Terminal World

by Alastair Reynolds

  ‘Now we know. And so do you. Sometimes we surprise ourselves with what we’re capable of when push comes to shove.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Quillon said, turning away before Agraffe could press him on the matter.

  He delved into the work again, cleaning and cutting, sewing and sawing, doing his best with the limited tools at his disposal. The sounds of battle had faded some time ago; he could not say exactly when he had heard the last shot or the last scream or had the last injured man delivered to his care. Occasionally there was a rumble from below, as of distant thunder, but Painted Lady sailed on oblivious. The zone had cost her much - stripped her of the very essence of what she had once been - and the battle had cost her even more in terms of her living crew. But she had endured, and the winds were still guiding her to her destination.

  When he had done all he could, he disposed of his bloodied apron, washed his hands and returned to the bridge. He supposed that it had been no more than an hour and a half since he had last stood here, but such a span of time now seemed ludicrously short for the events it was required to contain.

  Before he had said a word, or had his presence acknowledged, he saw Spearpoint. Curtana had the armoured shutters flung wide for maximum forward view. The sun had shifted, and now the light falling on his city had the lambent, beaten-gold quality of late afternoon. It was so huge, so stupefyingly tall, so hypnotically dense with teeming human potential that it stole his breath away. He had never seen it like this. Even when he was an angel he had never strayed far from the friendly thermals of the Celestial Levels, and when he had fled the city with Meroka he had not allowed himself to look back until they had set up camp, by which point Spearpoint had been much more distant. But now it filled half the sky, and it was drawing nearer by the second, and he knew he would never be able to leave it again.

  ‘I think that’s the ledge where Tulwar wants us,’ Curtana said. ‘Right, Meroka?’

  Meroka nodded. ‘Dead ahead, almost level? That’s your landing spot.’ She was grubby-faced from the turret’s fumes, except around her eyes, where she had been wearing goggles. ‘Hey, Cutter. Heard they’ve been keeping you busy in the operating theatre.’

  ‘I did what I could.’

  ‘Did anyone else die on you back there?’ Curtana asked.

  He grimaced at her tone. ‘I’m afraid you might have to wait a little longer for more ballast to shed.’

  ‘Thermals should start picking us up as soon as we reach the base.’ Into the speaking tube she said, ‘I want everything that isn’t breathing overboard now. Even if it’s still working. Guns, instruments, clocks, maps and almanacs, they all go. No matter how ancient and valuable.’

  ‘Will that do?’ Quillon asked, as she hung the tube back on its hook.

  ‘It’s all we’ve got left. If I could get everyone up in the envelope and cut the gondola loose, I’d do it. Hell, if I thought I was surplus mass I’d throw myself off first.’

  ‘I believe you.’

  He felt the change from one breath to the next, the first hint of the slow unclenching of the fist that had been locked around his skull since they had entered the zone. Curtana looked at him, waiting for his acknowledgement that he had felt the same thing she had, and that it was not merely wishful thinking. He nodded once.

  ‘It lasted longer than I expected.’

  ‘Tulwar did the best he could,’ Curtana said. ‘If we hadn’t been forewarned, the Skullboys would be picking through our bones about now. Is there anything you need to do?’

  ‘There’s no point making any medical decisions until we know we’re completely through the boundary. But if the conditions on the other side are similar to those we were experiencing before, the crew should be able to carry on without any additional medication from me.’

  ‘That’s good. You’ll have your hands full with the injured.’ She hesitated, and something of her usual humanity - the Curtana who existed when she was not fighting wars - broke through the facade of military callousness. ‘What I said earlier, about any of them dying—’

  ‘You didn’t mean it. I know.’

  ‘Actually, I did mean it, more or less. But it was the wrong thing to say to you, and I’m sorry for that.’ She angled her head to sight through the window, judging their approach vector and gradient. ‘Gas crews - five-second vent from aft cell,’ she said into the speaking tube, then to Quillon, ‘One second we’re too high, the next we’re too low. If we don’t hit that ledge square on, we’ve had it.’

  ‘You’ve done well to get us this far.’

  Curtana sneered. ‘As if that counts.’

  ‘How are the other ships?’

  ‘Cinnabar’s down with all hands. Iron Prominent is with us, but they’re still mopping up Skullboys. The rest of Swarm’s hanging back on the other side of the zone. They won’t cross until we’ve taken the sting out of the enemy.’ She let out a small, astonished laugh. ‘Fear and panic, I never thought I’d see this day. Spearpoint looming out of the ground like God’s own hard-on and I’m actually hoping we get there. Not long ago I’d have thrown myself into a propeller for thinking this way.’

  ‘You had your reasons. But whatever that thing is, it’s not the Spearpoint you used to hate. It’s something else, something different.’

  ‘Nimcha couldn’t have known what she was starting.’

  ‘I think she knew a lot more than she’s ever likely to admit - to us, at least,’ Quillon said.

  ‘You’d better go back and see how they’re doing.’

  ‘Is there anything more I can do for the ship?’

  ‘Keep some of those wounded men alive and you’ll have more than earned your keep. We’re not out of the woods yet, though, just so you know.’

  ‘I appreciate the dangers.’

  ‘Tulwar’s been in touch. They’re ready and waiting for us, and doing what they can to keep the Skulls occupied on the lower ledges. But we can still expect some resistance.’

  ‘We’ll get through it.’

  Without warning the gondola nosed up. ‘Thermals starting to kick in,’ Curtana said. ‘We’re over ... what’s that squalid-looking place below?’

  ‘Horsetown. And it’s not nearly as bad as it looks from up here.’

  ‘Actually,’ Meroka said, ‘it’s worse.’

  ‘It’s going to get bumpy from now on - prevailing winds hit the updraught and you get some interesting turbulence. A big ship like this, you wouldn’t think the air could toss it around like a ball, but it will.’

  ‘Is there anything you can do?’

  ‘Pray really hard.’

  He left her to her work, certain that Curtana still had some control over their destiny and that no one was better equipped to make use of that control. Nimcha and Kalis were waiting where he had left them, both of them unhurt, although visibly rattled by what they had been through. He told them that they were very close to Spearpoint now, and - without wishing to cause them further distress - that all would hinge on what happened in the next hour. The thermals continued to buffet the ship, lurching her up and down, the nausea of motion sickness beginning to push aside the last, drowsy remnants of zone sickness. The mother and child had adjusted well to the transition, and despite their apprehension and discomfort it was at least a blessing that they were no longer required to breathe bottled air.

  ‘You must feel glad,’ Kalis said. ‘To be returning to your city, when you must have thought that would never happen.’

  ‘I left the city because certain people were planning to murder me,’ Quillon explained gently. ‘The same people who did murder - or at least sanctioned the killing of - someone very close to me. None of that’s changed. My enemies are still there. I may or may not still be of the same interest to them, but you can be sure they haven’t suddenly decided to let bygones be bygones.’

  ‘Will they kill you?’ Nimcha asked guilelessly.

  ‘Hopefully they’ll accept me for what I am, not what I was. That’s all we can ever hope for, isn’t it?’
He tried to raise a smile from Nimcha, but the effort was wasted. ‘Anyway, I don’t feel the same way I did when I left. I had very few friends then. Now I feel like I have an army at my side.’

  Something pinged against the bottom of the gondola, making them all start. It sounded as if the shot had struck immediately under their feet, but Quillon knew how easily noises could carry from one part of the metal frame to another. ‘It’s to be expected,’ he said. ‘The Skullboys have control of the lower parts of the city and they don’t want us to land. But they won’t stop us.’

  It was easy to sound that confident; less easy to believe it in his heart. That they had got this far did not give them an automatic guarantee of success. The world did not work like that. It took pleasure in punishing the cocksure.

  ‘I’d best see to the wounded,’ Quillon said, standing unsteadily as another thermal pitched the floor.

  ‘Did many die?’ Kalis asked.

  He nodded. ‘We’re lucky to be alive. Cinnabar didn’t make it, and Iron Prominent took even heavier losses than we did.’

  ‘She brings luck and death,’ Kalis said. ‘That is what they always said of the tectomancer.’

  ‘They were foolish and ignorant,’ Quillon replied. ‘She’s just a girl with some unusual inheritance factors, that’s all.’

  He visited the patients, made a cursory inspection, adjusted a dressing here or a splint there, but their status was the same as before. The men were all on stretchers, ready to be lifted down to safety. He already had his suspicions about who would live and who would die, but even his most optimistic forecasts were contingent on conveying the wounded to Neon Heights. Here there were too many sick men in too small a place, the air itself beginning to thicken with disease and corruption.

  By the time he returned to the bridge shots were ringing against the gondola every few seconds. They were coming up from the ledge below them, where the Skullboys had control. The target ledge was very close now: he could even see tiny figures near the edge, with wave upon wave of dark-windowed buildings rising behind them, jostling for space and height until they met the soaring edifice supporting the next ledge above. He saw roads and bridges, and more people moving on them, but no slot-cars, slot-buses, trains, funiculars or elevators. Tulwar had mentioned electricity, but there was obviously so little of it to go around that most of Neon Heights was still without power, pushed back to the level of Horsetown, only without the benefit of horses.

  ‘Less than half a league now,’ Curtana said. ‘We’re slowing, though. The wind’s losing its effectiveness, meeting the city. I just hope we’ve got enough drift to carry us all the way in.’

  ‘And if we don’t?’ Quillon asked, shocked that it had all come down to something so utterly arbitrary.

  ‘We only have to get close, that’s all. Then we can grapple in.’

  ‘How close?’

  ‘Best that you don’t know, Doctor, otherwise you’ll be a nervous wreck.’

  ‘And we wouldn’t want that to happen,’ Quillon said.

  He willed the city closer, striving to blot the sound of gunfire from his mind. The shots were intensifying the closer they got to the landing point. The Skullboys must have occupied the tallest buildings on the underlying ledge, meaning that they had less distance to shoot across as Painted Lady drew nearer to her destination. With her own guns now all but derelict, Painted Lady’s crew had few options for retaliation. Airmen were firing muskets and crossbows down from the walkways and engine struts, but achieved little. The incoming bullets could be withstood: most of them ricocheted off the gondola’s heavy under-plating, or punched harmlessly through the envelope, never touching a gas cell. But then came the rockets, streaking up from rooftops on pillars of zigzagging flame. They were little more than fireworks converted into crude incendiary devices, most of them missing the airship even if they struggled to her altitude. But again the distance they had to span was lessening, and the proportion of misses was decreasing. ‘The fuckers,’ he heard Curtana say - he knew there was nothing an airman feared more than fire.

  By then the wind had pushed Painted Lady almost side-on to the ledge, all vestiges of aerodynamic control surrendered. In the dense and darkling sprawl of buildings it was difficult to see where Curtana intended to put her down, assuming she had ever allowed herself the luxury of thinking that far ahead. On the roads, promenades and squares between the structures people were massing in bewildering numbers, drawn by the spectacle. Some of them held torches against the gathering gloom of dusk, creating feeble pools of moving light. Quillon wondered why Tulwar wasn’t keeping them free of possible landing sites, then reminded himself that no one, not even Tulwar, had that authority now.

  There was a bell-like clang, quite distinct from the impact of a bullet, as a rocket glanced against the underside of the gondola. It might have been a lucky shot, but there was no doubt that Painted Lady had fallen within range of the Skullboys. Quillon tensed, realising that it now required an effort of will to keep breathing normally. In his estimation less than a quarter of a league now separated them from the ledge. As if in recognition of this, the massed citizenry were beginning to fan back from the square that now lay directly ahead. Buildings hemmed it from either side, surely squeezed too tightly together for the airship ever to fit between them. Not that fitting really mattered now, Quillon decided. It would be enough if Painted Lady rammed herself home, even if the impact mangled her once-proud frame.

  Another rocket struck home, this one with more ferocity.

  ‘Don’t you have any defence against these?’ Quillon asked.

  ‘We do, actually. It’s called not ever getting in range of Skullboy rockets. Normally it works pretty well for us.’

  ‘What will happen if they hit the envelope?’

  ‘It’ll burn,’ Curtana said. She turned to Poitrel. ‘Grappling teams ready?’

  ‘All at station,’ he answered.

  ‘They’d better not mess this up. We’ll get maybe one chance before the thermals push us up and out again, and I don’t fancy our hopes of ever finding our way back to Spearpoint without engines.’ She reached for the speaking tube, wiping dried spit from her mouth before bringing it to her lips. ‘Curtana here. This might be my final announcement as captain of Painted Lady, so I’ll keep it brief. We’re coming in fast, so I can’t promise you an easy stroll to the ground or a smooth docking. A crowd of good people down there want our medicines very badly, but we can’t just hand them out like candies. The supplies have to go through Tulwar’s distribution network so that they reach everyone who needs them, not just those within grabbing distance. We have sick and injured to offload and hospitalise. It’s going to take discipline and organisation and the best damned crew in Swarm working like a well-oiled machine. The ship’s done us proud to get us this far. Let’s show her what she meant to us.’

  She hung up the speaking tube.

  ‘If that doesn’t do it, nothing will,’ Quillon said.

  A rocket slammed past the gondola, its tail still spitting fire. He could hear the crowd now, the massed roar of all those people waiting on the ledge, the crackle of guns as men directed fire down onto the Skullboys.

  ‘The ship won’t be the safest or most secure place once we’re grappled in,’ Curtana said.

  ‘Meaning what?’

  ‘You’ve done your bit for us. You shouldn’t feel obliged to put yourself at further risk.’

  ‘Am I still the surgeon on this mission?’

  ‘You haven’t been formally discharged from duty.’

  ‘Then I will continue to perform those duties, if you have no objection.’

  She gave him a smile, cracked at the edges with fatigue. ‘None whatsoever, Doctor Quillon.’

  ‘It’s not as if I’m going to be massively popular down there when they find out what I am.’

  ‘They’ll adapt. We did, in the end.’ She looked through the gondola’s side window, the ledge - which had looked so far away for so long - now rushing closer
like a black tidal wave, a froth of tiny figures massing at its crest. At the last minute, a side-gust began to rotate the airship again, bringing the ledge back into the forward windows. Curtana must have been out of options, but still she could not relinquish her grip on the controls. ‘One hundred spans,’ she said, in not much more than a whisper, estimating their distance by eye. ‘Fifty.’

  Quillon felt a soft fist grab the ship and begin arresting its forward drift. He had to grab a handhold to remain standing.

  ‘Grapples ... now,’ Curtana said, but she was not issuing an order, merely voicing a prayer. The task of firing the grappling lines, Quillon surmised, required such expert timing and aim from the individual teams that it could never be directed from the bridge. Perhaps for the last time, Curtana had placed her utmost faith in the ability of her crew.

  The grappling lines sang out, whipping through the air as their spring-loaded launchers were released. The first fell short, its iron fingers scratching down the black wall of the shelf. There would not be time to reel it in, re-arm the launcher and try again. But the second found its mark, the grapple tangling with railings, the line tautening as the grappling crews worked the manual windlasses. The third whipped out and overshot the railings, crashing down in what looked like the middle of the crowd.

  ‘I told them to clear us a landing zone,’ Curtana said dolefully, as if it was no more or less than she had expected. ‘I told them that if there were too many people, it was going to get messy.’

  ‘They’d be dead in a month anyway, if we hadn’t come,’ Quillon said.

  ‘That’s very pragmatic, Doctor. I think you’ve spent too much time with us.’

  Now Painted Lady had lost all forward motion, and for a moment she hung in space, serenely becalmed, separated from the ledge by little more than her own length. A brave man could have crossed the gap hand-over-hand. Then winds began to tug her away from Spearpoint, and the lines, which were already taut, instantly became as rigid as iron cables. The railing began to buckle outwards under the load. Even in the gondola, Quillon heard the creak and groan as the windlasses resisted the tension. Then the grapple ripped itself free of the railing, dragging its horrible cargo with it, and Painted Lady jerked viciously as the second grapple took her entire burden. He watched the claw slide down the railing, the railing bowing out in a sinuous curve as it struggled to hold the airship. For a moment he was struck by the sure and certain knowledge that they were going to fail. Then two more grappling lines whipped out and found their mark, and the airship was once again secured. The lines were tightened and then began to haul in Painted Lady. The pace was excruciatingly slow, for the only motive power now available was human muscle. But though the winds continued to buffet her, Quillon finally dared to believe that she was safe.