“I hope you’ll be the one to break the news to the mother, in that case.”
“Leave it to me,” Scorpio said.
“Very well.” Scorpio had the feeling that the doctor was disappointed. “One other thing: she mentioned that word again, in her sleep.”
“What word?”
“Hella,” Valensin said. “Or something like it.”
Rashmika’s estimate turned out to have been optimistic. She had expected another two or three hours of travel before the caravan reached the eastern side of the bridge, but after four hours they appeared only to have made up half the distance. There had been many frustrating periods where the caravan doubled back on itself, following sinuous reverse-loops in the walls. There were times when they had to squeeze through runnels in the cliff, moving at little more than walking pace while the ice scraped against either side of the procession. Two or three times they had come to a complete halt while some technical matter was attended to—no explanation was ever forthcoming. She had the impression that the drivers tried to make up time after these delays, but the subsequent recklessness—which caused the vehicles to bounce and swerve perilously close to the edge—only added to her anxiety. When the quaestor had told her that they would be taking the bridge she had felt great apprehension, but now she was inclined to think it preferable to the many hazards of the ledge traverse. The road along the ledge was a human artefact: it had been blasted or cut into the cliffs within the last century and had probably been repaired and realigned several times since then. Doubt-less bits of it had collapsed over the years, and many vehicles must have taken the long, ballistic plunge to the bottom of the Rift. But the bridge was surely older than that. Now that she had given the matter some thought, it struck her as highly unlikely that it would choose her lifetime in which to come crashing down. It would actually be a remarkable privilege were that to happen.
Even so, she would still be glad when they reached the other side.
She was looking out of the viewing window when she saw another quick succession of flashes, like those she had observed from the roof. They were brighter now—she was undoubtedly closer to the source of whatever they were—and they left hemispherical purple after-images on her eyes, even when she blinked.
“You’re wondering what they are,” a voice said.
She turned. She was expecting to see Quaestor Jones, but the voice did not quite have his timbre. It was the voice of a younger man, with an accent from somewhere in the badlands.
Harbin, she wondered for an instant? Could it possibly be Harbin?
But it wasn’t her brother.
She didn’t recognise the man at all. He was taller than her and a little older, she guessed, although there was something in his expression—something in his eyes, now that she narrowed it down—that made him appear to be a lot older. He was not really bad-looking, she supposed. He had a thin, serious face, with prominent cheekbones and a jawline so sharp it hurt. His hair was cut very short, shorter than she liked it, so that she could see the exact shape of his skulclass="underline" a phrenologist’s dream date. He had small ears that stuck out more than he might have wished. His neck was thin and his Adam’s apple was prominent in a way that always alarmed her in men, as if something inside his neck had popped out of alignment and needed to be pushed back before harm was done.
“How do you know what I’m wondering?” Rashmika asked.
“Well, you are, aren’t you?”
She half-scowled. “And you’d know all about them, I suppose?”
“They’re charges,” he said amicably, as if he was accustomed to this kind of rudeness. “Nuclear demolition charges. They’re being used by Permanent Way teams clearing the road ahead of the cathedrals. God’s Fire.”
She had already guessed that the explosions had something to do with the Way. “I didn’t think they ever used anything like that.”
“Mostly they don’t. I haven’t been keeping up with the news, but they must have hit some unusually heavy obstructions. They could clear it with conventional charges and digging, if they had all the time in the world. But of course that’s the one thing they never have, not when those cathedrals are coming closer all the while. My guess is it was a rearguard spoiler action:”
“Oh, do please enlighten me.”
“It’s what happens when the cathedrals at the back begin to lose ground. Sometimes they sabotage the Way behind them to cause trouble for the leading cathedrals when they come round again on the next loop. Of course, it’s nothing anyone can ever prove…”
She studied his clothing: trousers and a high-collared loose-sleeved shirt; light, flat-soled shoes; everything grey and nondescript. No indication of rank, status, wealth or religious affiliation.
“Who are you?” Rashmika asked. “You’re talking to me as if we’ve already met, but I don’t know you at all.”
“But you do know me,” the young man said.
His face said that he was telling the truth, or at least not believing himself to be lying. His certainty made her all the less willing to give ground, irrational as that was.
“I think you’re mistaken.”
“What I mean is, we have met. And I believe you owe me a debt of gratitude.”
“Do I, now?”
“I saved your life—when you were on the roof, looking down the access shaft. You nearly fell, and I caught you.”
“That wasn’t you,” she said. “That was…”
“An Observer? Yes, it was. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t me.”
“Don’t be silly,” Rashmika said.
“Why don’t you believe me? Did you see my face?”
“Not clearly, no.”
‘Then you have no reason to think it wasn’t me, either. Yes, I know it could have been anyone up there. But who else saw what happened?“
“You can’t be an Observer.”
“No, not now I can’t.”
She did not want his company. Not specifically his company, but company in general. She wanted only to observe the slow approach to the bridge, to compose her thoughts as they made the crossing, mentally mapping the difficult terrain that lay ahead of her. She did not want idle conversation or distraction, most certainly not with the sort of person he claimed to be.
“What do you mean by that?” she asked. “Are you an Observer or aren’t you?”
“I was, but now I’m not.”
She felt a flicker of sympathy. “Because of what happened on the roof?”
“No. That didn’t help, certainly, but my doubts had already set in before that happened.”
“Oh.” Then her conscience was clear.
“I can’t say you didn’t play a small part in it, though.”
“What?”
“I saw you the first time you came up. I was on the viewing platform, with the others. We were supposed to be concentrating on Haldora, blocking out all external distractions. They could make it easy for us by physically restricting our view, forcing our eyes to stay locked on the planet, but that’s not the way it’s done. There has to be an element of discipline, an element of self-control. We’re supposed to look at Haldora for every instant of the day, despite the distractions. There are devices in the helmets that monitor how well we do that, recording every twitch of the eye. And I saw you. Only in my peripheral vision, to begin with. My eye made an involuntary movement to bring you into focus and I lost contact with Haldora for a fraction of a second.”
“Naughty,” she said.
“Naughtier than you think. There would have been a disciplinary measure for just that violation. It’s not so much the fact that I looked away as that I was occupying a space on the roof that might have been used by someone more vigilant. That was the sin, because in that instant there was always a chance—no matter how small—that Haldora might vanish. And someone else would have been denied the chance of witnessing that miracle because I had the weakness of mind to look away.”