Chapter 11

The first sensation to return came from a gust of wind blowing from behind him. It was warm and billowing, returning off the shape of Marlebone’s cavern twice more before settling with the sound of rustling paper and the smells of lignin and mechanical oil.  Screens of black disappeared around him and he found his surroundings more intimate and close. He heard his own breathing again. The sole of his shoe slid over smooth metal. He was aware both that he was intruding and that he was invited. Around him was some theatre shaped like a rounded square, where the floor sank into a shallow bowl. He stood at its centre. Around him the walls and ceiling were curved like a stomach.  The light he saw by did not seem to come from anywhere. A dim glow lit everything and showed a room singularly inhabited by someone who had a lot of time to read. At the edges of this manifold space were crates stacked on top of each other. Some with the tops overflowing. Old papery folders and thin digiset tablets poked out of them, some drawn out for use and loosely open aside.  Unlit chemical candles sat in waxen holders near the crates and as he looked around he saw shelves around, or the darkened shapes of them, filled with books and keepsakes. Several desks bore apparatus like bulbous glass alembics and inscrutable mechanisms of copper that gleamed with imbued shines. Thick rugs made up another corner of the wide room, some piled and one spread beneath a four-posted bed laden with downs and cushions. The colours were ochre, like the fabrics the people on the surface wore. He recognised a heavyset human figure at the midpoint of the room. She was sat in shadow.  When Arran saw her, he said, ‘Have I been bid welcome?’ affecting the formal register of communication kept for station officials.  The woman watched him calmly. A symmetry of writhing brassy speaking-tubes that reached serpentine towards the ceiling framed her on either side. She was sat on a low armchair, floating before the array. The tubes were hollow, each of them flared outwards at the bottom for listening, or speaking. This was a larger version of the similar apparatus on her desk nearby, or more likely, those smaller parts of the larger device.  ‘I’m almost forgotten in these older parts of the station,’ she said, her voice sonorous. It carried from where she sat. ‘And now I receive two visitors in the same cycle.’  ’What was that trickery you cast upon me?’  ’You ask what subtle powers my Obels wield. You come from the church this evening, have you not seen the light worked away? You intrude upon my workshop and expect no distracting fanceries?’  She had known he had been at the church. ‘I did not mean to intrude upon your workshop,’ he said. ‘I only come seeking the Mayor, Searcy. Is he here?’  She ignored his question. ‘Yes, I suppose this is a work-shop. The Obels turn and move on their eternal course and talk to me through my finnerach. They talk to me and we talk of orientation, and balance, and the precise densities they produce but, I speak not where they are always present, and those whose presence is felt need not speak to me. Understand? Do you think of electricity when you turn on a light? If this is a working shop then I am also equipment, as functional and required as the room around me, and thus the same.’  Arran nodded. ‘And I was once set to function in a sprawling undercity as no more than the reckoning of it. I was not born with humanity, but I was granted it.’  Her eyes glinted. He could not see her face clearly, just the lines of its shape and where her chin met her wide neck and her bosom. Her hair was long and brushed back and covered her shoulders. Her posture shifted more upright. ‘Yes, peacekeeper, you were never to be effective without it. A machine made to the same standard as a humanity that made itself gods.’  Her chair rose and fell slowly, like breathing. A light electric blue aura flicked at her hand. At once the room was illuminated with candlelight. Arran stepped back. Candles in holders flared to life, two dozen or more, making orange glows tinged with black smoke that gave off a heady warmth. The room leapt into focus and every surface reflected candlelight as though the metal itself was still hot.  Arran blinked and rubbed his eyes. ‘Yes, good trick.’ Marlebone’s soft, overweight form contained a great intelligence. She had bright, sharp eyes behind the downy paleness to her features. Arran saw he and Marlebone were not alone. A familiar tall figure was leaned up against the wall a few feet behind her.  ‘Searcy,’ Arran said. ‘I was looking for you.’  Searcy straightened off the wall and stepped forward. ‘Well, you’ve found me. It is one of the many tasks you’re fine for, Arran.’ The Mayor was discontented. He hadn’t expected Arran to come all the way to Marlebone’s quarters.  Marlebone watched Arran with some interest, like an exhibit at a zoo.  Searcy folded his arms across his chest. He turned to Marlebone. ‘Why’d you let him in here?’  He was angry at Marlebone for assuming authority and thought Arran was here to buck the suspension. But there was more to it. Arran stayed quiet.  He was right.  The Oracle had made Arran her unwitting audience. Given the events of the evening, the trouble over Odelford’s execution ran deeper than he thought. Marlebone’s expression turned to an expectant excitement.  ‘Two visitors in one day,’ she said. ‘Lucky me.’  Searcy stood adjacent to the finnerach, as Marlebone had called it. The control panel for the Obels. Those machines which kept the station suspended on invisible geometries, whose ways were unfathomable to nearly all.  ‘I didn’t want you here, but here you are. Marlebone’s doing, I’d say.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Join the meeting, why don’t you.’  ‘Indeed, it is good that you arrived so quickly.’ She paused. Marlebone straightened as she considered her next words. ‘We are going to have to ask you to leave this place, Arran.’  At her directness the Mayor’s jaw worked and he grumbled assent. ‘We want you to resign before the Council and the district chief, that is, when he arrives. I didn’t want it to be this way,’ he said.  The request dropped through Arran’s stomach like a lead weight. He stopped himself from sputtering at the shock. ‘You can’t ask me to do that,’ he said. ‘What? You want me to leave the prism?’  Marlebone nodded. ‘It is the way it has to be.’  ’An hour ago I was suspended! Is this to do with the transports? I saw they went out, Searcy. I know it was your doing. Like hell, I’ll get a copy of that order-’ It won’t matter if I get the order, he thought, now aware of how Searcy was playing him. But why?  Searcy shook his head. ‘This is a separate matter. This is a matter of the ongoing prosperity of the station.’  ‘Is that so?’ Arran put a hand on a hip, staring down the Mayor, who might as well have been made of stone. Arran couldn’t crack him.  ‘That is so, Arran,’ Marlebone said.  He let the transports go for now. ‘Searcy, I have Holly, your aide, outside. We’ve been to the church. Something’s going on. The Elder was panicked about something, and he’s withdrawn all his followers. He’s shut the church doors. Whatever you’ve decided with me, the town needs you right now.’  Marlebone’s gaze withdrew, lowering to settle over the curve of her belly. Her eyes flicked back up to Arran. She listened intently. She’d missed the news. Her eyes flicked to her finnerach.  ‘Never mind that,’ the Mayor said, shrugging. ‘It will settle down. Listen...’ He rubbed his palms together, thinking. ‘Arran, things in this sector have not been productive for far too long. It’s a problem of administration, and careful planning of our future prosperity. Your position is being freed. We’re taking the ongoing development of the station in another direction.’  The words were a harsh solvent in Arran’s nose. ‘Freed. What shit-’ He saw the Mayor’s level gaze and knew he couldn’t be budged to say more. Marlebone watched on. ‘Layoffs? I come down here to warn you and I get laid off?’  The Mayor looked away. ‘It could not have come at a worse time, you doing what you did. I didn’t want this discussion to happen here. But now, I see it couldn’t have gone any other way.’ He looked at Marlebone. ‘Anything to add? This is your show.’  ‘It is too soon,’ she said, still watching Arran. ‘But Mayor Searcy is correct. You must go from here. Your path leads you elsewhere.’  Arran looked at the Mayor. ‘You needed the Oracle to tell me that?’  The Mayor shook his head. ‘I think she wanted to tell you herself.’  Whatever this was sent alarm bells ringing all through every judicial sense he had in his body. There weren’t just schemes here, there were schemes behind schemes, schemes sat beside schemes, and further schemes shaking hands with them. The missing contraband cargo, for one. The whole case against Odelford was blown up. Searcy in his official capacity was now firmly offside. The call to send it had come from his office. Searcy’s stoic expression confessed nothing. Arran realised how deeply he’d fallen into this nest of schemes and half-truths, with only shifting sands to support him. Agitation led him to pace around a few steps before he decided to focus his attention where it could do him some good.  ‘These political schemes! If we get before the Council I’ll resign. I’ll resign as soon as I get out of here, I don’t care. You won’t have any trouble from me. I’d request my hand back-’  ‘Absolutely not,’ the Mayor said. ‘It keeps your suspension in place, and will do so until the district chief arrives.’  Before his temper could rise Marlebone spoke. ‘I have no more need for you tonight. This informal meeting has made me tired. Be gone. Mayor Searcy, you’ll find your aide returned outside the district. She has been rather turned around tonight, so be kind to her.’ Her bright eyes turned to Arran. ‘Lawman, if you would stay a moment.’  Searcy took the case with Arran’s hand inside and whisked himself away, brushing past Arran, who waited. Marlebone had no trickery of light and shadow for the Mayor. He left from the blast door behind Arran.  ‘I’ve always wanted to meet a lawman. May I see your gun?’ She beckoned Arran approach. Arran shook his head.  ‘There are guidelines about that sort of thing. I can only hand over my weapon under certain circumstances. We’ve never met, have we?’  ‘No,’ Marlebone said, sitting back in her chair. ‘Pity. I have always wanted to see a lawman’s weapon.’  ‘Suspended peacekeeper,’ he said.  ‘How does one suspend a death-bringer?’  Arran felt some offence at her words, but it wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling. For many, actual death was a concern so far removed they had forgotten it. ‘The day must come for all gods and men to die,’ he said.  ‘And this the sun that brings the day,’ the Oracle said, finishing off the phrase.  It was an expression spoken often in the undercity’s Hall of Justice. He was surprised she knew it. Many officers relied on such mantras to steel their minds and bodies through the horrors of their working days. The expression was not common among civilians. They were not required to wield the sun.  Marlebone seemed delighted to have surprised him. ‘I’m an Oracle, Arran. Of course I knew. Thank you. I have found some joy today after all. You may leave now. Go back the way you came, through fire, and blood.’  She turned her chair and faced the finnerach and before them focused her attention. The air around Arran became dense, cloyingly so, and everything went black. Now he could not even see himself.  Some trick of the light. The air rushed. He was ejected.