Revelation Space

by Alastair Reynolds

  Not today, though.

  Calvin had given the eyes a zoom/record facility, but it took concentration to use, rather like that needed to invert an optical illusion. Stick figures, foreshortened by the angle, enlarged and became agitated individuals rather than amorphous elements of a swarm. It was not so that he could now read their expressions or even identify their faces, but the people in the street defined their own personalities in the way they moved, and he had become acutely good at reading such nuances. The main mob was moving down Cuvier’s central thoroughfare behind a barricade of slogan boards and improvised flagstaffs. Apart from a few daubed storefronts and an uprooted japonica sapling down the mall, the mob had caused little damage, but what they failed to see was the troop of Girardieau militia mobilising at the far end of the mall. They had just disgorged from a van and were buckling on chameleoflage armour, flicking through colour modes until they all wore the same calming shade of chrome-yellow.

  He washed with warm water and a sponge, then carefully trimmed his beard and tied back his hair. He dressed, slipping on a velvet shirt and trousers followed by a kimono, decorated with lithographic Amarantin skeletons. Then he breakfasted — the food was always there in a little slot by the time the alarm rang — and checked the time again. She would be here shortly. He made the bed and upended it so that it formed a couch, in dimpled scarlet leather.

  Pascale, as always, was accompanied by a human bodyguard and a couple of armed servitors, but they did not follow her into the room. What did was a tiny buzzing blur like a clockwork wasp. It looked harmless, but he knew that if he so much as broke wind in the biographer’s direction, what he would have to show for it would be an additional orifice in the centre of his forehead.

  ‘Good morning,’ she said.

  ‘I’d say it’s anything but,’ Sylveste said, nodding towards the window. ‘Actually, I’m surprised you made it here at all.’

  She sat down on a velvet-cushioned footstool. ‘I have connections in security. It wasn’t difficult, despite the curfew.’

  ‘It’s come to a curfew, now?’

  Pascale wore a pillbox hat in Inundationist purple, the geometric line of her blunt black fringe beneath emphasising the pale expressionless cast of her face. Her outfit was tight-fitting, striped purple and black jacket and trousers. Her entoptics were dewdrops, seahorses and flying fish, trailing pink and lilac glitter. She sat with her feet angled together, touching at the toes, her upper body leaning slightly towards him, as his did towards hers.

  ‘Times have changed, Doctor. You of all people should appreciate that.’

  He did. He had been in prison, in the heart of Cuvier, for ten years now. The new regime which had succeeded his after the coup had become as fragmentary as the old, in the time-honoured way of all revolutions. Yet while the political landscape was as divided as ever, the underlying topology was quite different. In his time, the schism had been between those who wanted to study the Amarantin and those who wanted to terraform Resurgam, thereby establishing the world as a viable human colony rather than a temporary research outpost. Even the Inundationist terraformers had been prepared to admit that the Amarantin might once have been worthy of study. These days, however, the extant political factions differed only in the rates of terraforming they advocated, ranging from slow schemes spread across centuries to atmospheric alchemies so brutal that humans might have to evacuate the planet’s surface while they were being wrought. One thing was clear enough: even the most modest proposals would destroy many Amarantin secrets for eternity. But few people seemed particularly bothered by that — and for the most part those who did care were too scared to raise their voices. Apart from a skeleton staff of bitter, underfunded researchers, hardly anyone admitted to an interest in the Amarantin at all now. In ten years, study of the dead aliens had been relegated to an intellectual backwater.

  And things would only get worse.

  Five years earlier, a trade ship had passed through the system. The lighthugger had furled its ramscoop fields and moved into orbit around Resurgam; a bright and temporary new star in the heavens. Its commander, Remilliod, had offered a wealth of technological marvels to the colony: new products from other systems, and things which had not been seen since before the mutiny. But the colony could not afford everything Remilliod had to sell. There had been bloody arguments in favour of buying this over that; machines rather than medicine; aircraft rather than terraforming tools. Rumours, too, of underhand deals; trade in weapons and illegal technologies, and while the general standard of living on the colony was higher than in Sylveste’s time — witness the servitors, and the implants Pascale now took for granted — unhealable divisions had opened amongst the Inundationists.

  ‘Girardieau must be frightened,’ Sylveste said.

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ she said, a touch too hastily. ‘All that matters to me is that we have a deadline.’

  ‘What is it you want to talk about today?’

  Pascale glanced down at the compad she balanced on her knees. In six centuries computers had assumed every shape and architecture imaginable, but something like a simple drawing slate — flat, with a handwritten entry-mode — had seldom been out of fashion for long. ‘I’d like to talk about what happened to your father,’ Pascale said.

  ‘You mean the Eighty? Isn’t the whole thing already sufficiently well-documented for your needs?’

  ‘Almost.’ Pascale touched the tip of her stylus against her cochineal-dark lips. ‘I’ve examined all the standard accounts, of course. For the most part they’ve answered my questions. There’s just one small matter I haven’t been able to resolve to my total satisfaction.’

  ‘Which is?’

  He had to hand it to Pascale. The way she answered, without the slightest trace of real interest in her voice, it really was just as if this were a loose end that needed clearing up. It was a skill; one that almost lulled him into carelessness. ‘It’s about your father’s alpha-level recording,’ Pascale said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’d like to know what really happened to it afterwards.’

  In the soft interior rain, the man with the trick gun directed Khouri to a waiting cable-car. It was as unmarked and inconspicuous as the palanquin he had abandoned in the Monument. ‘Get in.’

  ‘Just a moment —’ But as soon as Khouri opened her mouth, he pushed the end of the gun into the small of her back. Not painfully — it was done firmly, not to hurt — but to remind her that it was there. Something in that gentleness told her the man was a professional, and that he was far more likely to use the gun than someone who would have prodded her aggressively. ‘All right; I’m moving. Who is this Mademoiselle anyway? Someone behind a rival Shadowplay house?’

  ‘No; I’ve already told you; stop thinking so parochially.’

  He was not going to tell her anything useful; she could see that. Certain it would not get her far, she said: ‘Who are you, then?’

  ‘Carlos Manoukhian.’

  That worried her more than the way he handled the gun. He said it too truthfully. It was not a cover-name. And now that she knew it — and guessed that this man was at best some kind of criminal, laughable as that category seemed in Chasm City’s lawlessness — it meant he planned to kill her later.

  The cable-car’s door clammed shut. Manoukhian pressed a button on the console which purged the Chasm City air, blasting out in steam jets below the car as it lofted itself via a nearby cable. ‘Who are you, Manoukhian?’

  ‘I help the Mademoiselle.’ As if that was not blindingly obvious. ‘We have a special relationship. We go back a long way.’

  ‘And what does she want with me?’

  ‘I would have thought it was obvious by now,’ Manoukhian said. He was still keeping the gun on her, even as he kept one eye on the car’s navigation console. ‘There’s someone she wants you to assassinate.’

  ‘That’s what I do for a living.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He smiled. ‘Difference is, this guy hasn’t paid f
or it.’

  The biography, needless to say, had not been Sylveste’s idea. Instead, the initiative had come from the one man Sylveste would have least suspected. It had been six months earlier; during one of the very few occasions when he had spoken face to face with his captor. Nils Girardieau had brought up the subject almost casually, mentioning that he was surprised no one had taken on the task. After all, the fifty years on Resurgam virtually amounted to another life, and even though that life was now capped by an ignominious epilogue, it did at least put his earlier life into a perspective it had lacked during the Yellowstone years. ‘The problem was,’ Girardieau said, ‘your previous biographers were too close to the events — too much part of the societal milieu they were attempting to analyse. Everyone was in thrall to either Cal or yourself, and the colony was so claustrophobic there was no room to step back and see the wider perspective.’

  ‘You’re saying Resurgam is somehow less claustrophobic?’

  ‘Well, obviously not — but at least we have the benefit of distance, both in time and space.’ Girardieau was a squat, muscular man with a shock of red hair. ‘Admit it, Dan — when you think back to your life on Yellowstone, doesn’t it sometimes seem like it all happened to someone else, in a century very remote from our own?’

  Sylveste was about to laugh dismissively, except that — for once — he found himself in complete agreement with Girardieau. It was an unsettling moment, as if a basic rule of the universe had been violated.

  ‘I still don’t see why you’d want to encourage this,’ Sylveste said, nodding towards the guard who was presiding over the conversation. ‘Or are you hoping you can somehow profit from it?’

  Girardieau had nodded. ‘That’s part of it — maybe most of it, if you want the truth. It probably hasn’t escaped your attention that you’re still a figure of fascination to the populace.’

  ‘Even if most of them would be fascinated to see me hung.’

  ‘You’ve a point, but they’d probably insist on shaking your hand first — before helping you to the gibbet.’

  ‘And you think you can milk this appetite?’

  Girardieau had shrugged. ‘Obviously, the new regime determines who gains access to you – and we also own all your records and archival material. That gives us a headstart already. We have access to documents from the Yellowstone years which no one beyond your immediate family even knows exist. We’d exercise a certain discretion in using them, of course — but we’d be fools to ignore them.’

  ‘I understand,’ Sylveste said, because suddenly it was all very clear to him. ‘You’re actually going to use this to discredit me, aren’t you.’

  ‘If the facts discredit you…’ Girardieau left the remark hanging in the air.

  ‘When you deposed me… wasn’t that good enough for you?’

  ‘That was nine years ago.’

  ‘Meaning what?’

  ‘Meaning long enough for people to forget. Now they need a gentle reminder.’

  ‘Especially as there’s a new air of discontent abroad.’

  Girardieau winced, as if the remark was in spectacularly poor taste. ‘You can forget about True Path — especially if you think they might turn out to be your salvation. They wouldn’t have stopped at imprisoning you.’

  ‘All right,’ Sylveste said, boring rapidly. ‘What’s in it for me?’

  ‘You assume there has to be something?’

  ‘Generally, yes. Otherwise, why bother telling me about it?’

  ‘Your co-operation might be in your best interest. Obviously, we could work from the material we’ve seized — but your insights would be valuable. Especially in the more speculative episodes.’

  ‘Let me get this straight. You want me to authorise a hatchet job? And not just give it my blessing but actually help you assassinate my character?’

  ‘I could make it worth your while.’ Girardieau nodded around the confines of the room in which Sylveste was held. ‘Look at the freedom I’ve given Janequin, to continue his peacock hobby. I could be just as flexible in your case, Dan. Access to recent material on the Amarantin; the ability to communicate with your colleagues; share your opinions — perhaps even the occasional excursion beyond the building.’

  ‘Field work?’

  ‘I’d have to consider it. Something of that magnitude…’ Sylveste was suddenly, acutely aware that Girardieau was acting. ‘A period of grace might be advisable. The biography’s in development now, but it’ll be several months before we need your input. Maybe half a year. What I propose is that we wait until you’ve begun to give us what we need. You’ll be working with the biography’s author, of course, and if that relationship is successful — if she considers it successful — then perhaps we’ll be ready to enter into discussions about limited field work. Discussions, mind — no promises.’

  ‘I’ll try and contain my enthusiasm.’

  ‘Well, you’ll be hearing from me again. Is there anything you need to know before I leave?’

  ‘One thing. You mentioned that the biographer would be a woman. Might I ask who it’ll be?’

  ‘Someone with illusions waiting to be shattered, I suspect.’

  Volyova was working near the cache one day, thinking of weapons, when a janitor-rat dropped gently onto her shoulder and spoke into her ear.

  ‘Company,’ said the rat.

  The rats were a peculiar quirk of the Nostalgia for Infinity; quite possibly unique aboard any lighthugger. They were only fractionally more intelligent than their feral ancestors, but what made them useful — what turned them from pest into utility — was that they were biochemically linked into the ship’s command matrix. Every rat had specialised pheromonal receptors and transmitters which allowed it to receive commands and transmit information back to the ship, encoded into complex secreted molecules. They foraged for waste, eating virtually anything organic which was not nailed down or still breathing. Then they ran some rudimentary preprocessing in their guts before going elsewhere in the ship, excreting pellets into larger recycler systems. Some of them had even been equipped with voiceboxes and a small hardwired lexicon of useful phrases, triggered into vocalisation when external stimuli satisfied biochemically programmed conditions.

  In Volyova’s case, she had programmed the rats to alert her as soon as they began to process human detritus — dead skin cells, and the like — which had not come from her. She would know when the other crew members were awake, even if she was in a completely different district of the ship.

  ‘Company,’ the rat squeaked again.

  ‘Yes, I heard first time.’ She lowered the little rodent to the deck, and then swore in all the languages at her disposal.

  The defensive wasp which had accompanied Pascale buzzed a little nearer to Sylveste as it picked up the stress overtones in his voice. ‘You want to know about the Eighty? I’ll tell you. I don’t feel the slightest hint of remorse for any of them. They all knew the risks. And there were seventy-nine volunteers, not eighty. People conveniently forget that the eightieth was my father.’

  ‘You can hardly blame them.’

  ‘Assuming stupidity is an inherited trait, then no, I can’t.’ Sylveste tried to relax himself. It was difficult. At some point in the conversation, the militia had begun to dust the domed-in air outside with fear gas. It was staining the reddened daylight to something nearer black. ‘Look,’ Sylveste said evenly. ‘The government appropriated Calvin when I was arrested. He’s quite capable of defending his own actions.’

  ‘It isn’t his actions I want to ask you about.’

  Pascale made an annotation in her compad. ‘It’s what became of him — his alpha-level simulation — afterwards. Now, each of the alphas comprised in the region of ten to the power eighteen bytes of information,’ she said, circling something. ‘The records from Yellowstone are patchy, but I was able to learn a little. I found that sixty-six of the alphas resided in orbital data reservoirs around Yellowstone; carousels, chandelier cities and various Skyjack and U
ltra havens. Most had crashed, of course, but no one was going to erase them. Another ten I traced to corrupted surface archives, which leaves four missing. Three of those four are members of the seventy-nine; affiliated to either very poor or very extinct family lines. The other is the alpha recording of Calvin.’

  ‘Is there a point to this?’ he asked, trying not to sound as if the issue particularly concerned him.

  ‘I just can’t accept that Calvin was lost in the, same way as the others. It doesn’t add up. The Sylveste Institute didn’t need creditors or trustees to safeguard their heirlooms. It was one of the wealthiest organisations on the planet right up until the plague hit. So what became of Calvin?’

  ‘You think I brought it to Resurgam?’

  ‘No; the evidence suggests it was already long lost by then. In fact, the last time it was definitely present in the system was more than a century before the Resurgam expedition departed.’

  ‘I think you’re wrong,’ Sylveste said. ‘Check the records more closely and you’ll see that the alpha was moved into an orbital data cache in the late twenty-fourth. The Institute relocated premises thirty years later, so it was certainly moved then. Then in ‘39 or ‘40 the Institute was attacked by House Reivich. They wiped the data cores.’

  ‘No,’ Pascale said. ‘I excluded those instances. I’m well aware that in 2390 around ten to the eighteen bytes of something was moved into orbit by the Sylveste Institute, and the same amount relocated thirty-seven years later. But ten to the eighteen bytes of information doesn’t have to be Calvin. It could as easily be ten to the eighteen bytes of metaphysical poetry.’