‘You did this to me,’ she said, obviously speaking aloud for Scorpio’s benefit. ‘Aren’t you proud?’
‘I didn’t do it to you, Skade. 1 know exactly what happened. I hurt you, and I’m sorry it happened that way. But it wasn’t intentional and you know it.’
‘So your defection was involuntary? If only it were that easy.’
‘I didn’t cut your head off, Skade,’ Clavain said. ‘By now Delmar could have healed the injuries I gave you. You’d be whole again. But that didn’t fit with your plans.’
‘You dictated my plans, Clavain. You and my loyalty to the Mother Nest.’
‘I don’t question your loyalty, Skade. I just wonder exactly what it is you’re loyal to.’
Scorpio whispered, ‘Thirteen minutes, Clavain. Then we have to be out of here.’
Skade’s attention snapped on to the pig. ‘In a hurry, are you?’
‘Aren’t we all?’ Scorpio said.
‘You’ve come for something. I don’t doubt that your weapons could already have destroyed Nightshade were that your intention.’
‘Give me Felka,’ Clavain said. ‘Give me Felka, then we’ll leave you alone.’
‘Does she mean that much to you, Clavain, that you’d have held back from destroying me when you had the chance?’
‘She means a great deal to me, yes.’
Skade’s crest rippled with turquoise and orange. ‘I’ll give you Felka, if it makes you leave. But first I want to show you something.’
She reached up with the gauntleted arms of her suit, placing one hand on either side of her neck as if about to strangle herself. But her metal hands were evidently capable of great gentleness. Clavain heard a click somewhere within Skade’s chest, and then the metal pillar of her neck began to rise from between her shoulders. She was removing her own head. Clavain watched, entranced and repelled, as the lower part of the pillar emerged. It ended in thrashing, segmented appendages. They dribbled pink baubles of coloured fluid — blood, perhaps, or something entirely artificial.
‘Skade…’ he said. ‘This isn’t necessary.’
‘Oh, it is very necessary, Clavain. I want you to apprehend fully what it is you’ve done to me. I want you to feel the horror of it.’
‘I think he’s getting the picture,’ Scorpio said.
‘Just give me Felka, then I’ll leave you.’
She hefted her own head, cradling it in one hand. It continued to speak. ‘Do you hate me, Clavain?’
‘None of this is personal, Skade. I just think you’re misguided.’
‘Misguided because I care about the survival of our people?’
‘Something got to you, Skade,’ Clavain said. ‘You were a good Conjoiner once, one of the best. You truly served the Mother Nest, just as I did. But then you were sent on the Chateau operation.’
He had pricked her interest. He saw the involuntary widening of her eyes. ‘The Chateau des Corbeaux? What does that have to do with anything?’
‘A lot more than you’d like to think,’ Clavain said. ‘You were the only survivor, Skade, but you didn’t come back alone. You probably don’t remember very much of what actually happened down there, but that doesn’t matter. Something got to you, I’m certain of that. It’s responsible for everything that’s happened lately.’ He tried to smile. ‘That’s why I don’t hate you, or even much blame you. You’re either not the Skade I knew, or you think you’re serving something higher than yourself.’
‘Ridiculous.’
‘But possibly true. I should know, Skade, I went there myself. How do you think we stayed on your tail all this time? The Chateau was the source for the technology you and I both used. Alien technology, for manipulating inertia. Except you used it for much more than that, didn’t you?’
‘I used it to serve an end, that’s all.’
‘You tried to move faster than light, just the way Galiana did.’ He saw another flicker of interest at the mention of Galiana’s name. ‘Why, Skade? What was so important that you had to do this? They’re just weapons.’
‘You want them badly, too.’
Clavain nodded. ‘But only because I’ve seen how badly you want them. You showed me that fleet, too, and that made me think you were planning on getting away from this part of space. What is it, Skade? What have you seen in your crystal ball?’
‘Shall I show you, Clavain?’
‘Show me?’ he asked.
‘Allow me access to your mind and I’ll implant exactly what I was shown. Then you will know. And perhaps see things my way.’
‘Don’t…’ Scorpio said.
Clavain lowered his mental defences. Skade’s presence was sudden and intrusive, so much so that he flinched. But she did not attempt to do more than paint images in his mind, as she had promised.
Clavain saw the end of everything. He saw chains of human habitats spangling with bright pinpricks of annihilating fire. Nuclear garlands dappled the surfaces of worlds too unimportant to dismantle. He saw comets and asteroids being steered into colonies, wave upon wave of them, far too many to be neutralised by the existing defences. Flares were lifted from the surfaces of stars, focused and daubed across the faces of worlds, sterilising all in their path. He saw rocky worlds being pulverised, smashed into hot clouds of interplanetary rubble. He saw gas giants being spun apart, ruined like the toys of petulant children. He saw stars themselves dying, poisoned so that they shone too hot or too cold, or ripped apart in a dozen different ways. He saw ships detonating in interstellar space, when they imagined they were safe from harm. He heard a panicked chorus of human radio and laser transmissions that was at first a multitude, but which thinned out to a handful of desperate lone voices, which were themselves silenced one by one. Then he heard only the mindless warbling of machine transmissions, and even those began to fall silent as humanity’s last defences crumbled.
The cleansing was spread across a volume many dozens of light-years wide. It took many decades to complete, but it was over in a flash compared with the slow grind of galactic history.
And all around, orchestrating this cleansing, he sensed dim, ruthless sentience. It was an ensemble of machine minds, most of which hovered just beneath the threshold of consciousness. They were old, older than the youngest stars, and they were expert only in the art of extinction. Nothing else concerned them.
‘How far in the future is this?’ he asked Skade.
‘It’s already begun. We just don’t know it yet. But within half a century the wolves reach the core colonies, those closest to the First System. Within a century, the human race consists of a few huddling groups too afraid to travel or attempt any communication with each other.’
‘And the Conjoiners?’
‘We’re amongst them but just as vulnerable, just as predated. No Mother Nest remains. Conjoiner nests in some systems have been wiped out completely. That’s when they send the message back in time.’
He absorbed what she had said and nodded guardedly, prepared to accept it for the time being. ‘How did they do it?’
‘Galiana’s Exordium experiments,’ Skade’s decorporated head answered. ‘She explored the linkage of human minds with coherent quantum states. But matter in a state of quantum superposition is entangled, in a ghostly sense, with every particle that has ever existed, or ever will exist. Her experiments were only intended to explore new modes of parallel consciousness, but she opened a window to the future, too. The conduit was imperfect, so that only faint echoes reached back to Mars. And every message sent through the channel increased the background noise. The conduit had a finite information capacity, you see. Exordium was a precious resource that could only be used at times of extreme crisis.’
Clavain felt a dizzying sense of vertigo. ‘Our history’s already been changed, hasn’t it?’
‘Galiana learned enough to make the first star ship drive. It was a question of energy, Clavain, and the manipulation of quantum wormholes. At the heart of a Conjoiner drive is one end of a microscopic wormh
ole. The other end is anchored fifteen billion years in the past, sucking energy out of the quark-gluon plasma of the primordial fireball. Of course, the same technology can be applied to the manufacturing of doomsday weapons.’
‘The hell-class weapons,’ he said.
Tn our original history we had neither of these advantages. We did not achieve starflight until a century later than the Sandra Voi’s first flight. Our ships were slow, heavy, fragile, incapable of reaching more than a fifth of light-speed. The human expansion was necessarily retarded. In four hundred years only a handful of systems were successfully settled. Yet still we attracted the wolves, even in that timeline. The cleansing was brutally efficient. This version of history — the one you have known — was an attempt at an improvement. The pace of human expansion was quickened and we were given better weapons to deal with the threat once it arose.‘
‘I see now,’ Clavain said, ‘why the hell-class weapons couldn’t be made again. Once Galiana had been shown how to make them, she destroyed the knowledge.’
‘They were a gift from the future,’ she said pridefully. ‘A gift from our future selves.’
‘And now?’
‘Even in this timeline decimation happened. Again the wolves were alerted to our emergence. And it turned out that the drives were easy for them to track, across light-years of space.’
‘So our future selves tried another tweak.’
‘Yes. This time they reached back only into the recent past, intervening much later in Conjoiner history. The first message was an edict warning us to stop using Conjoiner drives. That was why we stopped shipbuilding a century ago. Later, we were given clues that enabled us to build stealthed drives of the kind Nightshade carries. The Demarchists thought we had built her to gain a tactical advantage over them in the war. In fact, she was designed to be our first weapon against the wolves. Later, we were given information regarding the construction of inertia-suppressing machinery. Although I didn’t know it at the time, I was sent to the Chateau to obtain the fragments of alien technology which would enable us to assemble the prototype inertia-suppressing machine.’
‘And now?’
She answered him with a smile. ‘We’ve been given another chance. This time, flight is the only viable solution. The Conjoiners must leave this volume of space before the wolves arrive en masse.’
‘Run away, you mean?’
‘Not really your style, is it, Clavain? But sometimes it’s the only response that makes any sense. Later, we can consider a return — even a confrontation with the wolves. Other species have failed, but we are different, I think. We have already had the nerve to alter our past.’
‘What makes you think the other poor suckers didn’t try it as well?’
‘Clavain…’ It was Scorpio. ‘We really need to be out of here, now.’
‘Skade… you’ve shown me enough,’ Clavain said. ‘I accept that you believe you are acting justly.’
‘And yet you still think I am the puppet of some mysterious agency?’
‘I don’t know, Skade. I certainly haven’t ruled it out.’
I serve only the Mother Nest.‘
‘Fine.’ He nodded, sensing that no matter what the truth was Skade believed that she was acting correctly. ‘Now give me Felka and I’ll leave.’
‘Will you destroy me once you have left?’
He doubted that she knew of the pinhead charges he and Scorpio had deployed. He said, ‘What will happen to you, Skade, if I leave you here, drifting? Can you repair your ship?’
‘I don’t need to. The other craft are not far behind me. They are your real enemy, Clavain. Vastly better armed than Nightshade, and yet just as nimble and difficult to detect.’
‘That still doesn’t mean I’d be better off not killing you.’
Skade turned around and raised her voice. ‘Bring Felka here.’
Half a minute later, two other Conjoiners appeared behind Skade, burdened with a spacesuited figure. Skade allowed them to pass it forwards. The visor was open so that Clavain could tell that the figure was Felka. She appeared unconscious, but he was certain that she was still alive.
‘Here. Take her.’
‘What’s wrong with her?’
‘Nothing fundamental,’ Skade said. ‘I told you she was becoming withdrawn, didn’t I? She misses her Wall very much. Perhaps she will improve in your care. But there is something you need to know, Clavain.’
He looked at her. ‘What?’
‘She isn’t your daughter. She never was. Everything she told you was a lie, to make you more likely to return. A plausible lie, and perhaps one she almost wanted to believe was true, but a lie nonetheless. Do you still want her now?’
He knew she was telling the truth. Skade would lie to hurt him, but only if it served her wider ambitions. She was not doing that now, although he dearly wished that she were.
His voice caught in his throat. ‘Why should I want her less?’
‘Be honest, Clavain. It might have made a difference.’
‘I came here to save someone I care for, that’s all.’ He fought to keep his voice from breaking. ‘Whether she’s my blood or not… it doesn’t matter.’
‘No?’
‘Not at all.’
‘Good. Then I believe our business here is done. Felka has served us both well, Clavain. She protected me from you, and she was able to bring out the co-operative side of the Wolf, something I could never have done on my own.’
‘The Wolf?’
‘Oh, sorry, didn’t I mention the Wolf?’
‘Let’s leave,’ Scorpio said.
‘No. Not just yet. I want to know what she meant.’
‘I meant exactly what I said, Clavain.’ With loving care, Skade replaced her own head, blinking at the moment when it clicked home. ‘I brought the Wolf with me because I imagined it might prove valuable. Well, I was right,’
‘You mean you brought Galiana’s body?’
‘I brought Galiana,’ Skade corrected. ‘She isn’t dead, Clavain. Not in the way you always thought she was. I reached her shortly after she returned from deep space. Her personality and memories were still there, perfectly intact. We had conversations, she and I. She asked about you — and of Felka — and I told her a small white lie; it was better for all of us that she think you dead. She was already losing the battle, you see. The Wolf was trying to take her over, and in the end she wasn’t strong enough to fight it. But it didn’t kill her, even then. It kept her mind intact because it found her memories useful. It also knew that Galiana was precious to us, and so we would do nothing against it that would harm her.’
Clavain looked at her, hoping against hope that she was lying to him as she had lied before, but knowing that this was now the truth. And although he knew the answer she would give, he had to ask the question all the same.
‘Will you give her to me?’
‘No.’ Skade raised a black metal finger. ‘You leave with Felka only, or you leave with nothing. It’s your choice. But Galiana stays here.’ Almost as an afterthought she added, ‘Oh, and in case you were wondering, I do know about the pinhead munitions you and the pig left behind you.’
‘You won’t find them all in time,’ Scorpio said.
I won’t have to find them,‘ Skade said. ’Will I, Clavain? Because having Galiana protects me as fully as when I had Felka. No. I won’t show her to you. It isn’t necessary. Felka will tell you that she is here. She met the Wolf, too — didn’t you?‘
But Felka did not stir.
‘C’mon,’ Scorpio said. ‘Let’s leave before she changes her mind.’
Clavain was with Felka when she came around. He was sitting in a seat next to her bed, scratching at his beard, a grasshopperlike scritch, scritch, scritch that burrowed remorselessly into her subconscious and tugged her towards wakefulness. She had been dreaming of Mars, dreaming of her Wall, dreaming of being lost in the endless, consuming task of maintaining the Wall’s inviolability.
‘Felka.’ H
is voice was sharp, almost stern. ‘Felka. Wake up. This is Clavain. You’re amongst friends now.’
‘Where is Skade?’ she asked.
‘I left Skade behind. She isn’t your concern now.’ Clavain’s hand rested on hers. ‘I’m just relieved that you’re all right. It’s good to see you again, Felka. There were times when I never thought this would happen.’
She had come around in a room that did not look like any of those she had seen on Nightshade. It had a slightly rustic feel. She was clearly aboard a ship, but it was not a sleekly engineered thing like the last vessel.
‘You never said goodbye to me before you defected,’ she said.
‘I know.’ Clavain poked a finger into the folds of one eye. He looked weary, older than she remembered him from their last meeting. ‘I know, and I apologise. But it was deliberate. You’d have talked me out of it.’ His tone became accusatory. ‘Wouldn’t you?’
‘I only wanted you to take care of yourself. That was why I convinced you to join the Closed Council.’
‘On balance, that was probably a mistake, wasn’t it?’ His tone had softened. He was, she was reasonably certain, smiling.
‘If you call this taking care of yourself, then yes, I’d have to admit it wasn’t quite what I had in mind.’
‘Did Skade take care of you?’
‘She wanted me to help her. I didn’t. I became… withdrawn. I didn’t want to hear that she had killed you. She tried very hard, Clavain.’
‘I know.’
‘She has Galiana.’
‘I know that as well,’ he said. ‘Remontoire, Scorpio and I placed demolition charges across her ship. Even now we could destroy it, if I was prepared to delay our arrival at Resurgam.’
Felka forced herself into a sitting position. ‘Listen to me carefully, Clavain.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘You must kill Skade. It doesn’t matter that she has Galiana. It’s what Galiana would want you to do.’
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