Terminal World (28 page)

‘How long?’ Kalis asked.

What did it matter? he wondered. But nonetheless he tried to give her an honest answer, thinking back to what Fray and Meroka had told him. ‘Two years, give or take.’

‘Nimcha is five years old now. I told you that she was nearly three when her powers first showed.’

‘No,’ Quillon said, aiming to correct her gently. ‘That isn’t possible. Nimcha is just one girl. I can accept that she has some influence over the local conditions of the zone, here and now, in the place where she stands. That’s not to say I understand it, but I know what I felt and I must trust the evidence of my own senses. But to go beyond that, to start believing that this one girl caused
everything
that’s happened in the last couple of days ... that she’s been building up to it for years ... I’m sorry, but that’s simply more than I can credit.’

‘She had to bring the storm,’ Kalis said, with surprising calm, as if she had not really expected anyone to believe her. ‘She knew that the Skullboys would suffer, and that we might be able to escape. You cannot deny that it worked. You found us. If she had not brought the storm, you would never have done that.’

‘Crazy as a bag of snakes the woman may be,’ said Meroka, ‘but she does have a point.’

‘I cannot accept that all this was the work of one little girl,’ Quillon said. ‘It would mean that, just to escape from that cage, she had to plunge Spearpoint in darkness, eclipsing the one beacon of civilisation left on this planet.’

‘Got the job done,’ Meroka said.

‘She did not mean to cause what happened,’ Kalis said suddenly. ‘She only did what she had to do. Her power is strong, but her control over it is still ... not what it should be.’ She looked down at the rumpled folds of the blanket still covering her legs. ‘But what had to be done was done. I encouraged her in this. She was the instrument; I was the one who guided her. You cannot blame her for what happened.’

‘There’s no blame to be attached to anyone,’ Quillon said forcefully. ‘This was merely a coincidence of factors - you encouraged Nimcha to act, and at the same time the zone shift arrived. From your point of view, it was natural to believe that her influence had something to do with that. But that’s not what happened. It
cannot
be what happened.’

‘Why not?’ Kalis asked.

‘Because if Nimcha is what you think she is, then ...’ He trailed off, struggling to articulate his thoughts. ‘She wouldn’t just be a child with unusual abilities. She’d be the single most important human being now alive; someone with the power to change everything.’

‘And you do not think that this is possible?’

‘I’ll believe in anything when I see evidence for it. But evidence isn’t the problem here.’

‘What is, then?’

‘This isn’t the way it’s meant to happen.’ It was not so much rage as a kind of wild indignation, a sense that he had been displaced from his proper position in the order of things, like a planet demoted to a lesser orbit. From the moment the angel arrived on his mortuary table, he had been under the illusion that he was the master of his own destiny, the main actor in a story of his own shaping. But if Nimcha was all that her mother claimed, then she had been the one shaping the story all along. It was Nimcha who had caused the instabilities that had led the Boundary Commission to suspect that the storm was imminent ... the very instabilities that, it seemed increasingly likely, were behind the angels’ renewed interest in retrieving him from Neon Heights. It was Nimcha, in other words, who had been indirectly responsible for his fleeing the city. He felt now as if she had been pulling him towards her like a magnet.

‘I know what you’re feeling,’ Meroka said. ‘You’re thinking, this was my little adventure, it was all revolving around
me
. And now it’s not. You’re just a detail, swept up in the stuff she’s making happen. Welcome to the way most of us spend our lives feeling, Cutter. We’re just turds swirling our way down the pipe.’

‘She did not ask for this,’ Kalis said. ‘She did not choose this path.’

‘I don’t envy her.’

‘Neither should you pity her. Just ... understand. That is all I ask.’

‘I’ll do my best.’

‘Turn around,’ Meroka said.

He looked at her, trying to feign honest bemusement. ‘I’m sorry?’ ‘Turn around, Cutter. So we can see your back.’

‘I don’t see—’

‘Turn the fuck around. Now.’ She rose from the bench and he saw, mesmerised by the chrome glint of it, that she carried a blade. For a moment the only thought in his head was the wonder of how she had kept it about her.

‘What are you, Cutter? I’d like to know. Because you sure as hell aren’t normal.’

Quillon stepped back, raising his hands defensively, not willing to give in to her demands quite so easily. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘The others may not have seen anything like you before,’ Meroka said, ‘but I have. Those eyes aren’t something you forget in a hurry. No fucking wonder you kept them hidden so long. You knew exactly what I’d make of them.’

‘This is not what you think.’

‘Turn around. Ain’t repeating myself.’

Something in her voice commanded him to obey. He presented his back to her, facing the door, holding his hands above his shoulders. He felt the clean whisk as the knife cleaved through the fabric of his shirt and the vest under it. The cold line of it arrowed down his spine. Meroka grabbed the torn fabric and ripped it wide.

Kalis let out a small, startled gasp. Nimcha’s scream was pure dire incomprehension. Meroka spat. He felt the gobbet impact between his shoulder blades.

‘Always had my doubts, Cutter.’

‘This is not what you think,’ he said again, less pleadingly this time, for the damage was already done. He could still feel the cold line traced by the knife, and he guessed that for all her skill she had drawn blood. He imagined the droplets racing down his back like a procession of scarlet beetles.

She stepped closer. He felt an edge touch his throat.

‘Tell me what the fuck this means. In words of two syllables or less.’ Nimcha was still screaming. Her screams were becoming continuous and hysterical, as if she were in the throes of an unspeakably vivid night terror. It could not just be the sight of his wing buds. Meroka saw them for what they were, the mark of his true and secret nature, but to Nimcha they could only have been two slightly pendulous, symmetrical lumps on either side of his spine. He was peculiar enough without them, but surely his emaciation wasn’t enough to pitch the child into nightmares. Unless it was just one strangeness too many ...

‘Speak,’ Meroka said, increasing the pressure on the blade.

‘Fray knew what I am,’ he said, hardly daring to move his lips. ‘Fray trusted me. You trusted Fray. Isn’t that good enough for you?’

‘Fuck Fray. Tell me what you are.’

‘An angel made to look like a man. That’s all. Not your enemy. Angels hate me as well. They want me dead. All of that was true.’

‘What the fuck were you doing in Neon Heights?’

‘Trying not to die.’

‘Don’t get smart with me, Cutter.’

‘It’s the truth. I was sent down to blend in with humans, to prove that it could be done. To prove that we could be modified both to blend in and survive the different zone conditions. I thought that was all there was to it. I was wrong. There was an agenda I knew nothing about.’ He tried to swallow, conscious of the blade pushing against his skin, eager to part it. ‘I ... rebelled. From that point on I became a fugitive. Fray helped me build a new life. He always knew what I was and he always knew that I meant no harm. That’s the truth, Meroka. Fray knew how you felt about angels. Is it any wonder he didn’t want you finding out about me? You were supposed to get me out of Spearpoint. That was all.’

Nimcha was still screaming. But the scream had a different quality to it now. It was beginning to break up into choked grunts and gurgling, as if she was starting to go into convulsions.

‘Tell her to shut up,’ Meroka said.

‘She cannot,’ Kalis answered.

‘Let me look at her,’ Quillon said. ‘Whatever you have against me, we can deal with it later. But for now let me examine Nimcha.’

Meroka released the pressure on the blade by the smallest increment. ‘You want this blue-eyed freak anywhere near the girl, Kalis?’

Quillon spoke as calmly as he was able. ‘I won’t hurt her. If I had anything against her, do you think I’d have insisted we rescue them? At least let me look.’

Meroka pulled the blade from his throat. ‘We’re not finished, Cutter. Not by a long fucking margin.’

He went over to Nimcha, Kalis supporting her daughter as best she could. Nimcha had stopped screaming now, but she was still convulsing. Her limbs thrashed constantly and her eyes had rolled back into their sockets. Drool was spooling out of her mouth in a continuous stream. Her skin was beginning to darken.

‘She’s choking,’ Quillon said. ‘She’s swallowed her tongue. Support her head, Kalis. I’m going to try and reach in. Meroka: bang on the door and get them to bring either Gambeson or my medical bag.’

‘You couldn’t sound any colder if you tried, Cutter.’

‘That’s because I’m doing my job.’ The fingers on his right hand were still bandaged from where the Skullboy had bitten him. He used that hand to force her mouth open, and the left to reach in and try to retrieve her tongue. Nimcha thrashed under him, making a difficult task harder. She was trying to bite him. He pushed his fingers deeper, until he found the tongue. Not for the first time, he was paradoxically grateful for his slender fingers. As his bones elongated and thinned, so he became a better surgeon.

‘I have it,’ he said. ‘She should be able to breathe more easily now.’

Nimcha began to calm almost immediately, her convulsions easing, her normal complexion starting to return. Her breathing was deep, her eyes now closed.

‘It has never been that bad before,’ Kalis said.

‘This happens often?’

‘Lately. Along with the bad dreams. I fear for her. She has had the mark since she was young. But it has never made her sick.’

‘The two might not be connected.’ But that was as much consolation as he could offer her. If the convulsions were not linked to the mark of tectomancy, then the alternatives - epilepsy, a brain tumour - were no more reassuring. He was just about to ask her more about the bad dreams when the door opened. It was Gambeson, equipped with his own medical bag. An airman stood behind him.

‘I was told there was screaming. Is something the matter?’

‘We were just getting better acquainted,’ Quillon said, turning around so that Gambeson could see his slashed shirt and vest. ‘Meroka took it about as well as I’d been expecting.’

‘Did she hurt you?’

‘No, I’m fine.’ He flashed a glance at Meroka, who was still regarding him with poisonous distrust. ‘I can’t blame her for disliking what I am.’

‘And I won’t have our clients at each other’s throats,’ Gambeson said. ‘Touch him again, Meroka, and I’ll personally sign your death warrant. Is that understood?’

‘Whatever you say,’ she answered sullenly.

‘Take that knife from her,’ Gambeson told the airman. ‘And search her properly this time.’ Slowly his attention shifted to the child. ‘Was she the one screaming?’

‘She was disturbed by my wings,’ Quillon said. ‘It’s understandable. She won’t have seen anything like me before. It must have been quite upsetting for her.’

‘Has this sort of thing happened before?’ Gambeson asked Kalis. Quillon wondered if Gambeson detected the momentary hesitation in her answer. ‘No, this has not happened before. But she is resting now. I do not think it will happen again.’

‘I’ll do my best to reassure her,’ Quillon said.

‘I can examine her privately,’ Gambeson said. ‘There’s no reason why she has to be treated like a prisoner.’

‘I think we’d all rather stay together for now,’ Quillon said.

Gambeson looked sceptical. ‘Even you, Doctor? Given that your fellow clients ... companions ... now know everything about you?’

‘I think we can resolve our differences amicably.’ Quillon directed a querying glance at Meroka. ‘Can’t we?’

‘Very well,’ Gambeson said, not bothering to wait for her answer. ‘It’s probably just as well that you don’t need my immediate attention. The captain’s anticipating close action, I’m afraid. It could come at any time in the next day, but we must all be at maximum readiness.’ He paused and studied Quillon again. ‘I expect you’d appreciate a new shirt, Doctor. I’ll have one sent down. And perhaps a pair of tinted goggles, so you don’t have to go around explaining those eyes at every turn.’

‘That would help,’ Quillon said.

They were flying over water. To the south lay the same sparsely wooded, barely inhabited plains they had been traversing for many hours. The occasional hyphenated scratch of a long-abandoned road or railway line, the spindly remains of a disused semaphore tower, were the only tangible signs that civilisation had ever reached this region. Yet just when the monotony of it was becoming unbearable, the plains had given way to precipitous cliffs, plunging away beneath
Painted Lady
to drop at least a league below the former ground level. It was impossible to tell how deep the water was. It was a cold and sullen sea, slug-black, flecked by ice, running in what Quillon judged was an approximately east-west direction. He could see the far, northern side of it, where equally impressive cliffs staggered out of the waters, the dismal plains resuming beyond them. It must have been fifty or a hundred leagues to those cliffs; at least an hour’s flight. As the sun lowered after noon, vast shadows bit into the cliffs, deepening from purple to black.

He thought back to Meroka’s map, remembering the black ink of the Long Gash and the Old Sea. Could they have come so far that they were already crossing those waters?

‘There are many names for that sea,’ Kalis told him. ‘We are on the eastern edge of it now. They say it is so deep and long you could hide your Spearpoint in it, if you laid it on its side. They also say it was once much larger, extending all the way to the Night Maze and the Three Daughters. That was before the world became colder and the seas started to shrink.’ She shrugged, as if she placed no great faith in these titbits of planetary lore. ‘I have seen none of these places, nor have I ever met anyone who has. I do not even know for sure that they exist, or that the world was once warmer.’