Alastair Reynolds - Absolution Gap

“Let me see,” Khouri said. She carried the cannon on a shoulder strap, slung down her back, its weight shifted on to one hip.

‘There are other ways in,“ Vasko said, ”but I think this is the easiest.“

“We’ll take it,” Khouri said. “Stand aside. I’m going first.”

“Wait,” Clavain said.

Her lip curled. “My daughter’s in there. Someone go fetch the incubator.”

“I know how you feel.” Clavain said.

“Do you?”

His voice was marvellously calm. “Yes, I do. Skade took Felka once. I went in after her, just the way you’re doing. I thought it was the right way to proceed. I see now that it was foolish and that I came very close to losing her. That’s why you shouldn’t be the first one in. Not if you want to see Aura again.”

“He’s right,” Scorpio said. “We don’t know what we’ll find in that thing, or how Skade will react when she knows we’re here. We might lose someone. The one person we can’t afford to lose is you.”

“You can still fetch the incubator.”

“No,” Scorpio said. “It stays out here, out of harm’s way. I don’t want it getting smashed in a firefight. And if turns out that we can negotiate our way through this, there’ll be time to come back and get it.”

Khouri appeared to see the sense in his argument, even though she didn’t look very happy about it. She stepped back from the side of the berg. “I’m going in second,” she said.

“I’ll lead,” Scorpio said. He turned to the two Security Arm officers. “Jaccottet, you follow Khouri. Urton, stay here with Vasko. Keep an eye on the boats and watch out for anything emerging from any other part of the ice. The instant you see something unusual…” He paused, noticing the way his companions were looking around. ‘The instant you see something really unusual… let us know.“

He would let Clavain decide for himself what he did.

Scorpio negotiated the forest of impaling spikes. Daggers and fronds shattered with every movement, every breath. The air was a constant iridescent haze of crystals. With great effort he pulled himself through the aperture, his short stature and limbs making it more difficult for him than for any of the others. The tip of an icy blade kissed his skin, not quite breaking it but scraping painfully along the surface. He felt another push into his thigh.

Then he was through/landing on his feet on the other side. He dusted himself off and looked around. Everywhere, the ice gleamed with a neon-blue intensity. There were almost no shadows, just different intensities of that same pastel radiance. The spikes were here in abundance, as well as the rootlike structures that composed the fringe. They thrust through underfoot, thick as industrial pipes. He reminded himself that nothing here was static: the iceberg was growing, and this inclusion might only have existed for a few hours.

The air was as cold as steel.

Behind him, Khouri crunched to the ground. The muzzle of the Breitenbach cannon pulverised a whole fan of miniature stalactites as it swung around. Other weapons, too numerous to list, hung from her belt like so many shrunken trophies.

“What Vasko said… ” she began. “The low noise. I can hear it as well. It’s like a throbbing.”

“I don’t hear it, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t real,” Scorpio acknowledged.

“Skade’s here,” she said. “I know what you think: that she might be dead. But she’s alive. She’s alive and she knows we’ve landed.”

“And Aura?”

“I can’t feel her yet.”

Clavain emerged into the chamber, picking his way through the opening with the methodical slowness of a tarantula. His thin dark-clad limbs seemed built for precisely this purpose. Scorpio noticed that he managed to enter without breaking any of the ornamentation. He also noticed that the only weapon that Clavain appeared to be carrying was the short-bladed knife he had taken from his tent. He had it clutched in one hand, the blade vanishing when he turned it edge-on.

Behind Clavain came Jaccottet, much less stealthily. The Security Arm man stopped to brush the ice shards from his uniform.

Scorpio lifted his sleeve, revealing his communicator. “Blood, we’ve found a way inside the iceberg. We’re going deeper. I’m not sure what will happen to comms, but stay alert. Malinin and Urton are staying outside. If all else fails, we may be able to relay communications through them. I’m guessing we might be inside this thing for a couple of hours, maybe more.”

“Be careful,” Blood said.

What was this, Scorpio wondered: concern from Blood? Things were truly worse than he had feared. “I will be,” he said. “Anything else I need to know?”

“Nothing immediately related to your mission. Reports of enhanced Juggler activity from many of the monitoring stations, but that might just be a coincidence.”

“Right now I’m not sure if anything is a coincidence.”

“And—uh—just to cheer you up—some reports of lights in the sky. Not confirmed.”

“Lights in the sky? It gets better.”

“Probably nothing. If I were you, I’d put it all out of your mind. Concentrate on the job in hand.”

“Thanks. Sterling advice. All right, pal, speak to you later.”

Clavain had heard the conversation. “Lights in the sky, eh? Maybe next time you’ll believe an old man.”

“I didn’t not believe you for one instant.” Scorpio reached down to his own belt and pulled out a gun. “Here, take this. I can’t stand to see you walking around with just that silly little knife.”

“It’s a very good knife. Did I mention that it saved my life once?”

“Yes.”

“It’s a wonder I’ve held on to it all this time. Honestly, don’t you think there’s something very chivalrous about a knife?”

“Personally,” Scorpio said, “I think it’s time to stop thinking chivalry and start thinking artillery.”

Clavain took the gun the way one took a gift out of politeness, a gift of which one did not entirely approve.

They moved deeper into the iceberg, following the path of least resistance. The texture of the ice, braided and tangled like a wildly overgrown wood, made Scorpio think of some of the buildings in the Mulch layers of Chasm City. When the plague had hit them, their repair and redesign systems had produced something of the same organic fecundity. Here, it seemed, the growth of the ice was driven entirely by weird localised variations in temperature and air flow. Between one step and the next, the air shifted from lung-crackingly frigid to merely chilly, and any attempt to navigate by means of the draughts was doomed to failure. More than once he had the feeling he was inside a huge, cold, respiring lung.

But their path was always clear: away from the daylight, into the pastel blue core.

“It’s music,” Jaccottet said.

“What?” Scorpio asked.

“Music, sir. That low noise. There were too many echoes before. I couldn’t make sense of it. But I’m sure it’s music now.”

“Music? Why the fuck would there be music?”

“I don’t know, sir. It’s faint, but it’s definitely there. Advise caution.”

“I can hear it, too,” Khouri said. “And I advise hurrying the fuck up.”

She removed one of the weapons from her belt and shot at the thickest spar in front of her. It exploded into white marble dust. She stepped through the ruins and raised the gun towards another obstruction.

Clavain did something to his knife. It began to hum, just at the limit of Scorpio’s hearing. The blade became a blur. Clavain swept it through one of the smaller spars, severing it neatly and cleanly.

They moved on, further from the light. In waves, the air became colder still. They huddled deeper into their clothes and spoke only when it was strictly necessary. Scorpio had been grateful for his gloves, but now it felt as if he had forgotten to wear them at all. He had to keep looking down to remind himself they were still in place. It was said that hyperpigs felt the cold more acutely than baseline humans: some quirk of pig biochemistry that the designers had never seen any compelling reason to rectify.