The Abyss Beyond Dreams (79 page)

‘What are they doing?’ Kysandra wondered.

‘Holding an auction,’ Nigel said. ‘Passage goes to the highest bidder.’

‘That’s awful. The killing has stopped. Coulan got the mobs to break up and go home yesterday.’

‘Our mobs,’ Nigel said sardonically. ‘Right now there are a lot of old scores being settled. Boss fired you from work a couple of years back? It was really unfair. Well,
now’s your chance for payback. No sheriffs keeping order right now. No officials you can turn to for help. Good time to go looting, too. And you need to loot, if you want your family to eat,
because food’s running short. No trains bringing more, remember?’

‘Uracus!’

They saw Coulan and a large squad of heavily armed militia waiting at an empty wharf. The barge steered over to it and tied up. There was a surge of hopeful people along the quayside. The
silent, stone-faced militiamen on guard at the end of the wharf stopped them getting anywhere near the gangplank.

Kysandra stood on tiptoes to give the ANAdroid a quick kiss. ‘You made it okay?’

‘I’m intact, yes.’

‘Everything ready?’ Nigel asked brusquely.

‘I’ve had my militia guard them since we stormed the palace. Slvasta and Javier are butting heads in the Interim Congress, and Bethaneve is trying to manage the blockades around the
posh boroughs that simply won’t do as they’re told. We just need to go and collect them.’

‘Good.’

Kysandra gave the desperate refugees on the quayside a concerned look. ‘What about the residents?’

‘The guns are off the street,’ Coulan said. ‘Most of them, anyway. Not that it matters. They don’t have much ammunition left. We calculated that about right.’

‘I didn’t mean that. What about food? Hospitals? There were hundreds injured, I know. What are the victorious comrades doing about getting everything working again?’

‘They just have to hang on for a week,’ Nigel said.

‘And if it doesn’t work?’

‘It will.’

‘Really? We have James Hilton, in case you’re wrong. Nigel, you can’t abandon these people, not now. They’re desperate for some kind of order; Uracus, half of them are
desperate just for a meal, and Slvasta’s Congress of Morons is busy debating ideological purity and awarding themselves important titles. The city needs
practical
help.’ She
waved an arm at the crowds. ‘You created this. You’re the one with all the experience of managing billions of people – apparently. Do something!’

Nigel and Coulan exchanged a glance. Air hissed out of Nigel’s mouth in a reluctant sigh.

‘I can talk to some of the Congress delegates,’ Coulan said. ‘Organize the smarter ones to get basic services up and running again. Food will have to be brought in on
roads.’

‘Thank you!’

Nigel held up a warning finger. ‘Just as soon as we’ve got what we came for.’

‘Fine.’ She gave them both a sprightly smile. ‘Let’s go, then.’

It took a quarter of an hour to unload the carts. Then they were riding quickly into town, where the crowds that thronged the harbour melted away, leaving the streets beyond the quayside
practically deserted. Coulan’s militia men hung on to the sides of a couple of cabs which led the way, keeping their carbines very visible. A third cab followed the carts, carrying more
militia.

‘Not even cabs,’ Nigel observed as they made their way towards the centre of the city.

‘Anything with wheels got hired to take people out of town,’ Coulan said. ‘Going to have some very rich cabbies back here in a week or so.’

‘You didn’t try to stop them?’ Kysandra said.

‘Certainly not. The people who’re leaving are the ones who fear and oppose the revolution. They’re the ones who’ll ultimately organize the counter-strike, if and when it
comes. Better to have them away for the moment.’

Kysandra remembered the first time she’d visited Varlan: how wonderful the big buildings had seemed, how elegant and sophisticated. How she’d envied those who made their home in the
capital, the bright exciting lives they must all live.

Now she could hardly bear to look around. Twice she’d seen bodies hanging; two from a tree, another from a lamp post. Shuddered and turned away. Everywhere there were signs of violence
– congealed blood on the pavement, façades with long soot-slicks emerging from empty windows, looted shops, debris strewn around, the reeking silt left behind by the flooding, wrecked
cabs and carts with dead horses still attached. She gritted her teeth as their little convoy moved purposefully through it all, seeking that emotionless state she’d achieved south of the
river.

They skirted the edge of Bromwell Park and turned into Walton Boulevard. Kysandra could have cried at the state of the lovely old Rasheeda Hotel. All the ground-floor windows had been smashed,
along with many on the first, and even some on the second floor. Tattered white curtains fluttered out through the gaps, pitiful flags of submission. The troughs of flowers beside the entrance had
been broken up, the plants mashed. Her ex-sight perceived the interior had been stripped clean, leaving the grand rooms empty. Even the furniture was gone. ‘Bussalores,’ she muttered
sourly. ‘They’re like human bussalores.’

‘Life will stabilize,’ Nigel said. ‘Just hang on.’

She pressed her teeth together and stared resolutely ahead. The convoy made its way past vandalized statues and dried-up fountains that used to make the long boulevard so striking.

Militia stood guard round the massive palace. They saluted Coulan and opened the gates in the railings. The carts clattered swiftly over the expanse of cobbles outside, and through one of the
impressive archways into a courtyard. A second archway at the back, with sturdy iron gates, led into a smaller, inner courtyard overlooked by the Captain’s private quarters.

‘We found some interesting stuff that the drones missed,’ Coulan said as they made their way down a wide staircase into the vaults below the palace.

‘Like what?’ Kysandra asked.

Coulan grinned. ‘Ship’s fusion chamber, so they had power after the landing – for a while, anyway. Three regrav units from the
Vermillion
. Someone tried modifying them
– by the looks of things, without success. There’s also a smartcore that’s linked to some synthesizer nodes. Their molecular grids are all shot, so they must have worked for a
long time. And right beneath the private apartments is an old clinic with some medical modules, which are all depleted. I’d say the Captain’s family had access to Commonwealth medicine
after they landed here.’

‘How long?’ Nigel asked.

‘I think we’re looking at several centuries. The modules are badly worn. They cannibalized some to keep others working. The last one is a real patchwork. I wouldn’t have liked
to use it at the end.’

‘And then there were none,’ Nigel muttered.

‘Yeah. But our most interesting find is the gateways.’

‘What do you mean: gateways?’ Kysandra challenged. Her educational memory inserts contained a huge file on Commonwealth gateways, but surely he couldn’t mean . . . ‘Not
wormhole gateways?’

‘Oh, yeah,’ Coulan said happily. ‘The very same.’

‘Show me,’ Nigel said gruffly.

They had to go down three more flights of stairs before they came to the storage cellar. Kysandra could see why they’d descended so far when they walked through the door made of thick
anbor planks. The cellar was huge, with a ribbed semi-circular roof thirty metres high at the apex. It was filled with five hulking cylinders whose tops nearly scraped the ribs. They looked as if
they’d been wrapped in a dark-gloss spiderweb that clung tightly to the surface; the top half was covered by a heavy dust layer that killed the dull sheen. When her ex-sight probed through
the wrapping, she could perceive they were giant machines. Not that they had any moving parts – they weren’t
mechanical
– but the incredibly complex components were
locked together as tight as cells in living tissue.

‘I did not expect to find these here,’ Nigel admitted ruefully.

‘We should have done,’ Coulan said. ‘Standard equipment on colony ships. After all, who wants to transport raw material or people long distances when you reach your new world?
Gateways help keep your population centres and manufacturing sites tied together. Best way of establishing a monoculture.’

Nigel smiled fondly at the dark inert cylinders. ‘I wonder if they’ve got any floaters?’

‘And they are?’ Kysandra asked somewhat peevishly. They’d risked everything to gain unrestricted access to the palace, now these two were taking a moment to have a
nostalgiafest. Her tolerance was wearing thin.

‘Gateways you drop into a gas giant’s atmosphere. They float along the top of the gas/liquid boundary, siphoning out every kind of hydrocarbon compound you could ever need. An
infinite resource.’

‘Is that relevant?’

Nigel reached up and patted the first gateway. ‘This is what I built, Kysandra – me and Ozzie. This is what made the Commonwealth possible.’ He pursed his lips in regret.
‘I don’t suppose we can use one to reach up to the Forest?’

‘They all have direct mass converters as a power source, which are glitchy at best in the Void,’ Coulan said. ‘But this is the original protective wrap. I’m guessing
Captain Cornelius tried powering one up when they arrived. If it’d worked, they’d be using them instead of trains to link Bienvenido’s cities.’

‘So they kept them wrapped up and stored them down here. Makes sense. Damn. That would have been a real help.’ He regarded the big dark cylinders forlornly. ‘Looks like
I’m going to be a rocket jockey after all. Wilson Kime will laugh his ass off when he hears about this. Come on, let’s get what we came for.’

*

It had always surprised Yannrith how many cab drivers were cell members. Their trade was wealthy people, and the revolution was busy frightening them out of town. Of course, a
lot of cabs were also out of town right now, busy taking those same rich people to country estates or to the refuge of family in distant cities, for which they’d no doubt charge exorbitant
fees. But those who remained were happy enough to run activists all over town to help the cause. Bethaneve kept them on a rota.

A more cynical side of his mind suspected it was to secure their position afterwards. Cab licences in Varlan were notoriously unobtainable; the only way to get one these days was to inherit it.
The Varlan Cab Driver Guild could have taught Slvasta’s union a thing or two about restrictive practices and demarcation.

The cab turned out of Pointas Street onto Walton Boulevard. The statue of Captain Gootwai which had guarded the junction for centuries had been decapitated, and a pumpkin squashed onto the
broken neck. Yannrith didn’t much care for the lawlessness that was gripping the city. He liked order in his life. Slvasta had already asked him to command whatever police force they
assembled out of the remaining sheriffs and selected grade three activists. It would be a tough job, getting those two groups to work together afterwards.

‘Think of it as the perfect example of how we have to rebuild our lives afterwards,’ Slvasta had said. ‘Reconciliation has to start somewhere.’

Yannrith was scheduled to meet the surviving sheriff station captains that afternoon, to find out just how practical that was likely to be – that’s if any of them agreed to turn up
in the first place. But right now he was more concerned about the shocking split between Javier and Slvasta. It had taken everyone by surprise, blowing up out of nowhere. He was convinced it was
down to exhaustion and the unrelenting stress of the last few days. As reconciliations went, that one was pretty vital to all of them. Even Slvasta seemed to recognize that. Now.

Which was why Yannrith was on his way to the palace, to talk to Coulan, who was the calm sensible one, the one to negotiate a truce. Unfortunately, Coulan wasn’t responding to any
’paths right now, so Uracus alone knew what his game was. Maybe he was rushing to support his lover in a coup against Slvasta. Coulan always was an expert in subtle, intricate strategies.

Paranoia. Probably . . . The only way to find out was to confront him directly. Which Slvasta couldn’t do, because that would be a sign of weakness, and he had to build alliances with the
People’s Interim Congress delegates who supported him.

It fell to Yannrith, then, to act as the go-between in this feud (because Bethaneve was furious with both of them). That suited him fine because he also wanted to know first-hand how the search
for the Captain’s daughter was going. Once the whole of the Captain’s family was in custody, Slvasta could really start to apply pressure – like making the sheriff captains turn
up this afternoon. Although nobody actually wanted to start executing any more members of the Captain’s family, not now. Aothori had to go, everyone knew that, but the kids . . . That would
lose them a great deal of support.

Who could have guessed a revolution’s internal politics would turn out to be so insanely
complicated
?

A convoy of vehicles was coming the other way down Walton Boulevard, moving at a fair old pace. Two cabs in front, with armed militiamen hanging off the sides, their minds emitting a steely
caution to get out of the way. Then came two big covered wagons, heavily fuzzed. Followed by a final cab, equally laden with militia.

Yannrith peered at them curiously, just glimpsing a young woman sitting up beside the surly-looking driver on the first wagon. She was dressed in boots and a long suede skirt, with a leather
waistcoat over a white blouse, her red hair trailing from a broad-rimmed hat. Yannrith frowned; that face. He knew her from somewhere.
She’s with Coulan’s militia, which means
she’s an activist
.
But how do I recognize her? The cell network keeps us all isolated. In theory.

Then the convoy was past, and he didn’t know what to make of it at all. Coulan’s militia people had been methodically stripping the palace bare. There’d been a continual scrum
along Walton Boulevard for the first two days as they handed out the Captain’s possessions, but now all the booty was gone.
So why were the carts guarded? What could be so
important?