Consider Phlebas (15 page)

Kraiklyn let go of Jandraligeli and looked around the rest.

‘It’s true,’ Horza said. He shook his head. ‘I just didn’t think. None of us did. Lamm and Jandraligeli were even complaining about having to walk to the bows when Leni was in the shuttle, and you mentioned it, but I suppose he just didn’t hear.’ Horza shrugged. ‘He was excited.’

He shook his head.

‘We all fucked up,’ Yalson said heavily. She had turned her communicator back on. Nobody spoke for a while. Kraiklyn stood and looked round them, then went to the parapet, put both hands on it and looked down.

‘Leni?’ Wubslin said into his communicator, looking down too. His voice was quiet.

‘Chicel-Horhava,’ Dorolow made the Circle of Flame sign, closed her eyes and said, ‘Sweet lady, accept his soul in peace.’

‘Wormshit,’ Lamm swore, and turned away. He started firing the laser at distant, higher parts of the tower above them.

‘Dorolow,’ Kraiklyn said, ‘you, Wubslin and Yalson head down there. See what . . . ah, shit . . . ‘ Kraiklyn turned round. ‘Get down there. Mipp, you drop them a line or the medkit, whatever. The rest of us . . . we’re going forward to the bows, all right?’ He looked around them, challenging. ‘You might want to go back, but that just means he’s died for nothing.’

Yalson turned away, switching off her transmit button again.

‘Might as well,’ Jandraligeli said. ‘I suppose.’

‘Not me,’ Neisin said. ‘I’m not. I’m staying here, with the shuttle.’ He sat with his head bowed between his shoulders, his helmet on the deck. He stared at the deck and shook his head. ‘Not me. No sir, not me. I’ve had it for today. I’m staying here.’

Kraiklyn looked at Mipp and nodded at Neisin. ‘Look after him.’ He turned to Dorolow and Wubslin. ‘Get going. You never know; you might be able to do something. Yalson - you, too.’ Yalson wasn’t looking at Kraiklyn but she turned and followed Wubslin and the other woman when they set off to find a way down to the lower deck.

A crash they felt through their soles made them all jump. They turned round to see Lamm, a distant figure against the far-away clouds, firing up at flyer-pad supports five or six decks above, the invisible beam licking flame around the stressed metal. Another pad gave way, flapping and spinning like a huge playing-card, smashing into the level they stood on with another deck-quivering thump. ‘Lamm!’ Kraiklyn burst out. ‘Stop that!’

The black suit with the raised rifle pretended not to hear, and Kraiklyn lifted his own heavy laser and flicked the trigger. A section of deck five metres in front of Lamm ruptured in flame and glowing metal, heaving up, then collapsing back down, a blister of gases blowing out from it rocking Lamm off his feet so that he staggered and almost fell. He steadied and stood, visibly shaking with rage, even from that distance. Kraiklyn still had the gun pointing towards him. Lamm straightened and shouldered his own gun, coming back almost at a saunter, as though nothing had happened. The others relaxed slightly.

Kraiklyn got them all together; then they set off, following Dorolow, Yalson and Wubslin to the inside of the tower and a broad sweeping spiral of carpeted staircase which led down, into the Megaship the Olmedreca.

‘Dead as a fossil,’ Yalson’s voice said bitterly in their helmet speakers, when they were about halfway down. ‘Dead as a goddamned fossil.’

When they passed them on their way to the bows, Yalson and Wubslin were waiting by the body for the winch line Mipp was lowering from above. Dorolow was praying.

They crossed over the deck level Lenipobra had died on, down into the mist and along a narrow gangway with nothing but empty space on either side. ‘Just five metres,’ Kraiklyn said, using the light needle radar in his Rairch suit to plumb the depths of vapour below them. The mist was getting slowly thinner as they went on, up again onto another deck, now clear, then down again, by outside stairs and long ramps. The sun was hazily visible a few times, a red disc which sometimes brightened and sometimes dimmed. They crossed decks, skirted swimming pools, traversed promenades and landing pads, went past tables and chairs, through groves and under awnings, arcades and arches. They saw towers above them through the mist, and a couple of times looked down into huge pits carved out of the ship and lined with yet more decks and opened areas, from the bottom of which they thought they could hear the sea. The swirling mist lay in the bottom of such great bowls like a broth of dreams.

They stopped at a line of small, open, wheeled vehicles with seats and gaily striped awnings for roofs. Kraiklyn looked around, getting his bearings. Wubslin tried starting the vehicles, but none of the small cars were working.

‘There are two ways to go here,’ Kraiklyn said, frowning as he looked forward. The sun was briefly bright above, turning the vapour over them and to each side golden with its rays. The lines of some unknown sport or game lay drawn out on the deck under their feet. A tower forced out of the mist to one side, the curls and whorls of mist moving like huge arms, dimming the sun again. Its shadow cut across the path in front of them. ‘We’ll split up.’ Kraiklyn looked around. ‘I’ll go that way with Aviger and Jandraligeli. Horza and Lamm, you go that way.’ He pointed to one side. ‘That’s leading down to one of the side prows. There ought to be something there; just keep looking.’ He touched a wrist button. ‘Yalson?’

‘Hello,’ Yalson said over the intercom. She, Wubslin and Dorolow had watched Lenipobra’s body being winched up to the shuttle and then left, following the rest.

‘Right,’ Kraiklyn said, looking at one of the helmet screens, ‘you’re only about three hundred metres away.’ He turned and looked back the way they had come. A collection of towers, some kilometres away, were strung out behind them now, mostly starting at higher levels. They could see more and more of the Olmedreca. Mist streamed quietly past them in the silence. ‘Oh yeah,’ Kraiklyn said, ‘I see you.’ He waved.

Some small figures on a distant deck at the side of one of the great mist-filled bowls waved back. ‘I see you, too,’ Yalson said.

‘When you get to where we are now, head over to the left for the other side prow; there are subsidiary lasers there. Horza and Lamm will - ‘

‘Yeah, we heard,’ Yalson said.

‘Right. We’ll be able to bring the shuttle closer, maybe right down to wherever we find anything soon. Let’s go. Keep your eyes open.’ He nodded at Aviger and Jandraligeli, and they went forward. Lamm and Horza looked at each other, then set off in the direction Kraiklyn had indicated. Lamm motioned to Horza to switch off his communicator transmit and open his visor.

‘If we’d waited we could have put the shuttle down where we wanted to in the first place,’ he said with his own visor open. Horza agreed.

‘Stupid little bastard,’ Lamm said.

‘Who?’ asked Horza.

‘That kid. Jumping off the goddamned platform.’

‘Hmm.’

‘Know what I’m going to do?’ Lamm looked at the Changer.

‘What?’

‘I’m going to cut that stupid little bastard’s tongue out, that’s what I’m going to do. A tattooed tongue should be worth something, shouldn’t it? Little bastard owed me money anyway. What do you think? How much do you think it’d be worth?’

‘No idea.’

‘Little bastard . . . ‘ Lamm muttered.

The two men tramped along the deck, angling away from the dead-ahead line they had taken previously. It was difficult to tell where exactly they were heading, but according to Kraiklyn it was towards one of the side prows, which stuck out like enormous outriggers attached to the Olmedreca and formed harbours for the liners which had shuttled to and from the Megaship in its heyday, on excursions, or working as tenders.

They passed where there had evidently been a recent fire-fight; laser burns, smashed glass and torn metal littered an accommodation section of the ship, and torn curtains and wall hangings flapped in the steady breeze of the great ship’s progress. Two of the small wheeled vehicles lay smashed on their sides near by. They crunched over the debris and kept walking. The other two groups were heading forward, too, making reasonable progress according to their reports and chatter. Ahead of them there still lay the enormous bank of cloud they had seen earlier; it wasn’t growing any thinner or lower, and they could only be a couple of kilometres from it now, though distances were hard to estimate.

‘We’re here,’ Kraiklyn said eventually, his voice crackling in Horza’s ear. Lamm turned his transmit channel on.

‘What?’ He looked, mystified, at Horza, who shrugged.

‘What’s keeping you two?’ Kraiklyn said. ‘We had further to walk. We’re at the main bows. They stick further out than the bit you’re on.’

‘The hell you are, Kraiklyn,’ Yalson broke in from the other team, which was supposed to be heading for the opposite set of side prows.

‘What?’ Kraiklyn said. Lamm and Horza stopped to listen to the exchange over their communicators. Yalson spoke again:

‘We’ve just come to the edge of the ship. In fact I think we’re a bit out from the main side . . . on some sort of wing or buttress . . . Anyway, there’s no side prow around here. You’ve sent us in the wrong direction.’

‘But you . . . ‘ Kraiklyn began. His voice died away.

‘Kraiklyn, dammit, you’ve sent us towards the bow and you’re on a side prow!’ Lamm yelled into his helmet mike. Horza had been coming to the same conclusion. That was why they were still walking and Kraiklyn’s team had reached the bows. There was silence from the Clear Air Turbulence’s captain for a few seconds, then he said:

‘Shit, you must be right.’ They could hear him sigh. ‘I guess you and Horza had better keep going. I’ll send somebody down in your direction once we’ve had a quick look round here. I think I can see some sort of gallery with a lot of transparent blisters where there might be some lasers. Yalson, you head back to where we split up and tell me when you get there. We’ll see who comes up with something useful first.’

‘Fucking marvellous,’ Lamm said, stamping off into the mist. Horza followed, wishing the ill-fitting suit didn’t rub so much.

The two men walked on. Lamm stopped to investigate some state rooms which had already been looted. Fine materials snagged on broken glass floated like the cloud around them. In one apartment they saw rich wooden furniture, a holosphere lying broken in a corner and a glass-sided water tank the size of a room, full of rotting, brilliantly coloured fish and fine clothes, floating together on the surface like exotic weeds.

Over their communicators Horza and Lamm heard the others in Kraiklyn’s group find what they thought was a door leading to the gallery where - they hoped - they would find lasers behind the transparent bubbles they had seen earlier. Horza told Lamm they had best not waste their time, and so they left the state rooms and went back out onto the deck to continue heading forward.

‘Hey, Horza,’ Kraiklyn said, as the Changer and Lamm walked along the deck and into a long tunnel lit by dim sunlight coming through mist and opaque ceiling panels. ‘This needle radar’s not working properly.’

Horza answered as they walked. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘It isn’t going through cloud, that’s what’s wrong.’

‘I never really got a chance to . . . What do you mean?’ Horza stopped in the corridor. He felt something wrong in his guts. Lamm kept walking, away from him, down the corridor.

‘It’s giving me a reading off that big cloud in front, right the way along and about half a K up.’ Kraiklyn laughed. ‘It isn’t the Edgewall,. that’s for sure, and I can see that’s a cloud, and it’s closer than the needle says it is.’

‘Where are you now?’ Dorolow broke in. ‘Did you find any lasers? What about that door?’

‘No, just a sort of sun lounge or something,’ Kraiklyn said. ‘Kraiklyn!’ Horza shouted. ‘Are you sure about that reading?’

‘I’m sure. The needle says - ‘

‘Sure isn’t much fucking sun to lounge - ‘ somebody broke in, though it sounded as if it was accidental and they didn’t know their transmit was on. Horza felt sweat start out on his brow. Something was wrong.

‘Lamm!’ he shouted. Lamm, thirty metres away down the corridor, turned as he walked and looked back. ‘Come back!’ Horza shouted. Lamm stopped.

‘Horza, there can’t be anything - ‘

‘Kraiklyn!’ This time it was Mipp’s voice, calling from the shuttle. ‘There was somebody else here. I just saw another craft take off somewhere behind where we landed; they’ve gone now.’

‘OK, thanks Mipp,’ Kraiklyn said, his voice calm. ‘Listen, Horza, from what I can see from here, the bows where you are have just gone into the cloud, so it is a cloud . . . Shit, we can all see it’s a goddamn cloud. Don’t - ‘

The ship shuddered under Horza’s feet. He rocked. Lamm looked at him, puzzled. ‘Did you feel that?’ Horza shouted.

‘Feel what?’ Kraiklyn said.

‘Kraiklyn?’ It was Mipp again. ‘I can see something . . . ‘

‘Lamm, get back here!’ Horza shouted, through the air and into his helmet mike together. Lamm looked around him. Horza thought he could feel a continuing tremor in the deck below.

‘What did you feel?’ Kraiklyn said. He was starting to get annoyed.

Yalson chipped in, ‘I thought I felt something. Nothing much. But listen, these things aren’t supposed to . . . they aren’t supposed to - ‘

‘Kraiklyn,’ Mipp said more urgently, ‘I think I can see - ‘

‘Lamm!’ Horza was backing off now, back down the long tunnel of corridor. Lamm stayed where he was, looking hesitant.

Horza could hear something, a curious growling noise; it reminded him of a jet engine or a fusion motor heard from a very long distance away, but it wasn’t either. He could feel something under his feet, too - that tremor, and there was some sort of pull, a tug that seemed to be dragging him forward, towards Lamm, towards the bows, as though he was in a weak field, or -

‘Kraiklyn!’ Mipp yelled. ‘I can! There is! I - you - I’m - ‘ he spluttered.

‘Look, will you all just calm down?’

‘I can feel something . . . ‘ Yalson began.

Horza started running, pounding back down the corridor. Lamm, who had started to walk back, stopped and put his hands on his hips when he saw the other man running, away from him. There was a distant roaring noise in the air, like a big waterfall heard from far down a gorge.