Best of all you could visit the spindling pens and help the cargo jockeys muck out one of the tall beasts, and brush the fur on its six powerful legs, and feed it the strange purple-coloured straw it preferred. The spindlings saw him cry a few times, but nobody else, not even his great-aunt.
And so the Weapon came to see him.
Telni was alone in one of the smaller Buildings, near the centre of the cluster on the Platform. He was watching the slow crawl of lightmoss across the wall, the glow it cast subtly shifting. It was as if the Weapon just appeared at the door. Its little boy stood at its side, Powpy, with the cable dangling from the back of his neck.
Telni stared at the boy. ‘He used to be bigger than me. The boy. Now he’s smaller.’
‘We believe you understand why,’ said Powpy.
‘The last time I saw you was four years ago. I was six. I’ve grown since then. But you live down on the Lowland, mostly. Did you come up in one of the freight buckets?’
‘No.’
‘You live slower down there.’
‘Do you know how much slower?’
‘No,’ Telni said.
The boy nodded stiffly, as if somebody was pushing the back of his head. ‘A straightforward, honest answer. The Lowland here is deep, about half a kilometre below the Platform, which is itself over three hundred metres below the Shelf. Locally the stratification of time has a gradient of, approximately, five parts in one hundred per metre. So a year on the Platform is—’
‘Only a couple of weeks on the Lowland. But, umm, three hundred times five, a year here is fifteen years on the Shelf.’
‘Actually closer to seventeen. Do you know why time is stratified?’
‘I don’t know that word.’
Powpy’s little mouth had stumbled on it too, and other hard words. ‘Layered.’
‘No.’
‘Good. Nor do we. Do you know why your mother died?’
That blunt question made him gasp. Since Ama had gone, nobody had even mentioned her name. ‘It was the refugees’ plague. She died of that. And my grandfather died soon after. My great-aunt Jurg says it was of a broken heart.’
‘Why did the plague come here?’
‘The refugees brought it. Refugees from the war on the Shelf. The war’s gone on for years, Shelf years. My grandfather says – said – it is as if they are trying to bring down a Formidable Caress of their own, on their families. The refugees came in a balloon. Families with kids. Grandfather says it happens every so often. They don’t know what the Platform is but they see it hanging in the air below them, at peace. So they try to escape from the war.’
‘Were they sick when they arrived?’
‘No. But they carried the plague bugs. People started dying. They weren’t im—’
‘Immune.’
‘Immune like the refugees were.’
‘Why not?’
‘Time goes faster up on the Shelf. Bugs change quickly. You get used to one, but then another comes along.’
‘Your understanding is clear.’
‘My mother hated you. She was unhappy when you visited me that time, when I was six. She says you meddle in our lives.’
‘“Meddle.” We created the Platform, gathered the sentient Buildings to support it in the air. We designed this community. Your life, and the lives of many generations of your ancestors, have been shaped by what we built. We “meddled” in many ways long before you were born.’
‘Why?’
Silence again. ‘That’s too big a question. Ask smaller questions.’
‘Why are there so many roads coming in across the Lowland to the Loading Hub?’
‘I think you know the answer to that.’
‘Time goes twenty-five times slower down there. It’s as if they’re trying to feed a city twenty-five times the size of the Platform. As if we eat twenty-five times as fast as they do!’
‘That’s right. Now ask about something you don’t know.’
He pointed to the lightmoss. ‘You put this stuff in the Buildings to give us light. Like living, glowing paint.’
‘That’s correct.’
‘Is this the same stuff that makes the light storms, down on the Lowland?’
‘Yes, it is. Later you may learn that lightmoss is gathered on the Lowland and shipped up to the Platform in the supply lifts. That’s a good observation. To connect two such apparently disparate phenomena—’
‘I tried to eat the lightmoss. I threw it up. You can’t eat the spindlings’ straw either. Why?’
‘Because they come from other places. Other worlds than this. Whole other systems of life.’
Telni understood some of this. ‘People brought them here, and mixed everything up.’ A thought struck him. ‘Can spindlings eat lightmoss?’
‘Why is that relevant?’
‘Because if they can it must mean they both came from the same other place.’
‘You can find that out for yourself.’
He itched to try the experiment, right now. But he sought another question to ask, while he had the chance. ‘Did people make you?’
‘They made our grandfathers, if you like.’
‘Were you really Weapons?’
‘Not all of us. Such labels are irrelevant now. When human civilisations fell, sentient machines were left to roam, to interact. There was selection, of a brutal sort, as we competed for resources and spare parts. Thus we enjoyed our own long evolution. A man called Bayle mounted an expedition to the Lowland, and found us.’
‘You were farming humans. That’s what my mother said.’
‘It wasn’t as simple as that. The interaction with Bayle’s scholars led to a new generation of machines with enhanced faculties.’
‘What kind of faculties?’
‘Curiosity.’
Telni considered that. ‘What’s special about me? That I might have an Effigy inside me?’
‘Not just that. Your mother rebelled when you were born. That’s very rare. The human community here was founded from a pool of scholars, but that was many generations ago. We fear that by caring for you we may have bred out a certain initiative. That was how you came to our attention, Telni. Your mother rebelled, and you seek to answer questions. There may be questions you can answer that we can’t. There may be questions you can ask that we can’t.’
‘Like what?’
‘You have to ask. That’s the point.’
He thought. ‘What are the Formidable Caresses?’
‘The ends of the world. Or at least, of civilisation. In the past, and in the future.’
‘How does time work?’
‘That’s another question you can answer yourself.’
He was mystified. ‘How?’
A seam opened up on the Weapon’s sleek side, like a wound, revealing a dark interior. Powpy had to push his little hand inside and grope around for something. Despite the Weapon’s control, Telni could see the boy’s revulsion. He drew out something that gleamed, complex, a mechanism. He handed it to Telni.
Telni turned it over in his hands, fascinated. It was warm. ‘What is it?’
‘A clock. A precise one. You’ll work out what to do with it.’ The Weapon moved, gliding up another metre into the air. ‘One more question.’
‘Why do I feel . . . sometimes . . .’ It was hard to put into words. ‘Like I should be somewhere else? My mother said everybody feels like that, when they’re young. But . . . Is it a stupid question?’
‘No. It is a very important question. But it is one you will have to answer for yourself. We will see you again.’ It drifted away, two metres up in the air, with the little boy running beneath, like a dog on a long lead. But it paused once more, and the boy turned and spoke again. ‘What will you do now?’
Telni grinned. ‘Go feed moss to a spindling.’