Текст книги "The Abyss Beyond Dreams"

Автор книги: Peter F. Hamilton

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 44 страниц)

The landlady answered the door when Slvasta pulled its bell cord. Now, she would have been perfectly at home in the hall of archives, he thought. A puffy face that looked perpetually miserable, dark dress made out of stiff fabric, greying hair in a tight bun. Her gaze and ex-sight ran up and down Slvasta’s plain grey suit. ‘This door is locked at ten thirty,’ she said primly. ‘I insist that my girls are back by then. If they’re not, I will assume they no longer require residence here – and frankly if that is how they choose to behave, I wouldn’t want them under my roof anyway.’

‘An admirable philosophy,’ Slvasta assured her.

Bethaneve appeared in the hallway. She’d changed into a green dress with a skirt whose hem hovered around her knees, and a white cobweb shawl wrapped tightly round her shoulders. There was a pink rose in her hair. Hints of mischievous thoughts slithered about beneath a shell that was tantalizingly thin.

The landlady gave a snort of disapproval and closed the door.

‘You kept a straight face,’ Bethaneve said as they walked to the cab. ‘Well done.’

‘She does seem rather imposing.’

‘She used to work at the Tax Office. You develop a certain attitude if you stay long enough.’

The cab driver opened the door and helped Bethaneve up. When she sat on the bench and removed her shawl, Slvasta did a classic double take. The green dress had a square neck cut almost as low as the one Lanicia had worn yesterday. He cursed himself for being so obvious, but Bethaneve grinned knowingly.

‘So, where are you taking me?’ she asked.

Slvasta paused on the verge of answering; was he imagining a double entendre? ‘I’ve heard good things about the Oakham Lodge.’

‘I’m in your hands. Oh—’ Her hand covered her mouth, and she blushed. ‘Slvasta, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean—’

‘Trust me. After having your arm amputated without narnik, figures of speech don’t really register as terribly upsetting.’

‘Without narnik?’

‘Uh huh.’

‘Great Giu, tell me all about it!’

*

When Bethaneve smiled, her lips curled up. It made her look delightfully impish, he realized. Her laugh was husky. She didn’t have the formal restraint and coldness of the aristocratic daughters he’d met, a difference which was so refreshing. She knocked back beer, not wine. She was animated on a number of subjects, such as the three dams on the Yann river which ran through the city and provided water for nine districts – how the pumps were constantly breaking down and the owners weren’t obliged to compensate the households when supplies were cut off. Or the lamplight company that had the contract for Borton Street, which was doing such a sloppy job. And how the meat inspectors at Wellfield market were so crooked. And . . . And . . . And . . .

‘I shouldn’t be telling you things like this,’ she said as the main course was cleared away. They’d both had the steak-and-kidney pie that was the lodge’s specialty.

‘Why ever not?’

‘Well, you’re an officer.’

‘That hardly makes me part of the Captain’s police.’

‘No.’ She raised her beer glass and gave him a shrewd look over the top of it. ‘You’re not what I imagined an officer to be, either.’

‘How did you imagine an officer to be?’

‘Stuck up, like the rest of the aristos. Uncaring.’

‘Regiments have a difficult job, you know. Being an officer is no sinecure. It’s tough out there sweeping the countryside. And . . .’ He glanced at his stump. ‘Tougher if you fail.’

‘I get that now. It’s the uniforms, you see, all bright and expensive. I just identify you with the rich families who run everything.’

‘Some of their younger sons take commissions, mostly with the Meor regiment. That way they get to stay in Varlan – admittedly on the other side of the river. I heard there’s almost one officer for every trooper. And the Meor does pay officers about ten times what any other regiment pays. It’s called the capital weighting; life here is more expensive.’

‘Whose fault is that?’ she said sharply.

‘But there are more opportunities in a city than out in the countryside. That attracts people.’

‘Which puts up the prices, which takes opportunity away from the poorest.’

‘But you live here. You managed to get a good job.’

‘That’s a good job? Eight o’clock till five thirty, with forty minutes’ lunch break which you have to take in the canteen, which just happens to be run by the senior clerk’s family? Every day for a hundred and ten years, that’s the requirement to qualify for a full pension.’

‘Do you think you’ll last that long?’

‘No. I’m going to find me a rich landowner who’ll take me away from all this.’ She raised an eyebrow in scorn. ‘That’s what’s supposed to happen, isn’t it? Sorry, do I sound bitter? I don’t mean to be. It’s just that nothing changes. And there’s so much injustice on Bienvenido, and nobody seems to be doing anything about it. Certainly not the Captain and all our Councils. The money they receive – sweet Uracus! I see some of the public expenditure files, you know.’

‘Doesn’t surprise me. And I’m afraid I’m not landed. My mother has a farm, but my half-brothers will inherit that now. I’m going to spend my life fighting the Fallers.’

Bethaneve slid her hand across the table and grasped his fingers. ‘You’re a good man, Captain Slvasta. You stick to your beliefs. Don’t let them take that away from you.’

‘I won’t.’ Somehow he didn’t have the courage to tell her about the committee meeting that morning, how they’d already thwarted him.

‘So who’s this Nigel person?’ she asked. ‘You must want him very badly to resort to the Tax Office for help. What’s he done?’

He explained what had happened, how angry he was at himself for being tricked.

‘That’s very strange,’ she said when he’d finished. ‘I can’t imagine anyone working for a nest, no matter how much they were paid.’

‘Me neither,’ he admitted. ‘But what else could it be?’

‘Did you know that Captain Xaxon used to destroy an egg in public every year?’

‘No.’

‘He was the seventh Captain, I think. There’d be a big midsummer ceremony at the palace, and they’d bring out this giant steam-powered guillotine device he’d had specially built for the event. It could slice a Faller egg clean in half. There were bands, regimental parades. The whole works. Quite a spectacle, so they say. Ten thousand people used to turn up.’

‘Why did it stop? There’s nothing this world likes better than its traditions.’

‘One of his granddaughters had a puppy. It slipped its lead and ran towards the egg – the lure, you see. She ran after it—’

‘Oh, crud.’

‘They had to amputate three of her fingers when she got stuck.’ Bethaneve squeezed his hand a fraction tighter, and gave his stump a thoughtful look. ‘I don’t suppose they had time to administer narnik, either. Poor girl.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Anyway, that’s the only time I know about an egg being moved anywhere by humans. Maybe this Nigel is planning some kind of victory ceremony. Is he a politician?’

‘I suppose he could stand for a Council office. It makes as much sense as anything – except this was over a year and a half ago.’ He realized they were still holding hands, and made no effort to stop.

‘I’ll do you a deal, Captain Slvasta.’

‘Go on.’

‘I will order up all the files on boatowners in Erond county and go through them for you. See if any of them fit what you’ve told me about Nigel.’

‘That sounds good. What’s my side of the deal?’

Her smile became fierce. ‘You take me to a bait.’

‘A bait?’

‘Yes.’ She was looking at him intently, ex-sight examining his shell for hints of his reaction.

‘Very well.’

She drained her beer glass, then dropped the pretty rose from her hair into it. ‘Come on, then.’

*

Slvasta had never been to the city’s Newich district. Never had a reason to. It was a jumble of derelict warehouses and factories, broken up by bleak tenements the owners had built to house their workforce. A canal had been dug through the middle, channelling a powerful flow from the river Gossant before it emptied into the Colbal. Big factories were built on both sides of it, forming a dark artificial canyon. Each of them possessed two or three waterwheels, turning the looms and lathes inside.

The bait was held in one of them, an abandoned cloth works. Most of the building’s upper floors had been stripped out years ago as part of the demolition and replacement schedule for the whole canal – which hadn’t yet happened. Their absence left a single large enclosed space, with the remnants of the upper floors clinging to the walls forming precarious balconies. The uneven brick floor was broken up by deep, narrow trenches where the whirring leather pulley belts used to run day and night, and had now been colonized by manky, disease-laden urban bussalores. Big iron bearings were still affixed to the walls, the last remnants of the mighty looms which used to fill the factory.

Dozens of slates had slipped off the roof, allowing wide beams of moiré nebula-light to shine in. But the main source of illumination came from hundreds of oil lanterns hanging from the jagged edges of the balconies. They shone down on the bait pit in the centre of the brick floor, an arena seven paces across, made from thick timbers.

There must have been over three hundred men and women crammed inside. Slvasta had expected it to be mostly working class, residents from the nearby slum houses. But no, there were many shiny top hats and ornate dresses; he even saw a few regiment uniforms amid the crowd. The noise was brutal, the air rancid and filled with tatus flies. People were sitting along the edge of the balconies, dangling their legs over the side, tankards and wine glasses in hand. Spilt drink was a constant drizzle as they cheered on their animal down in the pit.

Slvasta stared round in amazement, letting his ex-sight drift about. One end of the factory was stacked with cages containing the animals yet to fight. There were barrels of beer set up, the brewers charging double the price of any pub, tables with wine, even some narnik traders blatantly walking round with trays of wads and fresh pipes. And bookmakers lurked in the corners, surrounded by guards armed with knives and pistols that you didn’t need to probe with ex-sense to discover.

‘Everything out in the open,’ he said, unsure if he approved or not.

‘True democracy,’ Bethaneve replied. Then she waved to someone at a small table on the other side of the pit. ‘This way.’

Her friends turned out to be Javier and his boyfriend Coulan. Javier was a big, heavily muscled thirty-year-old with ebony skin almost as dark as Quanda’s. Slvasta fought down that shameful comparison. The man had a Rakwesh accent, and the way he was hunched over the table made it look as though it’d been built for children. In contrast, Coulan was a tall lad with short-cropped fair hair and skin so pale Slvasta first thought he was albino; with his endearingly handsome features it was easy to like him at first glance. However, his shell was completely impervious, allowing no aspect of his thoughts to escape.

They greeted Slvasta with a modicum of suspicion at first, even with Bethaneve vouching for him.

‘Your first time at a bait?’ Javier asked as he beckoned a barmaid over.

‘Yes.’

‘Thought so.’

Slvasta didn’t know how to take that. Now he was sitting next to Javier, he was beginning to realize just how large the man was.

‘Any tips?’ Bethaneve shouted above the din.

‘Initie’s hound,’ Coulan said. ‘It’s a mean beast. Worth some coin.’

‘Putting it up against two mod-dogs in a while,’ Javier said. ‘I got Philippa one of them.’

‘Philippa runs the bait,’ Bethaneve ’pathed, as she nodded towards a ninety-year-old woman in a filthy silk kimono, sitting in a big armchair close to the arena.

‘Do you keep mod-dogs?’ Slvasta asked.

That earned him a snort of derision from Javier. ‘No. I find them for Philippa. Owners shouldn’t be so fucking careless.’

‘People shouldn’t own them at all,’ Slvasta replied levelly.

It clearly wasn’t the answer Javier had been expecting. He gave Slvasta a dark smile. ‘Then what would we all use?’

‘Who the crud cares? I just don’t want mods and neuts on Bienvenido.’

Javier grinned and nodded at Slvasta’s stump. ‘One of them get a bit snappy, did they?’

‘No, I lost the arm to an egg. The mods helped stick me to it; they belong to the Fallers. People can’t see that.’

Javier rocked back on his stool. ‘Crud!’

A roar came from the arena’s audience. A wolfhound had been dropped into the arena, along with three mod-cats. The wolfhound charged at the mod-cats, slavering furiously. The crowd cheered loudly as its teeth closed round the first mod-cat. But the other two mod-cats, ’path goaded and in a terror-frenzy, started snapping at the wolfhound’s legs. Teeth which adaptors had formed to slice clean through rodents ripped through the dog’s flesh. The wolfhound snarled in pain and fury and clamped its jaws on a mod-cat. Locked together, all three animals jumped and slung themselves around against the wooden wall, growling and shrieking as blood made the floor slicker.

Slvasta used his ex-sight to observe the carnage. Bethaneve stood so she could see the whole gory spectacle. A barmaid delivered three tankards to the table. Javier raised his. ‘To killing mods.’

‘Wherever they are,’ Slvasta responded. They knocked their tankards together and drank.

Bethaneve rolled her eyes. ‘Boys!’ Grinning, she drank a big slug of beer, then resumed her yelling at the arena.

‘So it’s a cushy office job for you now, is it?’ Javier asked.

‘Temporary. I’ll be back sweeping for eggs soon, I hope.’

‘Politics, then? They pushed you out because you were too dedicated to your job? I can appreciate that.’

‘That obvious, huh?’

‘It’s how the rich always work. Anyone who comes along that can upset the way things are done gets taken down fast. How else are they going to keep what they have?’

‘The Fallers keep them in power,’ Coulan said. ‘This constant fight against them means people accept the social and financial structure of this world without question. We need the regiments to perform the sweeps and root out nests; therefore we pay the government to protect us. Who’s going to argue? Without that protection, you either Fall or get eaten. It’s a great incentive.’

This world – a phrase Slvasta had heard before, though he couldn’t think where. ‘But there will always be Fallers,’ he said. ‘The Forest sends them. We can’t do anything about that.’

Javier leaned over the table, suddenly animated. Mostly by drink, but anger played its part. ‘People came to Bienvenido on ships that flew through the Void – some even say they came from outside the Void. No matter; once we could fly like Skylords. Can you imagine that? Now we just sit here and cower as the eggs Fall on us like Uracus is taking a shit. How our ancestors must despise us! We abandoned all the marvels they had, we shrank and listened to the weasel words of men like the Captains who promised us this false shelter. What we should be doing is declaring war on the Forest. Take the battle up there, into the Void itself.’

‘People flying into space?’ Slvasta asked. ‘You’re talking about ship’s machines, and they don’t work on Bienvenido. Our ancestors came here so they could live simple lives, lives that brought fulfilment. That is the way to the Heart of the Void.’ He frowned, barely able to believe he’d just quoted such orthodoxy. It was supposed to be him who argued against the establishment’s restrictions.

‘Really? Did any of your first ancestors tell you that directly? Or was it the teachers in schools paid for by the Councils? Councils that are ruled by the Captain and all the rich families who support him and beg his patronage. We don’t know what happened three thousand years ago, not really. But does it make any sense to you that the ships would choose to come here, a world under permanent siege? Why would they do that when they had a whole universe to choose from? Got an answer for that?’

Slvasta had to shake his head and admit defeat. ‘No. Not if you put it like that.’

‘Is there another way I should put it?’

‘Hey, I’m on your side.’

‘Yes. I can see you’re kept down just like all the rest of us dumb peasants. But is it the side you’d choose? If you were allowed to choose, that is? Which you’re not.’

‘I’m doing what I can.’

Javier clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Of course you are.’

Which he actually wasn’t, but that was down to a harsh self-judgement.

‘Enough,’ Bethaneve said. ‘We’re here to enjoy ourselves. Slvasta, fancy a flutter? Javier talks way too much, but he does know his beasts. Initie’s hound might be worth it.’

‘Quite right,’ Javier said. ‘Ignore my bullshit. I apologize. Put your money on Initie. You’ll double it at least.’

‘All right then,’ Slvasta said, suddenly realizing he was genuinely enjoying himself for the first time since he’d arrived in the city. ‘If it loses, I’ll claim you are a Faller and send the Marines after you. Still think it’s going to win?’

Javier roared with laughter. ‘Put my coin on with yours. We’ll find out the hard way.’

*

‘Would you like to start with the bad news?’ Bethaneve asked. It was Saturday, a week after the night at the bait. Bethaneve had agreed to meet Slvasta for lunch, and he’d chosen Davidia’s, a fresh-fish café halfway along Captain Sanorelle’s Pier. The pier was actually the start of what the poor Captain had hoped would be a bridge across the Colbal – a folly doomed from the moment the first stanchions were sunk. The river beside the city was over three kilometres wide, with a fiercely strong current even outside the rainy season. The bridge had reached four hundred metres on five massive stone arches before the end collapsed. Scaffolding and masonry alike were washed away by a surge, taking over two hundred workers with it.

Three arches remained now, and what had been planned as the wide road and railtrack they supported was now covered by a chaotic array of wooden shacks containing fish merchants, cafés and pubs. The air was thick with smoke from the curing houses.

Slvasta grinned. ‘You’re married?’

‘No. I went down into the vault containing tax returns from Erond county. There’s nothing that matches a trader with three or more boats.’

‘Ah, well, thank you for trying.’

‘I can expand the search.’

‘To where? There are hundreds of counties.’

‘Seven hundred and fifteen, plus eighty-two governed territories waiting to be elevated to regional status; then they’ll be split into about twenty counties each.’

‘That many? I didn’t know. Well, it was a valiant try. I’ll just have to find another way of tracking him down.’

‘I didn’t like to say it, but if he is a criminal, or he’s sided with the Fallers, then he probably won’t have a tax file.’

‘You’re probably right.’

‘Of course, Javier doesn’t have a file.’

‘Now why does that not surprise me? Your friends are quite intense.’ So far he and Bethaneve had been out in the evening on three occasions, two of which had seen them ending up in a pub with Javier and Coulan. He’d enjoyed the men’s company, though he was starting to think he’d like to spend slightly less time with them and more with Bethaneve.

‘They talk a lot,’ Bethaneve said as she ate her grilled marrobeam. ‘So do a lot of people. It’s harmless.’

He examined his beer. ‘Shame.’

‘Really?’ She grinned. ‘Do you think Javier would make a good Captain?’

Slvasta smiled back and drew in an exuberant breath. ‘No!’

She laughed. ‘He’s more like you than you realize.’

‘I don’t quite see that.’

‘Of course you don’t. That big-man bluster act of his covers up a lot. He was ten or twelve, I think, when his parents were eaten by Fallers. That’s what drives his contempt for the Captain and the Councils – just like you.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘We all have reasons for what we do, and the way we think. You want to change the way the regiments do things because that old way nearly got you eggsumed.’

‘True, things needs shaking up and modernizing. That’s progress.’

The look she gave him was almost sad. ‘We both know that’s a pile of crud. Progress stopped on this world three thousand years ago, the day our ancestors landed here.’

‘Is that what drives you? The quest for progress?’

‘I have a friend . . .’

He was slightly worried at the way her shell tightened, allowing no shade of emotion to show. Whatever she felt, she wasn’t prepared to share. ‘Go on.’

‘Had a friend, I suppose. We were young, and we came to Varlan together. Usual stupid story: we thought a life here was rich and exciting. Which it is when you’re young. Then I learned it wasn’t, not really. It took a while for me to realize that. It took the First Officer to make me see it.’

‘Aothori?’ he asked in surprise. ‘You know him?’

‘My friend did. A landowner from the south took her to the palace one night. She didn’t want to go, but she had problems in her life.’

‘Problems?’ Slvasta queried; he didn’t like to, it was obvious that talking about this was tough for her.

‘Narnik,’ she said resentfully. ‘What else? So she wasn’t in a position to say no. When she got there, Aothori enjoyed how vulnerable she was. Thankfully he gets bored quickly, which was probably the luckiest thing that ever happened to her. Too long with him, and . . . well. You’ve heard the rumours about him?’

‘Yeah.’

‘They’re all true, and that’s not the half of it. He’s evil, Slvasta. Really, truly, evil. If they ever cut him open, I wouldn’t be surprised if he bled blue.’

‘That bad, huh?’

‘Oh Giu, yes. I want him gone. Dead even. It’s the Captaincy that allows people like him to do whatever they want, to ruin lives. They rule the world for their own pleasure and profit, and it’s wrong. The day they and all their kind are brought down will be the happiest day of my life. So now you know – that’s what drives me.’

‘You’re not alone there. And your friend? The one who knew the First Officer? What of her?’

‘Gone away somewhere,’ she said with a sad sigh. ‘I suppose you have to know at some time.’

‘Know what?’ he asked in sympathy, thinking he could guess what was about to be said.

‘It wasn’t just my friend who used to do narnik.’

‘We all did,’ he said, a little too cheerily.

‘No, Slvasta, I had a real problem. It just took over. But I’ve been clean for a couple of years now. I’m never going back to that, not ever. It’s a dark place, and you don’t see it, not from the inside. And before you know it, the dark closes in and covers you. It’s like being buried alive, and the only way out is another wad. That’s when you think you can see the light again. But it’s not light, not really. It’s just the narnik lifting you, fooling you.’

He reached over the table and took her hand. ‘I’m sorry. But you’re clean now? That’s good.’

‘Yes. It was Coulan; he found me. He helped me see how bad I was. He helped me kick it. There’s not many people manage that, not when they’re as far gone as I was. But he knew what to do, how to help me. It was amazing, building up my self-esteem again. I owe him a lot. Everything, actually. He was so sweet, so generous. He didn’t have to do it, to help a stranger, but he did because that’s the kind of person he is.’

Just for a moment Slvasta could sense some of her memories, a few hazy images rich with emotion. He was proud of the way he kept hold of her hand. ‘You and him, then?’

‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘But it’s over. It has been for a long time. He’s with Javier now.’

‘We’ve all got a past in that respect,’ he assured her.

‘I know. But I’m still friends with him. Slvasta, I really hope that doesn’t bother you. It’s not in my nature to turn my back on someone who was so important to me. Without him . . . I don’t know where I’d be now. Dead, possibly, or just another house girl down at the bad end of Gamstak district.’

‘But you’re neither of these things. And I’m very grateful to him for that.’

‘Really?’ Her hand tightened on his.

‘Yes. Whatever you’ve been through, it made you what you are today. And that’s a very special person, Bethaneve. One I’m pleased I know.’

‘You’re so sweet. I can’t believe you do the job you do.’ She leaned over and kissed him. They’d kissed before – pleasant end-of-the-evening kisses when teekay strokes became playfully naughty – but not like this, not with this hunger. His shell immediately tightened round his thoughts, preventing anyone’s ex-sight from sensing them directly. Nothing he could do about the other café customers’ eyesight, though.

They moved apart, sharing the same knowing smile. It gave Slvasta real hope for the future for the first time since Ingmar’s death.