for a certain superciliousness — that she might find either fascinating or untrustworthy, depending on her mood. He did not look like a man much inclined to small talk. Usually that was all right with Antoinette.
‘I brought this back,’ she said. She stooped down and picked up the helmet.
‘Give it to me.’
She moved to throw it.
‘No,’ he said sharply. ‘Give it to me. Walk closer and hand it to me.’
‘I’m not sure I’m ready to do that,’ she said.
‘It’s called a gesture of mutual trust. You either do it or the conversation ends here. I’ve already said I won’t hurt you. Didn’t you believe me?’
She thought of the machinery that the goggles had edited out of her vision. Perhaps if she took them off, so that she saw the apparition as it really was…
‘Leave the goggles on. That’s also part of the deal.’
She took a step closer. It was clear that she had no choice.
‘Good. Now give me the helmet.’
Another step. Then one more. The Captain waited with his hands at his sides, his eyes encouraging her forwards.
‘I understand that you’re scared,’ he said. ‘That’s the point. If you weren’t frightened, there’d be no show of trust, would there?’
‘I’m just wondering what you’re getting out of this.’
‘I’m trusting you not to let me down. Now pass me the helmet.’ She held it out in front of her, as far as her arms would stretch, and the Captain reached out to take it from her. The goggles lagged slightly, so that a flicker of machinery was briefly visible as his arms moved. His gloved fingers closed around the helmet. She heard the rasp of metal on metal.
The Captain took a step back. ‘Good,’ he said, approvingly. He rolled the helmet in his hands, inspecting it for signs of wear. Antoinette noticed now that there was a vacant round socket in one side, into which the red umbilical was meant to plug. ‘Thank you for bringing this down to me. The gesture is appreciated.’
‘You left it with Palfrey. That wasn’t an accident, was it?’
‘I suppose not. What did you say it was — a “calling card”? Not far from the truth, I guess.’
‘I took it as a sign that you were willing to talk to someone.’
‘You seemed very anxious to talk to me,’ he said.
‘We were. We are.’ She looked at the apparition with a mixture of fear and dangerous, seductive relief. ‘Do you mind if I ask you something?’ She took his silence to indicate assent. ‘What shall I call you? “Captain” doesn’t seem quite right to me, not now that we’ve been through the mutual-trust thing.’
‘Fair point,’ he conceded, not sounding entirely convinced. ‘John will do for now.’
‘Then, John, what have I done to deserve this? It wasn’t just my bringing back the helmet, was it?’
‘Like I said, you seemed anxious to talk.’
Antoinette bent down to pick up her torch. ‘I’ve been trying to reach you for years, with no success at all. What’s changed?’
‘I feel different now,’ he said.
‘As if you were asleep but have finally woken up?’
‘It’s more as if I
‘I’m not sure. This might sound rude, but… who am I talking to, exactly?’
‘You’re talking to me. As I am. As I was.’
‘No one really knows who you were, John. That suit looks pretty old to me.’
A gloved hand moved across the square chest-pack, tracing a pattern from point to point. To Antoinette it looked like a benediction, but it might equally have been a rote-learned inspection of critical systems.
‘I was on Mars,’ he said.
‘I’ve never been there,’ she said.
‘No?’ He sounded disappointed.
‘Fact of the matter is, I really haven’t seen all that many worlds. Yellowstone, a bit of Resurgam, and this place. But never Mars. What was it like?’
‘Different. Wilder. Colder. Savage. Unforgiving. Cruel. Pristine. Bleak. Beautiful. Like a lover with a temper.’
‘But this was a while back, wasn’t it?’
‘Uh huh. How old do you think this suit is?’
‘It looks pretty damn antique to me.’
‘They haven’t made suits like this since the twenty-first century. You think Clavain’s old, a relic from history. I was an old man before he took a breath.’
It surprised her to hear him mention Clavain by name. Clearly the Captain was more aware of shipboard developments than some gave him credit for. ‘You’ve come a long way, then,’ she said.
‘It’s been a long, strange trip, yes. And just look where it’s brought me.’
‘You must have some stories to tell.’ Antoinette reckoned that there were two safe areas of conversation: the present and the very distant past. The last thing she wanted was to have the Captain dwelling on his recent sickness and bizarre transformation.
‘There are some stories I don’t want told,’ he said. ‘But isn’t that true for us all?’
‘No argument from me.’
His thin slit of a mouth hinted at a smile. ‘Dark secrets in your own past, Antoinette?’
‘Nothing I’m going to lose any sleep over, not when we have so much else we need to worry about.’
‘Ah.’ He rotated the helmet in his gloved hands. ‘The difficult matter of the present. I am aware of things, of course, perhaps more than you realise. I know, for instance, that there are other agencies in the system.’
‘You feel them?’
‘It was their noises that woke me from long, calm dreams of Mars.’ He regarded the icons and decals on the helmet, stroking them with the stubby tip of one gloved finger. Antoinette wondered about the memories they stirred, preserved across five or six hundred years of experience. Memories thick with the grey dust of centuries.
‘We thought that you were waking,’ she said. ‘In the last few weeks we’ve become more aware of your presence. We didn’t think it was coincidence, especially after what Khouri told us. I know you remember Khouri, John, or you wouldn’t have brought me down here.’
‘Where is she?’
‘With Clavain and the others.’
‘And Ilia? Where is Ilia?’
Antoinette was sweating. The temptation to lie, to offer a soothing platitude, was overwhelming. But she did not doubt for one instant that the Captain would see through any attempt at deception. ‘Ilia’s dead.’
The black and white cap bowed down. ‘I thought I might have dreamed it,’ he said. ‘That’s the problem now. I can’t always tell what’s real and what’s imagined. I might be dreaming you at this very moment.’
‘I’m real,’ she said, as if her assurance would make any difference, ‘but Ilia’s dead. You remember what happened, don’t you?’
His voice was soft and thoughtful, like a child remembering the significant events in a nursery tale. ‘I remember that she was here, and that we were alone. I remember her lying in a bed, with people around her.’
What was she going to tell him now? That the reason Ilia had been in a bed in the first place was because she had suffered injuries during her efforts to thwart the Captain’s own suicide attempt, when he had directed one of the cache weapons against the hull of the ship. The scar he had inflicted on the hull was visible even now, a vertical fissure down one side of the spire. She was certain that on some level he knew all this but also that he did not need to be reminded of it now.
‘She died,’ Antoinette said, ‘trying to save us all. I gave her the use of my ship,
‘But I remember her being unwell.’
