The Revelation Space Collection (425 page)
She does not know what that will mean for the minds now in the ocean. On some level, she is certain, they already know what is about to happen. They cannot have failed to pick up the nuances of panic as the human population made its escape plans. But she thinks it unlikely that anyone has swum with the specific purpose of telling the world what is to come. It might not make any difference. On the other hand, quite literally, it might make all the difference in the world.
It is, she supposes, a matter of courtesy. Everything that happens here, everything that will happen, is her responsibility.
She issues another command to the butterflies. The white armour dissipates, the mechanical insects fluttering in a cloud above her head. They linger, not straying too far, but leaving her naked on the jetty.
She risks a glance back towards her protector. She can just see his silhouette against the milky background of the sky, his childlike form leaning against a walking stick. He is looking away, his head bobbing impatiently. He wants to leave very much, but she doesn’t blame him for that.
She sits on the edge of the jetty. The water roils around her in anticipation. Things move within it: shapes and phantasms. She will swim for a little while, and open her mind. She does not know how long it will take, but she will not leave until she is ready. If her protector has already departed - she does not think this is very likely, but it must still be considered - then she will have to make other plans.
She slips into the sea, into the glowing green memory of Ararat.
Table of Contents
Thanks to Pete Crowther of PS Publishing and Marty Halpern and Gary Turner of Golden Gryphon Press for giving me the opportunity to write these novellas.
DIAMOND DOGS
ONE
I met Childe in the Monument to the Eighty.
It was one of those days when I had the place largely to myself, able to walk from aisle to aisle without seeing another visitor; only my footsteps disturbed the air of funereal silence and stillness.
I was visiting my parents’ shrine. It was a modest affair: a smooth wedge of obsidian shaped like a metronome, undecorated save for two cameo portraits set in elliptical borders. The sole moving part was a black blade which was attached near the base of the shrine, ticking back and forth with magisterial slowness. Mechanisms buried inside the shrine ensured that it was winding down, destined to count out days and then years with each tick. Eventually it would require careful measurement to detect its movement.
I was watching the blade when a voice disturbed me.
‘Visiting the dead again, Richard?’
‘Who’s there?’ I said, looking around, faintly recognising the speaker but not immediately able to place him.
‘Just another ghost.’
Various possibilities flashed through my mind as I listened to the man’s deep and taunting voice - a kidnapping, an assassination - before I stopped flattering myself that I was worthy of such attention.
Then the man emerged from between two shrines a little way down from the metronome.
‘My God,’ I said.
‘Now do you recognise me?’
He smiled and stepped closer: as tall and imposing as I remembered. He had lost the devil’s horns since our last meeting - they had only ever been a bio-engineered affectation - but there was still something satanic about his appearance, an effect not lessened by the small and slightly pointed goatee he had cultivated in the meantime.
Dust swirled around him as he walked towards me, suggesting that he was not a projection.
‘I thought you were dead, Roland.’
‘No, Richard,’ he said, stepping close enough to shake my hand. ‘But that was most certainly the effect I desired to achieve.’
‘Why?’ I said.
‘Long story.’
‘Start at the beginning, then.’
Roland Childe placed a hand on the smooth side of my parents’ shrine. ‘Not quite your style, I’d have thought?’
‘It was all I could do to argue against something even more ostentatious and morbid. But don’t change the subject. What happened to you?’
He removed his hand, leaving a faint damp imprint. ‘I faked my own death. The Eighty was the perfect cover. The fact that it all went so horrendously wrong was even better. I couldn’t have planned it like that if I’d tried.’
No arguing with that, I thought. It had gone horrendously wrong.
More than a century and a half ago, a clique of researchers led by Calvin Sylveste had resurrected the old idea of copying the essence of a living human being into a computer-generated simulation. The procedure - then in its infancy - had the slight drawback that it killed the subject. But there had still been volunteers, and my parents had been amongst the first to sign up and support Calvin’s work. They had offered him political protection when the powerful Mixmaster lobby opposed the project, and they had been amongst the first to be scanned.
Less than fourteen months later, their simulations had also been amongst the first to crash.
None could ever be restarted. Most of the remaining Eighty had succumbed, and now only a handful remained unaffected.
‘You must hate Calvin for what he did,’ Childe said, still with that taunting quality in his voice.
‘Would it surprise you if I said I didn’t?’
‘Then why did you set yourself so vocally against his family after the tragedy?’
‘Because I felt justice still needed to be served.’ I turned from the shrine and started walking away, curious as to whether Childe would follow me.
‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘But that opposition cost you dearly, didn’t it?’
I bridled, halting next to what appeared a highly realistic sculpture but was almost certainly an embalmed corpse.
‘Meaning what?’
‘The Resurgam expedition, of course, which just happened to be bankrolled by House Sylveste. By rights, you should have been on it. You were Richard Swift, for heaven’s sake. You’d spent the better part of your life thinking about possible modes of alien sentience. There should have been a place for you on that ship, and you damned well knew it.’
‘It wasn’t that simple,’ I said, resuming my walk. ‘There were a limited number of slots available and they needed practical types first - biologists, geologists, that kind of thing. By the time they’d filled the most essential slots, there simply wasn’t any room for abstract dreamers like myself.’
‘And the fact that you’d pissed off House Sylveste had nothing whatsoever to do with it? Come off it, Richard.’
We descended a series of steps down into the lower level of the Monument. The atrium’s ceiling was a cloudy mass of jagged sculptures: interlocked metal birds. A party of visitors was arriving, attended by servitors and a swarm of bright, marble-sized float-cams. Childe breezed through the group, drawing annoyed frowns but no actual recognition, although one or two of the people in the party were vague acquaintances of mine.
‘What is this about?’ I asked, once we were outside.
‘Concern for an old friend. I’ve had my tabs on you, and it was pretty obvious that not being selected for that expedition was a crushing disappointment. You’d thrown your life into contemplation of the alien. One marriage down the drain because of your self-absorption. What was her name again?’
I’d had her memory buried so deeply that it took a real effort of will to recall any exact details about my marriage.
‘Celestine. I think.’
‘Since when you’ve had a few relationships, but nothing lasting more than a decade. A decade’s a mere fling in this town, Richard.’
‘My private life’s my own business,’ I responded sullenly. ‘Hey. Where’s my volantor? I parked it here.’
‘I sent it away. We’ll take mine instead.’
Where my volantor had been was a larger, blood-red model. It was as baroquely ornamented as a funeral barge. At a gesture from Childe it clammed open, revealing a plush gold interior with four seats, one of which was occupied by a dark, slouched figure.
‘What’s going on, Roland?’
‘I’ve found something. Something astonishing that I want you to be a part of; a challenge that makes every game you and I ever played in our youth pale in comparison.’
‘A challenge?’
‘The ultimate one, I think.’
He had pricked my curiosity, but I hoped it was not too obvious. ‘The city’s vigilant. It’ll be a matter of public record that I came to the Monument, and we’ll have been recorded together by those float-cams.’
‘Exactly,’ Childe said, nodding enthusiastically. ‘So you risk nothing by getting in the volantor.’
‘And should I at any point weary of your company?’
‘You have my word that I’ll let you leave.’
I decided to play along with him for the time being. Childe and I took the volantor’s front pair of seats. Once ensconced, I turned around to acquaint myself with the other passenger, and then flinched as I saw him properly.
He wore a high-necked leather coat which concealed much of the lower half of his face. The upper part was shadowed under the generous rim of a homburg, tipped down to shade his brow. Yet what remained visible was sufficient to shock me. There was only a blandly handsome silver mask; sculpted into an expression of quiet serenity. The eyes were blank silver surfaces, what I could see of his mouth a thin, slightly smiling slot.
‘Doctor Trintignant,’ I said.
He reached forward with a gloved hand, allowing me to shake it as one would the hand of a woman. Beneath the black velvet of the glove I felt armatures of hard metal. Metal that could crush diamond.
‘The pleasure is entirely mine,’ he said.
Airborne, the volantor’s baroque ornamentation melted away to mirror-smoothness. Childe pushed ivory-handled control sticks forward, gaining altitude and speed. We seemed to be moving faster than the city ordinances allowed, avoiding the usual traffic corridors. I thought of the way he had followed me, researched my past and had my own volantor desert me. It would also have taken considerable resourcefulness to locate the reclusive Trintignant and persuade him to emerge from hiding.