Terminal World (80 page)

‘Not all of Swarm. But a portion of it - enough ships to make a difference, by bringing in more Serum-15? I think so. And he’ll make sure he’s on one of those ships when it crosses.’

‘The one thing I’ve never doubted is his courage.’

‘But you don’t think this is wise.’

‘It’s a gamble.’ Quillon sighed, the fight - the energy for argument - draining out of him. ‘But then I understand your position. If you want to keep a lid on Tulwar’s rabble, then you need to assert your strength. Bringing in more ships will do just that, especially if you can demonstrate that you have the collusion of at least some of the angels.’

‘No one said it would be pretty. But if that’s what it takes to keep this city from slipping back into chaos, Ricasso won’t hesitate.’ She paused. ‘There’s so much I’d rather be talking to you about. What happened down there, inside Spearpoint? Meroka and Malkin told me some of it, but I’m still only getting part of the story. Is Kalis going to be all right?’

‘She wouldn’t have made it this far if she wasn’t strong.’

‘And Nimcha?’

‘I don’t believe in destiny. But if I had to, she’d be living proof of it. She was born to serve Spearpoint, Curtana. Born to heal it and make it work again.’

‘By doing what?’

‘It’s not a city. It’s a gateway, a terminal. A road to the stars. But to reach them, you don’t go up.’ He smiled. ‘You go down. Deep beneath our feet, in the bowels of the Earth, is ... something. Something I don’t think you or I are quite capable of understanding. An aperture into ... something even stranger, I suppose. That’s the road.’

‘Can we travel it again?’

‘I think we may have to.’

‘That’ll take some doing.’

‘It will. And I suppose we’ll need ships and good pilots to fly them. They won’t be like your ships, and I’m guessing the piloting skills will be somewhat different. But I don’t doubt that the necessary adjustments can be made.’

‘I think that might be a problem for my grandchildren.’

‘Perhaps. But the world isn’t going to wait for us. It’s getting colder, and the forests are dying. We either do something about that, or find somewhere else to live.’

‘I’m glad you’re thinking about the future.’

‘Yours. Not necessarily mine.’ And he coughed again, the blood welling in his mouth, and the next breath felt as if there were knives in his lungs, jumbled this way and that like the contents of an untidy cutlery drawer.

‘Quillon, what I said about getting someone to operate on you. There’s another possibility.’

‘If you think I can operate on—’

‘Not you, no. But another angel. If we have friends up there, and we can get you to them—’

‘It’s hopeless, Curtana. The city’s a war zone. We ran into enough trouble just getting to the Pink Peacock.’

‘And if there was another way? One that didn’t involve cutting through the city?’

‘There isn’t.’

‘There is now. I think I can get you to the Celestial Levels. We’ll have to be quick, though, and I can’t guarantee that any of this is going to work, or that it’ll be easy on you. But I think there is a way we can make this happen.’ She tucked her good hand, the one that wasn’t bandaged, under the crude pillow formed from Meroka’s coat. ‘I’m going to move you now, Quillon. It may hurt. But you’re my physician, and I’m not giving up on you that easily.’

 

He was unconscious by the time they got him onto the roof of the Red Dragon Bathhouse. Unconscious but still breathing, albeit shallowly and with each breath shifting something horrible and loose in his chest. Still alive, though. That, Curtana thought, was all they could hope for now. And if he could manage not to die before he reached the angels, that would be even better. But she had never felt less optimistic in her life.

They were all there now, Meroka, Malkin, Kalis and Agraffe, crowding around the waiting capsule of the spotter balloon as the gasbag was inflated. Her crew had not dared begin the process before now; the balloon would be far too tempting a target for potshots, even before it began its ascent. As it was the gasbag had needed emergency repairs and the inflation - aided by hot air supplied by the bathhouse’s furnace - was taking longer than she would have liked. Would it even work at all? she wondered. The spiralling thermals would drive the balloon higher, but if it fell out of their grip the prevailing winds would soon carry it beyond Spearpoint, far beyond the possibility of rescue or help for Quillon. Having failed to land
Painted Lady
in one piece, she had a ready appreciation for just how malicious those thermals and winds could be when they collided with each other. She felt it in the tingling of burned skin under her bandages. Still: what else could they do, but this one daring thing?

Two of Madame Bistoury’s girls had brought Quillon’s stretchered form up from the lower floors. They shivered on the roof, drawing their flower-patterned nightgowns around themselves, but unwilling to return indoors until they had witnessed the departure. Curtana helped to manoeuvre Quillon into the observation cabin, making sure he was adequately protected from whatever jolts lay ahead. Once he came close to stirring, but his eyes were drowsy and unfocused and she did not think he retained any real sense of what was going on.

‘This isn’t the way it was meant to happen,’ Agraffe said. ‘We were supposed to save the city, not lose Quillon.’

Curtana adjusted the blankets she had used to cushion Quillon. He looked like a little baby wrapped up in them: an ugly, strange, birdlike baby. ‘We haven’t lost him, not yet. And we haven’t saved the city. We’ve begun to save it, that’s all.’

‘Good. Now leave the rest of it to us. You can get back down to the infirmary, where you belong.’

‘While there’s some ballooning to be done?’

‘No. Absolutely not. You’re not riding in that thing. Look at you: you’ve got one good hand, and you can barely work the arm it’s attached to!’

Trust Agraffe to fall back on a purely technical objection, she thought, rather than an appeal to emotion. He knew her far too well. ‘It’s a balloon. It’s not exactly over-endowed with controls. You go up or down. And we don’t need to go down.’

He held up his own bandage mittens. ‘You know I’d be doing this, if I could still pull a lever.’

‘You can’t, and I can.’

‘Sky Princess has made her point,’ Meroka said, buttoning the coat she had donated for use as Quillon’s pillow. ‘And it’s a good one. No damn doubt about it. But I’ve got two hands, which kind of settles the argument.’

‘You’ve never flown a balloon before,’ Curtana said.

‘No. But like you said, it goes up or down. Reckon I can get my head around that, if I try really hard. And there’s another point, one that won’t mean much to you but means a hell of a lot to me.’

‘Which is?’ Agraffe asked.

‘Quillon’s still my package. I do the delivering around here.’ She finished putting on the coat, pausing only to draw the collar higher around her neck. ‘Now show me how to work those God-damned levers, before I have to get argumentative about it.’

Agraffe looked at Curtana. ‘If it’s a choice between sending Meroka and sending you, you know which side I’m going to come down on. No offence, Meroka.’

‘None fucking taken. You carry on.’

‘She only needs to know how to slow her ascent, when she reaches the Levels. If the angels are there to meet her, they’ll find a way to bring her in. And if they’re not, she can turn off the burner and drop down again.’

‘And hope she hits the civilised part of Spearpoint, not the part still occupied by Skulls,’ Curtana said.

‘Same risk would apply to you,’ Agraffe pointed out.

‘Yeah, and at least I’m prepared for it,’ Meroka said, patting her coat, metal chinking through the leather. ‘But, you know, it’s not coming to that. If the good angels aren’t yanking our chains, I’ll bring Cutter to them. Just make sure they know we’re on our way.’

Kalis nodded at Curtana. ‘Let her do this. It is her wish. She has travelled far with Cutter. Let her continue the journey.’

Malkin walked over to Meroka and drew a revolver out of his pocket. He passed it butt-first to Meroka and reached out his own hand to close hers around the grip. ‘Take this. Used to belong to Fray, when he was in the force. Then it became mine. Never let me down when push came to shove. If it comes to it, take out a few of them flutter-winged bastards for me.’

‘If it comes to it,’ Meroka said, ‘I’ll be aiming to take out more than just a few.’ But she took the gun and slipped it into one of her own coat pockets, where it would be ready for immediate use.

‘Pulls a little to the left,’ Malkin said.

‘I’ll keep that in mind.’ She gave a heavy shrug under the coat. ‘You ready to show me how to fly this thing, Curtana? ‘Cause if you don’t, I’m taking it anyway. We don’t want to keep Quillon waiting much longer.’

Curtana helped Meroka into the cabin, jabbing a finger at the very few salient points of interest, while Meroka buckled herself in for the ascent. ‘Altimeter. Firesap burner. Ballast drop. Gas release - go easy on that, because you’ll sink faster than you can get hot air back into the envelope.’

‘I’ll figure it out.’

‘The cabin’s pressurised, but you’ll only have two hours of breathable air. Admission valve is here, but don’t even think of opening it unless you’re below at least Circuit City.’

‘I guess what we’re saying here is, the angels better be on our side up there. Or Quillon and I are both screwed.’

‘If we don’t have friends up there,’ Curtana said, ‘I think that goes for most of us. You’ll just be the first to find out.’

‘Seal me in. Got me a sudden hankering to do some ballooning.’

‘Good luck, Meroka.’

‘Same to you, Sky Princess. Hope they give you another blimp. You’ve earned it.’

Curtana’s eyes met Meroka’s; there was an unspoken exchange between them, and then she closed the door and motioned for Meroka to work the internal latch.

Curtana stepped back. While they had been talking, the team had achieved inflation of the balloon. It was straining to lift the cabin off the roof, into the wild heights above. She realised she had forgotten to demonstrate the release catch to Meroka. She pointed through the glass at the heavy lever to Meroka’s right. Meroka nodded and reached down to work the control. And then, with a swiftness that always startled Curtana, for all the balloon deployments she had witnessed, the cabin was rising. Perhaps it was her imagination, but it seemed to her that Quillon stirred from unconsciousness at precisely the moment of release, coming to wakefulness long enough to take in his surroundings and find Curtana beyond the glass, watching as he ascended. And then he was gone, as the balloon rose and took its occupants out of view.

‘Come back,’ she whispered. ‘We could use you.’

She was still craning to follow the balloon’s progress when Agraffe joined her and wrapped his arm around her side, taking care not to apply pressure to any of her bandages. ‘She’s in the thermals,’ he said, cupping a hand over his eyes. ‘Non-stop all the way to the Celestial Levels.’

Someone fired a single desultory shot; it clanged uselessly off the underside of the cabin.

‘I wonder if we’ll ever see either of them again,’ Curtana wondered.

‘We couldn’t have left Quillon in safer hands. You know that. And at least he has a chance now.’

‘It could have been me up there, not Meroka.’

‘Like she said, Quillon was her responsibility, not yours. Anyway, you and I have more than enough to be getting on with here. We have to signal Ricasso, so he can let the angels know what’s coming up to them. And find out what his plans are.’

‘He’ll be sorry he didn’t get a chance to talk to Quillon again.’

‘Maybe he will,’ Agraffe said. ‘That’s the thing. Nothing’s certain now. The only thing I’m sure of - if that isn’t a contradiction - is that nothing is going to be the same. I mean, look at us - we grew up in Swarm, educated from birth to spit on the memory of this place. And now we’ve risked our lives to get here and damn it all if I don’t want to see it survive.’ He was, despite everything, quite unable not to grin. ‘Maybe Swarm’s finished, at least the one we knew. But if that’s the case then Spearpoint isn’t going to be the same either. I want it to make it through this - somehow I know it will - but I also know it’s going to come out the other end different.’

‘Why stop at Spearpoint?’ Curtana said. ‘If Nimcha and the rest do their work, the world itself won’t be the same. And if the world changes, so does that.’

‘What?’ Agraffe asked.

She was pointing at the sky, but not at the balloon, which had climbed so rapidly that it was now little more than a tiny brassy speck against the sheer, ever-climbing face of Spearpoint. She wasn’t even pointing at the Celestial Levels, where the balloon was headed.

She was pointing into the empty, angel-less heavens beyond.

Everything else. The universe.