Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera

Author:Vajra Chandrasekera
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tor Publishing Group

19

The Desolation

The scene of the crime: Earth, an old and haunted house.

The Lamb decides to take a look at the sites of the alleged murders. The Clave provides a decrepit dropship, piloting it themself—this time a purely virtual presence, bringing no birds along. The absence of the birds makes the Clave feel more remote, as if they’re phoning it in. The dropship is a big egg the colour of dirt, about twenty metres long, with stubby wings and vectorable nozzles. There is no cockpit or visible instrumentation since it was designed to be piloted by someone like the Clave. Its innards are mostly empty space with a metal floor and metal benches to sit on. The Lamb is preoccupied with trying to sit on the bench, which is too low for her unfamiliar legs. It makes her back ache. The dropship wobbles a little as it rises above the valley, climbing slowly into the upper atmosphere. The light changes as they rise, growing warmer. The Lamb leans forward to catch sun in her face, eyes lidded.

Parts of the fuselage seem to be missing, or perhaps it was designed that way, but what’s left of the airframe looks worryingly rusty. The craft doesn’t seem very stable in the air, even as it picks up speed. She looks down at the valley, out of the gaps in the fuselage. The ghostly image of apocalyptic ash is intense from this angle, more real than the blue of the river or the green of the jungle, both of which seem fake and unconvincing, their colours too vivid. Perhaps this is the angle at which the satellites see the valley, so she’s getting a heavier dose of their perspective. Or perhaps the signal is stronger the higher they climb. The dropship rattles alarmingly under her feet.

“Do you have anything that’s not a wreck?” the Lamb says.

“Vintage,” the Clave Eight says. They sound defensive. The backchannel attempts to show a gallery of search-and-rescue personnel carriers and dropships from various historical periods, in various states of dis/repair, but the Lamb blocks it. Apparently the caretaker collects them. She’s about to complain that it will take forever to get anywhere in this bucket, but then the ramjets kick in and the buffeting of the wind through the holes ceases. There is a sudden oily smell, as if the entire aircraft had been bubbled in slick lubricant. She looks back through one of the holes in the fuselage and sees a hypersonic puff far behind them. The Clave sounds slightly distracted when they speak again. “Temporarily upgraded.”

Despite this, it takes more than three kilosecs to get to the other side of the planet, which time the Lamb passes in boredom, clicking the metal bench with her nailless fingers. The Clave provides only the barest debrief. Relative to pre-diaspora history, the Earth is essentially uninhabited by humans, except for the maintenance team. “That limits the suspect pool, at least,” the Lamb says uncertainly. She doesn’t want to do any of this, but she doesn’t want to go back to sleep either.

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