Century Rain Part 84

"This could be a trap," Floyd said.

"I'm trying very hard not to think about that possibility," Auger replied.

Ca.s.sandra's face became glazed as she absorbed a welter of data concerning their approach to Paris.

"Trap or not, we're in the thick of the clouds now. Slowing to subsonic speed. I think this is about as

low as I want to go in this ship. The particulate density is already rather on the high side for my liking."

"Can we release the Twentieth's shuttle?"

"Now is as good a time as ever," Ca.s.sandra said. "Follow me."

They howled through clouds as thick as coal, bellowing with thunder and flickering with lightning in slow, pink-tinged bursts.

"Still tracking Caliskan?" Auger asked.

"With difficulty," Ca.s.sandra said, turning briefly away from the antique control console. "Did you have any more luck with figuring out who that de Maupa.s.sant fellow Caliskan mentioned is?"

"Yes," she said. "I think I know exactly what he meant. It doesn't matter if we lose his trace-we can still make the RV."

"Couldn't he have just told you where to land?" Floyd asked.

"Caliskan likes his little games," Auger said, smiling thinly. Around them, the hull creaked and groaned like a very old chair.

"Cloud density is lessening," Ca.s.sandra said. "I believe we're nearly through the worst of it."

Through the cabin windows, the grey took on a rushing, streamlike quality, evoking great speed. The ship slammed through two or three final scarves of attenuated cloud before entering clear air above the city. This was a true Parisian night, as dark as it ever got except when there was some calamitous failure of ground-side power. The only sources of steady illumination were the artificial lights installed by Antiquities, mounted on buildings and towers or slung from hovering dirigibles and drone platforms. Now and then, lightning flickering above the clouds shone through the circuitlike patterns via which the clouds communicated, etching a negative ghost of those patterns on to the icebound streets and buildings laid out below.

They were about five kilometres up, a high enough elevation for a panoramic view of the entire city, right out to the artificial moat of the Peripherique defences.

"I don't know whether you're going to like this," Auger said to Floyd, "but welcome to Paris. You've never been here before."

Floyd looked down through the small windows set into the lower part of the cabin. "I guess this means you were telling me the truth all along," he said, struggling to deal with the enormity of that final realisation.

"Did you still have doubts?"

"I still had hopes."

She directed his attention to the edge of the city, where the tower-top beacons of the perimeter defences flashed red and green in sequence. "That's the Peripherique," she said, "a ring of roads encircling Paris. It didn't exist in your version of the city."

"What's the wall?"

"The ice cliff. It's armoured with metal and concrete, sensors and weapons, to keep the larger furies out, the ones that are big enough to see. Most of the time, it more or less works. But they still get through now and then, and when they do, they come in quickly."

That was the problem with Paris: the spiderweb of Metro and road tunnels offered numerous swift routes in from the perimeter. It didn't matter that half of those tunnels were blocked by cave-ins: the hostile machines would always find an alternative route, or burrow their way into the older system of water and sewerage tunnels. The smallest of them could slip through telegraphic conduits, optical-fibre trunk lines and gas pipes. If push came to shove, they could even drill new tunnels of their own. They could be stopped-they could even be destroyed-but not without inflicting unacceptable damage on the very city that the researchers were trying to preserve and study.

"I don't recognise much," Floyd said.

"You're looking at a city frozen more than a hundred years after your time," Auger said. "Even so, there are still some landmarks you should recognise. It's just a question of learning to see them, under all the ice."

"It's like the face of a friend under a funeral shroud."

"There's the curve of the Seine," Auger said, pointing. "The Pont Neuf. Notre Dame and Ile de la Cite. Do you see it now?"

"Yes," Floyd said, with a sadness that ripped her open. "Yes, I see it now."

"Don't hate us too much for what we did," she said. "We tried our best."

Above, the clouds rippled and surged with a strange, oblivious intelligence. The ship pitched and yawed, sinking lower. "Might I trouble you for the landing site?" Ca.s.sandra asked.

"Take us south of the river," Auger said. "Do you see that rectangle of flat ice?"

"Yes."

"That's the Champ de Mars. Line us up with it and hold alt.i.tude at three hundred metres."

She felt the ship respond almost before she had finished speaking. Servo-motors made a crunching, grinding sensation under her feet, as flight surfaces were redeployed.

"Is there something significant about this area?" Ca.s.sandra asked.

"Yes."

A bolt of lightning chose that moment to punch through the clouds, landing very close to the mangled,

attenuated stump of the Eiffel Tower, at the limit of the Champ de Mars.

"That's where we're headed," Auger said.

"The metal structure?"

"Yes. Bring us down on the upper stage, as best as you can."

"It's sloping. I'm not sure if I trust that metal?-"

"It'll hold," Auger said. "You're looking at seven thousand tons of Victorian pig iron. If it survived two

hundred years under ice, I think it can take our weight." For two centuries, the ice had swallowed the lower third of the three-hundred-metre-high tower. Some forgotten, unwitnessed catastrophe had ripped the upper seventy-five metres into history, leaving no trace of the wreckage within the excavated bowl of Paris. The first two observation decks remained, plus most of the much smaller third stage, which was perched atop a slanted, corkscrewed stump of twisted metal leaning far out towards the frozen Seine. "I can see a parked s.p.a.cecraft on the third level," Ca.s.sandra said. "Thrusters are still hot. Size and function matches the type of shuttle Caliskan was using."

"That's our meeting point. If he's being nice, he'll have left us enough s.p.a.ce to park."

"It'll be tight," the Slasher said.

"Do your best. If necessary, you only have to hold station while we disembark, or bring Caliskan aboard."

"And Mr. de Maupa.s.sant?"

"He won't be joining us. He's been dead nearly four hundred years."

"Then I confess-"

"Caliskan's little joke," Auger said. "He knew I'd get it. De Maupa.s.sant despised that tower. In fact, he hated it so much that he insisted on having lunch in it every day. Said it was the only place in Paris where it didn't spoil his view."

The tower thrust up below them, its distorted lean even more apparent now that they were hovering directly above the third stage. From this perspective, the latticed metal shaft curved inward, like an eroded cliff, while the far side was bent so far from its intended angle that the ironwork had begun to curl away in buckled sections, like the hackles of a dog.

Lighting stabbed close again. The play of shadow and light made the entire structure appear to move, wobbling like jelly.

"Bring us in, Ca.s.sandra," Auger said. "The sooner we're down, the happier I'll be."

The third-stage observation deck was an ap.r.o.n of square metal tilted at five or six degrees to the horizontal, pierced by the jagged uprights of severed girders and the shafts that had once carried the elevator cars to the top of the tower. Buckled metal railings were still in place around much of the perimeter. Caliskan's barb-shaped shuttle was parked in one corner, its tail jutting out into empty s.p.a.ce.

"That's his ship," Auger said. "Can you land?"

"I can try." Ca.s.sandra threw a bank of levers. "Landing skids are down and locked. We'll burn fuel in VTOL mode, but there's nothing I can do about that."

The ship hovered, sliding from side to side as Ca.s.sandra feathered the vectored thrust nozzles. They dropped a little, held station, then dropped again. Nearing the platform, the backwash from the thrusters sent loose metal scurrying across the deck, smashing through the railings and over the sides. Then they were down, the landing skids absorbing the impact with a bounce of pneumatics.

Ca.s.sandra powered down the engines, conserving every drop of fuel. "We should be all right for the time being," she said.

"Good job, that," Auger said. "For your next trick, can you re-open a channel to Caliskan?"

"Just a moment."

One of the screens flickered, then filled with Caliskan's features. He pushed unkempt white hair back

from a glistening brow. "Are you secured?" he asked.

"Yes," Auger said, "but I'm not sure there's enough fuel left in the shuttle for us to make it back into orbit." She glanced at Ca.s.sandra, who made an indecisive face and an equivocal hand gesture.

"How many of you are there aboard?" he asked.

"Three," she said, "plus the cargo. But Ca.s.sandra's hoping to fly the shuttle back on her own. Only

Floyd and I need to come with you."

"There should be enough room for all three of us, and the cargo. Do you think you can make the crossing?"

"Depends on the fury count," Auger said.

He glanced away, consulting some concealed read-out. "It's low enough not to be a problem, provided

you wear normal environment gear. No special precautions necessary. Just watch your footing."

"Why did you bring us here? I mean, I understand why orbit wasn't the safest place-"

"Precisely because of the fury count, Auger. The big machines never get this high. Monsieur Eiffel's

monstrosity is the safest place in the city."

THIRTY-FIVE.

Floyd and Auger stepped on to the leaning floor of the third-stage observation deck. Above, the constant motion of the clouds created a dizzying sense that the entire structure had chosen that exact moment to topple over. Floyd had never been good with heights, and this predicament seemed to encapsulate every vertigo-tinged nightmare he'd ever had. They were walking on a slippery, sloping, rickety surface pocked with holes and weak spots, almost three hundred metres in the air...in a gale...in heavy suits that made vision limited, every gesture clumsy, every step perilous, and they were also carrying four heavy boxes between them loaded with paper, books and phonograph records.

"You all right, Floyd?" Auger asked. Her voice was shrill in the diving-helmet affair the Slasher had just bolted into place over his head.

"Put it this way, Auger: when I last got out of bed, staggering around on the mangled wreck of the Eiffel Tower wasn't exactly on my list of things to achieve by sunset."

"But look on the bright side, Floyd. Think of the great stories you'll have to tell."

"And think of the fun I'll have finding someone prepared to believe me."

With an appalling and very audible groan of stressed iron, the deck suddenly lurched, its angle of tilt increasing. Loose debris came skidding towards them, squealing across the metal surfaces. Floyd dived to one side, dropping one of the boxes in the process. Before he could reach for it, a girder slid by and snagged on the side of the box, dragging it along for the ride. While he fumbled for a solid purchase- something to prevent him from sliding the same way as the box-he watched it cruise all the way to the edge of the deck and out into empty s.p.a.ce. The box tilted, spilling books, magazines, newspapers and records into the air above Paris.