The Algebraist (45 page)

Fassin looked at the curious infant for a while. It kept pointing at the catch. There had been no sign of pet-children round the house in all the time they’d been here. This one looked entirely like it might belong to Oazil, but he had not displayed any earlier, and hadn’t mentioned owning one. The child was still indicating the pane’s lock. It started to mime pressing and twisting and pulling motions.

Fassin opened the pane and let the creature in. It flipped inside, made a sign that was probably meant to be the Dweller equivalent of ‘Shh!’ and floated towards him, curling and cupping its body so that it formed a sickle shape, just a metre away from the prow of the arrowhead craft. Then, on its signal skin, now shielded from sight in all directions save that Fassin was watching from, it spelled out,

OAZIL: MEET ME 2KM STRAIGHT DOWN, HOUR 5. RE. VALSEIR.

It waited till he light-signalled back OK, then it sped out the way it had come, one slim tentacle staying behind after the rest of it had exited just long enough to pull the ceiling pane shut after it. It disappeared into the night-time gloom between the dark library globes outside.

Fassin looked at the time. Just before hour Four. He went back to his studies, finding nothing, thinking about nothing, until just before five, when he went back to Library Twenty-One and slipped out through the secret doorway again. He dropped the two thousand metres down through the slowly increasing heat and pressure and met the old Dweller Oazil, complete with his float-trailer. Oazil signalled,

- Fassin Taak?

-Yes.

- What did Valseir once compare the Quick to? In some detail, if you please.

- Why?

The old Dweller sent nothing for some time, then, - You might guess, little one. Or do this just because I ask. To humour an old Dweller.

Fassin waited a while before answering. - Clouds, he sent, eventually. - Clouds above one of our worlds. We come and we go and we are as nothing compared to the landscape beneath, just vapour compared to implacable rock, which lasts seemingly beyond lasting and is always there long after the clouds of the day or the clouds of the season have long gone, and yet other clouds will always be there, the next day and the next and the next, and the next season and the next year and for as long as the mountains themselves last, and the wind and the rain wear away mountains in time.

- Hmm, Oazil sent, sounding distracted. - Mountains. Curious idea. I have never seen a mountain.

- Nor ever will, I imagine. Do you want me to add any more? I don’t think I recall much else.

- No, that will not be necessary.

- Then?

- Valseir is alive, the old Dweller said. - He sends his regards.

- Alive?

- There is a GasClipper regatta at the C-2 Storm Ultra-Violet 3667, beginning in seventeen days’ time.

- That’s in the war zone, isn’t it?

- The tournament was arranged long before the hostilities were first mooted and so has been cleared with the Formal War Marshals. A special dispensation. Be there, Fassin Taak. He will find you.

The old Dweller roted forward a metre, taking up the slack on the float-trailer’s traces. - Farewell, Seer Taak, he signalled. - Remember me to our mutual friend, if you’d be so kind.

He turned and floated away into the deep hot darkness. In a few moments he was lost to most passive senses. Fassin waited until there was no sign of him at all, then rose slowly back up to the house.

‘Ah, Fassin, I understand commiserations are in order,’ Y’sul said, floating up to the bubble house’s reception balcony from the
Poaflias.
Nuern, Fassin and Hatherence had watched the ship motor out of the dim haze, hearing its engines long before they’d seen it.

‘Your sympathy is noted,’ Fassin told Y’sul. He’d got Hatherence to call the
Poaflias
the day before and order it back from its hunting patrol. The little ship returned with a modest number of trophies strung from its rigging: various julmicker bladders, bobbing like grisly balloons on sticks, three gas-drying RootHugger hides, the heads of a brace of gracile Tumblerines and - patently the most prized, mounted above the craft’s nose - a Dweller Child carcass, already gutted and stretched wide on a frame so that it looked like some slightly grotesque figurehead, flying just ahead of the ship. Fassin had sensed the colonel’s esuit rolling fractionally back when she’d realised what the new addition to the
Poaflias’s
nose actually was.

‘What is your state of mind, Fassin, now that you have lost so many of your family?’ Y’sul asked, coming to a stop in front of the Seer. ‘Are you decided to return to your own people?’

‘My state of mind is… calm. I may still be in shock, I suppose.’

‘Shock?’

‘Look it up. I have not decided to return to my own people yet. There are almost none to return to. We are, however, finished here. I wish to return to Munueyn.’

He’d told the colonel that morning that he’d discovered something and they needed to leave.

‘What have you discovered, major? May I see it?’

‘I’ll tell you later.’

‘I see. So where next are we bound?’

‘Back to Munueyn,’ he’d lied.

‘Munueyn? Our captain will be pleased,’ Y’sul said.

They left that evening. Nuern and Livilido seemed relaxed, positively cheered, that they were departing. Y’sul had returned with news of the war, in which two important Dreadnought actions had already taken place, resulting, in one engagement alone, in the loss of five Dreadnoughts and nearly a hundred deaths. The Zone forces were retreating in two volumes at least and the Belt certainly had the upper grasp at the moment.

Fassin and Hatherence recorded short messages of gratitude for Jundriance to read at his leisure.

Nuern asked them if they wanted to take any of the books or other works from the house.

‘No, thank you,’ Fassin said.

‘I found this humorous thesaurus,’ the colonel said, holding up a small diamond-leaf book. ‘I’d like this.’

‘Be our guest,’ Nuern told her. ‘Anything else? Diamond-based works like that will burn up in a few decades when the house has dropped further into the heat. Take all you want.’

‘Over-kind. This alone is most sufficient.’

‘The GasClipper regatta?’ Captain Slyne said. He scratched his mantle. ‘I thought you wanted to go back to Munueyn?’

‘There was no reason to let our hosts know where we were really heading,’ Fassin told Slyne.

‘You are suspicious of them?’ Y’sul asked.

‘Just no reason to trust them,’ Fassin said.

‘The regatta takes place around the Storm Ultra-Violet 3667, between Zone C and Belt 2,’ the colonel said. ‘Starting in sixteen days. Have we time to get there, captain?’

They were in Slyne’s cabin, a fairly grand affair of flickering wall-screens and antique furniture, the ceiling hung with ancient ordnance: guns, blaster tubes and crossbows all swaying gently as the
Poaflias
powered away at half-throttle from Valseir’s old house. So far Fassin had told Hatherence where they were really going, though not why.

Slyne let himself tilt, looking as though he was about to fall over. He did some more mantle scratching. ‘I think so. I’d better change course, then.’

‘Leave the course change for a little longer, would you?’ Fassin asked. They were only a half-hour away from the bubble house. ‘Though you might go to full speed.’

‘Have to anyway, if we’re to get to that Storm in time,’ Slyne said, turning and manipulating a holo cube floating over his halo-shaped desk. The largest screen, just in front of him, lit up with a chart of the volume and quickly became covered in gently curved lines and scrolling figure boxes. Slyne peered at this display for a few moments, then announced: ‘Full speed, we can be there in eighteen days. Best I can do.’ Slyne gripped a large, polished-looking handle sitting prominently on his desk and pushed it, with a degree of obvious relish, if also a little embarrassment, to its limit. The tone of the ship’s engines altered and the vessel began to accelerate gradually.

‘We might contact Munueyn and hire a faster ship,’ Y’sul suggested. ‘Have it rendezvous with the
Poaflias
en route and transfer to it.’

Slyne rocked back, staring at the older Dweller with patterns of betrayal and horror (non-mild) spreading across his signal skin.

‘Eighteen days will have to do, captain,’ Fassin told Slyne. ‘I don’t think we need be there for the very start of the tournament.’

‘How long do these competitions last, in generality?’ Hatherence asked.

Slyne tore his gaze from an unconcerned-looking Y’sul and said, ‘Ten or twelve days, usually. They might cut this one a little short because of the War. We’ll be there in time for most of it.’

‘Good,’ Fassin said. ‘Stay on your current course for another half-hour, if you please, captain. Turn for the Storm then.’ Slyne looked happier.

‘Consider it done.’

Slyne took advantage of a WindRiver, a brief-lived ribbon of still faster current within the vast, wide jet stream of the whole rotating Zone, and they made good time. They were challenged twice by war craft but allowed to continue on their way, and slipped through a mine net, a wall of dark lace thrown across the sky, dotted with warheads. Dreadnought-catcher, nothing to worry them, Slyne assured them. They had, oh, tens of metres to spare on almost every side.

The screwburster
Poaflias got
to very near the bottom of the Storm called Ultra-Violet 3667 within sixteen days, arriving more or less as the regatta began.

‘Keep clipped on! Could get a bit rough!’ Y’sul yelled, then repeated the warning as a signal, in case they hadn’t heard.

Fassin and Hatherence had come up on deck when the
Poaflias
had started bucking and heaving even more than usual. The gas around them, darker even than it had been at Valseir’s house
,
though less dense and hot, was fairly shrieking through the ship’s vestigial rigging. Ribbons and streaks, just seen coiling briefly round the whole vessel, were then torn away again as the ship plunged into another great boiling mass of cloud.

The human and the oerileithe, still within the relative calmness of the companionway shelter, exchanged glances, then quickly put the crude-looking harnesses on. The colonel’s fitted well over her esuit. Fassin’s-tied tight enough but looked messy, not designed forhis alien shape. Slyne had insisted that everybody should wear the things whenever they went on deck while the
Poaflias
was at full speed, even though both Hatherence and Fassin - in the unlikely event that they were somehow blown off the deck - could easily have caught up with the ship under their own power.

‘What’s going on?’ Hatherence shouted as they neared Y’sul, clinging to the rails near the bow harpoon gun.

‘Going to shoot the storm!’ Y’sul bellowed back.

‘That sounds dangerous!’ Hatherence yelled.

‘Oh, assuredly!’

‘So, what does it entail, exactly?’

‘Punching through the storm wall,’ Y’sul shouted. ‘Tackling the rim winds. Should be spectacular!’ Ahead, a great dark wall of tearing, whirling cloud could be glimpsed beyond the tatters and scraps of gas that the ship was stabbing its way through. Jagged lines of lightning pulsed across this vast cliff like veins of quicksilver.

They were still making maximum speed towards the wall, which seemed to stretch as far to each side as they could see, and up for ever. Downwards was a more swirling mass of even darker gas, boiling like something cooking in a cauldron. The wind picked up, thrumming the rails and rigging and aerials like an enormous instrument. The
Poaflias
shuddered and buzzed.

‘Time to get below, suspect,’ Hatherence shouted. A julmicker bladder blew off a nearby railing - it looked like it had been the last one left - smacked Y’sul across his starboard side and was instantly lost to the shrieking gale.

‘Could be,’ Y’sul agreed. ‘After you.’

They watched from the ship’s armoured storm deck, crowded in with Slyne beneath a blister of thick diamond set at midships, looking out across the deck and watching the
Poaflias’s
nose plunge into the storm like a torpedo thrown at ahorizontal waterfall of ink. The ship groaned, started to spin, and they were all thrown against each other. They disappeared into the wall of darkness. The
Poaflias
shook and leapt like a Dweller child on the end of a harpoon line.

Slyne whooped, pulling on levers and whirling wheels. Stuck in the far reaches of the ovaloid space, Slyne’s pet-children whimpered.

‘This entirely necessary?’ Fassin asked Y’sul.

‘Doubt it!’ the Dweller said. A big flat board covered in studs above Slyne started to light up. In the darkness, it was quite bright..

Hatherence pointed at it as dozens more of the studs lit. ‘What’s that?’

‘Damage-control indicators!’ Slyne said, still working levers and spinning wheels. They all rose to the ceiling as the ship dropped sharply, then crashed back down again.

‘Thought it might be,’ Hatherence said. She was thrown hard against Fassin in a violent turn, and apologised.

When the glare started to get too distracting, Slyne turned the damage-control board off.

In the worst of the turbulence, one of Slyne’s pet-children threw itself at its master and had to be torn off and smacked unconscious before being thrown into a locker. It was unclear whether it had been desperately seeking comfort or attacking. Y’sul was sick. Fassin had never seen a Dweller be sick. Stuck to the ceiling again, coated in a greasy film of vomit, Slyne cursing as he tried to keep hold of the controls, his pet-children keening from all sides, somebody mumbled, ‘Fuck, we’re going to die.’ They all denied responsibility afterwards. The
Poaflias
burst out of the torrent of storm cloud into a vast and hazy calm and started to drop like a lump of iron. Slyne drew in gas to whoop but caught some of Y’sul’s earlier output and just spluttered. Coughing and retching and cursing Y’sul’s lineage to some point only shortly after the Big Bang, he got the ship level and under control, contacted Regatta Control and limped - the ship had lost all its rigging, railings and four of its six engines - to the Lower Marina and a berth in a Storm Repair Facility.

Looking up, into the colossal bowl of the circling storm and on into the haze and the star-specked sky beyond, tiny shapes could be seen, slow-circling against the brassy glare of light.

- The pick-up fleet and relaying craft are all in orbit, Hatherence told him.

They were in a steep-pitched, multi-tiered viewing gallery packed with Dwellers. Protected by carbon ribs ready to be explosively deployed should a competition craft come too close - and attached to the
Dzunda,
a klick-long Blimper riding just inside the storm-wall boundary - the gallery was a relatively safe place to watch GasClipper races. Giant banner screens could scroll up on either side of the fan of dent-seats to provide highlights of other races and relay events too distant to witness directly.

- The pick-up
fleet?
Fassin asked.

- That is as it was described to me, Hatherence said, settling into her seat alongside his. Dwellers around them were staring at them, seemingly fascinated by their alienness. Y’sul had gone off to meet an old friend. While he was with them, Dwellers only glanced at Fassin and Hatherence now and again. With him gone, they stared shamelessly. They had both got used to it, and Fassin was confident that, if Valseir was here and looking for him, he wouldn’t have too difficult a job finding him.

- How big a fleet? Fassin asked.

- Not sure.

There were hundreds of accommodation and spectator Blimpers within the storm’s vast eye, scores of competing GasClippers and support vessels, plus dozens of media and ancillary craft, not to mention a ceremonial - and War-neutral - Dreadnought, the
Puisiel.
This was decked out with multi-tudinous bunting, lines of ancient signal flags and festoons of Dweller-size BalloonFlowers, just so that there’d be no possi-bility of anyone mistaking it for a Dreadnought taking part in the greater and fractionally more serious competition taking place beyond the Storm.

The side screens lit up and they watched some early action from a race which had taken place the day before. Around them, a thousand Dwellers hooted and roared and laughed, threw food, made spoken kudos bets that they would later deny or inflate accordingly, and traded insults.

- Any other news from outside? Fassin asked.

- Our orders remain as they were. There have been more semi-random attacks throughout the system. Nothing on the same scale as the assaults on the Seer assets earlier. The defensive preparations continue apace. Manufacturers continue to make heroic efforts. The people continue to make great but willing sacrifice. Morale remains most high. Though, unofficially, people would seem to be growing more frightened. Some rioting. Deep-space monitors have picked up still ambiguous traces of a great fleet approaching from the direction of the E-5 Disconnect.

- How great?

- Great enough to be bad.

- Much rioting?

- Not much rioting.

The Blimper powered up, distantly revving its engines. A ragged cheer resounded around them as the Dwellers realised things were about to start happening.

- Well, major, the colonel sent, signal strength low in the clat-tering hubbub of noise. - We are finally off the ship
Poaflias,
we are alone, I think it unlikely we can be overheard, and I have built up an extravagant desire to know quite why we are here. Unless you have, in the course, perhaps, of your studies, discovered that you are an insatiable fan of GasClippering.

- According to Oazil, Valseir is alive.

The colonel was silent for a while. Then she sent, - You tell me so, do you?

- Of course, Oazil may be mad or deluded or a fantasist or just a mischief-maker, but from what he said he knew Valseir, or had at least been instructed by Valseir on what to ask me to make sure I really was who I claimed to be.

- I see. So, his turning up at the house was not chance?

- I suspect he’d been keeping a watch on it. Or somebody had, waiting for us - for me - to turn up.

- And he told you to come here?

- He did.

- And then?

- Valseir will find me.

Another cheer went up as the
Dzunda
began to pick up speed, becoming part of a small fleet of similar spectator craft flocking through the gas towards the starting grid of GasClippers arranged a couple of kilometres ahead. This would be a short race, only lasting an hour or so, with turns around buoys set in the Storm Wall. The races would grow longer and more gruelling as the meet progressed, culminating in a last epic struggle all the way round the vast storm’s inner surface.

- So Valseir knew you were or might be looking for him, and had put in place arrangements to… Hmm. That is interesting. Any contact so far?

- Not yet. But now you know why we’re here.

- You will keep me informed?