Alastair Reynolds - Terminal World

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Table of Contents

Also by Alastair Reynolds from Gollancz:

Novels:
Revelation Space
Redemption Ark
Absolution Gap
Chasm City
Century Rain
Pushing Ice
The Prefect
House of Suns

Short Story Collections:
Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days
Galactic North
Zima Blue

Terminal World

ALASTAIR REYNOLDS

Orion

www.orionbooks.co.uk

And Earth is but a star, that once had shone.

The Golden Journey to Samarkand, James Elroy Flecker

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

The call came in to the Department of Hygiene and Public Works just before five in the afternoon. Something messy down on the ledge, maybe a faller from one of the overhanging buildings up in Fourth, maybe all the way from Circuit City. The dispatcher turned to the wall map, surveyed the pin lights and found a clean-up van close enough to take the call. It was one of the older crews, men he knew. He lifted the black handset of his telephone and spun the dial, taking a drag on his cigarette while the switchboard clunked and whirred.

Three oh seven.

Got a smear for you, Cultel. Something out on the ledge, just west of the waterworks. Not much else out there so you should spot it easy enough. Take the service duct on Seventh and Electric and walk the rest of the way. Keys on the blue hook should get you through any municipal locks.

Were loaded here. And were about a minute from coming off shift. Cant you pull in someone else?

Not at rush hour I cant. We wait for another van, smears going to start attracting a crowd and smelling bad. Seagulls are already taking an interest. Sorry, Cultel, but youre going to have to suck it up and earn some overtime.

Fine. But I was serious about being loaded. Youd better get another van to meet us, case we have to move some stiffs around.

Ill see what I can do. Call in when youve peeled it off the concrete; well start the paperwork at this end.

Copy, Cultel said.

And watch your step out there, boys. Its a long way down, and I dont want to have to call Steamville and tell them they need to deal with a couple of smears of their own.

In the clean-up van, Cultel clicked off his handset and hung it back under the dashboard. He turned to his partner, Gerber, who was digging through a paper bag for the last doughnut. You get all that?

Enough.

Another fucking ledge job. They know how much I love ledge jobs.

Like the man said, suck it up and earn some overtime. Gerber bit into the doughnut and wiped the grease off his lip. Sounds good to me.

Thats because youve got a sweet tooth and expensive girlfriends.

Its called having a life outside of scraping pancakes off pavement, Cultel. You should try it sometime.

Cultel, who always did the driving, grunted something derogatory, engaged the flywheel and powered the van back onto the pick-up slot. Traffic was indeed already thickening into rush hour, cars, taxis, buses and trucks moving sluggishly in one direction, almost nose to tail in the other. Being municipal, they could go off-slot when they needed to, but it still required expert knowledge of the streets and traffic flow not to get snarled up. Cultel always reckoned he could make more money driving taxis than a clean-up wagon, but the advantage of ferrying corpses around was that he mostly didnt need to make conversation. Gerber, who generally had his nose into a bag of doughnuts, didnt really count.

It took them twenty minutes to make it to Seventh and Electric. The service duct was accessed by a sloping ramp between two buildings, the ramp facing out from Spearpoint, an arched grillwork door at the bottom of it. Cultel disengaged the pick-up shoe and flywheeled down the slope, hoping hed still have enough spin to get back up it when they had the smear loaded. No sign of the other van yet. He snatched the keyset from the blue tag, grabbed the equipment from behind his seat and left the corrugated-sided van, Gerber carrying a camera and a heavy police-style torch.

When Cultel was new in Hygiene and Works, the cops were always first on the scene at a faller, with the clean-up crew just there to go through the menial business of peel-off and hose-down. But the cops couldnt keep up lately, and so they were perfectly willing for Hygiene and Works to handle the smears, provided everything was documented and signed off properly. Anything that looked like foul play, the cops could always get involved down the line. Mostly, though, the fallers were just accident victims. Cultel had no reason to expect anything different this time.

They passed through the municipal gate and walked down the concrete-lined service duct, which was dark and dank, with bits of cladding peeling off every few spans. Rainwater run-off seeped through the cracks and formed into a slow-moving stream deep enough to soak through Cultels shoes. It smelled a little bit of sewer. Beyond, at the far end of the service duct, was a half-circle of indigo sky. Cultel could already feel the cool evening wind picking up. Back from the ledge, with buildings all around, you didnt feel it much. But it was always colder towards the edges. Quieter, too: it didnt take much to absorb the hum of traffic, the rattle of commuter trains, the moaning of cop car sirens as they wound their way up and down the citys lazy spiral.

Beyond the duct, the concrete flooring gave way to Spearpoints underlying fabric. No one had ever bothered giving the black stuff a name because it was as ubiquitous as air. The ledge began level and then took on a gradually steepening slope. Cultel watched his footing. The stuff was treacherous, everyone knew that. Felt firm as rock one second, slippery as ice the next.

Gerber waved the torch downslope. Theres our baby.

I see it.

They edged closer, walking sideways as the angle of slope increased, taking increasingly cautious footsteps. The faller had come down about thirty spans from the very edge. In the evening gloom Cultel made out a head, two arms, two legs, all where they ought to have been. And something crumpled beneath the pale form, like a flimsy, translucent gown. You could never be too sure with fallers but it didnt look as though this one had come down very far. Dismemberment was commonplace: limbs, heads tended to pop off easily, either with the impact or from glancing collisions on the way down, as the faller bumped against the sides of buildings or the rising wall to the next ledge. But this jigsaw came with all the pieces.

Cultel looked up, over his shoulder, and lifted the rim of his hat to get a better view. No buildings or overhangs near enough for the faller to have come off. And even if theyd stepped off the next highest ledge, with the way the winds were working theyd have ended up at the base, back behind the rising tide of buildings. Should have been a lot more damage, too.

Somethings screwed up here, Cultel said.

Just starting to feel that way myself. Gerber raised the camera to his eye singlehandedly and flashed off two exposures. They crept forwards some more, planting each footstep gently, hardly daring to breathe. Gerber directed the torch a bit more steadily. It was then that Cultel knew what they were dealing with.

Crushed beneath the form: that wasnt any gown. It was wings.

Its Gerber started saying.

Yeah.

What they had was an angel. Cultel looked up again, higher this time. Not just to the nearest line of buildings, but all the way up. Up past the pastel flicker of Neon Heights, up past the hologram shimmer of Circuit City. Up past the pink plasma aura of the cybertowns. He could just see them circling around up there, leagues overhead, wheeling and gyring around Spearpoints tapering needle like flies around an insect zapper.

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