In the Mouth of the Whale (9 page)

And found instead that it was dark, and filled edge to edge with an immersive simulation of the Fomalhaut system. The vast outer belt of comets and dust clouds, rocks and planetoids and dwarf planets circled the outer edge of the square chamber, and the flaring point of Fomalhaut floated in the centre, so bright, so intensely white, that I had to look away from it. I didn’t see the Redactor Svern coming towards me until he eclipsed its baleful light. As always, he manifested as a small man scarcely taller than a Quick, with a wise, wrinkled face and a bald pate fringed by wisps of straw-coloured hair; as always, he was dressed in a long black duster whose hem hissed over the floor. He stopped at the inner edge of the dust belt, his deep-set eyes two smudges of shadow as he looked at me across a plane of floating motes.

‘Let me show you something,’ he said, and turned and walked clockwise around the belt to a point some sixty degrees away. He made a quick gesture, and a web of blue threads suddenly ran through the glowing motes, some stretching out and vanishing, others braiding one into the other.

The Redactor Svern pointed to a small curdle of blue light where all the threads converged. ‘Here is the Archipelago, first settled by the Quick a millennium and a half ago. The threads are the trade routes we established since our arrival, linking our mining and farm worldlets,’ he said, and gestured again.

Lines of red shot out from several points along the outer edge of the dust belt, close to where I stood, branching and rebranching, bending towards a bright point that flared at the inner edge of the belt, where red and blue threads met and mingled.

‘This is a real-time feed,’ the Redactor Svern said. ‘Mirrored from Our Thing’s archives. You can see that the Ghosts are further advanced than most people know. One hundred and ninety megaseconds ago, they pushed forward some fifty million kilometres and overtook a cluster of farm worldlets. From there, they are beginning to mount attacks on Cthuga itself.’

I knew just how badly the war was going because dealing with hells meant that I spent far too much time talking to the military, but out of respect to my old master I didn’t say anything. I also knew that he would get around to what he wanted to tell me in his own good time, and in his own way.

He walked forward and touched with a forefinger the little speck on which the blue and red threads converged. It inflated into a large, banded globe as big as his head, circled by a ring system many times its diameter; he spun it with the offhand ease of a juggler in the Permanent Floating Market.

‘The Quick discovered all manner of strange quantum effects in the core of Cthuga. Some of our philosophers believe that they might yield weapons that can win the war. Others believe that they are manifestations of some form of computational system. A Mind. Some say that this Mind was created when the Quick dropped their seedship into the heart of the planet. Some believe it may be a truly alien mind. The Ghosts believe that it has not yet been created, and is reaching back into the past to make sure that it is born at the proper time. That they can use it to reach into their own past, and fulfil the ancient prophesies of their founder . . .’ He looked at me and said, ‘Have we talked about this before?’

‘About the Mind in Cthuga? A little, Majister.’

‘I talk too much, to too many people, but it’s the only way now that I can influence the world of things. And you are too polite to complain, Isak. You indulge me.’

‘I always learn something new, Majister.’

‘There’s little new here, I’m afraid. The Ghosts advance on Cthuga, and its orbit carries it towards their territory, and away from ours. They are already probing its defences. It will not be long before they mount a full-scale attack. We do not know if they can do what they want to do, but we must do our best to stop them.’

‘That we can talk about this, Majister, suggests that they will not be successful. We would not be here if they had changed the past to suit themselves.’

‘In this particular universe, at this particular point in space-time, it may be true. But philosophers claim that there are many other universes entangled with this one, and if those universes in which the Ghosts are successful outnumber those in which they are not, then ours will become a remote and isolated island with no influence on the main currents of the future. That is what we are fighting for. To preserve the past, which we Trues hold so dear in any case, so that we will be free to determine our own future.’

Majister Svern spun the globe again. Underlit by Cthuga’s sere light, his face seemed more like a mask than usual, animated by something other than mere human intelligence. ‘When you first came in, I noticed that you flinched from the image of Fomalhaut. Do all bright lights affect you in the same way?’

‘Everything that reminds me of my disgrace affects me, Majister.’

‘Do you feel it with you still? As if something is following you, or watching you?’

He had asked this question before. I gave him the same answer now as then.

‘I have dreams about it,’ I said.

‘One of our philosophers claims that the Mind in Cthuga has been growing more active. That it has been contacting various Quick workers. I find it interesting that haunts and demons in the Library have also been growing more active. It may be a coincidence. Or it may be that the Mind is reaching out to the Ghosts, and the increased activity of demons and haunts is part of the Ghosts’ plans for the final stages of the war. Perhaps you are a casualty of war, rather than the victim of an unfortunate accident.’

‘Arden and Van were victims,’ I said. ‘As were their kholops. And they died because I was derelict in my duty. Because I ran away.’

The confession was still painful. Like a rough-edged stone stuck in my throat.

The Redactor Svern didn’t seem to hear me. He spun the ringed globe once again, then shrank it down and set it back in place.

‘The elder clans despise our clan because they believe that we are too close to the Quick, and have contaminated ourselves with their decadent philosophies,’ he said. ‘They say that our best hope of winning the war is to keep ourselves pure. Purity is strength. That is how we gained ascendancy over the Quick. That is how, according to them, we will defeat the Ghosts and destroy every trace of them in the Fomalhaut system. And after that, well, perhaps we will find a way of crossing the great gulf between Fomalhaut and beta Hydri, and we will destroy the Ghosts in their home system, too. It’s a pretty fantasy, founded on ideology rather than fact. As for its usefulness, well, I have shown you how badly the war is going. Anyone who discovers a weakness in the enemy that can be exploited, or a weapon that can be used against them, will be feted as a true hero.’

He fell silent. When it seemed that he would not speak again, I said, ‘Does this scion think that the Library contains something that can stop the Ghosts reaching Cthuga?’

‘No doubt you are wondering what this has to do with you. Why I brought you back, after . . . all this time.’

‘The Redactor Miriam told me that a trueborn scion needs our help. No more than that.’

‘I suppose that she also told you that you’d be a fool to volunteer, because you’ll almost certainly fail.’

‘I hope I will not.’

‘And that if you succeed, you will have no reward.’

‘I deserve none.’

‘And then she asked you to refuse the obligation I’m about to put to you.’

‘She asked me to quit the Library at once and join the army, so that I would not have to meet you in the first place.’

‘Yet here you are.’

‘Yes, Majister.’

‘The scion’s name is Lathi Singleton. She is one of the last of an old family in the oldest of all our clans. Although her position in it is greatly diminished, she is still powerful and dangerous. She contacted me directly, and by custom I cannot refuse her request.

‘I didn’t choose you because I pity you or feel that you have been treated unfairly, Isak. And I’m not using you to score petty political points against the Redactor Miriam. I am beyond all that. I chose you because of all of us you are best fitted to succeed. And if you succeed, I promise you that your punishment and exile will be ended. Not because it is in my gift, but because it will change everything. Let me explain what Lathi Singleton wants of us, and you’ll understand.’

As I quit the Library through the Alexandrian Gate, I sent a message to the Horse, telling him to find me at once, and wandered off towards the Permanent Floating Market, thinking about the strange meeting with the Redactor Svern and feeling a bitter-sweet nostalgia for the carefree times of lost innocence when I had once sported in the teeming aisles with fellow novices.

When I’d descended the sweeping span of the bridge that crossed the Library’s moat, the outer tip of the plate had been touched by a last gleam of light, but down in the market it was, as always, midnight. The overlapping leaves of the iron sky pressed overhead; the stalls, geos and tented arenas glowed in a thousand different pastel hues, like so many sea anemones at the bottom of a deep pool. As I stood at one of the stalls, eating noodles, the faces of the people passing its shell of soft pink light seemed to open like flowers. The strange beautiful faces of Quicks. The faces of Trues, hard and closed as fists. And there was the Horse, smiling his crooked smile, his hair a disordered flame, sauntering up to the stall and leaning next to me, his head scarcely higher than my shoulder, his upper lip wrinkling back as he watched me spoon more hot sauce on my noodles.

‘It’s hard to tell if you’re celebrating or trying to kill yourself,’ he said.

‘It’s the only way to give this stuff any kind of taste. Where have you been?’

‘Here and there. Round and about.’ The Horse ordered a bowl of tea from the young Quick behind the counter, a pale yellow fragrant infusion that made the stuff I’d been served seem like unrecycled drain water. ‘So,’ he said. ‘Am I still working for you, or is this a fond farewell before you take up arms against the enemy?’

Many of you – even in these enlightened times – will be shocked by his easy familiarity. But we had trained together, he’d stood by me after the desperate incident that had killed two other navigators and their kholops and left me disgraced and demoted, and we’d survived many scrapes and adventures since. Although we could never be friends, after my disgrace he was the nearest thing to a friend that I possessed. His given name, the name allocated by a bureaucratic subroutine of the tank farm where he’d been quickened and brought to term and decanted, derived from the genetic templates which had been crossed to create him, was Faia op (8,9 cis 15) Laepe-Nulit; the Horse was the name he’d chosen for himself after he’d been bought by the Library, the name that other Quicks knew him by, the name I had begun to use after my disgrace. An ancient beast of burden that had possessed, according to him, many noble virtues. He’d been raised and trained to be a navigator’s assistant, had taught me as much about the craft and traditions of my profession as any of my tutors, and possessed the unassailable belief that one day he would make his mark and win his freedom. He liked to tell me stories about Quicks who’d done just that. He liked to tell me all kinds of stories. There was nothing he liked better, it seemed to me, than to talk, to spin fanciful dreams out of thin air. Whenever I called him on his endless chatter, he’d smile and shrug and say that his sharp wit and quick tongue were all the advantage he had, so it was necessary to exercise them as much as possible. He used that same wit to flatter me, of course; because he was good at his work and because of his undimmed faith in me, I put up with his teasing banter and his endless prattling about his futile ambitions, his fantasy that we were true friends. Blood brothers.

I added another spoonful of hot sauce to the last of my noodles. It was good stuff: I was sweating like a pacer at the finish line.

‘A scion of the Singleton clan has disappeared,’ I said. ‘His mother thinks I can help her find him.’

‘That’s different, at least. How will we do that?’

‘She wants us to harrow a hell that he uncovered before he disappeared,’ I said, and told the Horse what the Redactor Svern had told me.

Yakob Singleton was the only surviving child of Lathi Singleton. He had been something of a rebel in his youth, but had settled down and distinguished himself working for the Office of Public Safety. During one of his investigations, he had uncovered information about an active hell. He’d hired a data miner to help him explore it, and that was the last anyone knew of him.

‘His mother believes that he is still alive,’ I said. ‘She wants me to search the hell and find whatever it was that made him walk away from his work and his family. Also, find anything that points to where he has gone.’

‘Since he’s almost certainly dead, that won’t take long,’ the Horse said. ‘What about the data miner? Did he vanish too, or is he locked up somewhere?’

‘She killed herself.’

‘You mean, the demon that got inside her head made her kill herself. Probably after it did the same thing to her client. I can see why we have been given this job,’ the Horse said. ‘It’s dirty work, and it isn’t going to end happily. At least, not for Lathi Singleton.’

‘I’m not sure it will do me any good, either,’ I said. ‘The Redactor Miriam took the trouble to make it clear that nothing can absolve me.’

‘Do you want absolution?’

‘She told me I’d fail. I want to prove her wrong.’