Alastair Reynolds - Absolution Gap

The pig played with his knife. “You didn’t, I hope.”

“Of course not, but I hope everyone understands the severity of the problem.”

“We’ve got a rough idea, thanks,” Antoinette said. Then she stood up, pulling down the hem of her formal blouse.

“Where are you going?” Vasko asked.

“To have a chat with the Captain,” she said.

In another part of the High Conch, several floors below, a series of partially linked, scalloplike chambers had been opened out of the conch matter with laborious slowness and much expenditure of energy. The chambers now formed the wards of the main infirmary for First Camp, where the citizenry received what limited medical services the administration could provide.

The doctor’s two green servitors budged aside as Scorpio entered, their spindly jointed limbs clicking against each other. He pushed between them. The bed was positioned centrally, with an incubator set on a trolley next to it on one side and a chair on the other.

Valensin stood up from the chair, placing aside a compad he had been consulting.

“How is she?” Scorpio asked.

“Mother or daughter?”

“Don’t be clever, doc. I’m not in the mood.”

“Mother is fine—except, of course, for the obvious and predictable side effects of stress and fatigue.” Milky-grey daylight filtered into the room from one high slit of a window, which was actually a part of the conch material left unpainted; the light flared off the glass in Valensin’s rhomboid spectacles. “I do not believe she requires any particular care other than time and rest.”

“And Aura?”

“The child is as well as can be expected.”

Scorpio looked at the small thing in the incubator. It was surprisingly shrivelled and red. It twitched like some beached thing struggling for air.

“That doesn’t tell me much.”

“Then I’ll spell it out for you,” Valensin said. Highlights in the doctor’s slicked-back hair gleamed cobalt blue. “The child has already undergone four potentially traumatic procedures. The first was Remontoire’s insertion of the Conjoiner implants to permit communication with the child’s natural mother. Then the child was surgically kidnapped, removed from her mother’s womb. Then she was implanted inside Skade, perhaps following another period in an incubator. Finally, she was removed from Skade under less than optimal field surgical conditions.”

Scorpio assumed Valensin had heard the full story of what happened in the iceberg. “Take my word for it: there wasn’t a lot of choice.”

Valensin laced his fingers. “Well, she is resting. That’s good. And there do not appear to be any immediate and obvious complications. But in the long run? Who can tell? If what Khouri tells us is true, then it isn’t as if she was ever destined for a normal development.” Valensin lowered himself back down into the seat. His legs folded like long hinged stilts, the crease in his trousers razor-sharp. “On a related matter, Khouri had a request. I thought it best to refer it to you first.”

“Go on.”

“She wants the girl put back into her womb.”

Scorpio looked again at the incubator and the child within it. It was a larger, more sophisticated version of the portable unit they had taken to the iceberg. Incubators were amongst the most valued technological artefacts on Ararat, and great care was taken to keep them running.

“Could it be done?” he asked.

“Under ordinary circumstances, I would never contemplate such a thing.”

“These aren’t ordinary circumstances.”

“Putting a child back inside a mother isn’t like putting a loaf of bread back into an oven,” Valensin said. “It would require delicate microsurgery, hormonal readjustment… a host of complex procedures.”

Scorpio let the doctor’s condescension wash over him. “But it could be done?”

“Yes, if she wants it badly enough.”

“But it would be risky?”

Valensin nodded after a moment, as if until then he had considered only the technical hurdles, rather than the hazards. “Yes. To mother and child both.”

“Then it doesn’t happen,” Scorpio said.

“You seem rather certain.”

“That child cost the life of my friend. Now that we’ve got her back, I’m not planning on losing her.”

“I hope you’ll be the one to break the news to the mother, in that case.”

“Leave it to me,” Scorpio said.

“Very well.” Scorpio had the feeling that the doctor was disappointed. “One other thing: she mentioned that word again, in her sleep.”

“What word?”

“Hella,” Valensin said. “Or something like it.”

Rashmika’s estimate turned out to have been optimistic. She had expected another two or three hours of travel before the caravan reached the eastern side of the bridge, but after four hours they appeared only to have made up half the distance. There had been many frustrating periods where the caravan doubled back on itself, following sinuous reverse-loops in the walls. There were times when they had to squeeze through runnels in the cliff, moving at little more than walking pace while the ice scraped against either side of the procession. Two or three times they had come to a complete halt while some technical matter was attended to—no explanation was ever forthcoming. She had the impression that the drivers tried to make up time after these delays, but the subsequent recklessness—which caused the vehicles to bounce and swerve perilously close to the edge—only added to her anxiety. When the quaestor had told her that they would be taking the bridge she had felt great apprehension, but now she was inclined to think it preferable to the many hazards of the ledge traverse. The road along the ledge was a human artefact: it had been blasted or cut into the cliffs within the last century and had probably been repaired and realigned several times since then. Doubt-less bits of it had collapsed over the years, and many vehicles must have taken the long, ballistic plunge to the bottom of the Rift. But the bridge was surely older than that. Now that she had given the matter some thought, it struck her as highly unlikely that it would choose her lifetime in which to come crashing down. It would actually be a remarkable privilege were that to happen.

Even so, she would still be glad when they reached the other side.

She was looking out of the viewing window when she saw another quick succession of flashes, like those she had observed from the roof. They were brighter now—she was undoubtedly closer to the source of whatever they were—and they left hemispherical purple after-images on her eyes, even when she blinked.

“You’re wondering what they are,” a voice said.

She turned. She was expecting to see Quaestor Jones, but the voice did not quite have his timbre. It was the voice of a younger man, with an accent from somewhere in the badlands.

Harbin, she wondered for an instant? Could it possibly be Harbin?

But it wasn’t her brother.

She didn’t recognise the man at all. He was taller than her and a little older, she guessed, although there was something in his expression—something in his eyes, now that she narrowed it down—that made him appear to be a lot older. He was not really bad-looking, she supposed. He had a thin, serious face, with prominent cheekbones and a jawline so sharp it hurt. His hair was cut very short, shorter than she liked it, so that she could see the exact shape of his skull: a phrenologist’s dream date. He had small ears that stuck out more than he might have wished. His neck was thin and his Adam’s apple was prominent in a way that always alarmed her in men, as if something inside his neck had popped out of alignment and needed to be pushed back before harm was done.