The Black Lung Captain

by Chris Wooding

  Frey thought of Amalicia Thade, how he'd run away from a life of luxury with a beautiful woman. 'Things just seem so much better in theory than in practice. I even wanted to be a pirate for a while, like a real pirate. But it turns out I'm just not that cold-blooded. No offence.'

  'None taken,' she said, sipping at her coffee.

  "I suppose, at some point, you just have to make a choice and stick to it." he said, unconvincingly. 'Make the best of things.'

  'So they say.'

  'Hardly seems fair, does it? All that compromise. Never quite getting what you dreamed of.'

  'No one gets what they dream of, Darian. That's why they call them dreams.'

  'You think so?'

  'Even if you get everything you ever wanted, it's rarely all it's cracked up to be. The rich are as unhappy and screwed-up as the poor. Just in a different way." She looked down into the black surface of her coffee. 'You can't get away from yourself.'

  'What does that mean?'

  'Well, wherever you go, whatever you do, you're still you. You can change your surroundings, start a new life, but you'll always fall into the same old patterns, make the same kind of friends, commit the same mistakes. The thing you need to change is yourself.'

  'What's wrong with we?' Frey protested indignantly.

  'I'm speaking generally. The thing a person has to change is themselves.'

  'Like you did?'

  'Like I did.'

  'And you're happier?'

  'No,' she said. 'But I'm alive.'

  She gave him a sad sort of smile. Frey was overwhelmed by a surge of affection. That smile made him want to sweep her up in his arms, to protect her from all harm, to erase the damage of the past somehow.

  'I forgot what it was like, talking to you,' he said. 'I mean, really talking, without all the threats and recriminations and stuff.'

  'We have a lot to recriminate about,' she said.

  He opened his mouth to speak, to say something complimentary, something to express his feelings, even in a small way. But she'd already detected the change in him. She'd seen the tenderness in his eyes and heard the softening of his voice.

  'Darian, don't,' she said quietly.

  So he didn't. The feeling curled up and died in the heat of bitterness and embarrassment. He got to his feet and threw some money on the table.

  'Let's go see this professor, then,' he said.

  Trinica nodded wordlessly, left her coffee, and followed him.

  Professor Kraylock was a small, thin, elderly man, with a tidy white moustache and a bald head speckled with liver spots. Little round glasses perched on a nose purpled with broken veins: the sign of a man who enjoyed his hard liquor. He was dwarfed by his chair and a colossal desk of walnut and leather. Sunlight beamed through two tall, arched windows behind him, edging him in dazzling light and casting his face into shadow. Blazing dust motes hung in the air around him.

  Frey and Trinica sat on the other side of the desk. Trinica and the professor were talking and laughing. Preamble stuff: greetings, inquiries about each other's health, that kind of thing. Frey had stayed largely silent. He wasn't good making small talk with educated folk.

  Trinica was, though. She chatted pleasantly with Kraylock, asking him about his studies and the affairs of the university, commenting on some rare sculpture he had in an alcove. This was the Trinica he remembered. The Trinica who would charm the socks off her father's guests at some swanky dinner function. The Trinica who you could talk to for hours, because she made you feel that everything you said was fascinating and important.

  Frey's eyes roamed the study, idly wondering if there was anything worth stealing. There was a lot of potentially valuable junk here. A brass orrery, an ornamental spyglass. Furniture that looked older than the planet. And books. Lots of books.

  Frey distrusted books. He had a sneaking suspicion that most people only bought them to make themselves seem impressive. He couldn't possibly imagine anyone reading so many massive, boring tomes. Had Kraylock really ploughed through every one of the forty volumes of the Encyclopaedia Vardia? Or the whole of Abric's Discourses on The Nature of Mankind? He doubted it.

  'I do appreciate you taking the time to speak with us,' Trinica was saying. 'But could I ask why Professor Grist wasn't able to meet us himself?'

  'Because he's dead,' Kraylock replied. 'In fact, I was rather surprised you didn't know that yourself. It's been almost two years now.'

  Great, thought Frey. Just great.

  Trinica looked appropriately bewildered. 'I'm sorry. We didn't know.'

  'You didn't, hmm? Your letter said you were interested in discussing his research. What research, exactly, were you interested in discussing?'

  It was obvious by his tone that the game was up before it had begun. He didn't believe their cover story for a moment. Trinica was still searching for a response when Frey leaned forward. 'Look,' he said. 'We're not students. We're searching for Professor Grist's son, Harvin. He's stolen something from us and we want it back. Well, actually the Awakeners stole it first, but that's by the by. We were hoping to talk to his dad and get an idea where he was. But his dad's dead, so . . .' He spread his hands. 'Sorry to have wasted your time.'

  He was getting out of his chair when Kraylock spoke. 'The Awakeners, you said. They stole something from you?'

  'Right.'

  'May I hazard a guess as to what it was?'

  'If you like.'

  'Something to do with the Manes?'

  Frey became suddenly interested again. 'That's quite a guess.'

  Kraylock motioned at him with one thin hand. 'Sit down.'

  Frey did so. Kraylock regarded them both from behind his glasses. 'Do you intend to kill him? Harvin, I mean?'

  Trinica leaned forward, her face solemn. 'He has a Mane artefact that could be extremely dangerous. We believe he intends to use it to cause harm to a lot of people. We're trying to stop him. But first we need to find him.'

  Kraylock studied them, searching for a lie, finding none. Eventually he sighed. 'That boy,' he said. 'He was nothing but heartache for Maurin. I always knew he'd come to a bad end.'

  'Can you tell us about Maurin Grist?' Trinica said. 'What was his field of research?'

  Kraylock blinked. 'Isn't it obvious? Manes. He was foremost authority on Manes in Vardia. Perhaps the world.'

  Frey and Trinica exchanged a glance.

  'We were friends for thirty years,' he said. 'We spoke often about his research. He believed the Manes' condition was a result of daemonic possession. That is nothing new, of course. It is a theory that has been widely discussed in the scientific community. But his unique idea concerned the nature of the daemon itself. Do you know what a symbiote is?'

  Trinica gave the answer. Frey suspected it was more for his sake than anything else. 'It's an entity that bonds with another entity for the mutual benefit of both.'

  'Exactly. The daemon doesn't consume or destroy its host. Maurin had assembled witness testimonies from survivors of Mane raids. He—'

  'Hang on,' said Frey. 'I though Manes didn't leave survivors? I heard they hunt down everyone. They say there's no point hiding from them; they even get you inside locked rooms.'

  Kraylock snorted, irritated at being interrupted. 'It's true there have been cases where Manes have got into apparently impossible places. When the bodies are found, the doors are still locked from the inside. No one knows how the A lanes do it. But no, they don't hunt down everyone. There have been plenty of survivors over the years.' He glared at Frey. 'May I continue?'

  'Sony,' said Frey meekly. He was having flashbacks to his days in the orphanage, when he'd be chewed out by teachers for interrupting in class.

  'Anyway, Maurin saw evidence of free will, decision-making, even arguments and disagreements. In the past, it was popularly supposed that they were mindless puppets, all under the control of a single guiding force - the daemon. It was the only way we could make sense of the way they acted.'

  'How's that?' Frey a
sked.

  'Well, for example, their manner is savage and they are never heard to speak. But during a raid they will all retreat together back to their dreadnoughts, without any signal being seen or heard. That, we thought, was evidence of control. They build and fly aircraft of their own, using technologies that even we don't understand. But they seemed so bestial, we had to believe that some other intelligence was responsible for that.'

  'And Maurin thought otherwise?' Trinica prompted.

  'He came to believe that the Manes were not being controlled at all. Instead, they were communicating silently. Speaking without words. He deduced from the evidence that each Mane always knew where the other A lanes were, even if they could not see or hear them. From this, he decided that they were connected in some way. The daemon forges that connection between its host bodies. But it does not control them. You've heard the story, perhaps, of the boy whose father came home a Mane?'

  'I know it,' said Frey. 'It was thirty years later, but his father hadn't aged a day. The boy killed him.'

  'Yes. The tale is true. But before the boy killed him, the father tried to reason with him. Father to son. Tried to persuade him to become a Mane. Spoke of brotherhood and belonging. The Navy has records of the son's story.'

  There was a moment's silence while they digested that.

  'So why do they look like they do?' Frey asked. When Trinica raised an eyebrow at him, he rolled his eyes. 'Yes, yes, I judge by appearances.'

  'It may be supposed that the daemon wreaks some physical change. Maurin never knew why. It differs from Mane to Mane. But there are certain advantages to having longer teeth, specialised vision, and so on. The daemon protects itself by enhancing its host.'

  'Enhancing? By making them ugly?'

  'They have no need to mate, as far as we can tell. They reproduce by converting other humans. Infecting them, like a virus. So why would they need to look pretty?'

  Frey shrugged. 'I dunno. Just because.'

  'Maurin theorised that mind-speech means that facial expressions and verbal communication become redundant. Perhaps they lose the finer facets of communication while keeping the more primal, animalistic ones, like snarling.'

  Frey thought of Jez, back on board the Ketty Jay. What about her? Would she lose the power of speech? Was she part of this . . . connection that Kraylock was talking about? What if she was speaking to the Manes, even now? Feeding them information from all over Vardia while they waited eagerly to invade? How could he be sure where her loyalties lay?

  'What happened to Maurin?' he asked.

  The professor looked momentarily uncomfortable. The sun went behind a cloud, and the light from the windows dimmed. Kraylock seemed frail in his huge chair.

  'He just died. There was no reason. His heart.' He rapped the desk with his knuckles. 'Stopped.'

  His manner was too casual. Frey wasn't fooled. 'But you think there's more to it, don't you?'

  Kraylock met his gaze steadily.

  'The Awakeners,' Frey said. It had been the mention of the Awakeners that had got Kraylock talking in the first place. And from the Awakeners, Kraylock had guessed their business concerned the Manes. 'You think the Awakeners killed him.'

  'An Imperator,' Trinica said, catching on. 'His heart stopped, just like that.' She nodded to herself. 'Sounds like something they'd do. But why?'

  Kraylock didn't reply for a moment. Debating whether or not to say anything. Then he sighed wearily and spoke.

  'His latest paper was going to be . . . controversial. He was drawing parallels between the Manes and the Awakeners. Specifically, the Imperators.'

  'Parallels?' Trinica asked.

  'He thought the Manes and the Imperators were essentially similar,' Kraylock said. 'Human hosts possessed by daemonic entities. The nature of the daemon is different, but the process is the same.'

  Frey was amazed. 'You're saying that the Awakeners have been employing daemons? The same Awakeners who denounce daemonism and hang daemonists wherever they're found?'

  'So he believed. The Manes and Imperators are both shrouded in secrecy and myth, but based on what truths he could obtain, he concluded that the Imperators were human hosts, presumably chosen from the ranks of the most faithful, who had been joined with a daemon to grant them extraordinary abilities. The Awakeners had always explained the Imperators' powers as evidence of the might of the Allsoul. Gifts from their deity to the loyal. But Maurin didn't hold with any of that. He wanted a scientific answer.'

  'And he could prove it?'

  'He had compelling research. He believed he had traced the origin of the Manes to its source, for one thing.'

  'Where?'

  'I don't know exactly. Somewhere in the north, near the coast. Marduk, I believe. Beneath the snows.'

  'What happened there?'

  'Approximately one hundred and fifteen years ago, a group of eminent daemonists assembled there. Maurin had letters detailing their plans. He even had the location, though, as I say, he never told me exactly. They came together to attempt a grand summoning. Something huge, something never before attempted.' He took off his glasses and cleaned them with a rag from the table. 'Something that went terribly wrong.'

  'And the first of the Manes appeared soon after,' Trinica said.

  Kraylock nodded. 'Those daemonists were the first of the Manes. Whatever they unleashed infected them. After that, they were the ones who spread the condition.'

  Frey was getting impatient. 'So what does this have to do with—'

  'The Awakeners?' Kraylock said. 'Because Maurin believed they knew about it. At the time they were aggressively attacking other religions. Any threat to their superiority was being wiped out. All the old gods were dying.'

  'Not so immortal after all, eh?' Frey said, but his comment was ignored.

  'There were survivors of that first disaster,' Kraylock continued. 'At least two. Maurin had letters, hinting at the tragedy that had occurred. They went into hiding, but then they disappeared. Maurin thought the Awakeners took them.'

  'Why did he think that?'

  'Because five years later, the first of the Imperators appeared.'

  Frey and Trinica worked it out at the same time.

  'So, the Awakeners heard what the daemonists were up to,' Trinica said. 'When it failed, they kidnapped the survivors—'

  '—refined the process—' Frey continued.

  '—and used it themselves, yes,' Kraylock finished. 'Infecting their most faithful subjects with symbiote daemons.'

  Frey whistled, impressed by the scale of their hypocrisy.

  'But they could never admit to employing daemonism,' Kraylock went on. 'The Lord High Cryptographer had already issued an edict condemning it as heresy. So they painted the Imperators as evidence of the superiority of their faith, and used them to root out and destroy other faiths. Daemonists in particular. They were extraordinarily effective. Their rivals were soon scattered or eliminated entirely.'

  'The Awakeners want to control all daemonism in Vardia,' Trinica said.

  'Exactly. Daemonists are capable of genuine miracles. The Allsoul can't compete with that. So the Awakeners discredited their competition while claiming its achievements as their own.'

  'Crake always said the Awakeners were more like a business than a religion,' Frey commented. Now he understood why the Awakeners were so interested in rumours of a crashed Mane dreadnought. They didn't want anyone getting hold of what was on board. The Awakeners knew the Manes were daemons, and daemonism was their thing. If there was any daemonic treasure to be had, they wanted control of it.

  'So what happened to all this evidence?' said Trinica.

  'Gone,' said Kraylock. 'That is what leads me to suspect foul play in his murder. That, and the subject of his paper.'

  Frey frowned. 'When did you say he died again?'

  'Two years ago.'

  Frey snapped his fingers at Trinica. 'And when did Smult say Grist suddenly started taking an interest in the Manes?'

  'Don't snap yo
ur fingers at me,' said Trinica. 'He said the spring before last.'

  'Yes. Two years ago.'

  Frey watched Trinica make the deduction in her head. 'What if Maurin suspected he was going to be killed?'

  Frey grinned. 'What if he made a copy of his research and sent it to someone nobody would suspect?'

  Excitement was dawning on Trinica's face. Frey was feeling so damn clever, he barely knew what to do with himself.

  'He sent his notes to his son!' Frey said. 'That's how Grist knew about the sphere. That's how he knew to bring a daemonist to unlock the door. That's how he got access to Navy reports. It was all in his father's notes.'

  'You think they might not have been lost?' Kraylock said in amazement. 'You have to get them back! That research, in the right hands ... it could be the end of the Awakeners!' He sat back in his chair and blew out a breath, as if unable to believe what he'd just said.

  'The end of the Awakeners." he said, more quietly. 'If the Archduke got hold of that . . . if the House of Chancellors knew about it . . . Why, the Awakeners have been using daemonists for more than a century! Spit and blood, that would be something. Maurin would laugh at that from his grave.' His eyes were alight. 'You must get me those notes!'

  Frey got to his feet. Trinica rose with him. 'First we have to find Grist,' he said. 'North coast of Marduk. Sounds like a good place to start.' He shook Kraylock's hand vigorously. 'Thanks for your help, Professor.'

  'The notes!' Kraylock said as they walked out. 'Don't forget the notes!'

  Trinica gave Frey a sideways glance as they walked out of the door. 'I'm impressed, Captain Frey,' she said wryly. 'And that's the second time in three days. What's become of you?'

  Frey was more than a little impressed himself. 'Stick around,' he said. 'There's more where that came from.'

  Twenty-Six

  The Hospital — Crake's Progress — The Deal

  The hospital stood on a hill on the edge of town. It was an old building with many windows, some of them lit to fend off the night. Sills crumbled at the edges; panes were cracked here and there; the walls were weathered and mossy. The darkness hid the worst of the dilapidation, but not enough of it.