by Gary Gibson
‘It’s possible, isn’t it?’ she asked. ‘God knows, we need at least to try. But unless you can locate that data yourself, we’re going to have to try something drastic.’
‘Such as?’ asked the Librarian.
She held her breath for a moment. ‘Such as letting the Wanderer have direct access to your memory banks.’
‘Do you really think that would be wise,’ said the Librarian, ‘given the Wanderer’s apparent tendency towards the unpredictable?’
‘It’s a question of priorities,’ replied Megan. ‘If you don’t do this, the Swarm will reach human space, and we’ve got no way to repel it. Your programming will prevent you from allowing this to happen – and that’s why you found a way to warn me, by letting me know the Swarm was on its way.’
She paced back and forth before the Librarian, cupping one fist with her other hand. ‘How long has it been?’ she demanded. ‘More than a hundred and fifty thousand years, since you and the rest of the Magi ships came to the Milky Way? And you haven’t even come close to fulfilling your core programming. If the Wanderer is telling the truth about there being some way to destroy the Makers, then this could be your chance for a final, all-out victory against them.’
The darkened silhouette’s head moved slightly to one side. ‘And yet you chose to arrange your own expedition rather than approach us once we informed you of the Swarm’s approach. You were going to offer yourself as a bridge to the Wanderer, and allow it to access our memory banks. Why, when you could simply have come here and made use of this ship?’
‘How?’ she asked. ‘What was I supposed to do – just stroll in past the Demarchy’s security? Until the flood swept everything away, that would have just got me killed. Not to mention that my first memory, after dying somewhere on the other side of the galaxy, was of waking up in a torture chamber in which you helped to put me, and who knows how many others. Why the hell would I trust you after that? Not to mention that for all I know you’re still too crippled to fly.’
‘We would have found a way to circumvent the Demarchy’s security operations once we knew you were on Redstone,’ said the Librarian. ‘As to your other concerns, you should remember we had no control over what the Demarchy chose to do with you or any of the other clones, once your original memories were restored. In truth, we had every reason to expect that, given your innate resourcefulness, one or more of you would have found a way to escape. And you and Gabrielle did manage that, eventually, although it took rather more lifetimes than we had originally anticipated.’
She stared at the Librarian, thunderstruck.
‘Let me ask you something in turn,’ said the Librarian. ‘If you didn’t trust us before, what brings you to trust us now?’
She shook her head. ‘Well,’ she said, her tone calmer now, ‘I guess the fact is I’m all out of any other ideas.’
‘You should know,’ said the Librarian, after a short pause, ‘that this ship is not so crippled as it might appear. We have already lifted off from Redstone, and we are even now accelerating to jump velocity.’
She stared at the creature in astonishment. ‘How . . . ?’
‘Taking off at this particular time is admittedly risky,’ the Librarian explained, ‘given that this ship is still not fully repaired, and therefore remains in a weakened state. But it is, as you yourself have made clear, a necessary risk.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘We can’t leave, not yet. I need to go back for Bash first . . . and Gabrielle.’
‘That won’t be necessary,’ said the Librarian. ‘They are both currently on board a ship called the Damien Ingersoll, which is owned by Otto Schelling.’
Megan felt all the blood drain from her face. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Entirely, yes. The Ingersoll broke orbit shortly after we escaped Redstone’s gravity well.’
‘How do you know they’re on board?’
‘A simple analysis of encrypted data traffic proved sufficient.’
Megan swallowed. ‘Gabrielle would have given birth by now. Do you – know if the baby is with her?’
‘Her child’s whereabouts is unknown,’ the Librarian replied. ‘The Ingersoll is clearly outfitted for a long-range expedition, so it is undoubtedly bound for the same destination as ourselves.’
‘Then we need to stop them,’ Megan moaned, sinking to her knees on the cold stone floor. ‘What do they even need Gabrielle for? She’s no use to them now that she can’t be merged with this ship.’
‘Then she may simply be a hostage,’ said the Librarian. ‘However, you should remember that you and she are genetically identical. It may be that, lacking you, they intend to use her to communicate with the Wanderer, through Bashir.’
Her eyes grew wide. ‘They can’t do that . . . can they?’
‘The Demarchy created you and every other Speaker-Elect from Dakota Merrick’s genetic material – and that, in turn, had already undergone considerable optimization on board this very ship. Gabrielle will almost certainly be capable of communicating with the Wanderer in precisely the same manner as yourself.’
‘But if that’s true,’ Megan mumbled, half to herself, ‘then they must know who I am.’
‘That is yet to be ascertained. In the meantime, we should speak about the other matter on your mind.’
She stared at the alien entity in confusion. ‘What other matter?’
‘Your desire,’ replied the Librarian, ‘to recover the memories of your former life as the Speaker-Elect Esté.’
She blinked, taking a moment to comprehend what it was saying to her. ‘You can do that?’
‘We did not suggest that. But why is it that you so strongly reject your previous existence as Dakota Merrick?’
‘Just because I have her memories,’ said Megan, ‘doesn’t make me her.’
‘Has it not occurred to you that, by living your life as if your former existence had no bearing upon it, you have made mistakes you might otherwise have avoided? I do not think Dakota Merrick, as she was, would have allowed herself ever to trust men such as Gregor Tarrant or Anil Sifra so easily, and with such dire consequences.’
Megan felt a flush of fury. The alien ship was patently digging through her mind, pulling out memories and putting them on display.
‘Go to hell!’ she screamed, her voice echoing through the vaulted hall in ever-decreasing waves. She was clenching her fists so hard by her sides that they hurt. ‘Get out of my head!’
‘By denying your former existence,’ the Librarian continued regardless, ‘you have denied yourself the lessons that life has taught you. Imtiaz Bashir is a good man, but perhaps not the wisest. It was wrong to have listened to him when he first brought Tarrant to meet you.’
Tears streamed down her face. ‘She’s the whole reason the Maker Swarm is on its way here,’ she protested, meaning Dakota Merrick. ‘It would never have known the human race even existed if she hadn’t gone out there. I just don’t want to have to carry that responsibility!’
‘She went looking for a means to stop the Nova War of two centuries ago – and she found it,’ declared the Librarian.
Megan stared at the shadowy figure. ‘What? That had nothing to do with me . . . or with her. The war was halted by some expedition—’
‘There are some facts of which you are clearly unaware,’ said the Librarian. ‘You have been resurrected before, and it was a long way from either Dios or Redstone.’
‘I have?’ said Megan faintly.
‘The first time was shortly after your encounter with the Maker Swarm.’
‘But . . . I don’t remember anything about that.’
‘That other Dakota died far away from a Magi ship,’ explained the Librarian. ‘Hence, there was no opportunity to recover her memories directly. This is why you do not have those same memories.’
‘How . . . how did she die?’
‘She took part in the expedition you just mentioned, the one that brought the Nova War to an early end. She helped deploy a weapon against the Em
issaries that would never have been discovered if her previous incarnation had not gone out to encounter the Swarm. Without her, the human race, and many of the species neighbouring it, would most likely have been wiped out by now.’
She stared into the shadows, thunderstruck. ‘I . . . I had no idea.’
‘You are not Esté,’ said the Librarian. ‘She died so that you might live. Her thoughts and memories cannot be recovered, and you must accept this.’
Megan cradled her head in her hands. It seemed all too much to take in.
‘In the meantime,’ the Librarian continued, ‘we still have a new mission to complete, and our flight out to the Wanderer will take some months. That leaves you plenty of time – virtual or otherwise – to contemplate our next move. So I suggest you make the best use of it.’
THIRTY-THREE
Gabrielle
Gabrielle could think of nothing but that last glimpse of Martha Stiles, clutching little Evie to her chest.
She screamed and fought as Tarrant dragged her towards an airlock, where the two Freeholders who had murdered the outpost’s staff stood already waiting. One of them seized and secured her wrists, and when she tried to struggle, the other hit her so hard across the back of her head, it left her nauseous and dizzy.
Finally they strapped a breather mask on to her, then dragged her outside into the freezing cold of a Redstone night. She hardly needed the mask, since she barely drew a single breath in the short time it took them to load her inside a waiting dropship. Once on board, she was in no position to offer further resistance.
Instead of strapping them in acceleration couches, they zipped her and Bash into padded bags that immobilized them entirely. Gabrielle felt a flood of anger when she realized that these containers were of a type designed for carrying animals into orbit.
Not long after, they transferred to a ship high above Redstone, where a woman with dark hair and a severe expression took charge of placing her inside a medbox. She returned some hours later, explaining to Gabrielle, as she emerged dripping from the medbox, that she was now on board a vessel called the Damien Ingersoll.
The Ingersoll, Gabrielle quickly learned, was a starship carrying a crew of a dozen. There was gravity on board, which indicated that they must be accelerating towards the outer system, in preparation for a jump.
Tarrant strode into the medbay while Gabrielle was still getting dressed. She cowered away, moving quickly to cover her nakedness.
‘She’s healthy enough,’ said the woman supervising her, ‘and her implants are functional. So if you want to start testing the bridge, it’s probably safe.’
Tarrant nodded. ‘Good work, Kathryn.’ He glanced over at Gabrielle. ‘Finish getting yourself dressed, then you’re coming with me.’
‘Where to?’ Gabrielle demanded in a quavering voice. Meanwhile, Kathryn departed the medbay, leaving them alone. ‘And what about Evie?’
‘I thought you’d have the good sense not to mention that name.’ Tarrant spoke in a harsh whisper. ‘Or don’t you understand the risk I took just to keep her safe? Stiles will take care of her.’
‘She’s your daughter,’ said Gabrielle. ‘Our daughter. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’
He stepped forward and slapped her, hard. She drew in a sharp breath, and put out a hand against the wall to steady herself.
‘Fuck you,’ she snarled, through gritted teeth. ‘I carried your child inside me. Does that really mean nothing to you?’
She waited for another blow to descend, but it never came. He just stared at her, with eyes bright and angry.
‘Hurry up and finish getting dressed,’ he growled finally, picking up some of her clothes from the deck and throwing them at her. ‘We’re only wasting time.’
A little while later, Tarrant led Gabrielle through the ship, to a room where they found Bash seated in a high-backed chair with some contraption resembling a squid made from black rubber carefully arranged on his head. Sifra was there as well, along with a third, older man she didn’t recognize. This man glanced at her briefly, then motioned her towards a seat directly facing Bash.
‘Sit,’ he said.
Her will to resist appeared to have deserted her with the loss of Evie. She therefore did as she was told, staring straight ahead as Tarrant secured her to the chair with some elasticated restraints. It would have been better for her, she thought, if she had simply drowned in the Ka’s freezing waters.
Tarrant stood back. ‘I want to be very clear about this,’ he began. ‘We’re not trying to hurt you here. Those restraints are for your own safety while we try an experiment.’
‘You want me to talk to the Wanderer? Okay, I get it.’
‘You need to think of Bash as being a kind of transceiver,’ said Tarrant. ‘He can send and receive messages between you and the Wanderer. We need to see if you can establish the same kind of rapport through him that Megan once did.’
And if I can’t, you’ll toss me out into space at the first opportunity.
Tarrant seemed to be waiting for some kind of answer.
‘I understand,’ she said.
Tarrant nodded perfunctorily. ‘Good.’ He turned to Sifra. ‘Let’s get started.’
Sifra stepped over to her, holding a device identical to the one Tarrant had used on the Grand Barge to inject an inhibitor into her neck.
‘What are you doing?’ she demanded, twisting away from him as he reached out towards the back of her neck.
‘Relax,’ said Tarrant. ‘Before we can start, he needs to install a new inhibitor.’
‘I don’t want—’
‘It’s for your own good, Gaby.’
Sifra pressed the device against the back of her neck, just above the raised flesh where her original inhibitor had been located. She tensed, clenching her jaw when she felt something like a needle punching through the skin. She’d be damned if she’d let them see how much it hurt. Sifra stepped away from her and went over to join Tarrant, who was making adjustments of some kind to a virtual panel.
The back of her neck began to throb painfully. Something about the pain fuelled her anger, making her want to throw herself at the two of them, to tear at their smug expressions with her fingernails, to rake the flesh from their skulls and listen to their screams. She twisted and strained against her restraints, but it was all to no avail.
‘Let’s ramp back her inhibitor,’ she heard Tarrant mutter under his breath, as he moved a finger slowly across part of the panel. ‘About . . . there.’
Gabrielle opened her mouth to scream obscenities at the pair of them, then glanced at Bashir and saw, with a start, that he was looking directly towards her, his gaze full of furious intensity.
Any further words died in her throat, as Bash’s eyes seemed to swallow her up, drawing her inside them . . .
Suddenly she was surrounded by stars wheeling around her head. Something enormous blotted out half the universe, an infinite black horizon into which light fell forever.
She tried to scream, but by now had lost all sense of her physical body. The Ingersoll, Bash, Tarrant – they were all gone, lost somewhere on the far side of the universe.
And just then, when she thought she might be about to lose all hope, she sensed a familiar presence close by. It floated in the chaos like a tiny flicker of light lost in an unending ocean of dark.
Somehow she knew it was Bash.
‘Gabrielle?’
She came to with a start, every muscle in her body taut, her skin slippery with sweat. Her neck felt like she’d twisted it badly, and she thought she could taste blood in her mouth. She coughed, trying to clear her throat, and tried to move, but she was still tied to the chair.
‘Here,’ said Tarrant, kneeling next to her and pushing something against her lips. ‘Drink this.’
She swallowed, tasting cool, clear water. The foul taste on her tongue diminished.
‘What happened?’ she managed to ask.
‘You were foaming at the mouth.’ Sifra sneered f
rom across the room, with evident amusement.
Tarrant produced a cloth, and used it to mop her mouth and cheeks. He glared briefly at the other man.
‘Tell me what happened,’ he pressed. ‘Tell me everything you saw and heard.’
She did her best to describe everything she had experienced – all, that is, except for that brief glimpse of something she was so sure had been Bash. Something held her back from saying anything about that.
‘And you’re sure that’s all?’ he asked. ‘You were under for a good hour.’
An hour? ‘I thought it was just a couple of seconds,’ she said, genuinely shocked. ‘Did anything happen?’
She saw the three men exchange glances – and guessed something had indeed happened.
‘So was your experiment successful or not?’ asked the old man from across the room, sounding impatient.
‘For a first time, yes,’ said Tarrant, standing up again. ‘She’s come out of her experience better than anyone else but Megan . . . and you saw the way the bridge reacted.’
‘We still haven’t got anything coherent out of the Wanderer, though, have we?’ insisted the old man, with a petulant edge to his voice. ‘It’s not talking to us now like it did when we still had Jacinth.’
‘Not yet,’ agreed Tarrant. He was gazing down at Gabrielle, but his mind was clearly elsewhere. ‘But give it time. It knows we’re on our way and, just as importantly, it knows why.’
‘We’ll try again,’ decided the old man. ‘I don’t want to take any chance of it deciding to deal with that woman instead of with us.’
Tarrant glanced down at Gabrielle and shrugged. ‘Looks as if we’re not done with you yet.’
She stared up at him sullenly. ‘I hope to hell it tears you and your ship apart once we get there. I hope to hell I get to watch you all die.’
Tarrant turned away and said nothing.
THIRTY-FOUR
Megan
The woman lived in a cliffside dwelling on a world that orbited so close to its sun that it actually passed through the corona. Through the tall and graceful windows of her dwelling, she could see great arcs of plasma thrown up from the star’s surface, like fountains of fire falling back in on themselves.
