Absolution Gap (65 page)

“Then what’s the problem?” Vasko asked.

Scorpio gestured at something through the window. “That,” he said.

Vasko followed the pig’s gaze. He saw the spire of the ship emerging from the silver sea haze. They had descended rapidly and were looking at the place where the ship thrust out of the water. It was here, only the night before, that Vasko had seen the ring of boats and the climbers trying to ascend to the ship’s entrance points. But everything had changed since then. There were no climbers, no boats. Instead of a ring of clear water around the base of the spire, the ship was hemmed by a thick, impenetrable layer of solid Juggler biomass. It was a fuzzy green colour, intricately textured. The layer reached out for perhaps a kilometre in all directions, connecting with other biomass clusters via floating bridges of the same verdant material. But that was not the whole of it. The layer around the ship was reaching up around the hull, forming a skin of biomass. It must have been tens of metres thick in places, dozens more where it flared upwards near the base. At that moment, by Vasko’s estimate, it had reached two or three hundred metres up the side of the ship. The uppermost limit was not a neatly regular circle but a ragged, probing thing, extending questing tendrils and fronds higher and higher. Faint green veins were already visible at least a hundred metres above the main mass. The whole sheath was moving even as he watched, creeping inexorably upwards. The main mass must have been moving at close to a metre a second. Assuming it could sustain that rate, it would have encased the entire ship within the hour.

“When did this start happening?” Vasko asked.

“Thirty, forty minutes ago,” Scorpio said. “We were alerted as soon as the concentration began to build up around the base.”

“Why now? I mean, after all the years that ship’s been parked here, why would they start attacking it now, of all days?” Vasko said.

“I don’t know,” Scorpio replied.

“We can’t be certain that it’s an attack,” Antoinette said quietly.

The pig turned to her. “So what does it look like to you?”

“It could be anything,” she replied. “Vasko’s right—an attack doesn’t make any sense. Not now, after all these years. It has to be something else.” She added, “I hope.”

“You said it,” Scorpio replied.

The plane continued to circle the spire. All around it was the same story. It was like watching an accelerated film of some enormous stone edifice being covered in moss, or a statue with verdigris—purposeful, deliberate verdigris.

“This changes things,” Antoinette said. “I’m worried, Scorp. It might not be an attack, but what if I’m wrong? What about the people already aboard?”

Scorpio lifted up his bracelet and spoke in hushed tones.

“Who are you calling?” Antoinette asked.

He cupped a hand over the microphone. “Marl Pellerin,” he said. “I think it’s time the swimmer corps found out what’s going on.”

“I agree,” Vasko said. “I thought they should have swum already, as soon as the Juggler activity started up. Isn’t that what they’re for?”

“You wouldn’t say that if it was you that had to swim out there,” Antoinette said.

“It isn’t me. It’s them, and it’s their job.”

Scorpio continued to speak softly into the bracelet. He kept saying the same thing over and over again, as if repeating himself to different people. Finally he shook his head and lowered his sleeve.

“No one can find Pellerin,” he said.

“She must be somewhere,” Vasko said. “On stand-by or something, waiting for orders. Have you tried the High Conch?”

“Yes.”

“Leave it,” Antoinette said, touching the pig’s sleeve. “It’s chaos back there. I’m not surprised that the lines of communication are breaking down.”

“What about the rest of the swimmer corps?” Vasko asked.

“What about them?” Scorpio asked.

“If Pellerin can’t be bothered to do her job, what about the others? We’re always hearing about how vital they are to the security of Ararat. Now’s their chance to prove it.”

“Or die trying,” Scorpio said.

Antoinette shook her head. “Don’t ask any of them to swim, Scorp. It isn’t worth it. Whatever’s happening out there is the result of a collective decision taken by the biomass. A couple of swimmers aren’t going to make much difference now.”

“I just expected better of Marl,” Scorpio said.

“She knows her duty,” Antoinette said. “I don’t think she’d let us down, if she had any choice. Let’s just hope she’s safe.”

Scorpio moved away from the window and started towards the front of the aircraft. Even as the plane pitched, responding to the unpredictable thermals that spiralled around the huge ship, the pig remained rooted to the ground. Low and wide, he was more comfortable on his feet in the turbulent conditions than either of his human companions.

“Where are you going?” Vasko asked.

The pig looked back. “I’m telling him to change our flight plan. We’re supposed to be gqoing back to pick up more evacuees.”

“And we’re not?”

“Afterwards. First, I want to get Aura into the air. I think the sky might be the safest place right now.”

Vasko and Scorpio handled the incubator, carrying it gently into the empty belly of the shuttle. The sky was darkening now, and the thermal matrix of the shuttle’s heating surface glowed an angry cherry red, the elements hissing and ticking. Khouri followed them warily, stooping against the oppressive blanket of warm air trapped beneath the shuttle’s downcurved wings. She had said nothing more since waking, moving in a dreamlike state of wary compliance. Valensin followed behind his patients, sullenly accepting the same state of affairs. His two medical servitors trundled after him, tied to their master by inviolable bonds of obedience.

“Why aren’t we going to the ship?” Valensin kept asking.

Scorpio hadn’t answered him. He was communicating with someone via the bracelet again, most likely Blood or one of his deputies. Scorpio shook his head and snarled out an oath. Whatever the news was, Vasko doubted it was welcome.

“I’m going up front,” Antoinette said, “see if the pilot needs any help.”

“Tell him to keep it slow and steady,” Scorpio ordered. “No risks. And be prepared to get us up and out if it comes to that.”

“Assuming this thing still has the legs to reach orbit.”

They took off. Vasko helped the doctor and his mechanical aides to secure the incubator, Valensin showing him how the shuttle’s interior walls could be persuaded to form outgrowths and niches with varying qualities of adhesion. The incubator was soon glued down, with the two servitors standing watch over its functions. Aura, visible as a wrinkled
thing
within the tinted plastic, bound up in monitors and tubes, appeared oblivious to all the fuss.

“Where are we going?” Khouri asked. “The ship?”

“Actually, there’s a bit of a problem with the ship,” Scorpio said. “C’mon, take a look. I think you’ll find it interesting.”

They circled the ship again, at the same altitude as before. Khouri stared at the view with wide, uncomprehending eyes. Vasko did not blame her in the slightest. When he had seen the ship himself, only thirty minutes earlier, it had been in the earliest stages of being consumed by the Juggler biomass. Because the process had only just begun, it had been easy enough to assimilate what was going on. But now the ship was
gone
. In its place was a towering, irregular fuzzy green spire. He knew that there was a ship under the mass, but he could only guess at how strange the view must look to someone who hadn’t seen the early stages of the Juggler envelopment.

But there was something else, wasn’t there? Something that Vasko had noticed almost immediately but had dismissed as an optical illusion, a trick of his own tilted vantage point within the shuttle. But now that he was able to see the horizon where it poked through rents in the sea mist, it was obvious that there was no illusion, and that what he saw had nothing to do with his position.

The ship was tilting. It was a slight lean, only a few degrees away from vertical, but it was enough to inspire terror. The edifice that had for so long been a solid fixture of the landscape, seemingly as ancient as geography itself, was leaning to one side.

It was being pulled over by the collective biomass of the Pattern Juggler organisms.

“This isn’t good,” Vasko said.

“Tell me what’s happening,” Khouri said, standing next to him.

“We don’t know,” Scorpio said. “It started an hour or so ago. The sea thickened around the base, and the ring of material started swallowing the ship. Now it looks as if the Jugglers are trying to topple it.”

“Could they?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. The ship must weigh a few million tonnes. But the mass of all that Juggler material isn’t exactly negligible. I wouldn’t worry about the ship toppling, though.”

“No?”

“I’d be more worried about it snapping. That’s a lighthugger. It’s designed to tolerate one or more gees of acceleration along its axis. Standing on the surface of a planet doesn’t impose any more stress on it than normal starflight. But they don’t build those ships to handle lateral stresses. They’re not designed to stay in one piece if the forces are acting sideways. A couple more degrees and I’ll start worrying. She might come down.”

Khouri said, “We need that ship, Scorp. It’s our only ticket out of here.”

“Thanks for the newsflash,” he said, “but right now I’d say there isn’t a lot I can do about it—unless you want me to start fighting the Pattern Jugglers.”

The very notion was extreme, almost absurd. The Pattern Jugglers were harmless to all but a few unfortunate individuals. Collectively, they had never indicated any malicious intentions towards humanity. They were archives of lost knowledge, lost minds. But if the Pattern Jugglers were trying to destroy the
Nostalgia for Infinity,
what else could the humans do but retaliate? That simply could not be allowed to happen.

“Do you have weapons on this shuttle?” Khouri asked.

“Some,” Scorpio said. “Light ship-to-ship stuff, mainly.”

“Anything you could use against that biomass?”

“Some particle beams which won’t work too well in Ararat’s atmosphere. The rest? Too likely to take chunks out of the ship as well. We could try the particle beams . . .”

“No!”

The voice had come from Khouri’s mouth. But it had emerged explosively, like a vomit of sound. It almost didn’t resemble her voice at all.

“You just said . . .” Scorpio began.

Khouri sat down suddenly, falling—as if exhausted—into one of the couches that the shuttle had provided. She pressed a hand to her brow.

“No,” she said again, less stridently this time. “No. Leave. Leave alone. Help us.”

Wordlessly, Vasko, Scorpio, Valensin—and Khouri too—turned to look at the incubator, where Aura lay entombed in the care of machines. The tiny red-pink form within was moving, writhing gently against those restraints.

“Help us?” Vasko asked.

Khouri answered, but again the words seemed to emerge without her volition. She had to catch her breath between them. “They. Help us. Want to.”

Vasko moved over to the incubator. He had one eye on Khouri, another on her daughter. Valensin’s machines shuffled agitatedly. They did not know what to do, and their jointed arms were jerking with nervous indecision.

“They?” Vasko asked. “They as in the Pattern Jugglers?”

The pink form kicked her little legs, the tiny, perfectly formed nub of a fist clenched in front of the miniature scowl of her face. Aura’s eyes were sealed slits.

“Yes. They. Pattern Jugglers,” Khouri said.

Vasko turned to Scorpio. “I think we’ve got this all wrong,” he said.

“You do?”

“Wait. I need to talk to Antoinette.”

He went forward to the bridge without waiting for the pig’s permission. In the shuttle’s cockpit he found Antoinette and the pilot strapped into their command couches. They had turned the entire cockpit transparent, so that they appeared to be floating in midair, accompanied only by various disembodied read-out panels and controls. Vasko took a dizzy step back and then collected himself.

“Can we hover?” he asked.

Antoinette looked at him over her shoulder. “Of course.”

“Then bring us to a stop. Do you have any ranging equipment? Anticollision sensors, that sort of thing?”

“Of course,” she said again, as if both questions were amongst the least intelligent she had heard in a long while.

“Then shine something on the ship.”

“Any particular reason, Vasko? We can all see that the damned thing’s tilting.”

“Just do it, all right?”

“Yes, sir,” she said. Her small hands, clinking with jewellery, worked the controls floating above her couch. Vasko felt the ship nudge to a halt. The view ahead rotated, bringing the leaning tower directly in front of them.

“Hold it there,” Vasko said. “Now get that ranging thing—whatever it is—on to the ship. Somewhere near the base if you can manage it.”

“That isn’t going to help us figure out the tilt angle,” Antoinette said.

“It’s not the tilt I’m interested in. I don’t think they’re really trying to topple it.”

“You don’t?”

Vasko smiled. “I think it’s just a by-product. They’re trying to move it.”

He waited for her to set up the ranging device. A pulsing spherical display floated in front of her, filled with smoky green structures and numbers. “There’s the ship,” she said, pointing to the thickest return in the radar plot.

“Good. Now tell me how far away it is.”

“Four hundred and forty metres,” she said, after a moment. “That’s an average. The green stuff is changing in thickness all the while.”

“All right. Keep an eye on that figure.”