Terminal World

by Alastair Reynolds

  More than anything - and he felt mildly guilty that Gambeson’s illness had been a contributing factor - Quillon was grateful to be busy. It kept his mind off Commander Spatha, and him away from the parts of the gondola where he was likely to meet the man. He’d had no contact with him since their last encounter and Quillon was beginning to believe that Spatha had lost interest in him after the incident with the book.

  Even as he thought this, however, another part of his mind recognised that he was engaged in quiet self-delusion.

  On the morning of the third day he was asked to come to the stateroom. When he arrived he found Meroka already there, sitting on one of the low chairs next to a coffee table. She was scratching idly at her bandaged shoulder. The only other person in the room was Ricasso, who was turning from the window as Quillon came in.

  Meroka looked up. ‘Man wouldn’t say a word to me until you arrived, Cutter.’

  ‘Is something the matter?’ Quillon asked.

  ‘Not necessarily,’ Ricasso answered. ‘I need your help with something-both of you - and I thought it best to wait until you were both present. It’s about Spearpoint. We’ve received some new intelligence.’

  ‘I wasn’t expecting any more news until we got nearer,’ Quillon said.

  ‘Nor was I. But I reckoned without the Skullboys. That ship we captured, the night before our departure from the fuel depot?’

  ‘I didn’t think there were any prisoners,’ Quillon said.

  ‘There weren’t. But we did take her with all documents still intact. Some of them have proved most ... illuminating. For ones so given to barbarism, the Skullboys are remarkably diligent log-keepers. Before she joined the pack we encountered, the Lacerator had been acting independently. They’d been listening to the signals on Radial Nine, the same semaphore line that Brimstone reported as still being operational.’

  ‘I thought the Skullboys were trying to disrupt those lines, not listen in on them,’ Meroka said.

  ‘One ship couldn’t have taken on a signal station,’ Ricasso said. ‘In any case, they’re as interested as we are in the state of the city. They listened in on the semaphore transmissions for much longer than Brimstone was able to.’ He nodded at the brown-covered intelligence transcripts on the coffee table. ‘This is what we got. It’s taken until now to decode the Skullboy logs, and there are still some passages we can’t decipher, but there’s enough to be going on with. If it’s accurate, it gives us a much clearer picture of the condition of the city than we’ve had so far. Nothing in it actively contradicts anything we learned from Brimstone, but it does put things into a new light.’ He gestured invitingly. ‘Open the documents. Read the transcripts. You have unlimited clearance. All I ask is that, as Spearpointers, you be alert for anything that doesn’t ring true. We’ve no other way of deciding if the Skullboy intelligence is reliable.’

  Quillon had joined Meroka at the table. He opened one of the dossiers and examined one of the pale pink, tissue-thin transcript papers inside.

  ‘Why wouldn’t it be?’

  ‘They’re Skullboys,’ Ricasso answered. ‘I’d like you pay particular attention to one name in particular, if at all possible - it keeps coming up. If this man isn’t responsible for these transmissions going out in the first place, he’s clearly a player of some importance in post-disaster Spearpoint.’

  ‘Tulwar,’ Meroka said, frowning hard, as if she was certain she must have made a mistake. ‘Here’s his name. And again.’ She shuffled the papers. ‘Here again. He’s all over this like a rash.’

  ‘You know this man?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘Tulwar helped us to get out of Spearpoint,’ Quillon said, spotting the name for himself on another of the transcript sheets. The sentence read: Tulwar continues to urge all citizens to use existing antizonal stocks responsibly. A little further down: Tulwar reports that supplies are holding and there is no need for further panic. Further still: Tulwar has indicated that mob law and punishment beatings will not be tolerated. While looting, the theft of rationed supplies and the breaking of curfew cannot be allowed to go unpunished, miscreants must and will be exposed to the full measure o the Emergency Law.

  ‘This doesn’t make any sense,’ Meroka said, shaking her head. ‘I mean, why Tulwar?’

  ‘You mean,’ Quillon said, ‘why not Fray?’

  ‘I suppose it could be someone else with the same name,’ Ricasso put in doubtfully.

  ‘No, it’s our Tulwar,’ said Meroka. ‘I’m pretty sure of that.’

  ‘Brimstone’s intelligence did say something about criminal elements moving into the power vacuum,’ Quillon said. ‘I suppose Tulwar would have to be considered a criminal element by anyone’s definition. But then again, so would you and I.’

  ‘Tulwar was just a cog in Fray’s machine,’ Meroka said.

  ‘A cog with ambitions, maybe. He already had a network in place: you saw how easy it was for him to arrange for us to be shipped down to Horsetown with the frozen corpses. He’d have been in a fairly advantageous position when the orthodox authority crumbled.’

  ‘So would Fray.’

  Quillon scanned the handful of papers for any mention of Fray, but the name didn’t leap out at him.

  ‘He doesn’t seem to be mentioned at all.’

  ‘This Fray was another contact?’ Ricasso asked.

  ‘More than that - he was a friend to both of us. Tulwar got me out of Spearpoint, but it was Fray who made it happen. I’d known him for years. He wasn’t a paragon of virtue, but he wasn’t a bad man either.’ He looked at Meroka, hoping she would say it before he did.

  ‘You don’t think he made it.’

  ‘We both saw the storm hit Spearpoint, and we know what Brimstone told us about the change in the zones. It hurt Neon Heights more than it hurt Steamtown. From Tulwar’s position that change might almost have been beneficial.’

  ‘Enough to go from being a fairly prominent player in the Steamtown underworld to the most powerful man in Spearpoint?’

  ‘The most powerful man in the part of Spearpoint still capable of communicating with the outside world,’ Quillon said. ‘For all we know, Fray’s still alive; he just can’t get a message out. We’re only seeing a small part of the picture here.’

  ‘But it seems to be a vaguely plausible part?’ Ricasso asked.

  ‘If you take it as a given that Tulwar’s expanded his influence,’ Quillon said, ‘then yes, I suppose it does.’

  ‘I agree with Cutter,’ Meroka said.

  Ricasso nodded, a cold gleam of satisfaction in his eyes. ‘That’s what I was hoping. I wasn’t counting on either of you actually knowing this man, but that’s a bonus. My main concern was that all this might turn out to be a Skullboy fabrication, for whatever reasons they might have had. I can’t rule that out even now, but the fact that they mention this Tulwar gentleman so many times—’

  ‘It’s real,’ Quillon said. ‘The only doubt in my mind is about what we’re not being told. But it doesn’t change anything, does it?’ He tapped a finger against one of the sheets. ‘Looting. Riots. Ration shortages. Medical supplies going astray. All this tells us is that the situation is just as grave as we anticipated. Maybe worse. They really do need that Serum- 15.’

  ‘And we’ll deliver it,’ Ricasso said. ‘As soon as we possibly can. Maybe sooner.’

  Quillon found out what Ricasso meant by his remark later that day, when he was called to the stateroom again. This time there were at least a dozen captains present, as well as Curtana, Agraffe, Meroka and, of course, Ricasso himself, who stood with hands on hips and his proud belly pressing against the enormous chart table, around which the gathering had assembled. He was staring at his audience with a look of pugnacious defiance, eyes flashing from one person to the next, alert to the merest hint of dissent.

  ‘This is our existing course,’ Ricasso said, dragging a fat thumbnail along the map. ‘Skirting the edge of the Bane, but spending another three days of flight actually getti
ng further from Spearpoint by the hour, before we clear the southern extremity, pick up the prevailing winds and begin to make easterly progress.’

  Curtana, who must have sensed something of what was afoot, said, ‘And your point is, exactly? We talked this over at length. We’re committed to it. Now is emphatically not the time to go changing our minds about the right approach.’

  ‘And you’re quite right about that, my dear. That is, you would be right if the information available to us had not altered. In the light of new intelligence, it behoves us to re-examine our original decision.’

  She stood with hands on hips. ‘What new intelligence?’

  ‘We pulled recently amended charts from the Lacerator. The Skullboys came close enough to the Bane’s limit to detect the changes. But they found nothing, no hint of a gradient along hundreds of leagues. There’s only one reasonable conclusion to be drawn from that: the Bane has shifted, or contracted. We shouldn’t have expected it to remain the same: every other zone has undergone a boundary change, so why not the Bane?’

  ‘You trust these charts?’ Agraffe asked. ‘For all we know they’re bogus, made up to lead us into disaster.’

  ‘That’s a reasonable point. But other information extracted from the same ship has been independently verified.’

  Quillon glanced at Meroka, who glanced back at him at the same moment. Her expression told him that she felt exactly the same way he did. Failing to find a glaring inconsistency or implausible detail in the semaphore logs was not the same as independent verification.

  ‘That’s—’ he started saying.

  ‘Doctor?’ Ricasso asked interestedly. ‘Your opinion, please? I’m most anxious to hear it.’

  ‘You know we can’t ever be certain those transcripts are authentic. But even if we were, it still wouldn’t give us any reason to presume the charts haven’t been faked.’

  ‘The changes the Skullboys have mapped dovetail with those measured by Brimstone, Painted Lady, Cinnabar and Iron Prominent, Doctor, so it’s highly unlikely that they’ve been completely fabricated.’

  ‘We don’t know how far the boundary has moved,’ Quillon said. ‘The Bane may have shrunk, or changed its shape, but that doesn’t mean we can go sailing into that territory without a care in the world. We may run into the boundary again, just a bit further in than it used to be.’

  ‘That’s why we’ll be paying due attention to the clocks, every second of the way,’ Ricasso said. ‘We’re not fools. We learned a hard lesson from the Salient. But even if the boundary has only retreated a little way, we’ll still save time and fuel by cutting across the edge of what used to be the Bane. Can you deny that saving time will be beneficial to Spearpoint?’

  ‘Of course I can’t.’

  ‘As I expected. We’ll send ships ahead of the main formation, mapping the gradients across a broad swathe, establishing a safe corridor. If the clocks tell us to change our course, we will. But in the meantime, we’ll shave days off our journey to Spearpoint, and avoid tangling with several known concentrations of Skullboys.’ Ricasso leaned forwards, his belly billowing up onto the edge of the table. He took a pointing stick and drew it across the edge of the tract, skirting the terrifyingly blank interior. ‘Given the urgency of our mission, and the saving in distance, we simply can’t debate this. It must be done. We’ll reach Spearpoint sooner, and since their instruments aren’t as sensitive as ours, I very much doubt that any Skullboys will come after us. As a by-product, we’ll end up compiling the first modern charts of this territory - something that we’d have to do eventually.’

  ‘First charts, period,’ Curtana said. ‘Unless you know better.’

  Ricasso said nothing, just tapped the pointing stick against the map.

  ‘How long would we be in the Bane?’ Quillon asked.

  ‘From a standpoint of medical interest, Doctor?’

  ‘I’m just wondering how long we’d be able to last if conditions changed, and we had to fall back on antizonals.’

  ‘Two days at the most,’ Ricasso said. ‘That’s assuming we never push the engines to maximum power, which of course would always be an option. Is that acceptable to you, given what you know of our drug supplies?’

  ‘Acceptable, I suppose,’ Quillon answered cautiously. ‘Which, to be clear, doesn’t mean the same as “embrace unquestioningly”.’ He felt Doctor Gambeson’s phantom presence at his side. While the man himself was not well enough to voice an opinion, Quillon knew that the onus had fallen on him instead.

  ‘I’m not saying we should rush into this,’ Ricasso said. ‘Equally, I see no rational alternative. The Bane’s retreat offers us a short cut to our objective - what airship captain wouldn’t leap at a short cut?’

  ‘Um, me for one,’ Curtana said.

  ‘Yes, my dear. Articulate your reservations. Deep inside I know you’d be bitterly disappointed if we turned away now.’ He clenched his fist. ‘Just think! We could well be the first organisms to enter the Bane in more than five thousand years.’

  ‘You’re really selling it to me now,’ Agraffe said, to a murmur of amused agreement from some of other captains. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the medicine run. But at least that was a calculated risk.’

  ‘The benefits outweigh the risk,’ Ricasso said. ‘For one thing, we can be reasonably sure we aren’t going to encounter any Skullboys in the Bane. Or anyone else, for that matter. And we won’t be stopping unless we’re forced to. We’ll keep the main body of Swarm at cruising speed for the entire duration of the passage. The scout ships may occasionally run faster, but we’ll avoid overtaxing the engines.’

  ‘If we’re really going to do this,’ Curtana said, sighing, ‘then Painted Lady should lead the way.’

  ‘Is she ready?’

  ‘Ready enough.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Ricasso replied. ‘Six airships will proceed Swarm in arrowhead formation - Painted Lady first, two behind her, and three behind them. With no ship more than five leagues from another, we’ll still establish accurate readings across a ten-league-wide track - more than enough to ensure Swarm’s safe passage. Two further escort craft will flank Swarm, and a final one will follow behind, continuing to make readings, and also watching for anyone attempting to follow us.’

  Curtana shook her head. ‘They won’t, take it from me.’

  ‘Then the trailing ship will have all the more time to take measurements,’ Ricasso said. He had, Quillon was beginning to realise, a maddening ability to twist any seeming disadvantage in his favour.

  ‘Don’t expect a majority show-of-flags on this,’ Agraffe said. ‘There were waverers last time. There’ll be even more now.’

  ‘There’ll be no need for a show-of-flags, my boy.’ Ricasso looked almost apologetic at his own cleverness. ‘I covered this eventuality in my last proposal, the one for which I secured a hundred-ship mandate.’

  ‘Ninety-eight, but who’s going to quibble?’ Curtana asked.

  ‘The point is - and this is not mere constitutional hair-splitting - I expressly requested permission to vary the course en route as I saw fit, subject to improved intelligence on boundary shifts, weather patterns and the locations of enemy forces. I now have precisely that improved intelligence.’

  ‘You won’t get away with that,’ Curtana said.

  ‘No, you won’t,’ Agraffe agreed. ‘That clause specifically forbids you from crossing any zone boundaries without a new show-of-flags.’

  Ricasso looked at him, his expression one of stupefied incomprehension. ‘But I won’t be crossing any zone boundaries, will I? Unless you mean the old boundaries on the old maps - but since when have we let them concern us?’

  Under her breath Curtana said, ‘You sly old fox.’ But there was nothing remotely affectionate or approving in her voice.

  ‘He may have a point,’ one of the other captains said.′ Constitutionally speaking, that is.’

  ‘Look,’ Ricasso said, striking a conciliatory tone. ‘Once people understand that
the boundary has moved - that what we’ll be flying over is simply barren land that has yet to be reclaimed by living things - they’ll put aside their anxieties.’

  ‘The same way I can feel all my anxieties just melting away as we speak,’ said Curtana acidly.

  She spoke to Quillon privately afterwards. ‘You’re probably surprised that I didn’t put up more of a fight.’

  ‘I think you had the intelligence to see the sense in crossing the Bane, even if you didn’t like the way Ricasso forced us into it.’

  ‘Very tactful of you.’

  ‘I just hope I didn’t cast the deciding vote.’

  ‘I didn’t see much voting going on, Doctor - or did I miss something?’

  ‘You know what I mean. Ordinarily it would have been Gambeson Ricasso leaned on for medical advice. But in that room it was just me. He must have known I’d endorse almost anything that gets Serum-15 to Spearpoint even marginally quicker.’

  ‘You feel manipulated.’

  ‘I feel like there’s something going on that I can’t quite work out.’ Curtana’s expression was rueful. ‘I’ve had that feeling about Ricasso since I was able to count my fingers.’

  ‘No one in their right mind would willingly go into the Bane unless there was an excellent reason, right?’

  ‘Nobody,’ Curtana said. ‘But as you say, no one “in their right mind” - that’s the clincher.’

  ‘I don’t think he’s mad. I don’t think he’s even slightly mad.’

  ‘I hear a but.’

  ‘The amount of time he must have spent down with those vorgs, pursuing his magic serum - at the very least, it betokens a certain ... monomania. A willingness to chase his obsessions beyond the point where any reasonable person would have turned back. I’m just wondering how that obsessiveness might relate to the Bane.’