Absolution Gap (52 page)

“The question is, who’s going to clear it? It would need to be done in—what, ten days at the maximum, before we reach the obstruction?”

Wyatt Benjamin had nodded. “You may not want to be that close when it’s cleared, however.”

“Why not?”

“We’re not going to be chipping this one away.”

Quaiche had absorbed that, understanding exactly what the man meant. “There was a fall of that magnitude three, four years ago, wasn’t there? Out near Glum Junction? I seem to remember it was cleared using conventional demolition equipment. Shifted the lot in fewer than ten days, too.”

“We could do this one in fewer than ten days,” Benjamin told him, “but we only have about half of our usual allocation of equipment and manpower.”

“That sounds odd,” Quaiche had replied, frowning. “What’s wrong with the rest?”

“Nothing. It’s just that it’s all been requisitioned, men and machines. Don’t ask me why or who’s behind it. I only work for the Permanent Way. And I suppose if it was anything to do with Clocktower business, you’d already know, wouldn’t you?”

“I suppose I would,” Quaiche had said. “Must be a bit lower down than Clocktower level. My guess? Another office of the Way has discovered something they should have fixed urgently already, a job that got forgotten in the last round. They need all that heavy machinery to get it done in a rush, before anyone notices.”

“Well, we’re noticing,” Benjamin had said. But he had seemed to accept the plausibility of Quaiche’s suggestion.

“In that case, you’ll just have to find another means of clearing the blockage, won’t you?”

“We already have another means,” the man had said.

“God’s Fire,” Quaiche had replied, forcing awe into his voice.

“If that’s what it takes, that’s what we’ll have to use. It’s why we carry it with us.”

“Nuclear demolitions should only ever be used as the absolute final last resort,” Quaiche had said, with what he hoped was the appropriate cautioning tone. “Are you quite certain that this blockage can’t be shifted by conventional means?”

“In ten days with the available men and equipment? Not a sodding hope.”

“Then God’s Fire it will have to be.” Quaiche had steepled the twigs of his fingers. “Inform the other cathedrals, across all ecumenical boundaries. We’ll take the lead on this one. The others had better draw back to the usual safe distance, unless they’ve improved their shielding since last time.”

“There’s no other choice,” Wyatt Benjamin had agreed.

Quaiche had placed a hand on his shoulder. “It’s all right. What has to be done, has to be done. God will watch over us.”

Quaiche snapped out of his reverie and smiled. The Permanent Way man was gone now, off to arrange the rare and hallowed deployment of controlled fusion devices. He was alone with the Way and the scrimshaw suit and the distant, alluring twinkle of the Gullveig Range.

“You arranged for that ice, didn’t you?”

He turned to the scrimshaw suit. “Who told you to speak?”

“No one.”

He fought to keep his voice level, betraying none of the fear he felt. “You aren’t supposed to talk until I make it possible.”

“Clearly this is not the case.” The voice was thin, reedy: the product of a cheap speaker welded to the back of the scrimshaw suit’s head, out of sight of casual guests. “We hear everything, Quaiche, and we speak when it suits us.”

It shouldn’t have been possible. The speaker was only supposed to work when Quaiche turned it on. “You shouldn’t be able to do this.”

The voice—it was like something produced by a cheaply made woodwind instrument—seemed to mock him. “This is only the start, Quaiche. We will always find a way out of any cage you build around us.”

“Then I should destroy you now.”

“You can’t. And you shouldn’t. We are not your enemy, Quaiche. You should know that by now. We’re here to help you. We just need a little help in return.”

“You’re demons. I don’t negotiate with demons.”

“Not demons, Quaiche. Just shadows, as you are to us.”

They had had this conversation before. Many times before. “I can think of ways to kill you,” he said.

“Then why not try?”

The answer popped unbidden into his head, as it always did: because they might be useful to him. Because he could control them for now. Because he feared what would happen if he killed them as much as if he let them live. Because he knew there were more where this lot came from.

Many more.

“You know why,” he said, sounding pitiable even to himself.

“The vanishings are increasing in frequency,” the scrimshaw suit said. “You know what that means, don’t you?”

“It means that these are the end times,” Quaiche said. “No more than that.”

“It means that the concealment is failing. It means that the machinery will soon be evident to all.”

“There is no machinery.”

“You saw it for yourself. Others will see it, too, when the vanishings reach their culmination. And sooner or later someone will want to do business with us. Why wait until then, Quaiche? Why not deal with us now, on the best possible terms?”

“I don’t deal with demons.”

“We are only shadows,” the suit said again. “Just shadows, whispering across the gap between us. Now help us to cross it, so that we can help you.”

“I won’t. Not ever.”

“There is a crisis coming, Quaiche. The evidence suggests it has already begun. You’ve seen the refugees. You know the stories they tell, of machines emerging from the darkness, from the cold. Engines of extinction. We’ve seen it happen before, in this very system. You won’t beat them without our help.”

“God will intervene,” Quaiche said. His eyes were watering, blurring the image of Haldora.

“There is no God,” the suit said. “There is only us, and we don’t have limitless patience.”

But then it fell silent. It had said its piece for the day, leaving Quaiche alone with his tears.

“God’s Fire,” he whispered.

 

Ararat, 2675

 

When Vasko returned to the heart of the iceberg there was no more music. With the light bulk of the incubator hanging from one hand he made his way through the tangle of icy spars, following the now well-cleared route. The ice tinkled and creaked around him, the incubator knocking its way through obstructions. Scorpio had told him not to rush back to the ruined ship, but he knew that the pig had only been trying to spare him any unnecessary distress. He had made the call to Blood, told Urton what was happening and then returned with the incubator as fast as he dared.

But as he neared the gash in the ship’s side he knew it was over. There was a pillar of light ramming down from the ceiling of ice, where someone had blasted a metre-wide hole through to the sky. Scorpio stood in the circle of light at the foot of the pillar, his features sharply lit from above as if in some chiaroscuro painting. He was looking down, the thick mound of his head sunk into the wide yoke of his shoulders. His eyes were closed, the fine-haired skin of his forehead rendered blue-grey in the light’s dusty column. There was something in his hand, speckling red on to the ice.

“Sir?” Vasko asked.

“It’s done,” Scorpio said.

“I’m sorry you had to do that, sir.”

The eyes—pale, bloodshot pink—locked on to him. Scorpio’s hands were shaking. When he spoke his perfectly human voice sounded thin, like the voice of a ghost losing its grip on a haunt. “Not as sorry as I am.”

“I would have done it, if you’d asked me.”

“I wouldn’t have asked you,” Scorpio said. “I wouldn’t have asked it of anyone.”

Vasko fumbled for something else to say. He wanted to ask Scorpio how merciful Skade had allowed him to be. Vasko thought that he could not have been away for more than ten minutes. Did that mean, in some abhorrent algebra of hurting, that Skade had given Clavain some respite from the prolonged death she had promised? Was there any sense in which she could have been said to have shown mercy, if only by shaving scant minutes from what must still have been unutterable agony?

He couldn’t guess. He wasn’t sure he really wanted to know.

“I brought the incubator, sir. Is the child . . .”

“Aura’s all right. She’s with her mother.”

“And Skade, sir?”

“Skade is dead,” Scorpio told him. “She knew she couldn’t survive much longer.” The pig’s voice sounded dull, void of feeling. “She’d diverted her own bodily resources to keep Aura alive. There wasn’t much of Skade left when we opened her up.”

“She wanted Aura to live,” Vasko said.

“Or she wanted a bargaining position when we came with Clavain.”

Vasko held up the light plastic box, as if Scorpio had not heard him properly. “The incubator, sir. We should get the child into it immediately.”

Scorpio leaned down, wiping the blade of the scalpel against the ice. The red smear bled away into the frost in patterns that made Vasko think of irises. He thought Scorpio might discard the knife, but instead the pig slipped it into a pocket.

“Jaccottet and Khouri will put the child into the incubator,” he said. “Meanwhile, you and I can take care of Clavain.”

“Sir?”

“His last wish. He wanted to be buried at sea.” Scorpio turned to step back into the ship. “I think we owe him that much.”

“Was that the last thing he said, sir?”

Scorpio turned slowly back to face Vasko and studied him for a long moment, his head tilted. Vasko felt as if he was being measured again, just as the old man had measured him, and the experience induced exactly the same feeling of inadequacy. What did these monsters from the past want of him? What did they expect him to live up to?

“It wasn’t the last thing he said, no,” Scorpio replied quietly.

 

They laid the body bag down on the fringe of ice surrounding the iceberg. Vasko had to keep reminding himself that it was still only the middle of the morning: the sky was a wet grey, clouds jammed in from horizon to horizon, like a ceiling scraping the top of the iceberg. A few kilometres out to sea was a distinct and threatening smudge of wet ink in that same ceiling, like a black eye. It seemed to move against the wind, as if looking for something below. On the horizon, lightning scribed chrome lines against the tarnished silver of the sky. Distant rain came down in slow sooty streams.

Around the iceberg, the sea roiled in sullen grey shapes. In all directions, the surface of the water was being constantly interrupted by slick, moving phantasms of an oily turquoise-green colour. Vasko had seen them earlier: they broke the surface, lingered and then vanished almost before the eye had time to focus. The impression was that a vast shoal of vague whale-like things was in the process of surrounding the iceberg. The phantasms bellied and gyred between waves and spume. They merged and split, orbited and submerged, and their precise shape and size was impossible to determine. But they were not animals. They were vast aggregations of micro-organisms acting in a coherent manner.

Vasko saw Scorpio looking at the sea. There was an expression on the pig’s face that he hadn’t seen before. Vasko wondered if it was apprehension.

“Something’s happening, isn’t it?” Vasko asked.

“We have to carry him beyond the ice,” Scorpio said. “The boat’s still good for a few hours. Help me get him into it.”

“We shouldn’t take too long over it, sir.”

“You think it makes the slightest difference how long it takes?”

“From what you’ve said, sir, it made a difference to Clavain.”

They heaved the bag into the black carcass of the nearest boat. In daylight the hull already looked far rougher than Vasko remembered it, the smooth metal surface pocked and pitted with spots of local corrosion. Some of them were deep enough to put his thumb into. Even as they lifted the bag over the side, bits of the boat came off in metallic scabs where Vasko’s knee touched it.

The two of them climbed aboard. Urton, who was to remain on the iceberg’s ledge, helped them on their way with a shove. Scorpio turned on the motor. The water fizzed and the boat inched back towards the sea, retreating along the channel it had cut into the fringe.

“Wait.”

Vasko followed the voice. It was Jaccottet, emerging from the iceberg. The incubator hung from his wrist, obviously heavier than when Vasko had carried it in.

“What is it?” Scorpio called, idling the engine.

“You can’t leave without us.”

“No one’s leaving.”

“The child needs medical attention. We must get her back to the mainland as soon as possible.”

“That’s just what’s going to happen. Didn’t you hear what Vasko said? There’s a plane on its way. Sit tight here and everything will be all right.”

“In this weather the plane might take hours, and we don’t know how stable this iceberg is.”

Vasko felt Scorpio’s anger. It made his skin tingle, the way static electricity did. “So what are you saying?”

“I’m saying we should leave now, sir, in both boats, just as we came in. Head south. The plane will pick us up by transponder. We’re bound to save time that way, and we don’t have to worry about this thing collapsing under us.”

“He’s right, sir, I think,” Vasko said.

“Who asked you?” Scorpio snapped.

“No one, sir, but I’d say we all have a stake in this now, don’t we?”

“You have no stake in anything, Malinin.”

“Clavain seemed to think I did.”

He expected the pig to kill him there and then. The possibility loomed in his mind even as his gaze drifted to that deep black eye in the clouds. It was closer now—no more than a kilometre from the iceberg—and it was bellying down, beginning to reach something nublike towards the sea. It was a tornado, Vasko realised: just what they needed.

But Scorpio only snarled and powered up the engine again. “Are you with me or not? If not, get out and wait on the ice with the others.”