The Abyss Beyond Dreams

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Nigel and Coulan exchanged a glance. Air hissed out of Nigel’s mouth in a reluctant sigh.

  ‘I can talk to some of the Congress delegates,’ Coulan said. ‘Organize the smarter ones to get basic services up and running again. Food will have to be brought in on roads.’

  ‘Thank you!’

  Nigel held up a warning finger. ‘Just as soon as we’ve got what we came for.’

  ‘Fine.’ She gave them both a sprightly smile. ‘Let’s go, then.’

  It took a quarter of an hour to unload the carts. Then they were riding quickly into town, where the crowds that thronged the harbour melted away, leaving the streets beyond the quayside practically deserted. Coulan’s militia men hung on to the sides of a couple of cabs which led the way, keeping their carbines very visible. A third cab followed the carts, carrying more militia.

  ‘Not even cabs,’ Nigel observed as they made their way towards the centre of the city.

  ‘Anything with wheels got hired to take people out of town,’ Coulan said. ‘Going to have some very rich cabbies back here in a week or so.’

  ‘You didn’t try to stop them?’ Kysandra said.

  ‘Certainly not. The people who’re leaving are the ones who fear and oppose the revolution. They’re the ones who’ll ultimately organize the counter-strike, if and when it comes. Better to have them away for the moment.’

  Kysandra remembered the first time she’d visited Varlan: how wonderful the big buildings had seemed, how elegant and sophisticated. How she’d envied those who made their home in the capital, the bright exciting lives they must all live.

  Now she could hardly bear to look around. Twice she’d seen bodies hanging; two from a tree, another from a lamp post. Shuddered and turned away. Everywhere there were signs of violence – congealed blood on the pavement, façades with long soot-slicks emerging from empty windows, looted shops, debris strewn around, the reeking silt left behind by the flooding, wrecked cabs and carts with dead horses still attached. She gritted her teeth as their little convoy moved purposefully through it all, seeking that emotionless state she’d achieved south of the river.

  They skirted the edge of Bromwell Park and turned into Walton Boulevard. Kysandra could have cried at the state of the lovely old Rasheeda Hotel. All the ground-floor windows had been smashed, along with many on the first, and even some on the second floor. Tattered white curtains fluttered out through the gaps, pitiful flags of submission. The troughs of flowers beside the entrance had been broken up, the plants mashed. Her ex-sight perceived the interior had been stripped clean, leaving the grand rooms empty. Even the furniture was gone. ‘Bussalores,’ she muttered sourly. ‘They’re like human bussalores.’

  ‘Life will stabilize,’ Nigel said. ‘Just hang on.’

  She pressed her teeth together and stared resolutely ahead. The convoy made its way past vandalized statues and dried-up fountains that used to make the long boulevard so striking.

  Militia stood guard round the massive palace. They saluted Coulan and opened the gates in the railings. The carts clattered swiftly over the expanse of cobbles outside, and through one of the impressive archways into a courtyard. A second archway at the back, with sturdy iron gates, led into a smaller, inner courtyard overlooked by the Captain’s private quarters.

  ‘We found some interesting stuff that the drones missed,’ Coulan said as they made their way down a wide staircase into the vaults below the palace.

  ‘Like what?’ Kysandra asked.

  Coulan grinned. ‘Ship’s fusion chamber, so they had power after the landing – for a while, anyway. Three regrav units from the Vermillion. Someone tried modifying them – by the looks of things, without success. There’s also a smartcore that’s linked to some synthesizer nodes. Their molecular grids are all shot, so they must have worked for a long time. And right beneath the private apartments is an old clinic with some medical modules, which are all depleted. I’d say the Captain’s family had access to Commonwealth medicine after they landed here.’

  ‘How long?’ Nigel asked.

  ‘I think we’re looking at several centuries. The modules are badly worn. They cannibalized some to keep others working. The last one is a real patchwork. I wouldn’t have liked to use it at the end.’

  ‘And then there were none,’ Nigel muttered.

  ‘Yeah. But our most interesting find is the gateways.’

  ‘What do you mean: gateways?’ Kysandra challenged. Her educational memory inserts contained a huge file on Commonwealth gateways, but surely he couldn’t mean . . . ‘Not wormhole gateways?’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ Coulan said happily. ‘The very same.’

  ‘Show me,’ Nigel said gruffly.

  They had to go down three more flights of stairs before they came to the storage cellar. Kysandra could see why they’d descended so far when they walked through the door made of thick anbor planks. The cellar was huge, with a ribbed semi-circular roof thirty metres high at the apex. It was filled with five hulking cylinders whose tops nearly scraped the ribs. They looked as if they’d been wrapped in a dark-gloss spiderweb that clung tightly to the surface; the top half was covered by a heavy dust layer that killed the dull sheen. When her ex-sight probed through the wrapping, she could perceive they were giant machines. Not that they had any moving parts – they weren’t mechanical – but the incredibly complex components were locked together as tight as cells in living tissue.

  ‘I did not expect to find these here,’ Nigel admitted ruefully.

  ‘We should have done,’ Coulan said. ‘Standard equipment on colony ships. After all, who wants to transport raw material or people long distances when you reach your new world? Gateways help keep your population centres and manufacturing sites tied together. Best way of establishing a monoculture.’

  Nigel smiled fondly at the dark inert cylinders. ‘I wonder if they’ve got any floaters?’

  ‘And they are?’ Kysandra asked somewhat peevishly. They’d risked everything to gain unrestricted access to the palace, now these two were taking a moment to have a nostalgiafest. Her tolerance was wearing thin.

  ‘Gateways you drop into a gas giant’s atmosphere. They float along the top of the gas/liquid boundary, siphoning out every kind of hydrocarbon compound you could ever need. An infinite resource.’

  ‘Is that relevant?’

  Nigel reached up and patted the first gateway. ‘This is what I built, Kysandra – me and Ozzie. This is what made the Commonwealth possible.’ He pursed his lips in regret. ‘I don’t suppose we can use one to reach up to the Forest?’

  ‘They all have direct mass converters as a power source, which are glitchy at best in the Void,’ Coulan said. ‘But this is the original protective wrap. I’m guessing Captain Cornelius tried powering one up when they arrived. If it’d worked, they’d be using them instead of trains to link Bienvenido’s cities.’

  ‘So they kept them wrapped up and stored them down here. Makes sense. Damn. That would have been a real help.’ He regarded the big dark cylinders forlornly. ‘Looks like I’m going to be a rocket jockey after all. Wilson Kime will laugh his ass off when he hears about this. Come on, let’s get what we came for.’

  *

  It had always surprised Yannrith how many cab drivers were cell members. Their trade was wealthy people, and the revolution was busy frightening them out of town. Of course, a lot of cabs were also out of town right now, busy taking those same rich people to country estates or to the refuge of family in distant cities, for which they’d no doubt charge exorbitant fees. But those who remained were happy enough to run activists all over town to help the cause. Bethaneve kept them on a rota.

  A more cynical side of his mind suspected it was to secure their position afterwards. Cab licences in Varlan were notoriously unobtainable; the only way to get one these days was to inherit it. The Varlan Cab Driver Guild could have taught Slvasta’s union a thing or two about restrictive practices and demarcation.

  The cab turned out of Pointas Str
eet onto Walton Boulevard. The statue of Captain Gootwai which had guarded the junction for centuries had been decapitated, and a pumpkin squashed onto the broken neck. Yannrith didn’t much care for the lawlessness that was gripping the city. He liked order in his life. Slvasta had already asked him to command whatever police force they assembled out of the remaining sheriffs and selected grade three activists. It would be a tough job, getting those two groups to work together afterwards.

  ‘Think of it as the perfect example of how we have to rebuild our lives afterwards,’ Slvasta had said. ‘Reconciliation has to start somewhere.’

  Yannrith was scheduled to meet the surviving sheriff station captains that afternoon, to find out just how practical that was likely to be – that’s if any of them agreed to turn up in the first place. But right now he was more concerned about the shocking split between Javier and Slvasta. It had taken everyone by surprise, blowing up out of nowhere. He was convinced it was down to exhaustion and the unrelenting stress of the last few days. As reconciliations went, that one was pretty vital to all of them. Even Slvasta seemed to recognize that. Now.

  Which was why Yannrith was on his way to the palace, to talk to Coulan, who was the calm sensible one, the one to negotiate a truce. Unfortunately, Coulan wasn’t responding to any ’paths right now, so Uracus alone knew what his game was. Maybe he was rushing to support his lover in a coup against Slvasta. Coulan always was an expert in subtle, intricate strategies.

  Paranoia. Probably . . . The only way to find out was to confront him directly. Which Slvasta couldn’t do, because that would be a sign of weakness, and he had to build alliances with the People’s Interim Congress delegates who supported him.

  It fell to Yannrith, then, to act as the go-between in this feud (because Bethaneve was furious with both of them). That suited him fine because he also wanted to know first-hand how the search for the Captain’s daughter was going. Once the whole of the Captain’s family was in custody, Slvasta could really start to apply pressure – like making the sheriff captains turn up this afternoon. Although nobody actually wanted to start executing any more members of the Captain’s family, not now. Aothori had to go, everyone knew that, but the kids . . . That would lose them a great deal of support.

  Who could have guessed a revolution’s internal politics would turn out to be so insanely complicated?

  A convoy of vehicles was coming the other way down Walton Boulevard, moving at a fair old pace. Two cabs in front, with armed militiamen hanging off the sides, their minds emitting a steely caution to get out of the way. Then came two big covered wagons, heavily fuzzed. Followed by a final cab, equally laden with militia.

  Yannrith peered at them curiously, just glimpsing a young woman sitting up beside the surly-looking driver on the first wagon. She was dressed in boots and a long suede skirt, with a leather waistcoat over a white blouse, her red hair trailing from a broad-rimmed hat. Yannrith frowned; that face. He knew her from somewhere. She’s with Coulan’s militia, which means she’s an activist. But how do I recognize her? The cell network keeps us all isolated. In theory.

  Then the convoy was past, and he didn’t know what to make of it at all. Coulan’s militia people had been methodically stripping the palace bare. There’d been a continual scrum along Walton Boulevard for the first two days as they handed out the Captain’s possessions, but now all the booty was gone. So why were the carts guarded? What could be so important?

  A minute later he arrived at the Captain’s Palace, keen to get some answers from Coulan. The militia guarding the gates were reluctant to let him through. It worried him that factions were forming, their attitudes hardening: that would be disastrous for the revolution. But once inside, the remnants of the teams assigned to the palace told him Coulan wasn’t there. They didn’t know where he was, nor when he would be back. They knew nothing of the convoy, either.

  *

  The Delkeith theatre on Portnoi Street was old and shabby, but it did have thick walls to block ex-sight from outside. It specialized in fairly crude satirical comedy, which was why Javier was familiar with it. The management had closed up as soon as the mobs hit the streets, but the caretaker was happy enough to open it for Javier.

  He sat on the stage, next to the giant teacup prop, and thanked people for coming, for having the courage to walk out of the Congress with him. They were mostly union stewards, as well as the radical stalwarts he’d known before he met Slvasta. During the time the cells had been built up, he’d carefully steered them all into positions of leadership, so now over twenty had been appointed borough delegates to the People’s Interim Congress.

  They understood the reality of life on Bienvenido, not needing any persuasion to see the injustice. They knew how vital jobs and a thriving economy were to establish the revolution as legitimate. Once he started talking, they were with him on blocking Slvasta’s stupidity about mods and neuts.

  With that agreed, they all started to discuss procedures and votes and possible allies to use in the Congress to defeat the motion. It didn’t help that the Congress was chaired by Slvasta, so they needed tactics into shaming him and forcing him to take account of a democratic mandate.

  The one person Javier really needed at the Delkeith was Coulan. Not just for the personal comfort, but because he had the best brain for this kind of stuff. Coulan would also know how to smooth things over with Slvasta.

  Now the argument was over, now the split was hugely public, Javier was feeling sheepish about the whole thing. There had been no need for either of them to get so bad tempered, nor so stubborn.

  It was tiredness, he kept telling himself. A state where the smallest frustration could trigger ludicrous amounts of adrenalin and testosterone. And he was ridiculously tired. The others had given him the job of industrial strategy for the Interim Congress. After all the violence and desperation of the revolution’s active stage, there had been no time to rest afterwards. They had to keep momentum going – was it Coulan who kept insisting that? Keep pushing the establishment back, keep claiming their own legitimacy through the Congress, by establishing their own managers in strategic businesses. Don’t let up. Push and push until there simply isn’t any resistance any more. Keep going.

  Coulan didn’t answer any ’paths. He was in charge of securing the palace and the Captain’s family. Tasks which had been carried out flawlessly, Javier knew; he’d perceived reports all through the active stage, keeping anxious track of his beloved. His small militia was superbly disciplined, eradicating any opposition, and not allowing the mob following them to run wild. If only all aspects of the revolution had been so well executed, he thought dolefully. There had been a lot of poor discipline. Too many had died or suffered. The looting was a disgrace.

  However, the palace was theirs now, as was the Captain’s family – apart from Dionene. The city was theirs. They’d won.

  So why do I feel so cruddy?

  Javier realized his eyes were closing. He abruptly sat back in the chair – a jerky movement which sent his elbow thudding against the ridiculous teacup. It was made from papier mâché and wobbled about. Once he saw it wasn’t going to fall over and roll across the stage, he held up his hands. ‘I’m sorry. I really have to get some sleep. We know what we have to do. I’ll see you all tomorrow at the morning session of Congress.’

  They all wanted to congratulate him. For the success. For not forgetting them. For standing up to Slvasta. For representing genuine democracy.

  He shook hands. Slapped backs. Promised long cheerful sessions in the pub. Barely recognizing them, and certainly not recalling what they’d all just said. The fatigue was so strong now, making it hard simply to stand.

  When he finally left the theatre, a cab was waiting for him. Bethaneve’s organizational magic was still working perfectly. He smiled at that as he told the cabby to take him to the palace. Somehow he had to talk to Coulan and find out just what was really happening. He fell asleep as soon as they started to move.

  *


  Exhaustion had finally abolished Slvasta’s rage. His aides kept giving him coffee during the Congress, which he hated but drank anyway. Now he had a wicked headache, his mouth tasted like crud, his bladder ached, and still the meetings went on. Essential political meetings he held in the First Speaker’s annex – a lovely hexagonal wood-panelled study with high, lead-framed windows. Delegates he knew he could trust came and went for hours. He talked to them soothingly, apologizing for his earlier outburst. They all expressed sympathy; it had been a tough week for everyone. And they all managed to drop in their concerns, on behalf of those they now represented, which he pledged to give them debate-time to raise. Trading favours and hearing whispers.

  As he sat in the annex, so Javier had set up in the Delkeith with his old cronies, forming a pro-neut faction. That simply couldn’t be allowed to succeed. But as the exhausting day wore on, draining him still further, he resented not being able simply to ’path his friend and say: ‘Come on, let’s go for a beer in the Bellaview pub garden, and just talk about it.’ The way it used to be.

  It should be Javier asking him, though. He was the one at fault.

  Bethaneve came in as the seventh – or eighth – group was leaving. She walked over to him as he sat behind the wide desk, sitting in his lap and resting her head against him. They said nothing for a long moment, just relaxing, content that they were still alive, that they had each other.

  ‘We did it,’ she whispered finally.

  ‘Now we have to make sure we don’t lose.’

  ‘We won’t.’ She kissed him lightly, then put her fingers under his chin, raising his head so she could look straight into his eyes. ‘You’re still thinking of Ingmar, aren’t you, sweetheart?’

  He nodded meekly. ‘I’m trying not to. But . . . Uracus damn those Fallers for all eternity. And the institute, traitors to our very race, every one of them.’