by Greg Egan
«I don’t care any more,» Theo replied. «I just want to stop wasting my time with people who refuse to take any of this seriously.»
«So you’d rather retire and go back to Baharabad?»
«Why not? They offered us that pension to get us out of the way. The message is clear: thanks for everything, but we don’t want to listen to you any more.»
Seth said, «Which is the perfect reason not to take it.»
«No, it’s the perfect reason why we should. I’ve already spent enough time telling these idiots things they didn’t want to hear.»
Seth hunted for a tactful way to phrase his response. «No one likes hearing that someone else has all the answers.»
«No, and they’d be free to ignore everything I said if it didn’t make sense. But it does make sense. Has any geologist ever seen a structure like this? Is anything of the kind even mentioned in passing in some apocryphal source or ancient legend?»
«No,» Seth conceded.
«The drop from the cliffs to the slope,» Theo said, «is already more than twenty times the depth of any other chasm ever surveyed. If this was simply an extreme example of some ordinary geological phenomenon, maybe it could be twice as deep, or five times—but twenty? Before we’ve even found the bottom of it?»
«I’m not arguing with you,» Seth replied. «It’s different in kind, it’s unprecedented. But that’s not enough to prove that you’re right about everything.»
«If the world is finite,» Theo said, «it can turn to the north while the orbit of the sun stays fixed. That’s the simplest possible explanation of the central fact of everyone’s existence. If I’d been bold enough to publish a book spelling out that argument, and predicting that we’d eventually reach the southern edge, everyone would now be telling me that my theory had been vindicated.»
«Maybe.» Seth understood his frustration, but it still didn’t justify abandoning their career. «If you’re worried about Irina,» he ventured, «then I can accept that. I’ll stop arguing, and we can go home.»
Theo was silent for a while, then he said, «She was fine last time we saw her. Elena’s still Elena, but she seems to have grown up a bit. I don’t think Irina’s in danger.»
Seth had been sincere in his offer, but this matched his own assessment of their sisters’ complicated lives. «Then if we have no urgent reason to go back, I’m really not ready to retire.»
Theo fell silent again. Seth wasn’t sure if he was chafing with resentment, but when he finally spoke his tone was conciliatory. «I need to make my own view clear to Jonas, but if you want to take up one of his offers yourself, I won’t try to stop you. Not if all I have to do is tag along.»
«All right.» Seth was encouraged—and if the notion of Theo as some kind of inert passenger was unlikely to last long out in the field, he was entitled to take whatever stance he wished with Jonas in order to salvage his pride. «So what do you think of the bridge?»
«It’s up to you,» Theo insisted.
«You don’t think it’s too dangerous?» Seth prodded him.
«High altitudes, extreme geometry, uninhabitable ground below? What could possibly go wrong?»
«And the expedition?»
«The geometry of the slope is extreme, in its own way,» Theo mused. «But compared to a project where a puff of wind could knock you into absolute summer, it looks positively benign.»
Seth didn’t push his luck; if he started listing the merits of gathering more evidence to test Theo’s hypothesis, that would only be treated as a provocation.
«Then the expedition it is,» he declared. «We can each give Jonas our separate answers: you can claim your pension, and I’ll go on hauling my pack for a living.»
Theo hesitated; it had surely occurred to him that he’d be facing all the same hardships for substantially less money.
But his pride held out against temptation. «Exactly,» he said. «I wouldn’t have it any other way.»
seth walked down to the site where the winches were being built, to check on their progress. The giant reels were similar to those on the balloon anchors, but the supporting frames had had to be redesigned completely to allow the rope to be fed out beneath the structure instead of rising up from it.
«We did agree that falling was better than burning,» Theo recalled.
«Thanks for the reminder.» The winches had benefited from many of the improvements to their skyward brethren, but Seth had no doubt that sticking them on platforms overhanging the cliffs would offer up entirely new modes of failure. «Can you imagine lugging these things into the steamlands?»
«Another reason to be glad that you didn’t end up a mover.»
In the food hall, Seth spotted Sarah and Judith, so he collected his breakfast and sat down beside them.
Sarah said, “Did you hear about Catherine?”
“I heard that she’d recovered,” Seth replied. Apparently she hadn’t suffered any permanent damage in the short time her Walker had been eating the puffballs.
“She’s asking to be liberated,” Judith said. “Cared for by friends, or given to a side-blind Walker, but she won’t accept being bound to Felice any more.”
“Fair enough,” Theo decided. “Let that poisoner be side-blind, and some innocent person healed.”
Sarah said, “At that age, ‘healed’ might be putting it too strongly. I doubt they’d be able to share views or use inspeech.”
“Maybe not. But having a companion who’ll warn you if you’re about to sidle into a ditch would still be better than nothing.”
Seth was growing resigned to the likelihood that, one way or another, the poison would make its way to Baharabad. And though he doubted that Elena would ever seek to use it, it could still affect his family indirectly. If the practice of punishing poisoners by separating Sider and Walker became the norm, other Siders with lesser grievances might start seeking the same outcome.
“It would be a miserable existence if she has to stay unpaired,” Judith said. “Pushed around on a cart, relying on donated blood. Her Walker friends might be willing to cut themselves while their outrage is fresh, but are they really going to do that for the rest of her life?”
“What we need is a more symmetrical response,” Theo suggested. “A drug that strips Walkers of their will, transforming them into compliant slaves.”
Seth said, “If you fed that to me, would you even notice the difference?”
Raina and Amina approached the breakfast table, but instead of joining them the pair merely offered curt greetings, then Raina stood fidgeting impatiently. Sarah said, “You’re giving me indigestion.”
Seth was confused. “Do you need us for something?” he asked Raina. She just glared at him, exasperated, but Amina said, “Jonas is announcing the full team for the expedition this morning.”
“Today?” Seth had forgotten; once he’d settled things with Theo, details like that had seemed unimportant.
“Yes, today,” Raina said irritably. “Once the six of us turn up.”
“You mean five,” Theo corrected her.
“If you really want your absence taken seriously,” Judith suggested, “you’re going to need to start resisting the urge to remind us of it every five seconds.”
Sarah paused in mid-bite. “If Theo swapped places with Catherine, would that satisfy everyone? Would justice be served?”
Theo inspoke, «Thump her.»
«You thump her, if you can’t take a joke.»
«Some compliant slave you are.»
Sarah finished her meal, and Seth hurried to do the same. As they left the dining hall and crossed the campsite, Seth pondered Raina’s anxiety. She’d been muttering for days about the politics of the selection process. Perhaps she was worried that she wouldn’t be appointed to lead the expedition, if someone more senior was included?
At the entrance to Jonas’s office, Raina paused, as if having second thoughts about disturbing him so early in the day. Sarah stepped past her and announced the group to Jonas’s ass
istant. A minute later, they were ushered inside.
Jonas tipped his head west to face them. “I’m glad you’re all here,” he said. “The composition of the team was settled last night, and it seemed best to let you know exactly what was happening before you were introduced to your new colleagues.
“A pair of surveyors from Laverington, Andrei and Nicholas, will be joining you. They’re among the most experienced that city has to offer, and I’m certain that the expedition will benefit from their skills.”
This news was not especially surprising, and Seth saw no reason not to welcome it. Laverington was the second-largest city on the Orico, and with Baharabad’s water shortage unresolved, anything that might strengthen their ties with one of the beneficiaries of the shifting northern storms seemed prudent.
“You will also be joined by an observer from Thanton, named Ada. I’m told she studied geology, though her primary qualification is her membership of one of the town’s merchant families.” Jonas hesitated, as if expecting to be interrupted, but Seth had no immediate response fit to utter, and apparently no one else did either. “This is not ideal, I know, but we rely on Thanton’s cooperation to maintain our supplies, and they have a legitimate interest in understanding the terrain to their south. Notwithstanding our distaste for the way they treat their Siders, they’re entitled to know the fate of their river and their prospects for migration. So I expect you to treat this woman with the same courtesy as you’d show to any other guest.”
PART FOUR
13
As night fell, seth sat on the hillside and watched the movers set off for the steamlands, dragging the last of the winches. On the uneven terrain, the large wheeled platform supporting the device needed to maintain a fixed orientation, but the planes of the individual wheels could be turned a little, allowing the team to lug the whole assembly back and forth: east-south-east, then west-south-west. After the first winch had been delivered, Seth had asked his friends if it had been frustrating to be forced to travel so far like this—stopping and starting, weaving from side to side—but they’d insisted that the rhythm of the motion was enjoyable in its own way, and the incremental progress that emerged was not a source of resentment, it was simply to be expected. “South is south,” Eunice had told him. “Not even a child imagines that they could roll anything directly south.”
«They should have just hung the winches from balloons,» Theo asserted.
«Doubling their height above the slope? Letting the wind blow them around, so we can be dashed against the cliffs?»
«How hard can it be to solve those problems? If they’re going to build a bridge across the western node . . .»
«Yeah, yeah. Save it for someone who cares.» Seth rubbed his eyes. Theo was diplomatic enough not to spend his time needling him about the pointlessness of the chasm expedition, but his endless complaints about the futility and impracticality of the bridge were irritating in their own way. «If you want to see the bridge canceled, you’d better hope we come back with evidence that the southern migration will be unimpeded.»
Theo laughed derisively. «You’re really saying “southern migration” now? Do we need to talk about the “eastern sunrise” as well, to avoid any risk of ambiguity?»
«I don’t know. Do you have plans to reverse the sun’s orbit? Trap it . . . and then bounce it around somehow?»
The movers passed out of range of Theo’s pings. As Seth sat in the dark, the wind from the south brought the smell of rain, and he pictured himself back in the steamlands, tramping through the mud toward the edge of the world as if he’d never been away.
“i believe the chasm was produced by a runaway fault ejection,” Ada declared. “A crack forms in the rock along a plane that slopes down to the south, steep enough that the rock above the shallowest part of the fault tears free and slides north along it. That in turn takes the pressure off the deeper rock, and allows it to do the same.” She’d learned to speak the Baharabadi dialect pretty fluently, and though her accent was strange to Seth’s ears, it was perfectly comprehensible.
Seth did not feel qualified to offer an opinion on her theory. Having finished inspecting the last of the winches, they were standing on the eastern side of the platform, peering over the safety rail. The platform protruded far enough to ensure that the rope wouldn’t get snagged if the top of it slackened and hung straight down, but the sight of the nearby rock face disappearing into the gloom did not exactly rival the view from the balloon, and any evidence of the structure’s detailed geology was in short supply.
“Where’s the ejecta?” Nicholas asked Ada. “If the rock excavated itself by sliding up a fault and showering into the air, shouldn’t there be a mountain of rubble somewhere to the north, as big as this hole?”
“There would have been, once,” she replied. “But it’s been blown away in the wind. Whenever this happened, it must have been long ago.”
Seth looked to the east, where the middle winch of the three could be seen, thrust much farther south over the precipice than the others, in order to sharpen the control the ropes’ geometry would exert on their joint cargo. An assembly of girders beneath the platform braced it against the cliff face, but the extent of the overhang was still alarming to behold. Not entirely rationally, he felt more worried for the rope team who’d have to stand on that perilously jutting structure, laboring for half the night, than he did for himself and his fellow travelers—as if the beams could snap and send the first group plummeting to their death, without the second suffering an equally grisly fate. But if the middle rope did break free like that, the two intact side ropes wouldn’t be enough to stop the basket being smashed into the cliff face.
“What do you think, Theo?” Ada asked. “Could a fault have done this?”
Theo inspoke, «Tell the half-head I’m asleep.»
«Why should I lie for you?» Seth replied.
«Were you there when they took our friends prisoner?»
«Yes, and if you want to snub her, I’m not stopping you. But if you want to do it, do it openly. Don’t ask me to pretend that you’ve dozed off.»
Theo fell silent. Ada mused, to no one in particular, “We might find evidence in the rocks on the slope. Matches to stones found far to the north.”
Andrei squatted down and picked up a pebble that had blown onto the platform, then threw it over the rail. “We might,” he said. “You never know.”
It was almost sunset, but as soon as they stepped out of the shade of the winch and started back to the campsite, Seth felt the heat sapping his strength again.
«Do you think the rope teams will actually come back to haul us up?» he asked Theo. «They might decide they’ve had enough of this weather.»
«If they do, you’ll just have to scale the cliffs.»
«That’s not going to happen.»
At the campsite, the rope teams had woken and were resting or eating in the shadows of their tents. Seth recalled the dead-man-walking glances many of the same people had cast his way before the balloon flight, and took some comfort from the fact that his presence didn’t seem to unsettle them at all now.
He parted company with the others and went looking for Sarah and Judith. Sarah was awake but still prone behind her tent, lying still to allow Judith to sleep a little longer.
“Please tell me it’s going to be cooler down there,” Sarah whispered, fanning herself with a copy of Ada’s self-published pamphlet On the Meaning of Strata. As she spoke, the rain began falling. “And drier.”
“It’s sure to be,” Seth promised. “Everything but flatter.”
“I can’t believe I talked Amir into staying behind,” she said. “I miss him so much.”
Seth struggled to think of something comforting to say; however the expedition fared, the reunion was hardly imminent. “Just think of the stories you’ll have to tell him when this is over.”
“Actually, I’m hoping it will be mostly just walking and measuring,” Sarah replied. “Rather than memorable, in the s
ense of our last trip.”
“I’m not anticipating any abductions,” Seth assured her.
Theo said, “Walking and measuring on a forty-five-degree slope might be memorable enough in its own way.”
Twilight engulfed the camp, and the rain closed in. There didn’t seem to be any point seeking shelter; they were going to end up soaked whatever they did. When Judith woke, she proposed that they head for the departure point, and no one could think of any reason to delay. Seth could already hear the rope teams assembling, shouting to each other over the pelting rain.
A crude path had been laid from the camp, running due east. Seth followed Sarah and Judith blindly, guided by nothing but the paving stones beneath his feet. Without the weight of a pack on his shoulders he felt ill-prepared for any kind of journey, but all the tools and provisions for the expedition had already been assembled in the basket.
A haloed patch of brightness appeared ahead, trembling and splintered by the strange refractions of the rain, but only vanishing entirely when Sarah crossed Seth’s line of sight. Eventually this beacon resolved into a lantern, hung from the ceiling of the gazebo where the other members of the team had already gathered.
Standing apart from the rest, Ada looked utterly lost and alone, and at the sight of her dripping form Seth felt a disconcerting pang of almost brotherly concern. It was not her fault how she’d been raised: her parents would have begun feeding her the poison when she was an infant. She must have known that there were such things in the world as sentient Siders long before the balloon project had brought a horde of foreigners passing her way—but she might well have lived her whole life until then without speaking to one.
Raina spotted them approaching and nodded a greeting as Seth followed Sarah into the sheltered space. Amina said, “We just need to wait for the rope teams to do their final checks.”
“I’m in no hurry!” Seth assured her. The last two test runs had been flawless, but the more eyes that were cast over the equipment before the basket was lowered with people inside it, the better.