The Revelation Space Collection (68 page)

‘What is it, Ilia?’

‘You know exactly what it is. Stop the trawl before you kill her.’ Volyova stepped into view now. Her tone of voice had been authoritative, but Khouri could see that she was unarmed.

‘I haven’t learned anything useful yet,’ Sajaki said. ‘I need a few more minutes . . .’

‘A few more minutes and she’ll be dead.’ With typical pragmatism, she added: ‘And her implants will be damaged beyond repair.’

Perhaps the second thing worried Sajaki more than the first. He made a tiny adjustment to the trawl. The red hue faded to a less alarming pink. ‘I thought these implants would be adequately hardened.’

‘They’re just prototypes, Yuuji-san.’ Volyova stepped closer to the displays and surveyed them for herself. ‘Oh, no . . . you fool, Sajaki. You damned fool. I swear you may have already damaged them.’ It was as if she were talking to herself.

Sajaki waited silently for a moment. Khouri wondered if he was going to lash out and kill Volyova in an eyeblink of furious motion. But then, scowling, the Triumvir snapped the trawl controls to their off settings, watched the displays pop out of existence, then hoisted the helmet off Khouri’s head.

‘Your tone of voice - and choice of wording - was inappropriate there, Triumvir,’ Sajaki said. Khouri saw his hand slip into his trouser pocket and finger something - something that, for an instant, looked like a hypodermic syringe.

‘You nearly destroyed our Gunnery Officer,’ Volyova said.

‘I’m not finished with her. Or you, for that matter. You rigged something to this trawl, didn’t you, Ilia? Something to alert you when it was running? Very clever.’

‘I did it to protect a shipboard resource.’

‘Yes, of course . . .’ Sajaki left his answer hanging in the air, its threat implicit, and then quietly walked out of the trawl room.

TWENTY-THREE

Cerberus/Hades Orbit, Delta Pavonis Heliopause, 2566

It was, Sylveste thought, a situation of disturbing symmetry. In a matter of hours Volyova’s cache-weapons would begin to combat the buried immunological systems of Cerberus; virus against virus, tooth against tooth. And here, on the eve of that attack, Sylveste was preparing to go to war against the Melding Plague which was consuming - or, depending on one’s point of view, grotesquely enlarging - Volyova’s afflicted Captain. The symmetry seemed to hint at an underlying order to which he was only partly privy. It was not a feeling he enjoyed; like being a participant in a game and realising, halfway through, that the rules were far more complicated than he had so far imagined.

In order that Calvin’s beta-level simulation be allowed to work through him, Sylveste had to slip into a state of ambulatory semi-consciousness akin to sleepwalking. Calvin would puppet him, receiving sensory input directly through Sylveste’s own eyes and ears, tapping directly into his nervous system to achieve mobility. He would even speak through Sylveste. The neuro-inhibitor drugs had already kicked him into a queasy full-body paralysis; as unpleasant as he remembered from the last time.

Sylveste thought of himself as a machine in which Calvin was about to become the ghost . . .

His hands worked the medical analysis tools, skirting the periphery of the growth. It was dangerous to stray too close to the heart; too high a risk of plague transmission into his own implants. At some point - this session, or perhaps the next - they would have to skirt the heart; that was inevitable, but Sylveste did not really want to think about that. For now, when they needed to work closer, Calvin used the simple, mindless drones which were slaved from elsewhere in the ship, but even those tools were susceptible. One drone had malfunctioned close to the Captain, and was even now being enmeshed in fine, fibrous plague tendrils. Even though the machine contained no molecular components, it still seemed that it was of use to the plague; still able to be digested into the Captain’s transformative matrix; fuel for his fever. Calvin was having to resort to cruder instruments now, but this was only a stopgap: at some point - soon now, undoubtedly - they would have to hit the plague with the only thing which could really work against it: something very like itself.

Sylveste could feel Calvin’s thought processes churning somewhere behind his own. It was nothing that could be called consciousness - the simulation which was running his body was no more than mimesis, but somewhere in the interfacing with his own nervous system . . . it was as if something had arisen, something which was riding that chaotic edge. The theories and his own prejudices denied that, of course - but what other explanation could there be for the sense of divided self Sylveste felt? He did not dare ask if Calvin experienced something similar, and would not necessarily have trusted any answer he received.

‘Son,’ Calvin said. ‘There’s something I’ve waited until now before discussing. I’m rather worried about it, but I didn’t want to discuss it in front of, well . . . our clients.’

Sylveste knew that only he could hear Calvin’s voice. He had to subvocalise to respond, Calvin momentarily relinquishing vocal control to his host. ‘This isn’t the time, either. In case you weren’t paying attention, we’re in the middle of an operation.’

‘It’s the operation I want to talk about.’

‘Make it quick, in that case.’

‘I don’t think we’re meant to succeed.’

Sylveste observed that his hands - driven by Calvin - had not ceased working during this last exchange. He was conscious of Volyova, who was standing nearby, awaiting instructions. He subvocalised, ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘I think Sajaki is a very dangerous man.’

‘Great - that makes two of us. But it hasn’t stopped you cooperating with him.’

‘I was grateful to begin with,’ Calvin admitted. ‘He saved me, after all. But then I started wondering how things must seem from his side. I began to wonder if he wasn’t just a touch insane. It struck me that any sane man would have left the Captain for dead years ago. The Sajaki I knew last time was fiercely loyal, but at least then there was some sense to his crusade. At least then there was a hope we could save the Captain.’

‘And now there isn’t?’

‘He’s been infected with a virus which the entire resources of the Yellowstone system couldn’t combat. Admittedly, the system itself was under attack from the same virus, but there were still isolated enclaves which survived for months - places where people with techniques as sophisticated as our own struggled to find a cure - and yet they never succeeded. Not only that, but we don’t even know which blind alleys they pursued, or which approaches might almost have worked, if they’d had more time.’

‘I told Sajaki he needed a miracle worker. It’s his problem if he didn’t believe me.’

‘The problem is, I think he did believe you. That’s what I mean when I said we weren’t meant to succeed.’

Sylveste happened to be looking at the Captain, Calvin having judiciously arranged the view. Confronted with the thing before his eyes, he experienced a moment of epiphany in which he knew that Calvin was absolutely right. They could go through the preliminary motions of healing the Captain - the rituals of establishing just how corrupted the man’s flesh was - but it could never progress beyond that. Whatever they tried, no matter how intelligent, no matter how conceptually brilliant, could not possibly succeed. Or, more significantly, could not be permitted to succeed. It was that latter realisation which was the most disturbing, because it had come from Calvin, rather than Sylveste. He had seen something which to Sylveste was still opaque, and now it seemed obvious; shatteringly so.

‘You think he’ll hinder us?’

‘I think he already has. We both observed that the Captain’s rate of growth had accelerated since we were brought aboard, but we dismissed it - either just a coincidence or our imaginations. But I don’t think so. I think Sajaki allowed him to warm.’

‘Yes . . . I was drawn to that conclusion myself. There’s something else, isn’t there?’

‘The biopsies - the tissue samples I asked for.’

Sylveste knew where this was leading. The drone that they had sent in to extract the cell samples was now half-digested by the plague. ‘You don’t think that was a genuine malfunction, do you? You think Sajaki made it happen.’

‘Sajaki, or one of his crewmates.’

‘Her?’

Sylveste felt himself glance towards the woman. ‘No,’ Calvin said, effecting an entirely unnecessary murmur. ‘Not her. That doesn’t mean I trust her, but on the other hand, I don’t see her as one of Sajaki’s automatic minions.’

‘What are you discussing?’ asked Volyova, stepping towards them.

‘Don’t come too close,’ Calvin said, speaking through Sylveste, who, for the moment, was unable to form his own sounds even subvocally. ‘Our investigations may have unleashed plague spore - you wouldn’t want to inhale them.’

‘It wouldn’t harm me,’ Volyova said. ‘I’m
brezgatnik
. I have nothing in me that the plague can touch.’

‘Then why are you looking so stand-offish?’

‘Because it’s cold,
svinoi
.’ She paused. ‘Wait a minute. Which one of you am I actually talking to? It’s Calvin, isn’t it? I suppose I owe you fractionally more respect - it isn’t you holding us to ransom, after all.’

‘You’re too kind,’ Sylveste found himself saying.

‘I trust you’ve arrived at a strategy here? Triumvir Sajaki won’t be pleased if he suspects you aren’t keeping up your side of the bargain.’

‘Triumvir Sajaki,’ Calvin said, ‘may well be part of the problem.’

She had come closer now, even though she was visibly shivering, lacking the thermal protection which Sylveste wore. ‘I’m not sure I understand that remark.’

‘Do you honestly think he wants us to heal the Captain?’

She looked as if he had slapped her across the face. ‘Why wouldn’t he?’

‘He’s had a long time to get used to being in command. This Triumvirate of yours is a farce - Sajaki’s your Captain in all but name, and you and Hegazi know it. He isn’t going to relinquish that without a fight.’

She answered too hastily to be totally convincing. ‘If I were you I’d concentrate on the job in hand and stop worrying about the Triumvir’s wishes. He brought you here, after all. He came light-years for your services. That’s hardly the work of a man who doesn’t want to see his Captain reinstated.’

‘He’ll ensure that we fail,’ Calvin said. ‘But in the course of our failure, he’ll find another glimmer of hope; something or someone else who can heal the Captain, if only he can find it or them. And before you know it, you’ll be on another century-long quest.’

‘If that’s the case,’ she said slowly, as if fearful of being drawn into a trap, ‘then why hasn’t Sajaki already killed the Captain? That would safeguard his position.’

‘Because then he’d have to find a use for you.’

‘A use?’

‘Yes, think about it.’ Calvin let go of the medical tools and stepped away from the Captain, like an actor preparing to enter the limelight for his soliloquy. ‘This quest to heal the Captain is the only god you’re capable of serving. Maybe there was a time when it was a means to an end . . . but that end never came, and after a while it didn’t even matter. You have the weapons aboard this ship; I know all about those, even the ones you don’t really like talking about. For now, the only purpose they serve is bargaining power when you need someone like me - someone who can go through the motions of healing the Captain, without actually making any real difference.’ Sylveste was glad when Calvin did not speak for a few seconds, for he needed to catch his breath and lubricate his mouth. ‘Now, if Sajaki suddenly became Captain, what would he do next? You’d still have the weapons - but who could you use them against? You’d have to invent an enemy from scratch. Maybe they wouldn’t even have something you wanted - after all, you’re the ones with the ship; what else do you need? Ideological enemies? Tricky, because the one thing I haven’t noticed among you is an ideological attachment to anything, except perhaps your own survival. No; I think Sajaki knows what would happen, deep down. He knows that if he became Captain, sooner or later you’d have to use those weapons just because they existed. And I don’t mean the kind of minimalist intervention you demonstrated on Resurgam. You’d have to go all the way: use every one of those horrors.’

Volyova was quick; Sylveste had already been impressed by that. ‘In which case, we owe Triumvir Sajaki our gratitude, don’t we? By not killing the Captain, he’s keeping us from the brink.’ But the way she spoke, it was as if she were reciting the argument of a devil’s advocate, saying it aloud only to better illuminate its heresies.

‘Yes,’ Calvin said, dubiously. ‘I suppose you’re right.’

‘I don’t believe any of this,’ Volyova said, with sudden fire. ‘And if you were one of us, it would be treason just to entertain those thoughts.’

‘Suit yourself. But we’ve already seen evidence that Sajaki wants to sabotage the operation.’

For a moment curiosity flashed in her expression, but she crushed it just as efficiently. ‘I’m not interested in your paranoia, Calvin - assuming it’s Calvin I’m talking to. I have an obligation to Dan, which is to get him into Cerberus. And I have an obligation to you, which is to help with the healing. The discussion of any other topics is superfluous.’