Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds
Bella was there on time, travelling alone except for a haunt. The haunt was a BI robot stealthed for maximum discretion, a paper-thin thing like a full-sized origami figure. It trod silently beside her, semi-transparent as a ghost image in the corner of her eye, folded into knife-edged invisibility when she was still. Haunts were technology from the last days before the Cutoff, troublesome to manufacture even with the latest forge-vat protocols.
Sugimoto’s was all wangwood screens, ornamental fans, miniature rock gardens and delicate watercolours. Judy Sugimoto had opened the Japanese restaurant in the early years of the transit plaza, content to do quiet business until the population curve ramped through the roof. Which it would, soon.
The place was in its usual state of near emptiness. Bella spotted Svetlana in a corner booth, finishing off a dish of thick-lipped, thuggish fugu — pufferfish.
Bella ordered a glass of sake for herself. She had no appetite.
“I know what this is about,” she said, as she settled into the booth. Through its curved window they had a dizzying view of the transit plaza, with its intersecting geometries of maglev tubes and Skyside-bound elevator shafts.
After a long pause, Svetlana said, “I don’t condone what happened to Meredith Bagley.”
“I’d have been surprised if you did.”
Svetlana cast an uneasy eye at the haunt as it folded and changed colour to blend into the seat. “Those men deserve to be punished for what they did to her. But Parry didn’t do what he did to protect those men. He did it to protect all of us.”
Bella sipped at the sake. “At least you accept that Parry was involved.”
“He told me he was. Did you expect him to lie?”
The haunt stiffened at the aggression in the other woman’s voice.
“I only meant that it might be a lot for you to take in,” Bella said.
“I never said it wasn’t.”
“Svetlana, I came to see you voluntarily. Please don’t take that tone with me.”
Svetlana pushed a chopstick into the remains of the puffer-fish and shook her head, disappointed as much — it appeared to Bella — with her own actions as with Bella’s.
“I want you to reconsider,” she said at length.
“Reconsider justice?”
“There are other kinds of justice. You know the names now — Parry’s given you that much.”
“Yes,” Bella said carefully.
“Then isn’t that enough? You have one line of evidence from Ash Murray that points to these three men.”
“Ash Murray is dead.”
Svetlana dismissed her objection with a stab of her chop-stick. “No dice, Bella. You can bring him back with one signature on the right form.”
“It still wouldn’t be enough for a conviction.”
“You have another witness now. Parry will testify that he saw that log, that he knew the three men were on that shift.”
“And the fact that he wiped that selfsame log?”
“It doesn’t have to come out.”
“The tribunal would get to the bottom of it sooner or later,” Bella said. “They’d want to know more — how he saw the names, why he didn’t mention it sooner. And even if the tribunal doesn’t figure it out, there’s still the problem of the other two men. They know what Parry did. Do you honestly think they’ll go down silently?”
“They still look up to Parry.”
“If they looked up to him that much, they wouldn’t have killed Meredith.”
“They won’t betray him.”
“Svetlana, he’s already betrayed them by coming to see me. As far as I’m concerned, all bets are off.”
“You’d have found Parry sooner or later.”
The sake nibbled the edge off her thoughts. “Let’s get one thing straight: I have, and continue to have, nothing but respect and admiration for Parry Boyce. In all the years of my exile —”
“Here we go,” Svetlana said, rolling her eyes.
“Hear me out — this isn’t about you, Svieta, or even about me. It’s about Parry, and that one lifeline of sanity he offered me. Other people were kind to me — Axford, Nick… Jim, of course — but it was Parry who drove out there. It was Parry who brought me the fish tank. It was Parry who left me with one microscopic shred of self-respect.”
“He trusted you,” Svetlana said. “He came to you voluntarily, so that you would know the truth, believing that you would have the good sense to bury it.”
“From where I was sitting, it looked very much like a confession, as if Parry expected me to arrest him.”
“That wasn’t how he meant it.”
“I can’t go second-guessing hidden intentions. I’m running an investigation. I was hoping to find the man who deleted those files, and to punish him. I can’t stop just because it turns out that he’s a friend, or because he had noble motives.”
“You could if you wanted to.”
“Thirteen years in power really taught you very little,” Bella said, closing a shutter on the little window of friendship that had opened up between them. She turned to the haunt. “We’re done here.”
The robot emerged from its camouflage, peeling itself from the chair.
“Bella, please,” Svetlana pleaded.
Bella did not look back. She left the restaurant and took the first outbound elevator.
* * *
“This is a nice surprise,” McKinley said, expressing enthusiasm with an exuberant swish of tractor fronds. The other two aliens present — Kanchenjunga and Dhaulagiri — kept their usual discreet vigil at the rear. “I wasn’t expecting to see you up here again quite so soon after Mike’s revival.”
Jim Chisholm looked at her concernedly. “Everything’s all right, isn’t it?”
“There’s no problem with Mike,” Bella said. “He’s settling in very well, as far as I can tell.”
“The party was an excellent idea.” Chisholm kept his arms folded into the capacious sleeves of his gown. His hair was a little longer and whiter than Bella remembered from the last time she’d seen him, his beard a little fuller and shot through with white at the corners of his mouth, but as always time seemed to pass much more slowly in the embassy than it did in Crabtree. “I’m sorry I couldn’t make it down, but I didn’t want anyone to think I might be trying to hog the limelight.”
“That’s all right. I’d have liked to have seen you — there’s a lot we could have talked about — but I appreciate that you had your reasons.”
“I’m sure Mike will do fine, in any case. And I hear that the party was successful in other ways.”
“If you mean Svetlana and me —”
He nodded sagely. “I was encouraged by the news. Let’s hope some small good comes of it.”
“Yes, let’s,” Bella said tartly. It was over, she knew. It would only be a matter of time before the news reached the embassy. A deceitful moment of thaw between two endless winters.
“Perhaps you’d like to discuss the scheduling of another rejuvenation?” McKinley asked.
“Ask me again in ten years.”
The alien formed a half-hearted high-res grid with its optic fronds, lashing them together in the sloppy manner of a poorly made basket. It was McKinley’s signal that she had his attention. “What is it, Bella? Would you like some time alone to talk to Jim in private?”
“That’s kind,” she said, “and an hour ago I might have said yes. But there’s no reason for you not to hear this as well. It would get back to you in the end, after all.”
“Does this concern us, then?”
“Yes,” she said, and felt a wash of dizziness pass over her, the feeling that she was horribly out of her depth, far from home and way off the script. “Forgive me, McKinley. This might be considered indelicate, but there are a few things I’ve been meaning to ask.”
Chisholm cleared his throat. “Bella, let’s not forget that the Fountainheads have never pretended that we’re ready for all the answers. There are certain truths that, in
“I know that, Jim. I’ve been hearing the same story for years. Maybe I believe it, too. But now and then there are things you absolutely have to know.”
“It would be a mistake to assume that we have all the answers,” McKinley told her.
“But you must have some. Let’s talk about the Cutoff, shall we?”
McKinley’s fronds invited her to continue. “By all means. There’s nothing taboo about it.”
“You’ve never actually spelled this out, but in every exchange we’ve ever had, you’ve consistently alluded to the fact that you made contact with a human ship launched from Triton, somewhere around the time of the Cutoff.”
“That’s what the data tells you.”
“I’m not talking about the data,” Bella said, fighting to hold her temper and nerve in check. “I’m talking about what you know. The Fountainheads are a starfaring culture. You’ve been out here a lot longer than we have, even by the standards of the Thai expansion.”
“We have starfaring capability,” McKinley said, as if that ought to settle her doubts.
“Then answer me this: how extensive was your empire, or realm, or whatever you want to call it, when you bumped into the Thai ship? Did any of your kind ever meet any other representatives from the expansion? What about ships that were sent out after the Cutoff? What happened to them?”
His fronds brushed each other in obvious agitation, like the arms of an anemone stirred by some sudden marine tide. “These are problematic questions.”
“That’s why I’m asking them.”
“Our territory is large. It encompasses a volume of space containing many solar systems.”
“Put some numbers on that for me, McKinley. Are we talking hundreds, thousands, millions, or what?”
The three aliens squirmed. Flashes of ruby red and emerald green from their deeper frond layers signalled some frantic exchange of visual signals. “I have always striven to be straight with you, Bella,” McKinley said at length.
“So why can’t you just tell me?”
“Our realm encompasses hundreds of thousands of systems.” His tone became probing. “Why is this of such immediate and pressing interest, Bella?”
“Because it’s odd to me,” she said, “that you only ever chanced upon one ship from the Thai expansion.”
“Would it make much difference if we had encountered more?”
“Possibly.” She shrugged noncommittally. “Then tell me about the Musk Dogs. Do they have a realm as well?” Bella did not wait for McKinley’s answer, for she was certain now that she would hear nothing resembling the truth. “And the other species, the ones you’ve as good as admitted are stashed away elsewhere in the Structure — what about them? What kind of empires do they have? Hundreds of thousands of star systems, like you? Where are all these starfaring species, McKinley? Why didn’t we see any sign of these jostling empires when we looked out into the sky from Earth? Why did it all look so damned empty out there?”
“You saw the Spica Structure,” the Fountainhead pointed out.
“Yes. One alien artefact around one star system, in one direction of the sky, two hundred and sixty light-years away. Made, incidentally, by beings we’ve still not seen. Where are they, McKinley? Where are the Spicans, after all this time?”
Jim Chisholm clapped his hands. “Okay, maybe we should wrap things up here.”
“I’m not done,” Bella said.
“Yes you are, Bella,” Chisholm said, with a sudden and uncharacteristic firmness. “You’ve said your piece. You’ve expressed reasonable concerns. McKinley, in turn, has made clear his reservations about revealing everything you’d like to know. You must respect that, as well. Would an adult answer every question a child asked? Of course not. It would be damaging.”
“Maybe I should have started with you,” she said sourly, “as you obviously see things from such a lofty perspective.”
“You’d have learned nothing from me you haven’t already learned from McKinley.”
“The difference is I can always tell when a man is lying. Even you, Jim.”
He looked at her with something like pity, shot through with love and compassion. “If I did lie to you, Bella, do you honestly imagine I wouldn’t have your best interests at heart?”
“I have a right to know the truth.”
“So do the citizens of Crabtree and greater Janus,” he countered. “Have you told Gabriela Ramos what happened to Old Buenos Aires? Have you told Mike Pasqualucci about the monster his son became?”
“That’s not the same thing,” Bella said, brimming with her own wounded self-righteousness. “You can’t say that’s the same thing!”
“It’s all the same,” Jim Chisholm said. He moved to turn his back on her, like a teacher let down by a promising pupil. “Call me when you’ve calmed down, Bella. Then perhaps we can make some progress.”
THIRTY-ONE
Bella stormed into the bunker, cycling through the many layers of security. Martin Hinks was on duty, supervising the scanning run. The cube turned within a loom of analysis instruments. Hinks — who had been born ten years into the Fountainhead era — jolted awake at Bella’s entry and tried to plaster on some vague simulacrum of alertness.
“Go back to sleep, Martin,” Bella said reassuringly. “It’s all right.”
“Madam —” he began.
But Bella had already crossed the red line on the floor. An alarm sounded, warning her that she was in danger of impairing the scanning run. Bella shoved aside the robotic scanners, toppling one of them on its spindly tripod. The fragile equipment crunched to the floor. Hinks redoubled his protests. Bella ignored him.
She reached out and touched one bare hand against the smooth black side of the cube. If asked, she could not have said exactly why she was doing this. All she knew was that the compulsion to touch the cube was now overwhelmingly strong, as if her entire life had been a vector aimed at this one moment. As if she had been born to touch the cube, and the cube had been born to embrace her touch.
The moving surface was iron cold. Nothing happened. Her fingers tingled, but that was all.
Bella pulled back, confused. Nothing had happened.
She flexed her fingers: the old stiffness was creeping back in with each year, like an invisible glove that was beginning to harden in place.
The alarm still blared. She looked back at Martin Hinks, expecting him to be angry that she had ruined the experiment, but instead he just looked embarrassed.
“I’m sorry,” Bella said. “I shouldn’t have… I just wanted to know what it felt like.”
“It’s all right, madam.”
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
Hinks left his desk and moved to the fallen machine, gently tipping it back into place. The white casing was badly dented where it had hit the floor and Bella wondered idly whether it would ever work again. If they had not turned up the gravity in Crabtree, all would have been well.
“It’s okay,” Hinks said. “I’ve touched it. We’ve all touched it. It’s just something you have to do.”
“Did I mess things up?”
She caught the hesitation in his voice before he answered. Yes, she had. “No, no. We’d only just started this run. It won’t take long to restart it.”
“I’ve damaged the equipment.”
“It’s fixable. It’ll still work fine.”
The cube revolved again and she saw the icy smudge where her fingertips had transferred a micro-layer of grease and dead skin to the artefact’s perfect black surface. She felt ashamed. “I’m sorry, Martin. I’ve ruined things. That was indefensible.”
Hinks helped her to a vacant stool, pushed back from one of the science consoles. “Can I bring you something to drink, perhaps, Madam Lind?”
“I’m fine,” she said, but even as she said it she realised that she did not quite feel fine. She flexed her hand again — the fingertips were still tingling, as if th
Too clear, in fact. Like a blackboard that had just been scrubbed.
“Martin,” she said calmly, “you need to do something for me. Call Ryan Axford, or whoever’s still on duty in the Hab, and tell them they need to come and fetch me. Tell them I think the cube has injected something into me. And tell them to hurry.”
* * *
She slept, woke, slept again. Axford was always there, frowning over a hard-copy read-out, tapping keypad instructions into some reassuringly antique item of medical hardware, whispering quietly to one of the other medics. Visitors came and went, through the quiet hours of the early morning and into the day shift. Bella watched the wall clock lurch forward in spasms, then appear to stall for subjective hours. In fever, she knew, the processes of the mind ran at an accelerated rate, distorting the perception of time. Something like that was happening to her now, as the cube’s machines spun havoc through her skull.
It was clear now that the cube had pushed something into her: its mass had decreased by half a gram since she touched it.
The day lulled into afternoon. Shifts changed, but Axford was always present. Once, when she came around and saw him looking askance at some display, she saw a weary old man packed into the shape of a boy.
Afternoon bled into evening. Nurses came and gave her something to drink — it might have been to slake her thirst, or to provide some isotopic tracer for the scans. They never offered her food, but she wasn’t hungry. Now and then they fiddled with the lacy imaging coronet Axford had positioned over her hair, or nipped blood from her thumb, or ran some other inscrutable test whose function she couldn’t guess.
Later, in the small hours, she had another visitor.
She felt more than usually alert. Normally she heard the hissing of the medical centre’s security doors, the exchange of words between visitor and duty staff, hushed confidences about her state of mind. There had been none of that this time.