‘Yes, as was always their intention, but all profits are allocated as investment in future voyages, and stand separate from initial investment costs,’ said Bloc. ‘How are we now with that?’
‘The cost of transporting materials and passengers has pushed us near to the limit,’ Aesop replied.
‘That the mercenaries have made no further move means Lineworld is waiting for us to go over that limit, then they can legally take over. Because they work from within the Polity, their actions here on the Line must have at least the gloss of legality.’ Bloc felt the situation was perhaps the best he could have hoped for. He had expected Lineworld to find some way of pushing up costs, and there were many ways they could have done that. By relocating the enterprise they had untied his hands. There were things he could do now he would not have dared on Chel Island. ‘Take me to the ship now. I want to see.’
Aesop turned and led the way through the sprawl of Polity accommodation units and a buzz of activity. Bloc noted the fences erected to keep the denizens of the dingle at bay, and some guard towers occupied by Batians. A few stalls and kiosks here were selling food and drink, but most sold various items of Polity technology that reifications might require. This too was part of the enterprise—a hugely profitable part for Lineworld. That organization was also raking in a profit from the currency exchange system he had arranged with Olian’s. Contractually that made no difference to the initial investment, but then Lineworld’s contracts served one purpose: they were the tip of a wedge into profitable enterprises started by others on the edge of the Polity. They invested, then took over—that was their whole ethos.
They came to a gate leading out of the temporary town warded by two more mercenaries who smilingly opened it for them. The Kladites now drew in closer around Bloc and keenly eyed the dingle either side of the path winding downslope.
‘There’s a good view from over here, unless you want to go down?’ Aesop pointed to a narrow side path.
Bloc waved him on.
Soon they emerged on an outcrop above a drop, and gazed down at the Sable Keech.
Only the keel and ribs of the ship were yet in place, resting on the ramp leading down to the sea. Those working on it gleamed brightly, and were as skeletal as what they were constructing. Either side of the construction site, and reaching back to below where Bloc was standing, just about every tree had been felled. A sawmill, open to the air, was in constant operation; clouds of wood dust boiling out from it and turning its surroundings into powdery desert. He observed where the masts were being assembled from bubble-metal sections. He noted stacked crates, some of them the size of houses. These contained bubble-metal gears and trains, electric motors, laminar batteries and solar cells, bearings and all the paraphernalia that would allow three living sails to control the mass of other monofabric sails the masts would carry. The ship, when finished, would be nearly a kilometre long, carry nine huge masts, five hundred kilometres of rigging, square kilometres of sail, and seven hundred passengers and crew (one for each year Sable Keech had been dead). It would be enormous, a triumph and, most importantly for Lineworld, very expensive to travel on.
‘I am happy to see this,’ said Bloc flatly. ‘Now, to my quarters, where we must finalize plans.’ He nodded slowly. ‘I will not lose what is mine.’
Bones sniggered in his hood at this.
Bloc gazed at the reif for a moment, and in response Bones jerked upright as if a lead attached to him had been snapped taut. Bloc turned back to Aesop. ‘We move tonight—ahead of plan.’
‘I’ll have to check that the… item is ready,’ Aesop replied.
‘No need. Can’t you feel it?’
Reif or not, the way Aesop then reacted looked something like a shudder.
‘It bothers you?’ Bloc asked.
‘A gun is so much more reliable,’ Aesop replied.
‘Guns are not a luxury we have at the moment, but we do have something better,’ said Bloc, moving on.
Tarsic damned the fault in his cleansing unit that drove him to take on any job on offer so as to remain a viable reification. There were cleansing units available here, but renting time on them was expensive. The five times he had used them had made a severe dent in his funds, which were already depleted by paying for his reservation, ticket bid and the steep accommodation costs. Anywhere else, he might have been able to forgo having his own small dwelling, but here that meant you stayed outside the compound. Some reifs were attempting that, and he heard that one of them had been swallowed whole by a giant leech. The woman had remained in contact via her aug as the leech digested her corpse. Then the contact broke when the leech, it was surmised, went into the sea. Others were losing portions of their precious flesh to leeches all the time, while the Spatterjay virus was rapidly eating away the rest of their preserved bodies. But now there was some hope for himself, and also his companions Beric and Sline.
After he was killed in an AGC accident on Klader, his grieving wife had cryo-stored Tarsic’s body. Her conversion to what was then the Cult of Anubis Arisen occurred some years later. She then paid for a download from his frozen brain to crystal, and subsequently his reification. Her own reification, after death by suicide—her being anxious to become a full member of the Cult—had proved unsuccessful. Tarsic then immediately looked into getting himself installed in a Golem chassis, but discovered just how much of a bitch his wife had been. A deferred debt was awaiting him, and the moment he ceased to be a reification that debt became due and would result in his utter bankruptcy. So in his Golem chassis he would have ended up indentured to the Cult for years—a group which had since come to look upon him with contempt, for he was perhaps unique in remaining a reification out of financial motives. It surprised him when Aesop, assistant to Taylor Bloc himself, who had bought out the Cult when it effectively collapsed as a going concern, had approached him.
Tarsic turned, as he proceeded, to check that Beric and Sline were still with him. Just about all the reifs here regularly went down to see the ship being built, just as worshippers would have once ventured forth to observe the construction of a cathedral—the feeling was much the same. Tarsic and his companions had already been there a couple of times. However, it was not so usual for reifs to venture out during the night, as that was when the big leeches were most active. The guards would be suspicious, as they were of any unusual activity. As the three approached the gates, one of the two Batian guards stepped forwards.
‘Strange to see you out after dark. Shouldn’t you be in shutdown mode or’—the female guard paused to say the next word with distaste—‘cleansing?’
‘Our night vision is good,’ Tarsic replied. ‘And we’ve concluded that we prefer to view the construction in a less religious atmosphere.’
The woman smiled. ‘Not a Kladite then?’
Tarsic held his hands out from his sides, ‘Do I look like one of those fanatics? Where’s my Kervox breastplate and skirted helmet, and my permanent link to the wise words of Taylor Bloc?’
‘Well, you might be in disguise,’ she suggested.
‘You’re auged.’ Tarsic raised a shaky finger and pointed to the white bone-effect aug behind her right ear. ‘They’ll certainly have some kind of record on me. My name is Tarsic Alleas Smith…’
The woman tilted her head. After a moment she nodded. ‘I see. Years working off a debt to the Cult, then to Taylor Bloc… and you’re known as a troublemaker amongst reifs. You’ll do.’ She signalled to her companion to open the gate for them.
When the three were some distance from the compound, heading down the path leading to the ship’s construction site, Beric opined, ‘She’d think differently if she knew precisely where we are going.’