Absolution Gap (23 page)

Crozet’s icejammer had gained some distance from the leading pair of machines, which had dropped back behind them by perhaps twice their own length. Batteries of floodlights shone ahead of the caravan, bathing Crozet’s vehicle in harsh blue radiance. Rashmika saw tiny figures moving behind windows, and even on the top of the machines themselves, leaning against railings. They wore pressure suits marked with religious iconography.

The caravans were a fact of life on Hela, but Rashmika admitted to only scant knowledge of how they operated. She knew the basics, though. The caravans were the mobile agents of the great churches, the bodies that ran the cathedrals. Of course, the cathedrals moved—slowly, as Crozet had said—but they were almost always confined to the equatorial belt of the Permanent Way. They sometimes deviated from the Way, but never this far north or south.

The all-terrain caravans, however, could travel more freely. They had the speed to make journeys far from the Way and yet still catch up with their mother cathedrals on the same revolution. They split up and re-formed as they moved, sending out smaller expeditions and merging with others for parts of their journeys. Often, a single caravan might represent three or four different churches, churches that might have fundamentally different views on the matter of the Quaiche miracle and its interpretation. But all the churches shared common needs for labourers and component parts. They
all
needed recruits.

Crozet steered the icejammer into the central part of the path, immediately ahead of the convoy. They had encountered a slight upgrade now, and the slope was causing the icejammer to lose its advantage of speed compared to the caravan, which merely rolled on, oblivious to the change in level.

“Be careful now,” Linxe said.

Crozet flicked his control sticks and the rear of the icejammer swung to the other side of the procession. The nose followed, and with a thud the skis settled into older grooves in the ice. The gradient had sharpened even more, but that was all right now—Crozet no longer needed to keep ahead of the caravan. Slowly, therefore, but with the unstoppable momentum of land sliding past a ship, the lead machines caught up with them.

“That’s the king, all right,” Crozet said. “Looks like they’re ready for us, too.”

Rashmika had no idea what he meant, but as they drew alongside, she saw a pair of skeletal cranes swinging out from the roof, dropping metal hooks. A jaunty pair of suited figures rode down on the cable lines, one standing on each hook. Then they passed out of view, and nothing happened for several further seconds until she heard heavy footsteps stomping around somewhere on the roof of the jammer. Then she heard the clunk of metal against metal, and a moment later the motion of the icejammer was dreamily absent. They were being winched off the ice, suspended to one side of the caravan.

“Cheeky sods do it every time,” Crozet said. “But there’s no point arguing with’em. You either take it or leave it.”

“At least we can get off and stretch our legs for a bit,” Linxe said.

“Are we on the caravan now?” Rashmika asked. “Officially, I mean?”

“We’re on it,” Crozet said.

Rashmika nodded, relieved that they were now out of reach of the Vigrid constabulary. There had been no sign of the investigators, but in her mind’s eye they had only ever been one or two bends behind Crozet’s icejammer.

She still did not know what to make of the business of the constabulary. She had expected some fuss to be made if the authorities discovered she had run away. But beyond a request for people to keep a lookout for her—and to return her to the badlands if they found her—she had not expected any active efforts to be made to bring her back. It was worse than that, of course, since the constabulary had got it into their heads that she’d had something to do with the explosion in the demolition store. She guessed they were assuming that she was running away because she had done it, out of fear at being found out. They were wrong, of course, but in the absence of a better suspect she had no obvious defence.

Crozet and Linxe, thankfully, had given her the benefit of the doubt: either that or they just didn’t care what she might have done. But she had still been worried about a constabulary roadblock bringing the icejammer to a halt before they reached the caravan.

Now she could stop worrying—about that, at least.

It only took a minute for a docking arrangement to be set up. Crozet appeared to have precious little say in the matter, for without him doing anything that Rashmika was aware of, the air in the vehicle gusted, making her ears pop slightly. Then she heard footsteps coming aboard.

“They like you to know who’s boss,” Crozet told her, as if this needed explaining. “But don’t be afraid of anyone here, Rashmika. They put on a show of strength, but they still need us badlanders.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Rashmika told him.

A man bustled into the cabin as if he had left on some minor errand only a minute earlier. His wide froglike face had a meaty complexion, the bridge of skin between the base of his flat nub of a nose and the top of his mouth glistening with something unpleasant. He wore a long-hemmed coat of thick purple fabric, the collars and cuffs generously puffed. A lopsided beret marked with a tiny intricate sigil sat lopsidedly on the red froth of his hair, while his fingers were encumbered by many ornate rings. He carried a compad in one hand, its read-out screen scrolling through columns of numbers in antique script. There was, Rashmika noticed, a kind of construction perched on his right shoulder, a jointed thing of bright green columns and tubes. She had no idea of its function, whether it was an ornament or some arcane medical accessory.

“Mr. Crozet,” the man said by way of welcome. “What an unexpected surprise. I really didn’t think you were going to make it this time.”

Crozet shrugged. Rashmika could tell he was doing his best to look nonchalant and unconcerned, but the act needed some work. “Can’t keep a good man down, Quaestor.”

“Perhaps not.” The man glanced at the screen, pursing his lips in the manner of someone sucking on a lemon. “You have, however, left things a tiny bit late in the day. Pickings are slim, Crozet. I trust you will not be too disappointed.”

“My life is a series of disappointments, Quaestor. I think I’ve probably got used to it by now.”

“One devoutly hopes that is the case. We must all of us know our station in life, Crozet.”

“I certainly know mine, Quaestor.” Crozet did something to the control panel, presumably powering down the icejammer. “Well, are you open for business or not? You’ve really been working hard to polish that lukewarm welcome routine.”

The man smiled very thinly. “This is hospitality, Crozet. A lukewarm welcome would have involved leaving you on the ice, or running you over.”

“I’d best count my blessings, then.”

“Who are you?” Rashmika asked suddenly, surprising herself.

“This is Quaestor . . .” Linxe said, before she was cut off.

“Quaestor Rutland Jones,” the man interrupted, his tone actorly, as if playing to the gallery. “Master of Auxiliary Supplies, Superintendent of Caravans and other Mobile Units, Roving Legate of the First Adventist Church. And you’d be?”

“The First Adventists?” she asked, just to make sure she had heard him properly. There were many offshoots of the First Adventists, a number of them rather large and influential churches in their own right, and some of them had names so similar that it was easy to get them confused. But the First Adventist Church was the one she was interested in. She added, “As in the oldest church, the one that goes all the way back?”

“Unless I am very mistaken about my employer, yes. I still don’t believe you have answered my question, however.”

“Rashmika,” she said, “Rashmika Els.”

“Els.” The man chewed on the syllable. “Quite a common name in the villages of the Vigrid badlands, I believe. But I don’t think I’ve ever encountered an Els this far south.”

“You might have, once,” Rashmika said. But that was a little unfair: though the caravan her brother had travelled on had also been affiliated to the Adventists, it was unlikely that it had been this one.

“I’d remember, I think.”

“Rashmika is travelling with us,” Linxe said. “Rashmika is . . . a clever girl. Aren’t you, dear?”

“I get by,” Rashmika said.

“She thought she might find a role in the churches,” Linxe said. She licked her fingers and neatened the hair covering her birthmark.

He put down the compad. “A role?”

“Something technical,” Rashmika said. She had rehearsed this encounter a dozen times, always in her imagination having the upper hand, but it was all happening too quickly and not the way she had hoped.

“We can always use keen young girls,” the quaestor said. He was digging in a chest pocket for something. “And boys, for that matter. It would depend on your talents.”

“I have no
talents
,” Rashmika said, transforming the word into an obscenity. “But I happen to be literate and numerate. I can program most marques of servitor. I know a great deal about the study of the scuttlers. I have ideas about their extinction. Surely that can be of use to someone in the church.”

“She wonders if she couldn’t find a position in one of the church-sponsored archaeological study groups,” Linxe said.

“Is that so?” the quaestor asked.

Rashmika nodded. As far as she was concerned, the church-sponsored study groups were a joke, existing only to rubber-stamp current Quaicheist doctrine regarding the scuttlers; but she had to start somewhere. Her real goal was to reach Harbin, not to advance her study of the scuttlers. However, it would be much easier to find him if she began her service in a clerical position—such as one of the study groups—rather than with lowly work like Way repair.

“I think I could be of value,” she said.

“Knowing a great deal about the study of a subject is not the same as knowing anything about the subject itself,” the quaestor told her with a sympathetic smile. He pulled his hand from his breast pocket, a small pinch of seeds between forefinger and thumb. The jointed green thing on his shoulder stirred, moving with a curious stiffness that reminded Rashmika of something inflated, like a balloon-creature. It
was
an animal, but unlike any that Rashmika—in her admittedly limited experience-remembered seeing. She saw now that at one end of its thickest tube was a turretlike head, with faceted eyes and a delicate, mechanical-looking mouth. The quaestor offered his fingers to the creature, pursing his lips in encouragement. The creature stretched itself down his arm and attacked the pinch of seeds with a nibbling politeness. What was it? she wondered. The body and limbs were insectile, but the elongated coil of its tail, which was wrapped around the quaestor’s upper arm several times, was more suggestive of a reptile. And there was something uniquely birdlike about the way it ate. She remembered birds from somewhere, brilliant crested strutting things of cobalt blue with tails that opened like fans. Peacocks. But where had she ever seen peacocks?

The quaestor smiled at his pet. “Doubtless you have read many books,” he said, looking sidelong at Rashmika. “That is to be applauded.”

She looked at the animal warily. “I grew up in the digs, Quaestor. I’ve helped with the excavation work. I’ve breathed scuttler dust from the moment I was born.”

“Unfortunately, though, that’s hardly the most unique of claims. How many scuttler fossils have you examined?”

“None,” Rashmika said, after a moment.

“Well, then.” The quaestor dabbed his forefinger against his lip, then touched it against the mouthpiece of the animal. “That’s enough for you, Peppermint.”

Crozet coughed. “Shall we continue this discussion aboard the caravan, Quaestor? I don’t want to have too great a journey back home, and we still have a lot of business to attend to.”

The creature—Peppermint—retreated back along the quaestor’s arm now that its feast was over. It began to clean its face with tiny scissoring forelimbs.

“The girl’s your responsibility, Crozet?” the quaestor asked.

“Not exactly, no.” He looked at Rashmika and corrected himself. “What I mean is, yes, I’m taking care of her until she gets where she’s going, and I’ll take it personally if anyone lays a hand on her. But what she does with herself after that is none of my business.”

The quaestor’s attention snapped back to Rashmika. “And how old are you, exactly?”

“Old enough,” she said.

The green creature turned the turret of its head towards her, its blank faceted eyes like blackberries.

 

Hela Surface, 2615

 

Quaiche slipped in and out of consciousness. With each transition, the difference between the two states became less clear cut. He hallucinated, and then hallucinated that the hallucinations were real. He kept seeing rescuers scrabbling over the scree, picking up their pace as they saw him, waving their gloved hands in greeting. The second or third time, it made him laugh to think that he had imagined rescuers arriving under exactly the same circumstances as the real ones. No one would ever believe him, would they?

But somewhere between the rescuers arriving and the point where they started getting him to safety, he always ended up back in the ship, his chest aching, one eye seeing the world as if through a gauze.

The
Dominatrix
kept arriving, sliding down between the sheer walls of the rift. The long, dark ship would kneel down on spikes of arresting thrust. The mid-hull access hatch would slide open and Morwenna would emerge. She would come out in a blur of pistons, racing to his rescue, as magnificent and terrible as an army arrayed for battle. She would pull him from the wreck of the
Daughter
, and with a dreamlike illogic he would not need to breathe as she helped him back to the other ship through a crisp, airless landscape of shadow and light. Or she would come out in the scrimshaw suit, somehow managing to make it move even though he knew the thing was welded tight, incapable of flexing.