Alastair Reynolds - Absolution Gap

For now, therefore, the flotillas of cathedrals would creep along the Way in a more or less fixed formation. If she thought of them as city-states, then now would be a period of trade and diplomacy rather than war. Doubtless there would be espionage and subtle gamesmanship, and doubtless plans were continually being drawn up for future contingencies. But for the moment what prevailed was a state of genteel cordiality, with all the strained courtesies one customarily expected between historical rivals.

This suited Rashmika: it would be difficult enough fitting in with the repair gang without having to deal with additional crises and complications.

She had been given orders to collect her belongings—such as they were—and remain in one vehicle of the caravan. The reason soon became obvious, as the caravan fissioned into many smaller components. Rashmika watched as the quaestor’s workers hopped from vehicle to vehicle, unhooking umbilicals and couplings with cool indifference to the obvious risks.

Some of these sub-caravans were still several vehicles in length, and she watched as they peeled away to rendezvous with the larger cathedrals or cathedrals-clusters. To her disappointment, however, the vehicle to which she had been assigned departed on its own. She was not alone in it—there were a dozen or so pilgrims and migrant workers waiting with her—but any hope that the Catherine of Iron might turn out to be amongst the larger cathedrals was quickly dashed, if it only merited one portion of the caravan.

Well, she had to start somewhere, as the quaestor had said.

Quickly the vehicle nosed away from the major cathedrals, bouncing and jinking over the ruts and potholes they had left in their wake.

“You lot,” she said, addressing the other travellers, standing in front of them with arms akimbo. “Which one of those is the Lady Morwenna?”

One of her companions wiped a smear of mucus from his upper lip. “None of them, love.”

“One of them has to be,” she said. “That’s the main gathering. The sweet spot is right there.”

“That’s the main gathering all right, but no one said the Lady Mor was part of it.”

“Now you’re being oblique for the sake of it.”

“Hark at her,” someone else said. “Right stuck-up little cow.”

“All right,” she countered. “If the Lady Morwenna isn’t there, where is it?”

“Why are you so interested?” the first one asked.

“It’s the oldest cathedral on the Way,” she said. “I think it’d be a little strange not to want to see it, don’t you?”

“All we want is work, love. Doesn’t matter which one doles it out. It’s still the same fucking ice you have to shovel out the way.”

“Well, I’m still interested,” she said.

“It isn’t any of those cathedrals,” another voice said, bored but not unreasonable. She saw a man at the back of the gathering, lying down on a couch with a cigarette in one hand and the other tucked deep into his trousers, where it rummaged and scratched. “But you can see it.”

“Where?”

“Over here, little girl.”

She stepped towards the man.

“Watch him,” another voice said. “He’ll be on you like a rash.”

She hesitated. The man waved her over with his cigarette. He pulled his hand free from his trousers. It ended in a crude-looking metal claw. He transferred the cigarette to it and beckoned her over with his undamaged hand. “It’s all right. I stink a bit, but I don’t bite. Just want to show you the Lady Mor, that’s all.”

“I know,” she said. She stepped through the jumble of other bodies.

The man pointed to a small scuffed window behind him. He wiped it clean with his sleeve. “Look through there. You can still see the top of her spire.”

She looked. All she saw was landscape. “I’m not…”

“There.” The man nudged her chin until she was looking in exactly the right direction. He smelled like vinegar. “Between those bluffs, do you see something sticking up?”

“There’s something sticking up all right,” someone else said.

“Shut up,” Rashmika snapped. There must have been something in the tone of her voice because it had exactly the desired effect.

“See it now?” the man asked.

“Yes. What’s it doing all the way out there? It can’t be on the Permanent Way at all.”

“It is,” the man said. “Just not on the part we usually follow.”

“Doesn’t she know?” said another voice.

“If I did, I wouldn’t be asking,” Rashmika replied tartly.

“The Way branches near here,” the man said, explaining it to her the way you would explain something to a child. She decided that she did not really like him after all. He was helping her, but the manner in which he was helping mattered, too. Sometimes refusal was better than grudging assistance. “Splits in two,” he said. “One route is the one the cathedrals normally follow. Takes them all the way down to the Devil’s Staircase.”

“I know about that,” she said. “Zigzag ramps cut into the side of the Rift. The cathedrals follow them down to the bottom of the Rift, then up the other side again after they’ve crossed it.”

“Right. Care to have a guess where the other route takes them?”

“I’m assuming it crosses the bridge.”

“You’re a clever little girl.”

She pulled away from the window. “If there’s a branch of the Way from the bridge to here, why didn’t we follow it?”

“Because for a caravan it isn’t the quickest route. Caravans can cut corners, go up slopes and around tight bends. Cathe-drals can’t. They have to take the long way around anything they can’t blast through. Anyway, the route to the bridge doesn’t see much maintenance. You might not have noticed it was a part of the Way even if you were on it.”

“Then the Lady Morwenna will pull further and further away from the main gathering of cathedrals,” she said. “Doesn’t that mean Haldora won’t be overhead any more?”

“Not exactly, no,” he said. He scratched at the side of his face with his claw, metal rasping against stubble. “But the Devil’s Staircase isn’t bang on the equator, either. They had to dig it where they could dig it, not where it should have gone. Another thing, too: you go down the Devil’s Staircase, you’ve got overhanging ice to contend with. Not good for Observers: blocks their view of the planet. And the Staircase is where cathedrals stand the best chance of pulling ahead of each other. But if one of them ever managed to cross the bridge, it’d be so far ahead of the pack it’d have to stop to let the others catch up with it. After that, nothing would ever get ahead of them. They could build themselves as wide as they liked. Never mind the glory in having crossed the bridge. They’d rule the Way.”

“But no cathedral has ever crossed the bridge.” She remembered the cratered ruins she had seen from the roof of the caravan. “I know that one did try it once, but…”

“No one said it wasn’t madness, love, but that’s old pop-eyed Dean Quaiche for you. You should be glad you’re ending up on the Iron Katy; They say the rats have already started leaving the Lady Mor.”

“The dean must think he has a good chance of making it,” she said.

“Or he’s insane.” The man grinned at her, his yellow teeth like chipped tombstones. “Take your pick.”

“I don’t have to,” she said, then added, “Why did you call him pop-eyed?”

They all laughed at her. One of them made goggles of his fingers around his eyes.

“Girl’s got a lot to learn,” someone said.

The Catherine of Iron was one of the smaller cathedrals in the procession, travelling alone several kilometres to the rear of the main pack. There were others further behind it, but these were little more than spires on the horizon. Almost certainly they were struggling to catch up with the others, determined to bring themselves as close as possible to the abstract moving point on the Way that corresponded to Haldora sitting precisely overhead. The ultimate shame, from a cathedral’s point of view, was to fall so far back that even the casual observer became aware that Haldora was not quite at the zenith. Worse than that—unspeakably worse—was the stigma that went beyond shame that was the fate suffered by any cathedral that lost sight of Haldora altogether. That was why the work of the Permanent Way gangs was taken so seriously. A day’s delay here or there was nothing, but many such delays could have a catastrophic effect on a cathedral’s progress.