‘Let’s just say that one or two discreet assassinations may still have to be performed,’ Khouri said. ‘But that should take care of our worst enemies. The rest we only have to hold off until the exodus is finished.’
Thorn turned to the Triumvir. ‘You’ve studied that thing in the sky more closely than any of us, Irina. Do you know how long we’ve got?’
‘No,’ she said curtly. ‘Of course I can’t say how long we’ve got, not without knowing what it is that they’re building up there. All I can do is make an extremely educated guess.’
‘So indulge us.’
She sniffed and then walked stiffly along the entire length of the window. Thorn eyed Khouri, wondering what she made of this performance. He had noticed a tension between the two women that he did not recall from his previous meetings with them. Perhaps it had always been there and he had simply missed it before, but he rather doubted it.
‘I’ll say this,’ the Triumvir stated, her heels squeaking as she turned to face the two of them. ‘Whatever it is, it’s big. Much bigger than any structure we could imagine building, even if we had the raw materials and the time. Even the smallest structures that we can single out in the cloud ought to have collapsed under their own self-gravity by now, becoming molten spheres of metal. But they haven’t. That tells me something.’
‘Go on,’ Thorn said.
‘Either they can persuade matter to become many orders of magnitude more rigid than ought to be possible, or they have some local control of gravity. Perhaps some combination of the two, even. Accelerated streams of matter can serve the same structural functions as rigid spars if they can be controlled with sufficient finesse…’ She was evidently thinking aloud, and for a moment she trailed off, before remembering her audience. ‘I suspect that they can manipulate inertia when it becomes necessary. We saw how they redirected those matter flows, bending them through right angles. That implies a profound knowledge of metric engineering, tampering with the basic substrate of space-time. If they have that ability, they can probably control gravity as well. We haven’t seen that before, I think, so it might be something they can only do on a large scale: a broad brush, so to speak. Everything we’ve seen so far — the disassembly of the rocky worlds, the Dyson motor around the gas giant — all that was watchmaker stuff. Now we’re seeing the first hints of Inhibitor heavy engineering.’
‘Now you’re scaring me,’ Thorn said.
‘Entirely my intention.’ She smiled quickly. It was the first time he had seen her smile that evening.
‘So what is it going to be?’ Khouri asked. ‘A machine to make the sun go supernova?’
‘No,’ the Triumvir replied. ‘We can rule that out, I think. They may have a technology that can do it, but it would only work on heavy stars, the kind that are already predestined to blow up. That would be a formidable weapon, I admit. You could sterilise a volume of space dozens of light-years wide if you could trigger a premature supernova. I don’t know how you would do it — maybe by tuning the nuclear cross sections to prohibit fusion for elements lighter than iron, thereby shifting the peak in the curve of binding energy. The star would suddenly have nothing to fuse, no means to support its outer envelope against collapse. They may have done it once, you know. Earth’s sun is in the middle of a bubble in the interstellar medium, blown open by a recent supernova. It intersects other structures right out to the Aquila Rift. They may have been natural events, or we might be seeing the scars left behind by Inhibitor sterilisation events millions of years before the Amarantin xenocide. Or the bubbles might have been blown open by the weapons of fleeing species. We’ll probably never know, no matter how hard we look. But that won’t happen here. There are no supergiant stars in this part of the galaxy now, nothing capable of undergoing a supernova. They must have evolved different weapons for dealing with lower-mass stars like Delta Pavonis. Less spectacular — no use for sterilising more than a solar system — but perfectly effective on that level.’
‘How would you kill a star like Pavonis?’ Thorn asked.
‘There are several ways one might go about it,’ the Triumvir said thoughtfully. ‘It would depend on the resources available, and the time. The Inhibitors could assemble a ring around the star, just like they did with the gas giant. Something larger this time, of course, and perhaps functioning differently. There’s no solid surface to a star, not even a solid core. But they might encircle the star with a ring of particle accelerators, perhaps. If they established a particle-beam flux through the ring, they could create a vast magnetic force by tightening and loosening the ring in waves. The field from the ring would strangle the star like a constricting snake, pumping chromospheric material away from the star’s equator towards the poles. That’s the only place it could go, and the only place it could escape. Hot plasma would ram away from the star’s north and south poles. You might even be able to use those plasma jets as weapons in their own right, turning the whole star into a flame-thrower — all you’d need is more machinery above and below the poles to direct and focus the jets where you wanted them. You could incinerate every world in a solar system with a weapon like that, stripping atmosphere and ocean. You wouldn’t even need to dismantle the entire star. Once you’d removed enough of its outer envelope, its core would adjust its fusion rate and the whole star would become cooler and much longer-lived. That might suit their longer-term plans, I suppose.’
‘That sounds as if it would take a long time,’ Khouri said. ‘And if all you’re going to do is incinerate the worlds, why waste half a star doing it?’
‘They could dismantle the whole thing, if they wished. I’m merely pointing out the possibilities. There’s another method they might consider, too. They dismantled the gas giant by spinning it until it flew apart. They could do that to a sun, too: wrap accelerators around it again, this time in pole-to-pole loops, and start rotating them. They’d couple with the star’s magnetosphere and start dragging the whole thing along with them, until it was spinning faster than its own centrifugal break-up speed. Matter would lift off the star’s surface. It would come apart like an onion.’
‘Sounds slow, too.’
Volyova nodded. ‘Perhaps. And there’s another thing we need to consider. The machinery that’s being assembled out there isn’t ringlike, and there’s no sign of any preparatory activity around the sun itself. The Inhibitors are going to use a different method again, I think.’
‘How else do you destroy a star, if pumping or spinning it won’t work?’ Khouri asked.
‘I don’t know. Let’s assume they can manipulate gravity to some extent. If that’s the case, they might be able to make a planet-mass black hole from the matter they’ve already accumulated. Say ten Earth masses, perhaps.’ She held her hands slightly apart, as if weaving an invisible cat’s cradle. ‘This big, that’s all. At most, they might have the resources to make a black hole ten or twenty times larger — a few hundred Earth masses.’
‘And if they dropped it into the star?’
‘It would begin eating its way through it, yes. They would need to take great care to place it where it would do the maximum harm, though. It would be very difficult to insert it exactly in the star’s nuclear-burning heart. The black hole would be inclined to oscillate, following an orbital trajectory through the star. It would have an effect, I am sure — the mass density near the black hole’s Schwarzschild radius would reach the nuclear-burning threshold, I think, so the star would suddenly have two sites of nucleation, one orbiting the other. But it would only eat the star slowly, since its surface area is so small. Even when it had swallowed half the star, it would still only be three kilometres wide.’ She shrugged. ‘But it might work. It would depend acutely on the way in which matter fell into the hole. If it became too hot, its own radiation pressure would blast back the next layer of infalling material, slowing the whole process. I’ll have to do some sums, I think.’
‘What else?’ Thorn asked. ‘Assuming it isn’t a black hole?’
&n
bsp; ‘We could speculate endlessly. The nuclear-burning processes in the heart of any star are a delicate balance between pressure and gravity. Anything that tipped that balance might have a catastrophic effect on the overall properties of the star. But stars are resilient. They will always try to find a new balance point, even if that means switching to the fusion of heavier elements.’ The Triumvir turned to look out of the window again, tapping her fingers against the glass. ‘The exact mechanism that the Inhibitors will use may not even be comprehensible to us. It doesn’t matter, because they will never get that far.’
Khouri said, i’m sorry?‘
I do not intend to wait this out, Ana. For the first time the Inhibitors have concentrated their activity at one focus point. I believe they are now at their most vulnerable. And for the first time, the Captain is willing to do business.‘
Khouri flashed a glance in Thorn’s direction. ‘The cache?’
‘He’s given me his assurance that he will allow its use.’ She continued tapping the glass, still not turning to face them. ‘Of course, there’s a risk. We don’t know exactly what the cache is capable of. But damage is damage. I am certain we can put back their plans.’
‘No,’ Thorn said. ‘This isn’t right. Not now.’
The Triumvir turned from the window. ‘Why ever not?’
‘Because the exodus operation is working. We’ve begun to lift people from the surface of Resurgam.’
Volyova scoffed. ‘A few thousand. Hardly a dent, is it?’
‘Things will change when the exodus operation becomes official. That’s what we always counted on.’
‘Things could get very much worse, too. Are you willing to take that chance?’
‘We had a plan,’ Khouri said. ‘The weapons were always there, to be used when we needed them. But it’s senseless to provoke a reaction from the Inhibitors now, after all that we’ve achieved.’
‘She’s right,’ Thorn said. ‘You have to wait, Irina. At least until we’ve evacuated a hundred thousand. Then use your precious weapons if you have to.’
‘By then it will be too late,’ she said, turning back to the window.
‘We don’t know that,’ Thorn said.
‘Look.’ Volyova spoke quietly. ‘Can you see it?’
‘See what?’
‘In the distance, between those two buildings. There, beyond Broadcasting House. You can’t miss it now.’
Thorn walked to the window, Khouri next to him. ‘I don’t see anything.’
‘Has your statement been broadcast yet?’ Volyova asked.
Thorn checked the time. ‘Yes… yes. It should just have gone out, at least in Cuvier.’
‘There’s your first reaction, then: a fire. Not much of one yet, but I don’t doubt that we’ll see more before the evening’s out. The people are terrified. They’ve been terrified for months, with that thing in the sky. And now they know the government has been systematically lying to them. Under the circumstances I’d be a little angry. Wouldn’t you?’
‘It won’t last,’ Thorn said. ‘Trust me, I know the people. When they understand that there’s an escape route, that all they have to do is act rationally and do what I say, they’ll calm down.’
Volyova smiled. ‘Either you are a man of unusual ability, Thorn, or a man with a rather inadequate grasp of human nature. I just hope it’s the former.’
‘You deal with your machines, Irina, and I’ll deal with the people.’
‘Let’s go upstairs,’ Khouri said. ‘On to the balcony. We’ll be able to see things more clearly.’
There were vehicles moving around now, more than normal for a rainy night. Below, police vans were assembling outside the building. Thorn watched riot officers troop into the vans, jostling each other with their armour, shields and electrically tipped prods. One by one the vans whisked away, dispersing the police to trouble spots. Other vans were being driven into a cordon around the building, the spaces between them spanned by metal barricades that had been perforated with narrow slits.
On the balcony it was much clearer. City sounds reached them through the rain. There were bangs and crashes, sirens and shouting. It almost sounded like a carnival, except there was no music. Thorn realised that it had been a long time since he had heard music of any kind.
Presently, despite the best efforts of the police, there was a crowd massing outside Inquisition House. There were simply too many people to hold back, and all the police could do was prevent them from entering the building itself. A number of people were already lying on the ground at the front of the crowd, stunned by grenades or prods. Their friends were doing their best to get them to safety. One man was thrashing in an epileptic frenzy. Another man looked dead, or at least deeply unconscious. The police could have murdered most of the people in the crowd in a few seconds, Thorn knew, but they were holding back. He studied the faces of the police as well as he was able. They appeared just as frightened and confused as the crowd they were supposed to be pacifying. Special orders had obviously decreed that their response should be measured rather than brutal.
The balcony was surrounded by a low fretted wall. Thorn walked to the edge and looked over, peering down towards street level. Khouri followed him, Triumvir Volyova remaining out of sight.
‘It’s time,’ Thorn said. ‘I need to speak to the people in person. That way they’ll know the statement wasn’t faked up.’
He knew that all he needed to do was shout and someone would hear him, even if it were only one person in the crowd. Before very long everyone would be looking upwards, and they would know, even before he spoke, who he was.
‘Make it good,’ Volyova said, barely raising her voice above a whisper. ‘Make it very good, Thorn. A lot will depend on this little performance.’
He looked back at her. ‘Then you’ll reconsider?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘Irina…’ Khouri said. ‘Please think about this. At least give us a chance here, before you use the weapons.’
‘You’ll have a chance,’ Volyova said. ‘Before I use the weapons, I’ll move them across the system. That way, even if there is a response from the Inhibitors, Infinity won’t be the obvious target.’
‘That will take some time, won’t it?’ Khouri asked.
‘You have a month, no more than that. Of course, I’m not expecting you to have the entire planet evacuated by then. But if you’ve kept to the agreed schedule — and perhaps improved on it a little — I may consider delaying the use of the weapons a while longer. That’s reasonable, isn’t it? I can be flexible, you see.’
‘You’re asking too much of us,’ Khouri said. ‘No matter how efficient our operation on the surface is, we can’t move more than two thousand people at a time between low orbit and the starship. That’s an unavoidable bottleneck, Ilia.’ She seemed unaware that she had spoken the Triumvir’s real name.
‘Bottlenecks can always be worked around, if it matters enough,’ she said. ‘And I’ve given you every incentive, haven’t I?’
‘It’s Thorn, isn’t it?’ Khouri said.
Thorn glanced back at her. ‘What about me?’
‘She doesn’t like the way you’ve come between us,’ Khouri told him. The Triumvir made the same derisive snort he had heard before.
‘No. It’s true,’ Khouri said. ‘Isn’t it, Ilia? You and I had a perfect working relationship until I brought Thorn into the arrangement. You’ll never forgive either me or him for destroying that beautiful little partnership.’
‘Don’t be absurd,’ Volyova said.
‘I’m not being absurd, I’m just…’
But the Triumvir whipped past her.
‘Where are you going?’ Khouri asked.
She stopped long enough to answer her. ‘Where do you think, Ana? Back to my ship. I have work to do.’
‘Your ship, suddenly? I thought it was our ship.’
But Volyova had said all she was going to say. Thorn heard her footsteps recede back into the building.
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‘Is that true?’ he asked Khouri. ‘Do you really think she’s resentful of me?’
But she said nothing either. Thorn, after a long moment, turned back to the city. He leaned out into the night, formulating the crucial speech he was about to deliver. Volyova was right: a lot depended on it.
Khouri’s hand closed around his own.
The air reeked of fear-gas. Thorn felt it worming into his brain, brewing anxiety.
Chapter 28
SKADE STALKED AROUND her ship. Nothing felt right aboard Nightshade now. The pressure on her spine had eased and her eyeballs had returned to more or less the right shape, but those were the only real compensations. Every living thing inside the ship was now within the field’s detectable sphere of influence, embedded in a bubble of artificially modified quantum vacuum. Nine-tenths of the inertial mass of every particle in the field no longer existed.
The ship was hurling itself towards Resurgam at ten gees.
Even though Skade had her armour, and was therefore insulated from the more physiologically upsetting effects of the field, she still moved around as little as possible. Walking was not in itself difficult since the acceleration that the armour felt was only a gee, a tenth of the actual value. The armour no longer laboured under the extra load, and Skade had lost the feeling that a fall would automatically dash her brains out. But everything else was worse. When she willed the armour to move a limb, it accommodated her wishes too quickly. When she moved what should have been a heavy piece of equipment, it shifted too easily. It was as if the apparently substantial furniture of the ship had been replaced by a series of superficially convincing paper-thin facades. Even changing the direction of her gaze took care. Her eyeballs, no longer distorted by gravity, were now too responsive and tended to overshoot and then over-compensate for the overshooting. She knew this was because the muscles that steered them, which were anchored to her skull, had evolved to move a sphere of tissue with a certain inertial mass; now they were confused. But knowing all this did not make dealing with it any easier. She had turned off her Area Postrema permanently, since her inner ear was profoundly disturbed by the modified inertial field.