Redemption Ark

‘You look tired. But we need you, Clavain. We haven’t even begun the struggle yet. Don’t you understand? All that’s happened so far is only the beginning. We have the weapons now…’

‘A handful of them. And Skade still wants them.’

‘Then she’ll have to fight us for them, won’t she? She won’t find that as easy as she imagines.’

Clavain looked back, but the ship was hidden. ‘If we’re still here, there won’t be a lot we can do to stop her.’

‘We’ll have the weapons themselves. But Remontoire will have returned by then, I’m sure of it. And he’ll have Zodiacal Light with him. The damage wasn’t fatal; a ship like that can repair itself.’

Clavain tightened his lips and agreed. ‘I suppose so.’

She held his hand as if to warm it. ‘What’s wrong, Clavain? You brought us so far. We followed you. You can’t give up now.’

‘I’m not giving up,’ he said. ‘I’m just… tired. It’s time to let someone else carry on the fight. I’ve been a soldier too long, Felka.’

‘Then become something else.’

‘That’s not quite what I meant.’ He tried to force some cheer into his voice. ‘Look, I’m not going to die tomorrow, or next week. I owe it to everyone to get this settlement off the ground. I just don’t think I’ll necessarily be here when Remontoire makes it back. But who knows? Time has a nasty way of surprising me. God knows I’ve learned that often enough.’

They continued in silence. The crossing was choppy, and now and then the boat had to steer itself past huge seaweedlike concentrations of ropy biomass, which shifted and reacted to the boat’s presence in an unnervingly purposeful way. Presently Clavain sighted land, and shortly after that the boat skidded to a halt in a few feet of water, bottoming out on rock.

They had to get out and wade the rest of the way to dry land. Clavain was shivering by the time he squelched out of the last inch of water. The boat looked a long way away, and Nostalgia for Infinity was nowhere to be seen at all.

Antoinette Bax came to meet them, picking her way carefully across a field of rockpools that gleamed like a tessellation of perfect grey mirrors. Behind her, on a higher rising slope of land, was the first encampment: a hamlet of bubbletents stapled into rock.

Clavain wondered how it would look in twenty years.

More than one hundred and sixty thousand people were aboard Nostalgia for Infinity, far too many to place on one island. There would be a chain of settlements, instead — as many as fifty, with a few hubs on the larger, drier nubs of land. Once those settlements were established, work could begin on the floating colonies that would provide long-term shelter. There would be enough work here to keep anyone busy. He felt an obligation to be part of it, but no sense that it was anything he had been born to do.

He felt, in fact, that he had done what he was born to do.

‘Antoinette,’ he said, knowing that Felka would not have recognised the woman without his help, ‘how are things on dry land?’

There’s shit brewing already, Clavain.‘

He kept his eyes on the ground, for fear of tripping. ‘Do tell.’

‘A lot of people aren’t happy with the idea of staying here. They bought into Thorn’s exodus because they wanted to go home, back to Yellowstone. Being stuck on an uninhabited piss-ball for twenty years wasn’t quite what they had in mind.’

Clavain nodded patiently. He steadied himself against Felka, using her as a walking stick. ‘And did you impress on these people the fact that they’d be dead if they hadn’t come with us?’

‘Yes, but you know what it’s like. No pleasing some people, is there?’ She shrugged. ‘Well, just thought I’d cheer you up with that, in case you thought it was all going to be plain sailing from now on.’

‘For some reason, that thought never crossed my mind. Now, can someone show us around the island?’

Felka helped him pick his way on to smoother ground. ‘Antoinette, we’re cold and wet. Is there somewhere we can get warm and dry?’

‘Just follow me. We’ve even got tea on the go.’

‘Tea?’ Felka asked suspiciously.

‘Seaweed tea. Local. But don’t worry. No one’s died of it yet, and you do eventually get used to the taste.’

I suppose we’d better make a start,‘ Clavain said.

They followed Antoinette into the huddle of tents. People were at work outside, putting up new tents and plumbing-in snakelike power cables from turtle-shaped generators. She led them into one enclosure, sealing the flap behind them. It was warmer inside, and drier, but this served only to make Clavain feel more damp and cold than he had a moment before.