‘Because you fear the Machine People even more than you fear the Lines,’ Purslane said. ‘And rightly so. You wouldn’t want us as enemies, but getting on the wrong side of the Machine People ... that doesn’t bear thinking about.’
‘You’ve been playing with fire,’ I said. ‘Now give us Hesperus, before you make things any worse for yourself.’
CHAPTER FOUR
While we were waiting for the necessary arrangements to be made, Doctor Meninx stole over to my console and bent down to whisper in my ear.
His voice was a rustle of ghost-stirred leaves. ‘I cannot impress on you strongly enough the mistake you will be making if you let that thing aboard. You must reason with Campion.’
‘Reason with him yourself.’
‘He will not listen to me. He knows what I am - a Disavower. I am expected not to approve of the robot. But you are different. If you raise an objection, he will give it due consideration.’
‘And if I don’t have an objection?’
‘You must!’ the avatar hiss-rustled. ‘Let that thing aboard and no good will come of it!’
‘He’s not a thing. He’s an envoy of the Machine People, lost and a long way from home.’
‘It may well be a trick of Ateshga’s - just some robot weapon he’s trying to smuggle aboard your ship so he can hijack it and claim it back.’
‘Do make your mind up, Doctor: are you against Hesperus because of your Disavower principles, or because you think he’s not really a Machine Person at all?’
‘I am against it on as many counts as I can think of.’
‘The Machine People are more civilised than most human societies. Hesperus will just be another guest.’
‘A wind-up toy that walks and talks.’ The avatar’s harlequin face creased into an expression of abject disgust. ‘Haunted clockwork!’
‘You won’t have to associate with him if you don’t want to. And if it really bothers you, you can always go into abeyance until the voyage is over.’
‘The automatic assumption being that I should be the one to go into abeyance, and not the robot? Nice to know where I stand in the pecking order, at last! Relegated by a box full of mindless algorithms!’
‘Doctor Meninx,’ I said, as forcibly as I could manage, ‘Hesperus is coming aboard. That’s final. As shatterlings of Gentian Line, we could not possibly refuse to assist him.’
‘It will not see me. You will tell it nothing of my origins, nothing of my physical existence, nothing of my beliefs.’
‘Then I suggest you keep a very low profile,’ I said. ‘If Hesperus catches one of your avatars wandering around, he’s likely to wonder who’s operating it, isn’t he?’
‘You will tell it only that I am a scholar. It does not need to know any more than that. And I will not have it anywhere near my tank.’
‘Why would he have the slightest interest in your tank?’
‘Because,’ the avatar said, ‘when it learns who I am - as I am sure it will - it will make every effort to kill me.’
I pushed my hand into the open slot of the maker and closed my fingers around the sculpted handle of the energy-pistol. The newly minted weapon had the peculiar heft of something crammed with intricate machinery at abnormal densities. Levators allowed me to hold it, but it still had the mass of a small boulder. The adepts who made use of these weapons normally donned power-armour to overcome that residual inertia, but I did not wish to greet my guest looking like another robot.
I kept telling myself not to be so nervous, but as soon as I chased one fear away, another circled into place. No Machine Person had ever harmed a human being, so the weapon might have been regarded as both superfluous and insulting. But I was about to release a prisoner who not only possessed superhuman speed and strength, but who might have been rendered half-deranged by the time he had spent in Ateshga’s care.
I just hoped that the weapon would leave more than a dent on that golden armour, if it came to that.
‘We’re sure about this?’ Campion asked.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Not remotely. But I think we’ve still got to do it.’
I palmed the control then stepped back briskly from the upright chassis of his cage.
The restraining field loosened its hold on him gradually, so that Hesperus lowered to the ground in dreamlike slow motion. His feet contacted the decking and his arms descended to his sides. He remained standing, but for several moments there was no indication that he was actually alive, rather than just balancing in that position. Then his golden face, averted until that moment, lifted to look me in the eyes.
Hesperus was a gorgeous machine.
He resembled a man in a suit of close-fitting armour, though he was too slender for a man to have fitted inside that skin. His skull was all elegant planes and gleaming curves. The Machine Person was both coldly robotic and searingly human, like an exaggerated and stylised caricature of some stunningly handsome man from the fables of antiquity, rendered in gold and chrome. His eyes were densely faceted mechanisms, shifting from opal to turquoise depending on the precise elevation of his gaze. He had a broad cleft chin. His cheekbones were parallel flanges of chrome, pushing through his skin as if to serve as cooling elements. He had a nose, which appeared to serve no other function than to complement the proportions of his face. His mouth was thick-lipped, the golden lips parted to a narrow slot, with the chromed complexities of his speech-generating systems lurking behind. His skull was gold save for two coloured-glass panels on either side, just above the streamlined representations of his ears. The panels were fretted with a fine webwork of chrome. Behind the facets whirled traceries of pastel light.
The rest of him was no less beautiful; there was almost no part of him that was not aesthetically balanced with the whole. He had a sculpted chest-plate, a lean chrome abdomen, thin hips and long, muscular limbs. The only oddity about him, the only thing that did not look quite in balance, was his left arm: it was thicker below the elbow than his right, and his left hand was heavier, as if he wore a metal gauntlet over the gauntlet of his own hand.
It was the only part of him that jarred; everything else was harmonious. Machine People manifest as men and women, sometimes as children and occasionally as sexless, luminously metallic beings. Hesperus’s face and build left me in no doubt that he had chosen to manifest as a man. He even had a suggestion of genitals, moulded in tasteful gold relief. But there was nothing crass or threatening about his appearance. Hesperus was exquisite, a thing to be admired and coveted.
But he was also alive. Also powerful and quick and - potentially - the most lethal and clever thing that had ever walked on Dalliance.
‘Who are you?’ he asked, his lips moving even though his face had appeared to be a stiff golden mask until that moment. His voice was a trilling, liquid susurration of birdsong, orchestrated into human speech sounds. It was the loveliest thing I had ever heard.
‘I am Purslane, a shatterling of Gentian Line, part of the Commonality.’ I indicated my companion. ‘This is Campion, a co-shatterling of the same Line. You’re aboard his ship now. You were being kept prisoner by an entity calling itself Ateshga. I have just negotiated your release.’
‘Do you fear me, shatterlings?’
‘Perhaps,’ I said.
‘You have no cause to. I would put that weapon away, if I were you. My intelligence is distributed throughout my body, so it would take more than one shot to kill me. You could hurt me eventually, but not before redirected energies had done a considerable amount of damage to your surroundings.’ He looked around slowly, his neck pivoting with the eerie smoothness of a gun-turret. Shifting effortlessly to Trans, he said, ‘Would it help matters if I spoke the language of the Commonality? I do not think it will pose me any insurmountable difficulties.’
We Gentians liked to think that no one else understood Trans quite as well as we did. Yet with one sentence Hesperus had demolished all my certainties.
‘He’s good,’ Campion whispered. ‘He’s very go
od.’
‘You speak Trans very well,’ I said.
‘For a machine.’
‘For anyone not born to it. Please - no offence was intended.’
He regarded me with those glinting opal eyes. He tilted his head microscopically and they flared turquoise light. ‘Nor was any taken, shatterling. Would you be so kind as to explain my predicament? You have mentioned someone called Ateshga, and the name means something to me, but I am still at a loss to understand how I came here.’
‘Then you don’t remember being caught?’
‘I remember details, but not the whole. I recall that I was travelling.’ He turned a palm to his chest, fingers stiffened. ‘Unfortunately, something happened to my ship - a technical fault.’
‘I can probably guess the rest. You dug into your vessel’s trove and learned of the existence of a dealer in ships located in this system. Ateshga lured you in and then decided he could make more credits by stealing your ship than by taking your money.’
‘Is that what happened to you?’
‘Ateshga didn’t realise he’d netted a pair of Gentians. We explained to him that if he didn’t let us go, he could expect retaliation from the rest of the Line.’
‘A formidable threat,’ Hesperus said. ‘How did you persuade him to let me go?’
‘He had no choice once we were free: he’d have been in even hotter water if it became known that he was imprisoning a Machine Person.’
‘In which case I owe you my gratitude. I am still sorry that you felt the need to bring a weapon.’
‘I was worried that you might be disorientated.’
‘Then your concern was understandable. My memory is damaged. Might I enquire as to the present date?’
‘Six zero three three, four eighty-five, Crab standard time. You’re in the Scutum-Crux Arm, in the Nelumbium System.’
‘I was Ateshga’s prisoner for a considerable number of years. The last clear date I recall - in the human system - began with a five.’
I glanced at the cage. He was still standing inside it, albeit free to walk out. ‘Did Ateshga do something to your memory?’
‘The errors I am experiencing are symptomatic of crude electromagnetic interference. He must have been trying to force amnesia on me, so that he could let me go without fear of the consequences.’ He looked down at his arm, the one that was larger than the other, and then back at me. ‘I am sorry, shatterlings. It must be quite unsettling to find me like this. Might I ask what you intend to do with me, now that I am in your care?’
‘Our next stop - once we’ve left Ateshga - will be our reunion system. If it’s anything like the last couple of get-togethers, there’ll be other Machine People along as guests. If you wish, we’ll take you to them. Otherwise, you can stay aboard our ships as long as you like.’ I paused, mindful of the delicate matter I was about to broach. ‘Of course, if you were to consent to visit the reunion, it would not hurt my standing in the Line.’
‘Something can probably be arranged. Have we already left Ateshga behind?’
‘There’s still a little business we have to conclude before we leave.’ I offered a hand, inviting him to step forward. ‘You don’t have to stay in that thing if you don’t want to.’
He formed a smile. There was something stiffly theatrical about it, the mask too perfectly symmetrical to show human emotions with complete authenticity. But it was still a smile.
‘Thank you, shatterling.’
‘Call me Purslane.’
‘Very well, Purslane.’ He took a cautious step out of the cage, as if expecting the containment field to snap on again. He stretched his arms, turning to the left and the right as if to admire them. I thought of two things: the hunting cat I had once owned in Palatial, and the replica of Michelangelo’s David which stood in one of the great hallways of the old household. ‘It is good to move again, Purslane. I cannot express how unpleasant it has been to be Ateshga’s prisoner. If I were inclined to revenge ...’ He trailed off.
‘Are you, Hesperus?’ Campion asked.
‘No,’ he answered. ‘Revenge is for biologicals. We do things differently.’
Doctor Meninx said nothing when he was introduced to Hesperus, but there was a world of calculating suspicion in his paper face.
‘Ateshga and I were just discussing the other ships,’ I said. ‘Weren’t we, Ateshga?’
‘But you have seen all my ships,’ the imago answered.
Hesperus moved into the imago’s line of sight and said, ‘I know what you did to my memory, Ateshga. You were sensible to wipe what you did.’
‘I could have killed you,’ Ateshga said.
‘That will be taken into consideration when I return to my people and explain where I have been. In the meantime, in the interests of ameliorating your situation, I suggest that you do everything in your power to comply with the shatterling’s requests. If she wishes to see more ships, show them to her.’
Ateshga said nothing. His ship slammed out of the atmosphere, carving a pillar of vacuum in its wake.
‘Where’s he gone?’ Campion asked.
‘Orbit,’ I said.
‘There were no ships in orbit,’ Doctor Meninx said. ‘We should have seen them even if they had the benefit of camouflaging screens. Nothing is that invisible.’
‘We did see them,’ I said. ‘We just didn’t see them.’
Campion settled into his couch and tugged his hovering console down until it was within easy reach. He punched commands and took Dalliance up and out. By the time we had cleared the atmosphere, Silver Wings was racing to meet us. We were above the equatorial plane of the Jovian, looking down on a sunlit face.
‘I do not understand,’ Doctor Meninx said.
‘Me neither,’ said Campion, staring at the planet. ‘All I’m seeing is—’
‘The ring system,’ I finished for him. ‘Show them, Ateshga. Campion and the Doctor are having one of their slow days.’
‘Show us what?’ Campion asked.
That was when the wave of change began spreading through the rings. Something awesome was happening down there. The very texture and brightness of the rings was transmuting, beginning in a perfectly straight line that then swept slowly around, moving with the eerie steadiness of a clock hand. Where the line had passed, the rings were darker and somehow more tenuous in appearance. Where before they had cut through the face of the planet like swathes of silver-white ribbon, now they resembled ribbons of smoke.
‘That’s where he hid them,’ I said. ‘Most of the particles are still chips of water ice, but the ships are much bigger. He tuned their impassors so that the bubbles had the same reflectivity as the rest of the particles. Now he’s turning them off, so there’s not so much light being thrown back at us.’
I had seen larger constructs; we all had. But beyond a certain scale, vast was simply vast, whether it was the hovering majesty of the jade cathedral on Lutetium, a Second Imperium moonship or the awesome bones of the Prior machinery near Sagittarius A.
There was room in those rings for a lot of ships.
‘How many?’ I asked, hardly daring to.
‘Sixty thousand, give or take,’ Ateshga said. ‘I’ve been collecting for a very long time.’
‘Take your pick,’ I told Campion. ‘If you can’t find the ship you’re looking for here, you may as well give up. I bet he’s got at least one of everything.’
‘I’m not sure now,’ Campion said, with an abashed smile.
‘Not sure about what?’
‘That I actually want to get rid of Dalliance. So what if she’s made me late for a few appointments? It’s not as if she didn’t get me there in the end, in one piece.’
‘You have an excellent point, honoured shatterling,’ said Ateshga. ‘Why dispose of something when it has served you well? Of course, once you have specified your requirements, it will still take a little while to complete the refurbishment. The components must be sourced, and integrated into your ship ... I believe we are loo
king at months, if not years, of work. Do you wish to enter abeyance until matters are completed?’
‘Nice try,’ I said. ‘I have a nagging feeling we’d never wake up if we put ourselves asleep.’
‘We’ll just have to take turns,’ Campion said.
‘That may not be necessary,’ said Hesperus in his beautiful trill of a voice. ‘I have no need of abeyance as you understand it. I am willing to supervise matters while the two of you sleep. I believe I can hold Ateshga to his guarantees.’
Campion and I looked at each other. I suppose we were both thinking the same thing. We had no evidence that Hesperus was an authentic envoy of the Machine People. Given Ateshga’s demonstrated treachery, Hesperus might very well be a plant, a last-ditch stratagem for regaining control of us.
‘You can trust me,’ he said, as if reading our thoughts. ‘Now and for ever.’
‘We can’t be certain of this creature’s intentions,’ Doctor Meninx said.
Angrily I turned on the paper harlequin. ‘Are you volunteering to stay awake, in that case?’
‘That is not what I meant—’
‘I do not blame any of you for harbouring suspicions,’ Hesperus said. ‘I also have suspicions. Do you really intend to return me to my people, or are you simply lying to gain my compliance? Were you complicit in my imprisonment?’
‘We weren’t,’ I said.
Hesperus raised a calming hand. ‘The point is, these doubts cannot be settled instantly. It will take time. For now, let me prove my trustworthiness by guarding you while Ateshga honours his obligations.’
‘Could you take care of my ship as well, and make sure Ateshga doesn’t cut any corners?’ Campion asked.
His eyes gleamed turquoise as he turned to face the imago. ‘Corner-cutting will not be an option, I assure you.’
CHAPTER FIVE
Purslane and Hesperus were facing each other, seated on opposite sides of a low gaming table. Tiny spectral armies stalked a shadowy landscape wreathed in a cloak of mist and gunpowder. The two gamers were commanding their battalions with subtle hand gestures, like expert puppeteers.
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