Ares Express (43 page)

Two minutes to curtain up on The End of the World Show. Somewhere out in the thickening fog, Bladnoch lurked in UA2, the big heavy lifter, dream projector warmed up and ready to transmogrify all this mistiness into saints. In the tower-top penthouse that United Artists had requisitioned as command centre for a truly profane fee, Weill received confirmation of funding from Wisdom and immediately generated a credit transfer to Grand Valley Regional Weather's account. It had been touch and go with the weather workers. Orbital climate systems had brusquely brushed his request for a hundred percent peasouper off to planetside weather control, but Weill could not rid himself of the feeling that they wanted rid of him quickly, that there were things going on up there not for the eyes of the earthbound. Grand Valley Regional Weather had whined about compensation payments to tower-toppers who paid high premiums for sunny skies and unbroken vistas from their panoramic windows and named a figure. Weill laughed. Grand Valley Regional Weather did not.

“Okay, I'll get you your filthy money,” Weill growled, then spent five minutes he could not afford trying to track down Synodical Security's Head of Finance through the labyrinth of Wisdom bureaucracy and the planetary communications network only to catch him on an approach shot to the thirteenth at Great Estramadura.

“How much?”

Weill repeated the fee. He heard the sigh.

“It's yours. It's transferring now. Now, if you'd be so kind, I'm about to dormy this hole.”

But Weill's request had put Synodical Security's Head of Finance off his stroke. He sliced his approach, bunkered, took five to get on to the green and threw away the match. The five-million-dollar five iron.

Mishcondereya's plague of nano-flies had liberally dosed the Church of the Ever-Circling Spiritual Family with hallucinogens, there was a clear window of fifteen minutes to get Skerry in and out before the dosages wore off: she crept in on muffled fans, positioning the speed dirigible over what the satellite images had shown was a shattered glass vault at the apex of the cathedral.

In the command tower, Weill relinquished the command chair for Seskinore, fresh from the ritual ablutions which climaxed his preperformance superstitions which included inside out underwear, never wearing anything blue, singing two bars from “The Five O'Clock Whistle” and allowing no one to use the word
bishop
. Weill considered it a professional challenge to work in as many natural and logical uses of that last, taboo word as possible when he First ADed to Seskinore. The old ham took two puffs of minty breath freshener, sat ponderously down in the Director's chair, cracked his walnut-knuckled fingers and donned his virtuality headset.

“And how are we, boys and girls?”

“Boys and girls are ready to rock-'n'-roll.”

The props were all in place, lighting and SFX up to speed, the actors cued and ready, and now Skerry had seen the gaping hole right through the belly of it all. Precious minutes could be lost sorting through racks of religious paraphernalia. She might have to take a hostage, anathema to Skerry. Threaten nastiness. It was a distinct possibility she might not be able to find the saint at all. Skerry thumbed the cabincom and explained her predicament to Mishcondereya.

“
Merde
,” Mishcondereya said, crackly over the corn lines. A pause, then, “I'll call Control.” Mishcondereya called Seskinore. Seskinore called Bladnoch out in UA2, who called Weill to call the cave because the old train-witch might have got something about that in that sending. While Weill called the Comedy Cave, Skerry listened to the static on the interphone and tried to make faces out of the swirling patterns. It was a distraction from the stage fright. The fright was a secret she had successfully kept all her professional
life: Skerry Scanland Ghalgorm was martyr to that disease of performers. The fear. The shakings; the pacings; the compulsive bouncings of balls on walls; the huddlings in the corner, arms wrapped around knees, rocking and moaning in terror; the discreet throwings up. She recited cantos from the Evyn Psalmody. She performed a Damantine stretch routine, jogged on the spot, chanted tongue-twisters. Anything to push down the dread. On this gig, stage fright could kill you.

“Sker.”

“The old train-witch doesn't know.”

“The old train-witch has hightailed it.”

Skerry was beginning to have a bad feeling about this.

“She's what?”

“Gone. Scarpered. Skedaddled. Flown the coop. Split the joint. Sker.”

“What?”

“There's something else.”

Skerry's stomach spasmed.

“What kind of something else?”

“He's moving.”

“He's not supposed to move.”

“I'm getting readings; he's cast off from the dock and is under acceleration.”

Skerry swore. The calculations were all based on a stationary target. The margins were tight, hideously tight. Maimingly tight.

“Are we tracking him?”

“I'm setting up a radar lock now. That's us. We're locked on, provided he doesn't make any sudden course changes. And, ah, Sker…”

“What now?”

“You know I said there was something else?”

“Yes.”

“Well, there's another something else after that one.”

“Tell me.”

“Ground-to-orbit tracking at Molesworth has picked up a number of objects de-orbiting into atmospheric entry configurations.”

“A number, what number?”

“A big number.”

“How big a number?”

“Five thousand, in the first wave.”

“First wave? How many waves are there?”

“Four that Molesworth knows of.”

“Twenty thousand, that's a big number. Does Molesworth know what they are?”

“Nothing on sensors, but, um, how should I put his? That other moon we used to have…”

“Oh, Mother of all Grace…”

“I don't know how he's done it, but he's got into the planetary defence systems. He's dropping soldiers all over the day side of the planet.”

Now Weill spoke in her ear.

“Thirty seconds. First positions.”

Skerry felt the dirigible shift altitude as Mishcondereya steered by radar through the cloud of unknowing. The fans swivelled into braking configuration, whirred, slowed to a safe-distancing thrum. Mishcondereya was parked directly over the Cathedral of the Church of the Ever-Circling Spiritual Family, matching its ponderous progress through the fog that would soon boil into angels and demons. Skerry tried to send her circus sense out into the churning mist, feeling for her unseen target, asking clues, hints, graces. Give me a sign, what does it look like?
Give me a break, one little break.

“Ready, Bladnoch?” Weill said.

“Ready.”

“Ready, Mishcon?”

“Ready.”

“Ready, Skerry?”

“Ready as I'll ever be.”

She buckled the bungees together around her ankles, strapped the isokinetic punch around her left wrist. The charge light glowed. She would blow a pure and perfect circle out of the hull, dive head first through, blow free the bungee couplings, roll and come up slugging. Simple. Pity there wouldn't be anyone there to see her greatest stunt.

The show goes on.

“Cue Armageddon,” Seskinore said. The green jump light went on. And, as it did every time, though she doubted it, every time, the fear went. Vanished. She was filled with a clear, cold certainty. It was easy. It was all so easy.

“Dying is easy, comedy is hard!” Skerry yelled, and dived head first out of the airship into the fog.

“Never!” Naon Sextus Solstice-Rising Asiim Engineer 11th thundered. His fist met the gleaming mahogany of the conference table. Tea glasses jumped, startled off their thick bottoms. “Never never never!” A double pound, doubly emphatic.

The gathered heads, without-portfolios and diverse uninviteds of the Domieties of
Catherine of Tharsis
turned their attention to the other end of the table where Child'a'grace sat, hands folded meekly in her lap, the natural leader of the rebel alliance.

She said, mildly, “But husband, it is your own mother.”

Naon Sextus's mouth worked. For a terrible moment everyone thought all propriety would be undone and he would address his wife directly. He caught his words, turned to Marya Stuard, his lieutenant and interpreter.

“Inform my wife that she is correct, it is my mother, and Taal Chordant Joy-of-May Asiim Engineer 10th is an Engineer of Engineers, and were she here, she would tell you no different from what I am telling you: we have never, never,
never
failed to deliver a contract. She would say, leave me there.”

The assembly pondered the self-orbiting logic. The Confab Chamber was steadily filling; word had passed up and down the train that the thing that had simmered four long years between Naon Engineer and his wife was at last coming to a head. Ringside seats at a full-blown domestic! Spectators packed the railed off Gentles and Relatives areas at each end of the carriage. The Bassareenis had turned out
en famille
. They were particularly keen to watch the snooty Engineers publicly disgrace themselves.

“But it was the red telephone,” Romereaux said. The conference room had a simple polarity. Stop the Trainers! at one end, The Mail Must Get Throughers at the other, undecideds down each side and baying bloodsports fans behind the studded brass railings. Amongst the nonaligned, mostly Tractions, a couple of new generation Deep-Fusion folk and the oldest Bassareenis,
heads nodded, agreements muttered. A red telephone, yes, the red phone, starkest emergencies, Aid from Beyond Comprehension, in a time of Extreme Direness, only direst direness, Taal Chordant, of course she knows, wouldn't have unless, worse than worst.

“Red telephones can be ignored,” Naon Engineer countered. There was a collective intake of breath. Heresy. Ignore a red telephone? Foolish. Worse than foolish. Reckless. Perilous. A dangerous precedent could be set. Taal Engineer was no grazeherd crying, “Leopard leopard leopard.” The collected heads turned back to Child'a'grace. She waited with an icon-like grace and stillness for the room to match her serenity. The very way she held herself in her council chair made everyone check his or her posture and sit up a little straighter.

“Husband, your mother, saints be kind to her, is being well aware of the Formas, of years more so even than you,” Child'a'grace said. That's right, the nodding heads agreed, Yezzir. “Not for nothing would she imperil the economic well-being of this train and those who live upon her. Not for nothing, say I again, but for one thing and one thing only, and that is family. Wherefore this red phone, unless she has found our child, your daughter, Sweetness Octave?”

A smattering of applause swelled into a small ovation. Many Tractions, Deep-Fusioneers and Bassareenis bore generations of low-grade resentment at being the driven, never the driver. Smelling mutiny, Marya Stuard rose from her green buttoned-leather seat. The room fell silent.

“Economic well-being. Shall we explore this idea for a few moments? The economic well-being of this train and all who live upon her. That, I believe, was your expression, Child'a'grace. I'm very glad you used it because it clarifies our thinking upon this subject. For, despite our many Domieties and mysteries, ultimately, this train is one nation, mobile, indivisible. We are all on the same track together, headed for the same destination, carrying a common cargo. What we are discussing here is not an Engineer affair. It is not even a Stuard and Deep Fusion affair. It is all of us, Tractions, Bassareeenis, all the people of
Catherine of Tharsis
. That is why it warms me to see representatives here from all our peoples and ages. Our economic well-being, my friends. And that cannot be the responsibility of just one family, or one individual out of one family.”

She looked around the captive faces.

“I agree with my friend, Child'a'grace, that Taal Chordant would only have used the emergency communication system on another's behalf, and I feel the loss of young Sweetness Octave as deeply as any of you, but consider again those words ‘economic well-being.' Sweetness Octave had a choice. She made it, she left the train. Such is her right. But her choice took away our choice. We live with the economic and social consequences of her exercise of freedom. I don't need to regale you with the economic implications of marriage contracts—we all have our diverse nuptial customs—let alone the social. Suffice to say what you have all by now experienced: that the real damage was done to the name of
Catherine of Tharsis
, and that name is our economic well-being. We are
Catherine of Tharsis
, four centuries of history beneath her wheels, named after Our Blessed Lady herself. We should be heading up the Ares Express. There should be Prelates and Nabobs in our Excelsior class lounges, not half a forest and a festering factory full of bugs. But it is work—the only work we can get. Oh yes. I won't bore you with how hard I and my family argued to get even this. So low has our stock sunk. So low. But it's money. It pays the track fees and the water rates and the insurance and the mortgage and puts a little food in our mouths. It's economic well-being. And now, you would throw every deadline and timetable and delivery date down the jakes for the person—mark this well—who got us into this state in the first place. Not enough for her to do it once. She would have you do it again. She doesn't know, doesn't care. Whatever you're doing, I don't care, stop it. Come and get me. I've had enough. I'm bored with life out there. I want to come back. Remember, she chose to leave us. She chose to walk away without a thought; without a thought for us, and now she wants to walk back again.”

Marya Stuard looked long at the sombre faces around the table. She had given them the back of her hand, the hard slapping of truth. Time now for the drop of honey. The table would be hers.

“I'm not saying, leave her,” Marya Stuard said, and could almost hear the tension go out of her audience's muscles like a chemical sigh. She afforded a little smile. “What I am saying is just, not now. When we've delivered. When we've our next contract, then, and she'll always be welcome back among us—we are one nation on a rail. But not now. Not now.”