Terminal World

by Alastair Reynolds

  ‘Curtana and the rest of her crew,’ Quillon said. ‘The rest of Swarm, for that matter.’

  Meroka looked sceptical. ‘It took you a couple of hours to figure out what she is. You think you’re going to be able to keep that from them for ever?’

  ‘We’ll just have to do our best, won’t we? When the surgeon comes he can’t be allowed to examine the girl too closely.’

  ‘I still don’t get it,’ Meroka said, looking at Kalis. ‘Why couldn’t you just act like a normal mother, instead of shaving your hair, marking your skin, putting on the witch act?’

  ‘She had no choice,’ Quillon said. ‘Someone out there must have had a shrewd idea one of them had the power. If Nimcha caused a local zone shift, that might have been enough to draw suspicion her way. What Kalis did may seem drastic to us, but she knew it was the best thing, the only thing, she could do for her daughter. It bought Nimcha time.’

  ‘Wake-up call, Quillon. They were captured by Skullboys. They were on their way to a burning.’

  ‘Nimcha might have been released, or at least spared execution.’

  ‘Happy endings all around.’

  ‘I’m not saying that. Just that from Kalis’s perspective, this was the lesser evil.’ Quillon picked dried blood from his upper lip. ‘I don’t think we should be judging her. We weren’t in her shoes.’ He paused, sifting through the jumbled memories of recent events. ‘And we know she’s real now, don’t we? Kalis - when you implored Nimcha to act, I felt something. The zone responded. It didn’t shift, but it certainly noticed. It was listening, and it tried to obey. It was as if she called out to it, but lacked the strength or focus to make it follow her will. Is that what happened?’

  After a great silence Kalis said, ‘I hoped that you would not feel it, or remember what I said.’

  ‘You’re amongst friends. But we’ve got to know the truth, and all of it.’ Deciding the direct approach was best he added, ‘How long have you known about her?’

  Kalis’s eyes darted between Quillon and Meroka, both of whom were still standing up. ‘Please,’ she said, nodding to indicate that they should return to their own bench.

  ‘Taking their sweet time with those blankets and clothes,’ Meroka growled.

  ‘She was one when the mark appeared,’ Kalis said. ‘It wasn’t long after she’d learned to speak. She had hair by then, but one day she fell and hurt her head. I had to clean the blood away, and that was when I saw the mark.’ She looked hard into his eyes, forcing him to imagine the shock of discovering her daughter’s nature. ‘It was then that I knew.’

  ‘And you knew - just like that?’ Quillon asked.

  ‘Of course. There have always been children with the gift, for as long as the world is old.’

  ‘Some combination of inheritance factors,’ Quillon mused. ‘Out there, in the general population. But it’s only when they come together in the right combination that a child like Nimcha is born. How old was she when the power showed itself?’

  Kalis thought for a moment. ‘Nearly three. She could read and write, like any child of that age. That was when it came through.’

  ‘As if it was waiting for certain brain structures to become sufficiently mature,’ Quillon said. ‘That’s what this is: not magic, not possession by demons. It’s just something buried deep in the blood, waiting for the right set of circumstances to emerge. Much like an inherited disease, although obviously more complicated - and much rarer - since it can’t depend on just a single inheritance factor.’

  ‘It is not a disease,’ Kalis said.

  ‘But it may still be something medicine can understand, and help her with if need be.’

  ‘She has no need of help.’

  ‘If the power threatened her life, would you still say that?’ Quillon asked.

  ‘It does not.’

  ‘The power brought hatred down on you, caused the two of you to end up in a cage.’

  ‘It saved us as well.’

  ‘Perhaps it might have, had she been able to command it more effectively. I felt something, certainly - I’m sure all of us did. But it wasn’t enough to stop the vorgs, or hurt the Skullboys. It’s an undeveloped talent, something that needs to be nurtured and shaped.’

  ‘You misunderstand,’ Kalis said darkly.

  ‘Evidently.’

  ‘She was weak and frightened when the vorgs came. The power is not always strong in her. Today it was weak, because of what she had already done.’

  ‘She’d used the power already tonight?’

  ‘Not tonight, city man. Yesterday. When the change came. When your city died. When you watched the angels fall.’ Kalis ran a hand through her daughter’s hair, dirty fingernails parting filthy, grease-knotted strands, exposing the vivid crimson emblem of the baubled star. ‘Nimcha brought the storm. Nimcha brought the end of your world.’

  He opened his mouth to answer, but the best he could do was smile and shake his head.

  ‘Told you she was crazier than a bag of snakes,’ Meroka said.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  A face appeared in the grilled window of the door. It was a man none of them had seen so far: grey-bearded, pale, with an aquiline nose and narrowed, hawkish eyes under heavy brows. He surveyed the four then worked the lock. He entered clutching a medical bag that was only a little less scuffed and careworn than Quillon’s. Behind him loomed another airman, burdened with blankets and clothes, and behind that man was a third, gripping a machine gun in shiny black gloves.

  ‘Apologies for my tardiness,’ said the bearded man. ‘My name is Gambeson; I have the honour ... the pleasure ... of being the surgeon on this mission.’ He wore a long leather coat, emblazoned across the chest and shoulders with what Quillon presumed to be various symbols of rank and distinguished service. The coat had been donned hastily, one of the buttons tucked through the wrong hole. Beneath it Quillon could see a white surgical smock, not unlike the one he wore during his normal duties at the Third District Morgue. ‘I’ve been instructed ... commanded ... to give each of you a thorough medical examination,’ Gambeson went on, ‘partly for your own sakes and partly for the security of Swarm.’

  ‘Because we might be carrying something?’ Quillon asked. His eyes kept being drawn to the white tunic, stained here and there with the ochre of dried blood.

  ‘Swarm, by its very nature, has to be cautious ... vigilant ... against infection. I’m given to understand that two of you are from Spearpoint?’

  ‘That would be Meroka and me,’ Quillon said. ‘We’re from Neon Heights.’

  ‘I’m afraid the internal details of Spearpoint mean very little to me.’ Gambeson’s hawk-like features were turned fully towards Quillon, the surgeon’s coppery eyes alert with observation. ‘I was told you’d been hurt, hit in the face?’

  ‘My nose may have been broken. Other than that there’s no lasting damage.’

  ‘And you know this for a fact?’ Gambeson asked.

  ‘Being a doctor as well, yes.’

  ‘I had my doubts ... suspicions. Rather an intriguing collection in that bag of yours, to start with. A veritable cornucopia of drugs and surgical instruments.’ The surgeon’s breath was warm and smelled faintly of leather. ‘I’m sure we’d have a great deal to talk about, Doctor ...’

  ‘Quillon.’ He looked at Nimcha and Kalis, knowing that he must do everything in his power to protect the girl. His heart raced in his chest. He knew he was on the edge of something irrevocable, a point from beyond which there was no return. ‘There is something, actually.’

  ‘Something?’

  ‘I’ve been having a little trouble focusing, since I was hit in the face. I’m wondering if something didn’t get ... dislodged.’

  ‘Let me see. Stand up, will you?’

  Gambeson looked over his shoulder, perhaps making sure the other men were still behind him, and then produced a silver instrument from his medical bag. It had a delicate, precision-tooled look, with an elegant knurled handle.

  ‘You�
�ve been dealing with injured men,’ Quillon said, in not much more than a whisper. ‘Where are they? Perhaps there’s something I can do to help.’

  Gambeson peered into his eyes one at a time, squinting into the eyepiece of his instrument. ‘Be very still, Doctor Quillon.’

  ‘I can show you how to use my medicines to best advantage. I can also operate, if it comes to that.’

  Gambeson lowered the instrument, frowning slightly, and rubbed one of its hinged lenses against his coat sleeve before raising it again. ‘I must insist that you be still. And silent.’ He looked at Quillon’s eyes again, but this time with a deepening frown, a recognition of wrongness. He pulled back sharply, as if he had seen his own death in those deep, dark pools of midnight blue.

  ‘What are you, Doctor Quillon? What the hell are you?’

  ‘Perhaps it would be best if you continued your examination in private,’ Quillon suggested.

  He was taken to another room, through a part of the gondola he had not seen before. As they passed through one section, a gloved and masked airman came down a spiral ladder descending from the ceiling, the open hatch offering a glimpse of the sepulchral vault of the airship’s envelope. He heard the resonant, organ-like throb of the air rushing by her skin, the droning skirl of her engines. The craft was larger than he had grasped on the ground. He could not guess at the size of its crew, even allowing for injuries. It seemed entirely possible that there might be many dozens of airmen aboard Painted Lady.

  ‘You know what I am,’ he told Gambeson, when the doctor faced him alone in the tiny chamber, which appeared to be little more than a walk-in medicine cabinet. ‘Or at the very least you have an inkling.’

  Gambeson closed the door behind them.

  ‘What you are is an impossibility, Doctor Quillon. Nonetheless, you are standing before me, so I must confront ... accept ... your true nature.’

  ‘Have you ever seen anything like me?’

  ‘I’ve had the pleasure of dissecting angels once or twice. They were dead long before they came to me. How could they not be, when they can’t survive beyond Spearpoint for more than a few hours? Nonetheless, their bodies may be collected and ... pickled ... and conveyed to those, such as I, who find amusement ... interest ... in them.’ He had prepared a basin of hot water and was dabbing the dried blood from Quillon’s face with a tenderness that bordered on the maternal. ‘They were very old corpses, Doctor Quillon. They’d been dead for centuries, according to the provenance, which I have no reason to doubt. But angels don’t change very much, if at all. And I remember the structure of their eyes very well. Would you mind removing your garments?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  Quillon shrugged off his replacement coat, donned hastily from the pile before Gambeson led him away from the others. He unbuttoned his shirt and removed his vest. He stood before Gambeson, his own wraith-like image reflected back at him from the bottles on the shelving, a pale, hairless, attenuated thing with ribs like radiator bars.

  Gambeson studied him expressionlessly. ‘Turn around please, Doctor. I would like to see your ...’ He swallowed as Quillon presented his back to his examiner. ‘Wings. Might I touch ... examine ... them?’

  ‘Be my guest.’

  Quillon felt Gambeson’s cold fingertips touch first his left and then his right wing-buds. He kneaded them gently, exploring the underlying structure, the tiny bones and muscles that were struggling to assume functionality.

  ‘What are you?’ he said again, softly this time.

  ‘You would have discovered my nature soon enough, Doctor. I saw no point in prolonging the matter. I am what you imagine me to be, but both more and less than that. I was an angel, once. I was born in the

  Celestial Levels, and I would have looked very like those pickled bodies you cut open. Then I was changed.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘For the purposes of infiltration,’ Quillon answered blandly. ‘There were four of us. We were altered, surgically and genetically, to make us look human. Or prehuman, as angels would say. We were sent down to Neon Heights, to live amongst normal men and women, to prove that it could be done. What would have killed unmodified angels was merely troublesome to us. With the right antizonals, we could still function.’

  ‘Why didn’t they remove your wings, alter your eyes?’

  ‘They did. Nine years ago you’d have needed detailed blood and urine chemistry to tell I was anything other than human. Unfortunately, the infiltration exercise went wrong.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘There was a ... disagreement.’ He smiled thinly as he glossed over Aruval’s death, his own role in murdering the other two infiltrators. ‘I was left behind, stranded in Neon Heights. Eventually our specialised drugs ran out. I made do with what I could find, but while I was able to stave off zone sickness, I couldn’t stop my underlying physiology from beginning to reassert itself. The circumstances I found myself in hadn’t been anticipated. The best I could do was suppress the changes with chemistry and surgery.’

  ‘There are scars under your wings.’

  ‘They were cut back whenever they grew too obviously. It had to be done over and over again. There was nothing I could do about my eyes, so I concealed them as best I could. I had help from human friends in Spearpoint.’

  ‘They trusted you?’

  ‘We trusted each other. I’m hoping you and I can come to the same accommodation.’

  ‘You lied to me about being a doctor, then.’

  Quillon turned around slowly. ‘No, that’s the truth. Most of it, anyway. I am, or was, a pathologist. I worked in the Third District Morgue. And before I was sent down to Neon Heights I was a kind of physician. There’s very little I don’t know about bodies, be they angel or human. My offer to help you still stands.’ He paused. ‘Would you mind if I dress again? I’m fully aware that I don’t conform to the usual standards of aesthetic normality.’

  ‘You’re a master of understatement, Doctor.’ Gambeson passed him his vest. ‘Why would you help us? And please don’t give me any specious half-truths about moral imperatives.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be a half-truth. Besides, I want to convince you of my good intentions. And I hope if I do so it will reflect well on my comrades. They don’t have much else to offer.’

  ‘They know what you are, of course.’

  ‘No,’ Quillon said, buttoning his shirt. ‘They don’t. Not at all. And for now you would be doing me a very great favour if things stayed that way.’

  ‘Why haven’t you told them?’

  ‘The woman and the child, we’re barely acquainted. The other one, Meroka, has excellent reason to hate the likes of me.’

  ‘She’ll learn the truth eventually.’

  ‘I know. I’m just hoping I can earn enough respect for her not to throw me out of the nearest window when it happens. I’m sure she’s capable of it.’

  ‘A firebrand.’

  ‘She has her reasons.’

  Gambeson pursed his lips. ‘For now, I would indeed like to keep you apart. There’s a small holding cell, which I’m afraid is even less salubrious than the place where we’re holding your friends. But you’ll be ... comfortable ... warm, and I’ll make sure you’re served a decent ration, such as we can spare.’

  ‘That would be kind, Doctor.’

  ‘I may wish to examine you some more in the morning. In the meantime, though, I’m afraid other patients call on my time.’

  ‘I can help,’ Quillon said.

  ‘Your offer is noted. It will, of course, need to be reviewed by Captain Curtana. I can’t promise that she’ll see eye to eye with you. Many of us have a well-earned dislike of angels, over and above anything we might feel for Spearpoint.’

  ‘I understand.’

  Gambeson hesitated. ‘Your companions: now that we’re speaking candidly, as it were, as two medical men - is there anything about them I need to know? Any matters that have come to your attention?’

  He shook his head as casually a
s he was able. ‘Nothing that I’m aware of. They could all use food, water and a good wash. Beyond that, there doesn’t seem to be much wrong with them.’

  ‘Even the mother and daughter?’

  ‘They’ve survived on their own for long enough. They’re stronger than they look.’

  Quillon attempted to sleep during the remainder of the night, but his efforts were fruitless. The pain from his smashed nose was all but gone; what disturbed him was the profound unfamiliarity of his surroundings, the discomfort of the bench he was expected to use as a bed, the bucking and swaying motion of the airship and the habit of the engines, just when his brain was beginning to adjust to their endless monk-like droning, to subtly change tone and volume. That and the many worries circling his mind, chasing each other like the Moon’s two halves.

  It had been an impetuous decision to reveal his identity to Gambeson, one that he had barely had time to evaluate, but it had served its intended function. He had given the doctor - and by extension the rest of the crew - something other than the girl to puzzle over. He would be the object of their fascination now; Nimcha just a semi-mute child of only subsidiary interest. He was not so naive as to think he could protect her secret for ever, but under the present circumstances a delaying action was the best he could offer. As to what would happen when Nimcha’s true nature was eventually revealed, he dared not speculate.

  It scarcely mattered whether or not he believed Kalis when she said that Nimcha had caused the storm. That was not the way the world worked, or at least not the one he lived in. It was not that he refused to believe in tectomancers. And granted, she might have some mild, demonstrable power over the zones ... but it could only be a local influence. Surely. To believe otherwise was to surrender every rational instinct he had ever cherished. No child could have brought about what he had witnessed happening to Spearpoint.

  What mattered - the only thing that mattered - was what everyone else would think when they discovered that mark on her head. How were the Swarmers liable to take it? Not well, he suspected. They might have their airships and machine guns, but superstition wasn’t something that went away just because you had engines and bullets.