I looked down at the thing, trying to see it anew. I remembered the Doctor fishing amongst the bones around the Spire’s base; placing something in one of his pockets. This hard, black, irregular, dully pointed thing.
What was it?
I half remembered.
‘There has to be more than this,’ I said.
‘Of course there is,’ Celestine said. ‘The human remains — with the exception of what’s been added since we arrived — are all from the same genetic individual. I know. Trintignant told me.’
‘That isn’t possible.’
‘Oh, it is. With cloning, it’s almost child’s play.’
‘This is nonsense,’ Childe said.
I turned to him now, feeling the faint ghost of an emotion Trintignant had not completely excised. ‘Is it really?’
‘Why would I clone myself?’
‘I’ll answer for him,’ Celestine said. ‘He found this thing, but long, long before he said he did. And he visited it, and set about exploring it, using clones of himself.’
I looked at Childe, expecting him to at least proffer some shred of explanation. Instead, padding on all fours, he crossed into the next room.
The door behind Celestine slammed shut like a steel eyelid.
Childe spoke to us from the next room. ‘My estimate is that we have nine or ten minutes in which to solve the next problem. I am studying it now and it strikes me as… challenging, to say the least. Shall we adjourn any further discussion of trivialities until we’re through?’
‘Childe,’ I said. ‘You shouldn’t have done that. Celestine wasn’t consulted…’
‘I assumed she was on the team.’
Celestine stepped into the new room. ‘I wasn’t. At least, I didn’t think I was. But it looks like I am now.’
‘That’s the spirit,’ Childe said. And I realised then where I had seen the small, dark thing that Trintignant had retrieved from the surface of Golgotha.
I might have been mistaken.
But it looked a lot like a devil’s horn.
TWELVE
The problem was as elegant, Byzantine, multi-layered and potentially treacherous as any we had encountered.
Simply looking at it sent my mind careering down avenues of mathematical possibility, glimpsing deep connections between what I had always assumed were theoretically distant realms of logical space. I could have stared at it for hours, in a state of ecstatic transfixion. Unfortunately, we had to solve it, not admire it. And we now had less than nine minutes.
We crowded around the door and for two or three minutes — what felt like two or three hours — nothing was said.
I broke the silence, when I sensed that I needed to think about something else for a moment.
‘Was Celestine right? Did you clone yourself?’
‘Of course he did,’ she said. ‘He was exploring hazardous territory, so he’d have been certain to bring the kind of equipment necessary to regenerate organs.’
Childe turned away from the problem. ‘That isn’t the same as cloning equipment.’
‘Only because of artificially imposed safeguards,’ Celestine answered. ‘Strip those away and you can clone to your heart’s content. Why regenerate a single hand or arm when you can culture a whole body?’
‘What good would that do me? All I’d have done was make a mindless copy of myself.’
I said, ‘Not necessarily. With memory trawls and medichines, you could go some way towards imprinting your personality and memory on any clone you chose.’
‘He’s right,’ Celestine said. ‘It’s easy enough to rescript memories. Richard should know.’
Childe looked back at the problem, which was still as fiercely intractable as when we had entered.
‘Six minutes left,’ he said.
‘Don’t change the fucking subject,’ Celestine said. ‘I want Richard to know exactly what happened here.’
‘Why?’ Childe said. ‘Do you honestly care what happens to him? I saw that look of revulsion when you saw what we’d done to ourselves.’
‘Maybe you do revolt me,’ she said, nodding. ‘But I also care about someone being manipulated.’
‘I haven’t manipulated anyone.’
‘Then tell him the truth about the clones. And the Spire, for that matter.’
Childe returned his attention to the door, evidently torn between solving the problem and silencing Celestine. Less than six minutes now remained, and though I had distracted myself, I had not come closer to grasping the solution, or even seeing a hint of how to begin.
I snapped my attention back to Childe. ‘What happened with the clones? Did you send them in, one by one, hoping to find a way into the Spire for you?’
‘No.’ He almost laughed at my failure to grasp the truth. ‘I didn’t send them in ahead of me, Richard. Not at all. I sent them in after me.’
‘Sorry, but I don’t understand.’
‘I went in first, and the Spire killed me. But before I did that, I trawled myself and installed those memories in a recently grown clone. The clone wasn’t a perfect copy of me, by any means — it had some memories, and some of my grosser personality traits, but it was under no illusions that it was anything but a recently made construct.’ Childe looked back towards the problem. ‘Look, this is all very interesting, but I really think—’
‘The problem can wait,’ Celestine said. ‘I think I see a solution, in any case.’
Childe’s slender body stiffened in anticipation. ‘You do?’
‘Just a hint of one, Childe. Keep your hackles down.’
‘We don’t have much time, Celestine. I’d very much like to hear your solution.’
She looked at the pattern, smiling faintly. ‘I’m sure you would. I’d also like to hear what happened to the clone.’
I sensed him seethe with anger, then bring it under control. ‘It — the new me — went back into the Spire and attempted to make further progress than its predecessor. Which it did, advancing several rooms beyond the point where the old me died.’
‘What made it go in?’ Celestine said. ‘It must have known it would die in there as well.’
‘It thought it had a significantly better chance of survival than the last one. It studied what had happened to the first victim and took precautions — better armour; drugs to enhance mathematical skills; some crude stabs at the medichine therapies we have been using.’
‘And?’ I said. ‘What happened after that one died?’
‘It didn’t die on its first attempt. Like us, it retreated once it sensed it had gone as far as it reasonably could. Each time, it trawled itself — making a copy of its memories. These were inherited by the next clone.’
‘I still don’t get it,’ I said. ‘Why would the clone care what happened to the one after it?’
‘Because… it never expected to die. None of them did. Call that a character trait, if you will.’
‘Overweening arrogance?’ Celestine offered.
‘I’d prefer to think of it as a profound lack of self-doubt. Each clone imagined itself better than its predecessor; incapable of making the same errors. But they still wanted to be trawled, so that — in the unlikely event that they were killed — something would go on. So that, even if that particular clone did not solve the Spire, it would still be something with my genetic heritage that did. Part of the same lineage. Family, if you will.’ His tail flicked impatiently. ‘Four minutes. Celestine… are you ready now?’
‘Almost, but not quite. How many clones were there, Childe? Before you, I mean?’
‘That’s a pretty personal question.’
She shrugged. ‘Fine. I’ll just withhold my solution.’
‘Seventeen,’ Childe said. ‘Plus my original; the first one to go in.’
I absorbed this number; stunned at what it implied. ‘Then you’re… the nineteenth to try and solve the Spire?’
I think he would have smiled at that point, had it been anatomically possible. ‘Like I said, I try a
nd keep it in the family.’
‘You’ve become a monster,’ Celestine said, almost beneath her breath.
It was hard not to see it that way as well. He had inherited the memories from eighteen predecessors, all of whom had died within the Spire’s pain-wracked chambers. It hardly mattered that he had probably never inherited the precise moment of death; the lineage was no less monstrous for that small mercy. And who was to say that some of his ancestor clones had not crawled out of the Spire, horribly mutilated, dying, but still sufficiently alive to succumb to one last trawl?
They said a trawl was all the sharper if it was performed at the moment of death, when damage to the scanned mind mattered less.
‘Celestine’s right,’ I said. ‘You’ve become something worse than the thing you set out to beat.’
Childe appraised me, those dense clusters of optics sweeping over me like gun barrels. ‘Have you looked in a mirror lately, Richard? You’re not exactly the way nature intended, you know.’
‘This is just cosmetic,’ I said. ‘I still have my memories. I haven’t allowed myself to become a—’ I faltered, my brain struggling with vocabulary now that so much of it had been reassigned to the task of cracking the Spire, ‘a perversion,’ I finished.
‘Fine.’ Childe lowered his head; a posture of sadness and resignation. ‘Then go back, if that’s what you want. Let me stay to finish the challenge.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think I will. Celestine? Get us through this door and I’ll come back with you. We’ll leave Childe to his bloody Spire.’
Celestine’s sigh was one of heartfelt relief. ‘Thank God, Richard. I didn’t think I’d be able to convince you quite that easily.’
I nodded towards the door, suggesting that she sketch out what she thought was the likely solution. It still looked devilishly hard to me, but now that I refocused my mind on it, I thought I began to see the faintest hint of an approach, if not a full-blooded solution.
But Childe was speaking again. ‘Oh, you shouldn’t sound so surprised,’ he said. ‘I always knew he’d turn back as soon as the going got tough. That’s always been his way. I shouldn’t have deceived myself that he’d have changed.’
I bristled. ‘That isn’t true.’
‘Then why turn back when we’ve come so far?’
‘Because it isn’t worth it.’
‘Or is it simply that the problem’s become too difficult; the challenge too great?’
‘Ignore him,’ Celestine said. ‘He’s just trying to goad you into following him. That’s what this has always been about, hasn’t it, Childe? You think you can solve the Spire, where eighteen previous versions of you have failed. Where eighteen previous versions of you were butchered and flayed by the thing.’ She looked around, almost as if she expected the Spire to punish her for speaking so profanely. ‘And perhaps you’re right, too. Perhaps you really have come closer than any of the others.’
Childe said nothing, perhaps unwilling to contradict her.
‘But simply beating the Spire wouldn’t be good enough,’ Celestine said. ‘For you’d have no witnesses. No one to see how clever you’d been.’
‘That isn’t it at all.’
‘Then why did we all have to come here? You found Trintignant useful, I’ll grant you that. And I helped you as well. But you could have done without us, ultimately. It would have been bloodier, and you might have needed to run off a few more clones… but I don’t doubt that you could have done it.’
‘The solution, Celestine.’
By my estimate we had not much more than two minutes left in which to make our selection. And yet I sensed that it was time enough. Magically, the problem had opened up before me where a moment ago it had been insoluble; like one of those optical illusions which suddenly flip from one state to another. The moment was as close to a religious experience as I cared to come.
‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘I see it now. Have you got it?’
‘Not quite. Give me a moment…’ Childe stared at it, and I watched as the lasers from his eyes washed over the labyrinthine engravings. The red glare skittered over the wrong solution and lingered there. It flickered away and alighted on the correct answer, but only momentarily.
Childe flicked his tail. ‘I think I’ve got it.’
‘Good,’ Celestine replied. ‘I agree with you. Richard? Are you ready to make this unanimous?’
I thought I had misheard her, but I had not. She was saying that Childe’s answer was the right one; that the one I had been sure of was the wrong one…
‘I thought…’ I began. Then, desperately, stared at the problem again. Had I missed something? Childe had looked to have his doubts, but Celestine was so certain of herself. And yet what I had glimpsed had appeared beyond question. ‘I don’t know,’ I said weakly. ‘I don’t know.’
‘We haven’t time to debate it. We’ve got less than a minute.’
The feeling in my belly was one of ice. Somehow, despite the layers of humanity that had been stripped from me, I could still taste terror. It was reaching me anyway; refusing to be daunted.
I felt so certain of my choice. And yet I was outnumbered.
‘Richard?’ Childe said again, more insistent this time.
I looked at the two of them, helplessly. ‘Press it,’ I said.
Childe placed his forepaw over the solution that he and Celestine had agreed on, and pressed.
I think I knew, even before the Spire responded, that the choice had not been the correct one. And yet when I looked at Celestine I saw nothing resembling shock or surprise in her expression. Instead, she looked completely calm and resigned.
And then the punishment commenced.
It was brutal, and once it would have killed us. Even with the augmentations Trintignant had given us, the damage inflicted was considerable as a scythe-tipped, triple-jointed pendulum descended from the ceiling and began swinging in viciously widening arcs. Our minds might have been able to compute the future position of a simpler pendulum, steering our bodies out of its harmful path. But the trajectory of a jointed pendulum was ferociously difficult to predict: a nightmarish demonstration of the mathematics of chaos.
But we survived, as we had survived the previous attacks. Even Celestine made it through, the flashing arc snipping off only one of her arms. I lost an arm and leg on one side, and watched — half in horror, half in fascination — as the room claimed these parts for itself; tendrils whipped out from the wall to salvage those useful conglomerations of metal and plastic. There was pain, of a sort, for Trintignant had wired those limbs into our nervous systems, so that we could feel heat and cold. But the pain abated quickly, replaced by digital numbness.
Childe got the worst of it, though.
The blade had sliced him through the middle, just below what had once been his ribcage, spilling steel and plastic guts, bone, viscera, blood and noxious lubricants onto the floor. The tendrils squirmed out and captured the twitching prize of his detached rear end, flicking tail and all.
With the hand that she still had, Celestine pressed the correct symbol. The punishment ceased and the door opened.
In the comparative calm that followed, Childe looked down at his severed trunk.
‘I seem to be quite badly damaged,’ he said.
But already various valves and gaskets were stemming the fluid loss; clicking shut with neat precision. Trintignant, I saw, had done very well. He had equipped Childe to survive the most extreme injuries.
‘You’ll live,’ Celestine said, with what struck me as less than total sympathy.
‘What happened?’ I asked. ‘Why didn’t you press that one first?’
She looked at me. ‘Because I knew what had to be done.’
Despite her injuries she helped us on the retreat.
I was able to stumble from room to room, balancing myself against the wall and hopping on my good leg. I had lost no great quantity of blood, for while I had suffered one or two gashes from close approaches of the pendulum,
my limbs had been detached below the points where they were anchored to flesh and bone. But I still felt the shivering onset of shock, and all I wanted to do was make it out of the Spire, back to the sanctuary of the shuttle. There, I knew, Trintignant could make me whole again. Human again, for that matter. He had always promised it would be possible, and while there was much about him that I did not like, I did not think he would lie about that. It would be a matter of professional pride that his work was technically reversible.
Celestine carried Childe, tucked under her arm. What remained of him was very light, she said, and he was able to cling to her with his undamaged forepaws. I felt a spasm of horror every time I saw how little of him there was, while shuddering to think how much more intense that spasm would have been were I not already numbed by the medichines.
We had made it back through perhaps one-third of the rooms when he slithered from her grip, thudding to the floor.
‘What are you doing?’ Celestine asked.
‘What do you think?’ He supported himself by his forelimbs, his severed trunk resting against the ground. The wound had begun to close, I saw, his diamond skin puckering tight to seal the damage.
Before very long he would look as if he had been made this way.
Celestine took her time before answering, ‘Quite honestly, I don’t know what to think.’
‘I’m going back. I’m carrying on.’
Still propping myself against a wall, I said, ‘You can’t. You need treatment. For God’s sake; you’ve been cut in half.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Childe said. ‘All I’ve done is lose a part of me I would have been forced to discard before very long. Eventually the doors would have been a tight squeeze even for something shaped like a dog.’
‘It’ll kill you,’ I said.
‘Or I’ll beat it. It’s still possible, you know.’ He turned around, his rear part scraping against the floor, and then looked back over his shoulder. ‘I’m going to retrace my steps back to the room where this happened. I don’t think the Spire will obstruct your retreat until I step — or crawl, as it may be — into the last room we opened. But if I were you, I wouldn’t take too long on the way back.’ Then he looked at me, and again switched on the private frequency. ‘It’s not too late, Richard. You can still come back with me.’
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