The Revelation Space Collection

delusional, but his examination raised as many questions as it answered.’

‘You talk about a baby,’ Clavain said before Khouri had a chance to interrupt, ‘but according to this report you’ve never given birth. Nor is there any obvious sign of Caesarean surgery having been performed.’

‘It wouldn’t be obvious — it was done by Conjoiner medics. They can sew you up so cleanly it’s as if it never happened.’ She looked at each of them in turn, her anger and fear equally clear. ‘Are you saying you don’t believe me?’

Clavain shook his head. ‘I’m saying we can’t verify your story, that’s all. According to Valensin there is womb distension consistent with you having very recently been pregnant, and there are hormonal changes in your blood that support the same conclusion. But Valensin admits that there could be other explanations.’

‘They don’t contradict my story, either.’

‘But we’ll need more convincing before we organise a military action,’ Clavain said.

‘Again: why can’t you just trust me?’

‘Because it’s not only the story about your baby that doesn’t make sense,’ Clavain replied. ‘How did you get here, Ana? Where’s the ship that should have brought you? You didn’t come all the way from the Resurgam system in that capsule, and yet there’s no sign of any other spacecraft having entered our system.’

‘And that makes me a liar?’

‘It makes us suspicious,’ Scorpio said. ‘It makes us wonder if you’re what you appear to be.’

‘The ships are here,’ she said, sighing, as if spoiling a carefully planned surprise. ‘All of them. They’re concentrated in the immediate volume of space around this planet. Remontoire, the Zodiacal Light, the two remaining starships from Skade’s taskforce — they’re all up there, within one AU of this planet. They’ve been in your system for nine weeks. That’s how I got here, Clavain.’

‘You can’t hide ships that easily,’ he said. ‘Not consistently, not all the time. Not when we’re actively looking for them.’

‘We can now,’ she said. ‘We have techniques you know nothing about. Things we’ve learned… things we’ve had to learn since the last time you saw us. Things you won’t believe.’

Clavain glanced at Scorpio. The pig tried to guess what was going through the old man’s mind and failed.

‘Such as?’ Clavain asked.

‘New engines,’ she said. ‘Dark drives. You can’t see them. Nothing sees them. The exhaust… slips away. Camouflaging screens. Free-force bubbles. Miniaturised cryo-arithmetic engines. Reliable control of inertia on bulk scales. Hypometric weapons.’ She shivered. ‘I really don’t like the hypometric weapons. They scare me. I’ve seen what happens when they go wrong. They’re not right.’

‘All that in twenty-odd years?’ Clavain asked, incredulously.

‘We had some help.’

‘Sounds as if you had God on the end of the phone, taking down your wish list.’

‘It wasn’t God, believe me. I should know. I was the one who did the asking.’

‘And who exactly did you ask?’

‘My daughter,’ Khouri said. ‘She knows things, Clavain. That’s why she’s valuable. That’s why Skade wants her.’

Scorpio felt dizzy: it seemed that every time they scratched back one layer of Khouri’s story, there was something even less comprehensible behind it.

‘I still don’t understand why you didn’t signal your arrival from orbit,’ Clavain said.

‘Partly because we didn’t want to draw attention to Ararat,’ Khouri said. ‘Not until we had to. There’s a war going on up there, understand? A major space engagement, with heavily stealthed combatants. Any kind of signalling is a risk. There’s also a lot of jamming and disruption going on.’

‘Between Skade’s forces and your own?’

‘It’s more complicated than that. Until recently, Skade was fighting with us, rather than against us. Even now, aside from the personal business between Skade and myself, I’d say we’re in what you might call a state of uneasy truce.’

‘Then who the hell are you fighting?’ Clavain asked.

‘The Inhibitors,’ Khouri said. ‘The wolves, whatever you want to call them.’

‘They’re here?’ Scorpio asked. ‘Actually in this system?’

‘Sorry to rain on your parade,’ Khouri said.

‘Well,’ Clavain said, looking around, ‘I don’t know about the rest of you, but that certainly puts a dent in my day.’

‘That was the idea,’ Khouri said.

Clavain ran a finger down the straight line of his nose. ‘One other thing. Several times since you arrived here you’ve mentioned a word that sounds like “hella”. You even said we had to get there. The name means nothing to me. What is its significance?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t even remember saying it.’

TWELVE

Hela, 2727

Quaestor Jones had been warned to expect a new guest aboard his caravan. The warning had come straight from the Permanent Way, with the official seals of the Clocktower. Shortly afterwards, a small spacecraft — a single-seat shuttle of Ultra manufacture shaped like a cockleshell — came sliding over the procession of caravan vehicles.

The ruby-hulled vehicle loitered on a spike of expertly balanced thrust, hovering unnervingly while the caravan continued on its way. Then it lowered, depositing itself on the main landing pad. The hull opened and a vacuum-suited figure stepped from the vehicle’s hatch. The figure hesitated, reaching back into the cockpit for a walking stick and a small white case. Cameras tracked him from different viewpoints as he made his way down into the caravan, opening normally impassable doors with Clocktower keys, shutting them neatly behind him. He walked very slowly, taking his time, giving the quaestor the opportunity to exercise his imagination. Now and then he tapped his cane against some component of the caravan, or paused to run a gloved hand along the top of a wall, inspecting his fingers as if for dust.

‘I don’t like this, Peppermint,’ the quaestor told the creature perched on his desk. ‘It’s never good when they send someone out, especially when they only give you an hour’s warning. It means they want to surprise you. It means they think you’re up to something.’

The creature busied itself with the small pile of seeds the quaestor had tipped on to the table. There was something engrossing about just watching it eat and then clean itself. Its faceted black eyes — in the right light they were actually a very dark, lustrous purple — shone like rare minerals.

‘Who can it be, who can it be…’ the quaestor said, drumming his fingers on the table. ‘Here, have some more seeds. A stick. Who do we know who walks with a stick?’

The creature looked up at him, as if on the verge of having an opinion. Then it went back to its nibbling, its tail coiled around a paperweight.

‘This isn’t good, Peppermint. I can feel it.’

The quaestor prided himself on running a tight ship, as far as caravans went. He did what the church asked of him, but in every other respect he kept his nose out of cathedral business. His caravan always returned to the Way on time to meet its rendezvous, and he rarely came back without a respectable haul of pilgrims, migrant workers and scuttler artefacts. He took care of his passengers and clients without in any way seeking their friendship or gratitude. He needed neither: he had his responsibilities, and he had Peppermint, and that was all that mattered.

Things had not been as good lately as in the past, but that went for all the caravans, and if they were going