Terminal World (57 page)

And always, always, that red rectangle of which Curtana had spoken. Five stars in the corner - one large, four smaller. All the smashed machines carried some form of it, if they carried any symbology at all. The sole exception was the void-crosser.

Quillon didn’t want to think about how much time separated that cloud-sized argosy from everything else. Perhaps it - and the wall - were the oldest things of all. Save, of course, for Spearpoint.

It wasn’t, as they had quickly realised,
their
Spearpoint - but in all other respects it was clearly the same type of structure. It rammed out of the ground, a slowly narrowing helical spike, tapering to perhaps half a league across at the point where it ended, its soaring rise abruptly terminated six leagues from the ground. Their Spearpoint went on upwards, narrowing to the merest sliver as it daggered out of the atmosphere above the Celestial Levels. This one just stopped. It was a flinty black in colour, and nowhere on it, save for the very lowest part, was there any indication that people had ever called it home. No city-districts winding their way up the spiral ledge, no empty buildings, disused roads, commuter lines, elevators and funicular tracks. It was Spearpoint lopped off at the top and scoured back to its skin.

‘Ricasso knew about this,’ Curtana said in a barely audible mutter. ‘It’s too much of a coincidence otherwise. He knew there was something here, something he was interested in. Must have been a clue on one of those old charts of his.’ In an even softer hiss she added, ‘The lying bastard.’

‘He was still right to push for crossing the Bane,’ Quillon said.

‘He’s still got some explaining to do. Now I know why he got over the smashing of his laboratory so easily. He knew
this
was coming up as a consolation prize.’

Painted Lady
climbed to five hundred spans. Curtana aimed her over the flat-topped section of wall between two of the towers, while the other ships hung astern to watch what happened.

As the airship neared the great structure, so the wall’s immense size and age impressed themselves upon Quillon with renewed and demoralising force. Had this not been deep inside the Bane, he was certain that vegetation would have smothered the edifice from its ramparts to the tops of its towers, reducing it to little more than a peculiarly regular green ridge, thrusting up from jungle canopy. But here nothing, not even the lowliest weed, had been able to endure. Yet the wall was still subject to the weather, and countless storms must have dashed against those white cliffs over the centuries and millennia. They’d had almost no measurable effect.

At last the top of the wall was directly under them. It was twenty spans across, room enough for garrisons and weaponry, but the fortifications he had noted earlier were clearly ornamental. The walls curved away in a gentle arc to either horizon. If the ends joined up, Curtana said, it could easily be a hundred leagues from side to side.

The inner face of the wall fell in steps rather than a single smooth descent. Connecting the ledges was a complex arrangement of ramps and stairways, some clearly grafted on to the worn remnants of older constructions. Plain white buildings crowded the lower ledges, tall houses and tenements piled in leaning, haphazard ranks like books in an untidy library. Again, it was clear that many phases of building and renewal had occurred. There were structures on the ground, but they were grouped into distinct communities with tracts of open space between them, rather than a single vast city pressing against the wall. Quillon made out the pale scratches of arrow-straight roads threading from one village or hamlet to the next. Many of them radiated out from the base of the broken Spearpoint, echoing the semaphore lines of Quillon’s home. Perhaps these roads and towns had once been set amongst trees and grassland, rather than the dusty rock and dirt that now surrounded them.

‘Flash Ricasso that we’re over the wall and there’s no sign of life,’ Curtana called out to the signals officer. ‘Inform him that I’m taking
Painted Lady
down to fifty spans to get a closer look. We’ll be out of line-of-sight until I bring her back up.’ Then she grabbed the speaking tube. ‘Machine-gunners. Keep on your toes.’

Without waiting for Ricasso’s acknowledgement, Curtana took the airship down to just above the roof level of the tallest buildings. They were overflying a village of perhaps thirty or forty distinct structures, laid out in a grid pattern with an open square near the middle. The white buildings were obviously designed for warm, dry weather. Their windows had shutters rather than glass, and there were open courtyards at their hearts, enclosed by galleried floors on all sides. If there had ever been ornamentation or colouration applied to the walls and floors, it had long since been scoured away by the wind, bleached by centuries of relentless sun. Nothing moved below except
Painted Lady’
s ominous shadow, her propellers a blur of whirling motion and her gun turrets swivelling nervously from target to target.

It was, Quillon knew, futile to speculate about the kinds of people who had lived here, at least on the basis of the evidence gathered so far. They could have formed the most civilised and enlightened society imaginable, a community of infinite wisdom and kindness. Or they could have been bloodthirsty cultists with a lingering death fixation. It was impossible to tell from their ruins. Everyone needed a roof over their head, even the barbarous and depraved.

‘There’s something,’ Curtana said, pointing to the next community along, another thousand spans or so out from the wall. ‘Let’s check it out.’

Quillon wasn’t sure what she’d seen, and for a moment he wondered if curiosity wasn’t overcoming her natural instinct to protect the airship. Yet how could there be anything down there that could harm them, even unintentionally? No animals, no people, no possibility of hidden weapons, for nothing of any sophistication could have survived the Bane. It was just ancient brick and clay: inert matter. Nothing, not even a scorpion or a rat, not even a bacterium, had lived in these streets for hundreds of years.

‘Take us lower: thirty spans,’ Curtana ordered. ‘All engines to dead slow.’

Painted Lady’
s motors quietened to a drumming chatter, barely ticking over.

‘What have you seen?’ Quillon asked.

‘That,’ she said, pointing to the thing that was now hoving into clear view, in the open centre of the village.

It was something half-made, surrounded by the sun-bleached, wind-scoured remains of wooden scaffolding. A wooden machine as tall as any of the houses, rising proud on solid wooden wheels several times higher than a man, with the remains of a rickety wooden track leading away from the unfinished machine. The track, such as it was, pointed back towards the wall, although it ended abruptly just beyond the village limits.

‘They were building another one of those things we saw out there,’ Curtana said. ‘One of those sailing engines. Look: you can even see the big tree-trunk they were going to use for the main mast, laid out on those trestles.’

‘Does that mean we got it wrong?’ Quillon wondered. ‘They were building these
after
they built the aircraft and the rockets?’

‘That’s a depressing thought,’ Agraffe said.

‘I guess it depends on when this area became uninhabitable,’ Curtana said. ‘Could be everything we’re seeing here was abandoned ages before they developed the flying machines. But the people who built these wooden machines - I’m not sure they’d have been capable of building the wall, and the wall had to come first.’

Quillon nodded. ‘And even from the top of the wall they wouldn’t have been able to see where the rockets fell down. They’d have had a hard time seeing the biplanes and airships, in fact. No wonder they still thought that sailing out might just be worth a shot.’

‘The poor bastards,’ Agraffe said.

‘Let’s reserve judgement on that,’ Curtana replied. ‘For all we know they were abject xenophobes intent on raping and pillaging the next society they had the misfortune to bump into.’

‘You want to go down and take a closer look at the machine?’ Quillon asked.

‘It can wait.’ She turned to one of her officers. ‘Take us back up to five hundred, resume our previous heading and flash
Purple Emperor.
Inform Ricasso we’ve found the remains of several communities but no signs of life. There’s no reason for Swarm not to follow us. Tell him that we’ll pass the structure ... the other Spearpoint ... on our starboard side, at our revised altitude.’

Quillon sensed the mood around him. No one was in a hurry to debate the implications of the other Spearpoint. It was too unexpected to fit into anyone’s preconceived notions about the world. There was one Godscraper, and one only. Why was there a second such structure, not only abandoned and uninhabited but broken and forgotten in the middle of nowhere?

Too much to deal with, too much to think about. He understood perfectly. He felt it as well.

‘Return flash from
Purple Emperor,’
said the signals officer. ‘It’s Ricasso, Captain. Says he wants to come aboard.’

‘Flash him back. Tell him it’s not ... expedient.’

A flurry of heliograph transmissions ensued. Ricasso was coming aboard anyway. Curtana took it with stoic forbearance.

Swarm and its entourage of support airships passed over the wall without incident. Shortly afterwards a boat detached from the main formation and sped out to meet
Painted Lady.
As it drew alongside, Quillon recognised the black and gold livery of one of Ricasso’s personal taxis. The man himself disembarked with enough luggage to fill a small room.

‘You’re going to have to return some of that ballast,’ Curtana said.

‘I presumed, my dear, that since you had burned fuel, there would now be a surplus in your weight allowance.’

‘We lose sungas through the cells,’ Curtana said. ‘They’re not completely pressure-tight, even with the new coatings. Plus we’ll be clear of the Bane in less than a day. You didn’t even need to bring an overnight bag.’

‘I may as well see out the rest of the journey here, now that I’ve made the crossing.’

‘From a security perspective, wouldn’t it be better if you stayed aboard
Purple Emperor?’

He made a theatrical show of looking around the room. ‘What, you think someone’s likely to assassinate me here? Someone from your hand-picked and hugely loyal crew?’

‘I was thinking more of the risk that we might run into something, or have an accident,’ Curtana said.

‘That risk applies equally to the entire fleet.’ He raised a pudgy finger before she could frame an objection. ‘Oh, I’m perfectly aware that
Painted Lady
would be the first vessel exposed to any danger. But knowing this ship, you can run a damn sight faster than that slow, bloated beast called
Purple Emperor.’

‘We don’t run,’ Curtana said testily. ‘We engage.’

He waved aside the distinction. ‘Whatever you say, my dear. What matters now is altitude more than speed.’ He clapped his hands together briskly. ‘Now, I realise it’s an imposition, but might I trouble you to pass over the other Spearpoint, rather than around it?’

‘We can’t. Its tip is far above our operational ceiling, as you well know.’

‘Then as high as we can manage, and we’ll launch a pressurised spotter balloon when we’re at the limit. That’s feasible, isn’t it? You still have a balloon aboard?’

‘Yes,’ Curtana said, with obvious effort. ‘And I take it this isn’t the kind of request I’m able to turn down?’

Ricasso grimaced awkwardly. ‘Not really, if I’m going to be brutally honest. Consider it part of your risk-assessment duties.’

‘That makes things so much easier.’

‘Splendid. I can’t tell you how excited I am about this, you know. I mean, of all the things to find.’

‘Yes, who’d have thought it? Who could possibly have anticipated this, when crossing the Bane was first mooted?’ Curtana turned away before he could answer - a direct insolence only she could have got away with - and snapped her fingers at the two
Emperor
men lingering by the connecting bridge. ‘Get his junk stowed back aboard your boat. I need to start making speed again.’

A few minutes later the bridge was reeled in and the taxi was on its way back to Swarm, carrying newly drawn maps and photographic plates that had been exposed since the last exchange. Curtana’s men showed Ricasso to his improvised quarters - little more than a large storage cupboard with a small grubby window, adjacent to the chart room. Rolls of emergency repair fabric, crates of unexposed plates and boxes full of dressings, potions and unguents had to find other homes aboard the already tightly organised airship. Quillon, who was never far from Ricasso, surmised that the man was not displeased with the arrangements, however improvisatory their nature. There was even room to unfold a bunk in his new quarters, provided some of the other items were moved around temporarily.

While he was helping Ricasso settle in - it had fallen to him, since almost everyone else seemed to be preoccupied with rigging for high-altitude flight - Quillon said, ‘So this really was a surprise?’

‘Of course, my dear fellow!’

‘But you had - let’s say - suspicions we’d find something out here.’

Ricasso ruminated before answering. Quillon imagined him weighing the benefits of concealment versus candour. ‘Not suspicions, precisely. That would be too strong a term. But did my investigations turn up something that intrigued me, something that led me to think crossing the Bane would offer us more than just a short cut? I won’t deny it. But we’re not even talking about a rumour here, Quillon. We’re talking about less than a scrap of one, a figment most educated men wouldn’t hesitate to dismiss.’

‘Something you’d like to share?’

‘There was a map, a fragment of a map, with something on it. Something deeply puzzling and strange. It looked like another Spearpoint - but that would be impossible, surely?’