Absorption: Ragnarok v. 1 (Ragnarock 1)

by John Meaney

  Weissmann’s a Luculenta.

  All the signs of it had been there. How could anyone miss the way she—?

  Something moved.

  ‘Hello, Alisha.’

  It was Rafaella Stargonier, her long black hair twisting as if in wind, though the chamber’s air was still. She reached out a fist, and Alisha touched it with hers.

  So Rafaella was real. She had risen up through the quickglass floor so fast, Alisha had thought she might be holo.

  ‘Rafaella, good morning. I’m glad to be here.’

  ‘Did you come alone? You were welcome to take a friend.’

  ‘I—I decided not to disturb anyone else.’

  She had called Roger in Skein, receiving no response. Her disappointment was mitigated by how exhausted he had looked last night. He was surely off Skein by intent, catching up on sleep.

  ‘So, my little place here is somewhat exotic, don’t you think?’

  ‘Er, yes, ma’am.’

  ‘We’re on first-name terms, remember? And I want to give you the tour.’

  ‘The tour?’

  ‘There’s so much in the world that people ignore. So much wonder they could experience, but they distract themselves with trivia instead.’

  ‘Um . . .’

  Rafaella raised both hands, and her eyes were shining as her voice become resonant.

  ‘Let me show you the world beneath.’

  All around them, the room began to change: flowing and morphing, the person-shape melting back into the floor, the concave space reconfiguring to something like the inside of a hollow tear-drop. Alisha’s seat budded a twin, and Rafaella sat down next to her.

  ‘Here we go.’ Rafaella patted Alisha’s hand. ‘You’ll love this.’

  Essentially they were in a sophisticated bubble, but it felt like a craft, and the illusion strengthened as they moved forwards, like a clear submarine through green waters. Then their direction dipped, as they began a forty-five degree descent.

  ‘Where is this?’

  ‘My little Alisha. Did you never ask what exists below the towers and marvels of Lucis City?’

  All around, within the translucent depths, were straight-edged shapes and rippling streamers, a complexity of organic and geometric structures she found hard to look at - there was so much of it, all around their pseudo-vessel, like a vast biological abstract sculpture, like a giant technological organism, deep inside the organs, the lymph nodes and capillaries, the microstructures within the cells, the complex molecules of life.

  It was like a fantasy of being shrunk to tiny size and floating through a great living body; but it was real.

  ‘There’s so much of it,’ Alisha said. ‘So . . . beautiful.’

  ‘Ah. That’s why I wanted another person to see it.’

  ‘To—?’

  ‘So I know it’s not just me. This place is a marvel.’

  Alisha stared around as they continued to sink deep among nameless structures.

  ‘I still don’t understand.’

  ‘Welcome,’ said Rafaella, ‘to The Marrows.’

  They popped into an enormous vault - perhaps containing air - their ‘vessel’ a true bubble now, lowering on a quickglass thread in a space big enough to contain several buildings, each a quickglass tower. In the distance were ranged other vaults, equally huge.

  ‘It’s like a different world.’

  ‘This is where we grow the city.’

  ‘Oh.’ The meaning of what Alisha saw became clearer. ‘It’s just so . . . Oh.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  The descent stopped. Rafaella stood, and the craft-bubble’s walls shivered apart, leaving only the floor. They were now on an exposed quickglass platform suspended by a hundred-metre thread from the vault ceiling, at the centre of this huge space, far below the surface city.

  ‘The architecture above is just the tip of everything,’ said Rafaella. ‘People would know this, if they bothered to look.’

  Alisha stood, her legs wobbly.

  ‘I . . . Can we go back up now?’

  ‘In a moment. See over there? You gave me the idea.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  A row of long, silver-scaled dragons hung in place, their wings diaphanous red, their crystal eyes bulbous. Quickglass dragons. Huge.

  ‘For Last Lupus,’ said Rafaella. ‘I thought we might end Festival with something spectacular. Your little mannequin inspired me.’

  Alisha’s bottom lip hurt. She realized she was biting it.

  ‘And you gave me the Zajinet,’ Rafaella added. ‘You have no idea how helpful that was.’

  ‘I don’t—’

  ‘My capacity for expansion is now effectively infinite. Isn’t that something wonderful?’

  Shaking her head, Alisha found the surrounding marvels blurring as tears filled her eyes.

  ‘You’re going to kill me, aren’t you? I don’t know why, but you are.’

  ‘Oh, no. You’re thinking of the old me.’ Rafaella’s mouth turned up at the corners, but the expression was not a smile. ‘I do things differently now.’

  Her eyes appeared to expand.

  Oh, God. Oh, no.

  Vampire code poured through Alisha’s plexnodes.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  EARTH, 1939-1940 AD

  The Bohr Institute, home of startling ideas, was everything it should be: stone walls, an atmosphere of grandeur, the great man’s coat of arms upon the wall: heraldic icons around a yin-yang. When Bohr had been knighted, he had chosen a superposition of classical and new, of west and east.

  It was all very appropriate; but Gavriela found it hard to care.

  ‘Florian Horst.’ Her Danish was almost non-existent. ‘Please.’

  In German, such abruptness was rude enough for insolence. She did not know if Danish was as formal. Perhaps her accent might mitigate offence.

  ‘You’re from Berlin?’ asked the woman behind the desk, in fluent German.

  ‘Oh, thank God. Yes, originally. You can recognize regional accents?’

  ‘Not much, but it’s hard to mistake a Berliner for anything else.’

  There was an old joke about the difference between someone from Berlin and a doughnut - nothing, they’re both Berliners - but she pushed it aside. Danish bakeries probably didn’t even make Berliners, though Swiss bakeries did.

  She had eaten so little food for the past fifteen days. At least, she thought it was fifteen days.

  The trek across wild countryside had been long, and she survived only because it was not her - she had no other way of thinking about it. Her body had lived off the land, trapping small animals in ways she should not have known, slipping past troops and civilians, always afraid.

  As for what she had done to the three Gestapo men, if that was what they were—

  ‘Fräulein?’

  ‘I’m sorry. You were saying, about Florian Horst?’

  ‘He left for—Ah, Fräulein. Are you Frau Horst’s friend?’

  ‘You mean Elke. Oh, yes. In fact I introduced them, Elke and Florian. I’m Gavriela Wolf.’

  ‘Could you wait a moment?’

  The woman slipped from behind the desk, and went down a corridor to the rear, high heels clicking. There were sounds of two men talking, a knocking - someone tapping his pipe free of old tobacco - and then a rustle of paper. Then the woman came back, carrying a large envelope.

  ‘For you, Frau Doktor.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Gavriela took it. ‘But what’s inside?’

  ‘There are so many . . . They’re trying to help as many as possible. Professor Bohr is a marvel.’

  She opened the envelope, finding several typed sheets, a small box and some banknotes: various denominations of Kroner.

  ‘What—?’

  ‘I’ll take you through to meet the Professor,’ said the woman. ‘Your . . . friend made certain arrangements.’

  ‘Florian?’

  ‘Not Doktor Horst. He’s . . . He went missing, along with Frau Horst.’
r />   ‘Missing?’

  ‘Perhaps they returned home.’

  ‘To Zürich?’

  ‘I understand Doktor Horst was from Stuttgart originally.’

  Now Gavriela understood the woman’s reaction.

  ‘Oh. I can’t believe he’s . . . one of them.’

  ‘It was Herr Doktor Krause who made the work arrangements for you, before he left for England.’

  Lucas is in England?

  The woman tapped the envelope in Gavriela’s hand.

  ‘Save as much as you can,’ she said. ‘You might need it later.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘My cousin captains a fishing-trawler. But he never works for free.’

  Six months later, Gavriela was throwing up over the side of that exact fishing-trawler, into the North Sea. In between bouts of paroxysm, she huddled inside the small wheelhouse with captain and crew, straining to make sense of reports broadcast by the BBC.

  The woman at the Bohr Institute was Helga, and her forecast had been correct. April had been the beginning of spring - and of Nazi occupation. As grey-uniformed soldiers swarmed the streets, few citizens were anything but cold to them; but neither did they have illusions about their ability to fight back.

  Not just Helga, but a whole string of friends helped Gavriela and others escape the country. When Gavriela asked why Helga stayed, Helga’s eyes had been fjord-grey, as unreadable as wild sea.

  ‘I have work here,’ she said.

  Now the trawler captain, Helga’s cousin, spat through the open wheelhouse hatchway, and turned up the volume on the radio.

  Far south of here, in France, from an obscure seaside town called Dunquerque, an incredible evacuation was taking place: a flotilla of military and private boats alike, thousands of them, taking the defeated British troops to safety, to their island fortress where they might regroup.

  Nazi forces were sweeping like a riptide through Europe; the commentators were casting the story of Dunquerque as some kind of victory.

  While on every side of the tiny boat, the massive ocean swelled and simply existed, huge and persisting, possessing a greatness no tiny, short-lived creature could enjoy.

  THIRTY-NINE

  THE WORLD, 5563 AD

  Harij sat on the rough ledge, watching dawn come up over the canyon. Liquid highlights rippled on his silver skin, where his short tunic left his shining limbs bare. He was too hot already, while the rest of the townfolk would be sensibly asleep, deep in the cavern system behind him.

  Below, the canyon was in shadow, almost hiding a mating-flight of dartbirds, the tri-winged creatures swooping as they swiftly joined in triplets before breaking apart, and soaring onwards.

  The black-and-silver moon of Magnus was high to the east.

  What’s that?

  Surely he was the only one mad enough to be out in daylight. None of his classmates could imagine such a thing. But across the canyon, on the purplish mesa, a tiny figure was moving.

  A Seeker?

  Could it be? Distant, tiny, and robed against the heat. It had been so long since such a one had visited, but Harij remembered, and dreamed.

  Then the tiny figure disappeared into a dip, was gone.

  If only he could . . .

  Something was in the void, just beyond the edge.

  **A spin-glass Hamiltonian is analogous to an allele-suitability matrix in a context of fitness-suitability space provided gene mutations are epistatically interdependent in every—**

  It drifted away, accelerating, for the flux was strong here.

  But to be so close to an Idea!

  He pulled himself to his feet, and moved along the ledge, wondering if he could yet reach out and grasp it before—

  Too late.

  For a second he was in danger of toppling over, but he caught himself.

  So close.

  He called out, unable not to.

  **Come back, please.**

  But the Idea tumbled on, in the air above the canyon, propelled by flux that paid no heed to one unhappy youth, however desperate his need for knowledge.

  FORTY

  EARTH-CLASS EXPLORATORY EM-0036, 2146 AD

  Rekka and Sharp stood within the microward boundary, looking around their old campsite, now renewed. There were three equipment cases standing open, although four cases had been designated for the mission. But she could not think of that, not now, because Sharp’s future was her main concern.

  ‘I’m willing to come with you,’ she said.

  ‘I know.’ The voice from his chest unit was soft, reflecting the subdued scent. ‘But they will believe me in the city.’

  ‘If you’re sure—All right, dear Sharp.’

  ‘I love you, Rekka.’

  ‘And I love you.’

  His massive arms enclosed her, as she pressed her face sideways against his chest, inhaling the scent of his fur. She had no idea how his people would greet him on his return; she only hoped they were more open-minded than humans.

  In fact, she thought they probably were.

  ‘You’ll walk to Mint City?’ she asked, drawing back.

  ‘It will give me time to . . . remember.’

  After months on Earth, he needed to reacclimatize. She smiled at her friend’s wisdom.

  ‘Go well, Sharp.’

  ‘Go well, Rekka.’

  Then he walked from the camp, his gait erect, his antlers wide and proud. Rekka stood watching until he was no longer in sight.

  You’d better be safe.

  But there were ways to help, still. Bending down at her biofact, she got to work, executing the pre-designed procedures. Within minutes, the first of her bees took wing.

  She despatched them after Sharp.

  FORTY-ONE

  LABYRINTH, 2603 AD (REALSPACE-EQUIVALENT)

  Carl-and-ship hurtled through Auric Void, howled past the edge of Mandelbrot Nebula, and a long time later burst into clear golden space near Labyrinth. Their distress signal gave them priority, and they tore along a docking tunnel into a wide space adjoining Med Centre.

  It was his first public appearance flying a ship, destroying a false identity established decades ago. That counted for nothing.

  Not with Miranda like this . . .

  He disengaged his mind from his ship as they touched against the dock. Med-drones were waiting, along with medics, and as soon as his control cabin formed an entrance gap, a drone floated inside.

  Panes of nothingness rotated, and three green-clothed medics stepped into the cabin.

  ‘It’s my wife . . .’

  But the medics worked in silence, sealing Miranda, limp and bloody, inside the drone. Then the drone floated out, towards more waiting medics. Two of the medics in here backed off, summoned fastpath rotations, and twisted out of this reality-layer.

  ‘Can’t you rotate the drone through to—?’

  ‘Pilot Blackstone, your wife’s condition won’t allow it. A transition to another level would cause a trauma she’s not strong enough to cope with.’

  ‘Is she . . . Is she dying?’

  ‘We’re going to do our best to make her live.’

  ‘I—’

  ‘Excuse me, I must go.’ As the medic summoned the rotation, he added: ‘The staff on the platform will take you to her.’

  Then he stepped into the twisting fastpath and was gone.

  Carl rubbed his eyes, trying to get his bearings, swaying after the effort of wild flight. Then he noticed a lev-platform touching against the hull opening. Two Pilots stepped inside, neither of them dressed in medic green. One wore a goatee, the other was shaven; both were wide-shouldered and hard-faced.

  ‘I’m Clayton,’ said the clean-shaven one, ‘and this is Boyle.’

  ‘You’re not from Med Centre.’

  ‘Not exactly. More like the same place you’re from.’

  Boyle had gestured a privacy shield into place, covering the entrance gap, turning the sight of the dock outside into a sparkling haze.

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