Alastair Reynolds - Absolution Gap

Bitter arguments ensued among the human researchers. The majority view was that this behaviour could not have evolved naturally; that it must stem from an earlier phase of conscious bioengineering, when the scuttlers tinkered with their own anatomies to allow whole body parts to be swapped from creature to creature without the benefit of microsurgery and antirejection drugs.

But a minority of researchers held that the swapping was too deeply ingrained in scuttler culture to have arisen in their recent evolutionary history. They suggested that, billions of years earlier, the scuttlers had been forced to evolve in an intensely hostile environment—the evolutionary equivalent of a crowded lobster pot. So hostile, in fact, that there had been a survival value not just in being able to regrow a severed limb, but also in actually being able to reattach a severed limb there and then, before it was eaten. The limbs—and later, major body parts—had evolved in turn, developing the resilience to survive being ripped from the rest of the body. As the survival pressure increased, the scuttlers had evolved intercompatibility, able to make use not just of their own discarded parts but those of their kin.

Perhaps even the scuttlers themselves had no memory of when the swapping had begun. Certainly, there was no obvious allusion to it in the few symbolic records that had ever been found on Hela. It was too much a part of them, too fundamentally a part of the way they viewed reality, for them to have remarked upon it.

Looking up at the fantastic creature, Rashmika wondered what the scuttlers would have made of humanity. Very probably they would have found the human race just as bizarre, regarding its very immutability horrific, like a kind of death.

Rashmika knelt down and propped the family compad on the slope of her legs. She flipped it open and pulled the stylus from its slot in the side. It wasn’t comfortable, but she would only be sitting like that for a few minutes.

She began to draw. The stylus scratched against the compad with each fluid, confident stroke of her hand. An alien animal took shape on the screen.

Linxe had been right about the caravan: no matter how frosty the reception had been, it still afforded them all the chance to get out of the icejammer for the first time in three days.

Rashmika was surprised at the difference it made to her general mood. It wasn’t just that she had stopped worrying about the attention of the Vigrid constabulary, although the question of why they had come after her continued to nag at her. The air was fresher in the caravan, with interesting breezes and varying smells, none of which were as unpleasant as those aboard the icejammer.

There was room to stretch her legs, as well: the interior of just this one caravan vehicle was generously laid out, with wide, tall gangways, comfortable rooms and bright lights. Everything was spick-and-span and—compared at least to the welcome—the amenities were more than adequate. Food and drink were provided, clothes could be washed, and for once it was possible to reach a state of reasonable cleanliness. There were even various kinds of entertainment, even though it was all rather bland compared to what she was used to. And there were new people, faces she hadn’t seen before.

She realised, after some reflection, that she had been wrong in her initial judgement of the relationship between the quaestor and Crozet. While there did not appear to be much love lost between them, it was obvious now that both parties had been of some use to each other in the past. The mutual rudeness had been a charade, concealing an icy core of mutual respect. The quaestor was fishing for titbits, aware that Crozet might still have something he could use. Crozet, meanwhile, needed to leave with mechanical spares or other barterable goods.

Rashmika had only intended to sit in on a few of the negotiation sessions, but she quickly realised that she could, in a small way, be of practical use to Crozet. To facilitate this she sat at one end of the table, a sheet of paper and a pen before her. She was not allowed to bring the compad into the room, in case it contained voice-stress-analysis software or some other prohibited system.

Rashmika noted down observations about the items Crozet was selling, writing and sketching with the neatness she had always taken pride in. Her interest was genuine, but her presence also served another purpose.

In the first negotiation session, there had been two buyers. Later, there was sometimes a third or fourth, and the quaestor or one of his deputies would always attend as an observer. Each session would begin with one of the buyers asking Crozet what he had to offer them.

“We aren’t looking for scuttler relics,” they said the first time. “We’re simply not interested. What we want are artefacts of indigenous human origin. Things left on Hela in the last hundred years, not million-year-old rubbish. There’s a declining market for useless alien junk, what with all the rich solar systems being evacuated. Who wants to add to their collection, when they’re busy selling their assets to buy a single freezer slot?”

“What sort of human artefacts?”

“Useful ones. These are dark times: people don’t want art and ephemera, not unless they think it’s going to bring them luck. Mainly what they want are weapons and survival systems, things they think might give them an edge when whatever they’re running from catches up with them. Contraband Conjoiner weapons. Demarchist armour. Anything with plague-tolerance, that’s always an easy sell.”

“As a rule,” Crozet said, “I don’t do weapons.”

‘Then you need to adapt to a changing market,“ one of the men replied with a smirk.

“The churches moving into the arms trade? Isn’t that a tiny bit inconsistent with scripture?”

“If people want protection, who are we to deny them?”

Crozet shrugged. “Well, I’m all out of guns and ammo. If anyone’s still digging up human weapons on Hela, it isn’t me.”

“You must have something else.”

“Not a hell of a lot.” He made as if to leave at that point, as he did in every subsequent session. “Best be on my way, I think—wouldn’t want to be wasting anyone’s time, would I?”

“You’ve absolutely nothing else?”

“Nothing that you’d be interested in. Of course, I have some scuttler relics, but like you said…” Crozet’s voice accurately parodied the dismissive tones of the buyer. “No market for alien junk these days.”

The buyers sighed and exchanged glances; the quaestor leaned in and whispered something to them.

“You may as well show us what you have,” one of the buyers said, reluctantly, “but don’t raise your hopes. More than likely we won’t be interested. In fact, you can more or less guarantee it.”

But this was a game and Crozet knew he had to abide by its rules, no matter how pointless or childish they were. He reached under his chair and emerged with something wrapped in protective film, like a small mummified animal.

The buyers’ faces wrinkled in distaste.

He placed the package on the table and unwrapped it solemnly, taking a maddening time to remove all the layers. All the while he maintained a spiel about the extreme rarity of the object, how it had been excavated under exceptional circumstances, weaving a dubious human-interest story into the vague chain of provenance.

“Get on with it, Crozet.”

“Just setting the scene,” he said.

Inevitably he came to the final layer of wrapping. He spread this layer wide on the table, revealing the scuttler relic cocooned within.

Rashmika had seen this one before: it was one of the objects she had used to buy her passage aboard the icejammer.

They were never very much to look at. Rashmika had seen thousands of relies unearthed from the Vigrid digs, had even been allowed to examine them before they passed into the hands of the trading families, but in all that time she had never seen anything that made her gasp in admiration or delight. For while the relics were undoubtedly artificial, they were in general fashioned from dull, tarnished metals or grubby unglazed ceramics. There was seldom any hint of surface ornamentation—no trace of paint, plating or inscription. Once in a thousand finds they uncovered something with a string of symbols on it, and there were even researchers who believed they understood what some of those symbols meant. But most scuttler relics were blank, dull, crude-looking. They resembled the dug-up leftovers of an inept bronze-age culture rather than the gleaming products of a starfaring civilisation—one that had certainly not evolved in the 107 Piscium system.