Chasm City

by Alastair Reynolds

  "I don't see how there can be a connection," he said.

  There was a chime from the console-one of the automated warning systems Norquinco had rigged up. Sky glanced towards the other man. "What is it? Do we have a problem?"

  "Not a technical one, but, um, still a problem. Someone's just scanned us with a phased-array."

  "Where did it originate from? The Flotilla?"

  "That direction, but not precisely. I think it must be another shuttle, Sky-making a similar approach to the one we used."

  "Probably following our thrust trail," Gomez said. "Well-how long have we got?"

  "I can't tell you, not without bouncing a radar beam off them as well. Could be a day; could be six hours."

  "Shit. Well, let's get in and see what we can find."

  They had moved around to the undamaged side of the command sphere now and were casting around for a suitable docking port. Sky did not want to try and land inside the Caleuche , but there were still plenty of surface points where the shuttle could have anchored itself for a quick crew transfer. Normally the larger ship would have responded to the shuttle's approach by activating one of the ports; guidance lights would have begun to shine and the port would have extended restraining clamps to guide the shuttle home the last few metres. If there had been any power left at all inside her, those docking mechanisms should still have woken up, even after decades of inactivity. But though the shuttle chirped its approach signal, nothing happened.

  "All right," Sky said. "We'll do what Oliveira did: use the grapples."

  He positioned the shuttle over a docking port and let the grapples whip away and bury themselves silently in the Caleuche 's hull. Then the shuttle began to pull itself in, like a spider ascending a strand of cobweb. The grapples did not appear to have anchored themselves firmly-they began to give, like hooks in flesh-but they would hold for now. Even if the shuttle broke loose from its mooring while they were inside the larger ship, the shuttle's autopilot would prevent it from drifting away.

  Still suited up, they moved to the airlock again and cycled through to vacuum. Sky's positioning had been excellent; their own docking seal was exactly aligned with the ship's, with the manual controls set to one side in a recessed panel. Sky knew from his experience on the Santiago that the airlocks were well-designed; even if no one had opened it in years, the manual opening controls should still function perfectly.

  It was simple. There was a lever you turned by hand, and that would crank aside the outer door. Once inside the exchange chamber, there would be a more comprehensive panel with pressure gauges and controls to allow the space to be flooded with air from within the ship. If there was no pressure on the other side, the door would allow him to pass even more easily.

  He reached out his gloved hand, ready to grasp the lever. But as soon as his fingers closed around the metal he knew something was wrong.

  It didn't feel like metal at all.

  It felt like meat.

  Even as he was registering that, another part of his mind had sent the signal to his hand to apply the twisting motion that would begin to crank the door aside. But the lever was incapable of being rotated. Instead, it just deformed in his hand, stretching as if made out of jelly. He looked closer, nearly pressing his faceplate against the panel. Now that he could see it properly, it was obvious why the lever would never work: it blended in to the rest of the panel. In fact, all the controls were like that; merging seamlessly with the background. He looked at the door, carefully now. There was no seam between it and its frame-only a smooth continuation.

  It was as if the Caleuche was made of grey dough.

  The cable-car had become just another vessel on the brown ooze of the Mulch river. Quirrenbach was using the car's arms to propel it along against the sluggish flow, reaching out on either side to brush against the overhanging slums. He had obviously done it many times before.

  "We're approaching the edge of the dome," Zebra said, pointing ahead and up.

  She was right. One of the merged domes of the Mosquito Net came down here, with the slums scraping against its filthy brown surface. It was hard to believe that overhanging, sloped ceiling had ever been transparent.

  "The inner or outer edge?" I said.

  "The inner," Zebra said. "Which means . . ."

  "I know what it means," I said, before she could answer. "Quirrenbach's taking us towards the chasm."

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  THE CANYON grew darker as we approached the Net, the overhanging structures more precariously stacked above us until they arched over forming a rough-hewn tunnel dripping unspeakable fluids. Hardly anyone lived here, even given the squalid population pressure of the Mulch.

  Quirrenbach took us underground; powerful lights glared from the front of the cable-car. Occasionally I saw rats moving in the gloom, but no sign of any people; human or pig. The rats had reached the city aboard Ultra ships-genetically engineered to serve aboard the ships as cleaning systems. But a few had escaped centuries ago, shrugging off their gloss of servitude, reverting to feral type. They scampered away from the bright ellipses cast by the cable-car's lights, or swam quickly through the brown water trailing vee-shaped wakes.

  "What is it you want, Tanner?" Quirrenbach said.

  "Answers."

  "Is that all? Or are you after your own private supply of Dream Fuel? Go on. You can tell me. We're old friends, after all."

  "Just drive," I said.

  Quirrenbach pushed us forward, the tunnel branching and bifurcating. We were in a very old part of the city now. Decrepit as this underground warren seemed, it might not have changed very much since the plague.

  "Is this really necessary?" I said.

  "There are other ways in," he said. "But only a few people know about this one. It's discreet, and it'll make you seem like someone with a right to get to the heart of the action."

  Presently he brought the car to a halt. I hadn't realised it, but Quirrenbach had steered it over a tongue of dry ground which rose out of the water near one stained and dilapidated wall, festered in grey mould.

  "We have to get out here," he said.

  "Don't even think about trying anything," I said. "Or you'll become an interesting new addition to the décor down here."

  But I allowed him to lead us out anyway, leaving the cable-car parked on the mudspit. There were deep grooves in the ground where the skids of other cars had created impressions. Evidently we were not the first to use this landing place.

  "Follow me," Quirrenbach said. "It isn't far."

  "Do you come here often?"

  Now there was a note of honesty in his voice. "Not if I can help it. I'm not a big player in the Dream Fuel operation, Tanner. Not a very large cog. I'd be a dead man if some people knew I was even bringing you this far. Can we make this a discreet visit?"

  "That depends. I told you I wanted some answers."

  He had reached something in the wall. "There's no way I can take you close to the centre of things, Tanner-start understanding that, will you? It just isn't possible. It's best if you go in alone. And don't even think about causing trouble. You'd need more than a few guns for that."

  "So what are you taking us to?"

  But instead of answering, he yanked at something hidden in the slime-covered grime of the wall, hauling aside a sliding panel. It was almost above our heads; a rectangular hole two metres long.

  Wary of tricks-like Quirrenbach using the hole as an escape route-I went first. Then I helped Quirrenbach up, and then Chanterelle. Zebra came last, casting a wary eye behind her. But no one had followed us, and the only eyes watching us depart belonged to the tunnel's rats.

  Inside, we crawled, crouching, along a low, square steel-lined tunnel for what seemed like hundreds of metres, but which was probably only a few dozen. I had lost all sense of direction now, but part of my mind insisted that we had all along been approaching closer and closer to the edge of the chasm. It was possible that we were beyond the fringe of the Mosquito Net now
. Above us, beyond only a few metres of bedrock, might have been poisonous atmosphere.

  But eventually, just when my back was beginning to ache with something that went beyond discomfort into real, paralysing pain, we emerged into a much larger chamber. It was dark at first, but Quirrenbach turned on a matrix of ancient lights stapled to the ceiling.

  Something ran from one end of the chamber to the other, emerging from one wall and vanishing into the other. It was a dull silver tube, three or four metres wide, like a pipeline. Jutting from it on one side, at an oblique angle, was what looked like a branch of the same tube: exactly the same diameter, but terminating in a smooth metal end-cap.

  "You recognise this, of course," Quirrenbach said, indicating the longer part of the pipe.

  "Not exactly," I said. I had expected one of the others to say something, but no one seemed any wiser than me.

  "Well, you've seen it many times." Then he walked up to the pipe. "It's part of the city's atmospheric supply system. There are hundreds of pipes like this, reaching down into the chasm, down into the cracking station. Some carry air. Some carry water. Some carry superheated steam." He knuckled the pipe, and now I noticed that there was an oval panel in the part which jutted out, more or less the same size as the panel which he had found in the wall. "This one normally carries steam."

  "What is it carrying now?"

  "A few thousand atmospheres. Nothing to worry about."

  Quirrenbach placed his hands on the panel and slid it aside. It moved smoothly, revealing a curve of dark green glass, framed by clean silver metal inset with controls. They were marked with a very old style of writing; words which were almost but not quite Norte.

  Amerikano.

  Quirrenbach tapped a few keys, and I heard a series of distant thumps. Moments later, the whole pipe thrummed as if sounding a monstrously low note. "That's the steam flow being rerouted along another network, for inspection mode."

  He pressed a button and the thick green glass whisked aside, revealing a mass of bronze machinery, nearly filling the bore of the pipe. At either end it was all pistons and accordioned sections, festooned with pipes and metal whiskers, servo-motors and black suction pads. It was difficult to tell whether it was ancient-something from the Amerikano period-or much more recent, cobbled together since the plague. Either way, it didn't look very reliable. But in the middle of the machine was a skeletal space equipped with two large padded seats and some rudimentary controls. It made a wheeler look like an exercise in spaciousness.

  "Start talking," I said.

  "It's an inspection robot," Quirrenbach said. "A machine for wriggling along the pipe, checking for leaks, weak spots, that kind of thing. Now it's . . . well, you figure it out."

  "A transportation system." I studied it myself, wondering what were the chances of riding it and surviving. "Clever, I'll give you that. Well-how long will it take to go where it goes?"

  "I've ridden it once," Quirrenbach said. "It wasn't any picnic."

  "You didn't answer my question."

  "An hour or two to get down below the mist layer. Same time to come back. I don't advise that you spend too long when you get there."

  "Fine. I'm not planning to. Will I pass for someone in the know if I take this thing down?"

  He eyed me over. " Onlypeople in the know arrive via this route. With Vadim's coat you'll pass for a supplier, or at least someone in the loop-provided you don't open your mouth too much. Just tell whoever meets you that you've come to see Gideon."

  "Sounds like it couldn't be easier."

  "Oh, you'll manage. A monkey could run the machine. Sorry. No offence intended." Quirrenbach smiled quickly and nervously. "Look, it's easy. You won't have any trouble telling when you've arrived."

  "No," I said. "Especially as you're coming along for the ride."

  "Bad move, Tanner. Bad move." Quirrenbach started looking around for moral support.

  "Tanner's right," Zebra said, shrugging. "It would make a kind of sense."

  "But I've never been close to Gideon. They won't necessarily take me any more seriously than they take Tanner. What am I supposed to say when they ask why we're there?"

  Zebra glared at him. "Improvise, you spineless little shit. Say you heard some rumours about Gideon's health, and you wanted to check them out for yourself. Say there are stories about the quality of the final product reaching the streets. It'll work. It's the same kind of story that got my sister close to Gideon, after all."

  "You've no idea whether she got close at all."

  "Well, just do your best, Quirrenbach-I'm sure Tanner will be there to give you all the moral support you need."

  "I'm not doing it."

  Zebra waved her gun towards him. "Want a rethink?"

  He looked down the barrel of the gun, then at Zebra, his lips pursed. "Damn you as well, Taryn. Consider your bridges well and truly burned, as far as our professional relationship is concerned."

  "Just get in the machine, will you?"

  I turned to Zebra and Chanterelle. "Take care. I don't think you'll be in any danger here, but keep an eye out in any case. I expect to be back within a few hours. Can you wait that long?"

  Zebra nodded. "I could, but I'm not planning to. There's enough room in that thing for three of us, if Chanterelle can hold the fort back here."

  Chanterelle shrugged. "Can't say I'm exactly looking forward to spending a few hours up here on my own, but I think I'd rather be here than down there. I guess this is one you owe to your sister?"

  Zebra nodded. "She'd have done the same for me, I think."

  "Way to go. I just hope the trip's worth it."

  I spoke to Chanterelle now. "Don't put yourself in any more danger than necessary. We can find our own way out of here if we have to, so if anything happens . . . you know where the car's parked."

  "Don't worry about me, Tanner. Just take care of yourself."

  "It's a habit of mine." I slapped Quirrenbach on the shoulder, with all the hearty bonhomie I'd have liked to have felt. "Well, are you ready? You never know. You might be inspired on the way down; something even more depressing than normal."

  He looked at me grimly. "Let's get this over with, Tanner."

  Despite what Zebra had said, there was barely room for two people in the inspection robot, and it was a painful squeeze to accommodate a third. But Zebra's articulation was not fully human, and she had an uncanny ability to fold herself into what space remained, even if the process caused her some discomfort.

  "I hope to God this isn't going to take too long," she said.

  "Start her up," I told Quirrenbach.

  "Tanner, there's still . . ."

  "Just start the fucking thing up," Zebra said. "Or the only composing you'll be doing is decomposing."

  That did the trick; Quirrenbach pressed a button and the machine rumbled into life. It clunked its way along the pipe, moving like a slow mechanical centipede. The machine's front and back moved jerkily, the suction grips hammering the wall, but the part where we were seated travelled relatively smoothly. Though there was no steam in the tunnel now, the metal sides were hot to the touch and the air was like a steady belch from the depths of hell. It was cramped and dark except for the weak illumination from the basic controls placed in front of our seats. The pipeline walls were smooth as glacial ice, polished that way by the monstrous pressures of the steam. Though the pipe had started out horizontally, it soon began to curve, gently at first, and then to something that was not far off vertical. My seat was now a deeply uncomfortable harness from which I was hanging, constantly aware of the kilometres of pipe that fell away below me and the fact that all that was stopping me dropping into those depths was the suction pressure of the cups arrayed around the inspection robot.

  "We're heading for the cracking station, aren't we?" Zebra said, raising her voice above the machine's hammering progress. "That's where they make it, isn't it?"

  "Makes a kind of sense," I said, thinking about the station. That was where all th
e pipes came from: the city's great taproots. The station nestled deep in the chasm, lost under the perpetual mist layer. It was where titanic conversion machines sucked in the hot, raw gaseous poison rising from the chasm's depths. "It's out of the way of any jurisdiction, and the people who crew it must have the kinds of advanced chemical tools they'd need to synthesise something like Dream Fuel."

  "You think everyone who works down there is in on the secret?"

  "No; probably just a small clique of workers producing the drug, unknown to anyone else in the station. Isn't that the case, Quirrenbach?"

  "I told you," he said, adjusting a control so that our rate of progress increased, the hammering becoming a harsh tattoo. "I was never allowed close to the source."

  "So how much do you know, exactly? You must know something about the synthesis process."

  "Why would it interest you if I did?"

  "Because it doesn't make much sense to me," I said. "The plague made a lot of things stop working. Implants-complicated ones, anyway. Sub-cellular nano robots; medichines-whatever you want to call them. That was bad news for the postmortals, wasn't it? Their therapies usually needed some intervention by those little machines. Now they had to make do without."

  "And?"

  "Suddenly something else shows up which almost does the job just as well. Better, in some ways. Dream Fuel's childishly easy to administer-it doesn't even need to be tailored to the person it's being used on. It heals injuries and it restores memories." I thought back to the man I'd seen thrashing on the ground, desperate for a tiny drop of the scarlet stuff even though the plague had already subsumed half his body. "It even confers protection from the plague for people who haven't discarded their machines. It's almost too good to be true, Quirrenbach."

  "Meaning what?"

  "Meaning I'm wondering how something that useful ended up being invented by criminals. It would be hard enough to imagine it being created before the plague, even when the city still had the means to create wonderful new technologies. Now? There are parts of the Mulch where they haven't even got steam power. And while there might be a few high-tech enclaves in the Canopy, they're more interested in playing games than developing miracle cures. But that seems to be exactly what they've ended up with-even if the supply is currently a little tight."