Alastair Reynolds - Absolution Gap

“The trouble is, Antoinette, what good was it to save those lives, if all that happens is that they die now, here on Ararat?”

“We don’t know that anyone’s going to die. So far the Inhibitors haven’t touched us down here.”

“All the same, you’d like some insurance.”

“We need to consider the unthinkable, John. If the worst comes to the worst, we’ll need to leave Ararat. And you’re going to have to be the man with the plan.”

He slipped the helmet on to his neck ring, twisting it to and fro to engage the latching mechanisms. The faceplate glass was still up. The whites of his eyes were two bright crescents in the shadowed map of his face. Green and red numerals were back-reflected on to his skin.

“It took some guts to come down here on your own, Antoinette.”

“I don’t think this is a time for cowards,” she said.

“It never was,” he said, beginning to slide down the faceplate glass. “About what you want of me?”

“Yes?”

“I’ll give the matter some thought.”

Then he turned around and walked slowly into the darkness. A skirl of red-brown dust swelled up to block him from view. It was like a sandstorm on Mars.

The Ultra captain was called Heckel, his ship the Third Gazometric . He had come down in a red-hulled shuttle of very ancient design—a triad of linked spheres with large, stylised tarantula markings.

Even by recent standards, Heckel struck Quaiche as a very strange individual. The mobility suit in which he came aboard the Lady Morwenna was a monstrous contraption of leather and brass, with rubberised accordion joints and gleaming metal plates secured by rivets. Behind the tiny grilled-over eyeholes of his helmet, wiper blades flicked back and forth to clear condensation. Steam vented from poorly maintained joints and seals. Two assistants had accompanied him: they were constantly opening and closing hatches in the suit, fiddling with brass knobs and valves. When Heckel spoke, his voice emerged from a miniature pipe organ projecting from the top of his helmet. He had to keep making adjustments to knobs in his chest area to stop the voice becoming too shrill or deep.

Quaiche understood none of Heckel’s utterances, but that was all right: Heckel had also brought along a baseline interpreter. She was a small doe-eyed woman dressed in a more modern spacesuit. Her helmet had folded back on itself, retracting like a cockatoo’s crest so that everyone could see her face.

“You’re not an Ultra,” Quaiche remarked to the interpreter.

“Does it matter?”

“I just find it amusing, that’s all. It’s where I started, doing the same line of work as you.”

“That must have been a long time ago.”

“But they still don’t find it any easier to negotiate with the likes of us, do they?”

“Us, Dean?”

“Baseline humans, like you and me.”

She hid it well, but he read her amused reaction. He saw himself from her point of view: an old man reclining on a couch, deathly frail, surrounded by an audience of moving mirrors, his eyed peeled open like fruits. He was not wearing the sunglasses.

Quaiche moved a hand. “I wasn’t always like this. I could pass for a baseline human, once, move in normal society with no one so much as batting an eyelid. I was taken into the employment of Ultras, just as you have been. Queen Jasmina, of the Gnostic Ascension …”

Heckel adjusted his chest knobs, then piped out something incomprehensible.

“He says Jasmina did not have the best of reputations, even amongst other Ultras,” the interpreter said. “He says that even now, in certain Ultra circles, mentioning her name is considered the height of bad taste.”

“I didn’t know Ultras even recognised bad taste as a concept,” Quaiche replied archly.

Heckel piped back something shrill and peremptory.

“He says there is a lot you need to remember,” the interpreter said. “He also says he has other business he needs to attend to today.”

Quaiche fingered the edge of his scarlet blanket. “Very well, then. Just to clarify… you would be willing to consider my offer?”

The interpreter listened to Heckel for a moment, then addressed Quaiche. “He says he understands the logic of your proposed security arrangement.”

Quaiche nodded enthusiastically, forcing the mirrors to nod synchronously. “Of course, it would work to the benefit of both parties. I would gain the protection of a ship like the Third Gazometric , insurance against the less scrupulous Ultra elements we all know are out there. And by agreeing to provide that security—for a fixed but not indefinite period, naturally—there would be compensations in terms of trading rights, insider information, that sort of thing. It could be worth both our whiles, Captain Heckel. All you’d have to do is agree to move the Third Gazometric closer to Hela, and to submit to some very mild mutual friendship arrangements… a small cathedral delegation on your ship and—naturally—a reciprocal party on the Lady Morwenna. And then you’d have immediate access to the choicest scuttler relics, before any of your rivals.” Quaiche looked askance, as if seeing enemies in the garret’s shadows. “And we wouldn’t have to be looking over our shoulders all the time.”

The captain piped his reply.

“He says he understands the benefits in terms of trading rights,” the interpreter said, “but he also wishes to emphasise the risk he would be taking by bringing his ship closer to Hela. He mentions the fate that befell the Gnostic Ascension …”

“And there was me thinking it was bad taste to mention it.”

She ignored him. “And he wishes to have these beneficial trading arrangements clarified before any further discussion takes place. He wishes also to specify a maximum term for the period of protection, and…” She paused while Heckel piped out a series of rambling additions. “He also wishes to discuss the exclusion from trade of certain other parties currently in the system, or approaching it. Parties to be excluded would include, but not be limited to, the trade vessels Transfigured Night, Madonna of the Wasps, Silence Under Snow …”

She continued until she noticed Quaiche’s raised hand. “We can discuss these things in good time,” he said, his heart sinking. “In the meantime, the cathedral would—of course—require a full technical examination of the Third Gazometric , to ensure that the ship poses no hazard to Hela or its inhabitants…”

“The captain wonders if you doubt the worthiness of his ship,” the interpreter said.

“Not at all. Why should I? He made it this far, didn’t he? On the other hand, if he has nothing to hide…”

“The captain wishes to retire to his shuttle to consider matters.”

“Of course,” Quaiche said with sudden eagerness, as if nothing was too much to ask. “This is a serious proposal, and nothing should be agreed in haste. Sleep on it. Talk to some other parties. Get a second opinion. Shall I call an escort?”

“The captain can find his own way back to the shuttle,” she said.

Quaiche spread his fingers in farewell. “Very well, then. Please convey my best wishes to your crew… and consider my offer very seriously.”

The captain swung around, his assistants continuing to adjust the control valves and levers in his ludicrous kettle of a suit. With a mad rhythmic clanking he began to locomote towards the door. His departure was as painfully slow as his arrival had been, the suit appearing incapable of moving more than an inch at a time.

The captain paused, then laboriously turned around. The wiper blades flicked back and forth. The pipe organ chimed out another sequence of notes.