In the Mouth of the Whale

by Paul McAuley

  At last, a round hole puckered open in the floor and a voice spoke out of empty air, telling me to climb down into the flitter that waited below. There were no troopers to blindfold or bind me, and the flitter’s canopy was left transparent. I saw the pale trumpet-shapes of my cell and others like it clustered around a black spine that dwindled down through sunlit air. I saw other spines in every direction, angling towards the skin of the sky. I saw, beyond flocks of fluffy white clouds far below, a loose patchwork of square and circular and rectangular platforms that curved away in every direction, the whole pierced by the spines from which individual platforms jutted. A second layer of platforms was visible in some of the gaps between the upper layer, and another layer was visible beyond that. Somewhere far below, near the core where the spines converged, was the platform that supported the Permanent Floating Market and the Library of the Homesun.

  For a moment, I hung above the city entire. Then the flitter shot away from the spire in a wild swoop. I yelled with exultation as it cut through the streaming whiteness of a cloud, and the upper platforms of the city rose up and the little craft decelerated with sudden and brutal force that squeezed me into my seat and took away my breath. It hovered in the air for a moment, then dropped straight down towards a platform covered with dark green trees from edge to edge. White pyramids stood here and there amongst the trees; the flitter fell towards the largest and touched down, as gently as a fallen leaf, on the wide lawn of flower-starred turf that surrounded it.

  Two troopers and a marshal caparisoned in a glistening white breastplate escorted me into the lowest level of the pyramid. The marshal told me that I was to meet with Yenna Singleton, but would not say why. I did my best to suppress my hope that my offer had been accepted, and asked the marshal how long I had been imprisoned. It had been just one and a quarter megaseconds after the incident at the tower on Avalon. Roughly fifteen diurnal cycles.

  I said that I had thought it much longer.

  ‘All prisoners do,’ the marshal said. ‘You were fed a drug to keep you compliant and to stop you killing yourself. It also affected your sense of time. Don’t worry. The drug was removed from your food yesterday. We need you to be sober and alert.’

  I was allowed to shower and shave, and to dress in my own clothes. My security had been shut down and I could not unlock it; I felt naked as the troopers and the marshal took me to a disc that promptly shot up a transparent tube, rising through floor after floor to a windowless atrium whose walls, floor and vaulted ceiling were constructed of seamless, polished black stone, with the badge of the Singleton clan set in silver in the centre of the floor.

  The Horse was waiting at the far end of the atrium, sitting cross-legged on the floor beside a tall double door.

  After I had stood before the college of Redactors and had been tried for causing the deaths of Arden and Van through culpable negligence and then had been sentenced to exile, after I had been led through the Alexandrian Gate in disgrace and the great double doors had clanged shut behind me, I had seen a small figure standing at the foot of the bridge that arched across the moat. It was the Horse, who had chosen to stand by me. My heart had leaped with gladness then, and it leaped again now, as the marshal marched me across the atrium, her boot heels ringing on stone.

  The Horse stood up to meet me and said, ‘I thought I would never see you again.’

  ‘I had the same thought about you.’

  ‘It seems we were both misinformed.’

  ‘Do you know why we have been brought here?’

  ‘The Redactor Svern sent me here. He didn’t trouble to explain why.’

  ‘I may have an idea,’ I said, and told the Horse about the deal I had tried to make with the Office of Public Safety. ‘I was given to understand they had no interest in it. Hence my imprisonment. But perhaps they have changed their minds. Or perhaps the Redactor Svern has intervened.’

  ‘I hope you know what you’re doing.’

  ‘As much as I always do.’

  ‘Then we’re still in trouble.’

  ‘As much as we always are.’

  ‘At least you still have your sense of humour,’ the Horse said.

  ‘And you still have your cynicism.’

  The Horse had no news of Prem Singleton. He was telling me how badly the war was going when at last the marshal commanded the doors to open. They swung apart in ponderous silence, exposing a dark space beyond.

  ‘Walk through,’ the marshal said. ‘Majistra Yenna is waiting for you.’

  She did not follow us, and it immediately became apparent why. As in the ruined tower on Ull, the door was a translation frame. In a single step, the Horse and I were transported to a place I hadn’t dared to believe I would ever see again – the chamber in the Redactor Svern’s memory palace where he received visitors.

  I knew then that I had won the attention of the right people, but instead of triumph a cold shrinking feeling washed through me. Dread. The realisation that I was at the threshold of something truly important, something life-changing. The fear of failing to measure up to the test I had set myself. It was deeper than the nervousness I’d felt at my final examination before I’d passed from novice to practitioner. Then, the course of the rest of my life had been at hazard; now, everything I had ever done or ever would do was in the balance, and I was scared that it had already been judged, and found wanting. If so, I thought, there was nothing I could do except meet my fate with dignity, so I straightened my back and told the Horse to keep quiet unless spoken to, and walked forward.

  As before, an immersive simulation of the Fomalhaut system filled the chamber edge to edge, with the bright point of Fomalhaut in its centre and the broad but paper-thin dust ring circling the walls. A thick thread of blue punched through the diffuse red oval of the Ghosts’ territory, and Ghost forces were retreating from it. Abandoning long-established positions, moving towards the edge of the dust ring in the direction of Cthuga. The thready pathways I’d seen before had thickened and joined in a kind of pseudopod or tentacle that angled across the dust ring; its tip had engulfed the gas giant, and the mass of the main body was beginning to flow along it.

  The Horse was looking all around with avid curiosity. When I told him to pay attention, he said that someone was coming, and pointed across the chamber, a little to the left of Fomalhaut’s spark.

  An old woman walked through the simulation of the dust ring, hip deep in dust clouds and comets and planetoids. Her white hair was done up in a helmet of little plaits and she wore the black one-piece uniform of an army trierarch, with a silver starburst on her right breast. I supposed that she must be Yenna Singleton, the matriarch of the clan, dead for more than two centuries. The Redactor Svern materialised from the shadows behind her, the hem of his black duster trailing behind him as he followed her across the chamber.

  ‘It’s good to see you again, Isak,’ he said. ‘Even if the circumstances are unfortunate.’

  I told him that I was sorry that I had failed him, and he dismissed my apology with a flick of his hand.

  ‘I have a small confession to make,’ he said. ‘An apology of my own. You see, I knew when I gave you the task that it was almost inevitable that you would fail. Not because you lacked skill or courage, but because it was the kind of problem that no one could solve. And that’s why I chose you, Isak. You had already fallen so far that neither our clan nor you would be hurt if you fell a little further.’

  ‘You sacrificed me for the greater good.’

  ‘And I could not tell you at the time, because you might have refused. I am sorry.’

  ‘I am sorry you doubted my loyalty.’

  ‘I do not blame you for being angry. But everything has worked out. You have done better than I believed possible, and you have returned.’

  ‘I survived, yes. And returned as a prisoner.’

  The old woman, Yenna Singleton, said, ‘Because you were associated with the traitors Lathi and Prem. Because you were a threat to the security and safety o
f my clan.’

  ‘And that has been resolved,’ the Redactor Svern said.

  ‘Lathi tried to gain power over the senior members of my clan. For that crime she has been arrested and tried and executed,’ Yenna Singleton said. ‘Prem is still at large, but we will capture her soon enough.’

  ‘And I have forged an agreement with the Singleton clan, and you have been returned to us as part of that agreement,’ the Redactor Svern said.

  ‘Forgive me, Majister, if I don’t share your happiness. For I fear that I still have some way to fall.’

  ‘We may yet all fall,’ Yenna Singleton said. ‘The Ghosts have changed their tactics and thrown everything they have at Cthuga. We are retaking positions they took from us out in the ring, but Cthuga has been overwhelmed. Its defences have been destroyed or compromised. Most of its pelagic stations are lost, and its communications net has fallen over, so little is known about the survivors. We have twice tried and failed to punch a hole through the Ghosts’ forces and we are readying a third wave, but we do so with little hope.’

  The Redactor Svern said, ‘It’s always been my belief that we have been fighting the war for the wrong reason. We have been defending our territory, but the enemy don’t care about us and our worldlets, except that we stand between them and Cthuga’s Mind. They call themselves Ghosts because they believe that their reality will not be validated until they reach back in time and change history to ensure that they become the only posthuman species. If they do that, we will become no more than ghosts. Haunting rare timelines separated from each other by the many in which the enemy has been victorious.’

  Yenna Singleton said, ‘We have always suspected that they wanted to win the help of Cthuga’s Mind. They tried and failed to make contact with their probes. Now they have flung every resource at the planet. And, at the same time, a starship that departed from the Solar System some fifteen centuries ago is approaching Fomalhaut.’

  The Redactor Svern said, ‘And that is why you are here, Isak. Because what you have discovered may have some bearing on the matter of this starship.’

  ‘With respect,’ I said, ‘I believe I’m here because you failed to find what you were looking for in my security.’

  ‘You wanted to bargain with my clan, for the good of your clan,’ Yenna Singleton said. ‘But as you can see, the two are united.’

  ‘There’s no more need for subterfuge,’ the Redactor Svern said.

  ‘There is only a small chance that we may be able to retake Cthuga,’ Yenna Singleton said. ‘But we have a much better chance of capturing the starship.’

  ‘It is our last chance to foil the enemy’s plan,’ the Redactor Svern said. ‘And you can play an important part in it, Isak.’

  A window opened in front of me, showing a bright lumpy shape composed of no more than a dozen pixels.

  ‘We got that from the deep-space array that’s usually pointed at beta Hydri,’ Yenna Singleton said. ‘It took a great deal of persuasion to convince Our Thing to look for it, and it took some time, too. It’s very small, not much bigger than an ordinary lighter, and it has deviated from the optimal course between the Homesun and Fomalhaut.’

  The Redactor Svern gestured; the lumpy mote in the window shrank to a bright dot as the view widened and tilted to show that the dot was slanting in above the plane of the dust ring. It was not heading towards Cthuga, as I had supposed, but towards Fomalhaut. In fact, it had already passed the inner edge of the dust ring and Cthuga’s orbit.

  ‘According to my clan’s philosophers, it will swing close in around Fomalhaut,’ Yenna Singleton said. ‘A manoeuvre that will exchange a great deal of its delta vee with the rotational energy of our star, and also bring it into the plane of the system. Then it will deploy a braking sail. It is an ancient, reliable technique that was used by our seedship and by the seedship of the Quick. Both sent a package ahead of themselves which took root in an asteroid and manufactured a solar-powered laser array. If the starship has done the same thing, then we must find out where its laser array is sited, and take control of it.’

  ‘And here is the crux, Isak,’ the Redactor Svern said. ‘You claim that certain cultists have opened back doors into the Library. Back doors that lead to information about the ship. It’s a serious claim, and we are taking it seriously, as you can see.’

  ‘Our two clans have joined in common cause,’ Yenna Singleton said. ‘We are working together to capture the starship, deprive the enemy of a valuable resource, and begin a final battle to eliminate them from the Fomalhaut system.’

  I looked across the glowing plane at the two revenants, light and dizzy with relief and elation. I was certain that Prem was chasing the same thing as me, but only I had the means to track down the information she needed. I could hand my clan a great victory, and reclaim my place amongst my peers.

  ‘You failed to find what you were looking for in my security not because it is hidden, but because it isn’t there,’ I said. ‘It isn’t in the security of my assistant, either. I removed all trace of it. But if you want to know about the back doors, and where they lead to, and what they have to do with the ship, I’ll lead you to them. I ask only that my kholop and I be returned to our former position.’

  ‘Oh, I think that we can do better than that,’ the Redactor Svern said.

  And so I returned to the Library of the Homesun. Not as a lone and penitent exile who had succeeded in the small task given to him, but at the head of a small army of officers and troopers. We were met at the entrance hall by the living Redactors, and the journeymen and women I had asked to volunteer to help me, and their kholops. The Redactor Miriam stepped forward to meet the splendidly caparisoned myrmidon who was the chief of the delegation from the Singleton clan. He bowed so low that the crest of tall plumes on top of his helmet almost brushed the floor, and then straightened and held up his hand, and shot the formal request to the Redactor Miriam’s security. She accepted it without comment, and turned to me and looked me up and down with cold contempt.

  ‘Don’t think this will absolve you,’ she said. ‘In fact, you’re doubly damned now.’

  I met her gaze and said, ‘You always wanted me to join the army. And so I have, and so has everyone who serves the Library.’

  She slapped my face, spat on the ground between us, and turned and stalked away. The other Redactors and the journeymen and women and their assistants, all clad in the plain black of our clan, parted to let her through. There was a long moment of silence. Everyone was looking at me. I felt the blood beat in my cheek.

  ‘Let’s get to work,’ I said.

  Within three kiloseconds, I was standing on an elevated highway that swept between the glass and steel towers of the Brutal Quarter. The sky was the blank white of a dead slate, shedding an even and directionless light. Dry weeds grew here and there in cracks between the concrete blocks that paved the roadway, and around the concrete posts of the railings on either side. There were no shadows, and everything stood out with stark particularity, vivid as anything in reality, far more real than the low-resolution simulacrum of Yakob Singleton’s data miner.

  The Horse stood beside me, wearing a sealed recording algorithm that manifested in the viron as mirrored goggles strapped around his head and fastened at the back with a padlock. The eight volunteers, selected because they’d all had experience in shutting down powerful demons, rode skycycles of an antique design, hovering in pairs at the cardinal points around the blocks of the Brutal Quarter. If anything manifested, they would engage it as best they could, without scrupling to save either the Horse or me.

  ‘Even if we survive this,’ the Horse said, as we walked along the centre of the elevated highway, ‘what makes you think that they’ll let us live after we return with what they want?’

  ‘The Redactor Svern gave his word.’

  ‘You always were a hopeless romantic.’

  ‘And you an unredeemable cynic.’

  The Horse looked up at me, the blank sky blankly reflected in t
he round lenses of his goggles. ‘At least one of us knows how the world works.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘This is just another exorcism. Nothing we haven’t done a hundred times before.’

  ‘I remember the last time we encountered a demon in the Library,’ the Horse said. ‘First we screamed. Then we ran.’

  ‘There may not be any demon. There’s no reason why the cultists would have protected their back doors. They hid them well.’

  ‘You know who has been here,’ the Horse said. ‘And you must remember what we found when we last visited one of the places where she got ahead of us.’

  The highway passed between two towers of identical height, one faced with mirror glass and the other with glass as black as obsidian, and we followed the curve of an off-ramp down an empty eight-lane street, crossed an empty plaza. Our securities sent enquiries darting away in every direction, returning reports of nothing more than the normal low-level cycling activity required to maintain the texture and physics of the viron. Every hundred seconds the journeymen and women in the perimeter reported that they had nothing to report.

  ‘If it wasn’t bad luck to say it’s too quiet, I’d say it’s too quiet,’ the Horse said.

  We passed a flock of metal tables and chairs. We skirted the edge of a square planted with a waist-high labyrinth of neatly trimmed thorn bushes. We passed a row of empty storefronts that lined the ground floor of one of the towers. We passed a giant bronze sculpture with three fat lobes, like an internal organ extracted from some alien behemoth. We passed the dry basin of a fountain, where a disarticulated human skeleton lay, its skull grinning at the white sky.

  ‘Oh-ho,’ the Horse said, with a grim smile.

  ‘We’ve seen skeletons elsewhere. They didn’t signify.’

  ‘In the Chapel of Skulls and in the Catacomb Gardens, as part of the viron design. Does this look like it’s part of any design?’