I estimate between eighty and ninety years prior to your recruitment.’
‘Sylveste,’ Khouri said, wonderingly. ‘Sajaki said that the reason Sylveste went missing was because they brought him aboard this ship, to fix Captain Brannigan. Do the dates tie together?’
‘Conclusively, I would say. This would have been 2460 — twenty or so years after Sylveste returned from the Shrouders.’
‘And you think he brought — whatever it is — with him?’
‘All we know is what Sajaki told us, which is that Sylveste accepted the Calvin simulation in order to heal Captain Brannigan. At some point during the operation Sylveste must have been connected to the ship’s dataspace. Perhaps that was how the stowaway gained access. Thereafter — very soon after, I suspect — it entered the gunnery through the one-way door.’
‘And it’s been there ever since?’
‘So it appears.’
This seemed to be a pattern: whenever Khouri felt she had things ordered in her head, or at least approximately so, some new fact would dash her scheme to shreds. She felt like a mediaeval astronomer, creating ever more intricate clockwork cosmologies to incorporate every new observational oddity. Now, in some way she could not begin to guess, Sylveste was related to the gunnery. At least she could take comfort in her ignorance. Even the Mademoiselle was foxed.
‘You mentioned the thing was hostile,’ she said carefully, not really sure she wanted to ask any more questions, in case the answers were too difficult to assimilate.
‘Yes.’ Hesitating now. ‘The dogs were a mistake,’ she said. ‘I was too impetuous. I should have realised that Sun Stealer—’
‘Sun Stealer?’
‘What it calls itself. The stowaway, I mean.’
This was bad. How did she know the thing’s name? Fleetingly, Khouri remembered that Volyova had once asked her if that name meant anything to her. But there was more to it than that. It was as if she had been hearing that name in her dreams for some time now. Khouri opened her mouth to speak, but the Mademoiselle was already talking. ‘It used the dogs to escape, Khouri. Or at least for a part of itself to escape. It used them to get into your head.’
Sylveste had no reliable way of marking the time in his new prison. All he remained certain of was that many days had passed since his capture. He suspected he was being drugged, forced into comalike sleep, barren of dreams. When he did dream, which was rarely, he had sight, but his dreams always revolved around his imminent blindness and the preciousness of the sight he retained. When he awoke he saw only grey, but after some time — days, he guessed — the grey had lost its geometric structure. The pattern had been imposed on his brain for too long; now his brain was simply filtering it out. What remained was a colourless infinity, no longer even recognisably grey, but simply a bright absence of hue.
He wondered what he was missing. Perhaps his actual surroundings were so dull and Spartan that his mind would sooner or later have performed the same filtering trick, even if he still had his sight. He sensed only the echoless enclosure of rock; many megatonnes of it. He thought constantly of Pascale, but it became harder by the day to hold her in his mind. The grey seemed to be seeping into his memories, smearing over them like wet concrete. Then there came a day, just after Sylveste had finished his rations, when the cell door was unlocked and two voices joined him.
The first was that of Gillian Sluka.
‘Do what you can with him,’ her croak of a voice said. ‘Within limits.’
‘He should be put under while I operate,’ said the other voice, male and treacle-thick. Sylveste recognised the cabbagy smell of the man’s breath.
‘He should, but he won’t be.’ The voice hesitated, then added: ‘I’m not expecting any miracles, Falkender. I just want the bastard to see me.’
‘Give me a few hours,’ Falkender said. There was a thump as the man placed something down on the cell’s blunt-edged table. ‘I’ll do my best,’ he said, almost mumbling. ‘But from what I know, these eyes were nothing special before you had him blinded.’
‘One hour.’
She slammed the door as she exited. Sylveste, cocooned in silence since his capture, felt its reverberations jar his skull. For too long he had been striving to pick up the softest of noises, clues to his fate. There had been none, but in the process he had become sensitised to silence.
He smelled Falkender loom nearer. ‘A pleasure to work with you, Dr Sylveste,’ he said, almost diffidently. ‘I’m confident I can undo most of the damage she had inflicted on you, given time.’
‘She gave you one hour,’ Sylveste said. His own voice sounded foreign; it had been too long since he had done much except mumble incoherently to himself in his sleep. ‘What can you possibly do in one hour?’
He heard the man rummage through his tools. ‘At the very least improve things for you.’ He punctuated his remarks with clucking noises. ‘Of course, I can do more if you don’t struggle. But I can’t promise that this will be pleasant for you.’
‘I’m sure you’ll do your best.’
The man’s fingers skated over his eyes, lightly probing.
‘I always admired your father, you know.’ Another cluck, reminding Sylveste of one of Janequin’s chickens. ‘It’s well known that he fashioned these eyes for you.’
‘His beta-level simulation,’ Sylveste corrected.
‘Of course, of course.’ He could visualise Falkender waving aside this vaporous distinction. ‘And not the alpha, either — we all know that vanished years ago.’
‘I sold it to the Jugglers,’ Sylveste said blankly. After years of holding it in, the truth had popped out of his mouth like a small sour pip.
Falkender made an odd tracheal sound which Sylveste eventually decided might be the man’s mode of chuckling. ‘Of course, of course. You know, I’m surprised no one ever accused you of that. But that’s human cynicism for you.’ A shrill whirring sound filled the air, followed by a nerve-searing vibration. ‘I think you can say goodbye to colour perception,’ Falkender said. ‘Monochrome’s going to be about the best I can manage.’
Khouri had been hoping for some mental breathing-space, some time in which to collect her thoughts, in which to listen quietly for the breathing of the invasive presence in her head. But the Mademoiselle was still speaking.
‘I believe Sun Stealer has already attempted this once before,’ she said. ‘I’m speaking of your predecessor, of course.’
‘You mean the stowaway tried to get into Nagorny’s head?’
‘Exactly that. Except in Nagorny’s case, there would have been no bloodhounds on which to hitch a ride. Sun Stealer must have had to resort to something cruder.’
Khouri considered what she had learnt from Volyova about this whole incident.
‘Crude enough to drive Nagorny mad?’
‘Evidently so,’ her companion nodded. ‘And perhaps Sun Stealer only attempted to impose his will on the man. Escape from the gunnery was impossible, so Sun Stealer merely tried to make Nagorny his puppet. Perhaps it was all done via subconscious suggestion, while he was in the gunnery.’
‘Exactly how much trouble am I in?’
‘Little, for now. There were only a few dogs — not enough for him to do much damage.’
‘What happened to the dogs?’
‘I decrypted them, of course — learnt their messages. But in doing so, I opened myself up to him. To Sun Stealer. The dogs must have limited him somewhat, because his attack on me was far from subtle. Fortunately, because otherwise I might not have deployed my defences in time. He was not particularly hard to defeat, but of course I was only dealing with a tiny part of him.’
‘Then I’m safe?’
‘Well, not quite. I ousted him — but only from the implant in which I reside. Unfortunately my defences do not extend to your other implants, including those Volyova installed in you.’
