solution pathways for most glitches, and the last thing they needed was someone showing them how to do things fractionally more efficiently. Jokingly, they said it would put them out of work — but that was just a polite way of saying that Norquinco made them uneasy. So he rode with Sky and Gomez, out of harm’s way.
‘The Caleuche,’ Sky said, repeating the name. ‘And I suppose there’s some significance in that name?’
‘Enough,’ Norquinco said, reading Sky’s expression of deep contempt. ‘The island where my ancestors came from had a lot of ghost stories. The Caleuche was one of them.’ Norquinco was speaking earnestly now, all trace of his usual nervousness gone.
‘And I suppose you’re going to enlighten us about her.’
‘She was a ghost ship.’
‘Funny, I’d never have guessed.’
Gomez thumped him. ‘Look, shut up and let Norquinco get on with it, all right?’
Norquinco nodded. ‘They used to hear her; sending accordion music out across the sea at night. Sometimes she would even put into port, or take sailors from other ships. The dead aboard her were having a party that never stopped. Her crew were wizards; brujos. They cloaked the Caleuche in a cloud that followed her around everywhere. Now and then people saw her, but they could never get close to her. She would sink under the waves, or turn into a rock.’
‘Ah,’ Sky said, ‘so this ship which people couldn’t see very clearly — because it was covered in a cloud — also had the ability to turn into an old rock when they got closer? That’s remarkable, Norquinco; proof of magic if ever I heard it.’
‘I’m not saying there was ever an actual ghost ship,’ Norquinco said testily. ‘Then. But now, who knows? Perhaps the myth concerned one that was yet to come.’
‘It gets better, it really does.’
‘Listen,’ Gomez said. ‘Forget the Caleuche; forget the ghost ship bollocks. Norquinco’s right — in a sense. It could have happened, couldn’t it? There could easily have been a sixth ship, and the knowledge of it might have become confused with time.’
‘If you say so. You could also argue that the whole thing was a tissue of lies made up by the terminally bored crew of a generation ship to minutely enrich the mythic fabric of their lives. If you so wished.’ Sky paused as the train swerved into a different tunnel, rattling against its induction rails, gravity rising as it moved a little closer to the skin.
‘Ah, I know what your problem is,’ Norquinco said, with half a smile. ‘It’s your old man, isn’t it? You don’t want to believe any of this because of who your father is. You can’t stand the idea of him not knowing about something so significant.’
‘Maybe he does know, has that ever occurred to you?’
‘So you admit the ship could be real.’
‘No, actually…’
But Gomez interrupted him, obviously warming to the subject. ‘As a matter of fact, I don’t find it hard to believe that there was once a sixth ship. Launching six rather than five wouldn’t have been much more effort, would it? After that — after the ships had got up to cruising speed — there could have been some disaster… some tragic event, deliberate or otherwise, which left the sixth ship essentially dead. Coasting, but derelict, with its crew all killed, probably its momios as well. There must have been enough residual power to keep the remaining antimatter in containment, of course, but that wouldn’t have taken much.’
‘What,’ Sky said, ‘and we just forgot about it?’
‘If the other ships had also played a part in the destruction of the sixth, it wouldn’t have been difficult to edit the data records of the entire Flotilla to remove any reference to the crime itself, or even the fact the victim had ever existed. That generation of crew could have sworn not to pass on the knowledge of the crime to their descendants, our parents.’
Gomez nodded enthusiastically. ‘So by now all we’d have been left with is a few rumours; half-forgotten truths mixed up in myth.’
‘Exactly what we do have,’ Norquinco said.
Sky shook his head, knowing it was futile to argue any further.
The train came to a halt in one of the loading bays which serviced this part of the spine. The three of them got out carefully, crunching their sticky-soled shoes onto the flooring for traction. There was scarcely any feeling of gravity now since they were so close to the axis of rotation. Objects still fell towards the floor, but with a certain reluctance, and it was easy to hurt your head against the ceiling if you took too ambitious a stride.
There were many such bays, each servicing a cluster of momios. There were six sleeper modules attached around this part of the spine, each of which held ten individual cryogenic berths. The trains reached no closer, and almost all equipment and supplies had to be manhandled from this point, via laddered shafts and winding crawlways. There were freight elevators and handler robots, but neither were used very often. Robots in particular needed diligent programming and maintenance, and even the simplest task had to be spelled out to them as if they were particularly slow-witted children. Usually, it was quicker just to do it yourself. That was why there were so many techs, usually leaning against the pallets looking bored, smoking homemade cigarettes or tapping styluses against clipboards, doing their best to look semi-occupied despite the fact that nothing was actually happening. The techs generally wore blue overalls flashed with section decals, but the overalls were usually ripped or amended in some fashion, exposing crudely tattooed skin. Sky knew all of them by face, of course — on a ship with only one hundred and fifty warm human beings, it was difficult not to. But he had only a vague idea what their names were, and next to none about the kinds of lives the techs lived when they were not working. Off-duty techs tended to keep to their own parts of the Santiago, and they tended to socialise amongst themselves, even to the extent of producing their offspring. They spoke their own patois, drenched in carefully guarded jargon.
But something was slightly different now.
No one was lazing around or trying to look busy. In fact, there were hardly any techs in the room at all, and the few that were here looked edgy, as if waiting for an alarm to go off.
‘What’s the matter?’ Sky said.
But the man who stepped gingerly from behind the nearest tower of equipment pallets was not a tech. He brushed his hand across the chrome shoulder of a crouched handler robot as if looking for support, sweat blistering on his forehead.
‘Dad?’ Sky said. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I could ask you the same question, unless this is one of your chores.’
‘Of course it is. I told you we work the trains now and then, didn’t I?’
Titus looked distracted. ‘Yes… yes, you did. I forgot. Sky, help these men unload the goods, and then you and your friends get away from here, will you?’
Sky looked at his father. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Just do it, will you?’ Then Titus Haussmann turned to the nearest tech, a heavily bearded fellow with grotesquely muscled forearms folded across his chest like hams. ‘The same goes for you and your men, Xavier. Get all non-essential people out of here, all the way back up the spine. As a matter of fact I want the engine section evacuated while we’re at it.’ He flipped up his sleeve and whispered orders into his bracelet. Recommendation, more accurately, Sky thought, but Old Man Balcazar would never fail to abide by Titus Haussmann’s advice. Then he turned to Sky again, blinking to see his son still present. ‘Didn’t I just tell you to get on with it, son? I wasn’t kidding.’
Norquinco and Gomez took their leave, accompanying a couple of techs to the waiting train, flipping open one of its freight covers and beginning the knuckle-grazing work of unloading supplies. They passed the boxes from hand to hand, out of the bay altogether, where they would presumably be lowered down the levels to the sleeper berths themselves.
‘Dad, what is it?’ Sky said.
He thought his father was going to reprimand him, but Titus simply shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Not yet. But there’s something not right with one of our passengers — something that has me a little worried.’
‘What do you mean, not right?’
‘One of the bastard momios is waking up.’ He mopped his forehead. ‘That’s not supposed to happen. I’ve been down there, into the berth, and I still don’t understand it. But it has me worried. That’s why I want this area
