Inhibitor Phase

by Alastair Reynolds

  ‘You do not need me to tell you what you are.’

  ‘But I need you to hold these threads together. You’re the only one who saw what I was, and what I’ve become. You’re half my story. If you crumble away, I don’t know what will happen to the rest of me.’

  ‘You were a survivor. You’ll stay a survivor.’

  ‘Here’s my promise to you, Glass. If either of us comes out of this, and you’ve been reset, I’ll help you recover the things you’ve lost. We’ll be each other’s crutches, two broken souls that can’t exist without each other. I’ll help you remember, and in remembering, you’ll help me find myself.’

  Glass considered my words, then said: ‘Can I tell you something, Clavain? You talk too much.’

  The sky over us crackled.

  Around the lagoon, the green walls and terraces shimmered with faces, a constant dance of them. Now the faces were larger than before: house-sized visages leering at us, forming and collapsing back into the green substrate almost quicker than the eye could follow. It was more than just faces, too. Less familiar forms were appearing in the endless, overlapping confusion of solid images. Now alien bodies and body parts interposed themselves between the faces, interlocking like clever wallpaper designs: claws, tentacles, compound eyes and scissoring wings among them. The waves of change hastened. The forms were blurring into a continuum, an infinite, disarticulated carnival of all the creatures that had ever touched this sea, and perhaps all the monsters and phantasms they ferried with them in their deepest nightmares and phobias.

  The waves of change, now a furious, flickering tumult, had begun to agitate the water of the lagoon. Disturbances sloshed from side to side, lifting us on one swell, crashing us down on the next. The rising and sinking waves brought the boat in and out of view. For a moment I thought that Pinky had been knocked overboard, but on the next glimpse I was relieved to see him pressed to the cross-planks, presenting as low a centre of gravity as possible. I feared for him, but as long as the boat stayed upright I thought he had a chance.

  Glass was still close to me, but the force of the water’s movement was starting to push us apart. Even as I gave all of myself to the act of swimming, holding my head above the surging green swell, I tried to reach out to her. My fingers closed on something, but not firmly enough. I paddled, snorted green muck from my nose, and struck out again. But Glass was out of reach, and now the airborne haze was blurring my vision. All was turning green.

  ‘Glass!’ I called out, with one good breath. ‘Glass!’

  But Glass was gone.

  I fought it for a little while, even as I knew that the wisest course was to submit; to allow the green into my lungs, to drown so that I might be reborn. But half a billion years of land-based evolution had wired my brain with a powerful aversion to the notion of drowning. It was not the same as getting into one of the acceleration tanks on Scythe, surrounded by all the reassurances of modern civilisation. I was alone now, devoid of tools or protection, naked to the core, just a small, frightened mammal about to drown, and all my higher faculties turned and fled in the face of that most primal of fears.

  So I fought, and fought, but always with ebbing strength, until at last I had nothing more to give, and the green tide flooded into me with eager enthusiasm, citadel gates at last flung wide to the besieging army. The organisms stormed my throat, my windpipe, my lungs. They fissured through me like a green lava flow, finding every crevice and channel to every other part of me. They followed nerves and blood vessels, infiltrating my brain, establishing lines of communication out of my body and into the wider node, and from there to every other node on Ararat. There was a point of maximum terror, then submission, then a dawning acceptance. Then the green bliss of dissolution. Even as my sense of self evaporated, I lost sight of why it had ever mattered in the first place. The sea was old and warm and welcoming. I was just another set of patterns to be folded into the whole.

  I remembered Glass and Pinky, and that I had come here for a reason. The urgency of my mission had not deserted me, but now it was just one imperative fighting for attention against a welter of new impulses and sensations. Because I knew that it mattered, I held onto it with what felt like a superhuman effort of will. My brother. I had to sift through the impressions battering my mind and identify his distinct presence. Then reach out to it, with all the humility and submission I could muster.

  Memories stroked my consciousness, bursting against its limits. They were not mine. They were not, for the most part, anything that I would have called human. I saw alien skies, alien suns, birthing nebulae, the scattered ashes of worlds and stars, vistas of great magnificence and equally great desolation. Time dizzied me. I had thought I understood time, but now my ignorance left me reeling. Time was vaster and colder and lonelier than anything I had ever imagined. There had already been so much of it: heavy oceanic layers of time, plunging into deep, still blackness, and my consciousness was just a feeble thing drifting in the highest sunlit layer. A galaxy’s worth of history had already passed into this ocean and been memorialised. All our human adventuring was no more than a scuff on the final page; unwarranted, barely noticed.

  I retained some sense of my physical embodiment. I had been blurred at the edges, but not destroyed. Something resembling a man was still immersed in the lagoon, although now I was no longer swimming, no longer breathing air. I was a man-shaped density gradient in the green slurry. A concentration of living matter that could be dispersed or reconsolidated with equal disregard.

  I formed a thought: Help Glass. And another: Don’t hurt Scorp.

  The lagoon’s movement had become a bottled storm. I was in it somewhere, tethered to the node like a billion-stringed puppet. I rose and fell on the surges. By some means I remained aware of my surroundings, even as I no longer had a clear sense of my own point of view. Encircling the lagoon, the play of forms had become a frenzy of transformation. Lights lit the flickering, ever-shifting mass. Sprites cross-knit the air. Purple clouds bellied down. Lightning arced between the node and the sky, over and over, some monstrous circuitry completing itself.

  A form began to bud from the lagoon’s side, maintaining integrity against the changing background. It was a rounded protrusion, a green stump gradually extending itself, as if it meant to form an arcing connection from one side of the lagoon to the other.

  The stump ceased its projection. It began to reshape itself, the green slurry flowing and reorganising in deliberate waves. The stump was becoming five-budded. The buds were becoming distinct in form and size. Four were fingers. One was a thumb.

  The green hand reached down from the sky and plucked me from the lagoon. It pinched me between its fingers and I saw myself as it did: a straggly, fibrous starfish, dripping tendrils.

  The hand lifted me higher. Now the point where it emerged from the lagoon’s wall was gaining definition and stability, becoming a lumpy, towering torso. Another arm began to bud from the torso. Then a boulder-like head. Two trunk-like columns differentiated themselves and lifted the torso and head ever higher.

  The hand elevated me until I was level with the head. It was crudely carved, lopsided. There had been a face there once, but now it was time-eroded, ruined, blasted by eternity. All that remained were suggestive creases and folds. Two eye-holes, the crease of a mouth, the line of a beard.

  And still I knew it.

  I formed his name.

  Nevil.

  Nevil.

  Nevil.

  And the face spoke into me: How dare you call me that. How dare you use my name.

  I felt the hand’s embrace around my soggy, sagging body. The hand and I were made of the same matter, intertangling and inter-penetrating.

  You know mine. I’m Warren, your brother.

  The fingers squeezed tighter. You shouldn’t have come back. Didn’t you remember what I promised? Didn’t I make it clear what I’d do to you if you returned?

  The face was gaining depth and symmetry, becoming a mirror to my own.
Ageless eyes of blank green formed beneath the overhang of massive brows.

  I need your help, Nevil. We all need your help.

  The face formed a sneer. Isn’t it enough that I already died for you once?

  Your friends are here. They know they can’t ask more of you. But there’s something you know, a piece of information you’ve carried with you, that will help us. Help us all, Nevil. Help humanity, all that’s left of it.

  The lips defined a mirthless smile. And for this . . . they send you?

  If there were a part of me still breathing, a ribcage, lungs and heart within that green concentration, I forced myself to take two slow measured breaths.

  No. I sent myself.

  Then you forget our last meeting. The one where I nearly killed you and left you with that as a warning never to trouble these seas again. The head cocked, quizzically. I thought I was clear. What part of that wasn’t clear?

  You left a part of you within me, last time. I came with a hyperpig called Pinky . . . only I called him Scorp once, and the only way I could have known that name is because you left it with me, the last time I was here. Scorp spoke for me. If anything that he said reached you, then you’ll know that I am not here to cause you hurt, or to seek forgiveness. He knows me better than I know myself. And he knew you.

  The hand tightened.

  You’ve tricked my old friend.

  No. I haven’t tricked him. I tricked myself. I blocked my memories and made a new life for myself to escape the truth of what I am, and what I did to you. I deny none of that, and I’m ready to pay whatever price you deem necessary for returning here. But before you punish me, we must have the information. You owe that: to Scorp, to Ana Khouri, to all the dead of Ararat. To the memories of Felka and Galiana.

  It was a risk to invoke those who had been dear to him, and I was willing to take it. With that invocation I knew that I would either breach his defences or turn him fully against me. There could be no middle ground.

  The hand squeezed tighter, and tighter still. I felt myself oozing out between his fingers, a loosening slurry that had once been a man called Warren Clavain.

  And still the hand kept squeezing.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Our suits guided our return to the Muskie shelter, backtracking via inertial compasses. The storm was abating as we moved into the cover of the camouflaging awning.

  ‘If they take the bait,’ I said, when we were unpacking the equipment again, and enjoying sips through our nutrient straws, ‘it will be sooner rather than later.’

  ‘Is there a chance they’ll just let them die?’ Charity asked. ‘Isn’t that the most likely outcome, given what we know of their group-mind psychology? There’ve been numerous cases of individuals or groups being sacrificed to offset a risk to the main nests.’

  ‘It’s true.’ I nodded. ‘But these are raw recruits, who ran the gauntlet to get to Mars. The other Conjoiners won’t want to do anything that might deter similar ventures. The mother nests need fresh bodies to replace those we kill. Even if it is only a question of not handing us a propaganda coup, they’ll be strongly disinclined to abandon these fresh young puppies.’

  ‘I don’t understand how they think,’ Charity said. ‘After all my time in Psychosurgical Ops, I understand what goes on inside their heads, probably better than anyone. But I still don’t have a sense of how it would feel to be a Conjoiner.’

  ‘Be glad,’ Hope said.

  ‘It feels marvellous,’ I said, removing the cartridge from my semi-automatic and slipping in a replacement. ‘It must feel marvellous, or they’d try to undo it. That, or it’s a trick of memory. It might feel terrible in absolute terms, but if the subject’s tricked into believing that it’s still better than what they had before, they’ll accept the transformation unquestioningly. Accept it and not want it taken away from them.’

  ‘Your brother’s given this a lot of thought,’ Hope said.

  I caught Charity’s frown. Whose brother, she must be thinking. She had no brother. Was the statement meant for me? But none of us were supposed to know about our respective backgrounds. Not even so much as our real names, let alone familial relationships.

  Something about the casual way Hope had made the observation had undoubtedly left Charity discomfited, feeling on the outside of something.

  I empathised. It was a familiar, skin-prickling sensation.

  ‘I doubt anyone’s given it more thought,’ I said, clicking the magazine back into the handle of the semi-automatic. ‘My brother might even get to see what the process feels like for himself.’

  ‘Your brother?’ Charity asked.

  ‘The prisoner – our extraction objective. The man we’ve come to Mars to steal away from the spiders.’

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘You weren’t meant to know,’ I answered, not without some kindness. ‘Anyway, it’s not tactically relevant. All that matters is that he’s a high-value asset that we’d like back for ourselves, and now we’re a step closer to getting him home.’

  ‘Are you . . . Sky Marshall Clavain, sir?’

  I wondered if she detected some distant, merciless amusement in my answer.

  ‘Would you think it likely, Charity?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She swallowed hard. ‘I thought that the Sky Marshall . . . one of the Marshalls, I mean . . . was on a diplomatic mission to Europa.’

  I answered her patiently. ‘Sky Marshall Nevil Clavain has been on Mars for three and a half months, Charity. That whole story about Europa was a smokescreen to explain his absence. It’s embarrassing to us that he’s been taken – even more embarrassing that we haven’t yet got him back. But we’re close now – thanks to you.’

  ‘Then you must be . . . Sky Marshall Warren Clavain, sir.’

  ‘I must.’

  ‘I am . . . honoured to be part of this operation, sir. I always took it seriously, but now that I know the prisoner’s identity, and that you’re with us . . .’

  ‘Let me turn this around, Charity,’ I said, interrupting her gently. She would still keep thinking of me as Faith, until I gave her permission to use my actual name and rank. ‘Things have gone well so far. Almost exactly according to plan. Apart from one detail.’

  A salty wind snapped against my cheeks. I was sitting on my haunches, knees drawn up, arms wrapped around grazed shins, pale grass tickling my calves, shivering.

  Another boy sat next to me. Beyond us was a sloping shoreline of grass, hemming a thin strand of colourless mud, and beyond it a seething grey sea, rows of whitecaps stretching unbroken to a horizon the colour of digital static.

  ‘Did you really think this was a good idea?’ the other boy said, rolling a smooth grey pebble between his fingers. ‘I mean, after everything?’

  ‘I had no choice. If our roles had been reversed, you’d have come back to Ararat just as I did.’ The wind flicked my hair against my eyes. I brushed it away, squinting irritatedly. ‘This isn’t about what I did to you, or what you said you’d do to me.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘I know that I wronged you. Set you up to die for the sake of a political stunt . . . because I desired the continuation of the war, rather than the peace you knew was possible. That was wrong, I know. But it wasn’t because I loved war itself. It was because I believed in our cause, and I thought war was the only way for it to prevail.’

  ‘So you wronged me, but it was all right because you believed in a higher cause.’

  I ground my teeth. ‘Not what I’m saying.’

  ‘Let’s be clear about the nature of your betrayal, shall we? You didn’t just set up my peace initiative to fail. You arranged for me to stumble into a lethal trap. You plotted my murder.’

  ‘You didn’t die.’

  ‘Which must have been a weight off your conscience.’

  ‘You gave as good as you got,’ I said, casting my eyes to the slate-coloured indeterminacy of the horizon. ‘When you turned your loyalties over to Galiana, and fled th
e solar system . . . what was the last message you sent back to the world? One of high-minded forgiveness, befitting one who has finally risen above the pettiness of war?’ I sniffed, shaking my head slowly. ‘No, you reserved all your energies to announce a brotherly vendetta. You said that you’d kill me if you ever got the chance, and that you’d never revoke that promise. That no deed on my part could ever atone for my one crime against you. That I shouldn’t even attempt to live a better life, because it was mathematically impossible to ever earn your forgiveness.’

  ‘And yet, you live.’

  ‘For now.’

  ‘Did it occur to you that I might not want to be found on Ararat?’

  After a silence I said: ‘I was here before. I tried and failed, but for some reason you left me alive.’

  ‘You remembered?’

  ‘I remembered the terror of drowning. I remembered that I didn’t want to return to this place, even if I didn’t quite know why.’

  ‘You should have listened to your fears. Perhaps, in a moment of weakness, I pitied you enough not to kill you there and then. But those fears should have made it very clear that I was serious about what would happen the next time.’

  ‘And yet, here we are.’

  I reached down, uprooting a clump of grass with a nub of muddy soil at the end of it. ‘I haven’t come back to test the seriousness of your threat. I’m not here to seek atonement or persuade you that I deserve another chance. I’m not even here as a brother. I’m here to speak to you as one soldier to another, about a war that makes the one that divided us seem ludicrous and tiny. I’m talking about extinction. Something which makes our lives look about as significant as this piece of dirt, compared to that ocean.’

  He reflected on an answer, then said testily: ‘It’s not an ocean. It’s the North Sea.’

  ‘You saw something,’ I persisted. ‘In your explorations, when you and Galiana took the Sandra Voi off into interstellar space, forging beyond any of the systems that had already been mapped and explored. Skimming close to a gas giant, your instruments picked up the signature of something that didn’t belong: a physical anomaly deep within the planet’s atmosphere. It was far too deep for your ship to reach, and your sturdiest probes only got close enough to glimpse its presence. You could get no nearer, so you did the only sensible thing: filed the anomaly away for future reference, a puzzle to be explored when Conjoiner science had advanced by a couple more centuries.’ I tossed aside the clump of grass. ‘But that advancement never came. History got in the way. The anomaly remained a footnote, too far away and too speculative to be worth the investment of a return expedition. Perhaps it was a mirage after all, a data ghost, or the result of some clever little trick of natural science, like a Brocken spectre. Interesting in its own right, but not likely to win a war.’ I paused. ‘But you were thinking about the wrong war.’