House of Suns (11 page)

‘They have stories to fabricate,’ Doctor Meninx said, with unconcealed delight. ‘Strands to edit, memories to delete, others to falsify, all to play down the extent to which they have consorted. Of course, I know the full and sordid truth, rendering the exercise rather pointless.’

‘And we know you’re a Disavower,’ I said. ‘Keep that in mind before you start blabbing to the rest of our Line - you might find the reception turns a bit frosty when everyone gets wind of what a nasty, bigoted specimen you really are.’

‘The doctor makes it sound worse than it is,’ Campion said, smiling fiercely. ‘We’re not trying to create false alibis here. We’re just moving some facts around. It’s probably a pointless exercise, but if we can keep it down to one or two brief encounters, maybe we’ll get away with the Line’s equivalent of a large slap on the wrists.’

‘Does this not create risks?’

‘Absolutely,’ Campion said, ‘but what choice do we have?’

‘When you delete a memory from a strand - from the public record, so to speak - what happens to the memory you retain in your head? Must it also be deleted?’

‘No,’ I said, ignoring the awkward look Campion was sending me. ‘We don’t delete those memories, although we certainly could if we wanted - the process is easy enough. As a matter of fact, Campion thinks we would be on safer ground if we did.’

‘I am sorry,’ Hesperus said. ‘I did not wish to steer the conversation in an uncomfortable direction.’

‘It’s all right,’ I replied, sighing. ‘Look, Campion and I agree on ninety-nine things out of a hundred. But the one thing we don’t agree on - all right, one of the
several
things - is what we do with those memories that don’t fit the story. I say we keep them. Campion says delete them, so that we never give Fescue or Betony or any of the others anything to use against us. And, damn it, I see his point. However, I just don’t think that an experience is worth anything unless you can remember it afterwards.’ I gazed down into the bottom of my glass, empty now. ‘To see something marvellous with your own eyes - that’s wonderful enough. But when two of you see it, two of you together, holding hands, holding each other close, knowing that you’ll both have that memory for the rest of your lives, but that each of you will only ever hold an incomplete half of it, and that it won’t ever really exist as a whole until you’re together, talking or thinking about that moment ... that’s worth more than one plus one. It’s worth four, or eight, or some number so large we can’t even imagine it. I think I’d rather die than lose those memories.’

‘I find your convictions admirable. I did not know the value of memory until I lost mine.’

‘I think I need to adjust my tank chemistry,’ said Doctor Meninx. ‘All of a sudden I feel nauseous.’

‘I would be more than happy to come down and adjust your tank chemistry,’ Hesperus said.

‘He threatened me!’ shrieked the paper cut-out. ‘Did you both hear that? He threatened me!’

Hesperus moved to stand up. ‘I think it would be better if I retired. It is clear that Doctor Meninx cannot see beyond the ghoulish figments of his imagination. It is a shame, since I have found this conversation to be most stimulating.’

‘Really?’ I asked.

‘Very much so. Only a little while ago - while we were discussing the origin of my people, and the hypothetical nature of my mission - something popped quite unbidden into my head. I cannot help but feel it is a memory of more than average significance. I hope you will not mind what I have done.’

‘Mind what?’ I asked.

Hesperus held up his goblet and rotated it slowly, so that the side that had been facing him came into clear view. Engraved into the glass was a tiny, densely detailed design. Even across the table, the intricacy of the picture was astonishing, its lines as bright and thin as laser-burns. I thought back to the way he had been scratching the tip of his thumb against the goblet; as I replayed the memory, I thought I could see him rotating the glass very slowly and precisely with the other fingers, using the thumb to scratch out a two-dimensional image in a series of precise vertical raster lines. While he had been doing that, we had appeared to have his full and undivided attention.

‘Would it inconvenience you awfully if I kept the glass?’ Hesperus asked.

I climbed the iron ladder up to the top of Doctor Meninx’s immersion tank. Beneath my feet, the grilled decking throbbed with the ceaseless labour of pumps and filtration systems. Under the grillework was bottle-green glass, thick enough to afford only murky glimpses of the floating occupant. I moved forward to the front of the tank and knelt down. I unfastened toggles and folded back a section of decking on squealing hinges until it lay flat against another part, revealing an access cover in the top of the tank. Steadying myself so as not to topple over the side, I gave the cover a hefty anticlockwise twist. After several rotations I was able to swing it open away from me.

Under the cover was a circular hole bored clean through the glass, which was as thick as my hand, and under the glass was dark, bubbling liquid. I adjusted my position until I could put my face into the hole and into the water. It was not actually water, I knew, but rather a blood-warm chemical concoction that not only supported Doctor Meninx against gravity and allowed him to breathe, but also provided him with various nutrient functions, absorbed through his skin and those internal membranes with which it came into contact.

My poorly focused eyes peered into that nutrient soup and made out something: a large, dark form, barnacled in places, tapering at the front, with the suggestive gleam of eyes set into trenches along the side of what I chose to think of as the head. They might not have been eyes at all, but rather some other highly specialised sensory organ, or maybe even just a functionless growth of some kind. I think I saw a limb or flipper emerging from his flanks, but since I was looking into even deeper darkness at that point, I could not be sure.

With my face submerged to the ears, I said, ‘I’m here. What is it you so badly needed to tell me in person, Doctor?’

‘It concerns Hesperus.’ His voice was a gurgling rumble that I could just about understand. ‘What else?’

I pulled my face out and sneezed, then pushed it back into the broth again. ‘What’s he done to annoy you now?’

‘I found out something about him. It was by accident, but my intentions were good. I wished to discuss something with him, to soothe the troubled waters between us—’

‘I can just see you soothing troubled waters, Doctor.’

‘Believe what you will. I know only that I wished to establish some common ground, so that we could at least be civil to each other during the rest of the journey. I made my way to the cabin you’ve given him. Have you ever visited him in his cabin, Campion?’

‘Now and then. Why?’

‘Have you announced your intention before arriving? Have you told him to expect a visit?’

I had to sneeze and pinch my nose again before I could answer. I kept my eyes shut now as his fluid was starting to irritate them.

‘Can’t say I remember either way.’

‘If you were to attempt to surprise him, I don’t think you’d succeed. His senses are more acute than we give him credit for. I’m sure he knows when you’re on your way, by the cues you give off - the electrical field of your body, the noises you can’t help making, the chemical signature of those forty thousand skin cells flaking off you every second you breathe.’

‘Your point being?’

‘I don’t give off those signals. I mean, my avatar doesn’t. It’s a machine, but not like him. I don’t think he feels it even when it’s near. He certainly doesn’t hear it coming.’

It was true: the avatar was silent as a ghost, except when it spoke. Even then there was something whispery and spectral about it.

‘So you surprised him. What happened?’

‘When I came through the door - which was not locked - he was seated at a table, preoccupied with something. It was strange to see him like that, but I suppose tables are as useful to robots as they are to humans - especially if those robots take pains to make themselves look like men.’ The water gurgled suddenly, as if Doctor Meninx had drawn an especially deep breath. ‘I could not see what he was doing, except that he had both arms on the table, and there were pieces of gold metal around them - curved parts, like the plates that make up his armour.’

I had an uncomfortable feeling now. ‘Go on.’

‘I announced my arrival, as politeness dictated. It was only then that he noticed I was there. Have you ever seen a machine startled, Campion? I advise you to experience it once for yourself. It’s a very singular thing to witness.’

I had to take my head out for several seconds now, wiping green scum from my cheeks, pushing lank hair back from my eyes. ‘I’d be startled if you crept up on me,’ I said when I had returned to the fluid.

‘But would you have something you didn’t want me to see? Hesperus did. In the instant he became aware of my presence, his arms moved with astonishing speed. They became a blur of gold. The metal pieces that were on the table vanished as if they had not existed. We both know what happened to them, of course.’

‘Do we?’

‘They were part of his armour—the casing for the left arm, I believe. The arm that is thicker than the other one, as if there is something under it, something he is hiding.’

‘He’s a robot. What could he possibly want to hide from us? That he’s got machines and things under all that armour? Weapons? He is a weapon, Doctor Meninx. If he wanted to do something nasty to us, he could have done it already.’

‘He was hiding something. I saw it.’

‘You saw what he was hiding?’

‘I saw that he was hiding something. What the thing was ... I did not get a good look.’

I knew he was lying, or unwilling to admit the truth to himself. He had seen something. He just did not wish to look foolish by saying it aloud.

‘Look,’ I said, trying to strike a reasonable note, ‘it wouldn’t make any sense for him to be hiding something inside that arm, would it? If he had something to conceal, he wouldn’t draw attention to it by making one arm thicker than the other. He’d have made both arms the same size - that way, we wouldn’t have noticed anything odd about him.’

‘But you admit it is peculiar.’

‘I admit there’s a puzzle, nothing more. For all we know, he was damaged and had to swap his old arm for one from a different robot, which is why they don’t match.’

‘They aren’t robots in that sense, Campion. He’s a machine at least as sophisticated as any ship you’ve ever seen. They can be any shape they wish. If he damaged part of himself, he could easily repair it so that it matched seamlessly with the rest of him. If he was forced to incorporate external parts, he could adapt those as well.’

‘So perhaps we caught him halfway through a transformation. He got damaged, had to graft a new arm on, and now he’s making it fit in better with the rest of him. That’s what you caught him doing: tinkering with his arm.’

‘Why would that startle him?’

‘Because it’s private? Neither of us has any idea what goes on in his head.’

‘I do. Nothing at all is what goes in there. Just dumb computation, the endless shuffling of symbols.’

‘In which case he can’t very well have been startled, can he?’

‘I’m not telling you this for my health, you know. He may not be conscious, but he can plot and scheme like a fox. He may just be following a program laid down thousands of years ago. But if that program instructs him to do something devious, something against your best interests ... are you just going to pretend it can’t happen?’

‘What are you suggesting I should do?’

‘Confront him, before it’s too late. Find out what he really has under that armour.’

‘You make it sound as if you’re expecting to find a bomb.’

‘I didn’t see a bomb.’

‘So what
did
you see, Doctor?’

‘Skin,’ he said. ‘Human skin, as I live and breathe.’

‘That just isn’t possible.’

‘I know what I saw, Campion. Your guest is not what he claims to be. The only remaining question is: what are you going to do about it?’

Campion whisked over to
Silver Wings of Morning
and told me what he had just learned from the aquatic. I had my doubts about the doctor’s reliability as a witness, but I knew that we would have no choice but to challenge Hesperus. My heart was rising in my throat as we whisked back to
Dalliance,
thinking of the confrontation ahead of us.

As it happened, Hesperus spared us the worst of it. He was waiting when we emerged from the whisking chamber, as if we had always had this appointment.

‘Were you on your way over to see me?’ I asked, trying to sound as natural as possible.

‘I would have crossed over if you had not come.’ He stood at the door, his arms hanging at his sides. ‘I hope you would not have minded.’

‘Of course not,’ I said.

‘There is something I feel I must bring to your attention.’ Hesperus looked at Campion and me in turn. ‘I should have disclosed it sooner, but I confess I did not know quite what to make of the matter. I hope you will not be distressed.’

‘Distressed, Hesperus? Why?’ I asked.

Campion coughed lightly. ‘Actually, there’s something we wanted to discuss with you—’

‘Is it my arm?’

Campion glanced at me, as if I was expected to be taking the lead even though it was him who had come to me with this information.

‘Tell him,’ I whispered.

‘We were wondering—’ Campion began.

‘I presume Doctor Meninx brought it to your attention?’ Though neither of us spoke, or gave any visible reaction I was aware of, Hesperus still nodded as if we had answered in the affirmative. ‘I feared as much. I could not be certain that he had seen enough to raise suspicions, but I realise now that he must have. I do not blame him for talking to you. In his shoes, I would have had similar fears. He could have spoken to me directly, of course.’