Shadow Captain

by Alastair Reynolds

  “Fetch my robe,” the head in the bath said in a low and liquid tone, as if the speaker’s mouth were partly submerged.

  “You heard the man,” Sneed said, snapping his fingers.

  Two of the attendants departed.

  Mister Glimmery began to rise from the white bath, keeping his back to us but spreading his arms as they emerged from the surface. The milk sluiced off him in thick white rivulets, tracing the muscled contours of very powerful shoulders and a broad, tapering back. His neck was as thick and wide as the base of an extremely old tree, one that had set down prodigious roots. I was not often intimidated by strong men, finding them laughable rather than impressive. Most such men, in my experience, had made themselves that way because their powers of reason and persuasion were lacking, and the abundance of muscle and bulk was a sort of unwitting advertisement for those deficiencies. But I had to admit that Mister Glimmery blunted my usual contempt. I could not say why, but something in his size and presence convinced me that he had always been this way; that it was the outcome of nature rather than some compensatory impulse, and that I could draw no safe conclusions from it about his reasoning faculties.

  His size was not the most noteworthy thing about him, either—but it was the canvas on which the main matter depended. Mister Glimmery was a victim of the glowy. Those branching, entwining filaments of glowing skin covered his arms, shoulders and back, and now that there was less steam to obscure the view, I even made out fine filigreed projections curling up the back of his head.

  He rose a little further, the base of his spine coming into view, then the upper parts of his buttocks, the glowy marking every part of him—but at that moment the two attendants stepped into the pool on either side and swept a gold cloak around him, Mister Glimmery only lowering his arms when they were safely sleeved. He did up the front of the cloak itself, and then slowly turned around to view us, stepping out of the pool by means of hidden stairs.

  I suppressed an outward exclamation. The glowy had taken a much more dominant hold of Mister Glimmery’s face. It shone like some crudely-daubed paint, shimmering with yellow-green light, and it was in his eyes as well, scintillating like embedded flecks of precious metal. The coverage of his skin was not uniform, but confined to stripes and curlicues, serving to exaggerate the lines and angles of his natural features, and also to cloud them, like a form of disruptive camouflage. Beneath his robe, his great chest swelled and deflated with each inhalation, and I would swear that the brightness of the glowy swelled and ebbed in sympathy.

  “You’d be Captain Marance,” he said, addressing Fura in the same low, liquid voice he had used when he was still in the milk. “Fresh in from the Emptyside, by all accounts. Did they say your ship is the Grey Lady?”

  “That’s what we call her,” Fura said.

  Mister Glimmery walked over to us, leaving huge milky footprints on the marbled floor, which his attendants were quick to mop away. He was breathing slowly in and out as he towered over Fura and I, that chest of his at the level of my nose, his head looking down at me like a boulder about to roll off a hill.

  “I’m surprised you didn’t haul-in closer. You must be standing off a hundred leagues or more. Makes coming and going very time-consuming.”

  “Hopefully we won’t be doing much coming and going,” I said.

  “Not much business to be done, then?” He turned his gaze slightly onto me, the flecks in his eyes twinkling with a vivid and dangerous curiosity. “And you’d be …?”

  “Tragen. Principal Bone Reader.”

  He looked back to Fura. “Like to keep such things in the family, do we, Captain?”

  Fura looked puzzled. “Mister Glimmery?”

  “There’s an uncommon likeness to the two of you, is all. You might be mistaken for sisters.”

  A male attendant brought a small platter, upon which stood a single slim-stemmed glass containing a viscous, straw-coloured fluid. Mister Glimmery took the stem between the tips of his exceptionally thick fingers and lifted the glass to his lips, drinking it dry. He set down the glass and the attendant was dismissed.

  “It would be a mistake if we were,” Fura said, referring to his remark. “We’re not related, and this is the first time we’ve crewed together.” Her gaze sharpened. “Do you normally take such a personal interest in newly arrived crews, Mister Glimmery? It can’t be very practical.”

  “You forget that we have very few visitors, Captain Marance. So few that it would be rather odd of me not to take an interest. A little discourteous, even. Which reminds me—I have forgotten my manners already.” He extended a sleeved arm. “Please, take a seat. Would you like some wine? Bring wine! You will excuse me while I … attire myself. Of course, if you should care to cleanse yourselves in my milk bath, I could have it prepared to your requirements.”

  “It’s all right,” Fura said. “We washed fairly recently. Certainly within the last couple of days.”

  “The offer stands. In the meantime, there is a certain gentleman who would value a conversation, I am sure. If you would oblige, I’m sure he’ll be most grateful. I won’t detain you.”

  While Mister Glimmery went off to get dressed, we were helped to a corner of the room that had been screened-off with the gold partitions. Chairs and settees were positioned around a low table set with drinks and a miniature gasworks of glassware and pipes and bubbling retorts. That was when I had my second surprise, just as I was getting over Mister Glimmery’s affliction. A Crawly was seated in its own specially upholstered chair, bending down over the table and inhaling from a hosed mouthpiece.

  “Good day to you sir,” I said diffidently, when neither Fura nor Prozor had uttered a word, and the silence was beginning to weigh. “I’m Tragen. This is Captain Marance, and this is Lodran.”

  The Crawly made a rustly sound that reminded me of old leaves crunching underfoot, or papers being shuffled. It took an effort of concentration to understand those noises as language, but I had heard Crawlies speaking before, and was therefore tolerably prepared.

  “Good day to you all. I am … Mister Cuttle.”

  I’d seen a fair number of them during my life, but seldom at such proximity. Most of the alien was hidden under a hooded cloak, covering its head, body and the limbs it used to shuffle along with. The cloak had a slit at the front for its forelimbs, and two of these hooked appendages were taking care of the bubbling apparatus and mouthpiece. No part of its actual face was visible, except for a set of whiskers, antennae and mouthparts jutting out like a sheath of twigs, and moving all the while.

  Fura, Prozor and I sat down with the alien to our right. For a moment none of us touched the drinks, although they appeared innocent enough, and nothing like milk or the straw-coloured concoction Mister Glimmery had just imbibed.

  “Are you a friend of Mister Glimmery’s, Mister Cuttle?” I asked, a little put-out that it was falling on me to make the conversation.

  “An … acquaintance. I was called here on … urgent family business.” Mister Cuttle set down his smoking apparatus, leaving the mouthpiece in a forked holder. “What brings you to Wheel Strizzardy, Captain … Marance?”

  “The warm welcome and the valuable trading opportunities,” Fura said.

  “In which case,” Mister Cuttle replied, “you have an unusual taste in such … matters.”

  “Well, they’ve been nice enough,” I said, feeling that there could be well be ears pressed to the other sides of the partitions, and that one of us ought to say something charitable. “That doctor’s been very helpful with our colleague, and Mister Glimmery seems keen to make us feel appreciated. I know this isn’t the most prosperous world we could’ve sailed to, but it’s not so bad, is it?”

  “No,” Mister Cuttle answered. “There are much worse.”

  “Have you seen many of our worlds?” I asked pleasantly.

  “Quite a number, and of all dispositions. Wheelworlds and laceworlds, sphereworlds and tubeworlds, from the Sunward processionals to the edge of the
Emptyside, to the Frost Margins … and beyond.”

  “Banker, are you?” Prozor asked, in a tone that was more inquisitorial than friendly. “’Cos that’s the line most of you’s in, isn’t it? Sneakin’ around, grubbin’ up quoins …”

  “We serve at the pleasure of your boards of directors. All the significant banking concerns remain under the control of … indigenous majority parties, do they not?”

  “That being us monkeys,” Prozor said, jabbing an elbow into Fura. “Indigenous majority parties. I’ve rarely felt so elevated.”

  “Have you ever been in a bauble, Mister Cuttle?” Fura asked, in not quite so needling a manner, but still with a directness that was less than cordial.

  “No, to my regret I have never seen a bauble, either inside … or outside.”

  “And yet, you being so well-travelled … wouldn’t you have liked to tick a bauble off your list?” Fura asked.

  “It is not so simple, Captain Marance.”

  Fura looked doubtful. “Don’t tell me you haven’t got the readies for it, Mister Cuttle.”

  “No, funds are not the … primary issue.”

  Fura settled back a little. “Now that I think about it, I’ve never heard any mention of any Crawly ever going near a bauble. Or any other alien, for that matter. Not a Clacker, not a Hardshell. That’s a bit rum, isn’t it? Unless there’s some reason, beyond funds, that hampers you. But I can’t think what it might be.”

  “You are very good at your work,” Mister Cuttle said. “People, I mean. You have a natural aptitude for the dangerous work of baubles.” He was loosening up, I sensed, getting into the voluble swing of producing our language sounds, as if he had been a little stiff until we arrived. “The flow of relics and artefacts is of benefit to your great economy, is it not? It provides employment to thousands of crews, and those crews and their ships in turn depend on a great interconnected web of businesses, from the sailmakers and chandlers at the docks, the brokers and recruiting agents, but far beyond that, to your markets and chambers of commerce. Even if my kind were able to compete on favourable terms in the opening of baubles, which we could not, lacking your resilience and fortitude, what good would be served by such a division of interests?”

  “Still,” Fura said, “and I’m speaking hypothetically here, so no offence intended, if you had a liking for quoins, and you couldn’t winkle ’em out of baubles yourselves—for whatever reason—the present arrangement wouldn’t be too shabby, would it? We do the hard work, you grease our banks to keep the funds flowing, the ships being launched and the crews paid, and after a lot of shufflin’ around, those quoins magically end up in your coffers.”

  “Quoins are a cumbersome sort of currency,” Mister Cuttle replied. “If every man and woman had to look after their own fortune, inter-world commerce would be prohibitively slow and burdensome. If a quoin is worth less than the cost of the fuel it would take to move it from one gravity well to another, then the quoin may be said to be worse than valueless. Besides, by vesting quoins in the major banks, fortunes may be allowed to appreciate.”

  “Or, in some cases, depreciate,” Prozor said.

  Mister Cuttle swivelled his hood to look at her. “Have you been the victim of such a turn?”

  “No, I’m slummin’ it here because I like the scenery and being pissed on day and night. What do you think?”

  “I am sorry for your bad luck. I know that a number of savings accounts faltered during the crash of ninety-nine, and perhaps yours was one of them. But this is a new century, and we may hope for better times.” Mister Cuttle picked up his mouthpiece again and inhaled from the gurgling contraption. “But if I may speak boldly, I would think of other places to remedy your losses, than your present location.”

  “Is that a threat?” I asked, my mood turning like a compass in a solar gale.

  Mister Glimmery chose that moment to step into the partitioned area. He had dressed properly now, at least compared to a man wearing only a gown. He had gold trousers and shoes on, and several gold layers on his torso, made of finely stitched and embroidered materials that gave off the light in differing ways, but his arms and shoulders were completely unclothed, and so was a good part of his chest, so that—even without the evidence in his face and eyes—there would have been no possibility of forgetting that he was a victim of the glowy, nor of the extent of its hold on him. I picked up a smell from him, too, but it was sweet and honey-like rather than unpleasant, and by a certain lustre to his skin I wondered if a perfumed balm had been rubbed into him after the milk bath.

  “Where is the wine?” he asked, twisting his head so that the muscles and nerves in his neck stood out like details in an anatomical drawing, so exact you could have labelled them there and then.

  The wine came a moment later. Mister Glimmery lowered his frame into a vacant chair, setting his arms on the rests and yet still looming over the rest of us. He had stationed himself opposite the four of us, and directly facing the Crawly. “There, Mister Cuttle,” he said obligingly. “I told you I’d bring some company, didn’t I? Mister Cuttle does so appreciate some new faces, and there’s precious little to keep him stimulated lately.” He poured the wine into glasses, not neglecting his own measure. “Did you ask them how they came to be in the Emptyside, Mister Cuttle?”

  The alien inhaled before answering. “We had hardly begun to get to know each other.”

  “Well, there’ll be time enough for all the questions in the world,” Mister Glimmery said, setting a small gold container down on the table before him. It had an expensive look, decorated with flowers and vines, and it was about long and wide enough to contain the handle of a skipping rope. “Their friend is very unwell, you see, and Doctor Eddralder won’t be held to a timescale where her recovery is concerned, assuming there’s any sort of positive outcome.”

  “There’d better be,” Fura said.

  “Help yourself to wine, Captain Marance. It will take the edge off your nerves.” Before Fura had a chance to reply, Mister Glimmery said: “I hardly dare ask how you came by the glowy yourself. It feels impertinent to raise the subject, but we can’t very well let it go unmentioned, given that we have the condition in common. It would be odd if we did not trade reminiscences.”

  I could feel Fura debating her answer, but after a pause she decided and took a modest sip of the wine, quite becoming and ladylike by her standards, and just enough not to be uncivil.

  I did likewise, realising with a degree of amazement how thirsty I was.

  “I had to eat lightvine,” Fura said. “It was that or die. Isn’t that how most people end up with the glowy?”

  Mister Glimmery nodded, not without some interest or sympathy. “Yes—by all accounts. Lightvine isn’t harmful in and of itself, and the genetic engineers who created it must have foreseen that it might need to provide temporary sustenance, to crews in distress. But there are correct ways to prepare lightvine, and incorrect ways. I suppose you had no means of cooking it?”

  “I had to eat it raw,” Fura said.

  “Does it trouble you?”

  “I’m managing fine enough, Mister Glimmery.”

  “And you’ve sought medical opinion, from a dependable source? Someone who really understands the condition, not just some quack willing to tell you anything you’ll want, so long as it lightens your pockets?”

  “I’ve seen who I need to see.”

  “Then let me blunt, just in case the quality of that medical opinion left something wanting. The glowy is caused by the accumulation of viable microbial spores in the circulatory, lymphatic and peripheral nervous systems. In its early stages there is no harm done, and the infection is easily treated. If left unchecked, though—over weeks or months—the glowy takes a more insidious hold. It becomes harder to eradicate—although there are still treatments, albeit of a harsher kind. Left longer still, the course becomes more uncertain. The glowy may stabilise, even retreat, or it may penetrate the central nervous system, lodging itself in the brain, t
he spine, the optic nerves and so on. Then it is much more intractable. Cases are rare enough to be anecdotal, but there is speak of changes in character and intellect—of the failure of the checks and balances of a well-tempered mind. Impetuousness, borderline sociopathy, the emergence of cruel desires and a vain disregard for the needs of others. Feverish, single-minded obsessions. And torments, in the worst cases. Terrible dreams by night and wrenching agonies by day.”

  “No one told me it was going to be a stroll in the park,” Fura said. “But I didn’t choose to end up this way, and just because I’ve got it in me doesn’t mean I’ve got the funds to clear it up. You seem to have both time and money, though, and yet you’re a sadder case than me.” She set down her glass, mostly undrunk. “How’d you come by it, seeing as we’re chin-wagging?”

  “By mistake,” he said candidly. “But not the same mistake as your own. In some instances, the glowy can stay within a host without any outward manifestation. The host themselves may not even be aware that they carry a significant microbial load.”

  “That was you, was it?” I asked.

  “No, that was the man I ate.” Mister Glimmery waited a heartbeat before smiling, the smile pushing apart the stripes and curlicues of his glowy, the flecks in his eyes seeming to glitter in flagrant self-amusement. “I had an accident, and needed a transfusion of blood at short notice. There were spores in the blood, unfortunately, quite a high density, and I went from clean to highly infected in one unfortunate stroke. It was a mistake of screening, a serious one, but I cannot be too ungrateful. I should be dead were it not for that transfusion. Were you informed of my nickname, Far-Gone Glimmery, or sometimes just Far-Gone? It started off as Too-Far-Gone, and then they shortened it, losing something of the sense in the process.”