Pesten shifted so he was kneeling with his blanket around his shoulders, and he gazed at Otho, intent. ‘And there’s more. Think about what Coton has told us, about the end of the universe. You must have seen it. You must have travelled to the edge of the nebula, and maybe beyond. I know you riders take your whales between the star clouds, once or twice a generation – else you would forget how it’s done, when it’s needed. I think you have seen that Coton is right.’
‘The stars are going out,’ Otho said bitterly. ‘The nebulae are all choked. You hardly ever see the yellow spark of a new star . . . Even in Atma’s day it was different. Atma was boss before me. So he said before I killed him. It’s true enough.’
‘Coton is right,’ Pesten repeated. ‘And we have to do what he says. We have to go to the Raft – for in the end it’s our only hope. And you could do it, couldn’t you? Oh, come on,’ he said, grinning. ‘I’ve spent my life watching you people control these beasts – and envying you, if you want to know.’
Lura said, ‘Pesten!’
‘I wasn’t always a dried-up old scholar, you know. And there is a certain romance about the whale riders.’
‘You don’t know what you’re asking, Brother,’ Otho said. ‘You’re talking about a dive deep into the nebula – to the very core, where we’ll scoot around the black hole. It’s dark and hot and thick down there. Half the whale’s flesh burns off, and it shits away a chunk of its mass to drive itself out of the gravity well, and it doesn’t care if we live or die in its gut or not. And then we’ll have to plunge into another nebula, and do it all over again.’
Anka said, her anger nearly choking her, ‘I can’t believe I’m listening to this. Otho, you only brought these two in for a quick shag of her, and a fat ransom for him. And now it’s all this.’
Pesten sat back on his heels. ‘Well, I’ve said all I can. What’s it to be, Otho? Steep yourself in blood and die with the rest of us – or live on, a hero?’
Otho growled, ‘I’d shut up if I were you, Brother, before you go too far.’ But he hesitated, his face twisted, and Lura could see Pesten’s persuasion was working. At last he snapped, ‘Let’s do this, and get it over, and we can get back to what we’re good at – riding and robbing. Start the singing, Anka.’
‘You can’t be serious.’
He held her gaze for long heartbeats. Lura wondered if Anka was deciding whether to challenge him, as he had once challenged Atma. Then she broke away.
And she began to sing, a wordless melody, and walked back towards the whale’s face. One by one the others walked with her and joined in, repeating the melody in an overlapping round. By the time they had reached the inside-out face of the whale the song was eerie, discordant, but it pulsed with a compelling rhythm.
‘Some say this is how the riders really control their whales,’ the Brother said, fascinated. ‘With song – not with goads. Once there were no riders, just hunters who learned to call the whales down from the sky. Some say the whales can read our minds . . .’
The riders gathered behind the whale’s eyes, and sang on and on. Lura and the Brother could do nothing but sit and listen.
And the whale turned. Lura could feel the shifting acceleration, and the shuddering of its skin as the great flukes beat at the air.
10
Croq, a small, plump, confident man, was Vala’s contact at the Palace of the Assimilation.
‘Welcome to our Palace, Academician, Marshal! I regard myself as something of a scholar though I have no formal qualification, but I could hardly do my job without acquiring a little learning . . . Come, come, follow me.’
Coton, Vala, Sand and a single Coalition guard followed him into the grounds of the ruined complex. The Palace of the Assimilation had been built on a massive tetrahedral frame, as had many of mankind’s greatest buildings. Though the frame survived, much of the facing, a kind of foam-concrete with a golden patina, had crumbled to leave huge gaps open to the sky, and where the weather had got in the internal partition walls and floors had rotted away. The ground floor was littered with chunks of debris and choked with weeds, and Coton could see people inhabiting lean-tos and shacks in the lee of the surviving walls. Some even had fires burning on the remnants of the polished floor. Vala, picking her way through the rubble, looked faintly embarrassed.
Croq had his own staff here, younger men and women in purple robes similar to his own, with weapons at their waists and antique-looking data slates under their arms. They nodded to Croq as he passed.
‘You can see we have taken in our share of the dispossessed, just as the rest of the planet,’ Croq said. ‘Well, they do no harm here, for little has survived of the Palace’s treasures above ground level. Let them stay, as long as they don’t disturb the customers!’ And he smiled, showing gappy teeth.
Marshal Sand strode impatiently, her head swathed in a Virtual bubble with update reports scrolling in the air. Coton was surprised to find Sand spending so much time on Vala’s projects, which were surely peripheral to her main objectives, yet here she was. Her guard kept a heavy rifle cradled in his arms – or hers; it was impossible to tell the sex under the gleaming green body armour.
Coton, meanwhile, was fascinated by Croq. He was bald with a thick black beard, and his sweeping purple robe, ancient and much patched, was a kind of imitation of Vala’s Academician robe – which was itself a homage to the learning of the past, especially the famous Commission for Historical Truth of the First Coalition. But Croq’s purpose was not scholarship but selling. Coton thought he had seen his type in the markets of Centre, smiling, hustling, dealing. But those vendors of bread and second-hand shoes would have looked crude beside this man, who clearly had expensive wares to sell to a much more discerning set of customers.
They came to a small cylindrical chamber that stood directly under the pinnacle of the main tetrahedral frame, Coton saw, looking up. A couple of Croq’s assistants waited here, weapons visible, evidently keeping the refugees out. Croq waved his party inside the chamber. They filed in, the door closed, and a single light globe lit up the space.
Coton heard the hum of ancient engines, felt a subtle acceleration. Sand grunted her annoyance as her Virtuals flickered.
‘An elevator,’ Vala murmured. ‘Evidently.’
Croq said, ‘Since the Palace was first built, whole civilisations have washed over it like breaking waves. I’m afraid that it’s only in the deepest basements, tucked away in caches, hidden purposefully or simply lost, that you’ll find much of value nowadays. Of course it gives you some idea of just how much was piled up here that there is still something left, even after all this time.’
Sand banged her gloved fist on the wall. ‘And this still works.’
‘Oh, yes. They built their infrastructure well, the ancients.’
Still the descent went on, smooth, its speed undetectable, and Coton, who in his short life had learned to be suspicious of elderly technology, wondered just how far they were falling. He tried to mask his gnawing anxiety.
At last the doors slid open, and Croq led them out into a long, sweeping corridor, illuminated by sparse light globes and curving in the far distance. Coton saw that the walls were shelved, and doors and side branches led off into more shadowy spaces. Croq let them pause as they passed shelves crowded with artefacts – gadgets, what looked like biological samples in specimen jars, even shimmering Virtuals. Coton stared at one beautiful image of another tetrahedral form with a densely structured surface that appeared to have been constructed around a star. He understood nothing of what he saw.