A world called ocean, p.18
A World Called Ocean, page 18
“I think so. Wearing blue jackets. Who were they?”
“Members of this ShipÕs police. This is the worst possible thing that could have happened. It means the priest is here with the full co-operation of this Ship’s captain.”
“Christ, you don’t mean they’re helping him?””
“I can’t think of any other explanation; we have to assume the worst. We are under the protection of the Unity Fleet as long as we’re in their quarters here, but it won’t be enough. We have to leave tonight, Alis. We have no choice.”
* * *
They returned to the Unity quarters. A Unity Ship was not far away, it seemed, perhaps ten miles distant, moving on a parallel course.
As it was, they were still some days out from Leviathan’s Fall. The seas were getting relatively crowded; the lights of many vessels could be seen from the higher levels of the Ship, all heading for Leviathan’s Fall, still somewhere over the horizon’s curve. Their Captain’s had to take care not to run into each other as they approached.
Maquina wanted to leave that evening, under cover of darkness. Alis returned to her cabin and tried to figure out what she was going to do next.
She was going to go ahead, with Maquina. That much was certain. She felt even less certain that she could trust him, after speaking to Amanda, but she couldn’t see that she had any other options. If she tried to go off on her own now, sheÕd be severely reducing her chances of survival. A few weeks on board one Ship did not make her an expert on Oceanic culture. For now, she would go with Maquina. What happened after that was another matter.
Maquina had told her there was someone on LeviathanÕs Fall, who could, at the very least, tell her what Lian had become involved in. She had wondered if—or how much—Maquina was lying to her, but there had to be some truth to it. Otherwise, why go to this much trouble to get her to Leviathan’s Fall?
The curtain of her cabin rustled and someone stepped in, not immediately recognisable in the dim light. Instinctively she reached a hand for her swordplant blade.
“No, Miss Dorican, it’s me, Amanda.”
Alis breathed a sigh of relief. “I’m sorry, I just thought for a second—?”
“It’s alright. It took me some time to get away. I had to finish what I was telling you earlier.”
Alis stepped past her, pushed back the curtain and looked out into the corridor. Nobody was around, not that she could see, anyway.
“It’s okay, Amanda. We’re on our own.”
“Good.” Amanda sank down on the edge of the cot. She looked tired; her eyes were a little bloodshot, and her forehead was creased with worry lines.
“You said something about Joseph having a brother,” said Alis.
The other woman nodded. “Yes. James Maquina. He’s dead now.”
Alis sat down on the cot beside her. “Dead? How?”
“Murdered,” said Amanda. “Stabbed.”
Alis had a sinking feeling. “Do they know who they did it?”
“No, they never found out. But Joseph left the Fleet, the Sacred Fleet, within a few hours. This was all before he started writing his books, you know. They all came later.”
“So why did he leave in such a hurry? Is he the one who did it?”
“I think so. But I can’t be sure,” she said hurriedly, “Some nights, he requires me to spend with him, when he wants me to.” Because it’s your duty, thought Alis. “Sometimes, he—talks in his sleep. Sometimes he mentions his brother James. They didn’t get on well, you know. They were rivals for Captaincy of a Ship. James was the older brother, and better favoured with the other Ships of the Fleet. Joseph was once heard to threaten him. He said he would kill him. I don’t have any proof, but I do know what he’s like. I’ve known him my entire life. But I think he did kill his brother out of jealousy and anger, and that is why he left the Sacred Fleet. They would like to get him back, to punish him. He taunts them with his books, and protests his innocence wherever he goes. If you asked him, he’d tell you his family murdered his brother, not him, and that they want him for a scapegoat.” Amanda put her hand on Alis’s arm. “Be careful, Alis. Lies come all too easily to him. He doesn’t know how to do anything else.”
“But you went with him, when you could have stayed behind,” Alis replied gently. She couldn’t help but feel there was a kind of inner strength to the other woman, something that must have helped her keep her head above water on other occasions.
Amanda sighed. “Well, that was because I thought it was my duty. But that’s over now.” She looked at Alis meaningfully.
“You’re—leaving him?”
“It’s more complicated than that. But that’s what it comes down to, yes.” She pulled back the long sleeves of her dress. The skin of her wrists was marked by long, deep scars. “I tried to get away from him, from this,” she said, looking around her at the cabin and—Alis thought—the Ship beyond. “I tried to kill myself, more than once. Then I wanted to escape some other way. When you go to the Unity Ship tomorrow, I won’t be here. I’m going another way. I’ll hide until we get to Leviathan’s Fall, somewhere on this Ship.” Amanda chuckled. “If I’m very lucky, I might even manage to stay alive.”
She looked at Alis. “He’s got you under guard, you know. I had to lie to one of the quarter’s guards to get past you. Told him I had a message from Joseph. They’ll find out my lie for sure, but I don’t think I’ll be around by then.”
“I looked outside. I didn’t see anybody.”
She shook her head. “Oh, they’re there, trust me. They’ll try not to let you see them, but they won’t let you go, either.”
Alis had a sudden thought. “Listen, maybe you can tell me something. I know that they have radio communications somewhere on board. Is there any way I would be able to get to it? I need to contact my superiors on St Brubaker.”
Amanda shook her head. “They won’t let you near it, I’m sure of that. And that Blackrobe will have men watching out for you or any one of us going near the radio room.”
“I see.” Alis was beginning to have the germ of an idea. She sat for a moment, thinking, and slowly it blossomed in her mind.
“Amanda. It may be asking a lot of you, but you would be helping me more than you could possibly imagine. I need to get word back to St Brubaker. I also have to get some things back there, valuable things. If I give you a note to explain everything, I know they’ll recompense you for your troubles.”
“You want me to smuggle something for you?”
“Well, yes. It’s up to you. But it’s urgent. Life and death urgent.”
Amanda looked away for a moment, and Alis had the feeling that she was thinking very hard.
“Yes, why not,” she said at last. “I’ll do that.” She nodded, hard. “That would be a good idea.” She looked at Alis. “You’ll have to watch yourself. Promise me you’ll try and stay out of harm’s way.”
It was Alis’s turn to grin. “I’ll try. When are you leaving?”
“As soon as I can. Now.”
“Wait a minute.” Alis snatched up one of the sacks the team’s possessions had been brought back in. “I’ll put it all in here.” She snatched up the interac cube with the chemical books hidden inside and threw it in. Next she grabbed a sheet of paper from her desk and began to scribble on it in tight, narrow lines. After five minutes, she finished, and signed it.
“Keep that letter out of sight,” she said to Amanda, handing her the letter. “When you get to the islands—” if you get to the islands
, the thought passing through her mind in a flash “—take this to St Brubaker. Show the letter to the people there, give them the that box. That’s all you need to do. Okay?”
“Okay.” Amanda tucked the letter into her dress and took up the sack. “I’ll go now. Good luck, Alis. I wish I had had more time to know you.”
“One more thing,” said Alis. “Take this.” She pulled out Wentik’s authorisation card and handed it over to Amanda. “That’s the final proof you’ll need,” Alis explained. “ItÕs like a passport, if you know what that is.” She thought hard, trying to remember if there was anything else she could say or do.
They hugged each other, a spontaneous gesture, for a moment. Then Amanda stepped beyond the curtain with one final nod, and was gone.
She wondered how much chance Amanda had of getting back to Hope. Maybe she’d be alright. They weren’t looking for her. Perhaps they might meet up at Leviathan’s Fall, but Leviathan’s Fall was supposed to be a big place.
There wasn’t anything left for her to do but wait. She couldn’t be sure of the time, but guessed it was probably past midnight. She gathered what few things she had, and lay back, closing her eyes. She was so tired she was on the verge of collapsing.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Wake up, Miss Dorican.” The whisper was harsh, urgent. She opened her eyes and looked into the face of one of the quarter’s guards. “We ‘re getting out of here. Get your thing together and I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.”
Alis nodded and sat up. The guard disappeared. She could hear his footsteps receding beyond the heavy curtain. Somewhere along the way, she had lost her sleepbox. Her sleep had been light, unsatisfying, filled with dreams of paranoia and men with razor-edged knives. The dreams were still there, wisps at the edge of her thoughts, that faded slowly as she looked around her.
She felt numb. She had barely slept in the past few days. Her arms and legs felt like leaden weights that threatened to drag her down. A headache was beginning to throb at the base of her skull.
She sighed and pushed herself off the bunk, but slowly. She felt dizzy and leaned against the wall for support. Glowbugs darted around her, luminescing in irregular patterns as they moved about the tiny cabin. Looking at them only made her headache worse.
She had fallen asleep still dressed in her clothes. For the moment, they were all that she had. So be it, she thought. The life of a refugee for me. She leaned down and picked up her bag with her few remaining possessions, and stepped beyond the curtain, looking back at the cabin one last time.
* * *
Apparently there was more than one way out of the Unity Dormitories. For some reason, Alis had assumed—without really thinking about it—that the entrance she had seen was the only one, the one with the Unity Fleet’s seal above it.
But the farther underneath the deck you got, the more the Ship was like some vast, interconnected warren. She left the cabin to find the quarter’s guard waiting for her. She followed him down the corridor and down two sudden sharp turns. Already she was lost. She found it was almost impossible to maintain a sense of direction in the small dark spaces they moved through..
After a few minutes they came to Maquina and the other quarter’s guards. Maquina only glanced at her for a moment, giving her the barest of nods. He was talking rapidly to one of the guards, too low and quiet for her to be able to make out what they were saying.
Then they were on their way. They moved down winding corridors that Alis had never seen, lit only by glowbugs, forever hidden from the light of day. It became warmer. Alis felt a distant thrum under her feet as they moved, something on the edge of audibility. Maquina was just behind her, with two guards directly in front of them and three directly behind.
One of the guards carried a heavy length of rope. She had no idea what it was for. Maquina had a sour look on his face, and didn’t even glance at her. The thrum became a sound, still only barely audible. She wondered if it was the sound of her own heartbeat, but the sound was not generated by a human heart, hers or anyone else’s. It had a rhythm to it, that filled the cramped warm air around them.
“What the hell is that noise?” said Alis.
“The Ship,” said Maquina, without further explanation. In the dim light he looked harried, angry, tight-lipped. She thought he must have found out about Amanda’s disappearance.
“So why is it making that noise?” she asked, determined to get an answer.
At first she thought he wasn’t going to answer her, and she wondered if she’d made a mistake in trying to push him, even to such a small degree. She kept her silence, and after a few more moments, he answered her question.
“A Ship has a large number of internal pumps. Hearts, if you will. Sometimes dozens of them. These spread nutrients throughout the entire body of the Ship, keeping it alive. There’s one near to the Unity Dormitories. That’s what you can hear.”
He said it matter of factly, but Alis was awed by the thought. So many hearts. She knew that the passage she was walking along had once been something like a blood vessel, now conveniently empty and dry.
She realised she had come to think of the Ship as something inanimate. Sometimes the deck might dip fractionally, or the whole body of the Ship would shudder.
But these things had started to become invisible to her, like the rise of the sun or the disturbing height of the waves. An accepted and regular part of her environment.
But now, listening to that powerful, rhythmic throb that penetrated the sinuous, organic lines of the darkened corridor, she realised—not for the first time— that the Ship was alive. Had perhaps been alive, as far as anyone could know, for many tens of thousands of years. Ever since the Cetis had first come here—a billion years ago, for all anyone knew—the Ships had sailed these seas, as if waiting for the arrival of someone. Or something. Perhaps mankind, perhaps the Cetis. It was anybody’s guess.
Somewhere far below, sea water churned through the creature’s body, krill and plankton siphoned out and converted into energy and body matter. The Ships were as much a mystery as the Cetis, and Alis felt a strange sense of shame that she, of all people, could forget that.
The idea that the Ships had somehow evolved naturally, ready-made floating cities on a deserted ocean planet, made a mockery of evolution. The only possible conclusion was that they were artificial, genetically engineered for a purpose. The Cetis seemed to have enjoyed interfering in this way. There were geneticists and ecologists on St Brubaker and all the way back on Earth who had told her a similar story—you couldn’t figure out the behaviour patterns of a species which probably didn’t reproduce more than once in a thousand years.
And she was walking in it, deep inside its body, like some tiny invader, or infestation. In some ways it was a frightening thought. She thought of the hundreds of thousands of tons of flesh that surrounded her, the vast weight of the city somewhere above her head.
“Here.” They stopped at Maquina’s command. Alis looked ahead into the darkness and saw something like stars.
They were stars. A cool breeze touched her skin, carrying a faint taste of salt, of seawater.
“Adrian, go ahead and see if you can see anyone.” She heard Maquina nearby, talking to one of the guards. The man nodded and slipped ahead.
“In case they have enough men to cover all the possible exits,” he said over his shoulder to her, almost as an aside. She nodded. He still looked grim, his usual verbose gusto completely gone.
Maquina huddled with the remaining quarter’s guards, talking quietly. Alis had the feeling she was being deliberately excluded. One of the guards looked over at her, his expression sullen and unhappy. It made her nervous. She looked behind her, remembering Amanda’s warning. Maybe she should have gone with her. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
No. There was one of her against more than a dozen quarter’s guards in the whole of the Unity Dormitories. It would have been far easier for Amanda to slip away, unnoticed, on her own. The only way for her now was forward. They had even taken away her sword, she remembered with bitter resentment. Because it wasn’t seemly for a woman to be seen carrying arms on a Ship, Maquina had told her. It would draw too much attention.
His tone had been convincing, but Alis was coming to realise she genuinely hated the man. Carrying a weapon would have drawn attention to her, he had told her. Now we wouldn’t want that, would we?
The man called Adrian came back, his silhouette blocking out the stars.
“All clear,” he said. “At this confluence, anyway. I don’t know about the others. They might be able to catch sight of us once we’ve launched, but I didn’t see any boats below.” He paused. “It’s pretty rough down there, sir. They won’t risk their own men, but you’ll have more than half a chance of drowning in those waters as it is, I reckon.”
“We’ll have to take our chances, anyway,” said Maquina. “But I’m glad of your help this far.” He nodded over his shoulder at Alis. “Your masters in the Unity Fleet will see that you are well paid for helping us this far.”
“We do believe in you, sir,” said the guard with a determined expression. “We believe in what you stand for. I want you to know that.”
Alis saw the smile on Maquina’s face and wondered what he’d told them. She wondered how theyÕd react if she told them what Amanda had told her, wondered at what Maquina might do if she did. Or maybe they already knew all or part of the story and didn’t care.
Maquina grabbed her by the arm and pulled her forward, jerking his head towards the starlight ahead. The moment had passed.
She realised they had come a long way. They had walked through the winding tunnels of the Ship’s interior for what felt like over an hour, so she figured they had easily walked its length.
Suddenly the tunnel broadened, the edges flaring out and joining with the body of the Ship, curving away above and below them. She felt a touch of vertigo as she saw the ocean perhaps a hundred feet below her. A few steps forward and she’d fall.
She could see other tunnels besides the one they had come along; they converged on this same spot, joining together. They were linked by a narrow ledge. She could just make out what might be similar ledges below and to the sides of them, but it was hard to tell in the dim starlight.
“These are like storm drains,” said Maquina suddenly. “You find them dotted all over the hulls of the Ships.”
Alis nodded, not sure how to respond to this information. There didn’t seem to be any way down. Then she noticed that the quarter’s guard with the rope had begun unravelling it. Another guard pulled a heavy spike and a hammer out of a sack he had been carrying over his shoulder. He proceeded to drive the spike into the flesh of the Ship with heavy, practised blows. The spike had an eye in it. She winced, despite herself. The Ship was no more sentient or capable of feeling pain than a blade of grass. Nevertheless, she felt a kind of sympathetic pain as the spike was driven home.
