. It isn’t like that – that’s the truth.’

  Eduardez glared at him. ‘Yeah, well maybe it is and maybe it isn’t. You just remember what I’m saying, okay?’

  ‘I’ll remember.’

  ‘Yeah, well. Anyway, you hear about Pachenko?’

  Elias hadn’t heard anything more about Pachenko since they’d found him curled up in a ball in the same spot Elias had left him. ‘No. No I didn’t.’

  ‘Went crazy after we all got back from the Rocks – you know that much, right? They locked him in a cell, then went looking for him one day. He wasn’t there. No window, no way out, just gone. Weird as shit.’

  ‘You sure about this?’

  ‘As sure as I’m sure they didn’t give us one single straight answer when they fucked around with our DNA. I’ve got contacts, heard stories how people used to see Pachenko, crazy and still screaming about bodies and blood and stuff, him wandering around, even when they knew he was still in the cell.’

  ‘I don’t understand. You mean he did get out
?’

  ‘No, Elias, I mean he was in two places at once. You ever hear of anything like that before?’

  Elias thought of Vaughn. ‘Maybe. I’m not sure. Listen, I’m looking for that man in the picture. He’s here somewhere.’ He showed Eduardez a smartsheet, then tapped at it until figures and names scrolled up. ‘This is a ship’s manifest.’

  ‘The Jager? Yeah, I know that one. One of the big cargo ships. He on the crew?’

  ‘Not exactly. He’s on ice, somewhere aboard. I need your help.’

  A look came over Eduardez’s face. Not sly exactly, but calculating. ‘Anything for an old friend, Elias, but times are hard, you know?’

  ‘I can pay you.’ Elias had discovered, to his surprise, that he was rich: payments from people, from deals over the years, all accumulated in anticipation of just such a day.

  ‘Hey man, I’m not being greedy. I’m just saying—’

  ‘I can pay you, okay? Now I need to know, can you – or anyone else – get me on board that ship?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Eduardez. ‘Sure, no problem.’

  Vincent

  When Vincent got to the Kasper Angel Station, he found himself doing a lot of waiting around.

  First, there had been a slow crawl out from the moon to the Oort Angel Station, out in the loose halo of cosmic debris orbiting Sol, far beyond the edge of the planetary system. That meant having to take an orbiter out from Luna to one of the high-speed cargo cruisers that fell in a constant stream from the Oort Station in a vast, elliptical solar orbit, for him there to be dropped into deepsleep and shipped out the rest of the way. He didn’t dream, which was good, since he’d now become infected with Eddie’s sense of urgency. Every day that it took to get himself out to Kasper seemed a day wasted.

  He now toured the Station, feeling what he was sure was a typical sense of psychic shock at suddenly finding oneself somewhere remarkable one had only ever read about or viewed on a screen somewhere. It didn’t take long to walk around the whole structure. It was a lot further into the Kasper system than the distance from the Oort Station back home to the Sun. And instead of orbiting the star itself, it orbited the next planet out, which was just a cold ball of iron and ice, the Kasper Angel Station being its only moon.