Текст книги "The Abyss Beyond Dreams"

Автор книги: Peter F. Hamilton

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Текущая страница: 34 (всего у книги 44 страниц)

‘I have absolutely no idea. But I now understand your obsession to get through the institute gates.’

‘It’s not an obsession. But you have to admit it’s a strange—’

The mod-bird had finished its overflight of the courtyard and was banking to head for the nearest fog patch. Its head turned to provide a last glimpse of the institute. A man had emerged from the entrance, walking towards the prisoner.

Bethaneve stiffened. Then she started shaking.

‘Bethaneve?’ Coulan asked in concern. ‘Bethaneve, what’s wrong?’

She tightened her shell as strongly as she possibly could. Hating herself for the weakness. Knowing that, despite veiling her thoughts, her face would be creased with distress. Tears threatened to trickle down her cheeks.

‘Bethaneve, for Giu’s sake—’

‘It’s him,’ she whispered. ‘The First Officer.’ Her hands gripped the edge of the table, squeezing hard.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Ha! You know what he does to people.’

‘Yes, and because of that he’s up there at the top of our list along with people like Trevene, to be dealt with as soon as we overthrow the Captain. He’ll be taken care of.’

Bethaneve didn’t like the way Coulan was looking at her, the curiosity in his gaze. Aothori’s appearance had been so unexpected, taking her by surprise. ‘But why’s he here? Why is he involved in this weird prisoner movement?’ As deflections went, it was pitiful. But Coulan at least appeared to be considering the question.

‘Aothori enjoys the interrogations,’ he said slowly. ‘He turns up at Fifty-Eight Grosvner Place often enough for them, we know that. So maybe the interrogations carry on at the institute.’

‘Why? What can they possibly do here that Trevene’s bastards can’t do in their dungeons?’

‘I don’t know. It’s not a good question to dwell on.’

‘Uracus!’

‘Where do the prisoners get taken after the institute?’ Coulan asked. ‘Is it the Pidrui mines?’

Bethaneve made an effort to focus, to get back to normal. ‘I don’t know. We haven’t tracked them when they leave.’

‘Then that’s your next step. Find out where they’re sending our comrades. Once we know that, we can rescue them as soon as we’ve got rid of the Captain.’ He paused. ‘And the First Officer.’

‘Yes. Yes, you’re right. I’ll start organizing that.’

‘Good.’ He pushed the chocolate cupcake across the table to her. ‘You’re their best hope, Bethaneve. Don’t let them down.’

‘I won’t.’

‘Okay then. We’d best be getting back. I want to know how the latest delivery went.’

‘Andricea’s with them,’ she said, not bothering to hide her disapproval. ‘I’m sure she’ll make sure everything goes off perfectly.’ She bit hard into the cupcake.

*

Andricea’s mod-bird circled overhead, watching the cab as Slvasta steered a convoluted route across Varlan. He had very mixed feelings about the mod-bird, but it had been with Andricea since it was born. Keeping it with her was a condition of her coming to Varlan – a very strong condition. He comforted himself with the knowledge that if anything went wrong, a mod-bird couldn’t do anything like the damage a mod-ape could wreak; in any case, it was damn useful to have an eye in the sky. The Captain’s police hadn’t intercepted a weapons shipment yet, but he knew Trevene suspected the rebel cells had access to weapons. Several activists had travelled out of the city to undergo training on the sniper rifles; they weren’t the kind of things you could just hand to people and tell them to get on with it. Nor, sadly – human nature being what it was – were they the kind of weapon everyone could keep quiet about. Loose boastful words at the end of an evening in a pub, pillow talk, whispers and hints – it all mounted up over time and became quiet rumour. Informants picked it up and reported it to their contacts.

And Slvasta knew they had, because Trevene was picking up more and more cell members for interrogation. Bethaneve was constantly sending warnings through the network, advising comrades to get out of town. It was becoming a regular migration.

But they fought back. Bethaneve’s contacts and lookouts kept an equally keen watch on the members of the Captain’s police. She and Coulan had gradually compiled a comprehensive list of names, starting with Trevene, and then addresses, family connections, habits, areas of expertise. Once that was established, Javier started telling subtle lies to cell members known to Trevene’s people. Bethaneve called that disinformation. Whatever name you used, their orchestrated deceit caused a great deal of confusion to the Captain’s police, and how they interpreted the surge of radical activity in the city.

If the stakes hadn’t been so high, Slvasta would have laughed at the mirrored networks of gossips and informers working the capital’s streets.

So despite formidable expense and effort since Democratic Unity won their seats in Nalani, the Captain’s police still hadn’t intercepted a weapons shipment, nor discovered a cache. And Slvasta was determined that record should remain intact. What Trevene’s reaction would be if a cache was found made for uncomfortable thinking.

He took a careful ninety minutes winding along Varlan’s boulevards and avenues and narrow back roads until they reached the junction into Prout Road in the Winchester district on the western side of town. It was a respectable enough region, with long rows of terraced houses long since converted into multiple lodgings. But there were still individual townhouses and parks, and light industry which didn’t belch out pollution into the culverted rivers that ran through it.

‘Taxing the poor,’ Slvasta ’pathed to the partially concealed man standing on the kerbside by the junction.

‘Pays for the rich,’ the man ’pathed back.

‘Is it clear?’

‘Yes. Nobody we don’t know visiting, nobody shown an interest for two days. No mods close. Go on in.’

‘Thanks.’

Slvasta used his ex-sight to guide the cab along the uneven cobbles of Prout Road. With the rainclouds remaining stubbornly overhead, there was no nebula light shining on the city tonight, and Prout Road’s streetlights hadn’t been lit for over a year, leaving the road in the pitch dark. The cab rolled up to the broad wooden doors of an old leatherworks yard, and a couple of level seven cell members opened them.

The factory was over three hundred years old, currently awaiting redevelopment. Its owners had moved the vats and rollers and cutting tables out to new premises three streets away when the cracks and bulges in the dark brick walls had become just too alarming to ignore. In the meantime squatters had moved in. To begin with it was families who wanted out of the Shanties, but couldn’t afford even the smallest rent, the jobless and the terminally unemployable. Over the last year, those first-generation residents had moved out as job opportunities opened wide across the city, only for their rooms to be taken over by those with drink or narnik problems, people whose mental health had deteriorated. People who didn’t care who came and went in the night.

Weak yellow light flickered in a few of the big windows looming over the courtyard. The door closed behind the cab, and the cell members increased their fuzz, obscuring the whole courtyard from psychic perception. Up on the driver’s bench, Slvasta increased his own fuzz so they wouldn’t realize who he was.

It was a smooth operation. Tovakar and Yannrith carried the trunk with two cell members; Andricea walked behind, gifting her sight to Slvasta, who stayed in the cab. They went down into the factory’s vaulted cellars. The bricks were crumbling here, and there had been several cave-ins. The cell members led them to a wide fissure with a steep ramp of rubble on the other side, leading down.

Andricea’s ex-sight probed round the cavern behind the opening. The stone walls here were ancient, slicked with algae along the edge of each big block. It had archways along one wall, which were all blocked off. ‘What is this place?’ she asked.

‘Whatever the factory was built on top of,’ the first cell member said. ‘There have been buildings here for two thousand years.’

The stones in one of the archways had shifted, leaving a gap they could just push the trunk through. On the other side were crude stairs leading down a circular shaft cut into naked rock. By the time Andricea reached the bottom there was so much rock and stone between them that her gifting had become very tenuous; Slvasta could barely make out anything. The little party seemed to be walking through another series of vaults. Empty crates and barrels were strewn across the floor, their rotten wood crumbling apart. A thick layer of gritty dust covered everything, but the air was perfectly dry.

Andricea had to use a lot of teekay to keep the dust out of her nose and mouth. The trunk was lowered to the ground, and Yannrith finally stopped fuzzing it. They all used their ex-sight to perceive the contents. There were twenty snub-nosed carbines inside, with three spare magazines each, everything wrapped in oiled cloth.

‘Don’t open it,’ Andricea said at once. ‘The dust down here will screw up the firing mechanisms.’

‘Nobody’s going to touch it,’ the first cell member said. ‘We’ll make sure of that. It’s quite safe here.’

‘When do we get to use them?’ the second cell member asked.

‘Nobody tells us,’ Yannrith said in a joshing tone. ‘We’re just the errand boys.’

‘It’s got to be soon,’ the first one said. ‘This has been going on for crudding years. How long does it take to kill the Captain? These fuckers would make easy work of it.’ His hand came down possessively on the trunk.

‘It’s not just the Captain,’ Andricea said. ‘There’s everyone who supports him as well.’

‘What? We’re going to kill all of them?’

‘I dunno,’ Andricea said. ‘Get them to think again, maybe. Who knows?’

‘Some fucker better,’ he said giving Yannrith a pointed stare.

‘Right.’

As Slvasta drove the cab back to its stables, he was satisfied the weapons would remain untouched until the day came. There were over twenty such caches distributed across the city now. Varlan seemed to be built above a honeycomb of forgotten crypts and cellars for which no map existed. They’d scattered an equal number of secure ammunition deposits underground as well. It was a decision they’d made right at the start: never to put the two together until they armed the cells. There was too much temptation for the people guarding them to sell and make a quick profit. After all, it wasn’t as though Bethaneve was going to run an audit. Personally, Slvasta would be satisfied if eighty per cent of the weapons remained when the day came.

After they returned the cab, they went their separate ways. Home for Slvasta now was Jaysfield Terrace – a smart stone crescent that curved round a circular park right in the heart of Langley, a borough that was the closest that anywhere in the city came to a country town. It was on Varlan’s north-western outskirts, with tree-covered hills visible from the taller buildings, and much sought after by the middle classes who enjoyed its leafy lanes and fashionable shops and decent schools. Slvasta had to admit he found it a comfortable place to live in despite its distance from the centre of the city. The furnished apartment they were renting occupied the whole of the fifth floor of Number Sixteen Jaysfield Terrace. With its high ceilings and four bedrooms, it was much too big for just him and Bethaneve.

‘Essential, though,’ she’d laughed as they moved in. ‘You have to live in the constituency if you’re to contest it at the election.’

For Langley was also the heart of a National Council constituency that stretched for over sixty miles out into the countryside – an area which comprised several old-family estates and their worker villages as well as some thriving towns and smaller farms. It contained a broad social spread of residents, with a great many small business owners, most of whom were dissatisfied by government with its excessive regulation and restrictive trading laws that favoured the established order. Colonel Gelasis had been right: it was a perfect constituency for him to challenge the incumbent.

The long curving terrace had small front gardens confined by iron railings. All the gates which led to front doors were set into iron arches with oil lamps at their apex. Almost half of them had been lit by residents determined to keep up standards and alleviate at least some of the darkness. The public lamp posts on the other side of the road remained dark. Slvasta scanned the plant pots on the steps of Number Sixteen. A tall neatly pruned bay tree on one side and a purple climbing jasmine on the other. The bay tree pot was the right way round. If anything was wrong, Bethaneve would have turned it a quarter clockwise – assuming she had time. By now Slvasta had lived with the prospect of arrest or worse for so long that he didn’t bother worrying about it.

The only downside of the apartment in Number Sixteen with its elegant fittings and fabulous views was the five flights of stairs he had to climb to reach it. When he did finally get into the marble-tiled hall the rain had soaked through his coat, leaving his clothes damp and cold. He shivered as he hung the coat up, and started unbuttoning the drosilk waistcoat.

Bethaneve was working in the dining room. She’d taken it over as her office as soon as they arrived; the long marwood table big enough to sit ten made a perfect desk, with papers and folders scattered across it. Strong oil lamps burned on either side of her, casting a bright light across the room. A bulky cabinet with carved doors had been moved across the mod door – not that there were any mod-dwarfs left in Number Sixteen. More thick folders were piled up around the walls, ledgers of the revolution all filled with her writing. Even her accountant’s mind couldn’t hold all the information on the cells and their activities. The symbols she used made no sense to anyone else; she wouldn’t even tell Slvasta what they all meant. ‘To protect the cells if we ever get interrogated,’ she said. ‘I’ll die before I betray our comrades, and their identities will be lost with me.’

Now she was making extensive notations in a spread of purple folders. Slvasta watched her in mild concern for a moment. She still kept her job at the Tax Office, a respectable position for the fiancée of a National Council candidate, which meant she worked in her drab office all day then came back to yet more book-keeping here – when she wasn’t risking herself on some clandestine activity. As always, he marvelled at her dedication and devotion to their cause. It had been his idea, but she had taken it forward in a way he’d never imagined.

She finished writing and turned to smile at him amid a burst of admiration and love. ‘I knew you’d be wet,’ she said. ‘I ran you a bath.’

‘There’s a strategy meeting in an hour,’ he said in regret. Another session of angst and determination in the local Democratic Unity offices, with him trying to hearten and inspire the devoted volunteers, most of them young, and all of them so desperate for him to succeed, to make a difference.

‘It’s a filthy night. I cancelled it.’

‘But—’

‘Go get in the bath.’

Slvasta did as he was told. After all this time, with every second of their lives spent on some aspect of the revolution, to have a break for one night wasn’t something he was going to protest at. Since they moved in, he hadn’t had a bath more than three or four times; everything was showers and quick meals snatched between events.

Six big double-wick candles had been placed strategically round the blue and white tiled bathroom. Bethaneve must have used her teekay to turn off the brass taps just before he arrived, for the big iron rolltop bath was full of water that was almost too hot. The air was saturated with the orange blossom scent of bath salts. He stripped off his soggy clothes and climbed in. Eyes closed, he leaned back and let the water engulf him.

Some time later Bethaneve asked: ‘Is that better?’

He opened his eyes. Not asleep, just resting heavily. Her teekay was snuffing out the candles, leaving just two flickering. The shadows expanded, framing her in the topaz light of the doorway. She was wearing a strikingly erotic long black lace robe tied loosely round the waist.

‘Uh huh,’ he said with a throat that was suddenly dry.

She walked over slowly and knelt beside the bath. The front of the robe shifted to reveal the slope of her breasts as she bent over to kiss him. Strands of hair fell into the water.

‘You’re perfection,’ he said eventually.

There was just enough light to show the smile on her face. ‘Thank you.’ She picked up a tall bottle of liquid soap and poured some into her cupped hand. ‘Let me do this.’

‘You know you’re what makes all this possible,’ he said, then whimpered as she began rubbing the soap slowly across his shoulders.

‘That’s very sweet, but we both know you’re the one everybody admires. No one would vote for me, or even listen to me. You have a fire; you burn for justice. They all sense that. They sense how genuine you are.’

‘Just a pretty figurehead. You do all the work, you and Coulan and Javier.’

‘Don’t forget the others.’ More soap was tipped into her hand; she slid it down his sternum. ‘Andricea helps you a lot.’

Slvasta suppressed a smile. Bethaneve had never quite been comfortable around Andricea, with her long limbs and sunny smile and trim figure.

‘Are you thinking about her?’ Bethaneve’s hands had paused.

‘Not at all.’

‘Hmm.’ She sounded suspicious.

Slvasta curled his hand round the back of her head and pulled her down for another kiss. Finally, Bethaneve relented and her hands crept down his stomach. ‘Not at all,’ he promised sincerely.

‘Are you frightened?’ she murmured. ‘I am sometimes.’

‘Not of the Captain’s police, no. We’re too prominent now, and we have support from some sections of the establishment.’

‘I meant the election. It’s only a week away.’

‘Ten days.’

‘Suppose we don’t win?’

‘The polls are good, and Tuksbury is a fool. Really, I had no idea.’ He’d assumed that anyone who’d held on to a constituency seat for forty-eight years would know a thing or two about election campaigns. Not so Tuksbury. At first he’d simply sneered at Slvasta, assuming his own nomination as Citizens’ Dawn candidate was good enough to gain him a majority. Then six weeks ago, when he realized that his own party’s unenthusiastic support and lack of funds being thrown his way meant they’d abandoned him, he suddenly woke up to the very real prospect that he might lose his Council seat. By then Slvasta had already been campaigning for two months – not just in Varlan where the bulk of the voters lived, but visiting every town and village in the constituency, attending public meetings, setting out Democratic Unity’s policies, promising to sweep away the old restrictions and conventions that made society so hidebound. He’d surprised himself at how adept he’d become at handling people, providing smart answers, telling the right jokes, knowing when to listen with a serious face, producing promises that sounded firm. It seemed there was truth in the old adage that you can get used to anything if you do it long enough.

Tuksbury, however, had never really campaigned before, had never engaged with the people he was supposed to represent. So when he finally stood up in public to address people, it didn’t go well. He spent family money on lavish spreads of free food and drink, then lectured the people scoffing it down on why they should always vote for him because – ‘I come from good family stock, not like this common moron who was so useless in the Cham regiment that he lost an arm to Fallers.’ The two open debates with Slvasta which he agreed to also ended badly. The last one had to be halted early when the audience started throwing things at him and trying to make him tumble off the raised platform with their teekay.

The shock and dismay of discovering what people truly thought of him sent Tuksbury to seek solace in the bordellos he discreetly and regularly frequented, while inhaling more narnik than usual to dull the pain of his humiliation – facets of his personality that the pamphlets were eager to print, complete with details. His misery was compounded by the gazettes, which were normally so supportive of Citizens’ Dawn, beginning to report the same foibles as the pamphlets.

Tuksbury hadn’t appeared in public for the last four days. Cell members had reported him holed up in the Maiden’s Welcome, a high-class brothel on Mawney Street, leaving his dispirited and badly underfunded campaign staff to produce leaflets that nobody read. One cell member, a clerk in a solicitor’s office, reported that Tuksbury’s wife had already filed for divorce.

‘We will win,’ Slvasta said confidently. ‘Hilltop Eye has the tax returns for Tuksbury’s estate, hasn’t it?’

‘Delivered three days ago,’ she confirmed. ‘I got them the records for the last ten years. Uracus, those bastards have paid less than you and I did. Can you believe that? Hilltop Eye will print them four days before the election.’

‘So it would take a Faller egg landing on my head for us to lose now. I just have to keep showing my face and not saying anything too stupid – for which I have you to watch over me.’

Bethaneve’s expression was pure wickedness as her hands and teekay reached his groin. As always, he was helpless under her ministrations. She could make his body do whatever she wanted, and the intensity of the pleasure made him cry out, sending the bathwater sloshing across the floor.

Afterwards she made him stand next to the bath while she used a towel to dry him. Then he was taken to the bedroom.

‘Marry me,’ he said as he lay back on the sheets and watched her move round the room, first to her dresser to dab perfume on her neck, then lighting three candles. They were officially engaged, of course, but that was for the sake of the election. There was no wedding day named nor planned for.

‘You know my answer,’ she told him gently.

‘Yes,’ he said forlornly. ‘When we’ve won.’

She came over to the bed and stood there, hands on hips, looking down at him. ‘And you know why.’

‘Because nobody should bring children into a world as unjust as this one,’ he responded automatically.

‘After we’ve won,’ she said. ‘That’s the time to build for the future. Anything before that is just castles made of sand and promises.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘So if I don’t win, do we still arm the cells and march on the palace?’

‘No. That would be a complete disaster. We have to have popular support on our side, a clear mandate from the electorate. It must look as if we’re doing what the people want.’

‘Some of them, anyway.’

‘You’re having doubts?’ she asked. ‘Now?’

‘No. I’m just tired, that’s all.’

‘Poor you. It’s nearly over. We just need another few weeks, maybe months. That’s all. Can you last that long?’

‘Do I get a choice?’

‘No. I’m sorry, my love. None of us does, not any more. This has grown too big to take the feelings of one person into account.’

‘Are we really going to do this?’ Slvasta wasn’t even sure if he was asking this out loud. ‘I mean, overthrowing the Captain? It’s just so . . . so outrageous. Sometimes I have to check I’m still real, that I’m not living some dream in the Heart. How did we ever do this? Put all this together?’

‘We did it because it was right. And it must be right, because it’s worked. Everything is ready.’

‘Yeah.’ That part was as much a mystery to him as the rest. The four of them had spent so long talking and arguing about what had to be done physically to achieve success. How do you march a force of armed men through a city to take out the top of the existing government, and have that accepted by everyone else? So many ideas dismissed, so many details expanded, strategies planned.

‘We just have to wait. Once you’re elected to the National Council, you—’

‘—become the authentic voice of the disaffected. Up pops my credibility and with it my legitimacy. Yes. Yes.’

‘And if we give the underclass enough to protest about, and the Council doesn’t listen – because it won’t; it’s full of people like Tuksbury – then we have the justification to launch the revolution.’

‘I know.’ Always there was the doubt. The way the rich with their fancy accountants avoided their fair share of taxes made him furious, and proper taxes for all was a priority for afterwards. But they were the ones planning on sabotaging the city’s water, creating disruption and suffering; it would be their activists who blew up the rail bridges, which would increase Varlan’s economic woes. Without them, things would carry on as they always did, which wasn’t that bad . . .

Bethaneve licked her lips. ‘Let me see. What I can do to perk you up?’

Even though she’d already satiated him in the bath, he knew he would be erect again when she wanted him to be. Her sexual skill was something he never questioned. No one with half a brain asked about previous loves, but still, some small bad part of his mind kept wondering about her and Coulan – if he’d been the one who’d taught her so much about what men truly enjoyed in bed. If it had been his touch which had encouraged her to cast off her inhibitions.

Fingers caressed him with nonchalant skill, then teekay so soft and slow it was torment plucked individual nerve strands in his cock. His flesh betrayed him immediately, igniting the pleasure pathways directly into his brain. He watched in awe as the lace robe flowed down over her skin like liquid gossamer, inflaming him still further.

‘A month,’ she whispered as she straddled him. ‘A month after the election. That will be the right time. The perfect time. That will be when you lead us forward and take control of the whole world. Does that satisfy you? Is that what you want?’ Her teekay crept around his balls like fronds of arctic frost, gripping mercilessly to balance him perfectly on the edge between pain and ecstasy.

‘Yes,’ he cried, ‘Oh Giu, yes!’ Not knowing or caring what he was agreeing with any more.