Things had gone well enough in the early years of the colony. Constanza’s message from the grave had taken the shine off for a while, but before very long the people’s need for a hero had overridden any nagging doubts they might have had about my suitability for the role. I had lost some sympathisers, but gained the general goodwill of the mob, a trade-off I considered acceptable. Constanza’s hidden package had never come to light, and as time passed I began to suspect that it had never existed; that the whole thing had been a psychological weapon designed to unnerve me.
Those early days were heady times. The three months’ good grace which I had given the Santiago had been enough time for us to establish a network of small surface camps. We had three well-fortified main settlements by the time the other starships braked into orbit above them. Nueva Valparaiso, near the equator (it would make a fine site for a space elevator one day, I thought) was the latest. Others would follow. It had been a good start, and it had seemed unthinkable then that the people - with a few loyal exceptions - would turn so viciously against me.
Yet they had.
I could see something ahead, through the dense-packed rain-forest foliage. A light. Definitely artificial, I thought - perhaps the allies I was supposed to be meeting. I hoped that was the case anyway. I did not have many allies now. The few left in the orthodox power structure had managed to break me out of custody before the trial, but they had not been able to assist me in reaching sanctuary. Very probably those friends would be shot for their treason. So be it. They had made the necessary sacrifice. I had expected nothing less.
At first it had not even been a war.
The Brazilia and the Baghdad had arrived in orbit, confronted by the skeletal hulk of the old Santiago. For long months nothing had happened, the two allied ships maintaining a chill observational silence. Then they had launched a pair of shuttles on trajectories which would bring them down in the Peninsula’s northern latitudes. I had wished I could have saved a speck of antimatter in the old ship, just to fire up its engine for a moment, and to douse the shuttles with that killing lance. But I had never learned the trick of shutting down an antimatter reservoir.
The shuttles had come down, then made further flights back up to orbit, ferrying down sleepers.
More long months of waiting.
And then the attacks had begun: skirmish squads moving down from the north, striking against the Santiago’s nascent settlements. So what that there were barely three thousand people on the whole planet. It was enough for a small war . . . and it had been quiet at first, giving both sides time to dig in, consolidate . . . breed.
Not really a war at all.
But my own side were still trying to have me executed for war crimes. It was not that they were interested in peace with the enemy - too much had happened for that - but they certainly blamed me for bringing about the whole situation. They would kill me and then return to the fray.
Ungrateful sons of bitches. They had twisted everything now. They had even changed the name of the planet, as a kind of joke. Not Journey’s End any more.
Sky’s Edge.
Because of the edge I had given them to be the first to arrive.
I hated it. I knew what they meant by it: a sick acknowledgement of the necessary crime; a reminder of what had brought them here.
But the name was sticking.
Now I paused; not merely to catch my breath. I had never really liked the jungle. There were rumours of things in it - large things which slithered. But no one I trusted had ever seen one. Just stories then - that was all.
Just stories.
But I was still lost. The light I had seen earlier was gone now. It might have been obstructed by a thick patch of trees . . . or perhaps I’d imagined it all along. I looked around me. It was very dark, and everything looked the same. The sky was blackening overhead - 61 Cygni-B, normally the brightest star in the sky apart from Swan, was below the horizon - and the jungle would soon just be a darkening extension of that blackness.
Perhaps I was going to die here.
But then I thought I saw movement far ahead, a milky shape which I at first assumed was the same patch of light I’d seen earlier. But this milky shape was much closer - approaching me, in fact. It was man-shaped and it was stepping towards me through the overgrowth. It shone, as if imbued with its own inner luminosity.
I smiled. I recognised the shape now. I shouldn’t have been afraid. I should have remembered that I was never truly alone; that my guide would always appear to show me the way forward.
‘You didn’t think I’d forget you, did you?’ Clown said. ‘Come on. It’s not far now.’
Clown led me on.
It had not been my imagination; not completely. There was a light ahead, gleaming through the trees like spectral fog. My allies . . .
By the time I reached them Clown was no longer with me. He had faded away like a retinal burn. That was the last time I ever saw him - but he had done well to bring me this far. He had been the only trusted friend of my life, even though I knew that he was just a psychological figment, a subconscious entity projected into daylight, born from memories of the tutelary persona I had known in the nursery aboard the Santiago.
What did that matter?
‘Captain Haussmann!’ called my friends through the trees. ‘You made it! We were beginning to think the others hadn’t managed . . .’
‘Oh, they played their parts well,’ I said. ‘I imagine they’ve been arrested by now - if they haven’t already been shot.’
‘That’s the odd thing, sir. We are hearing reports of arrests - and they’re saying they’ve recaptured you.’
‘That wouldn’t make any sense, would it?’
But it would, I thought - if the man they thought they had recaptured only looked like me; if the man only looked like me because buried beneath the supple skin of his face was an armature of twenty additional muscles which allowed him to mimic almost anyone. He would talk and act like me too, as he had been conditioned over years to do so; trained to think of me as his God; his only desire to obey me selflessly. And the missing arm? Well, that was a dead giveaway, wasn’t it? The man they had arrested looked like Sky Haussmann and was missing an arm as well.
There couldn’t be any doubt that they had recaptured me. There’d be a trial, of sorts, during which the prisoner might appear incoherent - but what more would they expect from an eighty-year-old man? He was probably going senile. The best thing would be to make some kind of example of him; something as public as possible. Something no one was going to forget in a hurry, even if it bordered on the inhumane. A crucifixion might fit the bill.
‘This way, sir.’
There was a vehicle waiting in the pool of light, a tracked surface rover. They bundled me aboard it and then we sped through the forest trail. We drove through night for what felt like hours, always further and further away from anything resembling civilisation.
Eventually they brought me to a large clearing.
‘Is this it?’ I said.
They nodded in unison. I knew the plan by then, of course. The climate was against me now. It was not a time for heroes - they preferred to redefine them as war criminals. My allies had sheltered me until now, but they had not been able to stop my arrest. It had been all they could do to spring me from the makeshift detention centre in Nueva Iquique. Now that my double had been recaptured, I would have to disappear for a little while.
Here in the jungle they had devised a means to protect me for good; no matter how the fortunes of my allies in the main settlements waxed and waned. They had buried a fully-functioning sleeper berth here, with the power supply to keep it working for many decades. They thought there was a risk involved in using it, but they also thought I was really eighty years old. I figured the risk was a lot less than they imagined. By the time I was ready to wake up - I’d give it a century at the very least - my helpers would have access to much better technology. It wouldn’t be a problem to revive me. It probably wouldn�
�t even be a problem to repair my arm.
All I had to do was sleep until the right time. I would be tended across the decades by my allies - just as I had tended the sleepers who rode the Santiago.
But with infinitely more devotion.
They hitched the surface rover to something buried beneath overgrowth - a metal hook - and then pulled the vehicle forward, dragging aside a camouflaged door set into the clearing’s floor, revealing steps sinking down into a well-lit, clinically clean chamber.
Helped by two of my people, I was escorted down the stairs, until I reached the waiting sleeper-casket. It had been refurbished since it had carried someone from Sol system, and it would suit my needs excellently.
‘We’d best get you under as soon as possible,’ said my aide.
I smiled and nodded at the man, and then allowed him to slip a hypodermic into my arm.
Sleep came quickly. The last thing I remembered, just before it closed over me, was that when I woke up I would need a new name. Something that no one would ever connect to Sky Haussmann - but which, nonetheless, would provide me with some tangible link to the past. Something that only I knew the meaning of.
I thought back to the Caleuche, remembering what Norquinco had told me about the ghost ship. And I thought about the poor, psychotic dolphins aboard the Santiago; of Sleek in particular; of the way his hard, leathery body had thrashed as I pushed poison into him. There had been a dolphin with the ghost ship, too, but for a moment I couldn’t remember its name, or even be certain that Norquinco had told me. I would find out when I woke, I thought.
Find out and use that name.
FORTY-ONE
Refuge was a kilometre-long blackened spindle, unrelieved by exterior lights; visible only by the way it occluded background stars and the silvery spine of the Milky Way. Very few other ships were seen coming or going, and those that we saw were just as dark and anonymous as the habitat. As we vectored in, one end of the spindle opened out in four triangular segments, like the highly adapted jaw of an eyeless marine predator. Insignificant as plankton, we drifted in.
The berthing chamber was just large enough to take a ship like ours. Docking clamps folded out, followed by concertina-like transfer tunnels, mating with the airlocks spaced around the equatorial belt of the ship’s main sphere.
Tanner’s here, I thought. From the moment we stepped into Refuge, he might be on the point of killing me and anyone who got too close to our little vendetta.
It wasn’t something I was going to forget easily.
Refuge sent armed drones into the ship, gloss-black spheroids bristling with guns and sensors which swept us for concealed arms. Of course we’d brought none with us; not even Yellowstone’s security was sloppy enough for that. By the same token, I hoped that Tanner had also come in unarmed - but I wasn’t counting on it.
With Tanner, you didn’t count on anything.
The robots betrayed a level of technology appreciably more advanced than anything I’d encountered since my revival, with the possible exception of Zebra’s furniture. Presumably unaugmented humans were not considered a serious transmission risk, but it might have been the case that we would have been denied entry if one of us had been carrying a plague-susceptible implant. Human officials moved in once the robots had completed the preliminary work, carrying significantly less brutal-looking guns, weapons which they toted with an air of embarrassed apology. They were excessively polite and I began to understand why.
No one gets here without an invitation.
We had to be treated like the honoured guests that we were.
‘I called ahead, of course,’ Quirrenbach said, while we waited in the airlock for our documents to be processed. ‘Reivich knows we’re here.’
‘I hope you warned him about Tanner.’
‘I did what I could,’ he said.
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means Tanner’s definitely here. Reivich won’t have turned him away.’
I was sweating as it was; worried that my fake identity would not be enough to get me into Refuge. But now the sweat on my brow turned into droplets of ice. ‘What in hell’s name is he playing at?’
‘Reivich must feel that he and Tanner still have some business to attend to. He’ll have invited him.’
‘He’s insane. Tanner might kill him just for kicks, even if his real argument’s with me. Don’t forget my own imperative was to complete a mission; to keep my word that I’d track down Reivich. I don’t know whether that impulse came from Tanner or Cahuella. But I wouldn’t like to stake my life on it.’
‘Keep your voice down,’ Quirrenbach said. ‘Those robots will have sprayed listening devices over every square angstrom of this room. You’re not here for a spot of quiet bloodshed, remember.’
‘Strictly tourism,’ I said, grimacing.
The armoured outer door reopened, rust flakes chipping in free-fall from its hinges.
A third-tier official came in, not even armed this time, nor clad in muscular armour. He wore a look of pained evasiveness, homing in on me like a heat-seeking slug. ‘Mister Haussmann? I’m sorry to inconvenience you, but we’re experiencing an administrative problem in processing your application for entry into Refuge.’
‘Really?’ I said, trying to sound remotely surprised. I could hardly complain: Sky Haussmann had got me out of Yellowstone’s atmosphere, which was all that could be reasonably expected of him.
‘I’m sure it’s nothing serious,’ the official said, sincerity chiselled into his face. ‘We frequently experience conflict between our records and those of the rest of the system; it’s to be expected after the recent unpleasantness.’
Recent unpleasantness. He was talking about the plague.
‘I’m sure the matter can be resolved with a slightly more thorough examination, a few physiological cross-checks; nothing too complicated.’
I bridled. ‘What kind of physiological cross-check, exactly?’
‘A retinal scan, that kind of thing.’ The official was snapping his fingers at something or someone beyond our view. Almost immediately another robot entered the airlock, a dove-grey sphere politely devoid of any nasty weapons, bearing the Mixmaster sigil.
‘I’m not submitting to a retinal scan,’ I said, as reasonably as I could. I knew it wouldn’t take a machine to spot the oddity of my eyes. A human barely had to glance at me in the right light to see there was something strange about the way I looked back at them.
My remark had the same effect on the official as a slap across the cheek, causing an almost tangible blanching. ‘I’m sure we can come to some kind of arrangement . . .’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I very much doubt that, I’m afraid.’
‘Then I’m afraid—’
Quirrenbach stepped between us. ‘Let me handle this,’ he mouthed, before speaking aloud to the man. ‘Excuse my colleague; he’s a little nervous around officialdom. There’s been an honest mistake, as I’m sure you appreciate. Will you accept the word of Argent Reivich?’
The man looked flustered. ‘Of course . . . provided I have his guarantees . . . and that it’s in person . . .’
He hadn’t needed to ask who Argent Reivich was, I noticed.
Quirrenbach snapped his fingers at me. ‘Stay here; I’ll square things with him. It shouldn’t take more than half an hour.’
‘You’re going to ask Reivich to sign me in?’
‘Yeah,’ Quirrenbach said, without a hint of humour. ‘Ironic, isn’t it.’
I didn’t have to wait long.
Reivich appeared on a screen in the holding pen where the Refuge officials held those pending a decision on entry. It was not too much of a shock to see his face, since I had already met Voronoff, who looked exactly the same. But there was something unique about the real Reivich; some essence Voronoff had not succeeded in capturing. It was nothing I could quite place. I suppose it was just the difference between someone playing a game - however earnestly - and someone whose intentions are deadly serio
us.
‘This is quite a turn-up,’ Reivich said. He looked pale but healthy, a white tunic with a high collarless neck his only visible item of clothing. He was backdropped by a mural of interlocking algebraic symbols, denoting part of the mathematic theory of Transmigration. ‘You asking me for entry, and me agreeing to it.’
‘You let Tanner in,’ I said. ‘Are you sure that was wise?’
‘No, but I’m sure it’ll prove interesting. Assuming he’s who you say he is, and you’re who you say you are.’
‘One or both of us might want to kill you.’
‘Do you?’
It was an admirable question; straight to the point. I gave him the dignity of appearing to think it over before answering. ‘No, Argent. I did once, but that was before I knew who I was. Finding out you’re not who you think you are does rather change one’s priorities.’
‘If you’re Cahuella, then my men killed your wife.’ His voice was thin and reedy, like a child’s. ‘I’d have thought you were even more keen to have me killed.’
‘Tanner killed Cahuella’s wife,’ I said. ‘The fact that he thought he was going to save her doesn’t really alter things.’
‘Are you Cahuella or not, in that case?’
‘I might have been, once. Now Cahuella doesn’t exist.’ I looked hard into the screen. ‘And frankly, I don’t think anyone’s going to mourn him, are they?’
Reivich pursed his lips distastefully. ‘Cahuella’s weapons butchered my family,’ he said. ‘He sold arms which murdered my loved ones. For that I could gladly have tortured him.’
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