‘You’d consider doing that?’ Khouri asked.
‘Consider it, yes,’ Volyova replied. ‘But I’m hoping it won’t come to that. All these samples I’ve been taking — I think I’m actually getting somewhere. I’ve found a counteragent — a retrovirus which seems stronger than the plague. It subverts the plague machinery faster than the plague subverts it. Only tested it on tiny pieces so far — and there’s really no way I can do any better than that, because testing it on the Captain would be a medical matter, and I’m not qualified to do that.’
‘Of course,’ Khouri said hastily. ‘But if you won’t do that, you’re really trusting all on Sylveste, aren’t you?’
‘Maybe, but one shouldn’t underestimate his skills. Or Calvin’s, I should say.’
‘And he’ll help you, just like that?’
‘No, but he didn’t willingly help us the first time either, and we still found a way.’
‘Persuasion, you mean?’
Volyova took a moment to take a scraping from one of the pipelike tendrils, just before it dove into an intestinal mass of ship plumbing. ‘Sylveste is a man with obsessions,’ she said. ‘And people like that are more easily manipulated than they imagine. They’re so intent on whatever goal it is they have in mind that they don’t always notice that they’re being bent to someone else’s will.’
‘Like yours, for instance.’
She took the sliver-thin sample and popped it away for analysis. ‘Sajaki told you that we brought him aboard during his missing month?’
‘Thirty days in the wilderness.’
‘Stupid name, that,’ Volyova said, gritting her teeth. ‘Did they have to make it sound so damned Biblical? Wasn’t as if he didn’t already have a messiah complex, if you ask me. Anyway, yes, that was when we brought him aboard. And the interesting thing was, this was fully thirty years before the Resurgam expedition ever left Yellowstone. Now, I’ll let you in on a secret. Until we returned to Yellowstone and recruited you, we didn’t even know of the existence of this expedition. We still expected to find Sylveste on Yellowstone.’
Khouri knew well enough from her own experience with Fazil the kind of difficulty Volyova’s crew must have faced, but she decided a little fake ignorance would seem more plausible. ‘Careless of you not to check firsthand.’
‘Not at all. In fact we did — it was just that our best information was already decades old before we obtained it. And then by the time we’d acted on it — made the hop to Yellowstone — it was twice as old again.’
‘I suppose it wasn’t a bad gamble. The family had always been associated with Yellowstone, so you’d have expected to find the rich young brat still hanging around the old place.’
‘Except we were wrong. But the interesting thing is, it looks as if we could have spared ourselves the bother all along. Sylveste may have had the Resurgam expedition in mind when we first brought him aboard. If only we’d listened, we could have gone there directly.’
As they traversed the complicated series of elevators and access tunnels which led from the Captain’s corridor to the glade, Volyova spoke beneath audibility into the bracelet which she never let slip from her wrist. Khouri knew that she must be addressing one of the ship’s many artificial personae, but Volyova gave no hint of what it was she was arranging.
The green light of the glade was a sensual feast after the unremitting cold and gloom of the Captain’s corridor. The air was warm and bouquet-fresh, and the painted birds which owned the aerial spaces of the chamber were almost too gaudy for Khouri’s dark-adapted eyes. For a moment she was too overwhelmed to notice that Volyova and she were not alone. Then she saw the three other people who were present. The trio sat facing each other around a stump of wood, kneeling in the dew-moistened grass. Sajaki was one of them, though he wore his hair in a different style from those Khouri had seen before: he was entirely bald apart from a topknot. The second person she recognised was Volyova herself — hair short now, which accentuated the angular form of her skull and made her look older than the version of Volyova which was standing next to Khouri. The third person, Khouri realised, was Sylveste himself.
‘Shall we join them?’ Volyova said, leading the way down the rickety staircase which descended to the lawn.
Khouri followed. ‘This dates from…’ She paused and recalled the date when Sylveste had gone missing from Chasm City. ‘Around 2460, right?’
‘Spot on,’ Volyova said, turning to fix Khouri with a look of mild amazement. ‘What are you, an expert on Sylveste’s life and times? Oh, never mind. The point is, we recorded his entire visit, and I knew there was one particular remark he made which… well, in the light of what we now know, I find curious.’
‘Intriguing.’
Khouri jumped, because it was not she who had spoken, and the voice had appeared to come from behind her. It was then that she became conscious of the Mademoiselle, loitering some distance up the staircase.
‘I should have known you’d show your ugly face,’ Khouri said, not even bothering to subvocalise, since the constant chatter of the songbirds served to mask her words from Volyova, who had gone on ahead to the others. ‘You’re like a bad penny, you know.’
‘At least you know I’m still around,’ she said. ‘If I weren’t, you’d have real grounds to worry. It would mean Sun Stealer had overwhelmed my countermeasures. Your sanity would be next, and I hate to speculate about what that would do for your employment prospects where Volyova’s concerned.’
‘Shut up and let me concentrate on what Sylveste has to say.’
‘Be my guest,’ the Mademoiselle said curtly, not straying from her vantage point.
Khouri joined Volyova next to the trio.
‘Of course,’ the standing Volyova said, addressing Khouri, ‘I could have replayed this conversation from any point in the ship. But it took place here, so this is where I chose to re-enact it.’ As she spoke, she reached into her jacket pocket and slipped out a pair of smoke-coloured goggles which she proceeded to place over her eyes. Khouri understood: lacking implants, Volyova could only witness this playback with the aid of direct retinal projection. Until she slipped on the goggles, she would not have seen the figures at all.
‘So you see,’ Sajaki was saying, ‘it’s in your best interests to do what we want. You’ve made use of Ultra elements in the past — your trip out to Lascaille’s Shroud, for instance — and it’s highly probable you’ll want to do so in the future.’
Sylveste placed his elbows on the tree stump. Khouri studied the man. She had seen plenty of lifelike evocations of Sylveste before, but this image seemed more real than any she had yet experienced. She guessed it was because Sylveste was in conversation with two people she knew, rather than anonymous figures from Yellowstone’s history. That made a lot of difference. He was handsome; improbably so, in her opinion, but she doubted that the image had been cosmetically doctored. His long hair hung in tangles either side of his magisterial brow; his eyes were acutely green. Even if she had to look him in the eyes before killing him — and the Mademoiselle’s specifications about the killing did not make that unlikely — it would be something to see those eyes for real.
‘That sounds awfully like blackmail,’ Sylveste said, his voice the lowest of those present. ‘You talk as if you Ultras have some kind of binding agreement. It might fool some people, Sajaki, but I’m afraid I’m not one of them.’
‘Then you may be in for a surprise the next time you attempt to enlist Ultra assistance,’ Sajaki answered, toying with a splinter of wood. ‘Let’s be quite clear on this. If you refuse us — in addition to whatever else that might bring upon yourself — you’d ensure that you never leave your home planet.’
‘I doubt that that would greatly inconvenience me.’
Volyova — the seated version — shook her head. ‘Not what our spies tell us. Rumour has it you’re trying to find funding for an expedition to the Delta Pavonis system, Dr Sylveste.’
‘Resurgam?’ Sylveste snorte
d. ‘I don’t think so. There’s nothing there.’
The real, standing Volyova said, ‘He’s clearly lying. It’s obvious now, though at the time I just assumed the rumour I had heard was false.’
Sajaki had replied to Sylveste, and now Sylveste was speaking again, defensively. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I don’t care what rumours you’ve heard — you’d better ignore them. There’s not a scrap of a reason to go there. Check the records if you don’t believe me.’
‘But that’s the odd thing,’ the standing Volyova said. ‘I did just that, and damned if he wasn’t right. Based on what was known at the time, there was absolutely no reason to consider an expedition to Resurgam.’
‘But you just said he was lying…’
‘And he was, of course — hindsight proves that much.’ She shook her head. ‘You know, I’ve never really thought about this, but it’s actually very strange — paradoxical, even. Thirty years after this meeting took place the expedition left for Resurgam, which means the rumour was correct after all.’ She nodded at Sylveste, embroiled in heated discussion with her seated image. ‘But back then nobody knew about the Amarantin! So what in hell’s name gave him the idea to go to Resurgam in the first place?’
‘He must have known he’d find something there.’
‘Yes, but where did that information come from? There were automated surveys of the system prior to his expedition, but none of them were thorough. As far as I know, none of them scanned the planetary surfaces close enough to find evidence that there’d once been intelligent life on Resurgam. Yet Sylveste knew.’
‘Which makes no sense.’
‘I know,’ Volyova said. ‘Believe me, I know.’
At which point she joined her twin next to the stump and leant so close to the image of Sylveste that Khouri could see the reflection of his unwavering green eyes in the smoky facets of her goggles. ‘What did you know?’ she asked. ‘More to the point, how did you know?’
‘He isn’t going to tell you,’ Khouri said.
‘Maybe not now,’ Volyova said. And then smiled. ‘But before very long it’ll be the real one sitting there. And then we may get some answers.’
As she was speaking, her bracelet began to emit a sonorous chiming. The sound was unfamiliar, but it obviously connoted alarm. Above, without any fuss, the synthetic daylight turned blood-red and began to pulse in rhythm with the chiming.
‘What’s that?’ Khouri asked.
‘An emergency,’ Volyova said, holding the bracelet close to her jaw. She snatched the retinal-projection goggles from her face and studied a little display inset into the bracelet. It was also pulsing red, in perfect time with the sky and the chiming. Khouri could see words trickling onto the display, but not clearly enough to read them.
‘What sort of emergency?’ Khouri breathed, wary of disturbing the woman’s attention. Though she had not noticed their departure, the trio had vanished quietly back into whatever portion of the ship’s memory had tricked them to life.
Volyova looked up from the bracelet, face quite pale. ‘One of the cache-weapons.’
‘Yes?’
‘It’s arming itself.’
ELEVEN
Approaching Delta Pavonis, 2565
They were running down a curving corridor, one that led from the glade towards the nearest radial elevator shaft.
‘What do you mean?’ Khouri shouted, straining to be heard above the klaxon. ‘What do you mean it’s arming itself?’
Volyova wasted no breath replying, not until they had reached the waiting elevator car, and she had ordered the thing to shuttle them straight to the nearest spinal-trunk elevator shaft, ignoring all the usual acceleration limits. When the car began to move she and Khouri were rammed back into its glass walling, almost knocking what wind they had left from their chests. The car’s interior lights were pulsing red; Volyova could feel her heart starting to pulse in sympathy. But somehow she managed to talk.
‘Exactly what I said. There are systems monitoring each cache-weapon — and one has just detected a power-surge in its weapon.’
Volyova did not add that the reason she had installed those monitors in the first place was because of the weapon which had appeared to move. Ever since, she had clung to the hope that the move had been imagined — a hallucination brought on by the loneliness of her vigil — but she now knew that it had been nothing of the sort.
‘How can it arm itself?’
The question was perfectly reasonable. It was one for which Volyova had a decided absence of glib answers.
‘I’m just hoping the glitch is in the monitoring systems,’ she said, if only to be saying something. ‘Not the weapon itself.’
‘Why would it be arming itself?’
‘I don’t know! Haven’t you noticed I’m not exactly taking this calmly?’
The axial lift decelerated abruptly, transitioning to the trunk shaft with a series of nauseous lurches. Then they were dropping quickly, so fast that their apparent weight dwindled almost to nothing.
‘Where are we going?’
‘The cache chamber, of course.’ Volyova glared at the recruit. ‘I don’t know what’s going on, Khouri, but whatever it is, I want visual confirmation. I want to see what the damned things are actually doing.’
‘It arms itself, what else can it do?’
‘I don’t know,’ Volyova said, as calmly as possible. ‘I’ve tried all the shutdown protocols — nothing worked. This isn’t exactly a situation I anticipated.’
‘But surely it can’t deploy? It can’t actually find a target and go off?’
Volyova glanced down at her bracelet. Maybe the readings were going haywire; maybe there really had been a glitch in the watchdog systems. She hoped that was the case, because what the bracelet was telling her now was very bad news indeed.
The cache-weapon was moving.
Falkender was true to his word: the operations he performed on Sylveste’s eyes were seldom pleasant and frequently much worse, with occasional forays into absolute agony. For days now Sluka’s surgeon had been exploring the envelope of his skill, promising to restore such basic human functions as colour perception and the ability to sense depth and smooth movement, but not quite convincing Sylveste that he had the means or the expertise to do so. Sylveste had told Falkender that the eyes had never been perfect in the first place; Calvin’s tools had been too limited for that. But even the crude vision which Calvin had given him would have been preferable to the insipidly coloured, flicker-motion parody of the world through which he now moved. Not for the first time, Sylveste found himself doubting that the discomfort of the repair was likely to be justified by the results.
‘I think you should give up,’ he said.
‘I fixed Sluka,’ Falkender said, a lividly coloured laminate of flat, man-shaped apertures dancing into Sylveste’s visual field. ‘You’re no great challenge.’
‘So what if you restore my vision? I can’t see my wife because Sluka won’t let us be together. And a cell wall’s a cell wall, no matter how clearly you see it.’ He stopped as waves of pain lashed his temples. ‘Matter of fact, I’m not sure it isn’t better being blind. At least that way you don’t have reality rammed down your optic nerve every time you open your eyes.’
‘You don’t have eyes, Doctor Sylveste.’ Falkender twisted something, sending pink pain-rosettes into his vision. ‘So stop feeling sorry for yourself, please; it’s most unbecoming. Besides, it’s possible you won’t have to stare at these particular walls for very much longer.’
Sylveste perked up.
‘Meaning what?’
‘Meaning things may soon start moving, if what I’ve heard is halfway to the truth.’
‘Very informative.’
‘I’ve heard that we may soon have visitors,’ Falkender said, punctuating his remark with another stab of pain.
‘Stop being cryptic. When you say “we”, which faction do you mean? And what kind of visitors?’
‘All I’ve heard i
s rumour, Doctor Sylveste. I’m sure Sluka will tell you in good time.’
‘Don’t count on it,’ Sylveste said, who happened to be under no illusions as to his usefulness from Sluka’s point of view. Since the time of his arrival in Mantell he had come to the forcible conclusion that Sluka was retaining him only because he offered her some transient entertainment; that he was some fabulous captured beast of dubious use but undoubted novelty. It was not at all clear that she would ever confide in him regarding any matter of true seriousness — and even if she did, it would be for only one of two reasons: either because she wanted something other than a wall to talk to, or because she had devised some new means of tormenting him verbally. More than once she had spoken of putting him to sleep until she thought of a use for him. ‘I was right to capture you,’ she would say. ‘And I’m not saying you don’t have your uses — they’re just not immediately apparent to me. But I don’t see why anyone else should be allowed to exploit you.’ From that point of view, as Sylveste had soon realised, it mattered little to Sluka whether or not she kept him alive. Alive, he provided her with some amusement — and there was always the possibility he might become more useful to her in the future, as the colony’s balance of power shifted. But, equally, it would not greatly inconvenience her to have him killed now. At least that way he would never become a liability; could never turn against her.
Eventually there came an end to the tenderly administered agonies, a passage into calmer light and almost plausible colours. Sylveste held his own hand before his gaze and turned it slowly, absorbing its solidity. There were furrows and traceries embossed into his skin which he had almost forgotten, yet it could not be more than tens of days — a few weeks — since he had been blinded in the Amarantin tunnel system.
‘Good as new,’ Falkender said, placing his tools back into their wooden autoclave. The strange, ciliated glove went last of all; as Falkender peeled it from his womanly fingers, it twitched and spasmed like a beached jellyfish.