Newton's Wake

Carlyle snorted. ‘So who built it? Aliens?’

‘Whoever built it,’ Higgins said, ‘might have sold it to someone else. Someone who wanted a QTD real bad. Or maybe just wanted another DK ship real bad and knew they could buy one with a QTD. Either way, I think there’s some third party out there.’

‘The Knights?’

Higgins shrugged. ‘They’re in hostility mode. Why not?’

‘Why not indeed,’ Carlyle said bitterly. ‘That makes sense. They bought the first QTD off us and there’s no reason they shouldn’t steal the second. Seeing as we’re fighting them and all. Shit.’

She sat for a moment staring in silence at Higgins, not wanting to divulge the next thought that followed on from that. If the Knights of Enlightenment had an even better model of the latest DK ship than the one she’d gone through all this to buy, then her bright idea of using a DK ship to outmanouevre them at Eurydice was so much chaff.

‘I guess,’ said Higgins, ‘that you planned to use the ship against the Knights at this new planet, and—’

‘Oh, shut up!’

Higgins’s steely lips compressed.

‘What I don’t understand,’ Carlyle went on, slightly apologetic, ‘is what Johnstone would get out of it.’

‘You mean, apart from a lot of money when he comes back from the dead?’

‘Aye,’ said Carlyle. ‘Apart from that. What’s money tae a Rapture-fucker? The truth about this’ll come out soon enough, likely as soon as my backup back hame wakes up and asks where the shiny new ship is. And after that his life willna be worth a damn anywhere we can reach. And there’s naebody but us who’ll poke around like we do in the tech, which means nae other suckers tae latch ontae if Rapture-fucking’s yir fix.’

Higgins shrugged. ‘This isn’t getting us anywhere.’

‘Aye, you’re telling me!’ In a sudden surge of renewed rage Carlyle brandished her pistol. ‘Do you want to get it over with now? Put the guns to each other’s heads, count of three?’

Higgins shook her iron head, her steel tongue dry on her steel lips.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t trust that method of suicide, not any more and not here.’ She glanced in the direction of the hole. ‘Remember what Johnstone said.’

‘You heard all that?’

‘Sure, it was on the open circuit.’

‘Fuck. You’re right. Anyway. So what do we do, if we cannae just kill ourselves?’

‘I’ll tell you what we can do,’ said Higgins, standing up. ‘We use the time we’ve got. Johnstone thought there must be another gate in there. We can go looking for that.’

‘With no guarantee that we’ll find it, or that it’ll lead anywhere more hospitable.’

‘Any less hospitable and it’ll be instantly lethal,’ said Higgins wryly. ‘Which is kind of the point, yeah? And anyway, looking for it will take our minds off things. And we might find some interesting stuff on the way.’

A Rapture-fucker to the end, Carlyle thought. She had little doubt that Higgins, with nothing left to lose, would be off in the cave like a kid in a toyshop. On the other hand, she was right: doing something had to be better than waiting to die. Already she felt feverish and nauseous, but that could just have been the shock.

Aye. The shock.

H

iggins went back up to the crane’s cabin, retrieved a remote control for the winch, and they attached themselves to the cable and descended together into the hole.

‘Wow,’ said Higgins. ‘This place is fucking magic. All those little lights, like it’s all alive!’

‘Aye, whatever. No doubt we’ll make a fortune off it someday. Any ideas about how we go about finding the gate?’

‘You’re the Carlyle. I thought you knew these things.’

‘I’ll let you in on a family secret,’ said Carlyle. ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

‘Oh!’ said Higgins. ‘Well, in that case …’

‘What?’

‘I’d do it logically.’ She began turning around, her helmet beam and her handheld halogen spotlighting one uncanny thing after another. ‘There are passageways through the machinery, aisles between the machines. That means that physically shifting stuff must have been a consideration. One of these aisles must lead to the gate.’

‘No shit.’

‘Ah, but look at what we can see from here, of the angles and the layout. Which way are the paths converging?’

‘Hard to tell, with perspective and all.’

Higgins drew her Webster and thumbed the laser sight on. She squatted on her heels and again turned around, more slowly, sending the beam down each of the visible corridors. It glowed a faint red in the dusty air, picked out bright red spots where it met objects. The lights on the objects moved in a way that suggested a response. Then she stood up. ‘That way,’ she said confidently.

Carlyle didn’t share her confidence, but she was past caring. ‘OK,’ she said. After a few hundred metres and several turns, she shared it even less. The only thing she was sure of was that she was thoroughly lost. She might be able to literally retrace her steps. The thought made her stop and glance back. Sure enough, their tracks were easily visible in the dust: two distinct sets of prints, sometimes crossing each other, slightly scuffed. Ten metres behind her, at the side of a thing that looked like a gigantic silver sculpture of a lighthouse-sized melted candle, was the end of a third set of prints.

She must have yelled. Higgins was back beside her in a moment.

‘There,’ said Carlyle.

The third set of prints stretched into the distance as far as their lights could reach. They were of bare feet.

There was some kind of reassurance in that she and Higgins had drawn and levelled their pistols without conscious thought.

Carlyle switched on her suit’s external speaker.

‘Come out,’ she said.

Nothing happened.

She was about to step forward when Higgins caught her elbow. ‘No.’

‘What?’

‘Leave it. If it wants to be seen, it will be.’

‘Aye, that’s reassuring.’

They walked on. Higgins never looked back, but every so often Carlyle did. The footprints were there behind them every time, always ending approximately the same distance away. After a while Carlyle began to hear, or imagine, stealthy pacing steps, approaching right up to behind her shoulder. She whirled, gun drawn, but still the prints ended ten or so metres behind. She wondered if whatever was following them was invisible. This thought was not reassuring either.

What overtook them eventually was weariness. They slumped, in wordless agreement, against a shining wall and sucked recycled water and greasy fruity-tasting paste from their helmets’ tubes.

‘White cell count right down,’ Higgins observed, with something like anxiety. ‘Not much longer to go.’

‘To the gate?’

‘Till we die.’ She looked around and shivered, her shoulder shaking against Carlyle’s. ‘I don’t want to die here.’

‘Why not?’ Carlyle had a metal taste in her mouth, but it was only her gums beginning to bleed.

‘I can’t swear that would guarantee extinction. There are some very sensitive devices in this place. They might … take us up.’

‘I know that,’ Carlyle said. ‘But is that no what you want? Rapture?’

‘Oh, Christ, no.’ It sounded like a prayer, not a profanity. ‘There’s no guarantee of becoming something better than human. You might become worse: a trapped consciousness in a treadmill, with no