‘You don’t have to watch,’ he told Khouri, who was standing at the foot of the casket with Aura in her arms.
‘I want to see you go under safely,’ she said.
‘You mean you want to see me safely out the picture.’ He knew even as he said it that it was cruel and unnecessary.
‘We still need you, Scorp. We might not agree with you about Hela, but that doesn’t make you any less useful.’
The child watched fascinatedly as the technicians fumbled a plastic shunt into Scorpio’s wrist. He could still see the scar where the last one had been removed, twenty-three years earlier.
‘It hurts,’ Aura said.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘It hurts, kid. But I can handle it.’
The reefersleep casket sat in a room of its own. It was the same one that had brought him to Ararat all those years ago. It was very old and very unsophisticated: a brutish black box with squared-off edges and the heavy, wrought-iron look of some artefact of medieval jurisprudence.
But it also had a perfect operational record, a flawless history of preserving its human occupants in frozen stasis during the years of relativistic travel between stars. It had never killed anyone, never brought anyone back to life with anything other than the full spectrum of mental faculties. It incorporated the minimum of nanotechnology. The Melding Plague had never touched it, nor had the Captain’s own transforming influences. A baseline human contemplating a spell in the casket could have been quietly confident of revival. The transitions to and from the cryogenic state were slow and uncomfortable compared to the sleeker, more modern units. There would be discomfort, both physical and mental. But there would be little doubt that the unit would work as intended, and that the occupant would wake again at the other end of the journey.
The only problem was, none of this applied to pigs. The caskets were tuned to baseline human physiology on the unforgiving level of cell chemistry. Scorpio had made it through reefersleep before, but each time had been a gamble. He told himself that the odds didn’t get any worse each time he submitted himself to a casket, that he was no more likely to die in this unit than in the first one he had used. But that wasn’t strictly true. He was much older now. His body was intrinsically weaker than the last time he had been through the process. Everyone was being very coy about the hard numbers - whether it was a ten or twenty or even a thirty per cent chance of him not making out - but their very refusal to discuss the matter alarmed him more than a cold assessment of the risk would ever have done. At least then he could have compared the risks of taking the casket and staying awake for the entire trip. Five or six years of shiptime, making him fifty-five or fifty-six, against a thirty per cent chance of not making it there at all? It wouldn’t have been an easy decision - as a pig, he had no guarantee of making it to sixty under normal circumstances. But at least full disclosure of the facts would have enabled him to make a considered choice. Instead, what drove him to the casket was a simple desire to skip over the intervening time. Damn the odds; he had to get the waiting over with. He had to know if it was worth their while making it to Hela.
And before that, of course, he had to know if he had made a terrible mistake by persuading the ship to travel to Yellowstone first.
He thought of the dust leaking from his hand, spilling on to the table, the trail drifting towards the Y he had marked rather than the H. Within minutes it had been confirmed: the ship was executing a slow turn, steering for Epsilon Eridani rather than the dim, unfamiliar star of 107 Piscium.
He had been pleased with the Captain’s decision, but it also frightened him. The Captain had followed the minority view rather than the democratic wish of the seniors. It had suited Scorpio, but he wondered how he would have felt if the Captain had sided with the others. It was one thing to know that he had an ally in John Brannigan. It would be quite another to feel himself the prisoner of the ship.
‘It’s not too late,’ Khouri said. ‘You can stop now, spend the trip awake.’
‘Is that what you’re planning to do?’
‘At least until Aura is older,’ she said.
The girl laughed.
‘I can’t take the risk,’ Scorpio said. ‘I may not last the journey if they don’t freeze me. Five or six years might not be much to you, but it’s a big chunk out of my life.’
‘It might not be that long if they can get the new machines to work. Our subjective time to Yellowstone might only be a couple of years.’
‘Still too long for my liking.’
‘It worries you that much? I thought you said you never thought much about the future.’
‘I don’t. Now you know why.’
She came closer to the black cabinet, lowering down on one knee, presenting Aura to him. ‘She thinks this is the wrong thing to do,’ Khouri said. ‘I feel it coming through. She really thinks we should be going straight to Hela.’
‘We’ll get there eventually,’ he said. ‘John willing.’ He directed his attention to Aura, looking into her golden-brown eyes. He expected her to flinch, but she held his gaze, barely blinking.
‘Shadows,’ she said, in her liquid gurgle, a voice that always seemed on the edge of hilarity. ‘Negotiate with shadows.’
‘I don’t believe in negotiation,’ Scorpio said. ‘All it gets you into is a world of pain.’
‘Maybe it’s time you changed your opinion,’ Khouri said.
Khouri and Aura left him alone with the technicians. He had been glad of the visit, but he was also glad to have a moment to marshal his thoughts, making sure that he did not forget the important things. One thing in particular assumed particular importance in his mind. He had still not told either of them about the private conversation he had had with Remontoire just before the Conjoiner’s departure. The conversation had not been recorded, and Remontoire had given little more than his words: no data, no written evidence, just a shard of translucent white material small enough to fit in his pocket.
Now that omission was beginning to weigh upon him. Was it right to keep Remontoire’s doubts from Aura and her mother? Remontoire had left the final decision to him, in the end: a measure of the extent to which he trusted Scorpio.
Now, in the casket, Scorpio could have done with a bit less of that trust.
He didn’t have the shard with him now. It was with his personal effects, awaiting his revival. It had no intrinsic worth in its own right, and had anyone else found it, it was more than likely that they would have left it undisturbed, assuming only that it was some personal trinket or totem of purely sentimental value. What mattered was where Remontoire had found it. And aboard the ship, to the best of his knowledge, Scorpio was the only one who knew.
‘I don’t know what to make of it,’ Remontoire said, handing him the curved white shard. Scorpio examined it, immediately disappointed at what had he been given. He could see through it. The edges were sharp enough to be dangerous, and it was too hard to flex or break. The thing looked like a dinosaur’s toenail clipping.
‘I know what it is, Rem.’
‘You do?’
‘It’s a piece of conch material. We found it all the time on Ararat, washed up after storms or floating out at sea. Much bigger than this piece.’
‘How big?’ Remontoire asked, steepling his fingers.
‘Large enough to use for dwellings, sometimes. Sometimes even for major administrative structures. We didn’t have enough metal or plastic to go around, so we were always trying to make the best use of local resources. We had to anchor the conch pieces down, because otherwise they blew away in the first storm.’
‘Difficult to work with?’
‘We couldn’t cut them with anything other than torches, but that’s not saying much. You should have seen the state of our tools.’
‘What did you make of the conch pieces, Scorp? Did you have a theory about them?’
‘We didn’t have much time for theories about anything.’
‘You must have had an inkling.’
Scorpio shrugg
ed and passed the fragment back to him. ‘We assumed they were the discarded shells of extinct marine creatures, bigger than anything now living on Ararat. The Jugglers weren’t the only organism in that ocean; there was always room for other kinds of life, maybe relics of the original inhabitants, before the Juggler colonisation.’
Remontoire tapped a finger against the shard. ‘I don’t think we’re dealing with marine life, Scorp.’
‘Does it matter?’
‘It might do, especially given the fact that I found this in space, around Ararat.’ He handed it back to the pig. ‘Interested now?’
‘I might be.’
Remontoire told him the rest. During the last phase of the battle around Ararat, he had been contacted by a group of Conjoiners from Skade’s party. ‘They knew she was dead. Without a leader, they were devolving into a directionless squabble. They approached me, hoping to steal the hypometric technology. They’d learned much already, but that was the one thing they didn’t have. I resisted, fought them off, but I also let them go with a warning. I considered it rather late in the day to be making new enemies.’
‘And?’
‘They came back to help me when the wolf aggregate was about to finish me off. A suicidal move on their part. I think it convinced me and my associates to accept terms of co-operation from Skade’s people. But there was something else.’
‘The shard?’
‘Not the shard itself, but data pertaining to the same mystery. I viewed it with suspicion, as I still do. I can’t rule out the possibility that it may have been a piece of disinformation sown by Skade when she knew her days were numbered. Just like her to throw a posthumous spanner into our works, wouldn’t you say?’
‘I wouldn’t put it past her for a second,’ Scorpio replied. Now that he knew it had some deeper significance, the piece of conch material felt like some holy relic in his hands. He held it with reverential care, as if he might damage it. ‘What did the data tell you?’
‘Before they transmitted the data, they spoke of the situation around Ararat being more complicated than we had assumed. I didn’t admit it at the time, but what they said chimed with my own observations. There had, for some time, been hints of something else in the game. Not my people, nor Skade’s, not even the Inhibitors, but another party, lurking on the very edge of events, like spectators. Of course, in the confusion of battle it was easy to dismiss such speculation: ghost returns from mass sensors, vague phantom forms glimpsed during intense energy bursts. There was a great deal of deliberate confusion.’
‘And the data?’
‘It only confirmed those fears. Added to my own observations, the conclusion was inescapable: we were being watched. Something else - neither human nor Inhibitor - had followed us to Ararat. It may even have been there before us.’
‘How do you know they weren’t part of the Inhibitors? We know so little about them.’
‘Because their movements suggested they were as wary of the Inhibitors as we were. Not to the same degree, but cautious nonetheless. ’
‘Then who are they?’
‘I don’t know, Scorp. I only have this shard. It was recovered after an engagement during which one of their vehicles may have been damaged by drifting too close to the battle. It is a piece of debris, Scorp. The same applies, I think, to every piece of conch material you have ever found on Ararat. They are the remains of ships, fallen into the sea.’
‘Then who made them?’
‘We don’t know.’
‘What do they want with us?’
‘We don’t know that, either, only that they have taken an interest.’
‘I’m not sure I like the sound of that.’
‘I’m not sure I like it either. They haven’t contacted us directly, and everything they’ve done suggests they have no intention of making their presence known. They’re more advanced than us, that’s for sure. They may skulk in the darkness, slinking around the Inhibitors, but they’ve survived. They’re still out there, when we’re on the brink of extinction.’
‘They could help us.’
‘Or they could turn out to be as bad for us as the Inhibitors.’
Scorpio looked into the old Conjoiner’s face: so maddeningly calm, despite the vast implications of their conversation. ‘You sound as if you think we’re being judged,’ he said.
‘I wonder if that isn’t the case.’
‘And Aura? What does she have to say?’
‘She has never made any mention of another party,’ Remontoire said.
‘Perhaps these are the shadows, after all.’
‘Then why go to Hela to make contact with them? No, Scorp: these aren’t the shadows. They’re something else, something she either doesn’t know about, or chooses not to tell us.’
‘Now you’re making me nervous.’
‘That, Mr Pink, was very much the idea. Someone has to know this, and it might as well be you.’
‘If she doesn’t know about the other party, how can we be sure the rest of her information’s correct?’
‘We can’t. That’s the difficulty.’
Scorpio fingered the shard. It was cool to the touch, barely heavier than the air it displaced. ‘I could talk to her about it, see if she remembers.’
‘Or you could keep the information to yourself, because it is too dangerous to reveal to her. Remember: it may be misinformation created by Skade to destroy our confidence in Aura. If she were to deny knowledge of it, will you be able to trust her any more?’
‘I’d still like the data,’ Scorpio said.
‘Too dangerous. If I passed it to you, it might find its way into her head. She’s one of us, Scorp: a Conjoiner. You’ll have to make do with the shard - call it an aide-mémoire - and this conversation. That should suffice, should it not?’
‘You’re saying I shouldn’t tell her, ever?’
‘No, I’m merely saying you must make that decision for yourself, and that it should not be taken lightly.’ Remontoire paused, and then offered a smile. ‘Frankly, I don’t envy you. Rather a lot may depend on it, you see.’
Scorpio pushed the shard into his pocket.
Hela, 2727
[Help us, Rashmika,] the voice said, when she was alone. [Don’t let us die when the cathedral dies.]
‘I can’t help you. I’m not even sure I want to.’
[Quaiche is unstable,] the voice insisted. [He will destroy us, because we are a chink in the armour of his faith. That cannot be allowed to happen, Rashmika. For your sakes - for the sake of all your people - don’t make the same mistake as the scuttlers. Don’t close the door on us.]
She thrashed her head into the damp landscape of her pillow, smelling her own days-old sweat worked into the yellowing fabric during sleepless, voice-tormented nights such as this. All she wanted was for the voice to silence itself; all she wanted was a return to the old simplicities, where all she had to worry about was the imposition of her own self-righteous convictions.
‘How did you get here? You still haven’t told me. If the door is closed—’
[The door was opened, briefly. During a difficult period with the supply of the virus, Quaiche endured a lapse of faith. In that crisis he began to doubt his own interpretation of the vanishings. He arranged for the firing of an instrument package into the face of Haldora, a simple mechanical probe crammed with electronic instrumentation.]
‘And?’
[He provoked a response. The probe was injected into Haldora during a vanishing. It caused the vanishing to last longer than usual, more than a second. In that hiatus, Quaiche was granted a glimpse of the machinery the scuttlers made to contact us across the bulk.]
‘So was everyone else who happened to see it.’
[That’s why that particular vanishing had to be stricken from the public record,] the voice said. [It couldn’t be allowed to have happened.]
She remembered what the shadows had told her about the mass-synthesiser. ‘Then the probe allowed you to cross over?’
&nb
sp; [No. We are still not physically embodied in this brane. What it did re-establish was the communication link. It had been silenced since the last time the scuttlers spoke to us, but in the moment of Quaiche’s intervention it was reopened, briefly. In that window we transmitted an aspect of ourselves across the bulk, a barely sentient ghost, programmed only to survive and negotiate.]
So that was what she was dealing with: not the shadows themselves, but their stripped-down minimalist envoy. She did not suppose that it made very much difference: the voice was clearly at least as intelligent and persuasive as any machine she had ever encountered.
‘How far did you get?’ Rashmika asked.
[Into the probe, as it fell within the Haldora projection. From there - following the probe’s telemetry link - we reached Hela. But no further. Ever since then, we have been trapped within the scrimshaw suit.]
‘Why the suit?’
[Ask Quaiche. It has some deeply personal significance for him, irrevocably entwined with the nature of the vanishings and his own salvation. His lover - the original Morwenna - died in it. Afterwards, Quaiche couldn’t bring himself to destroy the suit. It was a reminder of what had brought him to Hela, a spur to keep looking for an answer, for Morwenna’s memory. When it came time to send the probe into Haldora, Quaiche filled the suit with the cybernetic control system necessary to communicate with the probe. That is why it has become our prison.]
‘I can’t help you,’ she said again.
[You must, Rashmika. The suit is strong, but it will not survive the destruction of the Lady Morwenna. Yet without us, you will have lost your one channel of negotiation. You might establish another, but you cannot guarantee it. In the meantime, you will be at the mercy of the Inhibitors. They’re coming closer, you know. There isn’t much time left.]
‘I can’t do this,’ she said. ‘You’re asking too much of me. You’re just a voice in my head. I won’t do it.’
[You will if you know what’s good for you. We don’t know all that we would like to know about you, Rashmika, but one thing is clear: you are most certainly not who you claim to be.]
The Revelation Space Collection Page 292