“But it didn’t vanish. You’re off the hook.”
“I assure you that isn’t the way they see it.” He looked down, sheepishly, she thought. “Anyway, it’s academic: I made things a lot worse. I didn’t look back towards Haldora even when I was consciously aware that I’d lost contact. I just watched you, straining to hold you in focus, not daring to move any part of my body. I couldn’t see your face, but I could see the way you moved. I knew you were a woman, and when I realised that it just made it worse. It wasn’t idle curiosity any more. I wasn’t simply being distracted by some oddity in the landscape.”
When he said “woman” she felt a quiet thrill that she hoped did not show in her face. When had anyone ever called her that before without prefacing it with “young,” or something equally diminishing?
She blushed. “You can’t possibly have known who I was, though.”
“No,” he said, “not for certain. But when you came up again, I thought, ‘She must be a very independent-minded person.’ Nobody else had come up on to the roof the whole time I was there. And when you nearly had your accident… well, then I did see your face. Not clearly, but enough to know I’d recognise you again.” He paused, and for a moment watched the rolling view himself. “I did have my doubts,” he said, “even when I saw you here. But when I saw the flashes, I knew I had to take the chance. I’m glad I did. You seem like a nice person, and now you’ve as good as admitted you were the same person I helped up on the roof. Do you mind if I ask your name?”
“Provided you tell me yours.”
“Pietr,” he said. “Pietr Vale. I’m from Skull Cliff, in the Hyrrokkin lowlands.”
“Rashmika Els,” she said guardedly. “From High Scree, in the Vigrid badlands.”
“I thought I recognised the accent. I guess I’m not really a badlander myself, but we’re not from places so very far apart, are we?”
Rashmika felt torn between politeness and hostility. “I think you’ll find we’re a lot further apart than you realise.”
“Why do you say that? We’re both going south, aren’t we? Both taking the caravan towards the Way. How different can we be?”
“Very,” Rashmika said. “I’m not on a pilgrimage. I’m on an… enquiry.”
He smiled. “Call it what you will.”
“I’m on personal business. Personal secular business. Business that has nothing to do with your religion—which, incidentally, I do not believe in—but which has everything to do with right and wrong.”
“I was right. You really are a serious and determined person.”
She didn’t like that. “Shouldn’t you be getting back to your friends?”
“They won’t let me back,” he said. “They might have tolerated a moment of inattention; they might even have forgiven me a lapse of the kind I mentioned before. But once you leave them, that’s it. You’re poisoned. There is no way back.”
“Why did you leave?”
“Because of you, as I said. Because seeing you up there opened a glint of doubt in my armour. I don’t suppose it was ever very secure, or I wouldn’t have noticed you in the first place. But by the second occasion, when you nearly fell, I was already doubting that I had the conviction to continue.” At that, Rashmika started to say something, but he held up his hand and continued. “You shouldn’t blame yourself. Really, it could have been anyone up there. My faith was never as strong as the others‘. And when I thought about what lay ahead, what I was setting myself up for, I knew I didn’t have the strength to go through with it.”
She knew what he meant. The rigours of this part of the pilgrimage were as nothing compared to what would happen when Pietr reached the cathedral that was his destination. There, his faith would be irreversibly consolidated by chemical means. And as an Observer he would be surgically and neurologically adapted to enable him to witness Haldora for every instant of his existence. No sleep, no inattention, not even the respite of blinking.
Only mute observance, until he died.
“I wouldn’t have the strength either,” she said. “Even if I believed.”
“Why don’t you?”
“Because I believe in rational explanations. I do not believe planets simply cease to exist without good reason.”
“But there is a good reason. The best possible reason.”
“The work of God?”
Pietr nodded. Fascinated, she watched the bob of his Adam’s apple pushing against the high edge of his collar. “What better explanation can you ask for?”
“But why here, why now?”
“Because these are End Times,” Pietr said. “We’ve had human war and human plagues. Then we had stranger plagues and reports of stranger wars. Don’t you wonder where the refugees come from? Don’t you wonder why they come here, of all places? They know it. They know this is the place where it will begin. This is the place where it will happen.”
“I thought you said you weren’t a believer.”
“I said I wasn’t sure of the strength of my faith. That isn’t quite the same thing.”
“I think if God wanted to make a point, He’d find a better way to do it than through the random vanishing of a gas-giant planet light-years from Earth.”
“But it isn’t random,” Pietr countered, evading the rest of her point. “That’s what everyone thinks, but it isn’t true. The churches know it, and those who take the time to study the records know it, too.”
Now, despite herself, she found that she wanted to hear what he had to say. Pietr was correct: the vanishings of Hal-dora were always spoken of by the churches as if they were random events, subject to inscrutable divine scheduling. And the shameful thing was that she had always taken this information at face value, without questioning it. She had never stopped to think that the truth might be more complex. She had been far too preoccupied with her academic study of the scut-tlers to look further afield.
“If it isn’t random,” she asked, “then what is it?”
“I don’t know what you’d call it if you were a mathematician or a scholar. I’m neither. I only know what such people have told me. It’s true that you can never predict when a vanishing will occur—in that sense they are random. But the average gap between vanishings has been growing shorter ever since Quaiche witnessed the first one. It’s just that until recently no one could see it clearly. Now you can’t miss it, if you study the evidence.”
The back of Rashmika’s neck prickled. “Then show me the evidence. I want to see it.”
The caravan swerved sharply as it entered another of the tunnels bored through the side of the cliff.
“I can show you evidence,” he said, “but whether it’s the right evidence or not is another matter entirely.”
“You’re losing me, Pietr.”
The caravan scraped and gouged its way through the narrow confines of the tunnel. Rashmika heard thumps as dislodged ceiling materials—rocks and ice—hammered against the roof. She thought of the Observers up there and wondered what it was like for them.
“We’ll reach the bridge in four or five hours,” he said. “When we’re halfway across, meet me on the roof, where we were before. I’ll have something interesting to show you.”
“Why would I want to meet you on the roof, Pietr? Can I trust you?”
“Of course,” he said.
But she only accepted his word because she knew that he believed what he said.