The Abyss Beyond Dreams (73 page)

Kysandra put her knife and fork down. ‘Foodstuff for the neuts, and metals for smelting. That kind of thing.’

‘Look, I’m not complaining. I think it’s wonderful what Nigel has done, all the trade and industry he’s brought to this town. The whole region benefits. But it’s as
if there’s a whole part of you that I’m shut out from.’

She almost groaned in dismay. No matter how many times she said at the beginning:
this is just fun, I don’t want anything serious right now,
and no matter that they always
instantly agreed to those terms, it always wound up with them getting more demanding and possessive. ‘Isn’t what we have good enough?’

‘Oh, Giu, yes. I’m sorry, Kysandra. I just—’

Don’t say it. Don’t!

Even with her shell rock hard and revealing no hint of emotion, he must have sensed what a mess he was making of this.

‘I just want to see more of you,’ he finished lamely.

‘I don’t think there’s much you haven’t seen.’

He smiled, but she could see it was forced. And now the mood had gone completely. Neither of them seemed to know what to say. She considered talking about the lingerie that had arrived from
Varlan, which she’d been planning on wearing for him that afternoon. That always made men happy.
But why should I always have to rescue the moment, why not him?
That was the trouble
with being infected with the attitudes and outlook possessed by Commonwealth citizens; it was hard to find anyone on Bienvenido who could meet those expectations.
Perhaps we could talk about
the election, how Democratic Unity won a seat on the National Council.
Another glance at Deavid revealed how pointless that would be. Locals neither knew nor cared about politics in the
capital. Why should they? It didn’t affect them. So they believed.

Just how is he going to react to salvation? How are any of them going to cope? I can barely comprehend what it will mean, and I’ve been thinking about it for years
.

They were finishing the fish course in mildly awkward silence when Russell ’pathed her privately. ‘Gorlar’s riding the message cart into town. Riding hard.’

Kysandra stopped eating straight away. The message cart wasn’t due in until tomorrow. Something important must have happened for a message to be sent outside the schedule.
Great Giu,
Coulan’s people can’t have been blown, can they? Slvasta won his seat, dammit. Everything was going perfectly.
‘I have to go,’ she told Deavid.

‘No! Please, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked to be with you at the farm, it was stupid.’

She stood up. ‘This is nothing to do with that. My mother’s been a pain, and I have to go and sort it out. Again.’

‘Oh.’ He reddened. ‘Of course.’

‘I’ll see you tonight,’ she promised.

His smile was almost nervous. There was clearly a lot he wanted to say, but held his tongue. ‘Tonight, then.’

Kysandra was proud of the way she kept her shell solid. Even if the message was nothing and they spent the night together, everything was about to change. Within a month, they would have the
fearsome weapons from the palace. Nigel would launch
Skylady
and attack the Void’s structure. She still considered the whole mission crazy dangerous, despite his ability to reset the
Void. But – oh, oh – if he was right, if he really did know everything, the Void would be no more, and Bienvenido would be free. But it all depended on events in Varlan playing out
smoothly, or at least in their favour for a few days.

She waited with Russell outside the livery on the edge of town. It had a good position at the end of the newly upgraded river road which was lined with tall featherpalms. Deavid’s company
had been given the contract for the frame of the livery’s latest stable – which wasn’t the quality she’d been led to expect, but she never challenged it.
It’s only
for a couple more months.

The message cart came into view round the final bend in the river road. Russell’s ge-eagle had seen it five miles out, and he was right; Gorlar was riding it hard. The horse was flecked
with foam, wild-eyed and galloping along as if they were being chased by wild haxhounds.

Gorlar steered it off the road’s newly compacted stone surface and slowed down as the horse reached the livery’s wide gates. The neat cart was Nigel’s design, its narrow
bodywork made out of a drosilk-reinforced resin to combine strength and lightness, forming little more than a frame with a seating sling above the axle. People had been amazed by how fast the thing
could travel between Adeone and Erond, especially now the road had been relaid. They’d concluded two years back that river travel, which was the usual way of getting between the two towns,
was too slow for anything urgent, so Nigel through his expanding commercial concerns had lobbied and used some mild domination on local councillors.

Now the road was level and sound, with fresh or repaired bridges offering a clean route. They’d positioned new stables in towns at reasonable intervals, so the message carts could change
horses.

‘The buggy express’, Nigel called it.

‘Ma’am,’ Gorlar said as he jumped down. He was out of breath, with an exuberant look on his face at the frantic charge from Erond. Hands rummaged round in the leather satchel
and produced the pale-blue envelope. ‘It left Varlan yesterday,’ he said proudly.

‘Thank you.’ Kysandra took the letter from him. The big wax seal on the back was intact. Not that it was remotely important.

‘Imagine that,’ Gorlar said to Russell. ‘A letter from the capital here in less than two days.’

‘Yeah. Imagine,’ Russell said with a complete lack of interest.

‘Crud!’ Kysandra exclaimed, frozen in the act of opening the envelope. The letter and whatever Coulan had written was irrelevant. The paper contained a small biochip memory which her
u-shadow had accessed. Coulan’s message was very clear. The political situation was destabilizing; they’d been forced to bring the date forward.

‘What—’ Russell began.

Kysandra held her hand up, closing her eyes to think. They were going to initiate phase one when the Captain inaugurated the new National Council, and the letter had taken nearly two days to
reach her. That barely left a day until the cells hit Varlan’s water supplies.
A day!
And only at lunch she’d been thinking they still had several weeks left. There were few
options now, but she had to choose. Time was slipping away fast, and Nigel was back at the farm, hours away.

Coulan needs confirmation that we’re in position and ready to retrieve the weapons from beneath the palace. So . . .

‘Right,’ she snapped. ‘Gorlar, get yourself a fresh horse: you’re riding to Blair Farm with a letter for Nigel. Russell, same for you. I need you to be on the
eight-thirty express to Varlan.’

Russell pulled a face. ‘That’s tight.’

‘I know, so let’s move it.’

‘You haven’t even opened the letter,’ Gorlar protested. He was just one of their normal employees. Devoted to Nigel but not dominated, which left him free to question.

‘I know the handwriting,’ she said immediately. ‘It’s from an old friend, so it can only be one thing, I’m afraid. Important news. So I need you to ride as fast as
you can for me. Nigel must get my letter this afternoon.’

‘Right-o, ma’am. You can rely on me.’ He almost saluted.

•

Kysandra had plenty of time to get changed out of the dress and into some practical jeans with a white blouse under a suede jacket, and some sturdy boots, all worn beneath a
decent ankle-length coat of thin leather. Her small backpack had a few additional clothes, along with her basic kit of Commonwealth gadgets. She felt quite the adventurous traveller again.

Four hours after she’d dispatched Gorlar to the farm, she heard
it
clattering along the road.
Now this should be interesting
, she thought as she walked out of the
livery.

Madeline was in the livery’s yard with her, also in travelling clothes, a happy grin spreading over her face. ‘He’s riding it.’

‘I know. Nothing else on this world makes that racket.’

They faced the road to the farm, which thanks to the ancient cedars on both sides was practically a green tunnel. The mechanical clanking and brief roars of high-pressure steam echoed off the
trunks and branches. Kysandra’s ex-sight found him just before he came into view. Her grin rose to match the one on Madeline’s face.

Nigel was driving the steam car at about eighty kilometres an hour, with Fergus sitting in the front passenger seat. Smoke from the fire tube boiler was shooting out of the back like a grey
flame before swirling away in its wake. The wheels with their fat low-pressure tyres were a blur, giving the suspension a hefty workout. Two horses trotting sedately down the road were immediately
spooked, and bolted through the line of cedars. Carts and wagons swerved out of the way. Kysandra could feel a great deal of ex-sight swelling out from the town to scan the extraordinary
vehicle.

It was beautiful to behold. She’d spent hours in the workshop over the last five months, helping him with the early models. The work was nothing a mod-dwarf couldn’t do, screwing
parts together, hammering, even painting the bodywork, but she so wanted to be a part of it. The steam car was probably the most advanced piece of machinery to have been built on Bienvenido for a
thousand years. They’d constructed two prototypes, testing the whole boiler system, then made three working models.

‘Dead-end technology,’ Nigel had called them. ‘Just like airships and paddle steamers. But romantics never give up on them. You can always find enthusiasts building them
somewhere in the Commonwealth. They’re really quite evocative, like something from an alternative history.’

She was almost offended by him calling the splendid car a dead end. Driving it round the farm compound had been exhilarating. It had two seats in the front and three in the back, all of which
could be covered by a retractable canvas hood if it started to rain.

The car rolled into the livery yard, startling the horses in their stables. Its weight dug deep ruts in the damp ground as it came to a halt. Nigel hurried out, long brown coat swirling round
his legs, pushing his goggles up onto his forehead to reveal clean circles of skin round his eyes; the rest of his face was caked in soot and hot oily grime spat out by the engine. ‘Right,
what’s happened?’

‘Message from Coulan,’ she told him. ‘The radicals are getting restless. They’ve had to bring the date forwards.’

‘When?’

‘Phase one is planned to start tomorrow.’

‘Hell. That doesn’t give us any time.’

‘Don’t worry. I’ve sent Russell on the express.’

‘Which express?’

‘The eight-thirty to Varlan. It’ll get into the city early tomorrow morning.’

Nigel looked at her for a long moment. ‘Okay. And what is Russell going to do when he arrives?’

‘He’s carrying a letter for Coulan—’

‘
Yes!
Saying what?’

She frowned at him. ‘Confirming we’ll be there, and to activate the external groups to assist phase two. Russell will also tell Akstan to get everything ready for us in Dios, and
then he’ll contact our station chief in Willesden to make sure the Southern City Line is protected.’

Nigel’s shell attenuated slightly, allowing her to sense the lofty amusement colouring his thoughts – along with a steely thread of pride. ‘You said yes, then?’

‘What?’

He put his hands on her shoulder, giving her a steady look. ‘You said yes? You told Coulan to go ahead with the revolution?’

‘Well, obviously. Russell absolutely had to make the eight-thirty express. I didn’t have any time to consult with you. Why?’

‘You realize there’s no turning back now? You’ve fired the starting pistol – a shot that will be heard all over Bienvenido. Actually, all over the galaxy.’

‘Oh. Yes, I suppose so.’

He kissed her on the forehead. ‘That’s my girl. No doubts. No hesitation.’

‘Nigel, it wasn’t a decision. This is what we’ve been preparing for since we visited the Desert of Bone.’

‘Quite right,’ he said briskly. ‘Madeline, the car needs coal and water; get the livery people to bring it out – quickly. Fergus will show them what to do. Then
you’ll be coming with us.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘We’ll stay in Dios overnight, and load our equipment onto tomorrow morning’s express.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ Kysandra said. ‘Akstan will deliver everything from the warehouses to Dios station.’ She glanced out of the livery yard. People were
drifting along the street outside, anxious to get a real glimpse of the amazing steam car. A lot of them were kids. ‘There’s really no going back now, is there?’

‘No.’

*

It began a few minutes after midnight. The steam engine in the Holderness Avenue pump house suddenly lost pressure in one of its pistons, stalling the massive flywheel it
turned. The cut-off valves worked perfectly, allowing steam to escape from the boiler, averting any kind of dangerous pressure build-up. The pump slowly rattled to a halt. Water pressure fell to
zero across the whole district.

In the Hither Green Road pump house it was the pump itself which broke, its bearings seizing and disintegrating from the grit that contaminated the lubrication oil. Chunks of glowing metal
exploded across the big hall, embedding themselves in the stone walls and punching clean through the roof. Pressure surges burst several feed pipes, sending water jetting out. A few minutes later,
it poured into the idling engine’s firebox, extinguishing it in a blast of steam that shattered all the windows. Water continued to gush out, cascading down the road outside.

Chertsy Road pump house saw the engine regulator fail, allowing the pistons to increase speed, turning the pump faster and faster. The pressure in the pipes outside increased dramatically.
Junctions sprang leaks, sending water fountaining up through the cobbles, breaking the valves on domestic tanks.

It was a domino effect that had been meticulously plotted. No one incident was enough to wreck Varlan’s water utility network, but the surges and dips had a cumulative result, affecting
subsequent stations, forcing them to either shut down or suffer severe damage.