The balcony was surrounded by a low fretted wall. Thorn walked to the edge and looked over, peering down towards street level. Khouri followed him, Triumvir Volyova remaining out of sight.
‘It’s time,’ Thorn said. ‘I need to speak to the people in person. That way they’ll know the statement wasn’t faked up.’
He knew that all he needed to do was shout and someone would hear him, even if it were only one person in the crowd. Before very long everyone would be looking upwards, and they would know, even before he spoke, who he was.
‘Make it good,’ Volyova said, barely raising her voice above a whisper. ‘Make it very good, Thorn. A lot will depend on this little performance.’
He looked back at her. ‘Then you’ll reconsider?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘Irina . . .’ Khouri said. ‘Please think about this. At least give us a chance here, before you use the weapons.’
‘You’ll have a chance,’ Volyova said. ‘Before I use the weapons, I’ll move them across the system. That way, even if there is a response from the Inhibitors, Infinity won’t be the obvious target.’
‘That will take some time, won’t it?’ Khouri asked.
‘You have a month, no more than that. Of course, I’m not expecting you to have the entire planet evacuated by then. But if you’ve kept to the agreed schedule - and perhaps improved on it a little - I may consider delaying the use of the weapons a while longer. That’s reasonable, isn’t it? I can be flexible, you see.’
‘You’re asking too much of us,’ Khouri said. ‘No matter how efficient our operation on the surface is, we can’t move more than two thousand people at a time between low orbit and the starship. That’s an unavoidable bottleneck, Ilia.’ She seemed unaware that she had spoken the Triumvir’s real name.
‘Bottlenecks can always be worked around, if it matters enough,’ she said. ‘And I’ve given you every incentive, haven’t I?’
‘It’s Thorn, isn’t it?’ Khouri said.
Thorn glanced back at her. ‘What about me?’
‘She doesn’t like the way you’ve come between us,’ Khouri told him.
The Triumvir made the same derisive snort he had heard before.
‘No. It’s true,’ Khouri said. ‘Isn’t it, Ilia? You and I had a perfect working relationship until I brought Thorn into the arrangement. You’ll never forgive either me or him for destroying that beautiful little partnership.’
‘Don’t be absurd,’ Volyova said.
‘I’m not being absurd, I’m just...’
But the Triumvir whipped past her.
‘Where are you going?’ Khouri asked.
She stopped long enough to answer her. ‘Where do you think, Ana? Back to my ship. I have work to do.’
‘Your ship, suddenly? I thought it was our ship.’
But Volyova had said all she was going to say. Thorn heard her footsteps recede back into the building.
‘Is that true?’ he asked Khouri. ‘Do you really think she’s resentful of me?’
But she said nothing either. Thorn, after a long moment, turned back to the city. He leaned out into the night, formulating the crucial speech he was about to deliver. Volyova was right: a lot depended on it.
Khouri’s hand closed around his own.
The air reeked of fear-gas. Thorn felt it worming into his brain, brewing anxiety.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Skade stalked around her ship. Nothing felt right aboard Nightshade now. The pressure on her spine had eased and her eyeballs had returned to more or less the right shape, but those were the only real compensations. Every living thing inside the ship was now within the field’s detectable sphere of influence, embedded in a bubble of artificially modified quantum vacuum. Nine-tenths of the inertial mass of every particle in the field no longer existed.
The ship was hurling itself towards Resurgam at ten gees.
Even though Skade had her armour, and was therefore insulated from the more physiologically upsetting effects of the field, she still moved around as little as possible. Walking was not in itself difficult since the acceleration that the armour felt was only a gee, a tenth of the actual value. The armour no longer laboured under the extra load, and Skade had lost the feeling that a fall would automatically dash her brains out. But everything else was worse. When she willed the armour to move a limb, it accommodated her wishes too quickly. When she moved what should have been a heavy piece of equipment, it shifted too easily. It was as if the apparently substantial furniture of the ship had been replaced by a series of superficially convincing paper-thin façades. Even changing the direction of her gaze took care. Her eyeballs, no longer distorted by gravity, were now too responsive and tended to overshoot and then overcompensate for the overshooting. She knew this was because the muscles that steered them, which were anchored to her skull, had evolved to move a sphere of tissue with a certain inertial mass; now they were confused. But knowing all this did not make dealing with it any easier. She had turned off her Area Postrema permanently, since her inner ear was profoundly disturbed by the modified inertial field.
Skade reached Felka’s quarters. She entered and found Felka where she had left her last time, sitting cross-legged on a part of the floor that she had instructed to become soft. Her clothes had a stale, crumpled look. Her flesh was pasty and her hair was a nestlike tangle of greasy knots. Here and there Skade saw patches of raw pink scalp, where Felka had tugged out locks of her own hair. She sat perfectly still, one hand on either knee. Her chin was raised slightly and her eyes were closed. There was a faint glistening trail of mucus leading from one nostril to the top of her lip.
Skade audited the neural connections between Felka and the rest of the ship. To her surprise, she detected no significant traffic. Skade had assumed that Felka must have been roaming through a cybernetic environment, as had been the case on her last two visits. Skade had explored them for herself and found vast puzzlelike edifices of Felka’s own making. They were clearly surrogates for the Wall. But this was not the case on this occasion. After abandoning the real, Felka had taken the next logical step, back to the place where it had all begun.
She had gone back into her skull.
Skade lowered herself to Felka’s level, then reached out and touched her brow. She expected Felka to flinch against the cold metal contact, but she might as well have been touching a wax dummy.
Felka . . . can you hear me? I know you’re in there somewhere. This is Skade. There is something you need to know.
She waited for a response; none came. Felka. It concerns Clavain. I’ve done what I can to make him turn away, but he hasn’t responded to any of my attempts at persuasion. My last effort was the one I thought most likely to persuade him. Shall I tell you what it was?
Felka breathed in and out, slowly and regularly.
I used you. I promised Clavain that if he turned back, I’d give you back to him. Alive, of course. I thought that was fair. But he wasn’t interested. He made no response to my overture. Do you see, Felka? You can’t mean as much to him as his beloved mission.
She stood up and then strolled around the seated meditative figure. I hoped you would, you know. It would have been the best solution for both of us. But it was Clavain’s call, and he showed where his priorities lay. They weren’t with you, Felka. After all those years, all those centuries, you didn’t mean as much to him as forty mindless machines. I’ll admit, I was surprised.
Still Felka said nothing. Skade felt an urge to dive into her skull and find the warm and comforting place into which she had retreated. Had Felka been a normal Conjoiner, it would have been within Skade’s capabilities to invade her most private mental spaces. But Felka’s mind was put together differently. Skade could skim its surface, occasionally glimpse its depths, but no more than that.
Skade sighed. She had not really wanted to torment Felka, but she had hoped to prise her out of her withdrawal by turning her against Clavain.
It had not worked.
>
Skade stood behind Felka. She closed her eyes and issued a stream of commands to the spinal medical device she had attached to Felka. The effect was immediate and gratifying. Felka collapsed, sagging in on herself. Her mouth lolled open, oozing saliva.
Delicately, Skade picked her up and carried her out of the room.
The silver sun burned overhead, a blank coin shining through a caul of grey sea fog. Skade settled into a flesh-and-blood body, as she had before. She was standing on a flat-topped rock; the air was cold to the bone and prickled with ozone and the briny stench of rotting seaweed. In the distance, a billion pebbles sighed orgasmically under the assault of another sea wave.
It was the same place again. She wondered if the Wolf was becoming just the tiniest bit predictable.
Skade peered into the fog around her. There, no more than a dozen paces from her, was another human figure. But it was neither Galiana nor the Wolf this time. It was a small child, crouched on a rock about the same size as the one Skade stood on. Cautiously, Skade hopped and skipped her way from rock to rock, dancing across the pools and the razor-edged ridges that linked them. Being fully human again was both disturbing and exhilarating. She felt more fragile than she had ever done before Clavain had hurt her, conscious that beneath her skin was only soft muscle and brittle bone. It was good to be invincible. But at the same time it was good to feel the universe chemically invading her through every pore of her skin, to feel the wind stroking every hair on the back of her hand, to feel every ridge and crack of the seaworn rock beneath her feet.
She reached the child. It was Felka - no surprise there - but as she must have been on Mars, when Clavain rescued her.
Felka sat cross-legged, much as she had been in the cabin. She wore a damp, filthy, seaweed-stained torn dress that left her legs and arms bare. Her hair, like Skade’s, was long and dark, falling in lank strands across her face. The sea fog lent the scene a bleached, monochrome aspect.
Felka glanced up at her, made eye contact for a second and then returned to the activity she had been engaged in before. Around her, forming a ragged ring, were many tiny parts of hard-shelled sea-creatures: legs and pincers, claws and tail pieces, whiplike antennae, broken scabs of carapacial shell, aligned and orientated with maniacal precision. The conjunctions of the many pale parts resembled a kind of anatomical algebra. Felka stared at the arrangement silently, occasionally pivoting around on her haunches to examine a different part of it. Only now and then would she pick up one of the pieces - a hinged, barbed limb, perhaps - and reposition it elsewhere. Her expression was blank, not at all like a child at play. It was more as if she was engaged in some task that demanded her solemn and total attention, an activity too intense to be pleasurable.
Felka . . .
She looked up again, questioningly, only to return to her game.
The distant waves crashed again. Beyond Felka the grey wall of mist lost some of its opacity for a moment. Skade could still not make out the sea, but she could see much further than had been possible before. The pattern of rockpools stretched into the distance, a mind-wrenching tessellation. But there was something else out there, at the limit of vision. It was only slightly darker than the grey itself, and it shifted in and out of existence, but she was certain that there was something there. It was a grey spire, a vast towerlike thing ramming into the greyness of the sky. It appeared to lie a great distance away, perhaps beyond the sea itself, or thrusting out of the sea some distance from land.
Felka noticed it too. She looked at the object, her expression unchanging, and only when she had seen enough of it did she return to her animal parts. Skade was just wondering what it could be when the fog closed in again and she became aware of a third presence.
The Wolf had arrived. It - or she - stood only a few paces beyond Felka. The form remained indistinct, but whenever the fog abated or the form became more solid, Skade thought she saw a woman rather than an animal.
The roar of the waves, which had always been there, shifted into language again. ‘You brought Felka, Skade. I’m pleased.’
‘This representation of her,’ Skade asked, remembering to speak aloud as the Wolf had demanded of her before. She nodded towards the girl. ‘Is that how she sees herself now - as a child again - or how you wish me to see her?’
‘A little of both, perhaps,’ said the Wolf.
‘I asked for your help,’ Skade said. ‘You said that you would be more co-operative if I brought Felka with me. Well, I have. And Clavain is still behind me. He hasn’t shown any sign of giving up.’
‘What have you tried?’
‘Using her as a bargaining chip. But Clavain didn’t bite.’
‘Did you imagine he ever would?’
‘I thought he cared about Felka enough to have second thoughts.’
‘You misunderstand Clavain,’ the Wolf said. ‘He won’t have given up on her.’
‘Only Galiana would know that, wouldn’t she?’
The Wolf did not answer Skade directly. ‘What was your response, when Clavain failed to retreat?’
‘I did what I said I would. Launched a shuttle, which he will now have great difficulty in intercepting.’
‘But an interception is still possible?’
Skade nodded. ‘That was the idea. He won’t be able to reach it with one of his own shuttles, but his main ship will still be able to achieve a rendezvous.’
There was amusement in the Wolf’s voice. ‘Are you certain that one of his shuttles can’t reach yours?’
‘It isn’t energetically feasible. He would have had to launch long before I made my move, and guess the direction I was going to send my shuttle in.’
‘Or cover every possibility,’ the Wolf said.
‘He couldn’t do that,’ Skade said, with a great deal less certainty than she thought she should feel. ‘He’d need to launch a flotilla of shuttles, wasting all that fuel on the off-chance that one ...’ She trailed off.
‘If Clavain deemed the effort worth it, he would do exactly that, even if it cost him precious fuel. What did he expect to find in the shuttle, incidentally?’
‘I told him I’d return Felka.’
The Wolf shifted. Now its form lingered near Felka, though it was no more distinct that it had been an instant earlier. ‘She’s still here.’
‘I put a weapon in the shuttle. A crustbuster warhead, set for a teratonne detonation.’
She saw the Wolf nod appreciatively. ‘You hoped he would have to steer his ship to the rendezvous point. Doubtless you arranged some form of proximity fuse. Very clever, Skade. I’m actually quite impressed by your ruthlessness.’
‘But you don’t think he’ll fall for it.’
‘You’ll know soon enough, won’t you?’
Skade nodded, certain now that she had failed. Distantly, the sea mist parted again, and she was afforded another glimpse of the pale tower. In all likelihood it was actually very dark when seen up close. It rose high and sheer, like a sea-stack. But it looked less like a natural formation than a giant taper-sided building.
‘What is that?’ Skade asked.
‘What is what?’
‘That . . .’ But when Skade looked back towards the tower, it was no longer visible. Either the mist had closed in to conceal it, or it had ceased to exist.
‘There’s nothing there,’ the Wolf said.
Skade chose her words carefully. ‘Wolf, listen to me. If Clavain survives this, I am prepared to do what we discussed before.’
‘The unthinkable, Skade? A state-four transition?’
Even Felka halted her game, looking up at the two adults. The moment was pregnant, stretching eternally.
‘I understand the dangers. But we need to do it to finally slip ahead of him. We need to make a jump through the zero-mass boundary into state four. Into the tachyonic-mass phase.’
Again that horrible lupine glint of a smile. ‘Very few organisms have ever travelled faster than light, Skade.’
‘I’m prepared to
become one of them. What do I need to do?’
‘You know full well. The machinery you have made is almost capable of it, but it will require a few modifications. Nothing that your manufactories can’t handle. But to make the changes you will need to take advice from Exordium.’
Skade nodded. ‘That’s why I’m here. That’s why I brought Felka.’ ‘Then let us begin.’
Felka went back to her game, ignoring the two of them. Skade issued the coded sequence of neural commands that would make the Exordium machinery initiate coherence coupling.
‘It’s starting, Wolf.’
‘I know. I can feel it, too.’
Felka looked up from her game.
Skade sensed herself become plural. From out of the sea fog, from a direction she could neither describe nor point to, came a feeling of something receding into vast, chill distance, like a white corridor reaching to the bleak edge of eternity. The hairs on the back of Skade’s neck prickled. She knew that there was something profoundly wrong about what she was doing. The premonitionary sense of evil was quite tangible. But she had to stand her ground and do what had to be done.
Like the Wolf said, fears had to be faced.
Skade listened intently. She thought she heard voices whispering down the corridor.
‘Beast?’
‘Yes, Little Miss?’
‘Have you been completely honest with me?’
‘Why would one have been anything other than honest, Little Miss?’
‘That’s exactly what I’m wondering, Beast.’
Antoinette was alone on the lower flight deck of Storm Bird. Her freighter was locked in a loom of heavy repair scaffolding in one of Zodiacal Light’s shuttle bays, braced to withstand even the increased acceleration rate of the lighthugger. The freighter had been here ever since they had taken the lighthugger, the damage it had sustained painstakingly being put right under Xavier’s expert direction. Xavier had relied on hyperpigs and shipboard servitors to help him do the work, and at first the repairs had gone more slowly than they would have with a fully trained monkey workforce. But although they had some dexterity problems, the pigs were ultimately cleverer than hyperprimates, and once the initial difficulties had been overcome and the servitors programmed properly, the work had gone very well. Xavier hadn’t just repaired the hull; he had completely re-armoured it. The engines, from docking thrusters right up to the main tokamak fusion powerplant, had been overhauled and tweaked for improved performance. The deterrents, the many weapons buried in camouflaged hideaways around the ship, had been upgraded and linked into an integrated weapons command net. There was no point pussyfooting now, Xavier had said. They had no reason to pretend that Storm Bird was just a freighter any more. Where they were headed, there would be no nosey authorities to hide anything from.
The Revelation Space Collection Page 202
