Chapter 9

Arran went with Holly towards Marlebone’s oraculary district, named so because she lived at the heart of it. She worked at the heart of it. In many ways, she was the heart of it. She’d been there longer than anyone and rarely, if ever, emerged. In his five decades aboard the station Arran had never once seen her, and she was not known for entertaining frequent visitors.  ‘It’ll be fine,’ he said. They began to see the first of the old glyphs etched at street-corners and on stretches of brassy walls, strange symbols carved in a squarish hand, some of them at places set together to form short, gnomic phrases. These symbols were older forms of a language once practised commonly by original settlers and the ancient forgemasters, whose hands had built the prism, whose language was now forgotten.  These glyphs were the signs of Marlebone’s district. Few could navigate them as well as the maintainers who lived here, so at the outskirts Holly arranged for her and Arran to meet one to lead them through the field. The local, wrapped head to toe in thin fabric, could lead them to Marlebone, and so to the Mayor. Holly knew him from previous visits, and they exchanged hushed small-talk before Arran came over. The local was unused to accompanying two through the field, but it wouldn’t be a problem.  The glyphs left by the station’s creators were equal parts guide and warning. Progressing deeper into the oraculary district was dangerous for the uninitiated. Sometimes pilgrims visiting to meditate beneath the resonator domes or visit Marlebone for her readings got lost wandering in the district and had to be retrieved, only to be found distracted and confused and gibbering. Most who suffered the wandering-sickness recovered after sleeping it off. Sometimes they didn’t.  The stationfolk sometimes said the district still resonated from the hammer-strikes by which the spine of the station was beaten. More often they said it hurt their heads to visit for too long.  ‘He’ll lose his nut,’ Holly said. ‘At me, at you.’  ‘I know my capacity as an agent of the law,’ Arran said, he and Holly following the wrapped local through the outskirts of the district, where most of its residents lived.  ‘That,’ Holly said, stern, ‘being the same capacity which led you to annihilate Odelford, despite the agreement you made with the station?’  ‘Pretty much,’ Arran said, looking around.  Here a few families had for generations maintained the district’s oblong buildings, the relics with the rounded roofs, those a symmetrical array of domed resonators that snaked outwards from the middle of the district, each resonator square around the sides and warm to the touch and always vibrating at a low drone. They stood as monuments of the station’s original starforged design and of near-reverential importance to those who maintained them. Mostly the locals swept the long rooms inside bare and clean, so the signal from below reached the circling Obels unhindered. It was vital work.  A few of the other residents were still around now, or had just awoken, most wrapped from the neck down in ochre colours that conformed to their bodies, even their hands and feet. Its material offered them comfort from the vibrations that carried through every surface. They lived in homes carved from the first forgemetal and had stacked on their own additions and built their own gardens around them. Besides the resonators which served the Obels, the residents also kept fields and their produce here was some of the best on the station.  Arran and Holly went through, past the fields occupying the wide, open courtyards at the outskirts, on either side beneath them rows of green, leafy crops. Small billena fruits flowered inside papery husks. The harvest this season was promising. ‘It’s about your agreement,’ Holly said.  ‘Agreement,’ Arran said, rolling his eyes. ‘I am who I am, there’s only so much I can overlook.’  ‘Then that is what they will use against you.’  At each corner of the field were tall mouldcolumns, repurposed with solar attractors built at their ornate tops that were positioned towards the rows of crops. Between the resonance and the ultrasolar lighting, the maintainers’ fields received the best harvests on the station.  A technician swaddled in protective fabrics but for a slit around his eyes looked up, distracted from a handheld diagnostic unit he had been using to inspect an open control box at the base of one of the attractors. He had been deep in thought, but when he recognised Arran his eyes widened and the unit was forgotten, its soft glow fading.  As soon as he thought Arran wouldn’t notice he shut the box and ducked through a low, arched doorway and shut the door behind him.  Of the station’s starforged features this was the first designed, and first settled also. Some of the families had been here for seven centuries. General consensus was that they were a bit weird. Normally Arran only saw the odd one who’d emerge from the district to visit the rest of town, and they would pass unregarded by most.  Arran was beginning to feel the district’s buzzing drone. They had passed over a single large glyph stamped into the street itself. He noticed Holly touch the side of her head. The pair started to talk in hushed voices. Two or three paces ahead of them was their guide, seemingly unaffected. The air itself was shaking.  They were travelling deeper into the district, and they had to be careful to keep their wits about them.  Arran scanned the way ahead of their guide. ‘So what am I supposed to tell the Council? Sorry about your inconvenience, but there was an issue? I couldn’t let it spread?’  ‘They will prefer it if you use more rational terms,’ she said. ‘Your original directives require you prevent critical entropic patterns, and that is without question. If anything, your actions are unquestionable due to your programming.’  Arran had never had to argue his innocence before. His face scrunched. ‘You don’t get mad at the cat for pursuing the mouse when that mouse will breed a thousand more,’ he said.  ‘That’s about it, but don’t say that. They might decide they don’t want a cat. You know what the Council’s like.’ She glanced at him sidelong. ‘Just mention entropic patterns, too. They’ll respond better to that. Don’t confuse them with metaphor.’  Further amongst the humming resonators Marlebone, the Oracle, the length of her residence on the prism said to date almost to its founding, resided in her subterranean oraculary. Her role was to constantly monitor the circling Obels from her cavern below, her work keeping the monolith machinery turning through century after century, millennia after millennia, her function perhaps the most vital of all the prism’s operation. Her Obels were, and needed to be, as sound as the prism they were built inside.  The entrance to her home was deeper into the worn, foundational old structures carefully kept by the locals, who were said to keep some remnant of forgemaster knowledge. Whatever they knew was enough to maintain the district they held in reverence.  If a person was quiet and stationary here long enough the domed resonators would make them aware of the constant transit of all three Obels at once. It was described as a deafening awareness. Some visiting pilgrims were known to meditate on their passage in patient unbroken stillness for weeks. For those lone pilgrims, being alive forever was no different to being dead. The madness of the wards was no danger to them, for they were already mad.  The local stopped to read a glyph. He looked over his shoulder and the slit of fabric around his mouth parted. ‘We go on,’ he said. ‘Focus.’  Arran groaned. ‘It’s like a tunnel-drill in my head.’  Holly said, ‘Just don’t let it turn you around, that’s important.’  When Arran looked back he only saw rows of domed resonators. The way back was vanished. They were in the resonance field.  Holly nudged Arran to get his attention back and the local indicated they continue. They went on, making short turns between the resonators. So strange was the effect of this place that the visual dimensions were becoming unstable. At the corner of Arran’s eyes the buildings might seem larger or smaller, the length of an avenue longer than it seemed, or an off-shooting passage might repeat and repeat again once they had already passed it twice. The local handled it fine. His trudging form was the only shape that held steady against the world around. He did not vibrate subtly like everything else did, which set his teeth chattering. Arran and Holly kept their eyes on him.  At a junction the local stopped to read a glyph. He mumbled something to himself, then pointed them down a different way.  High above them even the panes seemed to warp. Some of the straight-sided shapes seemed rounder at a glance. It was only a trick of the light, Arran guessed. Those panes were perfectly engineered. They did not warp.  The pair progressed further behind the trudging local and the avenue straightened through the dully gleaming, vibrating buildings. After a while, though, Arran realised his body was tilting to account for a curving street that twisted to the right. Holly seemed to feel the tilt also and bumped into his shoulder. The local was still ahead. He did not swerve.  Of course, Arran could navigate quite well were he pursuing a quarry across the conventions of the modern undercities, but the cosmic mechanics of the Obels were of an older make, and unique in their design. They interfered with him. Arran could not remember any part of the station feeling quite so large. He felt like he’d been walking for an age.  Arran especially found himself distracted to the point of confusion. His living flesh, packed with bio-augmentation and wet machinery, struggled to cope with the dense vibration. Holly was affected too, her face queasy in the moonlight. She stumbled, outstretching a hand to catch herself on the wall, touching a set of three glyphs. One was the same symbol from earlier. The local batted her hand away from the precious carving and led them on.  The path ahead went on into darkness forever. Only the local’s thin form remained stable, as everything else flickered into half-image.  ‘We can go back,’ Arran said.  ‘No, no,’ she said, shaking her head. She made a slight gasp and pressed her head at the temple. ‘We’re here.’  Arran looked around. The way looked the same ahead as it did behind them. They were between rows of featureless domed oblongs. He saw no sign even of how to enter any of these buildings. The local was gone.  Holly indicated Arran look down. He did, and started. At a perfect right angle a smooth round tunnel opening went down into the ark. The path angled cleanly to flow into it. All around the entrance glyphs were carved, each an exact distance from the other, crowning the passageway. As he looked at the glyphs they shifted form, becoming other glyphs. He looked back up. The path ahead now ended with another featureless domed oblong.  Arran shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘Let’s go, then,’ he said.  They stepped down out of the air and with an awkward movement that lurched through them went down into Marlebone’s oraculary. At once they were in darkness. The vibrations had passed. Arran ran a diagnostic scan through his systems, feeling weakened. His augments, he noticed, were mostly offline. Warning reports came through his internal systems as Holly stopped to take a breath.  ‘Don’t look back,’ Holly said before Arran could turn his head and look back at the top of the tunnel. ‘It’s not over. We can only go forward until we return. It’s the rules. Don’t worry about your augments, they’ll come back.’  The floor was smooth and lined by light strips on either side that gave off enough light for them to see by as they made their way down the straight tunnel. The ceiling that curved over it from side to side was so dark as to be invisible. It reminded Arran of the ossuary dark. He dared not reach up.  ‘I don’t know what I can do if something happens down here,’ he said, flexing the fingers of his remaining hand. The knitted organics forming the augmented tendons and muscles felt like simple objects, like the hand of a mannequin. It unsettled him. The field had disabled him.  It was only a short way, although longer than it should have been, until they came to a simple round doorway inscribed by a single glyph in its centre.  The smooth, starforged doorway had no handle or doorknob. On it was only a glyph, which Holly approached first while Arran risked a glance behind them. He couldn’t help himself. Only blackness there.  When he turned back only blackness was ahead. He reacted with surprise, stepping backwards and letting out a cry. To his left, black, to his right, black. Below him the path was gone. Nothing. Holly and the door were gone. He was alone.  He caught himself before panic could set in and tried to think about which way was forward. He dared not yet take a step, lest he fall into some endless ossuary-dark.  ‘Holly?’ he said, hearing his voice close, and not travel far. ‘Holly?’ he said, louder.  He looked around and listened. The blackness was empty. He could still see himself, fully, as though he stood in the light that was there before, and he could still feel ground beneath him.  He took a step forward. No sound from the footstep reached his ears.  Concerning, he thought.  Never had the peacekeeper had to visit Marlebone, nor to ever come so far into her territory. If the Oracle needed someone’s attention she would summon them. Otherwise, she was always open to visitors like pilgrims who dared make it through the resonant gravitational forces. Arran was not here on pilgrim business. This trial, if it was a trial, frustrated him.  Maybe she didn’t know Arran. ‘I’m the peacekeeper here, Marlebone. Please let me out of this empty pavilion.’  No sound came in return.  Arran stood straighter and raised his voice. ‘Marlebone! I come on business. I seek an audience with the Mayor!’  He tried his augments, but the heightened filters only flickered faintly against the emptiness. He shut them off and folded his arms. The freshly-cauterised wound grazed against his chest and he shifted. ‘Marlebone!’  He called out louder, and louder again.  ‘Right,’ he said, when still no sound returned, not even an echo of his own voice.  Deciding next not to try and feel his way forward, or stumble through the dark, he willed together his strength and bunched to strike forward and through whatever invisible prison he was trapped in.  Finally he heard a voice return. It came booming, from every direction.  ‘Then you seek an audience with me.’