Alastair Reynolds - Absolution Gap

She knew what he meant. The rigours of this part of the pilgrimage were as nothing compared to what would happen when Pietr reached the cathedral that was his destination. There, his faith would be irreversibly consolidated by chemical means. And as an Observer he would be surgically and neurologically adapted to enable him to witness Haldora for every instant of his existence. No sleep, no inattention, not even the respite of blinking.

Only mute observance, until he died.

“I wouldn’t have the strength either,” she said. “Even if I believed.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Because I believe in rational explanations. I do not believe planets simply cease to exist without good reason.”

“But there is a good reason. The best possible reason.”

“The work of God?”

Pietr nodded. Fascinated, she watched the bob of his Adam’s apple pushing against the high edge of his collar. “What better explanation can you ask for?”

“But why here, why now?”

“Because these are End Times,” Pietr said. “We’ve had human war and human plagues. Then we had stranger plagues and reports of stranger wars. Don’t you wonder where the refugees come from? Don’t you wonder why they come here , of all places? They know it. They know this is the place where it will begin. This is the place where it will happen.”

“I thought you said you weren’t a believer.”

“I said I wasn’t sure of the strength of my faith. That isn’t quite the same thing.”

“I think if God wanted to make a point, He’d find a better way to do it than through the random vanishing of a gas-giant planet light-years from Earth.”

“But it isn’t random,” Pietr countered, evading the rest of her point. “That’s what everyone thinks, but it isn’t true. The churches know it, and those who take the time to study the records know it, too.”

Now, despite herself, she found that she wanted to hear what he had to say. Pietr was correct: the vanishings of Hal-dora were always spoken of by the churches as if they were random events, subject to inscrutable divine scheduling. And the shameful thing was that she had always taken this information at face value, without questioning it. She had never stopped to think that the truth might be more complex. She had been far too preoccupied with her academic study of the scut-tlers to look further afield.

“If it isn’t random,” she asked, “then what is it?”

“I don’t know what you’d call it if you were a mathematician or a scholar. I’m neither. I only know what such people have told me. It’s true that you can never predict when a vanishing will occur—in that sense they are random. But the average gap between vanishings has been growing shorter ever since Quaiche witnessed the first one. It’s just that until recently no one could see it clearly. Now you can’t miss it, if you study the evidence.”

The back of Rashmika’s neck prickled. “Then show me the evidence. I want to see it.”

The caravan swerved sharply as it entered another of the tunnels bored through the side of the cliff.

“I can show you evidence,” he said, “but whether it’s the right evidence or not is another matter entirely.”

“You’re losing me, Pietr.”

The caravan scraped and gouged its way through the narrow confines of the tunnel. Rashmika heard thumps as dislodged ceiling materials—rocks and ice—hammered against the roof. She thought of the Observers up there and wondered what it was like for them.

“We’ll reach the bridge in four or five hours,” he said. “When we’re halfway across, meet me on the roof, where we were before. I’ll have something interesting to show you.”

“Why would I want to meet you on the roof, Pietr? Can I trust you?”

“Of course,” he said.

But she only accepted his word because she knew that he believed what he said.

Khouri awoke. Scorpio was with her when she opened her eyes, sitting in the seat next to her bed where Valensin had been earlier. Another hour had passed, and he had missed the meeting in the High Conch. He considered this an acceptable trade-off.

The woman blinked and rubbed sleep gum from her eyes. Her lips were caked in the stringy white residue of dried saliva. “How long have I been out?”

“It’s the morning of the day after we rescued Aura. You’ve been out for most of it. Doc says it’s just fatigue catching up with you. That whole time you were with us, you must have been running on vapour.”

Khouri’s head turned to the other side of the bed. “Aura?”

“Doc says she’s doing OK. Like you, she just needs rest. Considering ail the crap she’s been through, she’s doing pretty well.”

Khouri closed her eyes. She sighed. In that moment Scorpio saw tension flood out of her. It was as if the whole time she had been with them, ever since they had pulled her out of the capsule, she had been wearing a mask. Now the mask had been discarded.

She opened her eyes again. They were like windows into a younger woman. He remembered, forcefully, the way Khouri had been before the two ships had separated in the Resurgam system. Half his life ago.

“I’m glad she’s safe,” she said. “Thank you for helping me. And I’m sorry for what happened to Clavain.”

“So am I, but there was no choice. Skade has us. She set the trap, we walked into it. Once she knew she couldn’t benefit from holding on to Aura, she was ready to give her back to us. But she wasn’t going to let us leave without paying. She felt Clavain still owed her.”

“But what she did to him…”

Scorpio touched her head gently. “Don’t think about it now. Don’t ever think about it, if you can help it.”

“He was your friend, wasn’t he?”

“Guess so. Inasmuch as I’ve ever had friends.”

“I think you’ve had friends, Scorp. I think you still have friends. Two more now, if you want them.”

“Mother and daughter?”

“We both owe you.”

“I’ll take it under advisement.”

She laughed. It was good to hear someone laugh. Khouri was the last one he’d have expected it from. Before the trip to the iceberg she had struck him as monomanically driven, like a purposeful preprogrammed weapon sent down from the heavens. But he understood now that she was as fragile and human as the rest of them. Whatever “human” meant for a pig.

“Mind if I ask you something?” he said. “If you’re sleepy, I can come back in a little while.”

“Fetch me that water, will you?”

He brought her the beaker of water she’d indicated. She drank half of it down, then wiped the white scurf from her moistened lips. “Go on, Scorp.”

“You have a link to Aura, don’t you? A mental connection, via the implants Remontoire put in both of you?”

“Yes,” she said;, guardedly.

“Do you understand everything that comes through it?”

“How do you mean?”

“You said that Aura speaks through you. Fine, I think I understand that. But do you ever pick up unintentional stuff?”

“Like what?”

“You know the leakage we have from the wolf war? Stuff slipping through the defences? Do you ever get leakage from Aura, things that cross over the gap between you, but which you can’t process?”

“I wouldn’t know.” She sounded less happy now than she had a minute earlier. She was frowning. The windows had slammed shut again. “What sort of thing were you thinking of, exactly?”

“Not sure,” he said. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s just a shot in the dark. When we pulled you out of that capsule, Valensin hit you with sedatives because you wouldn’t let us examine you. Knocked you out good and cold. But in your sleep you still kept saying something.”