House of Suns (7 page)

‘Six zero three three, four eighty-five, Crab standard time. You’re in the Scutum-Crux Arm, in the Nelumbium System.’

‘I was Ateshga’s prisoner for a considerable number of years. The last clear date I recall - in the human system - began with a five.’

I glanced at the cage. He was still standing inside it, albeit free to walk out. ‘Did Ateshga do something to your memory?’

‘The errors I am experiencing are symptomatic of crude electromagnetic interference. He must have been trying to force amnesia on me, so that he could let me go without fear of the consequences.’ He looked down at his arm, the one that was larger than the other, and then back at me. ‘I am sorry, shatterlings. It must be quite unsettling to find me like this. Might I ask what you intend to do with me, now that I am in your care?’

‘Our next stop - once we’ve left Ateshga - will be our reunion system. If it’s anything like the last couple of get-togethers, there’ll be other Machine People along as guests. If you wish, we’ll take you to them. Otherwise, you can stay aboard our ships as long as you like.’ I paused, mindful of the delicate matter I was about to broach. ‘Of course, if you were to consent to visit the reunion, it would not hurt my standing in the Line.’

‘Something can probably be arranged. Have we already left Ateshga behind?’

‘There’s still a little business we have to conclude before we leave.’ I offered a hand, inviting him to step forward. ‘You don’t have to stay in that thing if you don’t want to.’

He formed a smile. There was something stiffly theatrical about it, the mask too perfectly symmetrical to show human emotions with complete authenticity. But it was still a smile.

‘Thank you, shatterling.’

‘Call me Purslane.’

‘Very well, Purslane.’ He took a cautious step out of the cage, as if expecting the containment field to snap on again. He stretched his arms, turning to the left and the right as if to admire them. I thought of two things: the hunting cat I had once owned in Palatial, and the replica of Michelangelo’s David which stood in one of the great hallways of the old household. ‘It is good to move again, Purslane. I cannot express how unpleasant it has been to be Ateshga’s prisoner. If I were inclined to revenge ...’ He trailed off.

‘Are you, Hesperus?’ Campion asked.

‘No,’ he answered. ‘Revenge is for biologicals. We do things differently.’

Doctor Meninx said nothing when he was introduced to Hesperus, but there was a world of calculating suspicion in his paper face.

‘Ateshga and I were just discussing the other ships,’ I said. ‘Weren’t we, Ateshga?’

‘But you have seen all my ships,’ the imago answered.

Hesperus moved into the imago’s line of sight and said, ‘I know what you did to my memory, Ateshga. You were sensible to wipe what you did.’

‘I could have killed you,’ Ateshga said.

‘That will be taken into consideration when I return to my people and explain where I have been. In the meantime, in the interests of ameliorating your situation, I suggest that you do everything in your power to comply with the shatterling’s requests. If she wishes to see more ships, show them to her.’

Ateshga said nothing. His ship slammed out of the atmosphere, carving a pillar of vacuum in its wake.

‘Where’s he gone?’ Campion asked.

‘Orbit,’ I said.

‘There were no ships in orbit,’ Doctor Meninx said. ‘We should have seen them even if they had the benefit of camouflaging screens. Nothing is that invisible.’

‘We did see them,’ I said. ‘We just didn’t see them.’

Campion settled into his couch and tugged his hovering console down until it was within easy reach. He punched commands and took
Dalliance
up and out. By the time we had cleared the atmosphere, Silver Wings was racing to meet us. We were above the equatorial plane of the Jovian, looking down on a sunlit face.

‘I do not understand,’ Doctor Meninx said.

‘Me neither,’ said Campion, staring at the planet. ‘All I’m seeing is—’

‘The ring system,’ I finished for him. ‘Show them, Ateshga. Campion and the Doctor are having one of their slow days.’

‘Show us what?’ Campion asked.

That was when the wave of change began spreading through the rings. Something awesome was happening down there. The very texture and brightness of the rings was transmuting, beginning in a perfectly straight line that then swept slowly around, moving with the eerie steadiness of a clock hand. Where the line had passed, the rings were darker and somehow more tenuous in appearance. Where before they had cut through the face of the planet like swathes of silver-white ribbon, now they resembled ribbons of smoke.

‘That’s where he hid them,’ I said. ‘Most of the particles are still chips of water ice, but the ships are much bigger. He tuned their impassors so that the bubbles had the same reflectivity as the rest of the particles. Now he’s turning them off, so there’s not so much light being thrown back at us.’

I had seen larger constructs; we all had. But beyond a certain scale, vast was simply vast, whether it was the hovering majesty of the jade cathedral on Lutetium, a Second Imperium moonship or the awesome bones of the Prior machinery near Sagittarius A.

There was room in those rings for a lot of ships.

‘How many?’ I asked, hardly daring to.

‘Sixty thousand, give or take,’ Ateshga said. ‘I’ve been collecting for a very long time.’

‘Take your pick,’ I told Campion. ‘If you can’t find the ship you’re looking for here, you may as well give up. I bet he’s got at least one of everything.’

‘I’m not sure now,’ Campion said, with an abashed smile.

‘Not sure about what?’

‘That I actually want to get rid of
Dalliance.
So what if she’s made me late for a few appointments? It’s not as if she didn’t get me there in the end, in one piece.’

‘You have an excellent point, honoured shatterling,’ said Ateshga. ‘Why dispose of something when it has served you well? Of course, once you have specified your requirements, it will still take a little while to complete the refurbishment. The components must be sourced, and integrated into your ship ... I believe we are looking at months, if not years, of work. Do you wish to enter abeyance until matters are completed?’

‘Nice try,’ I said. ‘I have a nagging feeling we’d never wake up if we put ourselves asleep.’

‘We’ll just have to take turns,’ Campion said.

‘That may not be necessary,’ said Hesperus in his beautiful trill of a voice. ‘I have no need of abeyance as you understand it. I am willing to supervise matters while the two of you sleep. I believe I can hold Ateshga to his guarantees.’

Campion and I looked at each other. I suppose we were both thinking the same thing. We had no evidence that Hesperus was an authentic envoy of the Machine People. Given Ateshga’s demonstrated treachery, Hesperus might very well be a plant, a last-ditch stratagem for regaining control of us.

‘You can trust me,’ he said, as if reading our thoughts. ‘Now and for ever.’

‘We can’t be certain of this creature’s intentions,’ Doctor Meninx said.

Angrily I turned on the paper harlequin. ‘Are you volunteering to stay awake, in that case?’

‘That is not what I meant—’

‘I do not blame any of you for harbouring suspicions,’ Hesperus said. ‘I also have suspicions. Do you really intend to return me to my people, or are you simply lying to gain my compliance? Were you complicit in my imprisonment?’

‘We weren’t,’ I said.

Hesperus raised a calming hand. ‘The point is, these doubts cannot be settled instantly. It will take time. For now, let me prove my trustworthiness by guarding you while Ateshga honours his obligations.’

‘Could you take care of my ship as well, and make sure Ateshga doesn’t cut any corners?’ Campion asked.

His eyes gleamed turquoise as he turned to face the imago. ‘Corner-cutting will not be an option, I assure you.’

Purslane and Hesperus were facing each other, seated on opposite sides of a low gaming table. Tiny spectral armies stalked a shadowy landscape wreathed in a cloak of mist and gunpowder. The two gamers were commanding their battalions with subtle hand gestures, like expert puppeteers.

‘Any sign of Doctor Meninx?’ I asked, having just whisked up-ship from the propulsion chamber.

‘Still asleep, or whatever he gets up to in that tank of his,’ Purslane said.

‘That’s a shame.’

‘Isn’t it.’

Hesperus made a series of complex gestures, breaking his battalion into countless little divisions. Purslane pouted as they overran her forces, swarming amongst her men like rampaging insects. A little flag waved from a smoke-girdled summit. I thought of Count Mordax’s Ghost Soldiers, storming the Kingdom on their pale, bony horses.

‘Looks like he’s beaten you again,’ I said.

‘He always does,’ Purslane said, leaning away from the table. ‘I asked him to play down to my level, but he won’t.’

‘I would rather defeat you than insult you,’ Hesperus said. ‘Besides, the game is good practice for my memory. I have improved my short-term faculties since we last spoke, Campion.’

‘That’s good.’

Purslane rose and stroked a finger against the side of my cheek. ‘That’s enough fun and games for me, anyway. You and I have work to do.’

‘The strands,’ I said, with as little enthusiasm as I could muster.

‘We can’t put it off much longer. I really ought to whisk back to
Silver Wings
and start work on my side of the story.’

Putting it off for as long as possible was exactly what I had hoped to do. We were two days out from Ateshga; two hundred and two days after he had bowed to our requests. Thanks to Hesperus, the work had been completed more than satisfactorily.
Dalliance
was humming along at a whisker below the speed of light.

‘I shall not detain you from whatever business you must attend to,’ Hesperus said. ‘But might I ask a question, Campion?’

‘Go ahead.’

‘It concerns your guest.’

‘I’ve got a lot of guests, thanks to Ateshga.’

‘I am referring to Doctor Meninx.’

‘I thought you might be. Is there a problem with him?’

‘I do not think Doctor Meninx cares for my presence on this ship. Is that a fair assessment of his feelings?’

I tried to shrug off his question. ‘I can’t say what’s going on his head.’

‘If I did not know better, I would say that he is a Disavower. That is one of the things I do remember. The Disavowers do not believe that machines have any right to be considered sentient. In their most extreme manifestation, they would seek to eradicate machine intelligence from the galaxy.’

‘I don’t think Doctor Meninx is quite that far down the road.’

‘Give him time,’ Purslane murmured.

‘But he is a Disavower?’ Hesperus asked.

‘I don’t think he’s really serious about it,’ I evaded. ‘The Lines don’t have much truck with Disavowers. Gromwell wouldn’t have brought the doctor to our reunion if he suspected Meninx was a paid-up machine hater.’

‘Given the manner in which he has been delayed, one suspects that Doctor Meninx has decided that Gentian policy is no concern of his. Might he now be allowing his mask to slip?’

‘The doctor had some misgivings about letting you aboard. They weren’t specifically to do with you being a Machine Person, rather that you were an unknown quantity.’

‘I see,’ Hesperus said, as if my answer had told him a great deal more than I had intended.

‘Really, it’s not that big a deal. You don’t have to see each other if you don’t want to. It’s not as if he poses you any kind of threat.’

‘That is not my fear. I merely wish to establish cordial relations with your guest, in the hope that talking to him might shed light on some corner of my memory as yet unilluminated. Purslane told me that the doctor is a scholar, on his way to an engagement. That struck a chord with me, as if our trajectories might be similar.’

‘The doctor was on his way to the Vigilance,’ I said.

‘The Vigilance,’ Hesperus echoed, as if testing the sound of the word. ‘I know of this, although I cannot say why. What became of his engagement?’

‘Nothing. It wasn’t possible to deliver him to them without throwing me off-schedule for the reunion.’ I forced a half-smile. ‘Look on the bright side, though: if I hadn’t let down Meninx, I’d never have met you.’

‘And I would still be a prisoner of Ateshga.’

‘Precisely.’

‘Then Doctor Meninx’s misfortune is my great good luck, I suppose. I should like to know more of this Vigilance, Campion: now that the word has been spoken, it feels like a key to unlocking more of my buried memories. I am even more anxious to discuss my predicament with the doctor.’

‘I can tell you all about the Vigilance,’ I said. ‘I was there. Would you like to see my trove?’

‘That would be very kind indeed,’ Hesperus said.

Seen from outside, as I braked down from interstellar speed, the Vigilance was a hole punched in the pale shimmer of the Milky Way, where it transected the Norma and Cygnus Arms. In infrared it was the hottest thing for a thousand lights, blazing out like a beacon. Visible light photons from the star at the heart of the Vigilance had been downgraded to heat, seeping out in all directions. Somewhere in between, they had given up much of their energy to the Vigilance’s ceaseless information-gathering and archiving activities. The star was the engine in the basement of the library, a machine for turning hydrogen into data.

The Vigilance exists around a solar-type star with about a billion years left on the Main Sequence, or until a wormhole must be sunk into its core for refuelling. Once upon a time, that star almost certainly had a full arsenal of planets, moons, asteroids and comets, but none now remain. Every useful atom in the system has been reorganised into the component bodies of a Dyson swarm, numbering about ten billion in total. The Priors knew how to smash worlds and reforge their remains into the unbroken shell of a true Dyson sphere. Humans can do the smashing part, but all efforts to construct a shell of the necessary rigidity have failed. The best we can do is to englobe a star in a swarm of bodies moving on independent orbits, like flies buzzing around a lantern.