The Revelation Space Collection

‘Godspeed back to the parking swarm, Captain. We await transhipment of those unfortunate casket victims. And I look forward to doing business with you on another occasion.’

The captain turned to walk out, but paused before leaving. He had noticed the scrimshaw suit for the first time, Grelier thought. It was always there, standing in the corner of the room like a silent extra guest. The captain stared at it, his moth fluttering orbits around his head, then continued on his way. He could have no idea of the dreadful significance it represented to Quaiche: the final resting place of Morwenna and an ever-present reminder of what the first vanishing had cost him.

Grelier waited until he was certain the Ultra was not coming back. ‘What was all that about?’ he asked. ‘The extra stuff he “couldn’t accommodate”?’

‘The usual negotiations,’ Quaiche said, as if the matter was beneath him. ‘Count yourself lucky that you’ll get your vegetables. Now — Bloodwork, eh? How did it go?’

‘Wait a moment.’ Grelier moved to one wall and worked a brass-handled lever. The jalousies folded shut, admitting only narrow wedges of light. Then he bent down over Quaiche and removed the sunglasses. Quaiche normally kept them on during his negotiations: partly to protect his eyes against glare, but also because without them he was not a pretty sight. Of course, that was precisely the reason he sometimes chose not to wear them, as well.

Beneath the eyeshades, hugging the skin like a second pair of glasses, was a skeletal framework. Around each eye were two circles from which radiated hooks, thrusting inwards to keep the eyelids from closing. There were little sprays built into the frames, blasting Quaiche’s eyes with moisture every few minutes. It would have been simpler, Grelier said, to have removed the eyelids in the first place, but Quaiche had a penitential streak as wide as the Way, and the discomfort of the frame suited him. It was a constant reminder of the need for vigilance, lest he miss a vanishing.

Grelier took a small swab from the garret’s medical locker and cleaned away the residue around Quaiche’s eyes.

‘Bloodwork, Grelier?’

‘I’ll come to that. Just tell me what that business with the Ultra was all about. Why did you want him to bring his ship closer to Hela?’

Visibly, Quaiche’s pupils dilated. ‘Why do you think that’s what I wanted of him?’

‘Isn’t it? Why else would he have said that it was too dangerous?’

‘You presume a great deal, Grelier.’

The surgeon-general finished cleaning up, then slotted the top pair of glasses back into place. ‘Why do you want the Ultras closer, all of a sudden? For years you’ve worked hard to keep the bastards at arm’s-reach. Now you want one of their ships on your doorstep?’

The figure in the couch sighed. He had more substance in the darkness. Grelier opened the slats again, observing that the yellow-green shuttle had departed from the landing pad.

‘It was just an idea,’ Quaiche said.

‘What kind of idea?’

‘You’ve seen how nervous the Ultras are lately. I trust them less and less. Basquiat seemed like a man I could do business with. I was hoping we might come to an arrangement.’

‘What sort of arrangement?’ Grelier returned the swabs to the cabinet.

‘Protection,’ Quaiche said. ‘Bring one group of Ultras here to keep the rest of them away.’

‘Madness,’ Grelier said.

‘Insurance,’ his master corrected. ‘Well, what does it matter? They weren’t interested. Too worried about bringing their ship near to Hela. This place scares them as much as it tantalises them, Grelier.’

‘There’ll always be others.’

‘Perhaps…’ Quaiche sounded as if the whole business was already boring him, a mid-morning fancy he now regretted.

‘You asked about Bloodwork,’ Grelier said. He knelt down and picked up the case. ‘It didn’t go swimmingly, but I collected from Vaustad.’

‘The choirmaster? Weren’t you supposed to be administering?’

‘Wee change of plan.’

Bloodwork: the Office of the Clocktower dedicated to the preservation, enrichment and dissemination of the countless viral strains spun off from Quaiche’s original infection. Almost everyone who worked in the cathedral carried some of Quaiche in their blood now. It had reached across generations, mutating and mingling with other types of virus brought to Hela. The result was a chaotic profusion of possible effects. Many of the other churches were based on, or had in some sense even been caused by, subtle doctrinal variants of the original strain. Bloodwork operated to tame the chaos, isolating effective and doctrinally pure strains and damping out others. Individuals like Vaustad were often used as test cases for newly isolated viruses. If they showed psychotic or otherwise undesirable side-effects, the strains would be eliminated. Vaustad had earned his role as guinea pig after a series of regrettable indiscretions, but had grown increasingly fearful of the results of each new test jab.

‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ Quaiche said. ‘I need Bloodwork, Grelier, more so now than ever. I’m losing my religion.’

Quaiche’s own faith was subject to horrible lapses. He had developed immunity to the pure strain of the virus, the one that had infected him before his time aboard the Gnostic Ascension. One of the principle tasks of Bloodwork was to isolate the new mutant strains that were still able to have an effect on Quaiche. Grelier didn’t advertise the fact, but it was getting harder and harder to find them.

Quaiche was in a lapse now. Out of them, he never spoke of losing his religion. It was just there, solidly a part of him. It was only during the lapses that he found it possible to think of his faith as a chemically engineered thing. These interludes always worried Grelier. It was when Quaiche was at his most conflicted that he was at his least predictable. Grelier thought again of the enigmatic stained-glass window he had seen below, wondering if there might be a connection.

‘We’ll soon have you right as rain,’ he said.

‘Good. I’ll need to be. There’s trouble ahead, Grelier. Major icefalls reported in the Gullveig Range, blocking the Way. It will fall to us to clear them, as it always does. But even with God’s Fire I’m still worried that we’ll lose time on Haldora.’

‘We’ll make it up. We always do.’

‘Drastic measures may be called for if the delay becomes unacceptably large. I want Motive Power to be ready for whatever I ask of them — even the unthinkable.’ The couch tilted again, its reflection breaking up and reforming in the slowly moving mirrors. They were set up to guide light from Haldora into Quaiche’s field of view: wherever he sat, he saw the world with his own eyes. ‘The unthinkable, Grelier,’ he added. ‘You know what I mean by that, don’t you?’

‘I think so,’ Grelier said. And then thought of blood, and also of bridges. He also thought of the girl he was bringing to the cathedral and wondered if perhaps — just perhaps — he had set in motion something it would no longer be possible to stop.

But he won’t do it, he thought. He’s insane, no one doubts that, but he isn’t that insane. Not so insane that he’d take the Lady Morwenna across the bridge, over Absolution Gap.

EIGHTEEN

Ararat, 2675

The internal map of the Nostalgia for Infinity was a long scroll of scuffed, yellowing paper, anchored at one end by Blood’s knife and at the other by the heavy silver helmet Palfrey had found in the junk. The scroll was covered with a dense crawl of pencil and ink lines. In places it had been erased and redrawn so many times that the paper had the thin translucence of animal skin.

‘Is this the best we’ve got?’ Blood asked.

‘It’s better than nothing,’ Antoinette said. ‘We’re doing our best with very limited resources.’