by Gary Gibson
She glanced once more towards the door, then headed over to a set of drawers fitted into a recess. She slid the lowest one out and dumped its contents on the floor, then carefully unrolled a pair of Bash’s socks to reveal a narrow strip of metal, about ten centimetres in length. It had formerly been a side-runner attached to the drawer itself, and one end had been sharpened to a razor-edged point.
Removing the screws had taken her an eternity, since she had little choice but to work at them with nothing more than her fingernails. She had spent literally weeks gently prising out each of the tiny screws, one after another, until they became loose enough to remove.
With fingertips torn and raw, she had worked with the constant awareness that she might be interrupted at any moment, and more than once she had needed to slide the drawer hurriedly back into place, before making a pretence of tidying up its contents. She would then publicly chew at her fingernails in case anyone noticed the damaged tips and asked questions.
After that had come many long and boring hours of first flattening out and smoothing the metal strip, then gradually producing a sharpened point by whittling one edge against the grille covering the ventilation system.
She now wrapped the strip of sheet fabric around the unsharpened edge and tied it off. It felt too light, too insubstantial in her hands, more like a toy than a weapon, and yet beneath the overhead lights its edge glittered as sharp and deadly as she might wish. It could certainly cut a throat . . . or slice a wrist.
Could she take her own life, or even Bash’s, if it came to that? She had no idea. She’d dreamed often enough of cutting the throats of Tarrant or Sifra. Could that be so hard, after poisoning a roomful of people or murdering a stranger with a crowbar?
Every now and then, she would stare at the makeshift shank clasped in her hand, and think back to the days of luxurious bedchambers and servants. What would that other Gabrielle have thought, she now wondered, if she had ever been able to foresee what lay in her future?
She studied it for a little while longer then, as always, tucked the long metal strip back inside a pair of socks, before returning the fabric grip beneath her mattress. She did it all with the exactitude of a priestess performing a complicated but long-practised rite.
The next day, Tarrant himself came to fetch her, instead of just the usual guards.
‘It’s time for you to have a chat with Megan,’ he declared, leading her back along the passageway. ‘Make it very clear to her just how much is at stake if she interferes.’
‘What about Bash?’ asked Gabrielle, aware he was still asleep in his bunk.
‘The guards will fetch him in a little while,’ replied Tarrant. ‘You don’t need him for you to talk to Megan.’
‘There’s something I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘Megan told me what happened to those other machine-heads when they got here. How come I’m not affected – or the Ingersoll’s pilot?’
‘The Ingersoll has been refurbished with shielding specifically designed to resist the Wanderer’s informational attacks,’ Tarrant explained. ‘You’ll be safe from any such interference when you link to the Wanderer through Bash. And, if we still have any problems, we can always fully reactivate your inhibitor.’
They entered the communications suite where the bridging sessions were carried out. Schelling and Sifra were already there, waiting for them. Gabrielle automatically took her usual seat but, for some inexplicable reason, she felt more vulnerable there without having Bash seated across from her.
Tarrant moved around in front of her. ‘Remember,’ he said. ‘There’s a nova mine in close orbit around Bellhaven’s sun. So if she doesn’t—’
‘I didn’t forget,’ she interrupted him. ‘Anything else?’
‘Find out if she got a response from the Wanderer,’ said Sifra. ‘And remember, we’re routing you through the navigational systems so as to let you talk to her. It’s going to be a step up from what you’re used to.’
‘And be careful what you tell her,’ warned Schelling. ‘Gregor will be monitoring your conversation.’
A virtual panel appeared directly before her. ‘That’s your interface,’ explained Tarrant. ‘Pick the control access option – it’s the red icon at the centre.’
She did as she was told. The icon flashed briefly, then a rippling darkness spread out from the panel to consume the entire room. Gabrielle lost any immediate sense of her body, as if her soul had been cut free of her flesh. She found herself now looking out on to naked vacuum.
She discovered she could rapidly cycle her viewpoint through dozens of different vantage points, each one flickering by with such speed that she could hardly take in what she was seeing and experiencing.
Szymurski is riding along with you, said Tarrant, as if from very, very far away.
The Ingersoll’s pilot. You’re seeing everything he does, but you can’t control anything. You’ll be able to talk to Megan – but that’s about it.
This, then, she realized, was what it felt like to have full access to a starship’s senses.
Szymursky? asked Tarrant. Yes. Why?
You won’t have to, replied Tarrant, Szymursky reports only to me, not Schelling. We’re hooking you into the transceiver array now, he continued. If Megan’s monitoring our comms traffic – and she will be – she should know just about straight away that you’re here.
Gabrielle’s viewpoint changed to show the Ship of the Covenant locked into orbit around the desolate moon that lay ahead. She could also see the equally lifeless surface of the world around which the moon orbited.
Megan replied.
Megan’s relief was palpable.
Gabrielle realized that Megan’s presence had slipped away even while she’d been talking, just like a radio signal fading in and out.
<. . . thing’s happening,> sent Megan, suddenly fading back in.
The signal faded, then died. Gabrielle could still sense Szymurski as a distant presence.
<. . . want with Bellhaven?>
Silence fell. Then, deep in her gut, Gabrielle knew something was wrong. Very wrong.
THIRTY-SIX
Megan
The Wanderer struck without warning and, even though Megan had been prepared for such an attack, it came with startling swiftness.
She reclined on a cantilevered chair of metal and plastic with her eyes closed, in a grey-tiled communications room that probably hadn’t even existed until a few moments before she entered it.
The Wanderer is aggressively testing our defences, the Librarian informed her. It appears to be recomputing the underlying informationa
l structure of space-time within the body of our ship.
How is that even possible? she asked.
It has some means of temporarily redefining certain physical constants on a quantum-scale level, said the Librarian.
You’re saying it can alter reality?
On a minute and highly localized scale, yes.
But why?
In order to subvert and access our memory banks, it replied.
Megan shifted her subjective experience of time until the universe beyond the ship came, from her point of view, to a near standstill. She swam through the ship’s memory, and saw that great swathes of it had fallen forever dark and silent as they were consumed by the informational equivalent of a forest fire. Cancerous pockets, under the apparent influence of the Wanderer, sprang up in their place – only to be swiftly isolated and destroyed by the Librarian.
Eventually, the Wanderer withdrew its attack. Outwardly, nothing had changed; both it and the Magi ship continued their separate, apparently serene orbits around the moon.
How bad is the damage? she asked, coming back into normal time.
The ship has sustained severe damage, said the Librarian, and is in an even more greatly weakened state than before.
She remembered all those long hours she’d spent kneeling by Bash in his quarters, communing with the Marauder via a mind-to-mind link. I thought it and I had an agreement.
Our current prognosis is that it was merely testing our defences to ascertain whether we were weak enough to overcome.
It really can’t be trusted, can it?
No, the Librarian agreed. We could, if necessary, transmit your current mind-state to the nearest Magi ship, if we appear to be facing certain destruction.
No, she replied. That’d use up too much of your resources. Save it for the battle, if it comes. There were other versions of her out there, after all, preserved in the memories of those other Magi ships. They could have their turn to live if it came to the worst here.
She returned her attention to the Ingersoll, which was clearly preparing to decelerate for its final approach to the moon. The starship was so heavily shielded against any informational attack that she could not even pinpoint Gabrielle’s physical location aboard it.
Their connection was cut, again without warning.
Megan opened her eyes and peered around the grey-tiled room deep within the Ship of the Covenant. Something was wrong. She could sense it.
She glanced to one side and saw the Librarian standing there. There was something subtly wrong with its outline, as if it had been warped out of shape.
‘What’s happened?’ she asked. ‘What’s wrong with you?’
‘We were wrong,’ replied the Librarian. ‘The Wanderer wasn’t trying to hurt us during its attack. It was distracting us, so that it could plunder data.’
THIRTY-SEVEN
Gabrielle
‘Well?’ asked Schelling. ‘Did the Wanderer get our message?’
Gabrielle’s whole body felt cramped after emerging from the sensorium, her skin slick with sweat and her jaw aching.
‘I’m pretty sure it got it,’ she said, hungrily sucking in air. Bash looked as if the experience had been just as rough for him as well. His head was tipped back, his mouth open and his chest rising and falling with hummingbird-like rapidity.
‘“Pretty sure” doesn’t cut it,’ snarled the General. ‘We need to be sure it understands very clearly what’ll happen if it doesn’t start cooperating.’
Some hours had now passed since Gabrielle’s brief and interrupted conversation with Megan. Tarrant meanwhile had not reacted well to the suggestion that they should stay clear of the Wanderer, nor had he believed Megan’s claim that it had refused to deal with her. As far as he was concerned, this was little more than a thinly veiled ruse designed to dissuade them.
‘I think it understands just fine,’ said Gabrielle, fighting to hide her irritation. General Schelling was, she had long since learned, a man used to getting his own way. ‘I was very clear about the nova mine.’
‘And what about the negotiations it promised?’ Schelling demanded peevishly.
‘I honestly don’t know,’ replied Gabrielle. ‘I didn’t get anything that felt remotely like a straight answer – or an answer at all.’
Schelling’s face turned a fiery red. Tarrant stepped up beside him and put a restraining hand on his shoulder. ‘Remember we’re dealing with something entirely alien,’ Tarrant said to him. ‘You can’t always make sens
e of how something like that might react.’
‘So what do we do now?’ Schelling demanded. ‘Just sit and wait?’
‘That’s exactly what we do,’ Tarrant replied. ‘It’s not as if we have any other choice. But at the first sign that it might already be negotiating with Megan, we’ll send it off to whatever hell it has waiting for it.’
After they reached orbit above the moon a day later, she and Bash were returned to their quarters having spent some hours in acceleration couches. Entirely worn out, Gabrielle was soon fast asleep, until she felt a hand shaking her awake some time deep during the Ingersoll’s artificial night.
She opened her eyes to see Bash kneeling beside her bunk. At first she stared at him for long seconds, trying to absorb this new development. Finally she sat bolt upright.
‘Bash – how can you . . . ? I mean, how did you . . . ?’ She tripped over her own words, unable to complete a full sentence.
‘I’ve been waiting for the right time,’ he replied.
She rubbed at her face with one hand, still groggy from interrupted sleep and fatigue. ‘Right time? Right time for what?’
‘To kill the Wanderer,’ he said. ‘If we can.’
‘I don’t understand. First you’re dead to the world for months . . . and now you’re here actually talking to me? What is going on?’
He laid a hand over hers. ‘Don’t you remember what I told you?’ he said. ‘I’ve been fighting a war, but now’s the time to end it. But first you have to understand some things.’
‘What things?’ She was sobbing now, frightened and confused.
He reached out and gently took hold of her other hand as well. ‘I only have a little time – same as before. You just need to listen,’ he said, his face shadowy in the dim light of the cabin. ‘And listen carefully.’
‘To what?’
In that moment, their quarters vanished from around her.
Gabrielle found herself somewhere else – not in space, exactly, but in a grey and featureless void. She could sense that her physical body lay somewhere nearby, and yet, when she turned to look for it, she saw only a confusing mass of threads that hung in emptiness, burning with light.
