Terminal World (43 page)

‘Serum-15 offered some benefits, but it wasn’t what I was looking for. I moved on—’

‘Ricasso,’ Gambeson said.

Ricasso lowered his glass. His eyes were deep-rimmed and slightly bloodshot. ‘Serum-15 had some mild, non-fatal side effects. In all other respects it was at least as effective as clinical grade Morphax-55, or the equivalent we use on Swarm. The tests I ran showed that it provided just as much protection against zone sickness, up to and including alleviating the worst effects of massive maladaptive trauma. It was, in short, better than our best drug against zone sickness.’ His pinkish eyes turned pleading. ‘But it was a distraction, that’s all! We don’t need a better Morphax-55: what we have is already sufficient for our needs.’

‘Ours, perhaps,’ Gambeson said.

‘Can you make more of this stuff?’ Quillon asked.

Ricasso shook his head. ‘Not easily. It’s enough of a task to persuade the vorgs to achieve one result. Once you move beyond a given outcome, you may as well go back to the start.’

‘But you still have some left over,’ Gambeson said. ‘You didn’t destroy the old batches.’

‘A little.’

‘How much?’ Quillon asked.

Ricasso gave a careless shrug. ‘Fifty flasks, give or take.’

‘The Boundary Commission used to distribute Morphax-55 in vats, not flasks,’ Quillon said. ‘Even then it had to be rationed and tracked. Every drop counted.’ He felt something between sadness and relief: other than as a token gesture, Ricasso’s drug wasn’t going to be useful after all. Part of him wanted to return to Spearpoint. Another was terrified at the thought, anxious to cling to the flimsiest excuse for not going back.

‘Tell him the rest,’ Gambeson said.

Ricasso had the weary resignation of a defendant about to collapse under cross-examination. ‘The flasks contain the drug in its maximum concentration,’ he said. ‘That’s how it comes out of the vorgs. It’s far too strong in that form. Needs to be diluted.’

‘How much?’ Quillon asked.

‘A lot.’

‘How much
?’

‘About ... ten thousandfold. At that point you can treat it much as you would liquid-form Morphax-55.’

‘So in fact,’ Quillon said, ‘what you’re really telling us is that this ship holds the equivalent of ... half a million flasks of clinical-grade Morphax- 55?’

‘Near enough.’

‘And you didn’t think this worth bringing to our attention earlier because ... ?’

‘We have all the actual Morphax-55 we need. And I did say there were side effects.’

‘Mild ones,’ Curtana said.

‘When the alternative is slow and painful death,’ Gambeson said, ‘almost anything would count as a mild side effect.’

‘A flask is ... how big, exactly?’ Quillon asked.

Ricasso lifted up the decanter. ‘Give or take.’

‘If that was Morphax-55 there’d be enough in there to provide antizonal protection to hundreds of patients for hundreds of days,’ Quillon said.

Gambeson nodded. ‘He’s right. We’re sitting on the difference between life and death for the citizens of Spearpoint.’

‘It won’t save the city,’ Ricasso said. ‘It’ll just delay the death agonies. Is that really what we want to be doing?’

‘You can make more of it,’ Quillon said.

‘I told you, it’s not so easy to go back with the vorgs.’

Quillon leaned forwards to emphasise his point. ‘You did it once, you can do it again. Perhaps even come up with something more effective the second time around. Forget your miracle cure, Ricasso: it’s a noble objective, but even if it’s feasible, it’ll take too long to create to actually be of benefit to anyone. But you can do something
here and now
with what you already consider a failure. This can save lives.’

‘They’ll spit it back in our faces,’ Ricasso said.

‘After they’ve already asked for help? Maybe we ought to let them decide first,’ Curtana said.

‘You’ve never had any love for these people, my dear,’ Ricasso said. ‘What’s changed now?’

‘Nothing,’ Curtana replied vehemently. ‘They’ve still got to answer for what they did to us. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t human beings, in need of help. Even the angels, if it comes to that. I’m not proposing that we do this out of the goodness of our hearts, all right? But we’re Swarm. We’re better than Spearpoint, and this is our chance to prove it, instead of just basking in a warm glow of self-satisfaction.’

‘What she said,’ Agraffe said, grinning fiercely, as if he couldn’t wait to go and start his engines.

‘So we just ... return to Spearpoint?’ Ricasso asked, as if there was something fundamental that he simply wasn’t getting. ‘Just cruise back, as if nothing’s happened? Hello, it’s Swarm? Remember us? We’ve brought the medicines you asked for?’

‘If that’s what it takes,’ Curtana said.

‘You’re the one always telling us that we have to adapt to changing times,’ Gambeson said. ‘Now’s our chance to actually do it. We don’t have stop being Swarm, or repudiate our history. We just do something different, because we can. Take a leap into the unknown, and see what happens.’

‘I’ll do it,’ Curtana said. ‘Even if no one else does. As soon as
Painted
Lady’s patched together, I’ll take those fifty flasks of concentrated Serum- 15 all the way myself. They can dilute it when we arrive.’

Ricasso looked pop-eyed. ‘Without a mandate from Swarm?’

‘If it comes to it. Did my father always act on a mandate, Ricasso? For that matter, have you?’ The question was evidently rhetorical, for she did not give him a chance to respond. ‘No, thought not. But of course that was your generation, when things were different.’

‘If one ship goes, we all go,’ Agraffe said, clenching his fist. ‘It’ll really put the shit up them when they see Swarm arriving en masse. I’d almost want to be a Spearpointer, just to know it feels!’

‘In your heart, Ricasso, you know we must act,’ Gambeson said forcefully. ‘And soon, too, if it’s going to make a shred of difference. They’re running out of Morphax supplies already. If we sit here and dither and argue for a month or three, we may as well not bother at all. There’ll be hardly anyone left alive when we get there.’

‘Look,’ Ricasso said, ‘even if I accept that this is something we should be doing, I still need a show-of-flags.’

Curtana looked distinctly unimpressed with this line of argument. ‘Have you asked the other captains?’

‘Of course not. It wasn’t even a remote possibility until about five minutes ago. And what about the dissenters? How will they take it? They like Spearpoint even less than the rest of us, and that’s saying something.’

‘Never mind them,’ Curtana said. ‘It’s the moderates you need to bring onto your side, and this is exactly the kind of thing that could galvanise them. For too long they’ve had to make excuses for you, how you’ve shirked your responsibilities to Swarm, how you spend more time with your vorgs than you do in the tactical room. I don’t agree with any of that stuff, but that’s only because I know you. See it from outside this stateroom and things don’t look so clear-cut. It’s no wonder some of the captains have started listening to Spatha and those idiots. At least the dissenters are proposing Swarm
do
something, instead of skulking around on the margins avoiding a fight.’

‘Curtana’s right,’ Gambeson said. ‘No one could accuse you of lacking vision if you put this to the captains.’

Ricasso looked stricken. ‘They might accuse me of lacking sanity.’

‘Not if we have a plan,’ said Curtana, ‘and a number of high-influence captains ready to back you. You’ve got two already, and I can think of at least twenty more who’ll join Agraffe and me.’

‘Don’t put it to the flags just yet,’ Agraffe said, smiling as he caught himself on the edge of insubordination. ‘What I mean is, Curtana and I can put the word out to the other captains, those we think we can trust with a secret. We’ll convene here and put together the basics of a plan, something watertight. Then you can put it to the flags. If you ... um ... want my recommendation, that is.’

‘Noted,’ Ricasso said tartly.

 

After he had undressed in his cabin, after he had examined his wing-buds in the mirror above the basin, after he had studied his tapering, waiflike anatomy - the bones standing out like topographic features on a map with exaggerated contours - Quillon tried to sleep. It was not easy. Later that night word had arrived of a closer sighting of a Skullboy craft, dead-reckoning its way through the fog, quartering the terrain in a search pattern. While the refuelling continued, yet more ships were dispatched to intercept and harry however many of the enemy were out there. The probing forays had more in common with blind groping in a darkened room than anything the captains were normally used to. If close action ensued, they could expect losses, damaged ships and damaged crew. Quillon volunteered to assist in
Purple Emperor’s
hospital, but Gambeson told him to rest while he was able; if Swarm had need of him, it would not be slow to call on him.

But he couldn’t sleep; not really. Although the station-keeping engines, and the engines of the circling escorts, served to drown out some of the noise, his ears had become keenly attuned to the monotonously shifting drone. He could begin to hear
through
it now, out into the quieter airspace beyond Swarm’s inner cordon. He could hear the noises of battle, sometimes distant as thunder on the horizon, sometimes louder than fireworks going off next door. The engagement lasted for hours. It sent hectoring reports deep into his brain, penetrating the shallow, free-associating state of mind that was as close to dreaming as he was going to get. He saw gondola-sized skulls pushing their eyeless visages through the fog, suspended under flaccid grey balloons, wrinkled and convoluted as human brains, armoured, skull-headed men hanging from the lolling, laughing jawbones, edged weapons glinting with steely promise in the grey half-light. He dreamed of a vorg, escaping from its cage, sliding and crawling, dragging its limbless hindquarters through the dark bowels of
Purple Emperor
, navigating corridors unseen, leaving a slimy trail of discarded internal organs as it went, yet still finding its way to his cabin, leaning over him, its snout-mechanisms whirring and rotating, gearing up like a demented clock about to strike the hour.

Later, Gambeson came for him. His manner was diffident, almost apologetic.

‘I could use some assistance, Doctor.’

There was still blood on his wrists, where the gloves had not completely covered the skin.

Quillon reached without hesitation for his medical bag, which remained with him in his quarters whenever he was there. But when he lifted it from the dresser he knew immediately that something was wrong. The bag felt too heavy. Frowning while Gambeson looked on, he opened the bag and saw the long blue spine of a leather-bound volume jammed into the bag’s middle compartment, between the pouches and pockets containing his equipment and potions.

‘Reference material?’ Gambeson asked.

Quillon stared at the blue book, his mind spinning. For a moment, stupidly, he wondered if he had somehow stolen the book from Ricasso’s stateroom and then forgotten about it. But the dream logic collapsed. This couldn’t be the book Spatha wanted him to extract from the room. Even if Spatha had somehow managed to obtain the book himself, he would have no reason to hide it in Quillon’s bag. Unless the theft had been accomplished and he was expected to return it ...

‘Doctor?’ Gambeson asked.

‘It’s nothing,’ Quillon said, flustered but praying it didn’t show. ‘I ... requested it from the main library, that’s all.’

‘You seem surprised to find it there.’

‘I forgot putting it in the bag. But I remember now.’ He drew the volume out slowly, almost as if it might be wired to a bomb. But in his hands it had the dull solidity that told him it was nothing more than a book.

‘Might I see it?’ Gambeson asked.

‘It’s nothing.’

‘Nonetheless. Indulge my curiosity. I’m wondering what you couldn’t find in my library, that you had to go to the main one.’ Without invitation, Gambeson took the book and opened it. It fell open at a random page.

It was blank.

The volume was a logbook. As Gambeson leafed through its pages it became apparent that not a single entry had been made anywhere in it.

‘I thought I might start a journal,’ Quillon explained, improvising desperately. ‘Of my time in Swarm. My experiences, and anything I felt I ought to commit to paper. To assist in my adaptation.’

‘I could have supplied you with any number of blank logbooks.’

‘I felt it best not to trouble you.’

Gambeson closed the book, then slid it back along the dresser towards Quillon’s bag. ‘Something’s not right here, Doctor, but at the moment I don’t have time to worry about what it might be. Not while the butcher’s bill is waiting. Grab your bag and follow me. We’ve work to do.’

The bill, when it was accounted, could have been steeper. The first ship had returned to the fold in the small hours of the morning. It had sustained engine and steering-system damage, but only light injuries. The second came in thirty minutes later, engines still operable, but with a ragged, door-sized hole punched through the gondola’s forequarters. Two officers and three airmen had been killed, and nine of the survivors had sustained serious but treatable injuries. Another two ships crawled back during the ensuing hours. They had both taken damage, but there had only been one death between them. Quillon and Gambeson worked hard, sometimes as a team, sometimes attending to different patients. All the while Quillon was aware of Gambeson’s silent scrutiny, whenever the other man didn’t have his hands deep inside the red mysteries of a wound. Quillon, for his part, tried to force the matter of the book from his mind, but even as he worked it kept bobbing to the surface of his thoughts. He now understood perfectly what was expected of him. The blank book was to be taken into the stateroom in his medical bag and substituted for the real one. The swap could be effected in seconds; Ricasso need never know, at least until he came to make an entry in the original log. And if Commander Spatha had his way, Ricasso might never get that chance.