She shrugged and folded the paper. ‘Well, I’m not really sure that he ever existed. Maybe it suited the government to create a fictitious hope figure, just so that they could clamp down on the population even more effectively. You don’t really believe all the stories, do you?’
‘About him finding a way to lead us off Resurgam? No. Nice if it happened, I suppose. Get rid of all the whiners, for a start.’
‘Is that really your attitude? That the only people who want to leave Resurgam are whiners?’
‘Sorry, love. I can tell which side of the fence you’d come down on. But some of us actually like it on this planet. No offence.’
‘None taken.’ Then she leant back in the seat and placed the folded paper across her eyes, so that it served as a mask. If that message failed to get through to the driver, she decided, there was really no hope for him.
Fortunately it did.
This time when she nodded off it was into deep sleep. She dreamed about the past, memories flashing back now that the voice of Operative Four had unlocked them. It was not that she had been able to stop thinking about Four completely, but in all that time she had managed to avoid thinking of Four as a person. It was too painful. To remember Four was to think about how she had arrived on Resurgam, and that in turn meant thinking about her other life, the one that, compared with the bleak reality of the present, seemed like a distant and improbable fiction.
But Four’s voice had been like a trapdoor into the past. There were now certain things that could not be ignored.
Why the hell had Four called her now?
She woke when the motion of the vehicle changed. The driver was backing them into an unloading bay.
‘Are we there yet?’
‘Solnhofen it is. Not exactly bright lights, big city, but this is where you wanted to go.’
Through a gap in the slats of the depot wall she could see a sky the colour of anaemic blood. Dawn, or near enough.
‘We’re a bit on the late side,’ she commented.
‘We arrived in Solnhofen a quarter of an hour ago, love. You were sleeping like a log. I didn’t want to wake you.’
‘Of course you didn’t.’ Grudgingly, she handed over the rest of the driver’s fee.
*
Remontoire watched the last few members of the Closed Council take their seats around the tiered inner surface of the privy chamber. A number of the very old were still able to make their own way to their seats, but the majority were aided by servitors, exoskeletons or black clouds of thumb-sized drones. A few were so near the end of physical life that they had nearly abandoned the flesh entirely. They came in as heads, hooked up to spiderlike mobility prostheses. One or two were massively swollen brains so full of machinery that they could no longer be housed in skulls. The brains rode inside transparent fluid-filled domes dense with throbbing support machinery. They were the most extreme Conjoined, and by this stage most of their conscious activity would have devolved into the distributed web of greater Conjoiner thought. Each retained their brain like a family unwilling to demolish a crumbling mansion even though they hardly ever lived in it.
Remontoire tasted the thoughts of each newcomer. There were people in this room he had long assumed dead, individuals who had never attended any of the Closed Council sessions in which he had participated.
It was the matter of Clavain. He brought everyone out of retirement.
Remontoire felt the sudden presence of Skade as she entered the privy chamber. She had emerged on a ring-shaped balcony halfway up the side of the spherical room. The chamber was opaque to all neural transmissions; those within it could communicate freely, but they were totally isolated from the other minds in the Mother Nest. It enabled the Closed Council to meet in session and communicate more freely than through the usual restricted neural channels.
Remontoire shaped a thought and assigned it high priority, so that it immediately cut across the general wash of gossip and gained everyone’s attention. Does Clavain know about this meeting?
Skade snapped around to address him. [Why should he know about it, Remontoire?]
Remontoire shrugged. Isn’t it him we’ve come to talk about, behind his back?
Skade smiled sweetly. [If Clavain consented to join us, there’d be no need to talk about him behind his back, would there? The problem’s his, not mine.]
Remontoire stood up, now that everyone was looking at him or directing some sort of sensory apparatus in his direction. Who said anything about a problem, Skade? What I’m objecting to is the hidden agenda behind this meeting.
[Hidden agenda? We only want what’s best for Clavain, Remontoire. As his friend I would have imagined that you’d have grasped that.]
Remontoire looked around. There was no sign of Felka, which did not surprise him in the slightest. She had every right to be present, but he doubted that she would have been on Skade’s list of invitees.
I am his friend, I admit that. He’s saved my life enough times, but even if he hadn’t… well, Clavain and I have been through more than enough together. If that means I don’t have an objective view on the matter, so be it. But I’ll tell you something. Remontoire glanced around the room, nodding as he made eye or sensor contact. All of you — or those of you who need reminding — no matter what Skade would like to make you think, Clavain owes us nothing. Without him, none of us would be here. He’s been as important to us as Galiana, and I don’t say that lightly. I knew her before anyone in this room.
Skade nodded. [Remontoire is right, of course, but you’ll note his use of the past tense. Clavain’s great deeds all lie in the past — the distant past. I don’t deny that since his return from deep space he has continued to serve us well. But then so have we all. Clavain has done no more and no less than any senior Conjoiner. But don’t we expect more of him than that?]
More than what, Skade?
[His tired devotion to mere soldiery, constantly putting himself at risk.]
Remontoire realised that, like it or not, he had become Clavain’s advocate. He felt a mild contempt for the other Council members. He knew that many of them owed their lives to Clavain, and would have admitted it under other circumstances. But Skade had them cowed.
It was down to him to speak up for his friend. Someone has to patrol the border.
[Yes. But we have younger, faster and, let us be frank here, more expendable individuals who can do precisely that. We need Clavain’s expertise here, in the Mother Nest, where we can tap it. I don’t believe that he clings to the fringes out of any sense of duty to the Nest. He does it out of pure self-interest. He gets to play at being one of us, being on the winning side, without accepting the full implications of what it means to be Conjoined. It hints at complacency, self-interest — everything that is inimical to our way. It even begins to hint at disloyalty.]
Disloyalty? No one’s shown more loyalty to the Conjoined faction than Nevil Clavain. Maybe some of you need to brush up on your history.
One of the detached heads spidered on to a seat-back. [I agree with Remontoire. Clavain doesn’t owe us anything. He’s proven himself a thousand times over. If he wants to stay outside the Council, that’s his right.]
Across the auditorium a brain lit up, its lights pulsing in synchronisation with its voice patterns. [Yes; no one doubts that, but it is equally the case that Clavain has a moral obligation to join us. He cannot continue to waste his talents outside the Council]
The brain paused while fluid pumps throbbed and gurgled. The knotted mass of neural tissue swelled and contracted for several lethargic cycles, like some horrible lump of dough. [I cannot endorse Skade’s inflammatory rhetoric. But there is no escaping the essential truth of what she says. Clavain’s continued refusal to join us is tantamount to disloyalty.]
Oh, shut up, Remontoire interjected. If you’re anything to go by, I’m not surprised Clavain has second thoughts…
[The insult!] the brain spluttered.
But Remontoire detected a suppressed wave of am
usement at his barb. The swollen brain was clearly not as universally respected as it liked to imagine. Sensing his moment, Remontoire leant forward, hands clasped tight around the railings of the balcony. What is this about, Skade? Why now, after all the years when the Closed Council has managed without him?
[What do you mean, why now?]
I mean, what exactly has precipitated this move? Something’s afoot, isn’t it?
Skade’s crest blushed maroon. Her jaw was clenched rigid. She stepped back and arched her spine like a cornered cat.
Remontoire pressed on. First we have a renewal of the starship-building programme, a century after we stopped building them for reasons so secret even the Closed Council isn’t allowed to know them. Then we have a prototype crammed with hidden machinery of unknown origin and function, the nature of which again can’t be revealed to the Closed Council. Then there’s a fleet of similar ships being put together in a comet not far from here — but again, that’s as much as we’re allowed to know. Of course, I’m sure the Inner Sanctum might have something to say on the matter…
[Be very careful, Remontoire.]
Why — because I might be in danger of harmless speculation?
Another Conjoiner, a man with a crest a little like Skade’s, stood up tentatively. Remontoire knew the man well, and was certain that he was not a member of the Inner Sanctum.
[Remontoire’s right. Something is happening, and Clavain’s just one part of it. The cessation of the shipbuilding programme, the strange circumstances surrounding Galiana’s return, the new fleet, the disturbing rumours I hear about the hell-class weapons — these things are all connected. The present war is just a distraction, and the Inner Sanctum knows it. Perhaps the true picture is simply too disturbing for we mere Closed Council members to grasp. In which case, like Remontoire, I will indulge in a little speculation and see where it takes me.]
The man looked intently at Skade before continuing. [There’s another rumour, Skade, concerning something called Exordium. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that that was the codeword Galiana gave to her final series of experiments on Mars — the ones she swore she would never repeat.]
Remontoire might have been imagining it, but he thought he saw a visible change of colour sweep through Skade’s crest at the mere mention of the word. What about Exordium? he asked.
The man turned to Remontoire. [I don’t know, but I can guess. Galiana never wanted the experiments to be repeated; the results were useful, incredibly useful, but they were also too disturbing. But once Galiana was away from the Mother Nest, off on her interstellar expedition, what was to stop the Inner Sanctum from re-running Exordium? She need never have found out about it.]
The codeword meant something to Remontoire; he had definitely heard it before. But if it referred to experiments Galiana had performed on Mars, it was something that had happened more than four hundred years earlier. It would require delicate mnemonic archaeology to dig through the strata of overlying memories, especially if the subject itself was shrouded in secrecy.
It seemed simpler to ask. What was Exordium?
I’ll tell you what it was, Remontoire.‘
The sound of a real human voice cutting through the chamber’s silence was as shocking as a scream.
Remontoire followed the sound until he saw the speaker, sitting on her own near one of the entry points. It was Felka; she must have arrived since the session had commenced.
Skade slammed a furious thought into his head. [Who invited her?]
‘I did,’ Remontoire said mildly, speaking aloud for Felka’s benefit, ‘on the assumption that you didn’t seem very likely to, and since the matter under discussion happened to be Clavain… it seemed the right thing to do.’
‘It was,’ Felka said. Remontoire saw something move in her hand and realised that she had brought a mouse into the privy chamber. ‘Wasn’t it, Skade?’
Skade sneered. [There’s no need to talk aloud. It takes too long. She can hear our thoughts as well as any of us.]
‘But if you were to hear my thoughts, you’d probably all go mad,’ Felka said. The way she smiled was all the more chilling, Remontoire thought, because what she said was probably true. ‘So rather than risk that…’ She looked down, the mouse chasing its tail around her hand.
[You have no right to be here.]
‘But I do, Skade. If I wasn’t recognised as a Closed Council member, the privy chamber wouldn’t have admitted me. And if I wasn’t a Closed Council member, I’d hardly be in a position to talk about Exordium, would I?’
The man who had first mentioned the codeword spoke aloud, his voice high and trembling. ‘So my guess was correct, was it, Skade?’
[Ignore anything she says. She knows nothing about the programme.]
‘Then I can say what I like, can’t I, and none of it will matter. Exordium was an experiment, Remontoire, an attempt to achieve unification between consciousness and quantum superposition. It happened on Mars; you can verify that much for yourself. But Galiana got far more than she bargained for. She curtailed the experiments, frightened at what she had invoked. And that should have been the end of it.’ Felka looked directly at Skade, tauntingly. ‘But it wasn’t, was it? The experiments were begun again, about a century ago. It was an Exordium message that made us stop making ships.’
‘A message?’ Remontoire said, perplexed.
‘From the future,’ Felka said, as if this should have been obvious from the start.
‘You’re not serious.’
‘I’m perfectly serious, Remontoire. I should know — I took part in one of the experiments.’
Skade’s thoughts scythed across the room. [We’re here to discuss Clavain, not this.]
Felka continued to speak calmly. She was, Remontoire thought, the only one in the room who was unfazed by Skade, including himself. Felka’s head already held worse horrors than Skade could imagine. ‘But we can’t discuss one without discussing the other, Skade. The experiments have continued, haven’t they? And they have something to do with what’s happening now. The Inner Sanctum’s learned something, and they’d rather the rest of us didn’t know anything about it.’
Skade clenched her jaw again. [The Inner Sanctum has identified a coming crisis.]
‘What kind of crisis?’ asked Felka.
[A bad one.]
Felka nodded sagely and pushed a strand of lank black hair from her eyes. ‘And Clavain’s role in all this — where does he come in?’
Skade’s pain was almost tangible. Her thoughts arrived in clipped packets, as if, between her utterances, she was waiting for a silent speaker to offer her guidance. [We need Clavain to help us. The crisis can be… lessened… with Clavain’s assistance.]
‘What kind of assistance did you have in mind, exactly?’ Felka persisted.
A tiny vein twitched in Skade’s brow. Jarring colour waves chased each other along her crest, like the patterns in a dragonfly’s wing. [A long time ago, we lost some objects of value. Now we know exactly where they are. We want Clavain to help us get them back.]
‘And these “objects”,’ Felka said. ‘They wouldn’t by any chance be weapons, would they?’
The Inquisitor said farewell to the driver who had brought her to Solnhofen. She had slept for five or six hours clean through on the drive, offering the driver ample opportunity to rifle her belongings or strand her in the middle of nowhere. But everything was intact, including her gun. The driver had even left her with the newspaper clipping, the one about Thorn.
Solnhofen itself was every bit as miserable and squalid as she had suspected it would be. She only had to wander around the centre for a few minutes before she found what passed for the settlement’s heart: an apron of ground surrounded by two slovenly-looking hostels, a couple of drab administrative structures and a motley assortment of drinking establishments. Looming beyond the centre were the hulking repair sheds that were Solnhofen’s reason for existence. Far to the north, vast terraforming machines worked to speed
the conversion of Resurgam’s atmosphere into a fully human-breathable form. These atmospheric refineries had functioned perfectly for a few decades, but now they were becoming old and unreliable. Keeping them working was a major drain on the planet’s centrally managed economy. Communities like Solnhofen made a precarious living from servicing and crewing the terraforming rigs, but the work was hard and unforgiving, and required — demanded — a certain breed of worker.
The Inquisitor remembered that as she stepped into the hostel. She had expected it to be quiet at this time of day, but when she shoved open the door it was like stepping into a party that had only just passed its peak. There was music and shouting and laughter, hard, boisterous laughter that reminded her of barracks rooms on Sky’s Edge. A few drinkers had already passed out, huddled over their mugs like pupils guarding homework. The air was clotted with chemicals that made her eyes sting. She clenched her teeth against the noise and swore softly. Trust Four to pick a dump like this. She remembered the first time they had met. It had been in a bar in a carousel orbiting Yellowstone, probably the worst dive she had ever been in. Four had many talents, but selecting salubrious meeting places was not one of them.
Fortunately no one had noticed the Inquisitor’s arrival. She pushed past some semi-comatose bodies to what passed for the bar: a hole punched through one wall, ragged brickwork at the edges. A surly woman pushed drinks through like prison rations, snatching back money and spent glasses with almost indecent haste.
‘Give me a coffee,’ the Inquisitor said.
‘There isn’t any coffee.’
‘Then give me the nearest fucking equivalent.’
‘You shouldn’t speak like that.’
‘I’ll speak any fucking way I want to. Especially until I get a coffee.’ She leant on the plastic lip of the serving hatch. ‘You can get me one, can’t you? I mean, it’s not like I’m asking for the world.’
‘You government?’
‘No, just thirsty. And a tiny bit irritable. It’s morning, you see, and I really don’t do mornings.’