Terminal World (31 page)

Somewhere near midnight he was summoned to Captain Curtana’s private quarters. They were alone. She dismissed the attending airman as soon as he had delivered Quillon to her door.

‘Have a seat, Doctor. You can take those goggles off now. How you see through them I don’t know, but Gambeson tells me you did sterling work.’

‘I’m glad he was satisfied.’

‘I suppose I can’t rule out some ulterior motive for saving lives, but I confess at the moment it’s escaping me what it might be. You have my personal gratitude.’ There was a bottle of amber-coloured liquid on her desk, accompanied by a pair of small, wide-bottomed glasses. ‘Do you drink? It may seem a silly question, but I have no idea what kind of tolerance is the norm amongst angels, or whether such a tolerance would apply to one such as you.’

‘I drink.’ He corrected himself. ‘Or rather, I may drink, for now at least. Alcohol doesn’t affect me, but I still have taste buds.’

She poured a measure of the liquid into each of the glasses, finishing the bottle. ‘To your health, then, Doctor Quillon.’

He took the glass and sipped at it. It tasted the way he imagined firesap tasted, the aviation fuel that was distilled from some kind of wood secretion or resin: viscous and fiery, with a metallic finish.

The room was very small. The desk was designed to fold back into the wall when not in use. He presumed there was a folding bed somewhere in the room as well, although for now it was well disguised. There were a few shelves, and a number of technical-looking books, their spines printed with the angular, old-fashioned script that he now recognised as the written form of Swarmish. Almost no other signs of personalisation, save for a couple of framed black and white photographs. Both of them showed the same man, though he was younger in one than in the other, his hair and moustache dark where the older man’s were white. He wore an airman’s uniform in both pictures, with many medals or signifiers of rank on the chest: almost as many when he was young as when he was older. In the earlier picture he was standing on the ground with an airship looming behind him, most of it out of shot. In the other he was caught in a stiff, overly formal posture at the wheel, looking distinctly uncomfortable at being the centre of attention.

Quillon ventured, ‘I think I recognise that ship. Was that man one of
Painted Lady’s
former captains?’

‘You’re very observant, Doctor. That’s a useful trait amongst spies.’

‘And amongst doctors.’

‘Touché.’ She drank from her own glass, finishing it in one gulp. ‘Actually, I don’t think you’re a spy. A spy would do everything possible not to draw attention to himself, and he certainly wouldn’t have gone to such involved lengths to get aboard my ship.’

‘That’s something of a relief.’

‘Nor is it very likely that you’re a saboteur. You’ve had opportunity, and you haven’t acted. Perhaps you’re saving yourself for some devilish masterstroke, but I’m inclined to think otherwise.’

‘I’m not a saboteur. Or a spy. You can eliminate my friends from similar suspicions while you’re at it.’

‘I don’t need to. The fact that Meroka was last seen trying to kill you rather rules her out of suspicion, I think. Unless it’s all some incredibly cunning ruse to get us off our guard, but ... I don’t think so.’ Curtana smiled guardedly. ‘Now all I have to do is persuade Commander Spatha, and we’ll be home and dry.’

‘You’re in charge of this ship, aren’t you?’

‘Technically.’

‘Then why do you need to persuade him of anything? Doesn’t he have to listen to you, not the other way around?’

‘It’s not as simple as that. Spatha isn’t part of my regular crew. He’s been foisted on me to keep me and my crew in line.’ Curtana looked regretfully at the bottle she had poured from. ‘I probably shouldn’t be telling you any of this, but you’re going to find out sooner or later anyway so you may as well hear it now. Swarm’s undergoing one of its periodic spasms. For years there’s been little or no challenge to Ricasso’s rule, but that’s all changing. Look, we’re not a democracy, all right? Democracies are fine and noble things when you’ve got all the time in the world to make your decisions. In the air ... not how it works. You need one hand on the wheel, someone you can trust absolutely. That’s Ricasso. He was a captain once, and the other captains decided they wanted him to take all the big decisions. Just the captains, not the citizenry. When Ricasso says something, there’s this thing we do called the show-of-flags, but it’s not really a vote. It’s a show of confidence. Actually it’s not even that, because it’s more ceremonial. And it never, ever goes against Ricasso. Until recently.’

‘What happened?’

‘Some captains started getting ideas above their station, is what. There are about twenty of them, all told.
Ghost Moth
is the figurehead, although Spatha - who isn’t even a captain - is the one really pulling the strings. Together with the dissenting captains, it looks like they’re trying to engineer Ricasso’s fall from power.’

‘What have they got against him?’

‘Ricasso plays the long game. He’s repeatedly shied away from direct confrontation with the Skullboys, saying we’d be better off consolidating our power, improving our flexibility, developing improved forms of zone tolerance, before tackling them. They think he’s too soft.’

‘Is he?’

‘They forget what an iron-spined bastard he can be when the cause is right. Truth to tell, so do I sometimes. Ricasso’s content to hold the Skulls at bay, picking off the odd one here and there instead of declaring all-out war.’

‘Whereas Spatha and the others don’t agree.’

‘They’ve managed to draw concessions from Ricasso. He’s still in charge, and he still has majority support. But the minority - the
Ghost Moth
dissenters - have chipped away at some of his power. Show-of-flags is now binding on all decisions - it’s not just some ceremonial rubber-stamping like it used to be. Ricasso’s been allowed to pursue his interests, and not take Swarm into direct and deliberate confrontation with the enemy. In return, the dissenters have pushed through rearmament of dozens of ships, sticking guns and armour on anything with a gasbag and an engine. Everything’s become more disciplinarian than it used to be. We used to be very lax about rank and uniforms. I mean, we took airmanship seriously - you have to, out in one of these ships - but that’s not the same thing. Now it’s all rigid command hierarchies, saluting your superiors, war-readiness exercises, courts martial ...’ She shook her head in abject disgust. ‘I don’t know where it’s all going. What I do know is that anyone even suspected of having sympathies with Ricasso is now under special observation by Spatha and his dissenters. They’ve put security officers on our ships, spying turd-sucking scabs like Spatha himself.’ Curtana looked momentarily rueful. ‘I’ve said too much, haven’t I?’

‘Merely clarified your feelings. I find it helps.’

‘Helps if you know which side I’m on, that’s for sure. Here’s the thing, though, Doctor. I very much want to believe everything you’ve told me. I want to be able to accept you for what you say you are. But I’ve got a tiny, nagging problem.’

‘Which is?’

‘Doctor Gambeson. He’s been with me for years. Knows Ricasso like a brother. Isn’t a man on this ship whose counsel I’d trust over his. And Gambeson tells me he’s fairly certain that you’re still lying about something.’

‘Is he?’

‘It was much too pat, the way you presented yourself to him. You could have kept your secret much longer, but you seemed in almost indecent haste to reveal it to us. It was almost as if you wished to provide a distraction, to deflect Gambeson’s professional interest. You gave him a puzzle that you knew - or at least suspected - that he’d find impossible to ignore.’

‘I can’t help what I am,’ Quillon said.

‘No, and no one’s saying you aren’t an object of genuine fascination. But when Gambeson comes to me with a hunch like that, I am compelled to listen. And he tells me that he thinks you’re protecting one of the others.’ She raised a finger, rebuffing any attempt he might have made to interject. ‘His instincts may or may not be correct. He’s also told me that he doesn’t think you present an immediate threat to the security of either this ship or Swarm. In truth, I think he likes you, or at least would like the chance to spend more time talking to you. But understand one thing, Doctor: if deception is being practised here, I will learn of it sooner or later. I need hardly add that I would act in any way that I saw fit, with the full authority of command behind me. I would also not be responsible for any interest that Commander Spatha might choose to take in you from that point on.’

‘He’s already showing interest.’

‘Believe me, you haven’t seen the half of it.’

Quillon reflected on what he was being told. There was, he supposed, an outside chance that this was all some psychological gambit cooked up between the captain and her security officer, designed to lull him into sharing everything with Curtana. His instincts, however, told him that she was being entirely frank.

‘I am hiding nothing,’ he assured her.

‘I hope that’s the case, Doctor. For both our sakes.’

There was a lull. He wondered if this warning was the sole purpose of the conversation. ‘What will happen to us when we reach Swarm?’ he asked cautiously.

‘You’ll be evaluated. I’ve already told you that we believe in giving newcomers a chance to prove their worth. Doctor Gambeson’s doubts aside, you could have done worse than you have. The same can be said for Meroka. She took a bullet for us, and I won’t let that go unmentioned.’

‘I’m sure she’ll be delighted.’

‘You’re not defending her, by any chance? The impression I got from Gambeson was that she was on the point of slicing you open.’

‘Meroka was just making a point, that’s all.’

Curtana nodded as if she had just had some lingering prejudice confirmed. ‘In other words, you Spearpointers will stick by each other to the bitter end.’

‘Tell me the same isn’t true in Swarm, Captain.’

‘No, you’re probably right.’ She conceded his point wearily, as if her appetite for argument had just run out. ‘You realise you’ll probably never see it again, don’t you? The Godscraper? Do you still call it that?’

‘Some of us. But I confess I haven’t thought much further ahead than tomorrow morning.’

‘Not unwise, under the circumstances. The fact is, though, that we very rarely come within three hundred leagues of Spearpoint, and we usually don’t even venture into the same hemisphere. It has nothing to offer us, and we have nothing to offer it in return.’

‘Things might be different now,’ Quillon said.

‘Because of a little storm? I don’t think so. It’s changed their world more than it’s changed ours. When the zones shift, we shift with them. Spearpoint’s fatal weakness is that it’s never had that flexibility. It’s an evolutionary dead end; a form that can’t adapt.’

‘It’s done well enough to last this long. Anyway, if Spearpoint moved, the Mire would move with it. Doesn’t that rather exempt it from criticism?’

‘So what?’ she asked, disinterestedly. ‘The Mire has to be somewhere. All I care about is that it isn’t here, getting in my way when I have a ship to fly.’

‘I’m given to understand that you’re very good at it.’ He looked at the photographs again, then back at Curtana, gauging the similarity of the face he saw in the images against the one opposite him. Like Curtana he was dark-skinned, but the resemblance went deeper than that. He could see the same eyes, the same delicate features. ‘That man ... is he by any chance your father?’

‘Was,’ she corrected. ‘He died ten years ago. Got into an encounter with Skullboys over Sunburn Flats.’

‘And he flew this ship?’

‘And his father before him, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather all the way back to when they laid her keel. Been in the family for more than ten generations. She’s a hundred and fifty years old. Not the oldest ship in Swarm by any measure, but one of the oldest. That’s why I won’t see her endangered. She’ll go down in flames one day, but it won’t be under my command.’

‘I would have thought being on some long-range scouting mission qualified as hazardous in anyone’s book.’

‘That’s what she was built for,’ Curtana said. ‘I’m talking about the danger from internal elements, such as people I can’t be sure aren’t lying to me.’

‘I don’t know what I can do to convince you of my good intentions.’

‘I’m sure you’ll think of something.’ Curtana seemed on the verge of dismissing him when a thought occurred to her. She reached into a drawer under the fold-down desk and produced a small black volume that Quillon recognised. ‘We confiscated this from your friend, on the assumption she might have another weapon concealed somewhere inside it.’

‘And?’

‘We found nothing. She may as well have it back.’ Curtana riffled the translucent pages before handing the book over. ‘Are you a religious man?’