Sea of Ghosts - Alan Campbell [147]
‘It’s just a gift,’ Briana said. ‘Like telepathy.’
Maskelyne threw his hands up. ‘It is nothing like telepathy,’ he said. ‘Telepathy does not add or subtract anything from the universe. Look.’ He walked over to the table and picked up a partially disassembled gem lantern from among the clutter of machine parts and tools. ‘These burn for, say, a thousand years,’ he said. ‘Do you have any idea how much energy that requires? It’s enough to blow a battleship to pieces, and it has to come from somewhere.’ Next he untied a burlap sack from the leg of the table and opened it. Three small concrete spheres floated up out of the bag and rose gently towards the sky. Maskelyne scooped them back into the bag before they drifted too high. ‘Air stones,’ he said, ‘or chariot ballast, or whatever name you want to give them. The repulsive force comes from somewhere.’ Next he snatched up a stoppered ichusae. ‘You recognize this, of course?’ He set the bottle down again when he saw fear light Briana’s eyes. ‘Ichusae introduce poisonous matter to our world, matter brought from somewhere else. You see? Most of what the Unmer create sucks matter or energy from somewhere and dumps it into our world.’
‘Void flies—’ Briana began.
‘Void flies are not created,’ Maskelyne cried. ‘Void flies are creatures which possess the same inherent ability the Unmer do. And that’s the key. Where did they suddenly appear from? What becomes of the matter they remove from our universe? Where does it go? There’s a balance in all of this. A trade.’
Briana frowned.
Maskelyne’s gaze travelled across the objects on the table. ‘The universe expands in all directions,’ he muttered. ‘Elemental particles of matter cool and cease to fluctuate. But space cannot exist between identical particles. As variance decreases, more and more particles must find themselves occupying the same point in the universe, regardless of how far apart they are. Vast swathes of the cosmos begin to gather in one place, a single, tiny place that exists almost everywhere at the same time. Unimaginable pressure builds, and builds, and builds, until eventually . . .’ He looked at her expectantly.
She shrugged.
Maskelyne felt deflated. ‘I can see you’re not taking this seriously,’ he said.
‘You weren’t brought here to study the cosmos at our expense, Mr Maskelyne.’
‘At your expense?’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘Miss Marks, if my theory is correct, then it is very likely that there are still scraps of former universes adrift out there.’ He jabbed a finger at the sky. ‘Frozen, dying and utterly alien to anything we could imagine. If the Unmer have communicated with the inhabitants of one of these cosmic remnants and, indeed, have actively been shifting matter back and forth between here and there, then we need to consider any consequences that the subsequent enslavement of their race might have had.’
She sighed. ‘Go on.’
‘Our world is drowning,’ he said. ‘Whatever deal the Unmer made with the far side of the cosmos has evidently turned sour.’ He sighed. ‘I’m no merchant, but I know that when one party fails to adhere to a trade agreement, the other party gets angry.’
CHAPTER 16
PERTICA
Violent juddering woke Granger. He sat up abruptly, momentarily disorientated, then remembered where he was. Green light filtered through the windows of the deadship cabin, bathing the shelves of trove and Unmer experiments in a queer underwater luminance. Granger got up, wincing as his dry flesh cracked, and took a moment to work the numbness out of his arms and legs. It was freezing in here. His breath misted in the air before him. He wrapped a blanket around himself and shuffled over to the window.
Green ice floated upon a green sea. Outside the window stretched a frozen expanse of the Mare Verdant, the brine littered with broken slabs of ice and great nebulous snow-dusted masses with facets as deep and dark as bottle glass. From the bow