Текст книги "The Abyss Beyond Dreams"

Автор книги: Peter F. Hamilton

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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 44 страниц)

2

It was a big day. Auspicious, even. The Watcher Guild had seen Skylords approaching ten days ago, and predicted their arrival accurately. A lot of people in Varlan were talking about the coincidence that they’d arrive on the exact centenary of Jasmine Avenue. A couple of pamphlets actually used the word: omen.

It was also a week since the Josi bridge failure. The chaos and financial strain it had created in the Wellfield market proved too much for poor old Coughlin. He chose Guidance, taking a pyre boat out onto the Colbal and freeing his soul to be Guided by the magnificent crystalline creature.

That evening, Slvasta, Bethaneve, Javier and Coulan went to the bait Philippa was running to celebrate the Skylords’ visit. It was for cover, making sure that Slvasta and Javier were seen by hundreds of witnesses, putting them beyond suspicion. Trevene’s people were already alert for any sign of protests or demonstrations of solidarity for Jasmine Avenue, Bethaneve reported. She didn’t want to give them the slightest excuse for arrests.

Slvasta conceded the logic in needing cover, even though he privately thought she was leaning towards paranoia. ‘Javier’s a stallholder now,’ he told her. ‘People aren’t going to think he killed his own mod-apes.’

‘Not now, no,’ she said. The two of them had claimed a table by themselves for once, leaving Coulan and Javier to join a group of friends clustering round the arena. ‘But when you two start to rise to prominence, the Captain’s police will investigate you thoroughly. We need to be sure they don’t find anything they can use to charge you with.’

A big cheer went up as a mod-dwarf and a pair of terriers were released into the arena. The mod-dwarf started to bleat with terror and tried to climb the smooth walls to escape. One of the terriers snapped its jaws around its foot.

‘Uracus-be-damned,’ Slvasta said. ‘You really do think of everything, don’t you?’

‘Thinking ahead is the most important part of this. I’m good at it because it’s logical – like the ultimate practical application of maths.’

‘Yeah. So what do you extrapolate in our future?’

‘You’ll get elected to Nalani council, all right. I’ve got thirteen cells covertly campaigning for us, and there are over fifty union members and their families openly canvassing the vote. Democratic Unity will win a majority, and that puts us in charge of the borough. The Citizens’ Dawn party won’t know what hit it. Actually –’ she grinned aggressively – ‘they will. Two cell members work for them, and the feedback I’ve got is that the Nalani branch are already worried – so worried they haven’t dared tell their district officers that they might lose to us.’

‘Bethaneve.’ Slvasta took her hand, and gazed right at her face with its slightly wild hair. Her cheeks were flushed from excitement and determination. ‘I meant: what about us? You and me?’ There was a real tumult in his mind. The quiet success they’d been having positioning themselves and their movement’s activists was exhilarating. They’d built a clandestine organization that could accomplish acts of sabotage without the Captain’s police realizing anything was amiss. His rage at injustice had taken on physical form, which was an almost frightening accomplishment, like discovering a new psychic power.

‘Slvasta,’ she said in dismay, ‘you and me are what this is all for. So our children won’t have to grow up in the same kind of world we did. How can you question this?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said instantly. ‘It’s just that this is all happening so fast. I guess I get a little overwhelmed at times.’

A roar of jeering and chants broke out all around the cavernous old factory as the terriers finished off the mod-dwarf. People started clustering round the bookies. More drinks were ordered.

‘I know what you mean,’ she said, her shell dropping enough to show him the sympathy colouring her own thoughts. ‘Sometimes I can’t believe what we’re doing, too. It’s like—’

‘Go on,’ he urged.

‘I’m not sure. We’ve done so much without the sheriffs or Trevene noticing. I sometimes think that maybe they have, that they’re just waiting until we commit some really blatant act, then they’ll have the excuse they want to give us life sentences at the Pidrui mines. And in a public court, too, not using some suspension order.’

‘They’ll make an example of us, you mean?’

‘Probably?’

‘If they were watching us, I’m pretty sure we’d know about it. We are being careful, and my paranoia is a big old beast.’

She touched her beer glass to his. ‘You’re the sensible one.’

‘But you have made me wonder what happened to all the previous attempts to oust the Captain. There must have been some. I don’t recall ever hearing about any in history class. Not that it was the greatest school on Bienvenido.’

‘Apart from the Jasmine Avenue revolt I haven’t heard of any. Coulan probably knows; he went to university, after all.’

‘I’ll have to ask him some time.’

‘Do that.’ She drained her beer in one.

‘Another?’

‘No.’ She thrust her face towards him, not caring about the wisps of loose hair that slipped across her eyes. ‘I think we should say crud to caution. We’ve been here at the bait as agreed. Everyone has seen us if the sheriffs ever ask them. So let’s go home now. Just you and me. And I’ll do my best to convince you how much you mean to me.’

‘Sounds good,’ he croaked.

*

At a quarter to four, Slvasta and Javier arrived at the Wellfield market, ostensibly to pick up the carts to take them to Plessey station as usual. As they drew closer, they could pick up the furious ’path shouts that were flying about under the long parallel roofs. Three sheriff’s cabs were drawn up outside the main eastern side entrance. Two senior sheriffs were surrounded by a group of stallholders, all of whom were trying to shout over each other. Yalseed oil lamps on the iron pillars cast weak pools of illumination, revealing the corpses of several mod-apes lying in the aisles. When Slvasta followed up with a sweep of ex-sight, he perceived dozens more corpses lying in stall buildings and aisles right across the market. None of them had any surface injuries. They looked as if they were sleeping.

‘Thank Giu you’re here,’ Pabel said, coming out to greet them. ‘This is bad. Really bad.’

‘What’s happened?’ Javier asked.

Slvasta was impressed. Not only did Javier sound puzzled, he even managed to affect considerable concern and interest.

‘It’s terrible,’ Pabel said, leaking dismay into the aether. ‘Someone’s murdered all the market’s mod-apes.’

‘What?’

‘It’s true. A whole bunch of them ran through the market last night. They used teekay to kill every mod they could find, jabbed ’em inside the heart or the brain. It’s . . . It’s like . . .’

‘A slaughterhouse?’ Slvasta asked innocently.

Javier flashed a glare at him. ‘Did they get our mod-apes?’

‘Yes. I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t turn up till after it’d happened. There was nothing I could do.’

‘All right. Come on; let’s see what the sheriffs have to say.’

The senior sheriffs were having a tough time saying anything. Even Ryszard, who ran the Wellfield’s Meatcutter Guild, was having trouble getting the stallholders to calm down.

‘Has anyone been threatened recently?’ one of the sheriffs shouted.

Nobody had.

‘Did the killers ’path anything when they came through? Anything that could identify them? A reason?’

They hadn’t.

‘Did anyone recognize any of them?’

All of the killers had been heavily fuzzed.

The sheriffs didn’t seem to know what else to do or say.

‘What do we do?’ a stallholder called Calik asked Ryszard.

‘We came through the train delivery crisis just fine,’ Ryszard ’pathed strongly. ‘This is no problem. We work a little harder ourselves this morning, and by tonight we’ll all have ordered new mod-apes from the adaptor stables.’

‘Will the guild insurance cover us for the cost of replacements?’ Javier demanded.

‘I, er . . .’ a nervous Ryszard stammered. ‘That will have to be looked into, but obviously all claims will be given a great deal of sympathy.’

‘That’s no answer,’ someone else shouted.

‘I pay my dues,’ Javier said. ‘We all do. What are they for if not for calamities like this?’

Ryszard gave him a glance of pure hatred. ‘Can we all just keep calm, please? I’ve lost mod-apes, like everyone else.’

‘Then give us the guild insurance.’

‘I will do everything I can. And I will also be meeting with the chief sheriff to urge him to do whatever he can to catch these criminals.’

‘Urge?’ came a derisory ’path.

‘Insist!’ Ryszard sucked down an anxious breath. ‘Now I am off to Plessey to collect my meat. I will not let this heinous crime beat me. And neither should you.’

‘Politician,’ Javier grumbled loudly as the guild leader hurried off towards his stall. Several of his fellow stallholders heard and muttered agreement.

Without mod-apes, everyone struggled to cut their orders in time. Clients turned up, dismayed to see the mod-ape corpses lying round, but waited stoically for their orders to be completed.

Then men started to appear, asking if anyone wanted to employ them to help. Javier took on two, promising them work for a week. But first he sent them to Bryan-Anthony, the leader of the newly formed Wellfield union, to sign on with the organization. Other stallholders grumbled about him setting a bad example. Few followed his lead. By mid-morning, several stallholders had gone off to visit nearby adaptor stables and buy themselves new mod-apes. That was when they received their second shock of the day.

*

‘Every adaptor stable?’ Captain Philious asked in astonishment. He was standing in the garden room at the rear of the palace. It resembled a small Hellenic temple, but with glass sheets filling the gaps between the pillars, then curving back and merging to form a seamless roof. That glass was supposedly the last thing ever manufactured by the ship’s machines before they failed. Philious believed that; the glass was ancient, yet still stronger than any metal made in Bienvenido’s foundries today.

‘Yes, sir,’ Trevene replied. ‘The owners have been keeping very quiet about it, of course. But once the first couple of rumours leaked out, I had my people investigate thoroughly. The Adaptor Guild was reluctant to cooperate, but I insisted. There isn’t a neut in the city that hasn’t been sterilized.’

‘Crud!’ Philious made an effort to keep his temper. He looked out across the lawns where the annual afternoon garden party was underway. Varlan’s aristocracy and wealthiest merchants, all dressed in their finery, sipping tea as they waited for the Captain’s family to walk among them and murmur thanks for supporting the regimental widows and orphans fund. ‘How could such a thing happen? Is it a disease?’

‘No. This is deliberate. Three separate vets confirm it. Teekay destroyed their ovaries.’

‘Every one?’ he repeated incredulously. ‘But there must be thousands.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Crud.’ Philious stopped gazing at all the society girls with their colourful dresses cut to show off cleavage and legs. ‘Who did it?’

‘I’m investigating that.’

‘Investigating? That’s it? That’s your reply? There’s never been a crime this big before. You’re the chief of my police, for fuck’s sake! How can you not know? There must have been something? Dammit, half this city spies for you; the other half is terrified of you. You must know!’

‘This is something new, something different.’

‘What do you mean?’

Trevene pushed his glasses up his nose. ‘It could be a rival adaptor guild, Uracus knows there’s no love lost between any of them. But, as you rightly pointed out, the level of this goes beyond anything we’ve seen before. I can’t believe this is the work of jealous competitors seeking to take advantage of the city stables’ misfortune with high prices. I believe this has to be political.’

‘Political? Are you serious? The radicals at the university are dumb middle-class children playing at being important. As soon as they get their degrees they go home to work for daddy. And Shanty-dwellers are thicker than mod-ape shit. They couldn’t organize a fuck in a brothel, let alone this.’

‘Indeed. As I said, sir, this is different.’

‘Crud!’ Philious’s anger drained away as fast as it had risen. ‘So who are we left with?’

‘There are new workers’ unions springing up across town. And yesterday a team of unknowns rampaged though the Wellfield market, killing all the mods. Every one of them. It was butchery, plain and simple. An interesting coincidence, considering the people who will most benefit from the shortage of new mods will be the working class.’

‘And the Wellfield is unionized now?’

‘One of the first, yes.’

Philious realized he was actually smiling. ‘Clever. It would seem we have someone dissatisfied with my rule.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘A hundred years since Jasmine Avenue, too. Which speaks to me of small minds with big memories. How very apt. This is going to be interesting.’

‘I expect so,’ Trevene said impassively.

‘Right. I want to know who they are. Do you understand? You infiltrate them, you find their names and what they’re planning next. Giu, this attack on neuts is going to hit the city’s economy hard. That’s all we need right after the Josi bridge disaster.’ He gave Trevene a sharp glance. ‘Was that part of this?’

‘Unlikely. It was an old bridge.’

‘Nonetheless . . .’

‘I’ll look into it.’

‘There’s going to be unrest, no matter what we do to the leaders, and this time it won’t be limited to the Shanties.’

‘I’ll speak to the captains of the sheriff stations.’

‘Do that. And I’ll call in the First Speaker. He needs to knock heads together in the Adaptor Guild. Our priority must be to restock the stables. Dammit, my estate has shares in several of them.’ He squared his shoulders and returned his attention to the genteel throng walking all over his lawns in high heels. His wife was over by one of the fountains, chatting to a group of old women in hats that were mostly plumage. ‘I’d better get back out there before my sons claim all the fuckable daughters for tonight.’

3

‘Look at this,’ Coulan said, slapping down a copy of the Hilltop Eye on the table as he came in that evening.

The pamphlet had broken the story about the sterile neuts.

‘They got everything,’ Coulan continued. ‘How there hasn’t been a new mod in the city for a month now. How the stables have been conspiring to keep quiet about it. They’ve told the whole story.’

‘I should hope they have,’ Bethaneve said indignantly. ‘We keep feeding the pamphlets enough information. I’m never really sure how good our connection to them is. Does it say what the stables are doing about the neut shortage?’

‘No. But Hilltop Eye also found out that the towns around Varlan have the same problem. The stables are going to have to import from the regions we haven’t reached.’

‘That’ll cost them,’ Bethaneve said in satisfaction.

‘But the mods will return,’ Coulan said, ‘and now the stables will be on their guard against the neuts being sterilized again.’

‘We’ll be in power by then,’ Slvasta said.

‘In Nalani borough council,’ Bethaneve retorted scathingly. ‘Our timing was all wrong. We should have been winning elections in district councils before we hit the neuts.’

Javier clapped his hands down on both their shoulders. ‘I say this is fortuitous timing. Tomorrow morning, every stallholder in Wellfield is going to be taking on new workers. Human workers.’

‘That are all going to become union members,’ Slvasta said. ‘And there were more mod-apes than humans at the Wellfield.’

‘Uracus, the unemployed will be out there tonight asking for work if they have any sense,’ Coulan said. ‘We have to make sure they all know to sign on with the union.’

‘I don’t,’ Javier said. ‘I’m a stallholder now, one of the oppressor class.’ He smirked. ‘Slvasta should go.’

‘Bryan-Anthony knows what to do,’ Slvasta said. ‘He’s at the Wellfield right now, with several loyal union supporters, making it very clear to stallholders that any new cutter has to be signed up with the union first.’

‘And Ryszard is still at the sheriff station,’ Coulan said. ‘There’s some senior Citizens’ Dawn members there as well; two of them came along from the district headquarters. People in high places are getting very nervous about the Nalani borough elections.’

‘Now, there’s a sentence you don’t often hear,’ Bethaneve said with a relaxed smile.

‘It’s still three weeks away,’ Slvasta said. ‘There’s a lot can go wrong before that.’

She shook her head ruefully. ‘You’re such an optimist.’

‘Anyway, Javier and I are off to Coval Road tonight. We’re addressing a meeting, pulling in a few more voters.’

‘Isn’t the Ellington pub on Coval Road?’ Bethaneve asked.

‘Life is a constant Uracus for us politicians.’

*

Even though it was election day, Slvasta still kept to the usual routine. Up early, take a cart with Pabel to Plessey station to collect the day’s meat. Back to Wellfield to package it for customers. He didn’t get to vote until after midday.

His local voting station had set up in a shabby old community hall on Footscray Avenue, just round the corner from Tarleton Gardens. A bored, uniformed sheriff standing outside nodded impassively as he went through the doorway.

The election officials had set up five voting booths inside. Two women were sitting behind a desk, with a huge leather-bound voting ledger. The line to vote stretched the length of the hall, which apparently was rare. Normally turnout was about twenty per cent. Slvasta joined the queue. One or two people recognized him as a candidate and nodded or grinned. It took five minutes for him to reach the desk; the line behind him was still back to the door. ‘Busy?’ he said to the woman who checked his name off before handing him a voting slip. She gave him a disapproving look and beckoned the next voter forward.

As he drew the flimsy curtain across the booth he realized how much he wanted Bethaneve here with him, how much nicer it would have been for them to have voted together. But she was busy, and appearances must be kept to protect themselves from discovery and danger. Slvasta looked down at the voting sheet. There were eight parties competing to run Nalani’s borough council. Citizens’ Dawn and Democratic Unity were the largest and best organized, followed by the usual collection of eccentric independent candidates who had some burning local issue to promote. It was an unusually large number. Even some of the pamphlets they didn’t have contacts with had noted it. Everyone was interested in the emergence of a workers’ union again. Many thought Bryan-Anthony was a political genius for developing a political base so quickly.

It was a strange feeling, seeing his own name on the ballot. This, then, was the leap into the abyss, he thought; after this there can be no going back. He just had to have the courage – another reason he wished Bethaneve was here. How she would scorn his pathetic doubts. He closed his eyes, and saw Ingmar’s face.

I was weak before. I will not be again.

He placed his cross against his own party, pressing the pencil down hard so it left a firm dark mark that could never be disputed.

The world outside was so ordinary for such a momentous day. Bright sunlight shone down, prickling his face as he left the hall. A few high strands of cloud ribbed the sapphire sky above the city. As Slvasta started down Footscray Avenue, he saw a man at the end of the road, sitting on a bench which gave him a perfect view of everyone going into the hall. He’d been there when Slvasta walked to the hall as well: ordinary clothes, ordinary features, unobtrusively reading a gazette. Not quite fuzzed, but giving off a subtle psychic impression of insignificance. A tiny ’path that wheedled: ignore me, just below conscious thought – unless you hunted for the emanation.

A small smile lifted Slvasta’s lips and he scanned round with his ex-sight. Sure enough, there was a mod-bird perched on a chimney stack, its keen eyes gazing along Footscray Avenue, exposing the road’s traffic to its hidden owner.

So you are worried about us, Slvasta thought as he walked past the watcher, studiously disregarding him. As you should be.