Alastair Reynolds - Nightingale

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
NIGHTINGALE
Alastair Reynolds
Here’s another brilliant story by Alastair Reynolds, whose “Signal to Noise”
appears elsewhere in this anthology. In the hair-raising adventure that
follows, he sweeps us along with a determined and heavily armed boarding
party off to storm a lost ghost ship as big as a moon—and crewed with a
full complement of bizarre and deadly ghosts of its own.
* * * *
I checked the address Tomas Martinez had given me, shielding the paper
against the rain while I squinted at my scrawl. The number I’d written down
didn’t correspond with any of the high-and-dry offices, but it was a dead
ringer for one of the low-rent premises at street level. Here the walls of
Threadfall Canyon had been cut and buttressed to the height of six or
seven storeys, widening the available space at the bottom of the trench.
Buildings covered most of the walls, piled on top of each other, supported
by a haphazard arrangement of stilts and rickety, semi-permanent bamboo
scaffolding. Aerial walkways had been strung from one side of the street to
the other, with stairs and ladders snaking their way through the dark fissures
between the buildings. Now and then a wheeler sped through the water,
sending a filthy wave of brown water in its wake. Very rarely, a sleek,
claw-like volantor slid overhead. But volantors were off-world tech and not
many people on Sky’s Edge could afford that kind of thing anymore.
It didn’t look right to me, but all the evidence said that this had to be
the place.
I stepped out of the water, onto the wooden platform in front of the
office, and knocked on the glass-fronted door while rain curtained down
through holes in the striped awning above me. I was pushing hair out of my
eyes when the door opened.
I’d seen enough photographs of Martinez to know this wasn’t him.
This was a big bull of a man, nearly as wide as the door. He stood there
 with his arms crossed in front of his chest, over which he wore only a
sleeveless black vest that was zipped down to the midriff. His muscles
were so tight it looked like he was wearing some kind of body-hugging
amplification suit. His head was very large and very bald, rooted to his body
by a neck like a small mountain range. The skin around his right eye was
paler than the rest of his face, in a neatly circular patch.
He looked down at me as if I was something that the rain had washed
in.
“What?” he said, in a voice like the distant rumble of artillery.
“I’m here to see Martinez.”
“Mr. Martinez to you,” he said.
“Whatever. But I’m still here to see him, and he should be expecting
me. I’m…”
“Dexia Scarrow,” called another voice—fractionally more welcoming,
this time—and a smaller, older man bustled into view from behind the pillar
of muscle blocking the door, snatching delicate pince-nez glasses from his
nose. “Let her in, Norbert. She’s expected. Just a little
late
.”
“I got held up around Armesto—my hired wheeler hit a pothole and
tipped over. Couldn’t get the thing started again, so had to…”
The smaller man waved aside my excuse. “You’re here now, which is
all that matters. I’ll have Norbert dry your clothes, if you wish.”
I peeled off my coat. “Maybe this.”
“Norbert will attend to your galoshes as well. Would you care for
something to drink? I have tea already prepared, but if you would rather
something else…”
“Tea will be fine, Mr. Martinez,” I said.
“Please. Call me Tomas. It’s my sincere wish that we will work
together as friends.”
I stood out of my galoshes and handed my dripping wet coat to the
big man. Martinez nodded once, the gesture precise and birdlike, and then
ushered me to follow him farther into his rooms. He was slighter and older
 than I’d been expecting, although still recognizable as the man in the
photographs. His hair was grey turning to white, thinning on his scalp and
shaved close to the skin elsewhere on his head. He wore a grey waistcoat
over a grey shirt, the ensemble lending him a drab, clerkish air.
We navigated a twisting labyrinth formed from four layers of brown
boxes, piled to head height. “Excuse the mess,” Martinez said, looking
back at me over his shoulder. “I really should find a better solution to my
filing problems, but there’s always something more pressing that needs
doing instead.”
“I’m surprised you have time to eat, let alone worry about filing
problems.”
“Well, things haven’t been as hectic lately, I must confess. If you’ve
been following the news you’ll know that I’ve already caught most of my big
fish. There’s been some mopping up to do, but I’ve been nowhere near as
busy as in…” Martinez stopped suddenly next to one of the piles of boxes,
placed his glasses back on the ridge of his nose, and scuffed dust from the
paper label on the side of the box nearest his face. “No,” he said, shaking
his head. “Wrong place. Wrong damned place! Norbert!”
Norbert trudged along behind us, my sodden coat still draped over
one of his enormous, trunklike arms. “Mr. Martinez?”
“This one is in the wrong place.” The smaller man turned around and
indicated a spot between two other boxes, on the other side of the corridor.
“It goes here. It needs to be moved. Kessler’s case is moving into court
next month, and we don’t want any trouble with missing documentation.”
“Attend to it,” Norbert said, which sounded like an order but which I
assumed was his way of saying he’d remember to move the box when he
was done with my laundry.
“Kessler?” I asked, when Norbert had left. “As in Tillman Kessler, the
NC interrogator?”
“One and the same, yes. Did you have experience with him?”
“I wouldn’t be standing here if I did.”
“True enough. But a small number of people were fortunate enough
to survive their encounters with Kessler. It’s their testimonies that will help
bring him to justice.”
 “By which you mean crucified.”
“I detect faint disapproval, Dexia,” Martinez said.
“You’re right. It’s barbaric.”
“It’s how we’ve always done things. The Haussmann way, if you like.”
Sky Haussmann: the man who gave this world its name, and who
sparked off the 250-year war we’ve only just learned to stop fighting. When
they crucified Sky they thought they were putting an early end to the
violence. They couldn’t have been more wrong. Ever since then, crucifixion
is the way executions happen.
“Is Kessler the reason you asked me here, sir? Were you expecting
me to add to the case file against him?”
Martinez paused at a heavy wooden door.
“Not Kessler, no. I’ve every expectation to see him nailed to
Bridgetop by the end of the year. But it does concern the man for whom
Kessler was an instrument.”
I thought about that for a moment. “Kessler worked for Colonel Jax,
didn’t he?”
Martinez opened the door and ushered me through, into the
windowless room beyond. By now we must have been back into the canyon
wall. The air had the inert stillness of a crypt. “Yes, Kessler was Jax’s man,”
Martinez said. “I’m glad you made the connection: it saves me explaining
why Jax ought to be brought to justice.”
“I agree completely. Half the population would agree with you. But I’m
afraid you’re a bit late: Jax died years ago.”
Two other people were already waiting in the room, sitting on settees
either side of a low black table set with tea, coffee and pisco sours.
“Jax didn’t die,” Martinez said. “He just disappeared, and now I know
where he is. Have a seat, please.”
He knew I was interested; knew I wouldn’t be able to walk out of that
room until I’d heard the rest of the story about Colonel Brandon Jax. But
 there was more to it than that: there was something effortlessly
commanding about his voice that made it very hard not to obey. In my time
in the Southland Militia I’d learned that some people have that authority and
some people don’t. It can’t be taught; can’t be learned; can’t be faked.
You’re either born with it or you’re not.
“Dexia Scarrow, allow me to introduce you to my other two guests,”
Martinez said, when I’d taken my place at the table. “The gentleman
opposite you is Salvatore Nicolosi, a veteran of one of the Northern
Coalition’s freeze/thaw units. The woman on your right is Ingrid Sollis, a
personal security expert with a particular interest in counter-intrusion
systems. Ingrid saw early combat experience with the Southland, but she
soon left the military to pursue private interests.”
I bit my tongue, then turned my attention away from the woman before
I said something I might regret. The man—Nicolosi—looked more like an
actor than a soldier. He didn’t have a scar on him. His beard was so neatly
groomed, so sharp-edged, that it looked sprayed on through a stencil.
Freeze/thaw operatives rubbed me up the wrong way, no matter which side
they’d been on. They’d always seen themselves as superior to the common
soldier, which is why they didn’t feel the need for the kind of excessive
musculature Norbert carried around.
“Let me introduce Dexia Scarrow,” Martinez continued, nodding at
me. “Dexia was a distinguished soldier in the Southland Militia for fifteen
years, until the armistice. Her service record is excellent. I believe she will
be a valuable addition to the team.”
“Maybe we should back up a step,” I said. “I haven’t agreed to be part
of anyone’s team.”
“We’re going after Jax,” Nicolosi said placidly. “Doesn’t that excite
you?”
“He was on your side,” I said. “What makes you so keen to see him
hang?”
Nicolosi looked momentarily pained. “He was a war criminal, Dexia.
I’m as anxious to see monsters like Jax brought to justice as I am to see
the same fate visited on their scum-ridden Southland counterparts.”
“Nicolosi’s right,” said Ingrid Sollis. “If we’re going to learn to live
together on this planet, we have to put the law above all else, regardless of
former allegiances.”
  [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]