The Revelation Space Collection (271 page)

‘Six gees, Sukhoi. That’s all I’m asking of you. You can do it, can’t you?’

‘I can. And I will, if you insist upon it. But understand this: the quantum vacuum is a nest of snakes . . .’

‘And we’re poking it with a very sharp stick, yes.’

Sukhoi waited until he was done. ‘No. That was before. At six gees we are down in the pit with the snakes, Clavain.’

He let her have her moment, then patted the iron husk of the travel couch. ‘Just do it, Pauline. I’ll worry about the analogies.’

She spun the couch around and wheeled off towards the elevator that would ferry her downship. Clavain watched her go, then winced as another pressure sore announced itself.

The transmission came in a little while later. Clavain scrubbed it for buried informational attack, but it was clean.

It was from Skade, in person. He took it in his quarters, enjoying a brief respite from the high acceleration. Sukhoi’s experts had to crawl over their inertial machinery and they did not like doing that while the systems were functional. Clavain sipped on tea while the recording played itself out.

Skade’s head and shoulders appeared in an oval projection volume, blurred at the edges. Clavain remembered the last time he had seen her like this, when she had transmitted a message to him when he was still on his way to Yellowstone. He had assumed at the time that Skade’s stiff posture was a function of the message format, but now that he saw it again he began to have doubts. Her head was immobile while she spoke, as if clamped in the kind of frame surgeons used when making precise operations on the brain. Her neck vanished into absurd gloss-black armour, like something from the Middle Ages. And there was something else strange about Skade, although he could not quite put his finger on it ...

‘Clavain,’ she said. ‘Please do me the courtesy of viewing this transmission in its entirety and giving careful consideration to what I am about to propose. I do not make this offer lightly, and I will not make it twice.’

He waited for her to continue.

‘You have proven difficult to kill,’ Skade said. ‘All my attempts have failed so far, and there is no assurance that anything I try in the future will work either. That doesn’t mean I expect you to live, however. Have you looked behind you recently? Rhetorical question: I’m sure that you have. You must be aware, even with your limited detection capabilities, that there are more ships out there. Remember the task force you were supposed to lead, Clavain? The Master of Works has finished those ships. Three of them are approaching you from behind. They are better armed than
Nightshade
: heavy relativistic railguns, ship-to-ship boser and graser batteries, not to mention long-range stingers. And they have a bright target to aim at.’

Clavain knew about the other ships, even though they only showed up at the extreme limit of his detectors. He had started turning Skade’s light-sails to his own side, training his own optical lasers on to them as they passed in the night and steering them into the paths of the chasing ships. The chances of a collision remained small, and the pursuers could always deploy similar anti-sail defences of the sort Clavain had invented, but it had been enough to force Skade to abandon sail production.

‘I know,’ he whispered.

Skade continued, ‘But I’m willing to make a deal, Clavain. You don’t want to die, and I don’t really want to kill you. Frankly, there are other problems I would sooner expend energy on.’

‘Charming.’ He sipped at his tea.

‘So I will let you live, Clavain. And, more importantly, I will let you have Felka back.’

Clavain put his cup aside.

‘She is very ill, Clavain, retreating back into dreams of the Wall. All she does now is make circular structures around herself, intricate games that demand her total attention every hour of the day. They are surrogates for the Wall. She has abandoned sleep, like a true Conjoiner. I’m worried for her, I really am. You and Galiana worked so hard to make her more fully human ... and yet I can see that work crumbling away by the day, just as the Great Wall crumbled away on Mars.’ Skade’s face formed a stiff sad smile. ‘She doesn’t recognise people at all, now. She shows no interest in anything outside her increasingly narrow set of obsessions. She doesn’t even ask about you, Clavain.’

‘If you hurt her . . .’ he found himself saying.

But Skade was still talking. ‘But there may still be time to make a difference, to repair some of the harm, if not all of it. It’s up to you, Clavain. Our velocity differential is small enough now that a transfer operation is possible. If you turn away from my course and show no sign of returning to it, I will send Felka to you aboard a corvette - fired into deep space, of course.’

‘Skade . . .’

‘I will expect your response immediately. A personal transmission would be nice, but, failing that, I will expect to see a change in your thrust vector.’ She sighed, and it was in that moment that Clavain realised what had been troubling him about Skade since the start of the transmission. It was the way she never drew breath, never once stopped to take in air.

‘One final thing. I’ll give you a generous margin of error before I decide that you have rejected my offer. But when that margin has ended, I will still put Felka aboard a corvette. The difference is, I won’t make it easy for you to find her. Think of that, Clavain, will you? Felka, all alone between the stars, so far from companionship. She might not understand. Then again, she very well might.’ Skade hesitated, then added, ‘You’d know, I suppose, better than anyone. She’s your daughter, after all. The question is, how much does she really mean to you?’

Skade’s transmission ended.

Remontoire was conscious. He smiled with quiet amusement as Clavain entered the room that served as both his quarters and his prison. He could not be said to look sparklingly well - that would never be the case - but neither did he look like a man who had only recently been frozen, and before that, technically, deceased.

‘I wondered when you’d pay me a visit,’ he said, with what struck Clavain as disarming cheerfulness. He lay on his back, his head on a pillow, his hands steepled across his chest, but in every sense appearing relaxed and calm.

Clavain’s exoskeleton eased him into a sitting position, shifting pressure from one set of sores to another.

‘I’m afraid things have been a tiny bit difficult,’ Clavain said. ‘But I’m glad to see that you’re in one piece. It wasn’t propitious to have you thawed until now.’

‘I understand,’ Remontoire said, with a dismissive wave of one hand. ‘It can’t ...’

‘Wait.’ Clavain looked at his old friend, taking in the slight changes in his facial appearance that had been necessary for Remontoire to function as an agent in Yellowstone society. Clavain had become used to him being totally hairless, like an unfinished mannequin.

‘Wait what, Clavain?’

‘There are some ground rules you need to be aware of, Rem. You can’t leave this room, so please don’t embarrass me by making an attempt to do so.’

Remontoire shrugged, as if this was no great matter. ‘I wouldn’t dream of it. What else?’

‘You can’t communicate with any system beyond this room, not while you’re in here. So, again, please don’t try.’

‘How would you know if I did try?’

‘I would.’

‘Fair enough. Anything else?’

‘I don’t know if I can trust you yet. Hence the precautions, and my general reluctance to wake you before now.’

‘Perfectly understandable.’

‘I’m not finished. I dearly want to trust you, Rem, but I’m not certain that I can. And I can’t afford to risk the success of this mission.’ Remontoire started to speak, but Clavain raised a finger and continued talking. ‘That’s why I won’t be taking any chances. None at all. If you do anything, no matter how apparently trivial, that I think might be in any way to the detriment of the mission, I’ll kill you. No ifs, no buts. Absolutely no trial. We’re a long way from the Ferrisville Convention now, a long way from the Mother Nest.’

‘I gathered we were on a ship,’ Remontoire said. ‘And we’re accelerating very, very hard. I wanted to find something I could drop to the floor, so that I might have an idea of exactly how hard. But you’ve done a very good job of leaving me with nothing. Still, I can guess. What is it now - four and a half gees?’

‘Five,’ Clavain said. ‘And we’ll soon be pushing to six and higher.’

‘This room doesn’t remind me of any part of
Nightshade
. Have you captured another lighthugger, Clavain? That can’t have been easy.’

‘I had some help.’

‘And the high rate of acceleration? How did you manage that without Skade’s magic box of tricks?’

‘Skade didn’t create that technology from scratch. She stole it, or enough pieces to figure out the rest. She wasn’t the only one with access to it, however. I met a man who had tapped the same mother-lode. ’

‘And this man is aboard the ship?’

‘No, he left us to our own devices. It’s my ship, Rem.’ Clavain whipped out an arm encased in the support rig and patted the rough metal wall of Remontoire’s cell. ‘She’s called
Zodiacal Light
. She’s carrying a small army. Skade’s ahead of us, but I’m not going to let her get her hands on those weapons without a struggle.’

‘Ah. Skade.’ Remontoire nodded, smiling.

‘Something amusing you?’

‘Has she been in touch?’

‘In a manner of speaking, yes. That’s why I woke you. What are you getting at?’

‘Did she make it clear what had ...’ Remontoire trailed off, leaving Clavain aware that he was being observed closely. ‘Evidently not.’

‘What?’

‘She nearly died, Clavain. When you escaped from the comet, the one where we met the Master of Works.’

‘Clearly she got better.’

‘Well, that very much depends . . .’ Again, Remontoire trailed off. ‘This isn’t about Skade, is it? I can see that concerned paternal look in your eye.’ In one easy movement he swung himself off the bed, sitting quite normally on the edge, as if the five gees of acceleration did not apply to him at all. Only a tiny twitching vein in the side of his head betrayed the tension he was under. ‘Let me guess. She still has Felka, doesn’t she.’

Clavain said nothing, waiting for Remontoire to continue.

‘I tried to have Felka come with me and the pig,’ he said, ‘but Skade wasn’t having it. Said Felka was more useful to her as a bargaining chip. I couldn’t talk her out of it. If I’d have argued too strenuously, she wouldn’t have let me come after you at all.’

‘You came to kill me.’

‘I came to stop you. My intention was to persuade you to come back with me to the Mother Nest. Of course, I’d have killed you if it came to it, but then you’d have done precisely the same to me if it was something you believed in sufficiently.’ Remontoire paused. ‘I believed I could talk you out of it. No one else would have given you a chance.’

‘We’ll talk about that later. It’s Felka who matters now.’

There was a long silence between the two men. Clavain adjusted his position, determined that Remontoire should not see how uncomfortable he was.

‘What’s happened?’ Remontoire asked.

‘Skade’s offered to turn Felka over provided I abandon the chase. She’ll drop her behind
Nightshade
, in a shuttle. At maximum burn it can shift to a rest frame we can reach with one of our shuttles.’

Remontoire nodded. Clavain sensed his friend thinking deeply, chewing over permutations and possibilities.

‘And if you refuse?’

‘She’ll still ditch Felka, but she won’t make it easy for us to catch her. At best, I’ll have to forfeit the chase to ensure a safe recovery. At worst, I’ll never find her. We’re in interstellar space, Rem. There’s a hell of a lot of nothing out there. With Skade’s flame ahead of us and ours behind, there are huge deadspots in our sensor coverage.’

There was another long silence while Remontoire thought again. He eased back on to the bed, assisting the flow of blood to his brain.

‘You can’t trust Skade, Clavain. She has absolutely no need to convince you of her sincerity, since she doesn’t think you’ll ever have anything she needs or anything that can hurt her. This is not a two-prisoner game, like they taught you back on Deimos.’

‘I must have scared her,’ Clavain said. ‘She wasn’t expecting us to catch up so easily.’

‘Even so ...’ Remontoire hovered on the edge of saying something for several minutes.

‘You realise why I woke you now.’

‘Yes, I think I do. Run Seven was in a similar position to Skade when he had Irravel Veda on his tail, trying to get back her passengers.’

‘Seven made you serve him. You were forced to give him advice, tactics he could use against Irravel.’

‘It’s an entirely different situation, Clavain.’

‘There are enough similarities for me.’ Clavain made his frame elevate him to a standing position. ‘Here’s the picture, Rem. Skade will expect a response from me in a matter of days. You’re going to help me choose that response. Ideally, I want Felka back without losing sight of the objective.’

‘You thawed me out in desperation, then? Better the devil you know, as they say?’