The Revelation Space Collection (454 page)
Again, perhaps.
It never paid to take anything for granted where the Jugglers were concerned.
She parked the boat by the node’s periphery. Naqi stood up and removed her clothes for the final time, certain that she would not need them again. She looked down at herself, astonished at the vivid tracery of green that now covered her body. On one level, the evidence of alien cellular invasion was quite horrific.
On another, it was startlingly beautiful.
Smoke licked from the horizon. Machines clawed through the sky, hunting nervously. She stepped to the edge of the boat, tensing herself at the moment of commitment. Her fear subsided, replaced by an intense, loving calm. She stood on the threshold of something alien, but in place of terror what she felt was only an imminent sense of homecoming. Mina was waiting for her below. Together, nothing could stop them.
Naqi smiled, spread her arms and returned to the sea.
Table of Contents
For David Pringle
GREAT WALL OF MARS
‘You realise you might die down there,’ said Warren.
Nevil Clavain looked into his brother’s one good eye; the one the Conjoiners had left him with after the Battle of Tharsis Bulge. ‘Yes, I know,’ he said. ‘But if there’s another war, we might all die. I’d rather take that risk, if there’s a chance for peace.’
Warren shook his head, slowly and patiently. ‘No matter how many times we’ve been over this, you just don’t seem to get it, do you? There can’t ever be any kind of peace while they’re still down there. That’s what you don’t understand, Nevil. The only long-term solution here is . . .’ he trailed off.
‘Go on,’ Clavain goaded. ‘Say it. Genocide.’
Warren might have been about to answer when there was a bustle of activity along the docking tube, at the far end from the waiting spacecraft. Through the door Clavain saw a throng of media people, then someone gliding through them, fielding questions with only the curtest of answers. That was Sandra Voi, the Demarchist woman who would be accompanying him to Mars.
‘It’s not genocide when they’re just a faction, not an ethnically distinct race,’ Warren said, before Voi was within earshot.
‘What is it, then?’
‘I don’t know. Prudence?’
Voi approached. She carried herself stiffly, her face a mask of quiet resignation. Her ship had only just docked from Circum-Jove after a three-week transit at maximum burn. During that time the prospects for a peaceful resolution of the current crisis had steadily deteriorated.
‘Welcome to Deimos,’ Warren said.
‘Marshals,’ she said, addressing them both. ‘I wish the circumstances were better. Let’s get straight to business. Warren - how long do you think we have to find a solution?’
‘Not long. If Galiana maintains the pattern she’s been following for the last six months, we’re due another escape attempt in . . .’ Warren glanced at a read-out buried in his cuff. ‘About three days. If she does try to get another shuttle off Mars, we’ll really have no option but to escalate.’
They all knew what that would mean: a military strike against the Conjoiner nest.
‘You’ve tolerated her attempts so far,’ Voi said, ‘and each time you’ve successfully destroyed her ship with all the people in it. The net risk of a successful breakout hasn’t increased. So why retaliate now?’
‘It’s very simple,’ Warren said. ‘After each violation we issued Galiana a stronger warning than the one before. Our last was absolute and final.’
‘You’ll be in violation of treaty if you attack.’
Warren’s smile was one of quiet triumph. ‘Not quite, Sandra. You may not be completely conversant with the treaty’s fine print, but we’ve discovered that it allows us to storm Galiana’s nest without breaking any terms. The technical phrase is a “police action”, I believe.’
Clavain saw that Voi was momentarily lost for words. That was hardly surprising. The treaty between the Coalition and the Conjoiners - which Voi’s neutral Demarchists had helped draft - was the longest document in existence, apart from some obscure, computer-generated mathematical proofs. It was supposed to be watertight, though only machines had ever read it from beginning to end, and only machines had ever stood a chance of finding the kind of loophole Warren was now brandishing.
‘No . . .’ she said. ‘There’s some mistake.’
‘I’m afraid he’s right,’ Clavain said. ‘I’ve seen the natural-language summaries, and there’s no doubt about the legality of a police action. But it needn’t come to that. I’m sure I can persuade Galiana not to make another escape attempt.’
‘But if we should fail?’ Voi looked at Warren now. ‘Nevil and I could still be on Mars in three days.’
‘Don’t be, is my advice.’
Disgusted, Voi turned and stepped into the green cool of the shuttle. Clavain was left alone with his brother for a moment. Warren fingered the leathery patch over his ruined eye with the chrome gauntlet of his prosthetic arm, as if to remind Clavain of what the war had cost him; how little love he had for the enemy, even now.
‘We haven’t got a chance of succeeding, have we?’ Clavain said. ‘We’re only going down there so you can say you explored all avenues of negotiation before sending in the troops. You actually want another damned war.’
‘Don’t be so defeatist,’ Warren said, shaking his head sadly, forever the older brother disappointed at his sibling’s failings. ‘It really doesn’t become you.’
‘It’s not me who’s defeatist,’ Clavain said.
‘No, of course not. Just do your best, little brother.’
Warren extended his hand for his brother to shake. Hesitating, Clavain looked again into his brother’s good eye. What he saw there was an interrogator’s eye: as pale, colourless and cold as a midwinter sun. There was hatred in it. Warren despised Clavain’s pacifism; Clavain’s belief that any kind of peace, even a peace that consisted only of stumbling episodes of mistrust between crises, was always better than war. That schism had fractured any lingering fraternal feelings they might have retained. Now, when Warren reminded Clavain that they were brothers, he never entirely concealed the disgust in his voice.
‘You misjudge me,’ Clavain whispered, before quietly shaking Warren’s hand.
‘No. I honestly don’t think I do.’
Clavain stepped through the airlock just before it sphinctered shut. Voi had already buckled herself in; she had a glazed look now, as if staring into infinity. Clavain guessed she was uploading a copy of the treaty through her implants, scrolling it across her visual field, trying to find the loophole; probably running a global search for any references to police actions.
The ship recognised Clavain, its interior shivering to his preferences. The green was closer to turquoise now, the read-outs and controls minimalist in layout, displaying only the most mission-critical systems. Though the shuttle was the tiniest peacetime vessel Clavain had been in, it was a cathedral compared to the dropships he had flown during the war; vessels so small that they were assembled around their occupants like medieval armour before a joust.
‘Don’t worry about the treaty,’ Clavain said. ‘I promise you, Warren won’t get his chance to exploit that loophole.’
Voi snapped out of her trance irritatedly. ‘You’d better be right, Nevil. Is it me, or is your brother hoping we fail?’ She was speaking Quebecois French now, Clavain shifting mental gears to follow her. ‘If my people discover there’s a hidden agenda here, there’ll be hell to pay.’
‘The Conjoiners gave Warren plenty of reasons to hate them after the Battle of the Bulge,’ Clavain said. ‘And he’s a tactician, not a field specialist. After the ceasefire, my knowledge of worms was even more valuable than before, so I had a role. But Warren’s skills were a lot less transferable.’
‘So that gives him a right to edge us closer to another war?’ The way Voi spoke, it was as if her own side had not been neutral during the last exchange. But Clavain knew she was right. If hostilities between the Conjoiners and the Coalition re-ignited, the Demarchy would not be able to stand on the sidelines as they had fifteen years ago. And it was anyone’s guess how they would align themselves this time around.
‘There won’t be war.’
‘And if you can’t reason with Galiana? Or are you going to play on your personal connection?’
‘I was just her prisoner, that’s all.’ Clavain took the controls - Voi said piloting was a bore - and unlatched the shuttle from Deimos. They dropped away at a tangent to the rotation of the equatorial ring that girdled the moon, instantly in free fall. Clavain sketched a porthole in the wall with his fingertip, outlining a rectangle that instantly became transparent.
For a moment he saw his reflection in the glass: older than he felt he had any right to look, the grey beard and hair making him appear ancient rather than patriarchal; a man deeply wearied by recent circumstance. With some relief, he darkened the cabin so that he could see Deimos, dwindling at surprising speed. The higher of the two Martian moons was a dark, bristling lump infested with armaments, belted by the bright, window-studded band of the moving ring. For the last nine years, Deimos was all he had known, but now he could encompass it within the arc of his fist.
‘Not just her prisoner,’ Voi said. ‘No one else came back sane from the Conjoiners. She never even tried to infect you with her machines.’
‘No, she didn’t, but only because the timing was on my side.’ Clavain was reciting an old argument now, as much for his own benefit as Voi’s. ‘I was the only prisoner she had. She was losing the war by then; one more recruit to her side wouldn’t have made any real difference. The terms of ceasefire were being thrashed out and she knew she could buy herself favours by releasing me unharmed. There was something else, too: Conjoiners weren’t supposed to be capable of anything so primitive as mercy. They were Spiders, as far as we were concerned. Galiana’s act threw a wrench into our thinking. It divided alliances within high command. If she hadn’t released me, they might well have nuked her out of existence.’
‘So there was absolutely nothing personal?’
‘No,’ Clavain said. ‘There was nothing personal about it at all.’
Voi nodded, without in any way suggesting that she actually believed him. It was a skill some women had honed to perfection, Clavain reflected.
Of course, he respected Voi completely. She had been one of the first human beings to enter Europa’s ocean, decades back. Now they were planning fabulous cities under the ice, efforts she had spearheaded. Demarchist society was supposedly flat in structure, non-hierarchical; but someone of Voi’s brilliance ascended through echelons of her own making. She had been instrumental in brokering the peace between the Conjoiners and Clavain’s own Coalition. That was why she was coming along now: Galiana had only agreed to Clavain’s mission provided he was accompanied by a neutral observer, and Voi had been the obvious choice. Respect was easy. Trust, however, was more difficult: it required that Clavain ignore the fact that, with her head dotted with implants, the Demarchist woman’s condition was not very far removed from that of the enemy.