The Revelation Space Collection (109 page)

Almost never.

It was in the nature of a sniper’s work that one almost never saw the enemy as anything other than an impersonal stick-figure; too far away to be humanised by either facial details or an expression of pain when the slug found its mark. I almost never needed to send another slug. For a time, I thought I’d found a safe niche where I could psychologically barrier myself from the worst that the war had to offer. I was valued by my unit, protected like a talisman. Although I never once did anything heroic, I became a hero by virtue of my technical skill at aiming a gun. If such a thing were possible in any kind of combat, I was happy. In fact, I knew it was possible: I’d seen men and women for whom the war was a capricious and spiteful lover; one who would always hurt them, but to whom - bruised and hungry - they would inevitably return. The greatest lie ever told was the one that said war made us universally miserable; that if the choice was truly ours, we would free ourselves of war forever. Maybe the human condition would have been something nobler if that were the case - but if war did not have a strange and dark allure, why did we always seem so unwilling to abandon it for peace? It went beyond anything as mundane as acclimatisation to the normality of war. I had known men and woman who boasted of sexual arousal after killing an enemy; addicted to the erotic potency of what they had done.

My happiness, though, was simpler: born out of the realisation that I’d found the luckiest of roles. I was doing what I rationalised as morally right, while at the same time being sheltered from the very real risk of death that usually accompanied front-line forces. I assumed it would continue like that; that eventually I would be decorated and that if I didn’t stay a sniper until the war’s end, it would be only because the army considered my skills too valuable to risk in the front-line. I suppose it was possible I might have been promoted to one of the covert assassination squads - certainly more hazardous - but as far as I could see it, the most likely outcome would be a training role in one of the boot camps, followed by early retirement and the smug assurance that I’d helped expedite the war’s conclusion - even if that conclusion never seemed any closer.

Of course, it didn’t happen like that.

One night our unit got ambushed. We were cut down by guerrillas of an NC Deep Incursion squad, and in minutes I learned the true meaning of what was euphemistically described as close-quarters combat. No line-of-sight particle-beam weapons now; no delayed-detonation nano-munitions. What close-quarters combat meant was something which would have been infinitely more recognisable to a soldier of a thousand years earlier: the screaming fury of human beings packed so close together that the only effective way to kill each other was with sharpened metal weapons: bayonets and daggers, or with hands around each other’s throats; fingers pressed into each other’s eye-sockets. The only way to survive was to disengage all higher brain-functions and regress to an animal state of mind.

So I did. And in doing so, I learned a deeper truth about war. She punished those who flirted with her by making them like herself. Once you opened the door to the animal, there was no shutting it.

I never stopped being an expert shot when the situation called for it, but I was never again purely a sniper. I pretended I had lost my edge; that I could no longer be trusted with the most critical kills. It was a plausible enough lie: snipers were insanely superstitious, and many did develop some psychosomatic block that stopped them functioning. I moved through different units, requesting operational transfers that each time took me closer to the front. I developed a proficiency with weapons that went far beyond mere marksmanship: a fluidity of ease like a preternaturally skilled musician who could pick up any instrument and make it sing. I volunteered for deep-insertion missions that put me behind enemy lines for weeks at a time, living off carefully measured field-rations (Sky’s Edge’s biosphere was superficially Earthlike - but down on the level of cell chemistry it was completely incompatible, containing almost no native flora which could be safely eaten without either providing zero nourishment or triggering a fatal anaphylactic reaction). During those long episodes of solitude I allowed the animal to emerge again, a feral mindstate of almost limitless patience and tolerance for discomfort.

I became a lone gunman, no longer receiving orders via the usual chain of command, but from mysterious and untraceable sources in the Militia hierarchy. My missions became stranger; their goals less fathomable. My targets shifted from the obvious - mid-ranking NC officers - to the seemingly random, but I never questioned that there was a logic behind the kills; that it was all part of some devious and painstakingly planned scheme. Even when, on more than one occasion, I was required to put slugs in certain targets who wore the same uniform as I did, I assumed they were spies, or potential traitors, or - and this was the least palatable of conclusions - just loyal men who had to die because in some way their living had conflicted with the scheme’s inscrutable progress.

I no longer even cared whether my actions served any kind of greater good. Eventually I stopped taking orders and began soliciting them - severing connections with the hierarchy, and taking contracts from whoever would pay me. I stopped being a soldier and became a mercenary.

Which was when I met Cahuella for the first time.

‘My name is Sister Duscha,’ said the older of the two Mendicants, a thin woman with an unsmiling demeanour. ‘You may have heard of me; I’m the Hospice’s neurological specialist. And I’m afraid, Tanner Mirabel, that there’s something quite seriously wrong with your mind.’

Duscha and Amelia were standing in the chalet’s doorway. Only half an hour earlier I’d told Amelia of my intention to leave Idlewild within the day. Now Amelia looked apologetic. ‘I’m very sorry, Tanner, but I had to tell her.’

‘No need to apologise, Sister,’ Duscha said, brushing imperiously past her subordinate. ‘Whether he likes it or not, you did precisely the right thing by informing me of his plans. Now then, Tanner Mirabel. Where shall we begin?’

‘Wherever you like; I’m still leaving.’

One of the ovoid-headed robots trotted in behind Duscha, clicking across the floor. I made a move to get off the bed, but Duscha placed a firm hand on my thigh. ‘No; we’ll have none of that nonsense. You’re going nowhere for the time being.’

I looked at Amelia. ‘What was all that about being able to leave whenever I wanted?’

‘Oh, you’re free to leave, Tanner . . .’ But even as Amelia said it, she didn’t sound completely convincing.

‘But he won’t want to, when he knows the facts,’ Duscha said, lowering herself onto the bed. ‘Let me explain, shall I? When you were warmed, we made a very thorough medical examination of you, Tanner - focused especially on your brain. We suspected you were amnesiac, but we had to make sure there was no fundamental damage, or any implants that might warrant removal.’

‘I don’t have any implants.’

‘No, you don’t. But I’m afraid there is damage - of a sort.’

She clicked her fingers at the robot and had it trot closer to the bed. There was nothing on the bed now, but a minute earlier I had been in the process of assembling the clockwork gun, fitting the pieces together by a process of trial and error until I had the thing half-completed. When I had seen Amelia and Duscha striding across the lawn beyond the chalet, I had pushed the pieces under the pillow. I thought of it brooding there now, difficult to mistake for anything other than a weapon. They might have puzzled over the odd-shaped diamond pieces when they examined my belongings, but I doubted that they’d have realised what the pieces implied. Now there would have been very little doubt.

I said, ‘What sort of damage, Sister Duscha?’

‘I can show you.’

The robot’s ovoid head popped up a screen, filling with a slowly rotating, lilac image of a skull, packed with ghostly structures like intricate clouds of milky ink. I didn’t recognise it as my own, of course, but I knew it had to be my skull that they were showing me.

Duscha sketched her fingers over the rotating mass. ‘These light spots are the problem, Tanner. Before you woke, I injected you with bromodeoxyuridine. It’s a chemical analogue for thymidine; one of the nucleic acids in DNA. The chemical supplants thymidine in new brain cells; acting as a marker for neurogenesis; the laying down of new brain cells. The light spots show where there’s a build-up of the marker - highlighting foci of recent cell growth.’

‘I didn’t think brains grew new cells.’

‘That’s a myth we buried five hundred years ago, Tanner - but in a sense you’re right; it’s still rather a rare process in higher mammals. But what you’re seeing in this scan is something a lot more vigorous: concentrated, specialised regions of recent - and continuing - neurogenesis. They’re functional neurons, organised into intricate structures and connected to your existing neurons. All very deliberate. You’ll notice how the light spots are situated near your perceptual centres? I’m afraid it’s very characteristic, Tanner - if we didn’t already know from your hand.’

‘My hand?’

‘You have a wound in your palm. It’s symptomatic of infection by one of the Haussmann family of indoctrinal viruses.’ She paused. ‘We picked up the virus in your blood, once we looked for it. The virus inserts itself into your DNA and generates the new neural structures.’

There was little point in bluffing now. ‘I’m surprised you recognised it for what it was.’

‘We’ve seen it enough times over the years,’ Duscha said. ‘It infects a small fraction of every batch of slush . . . every group of sleepers we get from Sky’s Edge. At first, of course, we were mystified. We knew something about the Haussmann cults - needless to say, we don’t approve of the way they’ve appropriated the iconography of our own belief system - but it took us a long time to realise there was a viral infection mechanism, and that the people we were seeing were victims rather than cultists.’

‘It’s a blessed nuisance,’ Amelia said. ‘But we can help you, Tanner. I take it you’ve been dreaming about Sky Haussmann?’

I nodded, but said nothing.

‘Well, we can flush out the virus,’ Duscha said. ‘It’s a weak strain, and it will run its course with time, but we can speed up the process if you wish.’

‘If I wish? I’m surprised you haven’t flushed it out already.’

‘Goodness, we’d never do that. After all, you might have willingly chosen infection. We’d have no right to remove it in that case.’ Duscha patted the robot, which retracted its screen and clicked its way outside again, moving like a delicate metal crab. ‘But if you want it removed, we can administer the flushing therapy immediately.’

‘How long will it take to work?’

‘Five or six days. We like to monitor the progress, naturally - sometimes it needs a little fine-tuning.’

‘Then it’ll have to work its way out, I’m afraid.’

‘On your own head be it,’ Duscha said, tutting. She stood up from the bedside and left in a huff, her robot following obediently.

‘Tanner, I . . .’ Amelia began.

‘I don’t want to talk about it, all right?’

‘I had to tell her.’

‘I know, and I’m not angry about that. I just don’t want you to try and talk me out of leaving, understand?’

She said nothing, but the point was well made.

Afterwards I spent half an hour with her on some more exercises. We worked almost in silence, giving me plenty of time to think about what Duscha had shown me. I’d remembered Red Hand Vasquez by then and his assurance that he was no longer infectious. He was the most likely source of the virus, but I couldn’t rule out having picked it up by sheer bad luck when I was in the bridge, in the vicinity of so many Haussmann cultists.

But Duscha had said it was a mild strain. Maybe she was right. So far, all I had to show for it was the stigma and the two nocturnal dreams I’d had. I wasn’t seeing Sky Haussmann in broad daylight, or having waking dreams about him. I didn’t feel any lingering obsession with Sky, or any hint of one; no desire to surround myself with paraphernalia relating to his life and times; no sense of religious awe at the mere thought of him. He was just what he’d always been: a figure from history, a man who had done a terrible thing and been terribly punished for it, but who could not be easily forgotten because he’d also given us the gift of a world. There were older historical figures who had mixed reputations, their deeds painted in equally murky shades of grey. I wasn’t about to start worshipping Haussmann just because his life was rerunning itself when I slept. I was stronger than that.

‘I don’t understand why you’re in so much of a hurry to leave us,’ Amelia said while we took a break, pushing a wet strand of hair away from her brow. ‘It took you fifteen years to get here - what’s a few more weeks?’

‘I guess I’m just not the patient type, Amelia.’ She looked at me sceptically, so I tried to offer some justification. ‘Look, those fifteen years never happened for me - it seems like only yesterday that I was waiting to board the ship.’

‘The point still applies. Your arriving a week or two later will make blessedly little difference.’

But it would, I thought. It would make all the difference in the world - but there was no way Amelia could know the whole truth. All I could do was act as casually as possible when I answered her.

‘Actually . . . there is a good reason for me to leave as soon as possible. It won’t have shown in your records, but I’ve remembered that I was travelling with another man who must already have been revived.’