Yet in the aftermath, one culture emerged stronger than the others. Possibly they had been a fortunate small-time player in the main fray, now rising to supremacy amongst the ruins. Or possibly they were the result of a coalition, a merging of several battle-weary species. It hardly mattered, and they themselves probably had no hard data on their absolute origin. They were — at least then — a hybrid machine-chimeric species, with some residual vertebrate traits. They did not bother giving themselves a name.
‘Still,’ Fazil said, ‘they acquired one, whether they liked it or not.’
Khouri looked at her husband. As he had been relating to her the story of the Dawn War, she had come to a kind of understanding about where she was, and the unreality of it all. What Fazil had said about the Mademoiselle had finally connected with some lingering memory of the true-present. She remembered the gunnery room clearly now, and knew that this place, this tampered-with shard of her past — was no more than an interlude. And this was not properly Fazil, though — because he had been resurrected from her memories — he was at least as real as the Fazil she recalled.
‘What were they called?’ she asked.
He waited before answering, and when he did, it was with almost theatrical gravity. ‘The Inhibitors. For a very good reason, which will shortly become apparent.’
And then he told her, and she knew. The Knowledge crashed home, vast and impassive as a glacier, something she could never begin to forget. And she knew something else, which was, she supposed, the whole point of this exercise. She understood why Sylveste had to die.
And why — if it took the death of a planet to ensure his death — that was an entirely reasonable price to pay.
Guards came just as Sylveste was falling into shallow dreams, exhausted by the latest operation. ‘Wake up, sleepy-head,’ said the taller of the two, a stocky man with a drooping grey moustache. ‘What have you come for?’
‘Now that would spoil the surprise,’ said the other guard, a weaselly individual hefting a rifle.
The route along which they took him was clearly intended to disorientate, its convolutions too frequent to be accidental. Quickly they succeeded in their aim. The sector where they arrived was unfamiliar; either an old part of Mantell extensively refurbished by Sluka’s people, or else a completely new set of tunnel workings dug since the occupation. For a moment he wondered if he were being moved permanently to a different cell, but that seemed unlikely — they had left his other clothes in the first room, and had only just changed the bedsheets. But Falkender had spoken of the possibility of his status altering, in connection with the visitors he had mentioned, so maybe there had been a sudden change of plan.
But there been no change of plan, as he soon discovered.
The room where they left him was no less Spartan than his own; a virtual duplicate down to the same blank walling and food hatch; the same crushing sense that the walls were infinitely thick, reaching endlessly back into the mesa. So similar, in fact, that for a moment he wondered if his senses had deceived him, and all that had happened was the guards had frog-marched him in a loop which eventually returned to his own place of imprisonment. He would not have put it past them… and at least it was exercise.
But as soon as he had absorbed the room’s contents fully, he knew it was not his own. Pascale was sitting on her bed — and when she glanced up, he could tell she was just as astonished as Sylveste.
‘You’ve got an hour,’ the moustachioed guard said, patting his partner on the back.
And then he closed the door, Sylveste having already entered the room without their bidding.
The last time he had seen her, she had been wearing the wedding dress; her hair sculpted in brilliant purple waves, entoptics adorning her like an army of attendant fairies. He might as well have dreamt that. Now she wore overalls, as drab and shapeless as those Sylveste himself was dressed in. Her hair was a lank black bowl, eyes rouged by sleeplessness or bruising, possibly both. She looked thinner and smaller than he remembered — probably because she was hunched over, bare feet hooked under her calves, and the room’s whiteness seemed so large.
He was unable to remember a time when she had looked more fragile or beautiful; when it had been harder to believe that she was his wife. He thought back to the night of the coup, when she had waited in the dig with her patient, probing questions; questions which would later open a wound into the very core of who he was; what he had done and was capable of doing. It seemed very strange indeed that a confluence of events had brought them together, in this loneliest of rooms.
‘They kept telling me you were alive,’ he said. ‘But I don’t think I ever really believed them.’
‘They told me you’d been hurt,’ Pascale said, her voice quiet, as if she dared not shatter a dream by speaking aloud. ‘They wouldn’t say what — and I didn’t want to ask too much — in case they told me the truth.’
‘They blinded me,’ Sylveste said, touching the hard surface of his eyes; the first time he had done so since the surgery. Instead of the little nova of pain to which he had become accustomed there was only a vague fog of discomfort which faded as soon as he removed his fingers.
‘But you can see now?’
‘Yes. As a matter of fact you’re the first thing it’s been worth having sight for.’
And then she rose from the bed, slipping into his arms, hooking a leg round his own. He felt her lightness and delicacy; was almost afraid to return her embrace in case he crushed her. Yet he drew her nearer, and she reciprocated, seemingly just as nervous of damaging him, as if the two of them were spectres uncertain of each other’s reality. They held each other for what seemed like many more hours than the one they had been allocated; not because time dragged, but because for now time was unimportant; it was in abeyance, and it seemed as if it could be held that way by the act of will alone. Sylveste drank in the vision of her face; her eyes found something human even in the blankness of his own. There had been a time when Pascale had lacked the courage to look at him face-on, let alone stare into his eyes — but that time had long passed. And for Sylveste, gazing into Pascale’s eyes had never been difficult, since she need never be aware of his scrutiny. Now, though, he wished she could tell when he was staring; wished her the vicarious pleasure of knowing that he found her intoxicating.
Soon they were kissing, and then they slumped awkwardly to the bed. In a moment they were free of their Mantell clothes, shucking them in drab heaps beside the bed. Sylveste wondered if they were being observed. It seemed possible — likely even. It also seemed possible not to care. For now — for as long as this hour lasted — he and Pascale were absolutely alone; the room’s walls really infinite; the room the only open enclosure in the whole universe. It was not the first time they had made love, though the previous occasions had been rare indeed; in those few instances when the opportunity for privacy had arisen. Now — the thought almost made Sylveste laugh — they were married, and there was even less need for any subterfuge. And yet here they were again, once more snatching what intimacy they could. He felt an edge of guilt, and for a long time he wondered where it came from. Eventually, as they lay together, his head buried softly in her chest, he realised why he felt that way. Because there was so much to speak about, and instead they had squandered their time in the fevered archaeology of their bodies. But it had to be that way, Sylveste knew.
‘I wish there was longer,’ he said, when his sense of time had returned to something like normality, and he began to wonder how much of the hour remained.
‘The last time we spoke,’ Pascale said, ‘you told me something.’
‘About Carine Lefevre, yes. It was something I had to tell you, do you understand? It sounds ridiculous, but I thought I was going to die. I had to tell you; tell anyone. It was something I’d kept inside me for years.’
Pascale’s thigh was a cool pressure against his own. She drew her hand across his chest, mapping it. ‘Whatever happened out there, there’s no way I or anyone e
lse can begin to judge you.’
‘It was cowardice.’
‘No, it wasn’t. Just instinct. You were in the most terrifying place in the universe, Dan, don’t forget that. Philip Lascaille went there without a Juggler transform — look what happened to him. That you stayed sane at all was a kind of bravery. Insanity would have been a lot easier on you.’
‘She could have lived. Hell, even leaving her to die the way I did — even that would have been acceptable if I’d had the courage to tell the truth about it afterwards. That would have been some atonement; God knows she deserved better than to be lied about, even after I’d killed her.’
‘You didn’t kill her; the Shroud did.’
‘I don’t even know that.’
‘What?’
He leant on his side, momentarily pausing to study Pascale. Before, his eyes could have frozen her image for posterity. But that feature no longer functioned.
‘What I mean is,’ Sylveste said, ‘I don’t even know she died out there — I mean, not at first. I survived, after all — and I was the one who lost the Juggler transform. Her chances would have been better, though not by much. But what if she came through it, the way I did? What if she found a way to stay alive, but just couldn’t communicate her presence to me? She might have drifted halfway to the edge of the Shroud before I came round. After I’d repaired the lighthugger, I never thought to look for her. It never crossed my mind she might still be alive.’
‘For a very good reason,’ Pascale said. ‘She wasn’t. You can question what you did now, but back then intuition told you she was dead. And if she didn’t die — she’d have found a way to get in touch with you.’
‘I don’t know that. I never can.’
‘Then stop dwelling on it. Or else you’ll never escape the past.’
‘Listen,’ he said, thinking of something else Falkender had said. ‘Do you ever speak to anyone apart from the guards? Like Sluka, or anyone like that?’
‘Sluka?’
‘The woman who’s holding us here.’ Sylveste realised with a yawning sensation that they had told her next to nothing. ‘There isn’t time for me to explain in anything but the simplest terms. The people who killed your father were True Path Inundationists, as near as I can tell, or at least one offshoot of the movement. We’re in Mantell.’
‘I knew it had to be somewhere outside Cuvier.’
‘Yes, and from what they told me Cuvier has been attacked.’ He held back from telling her the rest, which was that the city had most probably been rendered uninhabitable above ground. She did not have to know that — not just yet, when it was the only place she had ever known properly. ‘I’m not really sure who’s running it now — whether people loyal to your father, or a rival group of True Pathers. The way Sluka tells it, your father didn’t exactly welcome her with open arms once he’d gained control of Cuvier. Seems there was enough enmity there for her to arrange his assassination.’
‘That’s a long time to hold a grudge.’
‘Which is why Sluka is possibly not the most stable person on this planet. Actually, I don’t think capturing us figured in her plans — but now she’s got us, she isn’t quite sure what to do. Clearly we’re too potentially valuable to discard… but in the meantime —’ Sylveste paused. ‘Anyway, something may be about to change. The man who fixed my eyes told me there was a rumour about visitors.’
‘Who?’
‘My question as well. But that’s as much as he said.’
‘It’s tempting to speculate, isn’t it?’
‘If anything was likely to change things on Resurgam, it would be the arrival of Ultras.’
‘It’s a bit soon for Remilliod to return.’
Sylveste nodded. ‘If there really is a ship coming in, you can bet it isn’t Remilliod. But who else would want to trade with us?’
‘Maybe trade isn’t what they’ve come for.’
Possibly it was a sign of arrogance, but Volyova was not physically capable of letting someone else do her work, no matter how absurd the alternative. She was perfectly happy — if happy was the word — to let Khouri sit in the gunnery and do her best at shooting the cache-weapon out of the sky. She was also willing to admit that using Khouri was the only sensible option available. But that did not mean that she was prepared to sit calmly by and await the outcome. Volyova knew herself too well for that. What she needed — what she craved — was some way to attack the problem from another angle.
‘Svinoi,’ she said, because, no matter how hard she tried, an answer obdurately failed to pop into her mind. Every time she thought she had hit on an approach, a way to circumvent the weapon’s progress, another part of her mind had already jumped ahead and found some impasse further down the logical chain. It was, in a way, a testament to the fluidity of her thought that she was able to critique her own solutions as soon as they came to mind; in fact, almost before she became consciously aware of them. But it also felt — maddeningly — as if she was doing her level best to sabotage her own chances of success.
And now there was this aberration to deal with.
She called it that now, because the word served to contain the melange of incomprehension and disgust she felt whenever she forced her mind onto the topic. The topic was whatever was going on inside Khouri’s head. And, now that Khouri was immersed in the abstracted mental landscape of gunspace, the aberration necessarily included the gunnery itself, and by extension Volyova, since it was her handiwork. She was monitoring the situation closely, via neural readouts on her bracelet. There was quite a storm going on in that woman’s skull; no doubt about it. And the storm was extending troubled, flickering tendrils into gunspace.
Volyova knew that, somehow, all of this had to be related. The whole problem with the gunnery, from the beginning: Nagorny’s madness, the Sun Stealer business, and latterly the self-activation of the cache-weapon. Somehow, also, the storm in Khouri’s head — the aberration — also fitted in with things. But knowing that a solution existed, or at the very least an answer — a unifying picture which would explain everything — did not help at all.
Perhaps the most annoying aspect was that, even in a moment like this, part of her mind was dwelling on that problem, not giving itself over fully to the more pressing issue at hand. Volyova felt as if her brain consisted of a room full of precocious schoolchildren: individually bright, and — if only they would pool themselves — capable of shattering insights. But some of those schoolchildren were not paying attention; they were staring dreamily out of the window, ignoring her protestations to focus on the present, because they found their own obsessions more intellectually attractive than the dull curriculum she was intent on dispensing.
A thought budged to the front of her mind; a recollection. It concerned a series of firewall systems she had installed in the ship, upwards of four decades earlier by shiptime. She had intended that they be called into use as a final countermeasure against incursion by subversive viruses. It had not occurred to her that they would ever really be needed, and most certainly not under circumstances like this.
But all the same, she remembered them.
‘Volyova,’ she said, almost gasping, into her bracelet, straining to tug the requisite commands from her memory. ‘Access counterinsurgent protocols; lambda-plus severity, maximum battle-readiness concurrence and counter-check to be assumed, full autonomous denial-suppression, criticality-nine Armageddon defaults, red-one-alpha security-bypass, all Triumvirate privileges invoked at all levels; all non-Triumvirate privileges rescinded.’ She collected her breath; hoping that the string of incantations had opened enough doors for her into the heart of the ship’s operational matrix. ‘Now,’ she said. ‘Retrieve and run the executable coded Palsy.’ To herself she muttered, ‘And do it damned quickly!’
Palsy was the program which initiated the sealing of the firewalls she had installed. She had written Palsy herself — but it was so long ago that she barely remembered what Palsy did, or how much of the ship Palsy was
liable to affect. It was a gamble — she wanted to immobilise enough to inconvenience the cache-weapon, but most certainly not enough to hamper her own attempts at stopping it.
‘Svinoi, svinoi, svinoi…’
Error-messages were scrolling across her bracelet. They were telling her, very helpfully, that the various systems which Palsy had attempted to access and disable were no longer within Palsy’s remit; they were out-of-bounds to the program’s interference. Most of them, anyway — especially the deeper ship systems. If Palsy had functioned correctly, it would have had the same general effect on the ship as a blow on the head had to a human being — massive shut-down of all nonessential systems, and a general collapse into a state of recuperative immobility. Real damage would have been done, but mostly on a superficial level, and of a sort that Volyova would have been able to fix, disguise or invent lies about before the other crewmembers were awakened. But Palsy had worked differently. If likened to a human affliction, what the ship had suffered was more akin to an episode of mild paralysis immobilising only the epidermal layers, and then only partially. That was not at all in accordance with Volyova’s plans.
But, she realised, it would have immobilised the autonomous hull weapons, those which were not directly slaved to the gunnery and which had already blown up the shuttle. Now at least she could try the same gambit again. Of course, the weapon would have advanced further now; there was no longer an option of simply obstructing it. But if she could at least get another shuttle out into space, certain possibilities presented themselves.
A second or so later, her optimism had been shattered into a few dismal crumbs of dejection. Maybe Palsy had been meant to work this way, or maybe in the intervening forty years various ship-systems had become tangled up and interconnected, so that Palsy killed certain parts Volyova had never meant it to touch… but, for whatever reason, the shuttles were inoperative, locked out by firewalls. She tried, perfunctorily, the usual Triumvirate-level bypass commands, but none of them worked. Hardly surprising: Palsy had set up physical breaks in the command network, chasms that no amount of software intervention could possibly bridge. To get the shuttles online, Volyova would have to physically reset all those breaks — and to do that, she would have to find the map she had made, four decades earlier, of the installations. That would entail, conservatively, several days’ work.