The Revelation Space Collection

‘Despite all that, Pietr, you still have faith?’ She saw his fist close tighter on the rail.

‘I believe that the vanishings are a message in a time of crisis. Not just a mute statement of Godlike power, as the churches would have it — a miracle for a miracle’s sake — but something vastly more significant. I believe that they are a kind of clock, counting down, and that zero hour is much closer than anyone in authority will have us believe. The Numericists knew this. Do I believe that the churches are to be trusted? By and large, with one or two exceptions, no. I trust them about as far as I can piss in a vacuum. But I still have my faith. That hasn’t changed.’

She thought he sounded as if he was telling the truth, but without a clear view of his face, her guess was as good as anyone’s.

‘There’s something else though, isn’t there? You said the churches couldn’t possibly conceal all evidence of the changing vanishings.’

‘They can’t. But there is an anomaly.’ Pietr let go of the railing long enough to pass something to Rashmika. It was a little metal cylinder with a screw top. ‘You should see this,’ he said. ‘I think you will find it interesting. Inside is a piece of paper with some markings on it. They’re not annotated, since that would make them more dangerous should anyone in authority recognise them for what they are.’

‘You’re going to have to give me a little more to go on than that.’

‘In Skull Cliff, where I come from, there was a man named Saul Tempier. I knew him. He was an old hermit who lived in an abandoned scuttler shaft on the outskirts of the town. He fixed digging machines for a living. He wasn’t mad or violent, or even particularly antisocial; he just didn’t get on well with the other villagers and kept out of their way most of the time. He had an obsessive, methodical streak that made other people feel slightly ill at ease. He wasn’t interested in wives or lovers or friends.’

‘And you don’t think he was particularly antisocial?’

‘Well, he wasn’t actually rude or inhospitable. He kept himself clean and didn’t — as far as I am aware — have any genuinely unpleasant habits. If you visited him, he’d always make you tea from a big old samovar. He had an ancient neural lute which he played now and then. He’d always want to know what you thought of his playing.’ She caught the flash of his smile through the faceplate. ‘Actually, it was pretty dreadful, but I never had the heart to tell him.’

‘How did you come to know him?’

‘It was my job to keep our stock of digging machinery in good order. We’d do most of the repairs ourselves, but whenever there was a backlog or something we just couldn’t get to work properly, one of us would haul it over to Tempier’s grotto. I suppose I visited him two or three times a year. I never minded it, really. I actually quite liked the old coot, bad lute playing and all. Anyway, Tempier was getting old. On one of our last meetings — this would have been eleven or twelve years ago — he told me there was something he wanted to show me. I was surprised that he trusted me that much.’

‘I don’t know,’ Rashmika said. ‘You strike me as the kind of person someone would find it quite easy to trust, Pietr.’

‘Is that intended as a compliment?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Well, I’ll take it as one, in that case. Where was I?’

‘Tempier said there was something he wanted to show you.’

‘It’s actually the piece of paper I’ve just given you, or, rather, the paper is a careful copy of the original. Tempier, it turned out, had been keeping a record of the vanishings for most of his life. He had done a lot of background work — comparing and contrasting the public records of the main churches, even making visits to the Way to inspect those archives that were not usually accessible. He was a very diligent and obsessive sort, as I’ve said, and when I saw his notes I realised that they were easily the best personal record of the vanishings I’d ever seen. Frankly, I doubt there’s a better amateur compilation anywhere on Hela. Alongside each vanishing was a huge set of associated material — notes on witnesses, the quality of those witnesses, and any other corroborative data sets. If there was a volcanic eruption the day before, he’d note that as well. Anything unusual — no matter how irrelevant it appeared.’

‘He found something, I take it. Was it the same thing that the Numericists discovered?’

‘No,’ Pietr said. ‘It was more than that. Tempier was well aware of what the Numericists had claimed. His own data didn’t contradict theirs in the slightest. In fact, he regarded it as rather obvious that the vanishings were growing more frequent.’

‘So what did he discover?’

‘He found out that the public and official records don’t quite match.’

Rashmika felt a wave of disappointment. She had expected more than that. ‘Big deal,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t surprise me that the Observers might occasionally spot a vanishing when everyone else misses it, especially if it happened during some other distracting…’

‘You misunderstand,’ Pietr said sharply. For the first time she heard irritation in his voice. ‘It wasn’t a case of the churches claiming a vanishing that everyone else had missed. This was the other way around. Eight years earlier — which would make it twenty-odd years ago now — there was a vanishing which did not enter the official church records. Do you understand what I’m saying? A vanishing took place, and it was noted by public observers like Tempier, but according to the churches no such thing happened.’

‘But that doesn’t make any sense. Why would the churches expunge knowledge of a vanishing?’

‘Tempier wondered exactly the same thing.’

So perhaps her trip up on to the roof had not been entirely in vain after all. ‘Was there anything about this vanishing that might explain why it wasn’t admitted into the official record? Something that meant it didn’t quite meet the usual criteria?’

‘Such as what?’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Was it very brief, for instance?’

‘As a matter of interest — if Tempier’s notes are correct — it was one of the longest vanishings ever recorded. Fully one and one-fifth of a second.’

‘I don’t get it, in that case. What does Tempier have to say on the matter?’

‘Good question,’ Pietr said, ‘but not one likely to be answered any time soon. I’m afraid Saul Tempier is dead. He died seven years ago.’

‘I’m sorry. I get the impression you liked him. But you said it yourself: he was getting old.’

‘He was, but that didn’t have anything to do with his death. They found him electrocuted, killed while he was repairing one of his machines.’

‘All right.’ She hoped she did not sound too heartless. ‘Then he was getting careless.’

‘Not Saul Tempier,’ Pietr said. ‘He didn’t have a careless bone in his body. That was the bit they got wrong.’

Rashmika frowned. ‘They?’

‘Whoever killed him,’ he said.

They stood in silence for a while. The caravan surmounted the brow of the bridge, then began the long, shallow descent to the other side of the Rift. The far cliffs grew larger, the folds and seams of tortured geology becoming starkly obvious. To the left, on the south-western face of the Rift, Rashmika made out another winding ledge. It appeared to have been pencilled tentatively along the wall, a hesitant precursor for the proper job that was to follow. Yet that was the ledge. Very soon they would be on it, the crossing done. The bridge would have held, and all would be well with the world — or at least as well as when they had set out.

‘Is that why you came here, in the end?’ she asked Pietr. ‘To find out why they killed that old man?’

‘That makes it sound like just another of your secular enquiries,’ he replied.

‘What is it, then, if it isn’t that?’

‘I’d like to know why they murdered Saul, but more than that, I’d like to know why they feel the need to lie about the word of God.’

She had asked him about his beliefs already, but she still felt the need to probe the limits of his honesty. There had to be a chink, she thought: a crack of uncertainty in the shield of his faith. ‘So that’s what you believe the vanishings are?’