The Revelation Space Collection

Scorpio thought. But what choice had he had? Clavain had never blamed him; had, in fact, done everything in his power to absolve him of any feelings of guilt. The man was about to die horribly, and the only thing that really mattered to him was sparing his friend any emotional distress. Why couldn’t Scorpio honour Clavain’s memory by letting go of the hatred? He had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. It wasn’t the pig’s fault. It hadn’t been Clavain’s, either. And the one person whose fault it definitely hadn’t been was Aura.

‘Scorp?’ she asked.

‘I’m glad you’re safe,’ he said.

Khouri put an arm around his shoulder. ‘I’m glad you made it as well, Scorp. Thank you for coming back, for all of us.’

‘A pig’s got to do…’ he said.

They stood in silence, watching the cathedral narrow the distance between itself and the edge of the bridge. For more than a century it had kept moving, never once losing the endless race with Haldora. One-third of a metre per second, for every second of every day, every day of every year. And now that same clocklike inevitability was sending it to its destruction.

‘Scorp,’ Rashmika said, breaking the spell, ‘even if we destroy the scrimshaw suit, what do we do about the machinery in Haldora? It’s still there. It’s still just as capable of letting them through.’

‘If we had one more cache weapon…’ Khouri said.

‘If wishes were horses,’ Scorpio answered. He stamped his feet to keep warm: either there was something wrong with the suit, or there was something wrong with him. ‘Look, we’ll find a way to destroy it, or at least throw a spanner into it. Or else they’ll show us.’

‘They?’ she asked.

‘The ones we haven’t met yet. But they’re out there, you can count on that. They’ve been watching and waiting, taking notes.’

‘What if we’re wrong?’ Khouri asked. ‘What if they’re waiting to see if we’re clever enough to contact the shadows? What if that’s the right thing to do?’

‘Then we’ll have added a new enemy to the list,’ Scorpio said. ‘And hey, if that happens…’

‘What?’

‘It’s not the end of the world. Trust me on this: I’ve been collecting enemies since I drew my first breath.’

For another minute no one said anything. The Lady Morwenna continued its crunching advance towards oblivion. The twin fire trails of the Nostalgia for Infinity continued to bisect the sky, like the first tentative sketch towards a new constellation.

‘So what you’re saying is,’ Vasko said, ‘we should just do what we think is right, even if they don’t like it?’

‘More or less. Of course, it may be the right thing as well. All depends on what happened to the scuttlers, really.’

‘They certainly pissed someone off,’ Khouri said.

‘Amen to that,’ Scorpio replied, laughing. ‘My kind of species. We’d have got on famously.’

He couldn’t help himself. Here I am, he thought: critically injured, most likely more than half-dead, having in the last day lost both my ship and some of my best friends. I’ve just killed my way through a cathedral, murdering anyone who had the insolence to stand in my way. I’m about to watch the utter destruction of something that might — just might — be the most important discovery in human history, the only thing capable of standing between us and the Inhibitors. And I’m standing here laughing, as if the only thing at stake is a good night out.

Typical pig, he concluded: no sense of perspective. Sometimes, occasionally, it was the one thing in the universe he was most grateful for.

Too much perspective could be bad for you.

‘Scorp?’ Khouri said. ‘Do you mind if I ask you something, before we get separated again?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Ask, and find out.’

‘Why did you save that shuttle, the one from the Wild Pallas? What stopped you firing on it, even when you saw the Inhibitor machines? You saved those people.’

Did she know? he wondered. He had missed so much during the nine extra years for which he had been frozen. It was possible that she had found out, confirmed that which he had only suspected.

He remembered something that Antoinette Bax had said to him just before they had parted. She had wondered if they would ever meet again. It was a big universe, he had said: big enough for a few coincidences. Maybe for some people, Antoinette had replied, but not for the likes of Scorpio and her. And she had been right, too. He knew that they were never going to meet each other again. Scorpio had smiled to himself: he knew exactly what she meant. He didn’t believe in miracles either. But where exactly did you draw the line? But he knew now, with absolute confidence, that she had also been wrong. It didn’t happen for the likes of Scorpio and Antoinette. But for other people? Sometimes things like that just happened.

He knew. He had seen the names of all the evacuees on the shuttle they had rescued from the Yellowstone system. And one name in particular had stood out. The man had even made an impression on him, when he had seen the shuttle being unloaded. He remembered his quiet dignity, the need for someone to share what he felt, but not to take that load from him. The man had — like all the other passengers — probably been frozen ever since.

He would now be amongst the eighteen thousand sleepers who were orbiting Hela.

‘We have to find a way to get to those people,’ he told Khouri.

‘I thought we were talking about—’

‘We were,’ he said, leaving at it that. Let her wait a little longer: she’d waited this long, after all.

For a while, no one spoke. The cathedral looked as if it would last for another thousand years. It had, in Scorpio’s opinion, no more than five minutes left.

‘I could still make it up there,’ Vasko said. ‘If I ran… if we ran, Scorp…’ He trailed off.

‘Let’s go,’ Scorpio said.

They all looked at him, then at the cathedral. Its front was a good seventy metres from the end of the bridge; there were still another three or four minutes before it began to push out into empty space. Then what? At least another minute, surely, before the awesome mass of the Lady Morwenna began to overbalance.

‘Go where, Scorp?’ Khouri asked.

‘I’ve had enough,’ he said, decisively. ‘It’s been a long day and we’ve all got a long walk ahead of us. The sooner we make a start on it, the better.’

‘But the cathedral—’ Rashmika said.

‘I’m sure it will be very impressive. You’re welcome to tell me all about it.’

He turned around and started walking back along what remained of the bridge. The sun was low behind him, pushing his own comical shadow ahead of him. It waddled before him, swaying from side to side like a poorly worked puppet. He was colder now: it was a peculiar, intimate kind of coldness, a coldness that felt as if it had his name on it. Maybe this is it, he thought: the end of the line, just as they had always warned him. He was a pig; he shouldn’t expect the world. He’d already made more of a dent in it than most.

He walked faster. Presently, three other shadows began to loom around his. They said nothing, walking together, mindful of the difficult journey ahead of them. When, after another few minutes, the ground rumbled — as if a great fist had just struck Hela in fury — none of them paused or broke their pace. They just kept walking. And when, eventually, he saw the smallest of the shadows begin to lose its footing, he watched the others rush towards it and hold it up.

After that, he didn’t remember very much.

EPILOGUE

She issues another command and the mechanical butterflies disengage their interlaced wings, shattering the temporary screen they have formed. The butterflies reassemble themselves into the lacy, fluttering fabric of her