Anyhow if you come at a Ghost with a jabbing weapon, you should try to get your spear into the carcase along the spin axis, where the hide is a little thinner, and you won’t rip it unnecessarily. Then you just follow the trail of excrement and blood and heat until he dies, which might take a day or two. Ghosts don’t leave spoor, my mother used to say. So you have to cut him an asshole.
L’Eesh was watching me analytically. ‘You’re, what, twenty, twenty-one? No children yet?’
‘Not until I can afford to buy them out of the Coalition draft.’
He nodded. ‘As Hily did you. I knew her ambition for you. It’s good to see it realised so well. It must have been hard for you when she died. I imagine you got thrown into a cadre by the Commissaries - right?’
‘I won’t talk to you about my mother, L’Eesh.’
‘As you wish. But you need to keep your mind clear, little Raida. And you might want to think about saving your energy. We have a long way to go.’
I worked with my bone spear and tried to ignore him.
We had to sleep in our suits, of course. I dug a shallow trench in the dust. I couldn’t shut out the crimson light. I slept in patches.
I woke up in my own stink. The recycled gloop from my hood nipples already tasted stale, my skinsuit was chafing in a dozen places, and I felt bruises from that landing that hadn’t registered at the time.
If the sun had moved across the sky at all, I couldn’t see it.
It’s a strange thing, but it wasn’t until that second ‘morning’ that I took seriously the possibility that I might die here. I guess I had been distracted by the hunt, my conflict with L’Eesh. Or maybe I just lack imagination. Anyhow my adrenaline rush was long gone; I was numb, flat, feeling beaten.
Through that endless day, we walked on.
We came to what might once have been a township. There was little left but a gridwork of foundations, a few pits like cellars, bits of low wall. I thought I could see a sequence, of older buildings constructed of massive marble-like blocks, later structures made of what looked like the local sandstone or else bits of broken-up marble ruins.
All of it trashed, burned out, knocked flat.
I squatted, chewing on a glucose tab.
L’Eesh, his suit scuffed and filthy, began poking around a large battleship-shaped mound of rubble. ‘You know, there’s something odd here. I thought this was a fort, or perhaps some equivalent of a cathedral. But it looks for all the world as if it crashed here.’
‘You don’t make aircraft from brick.’
‘Whatever made such a vast, ungainly structure fly through the air is gone now. Nevertheless there was clearly once a pretty advanced civilisation here. On the way in I glimpsed extensive ruins. And some of those impact craters looked deliberately placed. This whole world is an arena of war. But it seems to have been a war that was fought with interplanetary weapons, and then flying brick fortresses, and at last fire and clubs.
‘It’s likely both moons were inhabited. Life could have been sparked on either moon, in some tidal puddle stirred by the Jovian parent. And then panspermia would work, spores wafting on meteorite winds, two worlds developing in parallel, cross-fertilising . . .’
On he talked. I wasn’t interested. I was here for Ghosts, not archaeology.
I waited until he took the lead, and we walked on, leaving the ruined township behind.
Another ‘night’, another broken sleep in the dirt. Another ‘day’ on that endless plain. In places the surface had been blasted to glass; it prickled my feet as I staggered across it. We didn’t seem to get any closer to that damn bridge.
We had nothing to do but talk.
A lot of it was L’Eesh’s refined bragging. ‘You know, the Commission was always very tolerant of us, we hunters. Under the Coalition, you aren’t supposed to get old and rich. The species is the thing! Of course the Coalition found us useful, in the closing phases of its war with the Ghosts. It is not comfortable to feel one has been manipulated, even controlled. But it has been glorious nevertheless.’
It turned out L’Eesh had taken part in that great Ghost massacre on Snowball.
‘Snowball was actually the first Ghost planet anybody found. Did you know that? The site of first contact two thousand years ago. When Ghost numbers collapsed the Commission slapped on conservation orders - some nonsense about preserving cultural diversity - but there wasn’t a great deal of will behind the policing. On the day the orders were lifted we were already in orbit around Snowball. We made a huge circle around the major Ghost nest, with aerial patrols overhead, and we just worked our way in on foot, firing at will, until we met in the centre. The major challenge was counting up the carcases.
‘So it went: while those big nests lasted it was a feeding frenzy. You were born too late, Raida. You know, a thousand years ago the Ghosts’ pits of twisted spacetime struck dread into human hearts. They were deployed as fortresses, a great wall right across the disc of the Galaxy. Magnificent! . . . And now we hunt down the Ghosts like animals, for their hides. An intelligent species hunted as game. Remarkable! Appalling!’
‘Who cares? Ghosts are predators.’
‘They are colony creatures,’ he said gently. ‘Communities of symbiotes. You have been listening to too much Commission propaganda.’
‘After all you’ve done, why go on? Why risk your neck in places like this, for the last few scraps of hide?’
‘Because some day there will be a last Ghost of all. I must be there when he is brought down. It is the logic of my whole life.’
We walked on, across a land like a dusty table-top. L’Eesh kept up his dogged, unspectacular plod, hour after hour. He looked determined, sharp, as if he had plenty of reserve.
I was determined not to let my own gathering weakness show. I continued to carry that bone spear.
At the end of the third ‘day’ we reached the bridge.
Exhausted, filthy, uncomprehending, I peered up. About a hundred paces across, it was just a rough pile of mud bricks. And yet it towered above me, reaching up to infinity.
L’Eesh was breathing hard, sucking water. ‘Magnificent,’ he said. ‘Mad. They built a brick tower to reach to heaven! . . .’
I went exploring.
I came to a crumbled gap in the base of the tower. I crawled into an unlit interior. My suit’s low-output bioluminescent lamp glowed. I craned my neck. The bridge rose up vertically above me, a tunnel into the sky.
Metal gleamed amid the rubble on the floor.
I kicked aside half-bricks and uncovered a squat cuboid about half my height. It was featureless except for a fat red button. When I pressed the button the cube rose magically into the air, trailing a rose-coloured sparkle, like the bogeys’ vacuum-energy weapon; I kept out of the way of the wake. When I released the button the cube dropped again.
It was pretty obviously a lifting palette.
There was another palette buried in the wall of the bridge - and further up another, and another beyond that.
‘Now we know how they made their castles fly,’ L’Eesh said. ‘And how they raised this bridge.’ He was standing beside me, his suit glowing green. I saw he had scraped a channel in mould-softened brick with his thumb. Beneath it, something gleamed, copper-brown. ‘It’s not metal,’ he said. ‘Not even like Xeelee construction material.’
‘Maybe that’s the original structure.’
‘Yes. No suite of moons is stable enough to allow the building of a brick bridge between them; the slightest tidal deflection would be enough to bring it tumbling down. There must be something more advanced here - perhaps the moons’ orbits are themselves regulated somehow . . . The bridge itself is just a clumsy shell. The inhabitants must have constructed it after the intervention.’
‘What intervention?’
He sighed. ‘Think, child. Try to understand what you see around you. Imagine millennia of war between the two moons.’
‘What was there to fight over?’
‘That scarcely
ever matters. Perhaps it was just that these were sibling worlds. What rivalry is stronger? Finally the moons were ruined, serving only as a backdrop for the unending battles - until peacemakers sent down blood-red rays, vacuum energy beams that turned the weapons to dust.’
‘Peacemakers? Silver Ghosts?’
‘Well, it’s possible,’ he said. ‘Though it’s not characteristic of Ghost behaviour. It was a draconian solution: a quarantine of technology, the trashing of two spacefaring civilisations . . . How arrogant. Almost human.’
I felt uncomfortable discussing Ghosts with human-like motives. ‘What about these lift palettes?’
‘It makes a certain sense,’ he said. ‘From the point of view of a meddling Ghost anyhow. A simple technology to help the survivors rebuild their ruined worlds - something you surely couldn’t turn into a weapon - but it didn’t work out.’ He smiled thinly. ‘Instead the populations used the gifts to build this insane bridge.’
‘How is this going to help us find the Ghosts?’
He seemed surprised by the question. ‘There are no Ghosts here, child.’
Of course he was right. I saw it as soon as he said it. Ghosts spread out over every world they infest. We would have seen them by now, if they were here. The Ghosts had intervened here but they had not inhabited this world. I’d known this for a while, I guess, but I hadn’t wanted to face the possibility that I’d thrown away my life for nothing.
I slumped to the littered floor. The strength seemed to drain out of me.
In retrospect I can see his tactics. It was as if he had designed the whole situation as a vast trap. He waited until I had reached the bottom - at the maximum point of my tiredness, as I was crushed with disappointment at the failure of the hunt, surrounded by alien madness.
Then he struck.
The length of bone came looming out of the dark, without warning, straight at my head.
I ducked. The bone clattered against the wall. ‘L’Eesh, you bastard—’
‘It’s just business, little Raida.’
My heart hammered. I backed away until my spine was pressed against the rough wall. ‘You’ve found something you want. The vacuum-energy weapons. Is that it?’
‘Not what we came for, but I’ll turn a profit, if I can manage to get off this moon.’
‘It’s not as if you need to do this, to rob me,’ I said bitterly.
He nodded. ‘True. You actually have the stronger motive here. Which is why I have to destroy you.’ He spoke patiently, as if instructing a child. He raised the bone, its bulging end thick, hefting it like a club, and he moved towards me, his movements oily, powerful.
I felt weak before his calm assurance. He was better than me, and always would be; the logic of the situation was that I should just submit.
In desperation I jumped onto the lift palette - it was like standing on a bobbing raft - and stamped on the button. I rose immediately, passing beyond the reach of his swinging club. I had been too fast, faster than his reactions. The advantage of youth.
But L’Eesh easily prised another palette out of the wall and followed me up into the darkness.
My palette accelerated, bumping against walls that were as rough as sandpaper. L’Eesh’s green glow followed me, bioluminescent signals flickering.
Thus our ascension, two dead people racing into the sky.
On an interplanetary scale the tunnel arched, but from my petty human point of view it rose straight up. All I could see was a splash of bio light on the crude brickwork around me, sliding past, blurred by my speed.
L’Eesh tried to defeat me with words.
‘Imagine, Raida,’ he said softly. ‘They must have come here from across the moon, carrying their mud bricks, a global pilgrimage that must have lasted generations. What a vision! They sacrificed everything - abandoned their farms, trashed their biosphere down to the slime on the rocks . . . And you know what? The two populations must have worked together to build their bridge, so they could continue their war. I mean, you couldn’t build it just from one end or the other, could you? They cooperated so they could get at each other and carry on fighting. In the end, the war became the most important thing in their universe. More important than life, the continuation of the species.’
‘Insane,’ I whispered.
‘Ah, but once we built vast structures, waged terrible wars, all in the names of gods we have long forgotten. And are we so different now? What of our magnificent Galaxy-spanning Expansion? Isn’t that a grandiose folly built around an idea, a mad vision of cosmic destiny? Who do you think we more resemble - this moon’s warmongers or its peacemakers?’
I was exhausted. I clung to my scrap of ancient technology as it careened up into the dark.
That sleek voice whispered in my ear, on and on. ‘You can never live up to Hily’s memory, little Raida. You do see that, don’t you? You needn’t feel you have failed. For you could never have succeeded . . . I saw your mother die.’
‘Shut up, L’Eesh.’
‘I was at her side—’
‘Shut up.’
He fell silent, waiting.
I knew he was manipulating me, but I couldn’t help but ask. ‘Tell me.’
‘She was shot in the back.’
‘Who? ’
‘It doesn’t matter. She was killed for her catch, her trophies. Her death wasn’t dishonourable. She must even have expected it. We are a nation of thieves, you see, we hunters. You shouldn’t feel bitter.’
‘I don’t feel anything.’
‘Of course not.’
His brooding glow was edging closer.
I closed my eyes. What would Hily have said? Use your head. There is always an option.
I took my hand off the button. The palette rocked to a halt. ‘Get it over,’ I panted.
Now he had nothing to say; his words had fulfilled their purpose. He closed, that eerie green glow sliding over the crude brickwork.
And I jammed my hand back on the button. My palette lumbered into motion. I watched the exhaust gather into a thick crimson mist below me.
L’Eesh hurtled up into the mist, crouching on his palette - which abruptly cracked apart and crumbled. Stranded in the air, he arced a little higher, and then began to fall amid the fragments.
I sat there until my heart stopped rattling. Then I followed him down.
‘My fall is slow,’ he said, analytic, observing. ‘Low gravity, high air resistance. You could probably retrieve me. But you won’t.’
‘Come on, L’Eesh. It’s business, just as you said. You know what happened. These palettes extract their energy from the vacuum energy sea.’
‘Leaving some kind of deficit in their wake, into which I flew. Yes? And so we both die here.’ He forced a laugh. ‘Ironic, don’t you think? In the end we’ve cooperated to kill each other. Just like the inhabitants of these desolate moons.’
But I was thinking it over. ‘Not necessarily.’
‘What?’
‘Suppose I head up to the midpoint of the bridge and burn my way through the wall. Pohp ought to see me and come in for me. I’d surely be far enough out of the vacuum field for the Spline to approach safely.’
‘What about the quarantine ships?’
‘They must primarily patrol the moons’ low orbits. Perhaps I’d be far enough from the surface of either moon to leave them asleep.’
He considered. ‘It would take days to get there. But it might work. You have something of your mother’s pragmatism, little Raida. I guess you win.’
‘Maybe we both win.’
There was silence. Then he said coldly, ‘Must I beg?’
‘Make me an offer.’
He sighed. ‘There has been a sighting of a school of Spline. Wild Spline.’
I was startled. ‘Wild?’
‘These Spline are still spacegoing. But certain of their behavioural traits have reverted to an ancestral state. They believe they swim in their primordial ocean—’
I breathed, ‘Nobody has ever h
unted a Spline.’
‘It would be glorious. Like the old days. Hily would be proud.’ It was as if I could hear his smile.
I was content with the deal. It was enough that I’d beaten him; I didn’t need to destroy him.
Not yet. Not until I knew who killed my mother.
We argued percentages, all the way down towards the light.
The human victory was probably always inevitable. We were better at waging war: after all, we had spent a hundred thousand years practising on each other.
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