Текст книги "The Abyss Beyond Dreams"

Автор книги: Peter F. Hamilton

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Текущая страница: 40 (всего у книги 44 страниц)

‘I know.’ She didn’t shift from his lap.

Slvasta’s ex-sight caught Yannrith entering the ante-room. ‘Come on in,’ he ’pathed.

‘Captain,’ Yannrith said. Anxiety was leaking through his shell.

‘What’s the matter?’ Slvasta asked wearily. He wasn’t sure he could take much more bad news right now.

‘I can’t find Coulan anywhere.’

‘He’ll be with Javier,’ Slvasta said.

‘He’s not.’

Bethaneve stood up. ‘I’ll find him. I’ll put the word out with my people.’

‘I’ve just come back from the Captain’s Palace,’ Yannrith said. ‘There’s something really strange been going on. Coulan’s militia, the ones guarding it, they’re all acting odd.’

‘What do you mean, odd?’

Yannrith shrugged. ‘As if they’re drunk, or something. It’s difficult to get them to say anything.’

‘They’re loyal to Coulan.’

‘No, it’s more than that. And something’s been taken. I had to ask hard, but I found that much out eventually.’

‘Taken?’

‘From the palace cellars. Uracus, Slvasta, there are some really bizarre things down there. Ancient things that I’ve never seen before, things from Captain Cornelius’s ship itself.’

Slvasta stared at him, trying to make sense of what was being said. ‘Coulan’s taken something from Cornelius’s ship?’

‘I’m not sure. But look, captain, you remember your last sweep with the regiment?’

‘I can hardly forget. What about it?’

‘We met those peculiar people we thought were narnik barons. The girl, the redhead, I forget her name, Nigel’s so-called wife. She’s here. I saw her riding one of the wagons on Walton Boulevard. They were all heading down the hill.’

‘What wagons?’ Bethaneve blurted.

‘The wagons that took something from the palace.’

Slvasta’s headache seemed to redouble in potency as he gave Yannrith a shocked look. ‘Wait! Nigel and Kysandra are here? In Varlan?’

‘You do know them?’ an equally perturbed Yannrith asked.

‘Nigel supplied all our weapons,’ Bethaneve said. ‘But – I don’t understand. What’s he doing here?’

Through all the pain in Slvasta’s head, the elusive memory that had taunted him for days suddenly crystallized. ‘Grunts!’ he exclaimed.

Bethaneve and Yannrith frowned at him.

‘You said it,’ Slvasta accused her. ‘The night we were arming the cells, you said we can’t give a gun to every grunt on the streets.’

‘So?’

‘I only ever heard that word used like that once before. By Nigel! They’re soldiers or troopers, privates, sergeants, corporals, officers – comrades in our cells are activists. But never grunts.’

‘Slvasta—’

‘What is going on?’ he demanded hotly. ‘Do you know Nigel?’

‘I’ve never met him in my life. You were the one that went to Adeone to meet him. You’re the one that did the deal for weapons. All I know about him is what you’ve told me.’

‘Then why did you call our cell members grunts?’

‘Are you crazy?’ she shouted back at him. ‘It’s a crudding word!’

‘It’s his word.’

‘Oh for fuc—’

‘What was he doing back then, when we found him on the sweep? What did he have on those boats? Is he a narnik baron? Wait! Was he your supplier?’

She flinched as if he’d struck her. All the emotion drained out of her expression. ‘Slvasta,’ she said in an icily calm voice, ‘you need to stop this. You need to get some sleep.’

‘Why is he here? What did he take?’

‘I want you to calm down. Lie down on this settee and—’

‘No. Something is going on. Javier’s turned against me. Is he collaborating with Nigel, too?’

‘Slvasta.’ A tear trickled down her cheek. ‘Please. No.’

‘I will find out!’ he roared. ‘By Giu, I will know what game you’re all playing behind my back! You think you can get rid of me? You think you can just waltz right into the Captain’s Palace and rule this world? Do you? Well, you can’t! I’ll stop you. I’ll stop all of you.’ He stormed out of the annex. Tovakar and the five bodyguards he commanded regarded him in alarm. ‘We’re going to the palace,’ he told them. ‘Sergeant, are you with me?’

Yannrith gave Bethaneve a helpless shrug, and hurried out, leaving her to sink to her knees as she started to weep.

*

There still wasn’t any real furniture in the Tarleton Gardens apartment. After Slvasta and Bethaneve had moved out, the empty rooms seemed even larger. There was nowhere to hide in any of them.

Javier’s ex-sight had been pervading it as soon as he climbed out of the cab in the street outside. Coulan wasn’t inside. Coulan wasn’t anywhere. Not in the palace, not in the hotel where the Captain’s family was detained, not with any of the comrades. Nowhere. Javier went upstairs to their apartment anyway. There was nowhere else for him to go. Afternoon sunlight poured through the big bay windows. He’d always enjoyed the sensation of space he gained from the rooms. Other people’s houses and flats seemed so cluttered. They valued things; he prized potential.

‘It brings out your optimistic streak,’ Coulan had told him one night, snuggled up in his embrace. ‘I like that.’

Now Javier looked down on the mattress with its wrinkled sheets where they’d spent so many nights together, just talking quietly about their plans and hopes or thrashing round in sexual bliss, and there was no optimism left any more. Like the rooms, he was empty.

He sat on the mattress, and for all his bulk and strength he couldn’t hold back the exhaustion any more. ‘Where are you?’ he asked the bare walls.

Coulan wouldn’t abandon him, especially not in this dark desperate hour when he needed him more than ever. They loved each other. They were one. All he could think of was that Slvasta had sent an assassin for Coulan; that one by one he was wiping out anybody who opposed him.

‘You idiot,’ he told himself, and rested his eyes for a moment.

*

‘Wake up.’

Javier opened his eyes. Bethaneve was staring down at him. There were dark fatigue circles round her eyes, and her cheeks were blotchy from crying. Hair hung lankly round her face.

‘You look terrible,’ he said, smiling to ease the slur. He could only have been asleep minutes, for he was still absurdly tired. But somehow the sun was now low in the sky.

‘It’s Slvasta,’ she said in a fragile voice.

‘I know. I’m sorry. We were both stupid. Uracus, I hadn’t slept for days – I still haven’t. I was so tense, so angry. There were fights, terrible fights against the sheriffs and Marines, and . . . The streets were bad places to be for a while. But I had to be out there, had to lead our comrades. I’d like to talk to him.’

Bethaneve shook her head, struggling against fresh tears. ‘He’s got worse. He’s . . . He doesn’t trust anyone any more. He thinks there are conspiracies everywhere.’

‘You as well?’

She nodded miserably.

‘Giu! What did you do?’

‘He thinks I’m scheming with Nigel.’

‘Nigel? Nigel that supplied us with all the weapons?’

‘Yes.’

‘But he’s the only one of us who knows Nigel.’ He studied Bethaneve’s dead expression, sensed the seething emotions so thinly obscured by her shell. ‘All right. We have to put a stop to this. I need to find Coulan. He’ll know what to do.’

‘I know where he is.’

‘Where?’ It came out a lot more urgently than he intended.

‘The National Council building. Javier, he’s meeting with senior comrades, making deals, organizing them. I think he might be putting his own faction together.’

He thought it was the cold that made his muscles so difficult to move, but in the end he had to admit it was shock. ‘No. No, you’re wrong.’

‘I hope so. I do, really. But my informants aren’t close enough to be included in the deals. I don’t know what he’s actually arranging.’

‘Coulan would never betray us. We planned this with him for years; I know exactly what he thinks on any subject. He wants social justice just like we do.’

‘I know.’ She gave her feet a sheepish glance. ‘I remember, too. He saved me. He was going to save everyone.’

‘Then we must believe in him. We can’t allow Slvasta’s paranoia to contaminate us. That’s one of the principles we were going to install, remember? Everyone is innocent until proven guilty.’

‘He came up with that.’

‘Yeah. Then, until we find out what’s going on, we follow that principle.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We’ll do that.’

Javier lumbered to his feet. It was an effort, and for a moment he felt dizzy. ‘I should have been helping our comrades with the railway nationalization this afternoon.’

‘Do you even know how to nationalize a railway company?’

‘Sort of like taking it into new management, like I did with Coughlin’s stall at the Wellfield market.’

‘You need to scale up your thinking.’ She paused, allowing her troubled thoughts to show through her shell. ‘I meant what I said about not knowing what to do next. Do you think that’s strange?’

‘Listen, we’re both tired like nothing we’ve experienced before. Of course we’re going to make mistakes and forget things. Go easy on yourself. Look at the screw-up I’ve made of today.’

‘No. It’s more than that. We could always think of something before. How to organize the cells, political objectives, how to achieve our goals, strategies to manipulate public opinion. We sat down together and these ideas just kept coming. Fabulous ideas. Ideas that worked. Now we’ve won, and there’s nothing. We can’t figure out how to capitalize on what we’ve got. The city’s falling apart; there’s precious little food, the markets are closed, the water’s still not running in half the boroughs, people are fleeing. We broke it, cleverly and carefully. Why don’t we know how to put it all back together? We wanted this to be a decent fair society, so how come we had nothing ready to implement? Why no strategy to rebuild the rail bridges? Why not issue guarantees about life and liberty to reassure the professional classes that do the actual work?’

‘The People’s Interim Congress—’

‘Is a farce.’

‘That’s a bit harsh.’ He squirmed under her gaze. ‘Okay, they’re a bunch of idiots. But some of them are useful idiots. They mean well.’

‘That’s a magnificent epitaph. If we’re not careful, we’ll be singing it all the way to Giu.’

‘What do you want, Bethaneve?’

‘I don’t know. I’m just saying it’s strange. Strange that it didn’t bother me before, either. It’s as if we’ve suddenly used up every idea. Why?’

‘All right. This is how it’s going to go. You and I are going to find Coulan. Then the three of us are going to sit down like we did in the good old days of an entire week and a half ago, and think how to calm Slvasta down and get everything back on track. When we’ve done that, the four of us will brainstorm how to make the city work again; there may even be beer and sitting around in a pub involved. How’s that sound?’

‘Sounds like the best idea I’ve heard all day.’

There was a cab waiting for them outside Tarleton Gardens. Javier smiled as he helped Bethaneve inside. ‘See? You do know how to keep some things working.’

She was deadly serious when she looked back and said: ‘But this was something we knew we’d need before.’

Javier gave up.

The cab set off, moving quickly through the semi-deserted streets.

‘He’s moving,’ Bethaneve announced after ten minutes. ‘Leaving the National Congress building. There’s a cab – not one on our list.’

‘I’m going to ’path him,’ Javier announced. He focused his mind, reaching over the rooftops towards First Night Square. ‘Coulan. Coulan, my love, talk to me, please. I know you’re there. I need you so much.’

‘Uracus,’ Bethaneve grunted. ‘What did you say?’

‘Why? What happened?’

‘He just fuzzed that cab good and hard. My agent’s ex-sight can’t perceive it at all.’

‘Why is he doing this?’ Javier couldn’t keep the hurt distress from his voice. ‘What have I done?’

‘Hang on,’ Bethaneve settled back into the cab’s leather bench seat. ‘I’m going to activate all the cells around First Night Square. The comrades are still loyal, at least for now; they’ll watch out for him. Fuzz can defeat ex-sight, but he can’t hide the cab from good old-fashioned eyeball contact.’

A minute later someone saw the cab turn into Fletton Road. Then Coulan got out and hurried into the Tonsly shopping arcade. ‘Uracus, there are twenty entrances to that place,’ Bethaneve said. ‘I wish we had Andricea’s mod-bird.’

‘She’s one of Slvasta’s loyalists.’

A single eye opened to give him a disapproving stare. ‘That’s wrong-thinking.’

‘Sorry.’ He followed the gifting Bethaneve sent him. Marvelling at the way she coordinated ’paths from dozens of cell members seemingly simultaneously. Images of streets and arcade halls flashed before him at bewildering speed.

‘There!’

Fleeting glimpse of his beloved’s pale skin and sandy hair disappearing fast down Makins Alley. Short sharp instructions flicked out to cell members. They changed direction, sped up, slowed down, hovered at road junctions.

Coulan called a cab on Lichester Road. Fuzzed it. A cab from the list turned onto the road behind him, three cell members hopped on.

There were three more changes of cab. A confusing run on foot through the maze of crooked alleys and tiny dark lanes of Saxby.

‘Uracus,’ Javier murmured admiringly as Bethaneve constantly shuffled the cell members about, interpreted images, anticipated moves. ‘You own this city.’

She smiled, eyes still tight shut.

Coulan slipped into the Reynolds Hotel, emerging from a side door. A cell member, one of Bethaneve’s elites, was lounging casually at the end of the alley. The last cab dropped him off along Breamer Street, where there were a lot of people milling round at the end, shuffling slowly forwards towards the Colbal. He merged into them.

‘Only one reason for him to be there,’ Bethaneve said in satisfaction.

‘Cabby,’ Javier called loudly. ‘Quayside, and fast.’

*

For seventeen years Philious Brandt had been Captain of Bienvenido; a proud lineage, defending the world, maintaining order, regulating its economy, upholding the law, keeping politicians in line. The world belonged to him. And now it didn’t.

It had been a day of sheer terror for him and his family. One moment he’d been ’pathing frantically with Trevene and the First Speaker and the captain of the Palace Guard; the next moment gunshots had rippled around the palace. A mob had appeared, and some kind of well-organized and trained military force had stormed the walls and railings. Hidden gunmen had shot the Palace Guard. Staff panicked – some running for freedom, a heartening number rushing to the private apartments to shelter and protect the family.

Philious had ’pathed and ’pathed for help: the Marines, the sheriffs, the regiment officers stationed in Varlan. But they too were under siege. And one by one their minds vanished from his perception.

Then came the gunfire in the palace corridors themselves. Twice he heard explosions, the screams of the dying. Souls of dead guards drifted through the innermost apartments, apologetic as they drifted up, starting their long flight towards Giu.

The family had retreated to the central drawing room, with its crystal chandeliers and priceless furniture and polished floor, with tall windows looking out over the manicured gardens. Seven of his children were huddled round him (Dionene was out somewhere, thank Giu, but he had a pretty good idea of Aothori’s fate: his eldest son wasn’t popular at the best of times), the younger ones crying, the older two brittlely defiant. Little granddaughter asleep, cradled in her petrified mother’s arms. His wife stood beside him, stiff backed, showing courage for the children, her shell strong, but he knew the fear in her mind. Courtiers formed a protective picket around them, trying not to let their dread bloom.

Then the ’path had come. Coulan, offering terms of surrender. The life of everyone in the palace in exchange for taking the family into custody.

Philious agreed; he knew all about Coulan from Trevene’s long briefings on Slvasta and his cronies. Coulan was the level-headed one. Even so, he half-expected to be shot as soon as the doors opened; the horror of the Lanuux and Alfreed was still fresh in his mind. But Coulan kept his word, and his militia were efficient and disciplined.

They were escorted down to a covered wagon and fuzzed as they were driven through the streets. The ride went on for a long time, but it finished at a small hotel in the Nalani borough. There they waited, guarded by Coulan’s militia, while the mobs fought the authorities for control of the city.

Something about the militia members was eerily wrong. They wouldn’t speak to the family, they kept a perfect guard on their prisoners, they didn’t misbehave, nor threaten. The hotel was kept under an impervious teekay shell that must have been difficult to maintain, but it never wavered in all the time they were imprisoned. Philious half-suspected they were Fallers.

All they could do was wait. He forbade the children to discuss what their fate might be, but he knew speculation was gnawing at their minds. They might not be able to ’path through the militia’s shell, but the sounds of fighting were clear enough, and the upper rooms gave them a glimpse out over the rooftops, where smoke was visible across the city.

Philious endured as best he could, never quite understanding how this had come to pass.

Then on the third day of captivity, a man called Yannrith appeared and ordered Philious to accompany him.

‘No!’ his wife cried. ‘They’ll kill you, they’re animals, worse than Fallers! Don’t go.’

‘It’s not us who are the animals,’ Yannrith spat back at her. ‘I saw what’s inside the Research Institute. So did Aothori, a real close-up look.’

‘Bastard! Murdering bastard.’

Philious held up his hand, anxious not to annoy this imposing man. ‘I’ll go.’ He kissed his wife, very aware it was probably the last time he’d ever see her. ‘You’re not to worry. Be brave, for the children.’

There was an odd moment at the hotel’s entrance. Two militiamen stood guard there, staring blankly ahead.

‘Stand aside,’ Yannrith ordered.

They didn’t move.

‘By order of the People’s Interim Congress, which is this world’s legitimate government, you will stand aside so I may conduct our prime minister’s authorized business.’

It took a long moment, but the guards stepped aside. There were three cabs outside with armed comrades riding in them. Yannrith led Philious into the middle one, and fuzzed it heavily. Philious eyed the man, who was obviously regiment trained, and wondered again what had turned people like this against him.

‘I’m curious,’ Philious said. ‘What exactly have you done to those poor militia people? I thought they might be Fallers at first, but they’re not, are they?’

‘Shut up,’ Yannrith said.

‘Threads perhaps, in their brains?’

‘Last time: shut the crud up.’

Philious smiled at his small victory. He wasn’t entirely surprised when after forty minutes of travelling they arrived back at the palace. But when they did finally step out into the inner courtyard and he sent his ex-sight probing round, he was immediately demoralized by what he perceived. ‘Where is everything?’ he demanded. ‘What have you done with all– Oh, no! No!’

‘We thought we’d start the redistribution of wealth from the top down,’ Yannrith replied smugly.

‘My wife is right – you are crudding animals. And pathetic, petty-minded ones at that.’ Nonetheless he was worried about what the militia people had found below the palace; that would be far worse than the institute’s secrets. They won’t understand any of it, he told himself. Not that it matters any more.

A tall slender woman was waiting beside the door into the private residence. Her shell was as hard as any Philious had ever encountered. She had a mod-bird perched on her arm, and she was feeding it a chunk of meat. He blinked. The meat had looked suspiciously like a human finger.

As he approached, she sent the mod-bird off into the sky. ‘Welcome home, Captain,’ she said in mockery.

Philious didn’t respond. Nonetheless he couldn’t help his growing worry as Yannrith and the woman escorted him down the stone stairs into the vaults. The regiment man seemed to know exactly where he was going.

Philious’s final surprise was the man waiting for him in the ship’s armoury cellar. His eyes narrowed at the empty jacket arm pinned across his chest. ‘Captain Slvasta! Trevene warned me you were trouble.’

‘He was right.’

‘Are you going to kill me now?’

‘No. Do you know why?’

‘Because that would prove to the whole of Bienvenido that you’re naught but a savage, and your pitiful revolution is a sham.’

‘No. It’s because I need to know something, and you might have the answer. That is your only value right now.’

‘Go directly to Uracus. Even if I knew where Dionene was, I would willingly take Guidance to Giu before I told you.’

‘That’s not why you’re here.’

‘Then what . . .?’

Slvasta pointed his finger at the hulking mass of the Vermillion’s armoury behind him. ‘What was in there?’

‘I have no ide—’Captain Philious paused, terribly cautious of trickery. ‘What do you mean, was in there?’

‘Exactly that,’ Slvasta said.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Andricea.’

The woman stepped forwards. ‘One of our associates removed five large objects from this chamber – which we assume is part of Captain Cornelius’s ship. There are plenty of other weird artefacts down here, none of which could have been made on this world.’

Philious shook his head. ‘These are all just leftovers from the ship, that’s all. Nothing works. They haven’t worked for millennia.’

‘You seemed concerned, just now, that something had been taken,’ Andricea said. ‘We don’t know what those things were, but they’re clearly valuable to someone. The militia people our associate employed have had something done to their minds, like hypnosis but so much stronger. It took a great deal of effort to get them to tell me that the objects had been taken, but I did break through their conditioning eventually. So tell me, Captain, how long do you think you can hold out against me?’

Philious glanced nervously at the armoury again. ‘I don’t believe you. This is some kind of trick. Nobody . . .’ He licked his top lip, unsurprised to taste beads of sweat.

‘Nobody what?’ Slvasta asked coolly.

‘Nothing works. I don’t lie.’

‘Then it doesn’t matter if you tell us what was in there, does it?’

‘This, none of this can help your doomed revolution. You will lose. The cities and counties will march into Varlan and send you straight to Uracus for your crimes.’

‘What was in there?’ Slvasta bellowed. His hand gripped a pistol tight, not quite waving it towards Philious.

‘Nothing was taken. I know this because you can’t get inside. The entrance doesn’t work any more; it hasn’t for over two thousand years.’

Slvasta grinned. It disturbed Philious badly.

‘Oh, really? Come here.’ His teekay shoved at Philious, urging him forwards.

Philious didn’t resist. Then he got closer to the armoury – and froze. A wide circle close to the base had opened – the place his father had told him was the access hatch, made from a metal that Commonwealth ingenuity could make flow like water. ‘Oh, Uracus,’ he whispered. And the metal had indeed flowed once more; he could see it now as a thick rim around the hole. ‘No, no, no.’ He hurried forwards, and peered up into the absolute darkness of the interior with trepidation. Many years ago, when he was being prepared for the Captaincy – being tutored in their true heritage, in the old sciences, on the nature of the Void and how they must never drop their guard against the Fallers – his father had brought him to stand under the ship’s armoury, where one of the small broken conduit tubes led up inside it. He had sent his ex-sight through the tiny gap, examining the strange dead war machines entombed within, frightened and impressed by the things his father told him about them.

Now his ex-sight ranged freely inside the armoury, perceiving the empty loading cradles. His legs trembled as he backed away, then he spun round and fixed Slvasta with a furious glare. ‘They’re gone!’

‘No crud! Now tell me exactly what they are.’

‘Quantumbusters,’ Philious whispered in dread. ‘There were five quantumbusters in there.’

The burst of emotion that came pouring through Slvasta’s tenuous shell was a combination of anger and incomprehension. ‘What the crud are quantumbusters?’

‘The greatest weapon our ancestors ever created. They are so powerful they can destroy an entire sun and all its planets. They don’t work in the Void. None of the old technology works any more.’ Philious stared at the access hatch – impossibly open. ‘Until today.’

*

Twenty armed men that Tovakar and Yannrith trusted implicitly piled into five cabs. Slvasta rode in the second cab, along with Yannrith and Captain Philious. Andricea herself was driving the lead cab, teekay and a whip sending the horse racing down Walton Boulevard, then along the quickest route to the quayside.

‘I’ve ’pathed our comrades on a wharf,’ Yannrith said. ‘They’re holding a steam ferry for us.’

‘Let us hope it has a happier journey across than the Lanuux and the Alfreed,’ Captain Philious said snidely.

‘We didn’t do that,’ Slvasta snapped back.

‘Really?’

‘No.’

‘Then who? Your mysterious associate?’

‘I don’t know.’ Slvasta’s headache was making him sweat now. It was a constant battle to keep his eyes open, the fatigue which gripped him was so strong. Thinking was difficult. But he had to know, to work this out. Could Coulan be some kind of counterrevolutionary? But if so, why had Trevene not arrested them all? And Javier, why was he suddenly pro-mod? Bethaneve – that was the one that really hurt. How was she connected to Nigel?

What am I missing?

‘Did you know about us?’ he asked the Captain.

‘Trevene knew you were behind the mod-killing spree; that was obvious right from the start.’

‘Why didn’t you stop us?’

‘Because there were just four of you – four that mattered, anyway. You were drawing all the hotheads and radicals together; you had some kind of communication arrangement with people from the Shanties and other undesirables. We couldn’t break your system of contact, it was so random, but all the troublemakers were doing what you told them. It was impressive politics. Useful.’

‘To you? How?’

‘They do what you say. You do what we want. That’s why we offered you Langley. And you took it.’

‘Like all the greedy bastards before me.’

‘Yes. We underestimated your fanaticism, that’s all.’

‘All? It’s cost you everything.’

‘You’re gloating? After what’s happened today? Be careful of your arrogance, Slvasta, or it will be your downfall. I should know.’

‘So you had files on us?’

‘Yes.’

‘Tell me about Coulan.’

‘Some kind of student, a history graduate, I think, who drifted into the radical scene. We never could find out where he came from.’

‘Kassell, he came from Kassell. He’s a junior son who came to Varlan’s university to learn agricultural management so he could help run the family estate. While he was there he came to see the oppression of your regime.’

‘No, you’re wrong – or more likely lied to. There is no record of him in Kassell. Trevene checked.’

‘He has to have come from somewhere!’

‘Yes, but where is starting to concern me very badly – though he behaved perfectly honourably with me and my family, thank Giu. He’s the associate who opened the armoury, isn’t he?’

Slvasta nodded.

‘I can’t do that. The Captains haven’t had a proper electrical supply for the last two thousand years. The Void is hostile to it. I know the theory; I even made a lead acid battery when I was learning about it, that’s such a basic electrical power source even the Void doesn’t spoil it. Slvasta, I’ve seen a wire filament glow red from its power; it was almost as bright as a candle flame. It was impressive. But this – his knowledge and ability – is a whole new level. We saw something strange and new in the Faller from Eynsham Square. It had threads in its brain, threads that could control it like Uracus’s own puppet. That kind of machinery doesn’t belong in the Void.’

‘Wait. Someone controlled the Eynsham Square Faller?’

‘Yes, and how that worked to your advantage, eh? Hero. I’m assuming Coulan is using a similar process to control his militia. So now I am almost scared to wonder where he came from. Do you believe he is working alone, or is he part of a bigger faction inside your precious revolution?’

‘He’s allied with Nigel, somehow.’ Slvasta growled the name through a dry throat.

‘Who?’

‘One of our supporters.’ Slvasta remembered his visit to Blair Farm, the compound with all its new barns – efficient, productive, humming with activity; the hundreds of mods scurrying about, which had made his blood run cold. ‘He knows a lot about machines. And politics. But he’s no Faller; I have seen his blood with my own eyes. It’s red.’

‘We certainly didn’t have a file on him. So where does he come from?’

‘He lives south of Varlan.’

‘Ah, and here we are in hot pursuit of a convoy that crossed the river to the south bank. Tell me. When you captured me, the only major railway that was left intact was the Southern City Line. Why did you spare it?’

Slvasta hated the superior tone in the Captain’s voice. ‘We didn’t. I don’t know what happened to our sabotage teams, though I can make a crudding good guess now. And the Goleford bridge was blown this afternoon.’ What was it Bethaneve had said? Just after an express crossed it.

‘So they’ve taken the quantumbusters south. I still don’t understand why. Even if they could get them to work again, which I have considerable doubts about, what would be the point? If they detonate a quantumbuster, it will wipe out Bienvenido, the Forest, and most likely our sun as well. Neither humans nor Fallers will survive.’

‘Why then? Why? What has all this been for?’

‘I don’t know,’ Philious said. ‘But if you’re ever going to find out, you need to catch up with your associates, and quickly.’

*

They’d lost Coulan as soon as he stepped off the ferry onto the south bank. Technically, Willesden was another borough of Varlan. But in reality it was a rather pleasant town with decent-sized houses and broad parks; there was only one Shanty on its border, and that none too big. Business here centred on trade, moving and storing goods brought in by the railway and the boats. A wide swathe of the town between the wharfs and station was made up entirely of warehouses.

In the aftermath of the revolution, travel was again a major preoccupation. Hundreds of refugees arrived every hour, all of them desperate for temporary lodgings and a way out into the southern countryside.