“What about you?” he asked. “Planning to sleep this one out?”
He had expected Khouri to answer: the question had been addressed at her. But it was Aura who spoke. “No, Scorpio,” she said. “I’m going to stay awake. I’m six now. I want to be older when we reach Hela.”
“You have it all worked out, don’t you?”
“Not all of it,” she said, “but I’m remembering more and more each day.”
“About the shadows?” he asked.
“They’re people,” she said. “Not exactly like us, but closer than you’d think. They just live on the other side of something. But it’s very bad there. Something’s gone wrong with their home. That’s why they can’t live there any longer.”
“Sometimes she speaks of brane worlds,” Khouri said, “mumbles mathematics in her sleep, stuff about folded branes and gravitic signalling across the bulk. We think the shadows are entities, Scorp: the inhabitants of an adjacent universe.”
‘That’s quite a leap.“
“It’s all there, in the old theories. They might only be a few millimetres away, in the hyperspace of the bulk.”
“And what does this have to do with us?”
“Like Aura says, they can’t live there any longer. They want out. They want to come across the gap, into this brane, but they need help from someone on this side to do it.”
“Just like that? Would there be something in it for us, as well?”
“She’s always talked about negotiation, Scorp. I think what she meant was that the shadows might be able to help us out with our own local problem.”
“Provided we let them cross the gap,” Scorpio said.
“That’s the idea.”
“You know what?” he said, as the technicians began to plumb him in. “I think I’m going to have to sleep on this one.”
“What are you holding in your hand?” Khouri asked.
He opened his fist, showing her the shard of conch material Remontoire had given him. “It’s for luck,” he said.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Rashmika was on her way to the Clocktower when Grelier emerged from the shadows between two pillars. She wondered how long he had been skulking there, waiting on the off chance that she would select this particular route from her quarters.
“Surgeon-General,” she said.
“Like a wee word, if that won’t take too much of your time.”
“I’m on my way to the garret. The dean has a new Ultra delegation to interview.”
“This won’t take a moment. I understand how useful you’ve become to him.”
Rashmika shrugged: clearly she was going nowhere until Grelier was done with her. “What is it?” she asked.
“Nothing much,” he said, “just a small anomaly in your bloodwork. Thought it worth mentioning.”
“Then mention it,” she said.
“Not here, if you don’t mind. Loose lips, and all that.”
She looked around. There was no one else in sight. There was, now that she thought about it, almost never anyone else in sight when the surgeon-general was in the vicinity. He made witnesses melt into the architecture, especially when he did his rounds with the medical case and its arsenal of loaded syringes. Today all he carried was the cane, the head of which he tapped against the bottom of his chin as he spoke.
“I thought you said it would only take a moment,” Rashmika said.
“It will, and it’s on your way. We’ll just make a stop in Bloodwork, and then you can go about your duty.”
He escorted her to the nearest Clocktower elevator, slid the trelliswork door closed and set the carriage in motion. Outside it was daytime. The coloured light from the stained-glass windows slid tints across his face as they rose.
“Enjoying your work here, Miss Els?”
“It’s work,” she said.
“You don’t sound sparklingly enthusiastic. I’m surprised, frankly. Given what you might have ended up with—dangerous work in a clearance gang—haven’t you landed on your feet?”
What could she tell him? That she was scared to death by the voices that she had started hearing?
No. That wasn’t necessary at all. She had enough rational fears to draw from without invoking the shadows.
“We’re seventy-five kilometres from Absolution Gap, Surgeon-General,” she said. “In just under three days this cathedral is going to be crossing that bridge.” She mimicked his tone of voice. “Frankly, there are places I’d rather be.”
“Alarms you, does it?”
“Don’t tell me that you’re thrilled at the prospect.”
“The dean knows what he’s doing.”
“You think so?”
Green and pink light chased each other across his face. “Yes,” he said.
“You don’t believe it,” she said. “You’re as scared as I am, aren’t you? You’re a rational man, Surgeon-General. You don’t have his blood in your veins. You know this cathedral can’t be taken over the bridge.”
‘There’s a first time for everything,“ he said. Self-conscious of her attention, he was trying so hard to control his expression that a muscle in the side of his temple had started twitching.
“He has a death wish,” Rashmika said. “He knows that the vanishings are heading towards a culmination. He wants to mark the occasion with a bang. What better way than to smash the cathedral to dust and make a holy martyr of himself in the process? He’s the dean now, but who’s to say he doesn’t have his mind set on sainthood?”
“You’re forgetting something,” Grelier said. “He’s thinking beyond the crossing. He wants the long-term protection of Ultras. That isn’t the desire of a man planning suicide in three days. What other explanation is there?”
Unless she was reading him badly, Grelier believed that himself. She began to wonder just how much Grelier really knew about what Quaiche had in mind.
“I saw something odd when I was on my way here,” Rashmika said.
Grelier neatened his hair. His usually impeccably tidy white bristle-cut showed signs of distress. It was getting to him, Rashmika thought. He was as scared as everyone else, but he could not let it show.
“Saw something?” he echoed.
“Towards the end of the caravan trip,” she said, “after we’d crossed the bridge and were on our way to meet the cathedrals, we passed a huge fleet of machines moving north—excavating equipment, the sort they use to open out the largest scuttler seams. Whatever it was, it was on its way somewhere.”
Grelier’s eyes narrowed. “Nothing strange in that. They’d have been on their way to fix a problem with the Permanent Way before the cathedrals got there.”
“They were moving in the wrong direction for that,” Rashmika said. “And whatever they were doing, the quaestor didn’t want to talk about them. It was as if he’d been given orders to pretend they didn’t exist.”
“This has nothing to do with the dean.”
“But something on that scale could hardly take place without him knowing about it, surely,” Rashmika said. “In fact, he probably authorised it. What do you think it is? A new scuttler excavation he doesn’t want anyone to know about? Something they’ve found that can’t be left to the usual settlement miners?”
“I have no idea.” The twitch in the side of his temple had set up camp. “I have no idea and I don’t care. My responsibility is to Bloodwork and the dean’s health. That’s all. I have enough on my plate without worrying about interecumenical conspiracies.” The carriage shuddered to a halt, Grelier shrugging with evident relief. “Well, we’re here, Miss Els. And now, if you don’t mind, it’s my turn to ask the questions.”
“You said it would only take a wee moment.”
He smiled. “Well, that may well have been a wee fib.”