Clavain raised an eyebrow. ‘The other side?’
‘The quantum-vacuum state in which matter has imaginary inertial mass. By imaginary I mean in the purely mathematical sense, in the sense that the square root of minus one is an imaginary number. Of course, you immediately see what that would imply.’
‘You’re talking about tachyonic matter,’ Clavain said. ‘Matter travelling faster than light.’
‘Yes.’ Clavain’s host seemed pleased. ‘It appears that Merrier and Sukhoi’s final experiment concerned the transition between tardyonic — the matter we are familiar with — and tachyonic matter states. They were exploring the vacuum states that would allow the construction of a faster-than-light propulsion system.’
‘That’s simply not possible,’ Clavain said.
H put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Actually, I don’t think that is quite the right way to think about it. The grubs knew, of course. This technology had been theirs, and yet they chose to crawl between the stars. That should have told us all we needed to know. It is not that it is impossible, merely that it is very, very inadvisable.’
For a long time they stood in silence, on the threshold of the bleak room where Merrier had been unthreaded from existence.
‘Has anyone attempted those experiments again?’ Clavain asked.
‘No, not after what happened to Merrier. Quite frankly, no one was very keen to do any further work on the grub machinery. We’d learned enough as it was. The basement was evacuated. Almost no one ever comes down here these days. Those who do sometimes say they see ghosts; perhaps they’re the residual shadows of all those who suffered the same fate as Merrier. I’ve never seen the ghosts myself, I have to say, and people’s minds do play tricks on them.’ He forced false cheer into his voice, an effort that had the opposite effect to that intended. ‘One mustn’t credit such things. You don’t believe in ghosts, do you, Mr Clavain?’
‘I never used to,’ he said, wishing devoutly to be somewhere other than in the basement of the Chateau.
‘These are strange times,’ H said, with no little sympathy. ‘I sense that we live at the end of history, that great scores are soon to be settled. Difficult choices must soon be made. Now, shall we go and see the people I mentioned earlier on?’
Clavain nodded. ‘I can’t wait.’
Antoinette left the rim train at the closest station to the rented repair shop. Something about Xavier’s attitude had struck her as unusual, but it was nothing she could quite put her finger on. With some trepidation she checked out the repair shop’s waiting area and business desk. Nothing doing there, just a ‘closed for business’ sign on the door. She double-checked that the repair bay was pressurised and then pushed through to the interior of the bay itself. She took the nearest connecting catwalk, never looking down. The air in the bay was heady with aerosols. She was sneezing by the time she reached the ship’s own airlock, and her eyes were itching.
‘Xavier…’ she called.
But if he was deep inside Storm Bird he would never hear her. She would either have to find him or wait until he came out. She had told him she would arrive in twenty minutes.
She went through into the main flight deck. Everything looked normal. Xavier had called up some of the less commonly used diagnostic read-outs, some of which were sufficiently obscure that even Antoinette viewed them with mild incomprehension. But that was exactly what she would have expected when Xavier had half the ship’s guts out on the table.
‘I’m really, really sorry.’
She looked around, seeing Xavier standing behind her with an expression on his face that meant he was begging forgiveness for something. Behind him were two people she did not recognise. The taller of the two strangers indicated that she should follow them back into the lounge area aft of the main bridge.
‘Please do as I tell you, Antoinette,’ the man said. ‘This shouldn’t take long.’
Xavier said, ‘I think you’d better do it. I’m sorry I made you come here, but they said they’d start trashing the ship if I didn’t.’
Antoinette nodded, stooping back along the connecting corridor. ‘You did right, Xave. Don’t eat yourself up over it. Well, who are these clowns? Have they introduced themselves?’
‘The tall one’s Mr Clock. The other one, the pig, he’s Mr Pink.’
The two of them nodded in turn as Xavier spoke their names.
‘But who are they?’
‘They haven’t said, but here’s a wild stab in the dark. They’re interested in Clavain. I think they might possibly be spiders, or working for the spiders.’
‘Are you?’ Antoinette asked.
‘Hardly,’ Remontoire said. ‘And as for my friend here…’
Mr Pink shook his gargoylelike head. ‘Not me.’
‘I’d let you examine us if the circumstances were more amenable,’ Remontoire continued. ‘I assure you there are no Conjoiner implants in either of us.’
‘Which doesn’t mean you aren’t spider stooges,’ Antoinette said. ‘Now, what do I need to do in order for you to get the fuck off my ship?’
‘As Mr Liu correctly judged, we’re interested in Nevil Clavain. Have a seat…’ The one called Clock said it with steely emphasis this time. ‘Please, let’s be civil.’
Antoinette folded out a chair from the wall and parked herself in it. ‘I’ve never heard of anyone called Clavain,’ she said.
‘But your partner has.’
‘Yeah. Nice one, Xave.’ She gave him a look. Why couldn’t he have just pleaded ignorance?
‘It’s no good, Antoinette,’ Clock said. ‘We know that you brought him here. We are not in any way angry with you for doing that — it was the human thing to do, after all.’
She folded her arms. ‘And?’
‘All you have to do is tell us what happened next. Where Clavain went once you brought him to Carousel New Copenhagen.’
I don’t know.‘
‘So he just magically disappeared, is that it? Without a word of thanks, or any indication of what he was going to do next?’
‘Clavain told me the less I knew the better.’
Clock looked at the pig for a moment. Antoinette decided that she had scored a point. Clavain had wanted her to know as little as possible. It was only through her own efforts that she had found out a little more, but Clock did not have to know that.
She added, ‘Of course, I kept asking him. I was curious about what he was doing here. I knew he was a spider, too. But he wouldn’t tell me. Said it was for my own good. I argued, but he stuck to his guns. I’m glad he did now. There’s nothing you can force me to tell you because I simply don’t know.’
‘So just tell us exactly what happened,’ Clock said soothingly. ‘That’s all you have to do. We’ll work out what Clavain had in mind, and then we’ll be on our way. You’ll never hear from us again.’
I told you, he just left. No word of where he was going, nothing. Goodbye and thanks. That was all he said.‘
‘He wouldn’t have had documentation or money,’ Clock said, as if to himself, ‘so he couldn’t have got far without a little help from you. If he didn’t ask for money, he’s probably still on Carousel New Copenhagen.’ The thin, deathly pale man leaned toward her. ‘So tell me. Did he ask for anything?’
‘No,’ she said, with just the tiniest hesitation.
‘She’s lying,’ the pig said.
Clock nodded gravely. I think you’re right, Mr Pink. I hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but there you have it. Needs must, as they say. Do you have the item, Mr Pink?‘
‘The item, Mr Clock? You mean…’
Between the pig’s feet was a perfectly black box, like an oblong of shadow. He pushed it forwards, leaned down and touched some hidden mechanism. The box shuffled open to reveal many more compartments than appeared feasible from its size. Each held a piece of polished silver machinery nesting in precisely shaped cushioning foam. Mr Pink took out one of the pieces and held it up for scrutiny. Then he took out another
piece and connected the two together. Despite the clumsiness of his hands he worked with great care, his eyes focused sharply on the work in progress.
‘He’ll have it ready in a jiffy,’ Clock said. ‘It’s a field trawl, Antoinette. Of spider manufacture, I’m obliged to add. Do you know a great deal about trawls?’
‘Fuck off.’
‘Well, I’ll tell you anyway. It’s perfectly safe, isn’t it, Mr Pink?’
‘Perfectly safe, Mr Clock.’
‘Or at least, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be. But field trawls are a different matter, aren’t they? They’re not nearly as proven as the larger models. They have a much higher probability of leaving the subject with neural damage. Even death isn’t entirely unheard of, is it, Mr Pink?’
The pig looked up from his activities. ‘One hears things, Mr Clock. One hears things.’
‘Well, I’m sure the detrimental effects are exaggerated… but nonetheless, it’s not at all advisable to use a field trawl when there are alternative procedures available.’ Clock made eye contact with Antoinette again. His eyes were sunk deep inside their sockets and his appearance made her want to look away. ‘Are you quite sure Clavain didn’t say where he was going?’
‘I told you, he didn’t…’
‘Continue, Mr Pink.’
‘Wait,’ Xavier said.
They all looked at him, even the pig. Xavier started to say something else. And then the ship began to shake, quite without warning, yawing and twisting against its docking constraints. Its chemical thrusters were firing, loosing pulses of gas in opposing directions, the din of it like a cannonade.
The airlock behind Antoinette closed. She grabbed at a railing for support, and then tugged a belt across her waist.
Something was happening. She had no idea what, but it was definitely something. Through the nearest window she saw the repair bay choking in dense orange propellant fumes. Something broke free with a screech of severed metal. The ship lurched even more violently.
‘Xavier…’ she mouthed.
But Xavier had already got himself into a seat.
And they were falling.
She watched the pig and Clock scramble for support. They folded down their own seats and webbed themselves in. Antoinette seriously doubted that they had much more of an idea than she did about what was going on. Equally, they were smart enough not to want to be untethered aboard a ship that gave every indication that it was about to do something violent.
They hit something. The collision compressed every bone in her spine. The repair bay door, she thought — Xavier had pressurised the well so he and his monkeys could work without suits. The ship had just rammed into the door.
The ship rose again. She felt the lightness in her belly.
And then it dropped.
This time there was only a muffled bump as they hit the door. Through the window Antoinette saw the orange smoke vanish in an instant. The repair bay had just lost all its air. The walls slid past as the ship pushed its way into space.
‘Make this stop,’ Clock said.
‘It’s out of my hands, buddy,’ Xavier told him.
‘This is a trick,’ the spider said. ‘You wanted us aboard the ship all along.’
‘So sue me,’ Xavier said.
‘Xavier…’ Antoinette did not have to shout. It was perfectly silent aboard Storm Bird, even as she scraped through what remained of the bay door. ‘Xavier… please tell me what’s happening.’
‘I rigged an emergency program,’ Xavier said. ‘Figured it’d come in handy one day, if we ever got into just this situation.’
‘Just this situation?’
I guess it was worth it,‘ he said.
‘Is that why there were no monkeys working?’
‘Hey.’ He feigned insult. ‘Credit me with some foresight, will you?’
They were weightless. Storm Bird fell away from Carousel New Copenhagen, surrounded by a small constellation of debris. Fascinated despite herself, Antoinette inspected the damage they had left behind. They had punched a ship-shaped hole through the door.
‘Holy shit, Xave. Have you any idea what that’ll cost us?’
‘So we’ll be a little bit longer in the red. I figured it was an acceptable tradeoff.’
‘It won’t help you,’ Clock said. ‘We’re still here, and there’s nothing you can do to us that won’t hurt yourselves at the same time. So forget about depressurisation, or executing high-gee-load thrust patterns. They won’t work. The problem you had to deal with five minutes ago hasn’t gone away.’
‘The only difference,’ Mr Pink said,‘ is that you just burned a lot of goodwill’
‘You were about to rip her head open to get at her memories,’ Xavier said. ‘If that’s your idea of goodwill, you can stick it where the sun doesn’t shine.’
Mr Pink’s half-assembled trawl was floating through the cabin. He had let go of it during the escape.
‘You wouldn’t have learned anything anyway,’ Antoinette said, ‘because I don’t know what Clavain was going to do. Maybe I’m not putting that in sufficiently simple terms for you.’
‘Get the trawl, Mr Pink,’ Remontoire said. The pig glared at him until Clock added, with distinct overemphasis, ‘Please, Mr Pink.’
‘Yes, Mr Clock,’ the pig said, with the same snide undertone.
The pig fumbled at his webbing. He was almost out of it when the ship surged forward. The trawl was the only thing not tied down. It smashed against one of Storm Bird’s unyielding walls, breaking into half a dozen glittering pieces.
Xavier couldn’t have programmed that in, could he? Antoinette wondered.
‘Clever,’ Clock said. ‘But not clever enough. Now we’ll have to get it out of you via some other means, won’t we?’
The ship was under constant steady thrust now. Still Antoinette heard nothing, and that started her worrying. Chemical rockets were noisy: they transmitted their sound right through the framework of the hull even though the ship was in vacuum. Ion thrust was silent, but it couldn’t sustain this kind of acceleration. But the tokamak fusion motor was totally silent, suspended in a loom of magnetic fields.
They were on fusion thrust.
Holy shit…
There was a mandatory death sentence for using fusion motors within the Rust Belt. Even using nuclear rockets this close to a carousel would have brought heinous penalties; almost certainly she would never have flown in space again. But fusion thrust was an instrument of potential lethality. A misdirected fusion flame could sever a carousel in seconds…
‘Xavier, if you can do anything about this, get us back on to chems immediately.’
‘Sorry, Antoinette, but I figured this was for the best.’
‘You did, did you?’
‘Yes, and I’ll take the rap for it if it comes to that. But listen, we’re being held hostage here. That changes the rules. Right now we want the police to pay us a visit. All I’m doing is waving a flag.’
‘That sounds great in theory, Xave, but…’
‘No buts. It’ll work. They’ll see that I deliberately kept the flame away from habitations. Matter of fact, there’s even an SOS modulation buried in the pulse pattern, though it’s much too rapid for us to feel.’
‘You think the cops’ll notice that?’
‘No, but they’ll sure as hell be able to verify it afterwards, which is all that matters. They’ll see that this was a clear attempt at signalling for help.’
‘I admire your optimism,’ Clock said. ‘But it won’t come to a court of law. They’ll simply shoot you out of the sky for violating protocol. You’ll never have a chance to explain yourself.’
‘He’s right,’ Mr Pink said. ‘You want to live, you’d better turn this ship around and scuttle back to Carousel New Copenhagen.’
‘Back to square one? You’ve got to be joking.’
‘It’s that or die, Mr Liu.’
Xavier undid his seat restraints. ‘You two,’ he said, pointing at the t
wo visitors, ‘had better stay put. It’s for your own good.’
‘What about me?’ Antoinette said.
‘Stay where you are — it’s safer. I’ll be back in a minute.’
She had no choice but to trust him. Only Xavier knew the details of the program he had loaded into Beast, and if she started moving around as well she might come to harm if the ship made another violent thrust change. There would be arguments later, she knew — she was not happy that he had installed this set of tricks without even telling her — but for now she had to admit that Xavier had the upper hand. Even if all it might gain them was a few minutes of breathing time.
Xavier was gone, off towards the flight deck.
She glared at Clock. ‘I liked Clavain a lot better than you, you know.’
Xavier entered Storm Bird’s flight deck, making sure the door was sealed behind him, and settled into the pilot’s seat. The console displays were still in deep-diagnostic mode, not at all what one would expect of a ship in mid-flight. Xavier spent his first thirty seconds restoring the normal avionics readouts, bringing the ship into something resembling routine flight status. Immediately a synthetic voice started screeching at him that he needed to shut down fusion thrust, because according to at least eight local transponder beacons he was still within the Rust Belt, and thereby obliged to use nothing more energetic than chemical rockets…
‘Beast?’ Xavier whispered. ‘Better do it. They’ll have seen us by now, I’m pretty sure.’
Beast said nothing.
‘It’s safe,’ Xavier said, still whispering. ‘Antoinette’s staying downship with the two creeps. She’s not going anywhere soon.’
When the ship spoke to him, its voice was much lower and softer than it ever was when it addressed Antoinette. ‘I hope we did the right thing, Xavier.’
The ship rumbled as fusion thrust was smoothly supplanted by nuclear rockets. Xavier was pretty sure they were still within fifty kilometres of Carousel New Copenhagen, which meant even using nuclear rockets was in contravention of a list of rules as long as his arm, but he still wanted to attract some attention.