Terminal World (44 page)

He returned to his cabin after the surgery, finding the book where Gambeson had left it. He picked it up, feeling an evil, belligerent potency between his fingers, as if the book itself had become a willing conspirator in his downfall. He would have thrown it out of the window were it not sealed. Not that the book was in any way incriminating. It was a blank series of log pages.

Something fell out of it. He knelt down and retrieved it from the floor. It was a card figurine, flat enough to have been slipped between the pages. It was an angel, with the head snipped off. He did not think it could have been in the book when Gambeson had looked through it.

He crushed the angel in his fist, crumpling it until it was an unrecognisable ball of mangled card. Then he slipped the book back into his medicine bag, where he had first found it.

 

A little before noon he was called to Curtana’s quarters. He had lied to Doctor Gambeson out of simple reflex, because it cost him nothing and gained him a little more time to evaluate Spatha’s threat. But he could not keep lying indefinitely, and regarded it as entirely possible that Gambeson had already confided his suspicions to Curtana.

But she did not seem interested in his secrets.

‘I allowed you to sleep in,’ she said, ‘because I know how hard you worked last night. I’ve thanked you once for your assistance on behalf of
Painted Lady
; now you have Swarm’s gratitude as well.’

Her manner was brusque, as if all this was merely a preamble to some unspecified disciplinary action.

‘Have there been any developments?’

‘A number. Agraffe and I contacted those captains we felt could be entrusted with the outline of our intentions. They’ve been arriving aboard
Purple Emperor
as discreetly as possible, trying not to make it look as if anything’s afoot. Preliminary discussions are already taking place. As far as I know - I’ve left Agraffe to report back to me - there’s the beginning of a plan. We’ve got a possible route back to Spearpoint, avoiding Skullboys as much as possible, using prevailing wind patterns to conserve fuel. In the meantime, Gambeson’s running further tests on the Serum-15 to verify that we really do have as much of it as we think. He’s also looking at batches 14 and 13 as well, just in case they have some benefits Ricasso overlooked. I gather the testing’s quite involved.’

‘If Gambeson didn’t sleep, you shouldn’t have allowed me to either,’ Quillon said.

‘The difference is that Gambeson doesn’t look like a two-day-old corpse, Doctor. I’m sorry to have to spell it out to you.’ Curtana looked down at her fingers. ‘After everything you told me, I was surprised that you made such a persuasive case for returning. Isn’t Spearpoint the last place you’d want to be?’

‘Where I want to be and where I need to be aren’t necessarily the same things.’

‘Ever the doctor.’

‘You’re no different. You can dress it up however you like, make it look as if you only want to go back to Spearpoint to spite them, but I don’t believe that for a minute.’

‘I admit I don’t see things in quite the same simplistic terms as Agraffe.’ She allowed a fond smile to touch her lips. ‘Nor does Agraffe, actually, but he’s smart enough to know the best way to present this to the other captains. Not as us extending the hand of friendship, but showing Spearpoint that we’re better than it. And I don’t necessarily think that’s wrong. There would be something admirable about delivering the medicine without a word and turning our backs on them again. You know, as in, we’re so morally superior to you we don’t even need your gratitude.’

‘Sooner or later Swarm and Spearpoint are going to have to deal with the fact that they share the same planet.’

‘But not necessarily in my lifetime. Let’s hand over the medicines and ... cross any other bridges at some later point, shall we?’

‘That has to be your decision, not mine.’

Curtana tapped a nail onto her desk. ‘As for the girl, she’s not ceased to be a concern simply because of this other matter. You were right to bring her to Ricasso’s attention, but his powers of protection aren’t limitless. He’ll want proof sooner or later, or he’ll start convincing himself she isn’t real.’

‘He told me it wasn’t a good time.’

‘It wasn’t. And right now I can’t tell you when it might be. I’m just saying you might have to be flexible. The important thing is to keep Spatha away from her.’

‘I’m aware of the risks Spatha poses.’

‘Has he spoken to you privately?’

‘Enough to leave me in no doubt that he’s a dangerous man. You were right to warn me about him, back on
Painted Liady
. I won’t let my guard down.’

‘Don’t. He’s a snake. Prop-fodder, if I had my way.’ A shrewdness appeared in her face. ‘What has he said to you?’

Quillon hesitated on the brink of two momentous alternatives, anxious to confide in Curtana but equally anxious to protect Nimcha from being exposed for what she was.

‘It’s been made clear that I’d be better off not speaking about it to anyone.’

‘About what?’

‘I think that would amount to speaking about it.’

‘Fear and panic, Doctor. If there’s one person in Swarm you can trust, it’s me.’

‘I don’t doubt that.’

‘But you’re still concerned. All right, Ricasso, then. Will you speak to him?’ Seeing something in his face - she was better at reading him than most - she said, ‘Or is it
about
Ricasso?’

‘Is anything not about Ricasso?’

‘Fair point. But this does concern him, doesn’t it? Spatha’s asked you to do something? To kill him?’ She shook her head. ‘No, that wouldn’t make any sense. They’ve had ample chance to do that already. Make him ill, or issue some kind of statement regarding his ability to command? Can’t see what they’d gain by doing that, either.’

Quillon knew then that he had run out of room to lie. ‘I’ll speak to Ricasso. Can we agree that I volunteered this information?’

‘With some arm-twisting. But if Spatha’s up to his usual tricks, I understand why you might have wanted to keep things to yourself.’ She regarded him levelly. ‘I have a lot to deal with that doesn’t involve politics. Is this something I need to know about right now?’

‘I don’t think so.’

Curtana appraised her expensive fleet-issue watches. ‘Speak to Ricasso. I promise he’ll protect you and your friends. That’s the one thing Spatha and his army of weasels can’t allow for - you placing your trust in another human being, and that trust not being violated. Spatha thinks the world revolves on fear and betrayal.’

‘He might be right.’

‘Not in my Swarm. If those dissenters want to do things differently, they’re welcome to break away and see how long they last. I’d give them about a year before the Skulls are picking through their bones. If it wasn’t for the ships, I’d be more than glad to see the back of them right now.’

‘Do you think Ricasso will get a majority vote for the medicine run?’

‘Probably, if only because it means doing something, and even his enemies will go along with it if they think there’s half a chance of him failing. Whatever happens, we won’t be staying here. It’s become much too dangerous.’

She told him something of what had happened during the engagement.

The Skullboys had been beaten back. It had been a small raiding party, five ships according to the best intelligence. Two had been destroyed by close-action spingun and cannon fire, shredded in the air. A third had been crippled, engines shot away leaving it at the mercy of the winds. Upon last sighting it had been drifting in the general direction of the zone boundary, eighty leagues to the north. Another ship had sidled away with light damage. The fifth had been taken by a party from the long-range scout
White Admiral.
None of the Skullboys had been captured alive - they preferred to don wings and jump overboard - but they had failed in their efforts to blow up the abandoned ship.
White Admiral
had fired grapples and dragged her home at half-speed. Tainted with the stench and blood of Skullboys, the ship was of no interest to Swarm. But she would be stripped of anything of material value, and her maps and logbooks subjected to the closest examination, before the hulk was set adrift for target practice.

In the meantime, efforts were made to catch up with and engage the ship that had got away. But the fog had masked her departure, and none of the pursuing ships obtained another sighting before the search encompassed a hopelessly large volume of airspace. Swarm’s ships turned back home.

As to the intentions of the fleeing craft, it was guesswork at best. There might have been a larger force out there somewhere, but the ship could equally well have been operating autonomously. What was clear was that the knowledge she had acquired would eventually reach others. Skullboys, as Ricasso was fond of pointing out, were essentially self-organising. They formed like rust spots on armour plating, with multiple points of origin. They spread and coalesced. They had nothing resembling a centralised command structure. It didn’t matter. They had no objectives beyond chaos and anarchy and making the world more convivial to Skullboys. They turned some of their prisoners into more of themselves and raped and killed the rest. They weren’t particular.

What the Skullboys did have was something resembling an intelligence network. Sooner or later the escaped ship would make contact with another party, and then Swarm’s position would be compromised. It wouldn’t take long for Skullboys to find the fuel depot, now that they knew something had drawn Swarm this far north. The depot had not been tapped out, and not all of the tankers had been refuelled.

‘But that’s no reason to stay, waiting for them to close in on us,’ Curtana said.

‘The Skullboys couldn’t take on all of Swarm if they tried, could they?’

‘They could hurt us badly, if they caught us with half our ships still being refuelled. Not worth taking a chance on, especially now that we have a reason to move, an objective beyond just surviving. You can take some credit for that, Doctor.’

‘You’d have intercepted that semaphore transmission whether I was here or not.’

‘Yes, and we’d have had the medicines. But we wouldn’t have had you to speak up for Spearpoint and we wouldn’t have had you and Meroka to prick our collective conscience.’ Curtana looked diffident. ‘I’m not saying it needed pricking, but ... I’m not saying it didn’t make a difference either.’

‘Meroka and I aren’t exactly a shining example of hope and reconciliation.’

‘I’ll see what I can do about that. In the meantime ... we’re taking a lot on faith here, Doctor. You might just have given Ricasso a political lifeline, and if that’s the case I’m more grateful than you’ll ever know. I’m also hoping and praying none of us is making the worst mistake of our lives in going along with you.’

‘If you are,’ Quillon said, ‘it’s the worst mistake of my life as well.’

He was about to leave when she said: ‘Doctor, what I told you earlier ... the two-day-old corpse thing?’

‘Accurate, if not perhaps the terminology I might have chosen.’

‘It was hurtful, and you didn’t deserve it. I’m sorry. Can we ... put it behind us?’

Seeing the genuine remorse in her face, he said, ‘It’s already done.’

‘I guess Ricasso’s told you about his angel bones, the ones he likes collecting.’

‘Yes,’ Quillon said, not entirely sure where she was headed.

‘I don’t pay too much attention to his interests, except where they intersect with my duties as a captain. But I saw one of his angels once. It was when I was a girl. My father had taken me to visit Ricasso, down in his collection rooms aboard
Emperor
. It was a very old skeleton, found out near Paradise Flats. He’d taken the bones and fitted them together properly, replaced and repaired what was missing or broken. Then he’d covered them with a layer of clay. Actually it wasn’t clay, but a kind of insulating caulk we use on engine lines to stop them freezing and cracking, but ... I’m digressing, aren’t I? The care he’d taken with the angel, the attention to detail ... the way he’d remade the wings, using glass and metal ... the eyes and the face ... it was probably the strangest, most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen. And you know what?’

He saw something in her expression. ‘You hated it.’

‘Because of the wings,’ she said, nodding. ‘Because that damned ...
thing ...
made a mockery of my world and everything in it. Meroka was right, you know - Blimps. That’s all we’ve got. And you angels own the sky like you were fucking well born to it. Excuse my language. I’m pretty handy with the rudder of an airship, all right? I know a thing or two about jet streams, about static and dynamic lift. I can turn
Painted Lady
on a sunbeam. But that’s not really
flying
, not the way you do it. Is it any wonder we harbour resentment towards you?’

‘If it’s any consolation, I barely remember how it feels to fly. They buried my memories when they sent me down to Neon Heights. It was nine years ago, anyway.’

‘But you did it once.’

‘More than once,’ he admitted.

‘You’re wrong, Doctor. It’s no consolation whatsoever.’

He went to see Ricasso just before the show-of-flags. It was the middle of the afternoon and the fog had begun to lift, affording glimpses of powder-blue sky and arid, treeless horizons. The air was clear of Skullboys, to the limit of vision.

‘It’s a good day to vote,’ Ricasso said, turning from his window as Quillon entered the stateroom. ‘A tiresome formality, of course - they
will
endorse me - but it must still be done. Don’t you just hate tradition?’

Quillon and Ricasso were alone. Quillon placed his medicine bag next to the table where the chequer game was in progress. ‘We don’t have much that isn’t tradition in Spearpoint. When you’ve been going in circles for five thousand years, it’s hard not to echo the past. It’s like keeping a diary, until you realise that every new entry’s the same as one you’ve already written. So why waste your time, if nothing new ever happens? Swarm’s different, I think. You haven’t exhausted all the permutations yet. You’re new enough that you still bother having history.’