‘She wasn’t so unwell that she couldn’t fly a ship. Thing is, John, she felt she had something to atone for. You remember what she did to the colonists, when your crew were trying to find Sylveste? Made them think she’d wiped out a whole settlement in a fit of pique? That’s why they wanted her for a war criminal. Towards the end, I wonder whether she didn’t start believing it herself. How are we to know what went through her head? If enough people hate you, it can’t be easy not to start thinking they might be right.’
‘She wasn’t a particularly good woman,’ the Captain said, ‘but she wasn’t what they made her out to be. She only ever did what she thought right for the ship.’
‘I guess that makes her a good woman in my book. Right now the ship is about all we have, John.’
‘Do you think it worked for her?’ he asked.
‘What?’
‘Atonement, Antoinette. Do you think it made the slightest difference, in the end?’
‘I can’t guess what went through her mind.’
‘Did it make any difference to the rest of you?’
‘We’re here, aren’t we? We got out of the system alive. If Ilia hadn’t taken her stand, we’d probably all be smeared over a few light-hours of local solar space around Resurgam.’
‘I hope you’re right. I did forgive her, you know.’
Antoinette knew that it had been Ilia who had allowed the Captain’s Melding Plague to finally engulf the ship. At the time she did it, it had seemed the only way to rid the ship of a different kind of parasite entirely. Antoinette did not think that Ilia had taken the decision lightly. Equally — based on her very limited experience of the woman — she did not think consideration of the Captain’s feelings had had very much influence on her decision.
‘That’s pretty generous of you,’ she said.
‘I realise that she did it for the ship. I realise also that she could have killed me instead. I think she wanted to, after she learned what I had done to Sajaki.’
‘Sorry, but that’s way before my time.’
‘I murdered a good man,’ the Captain said. ‘Ilia knew. When she did this to me, when she made me what I am, she knew what I’d done. I would have sooner she’d killed me.’
‘Then you’ve paid for whatever you did,’ Antoinette said. ‘And even if you hadn’t then, even if she hadn’t done whatever she did, it doesn’t matter. What counts is that you saved one hundred and sixty thousand people from certain death. You’ve repaid that one crime a hundred thousand times over and more.’
‘You imagine that’s the way the world works, Antoinette?’
‘It’s good enough for me, John, but what do I know? I’m just a space pilot’s daughter from the Rust Belt.’
There was a lull. Still holding the helmet, the Captain took the end of the ribbed red umbilical and connected it to the socket in the side of the helmet. The interface between the real object and the simulated presence was disturbingly seamless.
‘The trouble is, Antoinette, what good was it to save those lives, if all that happens is that they die now, here on Ararat?’
‘We don’t know that anyone’s going to die. So far the Inhibitors haven’t touched us down here.’
‘All the same, you’d like some insurance.’
‘We need to consider the unthinkable, John. If the worst comes to the worst, we’ll need to leave Ararat. And you’re going to have to be the man with the plan.’
He slipped the helmet on to his neck ring, twisting it to and fro to engage the latching mechanisms. The faceplate glass was still up. The whites of his eyes were two bright crescents in the shadowed map of his face. Green and red numerals were back-reflected on to his skin.
‘It took some guts to come down here on your own, Antoinette.’
‘I don’t think this is a time for cowards,’ she said.
‘It never was,’ he said, beginning to slide down the faceplate glass. ‘About what you want of me?’
‘Yes?’
‘I’ll give the matter some thought.’
Then he turned around and walked slowly into the darkness. A skirl of red-brown dust swelled up to block him from view. It was like a sandstorm on Mars.
The Ultra captain was called Heckel, his ship the
Even by recent standards, Heckel struck Quaiche as a very strange individual. The mobility suit in which he came aboard the Lady Morwenna was a monstrous contraption of leather and brass, with rubberised accordion joints and gleaming metal plates secured by rivets. Behind the tiny grilled-over eyeholes of his helmet, wiper blades flicked back and forth to clear condensation. Steam vented from poorly maintained joints and seals. Two assistants had accompanied him: they were constantly opening and closing hatches in the suit, fiddling with brass knobs and valves. When Heckel spoke, his voice emerged from a miniature pipe organ projecting from the top of his helmet. He had to keep making adjustments to knobs in his chest area to stop the voice becoming too shrill or deep.
Quaiche understood none of Heckel’s utterances, but that was all right: Heckel had also brought along a baseline interpreter. She was a small doe-eyed woman dressed in a more modern spacesuit. Her helmet had folded back on itself, retracting like a cockatoo’s crest so that everyone could see her face.
‘You’re not an Ultra,’ Quaiche remarked to the interpreter.
‘Does it matter?’
‘I just find it amusing, that’s all. It’s where I started, doing the same line of work as you.’
‘That must have been a long time ago.’
‘But they still don’t find it any easier to negotiate with the likes of us, do they?’
‘Us, Dean?’
‘Baseline humans, like you and me.’
She hid it well, but he read her amused reaction. He saw himself from her point of view: an old man reclining on a couch, deathly frail, surrounded by an audience of moving mirrors, his eyes peeled open like fruits. He was not wearing the sunglasses.
Quaiche moved a hand. ‘I wasn’t always like this. I could pass for a baseline human, once, move in normal society with no one so much as batting an eyelid. I was taken into the employment of Ultras, just as you have been. Queen Jasmina, of the
Heckel adjusted his chest knobs, then piped out something incomprehensible.
‘He says Jasmina did not have the best of reputations, even amongst other Ultras,’ the interpreter said. ‘He says that even now, in certain Ultra circles, mentioning her name is considered the height of bad taste.’
‘I didn’t know Ultras even recognised bad taste as a concept,’ Quaiche replied archly.
Heckel piped back something shrill and peremptory.
‘He says there is a lot you need to remember,’ the interpreter said. ‘He also says he has other business he needs to attend to today.’
Quaiche fingered the edge of his scarlet blanket. ‘Very well, then. Just to clarify… you would be willing to consider my offer?’
The interpreter listened to Heckel for a moment, then addressed Quaiche. ‘He says he understands the logic of your proposed security arrangement.’
Quaiche nodded enthusiastically, forcing the mirrors to nod synchronously. ‘Of course, it would work to the benefit of
