by Paul McAuley
‘Aakash is gone. Agrata is dead. I almost died,’ Hari said. ‘And Nabhomani isn’t here, so I guess that he’s dead, too. And you tell me that you were trying to save the family?’
Hanging above the platform, outstretched arms clamped in the iron grip of the two manikins, he was neither angry nor afraid, felt only a cold forensic pity. His brother was a prisoner too, stripped of his competence and command, his potency. He had failed and he was trying to justify his failure, redefine it as an inescapable tragedy.
‘Nabhomani and I, we served the old man for almost fifty years,’ Nabhoj said. ‘We were loyal. We were faithful. We did everything asked of us. We agreed to allow Dr Gagarian aboard. We agreed to help him with his research. But it was a bad decision. You know that. You know what happened. It was a bad decision. Two years passed. Our reserves of credit were almost gone. We were losing the reputation we had cultivated over many years. And we had nothing to show for it. Nothing. Nabhomani and I endured the fiasco for longer than we should have done, out of misplaced loyalty and respect for our father. We tried to persuade him to give up his obsession, but he would not listen to us. And when at last we realised that we could not persuade him to do the right thing, we knew we had to act.’
‘You were too cowardly to do it yourself. You hired Deel Fertita and the reivers.’
‘They contacted us. When we put in at Porto Jeffre to pick up consumables and components for Dr Gagarian’s experiments, for those probes of his, Nabhomani was approached by a free trader who told him that someone was interested in Dr Gagarian’s research.’
‘This free trader, she was a tanky, wasn’t she?’ Hari said. ‘She called herself Mr D.V. Mussa.’
‘I never met him. Or her. We started a conversation with the interested party, Nabhomani and I, and we came to an arrangement. We would give them Dr Gagarian and his partners; they would give us control of the ship. We didn’t have the operating codes for the ship’s security, its reaction cannon and all the rest, and we didn’t have the expertise to neutralise any of it. So we agreed to a plan that would allow experts to come aboard. People who could help us.’
‘You betrayed your family by making an agreement with these reivers, and then they betrayed you. It was their idea to head out to Jackson’s Reef, wasn’t it?’ Hari said.
He’d been thinking about it ever since Khinda Wole had told him that Nabhomani had hired Deel Fertita and others. He was certain that he knew what had happened, but he wanted to hear Nabhoj admit it.
‘We needed an excuse to bring specialists aboard,’ Nabhoj said. ‘Jackson’s Reef seemed as good a destination as any. It was a simple plan, but things went wrong. I admit that things went badly wrong. The tick-tock fought back. Agrata and the old man fought back. We had cut the manikins and the drones and bots out of his control loop, but he found a way back inside that we didn’t know about. Nabhomani was killed before I could trace it. And then I tried to find you, but you had escaped from the cargo hold. I had sent you there and locked it to keep you safe, and you were gone, and so was Agrata.’
‘She rescued me. She saved my life, and she died trying to save the ship.’
‘I tried to keep both of you out of harm’s way while we dealt with the machines and the security systems,’ Nabhoj said. ‘But it did not work out.’
‘You didn’t try to keep Agrata “out of harm’s way”. You killed her.’
‘Not me.’
‘If not you, then your friend here, or one of her sisters. Don’t try to tell me that makes a difference. Because it doesn’t.’
‘She wouldn’t surrender. She killed Deel Fertita and two of the reivers, and she refused to surrender.’
‘Did she know? Did she know what you and Nabhomani did, before she died? Before she was murdered?’
Nabhoj opened his hands, palms up. A kind of shrug, one of Aakash’s gestures.
Hari said, ‘It must have broken her heart when she realised that you had betrayed our father.’
Nabhoj looked away, looked back. He said, ‘Our hearts were already broken. Mine and Nabhomani’s . . .’
Hari was no longer listening. The eidolon had pushed into his bios, breathless and happy. Suddenly, he was in the commons and he was in other parts of the ship.
Riyya was saying to Nabhoj, ‘Do you know what you did to Dr Gagarian’s colleagues? To their families?’
‘You will stay out of this,’ Nabhoj told her.
‘I am already in it,’ Riyya said. ‘My father was murdered by one of this woman’s sisters. You’re responsible for that, too.’
‘You should have come alone, Gajananvihari,’ Nabhoj said. ‘You shouldn’t have involved other people in this.’
Hari made himself pay attention to his brother. He said, ‘They were already involved, thanks to you and Nabhomani.’
‘I have explained why that was necessary.’
‘And now strangers control our ship. And you’re their prisoner. Bait to lure me back. Was it your idea to send those messages, or theirs?’
‘The ship is mine.’
There was a familiar congestion in Nabhoj’s face, a force pushing through his impassive calm.
‘Prove it,’ Hari said. ‘If you’re in charge of the ship, order these manikins to free me.’
‘You’ll be freed once the files have been extracted from your neural net.’
‘Is that what they told you? You’re a fool if you believe them. They killed everyone else who had anything to do with Dr Gagarian’s research. They’ll kill us, too.’
‘We have an agreement,’ Nabhoj said.
‘Of course we do,’ the assassin said. ‘Have you and your brother finished?’
‘Absolutely,’ Hari said.
The floating lights around the platform snapped off. In the sudden darkness, panels of emergency lighting kindled, dim red glows pulsing like hearth fires in the wiry thickets of the architectural weave, amongst the shadows of rooms and platforms, pulsing faster and faster, strobing, spraying sparks into the dim air of the central shaft. Firefly constellations whirled and thickened, coalesced into spidery figures with hinged jaws and blazing eyes that flung themselves at Nabhoj and the assassin.
Nabhoj shouted out and cringed as the figures lunged and snapped at him. The assassin did not move. She said, ‘I am not affected by silly tricks. And I still have control of the ship.’
‘Maybe you do,’ Hari said. ‘But I have control of everything else.’
The two manikins let go of his arms and there was a sudden commotion at the entrance to the omphalos as a crowd of manikins and service and maintenance bots rushed in, clambering along the architectural weave or swimming through the air, swarming towards the platform.
Nabhoj shouted again, and launched himself at Hari. Hari had barely enough time to bring his knees up to his chest. He kicked out, pushing against Nabhoj’s chest, the moment of contact shocking: a hard, shocking jar in his feet and spine. They flew apart. Action/reaction. Hari shot backwards across the shaft, grabbed a strand of the architectural weave and hung there, breathless. Nabhoj was intercepted by Riyya, who crashed into him and crooked her forearm under his beard and braced and hauled back, choking him into silence as they spun in the air.
The assassin watched this, calm and still between the pair of bristling maintenance bots that had settled on either side of her. ‘You still don’t have the ship,’ she told Hari.
‘Perhaps I can help,’ Eli Yong said.
‘I don’t need any help to take back my ship,’ Hari said. ‘But there is something you can do for me.’
10
After Hari had performed the reset that gave him control of the drive and navigation systems of Pabuji’s Gift, after he had confirmed that his father’s viron had been comprehensively trashed, Eli Yong helped him download a copy of Dr Gagarian’s files into the ship’s mind. He told her that she could keep the original.
‘It’s more than you deserve. But then again, it’s worth less than you think.’
Eli Yo
ng met his gaze, attempting to project her version of sincerity. ‘The arrangement I made with Rav, that was strictly business. I had nothing against you personally.’
‘Tell me something. Were you planning to cheat Rav after you extracted the files?’
Eli Yong’s gaze didn’t waver. ‘What do you think?’
‘I think that neither you nor Rav were interested in what the research meant, or how it could be used. You were only interested in what it was worth. How much you could sell it for. And because it’s only worth something to people like you while it remains a secret, I intend to seriously devalue it.’
Hari watched Eli Yong think about that. Her posture and the mask of her face didn’t change – she was very good at hiding her emotions – but something in her gaze hardened. Small shifts in the muscles around her eyes, a slight narrowing of her pupils.
She said, ‘If you’re going to do what I think you’re going to do, you are making a foolish mistake.’
‘I have no doubt that you hid a copy of the files somewhere. Either on Brighter Than Creation’s Dark or inside your head. The Saints may have made copies you didn’t have time to find. It’s possible that the tick-tock matriarch lied, and made a copy. The skull feeders probably made a copy, too,’ Hari said, remembering Rav moving from pole to pole on the moss island, methodically crushing the bouquets of skulls. Not out of malice, as Hari had thought at the time, but in case the skull feeders had unlocked Dr Gagarian’s files and downloaded them into the mindscape of their dead.
He said, ‘Riyya was right. Once an idea is out in the world, it’s impossible to suppress it or keep it secret. Only a fool would try.’
‘She is an idealist,’ Eli Yong said. ‘The worst kind of fool.’
‘She’s too honest, perhaps. Too trusting. But she sees the world more clearly than you or I. She sees it straight.’
‘She’s a fool,’ Eli Yong said. ‘And so are you.’
‘Cheer up,’ Hari said. ‘If you’re as clever as you want everyone to think you are, you have a good chance of winning the race to find something useful in the files. And if you aren’t, well, at least you have a head start.’
Hari knew that Riyya would be angry when he told her about his plan. He tried to harden his heart. He told himself that it was strictly business, family business. He told himself that he was protecting her, that he was saving her life. But it still wasn’t easy.
‘I made no secret about what I wanted to do,’ he said. ‘The assassin and her sisters have to pay for what they did. And I have to go to them because they will not come to me.’
He’d tried and failed to contact the assassin’s sisters – the assassin had refused to help him, saying that she was their arm and their hand, not their voice.
‘This isn’t just about what you want to do,’ Riyya said. ‘It’s also about how you’re going about it. We got here, you, me, and Rav’s son, because we helped each other. And we helped each other because we have all lost people. But you think that your loss counts more than anyone else’s. You think it gives you the right to abandon us and do whatever it is you want to do. Well, it isn’t right, Hari. It’s entirely selfish. And without our help you’ll probably get yourself killed.’
‘I don’t ask for or expect forgiveness, but I have to do this alone,’ Hari said. ‘I can’t explain why, but you’ll understand soon enough.’
Riyya looked away. Hari waited out her silence. He knew what she was going to say, knew she was going to condemn him, hoped that things would go more easily once she had decided that he was a monster.
But when she looked back, her gaze was softer, sadder. ‘You’ve changed,’ she said.
‘Long before I met you, while I was still marooned on Themba, I vowed that I would find out who destroyed my family and my future. That I would have my revenge. That was me then. This is me now.’
‘You want to balance out greed and foolishness and murder with more of the same,’ Riyya said. ‘How does that work? It won’t bring back your dead. It won’t bring back mine. You have your ship. You have your brother. You know what he did, and why. Isn’t that enough?’
‘The ship was hijacked and my father and Agrata were killed far beyond the jurisdiction of any city or settlement. And there’s no common police force in the Saturn system. There isn’t even any traffic control out here. I can’t invoke a higher authority. So if I’m going to make this right, I have to do it myself.’
‘You don’t have to do it by yourself. Let us help you.’
‘I don’t need any help.’
‘It must have been a terrible shock, finding out what your brother did, how he betrayed you. You’re angry,’ Riyya said, ‘and you want to hurt the people who hurt you. I understand. I do. But if you run straight at them, they’ll kill you. Let me help. Let Rav’s son help too. We’ve all been hurt by these assassins. We all want to make them pay. Talk it through with us. We can work up a plan—’
‘I already knew,’ Hari said. ‘I already knew what Nabhoj had done before he confessed – when the Ardenists told me where my ship was, they also showed me picts of him and the assassin in Dione’s orbital docks. I didn’t tell you because it was family business. And that’s why I didn’t tell you what I was planning to do. That’s why I don’t need or want your help. You left your family, Riyya. You ran away. I don’t think you are in any position to tell me what I should or shouldn’t do now that I’ve come home.’
It was easier, after that. After he had said a few unforgivable things, after Riyya had told him that he deserved to die alone, he called up half a dozen manikins, hustled her into the only gig left in the garages, and sent her across to Brighter Than Creation’s Dark with Eli Yong and Rav’s son. The Ardenist was still unconscious, sedated by the ship’s doctor thing. Hari reckoned that he wouldn’t recover consciousness for at least a day. More than enough time to do what needed to be done.
After the gig returned, Hari fired up the motors of his ship. Brighter Than Creation’s Dark and the seraphs and their supplicants dwindled into the darkness astern. He was on his way.
11
The Saints’ cutter was driving towards Titan, presumably planning to shed its excess delta vee and swing back and resume the chase, and Hari had a lot to do before he reached Enceladus. But before he started work he had a last conversation with his brother, the last of his farewells. Nabhoj hung between two manikins in one of the staging areas for the ship’s lifepods. Lifting his head when Hari floated into the bright spherical space, saying, ‘It has done you good to get off this ship, Gajananvihari. You’ve changed. You’ve grown up. You’ve had an education. You’ve learnt that there’s more to life than salvage work and serving the old man. Think about those lessons, brother. Think hard. Think about what you want to do with the rest of your life.’
‘You’ve had two hours to work up that speech,’ Hari said. ‘Is that the best you can do?’
He felt very cool, very calm. Watching everything as if it was a scene in a saga, as if he and his brother were mimesists playing out preordained parts.
Nabhoj had difficulty meeting Hari’s gaze, but he retained some of his dignity and authority.
‘I am not pleading for my life,’ he said. ‘I know that you want to kill me, and I understand why. All I ask is that you do what you want to do, not what you think you should do. Forget me, forget our father, forget the family. Save yourself.’
‘I’m doing exactly what I want to do,’ Hari said.
‘Nabhomani and I thought we were going to escape the old man’s influence,’ Nabhoj said. ‘We thought that we were going to make a new life for ourselves. Instead, we were following a course he’d already taken. We planned to steal his ship, the same ship he’d stolen when he broke the agreement he’d made with our uncle, Tamonash. Do you know that story?’
‘I met Tamonash. I know that our father stole more than the ship.’
‘Nabhomani met Tamonash’s daughter some years ago, and got the story from her. Perhaps it began then,’ Na
bhoj said, as if he’d thought of it for the first time. ‘Perhaps that was the seed of our decision to take charge of the ship.’
‘You could have left the ship and our family, and started a new life elsewhere. Or you could have killed our father and taken command of the ship by yourself. Instead, you and Nabhomani relied on outsiders. That’s what I can’t forgive.’
‘Perhaps we were cowards,’ Nabhoj said. ‘Yes, I admit that’s possible. Or perhaps our father inserted subtle checks and balances into our minds that made it difficult for us to rebel. We knew that our father’s obsession with the Bright Moment would destroy the family. We knew we had to do something. We could think about it. We could make plans. But when it came to acting on those thoughts, those plans . . . Well, we needed help. We needed a push. And if the old man did that to us, he did it to you, too. He made us all in his image.
‘We weren’t ever a family. It’s clear to me now. We were a cult. Controlled by the old man, doing whatever he wanted to do without question. He had passed over. He was dead. And he refused to let go. He would not give up the world, and he would not allow us to live our own lives. I always hoped you’d rise above that, Gajananvihari. That you’d be the first of us to escape, to make a life for yourself. And you can still do it. You can still put an end to this poisonous thing of his. My life is over. I know that. But whatever it is you’re planning to do, walk away from it. Erase the old man’s backup. Give him true death. Leave all this behind and find your own path.’
‘You betrayed our family to outsiders,’ Hari said. ‘You are responsible for the erasure of our father, and the deaths of Agrata and Nabhomani and Dr Gagarian. But you are still my brother, Nabhoj, and I still love you. I’m not going to kill you, but I can’t let you stay here. So I’m going to send you away.’