Century Rain

by Alastair Reynolds

  “Is there a theory five?”

  “Not yet. But I’m sure someone’s working on one.”

  Auger laughed. Everything she knew about academia told her how true that was. Skellsgard’s composure cracked as well, and it was only when they finished laughing, sighing with exhaustion and their eyes wet with tears, that Aveling opened his eyes and stared at them, his face as impassive as ever.

  “Civilians.”

  In the twenty-ninth hour, something changed in the spiderweb crawl of Skellsgard’s stress-energy display. The contours began to arrange themselves in a systematic and intricate pattern quite unlike the asymmetric bunching and stretching caused by the tunnel markings.

  “You might want to look at this,” she said.

  “Is something wrong?” Auger asked.

  “No. We’re just coming up on something a little unusual, that’s all. We always hit it somewhere between the twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth hours, although it’s never in quite the same place from trip to trip.”

  “More graffiti or tunnel turbulence?”

  “Nope. Much too stable for that.”

  Auger leaned forward, relaxing her seat buckle. She kept her voice low. Aveling was asleep, snoring lightly, and she had no particular desire to wake him up. “So what are we looking at?”

  “We’re approaching a widening in the fabric of the tunnel. It’s like a bubble, somewhat elongated in the direction of travel.” Skellsgard made a few micro-adjustments to their flight path, signalled by a sequenced volley of steering jets. “At first, we didn’t know what to make of it.”

  Auger tried to make some sense of the slowly moving contours, but she suspected it would need weeks of practice to untangle the information into anything approaching a three-dimensional image of their surroundings.

  “And now?” she asked.

  “We call it the ‘interchange cavern,’ ” Skellsgard told her. “As far as we know, the Slashers have never found anything like this in any of their travels. All the connections they’ve mapped have been simple point-to-point affairs. You might get multiple clusters of portals located close to each other in space, but you never get junctions in the hyperweb threads themselves.”

  “Except for this?”

  “Well, there’s obviously something special about this link because it feeds into the heart of an ALS. We think the interchange cavern allows selective access to different points in the crust of the captive planet.” With one blunt fingernail she tapped particular features in the contour display. “There are nineteen possible routes out of the cavern, as far as we can tell, not counting the one we just arrived by. Trouble is, our steering control is only sophisticated enough to allow us to change course in time to reach six of the exits. Of the remaining thirteen, we’ve managed to drop lightweight instrument packages into four of them, but we never heard anything back. They probably didn’t even make it to the ends of their threads.”

  “What about the six exits you can reach?”

  “We always come out underground, within a few hundred metres of the surface. But five of the six exits are no use to us. Given time, we could tunnel our way to daylight, but it would take years, and every kilogram of rock we excavate would have to be brought back through the link.”

  “I’m missing something here,” Auger said. “What’s so difficult about digging through rock, given that you’ve already excavated half of Phobos?”

  “There’s a catch: our tools don’t work on E2. We’d have to dig our way out with our fingers.”

  Auger asked the obvious question. “Wait. If you can’t reach the surface, how do you even know it’s the same planet? What if the threads lead somewhere else entirely?”

  “Gravity’s the main clue. It’s always within a per cent or two of the same value, no matter where we pop out. Geochemistry varies a little, too, but not enough to lead us to think we’re inside a different planet each time. We can plot these data points against our knowledge of E1 and take a stab at figuring out where we are—at least to within a continent’s accuracy—but only one exit lets us reach the surface.”

  “Because it’s closer?” Auger asked.

  “No. Because there’s another tunnel right next door. We only had to dig through a few dozen metres of actual rock before we hit a pre-existing shaft. If it wasn’t for that…” Skellsgard’s expression became philosophical. “Well, Susan would still be alive, and you’d still be looking at a tribunal.”

  “Thanks for the reminder.”

  “Sorry.”

  They passed through the interchange cavern without incident. Less than an hour later, Aveling’s sensors began to pick up the reflections from the approaching throat: the faint echo from the same kind of bow shock wave that had signalled the arrival of the other transport in the Phobos cavern. He told Skellsgard and Auger to secure themselves for arrival, which meant additional seat restraints and webbing, tightened to the point of discomfort. Auger recalled the violent arrival of the ship in Phobos and prepared herself for the worst.

  When it came, it was mercifully quick, and she had no sooner registered the fact that the ship was slowing than she felt the arrestor cradle clang into position around the hull. The ship surged forward, halted and then lurched back as pistons took up the recoil. And then suddenly all was very calm, with Aveling reaching above his head to flick switches, powering down vital systems.

  Auger had weight now, an unwelcome burden after thirty hours in free fall. It was an effort to move her arms to undo the seat harness, and a struggle to lift herself from the seat. Her muscles protested for a few moments as she began to stretch, and then, sullenly, resigned themselves to the task.

  Presently, someone knocked on the door.

  “That’ll be Barton,” Aveling said.

  Barton turned out to be a younger version of Aveling, only with a slightly more enlightened attitude towards civilians. He ushered them out of the transport, through a connecting airlock and into a rock-walled spherical cavern that was recognisable as a much smaller counterpart to the one at the Phobos end. Much equipment surrounded the recovery bubble, but there was no means to swap the existing transport for a refurbished one. Despite the damage it had sustained on the trip (light, Aveling said), the ship would simply be rotated through 180 degrees and sent on its way again.

  Auger was introduced to two other people in the chamber: a tough-looking female military specialist called Ariano and another civilian technician called Rasht, a small, feline man with a sallow complexion. Neither of them looked like Slashers, and both appeared to have been working double shifts for at least a week.

  “Any news on the others?” Aveling asked Ariano.

  “Nothing,” she said. “We’re still transmitting on the usual frequencies, but nobody’s called home.”

  Auger leaned against a red-painted handrail, unsteady on her feet. “What others?”

  “Our other deep-penetration agents,” Ariano said. “There are eight of them out there, some as far away as the United States. We’ve been sending out orders for them to return here.”

  “Because of what happened to White?”

  “That’s part of it. The link is also showing signs of instability, and we don’t want anyone to end up marooned here.”

  “This is the first I’ve heard about any instability,” Auger said uneasily.

  “It’ll hold long enough for you to complete your mission,” Skellsgard replied.

  “We’re also concerned about the political situation at home,” Ariano said. “We know things are hotting up back there, and that some people are talking about a Slasher invasion. If they’re right, there’s a danger we’ll lose Phobos. We can’t afford to have anyone still here if that happens.”

  “All the more incentive to get things done as quickly as possible,” Aveling said. He clicked his fingers at Ariano and Rasht. “Get the ship prepped for the return leg. I take it you have cargo?”

  Rasht was standing next to an incongruous-looking tower of cardboard boxes. The topmo
st box was crammed with books, magazines, newspapers and gramophone records. “Five hundred kilograms’ worth. A few more trips and we’ll have sent home everything Susan delivered.”

  “Good,” Aveling said. “Get it loaded and secured. You can ship out as soon as you’re ready.”

  “Wait,” Auger said. “Is that ship leaving without me?”

  “There’ll be another one back sixty hours after this one departs,” Aveling said, his voice unctuous with sarcastic sweetness. “That gives you at least two and a half days to complete your mission. If you get back with the tin sooner than that, you can simply sit tight here and wait for the next transport.”

  “I still don’t like the idea—”

  “This is the way it’s going to happen, Auger, so deal with it,” Aveling said bluntly, terminating the conversation by turning away.

  The three of them trooped off the catwalk, leaving Barton, Ariano and Rasht to load the transport for its return flight. They reached a circular deck surrounding the chamber. Prefabricated cubicles ringed the deck, along with equipment lockers and control consoles. In the deep pit below the bubble, powerful generators snored to themselves, umbilicals snaking across the floor like draped tentacles.

  Everything she saw, she realised, must have come through the link—even the bubble itself. The first few journeys must have been interesting, if not fatal.

  “Let’s get you freshened up,” Skellsgard said, leading Auger to one of the cubicles. “There’s a shower and washroom in there, and a wardrobe full of indigenous clothes. Help yourself, but remember you need to be comfortable wearing what you choose.”

  “I’m comfortable with what I’m wearing now.”

  “And you’d stick out like a sore thumb as soon as you entered Paris. The idea is to be as inconspicuous as possible. Any hint of strangeness and Blanchard may get other ideas about handing over the goods.”

  Auger showered, rinsing away the musty smell of the transport. She felt oddly alert. During the past thirty hours she had only slept intermittently, but the novelty of her situation served to hold tiredness at bay.

  As Skellsgard had promised, the wardrobe was well equipped with clothes from the same time period as the E2 artefacts she had already examined. Trying them on in various permutations, she couldn’t help but remember the ludicrous fancy-dress party she had attended on the Twentieth Century Limited in a desperate bid to ward off boredom. At least the garments here all originated from the same period, even if there was no guarantee that she was putting them on in anything resembling a sensible combination. It was trickier than she had expected. Lately, Tanglewood fashions had tended towards the utilitarian and consequently Auger was not used to things like dresses and skirts, stockings and heeled shoes. Even at the kind of academic functions where everyone else made an effort to dress up, she’d always been the one who made a point of showing up in work-stained coveralls. Now she was expected to pass as a woman from the mid-twentieth century, a time when even the wearing of trousers was uncommon.

  It took half an hour, but eventually she settled on a mix that didn’t strike her as glaringly off key, and which—equally importantly—she could still just about walk around in without looking drunk. She chose the shoes with the flattest heels amongst those on offer, which were still higher than she would have liked. She added black stockings and a knee-length skirt in navy blue with fine silver pinstripes that allowed her to walk without too much trouble, and paired these items with a pale-blue blouse and a jacket in the same fabric as the skirt. Rummaging in the back recesses of the wardrobe, she found a hat that completed the ensemble. She tugged here and shrugged there, settling the unfamiliar garments in place. She then stood in front of the mirror and toyed with the angle of the hat, trying to see herself as an anonymous woman rather than as Verity Auger in fancy dress. Only one thing mattered: if she saw herself in the background of some pre-Void Century photograph, would she merit a second glance?

  She couldn’t tell. She didn’t think she looked disastrous, but neither was she certain that she was about to blend in with anything or anyone.

  “You ready in there?” Skellsgard called from outside.

  Auger shrugged and let herself out. Skellsgard, to her surprise, had also put on clothes from the same period. They seemed to suit her about as well as they suited Auger.

  “Well?” Augur asked, self-consciously executing a little twirl.

  “You’ll do,” Skellsgard said, cocking her head as she appraised the outfit. “Main thing is not to worry about it too much. Look confident, as if you know you belong, and no one will give you a second glance. You hungry?”

  They’d eaten rations on the way over, but the weightlessness had done nothing for her appetite. “A bit,” she decided.

  “Barton’s fixed us some food. While we’re eating we can go over the rest of the stuff you need to know. Before that, though, we need to put you through the censor.”

  “I was wondering when we’d get to that.”

  ELEVEN

  When they had finished eating, Floyd left Greta smoking a cigarette while he persuaded the waiter to let him use the telephone. Fishing out his notebook, he called Blanchard’s number and waited for the landlord to answer.

  “I need to speak to Monsieur Custine,” Floyd said, after they’d exchanged pleasantries. “He should be waiting for my call.”

  Without another word, Blanchard passed the receiver to Custine. “Floyd,” he said excitedly, “I’m glad you called.”

  Floyd picked at his teeth with a fresh toothpick. “You’ve got something?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Get rid of the old man. I don’t want him listening in on your latest piece of speculation.” Floyd had his back to the bar, but a mirror offered an excellent view of the patrons. He watched them idly while he listened to Custine and Blanchard having an animated discussion at the other end of the line. Presently he heard the click as a door was closed.

  “I’m alone now,” Custine said. “He’ll give me a minute, no more.”

  “Let’s make the most of it, then. Did you get the wireless to work?”

  “Yes, rather to my surprise.”

  “Mine as well. How did you manage that?”

  “Trial and error, Floyd. I identified the severed wires and the contact points where they needed to be re-attached. It was then merely a question of some very delicate and methodical soldering, trying out the various permutations until something happened. We’re lucky that whoever sabotaged that wireless was in a great hurry, or they could have done a much more thorough job.”

  “All right,” Floyd said. “I’m officially impressed. Consider yourself in line for a promotion the next time a vacancy appears.”

  “Very droll, Floyd, considering that I am your only employee. I will confess that I was a little impressed with myself, if truth be told. But what is truly interesting is that the wireless still did not pick up any of the usual stations.”

  “Then it’s still broken.”

  “Not quite. I tuned it to the wavelength you noted on our first visit, and then made careful adjustments around that position. Eventually I found a signal. It was weak, but it may be that the wireless has suffered some more permanent damage that I couldn’t see. Then I moved the needle all the way up and down the dial, but that was all I found: just a single station.”

  “And what were they transmitting?”

  “Noises, Floyd, just as we were led to expect. Short tones and long tones, like Morse code.”

  “I hope you made a note of them.”

  “I did my best. I became aware that the pattern was repeating, with a minute or so of silence after each repetition. I attempted to scribble down the sequence of tones, but I couldn’t record them all before the station stopped transmitting.”

  “Then they went off the air for good?”

  “So it would seem. It must have been sheer luck that I stumbled on the end of a sequence of transmissions.”

  “All right. See what else you
can get out of it, without making Blanchard too suspicious.”

  “Do you think this is significant?”

  “It might be,” Floyd said. “Greta’s turned up something interesting in that paperwork.” He checked his watch. “How much longer do you think you need?”

  “Give me until four. That should be sufficient.”

  “All right. I’ll meet you there—I want to ask the tenants a few follow-up questions. In the meantime, keep a lid on what you’ve discovered.”

  Custine lowered his voice. “We’ll have to tell him at some point.”

  “I know,” Floyd said, “but let’s make sure we have a clear idea of what she was up to first.”

  Floyd put down the receiver, drawing a frosty glance from the waiter. He went back to the table where he had left Greta, then snapped at his fingers at another waiter and settled the bill, adding a modest tip. “I’ll drive you back to your aunt’s place,” he said.

  Greta gathered her gloves. “What did Custine have to say for himself?”

  “He might just have earned his Christmas bonus.”

  They returned to the Mathis. Floyd ripped a political pamphlet from underneath a windshield wiper and drove Greta back to Montparnasse, stopping so that she could pick up some groceries along the way.

  “Give my regards to Marguerite,” he said as Greta got out of the car.

  “I will.”

  “I’d like to see you again. How does this evening sound?”

  She reached for the bag of groceries. “Floyd, we can’t keep dancing around the one subject you don’t want to talk about.”

  “Then we’ll talk about it this evening.”

  “Until you change the topic.”

  “Humour me.”

  She closed her eyes in weary resignation. “Call me later. I’ll see how things go with Marguerite.”

  Floyd nodded: anything was better than a rejection. “I’ll call you this evening.”

  “Floyd… take care, all right?”

  “I will.”

  She pulled an apple from the bag of groceries and threw it at him. Floyd caught it and slipped it into his pocket. He started up at the Mathis again and drove back across town to rue des Peupliers. He got Blanchard to buzz him in, then walked up to the fifth floor and knocked on the door to Susan White’s apartment.