Pretending ignorance, Vasko stopped little groups of people at random and asked them what was going on. He made sure no one saw his uniform and also that none of the groups contained people likely to recognise him from work or his social circles.
What he heard disgusted him. He listened earnestly to graphic descriptions of gunfights and bomb plots, subterfuge and sabotage. It amazed and appalled him to discover how easily these stories had been spun out of nothing more than the fact of Clavain’s death. It was as if the crowd itself was manifesting a sly, sick collective imagination.
Equally distressing was the eagerness of those listening to accept the stories, bolstering the accounts with their own interjected suggestions for how events had probably proceeded. Later, eavesdropping elsewhere, Vasko observed that these embellishments had been seamlessly embroidered into the main account. It did not seem to bother anyone that many of the stories were contradictory, or at best difficult to reconcile with the same set of events. More than once, with incredulity, he heard that Scorpio or some other colony senior had died alongside Clavain. The fact that some of those individuals had already appeared in public to make short, calming speeches counted for nothing. With a sinking feeling, a cavernous resignation, Vasko realised that even if he were to start recounting events exactly as they had happened, his own version would have no more immediate currency than any of the lies now doing the rounds. He hadn’t actually witnessed the death himself, so even if he told the truth of things it would still only be from his point of view, and his story would of necessity have a damning taint of second-hand reportage about it. It would be dismissed, its content unpalatable, the details too vague.
Tonight, the people wanted an unequivocal hero. By some mysterious self-organising process of story creation, that was precisely what they were going to get.
He was shouldering his way through the lantern-carrying mob when he heard his own name called out.
‘Malinin.’
It took him a moment to locate the source of the voice in the crowd. A woman was standing in a little circle of stillness. The rabble flowed around her, never once violating the immediate volume of private space she had defined. She wore a long-hemmed black coat, the collar an explosion of black fur, the black peak of an unmarked cap obscuring the upper part of her face.
‘Urton?’ he asked, doubtfully.
‘It’s me,’ she said, stepping nearer to him. ‘I guess you got the night off as well. Why aren’t you at home resting?’
There was something in her tone that made him defensive. In her presence he still felt that he was continually being measured and found wanting.
‘I could ask you the same question.’
‘Because I know there wouldn’t be any point. Not after what happened out there.’
Provisionally, he decided to go along with this pretence at civility. He wondered where it was going to lead him. ‘I did try to sleep this afternoon,’ he said, ‘but all I heard were screams. All I saw was blood and ice.’
‘You weren’t even in there when it happened.’
‘I know. So imagine what it must be like for Scorpio.’
Now that Urton was next to him he shared the same little pocket of quiet that she had defined. He wondered how she did it. He did not think it very likely that the people flowing around them had any idea who Urton was. They must have sensed something about her: an electric prickle of foreboding.
‘I feel sorry for what he had to do,’ Urton said.
‘I’m not sure how he’s going to take it, in the long run. They were very close friends.’
‘I know that.’
‘It wasn’t just any old friendship,’ Vasko replied. ‘Clavain saved Scorpio’s life once, when he was due to be executed. There was a bond between them that went right back to Chasm City. I don’t think there was anyone else on this planet that Clavain respected quite as much as Scorpio. And Scorpio also knew that. I went with him to the island where Clavain was waiting. I saw them talking together. It wasn’t the way I’d imagined it to be. They were more like two old adventurers who’d seen a lot of the same things, and knew no one else quite understood them.’
‘Scorpio isn’t that old.’
‘He is,’ Vasko said. ‘For a pig, anyway.’
Urton led him through the crowd, towards the shore. The crowd began to thin out, and a warm night breeze salted with brine made his eyes tingle. Overhead, the strange lights etched arcane motifs from horizon to horizon. It was less like a firework display or aurora and more like a vast, painstaking geometry lesson.
‘You’re worried it’ll have done something to him, aren’t you?’ Urton asked.
‘How would you take it if you had to murder your best friend in cold blood? And slowly, with an audience?’
‘I don’t think I’d take it too well. But then I’m not Scorpio.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘He’s led us competently while Clavain was away, Vasko, and I know that you think well of him, but that doesn’t make him an angel. You already said that the pig and Clavain went all the way back to Chasm City.’
Vasko watched lights slide across the zenith, trailing annular rings like the pattern he sometimes saw when he pressed his fingertips against his own closed eyelids. ‘Yes,’ he said, grudgingly.
‘Well, what do you think Scorpio was doing in Chasm City in the first place? It wasn’t feeding the needy and the poor. He was a criminal, a murderer.’
‘He broke the law in a time when the law was brutal and inhuman,’ Vasko said. ‘That’s not quite the same thing, is it?’
‘So there was a war on. I’ve studied the same history books as you have. Yes, the emergency rule verged on the Draconian, but does that excuse murder? We’re not just talking about self-preservation or self-interest here. Scorpio killed for sport.’
‘He was enslaved and tortured by humans,’ Vasko said. ‘And humans made him what he is: a genetic dead end.’
‘So that lets him off the hook?’
‘I don’t quite see where you’re going with this, Urton.’
‘All I’m saying is, Scorpio isn’t the thin-skinned individual you like to think. Yes, I’m sure he’s upset by what he did to Clavain…’
‘What he was made to do,’ Vasko corrected.
‘Whatever. The point is the same: he’ll get over it, just like he got over every other atrocity he perpetrated.’ She lifted the peak of her cap, scrutinising him, her eyes flicking from point to point as if alert for any betraying facial tics. ‘You believe that, don’t you?’
‘Right now I’m not sure.’
‘You have to believe it, Vasko.’ He noticed that she had stopped calling him Malinin. ‘Because the alternative is to doubt his fitness for leadership. You wouldn’t go that far, would you?’
‘No, of course not. I’ve got total faith in his leadership. Ask anyone here tonight and you’ll get the same answer. And guess what? We’re all right.’
‘Of course we are.’
‘What about you, Urton? Do you doubt him?’
‘Not in the slightest,’ she said. ‘Frankly, I doubt that he’ll have lost much sleep at all over anything that happened today.’
‘That sounds incredibly callous.’
‘I want it to be callous. I want him to be callous. That’s the point. It’s exactly what we want — what we need — in a leader now. Don’t you agree?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said, feeling a huge weariness begin to slide over him. ‘All I know is that I didn’t come out here tonight to talk about what happened today. I came out here to clear my head and try to forget some of it.’
‘So did I,’ Urton said. Her voice had softened. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to rake over what happened. I suppose talking about it is my way of coping with it. It was pretty harrowing for all of us.’
‘Yes, it was. Are you done now?’ He felt his temper rising, a scarlet tide lapping against the defences of civility. ‘For most of yesterday and today you looked
as if you couldn’t stand to be in the same hemisphere as me, let alone the same room. Why the sudden change of heart?’
‘Because I regret the way I acted,’ she said.
‘If you don’t mind my saying, it’s a little late in the day for second thoughts.’
‘It’s the way I cope, Vasko. Cut me some slack, all right? There was nothing personal about it.’
‘Well, that makes me feel a lot better.’
‘We were going into a dangerous situation. We were all trained for it. We all knew each other, and we all knew we could count on each other. And then you show up at the last minute, someone I don’t know, yet whom I’m suddenly expected to trust with my life. I can name a dozen SA officers who could have taken your position in that boat, any one of whom I’d have felt happier about covering my back.’
Vasko saw that she was leading him towards the shore, where the crowd thinned out. The dark shapes of boats blocked the gloom between land and water. Some were moored ready for departure, some were aground.
‘Scorpio chose to include me in the mission,’ Vasko said. ‘Once that decision was taken, you should have had the guts to live with it. Or didn’t you trust his judgement?’
‘One day you’ll be in my shoes, Vasko, and you won’t like it any more than I did. Come and give me a lecture about trusting judgement then, and see how convincing it sounds.’ Urton paused, watching the sky as a thin scarlet line transected it from horizon to horizon. She had evaded his question. ‘This is all coming out wrong. I didn’t pick you out of the crowd to start another fight. I wanted to say I was sorry. I also wanted you to understand why I’d acted the way I did.’
He kept the lid on his anger. ‘All right.’
‘And I admit I was wrong.’
‘You weren’t to know what was about to happen,’ he said.
She shrugged and sighed. ‘No, I don’t suppose I was. No matter what they say, he walked the walk, didn’t he? When it came to putting his life on the line, he went and did it.’
They had reached the line of boats. Most of those still left on land were wrecks: their hulls had gaping holes in them near the waterline, where they had been consumed by seaborne organisms. Sooner or later they would have been hauled away to the smelting plant, to be remade into new craft. The metalworkers were fastidious about reusing every possible scrap of recyclable metal. But the amount recovered would never have been equal to that in the original boats.
‘Look,’ Urton said, pointing across the bay.
Vasko nodded. ‘I know. They’ve already encircled the base of the ship.’
‘That’s not what I mean. Look a bit higher, Hawkeye. Can you see them?’
‘Yes,’ he said after a moment. ‘Yes. My God. They’ll never make it.’
They were tiny sparks of light around the base of the ship, slightly higher than the bobbing ring of boats Vasko had already noticed. He estimated that they could not have climbed more than a few dozen metres above the sea. There were thousands of metres of the ship above them.
‘How are they climbing?’ Vasko said.
‘Hand over hand, I guess. You’ve seen what that thing looks like close-up, haven’t you? It’s like a crumbling cliff wall, full of handholds and ledges. It’s probably not that difficult.’
‘But the nearest way in must be hundreds of metres above the sea, maybe more. When the planes come and go they always land near the top.’ Again he said, ‘They’ll never make it. They’re insane.’
‘They’re not insane,’ Urton said. ‘They’re just scared. Really, really scared. The question is, should we be joining them?’
Vasko said nothing. He was watching one of the tiny sparks of light fall back towards the sea.
They stood and watched the spectacle for many minutes. Nobody else appeared to fall, but the other climbers continued their relentless slow ascent undaunted by the failure that many of them had doubtless witnessed. Around the sheer footslopes, where the boats must have been rocking and crashing against the hull, new climbers were beginning their ascent. Boats were returning from the ship, scudding slowly back across the bay, but progress was slow and tension was rising amongst those waiting on the shoreline. The Security Arm officials were increasingly outnumbered by the angry and frightened people who were waiting for passage to the ship. Vasko saw one of the SA men speaking urgently into his wrist communicator, obviously calling for assistance. He had almost finished talking when someone shoved him to the ground.
‘We should do something,’ Vasko said.
‘We’re off duty, and two of us aren’t enough to make a difference. They’ll have to think of something different. It’s not as if they’re going to be able to contain this for much longer. I don’t think I want to be here any more.’ She meant the shoreline. ‘I checked the reports before I came out. Things aren’t so bad east of the High Conch. I’m hungry and I could use a drink. Do you want to join me?’
‘I don’t have much of an appetite,’ Vasko said. He had actually been starting to feel hungry again until he saw the person fall into the sea. ‘But a drink wouldn’t go amiss. Are you sure there’ll be somewhere still open?’
‘I know a few places we can try,’ Urton said.
‘You know the area better than me, in that case.’
‘Your problem is you don’t get out enough,’ she said. She pulled up the collar of her coat, then crunched down her hat. ‘Come on. Let’s get out of here before things turn nasty.’
She turned out to be right about the zone of the settlement east of the Conch. Many Arm members lodged there, so the area had always had a tradition of loyalty to the administration. Now there was a sullen, reproachful calm about the place. The streets were no busier than they usually were at this time of night, and although many premises were closed, the bar Urton had in mind was still open.
Urton led him through the main room to an alcove containing two chairs and a table poached from Central Amenities. Above the alcove a screen was tuned to the administration news service, but at the moment all it was showing was a picture of Clavain’s face. The picture had been taken only a few years earlier, but it might as well have been centuries ago. The man Vasko had known in the last couple of days had looked twice as old, twice as eroded by time and circumstance. Beneath Clavain’s face was a pair of calendar dates about five hundred years apart.
‘I’ll fetch us some beers,’ Urton said, not giving him a chance to argue. She had removed her coat and hat, piling them on the chair opposite his.
Vasko watched her recede into the gloom of the bar. He supposed she was a regular here. On their way to the alcove he had seen several faces he thought he half-recognised from SA training. Some of them had been smoking seaweed — the particular variety which when dried and prepared in a certain way induced mild narcotic effects. Vasko remembered the stuff from his training. It was illegal, but easier to get hold of than the black market cigarettes which were said to originate from some dwindling cache in the belly of the Nostalgia for Infinity.
By the time Urton returned, Vasko had removed his coat. She put the beers down in front of him. Cautiously Vasko tasted his. The stuff in the glass had an unpleasant urinal tint. Produced from another variety of seaweed, it was only beer in the very loosest sense of the word.
‘I talked to Draygo,’ she said, ‘the man who runs this place. He says the Security Arm officers on duty just went and punched holes in all the boats on the shore. No one else is being allowed to leave, and as soon as a boat returns, they impound it and arrest anyone on board.’
Vasko sipped at his beer. ‘Nice to see they haven’t resorted to heavy-handed tactics, then.’
‘You can’t really blame them. They say three people have already drowned just crossing the bay. Another two have fallen off the ship while climbing.’
‘I suppose you’re right, but it seems to me that the people should have the right to do what they like, even if it kills them.’
‘They’re worried about mass panic. Sooner or later someone i
s bound to try swimming it, and then you might have hundreds of people following after. How many do you think would make it?’
‘Let them,’ Vasko said. ‘So what if they drown? So what if they contaminate the Jugglers? Does anyone honestly think it makes a shred of difference now?’
‘We’ve maintained social order on Ararat for more than twenty years,’ Urton said. ‘We can’t let it go to hell in a handcart in one night. Those people using the boats are taking irreplaceable colony property without authorisation. It’s unfair on the citizens who don’t want to flee to the ship.’
‘But we’re not giving them an alternative. They’ve been told Clavain’s dead, but no one’s told them what those lights in the sky are all about. Is it any wonder they’re scared?’
‘You think telling them about the war would make things any better?’
Vasko wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, where the seaweed beer had left a white rime. ‘I don’t know, but I’m fed up with everyone being lied to just because the administration thinks it’s in our best interests not to know all the facts. The same thing happened with Clavain when he disappeared. Scorpio and the others decided we couldn’t deal with the fact that Clavain was suicidal, so they made up some story about him going around the world. Now they don’t think the people can deal with knowing how he died, or what it was all for in the first place, so they’re not telling anyone anything.’
‘You think Scorpio should be taking a firmer lead?’
‘I respect Scorpio,’ Vasko said, ‘but where is he now, when we need him?’
‘You’re not the only one wondering that,’ Urton said.
Something caught Vasko’s eye. The picture on the screen had changed. Clavain’s face was gone, replaced for a moment by the administration logo. Urton turned around in her seat, still drinking her beer.
‘Something’s happening,’ she said.
The logo flickered and vanished. They were looking at Scorpio, surrounded by the curved rose-pink interior of the High Conch. The pig wore his usual unofficial uniform of padded black leather, the squat dome of his head a largely neckless outgrowth of his massive barrelled torso.
The Revelation Space Collection (revelation space) Page 267
