I had no intention of smothering her, but I won’t pretend that my thoughts were entirely charitable. I suppose I’d been thinking of shaking her out of her phantasms, forcing her to stop acting like a mewling child.
But once I was at her side, my anger dissolved.
‘Oh, Garval,’ I said, softly as if I whispered a lullaby. ‘You can’t help this, can you?’
Within the limits imposed by her restraints, Garval thrashed and convulsed. Her head snapped from side to side, the strap that should have bound her having worked loose. Her hands were fists, the nails digging into her palms, the tendons standing out like ridges. She moaned out a torrent of agonies.
I found the cloth Cazaray had used to moisten her brow, and went to the water dispenser in the wall. I returned to Garval, stationing myself at her side, and tried to open her fingers enough to slip my hand into hers.
‘You asked if we were the new ones. I’m Fura, and my sister’s Adrana. You were right about us: we’ve come aboard to do the same thing you did – to read the skull. I know it didn’t work out well for you, but that’s not your fault. You had to find a way off your world, and you did. Adrana and I were the same.’
I dabbed the wettened cloth against her brow and lips, while she twitched and jerked as violently as when I had entered the room.
‘Well, maybe not the same,’ I went on. ‘We didn’t have it that bad. It’s just that things hadn’t gone very well for the family. Mainly, I think Adrana wanted adventure – earning quoins was just an excuse, a way to justify what she did. She tricked me, in a way, but by the time I realised what she’d done, I think I liked the idea of escaping just as much as she did.’
Whether it was my words, my presence, or just a change in the weather in her head, but Garval’s distress seemed to lessen by some small degree. I administered the cloth again. I had no fear of waking the others with my talking: if they could sleep through Garval, they could sleep through the Sundering.
‘Velgen,’ she said, just that one word.
‘Someone close to you?’ I asked, chancing that it was the name of a person rather than a world.
‘Brother,’ she answered, her voice roughened from all the moaning. ‘Good brother. Good Velgen. I should have looked after him better. You look after each other, don’t you?’
‘We do,’ I answered. But it was the sort of thing you say, whether you mean it or not.
‘Where are we?’
‘At the bauble now, orbiting it. It’s going to open soon and they’re going inside it. I don’t think it’s a dangerous place, really. They have charts and the crew seem to know what they’re doing. Rackamore seems confident . . .’
She cut across my words with a thin, knowing smile on her lips. ‘Don’t always believe what your captain says.’
‘I think he wants the best for us.’
‘The best for himself. If the rest of ’em do all right out of it, that’s a bonus.’
I looked to the door, making certain it was shut. It was just a conversation, but all of a sudden it had a mutinous edge that made my skin prickle.
‘I don’t think he’s a bad man.’
‘Didn’t say he was. But whatever Rackamore is, a captain’s part of it, and what drives the likes of them isn’t what drives the rest of us.’
‘So what does drive him?’
She drew a laboured breath. ‘They tell you about his daughter?’
I brought the water and cloth to her bedside. ‘Not much.’
‘Good. All things considered, maybe it’s better that way.’
Gradually it became clear who was and who wasn’t going down to the bauble. A few hours before the field was supposed to drop, they all gathered in the galley, half in and half out of their spacesuits, with their helmets on the magnetic table like trophies. Cazaray – he’d been with us in the bone room until the last minute – was the least prepared, and he was being helped into his suit by Prozor and Triglav, while Hirtshal helped the others check that their connections and lungstuff seals were all secure.
The suits were familiar to me now, and we had been shown how to use them in an emergency. Every part of them was brown, or some metallic shade that contained or reflected that hue: brown fabric, brown alloy seals, brown concertina joints, brown helmet, brown glass on the little porthole of the faceplate, brown bars across the front of that faceplate. Only a few smears of colour on the helmets and shoulders identified one suit from the others.
‘They’re old,’ Rackamore said. ‘And there’s not much in them that you wouldn’t have found a thousand years ago. Old isn’t always bad, though. It’s what we can afford, which is one thing, but it’s also what we know we can trust and repair easily.’ He knuckled the white crown of his own helmet. ‘Short-wave squawk. That’s all that you can bank on. No in built sensors or navigation overlays. No power amplification for the rest of the suit. If you have it, you’ll soon come to depend on it and you’ll lose the strength you need to get out of a jam when the suit goes limp on you. No energy weapons or cutting gear. Nothing that relies on power works well in a bauble, and you’re better off not counting on it. Gas torches work, most of the time. Electrical pumps and supply valves for the life support, hard to avoid those, but if they seize up – and sooner or later they will – you can run on pressure alone for a few hours. Can’t rely on a heater, either.’ He had dredged up a smile. ‘There’s a reason we like to get in and out quickly. Saves on the frostbite.’
Trysil was working her fingers in the glove, easing some movement into the stiff articulation of the joints. The gloves squeaked as if they needed oiling. I remembered Rackamore exercising his fingers and understood why.
‘The bauble’s following the expected pattern,’ the captain said now. ‘Field drop should follow in . . . Proz?’
‘Ninety-seven minutes,’ she said.
I’d seen the gradual change in the bauble for myself. It was hard not to be captivated by it whenever I happened to pass a window facing the right way. The dance of patterns on the dark red surface had quickened, hastening towards a conclusion. More and more of the world was showing through the surface. Underneath that skin of energy was a ball of rock, not so different from Mazarile.
When they were ready there was time for a quick toast to the success of the party, handshakes and pats on backs, and then the expedition gathered their helmets and made their way to the front of the ship. The rest of us tagged behind. Rackamore, Cazaray and Mattice went inside the launch and the airlock was closed. Trysil and Jusquerel put on their helmets, double-checked seals and lungstuff supply, and went through another lock into the launch’s storage bay, where they worked to uncouple it from its cradle.
The mouth opened. Trysil and Jusquerel jammed levers against the hull of the launch and heaved it on its way. It backed slowly out, tail first, Rackamore using puffs of gas to control its flight. Once it was clear of the Monetta, Trysil and Jusquerel used gas-guns of their own to cross over to the launch and get aboard. It all happened in silence, like some complicated ballet that was going through a rehearsal without the orchestra.
They left. We watched the launch fall away from the Monetta, remaining below us as we orbited, carving out a spiral course like a watch spring. It was a silver bullet, then a silver hyphen, then it wasn’t anything more than a bright mark against the bauble’s surface.
‘Fifty minutes,’ Prozor said.
‘What happens if they hit the bauble before it opens?’ I asked Triglav, one of the five of us (besides Garval) who’d stayed back on the ship.
‘From the bauble’s point of view?’ The little man rubbed at his hairless scalp as if it needed polishing. ‘Not much. Might jinx Prozor’s calculations a little, but it won’t make a shred of difference to the auguries.’
‘And from their point of view?’
‘They say it’s painless.’
‘Do you mind Trysil
going in there?’ Adrana asked. By then we’d worked out the that the two of them were together, the only couple on the ship that we knew about.
‘Oh, I’d sooner not have her out of my sight. But the truth is I know ion systems and that’s enough for this little bone-box. In a bauble I’d just get in everyone’s way. No, Trysil’s welcome to her line of work and provided I get her back in one piece at the end of an expedition, I’m happy enough. Do you know your history?’
‘A little,’ I said.
Triglav scratched behind one bendy ear and said: ‘When Mattice opens a door, Trysil can walk into a room full of million-year-old loot, give it no more than a glance, and tell instantly whether it’s worth our while. Trysil says time builds up in old things like steam in a kettle, needing to get out. Old things – properly old things – are bursting at the seams with time. And what she knows isn’t from books or museums. Talk to Trysil about the Eleventh Occupation, she’d give you a blank look. Ask her about the Council of Clouds or the Empire of the Ever Breaking Wave, then she’d hold you down and tell you a thousand stories, none of which you’ll ever find in the Hall of History.’
‘What’s the most valuable thing you’ve ever found in a bauble?’ I asked.
‘Found, or pulled out?’ Triglav asked.
‘There’s a difference?’ Adrana put in.
‘Tell her about the engine,’ Prozor said, as if she was cutting off a line of conversation she didn’t care for.
‘It was about the size of a tea urn, a bronze-green thing with all sorts of pipes all over it,’ Triglav said. ‘Not a monkey trinket. Tusker or Bug-Eye, perhaps. We didn’t even try to make it work.’
‘Did someone?’ I asked.
‘Yes, on a sphereworld called Prosperal, somewhere down in the mid-processionals. And they got a hole drilled through their world for their trouble – all the way out from the inside.’ Triglav bent his sad features into half a smile. It was like someone wearing clown make-up, trying to form the opposite expression to the one painted on. ‘The lesson there is it’s not our business to fiddle around with things. Provided we’ve found ’em, and been paid for ’em . . . that’s enough for me.’
‘I’d have thought you’d be more curious,’ Adrana said.
‘Curiosity’s for coves that don’t know when they’ve got a good thing,’ Triglav said, scratching under his jaw. ‘I’m happy with my lot. Plenty worse things than being a bald little ion engineer on a sunjammer, even one that’s never going to make anyone’s fortune.’
‘Good,’ said Prozor. ‘Because that’s what you’re stuck with.’
We were still talking about baubles and trinkets when Hirtshal came into the room. The master of sail had a way of ending any conversation without a word. He cocked his bearded chin at the window, not even bothering with a question.
‘Five minutes,’ Prozor said. ‘You want a ringside seat, Hirtshal?’
Hirtshal stood with his arms folded, his eyes all cold and flinty like nothing could have interested him less.
‘No.’
The launch was now very close to the bauble’s surface, but with telescopes and binoculars we could still track it, a little grain of silver sliding over the flickering ruby-red of the surface. Prozor had consulted her books once or twice in the last few hours, but nothing had given her cause to alter her figures. The bauble’s changes were happening so quickly now it made me dizzy to look at them.
‘Rack’ll have his hand on the rockets,’ Triglav said in a low whisper. ‘If that bauble doesn’t pop on cue, he’ll turn around sharpish, put about five gees on the launch, and damn the rivets.’
‘I hope he has enough fuel,’ I said.
‘Plenty. Remember, it’s not just the crew he’s hoping to bring back to us.’
I had been expecting something spectacular when the bauble opened, but the truth was that it was a bit anti-climactic. The view of the underlying world had been growing sharper and more prolonged by the minute . . . and then suddenly it held, and the ruby-red surface didn’t return.
It was just like Mazarile, only less interesting to look at. A face of rock, craters, ridges and clefts, without even the compensation of areas of skyshell and the cities beneath.
‘Start the clock,’ Triglav said.
‘Already have,’ Prozor answered. ‘Two hundred and fifty-eight hours and counting.’
The launch continued its descent. It passed the point where the artificial surface had been and carried on to the true one beneath. Even though it was just a dot of silver, it gave off a smudge of light whenever Rackamore touched the steering jets. The swallower gave Brabazul’s Ruin the same surface gravity as Mazarile, so the launch needed to use its rockets to achieve a landing.
‘You see that line of craters?’ Triglav asked. ‘They’re on Loftling’s charts. There’s a way in near the rim of the rightmost crater. The captain’ll put down as close to that point as possible – no sense in walking further than you have to.’
The bauble had opened on schedule, so we could bank on it closing just as promptly. Rackamore’s party had two hundred and fifty-eight hours until they’d need to be back in space, above the level where the bauble’s surface had formed. That was more than ten days, and Loftling had only needed one day to make a round trip.
‘They’re down,’ Prozor said. It was only a minute or two later that Rackamore squawked back to confirm that they were safe and beginning to leave the launch.
‘Keep a watch on the sweeper,’ he said. ‘And if the sisters aren’t in the bone room, they should be.’
We waited just long enough for the party to step out onto the surface, although even with the telescopes there was nothing we could see of that. After a few minutes Rackamore said that they’d found Loftling’s entrance, and that Mattice was already following Loftling’s guidelines on opening the lock.
At the door to the bone room, before we spun the wheel, we experienced a moment of collective hesitation, a silent exchange of looks, both of us knowing that we had to push aside our doubts and rise to the moment. My throat was dry, my hands clammy.
I spun the wheel and we went inside.
Without Cazaray to squeeze some of the space out of the room, the skull seemed larger. I moved around it as if seeing it for the first time, picking my way through the loom of supporting strings, wondering again at the long-dead creature that had once owned these bones.
‘I’ll start at one end,’ Adrana said, taking the two sets of neural bridges from the wall. ‘You the other. If we meet in the middle without getting anything, we’ll know no one’s sending.’
I took the pins from my hair so that I could flatten it close to my scalp, and put on the neural bridge, jamming it down as tight as possible. I plugged in, closed my eyes, and emptied my thoughts. There was nothing from the peripheral input. I gave it long enough to be sure, then moved along to the next location. The skull quivered in its springs. Adrana moved her input at the same time as mine, disturbing the skull no more than necessary.
Nothing on the second nodes, for either of us.
We opened our eyes, met each other’s gaze, nodded, carried on.
On the third I felt a prickle.
‘Something . . .’ I whispered.
‘What?’
‘Quiet.’ I should have kept my trap shut – Cazaray would have chastised me for that – but the prickle was still there. Something was sending, or trying to send. But the signal was weak.
‘I’m moving to the next input. It might be stronger.’
‘All right,’ Adrana said doubtfully.
I uncoupled, plugged in again. The contact was clearer this time. I shivered a little.
‘Better?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then tell me what you’re getting.’
‘It’s not clear yet.’ I was speaking and trying to hold my mind empty at the same time. ?
??Let me work on it.’
‘Is it near or far?’
‘I can’t tell. Chaff it – let me concentrate.’
I moved to the next node. Nothing coming through on that one. I returned to the previous site. The signal was still there, but I was pretty sure it had got fainter.
‘Well?’ my sister demanded.
‘I don’t know. It’s not as strong.’
‘Let me try.’
‘Because you’re always better than me?’
‘In this case – yes.’
Pride nearly got the better of me, and I don’t mind admitting it. But I rose above it and allowed Adrana to couple onto the node. I backed away from the skull, eased the bridge from my head.
‘Show me how it’s done.’
Adrana ignored my goad and plugged in. Her face went all placid and doll-like, as if she’d been doing this since we were in nappies. For a good minute she showed no reaction, but then there was a twitch at the edge of her eyelid, and a faint crease dug itself into her forehead.
She unplugged and went back to the node where I’d first detected the presence. Then back to the other node. Her lower lip pulled back from the top one.
‘Well?’ I asked.
‘I thought there was something. On the first input, just for a moment. Then it was gone.’
‘I didn’t imagine it, then.’
‘Sometimes there’s noise on these inputs. Static charges building up in the skull. You know that.’
‘That’s not what it was.’
‘All right,’ she said, jerking the neural bridge off her scalp. ‘So what are you suggesting we do about this ghost signal? Take it to Triglav, or Prozor, or Hirtshal, and tell them to call back the party because we might have picked up a send from anywhere in the Congregation?’