‘How did you learn all this?’
‘Ways and means, Mr Clavain. Even before the Mademoiselle beat me to the alien, I had become dimly aware of her existence. I had my own webs of influence in Chasm City, and she had hers. For the most part we were discrete, but now and then our activities would brush against each other. I was curious, so I tried to learn more. But she resisted my attempts to infiltrate the Chateau for many years. It was only when she had the creature that I think she became distracted by him, consumed by his alien puzzle. Then I was able to get agents into the building. You’ve met Zebra? She was one of them. Zebra learned what she could and put in place the conditions I needed for the takeover. But that was long after Skade had come here.’
Clavain thought things through. ‘So Skade must have known something about the alien?’
‘Evidently. You’re the Conjoiner, Mr Clavain — shouldn’t you know?’
‘I’ve learned too much already. That’s why I chose to defect.’
They walked on, exiting the prison. Clavain was as relieved to be out of it as when he had left the room holding the palanquin. Perhaps it was his imagination, but he felt as if some of the creature’s isolated torment had imprinted itself on the room’s atmosphere. There was a feeling of intense dread and confinement that only abated once he had left the room.
‘Where are you taking me now?’
‘To the basement first, because I think there is something there that will interest you, and then I will take you to some people I would very much like you to meet.’
Clavain said, ‘Do these people have something to do with Skade?’
‘I think everything’s to do with Skade, don’t you? I think something may have happened to her when she visited the Chateau.’
H showed him to an elevator. The car was a skeletal affair fashioned from iron spirals and filigrees. The floor was a cold iron grillework with many gaps in it. H slid shut a creaking door formed from scissoring iron chevrons, latching it just as the elevator began its descent. At first the progress was ponderous, Clavain guessing that it would take the better part of an hour to reach the building’s lower levels. But the elevator, in its creaking fashion, accelerated faster and faster, until a substantial wind was ramming through the perforated flooring.
‘Skade’s mission was deemed a failure,’ Clavain said over the rumble and screech of the elevator’s descent.
‘Yes, but not necessarily from the Mademoiselle’s point of view. Consider: she had extended her web of influence into every facet of Chasm City life. Within limits, she could make anything happen that she wished. Her reach included the Rust Belt, all the major foci of Demarchist power. She even had, I think, some hold over the Ultras, or at least the means to make them work for her. But she had nothing on the Conjoiners.’
‘And Skade may have been her point of entry?’
I think it must be considered likely, Mr Clavain. It may not be accidental that Skade was allowed to survive when the rest of her team were killed.‘
‘But Skade is one of us,’ Clavain said feebly. ‘She would never betray the Mother Nest.‘
‘What happened to Skade afterwards, Mr Clavain? Did she by any chance widen her influence within the Conjoined?’
Clavain recalled that Skade had joined the Closed Council in the aftermath of the mission. ‘To some extent.’
‘Then I think the case is closed. That would always have been the Mademoiselle’s strategy, you see. Infiltrate and orchestrate. Skade might not even think she is betraying your people; the Mademoiselle was always clever enough to play on loyalty. And although Skade’s mission was judged a failure, she did recover some of the items of interest, did she not? Enough to benefit the Mother Nest?’
‘I’ve already told you that I don’t know about any secret project concerning the quantum vacuum.’
‘Mm. And I didn’t find your denial wholly convincing the first time, either.’
Clock, the one with the bald egg-shaped skull, told Xavier to call Antoinette.
‘I’ll call her,’ Xavier said. ‘But I can’t make her come here, even if Mr Pink starts damaging the ship.’
‘Find a way,’ Clock said, stroking the waxy olive leaf of one of the repair shop’s potted plants. ‘Tell her you found something you can’t fix, something that needs her expertise. I’m sure you can improvise, Mr Liu.’
‘We’ll be listening in,’ Mr Pink added. To Xavier’s relief, the pig had returned from inside Storm Bird without inflicting any obvious damage to the ship, although he had the impression that Mr Pink had merely been scoping out possibilities for inflicting harm later on.
He called Antoinette. She was halfway around Carousel New Copenhagen, engaged in a frantic round of business meetings. Ever since Clavain had left things had gone from bad to worse.
‘Just get here as quickly as you can,’ Xavier told her, one eye on his two visitors.
‘Why the big rush, Xave?’
‘You know how much it’s costing us to keep Storm Bird parked here, Antoinette. Every hour makes a difference. Just this phone call is killing us.’
‘Holy shit, Xave. Cheer me up, why don’t you?’
‘Just get here.’ He hung up on her. ‘Thanks for making me do that, you bastards.’
Clock said, ‘Your understanding is appreciated, Mr Liu. I assure you no harm will come to either of you, most especially not to Antoinette.’
‘You’d better not hurt her.’ He looked at both of them, unsure which one he trusted the least. ‘All right. She’ll be here in about twenty minutes. You can speak to her here, and then she can be on her way.’
‘We’ll talk to her in the ship, Mr Liu. That way there’s no chance of either of you running away, is there?’
‘Whatever,’ Xavier said, shrugging. ‘Just give me a minute to sort out the monkeys.’
The elevator slowed and came to a halt, shaking and creaking even though it was stationary. Far above Clavain, metallic echoes chased each other up and down the lift-shaft like hysterical laughter.
‘Where are we?’ he asked.
‘The deep basement of the building. We’re well below the old Mulch now, Mr Clavain, into Yellowstone bedrock.’ H ushered Clavain onwards. ‘This is where it happened, you see.’
‘Where what happened?’
‘The disturbing event.’
H led him along corridors — tunnels, more accurately — that had been bored through solid rock and then only lightly faced. Blue lanterns threw the ridges and bulges of the underlying geology into deep relief. The air was damp and cold, the hard stone floor uncomfortable beneath Clavain’s feet. They passed a room containing many upright silver canisters arrayed across the floor like milk churns, and then descended via a ramp that took them even deeper.
H said, ‘The Mademoiselle protected her secrets well. When we stormed the Chateau she destroyed many of the items she had recovered from the grub’s spacecraft. Others, Skade had taken with her. But enough remained for us to make a start. Recently, progress has been gratifyingly swift. Did you notice how easily my ships outran the Convention, how easily they slipped unnoticed through tightly policed airspace?’
Clavain nodded, remembering how quick the journey to Yellowstone had appeared. ‘You’ve learned how to do it too.’
‘In a very modest fashion, I admit. But yes, we’ve installed inertia-suppressing technology on some of our ships. Simply reducing the mass of a ship by four-fifths is enough to give us an edge over a Convention cutter. I imagine the Conjoiners have done rather better than that.’
Grudgingly, Clavain admitted, ‘Perhaps.’
‘Then they’ll know that the technology is extraordinarily dangerous. The quantum vacuum is normally in a very stable minimum, Mr Clavain, a nice deep valley in the landscape of possible states. But as soon as you start tampering with the vacuum — cooling it, to damp the fluctuations that give rise to inertia — you change the entire topology of that landscape. What were stable minima become precarious peaks and ridges. Th
ere are adjacent valleys that are associated with very different properties of immersed matter. Small fluctuations can lead to violent state transitions. Shall I tell you a horror story?’ ‘I think you’re going to.’
‘I recruited the very best, Mr Clavain, the top theorists from the Rust Belt. Anyone who had shown the slightest interest in the nature of the quantum vacuum was brought here and made to understand that their wider interests would be best served by helping me.’
‘Blackmail?’ Clavain asked.
‘Good grief, no. Merely gentle coercion.’ H glanced back at Clavain and grinned, revealing sharply pointed incisors. ‘For the most part it wasn’t even necessary. I had resources that the Demarchists lacked. Their own intelligence network was crumbling, so they knew nothing of the grub. The Conjoiners had their own programme, but to join them would have meant becoming Conjoined as well — no small price for scientific curiosity. The workers I approached were usually more than willing to come to the Chateau, given the alternatives.’ H paused, and his voice took on an elegiac tone it had lacked before. ‘One amongst their number was a brilliant defector from the Demarchists, a woman named Pauline Sukhoi.’
‘Is she dead?’ Clavain asked. ‘Or something worse than dead?’
‘No, not at all. But she has left my employment. After what happened — the disturbing event — she couldn’t bring herself to continue. I understood perfectly and made sure that Sukhoi found alternative employment back in the Rust Belt.’
‘Whatever happened, it must have been truly disturbing,’ Clavain said.
‘Oh, it was. For all of us, but especially for Sukhoi. Many experiments were in progress,’ said H. ‘Down here, in the basement levels of the Chateau, there were a dozen little teams working on different aspects of the grub technology. Sukhoi had been on the project for a year, and had shown herself to an excellent if fearless researcher. It was Sukhoi who explored some of the less stable state transitions.’
H led him past several doors that opened into large dark chambers, until they arrived at one in particular. He did not enter the room. ‘Something terrible happened here. No one associated with the work would ever go into this room afterwards. They say damp records the past. Do you feel it also, Mr Clavain? A sense of foreboding, an animal instinct that you should not enter?’
‘Now that you’ve planted the suggestion that there’s something odd about the room, I can’t honestly say what I feel.’
‘Step inside,’ H said.
Clavain entered the room, stepping down to the smooth flat floor. The room was cold, but then again, the entire basement level had been cold. He waited for his eyes to adjust to the gloom, picking out the generous dimensions of the chamber. Here and there the floor and walls and ceiling were interrupted by metal struts or sockets, but no apparatus or analysis equipment remained. The room was completely empty and very clean.
He walked around the perimeter. He could not say that he enjoyed being in the room, but everything he felt — a mild sense of panic, a mild sense of presence — could have been psychosomatic. ‘What happened?’ he asked.
H spoke from the door. ‘There was an accident in this room, involving only Sukhoi’s project. Sukhoi was injured, but not critically, and she soon made a good recovery.’
‘And none of the other people in Sukhoi’s team were injured?’
‘That was the odd thing. There were no other people — Sukhoi had always worked alone. We had no other victims to worry about. The technology was slightly damaged, but soon showed itself to be capable of limited self-repair. Sukhoi was conscious and coherent, so we assumed that when she was on her feet again she would go back down to the basement.’
‘And?’
‘She asked a strange question. One that, if you will pardon the expression, made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.’
Clavain rejoined H near the door. ‘Which was?’
‘She asked what had happened to the other experimenter.’
‘Then there was some neurological damage. False memories.’ Clavain shrugged. ‘Hardly surprising, is it?’
‘She was quite specific about the other worker, Mr Clavain. Even down to his name and history. She said that the man had been called Yves, Yves Mercier, and that he had been recruited from the Rust Belt at the same time that she had.’
‘But there was no Yves Mercier?’
‘No one of that name, or any name like it, had ever worked in the Chateau. As I said, Sukhoi had always tended to work alone.’
‘Perhaps she felt the need to attach the blame for the accident to another person. Her subconscious manufactured a scapegoat.’
H nodded. ‘Yes, we thought that something like that might have happened. But why transfer blame for a minor incident? No one had been killed, and no equipment had been badly damaged. As a matter of fact, we had learned much more from the accident that we had with weeks of painstaking progress. Sukhoi was blameless, and she knew it.’
‘So she made up the name for another reason. The subconscious is an odd thing. There doesn’t have to be a perfectly obvious rationale for anything she said.’
‘That’s precisely what we thought, but Sukhoi was adamant. As she recovered, her memories of working with Mercier only sharpened. She recalled the minutest details about him — what he had looked like, what he had liked to eat and drink, his sense of humour, even his background; what he had done before he came to the Chateau. The more we tried to convince her that Mercier had not been real, the more hysterical she became.’
‘She was deranged, then.’
‘Every other test said she wasn’t, Mr Clavain. If she had a delusional system, it was focused solely on the prior existence of Mercier. And so I began to wonder.’
Clavain looked at H and nodded for him to continue.
‘I did some research,’ H added. ‘It was easy enough to dig into Rust Belt records — those that had survived the plague, anyway. And I found that certain aspects of Sukhoi’s story checked out with alarming accuracy.’
‘Such as?’
‘There had been someone named Yves Mercier, born in the same carousel that Sukhoi claimed.’
‘It can’t be that unusual a name amongst Demarchists.’
‘No, probably not. But in fact there was only one. And his date of birth accorded precisely with Sukhoi’s recollections. The only difference was that this Mercier — the real one — had died many years earlier. He had been killed shortly after the Melding Plague destroyed the Glitter Band.’
Clavain forced a shrug, but with less conviction that he would have wished. ‘A coincidence, then.’
‘Perhaps. But you see, this particular Yves Mercier was already a student at the time. He was well advanced on studies into exactly the same quantum-vacuum phenomena that would, according to Sukhoi, eventually bring him into my orbit.’
Clavain no longer wanted to be in the room. He stepped up, back into the blue-lanterned corridor. ‘You’re saying her Mercier really existed?’
‘Yes, I am. At which point I found myself faced with two possibilities. Either Sukhoi was somehow aware of the dead Mercier’s life story, and for one reason or another chose to believe that he had not in fact died, or that she was actually telling the truth.’
‘But that isn’t possible.’
‘I rather think it may be, Mr Clavain. I think everything Pauline Sukhoi told me may have been the literal truth; that in some way we can’t quite comprehend, Yves Mercier never died for her. That she worked with him, here in the room you have just left, and that Merrier was present when the accident happened.’
‘But Merrier did die. You’ve seen the records for yourself.’
‘But suppose he didn’t. Suppose that he survived the Melding Plague, went on to work on general quantum-vacuum theory, and eventually attracted my attention. Suppose also that he ended up working with Sukhoi, together on the same experiment, exploring the less stable state transitions. And suppose then that there was an accident, one that involved a shift to a
very dangerous state indeed. According to Sukhoi, Merrier was much closer to the field generator than she was when it happened.’
‘It killed him.’
‘More than that, Mr Clavain. It made him cease to have existed.’ H watched Clavain and nodded with tutorly patience. ‘It was as if his entire life story, his entire world-line, had been unstitched from our reality, right back to the point when he was killed during the Melding Plague. That, I suppose, was the most logical point at which he could have died in our mutual world-line, the one you and I share.’
‘But not for Sukhoi,’ Clavain said.
‘No, not for her. She remembered how things had been before. I suppose she was close enough to the focus that her memories were entangled, knotted-up with the prior version of events. When Merrier was erased, she nonetheless ’ retained her memories of him. So she was not mad at all, not remotely delusional. She was merely the witness to an event so horrific that it transcends all understanding. Does it chill you, Mr Clavain, to think that an experiment could have this outcome?‘
‘You already told me it was dangerous.’
‘More than we ever realised at the time. I wonder how many world-lines were wrenched out of existence before there was ever a witness close enough to feel the change?’
Clavain said, ‘What exactly was it that these experiments were related to, if you don’t mind my asking?’
‘That’s the interesting part. State transitions, as I have said — exploring the more exotic quantum-vacuum manifolds. We can suck some of the inertia out of matter, and depending on the field state we can keep sucking it out until the matter’s inertial mass becomes asymptotic with zero. According to Einstein, matter with no mass has no choice but to travel at the speed of light. It will have become photonic, light-like.’
‘Is that what happened to Merrier?’
‘No — not quite. In so far as I understood Sukhoi’s work, it appeared that the zero-mass state would be very difficult to realise physically. As it neared the zero-mass state, the vacuum would be inclined to flip to the other side. Sukhoi called it a tunnelling phenomenon.’