Inhibitor Phase

by Alastair Reynolds

  I laughed aloud at the absurdity of what she had just said. ‘I would know if I were seven hundred years old, Rose.’

  ‘Probably Rose. Not Rose. Always Probably Rose.’

  ‘All right,’ I said, accepting her preference. ‘Probably Rose it is. What . . . happened to you, Probably Rose? How did you come here? Were you a doctor before?’

  ‘Not a doctor. Not a doctor.’ She was preparing another instrument now, resembling a magnifying glass. She indicated for me to extend my arm and swept the glass along it, frowning intently as images and data streams played across the semi-transparent glass. ‘Glass said you’d had it changed, yes.’

  ‘Glass can say what she wants.’

  ‘See those bone growths? Markers for osseo-integration. You lost the arm, then had a mechanical graft.’ She nodded to herself. ‘Fits. Wartime prosthetics, Martian theatre, first Conjoiner war.’

  ‘You just took blood from that arm.’

  ‘You had it regrown. Later methods. Maybe more than once. Multiple basal nucleation sites.’ She swung the hoop onto my face. ‘Mixmaster genetic watermarking. Same with the eye. Lost it, replaced it, regrown it – several times over. Good match. Hard to tell.’

  ‘Glass has sold you a story. Now you’re just seeing what you want to see.’

  ‘Run the same tests on yourself if you like. Yes, and yes. And verily. Nothing to hide. But you’ll come to the same conclusion.’ She put away the scanner. ‘Still need medicine, whoever you are. Do your bones ache?’

  ‘It’d be quicker if I told you which parts of me don’t ache.’

  ‘Glass’s accelerated rejuvenation, yes. Tearing apart bones, musculature, nervous tissue, rebuilding. Hard on you. These will help.’ She was preparing a concoction from the coloured vials on one of the racks, pouring a little of each into a small beaker. ‘And mnemonovores mean headaches. Ripping and reassembling synaptic connections. Like digging up the pavements of a city, putting in new drains and cables. Will get better, with time. But for now, drink.’

  Since I had nothing to lose, I took the beaker she had filled and sipped at it cautiously then with steady enthusiasm, and then swigged it with reckless abandon.

  ‘I’ll bet the medical systems on Glass’s ship were at least as good as anything you have here.’

  ‘Yes, and verily.’

  ‘So why didn’t Glass bother to give me something like this, just to take the edge off?’

  ‘Glass doesn’t care what you feel. How you feel. Just that you live.’

  I finished the beaker, tilting the empty receptacle in the direction of Probably Rose. ‘But you did, seemingly. To you, in that case. Unless you’ve just talked me into drinking a beaker full of poison.’ I watched her as she took the beaker from my fingers and placed it into an autoclave. ‘Did you know Glass before now?’

  ‘No. Not crossed paths. Only knew what Lady Arek and Pinky said.’

  ‘Then you’re another of the people who were already here, in this rock?’

  ‘No. Not here, yes and verily.’ She cuffed herself again. Something was not quite right in her head, I supposed. Some neurological gears kept sticking, or going out of mesh. It explained the strangeness of her speech patterns, the shakiness of her hands, perhaps even the twitching self-admonishment, a kind of tic that reset herself. ‘Down in Chasm City. In the Swinehouse, yes.’

  ‘What was the Swinehouse?’ I asked gently.

  ‘Bad. Very bad, yes, and verily. Bad, bad. Yes!’ She cuffed herself twice, and I felt bad that I had made her revisit something painful. ‘But I got out, yes. I got out. Probably Rose got out.’

  ‘What happened there?’

  ‘Not what happened.’ She slapped herself hard this time, three times in rapid succession ‘What is happening. What happens. What still goes on. Her Swineness! Yes. Yes! Yes!’

  I reached out to grab her wrist before she hit herself again.

  ‘I’m sorry, Probably Rose.’

  Slowly I let go of her, and she rubbed her wrist where I had seized it too firmly, even as I meant to be kind.

  She looked into me with that single wondering eye. ‘Are you a bad man, Warren Clavain?’

  She had called me by that name and I had no desire to acknowledge it. But if Glass had driven a crack into my certainty, initiating a process of self-examination and reidentification, being in the presence of this other damaged soul had blasted that crack into a deep, widening fissure. It wasn’t that I believed the evidence presented by the machines on the trolley. But I did believe Probably Rose.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I answered, trembling in sympathy. ‘And it frightens me what I’ll find when I do.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  We were called back to the Overlook for dinner. A long table had appeared since I was last there, with its major axis pointed at the slanted observation windows. There was still not much to see through them except suggestions of some formidably jagged terrain, crags and prominences and ravines wrapped all the way around the inner core, but which was still mostly wreathed in mist and darkness.

  Lady Arek stood at the table’s head, with her back to the window. Everyone else present was already seated: a dozen or so on either side. It was the first time we had seen most of them. Pinky and Snowdrop were nearest to Lady Arek, but seated opposite each other. Two facing chairs were left unoccupied, then came Cater, Omori, and Probably Rose, and then a weary-looking ensemble of pigs and humans, all of whom carried at least a scar or two.

  ‘Be seated, please,’ Lady Arek said, making a formal, stiff-armed gesture in the direction of the empty chairs. ‘I imagine you will want to eat, but even if you don’t, I have something you will want to see.’

  We took our places with a certain awkwardness, Glass eyeing me, me eyeing Glass, neither of us sure of our roles. Lady Arek poured some wine into our glasses. ‘They left us with the evidence of some extremely questionable activities taking place here,’ she commented. ‘They also left the contents of several well-stocked cellars, mostly untouched. Should our ethics forbid us from partaking, do you think?’

  I lifted the glass and sniffed the bouquet. ‘My instinct would be to say . . . to hell with ethics.’

  ‘Then we are of one mind, Warren.’ Lady Arek sat down and scraped her chair forward. ‘I must apologise for a certain reticence upon our first meeting. I had my doubts about your nature, and by extension I had doubts about Glass’s judgement. I wondered if you could really be the man we sought. You seemed, on the face of it . . . somewhat unpromising material.’

  ‘But he is who Glass says he is,’ Probably Rose said, looking around at the rest of the table. ‘I’ve run the tests, all the tests. Yes and verily. This man was born in an insular territory of Northern Europe, Western Palearctic Sector, Earth, called—’

  ‘My guarantee should have been sufficient,’ Glass interrupted.

  ‘My dear Hourglass . . .’ Lady Arek extended her hand in a show of charitableness. ‘You are right, as I should have always known you would be. Your methods may be unconventional, even reckless, but you have always shown attention to detail.’

  Glass shifted in her seat. It was hard to tell whether she considered herself criticised or praised. ‘Say what you will about my methods. But I wouldn’t have sat around for six years doing nothing.’

  ‘Matters are complicated,’ Lady Arek said.

  ‘Nothing’s complicated when you’re willing to use the necessary force. Unless you lack the nerve.’

  ‘Oh, the nerve isn’t lacking,’ Pinky said. He took a quick glug from whatever it was that he was drinking: some clear spirit, rather than wine. ‘If force was the answer . . .’

  ‘Then why aren’t we in possession of all nine stones?’ Glass demanded.

  I took a cautious sip of wine and set down my glass. ‘Lady Arek, Glass? This isn’t helping. It’s not helping me and I rather doubt it’s helping any of your friends. Who, incidentally, I have yet to be introduced to.’

  ‘You expecting it to be a long acquaintance
, Stink?’ Pinky asked.

  I met his gaze and answered as reasonably as I could. ‘The truth is I have no idea. But I thought a little civility wouldn’t go amiss, until we’ve all agreed on the next step – whatever that is.’

  Lady Arek sighed. ‘You are right, Warren: I’ve been a less than perfect host. And you have every right to know your new allies. As does Hourglass.’ She extended a hand and began naming the figures who took up the other places. ‘Bruno, Yilin, Chersini, Maude . . .’ Until the names washed over me and I could only nod, trusting that it would not be too long before I committed them to memory.

  ‘From what I’ve gathered,’ I said, ‘some of you were on this rock before Lady Arek arrived, and some of you have come up from Yellowstone. But the navigational beacon we found showed no ship movements other than the coming and going of Lady Arek’s shuttle. Those of you who arrived here from Chasm City must have arrived at the same time, on that last flight six years ago.’

  ‘That’s correct,’ said the one called Chersini, a male pig who held a long-bladed knife in a leather-gloved hand, scratching the tip against the table as he scraped an outline around his other hand. ‘We came up with the stone, those of us who made it out. Lady Arek and Pinky saved us. Isn’t one of us that won’t carry that gratitude to our graves. Unless you were there, you won’t know how bad it was.’

  Pinky said quietly: ‘Lady Arek wanted to take the shuttle back down, to scoop up another load of survivors. I overruled her. Twenty was all we managed. Three didn’t make it through the first week, even with Probably Rose doing her best.’

  ‘You were correct to overrule me,’ Lady Arek said. ‘Even now, I shudder to think how close I came to making that error. We had been lucky to make the movements we did without alerting the wolves. Another flight in and out of that atmosphere would almost certainly have breached their triggering thresholds.’ Her fierce eyes latched onto me, and again I felt their intimidating scrutiny. ‘Then all you would have for dinner company would be ghosts, Sky Marshall.’

  ‘First a new name, then a title. I suppose I’m going up in the world.’

  ‘Count your blessings,’ Lady Arek said. Then she reached forward and lifted the domed metal lid off the plate that was set before her. ‘Behold, the Gideon stone.’

  In the middle of the plate was a lumpy, random-looking thing that appeared to be a half-fused nugget of ruby and chromium. It was larger than a fist, smaller than a human skull. It gave off a soft scarlet glow, underlighting Lady Arek’s face.

  Lady Arek picked it up in her fingertips. She passed it to me, dropping it into my grip. I closed my fingers around it. The Gideon stone was cosmically cold, heavy and dense, as if I had just palmed a lump of frozen spacetime, folded and curdled in on itself to the quivering point of singularity.

  ‘It’s active,’ Lady Arek said. ‘It has its own energy source, its own activation protocols. We can control the stone to some degree, interfacing native human technology, integrating it into our defence systems. But the stone will always have a will of its own, its own moods and temperaments. Squeeze it tighter.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘Just do it, Stink,’ said Pinky.

  I redoubled my grip, humouring my hosts. I was expecting something to happen and when the stone glowed brighter, its scarlet light bleeding out between my fingers, I wisely avoided dropping it. Then I felt a sort of cold, eruptive ooze emerging from the stone, as if I had cracked it and now its soft, liquid contents were spilling out.

  The stone was intact; I had not crushed it. But something was definitely emanating from it. A pearly film was gloving my hand, creeping up towards my wrist. I felt nothing: no cold prickle or itch of contact. It was as if the film adhered close to the contours of my hand without making direct contact. A scale-like tessellation showed itself in the pearly film: hexagonal platelets jostling against each other.

  ‘Chersini,’ said Lady Arek. ‘Bring the vice.’

  Chersini scraped back his chair, reached for something beneath it and came round to my back. Before I could move Cater and Omori had me pinned down, unable to move or lift my arm where it rested against the table, my hand now lost within a faceted mitten of that spreading film.

  ‘Harm him,’ Glass said, ‘and I’ll send a direct neural command to Scythe to flood this entire complex with broad-spectrum nerve gas.’

  ‘That would have the slight drawback of also killing you,’ Lady Arek said.

  Glass looked unconcerned. ‘I’d accelerate my mental clock rate enough to enjoy my last few seconds.’

  ‘He shan’t be harmed.’ Lady Arek nodded at Chersini. ‘We need him to unlock the riddle of Charybdis. But a demonstration of the stone’s ability will make my point more readily than words ever could. Do it.’

  I writhed, but Cater and Omori had me immobilised. Rationally, I did not think it likely that Lady Arek would have any interest in seeing me injured. But I would have defied anyone to cling to rationality as they watched their hand being inserted between the two flat planes of a mechanical vice: the heavy item Chersini had kept beneath his chair.

  Chersini tightened the vice by means of a handle. It went around twice, then met the resistance of my hand.

  ‘As tight as you can,’ Lady Arek said.

  Grunting with the effort, Chersini completed another turn of the handle. I had no doubt of the strength he was exerting: I could see it in the muscles and tendons of his forearm, bulging through the fabric of his sleeve.

  But I felt nothing. The vice should have crushed my bones, but all I felt was a cold tingling. The pearly membrane that had come out of the Gideon stone was licking around the two jaws of the vice, enclosing them.

  ‘Harder,’ Lady Arek demanded.

  Chersini growled back: ‘Any harder and I’ll shatter the vice.’

  ‘I think,’ Glass said, ‘that we may consider your point demonstrated, Lady Arek.’

  ‘I concur,’ I said.

  Chersini eased back the jaws of the vice until it could be released from my hand. The membrane clung to it, then relinquished its interest. It settled down around my hand again, but with the extreme edge of it still inching up my forearm.

  ‘Armouring skein,’ Lady Arek said. ‘A defensive technology known to the Grubs and carried by the member of their civilisation who ended up crashed beneath Chasm City. We have no sense of how it works. We cannot even determine the consistency of that field, whether it’s a form of mass-energy or some clever, self-organising origami of spacetime at the Planck granularity. All we know is that we can make it work for us. Release your grip on the stone.’

  I did, watching as the membrane slithered back down my hand, losing its faceted texture and puddling eagerly back into the stone. The scarlet glow damped down again, the stone returning to dormancy.

  I massaged my wrist, more out of reflex than necessity. ‘Really, you could have just told me.’

  ‘But now you know,’ Lady Arek said. ‘Which will help you, when you have to trust your life to it.’

  ‘What gets through it? When we meet the Inhibitors, they won’t be coming at us with knives.’

  ‘Nothing in our conventional arsenal. Nothing that we’ve been able to test using our resources inside this rock. Cutting tools, projectiles, medium-yield laser and boser discharges: nothing breaks the field. Extreme pressure, extreme heat: nothing touches it.’

  Glass made a scoffing sound. ‘Call me when you need some real weapons.’

  ‘The armouring skein is strong, but not invulnerable,’ Lady Arek replied. ‘That we know. If the Grubs were in possession of an infinitely powerful defensive technology, one of their kind would likely not have crashed on Yellowstone. It must have limits. If we breach those limits, we may lose the Gideon stone, or even destroy ourselves. That, we must not risk. Given these dangers, the only testing must be under conditions of fire.’

  ‘Do you think this can resist Inhibitor-level weaponry?’ I asked.

  ‘We cannot assume so. Perhaps it will offer
short-term protection, but that is not what we are depending on. What you just saw – what you just experienced – was a demonstration of the Gideon stone’s ability to protect against extreme pressure. A mechanical vice, in this case, but it could just as easily have been the crush of a planetary atmosphere. An object – say, a ship – could endure a great deal of pressure with the assistance of Gideon stones.’

  ‘What sort of pressure?’

  ‘Multiple gigapascals,’ she answered me. ‘Many hundreds of thousands of atmospheres. That, at least, is what we must be prepared for, depending on factors yet to be decided.’

  I nearly laughed. ‘Dear God.’

  ‘I do not deny that the task is not without its challenges. But the thing we seek – the thing that the stones will help us find – may well be located at those pressures. We must be prepared.’

  ‘But you’ve only got the one stone. Is that going to be enough?’

  Lady Arek shook her head once. ‘Unfortunately not. The armouring skein has a limited effectiveness, a range of extent. One stone would provide for a small object – say a suit, or a missile, but not a ship.’

  ‘Then you’d better have an idea how we get the other stones,’ Glass said.

  Lady Arek looked at Pinky. ‘Tell them, if you will. The condensed version.’

  Pinky looked through me rather than at me. Then at Glass. ‘We had an ally in the city, who helped secure the nine stones. Unfortunately someone in his organisation betrayed him. Before we could get out of Chasm City, we were jumped by the Swine Queen. He was killed, and she has the other eight stones.’

  ‘Is she . . . a pig?’ I ventured.