‘It’s as good as lost,’ he said. ‘We now have no spares.’
The last pickup was still almost a bell away. Tarquinia said, ‘Do you want to get some loaves? I’ll stay here in case there are any surprises.’
As Ramiro stood in the queue in the food hall, he noticed a group of diners stealing glances in his direction then turning away with pained expressions, as if his presence were mildly embarrassing. Perhaps he’d become a figure of pity for wasting half his life on the expedition, to so little avail. But if all the real action had been back on the mountain, what exactly had anyone here done to earn the right to look down on him this way?
‘I trust you’re keeping out of trouble.’
Ramiro turned to see the woman who’d addressed him, three places behind him in the queue.
‘You’re brave, showing your face in the mountain,’ he told Greta.
‘I’ve never left,’ she replied. ‘I never will. I’m staying through whatever comes.’
‘ “Whatever comes”?’ Ramiro felt his anger rising. ‘You talk about it as if it’s some uncontrollable mystery, but I know you could persuade the Councillors to switch off the system, if you really wanted to. Once they’d made the plan and automated the shutdown, that would be it – there’d be nothing to fear.’ He called out to the diners, ‘This woman could set your minds at ease in an instant! Why aren’t you demanding it?’
Greta said, ‘So if we shut down the system deliberately – just close our eyes to danger – the danger will go away? That’s a child’s way of thinking.’
‘Our eyes will be closed whatever we do,’ Ramiro replied. ‘There’s nothing to lose by closing them voluntarily. After the disruption we’ll find out soon enough if there was any other cause.’ He tried again to rouse the spectators. ‘Isn’t that fair?’ he shouted. ‘Isn’t it worth trying? You should be demanding it!’
But no one was being stirred into action; they just stared down at their food. What had they told themselves in their messages? ‘Man from expedition made fool of himself in the food hall today, yelling at government adviser.’ They already knew that they wouldn’t take his proposal seriously enough to make any kind of fuss. And having told themselves as much, even if it made them feel a little weak and ashamed there was nothing they could do about it.
Ramiro collected his loaves from the counter and walked out. As his anger subsided slightly, he wondered if he’d been unfair to Greta. Not even the great fixer could sway the Councillors into acting entirely against their nature. Having chosen their own defining qualities, they wouldn’t surrender power or deny themselves information – even when it was certain that events would soon relieve them of both.
Back in the apartment, Ramiro watched Tarquinia eating but he had no appetite himself. ‘If this last one fails,’ he said, ‘don’t break your principles and send back a message.’
Tarquinia said, ‘I have a better idea: I solemnly promise that if it does fail, I’ll send a message to you to be delivered yesterday.’
The first report from the final occulter came in: it had reached the location where the cache was meant to be.
The second report showed the occulter still stable, weighed down with its expected cargo.
The third report declared that the machine had reattached to the surface.
And the fourth report demonstrated that it had retained its powers of locomotion.
They had twelve targets, twelve bombs, and twelve machines with which to deliver them.
Tarquinia said, ‘It looks as if we’re the disruption after all.’
Ramiro wasn’t so confident, but if the Council was intent on declining the role he was happy to match their stubbornness. It was his nature to oppose the messaging system, and history had finally offered him a route to its destruction just a few stints long. Until a meteor fell from the sky to show him up as an irrelevant trespasser, all he could do was keep following that path, and hope that the footprints in the dust ahead really were his own.
30
‘I knew you’d want your old job back,’ Celia declared.
Agata wasn’t sure if she should take this claim literally. She was surprised that Celia remembered her at all, though they had been on duty together when the bomb went off. In the four years since she’d been here the ramshackle office hadn’t changed, but the new construction along the axis had made it much harder to reach.
‘I mean, now that you can’t do cosmology,’ Celia clarified, holding out the patch for Agata to sign.
‘Exactly,’ Agata agreed, forming her mark and accepting the tool belt from her supervisor. ‘I thought I’d better make myself useful somehow.’
‘Do you think it’s a meteor coming?’ Celia asked phlegmatically.
‘No one can rule that out,’ Agata replied. ‘But I’m still hoping that it’s just a glitch in the system.’
Celia looked sceptical, but she didn’t press Agata for a detailed hypothesis. ‘Don’t take offence,’ she said, ‘but some of the older workers find it helpful to rehearse their resorptions and extrusions before going in.’
‘I’ll try that,’ Agata promised.
She made her way towards the entrance to the cooling system, trying to appear mildly dejected for the surveillance cameras: the woman who’d travelled across the cosmos to confirm Lila’s great theory, reduced to menial labour – and this time with no zealous strike-breaker’s pride. In truth, she was ecstatic that she’d been allowed to take the job. The automated employment system, bless it, had had no idea how far from ‘current’ her experience really was, and more to the point she had clearly not been flagged as any kind of security risk.
Agata dutifully shortened and stretched her legs half a dozen times before fitting her access key to the hatch. As she descended into the cool air of the tunnel she felt a twinge of claustrophobia and her memories of the blast came rushing back. She would never stop mourning Medoro, but she let the grief move through her mind like a familiar presence, with no need for elaborate rituals or acknowledgements.
She made her way up-axis as swiftly as she could, advancing through the blackness, searching the walls for patches of red. Whoever had worked this section before her had been diligent; she saw only the tiny specks of new growth, easily disposed of with a quick flash from her coherer. As far as she knew no one else would be coming here now, but she’d resolved to do a passable job every shift in case there was an unannounced inspection. If her rushed work wasn’t quite as thorough as that of her younger colleagues she could always blame her failing eyesight, but there could be no excuse for great glowing colonies of moss.
She reached the end of her allotted segment of the tunnel with almost a bell to spare, then she turned and raced back towards the start. The hard part was doing it quietly, keeping her feet low and lengthening her strides instead of breaking into a run. People were used to hearing workers in the tunnels, but the sound of outright sprinting might attract attention.
Light from the open hatch marked her entry point, but when she arrived at the ladder she slid the hatch closed above her and waited for her eyes to readapt to the dark. A couple of strides down-axis from the hatch, a hardstone grille covered the width of the tunnel. Peering between the bars she saw nothing: no flashes from the coherer of another tunnel worker burning off moss. Agata hadn’t quizzed Celia about anyone else’s shifts, but she’d chosen the latest of the time slots on offer. It was possible that right now there was no one at all between her and the cooling chamber.
She lay on the floor of the tunnel and rearranged herself so that she could reach down her throat and retrieve the small bundle of tools she’d swallowed. The rags they were wrapped in were covered with clumps of food and digestive resin; she shuddered but managed to avoid emitting a hum of revulsion as she flicked her hand clean.