The Abyss Beyond Dreams

by Peter F. Hamilton

  ‘Don’t open it,’ Andricea said at once. ‘The dust down here will screw up the firing mechanisms.’

  ‘Nobody’s going to touch it,’ the first cell member said. ‘We’ll make sure of that. It’s quite safe here.’

  ‘When do we get to use them?’ the second cell member asked.

  ‘Nobody tells us,’ Yannrith said in a joshing tone. ‘We’re just the errand boys.’

  ‘It’s got to be soon,’ the first one said. ‘This has been going on for crudding years. How long does it take to kill the Captain? These fuckers would make easy work of it.’ His hand came down possessively on the trunk.

  ‘It’s not just the Captain,’ Andricea said. ‘There’s everyone who supports him as well.’

  ‘What? We’re going to kill all of them?’

  ‘I dunno,’ Andricea said. ‘Get them to think again, maybe. Who knows?’

  ‘Some fucker better,’ he said giving Yannrith a pointed stare.

  ‘Right.’

  As Slvasta drove the cab back to its stables, he was satisfied the weapons would remain untouched until the day came. There were over twenty such caches distributed across the city now. Varlan seemed to be built above a honeycomb of forgotten crypts and cellars for which no map existed. They’d scattered an equal number of secure ammunition deposits underground as well. It was a decision they’d made right at the start: never to put the two together until they armed the cells. There was too much temptation for the people guarding them to sell and make a quick profit. After all, it wasn’t as though Bethaneve was going to run an audit. Personally, Slvasta would be satisfied if eighty per cent of the weapons remained when the day came.

  After they returned the cab, they went their separate ways. Home for Slvasta now was Jaysfield Terrace – a smart stone crescent that curved round a circular park right in the heart of Langley, a borough that was the closest that anywhere in the city came to a country town. It was on Varlan’s north-western outskirts, with tree-covered hills visible from the taller buildings, and much sought after by the middle classes who enjoyed its leafy lanes and fashionable shops and decent schools. Slvasta had to admit he found it a comfortable place to live in despite its distance from the centre of the city. The furnished apartment they were renting occupied the whole of the fifth floor of Number Sixteen Jaysfield Terrace. With its high ceilings and four bedrooms, it was much too big for just him and Bethaneve.

  ‘Essential, though,’ she’d laughed as they moved in. ‘You have to live in the constituency if you’re to contest it at the election.’

  For Langley was also the heart of a National Council constituency that stretched for over sixty miles out into the countryside – an area which comprised several old-family estates and their worker villages as well as some thriving towns and smaller farms. It contained a broad social spread of residents, with a great many small business owners, most of whom were dissatisfied by government with its excessive regulation and restrictive trading laws that favoured the established order. Colonel Gelasis had been right: it was a perfect constituency for him to challenge the incumbent.

  The long curving terrace had small front gardens confined by iron railings. All the gates which led to front doors were set into iron arches with oil lamps at their apex. Almost half of them had been lit by residents determined to keep up standards and alleviate at least some of the darkness. The public lamp posts on the other side of the road remained dark. Slvasta scanned the plant pots on the steps of Number Sixteen. A tall neatly pruned bay tree on one side and a purple climbing jasmine on the other. The bay tree pot was the right way round. If anything was wrong, Bethaneve would have turned it a quarter clockwise – assuming she had time. By now Slvasta had lived with the prospect of arrest or worse for so long that he didn’t bother worrying about it.

  The only downside of the apartment in Number Sixteen with its elegant fittings and fabulous views was the five flights of stairs he had to climb to reach it. When he did finally get into the marble-tiled hall the rain had soaked through his coat, leaving his clothes damp and cold. He shivered as he hung the coat up, and started unbuttoning the drosilk waistcoat.

  Bethaneve was working in the dining room. She’d taken it over as her office as soon as they arrived; the long marwood table big enough to sit ten made a perfect desk, with papers and folders scattered across it. Strong oil lamps burned on either side of her, casting a bright light across the room. A bulky cabinet with carved doors had been moved across the mod door – not that there were any mod-dwarfs left in Number Sixteen. More thick folders were piled up around the walls, ledgers of the revolution all filled with her writing. Even her accountant’s mind couldn’t hold all the information on the cells and their activities. The symbols she used made no sense to anyone else; she wouldn’t even tell Slvasta what they all meant. ‘To protect the cells if we ever get interrogated,’ she said. ‘I’ll die before I betray our comrades, and their identities will be lost with me.’

  Now she was making extensive notations in a spread of purple folders. Slvasta watched her in mild concern for a moment. She still kept her job at the Tax Office, a respectable position for the fiancée of a National Council candidate, which meant she worked in her drab office all day then came back to yet more book-keeping here – when she wasn’t risking herself on some clandestine activity. As always, he marvelled at her dedication and devotion to their cause. It had been his idea, but she had taken it forward in a way he’d never imagined.

  She finished writing and turned to smile at him amid a burst of admiration and love. ‘I knew you’d be wet,’ she said. ‘I ran you a bath.’

  ‘There’s a strategy meeting in an hour,’ he said in regret. Another session of angst and determination in the local Democratic Unity offices, with him trying to hearten and inspire the devoted volunteers, most of them young, and all of them so desperate for him to succeed, to make a difference.

  ‘It’s a filthy night. I cancelled it.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Go get in the bath.’

  Slvasta did as he was told. After all this time, with every second of their lives spent on some aspect of the revolution, to have a break for one night wasn’t something he was going to protest at. Since they moved in, he hadn’t had a bath more than three or four times; everything was showers and quick meals snatched between events.

  Six big double-wick candles had been placed strategically round the blue and white tiled bathroom. Bethaneve must have used her teekay to turn off the brass taps just before he arrived, for the big iron rolltop bath was full of water that was almost too hot. The air was saturated with the orange blossom scent of bath salts. He stripped off his soggy clothes and climbed in. Eyes closed, he leaned back and let the water engulf him.

  Some time later Bethaneve asked: ‘Is that better?’

  He opened his eyes. Not asleep, just resting heavily. Her teekay was snuffing out the candles, leaving just two flickering. The shadows expanded, framing her in the topaz light of the doorway. She was wearing a strikingly erotic long black lace robe tied loosely round the waist.

  ‘Uh huh,’ he said with a throat that was suddenly dry.

  She walked over slowly and knelt beside the bath. The front of the robe shifted to reveal the slope of her breasts as she bent over to kiss him. Strands of hair fell into the water.

  ‘You’re perfection,’ he said eventually.

  There was just enough light to show the smile on her face. ‘Thank you.’ She picked up a tall bottle of liquid soap and poured some into her cupped hand. ‘Let me do this.’

  ‘You know you’re what makes all this possible,’ he said, then whimpered as she began rubbing the soap slowly across his shoulders.

  ‘That’s very sweet, but we both know you’re the one everybody admires. No one would vote for me, or even listen to me. You have a fire; you burn for justice. They all sense that. They sense how genuine you are.’

  ‘Just a pretty figurehead. You do all the work, you and Coulan and Javier.’


  ‘Don’t forget the others.’ More soap was tipped into her hand; she slid it down his sternum. ‘Andricea helps you a lot.’

  Slvasta suppressed a smile. Bethaneve had never quite been comfortable around Andricea, with her long limbs and sunny smile and trim figure.

  ‘Are you thinking about her?’ Bethaneve’s hands had paused.

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Hmm.’ She sounded suspicious.

  Slvasta curled his hand round the back of her head and pulled her down for another kiss. Finally, Bethaneve relented and her hands crept down his stomach. ‘Not at all,’ he promised sincerely.

  ‘Are you frightened?’ she murmured. ‘I am sometimes.’

  ‘Not of the Captain’s police, no. We’re too prominent now, and we have support from some sections of the establishment.’

  ‘I meant the election. It’s only a week away.’

  ‘Ten days.’

  ‘Suppose we don’t win?’

  ‘The polls are good, and Tuksbury is a fool. Really, I had no idea.’ He’d assumed that anyone who’d held on to a constituency seat for forty-eight years would know a thing or two about election campaigns. Not so Tuksbury. At first he’d simply sneered at Slvasta, assuming his own nomination as Citizens’ Dawn candidate was good enough to gain him a majority. Then six weeks ago, when he realized that his own party’s unenthusiastic support and lack of funds being thrown his way meant they’d abandoned him, he suddenly woke up to the very real prospect that he might lose his Council seat. By then Slvasta had already been campaigning for two months – not just in Varlan where the bulk of the voters lived, but visiting every town and village in the constituency, attending public meetings, setting out Democratic Unity’s policies, promising to sweep away the old restrictions and conventions that made society so hidebound. He’d surprised himself at how adept he’d become at handling people, providing smart answers, telling the right jokes, knowing when to listen with a serious face, producing promises that sounded firm. It seemed there was truth in the old adage that you can get used to anything if you do it long enough.

  Tuksbury, however, had never really campaigned before, had never engaged with the people he was supposed to represent. So when he finally stood up in public to address people, it didn’t go well. He spent family money on lavish spreads of free food and drink, then lectured the people scoffing it down on why they should always vote for him because – ‘I come from good family stock, not like this common moron who was so useless in the Cham regiment that he lost an arm to Fallers.’ The two open debates with Slvasta which he agreed to also ended badly. The last one had to be halted early when the audience started throwing things at him and trying to make him tumble off the raised platform with their teekay.

  The shock and dismay of discovering what people truly thought of him sent Tuksbury to seek solace in the bordellos he discreetly and regularly frequented, while inhaling more narnik than usual to dull the pain of his humiliation – facets of his personality that the pamphlets were eager to print, complete with details. His misery was compounded by the gazettes, which were normally so supportive of Citizens’ Dawn, beginning to report the same foibles as the pamphlets.

  Tuksbury hadn’t appeared in public for the last four days. Cell members had reported him holed up in the Maiden’s Welcome, a high-class brothel on Mawney Street, leaving his dispirited and badly underfunded campaign staff to produce leaflets that nobody read. One cell member, a clerk in a solicitor’s office, reported that Tuksbury’s wife had already filed for divorce.

  ‘We will win,’ Slvasta said confidently. ‘Hilltop Eye has the tax returns for Tuksbury’s estate, hasn’t it?’

  ‘Delivered three days ago,’ she confirmed. ‘I got them the records for the last ten years. Uracus, those bastards have paid less than you and I did. Can you believe that? Hilltop Eye will print them four days before the election.’

  ‘So it would take a Faller egg landing on my head for us to lose now. I just have to keep showing my face and not saying anything too stupid – for which I have you to watch over me.’

  Bethaneve’s expression was pure wickedness as her hands and teekay reached his groin. As always, he was helpless under her ministrations. She could make his body do whatever she wanted, and the intensity of the pleasure made him cry out, sending the bathwater sloshing across the floor.

  Afterwards she made him stand next to the bath while she used a towel to dry him. Then he was taken to the bedroom.

  ‘Marry me,’ he said as he lay back on the sheets and watched her move round the room, first to her dresser to dab perfume on her neck, then lighting three candles. They were officially engaged, of course, but that was for the sake of the election. There was no wedding day named nor planned for.

  ‘You know my answer,’ she told him gently.

  ‘Yes,’ he said forlornly. ‘When we’ve won.’

  She came over to the bed and stood there, hands on hips, looking down at him. ‘And you know why.’

  ‘Because nobody should bring children into a world as unjust as this one,’ he responded automatically.

  ‘After we’ve won,’ she said. ‘That’s the time to build for the future. Anything before that is just castles made of sand and promises.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘So if I don’t win, do we still arm the cells and march on the palace?’

  ‘No. That would be a complete disaster. We have to have popular support on our side, a clear mandate from the electorate. It must look as if we’re doing what the people want.’

  ‘Some of them, anyway.’

  ‘You’re having doubts?’ she asked. ‘Now?’

  ‘No. I’m just tired, that’s all.’

  ‘Poor you. It’s nearly over. We just need another few weeks, maybe months. That’s all. Can you last that long?’

  ‘Do I get a choice?’

  ‘No. I’m sorry, my love. None of us does, not any more. This has grown too big to take the feelings of one person into account.’

  ‘Are we really going to do this?’ Slvasta wasn’t even sure if he was asking this out loud. ‘I mean, overthrowing the Captain? It’s just so . . . so outrageous. Sometimes I have to check I’m still real, that I’m not living some dream in the Heart. How did we ever do this? Put all this together?’

  ‘We did it because it was right. And it must be right, because it’s worked. Everything is ready.’

  ‘Yeah.’ That part was as much a mystery to him as the rest. The four of them had spent so long talking and arguing about what had to be done physically to achieve success. How do you march a force of armed men through a city to take out the top of the existing government, and have that accepted by everyone else? So many ideas dismissed, so many details expanded, strategies planned.

  ‘We just have to wait. Once you’re elected to the National Council, you—’

  ‘—become the authentic voice of the disaffected. Up pops my credibility and with it my legitimacy. Yes. Yes.’

  ‘And if we give the underclass enough to protest about, and the Council doesn’t listen – because it won’t; it’s full of people like Tuksbury – then we have the justification to launch the revolution.’

  ‘I know.’ Always there was the doubt. The way the rich with their fancy accountants avoided their fair share of taxes made him furious, and proper taxes for all was a priority for afterwards. But they were the ones planning on sabotaging the city’s water, creating disruption and suffering; it would be their activists who blew up the rail bridges, which would increase Varlan’s economic woes. Without them, things would carry on as they always did, which wasn’t that bad . . .

  Bethaneve licked her lips. ‘Let me see. What I can do to perk you up?’

  Even though she’d already satiated him in the bath, he knew he would be erect again when she wanted him to be. Her sexual skill was something he never questioned. No one with half a brain asked about previous loves, but still, some small bad part of his mind kept wondering about her and Coulan – if he�
�d been the one who’d taught her so much about what men truly enjoyed in bed. If it had been his touch which had encouraged her to cast off her inhibitions.

  Fingers caressed him with nonchalant skill, then teekay so soft and slow it was torment plucked individual nerve strands in his cock. His flesh betrayed him immediately, igniting the pleasure pathways directly into his brain. He watched in awe as the lace robe flowed down over her skin like liquid gossamer, inflaming him still further.

  ‘A month,’ she whispered as she straddled him. ‘A month after the election. That will be the right time. The perfect time. That will be when you lead us forward and take control of the whole world. Does that satisfy you? Is that what you want?’ Her teekay crept around his balls like fronds of arctic frost, gripping mercilessly to balance him perfectly on the edge between pain and ecstasy.

  ‘Yes,’ he cried, ‘Oh Giu, yes!’ Not knowing or caring what he was agreeing with any more.

  2

  Some people simply couldn’t be arsed – especially those who looked down on politicians and politics with the same contempt as they would regard a smear of animal dung on their boot sole. But still, many more did care, turning out to vote, making the effort. Outside some polling stations where Democratic Unity had put forward a full field of candidates for borough council seats, the sheriffs were unaccountably missing. In their stead, Citizens’ Dawn toughs watched over the free private vote, making sure the cross went in the right place. Wherever that happened, the knowledge slipped through Bethaneve’s communication network and local Democratic Unity activists arrived, demanding privacy and freedom from intimidation. Fights broke out, but they were sporadic, with the sheriffs finally turning up only to cart both sides off to the local station where they sat out the rest of the day cooling off in the drunk tank.

  Then there were cases of people being told they weren’t on the borough voting registry. There was nothing Bethaneve could do about that. But Tovakar, Andricea and Yannrith each had their own missions, running cells to intercept postal ballots that had been in storage for the last month. Citizens’ Dawn had been adding to the envelopes with their own false voters – dead or nonexistent. Those sacks were discreetly swapped with alternatives full of the same fantasy people, but now voting for Democratic Unity.