by Gary Gibson
That had been one of the last times Elias ever saw Trencher. Elias came by one day, found half the block burning, its ruined apartments gaping open as masonry tumbled downwards.
Elias thought about these events, and after he’d thought about them some more, he went looking for Hollis.
Ursu
It had not been a good morning.
Ursu had woken to the thunderous sound of the army encamped outside the walls, yelling and hooting enough to drive fear into the hearts of all the citizens. Ursu was now a Master-in-Waiting, and in the three days since the god had spoken to him, he’d tried to find some kind of precedent in the Book of Shecumpeh.
He pored through thick, heavy pages rich with ink and platitudes, but discovered nothing that described anything like the situation he now found himself in.
The Book of Shecumpeh was kept in a vault below the stables, attended by an elderly amanuensis named Turthe. Ursu was aware that Turthe was seeking someone to learn the arts necessary for making new copies of the Book and, perhaps, eventually take his place. For in many civil matters decisions made were based on sayings found in the Book of Shecumpeh.
Ursu knew that there were other communities, beyond the valley and still further away, which also revered their own city gods, each as jealously guarded as Shecumpeh was in Nubala, and that many of those cities also kept their own great books. But there was only one Book of Shecumpeh, much as there was only one city of Nubala. All the Masters-in-Waiting were required to learn the words of the book by rote, but it was Turthe’s task to repair and maintain the current copy.
The pages were heavy, the covers made from fine beaten leather. The paper had been handmade, sheet by sheet, by Turthe himself. Mostly, its text consisted of stories of all the leaders of Nubala since the city had been founded at the beginning of the Great Cold, when the ice came. But also within it were stories of the great heroes of Nubala, and the battles they had fought. Fables, legends and prophecies filled these pages.
Ursu’s mind drifted constantly back to the deeply certain knowledge he’d been given by the god; in those strange half-images that seemed to suggest words, there had been absolutely no confusion, no doubt of what was being asked of him.
Which left the question of when he should do it. It wasn’t like he could just tumble down those stone steps, snatch the thing up, and vault to freedom over the city walls. Lack of opportunity combined with his own fear, and Ursu could not help but dither on a heroic scale, waiting always for some sign he could not be sure would ever come.
So he waited, and the longer he waited, the harder the waiting became. But despite all this, he could still reason, use his rationality. Shecumpeh had shown him the world fallen to fire and death, if he failed. Therefore failure simply was not, could not be, an option. Ursu planned his move, although he greatly doubted his own ability to carry out such an impossible task.
Over the yells and hoots of the enemy, the sound of screaming closer to home became apparent. Ursu felt the fur across his back prickle, and across the tip of his snout. He raced down the cold stone steps, only to find turmoil in the Great Hall. Its doors were wide open, and he witnessed Masters and acolytes alike shouting and running about outside. The well just beyond the entrance seemed to be the centre of activity, as they drew buckets of water up and ran off with them somewhere, as if attempting to put out flames. Ursu began to step forward hesitantly, to help. He still remembered that story the older acolytes once told, about the ghost of the girl, Ewenden, who still haunted the well, and dragged the unwary down after her.
‘Just put that fire out!’ screamed one of the Masters, and Ursu stared around as gibbering acolytes ran past him. It was then he spotted the buildings across the way with their wooden roofs ablaze.
No matter how fast the acolytes hauled their buckets from the well, it was clear they would never have enough to douse the flames before the stricken buildings burned to the ground.
Nubala had been built in the time of the Ice Giants, and had been well prepared for siege. But since then, the ice had retreated, and in its place a great river flowed down the valley, deep enough for conquering armies to float their supplies dangerously close.
When Xan’s army had first approached, the city council had had some forewarning, and therefore time to build up stocks of vital supplies. But these great catapults that hurled flaming missiles over the city walls were an innovation that Nubala’s original architects could never have predicted.
‘Sometimes I think we should just give them what they want, and fuck tradition,’ muttered a voice near Ursu. He glanced to one side, and recognized the long, sad face of Nepuneh, until recently a fellow acolyte. Ursu stared at him, and Nepuneh looked guilty.
‘I – sorry. I didn’t mean that,’ he said hastily, his fear evident from the way his ears flattened themselves against his skull. He ran off quickly, and Ursu watched him go.
Give them what they want, he reflected. Why had it taken so long for him to understand Shecumpeh’s true purpose?
Xan wanted one thing, and one thing only: the living, beating heart of Nubala. And the essence of the city, the one thing whose removal would mean the end of the city, was Shecumpeh itself.
‘Hmm.’ Turthe smacked his long lips and lifted, one after the other, several huge pages of the Book, looking for the most recently inscribed passages. ‘Here we are. Xan’s armies arrived peacefully enough – well, as peacefully as any potential invasion force can.’ Turthe looked up at Ursu and slid his black, unsheathed claws through the fur that coated his lengthy skull.
Every bone in Ursu’s body ached from the endless carrying of water that had lasted until almost sunset. It had, of course, not been enough to prevent all the buildings standing opposite the House of Shecumpeh from burning to the ground. There were now injured to be attended to by Shecumpeh, and the dying also. There were also many corpses whose families would wish embedded by nightfall.
‘You know all this already, Ursu,’ said Turthe. ‘Why refresh your memory now?’
‘It has to do with what Shecumpeh communicated to me when I became a Master-in-Waiting,’ he replied, knowing he could hide behind the truth as long as he phrased things the right way. Turthe’s lips made a sucking sound and he left it at that. It would have been very impolite, if not a little sacrilegious, for him to inquire as to the nature of that privileged conversation between god and acolyte.
‘Well, as recorded here, Xan’s generals sent us a delegation seemingly to remind us that Xan is the reincarnation of the Fhide, and therefore Nubala was now part of Xan’s empire – lucky us.’ Turthe mumbled rapidly as he ran his fingers along the lines of symbols. ‘Naturally, being the race of canthre-licking piss-snow-eating troglodytes that they are, they saw fit to make demands. Well, that’s a bunch of inbred southerners for you. Anyway, as we all know,’ with this, he glanced up, ‘they also demanded we hand over Shecumpeh, in accordance with the Prophecies of the Fhide.’
The Prophecies of the Fhide? The Fhide had been a great ruler before the snows came, one of the First People, who had sought – briefly succeeding – to unite all the city-nations, including Nubala. Shortly before his death – in this, most of the Great Books of the various cities were agreed – corruption and betrayal destroyed his loose-knit empire from within. Most histories also agreed that the Fhide had predicted on his deathbed that he would come again to rebuild his empire. Inspired by this prophecy, Xan had led a so far successful campaign to consolidate the fractured lands on the opposite shore of the world, and had recently even proclaimed himself the reincarnation of the legendary Fhide. If anyone in Nubala actually believed that, few would publicly admit to it.
‘Remarkable.’ Turthe shook his head. ‘Nonetheless, before we became trapped in here by the siege, it was coming to light that Xan’s armies had already succeeded in stealing the gods of different cities all across the known world. Even now, perhaps, the lunatic is planning to encroach on great Baul itself.’
‘But we won’t hand
over Shecumpeh to Xan, will we?’ said Ursu.
‘Of course not. And bring the ice storming back in again, once it sees there is nothing to protect us from it? My own grandfather used to tell me what life was like in Nubala when he himself was a boy, and he described his piss freezing so fast, when he went to take a leak, that he could see the ice reaching for his delicates before he’d barely started.’
Ursu smiled; Turthe was always a lot more approachable than some of the other senior Masters.
‘But if they do succeed in entering the city, and taking Shecumpeh from—’
‘Careful what you say, young Master-in-Waiting,’ said Turthe. ‘Shecumpeh will triumph as always. Does it not say so, in the Great Book itself?’
Ursu nodded.
‘One hopes you do not have doubts, Ursu,’ the old one continued. ‘In times of war and desperation this may be forgivable, but perhaps not admirable.’ Ursu tried to look appropriately reproachful. Turthe emerged from behind the low table on which the Great Book rested and placed a hand on his shoulder.
‘The whole matter of the siege is fairly straightforward. They want Shecumpeh, but we don’t want to give it to them.’
Ursu gazed into his wide black eyes. ‘Nonetheless, if they . . .’
‘Enter the city?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then they . . .’
‘Will take it anyway?’
Ursu glanced through the pale light cast by burning tallow towards the entrance to Turthe’s workroom. Nobody was in there, but he still felt as if every word he said was somehow being conveyed throughout the whole of the House of Shecumpeh.
‘Perhaps,’ said Turthe sadly. ‘Perhaps even inevitably.’ He looked at Ursu for the longest time. ‘And whatever shall we all do then?’ he asked.
‘I – don’t know,’ Ursu said carefully.
‘No?’ Turthe’s ears twitched alongside his skull. ‘Pity. I was rather hoping you had been imparted some ideas.’
Kim
Kim fell into old routines with what felt to her like depressing ease. Unless there were some really exciting new nightspots down on Kasper, the Angel Station was about as good as it got for several thousand light years.
In design, the Angel Station consisted of a fat torus, with the singularity at the centre of its ring-shaped structure. When Kim first acquired the Goblin, she’d had to pay someone to teach her how to pilot it and then issue her with a pilot’s certificate. The tutor – a middle-aged woman who moonlighted occasionally from her work in one of the main research departments on board the Station – had tried to explain to her how the Angel gate worked. The only phrase that had really stuck with Kim was phase transition – like when water suddenly became ice, once the conditions were ideal.
She’d told Kim that, as far as anyone could tell, the singularity worked on a similar principle. Not a black hole – black holes being neither shaped like flat discs nor lacking gravity – but sharing some of the same properties. Somewhere inside the torus, space and time were forced into a controlled phase transition, where the laws of physics operated differently, and this made it possible to jump from one end of the galaxy to the other.
After that, it seemed to Kim, all you really needed to know here was where to find the best bars, because drinking, doping and screwing were pretty much the only forms of entertainment you were likely to find.
The human part of the Angel Station was built around the circumference of the original alien-built torus, bolted on to its exterior surface. As a result, a large part of the original Angel Station was now hidden behind ready-assembled living quarters, medical bays, converted fuel tanks that housed everything from exo-biologists to lapdancers, as well as docking bays, military barracks, and pressurized tubes winding through it all like spaghetti. And beyond that were the ever-present military escorts, sleek, buffed-up, long-range cargo haulers with heavy shielding built around the hull, and pressurized living quarters where once there had been only vacuum.
Kim headed for the Hub immediately after speaking with Pierce. A long time ago, this part of the Hub had itself been a heavy cargo lifter, but it was now permanently welded to the Station torus. Some budding entrepreneur had recognized the need for providing entertainment for upwards of several thousand people scattered at various points throughout the Kaspian system. He had gutted the whole thing after the post-Hiatus investigations into the disappearance of the original crew turned up nothing but blanks, then filled it with bars, music and a variety of exotic entertainments. The Hub, Kim knew, was where she stood the best chance of finding Bill Lyndon. Her supply of Books was already lower than she felt comfortable with. Not just any Books, of course – special Books. Ones that were hard to get hold of.
She caught sight of herself in a mirrored wall and saw her mouth was set in a thin line of anger, with maybe something uncomfortably like desperation in her eyes.
She noticed one or two other asteroid hermits like herself, almost certainly passing time on the Station between their contracts. They nodded, or exchanged a few words with her, at most.
Kim was more used to communicating with them from inside her Goblin than in the flesh, and it felt strange to see some of them now wandering around the Station’s fleshpots. She imagined they must feel the same way about her.
And then, at last, she found Bill Lyndon.
He was over six feet tall with a long beard brushing his barrel chest and thick black hair on his head. He sat alone in a small alcove near one of the bars, tapping through pages on a smartsheet. Video clips and pictures of naked actresses scrolled blurrily in front of him. She slid into the booth beside him and waited.
He gazed at her for a few short moments before it clicked with him. ‘Oh, hi, Kim,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know you were on your way back here.’
Kim smiled, more tightly than she’d meant to. He must have received at least a dozen voice, screen and text messages from her over the past few weeks. ‘Mind if I join you?’ she asked.
‘Sure, sure, sit down,’ he said, although she was already seated. ‘Want a beer?’
‘Not right now, thanks,’ she said. ‘I’ve been trying for some time to get hold of you.’
Bill sighed, and flashed a wide grin. He shook his head slowly, in a theatrical way. ‘If you knew what my life’s been like.’
‘Bill, I’d like to get some more of those Books I ordered from you last time.’
‘Well, things are kind of difficult right now – after the big find, and everything. You know they’ve raised the security rating for the whole Station?’
‘Big find? What big find?’
He peered at her. ‘You have been out of the loop, haven’t you? One of your rock hermit friends found something way out by Doran – stuff that looks like real old Angel technology.’ He leaned in close to her. ‘Something that might turn out to be Angel Books too, maybe. How about that?’
She stared at him. ‘Angel Books? Are you sure?’ Probably, it was something else altogether. Real Angel Books were still a fantasy. It didn’t take much imagination to picture how lucrative a find like that would be.
Doran was an irregularly shaped lump of rock barely worthy of being called a planet, really a captured asteroid with an orbit that kept it far from the heat of Kasper’s star. It had little in the way of mineral deposits worthy of exploitation, and so had been largely ignored both by the Station authorities and the rock hermits. Even so, it struck her as strange that something so significant could have been missed by the initial exploratory missions into the system.
‘I never heard anything on the Grid,’ she said. During those long, slow weeks of approach, her mind had been too preoccupied to pay much attention to whatever random information was bouncing around out there. Maybe she should have listened more closely.
‘That’s because they’re keeping it all hush-hush up there in Command,’ said Bill, referring to the nexus of pods and living quarters that housed the bureaucrats and military types who administrated life on board the Station
. ‘So whatever it is, it’s back here now. So up goes the security rating until they know what they have. End result is,’ he raised his eyebrows, ‘it’s a little harder now to get people some of the things they ask for. They’re paying a lot of attention to anyone going in or out through the Gate.’
‘I just saw some people come in off a ship who looked like scientists, not tourists. They let them in.’
‘Yes, but that’s coming in, not going out,’ he said. ‘What this means is, for the next few weeks, very little of anything is going back out – of anything.’
Kim shook her head. ‘So what? It’s only Books I’m after, and you know the only Book distillery is in Command. They’re just Memory Books. It’s not like an addictive drug.’
At that, Bill gave her a long, cool stare, and she found herself flinching from his gaze. ‘Everything’s addictive, sweetheart. Just depends how badly you want it – or need it.’
There was silence, then, for several long seconds, as music drifted through the air, emanating from hidden speakers. The way Bill looked at her, and spoke to her; it always made her feel as if she’d done something wrong. Books were just something she needed. Because her own bioware had come through the black market, she required Bill as a point of contact, because official channels for the distillation of Books weren’t accessible to her. But maybe he didn’t realize that.
After the silence had dragged on long enough to get uncomfortable, she opened her mouth to speak – but Bill beat her to it.
‘You know, Kim, I make a lot of money just sitting here getting old and fat. I don’t intend to do it forever, though, and believe it or not I do sometimes give a damn about some of the people who come to me. But do you know what?’
He looked at her like he was waiting for an answer. She shook her head.
‘You I don’t get. I heard of people like you, and what you’re doing isn’t even against anybody’s laws. But what you’re doing to yourself is suicide, plain and simple – the worst kind. Losing your own memories for somebody else’s.’
