Chasm City

by Alastair Reynolds

  "That's one of Sequard's automata," said the man with the iron-grey eyes. "He used work in the Glitter Band, one of the leading figures in the Gluonist Movement. Now he makes these things. They're very dangerous, so watch out."

  We stepped gingerly around the machine, avoiding the slow arcs of its lethal limbs. "I don't think I caught your name," I said to the man.

  He looked at me oddly, as if I'd just asked him his shoe-size.

  "Fischetti."

  We made our way down the thoroughfare, bypassing another automaton much like the first one, except this robot had distinct red stains on some of its limbs. Then we passed over a series of ornamental ponds where plump gold and silver koi were mouthing near the surface. I tried to work out where we were. We'd landed near the chasm and had been walking all the time towards it, but it had appeared much closer to begin with.

  Finally the thoroughfare widened out into a huge domed chamber, large enough for the hundred or so dining tables it must have contained. The place was nearly full. I even saw a few palanquins parked around one table which had been neatly set out for diners, but I couldn't see how they were going to eat. A series of steps led down to the chamber's glass floor, and then we were escorted to a vacant table at the edge of the room, next to one of the huge windows set into the chamber's midnight blue dome. An astonishingly intricate chandelier hung from the dome's apex.

  "Like I said, best view in Chasm City," Sybillene said.

  I could see where we were now. The restaurant was at one end of a stalk which emerged from the side of the chasm, fifty or sixty metres from the top. The stalk must have been a kilometre long, as thin and brittle-looking as a sliver of blown glass. It was supported at the chasm end by a bracket of filigreed crystal; the effect of which was to make the rest of it look even more perilous.

  Sybilline passed me a menu. "Choose what you like, Tanner-or let me choose for you, if you aren't familiar with our cuisine. I won't let you leave here without a good meal."

  I looked at the prices, wondering if my eye was adding a zero or two to each figure. "I can't pay for this."

  "No one's asking you to. This is one we all owe you."

  I made some choices, consulted with Sybilline and then sat back and waited for the food. I felt out of place, of course-but then again, I was hungry, and by staying with these people I'd learn a lot more about Canopy life. Luckily I wasn't required to make smalltalk. Sybilline and Fischetti were talking about other people, occasionally spotting someone across the room who they pointed out discreetly. Waverly butted in now and again with an observation, but at no point was my opinion solicited except out of occasional politeness.

  I looked around the room, sizing up the clientèle. Even the people who had reshaped their bodies and faces looked beautiful, like charismatic actors wearing animal costumes. Sometimes it was just the colour of their skin that they had changed, but in others their whole physiology had been shifted towards some lean animal ideal. I saw a man with elaborate striped spines radiating from his forehead, sitting next to a woman whose enlarged eyes were periodically veiled behind irridescent lids patterned like moth's wings. There was an otherwise normal-looking man whose mouth opened to reveal a forked black tongue which he stuck out at every opportunity, as if tasting the air. There was a slender, nearly-naked woman covered in black and white stripes. She caught my eye for an instant and I suspect she would have held her gaze had I not looked away.

  Instead I looked down into the steaming depths of the chasm beneath us, my sense of vertigo slowly abating. Though it was night-time, there was a ghostly reflected glow of the city all around us. We were a kilometre out from one wall, but the chasm was easily fifteen or twenty kilometres wide, the other side appearing just as distant as it had from the landing deck. The walls were mostly sheer, except for occasional narrow natural ledges where rock had fallen away from the sides. Sometimes there were buildings set into the ledges, connected to the higher levels by elevator tubes or enclosed walkways. There was no sign of the bottom of the chasm; the walls rose from a placid white cloud layer which hid the lower depths completely. Pipes stretched down into the mist, reaching towards the atmospheric processing machinery which I knew to be down there. The hidden machines supplied Chasm City with power, air and water, and were robust enough to have continued functioning even after the plague had hit.

  I could see luminous things flying down in the depths, tiny bright triangles of colour. "Gliders," Sybilline said, watching my gaze. "It's an old sport. I used to do it, but the thermals are insane near the walls. And the amount of breathing gear you have to wear . . ." She shook her head. "The worst thing is the mist, though. You get a speed buzz from flying just above the mist level, but as soon as you drop into it, you lose all sense of direction. If you're lucky, you head upwards and you make clear air before you run into the wall. If you're not, you think down is up and you head into higher and higher pressure until you cook yourself alive. Or you get to add some interesting new coloration to the side of the chasm."

  "Radar doesn't work in the mist?"

  "It does-but that wouldn't make it any fun, would it?"

  The food came. I ate cautiously, not wanting to make an exhibition of myself. It was good, too. Sybilline said the best food was still grown in orbit and shipped down by behemoth. That explained the extra zeroes after almost every item.

  "Look," Waverly said, when we were on the final course. "That's Voronoff, isn't it?"

  He was pointing discreetly across the room to where a man had just stood up from one of the tables.

  "Yes," Fischetti said, with a smile of self-congratulation. "I knew he'd be here somewhere."

  I looked at the man they were talking about. He was probably one of the least ostentatious people in the room, a small, immaculate-looking man with neatly curled black hair and the pleasingly neutral face of a mime artist.

  "Who is he?" I said. "I've heard of him, but I'm not sure where."

  "Voronoff's a celebrity," Sybilline said. She was touching my arm again, divulging another confidence. "He's a hero to some of us. He's one of the oldest post-mortals. He's done everything; mastered every game."

  "He's some kind of game player?"

  "More than that," Waverly said. "He's into every extreme situation you can imagine. He makes the rules; the rest of us just follow."

  "I hear he's got something planned for tonight," said Fischetti.

  Sybilline clapped her hands together. "A mist jump?"

  "I think our luck could be in. Why else would he come here to eat? He must be bored shitless of the view."

  Voronoff was walking away from his table, accompanied by a man and a women who had been sitting with him. Everyone in the room was watching them now, sensing that something was about to happen. Even the palanquins had turned.

  I watched the three of them leave the room, but the air of anticipation remained. After a few minutes I understood why: Voronoff and the others had appeared on a ring-shaped balcony around the outside of the restaurant, encircling its dome. They were wearing protective clothes and masks, their faces almost hidden.

  "Are they going to fly gliders?" I said.

  "No," Sybilline answered. "That's entirely passé as far as Voronoff's concerned. A mist jump's something much, much more dangerous."

  Now they were fitting glowing harnesses around their waists. I strained to get a better view. Each harness was attached to a coiled line of rope, the other end of which was anchored to the side of the dome. By now half the diners had crowded over to this side of the restaurant for a better view.

  "You see that coil?" Sybilline said. "It's up to each jumper to calculate the length and elasticity of their line. Then they have to time the moment that they jump, based on their knowledge of the thermals in the chasm. See how they're paying close attention to what the gliders are doing, down below?"

  That was when the woman jumped over the edge. She must have decided that the moment was right for her leap.

  Through the floor I
watched her drop, dwindling to a tiny human speck as she fell towards the mist. The coil was almost invisibly thin as she dragged it behind her.

  "What's the idea?" I said.

  "It's supposed to be pretty exciting," Fischetti said. "But the real trick is to fall enough to enter the mist; to disappear completely from view. But you don't want to fall too much. And even if you calculate the right length of line, you can still get creamed by thermals."

  "She's misjudged," Sybilline said. "Oh, silly girl. She's getting sucked closer and closer to that outcrop."

  I watched the glowing dot of the falling woman ram against the side of the chasm. There was a moment of stunned silence in the restaurant, as if the unspeakable had happened. I was expecting the silence to be broken by a cries of horror and pity. Instead there was a polite round of applause and some muted sounds of commiseration.

  "I could have told her that was going to happen," Sybilline said.

  "Who was she?" Fischetti said.

  "I don't know, Olivia something or other." Sybilline picked up the menu again and began scanning the desserts.

  "Careful, you'll miss the next one. I think it's going to be Voronoff . . . yes!" Fischetti hammered the table as his hero stepped off the balcony and dropped gracefully towards the mist. "See how cool he was? That's class, that is."

  Voronoff fell like an expert swimmer, his line as straight and true as if he were plunging through vacuum. It was all a matter of timing, I could see: he'd waited for the exact moment when the thermals would behave the way he wanted, working with him rather than against him. As he fell deeper it was almost as if they were nudging him helpfully away from the chasm walls. A screen in the middle of the room was relaying a side-on image of Voronoff, captured by what must have been a flying camera chasing him down the chasm. Other diners were following his trajectory with opera glasses, telescopic monocles and elegant lorgnette binoculars.

  "Is there a point to this?" I said.

  "Risk," Sybilline said. "And the thrill of doing something new and dangerous. If there's one thing the plague's given us, it's that: the opportunity to test ourselves; to stare death in the face. Biological immortality won't help you much if you've just hit a rockface at two hundred kilometres per hour."

  "Why do they do it, though? Doesn't potential immortality make your lives all the more precious?"

  "Yes, but that doesn't mean we still don't need to be reminded of death now and then. What's the point of beating an old enemy if you deny yourself the thrill of ever remembering what it was like in the first place? Victory loses its meaning without the memory of what you've vanquished."

  "But you could die."

  She looked up from the menu. "All the more reason not to cock up your timing, then."

  Voronoff was nearing the end of his fall. I could barely see him now.

  "He's picking up tension now," Fischetti said. "Beginning to slow down. See how beautifully he's timed it?"

  The line was stretched almost to its limit, now starting to arrest Voronoff's fall. But his timing was as good as his admirers had evidently been expecting. He disappeared for three or four seconds, vanishing into the whiteness before the coil began to contract, hauling him back upwards towards us.

  "Textbook," Sybillene said.

  There was more applause, but in contrast to before, this time it was wildly enthusiastic. People began to hammer their cutlery in appreciation of Voronoff's fall. "You know what?" Waverly said. "Now that he's mastered mist-jumping, he'll get bored and try something else even more insanely dangerous. You mark my words."

  "There goes the other one," Sybillene said, as the last jumper stepped from the balcony. "Timing looks good-better than the woman's, anyway. You'd have thought he'd have the decency to let Voronoff come back up first, wouldn't you?"

  "How will he get back up?" I said.

  "He'll haul himself up. There's some kind of motorised winch in his harness."

  I watched the last jumper plummet into the depths. To my untrained eye the jump looked at least as good as Voronoff's-the thermals didn't seem to be steering the man towards the sides, and his posture as he dropped looked amazingly balletic. The crowd had quietened down now and were watching the fall intently.

  "Well, he's no amateur," Fischetti said.

  "He just copied Voronoff's timing," Sybillene said. "I was watching the way the vortex affected the gliders."

  "You can't blame him for that. You don't get marks for originality, you know."

  He dropped further still, his harness a glowing green dot receding towards the mist. "Wait," Waverly said, pointing to the uncoiling line on the balcony. "He should have run out of line by now, shouldn't he?"

  "Voronoff had by this point," Sybillene agreed.

  "Silly fool's given himself too much," Fischetti said. He took a sip from his wine glass and studied the depths with renewed interest. "It's reached the limit now, but it's much too late."

  He was right. By the time the glowing green dot reached the level of the mist, it was falling almost as quickly as ever. The screen showed a last side-on view of him vanishing into the whiteness, and then there was only the taut filament of his line. Seconds passed-first the three or four that Voronoff had taken before emerging, and then ten . . . and then twenty. By thirty seconds people were beginning to get a little uncomfortable. Obviously they had seen this sort of thing happen before and had some idea of what to expect.

  Nearly a minute passed before the man emerged.

  I'd already been told what happened to glider pilots who went too deep, but I hadn't imagined it could be that bad. But the man had gone very far into the mist. The pressure and temperature had been too much for the flimsy protection of his suit. He had died: boiled alive within a few seconds. The camera lingered on his corpse, lovingly mapping the horror of what had happened to him. I felt revolted and looked away from the image. I'd seen some bad things during my years as a soldier, but never while sitting at a table digesting a large and luxurious meal.

  Sybilline shrugged. "Well, he should have used a shorter line."

  Afterwards we walked back across the stalk to the landing deck where Sybilline's cable-car was still waiting.

  "Well, Tanner, where can we take you?" she said.

  I wasn't exactly enjoying their company, I had to admit. It had begun badly and though I was grateful for the sight-seeing trip to the stalk, the cold way they had responded to the deaths of the mist-jumpers had left me wondering whether I wouldn't have been better off with the pigs they had mentioned.

  But I couldn't throw away a chance like this. "I take it you're heading back to the Canopy at some point?"

  She looked pleased. "If you want to come with us, it's absolutely no problem. In fact, I insist on it."

  "Well, don't feel any obligation. You've been generous enough as it is. But if it won't inconvenience you . . ."

  "Not at all. Get in the car."

  The vehicle opened before me, Fischetti getting in the driver's compartment and the rest of us in the back. We lofted; the cable-car's motion began to feel familiar, if not actually comfortable. The ground dropped away quickly; we reached the interstices of the Canopy and settled into a semi-regular rhythm as the car picked its route along one of the main cable ways.

  That was when I started to think I really should have taken my chances with the pigs.

  "Well, Tanner-did you enjoy your meal?" Sybilline asked.

  "Like you said, it's a hell of a view."

  "Good. You needed the energy. Or at least you will need it." Deftly, she reached into a compartment set into the car's plush and pulled out a nasty little gun. "Well, to state the obvious, this is a weapon and I'm pointing it at you."

  "Ten out of ten for observation." I looked at the gun. It appeared to be made out of jade and was embossed with red demons. It had a small, dark maw and she was holding it very steadily.

  "The point being," Sybilline continued, "that you shouldn't think of doing anything untoward."

  "If yo
u wanted to kill me, you could have done it dozens of times already."

  "Yes. But there's just one flaw in your thinking. We do want to kill you. Just not in any old manner."

  I should have felt immediate fear as soon as she pulled out the gun, but there'd been a delay of a few seconds while my mind assimilated the situation and decided it was probably just as bad as it appeared.

  "What are you going to do to me?"

  Sybilline nodded at Waverly. "Can you do it here?"

  "I've got the tools, but I'd far rather do it back at the airship." Waverly nodded at her. "You can keep that gun pointed until then, can't you?"

  I asked what they were going to do to me again, but all of a sudden no one seemed very interested in what I had to say. I'd walked into big trouble, that much was obvious. Waverly's story of shooting me to protect me from the pigs hadn't ever sounded more than halfway convincing, but who had I been to argue? I'd kept telling myself that if they had wanted me dead . . .

  Nice line. But like Sybilline had said, there was a certain flaw in my thinking . . .

  It didn't take very long to reach the trapped airship. As we swung up towards it I had an excellent view of the imprisoned craft, suspended precariously high above the city. There were no Canopy lights anywhere near it, no signs of habitation in the branches that supported it. I remembered what they had said about it being nice and discreet.

  We landed. By then Waverly had found a gun as well, and when I stepped onto the connecting ramp which led to the gondola, Fischetti was covering me with a third. About the only thing I could have done was jump over the side.

  But I wasn't that desperate. Not yet.

  Inside the gondola, I was escorted back to the chair where I had woken up only a couple of hours earlier. This time Waverly strapped me into the seat.