The Revelation Space Collection

threats were not in Jasmina’s repertoire.

But her cleverness ran deeper than that, for with Morwenna imprisoned in the suit he had no hope of doing what had sometimes occurred to him, which was to hide in a particular system until the Gnostic Ascension had passed out of range. No — he had no practical choice but to return to the queen. And then hope for two things: firstly, that he would not have disappointed her; and secondly, that she would free Morwenna from the suit.

A thought occurred to him. ‘Is she awake?’

‘She is now approaching consciousness,’ the ship replied.

With her Ultra physiology, Morwenna would have been much better equipped to tolerate slowdown than Quaiche, but it still seemed likely that the scrimshaw suit had been modified to protect her in some fashion.

‘Can we communicate?’

‘You can speak to her when you wish. I will handle ship-to-suit protocols.’

‘All right, put me through now.’ He waited a second, then said, ‘Morwenna?’

‘Horris.’ Her voice was stupidly weak and distant. He had trouble believing she was only separated from him by mere centimetres of metal: it might as well have been fifty light-years of lead. ‘Horris, where am I? What’s happened?’

Nothing in his experience gave him any clue about how you broke news like this to someone. How did you gently wend the topic of a conversation around to being imprisoned alive in a welded metal suit? Well, funny you should mention incarceration…

‘Morwenna, something’s up, but I don’t want you to panic. Everything will be all right in the end, but you mustn’t, mustn’t panic. Will you promise me that?’

‘What’s wrong?’ There was now a distinctly anxious edge to Morwenna’s voice.

Memo to himself: the one way to make people panic was to warn them not to.

‘Morwenna, tell me what you remember. Calmly and slowly.’ He heard the catch in her voice, the approaching onset of hysteria. ‘Where do you want me to begin?’

‘Do you remember me being taken to see the queen?’

‘Yes.’

‘And do you remember me being taken away from her chamber?’

‘Yes… yes, I do.’

‘Do you remember trying to stop them?’

‘No, I…’ She stopped and said nothing. He thought he had lost her — when she wasn’t speaking, the connection was silent. ‘Wait. Yes, I do remember.’

‘And after that?’

‘Nothing.’

‘They took me to Grelier’s operating theatre, Morwenna. The one where he did all those other things to me.’

‘No…’ she began, misunderstanding, thinking that the dreadful thing had happened to Quaiche rather than herself.

‘They showed me the scrimshaw suit,’ he said. ‘But they put you in it instead. You’re in it now, and that’s why you mustn’t panic.’

She took it well, better than he had been expecting. Poor, brave Morwenna. She had always been the more courageous half of their partnership. If she’d been given the chance to take the punishment upon herself, he knew she would have done so. Equally, he knew that he lacked that strength. He was weak and cowardly and selfish. Not a bad man, but not exactly one to be admired either. It was the flaw that had shaped his life. Knowing this did not make it any easier.

‘You mean I’m under the ice?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he said. ‘No, it’s not that bad.’ He realised as he spoke how absurdly little difference it made whether she was buried under ice or not. ‘You’re in the suit now, but you’re not under the ice. And it isn’t because of anything you did. It’s because of me. It’s to force me to act in a certain way.’

‘Where am I?’

‘You’re with me, aboard the Dominatrix. I think we just completed slowdown into the new system.’

‘I can’t see or move.’

He had been looking at the suit while he spoke, holding an image of her in his mind. Although she was clearly doing her best to hide it, he knew Morwenna well enough to understand that she was terribly frightened. Ashamed, he looked sharply away. ‘Ship, can you let her see something?’

‘That channel is not enabled.’

‘Then fucking well enable it.’

‘No actions are possible. I am to inform you that the occupant can only communicate with the outside world via the current audio channel. Any attempt to instate further channels will be viewed as…’

He waved a hand. ‘All right. Look, I’m sorry, Morwenna. The bastards won’t let you see anything. I’m guessing that was Grelier’s little idea.’

‘He’s not my only enemy, you know.’

‘Maybe not, but I’m willing to bet he had more than a little say in the matter.’ Quaiche’s brow was dripping with condensed beads of zero-gravity sweat. He mopped himself with the back of his hand. ‘All of this is my fault.’

‘Where are you?’

The question surprised him. ‘I’m floating next to you. I thought you might be able to hear my voice through the armour.’

‘All I can hear is your voice in my head. You sound a long way away. I’m scared, Horris. I don’t know if I can handle this.’

‘You’re not alone,’ he said. ‘I’m right by you. You’re probably safer in the suit than out of it. All you have to do is sit tight. We’ll be home and dry in a few weeks.’

Her voice had a desperate edge to it now. ‘A few weeks? You make it sound as if it’s nothing at all.’

‘I meant it’s better than years and years. Oh, Christ, Morwenna, I’m so sorry. I promise I’ll get you out of this.’ Quaiche screwed up his eyes in pain.

‘Horris?’

‘Yes?’ he asked, through tears.

‘Don’t leave me to die in this thing. Please.’

‘Morwenna,’ he said, a little while later, ‘listen carefully. I have to leave you now. I’m going up to the command deck. I have to check on our status.’

‘I don’t want you to go.’

‘You’ll still be able to hear my voice. I must do this, Morwenna. I absolutely must. If I don’t, neither of us will have any kind of a future to look forward to.’

‘Horris.’

But he was already moving. He drifted away from the slowdown coffin and the scrimshaw suit, crossing the compartment space to reach a set of padded wall grips. He began to make his way down the narrow companionway towards the command deck, pulling himself along hand over hand. Quaiche had never developed a taste for weightlessness, but the needle-hulled survey craft was far too small for centrifugal gravity. It would be better once they were underway again, for then he would have the illusion of gravity provided by the Dominatrix’s engines.

Under pleasanter circumstances, he would have been enjoying the sudden isolation of being away from the rest of the crew. Morwenna had not accompanied him on most of his previous excursions, but, while he missed her, he had generally revelled in the enforced solitude of his periods away from the Gnostic Ascension. It was not strictly the case that he was antisocial; admittedly, during his time in mainstream human culture, Quaiche had never been the most gregarious of souls, but he had always ornamented himself with a handful of strong friendships. There had always been lovers, some tending towards the rare, exotic, or — in Morwenna’s case — the downright hazardous. But the environment of Jasmina’s ship was so