The Abyss Beyond Dreams

  ‘The Raiel can get us out?’

  Nigel held up his hands. ‘We’re talking infinitesimal chances here. But then again, when infinitesimal is all you’ve got to grasp at . . .’

  ‘Then let’s do it. How can we get the Skylady back into space?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about it. Regrav is the problem. It glitched on me the whole time, and since I got down it’s been dead. But ingrav worked. It still does. Not well; it can’t generate a full gee of thrust, which is what I need to lift. But it’s still operational. If I could just get Skylady to a decent altitude, the old girl might be able to accelerate to escape velocity.’

  ‘So you need something to boost Skylady to start with.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Can you get a Skylord to help?’

  ‘I don’t see how.’

  ‘Tell them you can help the Forest.’

  ‘Even if they understood the concept, you forget they’re the Faller variant that’s perfectly adapted to the Void. They’re not going to help change a damn thing.’

  ‘Oh.’ She pursed her lips in annoyance. ‘Yeah. Uracus!’

  ‘I was thinking along the lines of something crude enough that the Void won’t glitch it.’

  ‘What?’

  His grin was malicious. ‘Project Orion. Now that would be something.’

  ‘What’s Project Orion?’

  ‘Something utterly beautiful, and completely crazy. It involves a lot of atom bombs. But, don’t worry, I’m not actually going to use it. There are a few more rational options open to us. We’ll run some experiments and see what’s the most effective.

  ‘How long will that take?’ It came out more childlike and petulant than she wanted.

  ‘I don’t know, because I haven’t decided which propulsion systems to test, yet. I need—’

  ‘—more information,’ she said in exasperation. ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘Everything costs more and takes longer. You need to get used to that.’

  *

  They walked along the railings that isolated the Captain’s Palace from the rest of the city. At the front, where the grand façade looked down Walton Boulevard, was the big open cobbled square where people could watch the Palace Guards and the Marines strut their ceremonial stuff twice a week. But, as you walked round, the rails gave way to a high stone wall, blocking the palace gardens from casual view. It was topped by firepine – a prickly scarlet and orange bush that resembled a cascade of foam, with a venom in its thorns that was both excruciating and lethal to humans. The stone was also thick enough to prevent most ex-sight perceiving what was going on inside. Mod-birds belonging to the Palace Guard avian squad flew ceaseless patrols overhead, preventing anyone else’s mod-bird from getting close and providing curious citizens with a glimpse of the hanky-panky that the Captain’s family was rumoured to get up to amid the lovely topiary paths, ornate ponds and shady glades.

  Mayborne Avenue was the road which circled the perimeter directly outside the wall: a wide thoroughfare planted with ever-blue procilla trees, with elegant stone townhouses on the other side; by law only two storeys high so they couldn’t see over the wall. The avenue was deliberately designed to draw attention to anyone who lingered.

  It was drizzling lightly when Nigel and Kysandra started to walk along the pavement on the houses’ side. Originally they’d been built by aristocratic families and wealthy merchants desperate to court favour with the Captain. But the two-storey law prohibited any truly grandiose house from being constructed on the avenue, so time had seen many converted into grace-and-favour apartments for the palace courtiers; several, it was said, were now residences reserved for the Captain’s various mistresses, while the remainder became prestigious addresses for company offices, legal firms, banks and charitable societies under the Captain’s generous patronage.

  They stopped outside one whose yellow dressed stone was aged to grey, its surface pocked with innumerable cracks and patches. The brass sign beside the front door read: Varlan University Bibliographical Preservation Society. Nigel’s teekay rang the bell.

  A receptionist showed them to a first-floor waiting room, her shell not quite strong enough to contain her condescension. Their appointment was so routine, so predictable. Nouveau riche provincials seeking a contact – any contact – within the palace court. Making a sizeable donation to one of the charitable societies of which the Captain was patron was the start of the long road to acceptability by Varlan society.

  After making them wait for a quarter of an hour, the receptionist showed them up to a second-floor office. It was a square room with high walls covered by floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. The only break was a tall sash window looking out over Mayborne Avenue. A broad applewood desk sat in front of it, almost black from age. Coulan rose from his chair and gave Kysandra a big hug and a kiss.

  ‘You look great,’ she told him. Which he did, his hair cut shorter and gelled in a conservative style. White shirt and dark fuchsia tie, charcoal-grey suit jacket hanging on the back of his chair. ‘A proper city worker.’

  ‘Really? So you mean I look bored, poor and miserable?’

  ‘Not that bad.’

  ‘I missed you,’ he said.

  ‘Nice,’ Nigel grunted as he sat down. ‘We brought a lot of files for you to access. But mainly we’ve made progress on the Fallers; turns out they’re a nasty type of nano, built for planetary conquest.’

  ‘Fascinating. Well, on my side, I’ve built up a decent network of contacts in Varlan, some actives.’

  ‘Actives?’ Kysandra asked.

  ‘Dominated,’ Coulan said. ‘I need to be able to rely on key people, not just hope they’ll do as I ask.’

  ‘Oh.’ She looked down, studying the floorboards.

  ‘Once I got her detoxed, I placed Bethaneve in the Tax Office,’ Coulan continued. ‘Several others report back to her, so the inspectors won’t be bothering you.’

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ Nigel said. ‘What else?’

  ‘A couple of Citizens’ Dawn politicians in the National Council were eager for campaign contributions; there’s always plenty of internal party bitchfighting going on for secure seats. Technically we’re living in a democracy, though in reality this is a one-party state; the Citizens’ Dawn party is the only one that counts. There are some opposition parties, but they’re a rag-tag bunch with a few borough seats that nobody really bothers about, not even the voters. I’m developing contacts in the radical movement, such as it is, but I have to proceed with caution there; they’re all as paranoid as they are committed, but I think I’ve found a way in.’

  ‘Sex?’ Nigel guessed.

  ‘Always: the eternal human weak spot. The other reason for my restraint in that direction is that, surprisingly, the Captain’s police are actually quite effective. They monitor all opposition for anyone able to mount a real challenge, or even just garner some popular support. If you want to get on in politics here, you join Citizens’ Dawn and spend the next century fighting your way up a very treacherous ladder. Outside politics, I’ve acquired assets in the banks, and even some in the regiments. Pamphlet editors are always eager to trade gossip, which ties in neatly with the ten sheriffs who will private ’path information to me for a price. And I’m working on identifying possibles in the Captain’s police, but they’re going to have to be turned by domination. I can’t trust anything else; the whole damn lot of them are fanatical about maintaining things the way they are.’

  ‘Sounds like progress,’ Nigel said.

  ‘Thank you. Oh, and you’ll never guess who’s just shown up in town.’

  ‘You’re right, I won’t guess.’

  ‘Captain Slvasta.’

  Nigel’s grin was positively dirty. ‘Captain, eh?’

  ‘Yeah. They promoted him and booted him over to the Joint Regimental Council where all that bright-burning youthful enthusiasm will be snuffed out by bureaucratic procedure.’

  ‘Poor boy. Can we use him?’

  ‘He’s
on my watch list.’

  ‘Okay. What about the palace?’ Nigel nodded at the wall on the other side of Mayborne Avenue.

  ‘Real progress there.’

  Kysandra’s u-shadow reported that Coulan was sending over a file. It was a recording from an artificial bussalore that Skylady had synthesized. Coulan had taken a week just getting the slippery little drone into the palace gardens, sitting in his Preservation Society office as the ersatz-rodent nosed along the wall, examining cracks. Eventually it found a deep one and slithered inside, then began clawing at the mortar joints, taking days to tunnel through and break out into the gardens.

  ‘It is true what they say about the Captain’s family,’ Coulan said solemnly. ‘It took me three days to navigate across the garden. There’s a lot of degenerate nocturnal behaviour going on in there, let me tell you.’

  ‘We should record it,’ Nigel said. ‘Nothing wrecks a reputation worse than a scandal. It can always be gifted to the city when we need it.’

  ‘I’ll send in another bussalore drone tonight.’

  The file continued to play, showing Kysandra the interior of the palace. Even though she’d seen the façade, she wasn’t quite prepared for the opulence of the rooms within. But Coulan didn’t keep it above ground for long. The vast building squatted above an expansive labyrinth of cellars and vaults and tunnels. She found herself in a brick vault with the drone’s little enhanced-sensitivity retinas looking up at the far wall. It was a convex curve made from metal that had darkened with age and gathered a dusting of powdery pine-green algae. There was a door in the middle, a big circular affair with an odd collar of torn metal and what looked like shredded rubber, whose stands hung limply.

  ‘Is that plyplastic?’ she asked. Skylady didn’t use much of the substance, but there were hundreds of references in her newly implanted memories.

  ‘Yes,’ Nigel confirmed.

  ‘So that’s . . .’

  ‘A cargo module, by the looks of it.’

  ‘Correct,’ Coulan said. ‘I found another eleven of them underneath the palace. The bussalore drone managed to get inside one. It’d been stripped clean. Even some of the internal structure had been removed.’

  ‘Useful material,’ Nigel muttered. ‘Probably propping up some aristo’s mansion roof.’

  ‘Indeed. Then two weeks ago, I found this.’

  The image changed to another large vault, this one annular with a ribbed ceiling. It enclosed a big ellipsoid made of smooth hexagonal panels which stood on its wide end, supported by brick buttresses. Metal struts which protruded from the panel intersections appeared to have been broken off. Tangles of cables and pipes formed a tattered web around the object. Six thick seamless tubes emerged from the panels around the narrow end, extending upwards so they almost touched the vault’s curving roof.

  ‘It took a while, but the drone eventually found a way in; some of the conduit mouldings had perished,’ Coulan said with a note of pride.

  The recording switched to a weird spectrum of cobalt-blue and black. Scale was difficult to make out, and the interior of the ellipsoid was filled with a dense lattice of support struts and cables and wire tubes, which made the picture confusing. Lean lines of scabbed electromuscle had distended from various mechanisms, oozing flaccid knobs that hung limply over dark gulfs, as if it had briefly turned liquid, only to resolidify. Cradles held blurred shapes; spheres, cylinders, discs . . .

  ‘Freeze,’ Nigel commanded.

  The recording focused on a long cylinder with a wasp-waist middle and a mushroom-profile head.

  ‘Oh, holy crap,’ Nigel whispered. His lips parted in a soft lopsided smile.

  ‘My thoughts exactly,’ Coulan said.

  Kysandra wanted to shout the question at them, but she knew the way this game was played now.

  ‘This changes everything,’ Nigel said. ‘We have to get in there. I need them.’

  ‘Not going to happen,’ Coulan said. ‘Not easily, anyway.’

  ‘I could ask nicely.’

  ‘I’ve studied Varlan’s society closely while I’ve been in the city; it’s conservative and sliding down the decadence decay curve. Can you imagine your impact? Hi there, Captain Philious, I’m from the Commonwealth. I have more knowledge than you, so just give me what I need and I’m going to try and get you all out of here, back to a universe where you will have none of your wealth and power, where you’re just the same as everyone else.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Nigel drawled, and scratched the back of his head. ‘So, we put together a crew of master criminals and pull off the crime of the millennium.’ He grinned. ‘Finally, something to rival the Great Wormhole Heist of 2243. I’d love to see Ozzie’s face at that news.’

  ‘It took me nearly three weeks to get a seven-centimetre remote drone into that vault. The palace has about a hundred armed guards on duty at any one time. There’s a Marine barracks five minutes away. And the Captain’s police aren’t idiots or slack. I just don’t see how we can realistically get into the vault, let alone take those out through the palace and back to the Skylady.’

  ‘So we have to get rid of the guards and Marines and the police, then.’

  ‘And manufacture a time crazy enough so no one will notice them being carted off down Walton Boulevard in broad daylight.’

  ‘Ah, hell. I suppose so. We don’t have a lot of options right now.’

  Kysandra gave up. ‘Right, you two! What the crud is that thing?’

  Nigel turned to face her, actually expressing some genuine gusto for once. ‘The Vermillion’s armoury.’

  BOOK SIX

  Those who Rise

  1

  Even though he’d sworn not to return, Slvasta had enjoyed seeing his old regimental comrades again. He’d made the journey back to Cham just ten days after he’d returned to Varlan from agreeing the deal with Nigel. Sergeant Yannrith had written, asking him to be a character witness for Trooper Tovakar. He was to be court-martialled, Yannrith’s letter explained: there had been one too many charges of drunk and disorderly behaviour. Major Rachelle was to be the prosecuting officer. If found guilty, Tovakar would be given a dishonourable discharge and stripped of his pension.

  That it was Major Rachelle was a big factor in Slvasta’s return. That and the injustice. Tovakar was no saint, but to strip a trooper of his pension – a man who’d faced terrible danger to keep his fellow citizens safe – well, that was exactly the kind of thing Democratic Unity and their organization were fighting in Varlan.

  His arrival caused a stir. Even provincial old Cham had heard of the Hero of Eynsham Square and looked favourably on a famous son. Ultimately, though, it had made no difference. Slvasta’s testimony appealed to emotion; Rachelle deployed cold logic and impeccable legal precedent. Tovakar was kicked out of the regiment and his pension rights revoked.

  Afterwards, Slvasta almost didn’t bother with the subtle recruiting questions, but routine and paranoia made him ask them anyway. He wasn’t asking them with the usual protection of anonymity, and Uracus alone knew how furious Bethaneve would be with him for that breach of security. But Tovakar was absolutely perfect material for their movement, so Slvasta made him an offer to accompany him back to Varlan and help Democratic Unity with certain politically useful acts. Tovakar didn’t even hesitate, which got Slvasta thinking. The trooper would be extremely useful when it finally (Giu forbid) came to using the weapons that Nigel had agreed to supply. There weren’t many ex-regiment people in their organization yet, and they could really use someone with that kind of experience. In his own way, Tovakar was indisputably loyal and reliable.

  So he went and sat down with Andricea, and then Sergeant Yannrith. It helped that the Cham regiment hadn’t been having the happiest time since he left. True, they didn’t take mods with them on sweeps any more, but most of the other reforms he’d instituted had quietly been dropped. There were more officers, recruited from the county’s gentry – junior sons and daughters who received no income from their family estates, an
d who saw the regiment purely as a way of maintaining their lifestyle. To pay for them, there were fewer troopers. Brigadier Venize was withdrawing from the day-to-day running of the regiment, with Major Rachelle stepping up to fill the gap. So when he made them the offer, Yannrith and Andricea were on the train with him and Tovakar back to Varlan.

  It turned out to be the smartest recruiting move he’d made. Even Bethaneve agreed with that. Eventually.

  *

  As always these days, Yannrith, Andricea and Tovakar were the ones standing with him on Varlan’s quayside in the grim meagre twilight, waiting for the ferry to chug its way over the Colbal. It was raining hard, a thin drizzle swirling out of featureless grey clouds that formed an unbroken ceiling over the city. Despite the rain, Slvasta was suffering a clammy warmth. Under his coat he wore a protective waistcoat of drosilk. Bethaneve insisted on that at all times. As the official leader of Democratic Unity he was a public figure, and not all the public admired him. The waistcoat would help against any sudden attack.

  Drosilk, which had started to come on the market eighteen months ago, was astonishing: a light glossy thread that formed a fabric with a beautiful moiré shimmer. But it was also fantastically strong; there had been nothing like it on Bienvenido before. At first it had been used by society ladies for their couture dresses. But soon the factory looms had begun to weave tighter fabrics, strong enough to turn a blade. Really thick weaves were supposedly bullet proof. Everybody wanted the stuff, which had first appeared from Gretz county. Slvasta had been mildly alarmed to learn that drosilk came from a mod. Some adaptor stable had produced what it was calling a mod-spider which spun the stuff out. The spider, barely the size of a human hand, was utterly harmless. That was going to add complications for his anti-neut policy. Drosilk was becoming an important commodity, helping the city’s battered post-mod economy along. Democratic Unity couldn’t afford to be seen opposing it; weaving and tailoring the bales of cloth into finished clothes provided a lot of work. A couple of the old adaptor stables in the city were already bringing in the mod-spiders, adapting their old barns to accommodate them, and nobody was protesting. Slvasta considered that the thin end of the wedge, but Coulan had advised him to say nothing and bide his time over the problem.