The Machinery of Light (20 page)

“The whites of their eyes are a long way off,” says Sarmax.

But getting closer. The ship is starting to speed up slightly. Spencer feels his magnetic clamps gripping just a little bit tighter against the wall of the shaft they’re crawling through. They’re getting ever nearer to the hull, approaching a small room set against it, identical rooms set around it. Officer quarters—and Spencer’s looking through the cameras at one officer in particular. He wears a major’s stripes. He’s sitting cross-legged, smiling very faintly. His eyes scare Spencer shitless.

Y
ou fucking bastards,” says the Operative.

“We’re just the errand boys,” says Riley.

The opaque visor has slid aside. Sightless eyes stare up at him. The face of Claire Haskell is without expression. Her mouth is slightly open. She’s breathing slowly.

“It’s not her,” says the Operative.

“Believe it or not,” says Riley, “it is.”

S
he dwelt underwater way too long. But then one day all that sea boiled away in an instant. Leaving only a voice.

That of Matthew Sinclair.

“Claire,” he says. “Can you hear me?”

“I can,” she replies.

She can feel him, too. His mental presence is very clear, totally unmistakable. Her mind can suddenly see straight through the mainframe in which she’s captive, out beyond Montrose’s base—
out across the Cislunar, all the way to the L5 fleet and the ship that sits at its center. Sinclair’s brain burns before her with the intensity of a firestorm, but all she can think of is a single question.

“Is this part of the interrogation, too?”

“A better word is by-product.”

W
hat the fuck is this?” asks Linehan.

“What does it look like?” says Lynx.

“I thought this wasn’t a real colony ship.”

“Guess it’s got all the accessories.”

Cryo-bays stretch around them. The sleepers are packed about as tight as possible. Their eyes are open. Their vital signs are checking out. Lynx walks over to one of them, rips a socket out of the wall. One set of vital signs flatlines.

“Let’s get on with it,” he says.

T
hirty seconds,” says Spencer. They’re pulling themselves through spaces barely wide enough to accomodate their armor. They’re within the duct-system of the officer quarters now. The man’s still sitting there, staring straight ahead. Spencer’s hoping that this isn’t some image that’s been put there for his benefit. Even so, he’s got a nasty feeling—

“This guy’s Autumn Rain,” he says.

“You know that for a fact?” says Sarmax.

“I’m asking
you
. I think you know—”

“I don’t know
shit,”
snarls Sarmax. “Except that we gotta be ready for anything. Are my angles correct?”

He’s referring to the laser mounted on his shoulder; it’s just swiveled, pointed downward at the wall ahead. But Spencer’s the one with the blueprint.

“Burn it,” he says, and Sarmax does just that.

W
hat do you mean it’s really her?” says the Operative.

“Now we got him excited,” says Maschler.

“Now you got me wondering what kind of bullshit you’re trying to fucking
pull,”
mutters the Operative. “There’s no way that Montrose is so stupid as to turn the Manilishi over to Szilard.”

“Unless?” asks Riley.

“There’s no unless. That’s not the Manilishi—”

“Hold that thought,” says Maschler.

The woman’s eyes open.

I
don’t understand,” says Haskell.

“You don’t have to,” says Sinclair.

His face is coming into view now—the one she remembers from four days ago. Its eyes are wide. Its lips are parted. She feels herself being pulled in as though by an undertow—feels like she’s already gone under.

“You broke into the InfoCom systems,” she says.

“On the contrary,” he says. “You broke
out
.”

D
id you just kill that guy?” asks Linehan.

“He didn’t feel a thing,” says Lynx.

Linehan can believe it. None of the people around him seem to be aware of much. The corridor stretches away, sleepers racked every step of the way. Plastic medbeds, looking disconcertingly like trays, are stacked upon one another, ten per each two meters of corridor.

“Easier to think of them as meat,” adds Lynx.

S
armax vaults into the room; the camera-feed that Spencer’s giving him merges seamlessly with what’s actually sitting in the room, wearing the uniform of a major in Russian intelligence and the smile of a man who’s way ahead of everything. Sarmax brings his guns to bear.

“Don’t fucking move,” he says.

“Glad you could make it,” says the man.

C
arson,” says the woman.

The Operative stares at her. She sounds just like Haskell.

“Claire?” he says.

W
hat the hell’s going on?” says Haskell.