The caravan rocked and rolled, negotiating a stretch of road that had only recently been reclaimed from icefalls. Now and then - more often, it seemed, than a day or so before - they swerved to steer past a group of pilgrims making the journey on foot. The pilgrims looked tiny and stupid, so far below. The fortunate ones had closed-cycle vacuum suits that permitted long journeys across the surface of a planet. Some of the suits even tended to ailments, healing minor wounds or soothing arthritic joints. Certainly those were the lucky ones. The rest had to make do with suits that had never been designed for travelling more than a few kilometres unassisted. They trudged beneath the weight of bulky home-made backpacks, like peasants carrying all their possessions. Some of them had ended up with such grotesque contraptions that they had no choice but to haul their belongings and their makeshift life-support systems behind them, on skis or treads. The suits, helmets, backpacks and towed contraptions were all augmented with religious totems, often of a cumbersome nature. There were golden statues, crosses, pagodas, demons, snakes, swords, armoured knights, dragons, sea monsters, arks and a hundred other things Rashmika did not trouble herself to recognise. Everything was done by muscle power, without the succour of mechanical assistance. Even in Hela’s moderate gravity the pilgrims were bent double with the effort, every sliding footstep a study in exhaustion.
Something drew her eye, far to what she judged to be the south. She looked sharply in that direction, but caught only a fading nimbus: a blue-violet glow retreating behind the nearest line of hills.
A moment later, she saw another flash in the same direction. It was as sharp and quick as an eye-blink, but it left the same dying aura.
A third. Then nothing.
She had no definite idea of what the flashes had been, but she guessed that the direction she was looking in could not be far from the position on the Permanent Way currently occupied by the cathedrals. Perhaps she had witnessed part of the clearing operation of which the quaestor had spoken.
Now something else was happening, but this time much nearer. The rack on which the Observers were mounted was tilting, lowering itself down towards the horizontal. At an angle of about thirty degrees it halted, and with one eerily smooth movement the Observers all sat up, their shackles unlocked. The suddenness of the motion quite startled Rashmika. It was like the co-ordinated rising of an army of somnambulists.
Something brushed past her - not forcefully, but not exactly gently either. Then another something.
She was being passed by a procession of the same hooded pilgrims. She looked back and saw that there was a long line of them approaching the rack. They were emerging from a trapdoor in the roof of the caravan, one she had not noticed earlier. At the same time, the ones that had been on the rack were filing off it one row at a time, stepping down the gentle slope with synchronised movements. As they reached the roof of the caravan they made their own line, winding back around the rack and vanishing down another trapdoor. Even before the rack was fully vacated, the new batch of Observers were taking their positions: lying flat on their backs, buckling in. The entire shift change took perhaps two minutes, and was executed with such a degree of manic calm that it was difficult to see how it could have been completed any more quickly. Rashmika had the impression that blood had been spilled over every second of that shift change, for here was a hiatus during which Haldora remained unobserved. This was not quite true, she realised then, for she saw no sign of similar activity anywhere else along the caravan: the other racks were still tilted at their usual observation angles. Doubtless the shift changes were staggered so that at least one group of Observers would be sure to witness a Haldora vanishing.
Until now, it had not occurred to her that the Observers would spend any time off the rack. But here they were, filing obediently back into the caravan. She wondered if this was because there were too many Observers to go around, or whether they needed to be taken off the rack now and then for their own health.
Doubtless the sequence of distant flashes had been a coincidence, but it had served to underscore the shift change in a way that Rashmika found faintly unsettling. The last time she had been up here she had felt as if she was spying on a sacred ceremony. Now she felt as if she had been caught in the middle of it, and had in some way marred the sanctity of the ritual.
The last of the new batch of Observers had assumed their positions on the rack. Though they had bustled past her, there was no obvious sign that she had spoiled their timing. Now the rack itself was tilting back to the same slope as the others along the line of the caravan, angling to face Haldora.
Rashmika turned around to watch the last of the old shift vanish back into the machine. There were three left, then two, and then the last one disappeared down into the hole. Where the new shift had emerged the trapdoor was now sealed, but the other one remained open.
Rashmika looked up at the Observers on the rack. They seemed utterly indifferent to her presence now, if indeed they had really noticed her at all. Perhaps they had only registered her as a minor obstacle on the way to their duty.
She began to make her way to the open trapdoor. All the while she kept an eye on the rack, but at its present angle it would have been almost impossible for anyone on it to see her at all, even in peripheral vision, and especially not given the fact that they were wearing helmets and hoods.
She had no intention of going down the trapdoor. At the same time she was hugely curious to see what was below. A glimpse would suffice. She might see nothing, just a laddered tube leading somewhere else, perhaps to an airlock. Or she might see . . . well, her imagination drew a blank. But she could not help but picture rows of Observers, hooked into machines, being refreshed in time for another shift.
The caravan swayed and bumped. She steadied herself on a railing, expecting any moment that the trapdoor would be tugged shut from within. She hesitated to go any nearer. The Observers had appeared docile so far, but how would they react to an invasion of their territory? She knew next to nothing about their sect. Maybe they had an elaborate series of death penalties lined up for those who violated their secrets. A thought crossed her mind: what if Harbin had done exactly what she was about to do? She was a lot like her brother. She could easily imagine Harbin killing time by wandering around the caravan, stumbling into the same shift change, being driven by his natural curiosity to see what was down below. Another thought, even less welcome, chased the first: what if one of the Observers was Harbin?
She pushed forwards until she reached the lip of the trapdoor. It still had not closed. Warm red light spilled up from the depths.
Rashmika steadied herself again, making certain she could not fall over the edge if the caravan made another sharp swerve. She peered into the shaft and saw a simple ladder descending as far as her angle of vision allowed her to see. To look deeper, she would have to lean further out.
Rashmika stretched, letting go of her hand-hold to make the move. She could see a little further into the hole now. The ladder terminated against grilled flooring. There was a hatch or doorway leading further into the caravan - one end of an airlock, perhaps, unless the Observers spent their entire lives in vacuum.
The caravan lurched. Rashmika felt herself tip forwards. She flailed, reaching back for the support railing. Her fingers clasped empty space. She tilted further forwards. The hole yawned bigger, the shaft suddenly appearing much wider and deeper than it had an instant ago. Rashmika started to cry out, certain that she was about to fall in. The ladder was on the wrong side; there was no way she was going to be able to grab it.
But suddenly she was still. Something - someone - held her. The person pulled her gently back from the edge of the trapdoor. Rashmika’s heart was in her throat. She had never understood what people meant when they said that, but now the expression made perfect sense to her.
Looking up into the face of her benefactor, she saw her own mirrored faceplate reflected back at her, and a smaller reflection in that, dwindling all the way to some vague, not too
distant vanishing point. Behind the hooded mirror, faintly visible, was a suggestion of a young man’s face. Cheekbones, caught sharply in the light. Slowly, but unmistakably, he shook his head.
Almost as soon as this realisation had dawned, Rashmika was on her own again. The Observer moved around to the side of the shaft where the ladder was and slipped nimbly over the side and then down. Still catching her breath after the shock of nearly falling, Rashmika moved sluggishly to the edge, arriving just in time to see the Observer operate some lever-driven mechanism that brought the trapdoor down. Once snugly in its frame, the door twisted through ninety degrees.
She was on her own again.
Rashmika stood up, shaky on her feet. She felt foolish and irresponsible. How careless she had been to allow herself to be saved by one of the pilgrims. And how unwise to assume that they did not perceive her at all. It was obvious now, crushingly so. They had always been aware of her but had simply chosen to ignore her as best they could. When, finally, she had done something that could not be ignored - something idiotic, it had to be said - they had intervened quickly and sternly, the way adults did around children. She had been put right without reprimand or caution, but the sense of indignity remained. Rashmika had little experience with rebuke, and the sensation was both novel and unpleasant.
Something snapped in her then. She knelt down on the armoured trapdoor and pounded it with her fists. She wanted the Observer to come back up and make some explanation for why he had shaken his head. She wanted him to apologise, to make her feel as if she had done nothing wrong by spying on their ritual. She wanted him to purge her guilt, to take it upon himself. She wanted absolution.
She kept knocking on the door, but nothing happened. The caravan rumbled on. The racked Observers maintained their tireless scrutiny of Haldora. Finally, humbled and humiliated, feeling even more foolish than she had when the man had saved her, Rashmika stood up and went back across the roof of the machine to her own part of the caravan. Inside her helmet she cried at her own weakness, wondering why she had ever imagined she had the strength or courage to see her quest through to the end.
Ararat, 2675
‘Do you believe in coincidences?’ asked the swimmer.
‘I don’t know,’ Vasko said. He stood at a window in the High Conch, a hundred metres above the grid of night-time streets. His hands were laced neatly behind his back, his booted feet set slightly apart, his spine straight. He had heard that there was to be a meeting here, and that he would not be prevented from attending. No one had explained why it was taking place in the conch structure rather than the supposedly more secure environment of the ship.
He looked out beyond the land to the ribbon of water between the shore and the dark spire of the ship. The Juggler activity had not lessened, but there was, strangely, a swathe of calm water reaching out into the bay like a tongue. The shapes festered on either side of it, but between them the water had the smooth cast of molten metal. The moving lanterns of boats meandered away from land, navigating that strip. They were sailing in the direction of the ship, strung out in a ragged, bobbing procession. It was as if the Jugglers were giving them clear passage.
‘Rumours spread fast,’ the swimmer said. ‘You’ve heard, haven’t you?’
‘About Clavain and the girl?’
‘Not just that. The ship. They say it’s started to come alive again. The neutrino detectors - you know about those?’ She didn’t wait for his answer. ‘They’re registering a surge in the engine cores. After twenty-three years, they’re warming. The ship’s thinking about leaving. ’
‘No one told it to.’
‘No one has to. It’s got a mind of its own. Question is, are we better off being on it when it leaves, or halfway around Ararat? We know there’s a battle going on up there now, even if we didn’t all believe that woman’s story at first.’
‘Not much doubt about it now,’ Vasko said, ‘and the Jugglers seem to have made up their minds as well. They’re letting those people reach the ship. They want them to reach safety.’
‘Maybe they just don’t want them to drown,’ the swimmer said. ‘Maybe they’re simply humouring whatever decision we make. Maybe none of it matters to them.’
Her name was Pellerin and he knew her from the earlier meeting aboard the Nostalgia for Infinity. She was a tall woman with the usual swimmer’s build. She had a handsome, strong-boned face with a high brow, and her hair was slicked back and glossy with perfumed oils, as if she had just emerged from the sea. What he took at first glance to be freckles across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose were in fact pale-green fungal markings. Swimmers had to keep an eye on those markings. They indicated that the sea was taking a liking to them, invading them, breaking down the barriers between vastly different organisms. Sooner or later, it was said, the sea would snatch them as a prize, dissolving them into the Pattern Juggler matrix.
Swimmers made much of that. They liked to play on the risks they took each time they entered the ocean, especially when they were senior swimmers like Pellerin.
‘It’s quite possible they do want them to make it to safety,’ Vasko said. ‘Why don’t you swim and find out for yourselves?’
‘We never swim when it’s like this.’
Vasko laughed. ‘Like this? It’s never been like this, Pellerin.’
‘We don’t swim when the Jugglers are so agitated,’ she said. ‘They’re not predictable, like one of your scraping machines. We’ve lost swimmers before, especially when they’ve been wild, like they are now.’
‘I’d have thought the circumstances outweighed the risks,’ he said. ‘But then what do I know? I just work in the food factories.’
‘If you were a swimmer, Malinin, you’d certainly know better than to swim on a night like this.’
‘You’re probably right,’ he said.
‘Meaning what?’
He thought of the sacrifice that had been made today. The scale of that gesture was still too large for him to take in. He had begun to map it, to comprehend some of its essential vastness, but there were still moments when abysses opened before him, reaching into unsuspected depths of courage and selflessness. He did not think a lifetime would be enough to diminish what he had experienced in the iceberg.
Clavain’s death would always be there, like a piece of shrapnel buried inside him, its sharp foreign presence felt with every breath.
‘Meaning,’ he said, ‘that if I were more concerned about my own wellbeing than the security of Ararat . . . then, yes, I might have second thoughts about swimming.’
‘You insolent little prick, Malinin. You have no idea.’
‘You’re wrong,’ he said, with sudden venom, ‘I have every idea. What I witnessed today is something you can thank God you didn’t have to experience. I know what it means to be brave, Pellerin. I know what it means and I wish I didn’t.’
‘I heard it was Clavain who was the brave one,’ she said.
‘Did I say otherwise?’
‘You make it sound as if it was you.’
‘I was there,’ he said. ‘That was enough.’
There was a forced calm in her voice. ‘I’ll forgive you this, Malinin. I know you all went though something awful out there. It must have messed with your mind pretty badly. But I’ve seen my two best friends drown before my eyes. I’ve watched another two dissolve into the sea and I’ve seen six end up in the psychiatric camp, where they spend their days drooling and scratching marks on to the walls with the blood from their fingertips. One of them was my lover. Her name is Shizuko. I visit her there now and when she looks at me she just laughs and goes back to her drawings. I have about as much personal significance for her as the weather.’ Pellerin’s eyes flashed wide. ‘So don’t give me a lecture about bravery, all right? We’ve all seen things we’d sooner forget.’
Her calm had undermined his own furious sense of self-righteousness. He was, he realised, shaking. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’
Pellerin left him. He stood alone, his thoughts in turmoil. He could still see the line of boats, each lantern now fractionally further out from the shoreline.
TWENTY-FIVE
Ararat, 2675
Vasko slipped an anonymous brown coat over his Security Arm uniform, descended the High Conch and walked unobserved into the night.
As he stepped outside he felt a tension in the air, like the nervous stillness that presaged an electrical storm. The crowds moved through the narrow, twisting defiles of the streets in boisterous surges. There was a macabre carnival atmosphere about the lantern-lit assembly, but no one was shouting or laughing; all that he heard was the low hum of a thousand voices, seldom raised above a normal speaking level.
He did not much blame them for their reaction. Towards the end of the afternoon there had been only one curt official statement on the matter of Clavain’s death, and it now seemed unlikely that there was any part of the colony that hadn’t heard that news. The surge of people into the streets had begun even before sundown and the arrival of the lights in the sky. Rightly, they sensed that there was something missing from the official statement. There had been no mention of Khouri or the child, no mention of the battle taking place in near-Ararat space, merely a promise that more information would be circulated in the fullness of time.
The Revelation Space Collection Page 267
