Century Rain

by Alastair Reynolds

  “Then it’s some kind of bomb, like the big firecracker the Americans say they’ll build one of these days.”

  “An atom bomb?” She almost laughed at the quaintness of it, but checked herself in time. In the mid-twentieth century of her own timeline there had been nothing quaint about it, any more than siege towers and boiling oil had been quaint in the thirteenth. “No, it’s not an atom bomb. An atom bomb would be… bad, I grant you that. But whether you drop it from a plane or load it inside a missile, a bomb’s a weapon with a specific focus of attack: a city or a town. Bad news if you’re there when it drops… equally bad news if you live in the fallout zone. But for everyone else? Business carries on more or less as usual.”

  Floyd stared at her with a kind of horrified fascination. “And Silver Rain?”

  “Silver Rain is much worse. Silver Rain touches everyone. There’s no escape, nowhere to run, no way to protect yourself even if you know it’s coming. There’s no way to negotiate with it, or buy your way out.” She paused, knowing that she had to tell him enough to satisfy his curiosity, but must not even hint at the truth. Already she regretted the little “Mars” wisecrack she had made earlier: things like that could get her into serious trouble. “It’s like a plague, spreading through the air. You breathe it in, and you feel fine. It doesn’t hurt you. And then one day you just die of it. Horribly, but quickly.”

  “Like some kind of mustard gas?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Just like that.”

  “You said it can kill millions of people.”

  “Yes.”

  “Who would use such a weapon? Wouldn’t they be just as likely to die at the same time?”

  “If they didn’t take the necessary precautions,” she said, “then yes, they might.”

  “And these precautions?”

  “Too many questions, Wendell.”

  “I’m just getting started.” He changed tack. “The Kaspar contract: could those spheres be a cover for something else?”

  “Such as?”

  “This Silver Rain you won’t talk about. Could the factory in Berlin be making this stuff?”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “Silver Rain isn’t like that. It isn’t something you make with foundries and lathes.”

  “A chemical, then? If there’s a foundry, there’s probably a chemical works nearby.”

  “It isn’t something you make in a chemical plant, either.” A small, quiet voice at the back of her head whispered “careful,” but she pressed on regardless. “Silver Rain is a special kind of weapon. It requires a very specialised manufacturing capability, one that just doesn’t exist in Germany or France.” Or anywhere else on this planet, she added to herself.

  Floyd swirled around the remains of his drink. “So who is making this stuff?”

  “That’s the point: I don’t know.”

  “But you seem so familiar with it.”

  “It can be made,” she said. “Just not locally. Which means you’d need to import it, and then find a means of deploying it.” She thought of the censor, with its automatic blockading of all forms of nanotechnology. Unless there was some as yet undiscovered means of bypassing the censor, there was no way to bring something like Silver Rain into E2. The trick Skellsgard had pulled with the pneumatic drill—dismantling it into simple, solid components and smuggling it through in pieces—wouldn’t work either. The only way to break nanotechnology down into smaller pieces and put it back together again later was with more nanotechnology.

  The rhythm of the train, the wheels clicking across the joints in the rails, seemed to goad her thoughts onward, like a whip.

  While it was true that the indigenous technology on E2 was nowhere near advanced enough to manufacture something like Silver Rain—and wouldn’t be for at least a century—there was always the possibility that Slasher agents had established a covert research and development programme somewhere. Auger thought about this for a moment and then dismissed it. No amount of advanced knowledge could compensate for an industrial technology still stuck in the steam age. Silver Rain was incredibly complex even in terms of the nanotechnology available in Auger’s timeline. But you couldn’t even make the simplest item of nanotechnology here on E2. You couldn’t even use the available tools to construct the specialised equipment necessary for manufacturing even the least sophisticated nanotechnological components. Given time, the necessary technical base could have been achieved—but not without some or all of that magical technology leaking into the world and thereby changing it. The Kaspar contract, on the other hand, looked more like the kind of covert programme that might actually work. Whatever function those spheres served, they had been manufactured using indigenous technology and know-how.

  Which made the reference to Silver Rain all the more anomalous. Someone planned to use it: that was clear. But they couldn’t make it within E2 and they couldn’t smuggle it through the censor.

  So they must have found another way of delivering it. If you couldn’t enter the house by the front door, she mused, you found another way in.

  You broke a window.

  Another portal? Perhaps such a thing existed, but there was a high probability that it would also come with its own censor.

  Which left the one possibility so horrifically obvious that she’d overlooked it completely. If they could find their way to the outside of the ALS, and if they had a means of cracking that shell, then they could simply deliver the Silver Rain directly, spraying it into the atmosphere from space.

  But that couldn’t be possible, surely. No one knew where the ALS was situated. The duration of the hyperweb transits was only weakly correlated with distance in actual light-years… and there was no indicator of direction at all. Auger’s thoughts returned to the house analogy. The hyperweb was like a vast, meandering underground tunnel system that emerged here and there in the basements of isolated old mansions. But there were many, many mansions strewn across the landscape and no way of telling from the inside which one a particular tunnel had emerged in. The windows were bricked up, the doors barred and the skylights boarded over. If only you could rip away some of those barriers, then perhaps you might get a glimpse of the surrounding landscape, and have some chance of identifying the house into which the tunnel led.

  Could the shell be cracked from the inside somehow?

  “Verity,” Floyd said gently. “Is there something you’d like to share with me?”

  “I’ve shared more than enough.”

  “Not from where I’m sitting.” He leaned back into the plush upholstery of his seat, studying her in a way that made her feel both uncomfortable and perhaps a little flattered. He wasn’t a bad-looking man, really: a bit crumpled around the edges, perhaps, and in need of a wash and a comb, but she’d known worse.

  “I’m sorry, Wendell, but I’ve told you all I can.”

  “You don’t even have all the answers yet, do you?”

  “No,” she said, glad to be able to say something in complete honesty for once. “All I have are the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle Susan White left me, which may or may not be sufficient to reconstruct the answer. If they are, I’m just too stupid to see it.”

  “Or maybe the answer isn’t that obvious.”

  “That’s what I keep wondering. All I know is that she must have been closer to the truth than I am right now.”

  “And look what good it did her,” Floyd said.

  “Yes,” Auger replied, saluting Susan’s memory with a lift of her glass. “But at least she died trying.”

  Auger found herself alone on the Champs-Elysées, moving along one broad, tree-lined pavement amidst the surging flow of the crowd. She remembered being on the train with Floyd, but that particular investigation had led nowhere. When they had arrived in Berlin, they had found it covered with ice, inhabited only by bickering tribes of feral machines. The trip had been a waste of time: how could she ever have forgotten that crucial detail? Now she was back in Paris, alone and a little sad despite the vivaciou
s mood of the other pedestrians. It was the middle of the morning and everyone was already overloaded with shopping and groceries and bright bouquets of flowers. Everywhere she looked there was riotous colour, from the clothes and belongings of the Parisians to the over-flowing shop-window displays and the trees, which were hung with gemlike fruits. Cars and buses sped by in blurs of gleaming chrome and gold. Even the horses shone, as if suffused with some soft inner light. Above the bobbing heads of the pedestrians, the Arc de Triomphe rose over everything, pennanted in a thousand pastel colours. Auger had no idea why she was walking towards it, or what she would do when she arrived. It was simply enough to be swept along by the other walkers, carried on their tide. All around her, couples and gatherings of friends laughed and made plans for later in the day. She felt their gaiety begin to elevate her mood.

  Behind her, she heard a steady rhythmic sound. She looked over her shoulder, through gaps between the people immediately behind her, and saw a child, a small boy, walking a dozen or so paces to her rear. The boy was the only other solitary person on the street, and as he walked—with a methodical, clockwork slowness—the other people made room for him, moving aside as if by some kind of magnetic repulsion. The little boy was wearing a red T-shirt and shorts, with white socks and buckled black shoes, and she knew that she had seen him somewhere before, not long ago. He had carried a yo-yo then, she remembered, but now a toy drum hung around his neck, upon which he was rapping out the insistent rhythm that had first drawn her attention. The tattoo he beat out was like a complicated heartbeat. It never varied, never slowed or quickened.

  The little boy unnerved her, so she pushed forward with the flow of pedestrians. Gradually the drumming sound faded away. When she could hear it no more, she risked a glance behind her and saw only a thick mass of shoppers and promenaders, with no sign of the little drummer boy. She kept walking briskly, and when she looked back again a little later, there was still no sign of him.

  But the mood of the avenue had changed. It wasn’t the boy—she was certain that none of the other Parisians were properly aware of him—but the weather. The colours on the street were suddenly muted and drab and the flags on the Arc de Triomphe fluttered like old grey rags. The sky, an untrammelled blue a moment earlier, now seethed with coal-black rainclouds. Sensing the imminent downpour, people dashed for the shelter of shop awnings and Métro entrances. Up and down the Champs-Elysées, umbrellas formed a choppy sea of bobbing black.

  It started raining, in dribs and drabs at first, darkening the pavement with a mottled pattern, but quickening until it was sluicing down in hard lines like drawn glass, spraying off the umbrellas, gushing from drainpipes. People who were still outside renewed their efforts to find shelter. But there were too many of them and not enough places to run to. Cars and buses threw showers of water on to the scurrying crowds. People dropped their belongings, abandoning them to the elements as they continued their frantic search for cover. The wind picked up and flipped their umbrellas over, lifting them into the sky. Auger, who had stopped, looked around at their expressions, watching the rain chisel fury into their faces. But she felt none of it. The rain was warm and sweet and it had the fragrance of expensive perfume. She lifted her face to the sky and let it anoint her, drinking it in. It was delicious: warm where it touched her skin, exquisitely cool as it slid down her throat. Around her, the people kept running, slipping and sliding on the wet paving stones. Why couldn’t they just stop and savour the rain? she wondered. What was wrong with them?

  Then the texture of the rain changed. It began to prickle her skin and eyes. It began to sting her throat. She closed her mouth, still holding her face to the sky but no longer gulping it down. The prickling intensified. The rain, gin-clear a moment ago, was now steely and opaque, coming down in chromed lines. Rivers of mercury poured from the drains and flooded the gutters, turning the pavements into mirrors. No one could stand up now, only Auger. Everyone else was flailing around, thrashing on the ground as they tried to struggle to their feet again. The rain flowed across their faces, puddling in their eyes and mouths as if trying to find its way inside. A horse, separated from its delivery cart, thrashed ineffectually in the street, struggling to stand until its legs snapped like sticks. At last even Auger turned her face from the sky. She held out a hand and watched the reflective shafts ram through the gaps between her fingers.

  The clouds began to disperse. The downpour abated and blue sky began to push through again. The rain gradually slowed to a trickle and then stopped. The mirrored pavements began to dry as the sun crept out again. Cautiously, the fallen people picked themselves up. Even the horse somehow regained its footing.

  “It’s over,” she heard people say, relieved, all around her, as they resumed their progress along the avenue. No one seemed concerned that they had lost their belongings, only that the Silver Rain had ended. The street bloomed with colours once again.

  “It’s not over!” Auger shouted, the only person standing still as the pedestrians surged around her. “It’s not over!”

  But no one paid her any attention, even when she cupped her hands and cried out even louder, “It isn’t over! This is only the beginning!”

  The people walked past her, oblivious. She reached out and grabbed a young couple, but they wrestled free of her, laughing in her face. With a dreadful sense of inevitability, she watched them continue their progress towards the Arc de Triomphe. After a dozen steps, they faltered and stopped in mid-stride. At exactly the same instant, so did everyone else on the street.

  For a moment, the Champs-Elysées was perfectly still, thousands of people suddenly completely motionless, some in the most ludicrous of postures. Then, very slowly, as one they lost their balance and toppled to the ground. Their perfectly immobile bodies littered the sides of the avenue as far as the eye could see. Even beyond the Champs-Elysées, a palpable stillness had descended over the entire city. Nothing moved, nothing breathed. The bodies had become silvery-grey, drained of colour.

  All was quiet. It was, in a way, quite beautiful: a city finally freed of its human burden.

  Then a breeze picked up, blowing along the length of the avenue. Where it touched the bodies, it lifted coils of shining dust from them, twining them through the air like long glittering scarves. As the dust peeled away from the bodies, it removed first their clothes and then their flesh, revealing chrome bones and steel-grey armatures of nerve and sinew. The breeze strengthened, abrading even the bones, smoothing the bodies into odd, abstract curves, like a landscape of intertwined sand dunes. Coils of dust snaked between Auger’s lips, peppery and metallic.

  She was screaming now, but it was pointless: the Silver Rain had come and no one had heeded her warnings. If only they had listened… but what good, she wondered, would it have done them anyway?

  She heard, distantly, a rhythmic sound. Far off in the sea of blurred skeletal remains, a single figure remained standing. The little drummer boy was still drumming, still walking very slowly towards her, picking his way between the bones.

  “Verity,” Floyd said softly. “Wake up. You’re having a nightmare.”

  It took her several seconds to surface through the dream, even with Floyd shaking her gently. He stood next to her bunk, his head level with hers as she opened her eyes to the dimly lit railway cabin.

  “I thought I was back in Paris,” she said. “I thought the rain had begun.”

  “You were screaming your head off.”

  “They wouldn’t listen to me. They thought it was over… they thought they were safe.” She was cold, drenched with her own sweat.

  “It’s all right now,” he said. “You’re safe. It was just a nightmare… just a bad dream.”

  Through the gap in the curtain she could see the moonlit landscape slipping by outside. They were still on their way to Berlin, still on their way to that icebound, machine-stalked city, as dangerous in its way as the excavated bowl of Paris. For a moment she panicked, wanting to tell Floyd that they had to turn around
, that this was a futile journey. But gradually her thoughts rearranged themselves as the dream began to fade a little. They were headed to a different Berlin, one that had never known a Nanocaust or any of the other horrors of the Void Century. That brightly lit, rain-soaked Paris had been a dream.

  “They wouldn’t listen,” she said softly.

  “It was just a nightmare,” Floyd repeated. “You’re safe now.”

  “No,” she said, still feeling as if the dream might reclaim her at any moment, still seeing the drummer boy stepping towards her through the maze of bones, as if that part of the dream was still playing somewhere in her skull, moving with clockwork deliberation towards an inevitable conclusion.

  “You’re safe.”

  “I’m not,” she said. “Nor are you. Nor is anyone. We have to stop it from happening, Wendell. We have to stop the rain.”

  His hand closed around hers. Gradually she stopped shaking and lay there numbly, and for a little while she let him hold her hand, until she fell back into an uneasy sleep, drifting bodiless through the dust-strewn streets of an empty city, like the last ghost in town.

  They arrived in Berlin by mid-morning on Sunday. All around the city, party banners and flags were on display again. Now that Rommel and von Stauffenberg were both safely in the ground, the bright young things had decided that it was time to give National Socialism another crack of the whip. The advertising men had come up with some careful changes: the old hard-edged swastika was gone, replaced by a rounded, softer successor. The party big shots still gave rallies in the Zeppelin Field, but they saved their best performances for the tiny, flickering window of television. Now there was a little slice of Nuremberg in every well-appointed living room, every beer hall and railway-station cafeteria. There was talk of parole for the big fish languishing in the Gare d’Orsay; perhaps even some kind of triumphant return to the Reichstag in the evening of his chemically sustained days.

  “It shouldn’t be like this,” Auger said quietly.