by Gary Gibson
‘Thank you,’ Remembrance replied blandly. ‘Is there anything else?’
The Physician stared at him for a moment with obvious chagrin, clearly searching for some strategy that would gain him even a morsel of insight into the reason for Remembrance’s private audience with their Queen. Remembrance could have happily told him there was none to give.
‘No, Remembrance,’ the Physician replied, his tone resigned. ‘It is time for your audience. Please accompany me.’
‘Of course.’ He followed Wind Sighing through the yacht until they came to the Royal Chamber. The decor throughout was typically conservative: curving walls of yellow-gold dotted with artificially grown amethysts and emeralds that winked and glistened under multihued glow-globes floating close to the ceiling.
A security drone slid out of its niche, focusing recording instruments and weaponry on Remembrance while maintaining a discreet distance. He entered an antechamber guarded by a single warrior-class Bandati, wings clipped and pierced with symbols of rank, and his artificially enhanced muscles bulging until they seemed almost grotesque.
The warrior sniffed Remembrance’s credentials, then bade him enter the Queen’s chamber alone.
The Royal Chamber, by necessity, demanded the most space within the yacht. The Queen of Darkening Skies Prior to Dusk herself towered above Remembrance of Things Past, the main part of her bulk resting in a hammock-like construction of wires and fabric built to take the weight of her gigantic frame.
Small-bodied attendants – their scent organs surgically blocked to prevent over-exposure to the valuable oils that constantly issued from the Queen’s glands – stood upon wheeled ladders that were, in turn, pushed by other attendants. Yet more of them carried waste material away in barrows, while others were engaged in grooming her, removing scales of dead skin from her vestigial wings, or collecting the valuable scent as it dripped from her pores, before then carrying it away in decorative ceremonial cups each of which might easily be a thousand years old.
The Queen’s eyes glistened as she turned to regard Remembrance of Things Past. As ever, he experienced a frisson of lust such as he had not enjoyed since his last audience with her long ago.
A wheeled platform was rolled into the centre of the chamber, until it stood directly before the Queen, and finally all her various attendants scurried away through doors or hatches, leaving her alone with Remembrance. He stepped forward and clutched the first handhold on a ladder leading to the top of the platform, and began pulling himself upwards, suddenly heedless of his injuries. He soon found himself face to face with the morbidly corpulent features of his Queen.
‘My beautiful knight,’ she chittered, her breath wheezing with a deep resonance from having to work its way up through such a formidable bulk. ‘How long has it been?’
‘Too long, my lady,’ he replied, barely able to manage the words as her scent wove its intoxicating magic on him. ‘Too long. Wind Sighing, I think, was uncomfortable that he could not be present.’
‘Wind Sighing will know the details of our business before very long, but for the moment what we have to discuss must remain between you and me. I have been watching you closely, Remembrance. There are remote visual scans showing your escape from the slopes of Mount Umami. These images, scavenged from an Immortal Light security network, are enjoying a brisk trade as a bootleg, and to many within the upper echelons of our Hive you are a hero.’
And yet, Remembrance knew, such an act of open confrontation would lead only to a renewal of the ancient conflict between the two Hives.
He clicked in annoyance. ‘That is of great concern to me, my Queen, since my mission was always, by necessity, of a most secret nature. If word of my exploits has become public, I can only consider myself to have failed further in my duties. If necessary, I will seek—’
‘Hush, my knight,’ the Queen replied, reaching out with one enormous, fleshy arm to brush at an uninjured wing. He shook with near-uncontrollable desire at her touch. ‘I myself was responsible for the release of the images. It is done by way of a message to my hateful sister: one of my own outwitting the best of her own Hive, despite apparently overwhelming odds. This cannot help but demoralize and sow discontent amongst her own royal advisers. For such remarkable bravery, I am most proud of you.’
‘Yet, my Queen, it only makes my work that much harder. We still have not ascertained the origin of the Giantkillers—’
‘And nor will we, at least for the moment,’ she interrupted.
Remembrance twitched his wings in confusion, but remained silent as she continued.
‘You covertly accessed their highest-security databases, in order to track Alexander Bourdain to the maul-worm’s lair, did you not?’
‘Yes, but not without difficulty. I used subversion routines created by your finest programmers, and found your sister’s own security forces were actively protecting Bourdain from us. We had to funnel the routines through secure channels and covertly download the contents of entire data stacks in order to—’
The Queen made a gesture of annoyance. ‘You found more than you bargained for, Remembrance. There was other information of far greater interest contained within their stacks.’
Remembrance could not contain his surprise. ‘There was?’
‘As necessary as it was for you to find the source of the Giantkillers, even that is not reason enough for me to come personally to Night’s End for the first time in three millennia – and in strictest secrecy’
‘I see.’
‘To be specific, Remembrance, it appears my dear sister the Queen of Immortal Light is involved in much more than mere technology-smuggling. It appears she may have entered into negotiations with a species known as the Emissaries.’
‘I . . . am not familiar with that name.’
‘They are one of the Shoal’s best-kept secrets: a rival interstellar empire with its own faster-than-light technology, viciously expansionist and constantly encroaching upon the Shoal’s own domain. The Shoal have their own good reasons for hiding the very existence of the Emissaries. I myself encountered an Emissary, a very long time ago, when I was barely a young proxy, and the possibility of an alliance between our race and theirs seemed at that time less than remote.’
Remembrance stared at her. ‘You met these creatures?’
‘And pray you never have to,’ she added. ‘They are . . . formidable. And not so congenial as the Shoal, by a very long way.’
‘I see.’ It was an enormous revelation; coming from anyone but his Queen he would have taken the story as an outright lie. And yet – ‘Why did this alliance not take place?’
‘Put simply, we had nothing to offer them and they had nothing as yet to gain. We might as well have been pre-Reformation primitives offering glass beads to the Shoal.’
Remembrance clicked and chittered to himself for a moment, while thinking out loud. ‘Then your sister presumably does have something to offer them now?’
‘Correct, my dear Remembrance. The Queen of Immortal Light has been smuggling couriers into extremely distant areas of the galaxy not normally permitted to our species.’
‘And they managed that without the Shoal even becoming aware of it?’
‘As far as we know, yes, although, from what we gather, at least one of their envoys disappeared en route. My sister clearly has something unique to bargain with this time round. Something that’s hidden, I believe, within this very system.’
Lust faded in the face of overwhelming curiosity. ‘Something hidden. What?’
The Queen paused briefly. ‘The details will be ready for you before your departure. You have a new mission, Remembrance, one of the most vital urgency, and it requires you to return to Ironbloom at once.’
‘The peace between you and your sister is over, I fear.’
‘You are correct, Remembrance. Too much is at stake now to allow the filial bonds of sister Hives to interfere. One piece of vital information concerns two humans currently being held in the city of Dark
water. There is extremely good reason to believe they are closely involved with these matters, so they will be the focus of your next mission.’
The vast, fleshy arm reached out once again and stroked Remembrance’s wings, making him shiver with delight. ‘We will need to transmute you,’ she murmured, ‘as Immortal Light know your current scent too well. You will have a new identity.’
‘I have a scent and name ready,’ Remembrance replied quickly, producing the bottle the Physician had given him. He opened the tiny flask and held it before his Queen.
The Queen cocked her enormous head to one side and regarded him. ‘Let me guess, another human name?’
‘I know you disapprove, my Queen, but I cannot deny my fondness for certain of their arts.’
‘Yet their scents are so bland – if unusual in some respects,’ she murmured, favouring the open flask with a glance.
‘Precisely. Which means they are forced to express themselves in ways that supersede their sensory limitations, and to my tastes they do so most frequently through their arts.’
‘I sometimes fear I have made you altogether too human,’ the Queen replied, drawing closer to the edge of the platform – and therefore closer to Remembrance.
‘Perhaps, my Queen,’ Remembrance replied, growing glassy-eyed.
It was true that his Queen’s attentions on previous occasions had made him sufficiently different from his own species that other Bandati now seemed strange to him. For all that Honeydew was a member of a rival Hive, Remembrance felt a curious kinship. They had both, after all, been made over by their respective Queens in order to communicate more easily with other species.
Remembrance waited patiently as his Queen inclined her head to run her long tongue across his wings and back. He felt an icy coldness sinking rapidly into his flesh, triggering physiological changes at the most fundamental level. It was a process that – given only a little time – would alter his scent and even his Hive rank. A Bandati Queen was the only one equipped to do such a thing.
‘And your chosen spoken name is?’ she asked, her voice growing thick with desire.
‘“Days of Wine and Roses”,’ he told her.
‘What a strange name,’ she murmured, as long-chain molecules modelled after highly mutable infectious viruses continued to work their transformative magic on him. ‘It paints a picture without relying on scent, and yet it still somehow feels as typically human as your previous name. Where did you find it?’
‘I stumbled across it while engaging in cultural research before taking up my post as assistant economic adviser to your previous ambassador to Earth. The words are pleasing to my ear.’
‘As they are to mine,’ she concurred. ‘And now to me, my love,’ she added, reaching towards him with her tree-trunk limbs, lifting him entirely off the platform and into her giant embrace. ‘You will serve me well.’
‘That I will,’ Remembrance-soon-to-be-Roses replied as the haze of lust finally overwhelmed him. ‘That I will.’
Five
The next morning Dakota and Corso lay curled together on the floor, her back pressed against his belly, head resting on the inside of his arm, the door and the vertiginous drop beyond it barely half a metre away. She remembered the low grunts he’d made as they’d coupled in the half-light of dawn, the whispered conversations earlier as he explained how he’d been kept in a cell identical to her own.
She wondered if their gaolers had been watching them the whole time, if their lovemaking had made any kind of sense to them.
He shifted behind her, and she wondered if she smelled as bad to him as he did to her, because it wasn’t like there were any washing facilities handy. He stumbled to his feet and she guessed he was heading for the ambrosia pipe.
‘Don’t drink it,’ she warned him.
He shook his head. ‘It’s safe now.’
‘Bullshit. It numbs your mind and makes it easier for them to deal with you. We have a better chance of figuring our way out of here if we can both think straight.’
He bent down to the pipe and touched its flexible tip before looking back over at her. ‘Starving to death isn’t going to help us either. Were you serious last night when you said you wanted to try and climb out of here?’
She pushed herself up onto one elbow and regarded him. ‘Yeah.’
He shook his head. ‘Well, don’t. Where would you go, anyway?’
‘Jesus, don’t you want to get out of here?’
‘I already tried.’
She frowned at him.
‘Climbing out, I mean. I already tried. All I managed was to nearly get myself killed.’
‘Lucas—’ she began in alarm.
‘I don’t want to talk about it, okay? And, as far as the ambrosia goes, trust me when I tell you it’s not an issue any more. Seriously.’
‘It’ll put you to sleep.’
‘It won’t.’ He bent down to suck on the pipe and Dakota stared as he swallowed several mouthfuls. She half expected him to slump there like a junkie after a new fix, but he just stared back, as bright-eyed as ever.
He nodded down towards the pipe. ‘I know you don’t trust me, but . . .’
‘You tried to steal the derelict from me. I didn’t forget that, at least.’
‘Look, trust me this one time. If I’m lying, fine, hold it against me for ever more. But look at you! Your ribs are showing. You need to drink, Dak. Or you’re going to die.’
She rocked back on her haunches, feeling warm sunlight play against the curve of her spine, and buried her head in her arms folded over her shoulders. ‘I don’t want to drink that stuff and then wake up back in that fucking chamber being tortured,’ she replied, her voice muffled. ‘It feels like that’s what happens every time I go near that pipe.’
‘But not this time, Dakota,’ Corso insisted. ‘This time is different. Look at me. Do I look like I’m going to pass out?’
‘Shit.’ Dakota unfolded herself and propped her head on one arm, staring at a man who was equal parts friend, lover and enemy. There had been times when he’d saved her life – and times when he’d been ready to kill her.
‘Shit,’ she said again, sounding even more miserable. She fell onto her hands and knees and crawled the short distance over to the food pipe. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’
She drank the ambrosia, staring up at Corso with a murderous expression.
It tasted different. Sweeter somehow, and grittier. She didn’t experience the wash of euphoria she’d felt before. She pulled away from the pipe and coughed hoarsely.
‘Easy,’ said Corso, kneeling beside her and gently prying the pipe from her fingers. ‘Not too much or you’ll just bring it all back up again. How long have you been starving yourself like this?’
‘Not sure. Several days, maybe.’
‘What, you’re trying to kill yourself?’
‘I feel like I’m already dead, being stuck in here.’ She glanced up at Corso.
He looked troubled. ‘It was pretty bad for me too,’ he said, glancing away from her.
‘Corso, how did you know—?’
‘Drink a little more now,’ he replied, cutting her off.
Some time later that same day she glanced over to see him standing by the door-opening, framed by stars. She watched him for a while, and realized she was starting to feel better than she had in days. Even the migraines were beginning to tail off, and her mind remained clear despite the ambrosia.
A voice she hadn’t expected to ever hear again spoke inside her mind.
How come?
It’s okay, Piri, I get it. Things are going ok
ay for once.
See you when you come back round. Over and out.
It had been a moment of revelation when the Piri Reis had successfully piggybacked its signal on the derelict’s own, more esoteric, system of communication. It had taken serious willpower earlier in the day not to punch the air in triumph, as it would have been hard to come up with an appropriate excuse to give Corso for such exultant behaviour.
The facility containing both the Piri and the derelict spacecraft orbited a moon whose Bandati name translated as ‘Blackflower’. This in turn orbited Dusk, the nearest of two inner-system gas giants known to the Bandati as the Fair Sisters. The farther gas giant was called Dawn. At the moment, the orbits of both Dusk and Ironbloom had brought them relatively close to each other, although Ironbloom’s greater orbital velocity would soon widen the gap.
Unfortunately, there were limitations to Dakota’s ability to communicate with the two vessels. For the moment the signal had to remain, by necessity, entirely line-of-sight. Both Piri and the derelict communicated via highly directional tach-transmissions that could pass through planetary bodies with ease, but the resulting interaction with ordinary matter generated enough Cerenkov-Mahler radiation to draw the attention of Bandati monitoring systems entirely capable of identifying a rogue transmission’s point of origin and its destination.
Blackflower completed a fast orbit around its parent, Dusk, roughly once every twenty-seven hours, which meant Dakota could only make contact with the Piri and the derelict for about half of that time – and only after dark, when the part of Ironbloom on which her tower stood was facing the right way.
But still, there were satellites orbiting both worlds on which signals might be piggybacked. Consequently the derelict was hijacking the Bandati’s own communications grids bit by bit – but that was taking time.
And Dakota wasn’t sure how much time they had left.