Absolution Gap

THIRTY-TWO

The caravan sidled up to the kerb of the Way, overtaking one cathedral after another. Monstrous machinery loomed over Rashmika. She was too overwhelmed to take it all in, retaining only a blurred impression of great dark-grey mechanisms, projected to an inhuman scale. As the caravan wormed between them, the cathedrals appeared to remain completely still, as fully rooted to the landscape as the buildings she had seen on the Jarnsaxa Flats. Except, of course, that these buildings were true skyscrapers, jagged fingers clawing across the face of Haldora. And that stillness, Rashmika knew, was only an illusion born of the caravan’s speed. Were they to stop, one or another of the cathedrals would be rolling over them within a few minutes.

It was said that the cathedrals never stopped. It was also said that they seldom deviated from their paths unless a given obstacle was too large to be safely crushed beneath their traction mechanisms.

The Way was much narrower than she had expected. She recalled what Quaestor Jones had said: that it was never more than two hundred metres wide, and usually much less than that. Distances were difficult to judge in the absence of any familiar landmarks, but she did not think the Way was more than one hundred metres wide at any point along this stretch. Some of the larger cathedrals were almost that wide themselves, squatting across the full width of the Way like mechanical toads. The smaller cathedrals were able to travel two abreast, but only by allowing parts of their superstructures to lean out over the edges of the Way. Here, it did not really matter: the Way was just a smoothed and cleared strip across the other-wise flat and unobstructed expanse of the Flats. Any one of the cathedrals could have diverted off the path prepared ahead of it, taking its chances on the slightly rougher ground on either side. But clearly no such risk-taking was on the cards today, and the relative order of the procession looked set to remain unchallenged for the time being. This was the normal way of things: the jockeying, jousting and general dirty tricks that one heard about in the badlands were very much the exception rather than the rule, and such stories, Rashmika had long suspected, enjoyed a degree of exaggeration as they travelled north.

For now, therefore, the flotillas of cathedrals would creep along the Way in a more or less fixed formation. If she thought of them as city-states, then now would be a period of trade and diplomacy rather than war. Doubtless there would be espionage and subtle gamesmanship, and doubtless plans were continually being drawn up for future contingencies. But for the moment what prevailed was a state of genteel cordiality, with all the strained courtesies one customarily expected between historical rivals.

This suited Rashmika: it would be difficult enough fitting in with the repair gang without having to deal with additional crises and complications.

She had been given orders to collect her belongings—such as they were—and remain in one vehicle of the caravan. The reason soon became obvious, as the caravan fissioned into many smaller components. Rashmika watched as the quaestor’s workers hopped from vehicle to vehicle, unhooking umbilicals and couplings with cool indifference to the obvious risks.

Some of these sub-caravans were still several vehicles in length, and she watched as they peeled away to rendezvous with the larger cathedrals or cathedrals-clusters. To her disappointment, however, the vehicle to which she had been assigned departed on its own. She was not alone in it—there were a dozen or so pilgrims and migrant workers waiting with her—but any hope that the Catherine of Iron might turn out to be amongst the larger cathedrals was quickly dashed, if it only merited one portion of the caravan.

Well, she had to start somewhere, as the quaestor had said.

Quickly the vehicle nosed away from the major cathedrals, bouncing and jinking over the ruts and potholes they had left in their wake.

“You lot,” she said, addressing the other travellers, standing in front of them with arms akimbo. “Which one of those is the Lady Morwenna?”

One of her companions wiped a smear of mucus from his upper lip. “None of them, love.”

“One of them has to be,” she said. “That’s the main gathering. The sweet spot is right there.”

“That’s the main gathering all right, but no one said the Lady Mor was part of it.”

“Now you’re being oblique for the sake of it.”

“Hark at her,” someone else said. “Right stuck-up little cow.”

“All right,” she countered. “If the Lady Morwenna isn’t there, where is it?”

“Why are you so interested?” the first one asked.

“It’s the oldest cathedral on the Way,” she said. “I think it’d be a little strange not to want to see it, don’t you?”

“All we want is work, love. Doesn’t matter which one doles it out. It’s still the same fucking ice you have to shovel out the way.”

“Well, I’m still interested,” she said.

“It isn’t any of those cathedrals,” another voice said, bored but not unreasonable. She saw a man at the back of the gathering, lying down on a couch with a cigarette in one hand and the other tucked deep into his trousers, where it rummaged and scratched. “But you can see it.”

“Where?”

“Over here, little girl.”

She stepped towards the man.

“Watch him,” another voice said. “He’ll be on you like a rash.”

She hesitated. The man waved her over with his cigarette. He pulled his hand free from his trousers. It ended in a crude-looking metal claw. He transferred the cigarette to it and beckoned her over with his undamaged hand. “It’s all right. I stink a bit, but I don’t bite. Just want to show you the Lady Mor, that’s all.”

“I know,” she said. She stepped through the jumble of other bodies.

The man pointed to a small scuffed window behind him. He wiped it clean with his sleeve. “Look through there. You can still see the top of her spire.”

She looked. All she saw was landscape. “I’m not…”

“There.” The man nudged her chin until she was looking in exactly the right direction. He smelled like vinegar. “Between those bluffs, do you see something sticking up?”

“There’s something sticking up all right,” someone else said.

“Shut up,” Rashmika snapped. There must have been something in the tone of her voice because it had exactly the desired effect.

“See it now?” the man asked.

“Yes. What’s it doing all the way out there? It can’t be on the Permanent Way at all.”

“It is,” the man said. “Just not on the part we usually follow.”

“Doesn’t she know?” said another voice.

“If I did, I wouldn’t be asking,” Rashmika replied tartly.

“The Way branches near here,” the man said, explaining it to her the way you would explain something to a child. She decided that she did not really like him after all. He was helping her, but the manner in which he was helping mattered, too. Sometimes refusal was better than grudging assistance. “Splits in two,” he said. “One route is the one the cathedrals normally follow. Takes them all the way down to the Devil’s Staircase.”

“I know about that,” she said. “Zigzag ramps cut into the side of the Rift. The cathedrals follow them down to the bottom of the Rift, then up the other side again after they’ve crossed it.”

“Right. Care to have a guess where the other route takes them?”

“I’m assuming it crosses the bridge.”

“You’re a clever little girl.”

She pulled away from the window. “If there’s a branch of the Way from the bridge to here, why didn’t we follow it?”

“Because for a caravan it isn’t the quickest route. Caravans can cut corners, go up slopes and around tight bends. Cathe-drals can’t. They have to take the long way around anything they can’t blast through. Anyway, the route to the bridge doesn’t see much maintenance. You might not have noticed it was a part of the Way even if you were on it.”

“Then the Lady Morwenna will pull further and further away from the main gathering of cathedrals,” she said. “Doesn’t that mean Haldora won’t be overhead any more?”

“Not exactly, no,” he said. He scratched at the side of his face with his claw, metal rasping against stubble. “But the Devil’s Staircase isn’t bang on the equator, either. They had to dig it where they could dig it, not where it should have gone. Another thing, too: you go down the Devil’s Staircase, you’ve got overhanging ice to contend with. Not good for Observers: blocks their view of the planet. And the Staircase is where cathedrals stand the best chance of pulling ahead of each other. But if one of them ever managed to cross the bridge, it’d be so far ahead of the pack it’d have to stop to let the others catch up with it. After that, nothing would ever get ahead of them. They could build themselves as wide as they liked. Never mind the glory in having crossed the bridge. They’d rule the Way.”

“But no cathedral has ever crossed the bridge.” She remembered the cratered ruins she had seen from the roof of the caravan. “I know that one did try it once, but…”

“No one said it wasn’t madness, love, but that’s old pop-eyed Dean Quaiche for you. You should be glad you’re ending up on the Iron Katy; They say the rats have already started leaving the Lady Mor.”

“The dean must think he has a good chance of making it,” she said.

“Or he’s insane.” The man grinned at her, his yellow teeth like chipped tombstones. “Take your pick.”

“I don’t have to,” she said, then added, “Why did you call him pop-eyed?”

They all laughed at her. One of them made goggles of his fingers around his eyes.

“Girl’s got a lot to learn,” someone said.

The Catherine of Iron was one of the smaller cathedrals in the procession, travelling alone several kilometres to the rear of the main pack. There were others further behind it, but these were little more than spires on the horizon. Almost certainly they were struggling to catch up with the others, determined to bring themselves as close as possible to the abstract moving point on the Way that corresponded to Haldora sitting precisely overhead. The ultimate shame, from a cathedral’s point of view, was to fall so far back that even the casual observer became aware that Haldora was not quite at the zenith. Worse than that—unspeakably worse—was the stigma that went beyond shame that was the fate suffered by any cathedral that lost sight of Haldora altogether. That was why the work of the Permanent Way gangs was taken so seriously. A day’s delay here or there was nothing, but many such delays could have a catastrophic effect on a cathedral’s progress.

Rashmika’s vehicle slowed as it approached the Catherine of Iron, then looped around to the rear. The partial circumnavigation afforded her an excellent view of the place that was to be her new home. Small though her assigned cathedral undoubtedly was, it was not an untypical example of their general style.

The flat base of the cathedral was a rectangle thirty metres wide and perhaps one hundred in length. Above this base towered the superstructure; below it—partially hidden by metal skirts—lay the rude business of engines and traction systems. The cathedral inched along the Way by dint of many parallel sets of caterpillar tracks. Currently, on one side, an entire traction unit had been hauled ten or so metres above the ice. Suited workers were lashed to the immobile underside of one of the tread plates, their welding and cutting torches flashing a pretty blue-violet as they effected some repair. Rashmika had never asked herself how the cathedrals dealt with that kind of overhaul, and the sheer bloody-minded ruthlessness of the solution—fixing part of the traction machinery while the cathedral was still moving—rather impressed her.

All around the cathedral, now that she noticed it, was more such activity; traceries of scaffolding covered much of the superstructure. Small figures were working everywhere she looked. The way they popped in and out of hatches, high above ground, made her think of clockwork automata.

Above the flat base, the cathedral conformed more or less to the traditional architectural expectations. Seen from above, the cathedral was an approximate cruciform shape, made up of a long nave with two stubbier transepts jutting out on either side and a smaller chapel at the head of the cross. Rising from the intersection of the nave and its transepts was a square-based tower. It rose for one hundred meters—about equal to the length of the cathedral—before tapering into a four-sided spire which was another fifty metres higher. The ridges of the spire were serrated, and at the very top of the spire was an assemblage of communications dishes and semaphoric signalling mirrors. Rising from the traction base and angling inwards to connect with the top part of the nave were a dozen or so flying buttresses formed from skeletal girderwork. One or two were obviously missing or incomplete. Much of the cathedral, in fact, had a haphazard look, with various parts of the architecture sitting in only approximate harmony with each other. There were whole sections that appeared to have been replaced in great haste, or at minimal expense, or some combination of the two. The spire appeared to lean at a small angle away from the true vertical. It was propped up on one side by scaffolding.

She didn’t know whether to be saddened or relieved. At this point, knowing what she now knew about Deari Quaiche’s plans for the Lady Morwenna, she was glad not to have been assigned to it. She could entertain all the fantasies she liked, but there was no chance of rescuing her brother before the Lady Morwenna reached the bridge. She would be lucky to have infiltrated any level of the cathedral’s hierarchy by then.

The notion of infiltration chimed in her head. It was as if it had resonated with something intimate and personal, something that ran as deep within her as bone marrow. Why did the idea suddenly have such grave and immediate potency? She supposed that her entire mission had been a form of infiltration, from the moment she left her village and set about joining the caravan. The work of ascending through the cathedral until she located Harbin was only a later, more dangerous aspect of an enterprise upon which she had already embarked. She had taken the first step weeks ago, when she first heard of the caravan passing so close to the badlands.

But it had begun earlier than that, really.

Very much earlier.

Rashmika felt dizzy. She had glimpsed something there, a moment of clarity that had opened and closed in an instant. She herself had jammed it shut, the way one slammed a door on a loud noise or a bright light. She had glimpsed a plan—a scheme of infiltration—which stood outside the one she thought she knew. Outside and beyond, enveloping it in its entirety. A scheme of infiltration so huge, so ambitious, that even this trek across Hela was but one chapter in something much longer.

A scheme in which she was not simply a puppet, but also the puppeteer. One thought shone through with painful clarity: You brought this on yourself.

You wanted it to happen this way.

She tore her mind away from that line of thinking. With an effort of will she forced it back on to the immediate business of the cathedrals. A lapse now, a moment of inattention, could make all the difference.

A shadow fell on the vehicle. It was under the Catherine of Iron, moving between those great rows of crawler tracks. Wheels and treads moved with an unstoppable, inexorable slowness. Never mind her own lapses: it was the driver she had to trust now.

She moved to the other side of the cabin. Ahead, folding down from the underside of the cathedral, was a ramp, its edges marked with pulsing red lights. The lower end of the ramp scraped against the ground, leaving a smooth trail in its wake. The sub-caravan pushed itself on to the slope, wheels spinning for a moment to gain traction, and then its whole length surmounted the ramp. Rashmika grabbed for a handhold as the vehicle began to climb the steep slope. She could feel the labouring grind of the transmission through the metal framing of the cabin.

Soon they reached the top. The sub-caravan righted itself, emerging in a barely lit reception area. There were a couple of other vehicles parked there, as well as a great amount of unfathomable and elderly-looking equipment. Figures moved around wearing vacuum suits. Three of them were fixing an airlock umbilical to the side of the sub-caravan, puzzling over the interconnectors as if this was something they had never had to do before.

Presently Rashmika heard thumps and hisses, then voices. Her companions began to gather themselves and their possessions, edging towards the airlock. She collected her own bundle of belongings and stood ready to join them. For a while nothing happened. She heard the voices getting louder, as if some dispute was taking place. Standing by the window, she had a better view of what was going on outside. Within the de-pressurised part of the chamber was a figure, standing, doing nothing. She caught a glimpse of a man’s face through the visor of his rococo helmet: the expression was blank, but the face was not entirely unfamiliar.

Whoever it was stood watching the proceedings, with one hand resting on a cane.

The commotion continued unabated for a few more moments. Finally it died down and Rashmika’s companions began to shuffle out through the airlock, donning the helmets of their vacuum suits as they entered it. They all looked a lot less lively than they had five minutes ago. The actuality of arriving at the Catherine of Iron had brought them to the end of their journey. Judging by their expressions, this dim, grimy-looking enclosure filled with derelict junk and bored-looking workers was not quite what they had imagined when they had set out. She remembered what the quaestor had said, however: that the dean of the Iron Katy was a fair man who treated his workers and pilgrims well. They should all count themselves lucky, in that case. Better a down-at-heel cathedral run by a good man than the doomed madhouse of the Lady Morwenna, even if she did have to get to the Lady Mor eventually.

She had reached the door when a hand touched her chest, preventing her from going any further. She looked into the eyes of a fat-faced Adventist official.

“Rashmika Els?” the man said.

“Yes.”

“There’s been a change of plan,” he said. “You’re to stay on the caravan, I’m afraid.”

They took her away from the Catherine of Iron, away from the smooth road of the Permanent Way. She was the only passenger in the sub-caravan apart from the suited man with the cane. He just sat there, his helmet still on, tapping the cane against the heel of his boot. Most of the time she could not see his face.

The vehicle bounced over ruts of ice for many minutes, the main gathering of cathedrals falling into the distance.

“We’re going to the Lady Morwenna, aren’t we?” Rashmika asked, not really expecting an answer.

None arrived. The man merely tightened the grip on his cane, tilting his head just so, the reflected lighting making a perfect blank mask of his visor. Rashmika felt sick by the time they hit smoother ground and drew alongside the cathedral. It was not only the motion of the caravan sub-unit that made her feel ill, but also a nauseating sense of entrapment. She had wanted to come to the Lady Morwenna. She had not wanted the Lady Morwenna to draw her into it, against her will.

The vehicle pulled alongside the slowly moving mountain of the cathedral. Whereas the Catherine of Iron crawled around Hela on caterpillar tracks, the Lady Morwenna actually walked, shuffling along on twenty vast trapedozoidal feet. There were two parallel rows of ten of them, each row two hundred metres long. The entire mass of the main structure, towering far above, was connected to the feet by the huge telescoping columns of the cathedral’s flying buttresses. They were not really buttresses at all, but rather the legs of the feet: complex, brutishly mechanical things, sinewy with pistons and articulation points, veined by thick segmented cables and power lines. They were driven by moving shafts thrusting through the walls of the main structure like the horizontal oars of a slave-powered galleon. In turn, each foot was elevated three or four metres from the surface of the Way, allowed to move forwards slightly, and then lowered back down to the ground. The result was that the entire structure slid smoothly along at a rate of one-third of a metre per second.

It was, she knew, very old. It had grown from a tiny seed sown in the earliest days of Hela’s human settlement. Everywhere Rashmika looked she saw indications of damage and repair, redesign and expansion. It was less like a building than a city, one that had been subjected to grandiose civic projects and urban improvement schemes, each throwing out the blueprint of the old. In amongst the machinery, coexisting with it, was a crawling population of sculptural forms: gargoyles and gryphons, dragons and demons, visages of carved masonry or welded metal. Some of these were animated, drawing their motion from the moving mechanisms of the legs, so that the jaws of the carved figures gaped wide and snapped closed with each step taken by the cathedral.

She looked higher, straining to see the vehicle’s windows. The great hall of the cathedral reached far above the point where the articulated buttresses curved in to join it. Enormous stained-glass windows towered above her, pointing towards the face of Haldora. There were outflung prominences of masonry and metal capped by squatting gryphons or other heraldic creatures. And then there was the Clocktower itself, shaming even the hall, a tapering, teetering finger of iron thrusting higher than any structure Rashmika had ever seen. She could see the history of the cathedral in the tower, the strata of growth periods laid bare, showing how the vast structure had expanded to its present size. There were follies and abandoned schemes; out-jutting elbows that went nowhere. There were strange levellings-off where it looked as if the spire had been tapering towards a conclusion, before deciding to continue upwards for another hundred metres. And somewhere near the very top—difficult to see from this angle—was a cupola in which burned the unmistakable yellow lights of habitation.

The caravan vehicle swerved closer to the line of slowly stomping feet. There was a clang, and then they floated free of the ground, winched off the surface just as Crozet’s icejammer had been by the caravan.

The man in the vacuum suit began undoing his helmet clasp. He did it with a kind of manic patience, as if the act itself was a necessary penitence.

The helmet came off. The man riffled one gloved hand through the white shock of his hair, making it stand straight up from his scalp. The top was mathematically flat. He looked at her, his face long and flat-featured, making her think of a bulldog. She was certain, then, that she had seen the man somewhere before, but for now that was all she remembered.

“Welcome to the Lady Morwenna, Miss Els,” he said.

“I don’t know who you are, or why I’m here.”

“I’m Surgeon-General Grelier,” he said. “And you’re here because we want you to be here.”

Whatever that meant, he was telling the truth.

“Now come with me,” he said. “There is someone you need to see. Then we can discuss terms of employment.”

“Employment?”

“It’s work you came for, isn’t it?” She nodded meekly. “Yes.”

“Then we may have something right up your alley.”