‘They’re just talking about getting out of the badlands,’ Rashmika said. ‘They all think they can make it rich in the caravans, or even in the cathedrals. And maybe they’re right. There are good opportunities, if you know the right people. But that isn’t enough for me.’
‘You want off Hela,’ Crozet said.
Rashmika remembered the mental calculation she had made earlier and expanded on it. ‘I’m a fifth of the way into my life. Barring something unlikely happening, another sixty-odd years is about all I have left. I’d like to do something with it. I don’t want to die without having seen something more interesting than this place.’
Crozet flashed yellow teeth. ‘People come light-years to visit Hela, Rash.’
‘For the wrong reasons,’ she said. She paused, marshalling her thoughts carefully. She had very firmly held opinions and she had always believed in stating them, but at the same time she did not want to offend her hosts. ‘Look, I’m not saying those people are fools. But what matters here is the digs, not the cathedrals, not the Permanent Way, not the miracles.’
‘Right,’ Crozet agreed, ‘but no one gives a monkey’s about the digs.’
‘We care,’ Linxe said. ‘Anyone who makes a living in the badlands has to care.’
‘But the churches would rather we didn’t dig too deeply,’ Rashmika countered. ‘The digs are a distraction. They worry that sooner or later we’ll find something that will make the miracle look a lot less miraculous.’
‘You’re talking as if the churches speak with one voice,’ Linxe said.
‘I’m not saying they do,’ Rashmika replied, ‘but everyone knows that they have certain interests in common. And we happen not to be amongst those interests.’
‘The scuttler excavations play a vital role in Hela’s economy,’ Linxe said, as if reciting a line from one of the duller ecclesiastical brochures.
‘And I’m not saying they don’t,’ Crozet interjected. ‘But who already controls the sale of dig relics? The churches. They’re halfway to having a complete monopoly. From their point of view the next logical step would be complete control of the excavations as well. That way, the bastards can sit on anything awkward.’
‘You’re a cynical old fool,’ Linxe said.
‘That’s why you married me, dear.’
‘What about you, Rashmika?’ Linxe asked. ‘Do you think the churches want to wipe us out?’
She had a feeling they were only asking her out of courtesy. ‘I don’t know. But I’m sure the churches wouldn’t complain if we all went bankrupt and they had to move in to control the digs.’
‘Yeah,’ Crozet agreed. ‘I don’t think complaining would be very high on their list of priorities in that situation either.’
‘Given all that you’ve said…’ Linxe began.
‘I know what you’re going to ask,’ Rashmika interrupted. ‘And I don’t blame you for asking, either. But you have to understand that I have no interest in the churches in a religious sense. I just need to know what happened.’
‘It needn’t have been anything sinister,’ Linxe said.
‘I only know they lied to him.’
Crozet dabbed at the corner of his eye with the tip of one little finger. ‘One of you buggers mind filling me in on what you’re talking about? Because I haven’t a clue.’
‘It’s about her brother,’ Linxe said. ‘Didn’t you listen to anything I told you?’
‘Didn’t know you had a brother,’ Crozet said.
‘He was a lot older than me,’ Rashmika told him. ‘And it was eight years ago, anyway.’
‘What was eight years ago?’
‘When he went to the Permanent Way.’
‘To the cathedrals?’
‘That was the idea. He wouldn’t have considered it if it hadn’t been easier that year. But it was the same as now — the caravans were travelling further north than usual, so they were in easy range of the badlands. Two or three days’ travel by jammer to reach the caravans, rather than twenty or thirty days overland to reach the Way.’
‘Religious man, was he, your brother?’
‘No, Crozet. No more than me, anyway. Look, I was nine at the time. What happened back then isn’t exactly ingrained in my memory. But I understand that times were difficult. The existing digs had been just about tapped out. There’d been blowouts and collapses. The villages were feeling the pinch.’
‘She’s right,’ Linxe said to Crozet. ‘I remember what it was like back then, even if you don’t.’
Crozet worked the joysticks, skilfully steering the jammer around an elbowlike outcropping. ‘Oh, I remember all right.’
‘My brother’s name was Harbin Els,’ Rashmika said. ‘Harbin worked the digs. When the caravans came he was nineteen, but he’d been working underground almost half his life. He was good at a lot of things, and explosives was one of them — laying charges, calculating yields, that sort of thing. He knew how to place them to get almost any effect he wanted. He had a reputation for doing the job properly and not taking any short cuts.’
‘I’d have thought that kind of work would have been in demand in the digs,’ Crozet said.
‘It was. Until the digs faltered. Then it got tougher. The villages couldn’t afford to open up new caverns. It wasn’t just the explosives that were too expensive. Shoring up the new caverns, putting in power and air, laying in auxiliary tunnels… all that was too costly. So the villages concentrated their efforts in the existing chambers, hoping for a lucky strike.’
‘And your brother?’
‘He wasn’t going to wait around until his skills were needed. He’d heard of a couple of other explosives experts who had made the overland crossing — took them months, but they’d made it to the Way and entered the service of one of the major churches. The churches need people with explosives knowledge, or so he’d been told. They have to keep blasting ahead of the cathedrals, to keep the Way open.’
‘It isn’t called the Permanent Way for nothing,’ Crozet said.
‘Well, Harbin thought that sounded like the kind of work he could do. It didn’t mean that he had to buy into the church’s particular worldview. It just meant that they’d have an arrangement. They’d pay him for his demolition skills. There were even rumours of jobs in the technical bureau of Way maintenance. He was good with numbers. He thought he stood a chance of getting that kind of position, as someone who planned where to put the charges rather than doing it himself. It sounded good. He’d keep some of the money, enough to live on, and send the rest of it back to the badlands.’
‘Your parents were happy with that?’ Crozet asked.
‘They don’t talk about it much. Reading between the lines, they didn’t really want Harbin to have anything to do with the churches. But at the same time they could see the sense. Times were hard. And Harbin made it sound so mercenary, almost as if he’d be taking advantage of the church, not the other way around. Our parents didn’t exactly encourage him, but on the other hand they didn’t say no. Not that it would have done much good if they had.’
‘So Harbin packed his bags…’
She shook her head at Crozet. ‘No, we made a family outing of it, to see him off. It was just like now — almost the whole village rode out to meet the caravans. We went out in someone’s jammer, two or three days’ journey. Seemed like a lot longer at the time, but then I was only nine. And then we met the caravan, somewhere out near the flats. And aboard the caravan was a man, a kind of…’ Rashmika faltered. It was not that she had trouble with the details, but it was emotionally wrenching to have to go over this again, even at a distance of eight years. ‘A recruiting agent, I suppose you’d call him. Working for one of the churches. The main one, actually. The First Adventists. Harbin had been told that this was the man he had to talk to about the work. So we all went for a meeting with him, as a family. Harbin did most of the talking, and the rest of us sat in the same room, listening. There was another man there who said nothing at all; he just kept looking at us — me mainly — and he had a walking stick that he kept pressing to his lips, as if he was kissing it. I didn’t like him, but he wasn’t the man Harbin was dealing with, so I didn’t pay him as much attention as I did the recruiting agent. Now and then Mum or Dad would ask something, and the agent would answer politely. But mainly it was just him and Harbin doing the talking. He asked Harbin what skills he had, and Harbin told him about his explosives work. The man seemed to know a little about it. He asked difficult questions. They meant nothing to me, but I could tell from the way Harbin answered — carefully, not too glibly — that they were not stupid or trivial. But whatever Harbin said, it seemed to satisfy the recruiting agent. He told Harbin that, yes, the church did have a need for demolition specialists, especially in the technical bureau. He said it was a never-ending task, keeping the Way clear, and that it was one of the few areas in which the churches co-operated. He admitted also that the bureau had need of a new engineer with Harbin’s background.’