The carbines opened up with a devastating roar.
7
Philious never enjoyed visiting the Faller Research Institute. Even in childhood Fallers triggered an instinctive discomfort, but his father had insisted he see one as part of his training. Time hadn’t lessened the reaction.
The black carriage he rode in with Trevene and Aothori was larger than an ordinary cab, but unadorned with any heraldic crest. There were several of them in the palace stables for the family to use when they wanted to travel about incognito. Two ordinary cabs followed them through the streets, filled with Palace Guards in civilian clothes.
East Folwich was a wealthy borough dominated by the clothing trade, so although it had a large industrial park the factories didn’t belch out smoke and chemical effluent as many did in Varlan. Pleasant houses formed quiet leafy streets, while larger residences surrounded the two parks. The majority of factories were built along both sides of the Dolan Drop canal, a channel dug specifically to divert half of the river Erinwash in a two-kilometre semicircle. Water surged down the brick-lined canal with considerable force, powering dozens of water wheels. Pollution here amounted to the tremendous clattering of big looms that reverberated through the air for sixteen hours a day.
To an observer, the institute looked like a small exclusive factory, wedged between an underused railway marshalling yard and the edge of the Dolan Drop factory zone. It was surrounded by an unusually high wall which was well maintained. No sign announced what was contained within. There was only one entrance, through heavy wooden doors into a short tunnel that had another set of identical doors at the far end. They were linked mechanically, making it impossible for both to be opened at the same time.
With the inner doors open, the Captain’s carriage trundled out into a bare courtyard. The institute building’s sombre purpose was reflected in its plain design, a long two-storey rectangle with narrow iron-barred windows and no adornment at all. Philious believed it was the only part of Varlan where you could see no vegetation. Even the weeds were scoured regularly from the courtyard’s cobbles by the staff. Human staff. There were no mods permitted inside, ever. Of all the places on Bienvenido, the institute remained steadfast in following the guidelines laid down in the original Faller manuals it had produced almost three thousand years earlier. Fallers, those pages warned, could exert total control over mods and neuts, rendering any human instruction worthless.
As he alighted from the carriage, Philious reflected on the irony that the other most devout believer in that tenet right now was Captain (retired) Slvasta.
The institute director, Professor Gravin, bowed gravely at his distinguished visitors. He was well into his second century, an enormously heavy man whose midnight-black skin served to highlight his remaining wisps of silver hair. Shaking the professor’s damp hand Philious also noticed how much sweat was glinting on that skin. It wasn’t from stress; moving such a bulky frame just a few steps seemed to exhaust Professor Gravin.
‘I’m so very glad you came, sir,’ the director wheezed as he led them inside. ‘What we have found is remarkable. And disturbing.’
‘So your letter implied,’ Philious murmured. He kept glancing at the director’s white coat. Everyone at the institute wore one, it was their uniform. But the buttons on the oversized director’s lab coat seemed perpetually on the point of ripping, they were under so much pressure. Not for the first time he began to question the need for the institute. For all his dedication, the professor and his staff were utterly inferior to the scientists who had accompanied Captain Cornelius, those stalwarts who had investigated the Fallers as their ship’s instruments decayed and died around them, who had determined so much of their nature and ability. Since those first two centuries, the institute had added very little to their knowledge. These days it didn’t do much other than confirm that the corpses of humans and animals brought to them were indeed Fallers, and check that there was no deviation, that nothing new had developed. Pioneering science had given way to a detailed cataloguing mandate as the institute tried to establish any kind of a pattern in Faller activity, because it no longer had anything else to contribute. Any idea that the institute would lead the fight back against the Fallers and their Forest home had faded more than two thousand years ago. Now it was just another government department, locked into the status quo, battling for budgets and staff.
Professor Gravin opened the doors of the autopsy room, barely fitting through the gap. The room was completely clad in shiny white tiles, except for the ceiling, which was all glass, with the late-morning sunlight streaming in. Philious had to squint against the glare.
The broad metal-skinned slab in the middle of the room held a body that had been cut open and spread apart so much that its original human outline was difficult to recognize. He was looking at a butcher’s table. It didn’t escape him that Aothori leaned forwards keenly.
‘The Meor regiment brought its remains to us two days ago,’ Professor Gravin said, sucking down air after his exertion. ‘We’ve been examining it ever since.’
Philious was aware of the professor’s emphasis, the institute carries on doing its job as always. ‘The Knole Street Faller, yes. I took the gifting, along with most of the city.’
‘Our first point of interest was the missing fingers,’ the professor said. He pulled on some rubber gloves and picked up the Faller’s hand. The index and middle fingers were missing, reduced to tiny stumps from which several sections had been sliced away. ‘In itself there’s nothing too unusual about that. An eggsumption will always duplicate the person it absorbs, right down to moles, blemishes, hair pattern. If our man had lost two fingers, than that’s what will come out. The egg won’t grow replacements.’
‘I am aware of this,’ Philious said, looking at the hand. The dead flesh was abnormally pale in the bright light. ‘So what is unusual?’
‘The surgery.’
‘Excuse me?’
The professor tapped the Faller’s index finger stump with his thumb. ‘We noticed the ends were unusually smooth. Normally when someone is unfortunate enough to lose a finger – some kind of industrial accident or just simple carelessness with an axe – the doctor will trim the torn flesh and stitch the wound together. It will heal, leaving scar tissue. This man had none.’
‘So it was a congenital condition,’ Aothori said. ‘He was born without those fingers.’
‘No, sir. We don’t think so. In both fingers there was still a section of the proximal phalanges remaining, about a centimetre long, extending from the knuckle. I consulted with the dean of medicine at the university – that isn’t a congenital defect we’re aware of.’
‘Then how do you explain it?’ Philious asked.
‘The tips of the phalanges had been smoothed, yet I don’t know how that would be achieved. And we examined the skin of the tip under a microscope: the wound had healed over in a uniform fashion. There is no scar tissue, no anomalies in the dermal layer at all. If he lost the fingers in an accident, he was given a perfect treatment afterwards. A treatment we are not capable of providing.’
‘Occam’s razor,’ Aothori said. ‘Just because you haven’t seen that congenital condition before doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Or perhaps the egg made a small alteration during duplication this time. More likely, the Faller lost those fingers in some kind of fight and you’re seeing the way their bodies heal.’
‘Yes, sir. We considered those options.’
‘But?’ Philious continued. ‘We’re not here because of the fingers, are we?’
‘No, sir. When my deputy reported the irregularity I took it upon myself to continue the autopsy personally.’
‘Commendable. And?’
The professor pointed at the open skull. The brainpan was empty. ‘Its brain. I dissected its brain. Please.’ He beckoned them over to one of the long benches running down the side of the room. There were several glass jars with flesh sealed inside, and a large brass microscope. A Faller brain was splayed o
pen on a small metal platform, the grey-brown mass peeled apart like a fruit, its segments pinned down at the tips. A brass stand with various magnifying glasses curved over the dissected tissue, providing various enhanced views of the stringy organ. ‘Fallers copy human organs very precisely,’ the professor said. ‘Except for the brain. It is the most distinctive difference outside of blood colour. Their brains are a single array of identical neural cells. Ours are a composite of clusters and lobes and glands, while theirs are uniform and regular. This one was different.’
Philious studied the splayed brain open before him; his distaste suppressed by curiosity, he moved in closer. The big magnifying glasses provided weirdly distorted images. ‘How so?’
‘There were minute fibres interlaced within the structure. I only just spotted them because I was using the strongest lenses.’
‘Fibres?’ Philious peered closer. The biggest lens showed him a landscape of grey-brown hummocks threaded with collapsed tubules – which he took to be capillaries.
‘Here, sir,’ the professor indicated the big microscope. ‘They’re considerably thinner than a human hair. As I say, it was mostly luck I spotted them. And they were terribly difficult to extract. We’ve only succeeded with a few sections so far.’
Philious looked into the microscope. The vision field was a simple white expanse, with what could have been a slender translucent grey blemish running from top to bottom: the fibre. He saw tiny spikes radiating out from the main strand, as if it had bristles. It was fascinating. ‘What is that?’
‘We don’t know,’ the professor said bluntly. ‘You saw the secondary filaments branching?’
‘Yes.’ Philious reluctantly moved away; he could sense Aothori’s eagerness to view the thread.
‘They appear short, but actually we don’t know how extensive they are. They get thinner and thinner until they vanish from the microscope’s sight. We’re guessing, of course, but they could wind up as molecular strings. In which case they’re presumably connected to individual neurones.’
Philious glanced back to the body on the slab. ‘And they’re part of its brain? Some kind of second nervous system?’
‘We simply don’t know.’ The professor dabbed a handkerchief across his brow to soak up some of the perspiration. ‘There has never, ever, been anything like this recorded in the institute’s history.’
‘You said yourself you got lucky.’
‘Yes, sir. I did. But the institute’s founders, the scientists who had ship’s machines, I don’t believe they’d have missed something like this, yet it isn’t described in any of the texts they published. And I’ve had staff re-examining microscope slides of Faller brain tissue for the last thirty hours. We have hundreds of valid samples dating back two hundred and fifty years. As yet, no one has spotted any threads like this.’
Philious licked his lips and glanced over at Trevene, who as always guarded his thoughts impeccably. ‘New,’ he said slowly. ‘And different. Sounds familiar?’
‘Not coincidence,’ Trevene said. ‘A new kind of Faller?’
‘Why bother speculating?’ Aothori said. ‘Let me bring Slvasta in. I can have answers out of him in a day – two at the most if he wants to play tough. You know I can.’
‘The Hero of Eynsham Square?’ Philious asked sarcastically. ‘The man who stood up to rampaging neuts to save a bunch of adorable schoolchildren in front of the whole city? You want to snatch him from his home and interrogate him until his mind and body are broken? Really?’
‘The Fallers manipulated that stampede,’ Aothori said. ‘And it made Slvasta look like the greatest thing on Bienvenido since we discovered how to adapt neuts. Is that also coincidence?’
‘Slvasta loathes Fallers and mods more than anybody,’ Trevene said. ‘His hatred consumes and drives him. It verges on the irrational. He is responsible for the neut sterilization. His followers are the ones slaughtering mods.’
‘You hope,’ Aothori sneered back. ‘Father, we need answers. I can get them. If our world is facing a new threat from our enemy, we must expose it.’
‘Not like this. These are troubled times. Our position, our status, must not be questioned.’
‘There were other people standing with Slvasta to face the neut charge,’ Trevene said. ‘Slvasta would naturally stop and make his stand: despite everything he’s an officer, regiment trained and sworn to protect Bienvenido’s citizens. But those others, it was almost suicide to stand with him. Their reasons for doing so might be a more profitable avenue of investigation. They have slunk away again, which is curious in itself.’
‘I remember the girl,’ Aothori said.
Philious held up a hand. ‘Not a girl, not this time. As I recall the gifting, there were at least two other men – one was quite young.’
‘I’ll find them,’ Trevene said.
‘Good. Now, professor, what do you think these fibres could be? Do they make the Faller’s teekay stronger, perhaps?’
‘Anything is possible, sir. All we know is that it’s new.’
‘Which is what this institute is actually for: discovering information about Fallers.’ He gave Aothori a pointed look. ‘So I’m assuming, professor, your next step is to find out if this Knole Street Faller is unique, or the start of some new development.’
‘Yes, sir,’ the professor said.
‘Right then, Aothori, you’re to speak to the Marine Commandant. From now on, every Faller the regiments kill is to be brought here for further research. Understood? All of them, no exceptions – not just the human ones, but the animals as well. The professor and his colleagues will examine every brain to see if there are more fibres.’
‘Yes, father. What about Slvasta?’
‘He’s chosen politics as his arena, so that’s the arena where we’ll deal with him.’
8
It had rained for half the morning, leaving the city’s cobbles and bricks slicked and shining. Now, a noon sun seared down on the streets, creating long wisps of vapour as the residual rainwater evaporated. The humidity was intense, making Slvasta sweat just walking a few metres from the cab to the entrance doors of the Westergate Club. Inside the grand building on Mortemer Boulevard, the marble walls and pillars and floors calmly absorbed the heat, taking the air down to an altogether more reasonable temperature.
The doorman was frowning as Slvasta came up the steps. Then recognition kicked in, and the doorman suddenly smiled.
‘Captain Slvasta, sir! Welcome.’
Slvasta gave the man a small nod, half-embarrassed. This had been the way of it for the whole ten days since the Doncastor Station Stampede (as everyone now referred to it). He hadn’t realized at the time, of course, but the shared vision from everyone in Eynsham Square had been perceived clean across the city. The one-armed man, standing resolutely in front of a group of terrified school kids, aiming a pistol at the charge of rampaging neuts and fearsome mod-apes. Calmly picking off the mod-apes while his teekay lanced into the brains of neuts until the children were safe. A few other people stood with him, but no one noticed them. Pamphlets and gazettes alike had been effusive in praising the ‘Hero of Eynsham Square’.
‘Thank you,’ Slvasta said modestly.
A footman was waiting by the reception desk just inside. He bowed in greeting. ‘Colonel Gelasis is waiting for you in the Nevada suite,’ he said. ‘Please follow me. It’s such an honour to have you here.’
And how do you answer that and its variants twenty times a day?
The Nevada suite was a private wood-panelled room off the club’s second-floor dining hall. Colonel Gelasis was sitting at the head of its long polished table, wearing his uniform. But not full ceremonial dress, Slvasta saw; no silk sashes or spiky oversize medals, just discreet gold braid and a line of ribbons. For the colonel, that was almost being in civvies.
‘My dear chap.’ Colonel Gelasis rose and shook Slvasta’s hand enthusiastically. ‘So good to see you again. Thank you for coming.’
Slvasta inclined
his head politely. ‘Thank you for inviting me.’ His first instinct when the runner arrived with the invitation had been to refuse – with a vulgar reply. The others had talked him out of it.
‘We need to know what they want,’ Bethaneve had said.
‘We need to know what they think you are,’ Coulan countered.
‘What I am?’
‘If they know you’re the true head of Democratic Unity.’
‘We are the party leaders,’ Slvasta said, almost desperately.
‘In here among ourselves, yes,’ Javier said. ‘But after Eynsham Square, you’re the public face.’
‘Like Bryan-Anthony?’ he grumped.
‘That’s not going to happen. Not to the Hero of—’
Eight days, and he was already cringing at the term.
Bethaneve stroked his cheek possessively. ‘They won’t kill you,’ she said. ‘They want to seduce you. That’s why your old boss wants to see you.’
‘So what do I tell them?’
Looking at Colonel Gelasis as they sat down, Slvasta couldn’t think of anyone less likely to be a political agent. The colonel had served the Captain’s Marines with distinction. The damage to his leg was cleverly fuzzed, and he could walk with just the slightest limp; only if he attempted to run was the injury apparent. But then that was probably why he’d been chosen as the one to make contact, someone Slvasta could relate to.
‘I have to tell you,’ Gelasis said, ‘we were all shocked by your resignation. Personally, I was very disappointed.’
‘Really?’ Slvasta wasn’t going to let him off that lightly. ‘They were going to crucify Arnice. He was going to be blamed for everything. If that’s the kind of loyalty the Meor regiment shows, then—’
‘That wasn’t the regiment, and you know it,’ Gelasis snapped immediately. ‘Some little prick working in the basement of the National Council thought he could shift the blame away from his masters. The Meor commandant would have had that charge revoked by the end of the week, that or the regiment would’ve marched on the Council. Arnice was one of their own, dammit, a brother officer. Politicians don’t get to blame the regiments for their stupidity and incompetence.’