Terminal World

by Alastair Reynolds

  ‘We can’t just leave you, not with everything that’s been happening.’

  ‘We can give it a shot,’ Meroka said.

  ‘Your friend spoke the truth,’ the woman said, eyeing Meroka with haughty derision. ‘I bring ill-fortune. That is why we travel alone. That is why you will never see us again.’

  ‘Ignore Meroka. You say you feel no ill-effects of the storm, but there could still be hidden dangers working their way to the surface. No one alive has lived through a storm like this, and please don’t tell me you’re any different. At the very least let me examine your daughter.’

  ‘We haven’t got time for this,’ Meroka said.

  ‘Then we’ll move. The four of us can travel together.’

  ‘No,’ the woman said. ‘We travel alone. But your friend is right. You must leave now.’

  She had turned her head away from him, allowing him a better look at the pattern on the back of her skull. The skin was reddened where it formed the bauble-tipped star.

  ‘Let me see that,’ Quillon said. Something in his tone of voice must have worked, because the woman did not pull away as he reached up and touched the back of her head, gently tracing the border of the pattern.

  ‘You know the sign of a tectomancer,’ the woman said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, for the sake of argument. ‘But this isn’t it. It’s ... I don’t know. Some kind of badly done tattoo, or a superficial burn or chemical injury. Probably a tattoo. I can see puncture scars where she’s been pricked with a needle, to get the ink into her skin. It’s not due to pigmentation.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ Meroka asked.

  ‘I’m saying this is faked,’ he said. ‘Someone’s made this woman look like a witch. Someone shaved her hair and made this mark on her skin, so she looks like a tectomancer.’

  ‘You know nothing,’ the woman said. ‘The mark of a tectomancer waxes and wanes with the seasons.’

  Quillon took hold of the woman’s wrist. It was like holding a hawser, something taut and dangerous when under tension. ‘Someone did this to you,’ he said urgently. ‘Maybe it was the Skullboys, trying to make you into something you weren’t, so they could sell you on to the next bunch of superstitious fools they chanced upon. But it isn’t real. No matter what you’ve been told, no matter what you’ve been made to believe, you aren’t a witch. You’re a woman, a mother. A woman with unusual zone tolerance, yes. But no witch. And we don’t fear you, do we, Meroka? We only want to help.’

  ‘If she isn’t one, why is she working so damned hard to make us think she is?’ Meroka said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Quillon said, letting go of the woman’s wrist.

  ‘Maybe she’s just bugfuck.’

  ‘How sane do you think you’d be if you’d been captured by Skullboys, branded to look like a witch, locked in a cage, all the while knowing that you were probably going to be burned alive? Throw in a few psychoactive drugs, some suggestion, and I think that could easily push someone over the edge.’

  ‘You say so, Cutter. Me, I think we’d be doing well if we all said goodbye now and went our separate ways.’

  ‘Your friend is wise,’ the woman said, nodding gravely. ‘You should do as she says.’

  ‘If I did as she said, you’d still be in that cage.’

  ‘Can’t argue with that,’ Meroka said darkly, looking around anxiously.

  ‘At least let me examine the girl,’ Quillon said again. ‘But not here. If we walk a while and find somewhere to stop, I can perform some simple tests.’

  ‘In the dark?’ Meroka asked.

  ‘Then we wait until daylight.’ He turned back to the woman. ‘Neither of you have shoes. Can you walk? I’m afraid we lost our horses last night.’

  He sensed the woman reviewing the possibilities open to her, her mind swarming with calculations. As deluded as she might be - and he had not quite made up his mind about that - there was an undeniable intelligence about her, an electric emanation that made his skin prickle. Her eyes were shockingly alert and sharp, her focus disarmingly penetrating.

  He wondered if she saw him for what he truly was.

  ‘We will walk with you,’ she said. ‘You may make your examination, if it pleases you. Then we will leave.’

  ‘My name is Quillon. I’m a doctor from the city. Meroka is ...’ He paused, searching for the words. ‘My guide. She knows her way around the Outzone. We were heading along this road, hoping to meet some friends of hers who might be able to help me reach Fortune’s Landing.’

  The woman looked at Quillon with dwindling interest. ‘You have travelled from the Godscraper?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I hope you said your farewells. Your city is dead.’ Then she paused and added: ‘I am Kalis. My daughter is Nimcha. That’s all you need to know.’

  Then she started walking, the girl at her side, picking a path through the rutted verge, away from the burning procession.

  ‘Charming conversationalist,’ Meroka said, walking alongside Quillon, far enough behind the woman and girl that it was unlikely they would be overheard. ‘Real easy-going manner.’

  ‘You can talk.’

  ‘With me it’s neurological.’

  ‘For all we know it’s neurological with her. Perhaps she just needs time to decide if she can trust us or not.’

  ‘You just rescued her, Cutter. What more does she want?’

  ‘I would think it self-evident. She’s placed her trust in people before, and it’s cost her dearly. Shouldn’t we give her the benefit of the doubt, until she’s had time to recognise that we don’t mean her any harm?’

  ‘We talking weeks or months here?’

  ‘In the morning, if she’s still with us, I’ll examine the child. And the mother too, if she’ll let me. If they need drugs, I’ll do what I can. Then they can go their own way.’

  Meroka shook her head. ‘This is another one of those things that isn’t going to end well.’

  It was all very good being doctorly, insisting on looking after the woman and her child, but if he didn’t rest he would be exhausted beyond measure by dawn. Certainly, he would be in no fit state to conduct an examination for the subtle indicators of latent zone sickness. There were preparations in his bag that could give him a few hours of chemically stimulated alertness, but even under normal circumstances he would pay for it afterwards. Given that he was also taking antizonals, the combination of drugs could easily prove fatal. He would just have to manage on his own reserves of endurance.

  Meroka, by contrast, did not seem tired at all. She was in her element now, doing the thing she did best of all, which was survival. And, perhaps, a little retribution on the side. He watched as she spotted a Skullboy lying on the ground near one of the powered vehicles, now furiously alight. She left the verge and started walking towards him. The Skullboy had been still until her approach, but as she neared he began to claw at the road, attempting to haul himself away even though his legs trailed uselessly behind him, crushed or paralysed. From the rear, Quillon saw Meroka’s coat flap open as she dug into her personal armoury. Something glinted in her hand. He heard a short, sharp crack and the Skullboy jerked once and then lay perfectly still. Meroka walked back, returning whatever weapon she had just used to the sanctuary of her coat.

  ‘You still think she’s a fake?’ she asked nonchalantly, as if she had just stepped aside to dispose of a cigarette. ‘There’s still something screwed-up about her, that’s for sure. Makes me nervous having her around.’

  ‘You should see the effect you have on people.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t felt it.’

  ‘All right - there’s something unnerving about her. I’m not saying she’s normal, or that there isn’t something a little strange going on in her head. But I’ve yet to see any objective evidence that she has superhuman powers.’

  ‘The girl creeps me out as well. You seen the way she stares?’

  ‘Like her mother, she’s been through a lot.’

&nbs
p; ‘She’s fucked up,’ Meroka said.

  Quillon shrugged. ‘Then we’ll all get along famously.’

  They reached the head of the burning procession. Ahead lay darkness and the open road, arrowing onwards into the coming night. Kalis and Nimcha walked confidently ahead, seeming to feel neither the coldness of the air nor the hardness of the worn and rutted ground under their feet. They were walking in the middle of the road, two ragged figures the colour of ash, the baubled star vivid on the back of the woman’s head, the girl’s filth-matted hair blowing sideways as the wind picked up. Overhead, the clouds began to curdle and race, vaults of star-dappled sky opening up between their harried edges. The droning sound hadn’t gone away. Now it was harsher, like a bone saw.

  Kalis halted. Nimcha stood perfectly still by her side, the two of them waiting like stone sentinels in the road. Instinctively Quillon slowed his own pace, wondering what was ahead.

  ‘They’ve seen something,’ Meroka said. ‘Hand me that pistol again, Cutter.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Might be an idea to reload it.’

  He reached into his pocket and passed her the weapon. ‘Why don’t you keep it? I can’t shoot very well with my left hand anyway.’

  ‘You’ll do your best. We run into vorgs, I don’t want to be the one doing all the work. Hold this.’ Meroka passed him the volley-gun while she attended to the pistol, loading it as quickly and effortlessly as if she had been doing it since birth. While she was reloading they walked on slowly, the crunch of each footstep painfully loud, until they had almost caught up with the woman and girl. They were both still staring further down the road.

  Meroka was about to pass the pistol back to Quillon when a hoarse voice bellowed out from the darkness on the left side of the road.

  ‘Hello! Hello, hello, hello! Got us some fellow travellers!’ The voice paused to laugh at itself. ‘Nice night for it, too! Why don’t you folks stop there for a moment, so we can all get acquainted?’

  It was a Skullboy. He stepped out of the gloom, pointing a long rifle or musket at Quillon and Meroka. He was heavily armoured, the covering made from plates of metal and scavenged composites, with bones nailed on the outside to form ribs and spikes. His helmet was metal, covering most of his face and with sides that flared down to his shoulders, the effect enhanced by various bits of skull and bone fixed onto the metal, forming grotesquely enlarged eye sockets through which his own eyes were only dimly visible. He wore a plated skirt that extended down to his knees, with spike-augmented boots on his feet.

  Meroka raised the pistol, and for an instant Quillon thought she was going to fire. Then she lowered it: not because she had decided the Skullboy posed no threat, but because he had not come alone. Emerging from the same gloom were at least five others, all carrying weapons of similar fierceness.

  ‘We’re screwed,’ she said quietly, with all the sense of occasion as if she had just drawn a bad hand in a low-stakes card game. Quillon was still holding the volley-gun, the only thing that might have saved them, and he didn’t have the faintest idea what he should do with it. Meroka was stuck with the pistol, unable to draw anything more substantial.

  ‘We mean you no harm,’ Quillon said, trying to keep the quaver out of his voice.

  That made the Skullboy laugh, which was not the effect he had intended. The Skullboy turned around to address his companions. ‘Man means us no harm, boys! Ain’t that a relief! And there we were, shitting ourselves with consternation!’

  The other Skullboys - none of them dressed quite alike, yet all obviously belonging to the same faction - found this uproarious. They were not all men, either. He heard the mad cackle of a woman, sounding as if her mind was already broken beyond repair.

  ‘We’re just passing through,’ Quillon said. ‘That’s all. Let us go, and you’ll hear no more of us.’

  ‘Just passing through?’ the Skullboy asked, as if the question was reasonable and sincerely meant.

  ‘We were caught by the storm. We lost our horses and now we’re just trying to get to safety.’

  ‘Lost your poor little horses? All four of you? Including the two of you in rags?’

  Meroka said nothing. Quillon couldn’t tell if she was simply shocked into silence, or had decided there was nothing to be gained by negotiating with these thugs.

  ‘They’re friends of ours,’ Quillon said.

  ‘Friends you decided to let out of their cage, by any chance? We heard about them, see. Was on our way to collect them from these other friends of ours when the storm changed things around.’ The Skullboy touched a hand to the jaw-piece of his helmet, the carved yellow spikes of his teeth moving behind the mouth-slit. ‘Unless, of course, that wasn’t your doing?’

  ‘She isn’t a witch,’ Quillon said, his heart beginning to race.

  ‘That’s an area of expertise for you, is it?’

  ‘She’s a fake. That mark on her head wouldn’t fool a child, let alone an adult.’

  ‘So we got ourselves an authority,’ the Skullboy said. He was up in Quillon’s face now, seemingly unconcerned by the volley-gun. His breath was an open sewer. He jabbed the barrel of his weapon against Quillon’s medical bag. ‘Figuring there must be something awful precious in there, you clutching it so tightly.’

  ‘Medicines,’ Quillon said, resignedly. ‘That’s all. I’m a doctor. I carry medicines.’

  ‘Medicines.’ The man said the word mockingly, as if it implied a world of lily-livered scholarship he wanted no part of. ‘Now ain’t that a wonder, boys? Especially as we might know some people who could use some medicines.’

  ‘You don’t seem to be doing too badly,’ Quillon said.

  ‘Well, we’ve found ourselves a temporary supply. But it’s not something we can count on for ever.’

  ‘What’s in that bag won’t last for ever either.’

  ‘No, but it’ll tide us over.’

  ‘You’re making a mistake, dickhead,’ Meroka said, speaking at last. ‘A bad one.’

  One of the other Skullboys - Quillon fancied it was the woman he had already heard laugh, though it was difficult to tell under all that armour - strode over to Meroka. ‘Maybe you should shut your trap, before it gets you into trouble.’

  ‘I’d say trouble’s already here and taking off its boots, wouldn’t you?’

  The Skullboy slapped her hard across the face, then tore the still-loaded pistol from her hand, flipped it around and pushed the barrel against her forehead, pressing it into the skin like a leather punch.

  Meroka didn’t flinch back. If anything she leaned in to the pressure.

  ‘Don’t shoot her,’ the leader said. ‘You’ll only stir up her brains. You know they don’t like that.’

  The other one made a clicking sound and withdrew the pistol. The barrel left a circular indentation in Meroka’s forehead.

  ‘They?’ Quillon asked, although he suspected he already knew the answer.

  The leader ripped the volley-gun out of Quillon’s grip, then stared down at his prize. ‘You could have shot us,’ he said, with something close to wonder. ‘Nasty thing like that, we’d have stood no chance.’

  ‘I didn’t want us to get off on the wrong footing,’ Quillon said.

  That earned him a stab in the stomach from the man’s rifle, but it was intended to hurt, not wound. The four of them - Quillon, Meroka, Kalis and Nimcha - were escorted off the road, their hands tied behind their backs with rope. No one had bothered checking Meroka’s coat. It was as if they didn’t care.

  After a few hundred paces across rough ground, they came to a flatbed steam-truck with high slatted sides. It had the tall, spoked wheels of a traction engine. The vehicle’s huge iron flywheel was turning slowly, steam hissing from valves. Two Skullboys were waiting on the high platform between the back of the squat black boiler and the front of the flatbed. It was lit up with lanterns and ready to roll.

  ‘Load her up, boys,’ said the leader. ‘Time to go see our friends with the long teeth!’r />
  One of the Skullboys hopped off the steam-truck and dropped the tailgate, forming a ramp up into the slatted, open-air compartment built onto the flatbed. The four prisoners were marshalled aboard. The first Skullboy closed the tailgate, then climbed aboard the control platform. The others split into pairs and clambered onto the running boards stretching the length of the flatbed. They grasped handholds and aimed their guns into the holding pen. The steam-truck - which seemed to lack any form of suspension - wheezed and snorted into motion, bumping and yawing across the cold, broken ground until it reached the comparatively level and smooth surface of the road. It started heading in the same direction Quillon and the others had been walking before their capture. Though they were now imprisoned, there was a dreamy sense of continuation.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said to Meroka. ‘I should have asked you to show me how to use the volley-gun. Perhaps I might have made a difference.’

  ‘Don’t kill yourself, Cutter. Would have been touch and go even if I’d been holding it.’

  He wondered if she was just being uncharacteristically kind, or merely stating the unembellished facts of their predicament.

  ‘I still feel I should have done something.’

  ‘Maybe it isn’t me you should be talking to.’

  He nodded and turned to Kalis, expecting her to be staring out into the black distance, detached from reality. He started under the pressure of her gaze.

  ‘It will be all right,’ she said.

  The girl - Nimcha - was listening, of course. She had said nothing, but that didn’t mean she was incapable of understanding. Kalis was just doing what any mother would have done under the same circumstances, which was to buffer her child from the full, lacerating bore of the truth. It was not going to be all right, by any measure. But what good would it do Nimcha to know this now?

  ‘Perhaps I should have left you in the cage,’ he said. ‘Not to die, but for someone else to rescue you. Then you wouldn’t be in this mess.’

  ‘You did what you had to do. It was for the best.’

  ‘This is for the best?’