“Go on,” Rashmika said. She finally understood why Pietr had wanted her to come up on to the roof midway through the crossing.
“They were the first to claim that the vanishings were increasing in frequency, but it was statistically difficult to prove. There, was already anecdotal evidence that they occurred in closely spaced clusters, but now, or so the Numericists claimed, the spaces between the clusters were growing shorter. They also claimed that the vanishings themselves were growing longer in duration, although they admitted that the evidence for that was much less ‘significant,’ in the statistical sense.”
“But they were right, weren’t they?”
Pietr nodded, the reflected landscape tilting in his helmet. “At least for the first part. Now even crude statistical methods will show the same result. The vanishings are definitely becoming more frequent.”
“And the second part?”
“Not proven. But all the new data hasn’t disproved it, either.”
Again Rashmika risked a glance down at the smear. “But what happened to them? Why did they end up down there?”
“No one really knows. As I said, the churches don’t even admit that an attempt at a crossing ever took place. Dig a little deeper and you’ll find grudging acknowledgement that the Numericists once existed—paperwork relating to rare trade dealings, for instance—but you won’t find anything about them ever crossing Absolution Gap.”
“It happened, though.”
“They tried it, yes. No one will ever know why, I think. Perhaps it was a last-ditch attempt to steal prestige from the churches that had frozen them out. Perhaps they’d worked out a short cut that would bring them ahead of the main procession without ever losing sight of Haldora. It doesn’t matter, really. They had a reason, they tried to make the crossing, and they failed. Why they failed, that’s something else.”
“The bridge didn’t give way,” Rashmika said.
“No—doesn’t look as if it did. Their cathedral was small, by the standards of the main ones. From the position of the impact point we can tell they made it a good way across the bridge before sliding off, so it wasn’t a question of the bridge buckling. My guess is it was always a delicate balancing act, with the cathedral extending either side of the road, and that midway over they lost navigational control just long enough to topple over. Who knows?”
“But you think there’s another possibility.”
“They hadn’t made themselves popular, what with all that statistical stuff about the vanishings. Remember what I said about the other churches not wanting to know about the increasing frequency?”
“They don’t want the world to change.”
“No, they don’t. They’ve got a nice arrangement as it stands. Keep circling Hela, keep monitoring Haldora, make a living exporting scuttler relics to the rest of human space. In the high church echelons, things are fine as they are, thank you very much. They don’t want any rumours of apocalypse upsetting their gravy train.”
“So you think someone destroyed the Numericists’ cathedral.”
“Like I said, don’t go trying to prove anything. Of course, it could have been an accident. No one has ever said that taking a cathedral across Absolution Gap was a wise course of action.”
“Despite all that, Pietr, you still have faith?” She saw his fist close tighter on the rail.
“I believe that the vanishings are a message in a time of crisis. Not just a mute statement of Godlike power, as the churches would have it—a miracle for a miracle’s sake—but something vastly more significant. I believe that they are a kind of clock, counting down, and that zero hour is much closer than anyone in authority will have us believe. The Numericists knew this. Do I believe that the churches are to be trusted? By and large, with one or two exceptions, no. I trust them about as far as I can piss in vacuum. But I still have my faith. That hasn’t changed.”
She thought he sounded as if he was telling the truth, but without a clear view of his face, her guess was as good as anyone’s.
“There’s something else though, isn’t there? You said the churches couldn’t possibly conceal all evidence of the changing vanishings.”
“They can’t. But there is an anomaly.” Pietr let go of the railing long enough to pass something to Rashmika. It was little metal cylinder with a screw top. “You should see this,” he said. “I think you will find it interesting. Inside is a piece of paper with some markings on it. They’re not annotated, since that would make them more dangerous should anyone in authority recognise them for what they are.”
“You’re going to have to give me a little more to go on than that.”
“In Skull Cliff, where I come from, there was a man named Saul Tempier. I knew him. He was an old hermit who lived in an abandoned scuttler shaft on the outskirts of the town. He fixed digging machines for a living. He wasn’t mad or violent, or even particularly antisocial; he just didn’t get on well with the other villagers and kept out of their way most of the time. He had an obsessive, methodical streak that made other people feel slightly ill at ease. He wasn’t interested in wives or lovers or friends.”
“And you don’t think he was particularly antisocial?”
“Well, he wasn’t actually rude or inhospitable. He kept himself clean and didn’t—as far as I am aware—have any genuinely unpleasant habits. If you visited him, he’d always make you tea from a big old samovar. He had an ancient neural lute which he played now and then. He’d always want to know what you thought of his playing.” She caught the flash of his smile through the faceplate. “Actually, it was pretty dreadful, but I never had the heart to tell him.”
“How did you come to know him?”
“It was my job to keep our stock of digging machinery in good order. We’d do most of the repairs ourselves, but when-ever there was a backlog or something we just couldn’t get to work properly, one of us would haul it over to Tempier’s grotto. I suppose I visited him two or three times a year. I never minded it, really. I actually quite liked the old coot, bad lute playing and all. Anyway, Tempier was getting old. On one of our last meetings—this would have been eleven or twelve years ago—he told me there was something he wanted to show me. I was surprised that he trusted me that much.”
“I don’t know,” Rashmika said. “You strike me as the kind of person someone would find it quite easy to trust, Pietr.”
“Is that intended as a compliment?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Well, I’ll take it as one, in that case. Where was I?”
“Tempier said there was something he wanted to show you.”
“It’s actually the piece of paper I’ve just given you, or, rather, the paper is a careful copy of the original. Tempier, it turned out, had been keeping a record of the vanishings for most of his life. He had done a lot of background work—comparing and contrasting the public records of the main churches, even making visits to the Way to inspect those archives that were not usually accessible. He was a very diligent and obsessive sort, as I’ve said, and when I saw his notes I realised that they were easily the best personal record of the vanishings I’d ever seen. Frankly, I doubt there’s a better amateur compilation anywhere on Hela. Alongside each vanishing was a huge set of associated material—notes on witnesses, the quality of those witnesses, and any other corroborative data sets. If there was a volcanic eruption the day before, he’d note that as well. Anything unusual—no matter how irrelevant it appeared.”
“He found something, I take it. Was it the same thing that the Numericists discovered?”
“No,” Pietr said. “It was more than that. Tempier was well aware of what the Numericists had claimed. His own data didn’t contradict theirs in the slightest. In fact, he regarded it as rather obvious that the vanishings were growing more frequent.”