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Inhibitor Phase

Page 58

by Alastair Reynolds


  Haven: a colony world orbiting Gliese 687.

  Hela: an icy moon in the 107 Piscium system, orbiting the gas giant Haldora.

  Hyperpig: pig-human chimera of human-level intelligence.

  Hypometric: a class of technologies involving manipulation of spacetime at the Planck or sub-Planck level.

  Inhibitors: self-replication robots of alien origin, utilising cube-like modular sub-elements of variable size. Also known as wolves.

  Lighthugger: any large space vehicle with a relativistic cruise ceiling.

  Medichine: subcellular nanotechnology, usually of a biomedical rather than military/cybernetic nature.

  Melding Plague: nanotechnological virus of probable alien origin, responsible for collapse of the Demarchist golden age in 2510.

  Nestbuilders: symbiotic intelligences who have retained starfaring capability despite the emergence of the Inhibitors.

  Norte: a language incorporating elements of English and Spanish.

  Pattern Jugglers: amorphous, aquatic alien organisms forming a single information processing entity. Jugglers have been encountered on several isolated worlds, implying some earlier seeding programme. Jugglers record and update the neural patterns of sentient organisms entering their seas.

  Reefersleep: the cryogenic freezing technology adopted by Demarchists, Conjoiners and Ultras.

  Russish: a language derived from Russian and English elements.

  Rust Belt: in post-plague years, the band of mainly ruined habitats still orbiting Yellowstone.

  Torpor: a less advanced form of hibernation technology compared to reefersleep, suitable only for short intervals.

  Ultras: a loose, anarchic affliliation of starship crews (derived from a variety of factions) who spend their entire lives on ships, often at relativistic speed.

  Wolves: informal term for the Inhibitors.

  Yellowstone: the major settled world in the Epsilon Eridani system, home to Chasm City.

  A NOTE ON CHRONOLOGY

  When I began writing this novel I had a story in mind, one that I hoped would fit into the existing chronology of events laid out by other books and stories set in the Revelation Space universe. Things are rarely that simple.

  The principal events that happen in the foreground of this novel are indeed broadly compatible with the existing canon, since they mostly take place after Absolution Gap, chronologically the last novel in the sequence before now. The only exception is the framing passages in AG, which are set further in the future again – around about the year 3300.

  Where we run into difficulties is in the latter stages of the novel, and how those events mesh with the timeline of Galactic North.

  Irravel’s narrative in that story has her communing with a representative of the Nestbuilders around a star in the Hyades, in the year 2931. It’s clear from Irravel’s discussion that humans have already deployed Nestbuilder weaponry against the Inhibitors, just as they are setting out to do in 2858, at the conclusion of Inhibitor Phase. While these dates might not seem to contradict each other, on closer inspection they introduce a difficulty.

  Although it might be 2931 by Irravel’s reckoning, the latest news she could hope to receive from back home would be from about 2780, a century and a half earlier. That’s because the Hyades star cluster is very much further out than any of the locations we’ve visited in this or the other novels.

  The first and least problematic get-out is to assume that the entry in Irravel’s narrative must be considered erroneous. Her next entry isn’t for another four hundred years, so there’s plenty of room to adjust the chronology without throwing her timeline out of joint.

  The second approach is to assume that, since Irravel is clearly heading further and further from Earth, she has decided that she no longer needs to synchronise her clocks to any local reference frame. By that reckoning, although she calls it 2931, the real date when the signals reach her would be nearer to 3080, from the point of view of someone on Earth. The later dates in her narrative can be reconciled with Irravel making stopovers, following a circuitous route, or just changing her mind.

  As for the framing events in Absolution Gap, these remain consistent within the timeline regardless of either assumption above.

  CREDITS

  Alastair Reynolds and Gollancz would like to thank everyone at Orion who worked on the publication of Inhibitor Phase in the UK.

  Editorial

  Gillian Redfearn

  Brendan Durkin

  Copy editor

  Abigail Nathan

  Proof reader

  Jane Howard

  Audio

  Paul Stark

  Amber Bates

  Contracts

  Anne Goddard

  Paul Bulos

  Jake Alderson

  Design

  Joanna Ridley

  Nick May

  Marketing

  Lucy Cameron

  Production

  Paul Hussey

  Editorial Management

  Charlie Panayiotou

  Jane Hughes

  Finance

  Jasdip Nandra

  Afeera Ahmed

  Sue Baker

  Publicity

  Will O’Mullane

  Sales

  Jen Wilson

  Esther Waters

  Victoria Laws

  Ellie Kyrke-Smith

  Frances Doyle

  Georgina Cutler

  Jack Hallam

  Operations

  Jo Jacobs

  Sharon Willis

  Lisa Pryde

  Lucy Brem

  Also by Alastair Reynolds from Gollancz:

  Novels

  Century Rain

  Pushing Ice

  House of Suns

  Terminal World

  The Medusa Chronicles (with Stephen Baxter)

  Revelation Space

  Revelation Space

  Redemption Ark

  Absolution Gap

  Chasm City

  Inhibitor Phase

  Poseidon’s Children

  Blue Remembered Earth

  On the Steel Breeze

  Poseidon’s Wake

  Revenger

  Revenger

  Shadow Captain

  Bone Silence

  The Prefect Dreyfus Emergencies

  Aurora Rising (previously published as The Prefect)

  Elysium Fire

  Short Story Collections:

  Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days

  Galactic North

  Zima Blue

  Beyond the Aquila Rift

  Slow Bullets (novella)

  COPYRIGHT

  First published in Great Britain in 2021 by Gollancz

  an imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

  Carmelite House, 50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  An Hachette UK Company

  Copyright © Dendrocopos Ltd 2021

  The moral right of Alastair Reynolds to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN (eBook) 978 0 575 09075 0

  Typeset by Input Data Services Ltd, Somerset

  www.alastairreynolds.com

  www.gollancz.co.uk

  Table of Contents

  To my wife, for being there.

  INHIBITOR PHASE

  PREFACE

  Part One

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER
THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  Part Two

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Part Three

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Part Four

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Chapter Twenty

  Part Five

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Part Six

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Part Seven

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  END NOTES

  KEY CHARACTERS IN THE TIMELINE

  SELECTED GLOSSARY

  A NOTE ON CHRONOLOGY

  CREDITS

  Also by Alastair Reynolds from Gollancz:

  COPYRIGHT

 

 

 


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