Terminal World (39 page)

‘And they just ... do this?’

‘They don’t have much choice. If they refuse, I kill them. Then I dismantle them and feed their remains to the other vorgs. They’re not fussy about a little biomechanical cannibalism.’

‘Even so.’

‘They have a highly developed survival instinct, so they don’t particularly want to die. I keep them alive, and they give me the drugs. It’s a very equitable arrangement. Secretly they harbour fantasies of taking over the ship, of course. They imagine they can assemble a fully operative vorg from the partially dismembered versions I have captive. Needless to say, it isn’t going to happen.’

Quillon was glad to move away from the cages. ‘How do you test the drug?’

‘On rats and zebra finches, mainly, although anything with a reasonably developed nervous system will do. I mean actual rats, Doctor - not people from the ground. They have to come from outside our own zone, of course, or else they’re already too well adapted to be useful subjects. I place one control group on normal antizonals, another on no drugs at all, and I test the third group with the serum.’

‘And?’

‘The results are ... encouraging. There’s still work to be done, but there’s no doubt in my mind that the project will succeed. Within twelve months I hope to test it on my first human subjects. Within a year I hope to begin widespread production and dispensing of the end-stage serum. I’ll need many more vorgs, of course, but that’s not an insurmountable problem. Freed of dependence on antizonals, there’ll be almost nowhere Swarm can’t reach.’

‘I could help you with this,’ Quillon said. ‘The testing of the batches must be laborious - wouldn’t you appreciate a second pair of hands down here?’

‘We barely know each other, Doctor.’

‘You know me well enough to show me all this. All I’m talking about is lifting some of the work from your shoulders. It’s not as if you’d need to teach me any medicine.’

‘You seem very keen.’

‘Of course I’m keen. Something like this could help the whole planet, not just Swarm.’

‘I don’t disagree. Equally, I see the need for caution and strict control. It’s both a cure and a weapon. We can’t go racing into this. If the Skullboys got their hands on it, there’d be nothing to contain them.’

‘But maybe they wouldn’t be Skullboys any more, if they had access to drugs that didn’t turn them into murderous, drooling lunatics.’

‘An experiment you’d be willing to sanction, Doctor?’ Ricasso’s tone showed that he had no great inclination to wait for an answer. ‘No; it’ll need to be dispensed with care. It’s chemical wildfire. Or it will be, when I reach the production batch.’

‘What happened to the previous runs?’

‘They just didn’t work out,’ Ricasso said. ‘You don’t need to worry about them.’

From a distance the fuel concentration depot was a dismal, rusting thicket of skeletal docking towers. It looked like a huddle of skyscrapers that had been flayed of glass and chrome and masonry, leaving only an armature of iron bones. They pushed up from a forlorn, mouse-grey landscape, a rugged, boulder-strewn steppe almost entirely denuded of vegetation. Only a few low-lying hills sheltered the towers from distant observation. Some had fallen, toppling onto the buildings and storage tanks below; others were leaning so precariously that it would have been brazen madness to bring an airship anywhere near them. That didn’t stop some of Swarm’s captains from doing just that. One by one the heavy tankers were brought in, engines droning against the prevailing wind, until they mated with the towers. Guylines were usually sufficient to stabilise the ships in favourable conditions. Here the towers flexed and swayed unnervingly under the varying loads, rivets popping free and girders springing away like flicked playing cards. Airmen scrambled down ladders to reach the pumps and valves on the ground. Some of the machines had been tested when Agraffe visited the site, but many had not been activated in years. They were iced over and seized tight with a thick caking of rust. Hammers clanged and flame-guns roared as the airmen tried to coax the petrified mechanisms back into something resembling serviceability. Even when it began to flow the fuel came desperately slowly, the ageing pumps barely able to lift it to the airships. The smaller craft could get in lower, nosing between the towers, but the tankers were much too big for that. Even now no one was exactly sure how much fuel remained in the tanks, or how much of that was not contaminated beyond the point of recovery. What was certain was that Swarm was not going anywhere for two or three days. All the while, the airworthy escort ships maintained a perimeter patrol, surveying the horizon for signs of enemy craft. This was a watering hole, and watering holes drew the hungry as well as the parched.

It was a predictably nervous time.
Painted Lady
was still undergoing repairs, so she was not one of the ships tasked with protection duties. This chafed at Curtana almost as much as the fact that she had not been given permission to command another vessel in the interim. Quillon sensed her bristling impatience whenever they were together. She was glad to be with Agraffe, who was also ‘grounded’ aboard
Purple Emperor
while his ship was patched back together. But she was also itching to get away from Swarm’s hustle and bustle, back to the gin-clear skies where her hand was on the wheel and her authority total. When she wasn’t talking or listening, Curtana stole appraising glances through the nearest window, as if judging the meteorological conditions.

He liked both of them. Agraffe was opinionated, hopelessly wedded to Swarm’s rightness in all things, but at no point had Quillon sensed even a speck of animosity in the man concerning his own nature. Agraffe didn’t like Spearpointers, that was clear, but it was a general prejudice and he was perfectly willing to make exceptions in individual cases. When Curtana or Ricasso or Gambeson were not around, Agraffe gave Quillon long and enthusiastic lectures on everything from the properties of high-altitude noctilucent clouds to the functioning of navigational gyroscopes and the business of aerial cartography. ‘I’m a good captain,’ he confessed to Quillon once, ‘but she’s better than me. Always will be. That’s no condemnation of my own abilities, though. It’s just that she’s Curtana and the rest of us aren’t. There’s only one Mother Goddess, and there’s only one Curtana. The rest of us are foothills.’ He smiled quickly. ‘Not that I’m putting her on a pedestal or anything.’

‘How much of that is natural talent, and how much did she learn from her father?’

‘Anyone’s guess. All I know is that ship listens to her hand on the helm like it wants her to command it. I’ve taken her out once - Painted Lady, I mean. She fought me all the way. Oh, I got her under control eventually - but it was more brute force than airmanship. Then Curtana takes over and it’s like she’s soothing an animal. That was when I knew I’d never have what she has.’ He said this in the relieved tones of a man who had not only abandoned an impossible goal, but realised that there was no humiliation in doing so.

By way of consolation Quillon offered, ‘I’m sure it would be the same if she tried to fly your ship.’

‘That’s the point, though. I’ve seen her take command of
Iron Prominent
- that’s my ship. She’s got her own quirks, her own temper. And Curtana just shrugged and took the reins, and she was flying almost as well as if I’d been at the helm. Not
as
well, but damned close. She’s born to it, Doctor. She’s a creature of the air, like yourself.’ He shook his head in marvel and wonderment. ‘We’re lucky to have her. We’re lucky we even live in the same century she does.’

‘You don’t mind the time apart?’

‘We make up for it.’ Agraffe hesitated. They were on one of the balconies, watching the refuelling operations from what was either a generously safe distance or a perilously close vantage point, depending on Quillon’s vacillating state of mind. The air smelled charged and flammable, waiting for a spark, a mistake, a moment’s inattention. ‘What about you, Doctor? Was there anyone in Spearpoint?’

‘There was, once.’

‘I don’t even know if angels have lovers, or whether the sexes come into it.’

‘It’s rather complicated.’

‘As I suspected.’

‘We have sexes. There are male angels and female angels. We have other sexes. We have reproductive organs and we look different from each other, at least in our own eyes. But those differences are subtle enough that a human physician wouldn’t necessarily see them. We’re ... aerodynamic. I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.’

Agraffe gave an uncertain smile. ‘But when you came down to Neon Heights—’

‘I was human enough to pass close physical examination, yes. Now I’m in a state of transition. I’m not sure if I’ll ever look exactly like an angel again. But I will certainly look ... unusual.’

‘And this other angel ... was she ... was the angel ... a woman?’

‘Her name was Aruval. I loved her when she was an angel, and I loved her when we had both been changed to look human. We were sent down together, part of the same infiltration party.’ He swallowed, conscious of a sudden dryness in his throat. Below, one of the airships was undocking from its refuelling point, pushing back like a pollen-laden bee departing a flower. ‘Aruval didn’t know the whole truth about the infiltration programme. Nor did I. We thought the purpose was merely to prove that it could be done, and then leave it at that. But our masters wanted to go much further. They wanted to engineer an army of infiltrators, an invading force that could sweep through Neon Heights and the rest of Spearpoint. The cosmetic modifications were almost an irrelevance. What really mattered was our enhanced zone tolerance.’

‘Aruval found this out?’

‘Almost by accident. The other two were in on the secret. Aruval grew suspicious when she caught them concealing extra drugs and weapons that we knew nothing about. She revealed her fears to me, but neither of us was ready to act until we knew more about what was going on. Then they killed Aruval. They tried to make it look like an accident, of course, and perhaps I’d have believed them if she hadn’t already confided in me. But by then I knew.’

‘How did they kill her?’

‘The three of them were off on a mission. One of our drug supplies had become tainted so we needed to obtain more stocks. Fortunately it was one of the less complicated drugs and there was a close commercial analogue in Neon Heights. They went to break into a pharmaceutical warehouse in the Second District. I stayed behind in the safe house, as I usually did. I was the medical specialist, you see. I’d been closely involved in the infiltration programme all along, working with the surgeons, the machine-programmers and the drug developers. I knew what had been done to us, and I knew what we all needed to stay alive. I monitored the others - and myself, of course - and made tiny adjustments to our therapeutic regime.’ Quillon took a heavy breath of cold, faintly toxic air. ‘Anyway: Aruval was pushed down a lift shaft in the warehouse. They said they’d run into security guards, had to make a quick exit, become separated, and Aruval had mistaken a service door for the open lift shaft. They were supposed to go back the next day and recover the body, or at least burn the warehouse down - anything to prevent Aruval from ending up on an autopsy table. But I knew the truth. I also knew that, once I’d helped with the disposal of her body, I’d be next. They were preparing to go deep, and I was a very conspicuous loose end. So that night I informed them that I needed to correct a slight imbalance in their medication. They submitted, as they always did. They had no reason to presume I suspected a thing. That may seem strange to you, but you must bear one thing in mind. Our faces were not our own. We had complete muscular control of them, but they were not the faces we had been born with. Nor did we have a lifetime’s experience reading nuances of expression, or hearing deception in each other’s voices. It was easier than you’d think to lie to each other.’ Quillon looked down at his gloved hands, tight on the railing. ‘I murdered my colleagues. I mixed fatal doses. I administered them. It was not a good way to die.’

‘You had no other choice.’

‘That made precious little difference, when they started dying.’

‘And afterwards?’

‘I attempted to hide the evidence of their crime, and mine. I was only partially successful. A man - a good man - came after me. He was a policeman, and he knew only that at least one murder had taken place. He had no way of knowing that this was an internal matter amongst the angels, so he pursued his case with a certain dogged relentlessness. And it led him to me. His name was Fray.’

‘I guess he didn’t turn you in.’

‘We came to an arrangement. I always wondered if he might betray me, but he never did. It was not his fault that I had to leave Spearpoint. In fact, I’d have been dead if he hadn’t helped me escape. So I don’t hate all humans. I don’t even hate most of them.’

‘I guess you’re wondering what’s happened to Fray, and anyone else you left behind.’

‘It’s crossed my mind.’

‘There’ll have been emergency provisions, Doctor. Spearpoint isn’t Swarm, but it still has governments and committees and civil contingency plans. I’m sure of it.’

‘I didn’t see much evidence of civil contingency plans taking hold after I left. I saw what looked like a city taking its terminal breath.’

‘Then you were lucky to get out when you did. So was Meroka.’

‘Strangely enough, that’s not quite how it feels.’ Quillon reached up to steady his airman’s cap, which a freak gust had threatened to dislodge. Day by day, even the cap seemed to fit him less tightly, the bones of his skull contracting. ‘But I don’t suppose I should be surprised. I can’t be the only exile who’s ever felt like a traitor, and I doubt I’ll be the last.’

‘Incoming,’ Agraffe said quietly, as if it was a response to Quillon’s statement.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Incoming,’ he repeated, and directed Quillon’s attention to an almost invisibly small dot on the horizon.