Ian McDonald - Ares Express

“Okay, I’ll get you your filthy money,” Weill growled, then spent five minutes he could not afford trying to track down Synodical Security’s Head of Finance through the labyrinth of Wisdom bureaucracy and the planetary communications network only to catch him on an approach shot to the thirteenth at Great Estramadura.

“How much?”

Weill repeated the fee. He heard the sigh.

“It’s yours. It’s transferring now. Now, if you’d be so kind, I’m about to dormy this hole.”

But Weill’s request had put Synodical Security’s Head of Finance off his stroke. He sliced his approach, bunkered, took five to get on to the green and threw away the match. The five-million-dollar five iron.

Mishcondereya’s plague of nano-flies had liberally dosed the Church of the Ever-Circling Spiritual Family with hallucinogens, there was a clear window of fifteen minutes to get Skerry in and out before the dosages wore off: she crept in on muffled fans, positioning the speed dirigible over what the satellite images had shown was a shattered glass vault at the apex of the cathedral.

In the command tower, Weill relinquished the command chair for Seskinore, fresh from the ritual ablutions which climaxed his preperformance superstitions which included inside out underwear, never wearing anything blue, singing two bars from “The Five O’Clock Whistle” and allowing no one to use the word bishop . Weill considered it a professional challenge to work in as many natural and logical uses of that last, taboo word as possible when he First ADed to Seskinore. The old ham took two puffs of minty breath freshener, sat ponderously down in the Director’s chair, cracked his walnut-knuckled fingers and donned his virtuality headset.

“And how are we, boys and girls?”

“Boys and girls are ready to rock-’n’-roll.”

The props were all in place, lighting and SFX up to speed, the actors cued and ready, and now Skerry had seen the gaping hole right through the belly of it all. Precious minutes could be lost sorting through racks of religious paraphernalia. She might have to take a hostage, anathema to Skerry. Threaten nastiness. It was a distinct possibility she might not be able to find the saint at all. Skerry thumbed the cabincom and explained her predicament to Mishcondereya.

“ Merde ,” Mishcondereya said, crackly over the corn lines. A pause, then, “I’ll call Control.” Mishcondereya called Seskinore. Seskinore called Bladnoch out in UA2, who called Weill to call the cave because the old train-witch might have got something about that in that sending. While Weill called the Comedy Cave, Skerry listened to the static on the interphone and tried to make faces out of the swirling patterns. It was a distraction from the stage fright. The fright was a secret she had successfully kept all her professional life: Skerry Scanland Ghalgorm was martyr to that disease of performers. The fear. The shakings; the pacings; the compulsive bouncings of balls on walls; the huddlings in the corner, arms wrapped around knees, rocking and moaning in terror; the discreet throwings up. She recited cantos from the Evyn Psalmody. She performed a Damantine stretch routine, jogged on the spot, chanted tongue-twisters. Anything to push down the dread. On this gig, stage fright could kill you.

“Sker.”

“The old train-witch doesn’t know.”

“The old train-witch has hightailed it.”

Skerry was beginning to have a bad feeling about this.

“She’s what?”

“Gone. Scarpered. Skedaddled. Flown the coop. Split the joint. Sker.”

“What?”

“There’s something else.”

Skerry’s stomach spasmed.

“What kind of something else?”

“He’s moving.”

“He’s not supposed to move.”

“I’m getting readings; he’s cast off from the dock and is under acceleration.”

Skerry swore. The calculations were all based on a stationary target. The margins were tight, hideously tight. Maimingly tight.

“Are we tracking him?”

“I’m setting up a radar lock now. That’s us. We’re locked on, provided he doesn’t make any sudden course changes. And, ah, Sker…”

“What now?”

“You know I said there was something else?”

“Yes.”

“Well, there’s another something else after that one.”

“Tell me.”

“Ground-to-orbit tracking at Molesworth has picked up a number of objects de-orbiting into atmospheric entry configurations.”

“A number, what number?”

“A big number.”

“How big a number?”

“Five thousand, in the first wave.”

“First wave? How many waves are there?”

“Four that Molesworth knows of.”

“Twenty thousand, that’s a big number. Does Molesworth know what they are?”

“Nothing on sensors, but, um, how should I put his? That other moon we used to have…”

“Oh, Mother of all Grace…”

“I don’t know how he’s done it, but he’s got into the planetary defence systems. He’s dropping soldiers all over the day side of the planet.”

Now Weill spoke in her ear.

“Thirty seconds. First positions.”

Skerry felt the dirigible shift altitude as Mishcondereya steered by radar through the cloud of unknowing. The fans swivelled into braking configuration, whirred, slowed to a safe-distancing thrum. Mishcondereya was parked directly over the Cathedral of the Church of the Ever-Circling Spiritual Family, matching its ponderous progress through the fog that would soon boil into angels and demons. Skerry tried to send her circus sense out into the churning mist, feeling for her unseen target, asking clues, hints, graces. Give me a sign, what does it look like? Give me a break, one little break.

“Ready, Bladnoch?” Weill said.

“Ready.”

“Ready, Mishcon?”

“Ready.”

“Ready, Skerry?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be.”

She buckled the bungees together around her ankles, strapped the isokinetic punch around her left wrist. The charge light glowed. She would blow a pure and perfect circle out of the hull, dive head first through, blow free the bungee couplings, roll and come up slugging. Simple. Pity there wouldn’t be anyone there to see her greatest stunt.

The show goes on.

“Cue Armageddon,” Seskinore said. The green jump light went on. And, as it did every time, though she doubted it, every time, the fear went. Vanished. She was filled with a clear, cold certainty. It was easy. It was all so easy.

“Dying is easy, comedy is hard!” Skerry yelled, and dived head first out of the airship into the fog.

“Never!” Naon Sextus Solstice-Rising Asiim Engineer 11th thundered. His fist met the gleaming mahogany of the conference table. Tea glasses jumped, startled off their thick bottoms. “Never never never!” A double pound, doubly emphatic.

The gathered heads, without-portfolios and diverse uninviteds of the Domieties of Catherine of Tharsis turned their attention to the other end of the table where Child’a’grace sat, hands folded meekly in her lap, the natural leader of the rebel alliance.

She said, mildly, “But husband, it is your own mother.”

Naon Sextus’s mouth worked. For a terrible moment everyone thought all propriety would be undone and he would address his wife directly. He caught his words, turned to Marya Stuard, his lieutenant and interpreter.

“Inform my wife that she is correct, it is my mother, and Taal Chordant Joy-of-May Asiim Engineer 10th is an Engineer of Engineers, and were she here, she would tell you no different from what I am telling you: we have never, never, never failed to deliver a contract. She would say, leave me there.”

The assembly pondered the self-orbiting logic. The Confab Chamber was steadily filling; word had passed up and down the train that the thing that had simmered four long years between Naon Engineer and his wife was at last coming to a head. Ringside seats at a full-blown domestic! Spectators packed the railed off Gentles and Relatives areas at each end of the carriage. The Bassareenis had turned out en famille . They were particularly keen to watch the snooty Engineers publicly disgrace themselves.