Five. There were five other void warrens, built by us — by people like Lago — and you chose to follow us. I’d like to know why.’
‘That was before the damage. After the damage, there were only four other void warrens.’
Sky nodded. So it understood something of what had happened to the Islamabad, anyway. ‘Meaning you don’t remember it as well?’
‘Not very well, no.’
‘Well, do your best. Where did you come from? What made you latch onto our Flotilla?’
‘There’ve been too many voids. Too many for Travelling Fearlessly to remember all the way back.’
‘You don’t have to remember all the way back. Just tell me how you got where you did.’
‘There was a time when there were just grubs, even though there had been many voids. We looked for other types of grub but didn’t find any.’ Meaning, Sky assumed, that there had been a time when Travelling Fearlessly’s people had crossed space, but not encountered any other form of intelligence.
‘How long ago was this?’
‘Ages ago. One and a half turns.’
Sky felt a chill of cosmic awe. Perhaps he was wrong, but he strongly suspected that the maggot was talking about rotations of the Milky Way; the time taken for a typical star at the current distance from the galactic centre to make one complete orbit. Each of those orbits would take more than two hundred million years… meaning that the grub’s racial memory — if that was what it was — encompassed more than three hundred million years of space travel. The dinosaurs had not even been a sketch on the evolutionary drawing board three hundred million years ago. It was a span of time that made humans, and everything humans had done, seem like a layer of dust on the summit of a mountain.
‘Tell me the rest.’
‘Then we did find other grubs. But they weren’t like us. Not like grubs at all, really. They didn’t want to… tolerate us. They were like a void warren but… empty. Just the void warren.’
A ship with no living things aboard it.
‘Machine intelligences?’
The mouth smiled again. It was quite obscene, really. ‘Yes. Machine intelligences. Hungry machines. Machines that eat grubs. Machines that eat us.’
Machines that eat us.
I thought of the way the maggot had said that; as if all it amounted to was a mildly irritating aspect of reality; something that had to be endured but which could not really be blamed upon anyone. I remembered my revulsion at the thought of the maggot’s defeatist mode of thinking.
No — not my revulsion, I told myself. Sky Haussmann’s.
I was right — wasn’t I?
Ratko led the three of us through the crudely excavated tunnels of the Dream Fuel factory. Now and then we passed through widened chambers, dimly lit, where workers in glossy grey coats leaned over benches so densely covered with chemical equipment that they resembled miniature glass cities. There were enormous retorts filled with litres of dark, twinkling blood-red Dream Fuel. At the very end of the production line, neat racks of filled vials waited ready for distribution. Many of the workers had goggles like those worn by Ratko, specialised lenses clicking and whirring into place for each task in the production process.
‘Where are you taking us?’ I said.
‘You wanted a drink, didn’t you?’
Quirrenbach whispered, ‘He’s taking us to see the man, I think. The man runs all this, so don’t underestimate him — even if he does have quite an unusual belief system.’
‘Gideon?’ Zebra asked.
‘Well, that’s part of it,’ Ratko said, obviously misunderstanding her.
We passed through another series of production labs, and then were led into a rough-walled office where a wizened old man lay — or sat, it wasn’t immediately clear — before an enormous, battered metal desk. The man was in a kind of wheelchair: a brutish, black, armoured contraption which was simmering gently, steam whispering out of leaking valves. Feedlines reached from the chair back into the wall. Presumably it could be decoupled from them when he needed to move around, gliding on the skeletal, curved-spoke wheels from which his chair was suspended.
The man’s body was hard to make out under its layers of aluminised blanketing. Two exquisitely bony arms emerged, the left placed across his thigh, the right toying with the army of black control levers and buttons set into one arm of the chair.
‘Hello,’ Zebra said. ‘You must be the man.’
He looked at each of us in turn. The man’s face was skin draped over bone, worn almost parchment-thin in places, so that he had a strangely translucent quality to him. But there was still an aura of handsomeness to him, and his eyes, when they finally looked in my direction, were like two piercing chips of interstellar ice. His jaw was strong, set almost contemptuously. His lips quivered as if he were on the verge of replying.
Instead, his right hand moved across the array of controls, depressing levers and pushing buttons with a dexterity that surprised me. His fingers, though they were thin, looked as strong and dangerous as the talons of a vulture.
He lifted his hand from the levers. Something started happening inside the chair, a rapid noisy clatter of mechanical switches. When the clatter stopped the chair began to speak, synthesising his words with a series of chime-like whistles which — if you concentrated — could be understood.
‘Self-evidently. What can I do for you?’
I stared at him in wonder. I had been assuming that Gideon would be many things, but I had never imagined anything like this.
‘You can fix us the drinks Ratko promised,’ I said.
The man nodded — the movement was economical, to say the least — and Ratko went to a cupboard set into a rocky niche in one corner of the office. He came back with two glasses of water. I drank mine in one gulp. It didn’t taste too bad, considering it had probably been steam only a little while earlier. Ratko offered something to Zebra and she accepted with clear misgivings, thirst obviously suppressing concerns that we might be poisoned. I put the empty glass down on his battered metal desk.
‘You’re not quite what I was expecting, Gideon.’
Quirrenbach nudged me. ‘This isn’t Gideon, Tanner. This is, well…’ and then he trailed off before adding weakly, ‘The man, like I said.’
The man punched a new set of orders into the chair. There was more clattering — it went on for about fifteen seconds — before the voice began to pipe out again, ‘No, I’m not Gideon. But you’ve probably heard of me. I made this place.’
‘What,’ said Zebra. ‘This maze of tunnels?’
‘No,’ he said, after another pause while the chair processed the words. ‘No. Not this maze of tunnels. This whole city. This whole planet.’ He had programmed a pause at that point. ‘I am Marco Ferris.’
I remembered what Quirrenbach had just told me about the man having an unusual belief system. Well, this certainly fitted the bill. But I couldn’t help but feel some sneaking empathy with the man in the steam-driven wheelchair.
After all, I wasn’t exactly sure who I was any more.
‘Well, Marco,’ I said. ‘Answer a question for me. Are you running this place, or is Gideon in charge? In fact, does Gideon even exist?’
The chair cluttered and clacked. ‘Oh, I am definitely running this place, Mister…’ He dismissed my name with a minute wave of his other hand; too much trouble to stop mid-sentence and query me. ‘But Gideon is here. Gideon has always been here. Without Gideon, I would not be here.’
‘Well, why don’t you take us to see him?’ Zebra said.
‘Because there is no need. Because no one gets to see Gideon without excellent reason. You do all your business through me, so why involve Gideon? Gideon is just the supplier. He doesn’t know anything.’
‘We’d still like a word with him,’ I said.
‘I’m sorry. Not possible. Not possible at all.’ He backed the chair away from the desk, the huge curved-spoke
