Alastair Reynolds - Absolution Gap

“I’m sure you have. But—please—show a modicum of restraint, all right?”

“And your magic advisor?” Seyfarth asked. “What did she have to say on the matter?”

“She concluded there was nothing to worry about,” Quaiche said.

Seyfarth turned around, latching his helmet into place. The pink plume fell across the black strip of his faceplate. He looked both comical and fearsome, which was exactly the intended effect.

“I’ll get to work, then.”

An hour later there was an official transmission from the Clocktower of the Lady Morwenna. The arrangement had been accepted by the Adventist party. Subject to the installation of twenty clerical observers aboard the Nostalgia for Infinity , the lighthugger was free to move into near-Hela space and commence the defence watch. Once the observers had come aboard and inspected the weapons setup, the crew would be permitted to make a limited physical study of the Haldora phenomenon.

The reply was sent back within thirty minutes. The terms were acceptable to the Nostalgia for Infinity , and the Adventist party would be welcomed aboard as the ship made its approach-spiral to Hela orbit. At the same time, an Ultra delegation would proceed by shuttle to the landing stage of the Lady Morwenna.

Thirty minutes after that, with a flicker of main drive thrust, the Nostalgia for Infinity broke station from the parking swarm.

The threshing machinery of Motive Power seemed to salute Captain Seyfarth as he strode through the chamber, his gloved hands tucked behind his back. As the leader of the Cathedral Guard, he never counted on a warm welcome from the mechanically minded denizens of the propulsion department. While they had no instinctive dislike for him, they did have long memories: it was always Seyfarth’s people who put down any rebellions within the Lady Morwenna’s technical workforce. There were surprisingly few workers in the chamber now, but in his mind’s eye Seyfarth sketched in the fallen bodies and injured victims of the last “arbitration action,” as the cathedral authorities had referred to the matter. Glaur, the shift boss he was looking for now, had never been directly linked to the rebellion, but it was clear from their infrequent dealings that Glaur had no love for either the Cathedral Guard or its chief.

“Ah, Glaur,” he said, catching sight of the man next to an open access panel.

“Captain. What a pleasure.”

Seyfarth made his way to the panel. Wires and cables hung from its innards, like disembowelled vitals. Seyfarth pulled the access hatch down so that it hung half-opened over the dangling entrails. Glaur started to say something—some useless protestation—but Seyfarth silenced him by touching a finger to his own lips. “Whatever it is, it can wait.”

“You have no…”

“Bit quiet in here, isn’t it?” Seyfarth said, looking around the chamber at the untended machines and empty catwalks. “Where is everyone?”

“You know exactly where everyone is,” Glaur said. “They got themselves off the Lady Mor as soon as they could. By the end of it they were charging a year’s wages for a surface suit. I’m down to a skeleton crew now, just enough lads to keep the reactor sweet and the machines greased.”

“Those who left,” Seyfarth mused. It was happening all over the cathedral: even the Guard was having trouble stopping the exodus. “They’d be in violation of contract, wouldn’t they?”

Glaur looked at him incredulously. “You think they give a damn about that, Captain? All that they care about is getting off this thing before we reach the bridge.”

Seyfarth could smell the man’s fear boiling off him like a heat haze. “You mean they don’t think we’ll make it?”

“Do you?”

“If the dean says we’ll make it, who are we to doubt him?”

“I doubt him,” Glaur said, his voice a hiss. “I know what happened the last time, and we’re bigger and heavier. This cathedral isn’t going to cross that bridge, Captain, no matter how much blood the surgeon-general pumps into us.”

“Fortunate, then, that I won’t be on the Lady Morwenna when it happens,” Seyfarth said.

“You’re leaving?” Glaur asked, suddenly keen.

Did he imagine, Seyfarth thought, that he was actually proposing rebellion? “Yes, but on church business. Something that’ll keep me away until the bridge is either crossed… or it isn’t. What about you?”

Glaur shook his head, stroking the filthy handkerchief he kept knotted around his neck. “I’ll stay, Captain.”

“Loyalty to the dean?”

“Loyalty to my machines, more like.”

Seyfarth touched him on the shoulder. “I’m impressed. You wouldn’t be tempted, not even once, to steer the cathedral from the Way, or to sabotage the motors?”

Glaur’s teeth flashed. “I’m here to do a job.”

“It’ll kill you.”

“Then maybe I’ll leave at the last moment. But this cathedral’s staying on the Way.”

“Good man. We’d better make sure of that, all the same.”

Glaur looked into his eyes. “I’m sorry, Captain?”

“Walk me to the lock-out controls, Glaur.”

“No.”

Seyfarth seized him by the neckerchief, lifted him half his height from the ground. Glaur choked, flailing his fists uselessly against Seyfarth’s chest.

“Walk me to the lock-out controls,” Seyfarth repeated, his voice still calm.

The surgeon-general’s private shuttle made its own approach, squatting down on a stiletto of fusion thrust. The landing pad Grelier had selected was a small, derelict affair on the outskirts of the Vigrid settlement. His red cockleshell of a ship came to rest with a pronounced lean, the pad’s surface subsiding into the ground. The pad clearly saw very little traffic: it might easily have been decades since anything larger than a robot supply drone had landed on it.

Grelier gathered his belongings and exited his ship. The pad was decrepit, but the walkway leading away from it was still more or less serviceable. Tapping his cane against the fractured craquelure of the concrete surface, he made his way to the nearest public entrance point. The airlock, when he tried it, refused to open. He resorted to the all-purpose Clocktower key—it was supposed to open just about any door on Hela—but that didn’t work either. Gloomily he concluded that the door was simply broken, its mechanism failed.

He followed the trail for another ten minutes, casting around until he found a lock that actually worked. He was near the centre of the little buried hamlet now; the topside was a confusion of parked vehicles, abandoned equipment modules, scorched and broken-faceted solar collectors. This was all very well, but the closer he was to the heart of the settlement, the more likely he was to be discovered going about his business.

No matter: it had to be done, and he had exhausted the alternatives. Still suited, he cycled through the airlock and then descended a vertical ladder. This brought him into a dimly lit tunnel network, with corridors radiating in five different directions. Fortunately, they were colour-coded, indicating the residential and industrial districts they led to. Except districts wasn’t really the right word, Grelier thought. This tiny community, though it might have enjoyed social ties with others in the badlands, was smaller in population than one floor of the Lady Morwenna.

He hummed as he walked. As bothered as he was by recent events, he always enjoyed being on Clocktower business. Even if, as now, the business was verging on the personal, a mission the precise reason for which Grelier had not told the dean.