‘The way I heard it,’ Tindouf was saying, as he tamped down the material in the end of his pipe, ‘we’s all come out of a ship, a big ship, that’s came back from the Swirly.’
‘Back from the Swirly,’ Surt repeated, just so we were clear on what he’d said. ‘That’s what you really believe, Tindouf? That a ship could make it across all that shivery distance, and back again?’
‘The alienses came across it, didn’t they?’
‘And they ain’t monkey, or anything like it,’ Surt said. ‘We can’t do what they do now, so what makes you think we ever could?’
He looked pained. ‘We got to have come from somewhere, ain’t we? T’aint proper otherwise.’
She leaned in, sucking in her cheeks. ‘So what happened to this fabled ship? How come no one’s ever found it, or remembered it? How come it’s not in any of the history books? I’ve read those books. They go all the way back to the start. No mention of no ship.’
‘Someone said it was Trevenza Reach,’ Drozna said.
‘Someone said it came out of their arse,’ said Surt. ‘Doesn’t make it any more likely.’
‘I’ve read books as well,’ I put in, while Prozor looked on with tolerant amusement, as if we were the entertainment she’d paid for. ‘It’s true that they go back to the year zero. But that’s not the start of things. That’s just the point where people were sufficiently settled that they could start numbering years and writing things down. It’s 1799 now. But the Thirteenth Occupation started a lot longer than eighteen hundred years ago.’
‘Proper little scholar, ain’t you,’ Surt said.
‘Least she’s read a book or two,’ Prozor said. ‘Instead of pretending to.’
‘By the time the histories start,’ I went on, ‘people were already spread out across dozens of worlds. They had primitive ships, spacesuits, and some means of communicating – probably something not too different from our own squawk. They’d worked out how to live off the things left behind after the last Occupation. They were probably as clever as us. The only difference was, they’d had such a struggle just to survive until then that they hadn’t had the luxury of keeping a record of anything that wasn’t essential. Probably they thought it wouldn’t be forgotten, since they all knew it and kept it going in stories they told each other. But at some point the thread was broken, and we lost the knowledge of how they got started.’ I gave a nod to Tindouf. ‘So the idea of a ship isn’t that silly. Perhaps some people went out into the Empty during some earlier Occupation, or even before the old worlds got sundered. Maybe that’s how every Occupation got started – some old, old ship limping its way back from the stars. If it takes a ship like the Monetta months to sail from one side of the Congregation to the other, it would have taken a ship centuries to get across the Empty. Maybe a lot more than that – thousands or millions of years. And the Swirly isn’t something you travel to. We’re already in it. It’s just that we can’t see it properly, because the stars are too tiny and cold and our minds shrivel up when we try and wrap ’em ’round the distances.’
‘What’s the Monetta?’ Surt asked.
‘Just another ship,’ I said, trying not to sound flustered. ‘So many of them, so many names, I get them jumbled up sometimes.’
‘There was someone called Prozor on the Monetta’s Mourn,’ Drozna rumbled out thoughtfully. ‘Not our one, obviously.’
Prozor shrugged. ‘It’s a good name. I ain’t ashamed of it.’
But when the others weren’t looking she settled her gaze on me, saying: one more mistake, and we were done. She was right. With a single lapse I had made a terrible, unforgivable error.
I swore it would be my last.
Surt found me a little later and I thought I knew exactly what was occupying her. I gave her my best keep-away scowl, thinking the last thing I wanted was to have to explain how the name of that ship had slipped out of my gob.
But Surt had something else on her mind. She curled her lip and asked: ‘How many books have you read?’
There was something challenging and defiant in that question, but also something else, and it took me a moment to pick it out. Interest was what it was. Guarded, and a little scornful, and hardly daring to admit to a weakness in herself, but interest all the same.
‘A few,’ I said. Then swallowed, correcting myself. ‘A few hundred. Maybe more. Probably less than a thousand.’
Surt shook her head. I might as well have said that the Old Sun was square, or that swallowers were made of cheese. ‘There ain’t hours in a life for all that many books.’
‘There are,’ I answered calmly. ‘More than enough. If you read a little every day . . .’ Then I saw something cloud her face. I thought of gentle ways of putting it, like asking her how long she took to read a book, or how many she thought she had read, but in the end I took the straight course to what needed to be asked. ‘Can you read, Surt?’
She took less offence than I was expecting. ‘Being an Integrator ain’t about what you dig out of books.’
‘I know, and I understand. I’m just asking: can you read?’
Some of that cocksure defiance was melting off her. ‘I can read what needs reading. Like a map, or the pressure gauge on a bottle of a lungstuff, or a sign that says “danger” or “keep out” or “mind your own damned business”. ’
‘I don’t doubt that you’re a good Integrator,’ I said. ‘That’s plain, Surt, or this ship wouldn’t work the way it does. And I understand what you mean about books. I knew someone once, a woman called Trysil. She was an Assessor, and a good one. She wasn’t much for books either, but she could look at a piece of the past and know exactly where it fitted. That’s hard-won knowledge and I won’t see it belittled.’
Surt gave me a sidelong look. ‘Belittled. Is that a book word?’
‘Perhaps.’ I smiled.
‘I’ve seen that junky thing you brought with you – that robot’s head. You keep it close but there ain’t too many secrets on a ship.’
‘I know.’ And I gave her a nod. ‘The robot was called Paladin. He got damaged and all that’s left is the head. But I don’t know how much of him’s still inside.’
‘I could look at him for you. I know robots. Most of ’em ain’t got a brain the way we have. It’s distributed. Multiple cognition cores, is what they call ’em. Hyper-parallel threading. But if a robot’s in trouble it can bottle a lot of itself into one of those cores. They just need waking up, sometimes.’
‘I . . .’ But my words dried up. I was torn between gratitude and a nasty, lingering splinter of suspicion.
‘I ain’t one for favours, Fura,’ Surt said, as if I’d been in any danger of thinking otherwise. ‘But there ain’t been many on this ship who’ve read a thousand books, if that isn’t a lie. And if you could teach me a word or two of reading, that’d be fair payment for taking a squint at your robot.’
The launch came back. In keeping with Trusko’s cautious approach, they’d completed one expedition into the bauble and called it a day, even though the window would have allowed another go, and perhaps a third. My thoughts flashed back to Rackamore, bidding farewell to Trysil on the hull of the Monetta when she had the harpoon through her, to the bravery and boldness of his crew, and I thought of Jastrabarsk, who’d taken a gamble on Prozor’s auguries even when his own Bauble Reader had said that the window was too narrow. I ought to have felt contempt for Trusko and his outfit, and on some level I did. But I needed them as well, and however they viewed me, I was now a part of that same crew, and I meant to change them.
Whether they wanted it or not.
We gathered in the galley to see the results of this expedition. If anything, it was an even sorrier haul than the first time, although you wouldn’t have guessed that from the way Trusko tried to talk it up. ‘Handsome, handsome,’ he kept saying, as the goods were pulled out of their boxes and laid out for our col
lective delectation. ‘A good quoin or two in that, and no mistake.’
‘Yes, a bar at least,’ Gathing said. ‘Almost enough for a round of drinks at Trevenza Reach. Oh, how our fortunes have shifted.’
‘You’re the Assessor,’ Strambli said out of her lopsided face. ‘Can’t blame the rest of us if you don’t find the jubbly.’
‘And I can’t speculate about what might have been behind the doors you couldn’t open,’ Gathing said.
‘Then don’t.’
‘What’s that?’ I asked, as Tindouf lifted a square of cloth out of the box. It was black, absolutely black, so you couldn’t see any folds or creases in it, but it also looked thinner than anything I’d ever seen, almost as if it didn’t have any thickness at all. It rippled in a continuous restless way, like a flag in a stiff breeze.
But there was no breeze in the cabin.
‘Catchcloth,’ Drozna said. ‘And probably more of it than I’ve seen in my life.’
‘Then it’s worth something,’ I said.
‘Would be, if there was about a million times more of it. Then you’d be a looking at a pretty few quoins. Go on, Tindouf. Let her feel it. Might be the one time in her life she gets her mitts on the stuff.’
‘We don’t wants her ripping it, with them tin fingers of hers.’
‘She won’t rip it,’ Drozna said.
I took the rectangle from Tindouf. I pinched it between my flesh and alloy fingertips, but it was so thin that it didn’t feel as if it was there at all. It was cold, too – colder than anything had any right to be, given that it had already been handled by the master of ions. I could almost sense it sucking the heat out of my body, like it needed to drink it.
‘What is it?’
‘Catchcloth,’ Surt said sarcastically.
‘It’s old – very old,’ Trusko answered. ‘First or Second Occupations, assuming it wasn’t brought here by aliens. You see the way it ripples and dances, like it’s picking up a wind?’
‘There isn’t one,’ I said.
‘Not that you can feel,’ Trusko said. ‘But there is a wind all the same. It’s coming from the Old Sun, just like the photon wind that puts the billow in our sails.’
‘We’re inside,’ I said carefully, as if I was being led into a trick. ‘The sails catch the wind because they’re outside, beyond the hull. But we’re not. There can’t be a wind that the catchcloth feels and we don’t.’
‘Queer thing is that’s exactly what there is,’ Trusko said. ‘Another kind of wind, raging out of the Old Sun all the while, but it slips through the hull and the photon sails like they aren’t there at all. Dark-wind, some call it. Or ghost-wind or shadow-wind. Most don’t even know it exists, because it’s no use to us. But once upon a time they had a means to snag it.’
I passed the catchcloth back to Tindouf. The chill of it was still in my fingers, even the tin ones. The nerve sensors had picked it up, and I did not care for the message they whispered into my brain.
‘It’s not right,’ I said slowly. ‘That something like that should even exist.’
‘It’s got the shivery about it all right,’ Drozna said. ‘But that doesn’t mean it’s evil or was made to give us nightmares. Coves use to wear clothes made out of catchcloth, so it’d ripple and dance around ’em, even when they were standing still. If we ever found enough of it to sew up a nice dress or gown, we could put a down-payment on our retirement with it.’
‘There speaks a man with grand ambitions,’ Gathing said.
‘Why isn’t it worth much?’ I asked.
‘Because it’s useless, is why,’ Surt said. ‘Like Droz says, you need more of it to do anything, and hardly any cove ever finds more of it. Just scraps here and there, like that one.’ Then she smiled at me, like we had a shared secret. ‘Make a nice handkerchief, ’cept your snot’d slide right off it.’
‘It catches the wind,’ I said. ‘Like our photon sails. A different wind, maybe, but it still catches it.’
‘Your point being?’ Strambli asked.
‘If you had enough of it, you could rig a whole ship with catchcloth. It would be black as night. No one would ever see you coming.’
‘She’s right, you know,’ Drozna said. ‘You’d only need a thousand square leagues of the stuff! I don’t know why anyone hasn’t thought of that before.’
They laughed. So did Prozor. So did I.
But inside I didn’t find it anything like as hilarious.
19
‘If it would make life easier for you, Captain,’ I was saying, just inside the door to his quarters, ‘I could switch to just bringing you daily reports, rather than after every watch. At least that way I wouldn’t have to keep telling you there wasn’t anything worth mentioning. Or even every other day . . .’
‘It’s all right, Fura,’ he said, raising a hand from his charts and papers. ‘I’d rather have a steady stream of no news, believe me. At the very least, it tells me that the bones are still singing. Well, come in and don’t be shy. Whatever you have for me, it can’t be any more of a let-down than that bauble we just opened . . .’
I eased into the room. Connected to both the galley and bridge by separate doors, Trusko’s quarters were done up in reds and golds, properly plush. It was a grander space than the one Rackamore had given himself, and there was something about it that felt more solid and dependable than any other part of the Queenie. ‘You seemed pleased with it, sir, when you came back on the launch,’ I told him.
‘We’d all made it back, and no one had jumped us. That was reason enough to lift my spirits, albeit temporarily. The loot looked good, as well, until we started the grim business of accounting it. I’m afraid Gathing had the right of it, when all is said and done. Trinkets. Gimcrackery. Nothing of substantial value or practical worth.’ He made a show of brightening. ‘Still, a streak of bad luck can’t run for ever. We’ll be cutting orbit for the third bauble, shortly, and there I hope for a twist in our fortunes.’
‘I hope so too, sir.’
‘So.’ He looked at me expectantly. ‘Anything to mention? Out with the worst of it, Fura.’
‘There isn’t really anything,’ I said. ‘Nothing bad, anyway, and that’s a sort of good news, isn’t it? The skull’s peachy, and there ain’t any other ships within jumpin’ distance.’
‘Perhaps they know their targets better than we know ours,’ he said self-pityingly, as if he wanted me to lean over, pat him on the hand and say ‘there, there’. ‘We were given the intelligence on these baubles at a steep mark-up, you know. Our last Bauble Reader was confident these would shift things for us. All rests on the third, I suppose.’
‘If you had better intelligence,’ I ventured, ‘would that change your plan?’
He looked at me with only mild interest. ‘What intelligence?’
‘Well, supposin’ . . . what I mean is, if I got a squeak of something over the bones, and it seemed to point to a bauble that was worth the cost of cracking, and wasn’t too far away . . . would that make you reconsider?’
‘It might, in the unlikely event such a thing were to happen.’ Then his interest sharpened. ‘Wait. What have you picked up?’
‘I doubt that it’s anything, sir.’ I brushed a hair from my brow, trying to look winsome and innocent. ‘Oughtn’t to have brought it up, not when you’ve got so much on your plate, and everythi—’
‘Spit it out, Fura. I’ll be the judge of whether it’s useful or not.’
‘It wasn’t much,’ I said. ‘I just got this intercept, two ships whispering to each other down in the Sunwards. Combine ’jammers, I think. They were sharing gossip, the way we all do.’
‘Yes, yes.’ He waggled his pudgy fingers at me. ‘Of course. Go on.’
‘It was something about a bauble no one put much stock in. The auguries said it wasn’t due to pop, and the lore was that there wasn’t
much worth the bother of going in it for anyways.’
He slumped. ‘If you’re going to throw me crumbs, Fura, at least make them tasty.’
‘There’s more, sir. Thing is, the coves on these ships was trading the idea that the auguries was all wrong, at least the common ones, and that the bauble was all set to pop. Like, soon. But that wasn’t all of it.’ I grimaced. ‘Really, sir, I’m sure it’s all chaff.’
‘When you say “wasn’t all of it” – what do you mean?’
I sighed. ‘These coves were saying there was dark rumours, sir. That there was some righteous loot stashed in the bauble, only no one’d had the spuds to get it out. No stairs, you see. Just a big plungey shaft, going all the way down, with rooms off it. Most crews see that and think it’s too much bother rigging up winches and buckets and so on.’ I swallowed, sensing I might have gone too far. ‘That’s what the coves were saying, is all.’
Trusko ruminated on what I’d told him. He was quiet for longer than I was expecting. It gave me a better chance to drift my eyes around the room, taking in the framed charts and documents he had up on the walls. There were instruments and knick-knacks and gubbins I couldn’t name, but all of it was shiny and expensive-looking and arranged just so. It was like someone’s idea of a captain’s quarters, more than the thing itself had any right to be.
‘It’s interesting enough, Fura,’ he mused. ‘But it begs the question of why these two ships weren’t setting sail themselves.’
‘I only got the edge of it, sir. What I know about sails and orbits you could scrawl on a stamp.’
The fingers waggled again. ‘Go on.’
‘They weren’t in the right place, to begin with. Starting off from down in the Sunward processionals, with all the worlds you’ve got to dodge around . . . even with full sail . . . they couldn’t make it, sir. Wasn’t going to be time, while that window was open.’
‘But you don’t even know where this bauble is, or whether it’s within sailing range of the Queenie.’