It led into a huge and bright room: part of the engine system. Since my time on the ship, I had learned enough of the ramscoop design to understand that the interstellar gases collected by the magnetic scoop had to pass through the middle of the ship to reach the combustion chamber at the rear…which was somewhere near where we were standing.
Overhead was a thick, glowing tube, running the length of the room. That was the fuel conduit. With the drive off, the glass lining the tube would have been midnight black. Only a fraction of the glow from the heated gases shone through…but it was still enough to bathe the room in something like daylight.
But that wasn’t the only bright thing in the room.
We walked along a railinged catwalk, high above the floor. Below, but slightly off to one side, was a thick metal cage in the form of a horizontal cylinder. The cage flickered with containment fields.
Something huge floated in the cage. It was creature: sleek and elongated, aglow with its own fierce brassy light. Something like a whale, but carved from molten lava. Quilted in fiery platelets that flexed and undulated as the creature writhed in the field’s embrace. Flickering with arcs and filaments of lightning, like a perpetual dance of St. Elmo’s fire.
I squinted against the glare from the alien thing.
“What…?” I asked, not needing to say any more.
“Flux Swimmer,” she said. “Devilfish found her…living in outflow jet from star. Didn’t evolve there. Migrated. Star to star, billions of years. Older than Galaxy.”
I stared, humbled, at the astonishing thing. “I’d heard of such things. In the texts of the Kalarash…but everyone always assumed they were legendary animals, like unicorns, or dragons, or tigers.”
“Real,” she said. “Just…rare.”
The creature writhed again, flexing the long, flattened whip of its body. “But why? Why keep it here?”
“Devilfish needs Flux Swimmer,” she said. “Flux Swimmer…has power. Magnetic fields. Reaches out…shapes. Changes.”
I nodded slowly, beginning to understand. I thought back to the engagement with the other ramscoop; the way its intake field had become fatally distorted.
“The Flux Swimmer is the Devilfish’s weapon against other ships,” I said, speaking for the girl. “She reaches out and twists their magnetic fields. Zeal always knew we were going to win.” I looked down at the creature again, looking so pitiful in its metal cage. I did not have to read the animal’s mind to know that it did not want to be held here, locked away in the heart of the Devilfish.
“They…make her do this,” the girl said.
“Torture?”
“No. She could always…choose to die. Easier for her.”
“How, then?”
She led me along an extension to the catwalk, so that we walked directly over the trapped animal. It was then that I understood how the crew exerted their control of the alien.
Hidden from view before, but visible now, was a smaller version of the same cage. It sat next to the Flux Swimmer. It held another version of the alien animal, but one that was much tinier than the first. Probes reached through the field, contacting the fiery hide of the little animal.
“Baby,” the girl said. “Hurt baby. Make mother shape field, or hurt baby even more. That how it works.”
It was all too much. I closed my eyes, numbed at the implicit horror I had just been shown. The baby was not being hurt now, but that was only because the Devilfish did not need the mother’s services. But when another ship needed to be destroyed and looted…then the pain would begin again, until the mother extended her alien influence beyond the hull and twisted the other ship’s magnetic field.
“I see why the captain cut our field now,” I said. “It was so she could reach through it.”
“Yes. Captain clever.”
“Where do you come into it?” I asked.
“I look after them. Tend them. Keep them alive.” She nodded upward, to where smaller conduits branched off the main fuel line. “Swimmers drink plasma. Captain lets them have fuel. Just enough… keep alive. No more.”
“We’ve got to stop this ever happening again,” I said, reopening my eyes. Then a thought occurred to me. “But she can stop it, can’t she? If the mother has enough influence over magnetic fields to twist the ramscoop of a ship thirty kilometers away…surely she can stop the captain and his crew? They’re cyborgs, after all. They’re practically made of metal.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head in exasperation—either with the situation, or her own limitations. “Mother…too strong. Long range…good control. Smash other ship, easy. Short range…bad. Too near.”
“So what you’re saying is…she can’t exercise enough local control, because she’s too strong?”
“Yes,” she said, nodding emphatically. “Too strong. Too much danger… kill baby.”
So the mother was powerless, I thought: she had the ability to destroy another ramscoop, but not to unshackle herself from her own chains without harming her child.
“Wait, though. The thing with the gun…that took some precision, didn’t it?”
“Yes,” she said. “But not mother. Baby.”
She had said it with something like pride. “The baby can do the same trick?”
“Baby weak…for now. But I make baby stronger. Give baby more fuel. They say starve baby…keep baby alive, but just.” She clenched her fist and snarled. “I disobey. Give baby more food. Let baby get stronger. Then one day…”
“The baby will be able to do what the mother can’t,” I said. “Kill them all. That’s the bad thing, isn’t it? That’s what you were warning me about. Telling me to get off the ship before it happened. And to make sure Zeal didn’t put implants in my head. So I’d have a chance.”
“Someone…live,” she said. “Someone…come back. Find Devilfish. Let mother and baby go. Take them home.”
“Why not you?”
She touched the side of her head. “I, lobot.”
“Oh, no.”
“When bad thing happen, I go too. But you live, Peter Vandry. You wethead. You come back.”
“How soon?” I breathed, not wanting to think about what she had just said.
“Soon. Baby stronger…hour by hour. Control…improving. See, feel, all around it. Empathic. Know what to do. Understand good.” Again that flicker of pride. “Baby clever.”
“Zeal’s onto you. That’s why he sent me here.”
“That why…has to happen soon. Before Zeal take away…me. What left behind after…not care about baby.”
“And now?”
“I care. I love.”
“Well, isn’t that heartwarming,” said a voice behind us.
I turned around, confronted by the sight of Mister Zeal blocking the main catwalk, advancing toward us with a heavy gun in his human hand: not a tranquiliser this time. He shook his head disappointedly. “Here was I, thinking maybe you needed some help…and when I arrive I find you having a good old chinwag with the lobot!”
“Zeal make you lobot too,” she said. “He train you now…just to build up neuromotor patterns.”
“Listen to her,” Zeal said mockingly. “Step aside now, Peter. Let me finish the job you were so tragically incapable of completing.”
I stood my ground. “Is that right, Zeal? Were you going to make me into one of them as well, or were you just planning on taking my hands?”
“Stand aside, lad. And it’s Mister Zeal to you, by the way.”
“No,” I said. “I’m not letting you touch her.”
“Fine, then.”
Zeal aimed the gun and shot me. The round tore through my leg, just below the knee. I yelped and started to fold as my leg buckled under me. By tightening my grip on the railings I managed not to slip off the catwalk.
Zeal advanced toward me, boots clanging on the catwalk. I could barely hold myself up now. Blood was drooling down my leg from the wound. My hands were slippery on the railing, loosing their grip.
�
�I’m trying not to do too much damage,” Zeal said, before levelling the gun at me again. “I’d still like to be able to salvage something.”
I steeled myself against the shot.
“Baby,” the girl called.
Zeal’s arm swung violently aside, mashing against the railing. His hand spasmed open to drop the gun. It clattered to the deck of the catwalk, then dropped all the way to the floor of the chamber, where it smashed apart.
Zeal grunted in anguish, using his good hand to massage the fingers of the other.
“Nice trick,” he said. “But it’ll only make it slower and messier for both of you.”
With both hands—he couldn’t have been hurt that badly—he delved into the pocket on the front of his apron. He came out with a pair of long, vicious looking knives, turning them edge-on so that we’d see how sharp they were.
“Baby…” I called.
But Zeal kept advancing, sharpening the knives on each other, showing no indication that the baby was having any effect on his weapons. It was only then that I realised that the knives were not necessarily made of metal.
Baby wasn’t going to be able to do anything about them.
Zeal’s huge boots clanged ponderously closer. The pain in my leg was now excruciating, beginning to dull my alertness. Slumped down on the deck, I could barely reach his waist, let alone the knives.
“Easy now, lad,” he said, as I tried to block him. “Easy now, and we’ll make it nice and quick when it’s your turn. How does that sound?”
“It sounds…”
I pawed ineffectually at the leather of his apron, slick with blood and oil. I couldn’t begin to get a grip on it, even if I’d had the strength to stop him.
“Now lad,” he said, sounding more disappointed than angry. “Don’t make me slash at your hands. They’re too good to waste like that.”
“You’re not getting any part of me.”
He clucked a little purr of amusement and knelt down just far enough to stab the tip of one of the knives—the one he held in his right hand—against my chest. “Seriously, now.”
The pressure of the knife made me fall back, so that my back was on the deck. That was when I touched it with my bare hand and felt how warm it was.
Warm and getting hotter.
Inductive heating, I thought: Baby’s magnetic field washing back and forth over the metal, cooking it.
I twisted my neck to glance back at the girl, and saw her pain. She held her hands in front of her, like someone expecting a gift. Baby must have been warming the hands as well as the deck.
Baby couldn’t help it.
Flat on the deck now, Zeal lowered his heel onto my chest. “Yes, the deck’s getting hotter. I can just feel it through the sole of my shoe.”
“Don’t you touch her.”
He increased the pressure on my chest, crushing the wind from my lungs. “Or what, exactly?”
I didn’t have the strength to answer. All I could do was push ineffectually against his boot, in the hope of snatching a breath of air.
“I’ll deal with you in a moment,” Zeal said, preparing to move on.
But then he stopped.
Even from where I was lying, I saw something change on his face. The cocky set of his jaw slipped a notch. His eyes looked up, as if he’d seen something on the ceiling.
He hadn’t. He was looking at his goggle, pushed high onto his forehead.
Nothing about the goggle had changed, except for the thin wisp of smoke curling away from it, where it contacted his skin.
It was beginning to burn its way into his forehead, pulled tight by the strap.
Zeal let out an almighty bellow of pain and fury: real this time. His hands jerked up reflexively, as if he meant to snatch the goggle away. But both hands were holding knives.
He screamed, as the hot thing seared into his forehead like a brand.
He lowered his hands, and tried to fumble one of the knives into his apron pocket. His movements were desperate, uncoordinated. The knife tore at the leather, but couldn’t find its way home. Finally, shrieking, he simply dropped the weapon.
It fell to the decking. I reached out and took it.
Zeal reached up with his bare hand and closed his fingers around the goggle. Instantly I heard the sizzle of burning skin. He tried to pull his hand away, but his fingers appeared to have stuck to the goggle. Thrashing now, he reached up with the other knife—still unwilling to relinquish it—and tried to use its edge to lever the offending mass of fused metal and skin from his forehead.
That was when I plunged the other knife into his shin, and twisted. Zeal teetered, fighting for balance. But with one hand stuck to his forehead and the other holding the knife, he had no means to secure himself.
I assisted him over the edge. Zeal screamed as he fell. Then there was a clatter and a sudden, savage stillness.
For what seemed like an age I lay on the catwalk, panting until the pain lost its focus.
“It won’t be long before the rest of the crew come after us,” I told the girl.
She was still holding her metal hands before her. I could only imagine her pain.
“Need to make baby strong now,” she said. “Feed it more.” She moved to a console, set into a recess in the railing itself. She touched her claws against the controls, and then gasped, unable to complete whatever action she’d had in mind.
I forced myself to stand, putting most of my weight on my good leg. My arm was in a bad way, but the fingers still worked. If I splinted it, I ought to be able to grip something.
I lurched and hobbled until I was next to her.
“Show me what to do.”
“Give baby more fuel,” she said, indicating a set of controls. “Turn that. All the way.”
I did what she said. The decking rumbled, as if the ship itself had shuddered. Overhead, I noticed a dimming in the glow of the pipe after the point where the smaller lines branched out of it.
“How long?” I said, pushing my good hand against the slug wound to keep the blood at bay.
“Not long. Ship get slower…but not enough for captain to notice. Baby drink. Then…bad thing.”
“Everyone aboard will die?”
“Baby kill them. Fry them alive, same way as Zeal. Except you.”
I thought of all that the Devilfish had done. If only half of those stories were true, it was still more than enough to justify what was about to happen.
“How long?” I repeated.
“Thirty…forty minutes.”
“Then it’s time enough,” I said.
She looked at me wonderingly. “Time enough…for what?”
“To get you to the surgeon’s room. To get you on the table and get those implants out of your head.”
Something like hope crossed her face. It was there, fleetingly. Then it was gone, wiped away. How often had she dared to hope, before learning to crush the emotion before it caused any more pain? I didn’t want to know…not yet.
“No,” she said. “Not time.”
“There is time,” I said. If I could extract those implants in time, and remove those metal hands, she would weather baby’s magnetic storm when it ripped through the rest of the crew. There was nothing I could do for the other lobots, not in the time that was left. And maybe there was nothing anyone could do for them now.
But the girl was different. I knew there was something more in there…something that hadn’t been completely erased. Maybe she didn’t remember her name now, but with time…with patience…who knew what was possible?
But first we had to save the aliens. And we would, too. We’d have the Devilfish to ourselves. If we couldn’t work out how to fly the aliens home, we could at least let them go. They were creatures of space: all that they really craved was release.
Then…once the Flux Swimmers were taken care of…we’d find a cryopod and save ourselves. So what if it took a while before anyone found us?
“No time,” she said again.
“There
is,” I said. “And we’re doing this. You’re my patient, and I’m not giving up on you. I’m Peter Vandry, surgeon.”
“Surgeon’s mate,” she corrected.
I looked down at Zeal’s spreadeagled, motionless form and shook my head. “Surgeon, actually. Someone just got a promotion.”
THE SLEDGE-MAKER’S DAUGHTER
SHE STOPPED in sight of Twenty Arch Bridge, laying down her bags to rest her hands from the weight of two hog’s heads and forty pence worth of beeswax candles. While she paused, Kathrin adjusted the drawstring on her hat, tilting the brim to shade her forehead from the sun. Though the air was still cool, there was a fierce new quality to the light that brought out her freckles.
Kathrin moved to continue, but a tightness in her throat made her hesitate. She had been keeping the bridge from her thoughts until this moment, but now the fact of it could not be ignored. Unless she crossed it she would face the long trudge to New Bridge, a diversion that would keep her on the road until long after sunset.
“Sledge-maker’s daughter!” called a rough voice from across the road.
Kathrin turned sharply at the sound. An aproned man stood in a doorway, smearing his hands dry. He had a monkeylike face, tanned a deep liverish red, with white sideboards and a gleaming pink tonsure.
“Brendan Lynch’s daughter, isn’t it?”
She nodded meekly, but bit her lip rather than answer.
“Thought so. Hardly one to forget a pretty face, me.” The man beckoned her to the doorway of his shop. “Come here, lass. I’ve something for your father.”
“Sir?”
“I was hoping to visit him last week, but work kept me here.” He cocked his head at the painted wooden trademark hanging above the doorway. “Peter Rigby, the wheelwright. Kathrin, isn’t it?”
“I need to be getting along, sir…”
“And your father needs good wood, of which I’ve plenty. Come inside for a moment, instead of standing there like a starved thing.” He called over his shoulder, telling his wife to put the water on the fire.
Reluctantly Kathrin gathered her bags and followed Peter into his workshop. She blinked against the dusty air and removed her hat. Sawdust carpeted the floor, fine and golden in places, crisp and coiled in others, while a heady concoction of resins and glues filled the air. Pots simmered on fires. Wood was being steamed into curves, or straightened where it was curved. Many sharp tools gleamed on one wall, some of them fashioned with blades of skydrift. Wheels, mostly awaiting spokes or iron tyres, rested against another. Had the wheels been sledges, it could have been her father’s workshop, when he had been busier.
Beyond the Aquila Rift: The Best of Alastair Reynolds Page 33