Beyond the Aquila Rift: The Best of Alastair Reynolds

by Alastair Reynolds

  “This was your idea, Dimitri. You decide when we leave.”

  “I’m going to finish suiting up. We’ll check comms and life-support thoroughly before we leave. And we’ll make damned sure the Soyuz isn’t going to drift away from us.”

  Galenka’s estimate was on the nail. Twenty minutes later we were deep into the thicket, with blue-green structures crowding around us. Closest to us was a trunk or branch with thornlike protrusions. Galenka brought the Soyuz in against the trunk until the hull shuddered with the contact. Ordinarily I’d have been worried about a pressure rupture, but now that we were both wearing helmets that was only a distant concern. Galenka had picked her spot well, the Soyuz resting on one of the out-jutting thorns. Friction, and the ship’s almost negligible weight, would serve to hold it in place until we were ready to leave. Galenka had even taken pains to make sure the forward escape hatch was not blocked.

  “Maybe you should stay here, while I check out the Progress,” I said. I didn’t feel heroic, but it seemed the right thing to say.

  “If we have to unload it, it’ll go quicker with two of us,” Galenka responded. “We can form a supply chain, save going all the way back each time. And keep an eye on each other.” She unbuckled. “You ready for this? I’m going to vent our air.”

  She let the air drain out through the release valve before opening the hatch. My suit ballooned around me, the seals and joints creaking with the pressure differential. I’d checked everything, but I was all too conscious of the thin membranes of fabric protecting me from lung-freezing death. Every gesture, every movement, was now more awkward, more potentially hazardous than before. Tear a glove on sharp metal, and you might as well have cut your hand off.

  Galenka popped the hatch. I pushed these concerns from my mind and exited the Soyuz. Now that I was seeing the alien environment with my own eyes—through a thin glass visor, rather than a thick porthole or monitor—it appeared not only larger, but vastly more oppressive and strange. The all-enveloping shell was a pitiless, hope-crushing black. I told myself that a window would eventually open for us to leave, just as one had allowed us to enter. But it was hard to shake the feeling that we were little warm animals, little shivering mammals with fast heartbeats, caught in a cold dark trap that we had just sprung.

  “Let’s do this shit, and get back home,” Galenka said, pushing past me.

  We climbed down the pea-green flank of the Soyuz, using the handholds that had been bolted on for weightless operations. We left the ship with the hatch open, the last dribbles of air still venting from the hull. My feet touched the thorn. Although I had almost no weight to speak of, the surface felt solid under me. It was formed from the same translucent material as the rest of Shell 4, but it wasn’t as slippery as glass or ice. I reached out a hand and steadied myself against the trunk. I felt as if I was touching bark or rock through my glove.

  “I think we can do this,” I said.

  “The Progress should be directly under us, where this trunk constricts against the one over here. I’d rather climb than drift, if that’s OK with you.”

  “Agreed. There are thorns all the way down, spaced every three or four meters—we should be able to use them for grabs, even if we can’t get traction on the rest of it. It shouldn’t be much harder coming back up.”

  “I’m right behind you.”

  If the thicket registered our presence, there was no evidence of it. The structure loomed around us, dizzying in its scale and complexity, but giving no sign of being alive or responsive to the intrusion of human technology. I began to ease, trying to imagine myself in a forest or cave system—something huge but mindless—rather than the glowing guts of an alien machine.

  It took fifteen minutes of cautious progress to reach the lodged Progress. It was jammed in nose first, with the engine pointing at us. A ship like that was not normally a man-rated vehicle, but the usual variants had a hatch at the front, so that space station crews could enter the vehicle when it was docked. Our Progress had been augmentd with scientific gear, computers, additional fuel and batteries. The docking hatch had become a kind of mouth by which the robot could feed samples into itself, using the feeler-like appendages of its sampling devices. Inside was a robotic system which sorted the samples, fed them into miniature laboratories where appropriate, and delivered whatever was left into a storage volume just ahead of the fuel tanks. We couldn’t have got in through the mouth even if the Progress hadn’t been jammed in nose first, but that didn’t matter. A secondary hatch and docking assembly had been installed in the side, so that the sample compartment could be unloaded through the Tereshkova’s own docking port.

  Galenka, who had overtaken me in our descent from the Soyuz, was the first to reach the sample hatch. The controls were designed to be opened by someone in a suit. She worked the heavy toggles until the hatch swung open, exposing the non-pressurised storage compartment. The hole in the side of the Progress was just large enough for a suited person to crawl through. Without hesitation she grabbed yellow handholds and levered herself inside. A few moments later the chamber lit up with the wavering light of her helmet-mounted flashlamp.

  “Talk to me, Galenka.”

  “It’s all racked and sorted, Dimitri. Must be about half a tonne of stuff in here already. Some of the chunks are pretty big. Still warm, too. Going to be a bitch of a job moving all of them back to the Soyuz.”

  “We’ll take what we can; that was always the idea. If nothing else we should make sure we’ve got unique samples from both Shell 1 and Shell 2.”

  “I’m going to try and bring out the first chunk. I’ll pass it through the hatch. Be ready.”

  “I’m here.”

  But as I said that, a status panel lit up on the side of my faceplate. “Comms burst from Tereshkova,” I said, as alphanumeric gibberish scrolled past. “A window must just have opened.”

  “Feeling better now?”

  “Guess it’s nice to know the windows are still behaving.”

  “I could have told you they would.” Galenka grunted with the effort of dislodging the sample she had selected. “So—any news?”

  “Nothing. Just a carrier signal, trying to establish contact with us. Means the ship’s still out there, though.”

  “I could have told you that as well.”

  It took twenty minutes to convey one sample back to the Soyuz. Doing it as a relay didn’t help—it took two of us to nurse the object between us, all the while making sure we didn’t drift away from the structure. Things got a little faster after that. We returned to the jammed Progress in good time and only took fifteen minutes to get the second sample back to our ship. We now had pieces of Shell 1 and Shell 2 aboard, ready to be taken back home.

  A voice at the back of my head said that we should quit while we were ahead. We’d salvaged something from this mess—almost certainly enough to placate Baikonur. We had taken a risk and it had paid off. But there was still more than an hour remaining of the time I had allowed us. If we moved quickly and efficiently—and we were already beginning to settle into a rhythm—we could recover three or four additional samples before it was time to start our journey back. Who knew what difference five or six samples might make, compared to two?

  “Just for the record,” Galenka said, when we reached the Progress again, “I’m getting itchy feet here.”

  “We’ve still got time. Two more. Then we’ll see how we’re doing.”

  “You were a lot more jumpy until that window opened.”

  She was right. I couldn’t deny it.

  I was thinking of that when another comms burst came through. For a moment I was gladdened—just seeing the scroll of numbers and symbols, even if it meant nothing to me, made me feel closer to the Tereshkova. Home was just three shells and a sprint across vacuum away. Almost close enough to touch, like the space station that had sped across the sky over Klushino, when my father held me on his shoulders.

  “Dimitri,” crackled a voice. “Galenka. Yakov here. I ho
pe you can hear me.”

  “What is it, friend?” I asked, hearing an edge in his voice I didn’t like.

  “You’d better listen carefully—we could get cut off at any moment. Baikonur detected a change in the Matryoshka—a big one. Shell 1 pulsations have increased in amplitude and frequency. It’s like nothing anyone’s seen since the first apparition. Whatever you two are doing in there—it’s having an effect. The thing is waking. You need to think about getting out, while the collision-avoidance algorithm will still get you through Shell 1. Those pulsations change any more, the algorithm won’t be any use.”

  “He could be lying,” Galenka said. “Saying whatever he needs to say to get us to go back.”

  “I’m not lying. I want you to come back. And I want that Soyuz back so that at least one of us can get home.”

  “I think we’d better move,” I said.

  “The remaining samples?”

  “Leave them. Let’s just get back to the ship as quickly as possible.”

  As I spoke, the comms window blipped out. Galenka pushed away from the Progress. I levered myself onto the nearest thorn and started climbing. It was quicker now that we didn’t have to carry anything between us. I thought of the changing conditions in Shell 1 and hoped that we’d still be able to pick a path through the lethal, shifting maze of field-lines.

  We were half way to the Soyuz—I could see it overhead, tantalisingly near—when Galenka halted, only just below me.

  “We’re in trouble,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Look down, Dimitri. Something’s coming up.”

  I followed her instruction and understood. We couldn’t see the Progress any more. It was lost under a silver tide, a sea of gleaming mercury climbing slowly through the thicket, swallowing everything as it rose.

  “Climb,” I said.

  “We’re not going to make it, Dimitri. It’s rising too quickly.”

  I gritted my teeth: typical Galenka, pragmatic to the end. But even she had resumed her ascent, unable to stop her body from doing what her mind knew to be futile. She was right, too. The tide was going to envelop us long before we reached the Soyuz. But I couldn’t stop climbing either. I risked a glance down and saw the silver fluid lapping at Galenka’s heels, then surging up to swallow her lowest boot.

  “It’s got me.”

  “Keep moving.”

  She pulled the boot free, reached the next thorn, and for a moment it appeared that she might be capable of out-running the fluid. My mind raced ahead to the Soyuz, realising that even if we got there in time, even if we got inside and sealed the hatch, we wouldn’t be able to get the ship aloft in time.

  Then the fluid took more of Galenka. It lapped to her thighs, then her waist. She slowed her climb.

  “It’s pulling me back,” she said, grunting with the effort. “It’s trying to drag me in.”

  “Fight it.”

  Maybe she did—it was hard to tell, with her movements so impeded. The tide consumed her to the chest, taking her backpack, then absorbed her helmet. She had one hand raised above her head, grasping for the next thorn. The tide took it.

  “Galenka.”

  “I’m here.” She came through indistinctly, comms crackling with static. “I’m in it now. I can’t see anything. But I can still move, still breathe. It’s like being in the immersion tank.”

  “Try and keep climbing.”

  “Picking up some suit faults now. Fluid must be interfering with the electronics, with the cooling system.” She faded out, came back, voice crazed with pops and crackles and hisses. “Oh, God. It’s inside. I can feel it. It’s cold, against my skin. Rising through the suit. How the fuck did it get in?”

  She faded.

  “Galenka. Talk to me.”

  “In my helmet now. Oh, God. Oh, God. It’s still rising. I’m going to drown, Dimitri. This is not right. I did not want to fucking drown.”

  “Galenka?”

  I heard a choked scream, then a gurgle. Then nothing.

  I kept climbing, while knowing it was useless. The tide reached me a few moments later. It swallowed me and then found a way into my suit, just as it had with Galenka.

  Then it found a way into my head.

  WE DIDN’T DROWN.

  There was a moment of absolute terror as it forced its way down my throat, through my eye sockets, nose and ears. The gag reflex kicked in, and then it was over. Not terror, no panic, just blissful unconsciousness.

  Until I woke up on my back.

  The silver tide was abating. It had left our bodies, left the inside of our suits. It was draining off them in chrome rivulets, leaving them dry and undamaged. We were lying like upended turtles, something like Earth-normal gravity pinning us to the floor. It took all my effort to lever myself into a sitting position, and then to stand up, fighting the weight of my backpack as it tried to drag me down. My suit was no longer ballooning out, meaning that we were in some kind of pressurised environment.

  I looked around, taking deep, normal breaths.

  Galenka and I were in a huge iron-grey room with gill-like sluice vents in the side walls. The fluid was rushing out through the vents, exposing a floor of slightly twinkling black, like polished marble. Greyblue light poured down through hexagonal grids in the arched ceiling. I wasn’t going to take any chances on it being breathable.

  I inspected the outer covering for tears or abrasions, but it looked as good as when I’d worn it.

  “Galenka,” I said. “Can you hear me?”

  “Loud and clear, Dimitri.” I heard her voice on the helmet radio, but also coming through the glass, muffled but comprehensible. “Whatever we just went through—I don’t think it hurt our suits.”

  “Do you still have air?”

  “According to the gauge, good for another six hours.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “Like I’ve been scrubbed inside with caustic soda. But otherwise—I’m all right. Clear-headed, like I’ve just woken up after a really slong sleep. I actually feel better, more alert, than before we left the Soyuz.”

  “That’s how I feel,” I said. “Where do you think we are?”

  “The heart of it. The middle of the Matryoshka. Where else could we be? It must have brought us here for a reason. Maybe it wants to assess the foreign objects it detected, then work out how best to recycle or dispose of them.”

  “Maybe. But then why keep us alive? It must recognise that we’re living. It must recognise that we’re thinking beings.”

  “Always the optimist, Dimitri.”

  “Something’s happening. Look.”

  A bar of light had cut across the base of part of the wall. It was becoming taller, as if a seamless door was opening upwards. The light ramming through the widening gap was the same grey-blue that came through the ceiling. Both of us tensing, expecting to be squashed out of existence at any moment, we turned to face whatever awaited us.

  Beyond was a kind of corridor, sloping down in a gently steepening arc, so that the end was not visible except as an intensification of that silvery glow. The inwardly-sloping walls of the corridor—rising to a narrow spine of a ceiling—were dense with intricately carved details, traced in the blue-grey light.

  “I think we should walk,” Galenka said, barely raising her voice above a whisper.

  We started moving, taking stiff, slow paces in our EVA suits. We passed through the door, into the corridor. We commenced down the curved ramp of the floor. Though I should have been finding it harder and harder to keep my footing, I had no sense that I was on a steepening grade. I looked at Galenka and she was still walking upright, at right angles to the surface of the floor. I paused to turn around, but already the room we had been in was angled out of view, with the door beginning to lower back down.

  “Do you hear that sound?” Galenka asked.

  I had been about to say the same thing. Over the huff and puff of our suit circulators it was not the easiest thing to make out. But there was a low dr
oning noise, like the bass note of an organ. It was coming from all around us, from the very fabric of the Matryoshka. It sustained a note for many seconds before changing pitch. As we walked we heard a pattern of notes repeat, with subtle variations. I couldn’t piece together the tune, if indeed there was one—it was too slow, too deep for that—but I didn’t think I was hearing the random emanations of some mindless mechanical process.

  “It’s music,” I said. “Slowed down almost to death. But it’s still music.”

  “Look at the walls, Dimitri.”

  They were astonishing. The walls had been carved with a hypnotically detailed mazelike pattern, one that I could never quite bring into focus. Edges and ridges of the pattern pushed out centimetres from the wall. I felt a strange impulse to reach out and touch, as if there was a magnetic attraction working on my fingers.

  Even as I acknowledged this impulse, Galenka—walking to my left—reached out her left hand and skirted the pattern on her side. She flinched and withdrew her gloved fingers with a gasp of something that could have been pain or astonishment or simple childlike delight.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I just got…I can’t describe it, Dimitri. It was like—everything.”

  “Everything what?”

  “Everything trying to get into my head. Everything at once. Like the whole universe gatecrashing my brain. It wasn’t unpleasant. It was just—too much.”

  I reached out my hand.

  “Be careful.”

  I touched the wall. Knowledge, clean and viridescent, as brittle and endlessly branching as a flower chilled in liquid nitrogen, forced its way into my skull. I felt mental sutures straining under the pressure. I flinched back, just as Galenka had done. The contact could not have lasted more than an instant, but the information that had gushed through was ringing in my skull like the after-chime of God’s own church bell.

  A window of comprehension had opened and slammed shut again. I was dizzy with what it had shown me. I already knew more about the Matryoshka than any other living person, with the possible exception of Galenka.