The Captain took a step back. ‘Good,’ he said, approvingly. He rolled the helmet in his hands, inspecting it for signs of wear. Antoinette noticed now that there was a vacant round socket in one side, into which the red umbilical was meant to plug. ‘Thank you for bringing this down to me. The gesture is appreciated.’
‘You left it with Palfrey. That wasn’t an accident, was it?’
‘I suppose not. What did you say it was - a “calling card”? Not far from the truth, I guess.’
‘I took it as a sign that you were willing to talk to someone.’
‘You seemed very anxious to talk to me,’ he said.
‘We were. We are.’ She looked at the apparition with a mixture of fear and dangerous, seductive relief. ‘Do you mind if I ask you something?’ She took his silence to indicate assent. ‘What shall I call you? “Captain” doesn’t seem quite right to me, not now that we’ve been through the mutual-trust thing.’
‘Fair point,’ he conceded, not sounding entirely convinced. ‘John will do for now.’
‘Then, John, what have I done to deserve this? It wasn’t just my bringing back the helmet, was it?’
‘Like I said, you seemed anxious to talk.’
Antoinette bent down to pick up her torch. ‘I’ve been trying to reach you for years, with no success at all. What’s changed?’
‘I feel different now,’ he said.
‘As if you were asleep but have finally woken up?’
‘It’s more as if I need to be awake now. Does that answer your question?’
‘I’m not sure. This might sound rude, but . . . who am I talking to, exactly?’
‘You’re talking to me. As I am. As I was.’
‘No one really knows who you were, John. That suit looks pretty old to me.’
A gloved hand moved across the square chest-pack, tracing a pattern from point to point. To Antoinette it looked like a benediction, but it might equally have been a rote-learned inspection of critical systems. Air supply, pressure integrity, thermal control, comms, waste management . . . she knew that litany herself.
‘I was on Mars,’ he said.
‘I’ve never been there,’ she said.
‘No?’ He sounded disappointed.
‘Fact of the matter is, I really haven’t seen all that many worlds. Yellowstone, a bit of Resurgam, and this place. But never Mars. What was it like?’
‘Different. Wilder. Colder. Savage. Unforgiving. Cruel. Pristine. Bleak. Beautiful. Like a lover with a temper.’
‘But this was a while back, wasn’t it?’
‘Uh huh. How old do you think this suit is?’
‘It looks pretty damn antique to me.’
‘They haven’t made suits like this since the twenty-first century. You think Clavain’s old, a relic from history. I was an old man before he took a breath.’
It surprised her to hear him mention Clavain by name. Clearly the Captain was more aware of shipboard developments than some gave him credit for. ‘You’ve come a long way, then,’ she said.
‘It’s been a long, strange trip, yes. And just look where it’s brought me.’
‘You must have some stories to tell.’ Antoinette reckoned that there were two safe areas of conversation: the present and the very distant past. The last thing she wanted was to have the Captain dwelling on his recent sickness and bizarre transformation.
‘There are some stories I don’t want told,’ he said. ‘But isn’t that true for us all?’
‘No argument from me.’
His thin slit of a mouth hinted at a smile. ‘Dark secrets in your own past, Antoinette?’
‘Nothing I’m going to lose any sleep over, not when we have so much else we need to worry about.’
‘Ah.’ He rotated the helmet in his gloved hands. ‘The difficult matter of the present. I am aware of things, of course, perhaps more than you realise. I know, for instance, that there are other agencies in the system.’
‘You feel them?’
‘It was their noises that woke me from long, calm dreams of Mars.’ He regarded the icons and decals on the helmet, stroking them with the stubby tip of one gloved finger. Antoinette wondered about the memories they stirred, preserved across five or six hundred years of experience. Memories thick with the grey dust of centuries.
‘We thought that you were waking,’ she said. ‘In the last few weeks we’ve become more aware of your presence. We didn’t think it was coincidence, especially after what Khouri told us. I know you remember Khouri, John, or you wouldn’t have brought me down here.’
‘Where is she?’
‘With Clavain and the others.’
‘And Ilia? Where is Ilia?’
Antoinette was sweating. The temptation to lie, to offer a soothing platitude, was overwhelming. But she did not doubt for one instant that the Captain would see through any attempt at deception. ‘Ilia’s dead.’
The black and white cap bowed down. ‘I thought I might have dreamed it,’ he said. ‘That’s the problem now. I can’t always tell what’s real and what’s imagined. I might be dreaming you at this very moment.’
‘I’m real,’ she said, as if her assurance would make any difference, ‘but Ilia’s dead. You remember what happened, don’t you?’
His voice was soft and thoughtful, like a child remembering the significant events in a nursery tale. ‘I remember that she was here, and that we were alone. I remember her lying in a bed, with people around her.’
What was she going to tell him now? That the reason Ilia had been in a bed in the first place was because she had suffered injuries during her efforts to thwart the Captain’s own suicide attempt, when he had directed one of the cache weapons against the hull of the ship. The scar he had inflicted on the hull was visible even now, a vertical fissure down one side of the spire. She was certain that on some level he knew all this but also that he did not need to be reminded of it now.
‘She died,’ Antoinette said, ‘trying to save us all. I gave her the use of my ship, Storm Bird, after we’d used it to rescue the last colonists from Resurgam.’
‘But I remember her being unwell.’
‘She wasn’t so unwell that she couldn’t fly a ship. Thing is, John, she felt she had something to atone for. You remember what she did to the colonists, when your crew were trying to find Sylveste? Made them think she’d wiped out a whole settlement in a fit of pique? That’s why they wanted her for a war criminal. Towards the end, I wonder whether she didn’t start believing it herself. How are we to know what went through her head? If enough people hate you, it can’t be easy not to start thinking they might be right.’
‘She wasn’t a particularly good woman,’ the Captain said, ‘but she wasn’t what they made her out to be. She only ever did what she thought right for the ship.’
‘I guess that makes her a good woman in my book. Right now the ship is about all we have, John.’
‘Do you think it worked for her?’ he asked.
‘What?’
‘Atonement, Antoinette. Do you think it made the slightest difference, in the end?’
‘I can’t guess what went through her mind.’
‘Did it make any difference to the rest of you?’
‘We’re here, aren’t we? We got out of the system alive. If Ilia hadn’t taken her stand, we’d probably all be smeared over a few light-hours of local solar space around Resurgam.’
‘I hope you’re right. I did forgive her, you know.’
Antoinette knew that it had been Ilia who had allowed the Captain’s Melding Plague to finally engulf the ship. At the time she did it, it had seemed the only way to rid the ship of a different kind of parasite entirely. Antoinette did not think that Ilia had taken the decision lightly. Equally - based on her very limited experience of the woman - she did not think consideration of the Captain’s feelings had had very much influence on her decision.
‘That’s pretty generous of you,’ she said.
‘I realise that she did it for
the ship. I realise also that she could have killed me instead. I think she wanted to, after she learned what I had done to Sajaki.’
‘Sorry, but that’s way before my time.’
‘I murdered a good man,’ the Captain said. ‘Ilia knew. When she did this to me, when she made me what I am, she knew what I’d done. I would have sooner she’d killed me.’
‘Then you’ve paid for whatever you did,’ Antoinette said. ‘And even if you hadn’t then, even if she hadn’t done whatever she did, it doesn’t matter. What counts is that you saved one hundred and sixty thousand people from certain death. You’ve repaid that one crime a hundred thousand times over and more.’
‘You imagine that’s the way the world works, Antoinette?’
‘It’s good enough for me, John, but what do I know? I’m just a space pilot’s daughter from the Rust Belt.’
There was a lull. Still holding the helmet, the Captain took the end of the ribbed red umbilical and connected it to the socket in the side of the helmet. The interface between the real object and the simulated presence was disturbingly seamless.
‘The trouble is, Antoinette, what good was it to save those lives, if all that happens is that they die now, here on Ararat?’
‘We don’t know that anyone’s going to die. So far the Inhibitors haven’t touched us down here.’
‘All the same, you’d like some insurance.’
‘We need to consider the unthinkable, John. If the worst comes to the worst, we’ll need to leave Ararat. And you’re going to have to be the man with the plan.’
He slipped the helmet on to his neck ring, twisting it to and fro to engage the latching mechanisms. The faceplate glass was still up. The whites of his eyes were two bright crescents in the shadowed map of his face. Green and red numerals were back-reflected on to his skin.
‘It took some guts to come down here on your own, Antoinette.’
‘I don’t think this is a time for cowards,’ she said.
‘It never was,’ he said, beginning to slide down the faceplate glass. ‘About what you want of me?’
‘Yes?’
‘I’ll give the matter some thought.’
Then he turned around and walked slowly into the darkness. A skirl of red-brown dust swelled up to block him from view. It was like a sandstorm on Mars.
Hela, 2727
The Ultra captain was called Heckel, his ship the Third Gazometric. He had come down in a red-hulled shuttle of very ancient design - a triad of linked spheres with large, stylised tarantula markings.
Even by recent standards, Heckel struck Quaiche as a very strange individual. The mobility suit in which he came aboard the Lady Morwenna was a monstrous contraption of leather and brass, with rubberised accordion joints and gleaming metal plates secured by rivets. Behind the tiny grilled-over eyeholes of his helmet, wiper blades flicked back and forth to clear condensation. Steam vented from poorly maintained joints and seals. Two assistants had accompanied him: they were constantly opening and closing hatches in the suit, fiddling with brass knobs and valves. When Heckel spoke, his voice emerged from a miniature pipe organ projecting from the top of his helmet. He had to keep making adjustments to knobs in his chest area to stop the voice becoming too shrill or deep.
Quaiche understood none of Heckel’s utterances, but that was all right: Heckel had also brought along a baseline interpreter. She was a small doe-eyed woman dressed in a more modern spacesuit. Her helmet had folded back on itself, retracting like a cockatoo’s crest so that everyone could see her face.
‘You’re not an Ultra,’ Quaiche remarked to the interpreter.
‘Does it matter?’
‘I just find it amusing, that’s all. It’s where I started, doing the same line of work as you.’
‘That must have been a long time ago.’
‘But they still don’t find it any easier to negotiate with the likes of us, do they?’
‘Us, Dean?’
‘Baseline humans, like you and me.’
She hid it well, but he read her amused reaction. He saw himself from her point of view: an old man reclining on a couch, deathly frail, surrounded by an audience of moving mirrors, his eyes peeled open like fruits. He was not wearing the sunglasses.
Quaiche moved a hand. ‘I wasn’t always like this. I could pass for a baseline human, once, move in normal society with no one so much as batting an eyelid. I was taken into the employment of Ultras, just as you have been. Queen Jasmina, of the Gnostic Ascension . . .’
Heckel adjusted his chest knobs, then piped out something incomprehensible.
‘He says Jasmina did not have the best of reputations, even amongst other Ultras,’ the interpreter said. ‘He says that even now, in certain Ultra circles, mentioning her name is considered the height of bad taste.’
‘I didn’t know Ultras even recognised bad taste as a concept,’ Quaiche replied archly.
Heckel piped back something shrill and peremptory.
‘He says there is a lot you need to remember,’ the interpreter said. ‘He also says he has other business he needs to attend to today.’
Quaiche fingered the edge of his scarlet blanket. ‘Very well, then. Just to clarify . . . you would be willing to consider my offer?’
The interpreter listened to Heckel for a moment, then addressed Quaiche. ‘He says he understands the logic of your proposed security arrangement.’
Quaiche nodded enthusiastically, forcing the mirrors to nod synchronously. ‘Of course, it would work to the benefit of both parties. I would gain the protection of a ship like the Third Gazometric, insurance against the less scrupulous Ultra elements we all know are out there. And by agreeing to provide that security - for a fixed but not indefinite period, naturally - there would be compensations in terms of trading rights, insider information, that sort of thing. It could be worth both our whiles, Captain Heckel. All you’d have to do is agree to move the Third Gazometric closer to Hela, and to submit to some very mild mutual friendship arrangements . . . a small cathedral delegation on your ship and - naturally - a reciprocal party on the Lady Morwenna. And then you’d have immediate access to the choicest scuttler relics, before any of your rivals.’ Quaiche looked askance, as if seeing enemies in the garret’s shadows. ‘And we wouldn’t have to be looking over our shoulders all the time.’
The captain piped his reply.
‘He says he understands the benefits in terms of trading rights,’ the interpreter said, ‘but he also wishes to emphasise the risk he would be taking by bringing his ship closer to Hela. He mentions the fate that befell the Gnostic Ascension . . .’
‘And there was me thinking it was bad taste to mention it.’
She ignored him. ‘And he wishes to have these beneficial trading arrangements clarified before any further discussion takes place. He wishes also to specify a maximum term for the period of protection, and . . .’ She paused while Heckel piped out a series of rambling additions. ‘He also wishes to discuss the exclusion from trade of certain other parties currently in the system, or approaching it. Parties to be excluded would include, but not be limited to, the trade vessels Transfigured Night, Madonna of the Wasps, Silence Under Snow . . .’
She continued until she noticed Quaiche’s raised hand. ‘We can discuss these things in good time,’ he said, his heart sinking. ‘In the meantime, the cathedral would - of course - require a full technical examination of the Third Gazometric, to ensure that the ship poses no hazard to Hela or its inhabitants . . .’
‘The captain wonders if you doubt the worthiness of his ship,’ the interpreter said.
‘Not at all. Why should I? He made it this far, didn’t he? On the other hand, if he has nothing to hide . . .’
‘The captain wishes to retire to his shuttle to consider matters.’
‘Of course,’ Quaiche said with sudden eagerness, as if nothing was too much to ask. ‘This is a serious proposal, and nothing should be agreed in haste. Sleep on it. Talk to some other parties. Get a second
opinion. Shall I call an escort?’
‘The captain can find his own way back to the shuttle,’ she said.
Quaiche spread his fingers in farewell. ‘Very well, then. Please convey my best wishes to your crew . . . and consider my offer very seriously.’
The captain swung around, his assistants continuing to adjust the control valves and levers in his ludicrous kettle of a suit. With a mad rhythmic clanking he began to locomote towards the door. His departure was as painfully slow as his arrival had been, the suit appearing incapable of moving more than an inch at a time.
The captain paused, then laboriously turned around. The wiper blades flicked back and forth. The pipe organ chimed out another sequence of notes.
‘Begging your pardon,’ the interpreter said, ‘but the captain has another question. Upon his approach to the Lady Morwenna, he made an unscheduled excursion from the usual flight path due to a technical problem with the shuttle.’
‘A technical problem? Now there’s a surprise.’
‘In the process of this deviation he witnessed significant excavation work taking place a little to the north of the Permanent Way, near the Jarnsaxa Flats. He saw what appeared to be a partially camouflaged dig. Investigating with the shuttle’s radar, he detected a sloping cavity several kilometres in length and at least a kilometre deep. He assumed that the dig was related to the unearthing of scuttler relics.’
‘That may be the case,’ Quaiche said, affecting an uninterested tone.
‘The captain was puzzled. He admits to being no expert on Hela affairs, but he was given to understand that most significant scuttler relics have been unearthed in the circumpolar regions.’
‘Scuttler relics are found all over Hela,’ Quaiche said. ‘It’s just that due to quirks of geography they’re easier to get at in the polar regions. I don’t know what this dig was that you saw, or why it was camouflaged. Most of the digging work takes place outside the direct administration of the churches, alas. We can’t keep tabs on everyone.’
‘The captain thanks you for your most helpful response.’
Quaiche frowned, and then corrected his frown to a tolerant smile. What was that: sarcasm, or had she just not hit quite the right note? She was a baseline human, like himself, the kind of person he had once been able to read like a diagram. Now she and her kind - not just women, but almost everyone - lay far beyond the boundaries of his instinctive understanding. He watched them leave, smelling something hot and metallic trailing in the captain’s wake, waiting impatiently while the room cleared of the noxious steam.
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