Absolution Gap

SIXTEEN

The shuttle came to a halt, hovering a few metres above the water. The rescue team assembled in the rear bay, waiting as the first boat—still tethered to the shuttle—was lowered gently on to the surface of the water. The sea was vast and dark in all directions, but also calm, apart from the area immediately within the thermal footprint of the shuttle. There was no wind, nor any indication of unusual Juggler activity, and the sea currents in this region were at their usual seasonal ebb. The iceberg would barely have moved between updates from the mapping network.

Once the boat had stabilised, the first three members of the team were lowered individually on to its decking. Scorpio went down first, followed by a male Security Arm officer called Jac-cottet, with Khouri completing the trio. Rations, weapons and equipment were lowered down in scuffed metal boxes, then quickly stowed in waterproof hatches along the sides of the boat. The last thing to go in was the portable incubator, a transparent box with an opaque base and carrying handle. This was secured with particular care, almost as if it already held a child.

The first boat was then unhitched, allowing Scorpio to steer it clear of the shuttle. The whine of its battery-driven motor cut across the loud simmer of the hovering shuttle. The second boat was then lowered down and allowed to settle. Vasko watched as another Security Arm officer—a woman named Urton—was lowered down into it, followed by Clavain. The old man teetered at first, but quickly found his sea legs. Then it was Vasko’s turn to be lowered down, helped by Blood. Vasko had expected that the other pig would be joining them on the operation, but Scorpio had ordered him to return to First Camp, to take care of things there. Scorpio’s only concession had been to let Blood come this far, to help with the loading of the boats.

The final boxes of equipment were lowered down, causing the boat to sink even more worryingly low in the water. The instant it was unhitched, the Security Arm woman had it speeding over to join Scorpio’s craft. The hulls chafed and squealed together. Minutes of whispered activity followed while items were transferred from craft to craft, until they were evenly trimmed.

“You ready for this?” Urton asked Vasko. “It’s not too late to back out, you know.”

She had been on his case from the moment they had met, during mission-planning sessions back on the Nostalgia for Infinity. Before that, their paths had barely crossed: like Jaccottet, she had only ever been another Arm operative to Vasko, with a few years of seniority on him.

“You seem to have a particular problem with me being on this mission,” he said, as calmly as he could. “Is it something personal?”

“Some of us have earned the right to be here,” she said. “That’s all.”

“And you think I haven’t?”

“You did a small favour for the pig,” she said, keeping her voice low. “Because of that you ended up embroiled in something bigger than you. That doesn’t mean you automatically earn my undying respect.”

“I’m not really interested in your respect,” Vasko said. “What I’m interested in is your professional co-operation.”

“You needn’t worry about that,” she said.

He started to say something, but she had already turned away, levering a heavy Breitenbach cannon into locking stanchions set along one side of the boat.

Vasko did not know what he had done to earn her hostility. Was it simply the fact that he was younger and less experienced? Sighing, he busied himself by helping to check and stow the equipment. It was not pleasant work: all the delicate tackle—the weapons, navigation and communication devices—had been lathered in a revolting opaque grey mucous layer of protective unguent. It kept getting all over his hands, breaking free in sticky ropes.

Swearing under his breath, wiping the muck off on to his knees, he barely noticed as the shuttle yawed away, leaving them alone at sea.

They slid across kilometres of mirror-flat water. The cloud layer had broken up in patches, opening ragged windows in the deep black sky. There were stars visible now, but it was one of those comparatively rare nights when none of Ararat’s moons were above the horizon. Lamps provided their only illumination. The boats kept within metres of each other, scudding side by side, the whine of their motors not quite loud enough to hinder conversation. Vasko had decided early in the expedition that his best course of action—having apparently won the grudging approval, of Clavain—would be to say as little as possible. Besides, he had plenty to think about. He sat near the back of the second boat, squatting on the gunwale, loading and unloading a weapon in a kind of mindless loop, burning the action into the muscle memory of his hands so that it would happen without thought when he needed it to. For the hundredth time since they had set out, he wondered if it would actually come to violence. Perhaps the whole thing would be revealed to be a colossal misunderstanding, nothing more.

In Vasko’s opinion, however, that was rather unlikely.

They had all read Khouri’s testimony; had all sat in on the session while she was cross-examined. Much of what had been discussed had meant little to Vasko, but as the argument and interrogation had continued, a picture had begun to form in his mind.

What was clear was this: Ana Khouri had returned from the computational matrix of the Hades neutron star with Thorn dead and his unborn child in her belly. Even then, she had known what Aura signified: that the unborn girl was not merely her child, but an agent of the ancient minds—human and alien—trapped within the sanctuary of the Hades matrix. Aura was a gift to humanity, her mind loaded with information capable of making a difference in the war against the Inhibitors. In Sylveste’s case—and it seemed likely that she carried some of his memories in addition to the reserves of knowledge—she was an act of atonement.

Khouri knew also that Aura’s information had to be accessed as quickly as possible if it was going to mean anything. They did not have time to wait for her to be born, let alone for her to grow up and begin talking.

With Khouri’s permission, therefore, Remontoire had sent droves of surgical remotes into the heads of mother and child while Aura was still inside Khouri’s womb. The drones had established Conjoiner-type implants in both Aura and Khouri, enabling them to share thoughts and experiences. Khouri had become Aura’s mouthpiece and eyes: she had found herself dreaming Aura’s dreams, unwilling or unable to define precisely where Aura ended and she began. Her child’s thoughts were leaking into her own, permeating them to the point where no concrete division existed.

But the thoughts and experiences had remained difficult to interpret. Khouri’s daughter was still an unborn child; the structures of her mind were tentative and half-formed, her mental model of the external universe necessarily vague. Khouri had done her best to interpret the signals, but despite her efforts only a fraction of the things she was picking up were intelligible. But even that fraction had turned out to be of vital importance. Following clues from Aura—sifting jewellike nuggets from a slurry of confusing signals—Remontoire had made drastic improvements to his arsenal of weapons and instruments. If nothing else, Aura’s potential significance was becoming obvious.

But that was when Skade had entered the affair.

She had arrived in the Delta Pavonis system long after the Inhibitors had completed their torching of Resurgam and the other planets. Quickly she had established lines of negotiation with the human elements still present after the departure of the Nostalgia for Infinity. Her ultimate objective remained the recovery of as many of the old Conjoiner-built cache weapons as possible. But with her own fleet damaged, and with the Inhibitors themselves gathering en masse, Skade was in no position to take what she wanted by brute force.

By then, the Zodiacal Light had completed its self-repairs and the human exploration of the Hades object had reached its logical conclusion. As Remontoire and his allies moved out of the system, therefore, Skade had shadowed them. Tentative communications ensued, and Skade had deployed her existing assets to protect die evacuees from the pursuing Inhibitor elements. The gesture was calculated and risky, but nothing else would convince Remontoire that she was to be trusted.

But Skade had wanted nothing more than to be trusted. She had seen the evidence of Remontoire’s new technologies and had realised that she was now at a tactical disadvantage. She had originally come to take the cache weapons—but the new ones would do equally well.

What had really interested her, however, was Aura.

Over months of shiptime, as the Zodiacal Light and the other two Conjoiner ships raced towards Ararat, Skade had played a delicate game of insinuation. She had gained Remontoire’s confidence, making conspicuous sacrifices, trading intelligence and resources. She had played on his old loyalties to the Mother Nest, convincing him that it was in their mutual best interests to co-operate. When, finally, Remontoire had allowed some of Skade’s fellow Conjoiners aboard his ship, it had merely seemed like the latest cordial step in a thawing detente.

But the Conjoiners had turned out to be a snatch-team. Killing dozens in the process, they had located Khouri, drugged her and taken her back to Skade’s ship. There, Skade’s surgeons had operated on Khouri to remove Aura. The foetus, still only in its sixth month of development, had then been reintroduced into another womb. A biocybernetic support construct of living tissue, the womb had then been installed in the new body Skade had grown for herself after discarding her old, damaged one in the Mother Nest. The implants in Aura’s head were meant to communicate only with their counterparts in Khouri, but Skade’s infiltration routines had quickly undone Remontoire’s handiwork. With Aura now growing inside her, Skade had tapped into the same flow of data that had already given Remontoire his new weapons.

She had her prize, but even then Skade was clever. Too clever, perhaps. She should have killed Khouri then and there, but in Khouri she had seen another means of obtaining leverage over Remontoire. Even after her child had been ripped from her, Khouri was still useful as a potential hostage. Following negotiations, Skade had returned her to Remontoire in return for even more technological trade-offs. Aura would have given her these things sooner or later, but Skade had been in no mood to wait.

By then, the Inhibitors were almost upon them.

When the ships eventually arrived around Ararat, the battle had entered a new and silent phase. As the humans had escalated their conflict to include the use of novel, barely understood weaponry, the Inhibitors had retaliated with savage new strategies of their own. It was a war of maximum stealth: all energies were redirected into undetectable wavebands. Phantom images were projected to confuse and intimidate. Matter and force were thrown around with abandon. Day by day, skirmish by skirmish, even hour by hour, the human factions had fallen in and out of co-operation, depending on minute changes in battle projections. Skade had only wanted to aid Remontoire if the alternative was her own guaranteed annihilation. Remontoire’s reasoning had not been so very far removed.

But a week ago, Skade had changed her tactics. A corvette had left one of her two remaining heavy ships. Remontoire’s side had tracked the swiftly moving ship to Ararat as it slipped between the major battle fronts. Analysis of its acceleration limits suggested that it was carrying at least one human occupant. A small detachment of Inhibitor forces had chased the corvette, cutting much closer to the planet than they usually did. It was as if the machines had realised that something significant was at stake, and that the corvette must be stopped at all costs.

They had failed, but not before damaging the Conjoiner ship. Again, Remontoire and his allies had managed to track the limping spacecraft as its stealth systems shifted in and out of functionality. They had watched the ship ditch in Ararat’s atmosphere, making a barely controlled landing in the sea. There was no sign that anyone on Ararat had even noticed.

A few days later, Khouri had followed. Remontoire had refused to commit a larger force, not when there was so little chance of making it past the Inhibitors to the surface. But they had agreed that a small capsule might stand a slim chance. In addition, someone really needed to let the people on Ararat know what was going on, and sending Khouri would kill two birds with one stone.

Vasko thought about the strength of mind that it must have taken for Khouri to come down here on her own, with no guarantee of rescue, let alone of being able to save her daughter. He wondered what the stronger emotion was: her love for her daughter, or the hatred she must have felt towards Skade.

The more he considered it, the less likely it seemed that this situation was the result of any kind of misunderstanding. And he very much doubted that any of this was going to be resolved by negotiation. Skade might have stolen Aura from Khouri, but she had had the element of surprise, and she would have lost nothing if her attempt had resulted in the death of either mother or baby. But that wasn’t true now. And Skade—if she was still alive and if the baby was still alive inside her—would be expecting them.

What would it take to make her give up Aura?

In the lamp-light, Vasko saw a flicker of silver-grey from Clavain’s direction, and watched as the old man examined the knife he had brought with him from his island retreat.

Rashmika had arranged a private meeting with Quaestor Jones. It took place immediately after a trading session, in the same windowless room she had visited with Crozet. Behind his desk, the quaestor waited for her to say something, hands folded across his generous paunch, his lips conveying suspicion mingled with faint prurient interest. Now and then he popped a morsel of food into the jaws of his pet, which squatted on the desk like a piece of abstract sculpture moulded from bright-green plastic.

As she studied him, Rashmika wondered how good he was at telling truth from lies. It was difficult to tell with some people.

“She’s a persistent little madam, Peppermint,” the quaestor said. “Warned her away from the roof, and there she was, not two hours later. What do you think we should do with her, eh?”

“If you don’t want people up on the roof, you ought to make it a bit harder to get up there,” Rashmika said. “In any case, I don’t particularly like being spied on.”

“I have an obligation to protect my passengers,” he said. “If you don’t like that, you’re very welcome to leave when Mr. Crozet returns to the badlands.”

“Actually, I want to stay aboard,” Rashmika said.

“You mean you wish to make the pilgrimage to the Way?”

“No.” She hid her distaste at the thought of the people on the racks. She had learned that they were called Observers. “Not that. I want to travel to the Way and to find work there. But pilgrimage hasn’t got anything to do with it.”

“Mm. We’ve already been over your skills profile, Miss Els.”

It did not please her that he remembered her name. “We barely discussed it, Quaestor. I don’t think you can really make an honest assessment of my skills based on one short conversation.”

“You informed me you were a scholar.”

“Correct.”

“So return to the badlands and continue your scholarship.” He made an effort to look and sound reasonable. “What better place to further your study of the scuttlers than at the very site where their relics are being unearthed?”

“It isn’t possible to study there,” she said. “No one cares what the relics signify as long as they’re able to get good money for them. No one’s interested in the bigger picture.”

“And you are, I take it?”

“I have theories concerning the scuttlers,” she said, fully aware of how precocious she sounded, “but to make further progress I need access to proper data, the kind in the possession of the church-sponsored archaeological groups.”

“Yes, we all know about those groups. But aren’t they in a position to form theories of their own? Begging your pardon, Miss Els, but why do you imagine that you—a seventeen-year-old—are likely to bring a fresh perspective to the matter?”

“Because I have no vested interest in maintaining the Quaicheist view,” Rashmika said.

“Which would be?”

“That the scuttlers are an incidental detail, unrelated to the deeper matter of the vanishings, or at best a reminder of what’s likely to happen to us if we don’t follow the Quaicheist route to salvation.”

“There’s no doubt that they were denied salvation,” the quaestor said, “but then so were eight or nine other alien cultures. I forget what the latest count is. There’s clearly no particular mystery here. Local details about this particular vanished species, their history and society and so on, still need to be researched, of course, but what happened to them in the end isn’t in doubt. We’ve all heard those pilgrims’ tales from the evacuated systems, Miss Els, the stories about machines emerging from the dark between the stars. Now, it seems, it’s our turn.”

“The supposition being that the scuttlers were wiped out by the Inhibitors?” she asked.

He popped a crumb into the intricate little mouth of his animal. “Draw your own conclusions.”

“That’s all I’ve ever done,” she said. “And my conclusion is that what happened here was different.”

“Something wiped them out,” the quaestor said. “Isn’t that enough for you?”

“I’m not sure it was the same thing that wiped out the Ama-rantin, or any of those other cultures. If the Inhibitors had been involved, do you think they’d have left this moon intact? They might have compunctions about destroying a world, a place with an established biosphere, but an airless moon like Hela? They’d have turned it into a ring system, or a cloud of radioactive steam. Yet whoever or whatever finished off the scuttlers wasn’t anywhere near that thorough.” She paused, fearful of revealing too much of her cherished thesis. “It was a rush job. They left behind too much. It’s almost as if they wanted to leave a message, maybe a warning.”

“You’re invoking an entirely new agency of cosmic extinction, is that it?”

Rashmika shrugged. “If the facts demand it.”

“You’re not greatly troubled by self-doubt, are you, Miss Els?”

“I know only that the vanishings and the scuttlers must be related. So does everyone else. They’re just too scared and intimidated to admit it.”

“And you’re not?”

“I was put on Hela for a reason,” she said, the words tumbling out of her mouth as if spoken by someone else.

The quaestor looked at her for a long, uncomfortable moment. “And this crusade,” he said, “this quest to uncover the truth no matter how many enemies it makes you—is that why you’re so intent on reaching the Permanent Way?”

“There’s another reason,” she said, quietly.

The quaestor appeared not to have heard her. “You have a particular interest in the First Adventists, don’t you? I noticed it when I mentioned my role as legate.”

“It’s the oldest of the churches,” Rashmika said. “And one of the largest, I’d imagine.”

“The largest. The First Adventist order runs three cathedrals, including the largest and heaviest on the Way.”

“I know they have an archaeological study group,” she said. “I’ve written to them. Surely there’d be some work for me there.”

“So you can advance your theory and rub everyone up the wrong way?”

She shook her head. “I’d work quietly, doing what was needed. It wouldn’t stop me examining material. I just need a job, so that I can send some money home and make some enquiries.”

He sighed, as if the world and all its troubles were now his responsibility. “What exactly do you know of the cathedrals, Miss Els? I mean in the physical sense.”

She sensed that the question, for once, was a sincere one. ‘They are moving structures,“ she said, ”much larger than this caravan, much slower…but machines, all the same. They travel around Hela on the equatorial road we call the Permanent Way, completing a revolution once every three hundred and twenty standard days.“

“And the point of this circumnavigation?”

“Is to ensure that Haldora is always in the sky, always at the zenith. The world moves beneath the cathedrals, but the cathedrals cancel out that motion.”

A smile ghosted the quaestor’s lips. “And what do you know about the motion of the cathedrals?”

“It’s slow,” she said. “On average, the cathedrals only have to move at a baby’s crawl to complete a circuit of Hela in three hundred and twenty days. A third of a metre a second is enough.”

“That doesn’t seem fast, does it?”

“Not really, no.”

“I assure you it does when you have a few hundred vertical metres of metal sliding towards you and you have a job to do that involves stepping out of the way at the last possible moment, before you fall under the traction plates.” Quaestor Rutland Jones leant forwards, compressing the bulk of his belly against the table and lacing his fingers before him. “The Permanent Way is a road of compacted ice. With one or two complications, it encircles the planet like a ribbon. It is never wider than two hundred metres, and is frequently much narrower than that. Yet even a small cathedral may be fifty metres across. The largest of them—the Lady Morwenna, for instance—are double that. And since the cathedrals all wish to situate themselves under the mathematically exact spot on the Way that corresponds to Haldora being precisely at the zenith, directly overhead, there is a certain degree of… ” His voice became mockingly playful. “… competition for the available space. Between rival churches, even those bound by the ecumenical protocols, it can be surprisingly fierce. Sabotage and trickery are not unheard of. Even amongst cathedrals belonging to one church, there is still a degree of playful jockeying.”

“I’m not sure I see your point, Quaestor.”

“I mean that damage to the Way—deliberately inflicted vandalism—is not unusual. Cathedrals may leave obstacles in their wake, or they may tamper with the integrity of the Way itself. And Hela itself does its share of harm. Rock blizzards… ice-flows… volcanic eruptions… all these can render the Way temporarily impassable. That is why cathedrals have Permanent Way gangs.” He looked at Rashmika sharply. “The gangs work ahead of the cathedrals. Not too far ahead, or they risk their good work being exploited by rivals, but just far enough to enable their tasks to be completed before their cathedrals arrive. I’ll make no bones about it: the work is difficult and dangerous. But it is work that requires some of the skills you have mentioned.” He tapped pudgy fingers against the table. “Working under vacuum, on ice. Using cutting and blasting tools. Programming servitors for the most hazardous tasks.”

“That’s not the kind of work I had in mind,” Rashmika said.

“No?”

“Like I said, I think my skills would be put to far better use in a clerical context, such as one of the archaeological study groups.”

“That may be so, but vacancies in those groups are rare indeed. On the other hand, by the very nature of the work, vacancies do tend to keep opening up in clearance gangs.”

“Because people keep dying?”

“It’s tough work. But it is work. And there are degrees of risk even in clearance duty. It shouldn’t be too difficult to find you something slightly less hazardous than fuse-laying, something where you might not even have to wear a surface suit all day long. And it might keep you occupied until something opens up in one of the study groups.”

Rashmika read the quaestor’s face. He had not lied to her so far. “It’s not what I wanted,” she said, “but if it’s all that’s on offer, I’ll have to take it. If I said I was prepared to do such work, could you find me a vacancy?”

“If I felt I could live with myself afterwards… then yes, I dare say I could.”

“I’m sure you’d sleep fine at night, Quaestor.”

“And you are certain that this is what you want?”

She nodded, before her own doubt began to show. “If you could start making the arrangements, I would be grateful.”

“There are always favours that can be called in,” he said. “But there is something I need to mention. There are people looking for you, from the Vigrid badlands. The constabulary can’t touch you here, but your absence has been noted.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.”

“There has been speculation about the purpose of your mission. Some say it has something to do with your brother.” The green creature looked up, as if taking a sudden interest in the conversation. It was definitely missing one of its forelimbs, Rashmika noted. “Harbin Els,” the quaestor continued. “That’s his name, isn’t it?”

There was clearly no point pretending otherwise. “My brother went to look for work on the Way,” she said. “They lied to him about what would happen, said they wouldn’t put the dean’s blood in him. We never saw him again.”

“And now you feel the need to find out what became of him?”

“He was my brother,” she said.

“Then perhaps this may be of interest to you.” The quaestor reached under his desk and produced a folded sheet of paper. He pushed it towards her. The green creature watched it slide across the desk.

She took the letter, rubbing her thumb against the red wax seal that held it closed. Embossed on the seal was a spacesuit, arms spread like a crucifix, radiating shafts of light. The seal had been broken; it only loosely adhered to the paper on one side of the join.

“What is it?” she asked, looking at his face very carefully.

“It came through official channels, from the Lady Morwenna. That’s a Glocktower seal.”

That part was true, she thought. Or at least the quaestor sincerely believed that was the case. “When?”

“Today.”

But that was a lie.

“Addressed to me?”

“I was told to make sure you saw it.” He looked down, not wanting to meet her eyes. It made his face harder to read.

“By whom?”

“No one… I… ” Again, he was lying. “I looked at it. Don’t think ill of me—I look at all correspondence that passes through the caravan. It’s a matter of security.”

“Then you know what it says?”

“I think you should read it for yourself,” he said.