Terminal World

by Alastair Reynolds

  ‘Flash Ricasso that we’re over the wall and there’s no sign of life,’ Curtana called out to the signals officer. ‘Inform him that I’m taking Painted Lady down to fifty spans to get a closer look. We’ll be out of line-of-sight until I bring her back up.’ Then she grabbed the speaking tube. ‘Machine-gunners. Keep on your toes.’

  Without waiting for Ricasso’s acknowledgement, Curtana took the airship down to just above the roof level of the tallest buildings. They were overflying a village of perhaps thirty or forty distinct structures, laid out in a grid pattern with an open square near the middle. The white buildings were obviously designed for warm, dry weather. Their windows had shutters rather than glass, and there were open courtyards at their hearts, enclosed by galleried floors on all sides. If there had ever been ornamentation or colouration applied to the walls and floors, it had long since been scoured away by the wind, bleached by centuries of relentless sun. Nothing moved below except Painted Lady’s ominous shadow, her propellers a blur of whirling motion and her gun turrets swivelling nervously from target to target.

  It was, Quillon knew, futile to speculate about the kinds of people who had lived here, at least on the basis of the evidence gathered so far. They could have formed the most civilised and enlightened society imaginable, a community of infinite wisdom and kindness. Or they could have been bloodthirsty cultists with a lingering death fixation. It was impossible to tell from their ruins. Everyone needed a roof over their head, even the barbarous and depraved.

  ‘There’s something,’ Curtana said, pointing to the next community along, another thousand spans or so out from the wall. ‘Let’s check it out.’

  Quillon wasn’t sure what she’d seen, and for a moment he wondered if curiosity wasn’t overcoming her natural instinct to protect the airship. Yet how could there be anything down there that could harm them, even unintentionally? No animals, no people, no possibility of hidden weapons, for nothing of any sophistication could have survived the Bane. It was just ancient brick and clay: inert matter. Nothing, not even a scorpion or a rat, not even a bacterium, had lived in these streets for hundreds of years.

  ‘Take us lower: thirty spans,’ Curtana ordered. ‘All engines to dead slow.’

  Painted Lady’s motors quietened to a drumming chatter, barely ticking over.

  ‘What have you seen?’ Quillon asked.

  ‘That,’ she said, pointing to the thing that was now hoving into clear view, in the open centre of the village.

  It was something half-made, surrounded by the sun-bleached, wind-scoured remains of wooden scaffolding. A wooden machine as tall as any of the houses, rising proud on solid wooden wheels several times higher than a man, with the remains of a rickety wooden track leading away from the unfinished machine. The track, such as it was, pointed back towards the wall, although it ended abruptly just beyond the village limits.

  ‘They were building another one of those things we saw out there,’ Curtana said. ‘One of those sailing engines. Look: you can even see the big tree-trunk they were going to use for the main mast, laid out on those trestles.’

  ‘Does that mean we got it wrong?’ Quillon wondered. ‘They were building these after they built the aircraft and the rockets?’

  ‘That’s a depressing thought,’ Agraffe said.

  ‘I guess it depends on when this area became uninhabitable,’ Curtana said. ‘Could be everything we’re seeing here was abandoned ages before they developed the flying machines. But the people who built these wooden machines - I’m not sure they’d have been capable of building the wall, and the wall had to come first.’

  Quillon nodded. ‘And even from the top of the wall they wouldn’t have been able to see where the rockets fell down. They’d have had a hard time seeing the biplanes and airships, in fact. No wonder they still thought that sailing out might just be worth a shot.’

  ‘The poor bastards,’ Agraffe said.

  ‘Let’s reserve judgement on that,’ Curtana replied. ‘For all we know they were abject xenophobes intent on raping and pillaging the next society they had the misfortune to bump into.’

  ‘You want to go down and take a closer look at the machine?’ Quillon asked.

  ‘It can wait.’ She turned to one of her officers. ‘Take us back up to five hundred, resume our previous heading and flash Purple Emperor. Inform Ricasso we’ve found the remains of several communities but no signs of life. There’s no reason for Swarm not to follow us. Tell him that we’ll pass the structure ... the other Spearpoint ... on our starboard side, at our revised altitude.’

  Quillon sensed the mood around him. No one was in a hurry to debate the implications of the other Spearpoint. It was too unexpected to fit into anyone’s preconceived notions about the world. There was one Godscraper, and one only. Why was there a second such structure, not only abandoned and uninhabited but broken and forgotten in the middle of nowhere?

  Too much to deal with, too much to think about. He understood perfectly. He felt it as well.

  ‘Return flash from Purple Emperor,’ said the signals officer. ‘It’s Ricasso, Captain. Says he wants to come aboard.’

  ‘Flash him back. Tell him it’s not ... expedient.’

  A flurry of heliograph transmissions ensued. Ricasso was coming aboard anyway. Curtana took it with stoic forbearance.

  Swarm and its entourage of support airships passed over the wall without incident. Shortly afterwards a boat detached from the main formation and sped out to meet Painted Lady. As it drew alongside, Quillon recognised the black and gold livery of one of Ricasso’s personal taxis. The man himself disembarked with enough luggage to fill a small room.

  ‘You’re going to have to return some of that ballast,’ Curtana said.

  ‘I presumed, my dear, that since you had burned fuel, there would now be a surplus in your weight allowance.’

  ‘We lose sungas through the cells,’ Curtana said. ‘They’re not completely pressure-tight, even with the new coatings. Plus we’ll be clear of the Bane in less than a day. You didn’t even need to bring an overnight bag.’

  ‘I may as well see out the rest of the journey here, now that I’ve made the crossing.’

  ‘From a security perspective, wouldn’t it be better if you stayed aboard Purple Emperor?’

  He made a theatrical show of looking around the room. ‘What, you think someone’s likely to assassinate me here? Someone from your hand-picked and hugely loyal crew?’

  ‘I was thinking more of the risk that we might run into something, or have an accident,’ Curtana said.

  ‘That risk applies equally to the entire fleet.’ He raised a pudgy finger before she could frame an objection. ‘Oh, I’m perfectly aware that Painted Lady would be the first vessel exposed to any danger. But knowing this ship, you can run a damn sight faster than that slow, bloated beast called Purple Emperor.’

  ‘We don’t run,’ Curtana said testily. ‘We engage.’

  He waved aside the distinction. ‘Whatever you say, my dear. What matters now is altitude more than speed.’ He clapped his hands together briskly. ‘Now, I realise it’s an imposition, but might I trouble you to pass over the other Spearpoint, rather than around it?’

  ‘We can’t. Its tip is far above our operational ceiling, as you well know.’

  ‘Then as high as we can manage, and we’ll launch a pressurised spotter balloon when we’re at the limit. That’s feasible, isn’t it? You still have a balloon aboard?’

  ‘Yes,’ Curtana said, with obvious effort. ‘And I take it this isn’t the kind of request I’m able to turn down?’

  Ricasso grimaced awkwardly. ‘Not really, if I’m going to be brutally honest. Consider it part of your risk-assessment duties.’

  ‘That makes things so much easier.’

  ‘Splendid. I can’t tell you how excited I am about this, you know. I mean, of all the things to find.’

  ‘Yes, who’d have thought it? Who could possibly have anticipated this, when crossing the Bane was firs
t mooted?’ Curtana turned away before he could answer - a direct insolence only she could have got away with - and snapped her fingers at the two Emperor men lingering by the connecting bridge. ‘Get his junk stowed back aboard your boat. I need to start making speed again.’

  A few minutes later the bridge was reeled in and the taxi was on its way back to Swarm, carrying newly drawn maps and photographic plates that had been exposed since the last exchange. Curtana’s men showed Ricasso to his improvised quarters - little more than a large storage cupboard with a small grubby window, adjacent to the chart room. Rolls of emergency repair fabric, crates of unexposed plates and boxes full of dressings, potions and unguents had to find other homes aboard the already tightly organised airship. Quillon, who was never far from Ricasso, surmised that the man was not displeased with the arrangements, however improvisatory their nature. There was even room to unfold a bunk in his new quarters, provided some of the other items were moved around temporarily.

  While he was helping Ricasso settle in - it had fallen to him, since almost everyone else seemed to be preoccupied with rigging for high-altitude flight - Quillon said, ‘So this really was a surprise?’

  ‘Of course, my dear fellow!’

  ‘But you had - let’s say - suspicions we’d find something out here.’

  Ricasso ruminated before answering. Quillon imagined him weighing the benefits of concealment versus candour. ‘Not suspicions, precisely. That would be too strong a term. But did my investigations turn up something that intrigued me, something that led me to think crossing the Bane would offer us more than just a short cut? I won’t deny it. But we’re not even talking about a rumour here, Quillon. We’re talking about less than a scrap of one, a figment most educated men wouldn’t hesitate to dismiss.’

  ‘Something you’d like to share?’

  ‘There was a map, a fragment of a map, with something on it. Something deeply puzzling and strange. It looked like another Spearpoint - but that would be impossible, surely?’

  ‘Now we know better. You’ve got a theory, haven’t you?’

  ‘I had one,’ Ricasso said forlornly. ‘Spearpoint - our Spearpoint - happens to be located quite close to the equator. For a long time, I’ve had a notion that Spearpoint was a kind of bridge between the Earth and the heavens. There have been treatises ... scholarly speculations ... on the possibility of constructing a kind of cosmic funicular, one that would ferry people and goods far above our atmosphere. I’ve made a point of collecting these articles, sifting the good from the bad, the sane from the demented. I do not pretend to understand every nuance of the mathematical underpinnings, but one thing has remained constant. You do not build such a structure up from the face of the Earth. You hang it down from a point in the void, so that its weight is exactly counterbalanced by the outward force it feels due to its orbit around the world. It must, of course, hover above the same spot on the ground to be of use. And it must be located close to the equator, if not exactly on it.’

  ‘I’ve seen the charts,’ Quillon said. ‘We’re still thirty or forty degrees from the equator.’

  ‘And yet here is something very like Spearpoint, except that it’s snapped.’

  ‘Meaning that Spearpoint cannot be the thing you imagined,’ Quillon said, wary of making his point too forcefully, for he knew how much of Ricasso’s self-worth was invested in his scholarship.

  But Ricasso didn’t seem to take it too badly. ‘No, you’re right. It can’t be. Whatever Spearpoint is - whatever Spearpoint was - it was almost certainly never a cosmic funicular. Unless our whole world has tipped on its axis. Which means that if I was wrong about that, there’s a chance I was wrong about everything else as well.’

  They were gaining height. Of all the ships in Swarm, Painted Lady was the one best equipped for high-altitude work, but even at her operational limit she would still be two leagues below the broken summit of what was now being called Spearpoint 2. Ricasso had known that, of course, just as he’d known that she still carried a spotter balloon that could be released and recovered in the thinning air. The balloons were used only rarely, since they were unpowered and therefore could not be employed as survey aides from fast-moving ships. But all the larger escort craft carried them, for the balloons had occasionally proved the decisive factor in aerial engagements where long-range observation was crucial. That didn’t make them popular, for Swarmers - as Quillon had quickly recognised - were universally contemptuous of any airborne contraption lacking an engine, steering system or stiffening structure. Even blimps were beneath their dignity.

  The deflated balloon and its airtight passenger pod travelled in a recess just behind the main turret on the upper surface of Painted Lady’s envelope, ready to be launched directly into the air with the minimum of fuss. The airship had to slow to a virtual standstill for the balloon to be inflated, filled with hot air from a firesap burner, but the procedure had obviously been well drilled and despite having to be handled by a reduced number of airmen, it proceeded without incident. Quillon, who had agreed to travel with Ricasso in the pod, watched matters with only mild apprehension. Set against all the dangers he had faced since leaving Spearpoint, a spot of high-altitude ballooning seemed in no way extraordinary. No one had made any concerted efforts to talk Ricasso out of the enterprise, and as ship’s physician, Quillon was at a loss to find medical grounds against it. Ricasso was - despite appearances - fairly healthy, and conditions inside the pressurised compartment would differ very little from those in the gondola.

  The passenger pod was a brass-coloured thing with angular, down-sloping riveted sides, hemispherical portholes set into three of the four faces and a pressure-tight door in the other. A small selection of instruments poked down through the floor, worked from inside. There were two seats and some rudimentary controls, enabling the occupants to work the firesap heater on the roof of the balloon, to drop ballast when it was required and to adjust the flow of air from the bottled supply within the cabin. That was it. No wireless to communicate with Painted Lady, since wireless didn’t work in the zones. No means of steering or choosing a landing spot, beyond such control as was achievable through varying altitude and thereby intercepting different windstreams. None of that really mattered, though. Ricasso, who claimed no particular proficiency with balloons, only wanted to go up and down. If they landed on Painted Lady again, so be it. If they missed and had to be picked up from the ground, it would entail only a small delay, inconsequential against the tremendous saving already achieved by passing through the Bane.

  ‘You sure you’re cool with this, Cutter?’ Meroka, clad in cold-weather gear, was with them as they prepared to board the cabin.

  ‘Done much ballooning?’ Quillon asked with a smile.

  ‘About as much as you’ve done horse burying.’

  ‘Then I’ll be fine.’ He slipped on his goggles. He had not been wearing them routinely since leaving Purple Emperor - his nature was no secret to Painted Lady‘s crew - but now the wind made his eyes sting. ‘Besides, if anything goes wrong with the air tanks, the fact that one of us is already adapted for high-altitude breathing may help matters.’

  ‘Half-adapted, Cutter. Don’t get ideas above your station.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  Curtana stamped her feet against the cold. It had been pleasant enough at their normal cruising altitude, but the air was chillier up here. ‘With the wind direction as it is right now, you should drift clean over the summit. Suggest you start losing height almost as soon as you’re over it. You don’t have long before those bottles run dry.’

  ‘We’ll be the very epitome of haste,’ Ricasso said.

  They got into the compartment, knees touching as they took up opposing seats. Curtana pushed the airtight door shut, allowing Ricasso to lock it from inside. He increased the firesap burner, fully inflating the balloon. The pod clanged against its fasteners as it tried to rise into the air. Curtana peered through one of the portholes and gave a hand gesture indicating that they wer
e ready to depart.

  ‘This is it, Doctor,’ Ricasso said theatrically. ‘No going back now!’

  ‘Then let’s get this diversion over with, so we can return to the serious business of the medicine run.’

  ‘Intellectual spoilsport.’ But Ricasso was smiling.

  Ricasso worked a release mechanism and suddenly - dreamily - they were aloft and rising. It wasn’t silent - there was the steady hiss of the air supply, and the on/off rumble of the firesap burner - but it was immediately obvious that they were not in a powered craft, and the motion, smooth as it was, had a sense of not being under their direct control. Painted Lady diminished with considerable speed, falling away and below as winds snagged the balloon. Quillon had just enough of a view of her to see her engines rev up again as the airship resumed powered flight. Very soon they had the sky to themselves, save for the looming tower of Spearpoint 2. The air currents were conveying them towards that edifice at considerable speed, but they were also rising steadily. Already the angle of view had changed, and Quillon was able to make out the upper surface of a ledge that had not been visible from the airship. Unlike Spearpoint’s ledges, it showed no sign of ever having been lived on.

  ‘If it’s not a ... what did you call it? Cosmic funicular?’

  ‘A working hypothesis, now gratefully discarded.’

  ‘Then what is it?’

  ‘I don’t know. That’s rather the point of this little exercise.’ But Ricasso leaned forwards, rising to the theme. ‘I was wrong, and so was everyone who ever speculated that Spearpoint might have been a cosmic funicular, at least in the conventional sense. But all those fables about it being a bridge to the stars? They can’t all be wrong.’

  ‘Unless, that is, they’re all wrong.’

  ‘That wreck we saw - the fallen void-crosser?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Something that big, we’d have noticed it if it came down anywhere else in the world. The Bane preserved it to some degree, but even with five thousand years of weather and war, if one of those had crashed somewhere else, there’d still be something left. Don’t you think, Doctor?’