In their hundreds, they were pressing against the low railing that encircled the balcony. They were looking out to sea, drawn by something going on beyond the island. I pushed myself to my feet and stumbled to the slumped form of Purslane. They had not hurt her as badly as me, but there was still a cut on her lip where someone had slapped her.
“Are you all right?” I said, my mouth thick with blood.
“Better than you,” she said.
“I don’t think they’re done with us. There’s a distraction now…maybe we could reach our ships?”
She shook her head and used her finger to wipe blood from my chin. “We started this, Campion. Let’s finish it.”
“It’s Fescue,” I said. “He’s the one.”
We followed the onlookers to the balcony. No one gave us a second glance, even as we pushed forward to the front. All round us the revellers were looking at the sea. Sleek dark forms were surfacing from the midnight waters, black as night themselves. They lolled and bellied in the waves, pushing great flukes and flippers into the sky, jetting white spouts of water from blowholes.
Purslane asked me what was happening.
“I don’t know,” I said truthfully.
“You planned this, Campion. This has to be something to do with Thousandth Night.”
“I know.” I winced at the pain in my chest, certain that the mob had broken a rib. “But I don’t remember what I planned. I thought the meteor shower was an end to it.”
They were everywhere now, surfacing in multitudes. “It’s as if they’re gathering in readiness for something,” Purslane said. “Like the start of a migration.”
“To where?”
“You tell me, Campion.”
But I didn’t have to tell her. It was soon obvious. In ones and twos they started leaving the ocean, rising into the air. Curtains of water drained off their flanks as they parted company with the sea. Ones and twos at first, then whole schools of them, rising into the sky between the hovering cliffs of our ships, as if they were born to fly.
“This is…impossible,” I said. “They’re aquatics. They don’t…fly.”
“Unless you made them that way. Unless you always planned this.”
Pink-tinged aurorae flickered around the rising forms, hinting at the fields that allowed them to fly, and which would—I presumed—sustain them when the air thinned out, high above us. Some ghost of a memory now pushed its way into my consciousness. Had I truly engineered these aquatics for flight, equipping them with implanted field generators, and enough animal wisdom to use them? The memory beckoned, and then shrivelled under my attention.
“Maybe,” I said.
“Good,” Purslane said. “But now the next question: why?”
But we didn’t have long to wonder about that. Suddenly the sky was cut in two by a brighter meteor than any we had seen during the earlier display. It boomed, reverberating down to the horizon and left a greenish aftertinge.
Another followed it: brighter now.
As if the meteor had triggered something, the sea erupted with a vast wave of departing aquatics. Thousands of them now, packed into huge and ponderous shoals or flocks, each aggregation moving with its own dim identity. The seas were emptying of life. Another meteor slashed the sky, bringing a temporary daylight to the scene. Over the horizon, an ominous false dawn signalled some terrible impact. Something large had smashed into my world. As more trails of light split the sky, I sensed that it would not be the last.
The island shook beneath our feet. That made no sense at all: there surely hadn’t been enough time for shockwaves to reach us yet, but none of us had imagined the vibration. I steadied myself on the handrail.
“What…” Purslane began.
The island shook again. That was a cue for the crowd to renew their interest in me, tearing their attention away from the departing aquatics. Purslane squeezed closer to me. I tightened my hold on her, while she redoubled her hold on me.
The crowd advanced.
“Stop,” boomed out a voice.
Everyone halted and turned to look at the speaker. It was Fescue, and he was kneeling by the figure I had shot. He had a hand in the wound I had bored through the body, plunged deep to the wrist. Slowly he withdrew his hand, slick to the cuff with blood, but holding something between his fingers, something that wriggled in them like a little silver starfish.
“This wasn’t Burdock,” he said, standing to his feet, while still holding the obscene, wriggling thing. “It was…a thing. Just like Campion and Purslane told us.” Fescue turned to look at me, his expression grave and forgiving. “You told the truth.”
“Yes,” I said, with all the breath I could muster. I realised that I had been wrong about Fescue: utterly, utterly wrong.
“Then it’s true,” he said. “One of us has committed a crime.”
“Burdock’s body is still on his ship,” I said. “All of this can be proved… if you allow us.”
The ground shook again. Overhead, the meteor assault had become continuous, and the horizon was aglow with fire. I had no sooner registered this than a small shard slammed out of the sky no more than fifteen kilometers from the island, punching a bright frothing wound into the sea. Sensing danger, the island’s screen came on, muting the impact blast to a salty roar. Another trail lanced down fifty kilometers away, raising a huge plume of superheated steam.
The impacts were increasing in severity.
Fescue spoke again. “We’ve all seen the evidence Purslane submitted. Given the truth about Burdock…I believe we should take the rest of the story seriously. Including the part about the murder of an entire culture.” He looked at the two of us. “You wanted to see our anticollision fields, I believe.”
“That’ll tell us who did it,” Purslane said.
“I think you may shortly have your wish.”
He was right. All around the island, the ships were raising their screens again, as protection against the bombardment. The smaller ships at first, then the larger ones—all the way up to the biggest craft of all, those that were already poking into space. The screens quivered and stabilised, and a hail of minor impacts glittered off them.
“Well,” Fescue said, addressing Purslane. “Do you see a match?”
“Yes,” she said. “I do.”
Fescue nodded grimly. “Would you care to tell us who it is?”
Purslane blinked, paralysed by the enormity of what she had to reveal. I held her hand, willing her to find the strength. “I thought it might be you,” she told Fescue. “Your ship matched the size profile…and when you ruined Campion’s ploy…”
“I don’t think he meant to,” I said.
“No, he didn’t,” Purslane said. “That’s obvious now. And in any case, his ship isn’t the best match. Samphire’s ship, on the other hand…”
As one, the crowd’s attention locked onto Samphire. “No,” he said. “There’s been a mistake.”
“Perhaps,” Fescue said. “But there is the matter of the weapons Purslane mentioned: the ones used against Grisha’s people. You’ve always had an interest in ancient weapons, Samphire…especially the weapons of the Homunculus wars.”
Samphire looked astonished. “That was over a million years ago. It’s ancient history!”
“But what’s a million years to the Gentian Line? You knew where those weapons were to be found, and you probably had more than an inkling of how they worked.”
“No,” Samphire said. “This is preposterous.”
“It may well be,” Fescue allowed. “In which case, you’ll be allowed all the time you need to make your case, before a jury of your peers. If you are innocent, we’ll prove it and ask your forgiveness—just as we did with Betony, all those years ago. If you are guilty, we will prove that instead—and uncover the rest of your collaborators. You’ve never struck me as the calculating kind, Samphire: I doubt that you put this together without assistance.”
A wave of change overcame Samphire: his expression hardening. “You can prove what
you like,” he said. “It will change nothing.”
“That sounds suspiciously like an admission of guilt,” Fescue said. “Is it true? Did you really murder an entire culture, just to protect the Great Work?”
Now his expression was full of disdain. There was an authority in his voice I had never heard before. “One culture,” Samphire said. “One pebble on the beach, against an ocean of possibility! Do you honestly think they mattered? Do you honestly think we’ll remember them, in a billion years?”
Fescue turned to his Advocate friends. “Restrain him.”
Three of the Advocates took purposeful steps toward Samphire. But they had only taken three or four paces when Samphire shook his head, more in sorrow than anger, and ripped open his tunic, exposing his smooth and hairless chest to the waist. He plunged his fingers into his own skin and pulled it aside like two theatrical curtains, showing no pain. Instead of muscle and bone, we saw only an oozing clockwork of translucent pink machines, layered around a glowing blue core.
“Homunculus machinery,” Fescue said, with an awesome calm. “He’s a weapon.”
Samphire smiled. A white light curdled in his open chest. It brightened to hellfire, ramming from his mouth and eyes. The construct body writhed as the detonating weapon consumed its nervous system from within. The outer layers crisped and collapsed.
But something was containing the blast. The white light—almost too bright to look at now—could not escape. It was being held back by a man-sized containment bubble, locked around Samphire.
I looked at Fescue. He stood with his arms outstretched, like a sculptor visualising a composition. Thick metal jewellery glinted on his fingers. Not jewellery, I realised now, but miniature field generators. Fescue was holding the containment bubble around Samphire, preventing the blast from escaping and destroying us all. His face was etched with the strain of controlling the generators.
“I’m not sure of the yield,” Fescue said to me, forcing each word out. “Sub-kilotonne range, I think, or else your systems would have detected the homunculus machinery. But it will still be enough to destroy this balcony. Can the island lock a screen around him?”
“No,” I said. “I never allowed for…this.”
“That’s as I thought. I can’t hold it much longer…twenty-five, thirty seconds.” Fescue’s eyes bored into me with iron determination. “You have complete control of the structure, Campion? You can reshape it according to your requirements?”
“Yes,” I said, faltering.
“Then you must drop the two of us through the floor.”
They were standing only a few meters apart. It would only cost me a moment’s concentration to order that part of the floor to detach itself, falling free. But if I did that, I would be sending Fescue to his death.
“Do it!” he hissed.
“I can’t,” I said.
“Campion,” he said. “I know you and I have had our differences. I have always criticised you for lacking spine. Well, now is your chance to prove me wrong. Do this.”
“I…”
“Do it! For the sake of the line!”
I looked at the faces of the other line members. I saw their pain, but also their solemn consent. They were telling me I had no choice. They were telling me to kill Fescue, and save us all.
I did it.
I willed the floor around the two figures to detach itself from the rest of the balcony. The tiny machines forming the fabric of the floor followed my will with dumb obedience, severing the molecular bonds that linked each machine to its neighbour.
For a heart-rending moment, the floor seemed to hover in place.
The field around Samphire quivered, beginning to lose integrity. Fescue’s generators were running out of power, Fescue running out of concentration…
He looked at me and nodded. “Good work, Campion.”
Then they dropped.
It was a long way down, and they were still falling when the revellers surged to the edge of the balcony to look down. The light from the explosion momentarily eclipsed the brightest impacts still raining down on the planet. I nodded at Fescue’s assessment: kilotonne range, easily. He had been right. It would have killed us all, and snapped the spire in two had the balcony not been flung so far out in space. It had been an accidental whim of design, but it had saved us all.
So had Fescue.
THERE WAS A great space battle that night, but this time it was for real, not staged in memory of some ancient, time-fogged conflict. The real Samphire had been on his ship, and when the construct failed to destroy the island, he made a run for orbit. From orbit, he must have planned to turn the ship’s own armaments on Reunion. But Fescue’s allies had anticipated him, and when his ship moved, so did a dozen others. They made interception above the lacerated atmosphere of my dying world and lit the sky with obscene energies. Samphire died, or at least that version of Samphire that had been sent to infiltrate our gathering. It may or may not have been the final one. It may or may not have been the only impostor in our midst.
After the battle, Vetchling, one of the other Advocates, took me aside and told me what she knew.
“Fescue supported the Great Work,” she said. “But not at any cost. When evidence reached him that an atrocity had been committed in the name of the Work…the murder of an entire human culture…he realised that not all of us shared his view.”
“Then Fescue knew all along,” I said, dismayed.
“No. He had shards of intelligence—hints, rumours, whisperings. He still had no idea who had committed the crime; how deeply they were tied to Gentian Line. He did not know whether the rest of the Advocates could be trusted.” She paused. “He trusted me, and a handful of others. But not everyone.”
“But Fescue spoke to me about the Great Work,” I said. “Of how we all had to bind together to bring it into being.”
“He believed it would be for the best. But more than likely he was sounding you out, seeing what you thought of it, goading you into an indiscretion.” Vetchling looked to the simmering sea, punctured by hundreds of volcanic vents that had reopened in the planet’s crust. We were looking down on the sea from a dizzy height now: the island had detached itself from Reunion, and was now climbing slowly into space, pushed by the vast motors I must have installed in its foundation rocks. The blast from Samphire’s weapon had shattered the outlying islands, crumbling them back into the sea. The water had rushed into the fill the caldera left after the main island’s departure, and now there was no trace that it had ever existed.
The party was over.
“He suspected Advocate involvement in the crime,” Vetchling continued. “But he could not rule out someone else being implicated: a sleeper, an agent no one would suspect.”
“He must have suspected Purslane and I,” I said.
“That’s possible. You did spend a lot of time associating, after all. If it’s any consolation, the two of you wouldn’t have been his only suspects. He may even have had his suspicions about Samphire.”
“What will happen to the Great Work now?”
“That’s not just a matter for Gentian Line,” Vetchling said. “But my guess is there’ll be pressure to put the whole thing on the back burner for a few hundred thousand years. A cooling-off period.” She sounded sad. “Fescue was respected. He had a lot of friends beyond our line.”
“I hated him,” I said.
“He wouldn’t have minded. All he really cared about was the line. You did the right thing, Campion.”
“I killed him.”
“You saved us all. You have Fescue’s gratitude.”
“How can you know?” I asked.
She touched a finger to her lips. “I know. Isn’t that enough for you?”
A LITTLE LATER, Purslane and I stood alone on the highest balcony of the island’s central spire. The island had climbed out of what would have been Reunion’s atmosphere, had the atmosphere remained.
Far below, viewed through the flickering curtain of the contai
nment bubble, my planet writhed in the agonies of its death by stoning. The impacting asteroids struck her like fists, bludgeoning her in furious quick-time. At least two, sometimes three or four, arrived within every minute. Their impact fireballs had dispersed most of the atmosphere by now, and had elevated a goodly fraction of the crust into parabolas of molten rock, tongues of flame that arced thousands of kilometers before splashing down. They reminded me of the coronal arcs near the surface of a late-type star. The ocean was a memory: boiled into a dust-choked vapour. Concussion from the multiple impacts was already unhinging the delicate clockwork of the planet’s magnetohydrodynamic core. Had there been a spot on the planet where it was still night, the auroral storms would have been glorious. For a moment, I regretted that I had not arranged matters so that the aurorae had formed part of the show, somehow, someway.
But it was much too late for second thoughts now. It would be someone else’s turn next time.
Purslane took my hand. “Don’t look so sad, Campion. You did well. It was a fine end.”
“You think so?”
“They’ll be raving about this for a million years. What you did with those whales…” She shook her head in undisguised admiration.
“I couldn’t very well let them stay in the ocean.”
“It was lovely. Putting aside everyone else that happened…I think that was my favourite bit. Not that this is bad, either.”
We paused a while to watch a succession of major impacts: a long, sequenced string of them. Continent-sized fissures were beginning to open up deep into the planet’s mantle: wounds as bright as day.
“I created something and now I’m ruining it. Doesn’t that strike you as just the tiniest bit…infantile? Fescue certainly wouldn’t have approved.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s not as if that world ever had any chance of outlasting us. It was created to endure for a specific moment in time. Like a sandcastle, or an ice sculpture. Here, and then gone. In a way, that’s the beauty of it. Who’d marvel at a sandcastle, if sandcastles lasted forever?”
Beyond the Aquila Rift: The Best of Alastair Reynolds Page 56