Absolution Gap

by Alastair Reynolds

  “Not for long, sir. Blood’s sending a plane. It’ll be here in under an hour.”

  “That isn’t the way it’s supposed to happen,” Scorpio said.

  “Pardon, sir, but Blood’s view was that once shooting started, it was time to tear up the rules.”

  “You can’t argue with that,” Clavain said.

  Scorpio nodded, still burdened by the vast weight of what lay before him. He could not let Vasko do it, no matter how devoutly he wished to abdicate this particular responsibility. “Anything else to report?” he asked.

  “The sea’s funny, sir. It’s greener, and there are mounds of biomass appearing all around the iceberg, as far as the eye can see.”

  “Juggler activity,” Clavain said. “Blood already told us it was hotting up.”

  “That’s not all, sir. More reports of things in the sky. Eyewitnesses even say they’ve seen things re-entering.”

  “The battle’s coming closer,” Clavain said, with something close to anticipation. “Well, Skade, I don’t think any of us really want to delay things now, do we?”

  “Wiser words were never spoken,” she said.

  “You tell us how you want it done. I presume we’ll need to get that armour off you first?”

  “I’ll deal with that,” she said. “In the meantime, make sure you have the incubator ready.”

  Scorpio made a shooting gesture in Vasko’s direction. “Return to the boat. Inform Blood that we are in the process of delicate negotiations, then bring the incubator back through the iceberg.”

  “I’ll do that, sir. But seriously, I know how hard it is for you to… ” Vasko could not complete his sentence. “What I mean is, I’m willing to do it.”

  “I know,” Scorpio said, “but I’m his friend. The one thing I know is that I wouldn’t want anyone else to have this on their conscience.”

  “There’ll be nothing on your conscience, Scorp,” Clavain said.

  No, Scorpio thought. There’d be nothing on his conscience. Nothing save the fact that he had tortured his best friend—his only genuine human friend—to death, slowly, in return for the life of a child he neither knew nor cared for. So what if he had no choice in the matter? So what if it was only what Clavain wanted him to do? None of that made it any easier to do, or would make it any easier to live with in times to come. Because he knew that what happened in the next half hour—he did not think the procedure could last much longer than that—would surely be burned into his memory as indelibly as the self-inflicted scar on his shoulder, the one that covered his original emerald-green tattoo of human ownership.

  Perhaps it would be faster than that. And perhaps Clavain would really suffer very little. After all, he had managed to block most of the pain when he lost the hand. Presumably it was within his power to establish a more comprehensive set of neural barricades, nulling the agony Skade sought to inflict.

  But she would know that, wouldn’t she?

  “Go. Now,” he said to Vasko. “And don’t return immediately.”

  “I’ll be back, sir.” Vasko hesitated at the bulkhead, studying the little tableau as if committing it to memory. Scorpio read his mind. Vasko knew that when he returned, Clavain would not be amongst the living.

  “Son,” Clavain said, “do as the man says. I’ll be all right. I appreciate your concern.”

  “I wish I could do something, sir.”

  “You can’t. Not here, not now. That’s another of those difficult lessons. Sometimes you can’t do the right thing. You just have to walk away and fight another day. Tough medicine, son, but sooner or later we all have to swallow it.”

  “I understand, sir.”

  “I haven’t known you that long, but it’s been long enough for me to form a reasonable impression of your abilities. You’re a good man, Vasko. The colony needs you and it needs others like you. Respect that need and don’t let the colony down.”

  “Sir,” Vasko said.

  “When this is done, we’ll have Aura again. First and foremost, she’s her mother’s daughter. Don’t ever let anyone forget that.”

  “I won’t, sir.”

  “But she’s also ours. She’ll be fragile, Vasko. She’ll need protecting as she grows up. That’s the task I’m giving you and your generation. Take care of that girl, because she may be the last thing that matters.”

  “I’ll take care of her, sir.” Vasko looked at Khouri, as if seeking permission. “We’ll all take care of her. That’s a promise.”

  “You sound as if you mean it. I can trust you, can’t I?”

  “I’ll do my best, sir.”

  Clavain nodded, weary, resigned, facing an abyss the depth of which only he could comprehend. “That’s all I’ve ever done, too. Mostly, it’s been good enough. Now go, please, and give my regards to Blood.”

  Vasko hesitated again, as if there was something more he wished to say. But whatever words he intended remained unsaid. He turned and was gone.

  “Why did you want to get rid of him?” Scorpio asked, after a few seconds had passed.

  “Because I don’t want him to see one moment of this.”

  “I’ll make it as quick as she’ll let me,” Scorpio said. “If Jaccottet works fast, I can work fast as well. Isn’t that right, Skade?”

  “You’ll work as fast as I dictate, and no faster.”

  “Don’t make this any harder than it has to be,” Scorpio said.

  “It won’t hurt him, will it?” Khouri asked. “He can turn off the pain, can’t he?”

  “I was coming to that,” Skade said, with an obvious reptilian delight in her own cunning, “Clavain—explain to your friends what you will allow to happen, please.”

  “I have no choice, do I?”

  “Not if you want this to go ahead.”

  Clavain scratched at his brow. It was pale with frost, his eyebrows pure ermine white. “Since I entered this room, Skade has been trying to override my neural barricades. She’s been launching attack algorithms against my standard security layers and firewalls, trying to hijack deeper control structures. Take my word for its, she’s very good. The only thing stopping her is the antiquated nature of my implants. For her, it’s like trying to hack into a clockwork calculator. Her methods are too advanced for the battleground.”

  “So?” Khouri said, squinting as if she were missing something obvious.

  “If she could penetrate those layers,” Clavain said, “she could override any pain-blocks I cared to install. She could open them all one by one, like water-release valves in a dam, letting the pain flow through.”

  “But she can’t get at them, can she?” Scorpio asked.

  “Not unless I let her. Not unless I invite her in and give her complete control.”

  “But you’d never do that.”

  “I wouldn’t,” he said, “unless, of course, she demanded it of me.”

  “Skade, please,” Khouri said.

  “Lower those blockades,” Skade said, ignoring the woman. “Lower them and let me in. If you don’t, the deal’s off. Aura dies now.”

  Clavain closed his eyes for a moment fractionally longer than a blink. It was only an instant, but for Clavain it must have involved the issuing of many intricate, rarely used neural management commands, rescinding standard security states that had probably remained frozen for decades.

  He opened his eyes. “It’s done,” he said. “You have control.”

  “Let’s make sure, shall we?”

  Clavain made a noise somewhere between a moan and a yelp. He clutched at the bandaged stump of his left hand, his jaw stiffening. Scorpio saw the tendons in his neck stand out like guylines.

  “I think you have it,” Clavain said, teeth clenched.

  “I’m locked in now,” Skade told her audience. “He can’t throw me out or block my commands.”

  “Get this over with,” Clavain said. Again, there was an easing in his expression, like the change of light on a landscape. Scorpio understood. If Skade was going to torture him, she w
ould not want to ruin her carefully orchestrated efforts with an extraneous pain source. Especially one that had never been part of her plan.

  Skade reached down to her belly with both gauntleted hands. No seam had been visible in her armour before, but now the curved white plate that covered her abdomen detached itself from the rest of the suit. Skade placed it next to her, then returned her hands to her sides. Where the armour had been opened, a bulge of soft human flesh moved under the thin, crosshatched mesh of a vacuum suit inner layer.

  “We’re ready,” she said.

  Jaccottet moved towards her and knelt down, one knee resting on the mound of fused ice that covered Skade’s lower half. The black box of white surgical instruments sat splayed open at his side.

  “Pig,” she said, “take a scalpel from the lower compartment. That will do for now.”

  Scorpio’s trotter poked at the snugly embedded instrument. Khouri reached over and pulled it out for him. She placed it delicately in his grasp.

  “For the last time,” Scorpio said, “don’t make me do this.”

  Clavain sat down next to him, crossing his legs. “It’s all right, Scorp. Just do what she says. I’ve a few tricks up my sleeve she doesn’t know about. She won’t be able to block all my commands, even if she thinks she can.”

  “Tell him that if you think it makes it easier for him,” Skade said.

  “He’s never lied to me,” Scorpio said. “I don’t think he’d start now.”

  The white instrument sat in his hand, absurdly light, an innocent little surgical tool. There was no evil in the thing itself, but at that moment it felt like the focus of all the inchoate badness in the universe, its pristine whiteness part of the same sense of malignity. Titanic possibilities were balanced in his palm. He could not hold the instrument the way its designers had intended. All the same, he could still manipulate it well enough to do harm. He supposed it did not really matter to Clavain how skilfully the work was done. A certain imprecision might even help him, dulling the white-hot edge of the pain Skade intended.

  “How do you want me to sit?” Clavain asked.

  “Lie down,” Skade said. “On your back. Hands at your sides.”

  Clavain positioned himself. “Anything else?”

  “That’s up to you. If you have anything you want to say, now would be a good time. In a little while, you might find it difficult.”

  “Only one thing,” Clavain said.

  Scorpio moved closer. The dreadful task was almost upon him. “What is it, Nevil?”

  “When this is over, don’t waste any time. Get Aura to safety. That’s really all I care about.” He paused, licked his lips. Around them the fine growth of his beard glistened with a haze of beautiful white crystals. “But if there’s time, and if it doesn’t inconvenience you, I’d ask you to bury me at sea.”

  “Where?” Scorpio asked.

  “Here,” Clavain said. “As soon as you can. No ceremony. The sea will do the rest.”

  There was no sign that Skade had heard him, or cared what he had to say. “Let’s start,” she said to Jaccottet. “Do exactly as I tell you. Oh, and Khouri?”

  “Yes?” the woman asked.

  “You really don’t have to watch this.”

  “She’s my daughter,” she said. “I’m staying right here until I get her back.” Then she turned to Clavain, and Scorpio sensed a vast private freight of communication pass between them. Perhaps it was more than just his imagination. After all, they were both Conjoiners now.

  “It’s all right,” Clavain said aloud.

  Khouri knelt down and kissed him on the forehead. “I just wanted to say thank you.”

  Behind her, Skade’s hand moved over the holoclavier again.

  OUTSIDE THE ICEBERG, on the spreading fringe of whiteness, Urton looked at Vasko the way a teacher would look at a truant child. “You took your time,” she said.

  Vasko fell to his knees. He vomited. It came from nowhere, with no warning. It left him feeling excavated, husked out.

  Urton knelt down on the ice next to him. “What is it? What’s happening?” Her voice was urgent.

  But he couldn’t speak. He wiped a smear of vomit from his chin. His eyes stung. He felt simultaneously ashamed and liberated by his reaction, as if in that awful admission of emotional weakness he had also found an unsuspected strength. In that moment of hollowing, that moment in which he felt the core of himself evacuated, he knew that he had taken a step into the adult world that Urton and Jaccottet thought was theirs alone.

  Above, the sky was a purple-grey bruise. The sea roiled, grey phantasms slipping between the waves.

  “Talk to me, Vasko,” she said.

  He pushed himself to his feet. His throat was raw, his mind as clear and clean as an evacuated airlock.

  “Help me with the incubator,” he said.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  p Eridani 40,2675

  BATTLE RAGED IN the immediate volume of space around the Pattern Juggler planet. Near the heart of the engagement itself, and close to the geometric centre of his vast ship Zodiacal Light, Remontoire sat in a posture of perfect zenlike calm. His expression betrayed only mild interest in the outcome of current events. His eyes were closed; his hands were folded demurely in his lap. He looked bored and faintly distracted, like a man about to doze off in a waiting room.

  Remontoire was not bored, nor was he about to doze off. Boredom was a condition of consciousness he barely remembered, like anger or hate or the thirst for mother’s milk. He had experienced many states of mind since leaving Mars nearly five hundred years earlier, including some that could only be approximated in the flat, limiting modalities of baseline human language. Being bored was not amongst them. Nor did he expect it to play a significant role in his mental affairs in the future, most certainly not while the wolves were still around. And he wasn’t very likely to experience sleep, either.

  Now and then some part of him—his eyelids, or even his entire head—twitched minutely, betraying something of the extreme state of non-boredom he was actually experiencing. Tactical data surged incessantly through his mind with the icy clarity of a mountain torrent. He was actually running his mind at a dangerously high clock-rate, just barely within the cooling parameters of his decidedly old-fashioned Conjoiner mental architecture. Skade would have laughed at him now as he struggled to match a thought-processing rate that would—to her—have barely merited comment. Skade could think this fast and simultaneously fragment her consciousness into half a dozen parallel streams. And she could do it while moving around, exerting herself, whereas Remontoire had to sit in a state of trancelike stillness so as not to put additional loads on his already stressed body and mind. They really were creatures of different centuries.

  But although Skade had been in his thoughts much of late, she was of no immediate concern now. He considered it likely she was dead. His suspicions had been strong enough even before he had permitted Khouri to descend into the planet’s atmosphere, following after Skade’s downed corvette, but he had been careful not to make too much of them. For if Skade was dead, then so was Aura.

  Something changed: a tick and a whirr of the great dark orrery of war in which he floated. For hours me opposed forces—the baseline humans, Skade’s Conjoiners, the Inhibitors—had wheeled around the planet in a fixed formation, as if they had finally settled into some mathematical configuration of maximum stability. The other Conjoiners were cowed: for weeks they had been gaining an edge over Remontoire’s loose alliance of humans, pigs and Resurgam refugees. They had stolen Aura, and through her they had learned many of the secrets that had enabled Remontoire and his allies to outflank the Inhibitor forces around Delta Pavonis. Later, Remontoire had given them even more in return for Khouri. But since Skade’s disappearance the other Conjoiners had become confused and directionless, far more than would have been the case with an equivalent grouping from Remontoire’s generation. Skade had been too powerful, too effective at manipulation. During the war agains
t the Demarchists (which seemed now, to Remontoire, like an innocently remembered childhood diversion) the ruthlessly democratic structure of Conjoiner politics had been gradually partitioned, with the creation of security layers: the Closed Council, the Inner Sanctum, even—perhaps—the rumoured Night Council. Skade was the logical end product of that process of compartmentalisation: highly skilled, highly resourceful, highly knowledgeable, highly adept at manipulating others. In the pressure of the war against the Demarchists, his people had—unwittingly—made a tyrant for themselves.

  And Skade had been a very good tyrant. She had only wanted the best for her people, even if that meant extinction for the rest of humanity. Her single-mindedness, her willingness to transcend the limits of the flesh and the mind, had been inspirational even to Remontoire. He had very nearly chosen to fight on her side rather than Clavain’s. It was no wonder those Conjoiners around her had forgotten how to think for themselves. In thrall to Skade, there had never been any need.

  But now Skade was gone, and her army of swift, brilliant puppets didn’t know what to do next.

  In the last ten hours, Remontoire’s forces had intercepted twenty-eight thousand separate invitations to negotiation from the remaining Conjoiner elements, squirted through the brief windows in the sphere of jammed communications afflicting the entire theatre of battle. After all the betrayals, after all the fragile alliances and spiteful enmities, they still thought he was a man they could do business with. There was, he thought, something else as well: hints that they were worried about something he had yet to identify. It might have been a gambit to snare his attention and encourage him to talk to them, but he wasn’t sure.

  He had decided to keep them waiting just a little bit longer, at least until he had some concrete data from the surface.

  Now, however, something had changed. He had detected the alteration in the disposition of battle forces one-fifteenth of a second earlier; in the ensuing time nothing had happened to suggest that it was anything but real.

  The Inhibitors were moving. A clump of wolf machines—they moved in clumps, aggregations, flickering clouds, rather than ordered squadrons or detachments—had left its former position. Between ninety-five and ninety-nine per cent of the wolf assets around p Eridani 40—estimated by mass, or volume (it was difficult to be sure how much wolf machinery had actually followed them from Delta Pavonis)—held station, but according to the sensor returns, which could not always be trusted, the small aggregate—between one and five per cent of the total force—was on its way to the planet.