House of Suns

by Alastair Reynolds

  ‘If it helps Hesperus, if it helps the Line, if it helps the Machine People, I’m happy with it.’ Which was halfway to the truth. Before Cyphel’s death, before the return of Hesperus, I had been indignant about losing Silver Wings. Now all I felt was emptiness, a sense that I had been betrayed and let down not just by elements of my Line, but by the universe itself. Getting my ship back would make no difference to that; it would be like throwing a single stone into a canyon and hoping to fill it to the brim.

  ‘There were things you wished to retrieve from the ship,’ Cadence said.

  I nodded, although the task filled me with nothing resembling enthusiasm. ‘It won’t take long - most of those old ships should still be able to fly out by themselves.’

  ‘As discussed, we will begin the process of familiarisation with your vehicle’s systems while you evacuate the hold.’ Cascade nodded his white mask at the golden form before us. ‘We may as well convey Hesperus into orbit now. That way we can also begin preparing him for the journey, as best as we are able.’

  ‘I won’t see him again, will I?’

  ‘If he can be healed, and if you live long enough, anything is possible,’ Cadence answered.

  ‘Maybe he won’t even remember us. You can’t be sure of that, can you?’

  Cascade said, ‘We will ensure that his debt to you is made clear.’

  ‘It isn’t about a debt. It’s about friendship. We liked him. I think he iked us back.’

  ‘He is in safe hands now,’ Cadence said. ‘You need have no fear about that.’

  ‘Will you take care of moving him?’ I asked. ‘I can have my shuttle ready at the main landing stage within the hour. Betony will need to authorise a visit to orbit, but there shouldn’t be any objection. This was his idea to begin with.’

  ‘This does not inconvenience you?’ Cascade asked.

  ‘It’s not as if I had anything else planned today.’

  ‘Then your offer is most acceptable to us. We shall make the necessary arrangements for Hesperus.’

  ‘Take good care of him,’ I said.

  I left the robots with him and went back to the open auditorium where I had last seen Campion. He was still sitting with Betony and the others, keeping a careful eye on Mezereon. As I approached he stood from his seat and moved to an empty position out of earshot of the others. I went up to him and said, ‘I’m going up to Silver Wings, so that I can assign control to Cadence and Cascade. They’re going to take Hesperus with them.’

  ‘Will you be long?’

  ‘I only need to empty the hold and authorise the change of ownership. I should be back on Neume by midnight. At worst, breakfast.’

  He made to move from his seat. ‘I’ll come with you.’

  ‘You don’t have to. In all honesty, I’d rather you didn’t come. It’s going to be difficult enough handing that ship over, but having you up there as a witness will make it even worse. You know what she means to me.’

  ‘I understand,’ Campion said. ‘This is something you’d rather do on your own.’

  ‘I’ll be all right once I’m back down. I just wanted you to know where I was going. I promise I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Don’t let those machines take anything that isn’t part of the deal.’

  ‘I won’t, trust me.’

  He got up and kissed me, holding me tight until I forced myself free. ‘They’ll regret this, one day,’ he said. ‘They’ll see that they did the wrong thing. Betony probably knows it already - Cyphel’s death has put everything else into perspective. But he can’t back down, not now the offer’s already been made to the robots.’

  ‘If they bring her back with a scratch on her, there’ll be hell to pay.’

  He smiled. ‘That’s the spirit. Now go up there and get it over and done with.’

  I kissed him again; our hands linked and then parted. I turned to Betony, whom I sensed had been watching us.

  ‘I’m going up to my ship, to sign her over to the robots. I presume you have no objections?’

  ‘Of course not,’ he said, then looked back at Mezereon, as if he could not quite meet my eyes. Feeling a flicker of triumph, I walked away from the auditorium, my back straight, my head held high, to the landing stage. My shuttle was there by the time I arrived, and I did not have long to wait for the robots, or their golden cargo.

  We lifted from Ymir without incident. I watched the spires fall away, curving the shuttle around so that I caught a fleeting view of the auditorium. Mezereon’s array of panes glittered in the sun, spangles of light flashing from the two hundred and fifty-six facets that had once been a single human being. I caught a glimpse of a tiny black-clad figure stalking between the panes, and then the ruby discharge of an energy-pistol, and then another tower swung into place to block my line of sight. I pushed the shuttle higher and was soon knifing into the high, thin layers of atmosphere where we had played out Cyphel’s life. Behind me, the robots stood on either side of their fallen kinsman, who was resting horizontally between them. Their hands were pressing into him, one on each shoulder. As I had noticed when they had attempted to commune with him previously on Silver Wings of Morning, it was as if the gold armour of his skin had become as malleable as clay.

  I instructed the shuttle to match position and speed with my ship’s polar orbit. Silver came quickly into view, enlarging with frightening rapidity until the shuttle braked viciously to avoid the collision that until the absolute last moment had appeared inevitable. Inside, we felt nothing of that brutal slowdown. The shuttle sent a command for the cargo bay to open and we slipped inside the lovely chrome swan that had been my ship for so long. Selecting manual controls, I guided the shuttle through the maze of parked vehicles until I found the vacant docking berth I had used on my last visit. Field clamps locked it home; I set the drive to idle and we disembarked. Cadence and Cascade carried Hesperus; I strode ahead of them, walking through a good half-kilometre of bay until we reached the nearest whisking chamber.

  ‘Welcome, Purslane,’ said Silver Wings, speaking directly into my head. ‘I see you are accompanied. Are they guests, or are you being coerced?’

  I am being coerced, I thought sourly, but by the Line, not these innocent machines. ‘They’re friends of mine,’ I said aloud. ‘Please make them welcome. Cadence is the silver one, Cascade the white one.’

  ‘Welcome, Cadence and Cascade.’

  ‘Hesperus you know,’ I said. ‘He’s still unwell, but the robots are going to take him somewhere where he can be healed. In a little while I’ll be assigning command authority to the robots, so you’ll have a good chance to get to know them better.’

  ‘Are you disposing of me, Purslane?’ Silver Wings asked, still in my head.

  ‘Not by choice. We’ll talk about it on the bridge. If all goes well, we’ll see each other again, in half a million years or so.’

  The whisking chamber was large enough to receive cargo, and therefore easily spacious enough for me and the three robots. I began to tap our destination into the hovering go-board, then looked back at my guests and hesitated. ‘Hesperus whisked, so I’m assuming you can do it as well. That was before he was injured, though. Will he be all right? We can walk if you like, but the bridge is a good fifteen kilometres away.’

  ‘We can whisk,’ Cadence said. ‘Hesperus will come to no harm.’

  ‘If you’re sure.’

  A grid of lights in the chamber’s walls flashed red to signify that the whisking field was about to activate, and that we should confine ourselves to the area indicated on the floor. There was a moment’s bright rush - a subliminal sense of being syringed down swerving, chicaning tubes - and then, less than an eyeblink later, we were standing in the counterpart to the first chamber, fifteen kilometres up-ship.

  ‘Has there been a mistake?’ Cascade asked, looking into the echoing, gloomy concourse onto which the whisking chamber had opened. ‘This does not resemble the bridge I had imagined.’

  ‘The bridge is still a little way from he
re,’ I said. ‘There used to be a direct link between the cargo bay and the bridge, but that wasn’t a very good idea - it made the ship too vulnerable to attack by infiltrating parties. It was like putting an express elevator between the city gates and the mayor’s office - asking for trouble.’

  ‘Do we have far to go now?’

  ‘Just a stroll.’ The concourse was ringed by whisking chambers. I pointed to the one opposite us and set off at a brisk pace, leading the robots across a bridge. Above and below, rising and plunging to similarly dizzying vanishing points, stretched a shaft filled with slowly moving anvil-shaped mechanisms. Local gravity here was aligned with Silver Wings’ long axis, so the shaft ran most of her length, until it butted against the mountainous bulkhead of the cargo bay. The machines were engaged in a never-ending process of repair and overhaul.

  Every sixth whisking chamber was designed for cargo as well as people. The rest were only large enough to take one or two people at once, but there were enough of those to accommodate hundreds of simultaneous journeys. Although her origins were buried almost beyond recall, it was evident from the capacity of her whisking system - which pre-dated the redesign to prevent boarders - that she had once been intended to carry millions of passengers. I sometimes wondered if my ship pined for those days when her halls and atria, her vast concourses and plazas, teemed with human life. Now all she ever had was me, and a handful of guests if she was lucky. We rattled around like ghosts in an empty mansion.

  We reached the other whisking chamber. I tapped the go-board, knowing that in a few moments we would be on the bridge and that there would be no further reason to delay handing over the ship. I had been steeling myself for it ever since we had left Neume, to the point where I had begun to think I could sail through it without an emotional hiccup. But now that the time was almost upon me I felt a tightening in my throat. This was not going to be as easy as I had thought.

  The room’s wall flashed red. The whisk would be a short one this time - it would feel like an instantaneous translation between the two chambers.

  Something happened.

  I think I must have blacked out for a moment, because there was a stall in my thoughts that had nothing to do with the process of whisking. In that stall I appeared to have been pushed violently out of the region of influence of the field, so violently that I had hit the floor and was now lying in a shocked heap, not so much in pain as waiting for the pain to arrive, which I knew with certainty it was about to do. I coughed for breath and groaned. I still had no idea what had happened, but as my blurred eyes resumed some focus I made out a golden form looming over me, a form that was unmistakably Hesperus, who was unmistakably alive.

  Cadence and Cascade had vanished.

  ‘We must leave,’ Hesperus said, leaning down to pick me up off the floor. ‘We must leave and leave quickly.’

  Bruised as I was, I did not have the impression that anything was actually broken - the pain was too diffuse for that. ‘Hesperus,’ I said, relieved and bewildered in equal measure. ‘What—’

  ‘There isn’t time to discuss it here. I pushed you out of the transit field just as it reached operating strength. Cadence and Cascade went on as intended. They’ve arrived at the far end.’

  ‘The bridge,’ I said, my voice hoarse. I was standing, though not without Hesperus’s assistance.

  ‘Can we return to the cargo bay from this chamber?’

  My eyes were still blurry, my thoughts still addled. ‘No ... got to get to the other side, over the bridge.’

  ‘Very well. May I carry you? It will be faster.’

  I do not recall if he waited for my answer. His golden arms swept me up and held me securely. Hesperus started walking, then the walk became a pounding, superhumanly fast run. We crossed the shaft where the anvil-shaped machines rose and fell according to their own unfathomable agendas, and then we were in the whisking chamber. Hesperus touched the go-board. The ship accepted the command, still recognising him as a valid guest. We slammed to the other end of the ship, to the chamber at the entrance to the cargo bay.

  ‘What’s happening?’ I asked, as some of the fog began to lift.

  ‘I tricked Cadence and Cascade,’ Hesperus said as we entered the cargo bay. ‘They were lying about their intentions.’

  ‘They wanted my ship. I was about to give her to them. What’s to lie about?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. All I know is that they’ve no intention of returning me to the Monoceros Ring. When they interfaced with me just now they were doing their best to kill me.’

  Hesperus had ... loosened, somehow - his voice was the same, but the speech had become more colloquial, less rigid and precise than before.

  ‘Why would they want to kill you?’

  ‘When they interfaced with me aboard your ship, their intention was to suck information out of me and leave me dead. Then they would lie and say I had died from my earlier injuries. They failed then - I was stronger than they expected, and they couldn’t be too obvious about what they were doing. Unfortunately, they left me too weakened to communicate my fears to you. Later, they were overjoyed that you wanted to convey me to the Spirit of the Air.’

  ‘Because they thought you’d die there instead.’

  ‘Which I didn’t. When I returned from the Spirit there was still a spark of life in me. As we lifted from Neume, they tried once more to kill me. They were doing their best to track down that spark of life and extinguish it. It took all of my resources and cunning to fend them off without looking as if I was fending them off. I succeeded, obviously, or I would never have surprised them the way I did.’ My golden conveyor paused. ‘Are you having problems with your eyes, Purslane?’

  ‘Everything’s a bit foggy.’

  ‘I had to shove you very hard. It’s likely that you burst some capillaries in your eyes. You may even have suffered a detached retina. I’m sorry I couldn’t warn you, or prepare you for the shock. Speed was unfortunately of the essence.’

  ‘I still don’t understand ... why are they lying?’

  ‘When they interfaced with me, I saw a little way into their minds as well. They were glad that you complied with their request, Purslane, but if you had obstructed them, or given them cause for delay, I do not think they would have hesitated to kill you. Your only consolation is that it would have been spectacularly, mercifully fast.’

  I had too many questions to know where to begin, but all I could do was ask them one at a time. ‘What’s happened to them now?’

  ‘I intervened before you had assigned control to them. Unless I’m mistaken, they are currently marooned at the other end of the whisking tube, in the bridge.’

  ‘You’re right. They won’t be able to whisk, not without my say-so.’

  ‘Will the ship assign authority to them without your permission, even if it’s only to use the whisks, or open sealed doors?’

  ‘No - we should be all right. They’re effectively prisoners in the bridge. If they start to damage it, to try and force their way out, she should detect what they’re doing and treat them as harmful elements.’

  ‘She’ll eject them?’

  ‘Not unless I tell her to. But she’ll definitely lock them down with restraining fields.’

  ‘That may not hold them for very long - they are a lot stronger, a lot more resourceful, than you probably realise.’ Hesperus’s voice took on a graver tone. ‘You must ask Silver Wings to eject them now, Purslane. If she can’t eject them, she must destroy them.’

  ‘It isn’t that easy.’

  ‘You can issue the command from here, can’t you?’

  ‘That’s not the point. I can’t just kill the robots, or throw them into space - that’s not how it works.’

  ‘They are not what they claim to be.’

  ‘But I only have your word for that.’ I groaned, as much in frustration as discomfort. ‘I don’t mean it like that, but a couple of minutes ago you were dead. How do I know you aren’t suffering the after-effects of whatever happe
ned to you on Neume? Those robots are guests of the Line. How do you think it’ll look if I go back down to Neume and say I tossed them into space?’

  ‘I wouldn’t lie,’ he said.

  ‘Hesperus, see it from my side. You’re asking me to take a vast amount on faith.’

  ‘You trusted me before.’

  ‘It’s not that I don’t trust you now, just that I need a little time to think things over. You’re different - you even sound different, more like a human. How do I know something else hasn’t changed?’

  ‘More has changed than you can possibly imagine - I am still Hesperus, but I am also much more than he ever was. And I am telling you that you must act against Cadence and Cascade.’

  ‘They can’t do anything from the bridge. I can consult with the Line, see what action needs to be taken.’

  ‘There isn’t time. Those robots didn’t need you to assign them control of this ship - it was just a step that saved them a certain amount of difficulty. It has been several minutes since they arrived - centuries, in machine terms. By now, they are likely to be well advanced in their efforts to achieve direct control. They have probably already explored and discarded thousands of stratagems for gaining command. They will have thousands more to try. Sooner or later, one of them will succeed. There is always a back door.’

  ‘They won’t get control of her.’

  ‘They will, given time - time that may now be measured in minutes, or even seconds. She is big, she is old, but they are clever and resourceful. If I was there, I could do it as well, and there are two of them.’

  ‘If you’re wrong, and I’m shown to have acted against Machine People—’

  ‘The blame will be all mine - and I can be very, very persuasive. Do it, Purslane. Time is not on your side. I am.’

  ‘Put me down,’ I said. ‘I can’t do this while you’re carrying me around.’

  Hesperus slowed and placed me on the deck. The unlit ships and obscure machines of the cargo bay loomed around us, heavy with the past.

  ‘Silver,’ I said, ‘can you hear me?’

  The voice in my head answered, ‘I can hear you, Purslane.’