Remontoire looked at Felka; Felka looked back at him and nodded.
‘Lead on, Skade,’ said Remontoire.
‘Very well.’
The barricade wheezed open, revealing an even darker and deader space beyond it. They stepped through and then descended several further levels via vertical shafts, riding piston-shaped discs.
Remontoire examined his feelings but nothing was out of the ordinary. He raised a quizzical eyebrow in Felka’s direction, to which she responded with a short shake of her head. She felt nothing unusual either, and she was a good deal more attuned to such matters than he was.
They continued on through normal corridors, pausing now and then until they regained the energy to continue. Eventually they arrived at a plain stretch of walling devoid of any indicators — real, holographic or entoptic — to mark it as out of the ordinary. Yet the crab halted at a certain spot and after a moment a hole opened in the wall at chest height, enlarging to form an aperture shaped like a cat’s pupil. Red light spilled through the inverted gash.
‘This is where I live,’ the crab told them. ‘Please come in.’
They followed the crab into a large warm space. Remontoire looked around, realising as he did so that nothing he saw matched his expectations. He was simply in an almost empty room. There were a few items of machinery in it, but only one thing, resembling a small, slightly macabre piece of sculpture, that he did not instantly recognise. The room was filled with the soft hum of equipment, but again the sound was not unfamiliar.
The largest item was the first thing he had noticed. It was a black egg-shaped pod resting on a heavy rust-red pedestal inset with quivering analogue dials. The pod had the antique look of much modern space technology, like a relic from the earliest days of near-Earth exploration. He recognised it as an escape pod of Demarchist design, simple and robust. Conjoiner ships never carried escape pods.
This unit was marked with warning instructions in all the common languages — Norte, Russish, Canasian — along with icons and diagrams in bright primary colours. There were bee-stripes and cruciform thrusters; the grey bulges of sensors and communication systems; collapsed solar-wings and parachutes. There were explosive bolts around a door and a tiny triangular window in the door itself.
There was something in the pod. Remontoire saw a curve of pale flesh through the window, indistinct because it was embedded in a matrix of amber cushioning gel or some cloying medical nutrient. The flesh moved, breathing slowly.
‘Skade… ?’ he said, thinking of the injuries he had seen when he had visited her before their departure.
‘Go ahead,’ the crab said. ‘Have a look. I’m sure it will surprise you.’
Remontoire and Felka eased closer to the pod. There was a figure packed inside it, pink and foetal. Remontoire saw lines and catheters, and watched the figure move almost imperceptibly no more than once a minute. It was breathing.
It wasn’t Skade, or even what had remained of Skade. It definitely wasn’t human.
‘What is it?’ Felka asked, her voice barely a whisper.
‘Scorpio,’ Remontoire said. ‘The hyperpig, the one we found on the Demarchist ship.’
Felka touched the metal wall of the pod. Remontoire did likewise, feeling the rhythmic churning of life-support systems. ‘Why is he here?’ Felka asked.
‘He’s on his way back to justice,’ Skade said. ‘Once we’re near the inner system we’ll eject the pod and let the Ferrisville Convention recover him.’
‘And then?’
‘They’ll try him and find him guilty of the many crimes he is supposed to have committed,’ Skade said. ‘And then, under the present legislation, they’ll kill him. Irreversible neural death.’
‘You sound as if you approve.’
‘We have to co-operate with the Convention,’ Skade said. ‘They can make life difficult for us in our dealings around Yellowstone. The pig has to be handed back to them one way or another. It would have been very convenient for us if he had died in our custody, believe me. Unfortunately, this way he has a small chance of survival.’
‘What kind of crimes are we talking about?’ Felka asked.
‘War crimes,’ Skade said breezily.
‘That doesn’t tell me anything. How can he be a war criminal if he isn’t affiliated to a recognised faction?’
‘It’s very simple,’ Skade said. ‘Under the terms of the Convention virtually any extralegal act committed in the war zone becomes a war crime, by definition. And there’s no shortage in Scorpio’s case. Murder. Assassination. Terrorism. Blackmail. Theft. Extortion. Eco-sabotage. Trafficking in unlicensed alpha-level intelligences. Frankly, he’s been involved in every criminal activity you can think of from Chasm City to the Rust Belt. If it were peacetime, they’d be serious enough. But in a time of war, most of those crimes carry a mandatory penalty of irreversible death. He’d have earned it several times over even if the nature of the murders themselves wasn’t taken into consideration.’
The pig breathed in and out. Remontoire watched the protective gel tremble as he moved and wondered if he were dreaming, and if so what shape those dreams assumed. Did pigs dream? He was not sure. He did not remember if Run Seven had had anything to say on the matter. But then, Run Seven’s mind had not exactly been put together like other pigs‘. He had been a very early and imperfectly formed specimen, and his mental state had been a long way from anything Remontoire would have termed sane. Which was not to say that he had been stupid, or lacking in ingenuity. The tortures and methods of coercion that the pirate had used on Remontoire had been adequate testimony to his intelligence and originality. Even now, somewhere at the back of his mind (there were days when he did not notice it) there was a scream that had never ended; a thread of agony that connected him with the past.
‘What exactly were these murders?’ Felka repeated.
‘He likes killing humans, Felka. He makes something of an art of it. I don’t pretend there aren’t others like him, criminal scum making the most of the present situation.’ Skade’s crab hopped through the air and landed deftly on the side of the pod. ‘But he’s different. He revels in it.’
Remontoire spoke softly. ‘Clavain and I trawled him. The memories we dug out of his head were enough to have him executed there and then.’
‘So why didn’t you?’ asked Felka.
‘Under more favourable circumstances, I think we might have.’
‘The pig needn’t detain us,’ Skade said. ‘It’s his good fortune that Clavain defected, forcing us to make this journey to the inner system, or we’d have had to return a corpse, packed into a high-burn missile warhead. That option was seriously considered. We’d have been perfectly within our rights.’
Remontoire stepped away from the pod. I thought it might be you in there.‘
‘And were you relieved to find it wasn’t me?’
The voice startled him, because it had not come from the crab. He looked around and for the first time paid proper attention to the unfamiliar object he had only glanced at before. It had reminded him of a sculpture: a cylindrical silver pedestal in the middle of the room, supporting a detached human head.
The head vanished into the pedestal somewhere near the middle of the neck, joined to it by a tight black seal. The pedestal was only slightly wider than the head, flaring towards a thick base inset with various gauges and sockets. Now and then it gurgled and clicked with inscrutable medical processes.
The head swivelled slightly to greet them and then spoke, pushing thoughts into his head. [Yes, it’s me. I’m glad you were able to follow my proxy. We’re inside the range of the device now. Do you feel any ill effects?]
Only a little queasiness, Remontoire replied.
Felka stepped closer to the pedestal. ‘Do you mind if I touch you?’
[Be my guest.]
Remontoire watched her press her fingers lightly across Skade’s face, tracing its contours with horrified care. It is you, isn’t it? he asked.
[You
seem a little surprised. Why? Does my state disturb you? I’ve experienced far more unsettling conditions than this, I assure you. This is merely temporary.]
But behind her thoughts he sensed chasms of horror; self-disgust so extreme that it had become something close to awe. He wondered if Skade was letting him taste her feelings deliberately, or whether her control was simply not good enough to mask what she really felt.
Why did you let Delmar do this to you?
[It wasn’t his idea. It would have taken too long to heal my entire body, and Delmar’s equipment was too bulky to bring along. I suggested that he remove my head, which was perfectly intact.]
She glanced down, though she could not tilt her head. [This life-support apparatus is simple, reliable and compact enough for my needs. There are some problems with maintaining the precise blood chemistry that my brain would experience if it were connected to a fully functioning body — hormones, that sort of thing — but apart from some slight emotional lability, the effects are pretty minor.]
Felka stepped back. ‘What about your body?’
[Delmar will have a replacement ready, fully clone-cultured, when I get back to the Mother Nest. The reattachment procedure won’t cause him any difficulties, especially since the decortication happened under controlled circumstances.]
‘Well, that’s fine then. But unless I’m missing something, you’re still a prisoner.’
[No. I have a certain degree of mobility, even now.] The head spun around through a disconcerting two hundred and seventy degrees. From out of the room’s shadows stepped what Remontoire had until then taken to be a waiting general-utility servitor, the kind one might find in any well-appointed household. The bipedal androform machine had a dejected, slumped appearance. It was headless, with a circular aperture between its shoulders.
[Help me into it, please. The servitor can do it, but it always seems to take an eternity to do it properly.]
Help you into it? Remontoire queried.
[Grasp the support pillar immediately beneath my neck.]
Remontoire placed both hands around the silver pedestal and pulled. There was a soft click and the upper part, along with the head, came loose in his hands. He elevated it, finding it much heavier than he had imagined it would be. Hanging beneath the place where the pedestal had separated was a knot of slimy wriggling cables. They thrashed and groped like a fistful of eels.
[Now carry me — gently — to the servitor.]
Remontoire did as she asked. Perhaps the possibility of dropping the head flickered through his mind once or twice, though rationally he doubted that the fall would do Skade very much harm: the floor would most likely soften to absorb the impact. But he fought to keep such thoughts as well censored as he could.
[Now pop me down into the body of the servitor. The connections will establish themselves. Gently now… gently does it.]
He slid the silver core into the machine until he encountered resistance. Is that it?
[Yes.] Skade’s eyes widened perceptibly, and her skin took on a blush it had lacked before. [Yes. Connection established. Now, let’s see… motor control…]
The servitor’s forearm jerked violently forwards, the fist clenching and unclenching spasmodically. Skade pulled it back and held the outspread hand before her eyes, studying the mechanical anatomy of gloss-black and chrome with rapt fascination. The servitor was of a quaint design that resembled medieval armour; it was both beautiful and brutal.
You seem to have the hang of it.
The servitor took a shuffling step forwards, both arms held slightly in front of it. [Yes… This is my quickest adjustment yet. It almost makes me think I should instruct Delmar not to bother.]
‘Not to bother doing what?’ asked Felka.
[Healing my old body. I think I prefer this one. That’s a joke, incidentally.]
‘Of course,’ Felka said uneasily.
[But you should be grateful that this has happened to me. It makes me more likely to try to bring Clavain back into our possession alive.]
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because I would very much like him to see what he has done to me.’ Skade turned around with a creak of metal. ‘Now, there is something else you wanted to see, I think. Shall we continue?’
The suit of armour led them out of the room.
Chapter 15
A WORD PRESSED itself into Volyova’s skull, as hard and searing as a cattle brand.
[Ilia.]
She could not speak, could only shape her own thoughts in response. Yes. How do you know my name?
[I’ve come to know you. You’ve shown such interest in me — in us — that it was difficult not to know you in return.]
Again she moved to hammer on the door that had sealed her inside the cache weapon, but when she tried to lift her arm nothing happened. She was paralysed, though still able to breathe. The presence, whatever it was, continued to feel as if it was directly behind her, looking over her shoulder.
Who… She sensed a terrible mocking delight in her own ignorance.
[The controlling subpersona of this weapon, of course. You can call me Seventeen. Who else did you think I was?]
You speak Russish.
[I know your preferred natural language filters. Russish is easy enough. An old language. It hasn’t changed much since the time we were made.]
Why… now?
[You have never reached this deeply into one of us before, Ilia.]
I… have. Nearly.
[Perhaps. But never under quite these circumstances. Never with so much fear before you even began. You are quite desperate to use us, aren’t you? More than you’ve ever been before.]
She felt, despite still being paralysed, a tiny easing of her terror. So the presence was a computer program, no more than that. She had simply triggered a layer of the weapon’s control mechanism that she had never knowingly invoked before. The presence felt almost preternaturally evil, but that — and the paralysis — was obviously just a refinement of the usual fear-generation mechanism.
Volyova wondered how the weapon was talking to her. She had no implants, and yet the weapon’s voice was definitely speaking directly into her skull. It could only be that the chamber she was in was functioning as a kind of high-powered inverse trawl, stimulating brain function by the application of intense magnetic fields. If it could make her feel terror, Volyova supposed, and with such finesse, it would not have been a great deal more difficult for it to generate ghost signals along her auditory nerve or, more probably, in the hearing centre itself, and to pick up the anticipatory neural firing patterns that accompanied the intention to speak.
These are desperate times…
[So it would seem.]
Who made you?
There was no immediate answer from Seventeen. For a moment the fear was gone, the neural thrall interrupted by a blank instant of calm, like the drawing of breath between agonised screams.
[We don’t know.]
No?
[No. They didn’t want us to know.]
Volyova marshalled her thoughts with the care of someone placing heavy ornaments on a rickety shelf. I think the Conjoiners made you. That’s my working hypothesis, and nothing you’ve told me has led me to think it might need reconsidering.
[It doesn’t matter who made us, does it? Not now.]
Probably not. I’d like to know for curiosity’s sake, but the most important thing is that you’re still capable of serving me.
The weapon tickled the part of her mind that registered amusement. [Serving you, Ilia? Whatever gave you that impression?]
You did what I asked of you, in the past. Not you specifically, Seventeen -1 never asked anything of you — but whenever I asked anything of the other weapons, they always obeyed me.
[We didn’t obey you, Ilia.]
No?
[No. We humoured you. It amused us to do what you asked of us. Often that was indistinguishable from following your commands — but only from your point of view.]
You’re just saying that.
[No. You see, Ilia, whoever made us gave us a degree of free will. There must have been a reason for that. Perhaps we were expected to act autonomously, or to piece together a course of action from incomplete or corrupted orders. We must have been created to be doomsday weapons, you see, weapons of final resort. Instruments of End Times.]
You still are.
[And are these End Times, Ilia?]
I don’t know. I think they might be.
[You were frightened before you came here, I can tell. We all can. What exactly is it that you want of us, Ilia?]
There’s a problem you might have to attend to.
[A local problem?]
In this system, yes. I’d need you to deploy beyond the ship… beyond this chamber… and help me.
[But what if we decide not to help you?]
You will. I’ve looked after you for so long, taking care of you, keeping you safe from harm. I know you’ll help me.
The weapon held her suspended, stroking her mind playfully. Now she knew what a mouse felt like after the cat had caught it. She felt that she was only an instant away from having her spine broken in two.
But as abruptly as it had come, the paralysis eased. The weapon still imprisoned her, but she was regaining some voluntary muscle control.
[Perhaps, Ilia. But let’s not pretend that there aren’t complicating factors.]
Nothing we can’t work around…
[It will be very difficult for us to do anything without the co-operation of the other one, Ilia. Even if we wanted to.]
The other one?
[The other… entity… that continues to exert a degree of control over us.]
Her mind dwelled on the possibilities before she realised what the weapon had to be talking about. You mean the Captain.