Inhibitor Phase

by Alastair Reynolds

  Gently I took the harpoon gun from her while Pinky managed both oars, dipping them languidly into the water rather than levering them against the banks.

  ‘Somewhere in the gaps in our records,’ I said quietly, ‘someone must have come here and adapted to the ocean. Or been forced to adapt. Whatever the case, we’re the newcomers now. Those swimmers would be dead unless they’d found some equilibrium with the sea and the Jugglers: some way of life that allows them to coexist with the nodes.’ I smiled. ‘Out of all this chaos and darkness, something new. Speciation, adaptation, biogenesis. Life always finds a way.’

  ‘Until it doesn’t, and there’s nothing left to mourn it but decaying cell cultures. Adaptation’s all well and good. But unless you’ve got something to fight the wolves with, you’ve just found a slower, quieter way of becoming extinct.’

  ‘You said they don’t touch Juggler worlds. Perhaps that’s our solution: merge with the oceans and wait until the wolves have gone.’

  ‘And while we’re at it,’ Glass said, sounding like Lady Arek for a moment, ‘we can de-evolve spines and central nervous systems as well.’

  ‘Maybe we should wait until we’ve met these people before we pass judgement on their choices.’

  ‘Now might be your chance,’ Pinky commented.

  The swimmer was emerging from the water again, perhaps fifteen metres behind us. A head rose above the green, then a widening neck, then the shoulders and sternum of a muscular, broad-chested torso. I couldn’t tell if the swimmer was treading water, or standing on some extension of the biomass beneath the surface, only that it seemed confident of its posture.

  Glass had been right when she spoke of human genestocks; of that I had no doubt. Compared to some of the wilder strains of people that had existed in the Rust Belt or out among the Skyjacks or Ultras, its adaptations were almost unremarkable. It had a flattened, seal-like face with slitted nasal openings and wide, forward-facing eyes that were clearly well evolved for light-gathering underwater. Whiskers fanned out around the nose and mouth: a useful sensory augmentation in dark or confined spaces. The creature had external ears, but they were vestigial affairs and folded tightly to the skull, which was covered in a dark, glistening integument that I imagined must have very efficient thermal properties. The creature had a mane of green-stained hair fanning down over the shoulders, and what I first took to be oddments of scrap contamination caught in the hair were in fact ornaments or trinkets, deliberately braided in. The skin glimmered here and there with paler, almost luminous patches of gold and green. Only the upper third of the creature was so far visible but I could see nothing of clothing.

  All this I took in within a second of Pinky’s words, adding these observations to the impressions already gained with our earlier encounters. We had already seen that the creatures possessed tools, and the desire to trap us, so my assumption was that this swimmer also had hostile intent.

  ‘Go back!’ I shouted, jabbing the barrel of the harpoon gun in what I hoped was a sufficiently unambiguous fashion, regardless of which spoken languages the creature did or did not comprehend.

  A moan came from the swimmer.

  ‘NOoo . . . !’ it bellowed, on a long, deep, falling note. ‘NOooo . . . ! NOoo . . . GOoooo . . . ! NO GO! NO GO!’

  Unless my brain was filling in meaning where none existed, I felt that the utterance had been quite clear enough. Our tongue might not have been the one preferred by the creature, but it knew it well enough to issue a directive.

  ‘Not your decision to make, I’m afraid.’ I made another lunge with the harpoon gun. ‘Leave us alone, friend, and we’ll leave you alone. Our business is not your business.’

  ‘Shoot it,’ Glass said.

  Two barbs remained in the gun, one ready to be fired and the other still stowed in the stock. I considered a warning shot, firing above the creature, but if that did not have the desired effect and the creature made a lunge I would not have time to load the third barb.

  ‘Go!’ I shouted. ‘You understand “go”! Go or I’ll hurt you! Don’t make me do this!’

  ‘NO GO! Not swim! Bad time!’

  Glass turned on the motor, aiming its blast at the creature. It howled as the hot air lashed its face, then drew its left arm from the water, using a large webbed hand to shield its eyes. The boat accelerated away from the swimmer, sluggishly at first, then with gathering momentum. The swimmer’s other arm came out of the water, and it had something in it. It was a sort of clawed grapnel on a line, and the creature swung it in widening, quickening arcs, letting out the line a little at a time, all in the fingers of one hand.

  I fired, but I still could not bring myself to aim directly for the creature. I knew it to be intelligent and on some level I understood that its injunction had been as much warning as threat, and perhaps a warning that we would have been wise to heed. But we had come too far, and overcome too much, to be deterred now.

  The shot was aimed at the swinging grapnel, not the creature’s hand, but the effect was not very different. The barb collected the grapnel and its line, tangling with them, and in so doing ripped the line from the creature’s grip, taking some portion of flesh with it. The creature bellowed, the tips of its fingers bloodied, and the webbing between those fingers lacerated and flapping loose. I released the barb’s line. The creature was still looking at us, holding its wounded hand by the wrist even as it sank back into the water. Slowly the curving corridor of green sealed it from sight, almost like a curtain closing, and we were alone again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  When it seemed unlikely the creature would find us again, Glass quietened the motor and we resumed our progress with the oars. I had reloaded the harpoon gun with the one remaining barb, but after that encounter had seen nothing that merited raising the weapon.

  Which was not to say that we were relieved, or in any way confident. Although very little was said of the matter – what was there to say, since we had all seen the same thing – each of us in our private fashion must have been mulling the creature’s motives and wondering if its intentions were as belligerent as they had seemed at the time. If we had surprised these creatures with our presence on Ararat, then perhaps they had been forced into actions which only looked to be hostile because barriers of language precluded any reasoned persuasion. Maybe they had tried to net the boat not because they meant harm to us or our craft but because by the time they knew of us we were moving too quickly to be dissuaded by other means. When that had failed, one had followed us into the node . . . and if the creature had meant to hurt us, then by the time he surprised us we were in easy range of spears, arrows, poison darts, or any throwing weapon I cared to name. But the creature had asked us to stop, and when we had refused it had only demonstrated an intention to grapple our boat. Perhaps others would have arrived soon after, to augment the effort.

  Or perhaps I was being charitable where no such assumption was merited. Perhaps, if I had not fired that barb, one of us would have lost an eye or a hand to that grapple. Who was I to decide what was a weapon, and what was a tool?

  ‘Ahead,’ Glass called, snapping me from my thoughts. ‘The lagoon. We’ve reached it.’

  The channel widened, disclosing an area of relatively open water about two hundred metres across. Walls of green surrounded the lagoon, at least as tall as any part of the channel, and beyond these walls rose ever higher terraces of dense green, climbing in ziggurat-like steps until they were at least fifty or sixty metres above the level of the sea. Some immense architecture of living matter must have supported these prominences, scaffolding them like the interlocking limbs of a forest canopy, but all complexities were hidden beneath the green mantle.

  The air was still, humid and heavy. The only way in or out of the lagoon was the channel that had brought us and now that we had passed it that aperture looked narrower, less navigable. The weather system that we had glimpsed over the node from a distance was now a dark, squatting mass directly above us. The clouds were moving
in a restless, slithering, cross-hatched formation, like a nest of eels. No rain yet fell on us, but my skin prickled as if there was an ocean of water suspended over us by the thinnest of threads. Thunder rumbled some way off. A tick-like creature nipped my neck and I swatted it away.

  The boat had reached the middle of the lagoon. I arrested its drift with the oar, which I then set down in the bottom.

  ‘So,’ I said, addressing Glass. ‘We’ve arrived. This is the lagoon, or a lagoon. Do you have a script for the next part?’

  ‘We commune,’ Glass said. ‘The node has permitted us passage, and the presence of this lagoon indicates a tacit invitation to proceed. We shall swim: you with the intention of contacting your brother, me to be restored to my earlier template.’

  ‘Nothing big, then.’

  ‘The Jugglers rarely do anything in small ways.’ Glass began to disrobe. ‘Take off your clothes, Clavain. They’d only be consumed by the water, so if you want them afterwards you’d better leave them on the boat.’

  ‘Naked humans,’ Pinky said, with a faint disgusted shudder. ‘You’ve no idea how much you look like pigs, under all those layers. It’s unsettling.’

  ‘Be glad you’re not expected to swim,’ I said, beginning to strip off.

  ‘I would if my life depended on it. Which it would have to, because any other time swimming’s almost certainly going to get me killed. You sure you don’t want to slow down a bit, you know, take in the scenery?’

  I nodded. ‘Every sane part of me, Scorp. But Glass is right. We’re here now. No amount of delay is going to make any difference, and since I very, very badly want to be on the other side of this . . .’

  ‘Then I’ll just sit here and think happy thoughts.’

  ‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘You’re still my advocate, remember? You don’t have to swim. But if the node’s aware of us, it’s aware of you. Start telling it that I’m not here to do any harm, and that it would be very good to meet my brother. Remind him who you are – and that you’re here to vouch for me.’

  ‘At least there’s nothing awkward about any of that.’

  ‘Do what you can. But above all else, no matter what happens here, you protect yourself. And if Glass and I don’t return . . .you turn that boat around and return to First Camp.’

  ‘You know that ain’t happening. But nice sentiment.’

  ‘You’ll give us six hours from the point where you lose contact with us,’ Glass said firmly. ‘No longer. Your bravado doesn’t concern me. But I’d like knowledge of our failure to make it back to Probably Rose.’

  ‘How will that help?’ I asked.

  ‘They’ll know what not to do. They’ll have to try, nonetheless. If we don’t succeed, they must – even though the odds decrease with each degree of separation from your brother. This is all we have, Clavain: we either reach the knowledge held by Nevil, or we fail, eternally.’

  I finished undressing. Although the air was sticky, and a storm felt as if it were building pressure, straining to burst through some incredibly thin membrane, I still shivered. I felt weak and cadaverous. Glass regarded me with clinical disinterest, and I nodded back at her, ready and not ready, full of wonder and terror and the deep apprehension that preceded any long-delayed family reunion.

  ‘Into the water?’

  ‘Into the water.’ Glass slid off the boat, making a splashless entry into the lagoon. She submerged her whole body then came back up with just her head and shoulders above the green surface. But now she was lathered in a fine marbling of green and instead of wiping it from her eyes she stared back with an unblinking ferocity of spirit. ‘My advice is not to resist the organisms. Let them into you willingly, no matter how uncomfortable the process. Whatever will happen will happen anyway, but resisting the contamination only delays the inevitable.’

  I eased myself onto the edge of the boat, Pinky counter-balancing it, then slipped into the lagoon, a couple of metres from Glass. I dipped my head under, closing my eyes by reflex, then pushed my face back into the air. My skin itched and I had a strong sense of a gummy mass wanting to ooze its way into my nostrils.

  Glass paddled backwards from the boat, still keeping her head elevated from the water, with only her black-nailed fingers and toes breaking the surface.

  ‘Follow me. We should put some distance between us and the boat. The node must recognise that our entry is deliberate, and that we are not seeking to return to the boat’s sanctuary.’

  ‘When will we know if something’s happening?’

  ‘I doubt there will be much ambiguity. Your only clear memory of your last visit here was a sense of drowning. That should indicate the level of experience typical of Juggler communion.’

  I still had my face to the boat as I kicked alongside Glass. Pinky was standing up, astride the boat’s middle now that he no longer had to balance my weight. He puffed his chest, worked his shoulders, and cupped two hands around his snout.

  ‘Hey, Nevil. Wondering if you can hear me. It’s Scorp. You remember me, I guess. Hard not to, given how it went down the last time you and I were together. Part of me never thought I’d ever come back to this place. Part of me never wanted to. But here I am. Ain’t life a surprise, sometimes?’ He paused, shuddered, and seemed on the point of sitting down, overcome by the ridiculousness of the role I had placed on him. I would not have blamed him in the slightest. I had spoken truthfully when I said I wanted him to accompany me to the Pattern Jugglers, but only a small part of that had anything to do with his advocacy. I had come to regard him as a protector, a talisman whose mere presence was enough to keep harm at bay. He had been at my brother’s side until the end, and it was not through any failings of Pinky that Nevil had perished.

  Yet after that deliberation he regathered his purpose. ‘You know I was never good at this stuff. After you were gone, they made me run this place. I guess I didn’t do the worst job, all things told. Quite a lot of us made it, even if it wasn’t exactly happy ever after once we got off Ararat. But the speech-making part of it? Never my finest hour.’ He tapped his forehead. ‘They say there are things in here that aren’t so well developed: little circuits that help with reflection, strategic planning, delayed gratification, that kind of thing. And I suppose if those aren’t working too well, then speaking out loud, being all persuasive and rhetorical, ain’t likely to be my strongest suit, either. But this little piggy is the last straw in the pack, so I guess we have to work with what we’re given, and that’s me. And I remember you, my friend. There hasn’t been a day when I haven’t brought you to mind. We were either together too long, or not nearly enough, ain’t worked that one out just yet, and maybe I never will. But here’s what I have to tell you.’ Pinky angled his head in my direction, giving me – what? Forewarning? That my name and identity was about to be invoked, and once uttered, there could be no undoing it? ‘I’ve brought someone to meet you. Maybe you already know who he is. I like to think you do, because then it takes the burden off me to do the introducing . . . but seeing as I was asked, and I don’t like to let my friends down . . . this is your brother. His name is Warren and I know there’s some . . . not so great stuff between you. Shit that went down, hundreds of years ago. Shit you never told me about, probably because the wounds were still raw, even after all that time. Now, it ain’t my job to say that none of that mattered, now or then. But I do have a duty to state my feelings. Warren doesn’t measure up to you, Nevil. He hasn’t seen or done half the things and I doubt he’s known half the heartache you went through. But in the time I’ve known him – which I admit is just a scratch against a life. Against a human life, leastwise – I’ve seen enough to make me say a good word for him. And if a word of this reaches you, and if any of it has any chance of you moving to accept him, even to speak to him in the way he wants, and open up about the things you still know – the things you might not even know matter to us – then I beg you to remember our friendship, and consider that any friend of mine must be a friend of yours, no matter how str
ange the course that brought us together.’

  Pinky fell silent and buckled back down onto his haunches, worn out and perhaps aware that he had offered all that could reasonably be presented in my defence, and any further words were not likely to make any difference. By the time he finished, Glass and I had paddled most of the way across the lagoon, and with the green biomass forcing its way into me with each breath, stifling my breathing, it was all I could do to nod a grateful thanks for his intercession. It might not help, but it was all I could have hoped for, and I was very glad indeed that he had accompanied us.

  ‘Are you frightened, Glass?’

  ‘Would it help if I am?’

  ‘I’m frightened. But I think my fear’s of a different kind than yours. This is either going to kill me or not. If it doesn’t kill me, then I think I may come away with something of Nevil, something that can help us. If I die, then nothing ever matters again. But you’re expecting to lose part of yourself: every new experience since you were last on Ararat. The Jugglers might preserve something of your memories since then, but there’s no guarantee of that.’

  ‘It’s an acceptable sacrifice. And there’s no guarantee that they will reset me to my earlier condition. There are informational structures in my brain that they may find enticing, sufficient to grant a favour. But a request does not have to be honoured.’

  ‘Then you’re between two hard places: dying in pieces, here, or dying for good, a little while from now. I don’t envy you, Glass. But if you won’t admit that this is a little terrifying, I’ll do it for you. I don’t want to lose the part of you that’s known me. You’ve been a witness, and a catalyst, to my changes. Whatever’s become of me, whatever man I’ve now become, you were the instrument that made it happen. I won’t say I’m grateful . . . although perhaps I should be. The truth is always better than the lie.’