Alastair Reynolds - Absolution Gap

“Then I’m not going to lose any sleep over it,” Scorpio said.

Antoinette came to see Scorpio after the meeting. He had taken the elevator back upship, to assist with the ongoing efforts to process the evacuees. There were people everywhere, huddled into filthy, dank, winding corridors as far as the eye could see.

He walked along one of these corridors, absorbing the frightened faces, fielding questions when he was able to, but saying nothing about the wider plans for the ship and its passengers. He told them only that they would be taken care of, that some of them would be frozen, but that every effort would be taken to make the process as painless and safe as possible. He believed it, too, for a while. But then it dawned on him, after navigating one corridor, that he had seen only a few hundred evacuees out of the thousands supposedly aboard.

He met Antoinette in a junction, where Security Arm militia were directing people to functioning elevators that would take them to different processing centres much further down the ship.

“It’s going to be all right, Scorp,” she said.

“Am I that easy to read?”

“You look worried, as if you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders.”

“Funny, but that’s more or less how I feel.”

“You’ll hack it. Do you remember how it was with Clavain, when we were in the Mademoiselle’s Chateau?”

“That was a while back.”

“Well, I remember even if you don’t. He looked just the way you look now, Scorp, as if his whole life had been a sequence of errors, culminating in that one moment of absolute failure. He nearly lost it then. But he didn’t . He kept it together. And it worked out. In the end, that sequence of errors turned out to be exactly the right set of choices.”

He smiled. “Thanks for the pep talk, Antoinette.”

“I just thought you should know. Things are getting complicated, Scorp, and I know you sometimes don’t think that’s exactly your ideal milieu, if you get my drift. But you’re wrong. Your kind of leadership is just what we need now: blunt and to the point. You’re not a politician, Scorp. Thank God for that. Clavain would have agreed, you know.”

“You think so?”

“I know so. I’m just asking you not to have a crisis on us. Not now.”

“I’ll try not to.”

She sighed and punched him playfully on the arm. “I just wanted you to know that before I leave.”

“Leave?”

“I’ve made my mind up: I’m going back down to Ararat on one of Remontoire’s shuttles. Xavier’s down there.”

“That’ll be risky,” he warned. “Why not just let Remontoire bring Xavier back up here? He’s already agreed to bring Orca back from Ararat. I hate to be blunt—sorry—but at least that way we’d only lose one of you if the wolves take out the shuttle.”

“Because I’m not coming back,” she said. “I’m going down to Ararat and I’m staying there.”

It took a moment for that to sink in. “But you made it out,” he said.

“No, Scorp, I came up with the Infinity because I didn’t have a lot of choice in the matter. But my responsibilities are down there, with the thousands we’ll be leaving behind. Oh, they don’t really need me, I suppose, but they definitely need Xavier. He’s about the only one who knows how to fix anything when it goes wrong.“

“I’m sure you’ll make yourself useful,” Scorpio said, smiling.

“Well, if they let me fly something now and then, I guess I won’t go totally insane.”

“We could still use you up here. I could use an ally any time of the day.”

“You’ve got allies, Scorp; you just don’t know it yet.”

“You’re doing a brave thing,” he said.

“It’s not such a dreadful place,” she replied. “Don’t make me out to be too much of a martyr. I never really minded Ararat. I liked the sunsets. I guess I’ve even developed a taste for seaweed tea after all these years. All I’m really doing is staying at home.”

“We’ll miss you,” he said.

She looked down. He had the feeling that she could not look at his face. “I don’t know what’s going to happen now, Scorp. Maybe you’ll take this ship to Hela, like Aura says. Maybe you’ll go somewhere else. But I’ve a feeling we won’t ever meet again. It’s a big universe out there, and the chances of our paths ever crossing again…”

“It’s a big place,” he said, “but on the other hand, I guess that also makes it big enough for a few coincidences.”

“For some people, maybe, but not for the likes of you and me, Scorp.” She looked up then, staring hard into his eyes. “I was scared of you when I met you, I don’t mind admitting that now. Scared and ignorant. But I’m glad everything happened the way it did. I’m glad I got to know you for a few years.”

“It was half my life.”

“They were good years, Scorp. I won’t forget them.” Once more she looked down. He wondered if she was looking at his small, childlike shoes. Suddenly he felt self-conscious, wishing he was larger, more human, less like a pig and more like a man. “Remontoire’s going to have that shuttle ready soon,” she said. “I’d better be going. Take care of yourself, all right? You’re a good man. A good pig.”

“I try,” Scorpio said.

She hugged him, then kissed him.

Then she was gone. He never saw her again.

The caravan sidled up to the kerb of the Way, overtaking one cathedral after another. Monstrous machinery loomed over Rashmika. She was too overwhelmed to take it all in, retaining only a blurred impression of great dark-grey mechanisms, projected to an inhuman scale. As the caravan wormed between them, the cathedrals appeared to remain completely still, as fully rooted to the landscape as the buildings she had seen on the Jarnsaxa Flats. Except, of course, that these buildings were true skyscrapers, jagged fingers clawing across the face of Haldora. And that stillness, Rashmika knew, was only an illusion born of the caravan’s speed. Were they to stop, one or another of the cathedrals would be rolling over them within a few minutes.

It was said that the cathedrals never stopped. It was also said that they seldom deviated from their paths unless a given obstacle was too large to be safely crushed beneath their traction mechanisms.

The Way was much narrower than she had expected. She recalled what Quaestor Jones had said: that it was never more than two hundred metres wide, and usually much less than that. Distances were difficult to judge in the absence of any familiar landmarks, but she did not think the Way was more than one hundred metres wide at any point along this stretch. Some of the larger cathedrals were almost that wide themselves, squatting across the full width of the Way like mechanical toads. The smaller cathedrals were able to travel two abreast, but only by allowing parts of their superstructures to lean out over the edges of the Way. Here, it did not really matter: the Way was just a smoothed and cleared strip across the other-wise flat and unobstructed expanse of the Flats. Any one of the cathedrals could have diverted off the path prepared ahead of it, taking its chances on the slightly rougher ground on either side. But clearly no such risk-taking was on the cards today, and the relative order of the procession looked set to remain unchallenged for the time being. This was the normal way of things: the jockeying, jousting and general dirty tricks that one heard about in the badlands were very much the exception rather than the rule, and such stories, Rashmika had long suspected, enjoyed a degree of exaggeration as they travelled north.