Alastair Reynolds - Absolution Gap

Vasko shrugged. “We’ll just have to factor it into our long-term planning. It’s nothing we can’t deal with. The ship’s still headed for Hela, isn’t it? Even the Captain sees that’s the right place to go now.”

“Just make sure you keep on his right side,” Scorpio said. “Place could get a little uncomfortable otherwise.”

“The Captain isn’t a problem.”

“Nor am I, now.”

“It doesn’t have to be this way. It’s your call, Scorp.”

Yes, his call: whether to stand down from command on the grounds of medical unsuitability, or save his dignity by going back into the casket. What was it Valensin had told him? He had a fifty-fifty chance of making it out alive next time. But even if the casket didn’t kill him he would be a wreck, surviving only by a kind of chemical momentum. One more trip into the casket after that and he’d be pushing the statistics to breaking point.

“You’re still not going to admit this is mutiny?” he asked.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Vasko said. “We still value your input as a colony senior. No one has ever said otherwise. You’ll still be nominally in charge. It’s just that your role will become more of a consultative one.”

“Rubber-stamping whatever you and Urton and the rest of your gang decide is the next policy decision?”

“That sounds terribly cynical.”

“I should have drowned you when I had the chance,” Scorpio said.

“You shouldn’t say that. I’ve learned as much from you as I did from Clavain.”

“You knew Clavain for about a day, kid.”

“And how long did you know him, Scorp? Twenty, thirty years? That still wasn’t a scratch against his lifetime. You think it really makes any difference? If you want to make a point of it, then neither of us knew him.”

“Maybe I didn’t know him ,” Scorpio said, “but I know he’d have let that shuttle in, just the way I did.”

“You’re probably right,” Vasko said, “but it would still have been a mistake. He wasn’t infallible, you know. They didn’t call him the Butcher of Tharsis for nothing.”

“You’d have deposed him as well, is that what you’re saying?”

Vasko considered the point and then nodded. “He’d have been getting old as well. Sometimes you just have to cut out the dead wood.”

Aura came to see him before they put him under again. She stood in front of her mother, knees together, hands together. Khouri was straightening her daughter’s hair, fussing her fringe into shape. They both wore white.

“I’m sorry, Scorpio,” Aura said. “I didn’t want them to get rid of you.”

He felt like saying something angry, something that would hurt her, but the words stalled in his mouth. He knew, on some fundamental level, that none of this was Aura’s fault. She had not asked for the things that had been put in her head.

“It’s all right,” he said. “They’re not getting rid of me. I’m just going to go back to sleep again until they remember how useful I am.”

“It won’t take them long,” Khouri said. She knelt down so that her head was at the same level as her daughter’s. “You were right,” she said. “No matter what advice Aura gave you, and no matter what the others said, it was the right thing to do. The brave thing. The day we forget that is the day we might as well start calling ourselves wolves as well.”

“That’s the way I saw it,” Scorpio said. “Thanks for your support. It’s not that I don’t have allies, I just don’t have as many as I need.”

“None of us are going anywhere in a hurry, Scorp. We’ll still be around when you wake up.”

He acknowledged that with a nod, but kept his thoughts to himself. She knew as well as he did that there was nothing certain about his chances of waking up again.

“What about you?” he asked. “Planning to sleep this one out?”

He had expected Khouri to answer: the question had been addressed at her. But it was Aura who spoke. “No, Scorpio,” she said. “I’m going to stay awake. I’m six now. I want to be older when we reach Hela.”

“You have it all worked out, don’t you?”

“Not all of it,” she said, “but I’m remembering more and more each day.”

“About the shadows?” he asked.

“They’re people,” she said. “Not exactly like us, but closer than you’d think. They just live on the other side of something. But it’s very bad there. Something’s gone wrong with their home. That’s why they can’t live there any longer.”

“Sometimes she speaks of brane worlds,” Khouri said, “mumbles mathematics in her sleep, stuff about folded branes and gravitic signalling across the bulk. We think the shadows are entities, Scorp: the inhabitants of an adjacent universe.”

‘That’s quite a leap.“

“It’s all there, in the old theories. They might only be a few millimetres away, in the hyperspace of the bulk.”

“And what does this have to do with us?”

“Like Aura says, they can’t live there any longer. They want out. They want to come across the gap, into this brane, but they need help from someone on this side to do it.”

“Just like that? Would there be something in it for us, as well?”

“She’s always talked about negotiation, Scorp. I think what she meant was that the shadows might be able to help us out with our own local problem.”

“Provided we let them cross the gap,” Scorpio said.

“That’s the idea.”

“You know what?” he said, as the technicians began to plumb him in. “I think I’m going to have to sleep on this one.”

“What are you holding in your hand?” Khouri asked.

He opened his fist, showing her the shard of conch material Remontoire had given him. “It’s for luck,” he said.

Rashmika was on her way to the Clocktower when Grelier emerged from the shadows between two pillars. She wondered how long he had been skulking there, waiting on the off chance that she would select this particular route from her quarters.

“Surgeon-General,” she said.

“Like a wee word, if that won’t take too much of your time.”

“I’m on my way to the garret. The dean has a new Ultra delegation to interview.”

“This won’t take a moment. I understand how useful you’ve become to him.”

Rashmika shrugged: clearly she was going nowhere until Grelier was done with her. “What is it?” she asked.

“Nothing much,” he said, “just a small anomaly in your bloodwork. Thought it worth mentioning.”

“Then mention it,” she said.

“Not here, if you don’t mind. Loose lips, and all that.”

She looked around. There was no one else in sight. There was, now that she thought about it, almost never anyone else in sight when the surgeon-general was in the vicinity. He made witnesses melt into the architecture, especially when he did his rounds with the medical case and its arsenal of loaded syringes. Today all he carried was the cane, the head of which he tapped against the bottom of his chin as he spoke.

“I thought you said it would only take a moment,” Rashmika said.

“It will, and it’s on your way. We’ll just make a stop in Bloodwork, and then you can go about your duty.”

He escorted her to the nearest Clocktower elevator, slid the trelliswork door closed and set the carriage in motion. Outside it was daytime. The coloured light from the stained-glass windows slid tints across his face as they rose.

“Enjoying your work here, Miss Els?”

“It’s work,” she said.

“You don’t sound sparklingly enthusiastic. I’m surprised, frankly. Given what you might have ended up with—dangerous work in a clearance gang—haven’t you landed on your feet?”