Ian McDonald - Ares Express

The flame guttered out in dismal sparks. Grandmother Taal flung the empty casing away from her. She looked defiantly up into the great white light.

“I am Taal Chordant Joy-of-May Asiim Engineer 10th, of Catherine of Tharsis !” she declared. “In the name of all Engineers, I claim Uncle Billy!”

A distant voice shouted down.

“How about you, Cousin Taal Engineer! Welcome to Five Great Stones . Come aboard.”

Dark figures were already weaving through the seething white spotlight to her assistance.

Acolytes in plum opened the filigree gates of the hand-cranked elevator and demurely ushered Sweetness and Serpio into a short corridor. More acolytes waited by a tall pair of arched double doors worked with a pattern of twining tree branches and roots. The acolytes were young, pudding-bowl cropped, puppyish. Their plum pants were too short around the ankles and their plum tops too tall around the collar.

“Hiya,” Sweetness said as they swung open the double doors. They smiled.

The audience chamber of Devastation Harx occupied the uppermost chord of the flying cathedral. It was a glassine dome, transparent to heaven. Little webs of sand clung to the corners of the ribbing, souvenirs from when the machine—or was it a building, Sweetness wondered, accustomed to dual-purpose artifacts—had lain buried under the great sand. What was not transparent was wood. Wooden floor, clicky under Sweetness’s desert boots. Wooden furniture—a horseshoe-shaped table and thirteen chairs, all alike and elegantly unostentatious. Wooden cressets, bearing double-handfuls of bioluminescence. Wooden buttresses arching overhead, spreading finger-twigs in a complex interwoven vaulting. Sweetness imagined herself standing in a forest under a winter sky. The audience chamber smelled of wax polish.

If you wandered close to the wooden perimeter handrail you could see the flanks of the lift canopy spreading out around you like old women’s skirts. You could also see that you were several hundred metres above the ground. To a railway girl who had only ever flown in her dreams, it was hypnotically disconcerting. The cathedral was moving over an expanse of old chaotic terrain that had escaped the manforming. The raw stuff of the earth lay heaped and unsorted like effects at a Deuteronomy funeral. Red rock clawed for Sweetness; any and every part of this sharp-edged land could pierce and flay this flying circus like a carnival balloon on a barbed-wire fence. The play of sun and shadow over the long, knife-blade valleys striped the land like an Argyre hunting cat. The ground rippled like sand in a shallow river. Sweetness felt herself dragged to the rail, to contemplate the long slide down the side of the airship, the terminal plummet to end shredded by stone knives. It was a nastily delicious fantasy.

“You know, if men could fly like birds, I don’t think we would really bother doing anything else.” The voice was low and soft and almost accentless. It used the words slowly, as if it weighing and parcelling each. “Everyone, at some time, wonders what it would be like to jump.” Devastation Harx was one of those people who are not what you expect but, when you see them, they so utterly refute your mental image that you can no longer recall what it was you had expected. The face perfectly fitted the voice: late twenties, grey-haired, refined, a hint of epicene to take the edge off crude handsome; lips a little full, as if this face had once belonged to a cruel teen-something who had latterly found a better way. Not over tall, nor over small. Medium framed, no obvious body fat but not gaunt. He had bearing. Poise. A trained stance. He carried his hands as if he knew what to do with them. His left held a black swagger-cane, capped each end with silver. It looked as if it might contain a sword. But best, Sweetness observed, he wore a very killer suit. Soft, light-swallowing black. The frock coat was frogged with silver. His white shirt was clasped with a silver collar brooch. Exactly the same amount of cuff peeped from the coat sleeves. It was not a thing Sweetness had consciously considered until then, but it was now obvious that people who call themselves names like Devastation Harx—he could be no other—need good tailors.

“I am Devastation Harx,” the elegant man said. He offered a hand. Sweetness looked around for Serpio. He was seated at the table. A moment of panic, then she took the hand and, because the suit was so good, she curtsied.

“Sweetness Octave Glorious Honey-Bun Asiim Engineer 12th.”

“A fine name. Well, I am delighted to meet you, Sweetness Octave Glorious Honey-Bun Asiim Engineer 12th. And you…”

He gave a short bow somewhere just off Sweetness’s port flank. She squirmed away, frowned. Devastation Harx seemed to be waiting for something from her.

“Oh. This is, well, I call her Little Pretty One.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Devastation Harx said.

All right, if that’s how you want to play it , Sweetness thought. Nice guy/guy-with-weird-powers.

But he had nice manners. He pulled a chair out for Sweetness at the horseshoe-shaped table. Without any evident summons, more plum acolytes brought fruit and bread.

“I’m sure you’re hungry. The desert’s not exactly conducive to gastronomy.”

Sweetness fell on the fruit bowl. She noticed that Serpio wasn’t eating but the gnaw in her belly said, ask questions later . She gorged. Devastation Harx smiled.

“This is some burg,” Sweetness said, mouth full of pears.

“The power of mail order,” Devastation Harx said.

“You built all this?”

“From remote religion. We’ve always had a strong distance-supply industry in our society; School of the Air, Flying Doctors, Travelling Inseminators, Wandering Miracle Shows, the Universal Pantechnicon Catalogue. We’re a geographically dispersed people—as I’m sure you appreciate. It was the next logical step, mail-order religion. Why not a Church of the Air? Literally.”

Sweetness poured a glass of water, held it up to the light, frowned, demurely dropped in a sterilising tablet.

“It’s always wise not to trust the water,” Devastation Harx said indulgently. He watched Sweetness cram down more fruit. “So, your, ah, attachment?”

Sweetness cleared her gob with chlorinated water.

“She’s my sister.”

“She is?”

“We were joined.”

“You still are.”

“At birth.”

“I see. But now you’re…”

“Separated.”

“But only physically. Not…psychically.”

“Well, I know she’s always there, but I can’t see her, not like you can. I can only see her in mirrors.”

“Yes, that’s often the way of it. Mirrors reflect so much more than just crude physical likeness, don’t you think? They reflect how we feel about what we are, they reflect truths, they can reflect illusions, they reflect our hopes and fears for the future, the marks of our histories, they show us our selves as we can never see them. A lot of magic for a mere half-silvered glass.”

“Is this part of your religion or something?”

“More ‘or something,’” Devastation Harx said. “So, have you had enough yet? Do you want any more?”

Sweetness looked round at the lifter of peels, skins and cores.

“No, I think that’s me.”

“Good.” Devastation Harx stood up. “In that case, allow me to take you on the conducted tour. I don’t get many visitors and I like to show the old place off. It’s not everyone gets a flying cathedral.”

He was already halfway to the double doors. He extended a hand to Sweetness and Serpio. The doors were already swinging open. Sweetness caught a wisp of plum.