Alastair Reynolds - Absolution Gap

The quaestor had never heard of DEUS-X, but the religious type Grelier had described was familiar enough to him. They were usually young men, usually very serious and humourless. There was something already in their brains that the virus latched on to. “What does he have to do with the girl?”

“Nothing, yet. I just want him to come into possession of that tube and that piece of paper. It will mean something to him already, although he’ll never have seen the markings written down that precisely. For him it will be like finding illuminated scripture, where before all he had were scratches on stone.”

The quaestor examined the paper again. Now that he looked closer, he thought he had seen the markings before. “The missing vanishing?” he asked. “I thought that was just an old wives’ tale.”

“It doesn’t matter if it’s an old wives’ tale or not. It’ll be one of the fringe beliefs with which Pietr has already come into contact. He’ll recognise it and it will spur him to act.” Grelier studied the quaestor very carefully, as if measuring his reliability. “I have arranged for a spy to be present amongst the Observers. He will mention to Pietr something about a girl on a crusade, something already foretold. A girl born in ice, destined to change the world.”

“Rashmika?”

Grelier made a gun shape with his hand, pointed it at the quaestor and made a clicking sound. “All you have to do is bring them together. Allow her to visit the Observers and Pietr will take care of the rest. He won’t be able to resist passing on the knowledge he has gained.”

The quaestor frowned. “She needs to see those markings?”

“She needs a reason to meet the dean. The other letter will help—it concerns her brother—but it may not be enough. She’s interested in the scuttlers, so the missing vanishing will prick her curiosity. She’ll have to follow it to its conclusion, no matter how badly her instincts tell her to stay away from the cathedrals.”

“But why don’t I just give her the tube now? Why the need for this cumbersome charade with the Observers?”

Grelier looked at Peppermint again. “You really don’t learn, do you?”

“I’m sorry, I just…”

“The girl is extraordinarily difficult to manipulate. She can read a lie instantly, unless the liar is completely sincere. She needs to be handled with a buffer of unquestioning, utterly delusional self-belief.” Grelier paused. “Anyway, I need to know her limits. When I have studied her from a distance, she can be approached openly. But until then I want to guide her remotely. You are part of the buffer, but you will also be a test of her ability.”

“And the letter?”

“Give it to her personally. Say it came into your possession through a secret courier and that you know nothing beyond that. Observe her closely, and report on her reaction.”

“And what if she asks too many questions?”

Grelier smiled sympathetically. “Have a bash at lying.”

The medical case chimed, its analysis complete. Grelier swung it around so that the quaestor could see the results. On the inside of the lid, histograms and pie charts had sprung into view.

“All clear?” the quaestor asked.

“Nothing you need worry about,” Grelier replied.

On his private cameras, the quaestor watched the ruby-hulled cockleshell spacecraft lift off from the caravan. It flipped over, its main thrusters throwing wild shadows across the landscape.

“I’m sorry, Peppermint,” he said.

The creature was trying to clean its face, its one remaining forelimb thrashing awkwardly across its mouth-parts like a broken windscreen-wiper. It looked at the quaestor with those blackcurrant eyes, which were not as uncomprehending as he might have wished.

“If I don’t do what he wants, he’ll come back. But whatever he wants with that girl isn’t right. I can feel it. Can you? I didn’t like him at all. I knew he was trouble the moment he landed.”

The quaestor flattened out the letter again. It was brief, written in a clear but childish script. It was from someone called Harbin, to someone called Rashmika.

The flight to the Nostalgia for Infinity only took ten minutes, most of which was spent in the final docking phase, queued up behind the transports that had arrived earlier. There were a number of entry points into the towering ship, open apertures like perfectly rectangular caves in the sides of the spire. The highest was more than two kilometres above the surface of the sea. In space they would have been the docking bays for small service craft, or the major airlocks that permitted access to the ship’s cavernous internal chambers.

Scorpio had never really enjoyed trips to the Infinity , under any circumstances. Frankly, the ship appalled him. It was a perversion, a twisted mutation of what a mechanical thing should be like. He did not have a superstitious bone in his body, but he always felt as if he was stepping into something haunted or possessed. What really troubled him was that he knew this assessment was not entirely inaccurate. The ship was genuinely haunted, in the sense that its whole structural fabric had been inseparably fused with the residual psyche of its erstwhile Captain. In a time when the Melding Plague had lost some of its horror, the fate of the Captain was a shocking reminder of the atrocities it had been capable of.

The shuttle dropped off its passengers in the topmost docking bay, then immediately returned to the sky on some other urgent colonial errand. A Security Arm guard was already waiting to escort them down to the meeting room. He touched a communications earpiece with one finger, frowning slightly as he listened to a distant voice, then he turned to Scorpio. “Room is secured, sir.”

“Any apparitions?”

“Nothing reported above level four hundred in the last three weeks. Plenty of activity in the lower levels, but we should have the high ship to ourselves.” The guard turned to Vasko. “If you’d care to follow me.”

Vasko looked at Scorpio. “Are you coming down, sir?”

“I’ll follow in a moment. You go ahead and introduce yourself. Say only that you are Vasko Malinin, an SA operative, and that you participated in the mission to recover Clavain—and then don’t say another word until I get there.”

“Yes, sir.” Vasko hesitated. “Sir, one other thing?”

“What?”

“What did he mean about apparitions?”

“You don’t need to know,”

Scorpio said. Scorpio watched them troop off into the bowels of the ship, waiting until their footsteps had died away and he was certain that he had the landing bay to himself. Then he made his way to the edge of the bay’s entrance, standing with the tips of his blunt, childlike shoes perilously close to the edge.

The wind scrubbed hard against his face, although today it was not especially strong. He always felt in danger of being blown out, but experience had taught him that the wind usually blew into the chamber. All the same, he remained ready to grab the left-hand edge of the door for support should an eddy threaten to tip him over the lip. Blinking against the wind, his eyes watering, he watched the claw-shaped aircraft bank and recede. Then he looked down, surveying the colony that, despite Clavain’s return, was still very much his responsibility.

Kilometres away, First Camp sparkled in the curve of the bay. It was too distant to make out any detail save for the largest structures, such as the High Conch. Even those build-ings were flattened into near-insignificance by Scorpio’s elevation. The happy, bustling squalor and grime of the shanty streets were invisible. Everything appeared eerily neat and ordered, like something laid out according to strict civic rules. It could have been almost any city, on any world, at any point in history. There were even thin quills of smoke rising up from kitchens and factories. Yet other than the smoke there was nothing obviously moving, nothing that he could point to. But at the same time the entire settlement trembled with a frenzy of subliminal motion, as if seen through a heat haze.