Revelation Space Read Online Free PDF Page B

but she would not have claimed to have been at ease with any of them. She approached them with the nervousness of a new lover, knowing that the knowledge she had gleaned to date was entirely skin-deep, and that what lay below might shatter every illusion she had.
    She was never entirely sorry to exit the cache.
    At 450 she shot through another armature, spacing the utility section from the ship’s tapering conic tail, which extended below for another kilometre. Again a surge as the elevator rode through a rad-zone, then the beginning of prolonged deceleration which would eventually bring it to a halt. It was passing through the second set of cryogenic storage decks, two hundred and fifty levels capable of holding one hundred and twenty thousand, though of course there was currently only one sleeper, if one was so generously inclined as to describe the Captain’s state as sleep. The elevator was slowing now. Midway through the cryo levels it stopped, cordially announcing that it had reached her destination.
    “Passenger cryogenic sleep level concierge,” said the elevator. “For your in-flight reefersleep requirements. Thank you for using this service.”
    The door opened and she stepped across the threshold, glancing down at the converging, illuminated walls of the shaft framed by the gap. She had travelled almost the entire length of the ship (or height—it was difficult not to think of the ship as a tremendously tall building) and yet the shaft seemed to drop down to infinite depths below. The ship was so large—so stupidly large—that even its extremities beggared the mind.
    “Yes, yes. Now kindly piss off.”
    “I’m sorry?”
    “Go away.”
    Not that the elevator would, of course—at least not for any real purpose other than placating her. It had nothing else to do but wait for her. Being the sole person awake, Volyova was the only one who had any cause to use the elevators at all.
    It was a long hike from the spinal shaft to the place where they kept the Captain. She could not take the most direct route either, since whole sections of the ship were inaccessible, riddled with viruses which were causing widespread malfunction. Some districts were flooded with coolant, while others were infested with rogue janitor-rats. Others were patrolled by defence drogues which had gone berserk and so were best avoided, unless Volyova felt in the mood for sport. Others were filled with toxic gas, or vacuum, or too much high-rad, or were rumoured to be haunted.
    Volyova did not believe in hauntings, (though of course she had her own ghosts, accessed via the spider-room), but the rest she took very seriously indeed. Some parts of the ship she would not enter unless armed. But she knew the Captain’s surroundings well enough not to take excessive precautions. It was cold, though, and she hiked up the collar of her jacket, tugged the bib of her cap tighter down, its mesh fabric crunching against her scalp stubble. She lit another cigarette, hard sucks perishing the vacuum in her head, replacing it with a frosty military alertness. Being alone suited her. She looked forward to human company, but not. with any great fervour. And certainly not if that company also entailed dealing with the Nagorny situation. Perhaps when they reached the Yellowstone system she would consider locating a new Gunnery Officer.
    Now, how had that worry escaped from her mental partitioning?
    It was not Nagorny that concerned her now, but the Captain. And here he was, or at least the outermost extent of what he had now become. Volyova composed herself. That composure was necessary. What she had to examine always made her sick. It was worse for her than for the others; her repulsion stronger. She was brezgati; squeamish.
    The miracle was that the reefersleep unit which cased Brannigan was still functional. It was a very old model, Volyova knew—sturdily built. It was still striving to hold the cells of his body in stasis, even though the shell of the