The Abyss Beyond Dreams Page 64

  Then came the gunfire in the palace corridors themselves. Twice he heard explosions, the screams of the dying. Souls of dead guards drifted through the innermost apartments, apologetic as they drifted up, starting their long flight towards Giu.

  The family had retreated to the central drawing room, with its crystal chandeliers and priceless furniture and polished floor, with tall windows looking out over the manicured gardens. Seven of his children were huddled round him (Dionene was out somewhere, thank Giu, but he had a pretty good idea of Aothori’s fate: his eldest son wasn’t popular at the best of times), the younger ones crying, the older two brittlely defiant. Little granddaughter asleep, cradled in her petrified mother’s arms. His wife stood beside him, stiff backed, showing courage for the children, her shell strong, but he knew the fear in her mind. Courtiers formed a protective picket around them, trying not to let their dread bloom.

  Then the ’path had come. Coulan, offering terms of surrender. The life of everyone in the palace in exchange for taking the family into custody.

  Philious agreed; he knew all about Coulan from Trevene’s long briefings on Slvasta and his cronies. Coulan was the level-headed one. Even so, he half-expected to be shot as soon as the doors opened; the horror of the Lanuux and Alfreed was still fresh in his mind. But Coulan kept his word, and his militia were efficient and disciplined.

  They were escorted down to a covered wagon and fuzzed as they were driven through the streets. The ride went on for a long time, but it finished at a small hotel in the Nalani borough. There they waited, guarded by Coulan’s militia, while the mobs fought the authorities for control of the city.

  Something about the militia members was eerily wrong. They wouldn’t speak to the family, they kept a perfect guard on their prisoners, they didn’t misbehave, nor threaten. The hotel was kept under an impervious teekay shell that must have been difficult to maintain, but it never wavered in all the time they were imprisoned. Philious half-suspected they were Fallers.

  All they could do was wait. He forbade the children to discuss what their fate might be, but he knew speculation was gnawing at their minds. They might not be able to ’path through the militia’s shell, but the sounds of fighting were clear enough, and the upper rooms gave them a glimpse out over the rooftops, where smoke was visible across the city.

  Philious endured as best he could, never quite understanding how this had come to pass.

  Then on the third day of captivity, a man called Yannrith appeared and ordered Philious to accompany him.

  ‘No!’ his wife cried. ‘They’ll kill you, they’re animals, worse than Fallers! Don’t go.’

  ‘It’s not us who are the animals,’ Yannrith spat back at her. ‘I saw what’s inside the Research Institute. So did Aothori, a real close-up look.’

  ‘Bastard! Murdering bastard.’

  Philious held up his hand, anxious not to annoy this imposing man. ‘I’ll go.’ He kissed his wife, very aware it was probably the last time he’d ever see her. ‘You’re not to worry. Be brave, for the children.’

  There was an odd moment at the hotel’s entrance. Two militiamen stood guard there, staring blankly ahead.

  ‘Stand aside,’ Yannrith ordered.

  They didn’t move.

  ‘By order of the People’s Interim Congress, which is this world’s legitimate government, you will stand aside so I may conduct our prime minister’s authorized business.’

  It took a long moment, but the guards stepped aside. There were three cabs outside with armed comrades riding in them. Yannrith led Philious into the middle one, and fuzzed it heavily. Philious eyed the man, who was obviously regiment trained, and wondered again what had turned people like this against him.

  ‘I’m curious,’ Philious said. ‘What exactly have you done to those poor militia people? I thought they might be Fallers at first, but they’re not, are they?’

  ‘Shut up,’ Yannrith said.

  ‘Threads perhaps, in their brains?’

  ‘Last time: shut the crud up.’

  Philious smiled at his small victory. He wasn’t entirely surprised when after forty minutes of travelling they arrived back at the palace. But when they did finally step out into the inner courtyard and he sent his ex-sight probing round, he was immediately demoralized by what he perceived. ‘Where is everything?’ he demanded. ‘What have you done with all— Oh, no! No!’

  ‘We thought we’d start the redistribution of wealth from the top down,’ Yannrith replied smugly.

  ‘My wife is right – you are crudding animals. And pathetic, petty-minded ones at that.’ Nonetheless he was worried about what the militia people had found below the palace; that would be far worse than the institute’s secrets. They won’t understand any of it, he told himself. Not that it matters any more.

  A tall slender woman was waiting beside the door into the private residence. Her shell was as hard as any Philious had ever encountered. She had a mod-bird perched on her arm, and she was feeding it a chunk of meat. He blinked. The meat had looked suspiciously like a human finger.

  As he approached, she sent the mod-bird off into the sky. ‘Welcome home, Captain,’ she said in mockery.

  Philious didn’t respond. Nonetheless he couldn’t help his growing worry as Yannrith and the woman escorted him down the stone stairs into the vaults. The regiment man seemed to know exactly where he was going.

  Philious’s final surprise was the man waiting for him in the ship’s armoury cellar. His eyes narrowed at the empty jacket arm pinned across his chest. ‘Captain Slvasta! Trevene warned me you were trouble.’

  ‘He was right.’

  ‘Are you going to kill me now?’

  ‘No. Do you know why?’

  ‘Because that would prove to the whole of Bienvenido that you’re naught but a savage, and your pitiful revolution is a sham.’

  ‘No. It’s because I need to know something, and you might have the answer. That is your only value right now.’

  ‘Go directly to Uracus. Even if I knew where Dionene was, I would willingly take Guidance to Giu before I told you.’

  ‘That’s not why you’re here.’

  ‘Then what . . .?’

  Slvasta pointed his finger at the hulking mass of the Vermillion’s armoury behind him. ‘What was in there?’

  ‘I have no ide—’Captain Philious paused, terribly cautious of trickery. ‘What do you mean, was in there?’

  ‘Exactly that,’ Slvasta said.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Andricea.’

  The woman stepped forwards. ‘One of our associates removed five large objects from this chamber – which we assume is part of Captain Cornelius’s ship. There are plenty of other weird artefacts down here, none of which could have been made on this world.’

  Philious shook his head. ‘These are all just leftovers from the ship, that’s all. Nothing works. They haven’t worked for millennia.’

  ‘You seemed concerned, just now, that something had been taken,’ Andricea said. ‘We don’t know what those things were, but they’re clearly valuable to someone. The militia people our associate employed have had something done to their minds, like hypnosis but so much stronger. It took a great deal of effort to get them to tell me that the objects had been taken, but I did break through their conditioning eventually. So tell me, Captain, how long do you think you can hold out against me?’

  Philious glanced nervously at the armoury again. ‘I don’t believe you. This is some kind of trick. Nobody . . .’ He licked his top lip, unsurprised to taste beads of sweat.

  ‘Nobody what?’ Slvasta asked coolly.

  ‘Nothing works. I don’t lie.’

  ‘Then it doesn’t matter if you tell us what was in there, does it?’

  ‘This, none of this can help your doomed revolution. You will lose. The cities and counties will march into Varlan and send you straight to Uracus for your crimes.’

  ‘What was in there?’ Slvasta bellowed. His hand gripped
a pistol tight, not quite waving it towards Philious.

  ‘Nothing was taken. I know this because you can’t get inside. The entrance doesn’t work any more; it hasn’t for over two thousand years.’

  Slvasta grinned. It disturbed Philious badly.

  ‘Oh, really? Come here.’ His teekay shoved at Philious, urging him forwards.

  Philious didn’t resist. Then he got closer to the armoury – and froze. A wide circle close to the base had opened – the place his father had told him was the access hatch, made from a metal that Commonwealth ingenuity could make flow like water. ‘Oh, Uracus,’ he whispered. And the metal had indeed flowed once more; he could see it now as a thick rim around the hole. ‘No, no, no.’ He hurried forwards, and peered up into the absolute darkness of the interior with trepidation. Many years ago, when he was being prepared for the Captaincy – being tutored in their true heritage, in the old sciences, on the nature of the Void and how they must never drop their guard against the Fallers – his father had brought him to stand under the ship’s armoury, where one of the small broken conduit tubes led up inside it. He had sent his ex-sight through the tiny gap, examining the strange dead war machines entombed within, frightened and impressed by the things his father told him about them.

  Now his ex-sight ranged freely inside the armoury, perceiving the empty loading cradles. His legs trembled as he backed away, then he spun round and fixed Slvasta with a furious glare. ‘They’re gone!’

  ‘No crud! Now tell me exactly what they are.’

  ‘Quantumbusters,’ Philious whispered in dread. ‘There were five quantumbusters in there.’

  The burst of emotion that came pouring through Slvasta’s tenuous shell was a combination of anger and incomprehension. ‘What the crud are quantumbusters?’

  ‘The greatest weapon our ancestors ever created. They are so powerful they can destroy an entire sun and all its planets. They don’t work in the Void. None of the old technology works any more.’ Philious stared at the access hatch – impossibly open. ‘Until today.’

  *

  Twenty armed men that Tovakar and Yannrith trusted implicitly piled into five cabs. Slvasta rode in the second cab, along with Yannrith and Captain Philious. Andricea herself was driving the lead cab, teekay and a whip sending the horse racing down Walton Boulevard, then along the quickest route to the quayside.

  ‘I’ve ’pathed our comrades on a wharf,’ Yannrith said. ‘They’re holding a steam ferry for us.’

  ‘Let us hope it has a happier journey across than the Lanuux and the Alfreed,’ Captain Philious said snidely.

  ‘We didn’t do that,’ Slvasta snapped back.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then who? Your mysterious associate?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Slvasta’s headache was making him sweat now. It was a constant battle to keep his eyes open, the fatigue which gripped him was so strong. Thinking was difficult. But he had to know, to work this out. Could Coulan be some kind of counterrevolutionary? But if so, why had Trevene not arrested them all? And Javier, why was he suddenly pro-mod? Bethaneve – that was the one that really hurt. How was she connected to Nigel?

  What am I missing?

  ‘Did you know about us?’ he asked the Captain.

  ‘Trevene knew you were behind the mod-killing spree; that was obvious right from the start.’

  ‘Why didn’t you stop us?’

  ‘Because there were just four of you – four that mattered, anyway. You were drawing all the hotheads and radicals together; you had some kind of communication arrangement with people from the Shanties and other undesirables. We couldn’t break your system of contact, it was so random, but all the troublemakers were doing what you told them. It was impressive politics. Useful.’

  ‘To you? How?’

  ‘They do what you say. You do what we want. That’s why we offered you Langley. And you took it.’

  ‘Like all the greedy bastards before me.’

  ‘Yes. We underestimated your fanaticism, that’s all.’

  ‘All? It’s cost you everything.’

  ‘You’re gloating? After what’s happened today? Be careful of your arrogance, Slvasta, or it will be your downfall. I should know.’

  ‘So you had files on us?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tell me about Coulan.’

  ‘Some kind of student, a history graduate, I think, who drifted into the radical scene. We never could find out where he came from.’

  ‘Kassell, he came from Kassell. He’s a junior son who came to Varlan’s university to learn agricultural management so he could help run the family estate. While he was there he came to see the oppression of your regime.’

  ‘No, you’re wrong – or more likely lied to. There is no record of him in Kassell. Trevene checked.’

  ‘He has to have come from somewhere!’

  ‘Yes, but where is starting to concern me very badly – though he behaved perfectly honourably with me and my family, thank Giu. He’s the associate who opened the armoury, isn’t he?’

  Slvasta nodded.

  ‘I can’t do that. The Captains haven’t had a proper electrical supply for the last two thousand years. The Void is hostile to it. I know the theory; I even made a lead acid battery when I was learning about it, that’s such a basic electrical power source even the Void doesn’t spoil it. Slvasta, I’ve seen a wire filament glow red from its power; it was almost as bright as a candle flame. It was impressive. But this – his knowledge and ability – is a whole new level. We saw something strange and new in the Faller from Eynsham Square. It had threads in its brain, threads that could control it like Uracus’s own puppet. That kind of machinery doesn’t belong in the Void.’

  ‘Wait. Someone controlled the Eynsham Square Faller?’

  ‘Yes, and how that worked to your advantage, eh? Hero. I’m assuming Coulan is using a similar process to control his militia. So now I am almost scared to wonder where he came from. Do you believe he is working alone, or is he part of a bigger faction inside your precious revolution?’

  ‘He’s allied with Nigel, somehow.’ Slvasta growled the name through a dry throat.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘One of our supporters.’ Slvasta remembered his visit to Blair Farm, the compound with all its new barns – efficient, productive, humming with activity; the hundreds of mods scurrying about, which had made his blood run cold. ‘He knows a lot about machines. And politics. But he’s no Faller; I have seen his blood with my own eyes. It’s red.’

  ‘We certainly didn’t have a file on him. So where does he come from?’

  ‘He lives south of Varlan.’

  ‘Ah, and here we are in hot pursuit of a convoy that crossed the river to the south bank. Tell me. When you captured me, the only major railway that was left intact was the Southern City Line. Why did you spare it?’

  Slvasta hated the superior tone in the Captain’s voice. ‘We didn’t. I don’t know what happened to our sabotage teams, though I can make a crudding good guess now. And the Goleford bridge was blown this afternoon.’ What was it Bethaneve had said? Just after an express crossed it.

  ‘So they’ve taken the quantumbusters south. I still don’t understand why. Even if they could get them to work again, which I have considerable doubts about, what would be the point? If they detonate a quantumbuster, it will wipe out Bienvenido, the Forest, and most likely our sun as well. Neither humans nor Fallers will survive.’

  ‘Why then? Why? What has all this been for?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Philious said. ‘But if you’re ever going to find out, you need to catch up with your associates, and quickly.’

  *

  They’d lost Coulan as soon as he stepped off the ferry onto the south bank. Technically, Willesden was another borough of Varlan. But in reality it was a rather pleasant town with decent-sized houses and broad parks; there was only one Shanty on its border, and that none too big. Business here centred on trade, moving an
d storing goods brought in by the railway and the boats. A wide swathe of the town between the wharfs and station was made up entirely of warehouses.

  In the aftermath of the revolution, travel was again a major preoccupation. Hundreds of refugees arrived every hour, all of them desperate for temporary lodgings and a way out into the southern countryside.

  There weren’t many cell members in Willesden. The ones that had been given duties had been redeployed days ago to find out what had happened to their comrades assigned to blow up the bridges. Bethaneve had summoned several to the riverbank area to help search, but they were slow coming.

  She and Javier disembarked from the ferry as the sun hung close to the horizon, looking as if it was about to plunge into the river. Long rose-gold shimmers licked across the water, tinting the air a faint copper. They looked around in dismay. The chaos here was almost as bad as what they’d left behind them on the quayside, only the scale was reduced.

  ‘Any ideas?’ Bethaneve asked.

  ‘Well, now that the Goleford bridge is down, he’ll have to find himself either a boat or a horse.’

  ‘Can he ride?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. I’ve never seen him ride, but that doesn’t mean anything.’ Javier could feel his stomach tightening up at that admission. What do I really know about him? I thought it was everything.

  ‘I’ve not seen him ride, either,’ Bethaneve said. ‘And if he can, we’re not going to find him. So that leaves us with a boat.’

  They looked along the river. On this side, it was mainly ferries and small boats that had just charged an extortionate fee for bringing desperate people over. There were only two big ocean-going cargo ships, their sails all furled. Both had big crowds of people at their gangplanks, all bidding against each other.

  ‘They’re not going to leave tonight,’ Bethaneve decided. There were a few other boats, barges mainly, but their captains seemed intent on making a fortune charging passage across the Colbal. She scanned the houses of Willesden again. The land here didn’t rise as it did on the Varlan side, but even so, it wasn’t possible to see the countryside beyond. She narrowed her eyes as she tried to read the signposts at the top of each road leading away from the river.