‘Finally,’ I said, relieved. ‘A galactic superpower I’ve actually heard of.’
‘Well, you’d have to work hard not to have heard of the Benevolence - they did last nearly eleven circuits, after all - more than two million years. The Benevolence developed many of the basic principles now used by Scapers: transmutation engines, world-to-world atmosphere pumps, that kind of thing. For a little while Neume was classically Terran. That was when the Benevolence built their great cities - their remains are still the largest surviving structures on the planet.’ Betony looked to the horizon with narrowed eyes. ‘We’re coming up on one of them now. You’d have seen it from space if you’d looked carefully.’
A dark, squared-off finger began to push itself into view. It was a tower, slender as an obelisk, many kilometres tall, apparently intact but leaning at a precarious angle. It looked as if it might topple into the dunes at any moment.
‘Did they build it like that?’ Aconite asked.
‘No,’ Betony said, ‘but it’s been like that for at least a million years, and it should be good for a few million more. It won’t snap, and it’s anchored so deep into the crust it won’t ever fall.’
‘We could build cities like that if we wanted to,’ Mezereon said, her tone petulant.
‘But we haven’t, and the Benevolence did, and now they’ve left their mark on deep time - whereas we’ll be doing well to be remembered a circuit from now.’
Our shuttles descended further, until we were skimming the dunes at an altitude of only a few kilometres - low enough that we would have seen people, had anyone been abroad. But the endless glittering dunes were lifeless. Betony steered his vehicle under the overhang of the leaning obelisk, as if daring us to follow. Purslane instructed her shuttle to tip itself onto its belly, so that we were standing upside down.
The Benevolence structure was sheer black, lacking windows, entrances or landing decks. It was not totally smooth: there were vast, plaque-like designs worked into its towering faces, their edges gleaming with a blue-black of partly reflected sky. I did not know if the designs were abstract shapes, served some weird civic function, or were slogans in the dead language of the Benevolence.
‘Why did they die out?’ I asked, deciding that there was no point in hiding my ignorance.
‘Everyone dies out,’ Betony said. ‘That’s turnover.’
‘We’re still here.’
‘Only because we’ve stretched that same inevitable process across six million years. Doesn’t mean we’re immune to it, only that we found an extension clause.’
‘You’re in an exceptionally cheerful mood,’ Purslane said.
‘Near-extinction will do that to you,’ Betony answered.
We flew on for another half an hour, passing several more Benevolence structures - dark spires jutting from the ground at odd, unsettling angles, alone or in jagged, cactus-like clusters - and then through the eye sockets of a mountainous human skull, its cranium snow-capped. After another twenty minutes of flight, one of the larger cities of the tenant civilisation came slowly into view. By now Neume’s sun was beginning to set towards the west, throwing deep, rippling shadows across the dunes. The city stood dark against the fire-streaked sky.
‘That’s Ymir,’ Betony said. ‘Not the largest city on Neume, but it’s the one best suited to our needs - we’ve been given more or less free run of large parts of it, so we’d best not complain.’
‘Is that where everyone is?’ Aconite asked.
‘More or less. At any one time, one or two shatterlings may be further afield - patrolling the system for incoming ships, visiting the other cities or returning to orbit for intervals of abeyance or rejuvenation - but most of us have been happy to remain in Ymir. It has everything we need, including privacy.’
‘Is this whole planet under a single administration?’ I asked.
‘No - there are at least three primary powers, and a dozen or so second-tier states. They don’t all speak the same dialect, either. But for our purposes we don’t need to worry about that. Neume’s perfectly happy to present itself to us as a monoculture. It’s in their collective interests as much as ours.’
‘So who are we dealing with - and what happened to the High Benevolence?’
‘You really ought to know that,’ Purslane whispered at me.
‘Campion can be forgiven,’ Betony said. ‘The High Benevolence vanished two million years ago - they’ve been gone as long as they existed. Which is a sobering thought given that I still remember when they were up-and-coming nascents with scarcely a hundred systems to their name.’
‘How you prioritise your memories is your own business,’ I said. ‘I prefer to keep recent events near the top of the stack.’
Betony smiled tightly. ‘And I’m a bottom-up kind of man. Each to their own, dear boy. Anyway, the Benevolence ... well, they just went. Story has it that they got into a dispute with an aquatic client culture, the Third Phase Nereids, over the cost of a panthalassic scaping. The argument escalated until it encompassed many systems. Another nascent, the Plastic, saw their chance and took over much of the Benevolence’s territory. But the Plastic weren’t with us for very long.’
‘What happened to them?’ Aconite asked.
‘Too inflexible,’ Betony said. ‘After they were gone, all we have left of the Benevolence is their ruins.’
‘Did the Plastic build the space elevators, and the orbital ring?’ I asked.
‘No - they came much later - you’re looking at six or seven tenants down the line before that happened. That was the Providers. They were here for at least four hundred and twenty kilo-years before it turned rotten for them.’
‘And the current lot?’ Campion asked.
‘They call themselves the Witnesses. They’re just happy to live here and study and/or worship the Spirit, depending on factional affiliation. They build their cities and towns on the foundations left by the Benevolence - it’s much easier than sinking shafts right down to the surface, and a lot less likely to piss off the Spirit.’
Now that Ymir was close, we could see what he meant. Four stiff black fingers reached from the dunes, each an obelisk of the Benevolence, each tilted halfway to the horizontal. The shortest of the fingers must have been four or five kilometres from end to end, while the longest - one of the two middle digits - was at least eight. From a distance, caught in the sparkling light of the lowering sun, it was as if the fingers were encrusted with jewellery of blue stones and precious metal. But the jewellery was Ymir: the Witnesses had constructed their city on the surface of the fingers, with the thickest concentration of structures around the middle portions of the fingers. A dense mass of azure towers thrust from the sloped foundations of the Benevolence relics, fluted and spiralled like the shells of fabulous sea creatures, agleam with gold and silver gilding. A haze of delicate latticed walkways and bridges wrapped itself around the towers of Ymir, with the longer spans reaching from finger to finger. The air spangled with the bright moving motes of vehicles and airborne people, buzzing from tower to tower.
As the shuttles neared Ymir, three of the moving motes sped out to meet us, to provide an escort into one of the largest towers on the longest finger. The escorts were intricate contraptions of gold and ruby, mimicking the designs of ornithopters or dragonflies with gold-feathered or gold-veined mechanical wings, but moving too quickly, and with too much agility, for that to be their sole mode of propulsion. At the head of each craft was a compartment like a swollen eye held in talons, in which a goggled and helmeted pilot lay prone, working an array of control levers. The escorts were themselves accompanied by flapping, gyring bird-sized drones, and the drones by a multitude of even smaller jewel-sized machines.
We navigated the crowded airspace of Ymir, the escort taking us into the thicket of towers, under the skeletal traceries of connecting bridges and walkways. More craft swerved from their courses to meet us - keeping their distance, but shadowing us all the way in. The flying people wore fluttering wings of varying designs
. Again, the wings could not possibly have kept them aloft - they must have been using levator belts or backpacks, with the wings providing fine control.
‘You’re going to be the centre of attention for a little while, I’m afraid,’ Betony said. ‘Neume doesn’t see much interstellar traffic, and it’s already six years since the last shatterlings came in.’
‘We’ll cope,’ Purslane said.
Beneath us, the black fingers of the Benevolence relics blotted out a view of the real ground, kilometres beneath. It would be easy to forget that this city was perched on the slopes of the leaning towers of a fallen civilisation, one that had not breathed the air of Ymir for two million years. Every now and again in my life I felt the cognitive lurch that came from a true apprehension of how ancient I was, how far I had come from the moment of my birth as a single human baby, a girl in a rambling, ghost-ridden mansion.
Presently we approached one of the largest towers, a building with a jewelled onion on the top. Halfway up its balconied, corkscrewed sides was the out-jutting semicircle of a buttressed deck, easily large enough for the escort and our two shuttles. The winged craft hovered in the air while Betony’s vehicle tipped onto its spiked end, which thickened, contracted and split to form a tripod, and then descended slowly to the deck. Purslane’s shuttle landed next to it, belly down. A moment later the real Betony emerged from the underside of the teardrop, descending between the tripedal landing legs on a levator disc. When the disc touched the deck he stepped off it and the disc returned to the body of the teardrop, sealing the craft.
A door opened in the side of Purslane’s shuttle, lowering down and forming steps and railings. The cool, crisp air of Ymir hit me almost instantly. I breathed in the subtle flavours of a new world, feeling the first giddy hint of light-headedness. It was not unpleasant, like the promise of intoxication in the first sip of strong wine. Purslane took my hand and we walked down the steps, with Aconite and Mezereon following us.
There were many people on the landing deck; a hundred at the very least. They were arranged in three groupings. Before us stood a large number of Gentian shatterlings - at least forty, perhaps all those who had already made it to Neume, with the exception of the handful who must have been on patrol duties. To the right stood a smaller group - twelve or fifteen individuals, whom I took to be the surviving guests of our reunion. Amongst them I recognised one or two shatterlings of other Lines, two individuals who were almost certainly Machine People, as well as a number of highly evolved posthumans of non-baseline anatomy. To the left, numbering forty or fifty, was a civic reception party of Neume locals, dressed for flight but with their artificial wings folded neatly behind them. They had looked to be of normal human size when I had seen them in the air and in the cockpits of their flying machines, but now that we stood together I saw that they were a head or so taller than most of us, and of exceedingly slender build, with dark, slanted eyes and delicate, elfin features. Their honey-coloured skin was in fact very fine fur.
One of them, a female, stepped forward. Like the other Neume citizens she wore a tight-fitting one-piece garment of quilted black plates with something of the texture of leather, cross-webbed across the chest with jointed metal. Coloured studs, which could have been controls, or symbols of authority, ran the length of the cross-webbing. The woman wore a heavy black belt which I presumed to contain levator mechanisms, and above this belt, wrapping her at the abdomen, was a blue cummerbund. A translucent mask with a snout and goggles hung on straps under the creature’s chin, ready to be snapped into place (I presumed) should it be necessary to fly into the thin air above Ymir. Her booted feet were splayed at the toes, and her gloveless hands revealed long, elegant fingers. Above her brow, the fur turned darker and formed a stiff mane that fanned down the back of her neck. Most of the Neume locals had a similar hairstyle, but with subtle variations. None of the others had a blue cummerbund; about ten had purple ones, while the others wore red or black.
‘Greetings to the honoured shatterlings of Gentian Line,’ the woman said in flawless Trans. She had a politician’s bearing, a politician’s ready authority. Her voice was husky but otherwise perfectly comprehensible, and it carried clearly in the thin, still air of the landing deck. ‘I am Jindabyne, the magistrate of Ymir and the Six Provinces. I have been delegated to welcome you to Neume. Firstly, I offer you our heartfelt sympathies for the atrocity that has befallen your Line. While one can hardly speak of pleasure at such a time, we still trust that your stay on Neume will be satisfactory. Rest assured that we Witnesses - the citizens of Ymir, and the rest of the planet - will do everything we can to make your visit as comfortable as possible. If you need anything that is within our power to give, you need only ask.’
I glanced at Purslane, who nodded for me to speak. ‘Thank you, Magistrate - it’s most kind of you to welcome us. I am Campion of the Gentians, and this is my fellow shatterling Purslane.’ I turned around slowly, extending a hand. ‘This is Aconite, and this is Mezereon - also Gentians. Aboard the shuttle, we carry three more shatterlings of our Line, still in abeyance.’ I had not forgotten about the prisoners, but the welcoming ceremony did not strike me as the right place to mention such an unpleasant detail.
‘Has Betony told you much about our world, Campion?’
‘A little - and of course, we have the information in our troves. That doesn’t mean we can’t still learn a thing or two.’
‘I am sure you already know all that is worth knowing. Nonetheless, feel free to ask questions: ours is an open society, and we have no secrets. Presently, one of my staff will show you to your accommodation - if it is not to your liking, say so immediately and it will be changed. In the meantime, though, I am sure you are anxious to speak to your fellow shatterlings. I won’t delay you a moment longer.’
‘Thank you, Magistrate,’ Purslane said.
‘A privacy screen can be arranged if you would prefer. In any case, my staff and I will disable our comprehension of Trans for the time being. You need have no fear of eavesdropping.’
‘I doubt that we have any secrets we wouldn’t be willing to share with you,’ I said, ‘but we appreciate the gesture - it’s most kind.’
Jindabyne gestured towards the waiting shatterlings. ‘Go now. Don’t delay this reunion, however bitter-sweet it may be.’
‘Magistrate,’ Purslane said as we were about to walk across the deck to the waiting Gentians, ‘there is one thing ... before you disable your comprehension. It may be impertinent of me to mention it now ...’
I bristled, seeing where this was going. ‘Purslane,’ I said under my breath, ‘it can wait.’
‘What is it, shatterling?’
‘Ever since we heard of Neume, I’ve been curious about the Spirit of the Air.’
‘As are most of our visitors,’ Jindabyne said, a tightness creeping into her voice. ‘Without their curiosity, we would not have an economy.’
‘I was wondering if it would be possible to ... well, meet it. Or at least communicate with it.’
I had barely read a single emotion in Jindabyne’s face, but now I saw the diplomatic mask slip for a microsecond, revealing the tension simmering just beneath. ‘Rest assured that there is a vast archive of observations and analysis in the public records department, stretching back to the last days of the Benevolence. I am certain you will find all that interests you in those archives, and you will of course have the opportunity to meet both scholars and worshippers of the Spirit during your stay on Neume.’
‘It’s the entity itself I’m interested in,’ Purslane said, ‘not the documentation.’
‘Although in the meantime,’ I said, ‘my fellow shatterlings and I will be delighted to have access to that archive. It is generous of you to make it available to us, Magistrate - and I’m sure we’ll do all in our power to repay you for your kindness.’
Purslane glared at me for an instant.
‘We normally charge for access to our records,’ Jindabyne said. ‘Gifts and energies keep ou
r world running. But it is our honour to provide a place of sanctuary to our friends from Gentian Line, and there will be no talk of payment.’
‘Thank you,’ Aconite said, speaking for the first time since leaving the shuttle. He and Mezereon kept a respectful distance between them now: there was no danger of mistaking them for an item.
That appeared to be Betony’s cue to raise his voice. ‘With the magistrate’s permission, let me welcome our four lost shatterlings back into the fold! Campion and Purslane, Mezereon and Aconite - and Lucerne, Melilot and Valerian aboard the shuttle! This is more than we ever dared hope for!’
The shatterlings roared and cheered and clapped. I raised a hand in salute. The last thing I felt like was a homecoming champion, but I had to acknowledge their welcome.
Purslane smiled decorously and raised a hand. ‘I’m happy so many of us survived,’ she said. ‘There were times when I feared no one else would have made it here. It’s so good to see you all.’
Excluding Betony, there were forty-four shatterlings already on Neume. I could not take them all in with a single glance, but I soon put names to some of our fellow survivors. There was willowy Cyphel, looking as beautiful as ever, her hair the blue-white of moonlit snow. There was the swarthy Charlock, never a man I had counted as an ally but who now met my gaze and gave me a nod that said all that was behind us now. There stood the ever-jocular Weld, wearing his usual portly reunion-anatomy. There were Sainfoin, Medick, Henbane, Bartsia and Tansy.
Purslane and I walked to the survivors and touched hands with as many of them as we were able, Aconite and Mezereon following behind us.
‘I always misjudged you, Campion,’ said Galingale, a male shatterling I had not noticed until then who was now reaching over Tansy’s shoulder to take my hand. ‘I’ll never forgive myself for that now. I never thought I’d say it, but ignoring Fescue was the best thing you could have done.’
‘The decision to enter the system was as much Purslane’s as mine,’ I said.
‘Of course,’ Galingale said. He was my height, with pinched features, reddish, meat-coloured skin and a tight-cropped skullcap of white hair. Galingale affected an artificial eye, replacing the green one that was his genetic birthright. He had lost the real eye - and much of the left side of his face - when he had played tourist in a brutal micro-war, falling foul of crossfire. Injured, he had fallen - or allowed himself to fall - into the hands of one of those nascent interstellar civilisations. Their surgeons had patched him back together and given him the eye - the height of their cyberscience. It was a thing of laughable crudity by Line standards, like a peg-leg or a wooden hand fixed in one position. Galingale had allowed his facial injury to be healed invisibly when he returned to Gentian care, but he had kept the artificial eye. His strand had been a popular one that circuit, and the grim replacement was a gentle reminder of past glories. His hands still clasped around mine, he said, ‘We’ll need to honour Fescue properly, won’t we? Something befitting his status.’