Terminal World

by Alastair Reynolds

  ‘Meroka said Swarm used to be Spearpoint’s military arm,’ Quillon said.

  Ricasso looked equivocal. ‘More than that. Back then Swarm was Spearpoint. You couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. What you call Spearpoint was just Swarm’s fixed focus. But administratively, politically, culturally, the city was diffuse. Its influence was much more widespread than it is now. It had true satellite communities, daughter-cities, spread halfway across the world, bound by the same laws and statutes, the same civil rights.’

  ‘And then all that changed,’ Agraffe said, sounding like a man warming to the topic. ‘There was a zone storm, a big one. Maybe not as big as the one we’ve just experienced, but big enough. The map shifted. Once things had settled down, we surveyed the changed boundaries and reported back to Spearpoint.’

  ‘There are places we can’t go,’ Ricasso said. ‘Zones where nothing works. Not just machinery, but basic biological processes. The Bane’s the largest of them, but there are others. After the storm, it appeared that a navigable path had opened up into part of the Bane. We called it the Salient: it was a projection of the existing zone into what had once been dead space. We could live in it, and more importantly, our ships and instruments could function there. It was possible for a ship to travel into the Salient and report back.’

  ‘But Spearpoint wanted more than that,’ Curtana said. ‘They had intelligence - very shaky, dubious intelligence - that there was something important inside the Bane. It had been hidden until now, but with the Salient pushing as deep into the Bane as it did, there was a possibility of reaching it.’

  ‘There were tensions between Spearpoint and some of its satellite communities,’ Ricasso said. ‘They wanted more autonomy. Spearpoint - under the influence of the Celestial Levels - wanted to strengthen its authority. After the zone shift, there were fears that one of these dissident states might try to stake its own claim on whatever was in the Bane, thereby altering the power balance across much of the planet. That, needless to say, couldn’t be tolerated. And so Spearpoint - or rather the angels - decided that it was going to commit much more than just a small survey mission to the Salient. Fully half of Swarm was organised into a taskforce. We weren’t just going to stake a claim; we were going to occupy, and hold, for as long as it took.’

  ‘What happened?’ Quillon asked.

  ‘Swarm’s captains had serious qualms,’ Curtana said. ‘They were worried that the storm might not have played out completely. If the zones underwent another adjustment, there’d be a chance that the Salient might collapse, or disconnect from its mother-zone.’

  ‘Marooning the fleet,’ Quillon said.

  ‘It would have been a death sentence,’ Ricasso replied. ‘A slow one, but a death sentence all the same. It’s no wonder the captains wanted reassurance.’

  ‘They got it, too,’ Agraffe said. ‘They were assured that the best analysts in the Celestial Levels had run computer simulations which showed that the Salient was stable. On that understanding, they agreed to the expedition. But they’d been lied to. The angels had decided that the Salient had to be explored at all costs, even if that meant placing Swarm in jeopardy.’

  Quillon could see where things were heading. ‘It collapsed, didn’t it.’

  ‘Swarm was deep inside when the zones resettled,’ Curtana answered. ‘They were cut off; didn’t have a hope. Even then, we were so naive that we didn’t immediately assume there’d been any deception. What was left of Swarm regrouped. We couldn’t do anything for the ships lost in the Salient. They were beyond help; beyond heliograph signalling range. The only thing left to them was death from zone sickness. But then, slowly, the truth began to emerge. The simulations that had been suppressed because they didn’t show the results Spearpoint wanted. The voices that had been silenced or discredited. Our betrayal.’

  ‘As far as we were concerned, it was tantamount to a declaration of war,’ Ricasso said. ‘So we took it as such. Spearpoint had abandoned us, so we abandoned it in return. We withdrew from protection duties. One by one its satellite communities broke away from control. Over time, they all withered. Now they’re not even remembered. And we claimed the skies for our own.’

  ‘I can’t speak for Spearpoint,’ Quillon said, ‘but I’m sorry this happened.’

  ‘Justice has been served,’ Agraffe replied loftily. ‘It’s just a shame that we had to wait so long.’

  ‘That’s a pretty harsh judgement, considering no one alive in Spearpoint was responsible for the crime.’

  ‘Collective responsibility doesn’t end with death of any single citizen,’ Curtana said. ‘It goes on. The city betrayed us. The city still remembers, even as it tried to forget.’ She shrugged. ‘Now ... it’s getting a taste of its own medicine.’

  ‘Surely you can’t wish death by zone sickness on anyone.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I? They brought it on us. And they wanted you dead, Doctor. Don’t tell me your sympathies lie with Spearpoint now, after it forced you into exile.’

  ‘They’re good people,’ he told her. ‘Most of them.’

  ‘Sometimes bad things happen to good people,’ Ricasso said. ‘That’s just the way things are. You can’t lose sleep over it, Doctor. I’d have thought a medical man would appreciate that more than anyone.’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Swarm was moving north, uncoiling out of the temporary sanctuary of its crater like some black mass of hornets, belligerent and purposeful. Thousands of engines were revved to military power. The snarling, braying noise drummed off the landscape for leagues around. It was the sound of a city carving a path through the sky.

  Out on the balconies, the sound was nearly unbearable, especially aboard Purple Emperor, which was never very far from its flanking escort of sleek, weapons-barbed protector vehicles. A small army of airmen had to work outside all the while, tending to the engines, the demented cat’s cradle of rigging and struts and torsion spars, the rip-prone envelopes, the finicky, temperamental windspeed and barometric pressure gauges, the guns and cannon that needed continual testing, calibration and adjustment. The airmen wore goggles, helmets and earmuffs, rendering them all but indistinguishable from each other. If there had been something casual about Swarm while it loitered in the crater, the impression was now one of the unbending application of strict procedure. Swarm had owned the skies for centuries; finally Quillon understood something of the authoritarian discipline that had made that possible. It had saved his life, and given his companions shelter. But it was still a thing to be feared, even as it went through the paradoxical business of burning fuel in the hope of finding further reserves of the same dwindling commodity. It was a creature that had to keep moving or die, and that made it both awesome and ever so slightly tragic.

  They had waited a day for Brimstone to come in. When no word of the ship had arrived - no distant flash of a heliograph send at the limit of visibility - Ricasso had reluctantly given the order to move north, towards the fuel facility that Agraffe had surveyed. Collectively, Swarm could only travel at half the speed of its fastest ships, maintaining little more than twenty-five leagues per hour; less if there was headwind. Swarm’s strength at this point lay in numbers rather than agility, but it was also amorphous and adaptable, and (so Quillon was reassured) capable of rebuffing almost any conceivable attack.

  His status remained difficult to assess. Ricasso had allocated him generous quarters near his own stateroom, replete with every luxury one could reasonably expect aboard an airship. He shared his meals with Ricasso, Curtana, Agraffe and - when his own duties permitted it - Doctor Gambeson. No topic of discussion was out of bounds, not even matters that Quillon would have supposed were sensitive operational secrets, such as the severity of the fuel shortage. He could only conclude that Ricasso and the others either trusted him completely, or had absolutely no intention of ever letting him leave Swarm. The truth probably lay somewhere between those poles.

  But in other senses he was not at liberty to do as he
pleased. He was confined to Purple Emperor, and only allowed to move around a very small part of her, effectively a self-contained section encompassing the stateroom and the infirmary, plus a short stretch of private balcony. Partly this was for his own protection, to keep his true nature secret from as many personnel as possible. But it also reinforced his impression that regardless of Ricasso’s fascination with him, he was still a prisoner.

  Meroka had continued to improve. She was out of the infirmary now, although still bandaged and sore. She was not yet well enough to be allowed near the guns again, even for training exercises - they were simply too heavy and cumbersome for someone in her condition. Instead, she was being schooled in navigation and Swarm communications, skills that - for the airmen - were at least as vital as being able to load and aim a spingun. He found her at one of the heliograph stations, practising the transmission of test signals between Purple Emperor and other nearby ships, working the shutter with increasing speed and confidence. She not only had to learn the apparatus, but also the code system for ship-to-ship messaging. A female signals officer remained with her at all times, but it was clear that Meroka was anything but a slow pupil.

  He watched her for several minutes before she became aware of his presence. She was sending and receiving in bursts, alternately working the shutter and noting incoming flashes in a practice log. Through the windows he saw the stuttering mirror-flash of the other sender, the shutter flicking open and shut only slightly faster than Meroka was able to work hers.

  ‘She’s good, isn’t she?’ Quillon said, addressing the signals officer.

  ‘Better than your average dirt-rat,’ the woman said, which he supposed was meant as praise. ‘All right, you can take a break now. It’s hard on the wrist to begin with, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’ll cope,’ Meroka said.

  ‘Gambeson tells me you’re doing well,’ Quillon said.

  ‘Good for Gambeson.’

  ‘He’s not the only one concerned for your welfare.’

  ‘You wouldn’t know concern if it bit you, Cutter.’ Meroka eyed the signals officer. She was not one of Painted Lady’s crew and so was unlikely to know Quillon’s secret. Quillon imagined Meroka having to bite down hard against the temptation to refer to his angel nature. ‘It’s not in you. Not in any of you. You’re colder than snakes. I learned that the hard way.’

  ‘I know what happened,’ he said softly. ‘Tulwar told me. All I can say is, I’m sorry. You deserved better treatment. Both of you.’

  ‘“Sorry”? That’s the best you’ve got?’

  ‘If I could undo what happened, I would. But it would never have been in my power.’

  ‘Guess that gives you a clear conscience, then.’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘This isn’t about making me feel better, Cutter. It’s about atoning for your own sins. Sorry, but I can’t lift that particular burden. Got enough of my own.’ She paused and looked at the signals officer. ‘Break over. Can we get back to the lesson?’

  ‘You’re wrong about me,’ Quillon said.

  ‘And you’re wrong about me, if you think there’s some forgiveness deep down inside, if only you can find it. Truth to tell, Cutter, there’s only more hate. That’s what I am. Clinical-grade hate, all the way through. Keep digging, you’ll only come out the other side.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘Then you’re in for more misery and frustration than you realise.’ Without another word, Meroka returned to the heliograph, grabbing the shutter lever and initiating another send, all the anger and fury of her life working its way into her wrist as she wrenched the mechanism back and forth.

  Quillon took his leave.

  ‘The girl was convulsing again,’ Gambeson told him, when they were alone in a side-room off the infirmary. ‘Her mother says it’s normal, but I’m not sure she isn’t hiding something.’ He looked at Quillon enquiringly. ‘Are you certain they haven’t been taking antizonals? It could be a side effect.’

  Where Kalis and Nimcha were concerned, he had to tread even more carefully than with Meroka. Curtana still suspected he was hiding something, but he hoped that the gyro-needle of her suspicion wasn’t zeroing in on the mother and daughter yet. Perhaps she still thought Meroka was the one he was most likely to be protecting. Kalis and Nimcha, after all, were both dirt-rats, not Spearpointers. Dirt-rats, as far as he could judge, were not considered to be capable of much more than nuisance-action. They brought disease, parasites and moral laxity. Sabotage and espionage were deemed to be beyond their remit. But still: Curtana’s suspicion wouldn’t fixate on Meroka indefinitely, and then it would have nowhere else to go but the mother and daughter. Quillon craved the chance to speak to them in private. But he could not risk displaying an undue attachment, and was therefore obliged to show no more than the plausible concern of one traveller for his companions.

  ‘They refused the drugs I offered, so I can’t see any reason for them to have taken any illicitly,’ Quillon said. ‘They just have unusually robust tolerance, that’s all.’

  ‘It’s not uncommon amongst surface-dwellers,’ Gambeson mused. ‘And, at least out here, the zone shift hasn’t been too severe. We’ve been flying through stable conditions ever since the storm, keeping well away from boundaries. But that only makes the convulsions even more of a mystery. I suppose you think us terribly primitive, lacking X-rays and brain-imaging devices?’

  ‘You can hardly be blamed for living somewhere where machines like that won’t work.’

  ‘It’s not for want of trying, believe me. There are some basic electrical systems in Swarm, but the crew spend more time repairing them than using them. Building complicated medical equipment is quite beyond the bounds of possibility. The zone simply won’t tolerate it. The cellular grid doesn’t have the necessary resolution, as Ricasso would say.’

  ‘We all have to make the best of what we have,’ Quillon said. ‘I’ve seen the medical care you offer on this ship, and I’ve been impressed. Granted, you don’t have much in the way of clever machines to help you, but you’ve compensated by being superb physicians.’

  ‘But it would need more than a superb physician to look inside that girl’s skull and see what’s making her ill. Perhaps we were right to quarantine her after all. It could be viral meningitis, or something similar.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s anything like that. I believe Kalis when she says the convulsions aren’t a cause for concern. She’s the girl’s mother, after all. If anyone’s going to know, it’s her.’

  ‘And you’re satisfied that the mother isn’t a cause for concern herself?’

  Quillon tried to look puzzled by Gambeson’s line of questioning. ‘The mother? She’s as strong as a horse.’

  ‘I was thinking more along mental lines. You’ve seen that mark on her head.’

  ‘It’s just a tattoo.’ Skirting dangerously close to the truth, he added, ‘Someone did it for a cruel joke, or so they could pass her off as a tectomancer. It’s not as if she did it to herself.’

  ‘I just wonder what persuaded someone to persecute her in that fashion. She’s hardly the most normal person I’ve ever met. The way she stares ... her entire manner ... it’s discomfiting. I wouldn’t be surprised if she drew some of that persecution down on herself.’

  ‘She’s been through a lot.’

  ‘Enough, perhaps, to destabilise her, to push her over the edge?’

  ‘She seems rational enough to me,’ Quillon said. ‘Uneducated, certainly, Swarmish isn’t her native tongue, and she’s unfamiliar with your culture and technology. She’s probably illiterate. But she isn’t stupid - she has an excellent command of oral history, and she’s managed to keep herself and her daughter alive out there. In my book that makes her neither deranged nor irresponsible.’

  ‘She cares for the girl; that’s not in doubt. I just hope there isn’t anything seriously wrong with either of them.’

  ‘I suppose if I spoke to them I might be able to tea
se something out,’ Quillon said.

  ‘You don’t sound very keen.’

  Good, Quillon thought. That was the idea.

  ‘They’ve already asked for you, actually,’ Gambeson continued. ‘Provided you respect the terms of the quarantine, I’ve no objections.’

  ‘Shouldn’t I be quarantined as well? I was in contact with both of them.’

  ‘The quarantine’s mainly a sop ... a concession ... to the captain and her officers. But since it causes no harm, and may even do some small good, I am willing to indulge them in that.’

  ‘I’ll be brief.’

  He went to see Kalis and Nimcha, closing the quarantine door behind him. The room was spartan, but warm and clean and infinitely preferable to the conditions they had been forced to endure aboard Painted Lady. There were separate beds with clean sheets and pillows. Mother and daughter were wearing Swarm clothes, utilitarian and slightly too large for both of them, but a considerable improvement on the rags he had found them in. A wind-up gramophone player had been provided, together with an assortment of cylinders, but there was no sign that Kalis had played them; the cover was still on the box. Nor was Nimcha showing interest in the pile of child’s picture books she had been given to read. Quillon leafed through them and understood why. The illustrations and texts were predominantly concerned with romanticised airship-based adventures, the ground little more than a smudgy abstraction. Clearly nothing of interest ever happened on the ground.

  Mother and daughter, in any case, seemed much more interested in the view through the room’s single large window. They were standing at it when he came in, their backs to the door. As the escort ships jockeyed around Purple Emperor, the view shifted constantly, the sky and the land showing through the packed mass in furtive glimpses.

  ‘Where are we?’ Kalis asked.

  ‘North,’ he said.

  It was as accurate an answer as he could give. They were a day out from the crater now. The air was chillier than it had been at the equatorial latitudes of Spearpoint and the Long Gash, so much so that even with coat and gloves he could only tolerate brief, bracing spells on the balcony. The airmen never stopped their work, which only became more taxing as the cold took its toll on fabric and machines. Once, with a sense of dreamlike unreality, he had watched a lone airman stumble from a spar and drop into the rushing air, the sound of the engines stealing any exclamation that the man might have made. Snatched away by Swarm’s motion, the airman tumbled off the envelope of one of the escort ships moving behind and below Purple Emperor.