Terminal World (34 page)

‘I’m not sure she’s slept since we were rescued,’ Quillon said.

‘It wouldn’t surprise me. It’s a rare mission when she doesn’t come back pushed to the brink of exhaustion. I feel a duty of protection, of course.’ Ricasso sat opposite Quillon with his legs spread wide, his belly sagging between like a partially deflated gasbag. ‘I knew her father very well; he was a superb man. Died defending us, of course. Skullboy incursion of 5273. In my darker moments I worry that she won’t feel she’s served Swarm unless she meets a similar end.’

‘She told me you’re her godfather.’ Quillon hesitated. ‘What should I call you, by the way?’

‘Ricasso, like everyone else. I’m not a great stickler for formality, as you’ll discover.’

‘Do you ... run Swarm?’

‘Technically speaking, yes.’ He lowered his voice conspiratorially. ‘On a day-to-day level, not at all. I’ve delegated that kind of thing to my very capable administrative staff. Frankly, I’ve got better things to do with my time than
govern
. It’s all rather tiresome.’

‘I heard you’re interested in scholarship.’

‘Indeed. And yourself, Doctor?’ His face lit up with inquisitiveness. ‘Are you perchance a man of letters?’

‘I’ve studied medicine.’

‘There’s a hint in the title. I mean more generally. Do you have an interest in history?’

‘No more or less than anyone else, I imagine.’

‘Well, I hope that isn’t the case, because most people - in my admittedly very limited experience - aren’t interested at all. And you can’t really blame them for that, I suppose.’

‘You feel differently.’

‘For my sins. Most would consider it no more than a harmless, slightly eccentric diversion, something to keep a bored old man out of mischief. I’m perfectly content for them to keep believing that, but I know they’re wrong.’

‘There’s a saying in Spearpoint - history is just the same card game, reshuffled. Nothing ever really changes; nothing ever happens that hasn’t happened already, probably a thousand times. So what’s the point in studying the past? All it will tell you is that the future’s going to be more of the same, like the weather.’

‘You use the same calendar as us, Doctor. I mentioned the Skullboy incursion of 5273 just now.’

Quillon grasped his seat’s armrests as the little ferry performed a sharp swerve - far sharper than seemed possible for a dirigible - and plunged between two looming ships, skimming the envelope of one and just passing beneath the gondola of another.

‘I fail to see the relevance.’

‘If history’s always been the same, if nothing’s ever changed, why do we bother with a calendar in the first place? Granted, it makes the bookkeeping a little simpler. Gives dirt-rats something to scribe on their gravestones. But there’s got to be more to it than that, don’t you think? The mere existence of a dating system implies that something happened, something that was deemed sufficiently noteworthy to mark the commencement of things. Something suitably epochal.’

Curtana, who had woken from her drowse, said, ‘Here we go.’

‘Humour an old fool, my dear.’

They were in the thick of Swarm now, surrounded on all sides by airships and the ropes and bridges linking them. The sky and the ground were only intermittently visible. It was deceptively easy to imagine that these huge structures were fixed landmarks, like a city of toppled skyscrapers.

‘From what little I know of the matter,’ Quillon said, ‘our calendar derives from the Testament. It says that the Eye of God shone through the skin of the world, five thousand, two hundred and eighty-odd years ago. Before that there was just formless chaos, darkness without light.’

‘The Eye of God being more or less synonymous with what, in more enlightened times, we would now refer to as the Mire, the chaotic origin point for the zones. Is that not correct?’

‘No one really takes that seriously,’ Quillon said.

‘Other than the many millions of people who still read the Testament, or one of the other major religious texts.’

‘Even the most ardent of them don’t take all of it literally,’ Quillon said. ‘They read it for moral guidance, comfort during hardship. Not as a veiled history lesson about the origin of the world.’

‘And if they did?’

‘They’d be deluding themselves.’

‘You sound rather sure of that, Doctor. Not even a glimmer of doubt? Come now - you can’t be that close-minded. Not after everything that’s happened recently.’

‘It’s just a bad storm, that’s all.’

‘And yet the Testament says - and I’m quoting from memory here, so forgive me if I don’t get it exactly right -
“and in that time it is written that the powerful shall come, those who move the mountains and the skies, and the mark of the keepers of the gates of paradise shall be upon them, and they shall be
feared”.’
He smiled, pleased with himself, for it was undoubtedly an accurate recollection. ‘The tectomancers, in other words.’

‘No one’s moved any mountains or skies that I’m aware of.’

‘We’ll allow a little latitude for poetic interpretation. Keep in mind that the Testament’s been passed down through more than three hundred generations. Is it any wonder certain concepts have been muddied?’

‘More than muddied, if you ask me.’

‘So you don’t believe in tectomancers, despite all the scholarship to the contrary?’

Quillon answered as truthfully as he was able. ‘I believe some individuals have certain, very limited control over the zones. If that makes me close-minded, so be it.’

‘I’m not asking you to open your mind to all manner of nonsense, Doctor, merely to allow for the possibility of things you might previously have dismissed, or failed to give any consideration to whatsoever. Such as the fact that the world was not always this way, and by implication doesn’t have to be this way in the future.’

‘If the world was very different,’ Quillon said, ‘there wouldn’t necessarily be room in it for Swarm.’

‘Something that you no doubt think must have escaped my attention.

 

Well, it hasn’t. Truth to tell, Doctor, there’s actually a purpose to my scholarship. I have a duty to evaluate any threat, any change in circumstances, that might affect Swarm and its citizenry. Call it strategic thinking, if you must. It seems to me axiomatic that you can’t predict the future state of our world, much less plan how you’re going to adapt to it, unless you understand how the world became the way it is.’

‘And the fact that you enjoy nosing through dusty old maps and legends is entirely coincidental,’ Curtana said, with the long-suffering air of someone who had been through similar discussions more times than she cared to remember.

‘A happy marriage of desire and necessity, that’s all,’ Ricasso said. He looked at Quillon sadly. ‘I’m sorry, Doctor. My hopes were raised. It’s not your fault, of course.’

‘About what?’

‘I hoped you might prove a suitable foil, a sympathetic ear for my more outlandish ideas. You’re set in your ways, though, and I can hardly fault you for that. Medicine is a fixed discipline; it requires diligence, not imagination.’

Quillon did not allow the barb to rankle him. ‘Doctor Gambeson told me you enjoy your conversations with him.’

‘Gambeson’s the exception to the rule. Besides, as often as not he’s away from Swarm. I used to enjoy discussions with Curtana’s father, but now that he’s no longer with us—’

‘I wouldn’t want to give the impression that I’m completely closed to new ideas,’ Quillon said.

‘Of course not,’ Ricasso said, reassuringly. ‘I’m sure, in your own way—’

‘It would still be good to talk privately.’

Ricasso leaned over and patted Quillon on the knee, the way an uncle might reassure a small boy. ‘I insist on it, dear fellow. I’m sure we’ll find a lot of common ground.’

The pilot lowered a grilled hatch to speak to her passengers. ‘Coming up on
Purple Emperor,
sir. I’ll bring us into the main docking port, unless you’ve any objections.’

‘That’ll be fine,’ Ricasso answered. ‘Take a good look, Doctor. Not many people get this close to her. Quite something, isn’t she? Even for a Spearpointer?’

‘She’s enormous.’

‘There’s no larger machine on the planet. Nearly two hundred and fifty years old, as well. That’s almost prehistoric where airships are concerned.’

They had punched through to Swarm’s secret core.
Purple Emperor
nestled there like a jewel, ornamented with the lesser finery of smaller ships maintaining close, swaddling formation. She was, by any measure, a truly preposterous machine: vast and dark as a thundercloud, threatening in her very size, but at the same time conveying a sense of ludicrous ponderousness and vulnerability. Her envelope must have been more than half a league from end to end, twice the size of any ship Quillon had glimpsed so far. The main gondola, running nearly the whole length of the envelope, was a dozen decks tall, lit up with chains of golden windows, festooned with balconies and promenades. There were a dozen smaller gondolas linked to the main one by covered walkways. She had numerous outriggers, mounted in triple and quadruple layers, each supporting a dozen or more engines, the airscrews ranging in size from mere propellers, no larger than those on
Painted Lady
, to slowly gyring blades as long again as a single airship. Ships at least as large as
Painted Lady
were docked at various stations, and they resembled nothing more than opportunist parasites nibbling the crusted underbelly of some tremendous, oblivious sea monster.

‘I’ve never seen anything quite like her,’ Quillon said.

‘They should have cut her up years ago,’ Curtana said. ‘She’s too big, too old. Slows down the entire formation, and keeps our best ships tied up feeding and protecting her, like a big fat mewling baby.’

‘Never one for sentiment, our Curtana,’ Ricasso reflected.

‘If Swarm didn’t have to spend half its resources protecting worn-out, bloated relics like
Purple Emperor
, we could really do something. Take on the Skullboys at their own game for once, instead of skulking around them. Become more mobile, more assertive.’

‘More like the Skullboys, in other words,’ Ricasso said.

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘One thing I’m still not entirely clear about,’ Quillon said. ‘What is it that Swarm does, exactly?’

‘Everything that Spearpoint does, and more,’ Ricasso said grandly. ‘Which is to say, Swarm endures; it provides shelter and comfort for its citizens, it clothes, feeds and educates them and gives them work to do when they are old enough. If that was all, it would still be enough: nobody requires Spearpoint to be anything other than a city, do they? It is a thing unto itself, sufficient in that regard. So with Swarm. But we are much more than just a city in the air, and that is where we differ from the Godscraper. Spearpoint’s civilising influence, if you can call it that, extends no more than a handful of leagues from its base. We are not like that. Swarm’s influence covers the entire planet - there’s nowhere we can’t go, nowhere we can’t extend our reach. Our shadow has touched every square span of the Earth’s surface.’

‘Even the Bane?’ Quillon asked, recalling the blank spot on Meroka’s map.

‘No one goes there, no one even lives there, so it doesn’t count,’ Ricasso answered. ‘Elsewhere is what matters. Half the communities on this planet think Spearpoint’s a myth. But they’ve all heard of Swarm, and most of them know what we stand for.’

‘Which is?’

‘Self-preservation,’ Curtana answered, before Ricasso had a chance to speak. ‘That’s all. We grub around looking for the last drop of firesap, or bully some hapless dirt-rats into forging new engines or bullets for our ships. Funny how persuasive four hundred loaded spinguns aimed down at you from the sky can be.’

‘We stand for more than just staying alive,’ Ricasso said. ‘We’re the last beacon of enlightenment in a world where the lights are going out one by one.’

Curtana looked like she’d heard this one before. ‘Oh, please. We’re just another semi-organised rabble. The difference is we have ranks and airships and the delusion that we’re doing something noble and uplifting.’

‘If your father heard you speak—’

‘He’d agree with me. And so would the Ricasso he used to know. We had a purpose once, I’m not arguing with that.’

‘Before Spearpoint turned its back on us.’

‘I’m not talking about that. I mean afterwards, long afterwards. Until recently, in fact. We were trying to make something better of the world, acting as - yes, I’ll admit it - a civilising force, where none existed. Helping the surface communities to better themselves. Establishing lines of communication and commerce, offering guidance and support to towns and communities that dared stand up to the Skullboys. Proving that it didn’t have to be Spearpoint or nothing, that there was an alternative.’

Ricasso said, ‘We probably shouldn’t bicker in front of our guest.’

‘He’s got eyes and ears and a brain,’ Curtana replied. ‘He’ll have worked out most of it for himself. He did ask the question, didn’t he?’

Quillon smiled awkwardly. ‘I didn’t mean to reopen old wounds.’

‘You didn’t,’ Ricasso said, leaning forwards to pat Quillon on the knee reassuringly. ‘Curtana and I may have our differences, but fundamentally ... Look, you know what they say about your fiercest critics, how you should keep them close at hand? Well, there’s none fiercer than Curtana. Her only saving grace is that she thinks I’m still open to reasoned persuasion, rather than being jettisoned overboard.’

‘Yes,’ Curtana said. ‘I’m foolish enough to think he may not be a completely lost cause.’

‘And as foolish as it makes me, I’m proud to have her as my god-daughter,’ Ricasso answered.

They docked without ceremony, Quillon experiencing a disorientating sense of landing on solid ground as the little craft engaged with the rock-steady fixture of
Purple Emperor.
The landing door was lowered again, and almost immediately a uniformed man leaned in through the open hatchway. He had a youthful, handsome face, pale and freckled, a light, downy growth of beard, flashing green eyes and a head of reddish hair, worn raffishly long. He nodded at Ricasso, but that was clearly just a formality for the benefit of the other observers. Curtana rose from her seat and embraced the man without speaking. They kissed and descended the steps, still holding each other. The guard motioned for Quillon to follow them down onto the platform. They’d berthed next to one of the smaller gondolas, on the starboard side of the ship. Immediately Quillon was struck by how very much more palatial the surroundings were, compared to the businesslike austerity of
Painted Lady
. Although there were other ships docked, there was none of the boisterous activity of the servicing facility. The deck was carpeted, and the attending airmen behaved more like hotel concierges, their uniforms as discreetly understated as their manner. Even the engine drone sounded muted and deferential.