Century Rain

by Alastair Reynolds

“Make those stars super-massive and super-dense. Make them whip around each other like dervishes, spiralling in towards an eventual collision. Now you’ve got yourself a pretty fierce source of gravity waves. They’re sending out a ripple, like a steady note from a musical instrument.”

  “I thought you didn’t like music.”

  “I don’t,” she said, “but I can recognise a useful analogy when it comes along.”

  “OK—so two stars circling around each other will give you a gravity wave.”

  “There are other mechanisms for producing such a wave, but the point is that there are a lot of binary stars out there: a lot of potential gravity-wave sources dotted around the sky. And they all have a unique note, a unique signature.”

  “So if I pick up a tone—”

  “You can work out exactly where it originated.”

  “Like knowing the flash pattern of a lighthouse?”

  “Exactly that,” Auger said. “But now comes the hard part. Somehow you have to measure those waves. Gravity is already the weakest force in the universe, even before you start worrying about measuring microscopic changes in its strength. It’s like trying to hear someone whispering on the other side of the ocean.”

  “So how can you do it?”

  She was about to tell him when movement from above caught her eye: a glint of polished metal against the low grey sky. There was just enough time to register the small figure crouched on one of the overhead pipes, and the nasty little weapon it clutched in one clawlike hand.

  “Floyd…” she started to say.

  The gun fired, making a rapid, high-pitched laughing sound. Auger felt a sudden warm pain in her right shoulder, and then she was on the ground and the pain became worse. She was still looking up. The child stood balanced on the pipe, seemingly unfazed by vertigo. It held the gun aloft, releasing a sleek sickle-shaped clip from the grip and inserting another.

  Floyd took out the automatic she’d given him. He thumbed off the safety catch and took a two-handed stance, squinting against the sky.

  “Shoot the fucker,” Auger said, grimacing against the pain.

  Floyd fired. The gun jerked in his hand, the bullet winging off the underside of the pipe. The child began to lower its own weapon, taking careful aim.

  Floyd emptied another two slugs into the air. This time they didn’t hit the pipe.

  The war baby toppled from its perch, shrieking as it dropped to the ground. Its thin little arms and legs wheeled as it fell. It hit the ground, bouncing once, and then lay quite still.

  It was a boy.

  Floyd spun around, scanning the buildings for evidence of more children. Auger pushed herself up on her good elbow, and then touched the wound in her shoulder. She pulled her fingers away. There was blood on the tips, but not as much as she had expected. It still felt as if someone was twisting a hot iron poker around in her shoulder. She reached around the back and felt more wetness under her shoulder blade.

  “I think that was the only one,” Floyd said, crouching over her.

  “Is it dead?”

  “Dying.”

  “I need to talk to it,” she said.

  “Hold it right there,” Floyd said softly. “You’ve just been shot, kid. There are other priorities just now.”

  “There’s an exit wound,” she said. “The bullet went through me.”

  “You don’t know how many went in, or whether they fragmented. You need help, and you need it fast.”

  She pushed herself up and then struggled to her feet, using her good arm for leverage. The war baby lay where it had fallen, quietly gurgling in a pool of its own blood, its head twisted towards them. The eyes were still open, looking their way.

  “It’s the same boy,” she said. “The one that stabbed the waiter in Gare du Nord.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I got a good look at its face,” she said. “I know it’s the same one. It must have followed us here.”

  She hobbled over to the boy and kicked its gun away. The head moved, swivelling around to keep her in view. The mouth lolled open in a stupefied grin and blood drooled from the smoke-grey lips. The black tongue moved, as if trying to form words.

  Auger pressed her foot down on the war baby’s neck. She was glad she hadn’t managed to snap the heels off her shoes now.

  “Talk to me,” she said. “Talk to me and tell me what the fuck you are doing building a resonant gravitational wave antenna in nineteen fifty-nine, and what it has to do with Silver Rain.”

  The black tongue oozed and wriggled like a captive maggot. The child made a liquid gurgling noise.

  “Maybe if you took your shoe off its neck,” Floyd suggested.

  Auger reached down and picked up the war baby’s weapon. She reminded herself that it had a full clip and that the baby had been ready to use it just before it had fallen from the pipe.

  “I want answers, you shrivelled-up piece of shit. I want to know why Susan and the others had to die. I want to know what you fuckers intend to do with Silver Rain.”

  “It’s too late,” the child said, forcing the words out between gurgles of blood and bile. “Much too late.”

  “Yeah? Then why are you in such a hurry to stop anyone getting too close to this shit?”

  “It’s the right thing to do, Verity. You know it in your heart.” The child coughed, spitting blood in her face. “These people shouldn’t exist. They’re just three billion dots in a photograph. Dots, Verity. That’s all they are. Pull away and they blur into one amorphous mass.”

  She thought of her dream, of the Silver Rain falling on to the Champs-Elysées. Of the beautiful people picking themselves up and thinking that life was about to go on, and being so terribly wrong. She remembered trying to warn them. She remembered the little drummer boy stepping through the bones.

  Dizziness washed over her. She suddenly felt very cold and very weak.

  Auger squeezed the trigger and did something abominable to the war baby.

  Then she slumped to her knees and was sick.

  Floyd gently drew her to her feet and steered her away from the bloody mess she had made.

  “It wasn’t a child,” she said. “It was a thing, a weapon.”

  “You don’t have to convince me. Now let’s get out of here before those shots attract the wrong kind of attention. We need to get you to a hospital.”

  “No,” she said. “You need to get me to Paris. That’s all that matters.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Floyd stood in a public telephone kiosk just outside Gare du Nord. It was Tuesday morning and his head didn’t feel any better. With both of them injured, but not wanting to have to deal with helpful or inquisitive strangers, the train journey back from Berlin had been a long and wearying one. There had been tense moments while their documents were inspected, neither of them daring to say a word until the officials had moved on. Floyd doubted that his own injuries were any cause for concern, but he was extremely worried about Auger. He’d left her in the waiting room, bandaged and drowsy, but still adamant that she didn’t want to be taken to hospital.

  “Maillol,” a man said on the other end of the line.

  “Inspector? It’s Wendell Floyd. Can we talk?”

  “Of course we can,” Maillol said. “As a matter of fact, you’re just the man I wanted to speak to. Where have you been, Floyd? No one seemed to know where you’d gone.”

  “Germany, monsieur. I’m back in Paris now. But I don’t have much money and I’m calling from a public telephone.”

  “Why not use the telephone in your office?”

  “I figured it might not be safe.”

  “Sensible boy,” Maillol said approvingly. “Well, shall I start? I’ll be quick about it. You’re aware of my anti-bootlegging operation in Montrouge, aren’t you? As it happens, we’ve turned up something interesting: a floater.”

  “A floater, monsieur?”

  “A body, Floyd, floating face-down in a flooded basement in the same warehouse complex where we foun
d the illegal pressing plant. Identification revealed the individual to be a Monsieur Rivaud. Forensics say he can’t have been in the water for more than three or four days.”

  “It’s early, monsieur, and I haven’t had much sleep, but I don’t think I know that name.”

  “That’s odd, Floyd, because you seem to have met the gentleman. He had one of your business cards on him.”

  “Still doesn’t mean I know him.”

  “He also had a key that we traced back to Monsieur Blanchard’s building on rue des Peupliers. Rivaud was one of his tenants.”

  “Wait,” Floyd said. “He wouldn’t be one of the tenants on the second floor, would he?”

  “So you do remember him.”

  “I never met him. Custine interviewed him: that’s how he came by the business card. When I went round to make follow-up enquiries, no one was home.”

  “Probably because the young man was dead.”

  Floyd closed his eyes. Just what the case needed: another death, no matter how peripheral it might be. “Cause of death?”

  “Drowning. It could be accidental: he might have stumbled and fallen into the flooded basement. On the other hand, Forensics turned up some curious abrasions on the man’s neck. They look like finger marks, as if someone had held his head underwater.”

  “Open and shut, in that case—homicide by drowning.”

  “Except,” Maillol said, “the finger marks were very small.”

  “Let me guess: they were the right size for a child.”

  “A child with long fingernails, yes. Which of course doesn’t make any sense—”

  “Except I already told you there are some bad children associated with this case.”

  “And we have that stabbing in Gare du Nord, of course. We still haven’t turned up the boy the witnesses saw.”

  “You probably won’t,” Floyd said.

  “Do you know something about that incident?”

  Floyd pulled a fresh toothpick from his shirt pocket and slipped it into his mouth. “Of course not, monsieur,” he said. “I just meant to say… the child’s probably well away by now.”

  Maillol said nothing for ten or twenty seconds. Floyd heard his breathing above the muted background chatter of typewriters and barked orders.

  “I’m sure you’re right,” Maillol said. “But you see the problem from my point of view. I had no interest in the rue des Peupliers case beyond my desire to do what I could for Custine. But there was no connection between those two deaths and the goings-on in Montrouge.”

  “And now?”

  “Now I have a connection, and it doesn’t make any sense. What was your man Rivaud doing nosing around in Montrouge?”

  “I have no idea,” Floyd said.

  “This is a loose end,” Maillol said. “I don’t like loose ends.”

  “I don’t like them either, monsieur, but I still have no idea what Rivaud was doing there. As I said, I never even spoke to the man.”

  “Then perhaps if I had a word with Custine?”

  “Actually,” Floyd said, “Custine’s the reason I’m calling.”

  “Has he been in touch again?”

  “Of course we’ve been in touch. What else would you expect? He’s my friend and I know he’s innocent.”

  “Very good, Floyd. I’d be disappointed if you said anything different.”

  “I can’t tell you where to reach Custine. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “But I think I’m close to finding your suspect. You’re just not going to like it very much when I hand one of them over.”

  “One of them?”

  Floyd pushed coinage into the iron belly of the payphone. “Custine didn’t kill Blanchard. One of those children did. You spoke to the witnesses in Gare du Nord. You know how they described that boy.”

  “Including one witness who spoke French with a pronounced American accent.”

  “The child was real, monsieur. There are several of them, boys and girls, but up close they don’t look like children at all. If I can deliver one of these monsters to you, I’ll have kept my end of the deal, won’t I?”

  “We didn’t have a deal, Floyd.”

  “Don’t let me down, monsieur. I’m trying to retain some lingering shred of respect for the authority in this city.”

  “I can’t keep Belliard off your case indefinitely,” Maillol said. “He’s already following every lead that stands a chance of throwing up Custine. That bar you frequent? Le Perroquet Pourpre?”

  “Yes?” Floyd asked, worriedly.

  “There’s a nice burnt-out shell where it used to be.”

  “Michel, the owner—is he all right?”

  “There were no deaths, but witnesses saw a couple of men in greatcoats with petrol cans fleeing the scene in a black Citroën. They were last seen heading in the general direction of the Quai des Orfèvres.” Maillol paused to let that sink in, then added, “If Custine was hiding there, then you can be sure Belliard is closing on him.”

  “Custine can take care of himself.”

  “Perhaps, Floyd. The question is: can you? Belliard won’t stop at one fish.”

  “I just need more time,” Floyd said.

  “If—and I repeat if—you hand one of these mock children over to me, alive and in a state amenable to interrogation… then I might, conceivably, be able to do something. Though how I’ll explain matters to the examining magistrate, I don’t know. Paris terrorised by a gang of feral children? He’ll laugh me out of the Palais de Justice.”

  “Show him the child, sir, and I don’t think he’ll be laughing for long.”

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  “I’m glad to know we still have some common ground,” Floyd said.

  “Common ground that is dwindling by the moment, mon ami. In return, I’ll want your assistance to close off the Rivaud connection.”

  “Understood,” Floyd said. He put down the receiver, then dug into his pockets for another coin for the next call.

  The car slowed down, pulled out of the flow of traffic and scraped its right wheels against the kerb with a hiss of rubber. The rear passenger-side door was flung open and a hand—belonging to a large man lost in shadow in the front passenger seat—directed them into the back of the car. Auger climbed in first, then Floyd. He slammed the rear door shut just as the driver gunned the engine and pulled back on to rue La Fayette, his abrupt entry into the procession of vehicles greeted by a symphony of angry horns.

  Custine turned around in the front passenger seat, while the driver—who turned out to be Michel—nosed the car on to rue Magenta.

  “It’s good to see you back, Floyd,” Custine said warmly. “We were beginning to worry.”

  “Nice to know I’m appreciated.”

  Custine touched the brim of his hat in Auger’s direction. “You too, mademoiselle. Are you all right?”

  “She’s been shot,” Floyd said. “I’d say that makes her pretty far from all right. Only problem is, she won’t let me take her to a hospital.”

  “I not needing hospital,” Auger said. “I only needing station of the train.”

  Custine looked at Floyd. “Is it me, or did she speak perfect French the last time I saw her?”

  “She had a bump on the head.”

  “Must have been a bad one.”

  “That’s nothing. You should hear what’s happened to her English.”

  “What happened to you, Floyd?” Custine asked, noticing Floyd’s bandaged head for the first time. Floyd’s hat, which had rolled off his head in the basement of the Kaspar Metals building when Auger pulled him to safety, had never been retrieved.

  “Never mind me. How are you? How is Greta? Is Marguerite still…?”

  “I spoke to Greta yesterday. She was—naturally enough—more than a little agitated at your sudden departure.”

  “I didn’t have time for a debate. You were there. You know what it was like.”

  “Well, I’m sure she�
�ll forgive you—given time. As for Marguerite… well, she’s still holding on.” Custine slid his hat over one side of his face, masking himself as a police car droned past in the opposite direction. He waited until the car had turned on to a different street before allowing himself to relax again. “I don’t think anyone has much hope of her lasting the week, though.”

  “Poor Greta,” Floyd said. “She must be going through hell.”

  “All this isn’t exactly helping.” Custine looked uncomfortably at Auger, perhaps wondering how much had taken place between them while they were in Berlin. “She’s still expecting an answer from you,” he said delicately. “That little dilemma hasn’t gone away in your absence.”

  “I know,” Floyd said heavily.

  “You have to make a decision sooner or later. It’s only fair.”

  “I can’t think straight until we get out of this mess,” Floyd said. “And that means clearing your name. Not much point in handing over the investigation business to you if you’re going to be running it from prison, is there?”

  Custine shook his head. “Leave it, Floyd. They will always find a way to take me down. I can be out of Paris by the middle of the week. I have friends in Toulouse… a man who can create a new identity for me.”

  “I just spoke to Maillol again. He still thinks he can get you off the hook if I turn up another suspect.”

  “Put it like that, it almost sounds easy.”

  “It won’t be. But before I can help you, I have to help Mademoiselle Auger.”

  “Then take her to a hospital, irrespective of her wishes.”

  “She made it pretty clear, Custine—there’s something down in that station that can help her. That’s why we’re going to Cardinal Lemoine.”

  “When was she shot?”

  “Yesterday—nearly twenty-four hours ago.”

  “Then she is more than likely delirious. In this instance, Floyd, the patient is very much not to be trusted.”

  “I trust her. She’s been saying the same thing since she was shot. She knows what’s best for her.”

  “Who is she?”

  “I don’t know,” Floyd said. “But after all I’ve seen, I’m beginning to have my doubts about the Dakota story.”