Absolution Gap

TEN

He woke. He was moving. The air was cold but fresh and there was no pain in his chest. So this is it, he thought. The last hallucination, perhaps, before his brain slid into the trough of cascading cell-death. Just make it a good one, and try to keep it up until I die. That’s all I’m asking for.

But it felt real this time.

He tried looking around, but he was still trapped inside the Daughter. Yet his view of things was moving, the landscape bouncing and jolting. He realised that he was being dragged across the scree, down to the level part of the floor. He craned his neck and through his good eye he saw a commotion of pistons, shining limb joints.

Morwenna.

But it wasn’t Morwenna. It was a servitor, one of the repair units from the Dominatrix. The spiderlike robot had attached adhesive traction plates to the Scavenger’s Daughter and was hauling it across the ground, with Quaiche still in it. Of course, of course, of course: how else was it going to get him out of there? He felt stupid now. He had no suit and no airlock. For all intents and purposes, in fact, the ship was his vacuum suit. Why had this never occurred to him before?

He felt better: clear-headed and sharp. He noticed that the servitor had plugged something into one of the Daughter’s umbilical points. Feeding fresh air back into it, probably. The Daughter would have told the servitor what needed to be done to keep her occupant alive. The air might even be supercharged with oxygen, to take the edge off his pain and anxiety.

He could not believe this was happening. After all the hallucinations, this really, genuinely felt like reality. It had the prickly texture of actual experience. And he did not think that servitors had featured in any of his hallucinations to date. He had never thought things through clearly enough to work out that a servitor would have to drag the ship to safety with him in it. Obvious in hindsight, but in his dreams it had always been people coming to his rescue. That one neglected detail had to make it real, didn’t it?

Quaiche looked at the console. How much time had passed? Had he really managed to make the air last for five hours? It had seemed doubtful before, but here he was, still breathing. Perhaps the indoctrinal virus had helped, putting his brain into some mysterious state of zenlike calm so that he used up the oxygen less quickly.

But there wouldn’t have been any air left, let alone oxygen, not by the third or fourth hour. Unless the ship had made a mistake. This was a dismaying thought, given all that he had been through, but it was the only possible explanation. The air leak must not have been as serious as the Daughter had thought it was. Perhaps it had started off badly, but had sealed itself to some extent. Perhaps the auto-repair systems had not been totally destroyed, and the Daughter had been able to fix the leak.

Yes, that had to be it. There was simply no other explanation.

But the console said that only three hours had passed since his crash.

That wasn’t possible. The Dominatrix was still supposed to be tucked away behind Haldora, out of communications range. It would be out of range for another sixty minutes! Many more minutes, even at maximum burn, before it could possibly reach him. And maximum burn was not an option either, was it? There was a person aboard the ship who had to be protected. At the very least, the Dominatrix would have been restricted, to slowdown acceleration.

But it was sitting there, on the ice. It looked as real as anything else.

The time had to be wrong, he thought. The time had to be wrong, and the leak must have fixed itself. There was no other possibility. Well, there was, now that he thought about it, but it did not merit close examination. If the time was right, then the Dominatrix must have somehow received his distress signal before emerging from behind Haldora. The signal would have had to find its way around the obstruction of the planet. Could that have happened? He had assumed it was impossible, but with the evidence of the ship sitting before him, he was ready to consider anything. Had some quirk of atmospheric physics acted as a relay for his message, curving it around Haldora? He couldn’t swear that something like that was impossible. If the clock was correct, what was the alternative? That the entire planet had ceased to exist just long enough for his message to get through?

Now that would have been a miracle. He had asked for one, but he hadn’t really been expecting one.

Another servitor was waiting by the open dorsal lock. Cooperating, the two machines hoisted the Daughter into the Dominatrix. Once inside the bay, the machines nudged the Daughter until a series of clunking sounds resonated through the hull. Despite the damage it had sustained, the little ship was still more or less the right shape to be accommodated by the cradle. Quaiche looked down, watched the airlock sealing beneath him.

A minute later, another servitor—much smaller this time—was opening the Daughter, preparing to lift him out of it.

“Morwenna,” he said, finding the energy to talk despite the returning pain in his chest. “Morwenna, I’m back. Bruised but intact.”

But there was no reply.

The capsule was preparing to open. Clavain sat before it, his fingers laced together beneath his chin, his head bowed as if in prayer, or the remorseful contemplation of some recent and dreadful sin.

He had thrown back his hood; white hair spilled over the collar of his coat and on to his shoulders. He looked like an old man, of obvious stature and respectability, but he did not look much like the Clavain everyone thought they knew. Scorpio had little doubt that the workers would go back to their husbands and wives, lovers and friends and, despite express orders to the contrary, they would talk abut the elderly apparition that had materialised out of the night. They would remark on his uncanny similarity to Clavain, but how much older and frailer he looked. Scorpio was equally certain they would prefer the old man to turn out to be someone else entirely, with their leader really halfway around the world. If they accepted this old man as Clavain, it meant that they had been lied to, and that Clavain was nothing more than a grey ghost of himself.

Scorpio sat down in the vacant seat next to him. “Picking something up?”

It was a while before Clavain answered, his voice a whisper. “Not much more than the housekeeping stuff I already reported. The capsule blocks most of his neural transmissions. They’re only coming through in shards, and sometimes the packets are scrambled.”

“Then you’re certain it’s Remontoire?”

“I’m certain that it isn’t Skade. Who else can it be?”

“I’d say there are dozens of possibilities,” Scorpio whispered back.

“No, there aren’t. The person inside this capsule is a Conjoiner.”

“One of Skade’s allies, then.”

“No. Her friends were all cast from the same mould: new-model Conjoiners, fast and efficient and as cold as ice. Their minds feel different.”

“You’re losing me, Nevil.”

“You think we’re all alike, Scorp. We’re not. We never were. Every Conjoiner I ever linked minds with was different. Whenever I touched Remontoire’s thoughts it was like…” Clavain hesitated for a moment, smiling slightly when the right analogy occurred to him. “Like touching the mechanism of a clock. An old clock, good and dependable. The kind they had in churches. Something made of iron, something ratcheted and geared. I think to him I was something even slower and more mechanical… a grindstone, perhaps. Whereas Galiana’s mind…”

He faltered.

“Easy, Nevil.”

“I’m all right. Her mind was like a room full of birds. Beautiful, clever songbirds. And they were singing—not in some mindless cacophony, not in unison, but to each other—a web of song, a shining, shimmering conversation, quicker than the mind could follow. And Felka…” He hesitated again, but resumed his thread almost immediately. “Felka’s was like a turbine hall, that awful impression of simultaneous stillness and dreadful speed. She seldom let me see deep into it. I’m sure she thought I wouldn’t be able to take it.”

“And Skade?”

“She was like a shining silver abattoir, all whirling and whisking blades, designed to slice and chop reality and anyone foolish enough to peer too far into her skull. At least, that’s what I saw when she let me. It may not have had very much to do with her true mental state. Her head was like a hall of mirrors. What you saw in it was only what she wanted you to see.”

Scorpio nodded. He had met Skade on precisely one occasion, for a few minutes only. Clavain and the pig had infiltrated her ship, which was damaged and drifting after she had attempted, with the aid of dangerous alien machinery, to exceed the speed of light. She had been weakened then, and evidently disturbed by the things that she had seen after the accident. But even though he had not been able to see into her mind, he had come away from the meeting with a sure sense that Skade was not a woman to be trifled with.

Frankly, he did not very much mind that he would never be able to see into her skull. But he still had to assume the worst. If Skade was in the capsule, it was entirely possible that she would be disguising her neural packets, lulling Clavain into a false sense of security, waiting for the moment when she could claw her way into his skull.

“The instant you feel anything odd…” Scorpio began.

“It’s Rem.”

“You’re absolutely certain of that?”

“I’m certain it isn’t Skade. Good enough for you?”

“I suppose it’ll have to do, pal.” ‘

“It had better,” Clavain said, “because…” He fell silent and blinked. “Wait. Something’s happening.”

“Good or bad?”

“We’re all about to find out.”

The glowing displays in the side of the egg had never been still since the moment it had been pulled from the sea, but now they were changing abruptly, flicking from one distinct mode to another. A pulsing red circle was now flashing several times a second rather than once every ten. Scorpio watched it, hypnotised, and then observed it stop flashing entirely, glaring at them with baleful intent. The red circle became green. Something inside the egg made a muffled series of clunks, making Scorpio think of the kind of old mechanical clock Clavain had described. A moment later the side of the capsule cracked open: Scorpio, for all that he was expecting something, jumped at the sudden lurch of movement. Cool steam vented out from under the widening crack. A large plaque of scorched metal folded itself back on smooth hinged machinery.

A jangle of smells hit the pig: sterilising agents, mechanical lubricants, boiling coolants, human effluvia.

The steam cleared to reveal a naked human woman packed inside the egg, bent into a foetal position. She was covered in a scum of protective green jelly; lacy black machinery curled around her, like vines wrapping a statue.

“Skade?” Scorpio said. She didn’t look like his memories of Skade—her head was the right shape, for a start—but a second opinion never hurt.

“Not Skade,” Clavain said. “And not Remontoire, either.” He stood back from the capsule.

Some automated system kicked in. The machinery began to unwind itself from around her, while pressure jets cleansed her skin of the protective green jelly. Beneath the matrix her flesh was a pale shade of caramel. The hair on her skull had been shaved almost to the scalp. Small breasts were tucked into the concave space between her legs and upper body.

“Let me see her,” Valensin said.

Scorpio held him back. “Hold on. She’s come this far on her own; I’m sure she can manage for a few more minutes.”

“Scorp’s right,” Clavain said.

The woman quivered like some inanimate thing shocked into a parody of life. With stiff scrabbling movements she picked at the jelly with her fingers, flinging it away in cloying patches. Her movements became more frantic, as if she was trying to douse a fire.

“Hello,” Clavain said, raising his voice. “Take it easy. You’re safe and amongst friends.”

The seat or frame into which the woman had been folded pushed itself from the egg on pistons. Even though much of the enveloping machinery had unwrapped itself, a great many cables still vanished into the woman’s body. A complex plastic breathing apparatus obscured the lower part of her face, giving her a simian profile.

“Anyone recognise her?” Vasko asked.

The frame was slowly unwinding the woman, pulling her out of the foetal position into a normal human posture. Ligaments and joints creaked and clicked unpleasantly. Beneath the mask the woman groaned and began to rip away the cables and lines that punctured her skin or were attached to it by adhesive patches.

“I recognise her,” Clavain said quietly. “Her name’s Ana Khouri. She was Ilia Volyova’s sidekick on the old Infinity, before it fell into our hands.”

“The ex-soldier,” Scorpio said, remembering the few times he had met the woman and the little he knew of her past. “You’re right—it’s her. But she looks different, somehow.”

“She would. She’s twenty years older, give or take. They’ve also turned her into a Conjoiner.”

“You mean she wasn’t one before?” Vasko asked.

“Not while we knew her,” Clavain said.

Scorpio looked at the old man. “Are you sure she’s one now?”

“I picked up her thoughts, didn’t I? I could tell she wasn’t Skade or one of Skade’s cronies. Stupidly, I assumed that meant she had to be Remontoire.”

Valensin attempted to push past one more time. “I’d like to help her now, if that’s not too much of an inconvenience.”

“She’s taking care of herself,” Scorpio said.

Khouri sat in what was almost a normal position, the way someone might sit while waiting for an appointment. But the moment of composure only lasted a few seconds. She reached up and pulled away the mask, tugging fifteen centimetres of phlegmy plastic tubing from her throat. At that point she let out a single bellowing gasp, as if someone had punched her unexpectedly in the stomach. Hacking coughs followed, before her breathing settled down.

“Scorpio…” Valensin said.

“Doc, I haven’t hit a man in twenty-three years. Don’t give me a reason to make an exception. Sit down, all right?”

“Better do as he says,” Clavain told him.

Khouri turned her head to face them. She held up a palm to shade the bloodshot slits of her eyes, blinking through the gaps between her fingers.

Then she stood, still facing them. Scorpio watched with polite indifference. Some pigs would have been stimulated by the presence of a naked human woman, just as there were some humans who were attracted to pigs. But although the points of physiological difference between a female pig and a female human were hardly extreme, it was precisely those differences that mattered to Scorpio.

Khouri steadied herself by holding on to the capsule with one hand. She stood with her knees slightly together, as if at any moment she might collapse. Yet she was able to tolerate the glare now, if only by squinting at them.

She spoke. Her voice was hoarse but firm. “Where am I?”

“You’re on Ararat,” Scorpio said.

“Where.” It was not phrased as a question.

“On Ararat will do for now.”

“Near your main settlement, I’m guessing.”

“As I said…”

“How long has it been?”

“That depends,” Scorpio said. “A couple of days since we picked up the beacon from your capsule. How long you were under the sea, we don’t know. Or how long it took you to reach the planet.”

“A couple of days?” The way she looked at him, it was as if he had said weeks or months. “What exactly took you so long?”

“You’re lucky we got to you as quickly as we did,” Blood said. “And the wakeup schedule wasn’t in our control.”

“Two days… Where’s Clavain? I want to see him. Please don’t anyone tell me you let him die before I got here.”

“You needn’t worry about that,” Clavain said mildly. “As you can see, I’m still very much alive.”

She stared at him for a few seconds with the sneering expression of someone who thought they might be the victim of a poorly executed hoax. “You?”

“Yes.” He offered his palms. “Sorry to be such a disappointment.”

She looked at him for a moment longer, then said, “I’m sorry. It’s just not… quite what I was expecting.”

“I believe I can still make myself useful.” He turned to Blood. “Fetch her a blanket, will you? We don’t want her catching her death of cold. Then I think we’d better let Doctor Valensin perform a comprehensive medical examination.”

“No time for that,” Khouri said, ripping away a few adhesive patches she had missed. “I want you to get me something that can cross water. And some weapons.” She paused, then added, “And some food and water. And some clothes.”

“You seem in a bit of a hurry,” Clavain said. “Can’t it wait until morning? It’s been twenty-three years, after all. There must be a great deal to talk about.”

“You have no fucking idea,” she said.

Blood handed Clavain a blanket. He stepped forward and offered it to Khouri. She wrapped it around herself without any real enthusiasm.

“We can do boats,” Clavain said, “and guns. But I think it might help if we had some idea just why you need them right this moment.”

“Because of my baby,” Khouri said.

Clavain nodded politely. “Your baby.”

“My daughter. Her name’s Aura. She’s here, on… what did you say this place was called?”

“Ararat,” Clavain said.

“OK, she’s here on Ararat. And I’ve come to rescue her.”

Clavain glanced at his companions. “And where would your daughter be, exactly?”

“About eight hundred kilometres away,” Khouri said. “Now get me those weps. And an incubator. And someone who knows field surgery.”

“Why field surgery?” Clavain asked.

“Because,” Khouri replied, “you’re going to have to get her out of Skade first.”