by Dan Abnett
Huge hydraulic clamps had once lifted underboats in and out of the docking pool and secured them to the wharf, but rust and neglect had long since rendered them useless. They protruded like the rotting claws of behemoth crabs from the gantry, trailing streamers of calcite and algae into the soupy dock basin. As the underboat surfaced, its fans blowing and sputtering the grease ice coating the pool's surface, Lucic opened the upper hatch, and climbed out to make them steady, using dirty old chains and hooks that dangled from the gantry piers.
The docking pool was dim, illuminated only by the underboat's light rig and a few faded lumin strips high up in the arched roof. The skeletal bulk of the gantry wharf and the perished docking clamps made distressing silhouettes above them, and the light cast wan, foggy reflections off the slowly wallowing, viscous surface of the pool. A pair of corroded metal ladders allowed them to clamber up onto the wharf platform. Nayl opened the larger side hatch so that Ravenor could move out and rise to the walkway.
"Bad air," muttered Carl. The House's atmosphere held the sickly tang of an air supply recirculated and poorly scrubbed too many times, like a starship that had been sealed in transit for too long. There was no sound, except for the slap of the grease ice, the dying thump of the underboat's fans, and the brittle clump of their footsteps. Nayl, Lucic and Plyton switched on lamp packs.
"Cold." Plyton shivered, buttoning her coat. Her mood seemed to have lifted, however, now she was out of the underboat's drab metal confines. "This way," said Lucic, and set off down the walkway. "Why don't they keep this place in good order?" Carl wondered aloud. "It's not a way station or a depot." Lucic replied, gesturing with one gangly arm. The residents of the House expect those who come here to be perfectly capable of leaving again without supply or repair."
"Residents?" Ravenor asked. "How many?"
Lucic shrugged. "They don't tell me things like that. Come on." Ballack and Nayl pushed past him to lead the way. The metal surfaces of the decks, walls and machinery around them were caked in rust, or limed with verdigris and blooms of algae. There was an open, unlit hatchway at the back of the wharf platform, a hatchway that had clearly been open for so long, corrosion would not allow it to be sealed again.
The deck beneath them shuddered. All the loose chains and hanging filaments in the dock swayed and clanked. Every weapon in the party rose ready.
"Don't panic," said Lucic, "the House just took a step to steady itself. Get used to the sensation."
The hatch led through into a service tunnel where the lights had long since burned dead, or had been robbed out for spares. Their weaving lamp beams caught strange surface mottling on the walls, but it wasn't rust.
"Look at this," said Carl, training his lamp. The area of wall he was illuminating was entirely covered in a curious, tight patterning that appeared to have been etched. As he moved the beam around slowly, they could see that the pattern covered everything. "What is that?" Kys asked, leaning close. "Fingerprints," said Angharad. "No, it can't-"
"Fingerprints," the Carthaen repeated.
"She's right," Ravenor said, his transponder a dry rattle in the darkness beside them. "Human fingerprints."
The prints were life size, packed in so close to each other that barely a scrap of wall remained unmarked. They looked as if they had been left by thousands upon thousands of finger touches, but the touch of a fingertip did not excise its shape perfectly into bare metal in miniature bas-relief. "They must have been engraved," said Carl, "but the workmanship is astonishing. Who has the time to engrave so many individual, perfect marks?"
"This is the House." Lucic replied, in an annoyingly off-hand way.
"What's really astonishing," said Ravenor, "is that every single print is different."
A ripple of deep unease ran through them. For the first time, Ravenor felt the inscrutable Angharad register a scintilla of fear.
The service tunnel continued on for thirty metres and opened into a wide, drum-shaped chamber. This was also unlit. Their lamp beams revealed a rickety metal spiral staircase against one wall, leading up into the shadows to a roof hatch. The centre of the chamber was occupied by a cargo hoist, a cage of machinery surrounding a low, rectangular plinth crusted in filth and oil residue. Above it in the ceiling the dim space of a riser shaft yawned like a throat. The rest of the chamber was cluttered with metal litter and rusting machine junk. There were two other doors, both of them sealed forever by rust and decay.
Like the service tunnel, every part of the chamber's walls was covered with fingerprints. "Do we go up?" asked Nayl.
"We wait," said Lucic.
"For what?"
"Just wait. We can't rush them. This is their party now." They waited in edgy silence. The House rocked gently again, as it took another adjusting step.
"This-" said Plyton.
"Shhhhhh!" said Nayl. He was gazing up into the open darkness of the riser shaft above them.
A light came on far above them. It was thin and washy, a dirty fuzz of yellow radiance that penetrated only very faintly to their level. There was a distant, muffled thump of heavy gear, then a grinding noise. The hoist was descending.
It came down the shaft slowly, bringing the wash of light with it. The hoist was an open-sided, rectangular platform that matched exactly the dimensions of the plinth at the foot of the shaft. It lowered into view and settled with a resounding metal clang. Half a dozen mismatched oil lamps and bottle tapers stood on the platform, higgeldy-piggeldy, shedding their dirty, smoky glow. A figure stood in their midst, short, slender, like a youth or a child. The figure was shrouded in a hooded, floor-length cloak, and no face could be detected under the cowl. Ravenor hesitated from scanning. He did not want to provoke the residents of the House.
The figure wore an old, large, rusty key on a ribbon around its neck. It looked like the sort of antique key that might have once opened the gatehouse of a pre-Heresy bastion.
The figure gazed at them.
"These people come seeking coherence." Lucic called out, taking a step forward. There was a nervous tremor in his voice. "I am their guide."
For a brief moment, there was a murmur of voices in the air around them, an unintelligible flutter of whispering, hissing voices, overlapped and urgent.
Then it died away. The figure raised its left hand and beckoned them onto the hoist platform with a single, slow gesture.
As Ravenor steered his chair onto the platform, he knew he'd just tasted the first, undeniable trace of the Wych House's psykcraft.
TEN
The hoist carried them slowly up eighty metres of rusty riser shaft into a vast circular theatre that was lit around its edges by thousands of candles and lamps. The floor was formed of metal grille plates, and arranged on a split level, with a raised ring walkway around the outside of the chamber divided by an iron handrail from a circular central floor space. There were several heavy duty hatches at intervals around the chamber walls.
The hoist platform brought them up on the edge of the inner floor space. Above them, at the limits of the candlelight, the theatre chamber's domed roof was a mass of support girders and heavy black frames in shadow.
They looked around, assessing their circumstances. Their weapons were sheathed and bolstered, so as not to cause problems, but they were ready.
Angharad glanced at Nayl and nodded across the chamber. On the far side from the hoist, the room's raised ring walkway had a broad set of seven metal steps set into its lip, virtually identical to the set that rose from the centre floor space to the ring walkway itself. This upper set interrupted the encircling handrail and jutted out into the chamber over the inner floor space, leading to nothing.
They'd all seen it. Nayl glanced up into the roofs shadows. Was there something concealed up there that required step access when it descended?
The robed figure walked off the platform onto the lower level. They followed, halting as the figure stopped and turned to face them again.
"Hell's teeth!" Nayl growled.
&n
bsp; A dozen more hooded figures, identical to the first, were suddenly standing on the raised walkway above them, staring down. They'd heard no hatch open. There had been no flicker of the candles. Each of the newcomers had a key around its neck, but no two keys were identical.
"Someone say something." Plyton whispered. "The tension is killing me."
Another flutter of sighing, hissing voices breathed around them. Ravenor tentatively reached out with his mind. The situation was precarious, but he dared not wait any longer. Immediately, he encountered a strong background aura of psychic activity. The place was alive with it, as if it saturated the walls and the deck. It was resonating in a slow, gentle pulse, like breathing, but it wasn't coming from the hooded figures. They were utterly blank and inert to his inspection. The aura was around them all, as if they stood within a vast, psy-active mind.
Or as if the ocean outside was alive.
"I have come seeking coherence," Ravenor said. Lucic made no objection. He stood back.
"I have come seeking coherence." Ravenor repeated.
The figure that had brought them up on the hoist had walked slowly up the steps to join the others of its kind on the raised walkway.
"Do you have names? Voices?" Ravenor asked.
"We have both," said one of the figures. Its speech was audible and precise, though little more than a murmur in volume. The voice seemed young too, although it was impossible to tell whether it was male or female.
"Will you tell me your names?" Ravenor asked.
"Will you tell us yours?"
"Is that essential for our transaction?"
"No," said another of the figures, "though to receive accurate coherence, you must be truly known. This is not our function. It is up to the House to know you."
"What is your function?"
"We are merely housekeepers."
"I see, and how will the House know me?"
"It is learning already. You may speed the process by explaining your incoherence."
Ravenor swung his chair around and faced Plyton. "Maud?"
"Sir?"
"I'd like you to escort Mr. Lucic back down the hoist to our craft and watch over him there."
"Wait-" Lucic began.
"Does our guide need to be here any longer?" Ravenor asked the hooded figures.
"His function is complete."
"The housekeepers have spoken, Lucic." Ravenor told the prospector. "I thank you for your services of guidance and introduction, but I don't want you around while this is happening. Remove yourself, stay with the underboat, and we can remain friends."
Lucic glanced around, agitated and clearly unhappy. He knew he wasn't in a situation where he could put up an effective argument or fight. He forced a beaming grin onto his slender face, and bowed. "Of course," he said, "I have no wish to fall out with you. Out here, a man needs all the friends he can get."
Plyton gestured with the muzzle of the shotgun slung over her shoulder. "Let's go," she said.
+Watch him, Maud.+
Plyton nodded. She was still not used to directly sent thoughts. She followed Lucic onto the hoist platform, pulled the lever, and they slowly dropped below the floor.
Ravenor turned back to face the housekeepers.
"Explain what I can do in more detail."
"Describe the parameters of your incoherence, in plain terms," one of the housekeepers replied. "Allow the House to know you."
"And how is coherence communicated?"
"The right key opens the right door," said a housekeeper.
Ravenor's companions exchanged troubled looks.
Ravenor rolled his chair forward until he was directly beneath the watching housekeepers on the raised walkway. "I seek coherence," he announced, as if speaking not to them but to the chamber as a whole. "My name is Gideon Ravenor. There's no point hiding that. I am searching for someone... a great enemy of mine, there's no point hiding that fact either. He has eluded me for a long time, and driven me into a state of near ruin in my efforts to find him. The stars are a vast place, and he could be anywhere. I decided it would be better to search for something or someone that could tell me where and how to find him, than to spend lifetimes searching for him fruitlessly. The Wych House of Utochre has a great and ancient reputation for prediction. It is said the House's accuracy in such matters is extraordinary. In my past life, I was an Imperial inquisitor and a loyal servant of the Ordos Helican. To seek out the guidance and psykcraft of a place such as this would have been deemed the act of a radical or a heretic. It would not have been remotely condoned by the men I called my masters. But I am rogue now, and desperate, and I am acting outside the scope, knowledge and permission of the Holy Inquisition. I am no longer an inquisitor. Perhaps I am damned, but I'll surely be damned if I don't know."
The whispering voices of the House billowed around them. They reminded Kys uncomfortably of the rushing wings of the sheen birds at Petropolis. She was fighting the desire to weep. Ravenor's spoken admission, even if it had been uttered with unnecessary emphasis to convince the Wych House, had been painful to hear. I am no longer an inquisitor. Perhaps I am damned.
Perhaps they were all damned.
"The one I seek goes by the name of Zygmunt Molotch," Ravenor said.
The voices swirled, their whispers becoming more sibilant and sharp. They streamed around Ravenor like an eddying wind, like the frail sighs of phantoms.
Now they could all hear what the voices were saying.
Molotch, Molotch, Molotch...
At the base of the riser shaft, down in the gloom, Plyton led Lucic off the platform. She turned, dragged back the lever, and allowed the empty platform to trundle back up the shaft.
"How do we get back up?" Lucic asked.
"Please Throne we don't have to." Plyton replied. They both carried oil lamps taken from the platform. By the light of hers, Plyton indicated the spiral staircase. "That's got to lead up somewhere," she said, "if needs be, but they need to hoist more than we do. Come on."
They walked back along the service tunnel towards the docking pool.
"So, you're Maud," said Lucic lightly.
"Don't talk to me," she replied.
They stepped back out into the gloomy wharf area, amongst the hanging, rusty chainwork and rotting machinery. The underboat sat quietly below them, moored against the wharfs fenders by the heavy sea chains Lucic had fixed. The underboat's top and side hatches were still open, and pale electric light shone out.
"Checking in," Plyton said into her link.
The pilot servitor's voice crackled back an acknowledgement.
"Well, we could be in for a long wait," Lucic said, sitting down on the pier's edge so his feet dangled over the drop into the pool. He set the lamp down beside him. "How will we pass the time if not in friendly conversation, Maud?"
"Don't talk to me," she replied.
ELEVEN
"I have a theory," Carl said.
"About?" Ravenor asked.
"About how this place might work," Carl said. They were still waiting down on the theatre's lower space. The housekeepers had not moved or spoken, not even when the empty hoist returned. The flutter of whispers came and went like a breeze.
"Go on," Ravenor prompted.
"I don't think it's the House itself. There might be some active material or device here that acts as a focus, but I think what really matters is where the House is."
"Interesting. Go on."
"I think it's the ocean. I think it's the ocean itself. Somehow, that responds and resonates to..." he faltered. "Actually, my theory is rather weak and open-ended."
"I think you're halfway there," said Ravenor. "That's good reasoning, but you're not taking it far enough. I agree the ocean is part of it, functioning as a resonating medium, but I think the real secret is the moon itself."
"Utochre?"
"Yes. How often do we find crystals or crystalline materials employed in divination and prediction? Sensing crystals, scrying crystals, crystals used to
refract and focus psy-impulses?"
"Crystal balls?"
"Exactly. The technique and belief is as old as man, and we're not the only species to appreciate the method."
"The eldar?"
"Precisely - the eldar. Mineral resonance. Let's face it, it wouldn't be wildly incorrect to define wraithbone as an organic gemstone. This moon is infamously rich in a myriad different forms of crystal deposit. The Wych House-"
"-uses Utochre as a gigantic crystal ball," Carl said with a grin. "Am I close?"
"I don't know. If you are, it's a crude analogy, but those are the lines I was thinking along."
Carl looked pleased with himself.
"You were almost there ahead of me that time, interrogator. I soon won't be able to teach you anything."
"The stuff I know," Carl chuckled.
The fluttering whispers suddenly stopped. The abrupt silence was a little unnerving. With a shudder, the Wych House adjusted its footing.
"The House is ready," said one of the hooded figures.
"Step up onto this level," instructed another. Ravenor guided his chair up over the lower steps onto the raised walkway, and his companions followed obediently until they all stood, waiting, beside the housekeepers.
They heard a rapid series of metal clanks and the whine of hydraulics. Slowly, ponderously, a broad, circular platform descended from the domed roof space on heavy telescopic stanchions. The platform fitted concentrically over the lower floor space but was several metres smaller in diameter. It lowered until it was precisely as far above the level of the raised walkway as the walkway was above the lower floor, creating a third tier to the chamber. The edge of the circular platform met the top of the steps jutting up and out from the raised circuit, and locked in place with a thump of mag-bolts. There was enough headroom beneath it for a man to descend to the lower floor space and walk around without ducking.
The circular platform was a thick and pitted disc of iron or steel with the six elevator stanchions, each one currently at full extension, rising like columns at regular intervals around its rim. Above it, black girders and the beams of the dome space slowly became illuminated by the gradually intensifying ghost glare of a dozen photo-lumin lamps.
