Soon, the tapping of a cane announced Grelier’s arrival. He had not been far away, listening in on the proceedings via concealed cameras and microphones.
‘Seems promising enough,’ the surgeon-general ventured. ‘They didn’t dismiss you out of hand, and they do have a ship. My guess is they can’t wait to make the deal.’
‘That’s what I thought as well,’ Quaiche said. He rubbed a smear of condensation from one of his mirrors, restoring Haldora to its usual pinpoint sharpness. ‘In fact, once you stripped away Heckel’s not very convincing bluster I got the impression they needed our arrangement very badly.’ He held up a sheet of paper, one that he had held tightly to his chest throughout the negotiations. ‘Technical summary on their ship, from our spies in the parking swarm. Doesn’t make encouraging reading. The bloody thing’s falling to bits. Barely made it to 107 P.’
‘Let me see.’ Grelier glanced at the paper, skimming it. ‘You can’t be certain this is accurate.’
‘I can’t?’
‘No. Ultras routinely downplay the worthiness of their ships, often putting out misinformation to that effect. They do it to lull competitors into a false sense of superiority, and to dissuade pirates interested in stealing their ships.’
‘But they always overstate their defensive capabilities,’ Quaiche said, wagging a finger at the surgeon-general. ‘Right now there isn’t a ship in that swarm that doesn’t have weapons of some kind, even if they’re disguised as innocent collision avoidance systems. They’re scared, Grelier, all of them, and they all want their rivals to know they have the means to defend themselves.’ He snatched back the paper. ‘But this? It’s a joke. They need our patronage so they can fix their ship first. It should be the other way around, if their protection is to have any meaning to us.’
‘As I said, where the intentions of Ultras are concerned nothing should be taken at face value.’
Quaiche crumpled the paper and threw it across the room. ‘The problem is I can’t read their bloody intentions.’
‘No one could be expected to read a monstrosity like Heckel,’ Grelier said.
‘I don’t mean just him. I’m talking about the other Ultras, or the normal humans that come down with them, like that woman just now. I couldn’t tell if she was being sincere or patronising, let alone whether she really believed what Heckel was having her say.’
Grelier kissed the head of his cane. ‘You want my opinion? Your assessment of the situation was accurate: she was just Heckel’s mouthpiece. He wanted to do business very badly.’
‘Too bloody badly,’ Quaiche said.
Grelier tapped the cane against the floor. ‘Forget the Third Gazometric for the time being. What about the Lark Descending? The third-party summaries suggested a very useful weapons allocation, and the captain seemed willing to do business.’
‘The summaries also mentioned an instability in her starboard drive. Did you miss that bit?’
Grelier shrugged. ‘It’s not as though we need them to take us anywhere, just to sit in orbit around Hela intimidating the rest of them. As long as the weapons are sufficient for that task, what do we care if the ship won’t be capable of leaving once the arrangement is over?’
Quaiche waved a hand vaguely. ‘To be honest, I didn’t really like the fellow they sent down. Kept leaking all over the floor. Took weeks to get rid of the stain after he’d left. And a drive instability isn’t the mild inconvenience you seem to assume. The ship we come to an agreement with will be sitting within tenths of a light-second of our surface, Grelier. We can’t risk it blowing up in our faces.’
‘Back to square one, in that case,’ Grelier said, with little detectable sympathy. ‘There are other Ultras to interview, aren’t there?’
‘Enough to keep me busy, but I’ll always come back to the same fundamental problem: I simply cannot read these people, Grelier. My mind is so open to Haldora that there isn’t room for any other form of observation. I cannot see through their strategies and evasions the way I once could.’
‘We’ve had this conversation before. You know you can always seek my opinion.’
‘And I do. But - no insult intended, Grelier - you know a great deal more about blood and cloning than you do about human nature.’
‘Then ask others. Assemble an advisory council.’
‘No.’ Grelier, he realised, was quite right - they had been over this many times. And always it came round to the same points. ‘These negotiations for protection are, by their very nature, extremely sensitive. I can’t risk a security leak to another cathedral.’ He motioned for Grelier to clean his eyes. ‘Look at me,’ he went on, while the surgeon-general opened the medicine cabinet and prepared the antiseptic swabs. ‘I’m a thing of horror, in many respects, bound to this chair, barely able to survive without it. And even if I had the health to leave it, I would remain a prisoner of the Lady Morwenna, still enmeshed in the optical sightlines of my beloved mirrors.’
‘Voluntarily,’ Grelier said.
‘You know what I mean. I cannot move amongst the Ultras as they move amongst us. Cannot step aboard their ships the way other ecumenical emissaries do.’
‘That’s why we have spies.’
‘All the same, it limits me. I need someone I can trust, Grelier, someone like my younger self. Someone able to move amongst them as I used to. Someone they wouldn’t dare to suspect.’
‘Suspect?’ Grelier dabbed at Quaiche’s eyes with the swabs.
‘I mean someone they would automatically trust. Someone not at all like you.’
‘Hold still.’ Quaiche flinched as the stinging swab dug around his eyeball. It amazed him that he had any nerve endings there at all, but Grelier had an unerring ability to find those that remained. ‘Actually,’ Grelier said, musingly, ‘something did occur to me recently. Perhaps it’s worth mentioning.’
‘Go ahead.’
‘You’re aware I like to know what’s happening on Hela. Not just the usual business with the cathedrals and the Way, but in the wider world, including the villages.’
‘Oh, yes. You’re always on the hunt for uncatalogued strains, reports of interesting new heresies from the Hauk settlements, that sort of thing. Then out you ride with your shiny new syringes, like a good little vampire.’
‘I won’t deny that Bloodwork plays a small role in my interest, but along the way I do pick up all sorts of interesting titbits. Keep still.’
‘And you keep out of my sightlines! What sort of titbits?’
‘The last but one time I was awake was a two-year interval, between ten and eight years ago. I remember that revival very well: it was the first occasion on which I found myself needing this cane. Towards the end of that period awake I made a long trip north, following leads on those uncatalogued strains you just mentioned. On the return journey I rode with one of the caravans, keeping my eyes peeled - sorry - for anything else that might take my fancy.’
‘I remember that trip,’ Quaiche said, ‘but I don’t recall you saying that anything of significance happened during it.’
‘Nothing did. Or at least nothing seemed to, at the time. But then I heard a news bulletin a few days ago and it reminded me of something.’
‘Are you going to drag this out much longer?’
Grelier sighed and began returning the equipment to its cabinet. ‘There was a family,’ he said, ‘from the Vigrid badlands. They’d travelled down to meet the caravan. They had two children: a son and a younger daughter.’
‘Fascinating, I’m sure.’
‘The son was looking for work on the Way. I sat in on the recruitment interview, as I was permitted to do. Idle curiosity, really: I had no interest in this particular case, but you never know when someone interesting is going to show up.’ Grelier snapped shut the cabinet.
‘The son had aspirations to work in some technical branch of Way maintenance - strategic planning, something like that. At the time, however, the Way had all the pencil-pushers it needed. The only vacancies available were
- shall we say - at the sharp end?’
‘Beggars can’t be choosers,’ Quaiche said.
‘Quite. But in this case the recruiting agent decided against a full and frank disclosure of the relevant facts. He told the son that there would be no difficulty in finding him a safe, well-paid job in the technical bureau. And because the work would be strictly analytical, requiring a clear-headed coolness of mind, there would be no question whatsoever of viral initiation.’
‘If he’d told the truth, he’d have lost the recruit.’
‘Almost certainly. He was a clever lad, no doubt about that. A waste, really, to throw him straight into fuse laying or something with an equally short life-expectancy. And because the family was secular - they mostly are, up in the badlands - he definitely didn’t want your blood in his veins.’
‘It isn’t my blood. It’s a virus.’
Grelier raised a finger, silencing his master. ‘The point is that the recruiting agent had good reason to lie. And it was only a white lie, really. Everyone knew those bureau jobs were thin on the ground. Frankly, I think even the son knew it, but his family needed the money.’
‘There’s a point to this, Grelier, I’m sure of it.’
‘I can barely remember what the son looked like. But the daughter? I can see her now, clear as daylight, looking through all of us as if we were made of glass. She had the most astonishing eyes, a kind of golden brown with little flecks of light in them.’
‘How old would she have been, Grelier?’
‘Eight, nine, I suppose.’
‘You revolt me.’
‘It wasn’t like that,’ Grelier said. ‘Everyone there felt it, I think, especially the recruiting agent. She kept telling her parents he was lying. She was certain. She was visibly affronted by him. It was as if everyone in that room was playing a game and she hadn’t been told about it.’
‘Children behave oddly in adult environments. It was a mistake to have her there.’
‘She wasn’t behaving oddly at all,’ Grelier said. ‘In my view, she was behaving very rationally. It was the adults who weren’t. They all knew that the recruiting agent was lying, but she was the only one who wasn’t in denial about it.’
‘I expect she overheard some remark before the interview, something about how the recruiting agents always lie.’
‘She may have done, but even at the time I thought it went a little deeper than that. I think she just knew that the recruiter was lying simply by looking at him. There are people, individuals, who have that ability. They’re born with it. Not more than one in a thousand, and probably even fewer who have it to the extent of that little girl.’
‘Mind-reading?’
‘No. Just an acute awareness of the subliminal information already available. Facial expression, primarily. The muscles in your face can form forty-three distinct movements, which enable tens of thousands in combination.’
Grelier had done his homework, Quaiche thought. This little digression had obviously been planned all along.
‘Many of these expressions are involuntary,’ he continued. ‘Unless you’ve been very well trained, you simply can’t lie without revealing yourself through your expressions. Most of the time, of course, it doesn’t matter. The people around you are none the wiser, just as blind to those microexpressions. But imagine if you had that awareness. Not just the means to read the people around you when they don’t even know they’re being read, but the self-control to block your own involuntary signals.’
‘Mm.’ Quaiche could see where this was heading. ‘It wouldn’t be much use against something like Heckel, but a baseline negotiator . . . or something with a face . . . that’s a different matter. You think you could teach me this?’
‘I can do better than that,’ Grelier said. ‘I can bring you the girl. She can teach you herself.’
For a moment, Quaiche regarded the hanging image of Haldora, mesmerised by a writhing filament of lightning in the southern polar region.
‘You’d have to bring her here first,’ he said. ‘Not easy, if you can’t lie to her at any point.’
‘Not as difficult as you think. She’s like antimatter: it would only be a question of handling her with the right tools. I told you something jogged my memory a few days ago. It was the girl’s name. Rashmika Els. She was mentioned in a general news bulletin originating from the Vigrid badlands. There was a photo. She’s eight or nine years older than when I last saw her, obviously, but it was her all right. I wouldn’t forget those eyes in a hurry. She’d gone missing. The constabulary were in a fuss about her.’
‘No use to us, then.’
Grelier smiled. ‘Except I found her. She’s on a caravan, heading towards the Way.’
‘You’ve met her?’
‘Not exactly. I visited the caravan, but didn’t reveal myself to Miss Els. Wouldn’t want to scare her off, not when she can be so useful to us. She’s very determined to find out what happened to her brother, but even she will be wary of getting too close to the Way.’
‘Mm.’ For a moment the beautiful conjunction of these events caused Quaiche to smile. ‘And what exactly did happen to her brother?’
‘Died in clearance work,’ Grelier said. ‘Crushed under the Lady Morwenna.’
TWENTY-ONE
Ararat, 2675
Skade lay half-cocooned in ice and the frozen black froth of Inhibitor machinery. She was still alive. This much was clear as they squeezed through the narrow, crimped opening of the crushed bulkhead. From the control couch in which she still lay, Skade’s head tilted slightly in their direction, the merest glaze of interest troubling the smooth composure of her face. The fingers of one white-gauntleted hand hovered above a portable holoclavier propped in her lap, the fingers becoming a blur of white in time with the gunlike salvos of music.
The music stopped as her hand moved away from the keyboard. ‘I was beginning to wonder what had kept you.’
‘I’ve come for my child, bitch,’ Khouri said.
Skade showed no sign of having heard her. ‘What happened, Clavain?’
‘A little mishap.’
‘The wolves took your hand. How unfortunate.’
Clavain showed her the knife. ‘I did what had to be done. Recognise this, Skade? Today wasn’t the first time it’s saved my life. I used it to cut the membrane around the comet, when you and I had that little disagreement over the future policy of the Mother Nest. You do remember, don’t you?’
‘There’s been a lot of water under the bridge since I last saw that knife. I still had my old body then.’
‘I’m sorry about what happened, but I only did what I had to do. Put me back there now, I’d do the same thing again.’
‘I don’t doubt it for a moment, Clavain. No matter what people say, you always were a man of conviction.’
‘We’ve come for the child,’ he said.
She acknowledged Khouri with the tiniest of nods. ‘I had gathered.’
‘Are you going to hand her over, or is this going to become tedious and messy?’
‘Which way would you prefer it, Clavain?’
‘Listen to me, Skade. It’s over. Whatever happened between you and me, whatever harm we did each other, whatever loyalties we believed in, none of that matters any more.’
‘That’s exactly what I told Remontoire.’
‘But you did negotiate,’ Clavain said. ‘We know that much. So let’s take it to the limit. Let’s join forces again. Give Aura back to us and we’ll share everything she tells us. It’ll be better for all of us in the long run.’
‘What do I care about the long run, Clavain? I’m never going to see the outside of this ship again.’
‘If you’re hurt, we can help you.’
‘I really don’t think so.’
‘Give me Aura,’ Khouri demanded.
Scorpio stepped closer, taking a better look at the injured Conjoiner. She wore armour of a very pale shade, perhaps even white. Chameleoflage armour, probably: the outer integumen
t had tuned itself to match the colour of the ice that had condensed or ruptured through into the cabin before the lighting failed. The suit was styled in the manner of medieval armour, with bulbous sliding plates covering the limb joints and an exaggerated breastplate. There was a cinched, feminine waist above a skirtlike flaring. The rest of the body - below the waist - Scorpio could not see at all. It vanished into ice that pinned Skade neatly in place like a doll for sale.
All around her, in little aggregations of blackness, were warty clumps of Inhibitor machinery. But none were touching Skade, and none appeared active at the moment.
‘You can have Aura,’ she said. ‘At, of course, a price.’
‘We’re not paying for her,’ Clavain said. His voice was faint and hoarse, stripped of strength.
‘You’re the one who mentioned negotiation,’ Skade said. ‘Or were you thinking more along the lines of a threat?’
‘Where is she?’
Skade moved one of her arms. The armour creaked as it budged, dislodging curtains of frost. She tapped the hard plate covering her abdomen. ‘She’s here, in me. I’m keeping her alive.’
Clavain glanced back at Khouri, his eyes conveying the admission that, finally, everything she had told them had turned out to be true. ‘Good,’ he said, turning his attention back to Skade. ‘I’m grateful. But now her mother needs her back.’
‘As if you care about her mother,’ Skade said, mocking him with an adversarial smile. ‘As if you truly care about the fate of a child.’
‘I came all this way for that child.’
‘You came all this way for an asset,’ Skade corrected.
‘And I suppose the child means vastly more to you than that.’
The Revelation Space Collection Page 260