So they went to the registry and signed away the difference in their ballots. Moko gained time and Arlyana lost time, but they would both live long enough for Moko to learn to climb.
They started with training walls, then worked their way up to boulders, then spouts, and finally to sheer walls. She taught him about ropes and anchors and how to belay, and over the following weeks he built up his strength and endurance.
Signing at the registry had another, quite unexpected, effect: Moko, who had more or less disappeared from his life, became traceable. Consequently, Arlyana was woken early one morning by a message marked “maximum urgency.”
She opened the message on screen. A man with a shaved scalp and a slightly pinched mouth appeared on screen; he wore a Brethren tunic.
“My dear lady,” said the man. “I apologize for sending a recorded message, but I am fifty light-hours away and cannot engage in responsive conversation. My name is Tarroux, and as you have may have guessed I am Moko’s brother. I found you through the registry, and I apologize for intruding on you, but I have been trying to reach Moko with an extremely urgent message. It is imperative that he view the attachment as soon as possible. Before I finish, please allow me to thank you. When you signed your time over to Moko, you may have given him just enough to save himself from the ballot. I can’t tell you how much this means.” There the message ended.
Arlyana shook Moko awake and dragged his grogginess out of bed.
“You have to see this,” she said. Once the message finished, she touched the attachment and went to leave the room.
“Stay,” said Moko.
“But it’s private!”
“Stay!”
So they watched together as Tarroux, brother to Moko, spoke again.
“Moko,” he said, “there is a place for you on the last Brethren mission ship. You know this will be the last ship to leave Musca. The sun is becoming too wild even for missionaries.
“I know we’ve been through this before, but I am hoping that the approaching ballot date will have changed how you feel about joining the Brethren.
“Please, brother, I love you and it breaks my heart knowing how easily you could be saved.”
There was a stark jump-cut in the video stream. Tarroux had come back to the message and added a coda. The quality of the light had changed, the background was darker, and Tarroux looked as if he was being eaten from inside.
“Brother, I know I’ve asked you many times before and you’ve refused many times before, but please, please join the Brethren. I… I have never said this before, but I beg you to join the mission. Even if you don’t believe, just say that you do. That’s all you have to do. Just say you believe. I know, I know. It may be a lie. But with time spent among us, maybe you will come to see our truth. Even if you don’t change, even if you never accept the Tenets, I will still have my brother.”
At the end of the message, Arlyana turned off the screen.
“You turned down a place with the Brethren?” she asked, astonished. “You could have avoided the ballot?”
“Yes, I could have gone to the Brethren and lived a life that means nothing to me, full of empty rituals and prayers to forces I do not believe exist.”
“
“Just like you, eh?”
The sudden non-sequitur jarred Arlyana. “What do you mean by that?” she asked.
“You think I wouldn’t figure out the story with you and your family? I know what happened. I know it was your sister who was balloted, not you. I know that you took over her ballot because she was pregnant. And I know that your sister fell pregnant
“You can’t possibly know all that,” Arlyana said angrily.
“All right, I don’t
“You can’t possibly understand…”
“Tell me I’m wrong, then.”
Arlyana said nothing, she just glared at him while an accusatory aura radiated from her.
Canterbury Hollow was one of the great chambers that crowned their civilization: a wonder of engineering and of art, it had been carved in the shape of a cathedral window. Everyone came there when they died, for recycling. Here the bodies of the dead were committed to the huge bacterial vats that broke down flesh and bone and returned organics to the community.
It was their last day together. The train brought Arlyana and Moko to the base of the Sepulchral Tower, a bowed memorial to everyone who had ever lived and died in that underworld. Few visitors ever went deeper than the memorial park, but Arlyana and Moko were not there to mourn and so they walked past the Sepulchre and into the darker Hollow. The light dimmed as they went deeper: here the brightness was only to be found where it was needed for the workers and machines of the Hollow to perform their daily tasks.
Arlyana took him to a ladder at the base of the western wall that stretched up into the gloom overhead.
“I did all that training to climb a ladder?” said Moko.
“This service ladder rises two hundred metres. After that, it’s all our own work.”
By the time they reached the top of the ladder, Moko’s arms were aching. He wondered how he would manage the rest of the climb. Arlyana reassured him that it would be harder work from here, but slower and with plenty of time for his muscles to recover between exertions.
“The route we’re taking is called Little Freya. It’s long but easy, and it has plenty of anchor points that previous climbers have left behind. Over to the right there”— and she pointed to a series of vertical ridges forty metres away—“is Big Freya. It’s a much, much harder climb. The record for free climbing Big Freya is seven hours. I’ve free climbed it in ten. Believe me, what we’re doing is a cinch.”
They took a rest break, then Arlyana looped a rope through a nearby anchor and started climbing. They took turns climbing, then belaying, climbing, then belaying. Their progress was slow but safe, and Moko found that the longer they climbed the more he became focussed on each motion, on balancing the needs of work and rest, on finding the most efficient body position to keep a hold without exhausting a muscle group. Arlyana watched over him, taking care not to push him too hard, nor to let him pause when they needed to push on.
Time seemed to shrink away. He stopped counting hours and minutes and began thinking in steps and grips, which formed movements, which formed phases.
They went around bluffs, over ridges, avoided overhangs, and followed the road up the rock face. As they ascended, the light became more tenuous. They donned collar lanterns and set them glowing.
Many hours later, they came to a small cavern that burrowed off the side of the Hollow. Arlyana helped Moko scramble over the lip and into the safety of the space inside. Once he had caught his breath, he looked out the cavern mouth. There was another hundred metres to the peak of Canterbury Hollow. He groaned. The muscles ached in his shoulders, back, and calves.
Arlyana smiled. “Don’t worry. This is as far as we’re going.”
“But we’re not at the top yet.”
“This is better. Come and see.”
She took his hand and led him into the cavern. The space opened up at the back and they could walk upright without hitting their heads. The light from their collar lanterns filled the small cavern. Hundreds of golden reflections shone back at them. The reflections came from ballot tags that had been hung from the roof. There were hundreds of them, maybe thousands.
Moko moved about, brushing the tags with his fingers and setting them swinging. “What is this place?” he asked.
“Where climbers come to die,” Arlyana said. She hammered a bolt into the cavern roof and from it she hung her ballot tag. Moko took his own tag and chain from around his neck and hung it from the same bolt, then looped a
