Inhibitor Phase

by Alastair Reynolds

  Like all the most daring lies, it was insidious and difficult to refute. The story was that the destruction of the Salmacis had been faked, and that the ship was still operable: kept somewhere close to Sun Hollow as an escape option for the governing elite, if and when the wolves came or some other catastrophe hit us. Most of the five thousand would be left behind, though, since the ship could only take a lucky few.

  Rurik had shrugged off this lie when it first began circulating. Then he had begun to view it with a sort of guarded scepticism: not believing it, but not exactly dismissing it either. Finally, he had begun to nurture it for his own political ends. We had fallen into some mild rivalry over differing ideas for contingency planning – birth control, food rationing and so on – and Rurik had begun to agitate for a change in leadership. At the time I do not believe he put any real credence in the lie. It was just useful leverage, helping him stoke up some public dissent and gather a body of supporters. But over time I think he came very close to believing it, internalising it as fact, even though Rurik himself had been part of the executive operation to scupper the ship.

  He and his brigade of rebels had got no further than the shuttle pen, but in attempting to leave Sun Hollow – without direct orders from Sanctum to do so – he had incurred the sternest penalty in our statutes.

  I could do nothing to pardon him, but I had done all in my power to spare the lives of his co-conspirators. Including Orva Taine, who had undoubtedly been aware of her husband’s plans. At the very least, she should be behind bars in Sanctum’s modest detention block. But nothing good would have come of that – she was well liked and a good worker – and so I had used every executive power at my disposal to isolate her from the consequences of Rurik’s crimes.

  ‘You are either very wise,’ Morgan Valois had confided to me, as I laid out my plans for protecting the co-conspirators, ‘or extraordinarily gullible. I think we may need the benefit of another thirty or forty years to know which it is.’

  ‘If we get those extra years,’ I said quietly, for fear of being overheard, ‘I’ll take whatever verdict’s offered.’

  Valois was watching me now, from just off-stage. His downcast, reproving look confirmed that he thought little good would come of this announcement. He disagreed with me going public about the incomer before we had a better idea of what she represented, or how the seismic disturbances fitted into that picture. But rumours were already in circulation, and I knew all too well the damage they could do if left unchecked.

  ‘Friends,’ I began, smiling out to the assembly, trying to strike an immediate note of reassurance. ‘I have news, and for the most part it is welcome. Some while ago, as you are all aware, I set out from Sun Hollow to intercept a ship that was in danger of exposing our existence to the wolves. Even if that ship had never attempted any contact with our community, it was behaving in a way that caused us concern. It had to be destroyed, even though that meant the likely deaths of many innocent souls.’ I injected the appropriate solemnity into my voice. ‘It was necessary, but that does not mean I took any pleasure in executing their destruction. And there was, of course, great risk in our own intervention. But it was a risk that we have considered many times; one that we have decided must be borne for the sake of Sun Hollow and the five thousand lives I address today. So it was: the incomer was successfully intercepted and destroyed.’

  I paused, watching their faces to see if anyone challenged my glossing over exactly how the incomer had been destroyed – how it seemed to have happened despite, rather than because of, my interventions. If they had doubts, they were well hidden.

  ‘That is the less welcome news,’ I continued. ‘Lives were taken, and we mourn them. But out of that tragedy we have been granted a gift of life.’

  A ripple of surprise and interest passed through the assembly. Interest, curiosity, scepticism and resentment, in equal measure.

  ‘A single passenger survived the destruction,’ I said. ‘A woman, we believe, and probably from Haven. It’s likely that we know her name, but we’ll wait until she can confirm it for us. What we can say is that she seems well, given all the tests we can run. She’s sleeping for the time being, coming slowly out of hibernation, but we don’t think it will be too many more hours before she is conscious and able to communicate.’ I smiled tightly. ‘Then we will begin the difficult business of explaining to her what has happened. It will be a shock, I think, and she will need help with that readjustment. She may not like us, at first. But in time, with all the patience and understanding we can offer, I think she will come to accept her situation and perhaps be thankful to be alive. And we, in turn, will be thankful to have her among us.’

  ‘Another mouth to feed,’ called Silus Maurus, one of my more emboldened and vocal critics. He sat in the front row, squashed into his seat like a toad, arms folded belligerently.

  ‘Yes,’ I said enthusiastically. ‘Another mouth to feed. Another pair of lungs to add to the demand on our life-support. Another soul needing shelter and warmth. Shall I tell you what else she brings? Possibility. A mind full of new ideas. New stories, new lessons. New songs. New jokes. She only has to know one new thing to turn Sun Hollow upside down. It might be the tiniest, least important fact as far as she’s concerned. It might be about the wolves, or engineering, or medicine. It might be a new way to cook spinach or mutton. It might be a better way to take out an infected tooth, or a new way of stitching sheepskin.’

  ‘And it might be nothing at all,’ Maurus said, smirking to one side.

  ‘That’s possible,’ I admitted, ‘though unlikely. But I’ll tell you this. You don’t learn the worth of a human being with a few questions. It takes a lifetime to understand the value of a life. And that’s what we’ll give her, unreservedly and without conditions. A new life among us, in Sun Hollow.’ Before any other critics could chip in, I added: ‘She’ll find employment, something that suits her talents. Everyone contributes, and so shall she. But from the moment she opens her eyes, we treat her as one of us. If she has something to offer, something new, she’ll give it in due course. But we won’t demand it of her, and we won’t treat her with anything other than gratitude and kindness.’

  ‘What about these noises we hear about?’ called out Nate Masnek, rising slightly from his seat and rubbing his good hand against the bandaged remains of the other.

  I tried not to bristle. Masnek had been fair to me in the past and his question was well meant. It was not his fault reports of the seismic disturbances had already leaked out of Sanctum.

  ‘Impactor activity has been quite high lately,’ I said, which was close enough to the truth to assuage my conscience. ‘As ever, we monitor all seismic activity and respond accordingly. At the moment, there’s no cause for any concern.’

  I became aware of Morgan Valois, shuffling to my side. ‘Thank you for that extremely helping briefing, Administrator,’ he said, in the strained tones of one who believed that some sort of embarrassing public debacle had only just been averted. ‘Since you have much business to attend to – and everyone is already gathered – I think I might seize the opportunity of continuing with some daily administrative announcements?’ Pointedly, he did not wait for my assent. ‘Firstly, I’m pleased to report that the spur into chamber four has now been cleared for use after last month’s subsidence . . .’

  Questions were still being shouted from the audience, even as Valois tried to turn the topic over to such matters as seasonal spinach output, mandatory water rationing and the imposition of revised schooling rotas.

  I was exceedingly glad to turn my back on the gathering and leave the stage.

  Most of a day passed before our guest was ready to be removed from reefersleep. Legitimate Sanctum business (Valois had been right about that) took up the last hours before I returned home, quietly apprehensive about the sort of reception I was likely to get from Victorine. Nicola must have spoken to her, though, or her harder feelings had thawed, or my words at the assembly had worked some effect, becau
se there was little of the antipathy I had felt the previous evening. I wished that adults were as capable as children of moving beyond some impasse, letting go of whatever had been intractable only hours or days ago. I envied them that ability to discard their past selves as if they were old, tattered, useless skins.

  ‘Has she come out of the box yet?’ Victorine asked, while we were setting out a board and counters for a game we often played after meals.

  ‘No. Perhaps tomorrow, if all goes well. Nothing needs to be rushed. She’s taken decades and decades to reach us, so a few more hours won’t make any difference to her.’

  ‘Do you think she ever saw the wolves?’

  ‘It’s doubtful. We think she left her planet in the years before the wolves came. Much of what we take for granted will be new to her, and very likely difficult to accept.’

  ‘Didn’t you speak to her, out in space? You didn’t say anything about that in the assembly.’

  ‘I did speak to her, but I’m not sure how much of it sank in. That’s why I didn’t mention it. If your mother and I woke you in the night, when you had been deeply asleep, and whispered secrets to you, do you think you’d remember them all in the morning?’

  ‘It would depend on the secrets.’

  ‘You cannot fault her logic,’ Nicola said, smiling at the two of us as she fumbled handmade dice out of a bag. ‘Still, we will all do our best to help the passenger adjust, won’t we? It will be good for us to have a new face in Sun Hollow.’

  ‘Do you think she’ll be cross that everyone else on her ship died?’ Victorine asked, with an unaffected naturalness.

  ‘She’ll be sad, I think, when the truth hits home,’ I answered, laying out the counters in their starting positions. ‘But she might not have known those people as well as we all know each other in Sun Hollow.’

  ‘She still won’t be able to talk to any of them about where she came from.’

  ‘No,’ I acknowledged, meeting her eyes. ‘And that may be difficult for her, until she adjusts to her new life.’

  ‘It would change things,’ Nicola said quietly, ‘if it turned out that she was not the only survivor.’

  I nodded once, but did not allow myself to be drawn in. I should have known it would be impossible to prevent news of the seismophone trace finding its way beyond Sanctum, especially as I had decided against placing it under a secrecy order.

  We played three rounds of the game, Victorine trouncing Nicola and me, and then tiredness won out and we all made preparations for bed.

  ‘There was a rumour,’ Nicola said quietly, when it was just the two of us and the last of the tea. ‘Of something coming in from the east.’

  ‘You’re exactly right. It’s a rumour.’

  ‘Nate Masnek asked about sounds, and I heard something about footsteps.’

  ‘Which is as good a case as any for dismissing it completely. No one would land ninety kilometres away and walk across the surface.’

  ‘Perhaps they don’t know we’re here.’

  ‘In which case, it’s an astonishing coincidence they landed as near to us as ninety kilometres. Either way makes no sense. A deliberate visitor would land closer if they’d detected our presence. Maybe not right above us, but not tens of hours of travel away. A random stranger would have landed anywhere on Michaelmas but this exact sector.’ I forced a reassuring smile, trying to ease her fears even if my own were unassailable. ‘The truth is more mundane: those seismophones aren’t as reliable as we’d wish, and the cables connecting them back to Sun Hollow are susceptible to damage. There might not be any weather out there, but there’s no shortage of violent geology to make up for it. The temperature variations play havoc, the crust strains and contracts, and it only takes one cable rubbing against a rock to send false signals back to us.’

  ‘These recent weeks have been strange. First Rurik Taine, then the incomer. Then you coming back to us, when we thought you were dead. And you bring back a gift for the community, if an odd one. No one knows what to make of these things, Miguel. They start to feel like portents.’ She smiled hastily to reassure me that she was not yet ready to embrace full-blown superstition. ‘Too many shadows. We are all surviving on the edge of our wits. This isn’t how people are meant to live.’ She nodded to the bedroom where her daughter was easing into dreams that I hoped were as pleasant and carefree as her life would permit. ‘You would tell me, regardless of your Sanctum secrets, if you knew things were about to get worse?’

  ‘I would tell you.’

  ‘Good. Now sleep, and sleep well, because I have never known you look more tired than these last days. And tomorrow, if all is well, your passenger will speak again.’

  Late in the morning of the following day I left my office and went down to the infirmary, summoned by a call from the duty physician, Doctor Kyrgiou. Valois must have received the same call, for we nearly bumped into each other in the rock-walled tunnels that connected the two parts of Sanctum.

  ‘Alma not joining us?’ I asked.

  ‘Headaches of her own, dear boy, without concerning herself with your pet survivor.’

  I raised an eyebrow, unaccustomed to such a tone from the normally unflappable Valois. I supposed the strain of recent events was getting to all of us, cracking us open along our lines of weakness. ‘A few odd noises on the seismophones?’

  ‘No – although I’d say they’re hardly helping, under the circumstances.’ Although there was no danger whatsoever of our conversation being overheard, he nonetheless dropped his voice. ‘Peter and Saul have dropped out.’

  I understood his meaning, but hoped that I might have misheard. Peter and Saul were two of our Disciple watchkeeping satellites: our system-wide early warning network. ‘Dropped out as in . . . gone silent?’

  ‘They were late with their status pulses. Those pulses aren’t sent on a fixed schedule, but there’s a window in which we’d expect to see them. That window came and went. We waited for Michael to spike a bit, and sent a query.’ Seeing my developing concern, he added: ‘Low-energy, ultra-low bandwidth: the usual protocols, and aimed preferentially at Peter and Saul.’

  I walked on a few paces. ‘And?’

  ‘Nothing’s come back. Those queries aren’t negotiable: if the Disciple receives such a transmission, it’s obliged to acknowledge receipt, regardless of Michael’s activity or any other security concerns.’

  ‘A serious fault could put a Disciple into self-repair and recovery mode. That’s happened before after an impactor strike: something small enough to damage the satellite, but not destroy it outright. Sometimes they come back up on their own, sometimes we have to go out there and repair them.’

  ‘Two at the same time?’

  ‘Well, that still leaves ten units: ample overlap of coverage. Provided they all keep working properly.’ I patted him on the shoulder and wished someone were around to extend me the same courtesy. ‘We’ll get around this, Morgan. It looks bad because of everything else going on, but any one of these anomalies is something we’ve faced before.’

  ‘Something is wrong here, Miguel – really, badly wrong.’ We had arrived at the infirmary in time for Valois to nod through the glass partition into the enclosure where the passenger was being kept. ‘Something to do with Brianna Bettancourt, if I’m not mistaken.’

  Doctor Kyrgiou and her fellow physicians were preparing to take her out of the casket. It had already been opened: the entire upper section removed in one piece like a coffin lid and placed to one side. Now the gowned and masked physicians were delving into the interior with gloves and tools. The tall, slightly stoop-shouldered Kyrgiou stood to one side, holding a portable screen while one of her colleagues swept a scanner along the length of the casket.

  It was hard to see what was going on. Other than the physicians, there were trolleys stacked with monitor devices, life-support machines (not yet operating, but ready if they were needed) and upright stands loaded with various bags of tinted medical solutions.

  I pressed the i
ntercom button set into the partition. ‘Good morning, Doctor Kyrgiou. Thank you for calling me. May I ask how close she is to revival?’

  The tall figure looked up from her portable screen, her voice emerging from a grille above the window.

  ‘She’d already be awake if it wasn’t for our own anaesthetics, Administrator. Just as she was showing signs of surfacing, we held her under while we double-checked her bloods and ran a few last-minute tests.’

  While she was still cold, the physicians had drilled into the casket and nipped away a tiny tissue sample; enough to run some basic checks and confirm (to the best of our capabilities) that the passenger was human rather than some devious wolf construct. The sample also enabled them to test for the major transmissible diseases, based on those known to us. They went on to draw blood, extract marrow and spinal fluid, and probably run a dozen other tests too complicated to explain to me. Kyrgiou tipped her screen in my direction as the scan went on, showing a smoky scroll of familiar-looking body parts. Pelvis, ribs, shoulders and skull. I was no surgeon but nothing stood out as being artificial, even at the highest scanning resolution. Her brain was uncorrupted by machine parts, and there was no sign of trauma from her ordeal.

  Kyrgiou swept the scanner back along the passenger’s torso.

  ‘Stop,’ I called out. ‘I saw something. Back up a bit: around the ribcage.’

  ‘What did you see?’ Kyrgiou asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Something solid, somewhere in her chest. A sort of dense mass, like a machine, an implant. About the size of a fist. Like an artificial heart.’

  ‘There’s nothing, Miguel.’ She played the scanner back and forth over the area of interest. ‘Bone, muscle, lungs, heart. Normal tissue, normal organs. Nothing mechanical.’

  ‘I swear I saw something.’

  ‘The scanner records itself. I’ll rerun the capture. Back thirty seconds?’

  ‘That should be enough.’

  Kyrgiou spooled back and let the recording run forward. I watched intently, until we reached the point where Kyrgiou jerked back to the ribcage upon my request.