Institute. Dan soon escaped its shackles, more interested in the Shrouder enigma than cybernetic immortality. He kept possession of the beta-level sim, though he never realised its exact significance. He thought of it more as an heirloom than anything else.’ The Triumvir smiled. ‘I think he would have destroyed it had he realised what it represented, which was his own annihilation.’
Understandable, Khouri thought. The beta-level simulation was like a trapped demon waiting to inhabit a new host body. Not properly conscious, but still dangerously potent, by virtue of the subtle ingenuity with which it mimicked true intelligence.
‘Cal’s precautionary measure was still useful to us,’ Sajaki said. ‘There was enough of Cal’s expertise encoded in the beta to mend the Captain. All we had to do was persuade Dan to let Calvin temporarily inhabit his mind and body.’
‘Dan must have suspected something when it worked so easily.’
‘It was never easy,’ Sajaki admonished. ‘Far from it. The periods when Cal took over were more akin to some kind of violent possession. Motor control was a problem: in order to suppress Dan’s own personality, we had to give him a cocktail of neuro-inhibitors. Which meant that when Cal finally got through, the body he found himself in was already half-paralysed by our drugs. It was like a brilliant surgeon performing an operation by giving orders to a drunk. And — by all accounts — it wasn’t the most pleasant of experiences for Dan. Quite painful, he said.’
‘But it worked.’
‘Just. But that was a century ago, and now it’s time for another visit to the doctor.’
‘Your vials,’ said the Ordinator.
One of the wimpled aides from Pascale’s party stepped forward, brandishing a vial identical in size and shape to the one which Sylveste removed from his pocket. They were not the same colour: the fluid in Pascale’s vial had been tinted red, against the yellow hue of Sylveste’s. Similar darkish fronds of material orbited within. The Ordinator took both vials and held them aloft for a few moments before placing them side by side on the table, in clear view of the audience.
‘We are ready to begin the marriage,’ she said. She then performed the customary duty of asking if there were anyone present who had any bioethical reasons as to why the marriage should not take place.
There was, of course, no objection.
But in that odd, loaded moment of branching possibilities, Sylveste noted a veiled woman in the audience reach into a purse and uncap a dainty, jewel-topped amber perfume jar.
‘Daniel Sylveste,’ said the Ordinator. ‘Do you take this woman to be your wife, under Resurgam law, until such time as this marriage is annulled under this or any prevailing legal system?’
‘I do,’ Sylveste said.
She repeated the question to Pascale.
‘I do,’ Pascale said.
‘Then let the bonding be done.’
Ordinator Massinger took the wedding gun from the mahogany box and snapped it open. She loaded the reddish vial — the one Pascale’s party had delivered — into the breech, then reclosed the instrument. Status entoptics briefly haloed it. Girardieau placed his hand on Sylveste’s upper arm, steadying him as the Ordinator pressed the conic end of the instrument against his temple, just above his eye-level. Sylveste had been right when he told Girardieau that the ceremony was not painful, but neither was it entirely pleasant. What it was was a sudden flowering of intense cold, as if liquid helium were being blasted into his cortex. The discomfort was brief, however, and the thumb-sized bruise on his skin would not last more than a few days. The brain’s immune system was weak by comparison with the body as a whole, and Pascale’s cells — floating as they did in a stew of helper medichines — would soon bond with Sylveste’s own. The volume was tiny — no more than a tenth of one per cent of the brain’s mass — but the transplanted cells carried the indelible impression of their last host: ghost threads of holographically distributed memory and personality.
The Ordinator removed the spent red vial and slotted the yellow one in its place. It was Pascale’s first wedding under the Stoner custom, and her trepidation was not well disguised. Girardieau held her hands as the Ordinator delivered the neural material, Pascale visibly flinching as it happened.
Sylveste had let Girardieau think the implant was permanent, but this was never the case. The neural tissue was tagged with harmless radioisotope trace elements, enabling it to be routed out and destroyed, if necessary, by divorce viruses. So far, Sylveste had never taken that option, and imagined he never would, no matter how many marriages down the line he was. He carried the smoky essences of all his wives — as they carried him — as he would carry Pascale. Indeed, on the faintest level, Pascale herself now carried traces of his previous wives.
That was the Stoner way.
The Ordinator carefully replaced the wedding gun in its box. ‘According to Resurgam law,’ she began, ‘the marriage is now formalised. You may—’
Which was when the perfume hit Janequin’s birds.
The woman who had uncapped the amber jar was gone, her seat glaringly vacant. Fragrant, autumnal, the odour from the jar made Sylveste think of crushed leaves. He wanted to sneeze.
Something was wrong.
The room flashed turquoise blue, as if a hundred pastel fans had just opened. Peacocks’ tails, springing open. A million tinted eyes.
The air turned grey.
‘Get down!’ Girardieau screamed. He was scrabbling madly at his neck. There was something hooked in it, something tiny and barbed. Numbly, Sylveste looked at his tunic and saw half a dozen comma-shaped barbs clinging to it. They had not broken the fabric, but he dared not touch them.
‘Assassination tools!’ Girardieau shouted. He slumped under the table, dragging Sylveste and his daughter with him. The auditorium was chaos now, a frenzied mass of agitated people trying to escape.
‘Janequin’s birds were primed!’ Girardieau said, virtually screaming in Sylveste’s ear. ‘Poison darts — in their tails.’
‘You’re hit,’ Pascale said, too stunned for her voice to carry much emotion. Light and smoke burst over their heads. They heard screams. Out of the corner of his eye, Sylveste saw the perfume woman holding a sleekly evil pistol in a two-handed grip. She was dousing the audience with it, its fanged barrel spitting cold pulses of boser energy. The float-cams swept round her, dispassionately recording the carnage. Sylveste had never seen a weapon like the one the woman used. He knew it could not have been manufactured on Resurgam, which left only two possibilities. Either it had arrived from Yellowstone with the original settlement, or it had been sold by Remilliod, the trader who had passed through the system since the coup. Glass — Amarantin glass that had survived ten thousand centuries — broke shrilly above. Like pieces of shattered toffee, it crashed down in jagged shards into the audience. Sylveste watched, powerless, as the ruby planes buried themselves in flesh, like frozen lightning. The terrified were already screaming loud enough to drown out the cries of those in pain.
What remained of Girardieau’s security team was mobilising, but terribly slowly. Four of the militia were down, their faces punctured by the barbs. One had reached the seating, struggling with the woman who had the gun. Another was opening fire with his own sidearm, scything through Janequin’s birds.
Girardieau meanwhile was groaning. His eyes were rolling, bloodshot, hands grasping at thin air.
‘We have to get out of here,’ Sylveste said, shouting in Pascale’s ear. She seemed still dazed from the neural transfer, blearily oblivious to what was happening.
‘But my father…’
‘He’s gone.’
Sylveste eased Girardieau’s dead weight onto the cold floor of the temple, careful to keep behind the safety of the table.
‘The barbs were meant to kill, Pascale. There’s nothing we can do for him. If we stay, we’ll just end up following him.’
Girardieau croaked something. It might have been ‘Go’, or it might only have been a final senseless exhalation.
‘We can’t leave him!’ Pascale said.
‘If we don’t, his killers end up winning.’
Tears slashed her face. ‘Where can we go?’
