Nina said, “Is Imrani in danger?”
“His position is far from secure, especially now he’s begun to question his confinement.”
“He’s been shabbily treated,” said Lucian. “You may both be in a position to help him.”
“Through the Noosphere?”
“He’s about to begin communion.”
“We can occupy him?” I said. “Now? In real time?”
Chloe said, “You can help him act in the best way possible with the advice and information we can supply, as you did with Tunde. If you offer him the chance to escape, he’ll most likely grasp at it.”
“Escape?” said Nina. “How?”
“With our help, it should be possible.”
In their own way, they were as evasive with us as Elydia and Felix were with Imrani. On this occasion I didn’t let it concern me: I was eager to play my part.
They must have intuited this, because I sensed them withdrawing, I sensed another consciousness pressing in, expectant at first, then uncertain when he did not find what he had been anticipating.
“Imrani?” I said.
He froze at the intensity of the contact.
“It’s all right,” I said, as gently as I could. “We’re here to help you.”
A frightened pause. Then:
“Who are you?”
I told him my name, and then Nina spoke hers, my first awareness that she had accompanied me. Imrani shrunk back, fearful and suspicious.
“There’s no need to be afraid—” I began, but Nina interrupted with a calm: “Let me.”
Her placid voice was a counter to my urgency, and she explained as briefly as she could how we had come to occupy the Noosphere.
To my surprise, I felt his fear quite quickly giving way to curiosity. He had the flexibility of youth, and our sudden manifestation was something new and exciting in what had become a restricted life of tedium. His acceptance of us had the swiftness of someone who desperately wants to believe, and his response to Nina was guilelessly enthusiastic. I think it was helped by the fact that our contact through the Noosphere was so immediate and intimate. He knew we were who we said we were, preposterous though it seemed; and because he had been lacking comradeship, he showed no hesitation when Nina revealed that we intended to help him escape.
I could see his face reflected in the mirrored lids on either side of the optic. He was bursting with relief and gratitude, tears trickling down his cheeks. Nina soothed him, assuring him everything would be fine.
“How?” he said at last. “How are we going to get out of here?”
“Through the door,” Nina replied. “We’ll tell you what words to say to get it to open.”
Against my instinct, Nina advised him to wait for an hour before making his move. This seemed to me like an inordinate delay when we could leave immediately, but Imrani agreed with her, saying that Elydia and Felix often stayed up into the small hours; he wanted to be sure they were sleeping when he left.
So we waited, while I began to bristle with impatience. Presently Imrani began pressing his ear to the chamber wall, checking to see if Elydia and Felix were asleep.
“Walls are sound-proofed,” I reminded him. “This is wasting time.”
“That’s what you think,” he said. “There’s a quirk in the respiration ducts that carries sounds right through from their bedchamber. You won’t believe what I’ve heard some nights. Felix might be Augmented, but he snores like a rhinocerhorse!”
Nina joined in with his amusement, while I, for want of anything better to do, simply listened through his ears.
There was nothing. No sound whatsoever.
“It’s quiet,” I said. “They must be asleep. Let’s go.”
But he still delayed, insisting we should wait a little longer. Nina agreed with him, much to my irritation.
Imrani was naturally curious to know more about us. I was reluctant to tell him anything not connected with our immediate mission, but Nina patiently answered all his avid questions about the other lives we had experienced during our various transitions. He was both awed by and envious of our capacities, even though Nina stressed that we could only act through our hosts.
“Listen,” I said eventually, “we have to move.”
At last Nina agreed with me.
“Should I pack a bag?” Imrani asked, almost teasingly.
“Let’s just get out of here,” I said with great restraint.
A whispered code supplied by Chloe and Lucian caused the doormouth to open in silence. Imrani stepped outside. There was no one about.
We went down stairways and along gloomy corridors lit only by the occasional candlemass which made Imrani’s shadow loom large on the ice walls. His initial excitement and sense of adventure began to give way to apprehension as we descended a spiralway to one of the side exits.
There was a wardrobe of warmsuits beside the door. It opened up, asking Imrani what colour suit he wanted.
He eyed the array, which ranged from scarlet to gold.
“Pink!” he said with provocative glee.
“White,” I insisted. “You want minimum visibility.”
He took the pink one anyway, suiting up speedily.
“It’s thirty-two days since I’ve been out there,” he told us. “I counted every one. Thirty-two days stuck in this mausoleum.”
“Let’s move!” I urged him.
We entered the doorvalve. Imrani fitted his mask and checked the suit’s homeostatics. The outer envelope parted. We stepped outside. And stopped, startled by what we saw.
It was obvious why Imrani had been kept inside, why the windows had been sealed. Immediately beyond Acheron, the entire valley floor was filled with ships. They were as many and as varied as we had ever seen, ranging from elephantine long-haul voyagers to bulbous ferries and ancient scouters, their patched metal hulls pitted and streaked after centuries of flight.
There were warmsuited figures everywhere, too, checking vent ducts and folded sails, manoeuvring bloated wagon-fliers over holds. The fleet was preparing for take-off.
Under my urging, Imrani strode forward, crossing the deserted square of the settlement, not looking back. The squat domes and bunkers of Acheron were shuttered, dark; all the activity was focused around the ships.
As we approached, I said, “Don’t hesitate. Act as if you belong.”
“I wish you’d be quiet!” Imrani said irritably. “You’re making me nervous.”
“Calm down!” Nina whispered soothingly. “Let’s all relax. The last thing we need is an argument.”
“You tell me what to do then,” he said to her. “He puts me on edge.”
I didn’t like the idea of being rebuffed, but Nina was right: this was no time for an argument.
In fact, we needn’t have worried. Imrani walked past a group of figures who were doing some repair work on the guidance systems in the nose of one ship, plasm-torches flaring as they welded new connections. No one paid us special attention. The suited figures were of every size and shape.
“You see?” Imrani remarked, gesturing to a sylph-like figure in lilac. “Pink’s fine. No one’s turned a hair.”
I resisted the urge to point out that they were as varied in physique as they were in colour. I did not want to add to his anxiety.
We continued on through the centre of the fleet. On one side of us a transplanetary sailship was unfurling its enormous silver wings, while on the other a swollen tanker extruded transfusion lines into the belly of a spirogyrator. Beyond rose the tiers of the valley sides with their ranks of corpses, insensate witnesses to the spectacle.
Chloe and Lucian were directing us towards a customized phoenix, a popular class of ship used for both civilian and politia flights. Extra vent sacs had been grown on the undersides of its wings, its head was enveloped in a radiation hood, and a plated exoskeleton covered its entire body, gleaming gunmetal in the interstellar night.
No one was attending the ship, and a forward portal was open.
“We’re going on board?” Imrani enquired.
“Yes,” said Nina.
Imrani went up the ramp. I could hardly believe it had been so easy. But as soon as we were inside, a security monitor dropped down from the corridor ceiling, halting us.
“Welcome aboard,” the ship said. “Please identify yourself.”
It spoke in Elydia’s voice. The monitor was peering closely at Imrani, its optic almost touching his visor. I realized that it could not have been Elydia herself because she would have recognized Imrani.
Chloe and Lucian immediately supplied us with another coded sequence which compelled the ship to accept our presence as motile cargo. The monitor withdrew into the ceiling.
Imrani watched it go, amazed at the effect of the code.
“It’s letting us in?” he said.
“We’ve just become a part of the manifest,” Nina told him.
“Wow!”
“Are we going to stand here?” I said.
“Where to?” Imrani asked, and I had the distinct impression he was addressing Nina rather than me.
“The cargo holds,” she said. “We’re going to hide there.”
The holds were located in the main body of the ship, a series of interconnecting chambers, all of which were empty apart from one which held provision dispensaries networked to the ship’s galley. Imrani settled down beneath a tangle of alimentaries, fashioning a grain-sac into a recliner.
“What now?” he said.
“Now,” Nina said, “we wait.”
I was not good at waiting, and in the interval I tried to get Chloe and Lucian to reveal why we had boarded the ship. But they had withdrawn: for the moment we were alone.
It was not long before Imrani’s eyes closed. I tried to stir him but Nina placated me, insisting that he needed his rest. Soon he was asleep, and then there were just the two of us, presences only in the darkness of his mind.
“Nathan?”
I still felt as if the name didn’t belong to me.
“We’re being used,” I said. “I don’t like it. They’re only feeding us what suits them. They knew about these ships, but they haven’t explained why they’re here.”
“Perhaps they need us to find out.”
I was dubious it was so straightforward.
“It could be some kind of task force,” Nina said. “Or an evacuation fleet. Maybe Charon’s been put under martial law or something. Maybe they’re going to have to defend themselves.”
I thought about the figures we had seen outside. Augmenters many of them. It was possible that the Noocracy had finally decided on a show of force to root them out. But to me the ships assembled here looked more like an attacking force. I said as much.
“You may be right,” Nina conceded. “But even Chloe and Lucian might not be sure. They might want us to have the freedom to use our own judgement, depending on the circumstances.”
“Very considerate of them.”
“You’re all I have, you know.”
This was said with such simplicity and sincerity that I felt chastened. Though I could not see her, I could picture her face, conjure the smell of her warmth, her touch.
“Do you trust them?” I asked.
“Lucian and Chloe?”
“I like people to show a bit of emotion. Those two are just a pair of talking heads.”
It was good to have a sense of my own personality, of something that was independent of the world into which I had been born. I could survive without knowing my past, I was certain, as long as I was sure of myself in the present.
“I don’t think they intend us any harm,” Nina said.
“That’s a tremendous relief. So there’s nothing to worry about?”
“I really believe they do need us to help them.”
“You haven’t answered the question.”
She was silent for a while. Then she said, “I don’t trust anyone, Nathan. Not even you.”
I wasn’t prepared for this. “What do you mean?”
“You’re impulsive, intolerant of others’ weaknesses. We have to move carefully here, especially when, as you’ve said yourself, we know so little.”
I wondered if she meant more than this, but decided to make light of it. “But apart from that,” I said, “you think I’m wonderful.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t like you. We need one another. There’s no one else.”
She had come “closer”. I pictured her face, imagined embracing her.
I had a sensation of time passing. Because I wanted to show Nina that I could be patient, I simply waited in the silence and the dark, aware of her presence close by but not attempting to communicate. I focused instead on my own thoughts, searching through what I knew, being as fully aware of myself as was possible in the hope that perhaps some elusive memories of my past might surface. None did. I knew only that I existed now; I remembered only my awakenings and the dreams. My life was the story which had still not reached its end.
It was Nina who finally stirred my from my introspection.
“Did you hear something?” she asked.
I listened, and there it was: muffled voices and footfalls. Presently they came closer. We heard movement, conversation in adjoining chambers, the sound of large masses being shifted.
“They’re loading,” I said.
No one entered our own chamber, where Imrani slept blissfully on. The loading continued for perhaps two hours, then everything went silent for a while. Presently we heard more conversation and the ship began to talk, responding to a systems check.
Imrani did not stir even when I tried to wake him by “shouting”.
“Leave him,” Nina urged me.
In the darkness we waited, listening while the systems check was completed. Then, after a long delay, we heard a low vibration, sensed it in Imrani’s body as the ship powered up.
It was only when the ship lifted off with a peremptory lurch that he woke.
Imrani blinked away his sleep in the feeble light of the chamber glownodes, taking a few moments to orientate himself, to remember that we were with him.
“What’s happening?” he said.
The tug of the ship’s acceleration gave him his answer.
“Do you know where we’re headed?” he asked.
Chloe and Lucian manifested themselves again, telling us that it was important we investigated the other cargo chambers as soon as the ship was fully on its way. I had a sense that they were preoccupied, engaged in other matters; they left us as swiftly as they had come, much to my frustration.
Nina conveyed their instructions to Imrani. We waited a further hour, until the ship had reached a constant acceleration. Each of the holds, including ours, was secured, but once again Chloe and Lucian had provided us with access codes.
“Is it safe to go out?” Imrani wanted to be assured.
“We have to risk it,” Nina told him simply.
Was that what Chloe and Lucian intended? Only to give us the barest information or instructions so that we would have to rely on our own wits? Well, damn them, we’d do exactly that.
Imrani slipped out into the corridor. It was quiet. One by one, we began checking the other chambers.
The first few we entered contained only extra provisions and vat-sacs holding spare biomechanicals. Eventually we came to a smaller chamber and I sensed Chloe and Lucian’s distant presence again, their expectancy growing even from afar. They knew there was something special inside it.
“Take it easy,” I whispered to Imrani as he instructed the valve to give us access. “Take your time.”
“Now who’s cautious?” he retorted.
It was plain he didn’t like me, and that I couldn’t expect the cooperation I had received from Tunde. In that case, Nina would have to do the reassuring and cajoling.
The valve opened. The hold chamber was dark: we could see nothing without stepping inside.
At first I thought the chamber was empty, but the glownodes brightened in r
esponse to our entry and I saw it.
Against the far wall, safely ensconced in the slender webbing of a packing threader, was a bulging sac taller than any human and twice as wide. An oval sac with veins and arteries standing out on its surface. Inside could be discerned the shape of two human figures, fully adult.
We only had a few instants to register it, but the three of us knew what it was. Screeching with alarm, the threader itself came scuttling out of the shadows, an arachnid the size of a scroungedog intent on defending its charge.
We had no time to react. The creature pounced, closing its fangs around Imrani’s thigh. I felt the venom go into the muscle like a flood of iced water, and then we were falling, the threader scuttling back out of reach with a rasp of chitin.
Imrani fell backwards, and the paralysis spread swiftly up his body. Dimly I was aware of the threader continuing to screech, and presently a face loomed over us.
It was Elydia. She smiled.
“So here you are! We thought you had managed to sneak on board one of the ships, but I didn’t quite expect to find you here. How enterprising of you!”
I tried to speak, but Imrani couldn’t have used his voice even if he had wanted to: his vocal cords were frozen.
“Hasn’t the womb grown?” she said, and it was the last thing I heard or saw as a tide of blackness washed over us.
Part Three
THE OORT CROWD
Eleven
“What is this?” Marea was asking.
“It’s a null-shrine,” Vargo said, “though they never tell you that. You can use it in the ordinary way, but there’s a special override. They let you plug in, commune with your ancestors, and then, when you’re not expecting it—zap!—they extinguish your consciousness, and that’s the end of you.”
Marea had her hands in the prayer gloves, though the shrine was not activated.
“Is that what you used to do?” she asked.
“It was one of my duties,” he told her.
“You were an executioner?” Cori said, wide-eyed.
He shook his head. “It’s the shrine that does the executing. I was the pilot.”
Mortal Remains Page 24