He passed through into the part of the building reserved for SA personnel. In the small curved chamber where he usually received his assignments, he found a trio of people sitting around a low table drinking seaweed tea. He knew them all.
‘Malinin,’ said Gunderson, a young woman with short red hair. ‘To what do we owe the pleasure?’
He didn’t care for her tone. ‘I came for my duties,’ he said.
‘I didn’t think you mixed with the likes of us these days,’ she sneered.
He reached across the tea-drinkers to rip the assignment sheet from the wall. ‘I mix with whoever I like,’ he said.
The second of the trio, a pig named Flenser, said, ‘We heard you were more likely to be hanging around with administration stiffs.’
Vasko looked at the docket. He couldn’t see his name against any of the regular duties. ‘Like Scorpio, you mean?’
‘I bet you know a lot more than we do about what’s going on,’ Gunderson said. ‘Don’t you?’
‘If I did, I’d hardly be in a position to talk about it.’ Vasko pinned the sheet back on the wall. ‘Truthfully, I don’t know very much more.’
‘You’re lying,’ the third one — a man named Cory — said. ‘You want to climb that ladder, Malinin, you’d better learn how to lie better than that.’
‘Thanks,’ he said, smiling, ‘but I’ll settle for learning how to serve this colony.’
‘You want to know where to go?’ Gunderson asked him.
‘It would help.’
‘They told us to pass you a message,’ she said. ‘You’re expected in the High Conch at eight.’
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘You’ve been very helpful.’ He turned to leave.
‘Fuck you, Malinin,’ he heard her say to his back. ‘You think you’re better than us, is that it?’
‘Not at all,’ he replied, surprised by his calmness. He turned back to face her. ‘I think my abilities are average. I just happen to feel a sense of responsibility, an obligation to serve Ararat to the best of my abilities. I’d be astonished if you felt differently.’
‘You think that now Clavain’s out of the picture, you can slime your way to the top?’
He looked at Gunderson with genuine surprise. ‘That thought never crossed my mind.’
‘Well, that’s good, because if it had, you’d be making a serious mistake. You don’t have what it takes, Malinin. None of us have got what it takes, but you especially don’t have it.’
‘No? And what exactly is it that I don’t have?’
‘The balls to stand up against the pig,’ she said, as if this should have been obvious to all present.
In the High Conch, Antoinette Bax was already seated at the table, a compad open in front of her. Cruz, Pellerin and several other colony seniors had joined her, and now Blood came in, swaggering like a wrestler.
‘There’d better be a good reason for this,’ he said. ‘It’s not as if I haven’t got a shitload of other things I really need to be taking care of.’
‘Where’s Scorpio?’ she asked.
‘In the infirmary, checking on mother and daughter. He’ll be here as soon as he can,’ Blood replied.
‘And Malinin?’
‘I had someone leave a message for him. He’ll get here eventually.’ Blood collapsed into a seat. Reflexively, he took out his knife and began to scrape the blade against his chin. It made a thin, insectile noise.
‘Well, we’ve got a problem,’ Antoinette said. ‘In the last six hours, the neutrino flux from the ship has about trebled. If the flux increases another ten, fifteen per cent, that ship’s going to have nowhere to go but up.’
‘There’s no exhaust yet?’ asked Cruz.
‘No,’ Antoinette replied, ‘and I’m pretty worried about what will happen when those drives do start thrusting. No one was living around the bay when she came down. We need to think seriously about an evacuation to inland areas. I’d recommend moving everyone to the outlying islands, but I know that’s not possible given the existing load on aircraft and shuttles.’
‘Yeah, dream on,’ Blood said.
‘All the same, we have to do something. When the Captain decides to take off, we’re going to have tidal waves, clouds of superheated steam, noise so loud it will deafen everyone within hundreds of kilometres, all kinds of harmful radiation spewing out…’ Antoinette trailed off, hoping she had made her point. ‘Basically, this isn’t going to be the kind of environment you want to be anywhere near unless you’re inside a spacesuit.’
Blood buried his face in his hands, making a mask of his stubby pig fingers. Antoinette had seen Scorpio do something similar when crises pressed on him from all sides. With Clavain gone and Scorpio absent, Blood was experiencing the responsibility he had always craved. Antoinette doubted that the novelty of command had lasted for more than about five minutes.
‘I can’t evacuate the town,’ he said.
‘You have no choice,’ Antoinette insisted.
He lowered his hands and jabbed a finger at the window. ‘That’s our fucking ship. We shouldn’t be speculating about what it’s going to do. We should be giving it orders, where and when it suits us.’
‘Sorry, Blood, but that isn’t how it works,’ Antoinette said.
‘There’ll be panic,’ Cruz said. ‘Worse than anything we’ve seen. All the processing stations will have to be closed down and relocated. It’ll delay exodus flights to the Infinity by at least a day. And where are those relocated people going to sleep tonight? There’s nothing for them inland — just a bunch of rocks. We’d have hundreds dead of exposure by daybreak.’
‘I don’t have all the answers,’ Antoinette said. ‘I’m just pointing out the difficulties.’
‘There must be something else we can do,’ Cruz said. ‘Damn, we should have had contingencies in place for this.’
‘Should haves don’t count,’ Antoinette said. It was something her father had always told her. It had annoyed her intensely, and she was dismayed to hear the same words coming out of her mouth before she could stop them.
‘Pellerin,’ Blood said, ‘what about swimmer corps intervention? Ararat seems to be on our side, or it wouldn’t have made a channel for the boats to reach the ship. Anything you can offer?’
Pellerin shook her head. ‘Sorry. Not now. If the Jugglers show signs of returning to normal activity patterns, we might sanction an exploratory swim, but not before then. I’m not sending someone to their death, Blood, not when there’s so little chance of a useful outcome.’
‘I understand,’ the pig said.
‘Wait,’ Cruz said. ‘Let’s turn this around. If it’s going to be such a bad thing to be anywhere near the ship when it lifts, maybe we should be looking at ways to speed up the exodus.’
‘We’re already moving ’em out as fast as we can,’ Blood said.
‘Then cut back on the bureaucracy,’ Antoinette said. ‘Just move them and worry about the details later. And don’t take all day doing it. We may not have that much time left. Shit, what I wouldn’t give for Storm Bird now.’
‘Perhaps there is something you can do for us,’ Cruz said, gazing straight at her.
Antoinette returned the one-eyed woman’s stare. ‘Name it.’
‘Go back aboard the Infinity. Reason with the Captain. Tell him we need some breathing space.’
It was not what she wanted to hear. She had, if anything, become even more frightened of the Captain since their conversation; the thought of summoning him again filled her with renewed dread.
‘He may not want to talk,’ she said. ‘Even if he does, he may not want to hear anything I have to say.’