The bayonet taking her weight, Quillin pulled herself up to the rim of the lock. I tried kicking her away, but the skewered leg no longer felt a part of me.
'You're dead,' she whispered.
'News to me.'
Her eyes rolled wide, then locked on me with renewed venom. She gave the bayonet a violent twist. 'So tell me one thing. That story - bullshit, or what?'
'I'll tell you,' I said. 'But first consider this.' Before she could react I reached out and palmed a glowing panel set in the lock wall. The panel whisked aside, revealing a mushroom-shaped red button. 'You know that story they told about Wendigo, how she lost her arms?'
'You weren't meant to swallow that hero guff, Spirey.'
'No? Well, get a load of this, Quillin. My hand's on the emergency pressurisation control. When I hit it, the outer door's going to slide down quicker than you can blink.'
She looked at my hand, then down at her wrist, still attached to my ankle via the jammed bayonet. Slowly the situation sank in. 'Close the door, Spirey, and you'll be a leg short.'
'And you an arm, Quillin.'
'Stalemate, then.'
'Not quite. See, which of us is more likely to survive? Me inside, with all the medical systems aboard this ship, or you all on your lonesome outside? Frankly, I don't think it's any contest.'
Her eyes opened wider. Quillin gave a shriek of anger and entered one final, furious wrestling match with the bayonet.
I managed to laugh. 'As for your question, it's true, every word of it.' Then, with all the calm I could muster, I thumbed the control. 'Pisser, isn't it?'
I made it, of course.
Several minutes after the closing of the door, demons had lathered a protective cocoon around the stump and stomach wound. They allowed me no pain - only a fuzzy sense of detachment. Enough of my mind remained sharp to think about my escape - problematic given that the ship still wasn't fixed.
Eventually I remembered the evac pods.
They were made to kick away from the ship fast, if some quackdrive system went on the fritz. They had thrusters for that - nothing fancy, but here they'd serve another purpose. They'd boost me from the splinter, punch me out of its grav well.
So I did it.
Snuggled into a pod and blew out of the wreck, feeling the gee-load even within the thick. It didn't last long. On the evac pod's cam I watched the splinter drop away until it was pebble-sized. The main body of the kinetic attack was hitting it by then, impacts every ten or so seconds. After a minute of that the splinter just came apart. Afterwards, there was only a sooty veil where it had been, and then only the Swirl.
I hoped the Queen had made it. I guess it was within her power to transmit what counted of herself out to sisters in the halo. If so, there was a chance for Yarrow as well. I'd find out eventually. Then I used the pod's remaining fuel to inject me into a slow, elliptical orbit, one that would graze the halo in a mere fifty or sixty years.
That didn't bother me. I wanted to close my eyes and let the thick nurse me whole again - and sleep for an awfully long time.
After a lean period, I broke back into Interzone in the mid-nineties. 'Spirey and the Queen' is a story from that second, more sustained burst of success, and one that I'm really fond of even now. Maybe that's because the story was such a pig to write that it was a relief to get it out of my system, maybe because it appeared with some very striking illustrations, and maybe because it was the first story of mine that seemed to be received enthusiastically by at least some readers. I'd started it quite a few years earlier, and the story had been through numerous aborted versions before I found the right angle of attack. Things were complicated by the fact that I was also working on the novel Revelation Space at the time, and beginning to have some thoughts about the wider future history into which that book slotted. At various times 'Spirey and the Queen' was part of that history, then it was out, then it was in again . . . until I decided that the story really worked best as a stand-alone piece, unrelated to anything else I was working on. Typically for me, the motor of plot only kicked in when I started looking at the story in thriller terms: spies, defectors, that kind of thing. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to work out the identity of the two warring combines featured in the story; suffice it to say that there are clues in both their names and symbols. As for Spirey herself, I took her name from a sign I spotted in Australia, which indicated the way to a certain 'Spirey Creek'.
I always had the vague intention of returning to Spirey's universe at some point or another. Perhaps I will, one day . . . if only to find out for myself what happens after the last line of this story.
UNDERSTANDING SPACE AND TIME
PART ONE
Something very strange appeared in the outer recreation bubble on the day that Katrina Solovyova died. When he saw it, John Renfrew rushed back to the infirmary where he had left her. Solovyova had been slipping in and out of lucidity for days, but when he arrived he was glad to find her still conscious. She seldom turned her face away from the picture window, transfixed by the silent and vast twilight landscape beyond the armoured glass. Hovering against the foothills of Pavonis Mons, her reflection was all highlights, as if sketched in bold strokes of chalk.
Renfrew caught his breath before speaking.
'I've seen a piano.'
At first he did not think she had heard him. Then the reflection of Solovyova's mouth formed words.
'You've seen a what?'
'A piano,' Renfrew said, laughing. 'A big, white Bosendorfer grand.'
'You're crazier than me.'
'It was in the recreation bubble,' Renfrew said. 'The one that took a lightning hit last week. I think it fried something. Or unfried something, maybe. Brought something back to life.'
'A piano?'
'It's a start. It means things aren't totally dead. That there's a glimmer of . . . something.'
'Well, isn't that the nicest timing,' Solovyova said.
With a creak of his knees Renfrew knelt by her bedside. He'd connected Solovyova to a dozen or so medical monitors, only three of which were working properly. They hummed, hissed and bleeped with deadening regularity. When it began to seem like music - when he started hearing hidden harmonies and tonal shifts - Renfrew knew it was time to get out of the infirmary. That was why he had gone to the recreation bubble; there was no music there, but at least he could sit in silence.
'Nice timing?' he said.
'I'm dying. Nothing that happens now will make any difference to me.'
'But maybe it would,' Renfrew said. 'If the rec systems are capable of coming back online, what else might be? Maybe I could get the infirmary up and running . . . the diagnostic suite . . . the drug synth . . .' He gestured at the banks of dead, grey monitors and cowled machines parked against the wall. They were covered with scuffed decals and months of dust.
'Pray for another lightning strike, you mean?'
'No . . . not necessarily.' Renfrew chose his words with care. He did not want to offer Solovyova false optimism, but the apparition had made him feel more positive than at any time he could remember since the Catastrophe. They could not unmake the deaths of all the other colonists, or unmake the vastly larger death that even now was difficult to mention. But if some of the base systems they had assumed broken could be restarted, he might at least find a way to keep Solovyova alive.
'What, then?'
'I don't know. But now that I know things aren't as bad as we feared . . .' he trailed off. 'There are lots of things I could try again. Just because they didn't work the first time--'
'You probably imagined the piano.'
'I know I didn't. It was a genuine projection, not a hallucination.'
'And this piano . . .' The reflection froze momentarily. 'How long did it last, Renfrew? I mean, just out of curiosity?'
'Last?'
'That's what I asked.'
'It's still there,' he said. 'It was still there when I left. Like it was waiting for someone to come and play it
.'
The figure in the bed moved slightly.
'I don't believe you.'
'I can't show you, Solovyova. I wish I could, but--'
'I'll die? I'm going to die anyway, so what difference does it make?' She paused, allowing the melancholic chorus of the machines to swell and fill the room. 'Probably by the end of the week. And all I've got to look forward to is the inside of this room or the view out of this window. At least let me see something different.'
'Is this what you really want?'
Solovyova's reflection tipped in acknowledgement. 'Show me the piano, Renfrew. Show me you aren't making this shit up.'
He thought about it for a minute, perhaps two, and then dashed back to the recreation bubble to check that the piano was still there. The journey seemed to take for ever, even at a sprint, through sunken tunnels and window-lined connecting bridges, up and down grilled ramps, through ponderous internal airlocks and sweltering aeroponics labs, taking this detour or that to avoid a blown bubble or failed airlock.
Parts of the infrastructure creaked ominously as he passed through. Here and there his feet crunched through the sterile red dust that was always finding ways to seep through seals and cracks. Everything was decaying, falling apart. Even if the dead had been brought back to life the base would not have been able to support more than a quarter of their number. But the piano represented something other than the slow grind of entropy. If one system had survived apparent failure, the same might be true of others.
He reached the bubble, his eyes closed as he crossed the threshold. He half-expected the piano to be gone, never more than a trick of the mind. Yet there it was: still manifesting, still hovering a few centimetres from the floor. Save for that one suggestion of ghostliness, it appeared utterly solid, as real as anything else in the room. It was a striking pure white, polished to a lambent gloss. Renfrew strode around it, luxuriating in the conjunction of flat planes and luscious curves. He had not noticed this detail before, but the keys were still hidden under the folding cover.
He admired the piano for several more minutes, forgetting his earlier haste. It was as beautiful as it was chilling.
Remembering Solovyova, he returned to the infirmary.
'You took your time,' she said.
'It's still there, but I had to be sure. You certain you want to see it?'
'I haven't changed my mind. Show me the damned thing.'
With great gentleness he unplugged the vigilant machines and wheeled them aside. He could not move the bed, so he took Solovyova from it and placed her in a wheelchair. He had long since grown accustomed to how frail human bodies felt in Martian gravity, but the ease with which he lifted her was shocking, and a reminder of how close to death she was.
He'd hardly known her before the Catastrophe. Even in the days that followed - as the sense of isolation closed in on the base, and the first suicides began - it had taken a long time for them to drift together. It had happened at a party, the one that the colonists had organised to celebrate the detection of a radio signal from Earth, originating from an organised band of survivors in New Zealand. In New Zealand they still had something like a government, something like society, with detailed plans for long-term endurance and reconstruction. And for a little while it had seemed that the survivors might - by some unexplained means - have acquired immunity to the weaponised virus that had started scything its way through the rest of humanity in June 2038.
They hadn't. It just took a little longer than average to wipe them out.
Renfrew pushed her along the tortuous route that led back to the bubble.
'Why a . . . what did you call it?'
'A Bosendorfer. A Bosendorfer grand piano. I don't know. That's just what it said.'
'Something it dragged up from its memory? Was it making any music?'
'No. Not a squeak. The keyboard was hidden under a cover.'
'There must be someone to play it,' Solovyova said.
'That's what I thought.' He pushed her onwards. 'Music would make a difference, at least. Wouldn't it?'
'Anything would make a difference.'
Except not for Solovyova, he thought. Very little was going to make a difference for Solovyova from this point on.
'Renfrew . . .' Solovyova said, her tone softer than before. 'Renfrew, when I'm gone . . . you'll be all right, won't you?'
'You shouldn't worry about me.'
'It wouldn't be human not to. I'd change places if I could.'
'Don't be daft.'
'You were a good man. You didn't deserve to be the last of us.' Renfrew tried to sound dignified. 'Some might say being the last survivor is a sort of privilege.'
'But not me. I don't envy you. I know for a fact I couldn't handle it.'
'Well, I can. I looked at my psychological evaluation. Practical, survivor mentality, they said.'
'I believe it,' Solovyova said. 'But don't let it get to you. Understand? Keep some self-respect. For all of us. For me.'
He knew exactly what she meant by that.
The recreation bubble loomed around the curve in the corridor. There was a moment of trepidation as they neared, but then he saw the white corner of the floating piano, still suspended in the middle of the room, and sighed with relief.
'Thank God,' he said. 'I didn't imagine it.'
He pushed Solovyova into the bubble, halting the wheelchair before the hovering apparition. Its immense mass reminded him of a chiselled cloud. The polished white gleam was convincing, but there was no sign of their own reflections within it. Solovyova said nothing, merely staring into the middle of the room.
'It's changed,' he said. 'Look. The cover's gone up. You can see the keys. They look so real . . . I could almost reach out and touch them. Except I can't play the piano.' He grinned back at the woman in the wheelchair. 'Never could. Never had a musical bone in my body.'
'There is no piano, Renfrew.'
'Solovyova?'
'I said, there is no piano. The room is empty.' Her voice was dead, utterly drained of emotion. She did not even sound disappointed or annoyed. 'There is no piano. No grand piano. No Bosendorfer grand piano. No keyboard. No nothing. You're hallucinating, Renfrew. You're imagining the piano.'
He looked at her in horror. 'I can still see it. It's here.' He reached out to the abstract white mass. His fingers punched through its skin, into thin air. But he had expected that.
He could still see the piano.
It was real.
'Take me back to the infirmary, Renfrew. Please.' Solovyova paused. 'I think I'm ready to die now.'
He put on a suit and buried Solovyova beyond the outer perimeter, close to the mass grave where he had buried the last survivors when Solovyova had been too weak to help. The routine felt familiar enough, but when Renfrew turned back to the base he felt a wrenching sense of difference. The low-lying huddle of soil-covered domes, tubes and cylinders hadn't changed in any tangible way, except that it was now truly uninhabited. He was walking back towards an empty house, and even when Solovyova had been ill - even when Solovyova had been only half-present - that had never been the case.
The moment reached a kind of crescendo. He considered his options. He could return to the base, alone, and survive months or years on the dwindling resources at his disposal. Tharsis Base would keep him alive indefinitely provided he did not fall ill: food and water were not a problem, and the climate recycling systems were deliberately rugged. But there would be no companionship. No network, no music or film, no television or VR. Nothing to look forward to except endless bleak days until something killed him.
Or he could do it here, now. All it would take was a twist of his faceplate release control. He had already worked out how to override the safety lock. A few roaring seconds of pain and it would all be over. And if he lacked the courage to do it that way - and he thought he probably did - then he could sit down and wait until his air supply ran low.
There were a hundred ways he could do it, if he had the will.
He looked at the base, stark under the pale butterscotch of the sky. The choice was laughably simple. Die here, now, or die in there, much later. Either way, his choice would be unrecorded. There would be no eulogies to his bravery, for there was no one left to write eulogies.
'Why me?' he asked aloud. 'Why is it me who has to go through with this?'
He'd felt no real anger until that moment. Now he felt like shouting, but all he could do was fall to his knees and whimper. The question circled in his head, chasing its own tail.