boat, any one of whom I’d have felt happier about covering my back.’
Vasko saw that she was leading him towards the shore, where the crowd thinned out. The dark shapes of boats blocked the gloom between land and water. Some were moored ready for departure, some were aground.
‘Scorpio chose to include me in the mission,’ Vasko said. ‘Once that decision was taken, you should have had the guts to live with it. Or didn’t you trust his judgement?’
‘One day you’ll be in my shoes, Vasko, and you won’t like it any more than I did. Come and give me a lecture about trusting judgement then, and see how convincing it sounds.’ Urton paused, watching the sky as a thin scarlet line transected it from horizon to horizon. She had evaded his question. ‘This is all coming out wrong. I didn’t pick you out of the crowd to start another fight. I wanted to say I was sorry. I also wanted you to understand why I’d acted the way I did.’
He kept the lid on his anger. ‘All right.’
‘And I admit I was wrong.’
‘You weren’t to know what was about to happen,’ he said.
She shrugged and sighed. ‘No, I don’t suppose I was. No matter what they say, he walked the walk, didn’t he? When it came to putting his life on the line, he went and did it.’
They had reached the line of boats. Most of those still left on land were wrecks: their hulls had gaping holes in them near the waterline, where they had been consumed by seaborne organisms. Sooner or later they would have been hauled away to the smelting plant, to be remade into new craft. The metalworkers were fastidious about reusing every possible scrap of recyclable metal. But the amount recovered would never have been equal to that in the original boats.
‘Look,’ Urton said, pointing across the bay.
Vasko nodded. ‘I know. They’ve already encircled the base of the ship.’
‘That’s not what I mean. Look a bit higher, Hawkeye. Can you see them?’
‘Yes,’ he said after a moment. ‘Yes. My God. They’ll never make it.’
They were tiny sparks of light around the base of the ship, slightly higher than the bobbing ring of boats Vasko had already noticed. He estimated that they could not have climbed more than a few dozen metres above the sea. There were thousands of metres of the ship above them.
‘How are they climbing?’ Vasko said.
‘Hand over hand, I guess. You’ve seen what that thing looks like close-up, haven’t you? It’s like a crumbling cliff wall, full of handholds and ledges. It’s probably not that difficult.’
‘But the nearest way in must be hundreds of metres above the sea, maybe more. When the planes come and go they always land near the top.’ Again he said, ‘They’ll never make it. They’re insane.’
‘They’re not insane,’ Urton said. ‘They’re just scared. Really, really scared. The question is, should we be joining them?’
Vasko said nothing. He was watching one of the tiny sparks of light fall back towards the sea.
They stood and watched the spectacle for many minutes. Nobody else appeared to fall, but the other climbers continued their relentless slow ascent undaunted by the failure that many of them had doubtless witnessed. Around the sheer footslopes, where the boats must have been rocking and crashing against the hull, new climbers were beginning their ascent. Boats were returning from the ship, scudding slowly back across the bay, but progress was slow and tension was rising amongst those waiting on the shoreline. The Security Arm officials were increasingly outnumbered by the angry and frightened people who were waiting for passage to the ship. Vasko saw one of the SA men speaking urgently into his wrist communicator, obviously calling for assistance. He had almost finished talking when someone shoved him to the ground.
‘We should do something,’ Vasko said.
‘We’re off duty, and two of us aren’t enough to make a difference. They’ll have to think of something different. It’s not as if they’re going to be able to contain this for much longer. I don’t think I want to be here any more.’ She meant the shoreline. ‘I checked the reports before I came out. Things aren’t so bad east of the High Conch. I’m hungry and I could use a drink. Do you want to join me?’
‘I don’t have much of an appetite,’ Vasko said. He had actually been starting to feel hungry again until he saw the person fall into the sea. ‘But a drink wouldn’t go amiss. Are you sure there’ll be somewhere still open?’
‘I know a few places we can try,’ Urton said.
‘You know the area better than me, in that case.’
‘Your problem is you don’t get out enough,’ she said. She pulled up the collar of her coat, then crunched down her hat. ‘Come on. Let’s get out of here before things turn nasty.’
She turned out to be right about the zone of the settlement east of the Conch. Many Arm members lodged there, so the area had always had a tradition of loyalty to the administration. Now there was a sullen, reproachful calm about the place. The streets were no busier than they usually were at this time of night, and although many premises were closed, the bar Urton had in mind was still open.
Urton led him through the main room to an alcove containing two chairs and a table poached from Central Amenities. Above the alcove a screen was tuned to the administration news service, but at the moment all it was showing was a picture of Clavain’s face. The picture had been taken only a few years earlier, but it might as well have been centuries ago. The man Vasko had known in the last couple of days had looked twice as old, twice as eroded by time and circumstance. Beneath Clavain’s face was a pair of calendar dates about five hundred years apart.
‘I’ll fetch us some beers,’ Urton said, not giving him a chance to argue. She had removed her coat and hat, piling them on the chair opposite his.
Vasko watched her recede into the gloom of the bar. He supposed she was a regular here. On their way to the alcove he had seen several faces he thought he half-recognised from SA training. Some of them had been smoking seaweed — the particular variety which when dried and prepared in a certain way induced mild narcotic effects. Vasko remembered the stuff from his training. It was illegal, but easier to get hold of than the black market cigarettes which were said to originate from some dwindling cache in the belly of the
By the time Urton returned, Vasko had removed his coat. She put the beers down in front of him. Cautiously Vasko tasted his. The stuff in the glass had an unpleasant urinal tint. Produced from another variety of seaweed, it was only beer in the very loosest sense of the word.
‘I talked to Draygo,’ she said, ‘the man who runs this place. He says the Security Arm officers on duty just went and punched holes in all the boats on the shore. No one else is being allowed to leave, and as soon as a boat returns, they impound it and arrest anyone on board.’
Vasko sipped at his beer. ‘Nice to see they haven’t resorted to heavy-handed tactics, then.’
‘You can’t really blame them. They say three people have already drowned just crossing the bay. Another two have fallen off the ship while climbing.’
‘I suppose you’re right, but it seems to me that the people should have the right to do what they like, even if it kills them.’
‘They’re worried about mass panic. Sooner or later someone is bound to try swimming it, and then you might have hundreds of people following after. How many do you think would make it?’
‘Let them,’ Vasko said. ‘So what if they drown? So what if they contaminate the Jugglers? Does anyone honestly think it makes a shred of difference now?’
‘We’ve maintained social order on Ararat for more than twenty years,’ Urton said. ‘We can’t let it go to hell in a handcart in one night. Those people using the boats are taking irreplaceable colony property without authorisation. It’s unfair on the citizens who don’t want to flee to the ship.’
‘But we’re not giving them an alternative. They’ve been told Clavain’s dead, but no one’s told them what those lights in the sky are all about. Is it any wonder they’re scared?’
‘You think telling them about the war would make things any better?’
Vasko wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, where the seaweed beer had left a white rime. ‘I don’t know, but I’m fed up with everyone being lied to just because the administration thinks it’s in our best interests not to know all the facts. The same thing happened with Clavain when he disappeared. Scorpio and the others decided
