Inhibitor Phase

by Alastair Reynolds

  ‘This ship isn’t mad,’ I said quietly, for Pinky’s ears alone. ‘If anything, it’s saner than Glass.’

  ‘As comparisons go, Stink . . .’

  I smiled. ‘It could use some work. I know.’

  At Lady Arek’s persuasion, the ship allowed us back to the medical suite where I had last seen Glass. That meeting felt much longer ago than a day, consigned to some more innocent part of my life. Snowdrop, Omori, and John the Revelator had all been alive when I was last in here. Now their deaths seemed to mark some dividing line between the man I had felt myself to be and the one I knew, deep down, I truly was.

  We gathered around the room’s focal point: the container in which I had last seen Glass. She might still have been in there for all we could tell, but now there was no way to see into it. The support medium had become a murky yellow-green, hiding its secrets, and the surgical machines had pulled away from whatever activity they had been engaged in before.

  ‘Are you in there, Glass?’ Lady Arek asked, touching a palm to the enclosing shell.

  ‘She’d better be,’ I said.

  ‘Not helpful,’ Lady Arek snapped.

  ‘She can’t be anywhere else, can she? I saw her in this bottle. The machines were fussing over her.’

  ‘Damn those ninecats. I never liked them.’ Lady Arek removed her palm from the container. It left a cold imprint, blushing away after a few seconds. ‘We need her. Not just because there will always be aspects of this ship that she understands better than me, but the rest of it, too. Her tactical and strategic expertise dovetails with my own.’ Her eyes flashed onto me. ‘And yours – when you relearn it.’

  ‘Glass!’ I called. ‘If there’s a part of you still alive enough to hear this, you find a way to come back to us!’

  ‘Giving her orders now?’ Lady Arek asked mildly.

  Pinky made a low cough. ‘Was that there when we arrived?’

  Another door had opened on the opposite side of the medical suite, beckoning us to investigate. Stepping into the chamber beyond, I took an involuntary breath, taken aback that such a large space could have been in the ship all along, hidden from my exploration. It was twenty times larger than the medical suite, big enough to contain another spacecraft entirely. All it was, though, was a larger annex of the medical suite, filled with multiply duplicated samples of the same equipment.

  We moved from bottle to bottle, quickly confirming that each contained the faint but unmistakable form of a pig. Judging by the quick whirring processes going on in and around the bottles, various forms of surgery and healing were taking place.

  ‘Thank you, Scythe,’ I said, not caring what the others made of my talking to the ship. ‘You’re trying to help them, and we understand. Please continue doing what you’re doing.’

  ‘Healing them is only half the battle,’ Lady Arek said. ‘None of this will help if they cannot be kept alive afterwards. That either means reefersleep or life-support, or . . .’

  ‘I think we can trust that the ship has things in hand,’ I said. ‘Or that it will do, very shortly.’

  The far wall was not fixed. It was moving back very slowly, like the barrel of a piston. As it retreated, it was leaving a structure behind it. It had a soft, improperly formed look to it, like a casting that had been removed from the mould when it was still molten. But it was sharpening as we looked, gaining form and function. It was a reefersleep casket, all but identical to the ones Glass and I had used.

  The retreating wall finished forming the casket. Then a new one began to bud out of the same moving surface.

  ‘Something got the message,’ Pinky said.

  Our friends and allies – even such a doubtful and mercurial ally as John the Revelator – had turned the wolves from our scent. But it was only when we were a month out of Yellowstone that we allowed ourselves to believe it. Lady Arek used every passive sensor at her disposal and finally decreed that there was no trace of the enemy ahead or behind us – at least not out to a range of several light-minutes. Of course there could be no certainty in that, but since no better reassurance could be hoped for, we all accepted it gratefully. Under pressure, as I had learned in Sun Hollow, the human mind will settle for a lot less than certainty.

  Day by day the ship had continued healing pigs and manufacturing reefersleep caskets. Neither process could be accelerated, but once we had a sense of the schedule we could begin to plan around it. There was food, water and life-support in abundance. We never saw where our sustenance was coming from, and perhaps that was for the best. All that mattered was that the tireless robots came and went without cessation, and if food of one kind was rejected (the pigs could be fussy, due to their hypertrophied sense of smell and taste) then an alternative was quickly offered. Over the early days of that month the machines – and by implication Scythe – came to an understanding of its guests, and gradually tailored its offerings and amenities until all were satisfied. Washing and toilet facilities were created, as well as furniture and concessions to privacy including personal sleeping spaces. Garments were offered, the rags taken away, and the pigs rummaged through hoppers of clean colourful fabric, trying on pieces for size and style. With the ship holding at one gee for the time being, it was as close to a normal life as most of the pigs had ever known.

  One by one the healed ones came back to us. I was glad of that, preferring to have the proof of their recovery than having them sent straight into the new caskets. The other pigs saw that their friends had been made well and began to believe that this frightening, unpredictable and automated environment might be trying to help them. By then, most understood that it was our hope to have them all go into reefersleep. But that brought its own concerns, too. The pigs were either alarmed at the general prospect of being frozen, or more specifically aware of the particular risks associated with hibernation and pigs. On this matter, we could only offer so much reassurance.

  All the same, the ship clearly meant for us to sleep. When we all went into the caskets, the acceleration could be ramped up as steeply as Scythe desired. It would be a lot less complicated if none of us needed to breathe or walk around in that interval.

  Barras turned out to be key. He was wise enough not to be completely persuaded that any part of this was going to be safe. By submitting to reefersleep, the pigs were accepting a reasonable chance of death. But it was a risk that came from considerations of physics and biology, not the mad whims of the Swine Queen or the cold predation of the wolves. They could deal with that, in their fashion. Not all the pigs would see it that way, but a small number of dissenters could be press-ganged into the caskets if it came to open resistance. Barras, though, was confident that a majority of the pigs would come to an understanding that this was still the best hope for them collectively, and the doubters would eventually fall in with the rest, grudgingly but peacefully.

  We left them to it. If we were to instil trust in the pigs then we had to let them manage their own affairs, with a de facto leader and something approaching an ad hoc democracy. I reiterated my earlier pledge: if for some reason reefersleep was not an option for the pigs, then I would remain awake and see out the long watch with them. But at the same time I made it clear that I expected to be able to offer very little assistance.

  In the end there was unanimity among the pigs. How they got there was no concern of mine: all that mattered was that Barras had persuaded them to go into the caskets. By then, nearly all the cabinets had been created, stretching in a long, ordered row down the length of that huge chamber. The robots played no further part in the process, leaving us to coordinate how the units were occupied, configured and their revival clocks set.

  Lady Arek ran various simulations of Scythe’s crossing under different thrust patterns. The worldtime for our journey hardly varied with one parameter or another, but the competing scenarios did make a significant variation in elapsed shiptime, amounting to nearly a year’s difference in our on-board clocks. That would be a long time to wake up early, if the revival
points were set too early. The trouble, as Lady Arek made clear, was that Scythe could only begin detailed intelligence gathering when it was already within a few light-months of Ararat. If it found wolves, or some other threat, it might need to adjust its deceleration and final approach profile. The exact details of our flight’s end stages were therefore impossible to predict in advance, giving us no way to be sure when to set the revival clocks.

  ‘The pigs can wait until we’re sure that there’s a planet we can land on,’ Pinky said. ‘The rest of us can come out earlier.’

  ‘By how much?’ Lady Arek asked, when it was just the four of us left warm, standing by our waiting caskets: the two that Glass and I had already used, one of which would suit Lady Arek just as well, and the two new units that had been forged for Pinky and Probably Rose.

  ‘A month. Six months. Maybe even a year. Sniff out the system, see how it lies, then refine our plans.’

  ‘If those plans demand high acceleration,’ I said, ‘staying awake for the rest of the voyage might not be an option.’

  Pinky glanced at his casket. Outwardly, it looked the same as the other two. But its interior space was smaller, configured to provide a snug fit around a pig. ‘So we go back in.’

  ‘And each time, we roll the dice on whether we come out again,’ I said.

  ‘That’d be for me to fret about, not you.’

  But Lady Arek sided with me. ‘Clavain is old as well, Pinky – older than either of us. The things Hourglass did to him have reset some of his morbidity markers, but reefersleep still presents a non-negligible risk. None of us must take any part of this lightly.’

  He lifted his snout. ‘Do I look like I’m taking it lightly?’

  ‘If I might offer an opinion?’

  We all stopped and turned to face the voice. Glass was standing in the doorway: she had appeared silently, without warning. She looked just as she had before she went to the Swinehouse: steady on her feet, lacking any visible injury, and entirely in command of herself.

  ‘I was only ever caretaking,’ Lady Arek said decorously, extending a hand by way of welcome, even though they were standing far apart. ‘It is good to see you, Hourglass. We were becoming concerned, after your absence.’

  ‘So concerned that you were ready to jump into my reefersleep casket?’ Glass asked.

  ‘You can’t blame us for making arrangements,’ I said. ‘For all we knew you’d be in that bottle for months. Besides, the ship has shown that it can make reefersleep caskets at will.’

  ‘You’re quite correct, Clavain.’ She walked over to us, her gait steady. Perhaps she had grown marginally thinner or paler since I had last seen her clearly, but it was hard to be sure. ‘In any case, there are no hard feelings. It is right that you should take to the caskets, now that I am restored. In fact, I will be here to supervise all four of you as you go into reefersleep.’

  ‘What of you?’ Lady Arek asked suspiciously.

  ‘I will enter in good time,’ Glass answered. ‘There are a number of technical matters I’d like to attend to while Scythe is in transit. First of all, I will overview the final measures necessary for the completion of the hypometric precursor device, the nature of which you were good enough to explain to Clavain. ‘Our layover on Ararat will provide the ideal environment to perform a number of low-energy system tests, safe from wolf interference.’

  ‘And between now and then?’ Lady Arek asked.

  ‘I was about to come to the other matter: the testing and integration of the Gideon stones. This will be delicate work, and it would do well not to be rushed. I shall remain awake for a period – anything up to several months, depending on my progress – and I shall wake earlier, as well, to complete whatever loose ends remain.’

  ‘I could assist,’ Lady Arek said.

  ‘And you most certainly shall, if for any reason I find myself unable to complete the work in a timely fashion.’

  ‘When you begin poking about with those stones . . . is there a danger of destroying the ship?’ I asked.

  Glass nodded enthusiastically. ‘Very much so.’

  ‘Then for the sake of my nerves, I think I’d rather be dead while you’re doing it.’

  Pinky had made his own mind up. He was already clambering into the casket. I met his eyes, nodded some wordless encouragement, and made similar arrangements of my own.

  Part Five

  PHOTOSPHERE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The sun was still ten degrees above the horizon when I reached the Muskie ruin. Not much was left of it now, with dust already smothering its lines, but the feature had been well documented and easily mapped from orbit, and it was a prime candidate among our possible rendezvous points. I was glad that the impactor and dropships had not veered too far from their predicted landing zone because none of the other shelters were as handy as this one, nor as close to the initial objective.

  It had been a quintet of pressure domes, with one main dome in the middle and four smaller units around it, linked by semicircular tunnels. The domes had long ago ruptured or caved in, so that all that was left was their foundations and a metre and a half or so of crumbling, curving walls. Anything useful, such as solar collectors, airlocks or life-support systems, had been plundered long ago. These abandoned, crumbling homesteads – there were hundreds more, all over Mars – were already fading into invisibility. They had been here only a century or more, but I easily imagined myself crouching among the vine-ridden walls of some jungle temple from a thousand years earlier.

  Mars already had a long and bewildering history of ambition, conquest and abject, harrowing failure. The Muskies, with their cultish, over-reaching aspirations, were just one small chapter in that narrative.

  While the others converged on this position, I set about preparing our temporary camp. I retracted my stilts and set equipment pods on the darkening ground. I unwrapped a four-metre-wide thermal mat and secured it to the ground with burrowing pitons. Kneeling on the mat, I laid out more tools, weapons and supplies. Using the walls as cover, I deployed a camouflaged awning, resembling a bigger version of my suit’s adaptive parasol. Now even the neutral, vigilant Demarchists would have trouble spotting us from space.

  The sun had gone down by the time I was done. Without image amplification it was totally dark under the awning; totally dark beyond it. There was no airglow, no moonlight. A thin, cold wind whipped and chivvied the adaptive fabric. I heard it, faintly, through my suit’s acoustic sensors. Conserving energy, I sat very still with my knees tucked up to my chest.

  Hope was the first to arrive. My suit alerted me to his approaching footfalls, picking up even the minor seismic signal of the stilts. There was almost nothing to see until he was climbing in through a gap in the wall, crouching into the space under the awning. I studied him through the image-amplification overlay, alert for signs of injury or damage. My visor painted a pale purple outline around his form.

  Our suits established an ultra-short-range comms handshake.

  ‘Status?’ I asked.

  ‘Bruised and battered, but otherwise functional. How was it for you?’

  ‘Nominal.’

  ‘Always one for the small-talk, Faith.’

  ‘Small-talk won’t get us off Mars with the mission objective.’

  ‘No, but it might make the time pass a little more easily. You know, by the time they extracted me from my last surface mission, I was talking to anything that looked like it had a face.’

  ‘By all means talk to yourself. Unless it compromises our operational effectiveness, I don’t have a problem with it.’ I gestured at the items on the ground. ‘I’ve commenced the parts inventory.’

  Hope unpacked his own equipment pods and began laying the contents next to the things I had already set out. Weapons, ammunition, suit components, medical instruments and supplies. Some of the bigger weapons and tools had been split between us; now their parts could be organised and assembled.

  ‘The drop was rougher than the simulati
ons,’ Hope commented, clicking together the two main sections of an armour-piercing rifle.

  ‘Everything’s rougher than simulations. We made it down. If they saw us, or suspected anything, there’ll be some activity by day-break.’ I sighted down the bore of a magnetic pistol, then snapped it back into its housing.

  ‘Any sign of Charity?’ Hope asked.

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘The fourth suit?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  I carried on organising our equipment.

  Charity arrived an hour later, exhausted but relieved to have found the rendezvous. She unpacked her gear, and after a quick inspection we confirmed that it had all arrived undamaged.

  Which was good: each of us had our role to play, but Charity’s was the first, and arguably most critical, part of the mission. If it failed, then the operation as a whole was shot.

  ‘Rest while you can,’ I advised her. ‘We’re still waiting on the other suit, but even if it arrives soon we’ll need storm cover before we set out.’

  ‘About the other suit, sir.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I think I saw it go down, sir. Something came in very hard about twenty klicks north of my drop-point. I don’t think it was an ordinary impactor shard. It looked small and sleek, like a dropship. But I didn’t see any sign of a slowdown. The horizon line was near, though, so I suppose it might have flared when it was out of sight . . .’

  The storm came, and the storm persisted. There was night, and there was night’s close cousin: daylight smothered to a grey, shadowless twilight by the rushing dust clouds. At its fiercest, the storm felt as it might already blanket all of Mars and never surrender its hold. But we knew better. At this season, and this latitude, it might only last a day. That would still be enough for us.

  I was the only one receiving updates from orbit. They were highly encrypted, low-energy transmissions that were being beamed out in all directions, not just down to the surface. If the Conjoiners detected these signals, it would not necessarily alert them that an operation was in progress. The content itself was extremely terse: just enough to give us guidance as to whether it was safe to proceed, and what sort of time margin was in force.