The Revelation Space Collection

do about human nature.’

‘Then ask others. Assemble an advisory council.’

‘No.’ Grelier, he realised, was quite right — they had been over this many times. And always it came round to the same points. ‘These negotiations for protection are, by their very nature, extremely sensitive. I can’t risk a security leak to another cathedral.’ He motioned for Grelier to clean his eyes. ‘Look at me,’ he went on, while the surgeon-general opened the medicine cabinet and prepared the antiseptic swabs. ‘I’m a thing of horror, in many respects, bound to this chair, barely able to survive without it. And even if I had the health to leave it, I would remain a prisoner of the Lady Morwenna, still enmeshed in the optical sightlines of my beloved mirrors.’

‘Voluntarily,’ Grelier said.

‘You know what I mean. I cannot move amongst the Ultras as they move amongst us. Cannot step aboard their ships the way other ecumenical emissaries do.’

‘That’s why we have spies.’

‘All the same, it limits me. I need someone I can trust, Grelier, someone like my younger self. Someone able to move amongst them as I used to. Someone they wouldn’t dare to suspect.’

‘Suspect?’ Grelier dabbed at Quaiche’s eyes with the swabs.

‘I mean someone they would automatically trust. Someone not at all like you.’

‘Hold still.’ Quaiche flinched as the stinging swab dug around his eyeball. It amazed him that he had any nerve endings there at all, but Grelier had an unerring ability to find those that remained. ‘Actually,’ Grelier said, musingly, ‘something did occur to me recently. Perhaps it’s worth mentioning.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘You’re aware I like to know what’s happening on Hela. Not just the usual business with the cathedrals and the Way, but in the wider world, including the villages.’

‘Oh, yes. You’re always on the hunt for uncatalogued strains, reports of interesting new heresies from the Hauk settlements, that sort of thing. Then out you ride with your shiny new syringes, like a good little vampire.’

‘I won’t deny that Bloodwork plays a small role in my interest, but along the way I do pick up all sorts of interesting titbits. Keep still.’

‘And you keep out of my sightlines! What sort of titbits?’

‘The last but one time I was awake was a two-year interval, between ten and eight years ago. I remember that revival very well: it was the first occasion on which I found myself needing this cane. Towards the end of that period awake I made a long trip north, following leads on those uncatalogued strains you just mentioned. On the return journey I rode with one of the caravans, keeping my eyes peeled — sorry — for anything else that might take my fancy.’

‘I remember that trip,’ Quaiche said, ‘but I don’t recall you saying that anything of significance happened during it.’

‘Nothing did. Or at least nothing seemed to, at the time. But then I heard a news bulletin a few days ago and it reminded me of something.’

‘Are you going to drag this out much longer?’

Grelier sighed and began returning the equipment to its cabinet. ‘There was a family,’ he said, ‘from the Vigrid badlands. They’d travelled down to meet the caravan. They had two children: a son and a younger daughter.’

‘Fascinating, I’m sure.’

‘The son was looking for work on the Way. I sat in on the recruitment interview, as I was permitted to do. Idle curiosity, really: I had no interest in this particular case, but you never know when someone interesting is going to show up.’ Grelier snapped shut the cabinet.

‘The son had aspirations to work in some technical branch of Way maintenance — strategic planning, something like that. At the time, however, the Way had all the pencil-pushers it needed. The only vacancies available were — shall we say — at the sharp end?’

‘Beggars can’t be choosers,’ Quaiche said.

‘Quite. But in this case the recruiting agent decided against a full and frank disclosure of the relevant facts. He told the son that there would be no difficulty in finding him a safe, well-paid job in the technical bureau. And because the work would be strictly analytical, requiring a clear-headed coolness of mind, there would be no question whatsoever of viral initiation.’

‘If he’d told the truth, he’d have lost the recruit.’

‘Almost certainly. He was a clever lad, no doubt about that. A waste, really, to throw him straight into fuse laying or something with an equally short life-expectancy. And because the family was secular — they mostly are, up in the badlands — he definitely didn’t want your blood in his veins.’

‘It isn’t my blood. It’s a virus.’

Grelier raised a finger, silencing his master. ‘The point is that the recruiting agent had good reason to lie. And it was only a white lie, really. Everyone knew those bureau jobs were thin on the ground. Frankly, I think even the son knew it, but his family needed the money.’

‘There’s a point to this, Grelier, I’m sure of it.’

‘I can barely remember what the son looked like. But the daughter? I can see her now, clear as daylight, looking through all of us as if we were made of glass. She had the most astonishing eyes, a kind of golden brown with little flecks of light in them.’

‘How old would she have been, Grelier?’

‘Eight, nine, I suppose.’

‘You revolt me.’

‘It wasn’t like that,’ Grelier said. ‘Everyone there felt it, I think, especially the recruiting agent. She kept telling her parents he was lying. She was certain. She was visibly affronted by him. It was as if everyone in that room was playing a game and she hadn’t been told about it.’

‘Children behave oddly in adult environments. It was a mistake to have her there.’

‘She wasn’t behaving oddly at all,’ Grelier said. ‘In my view, she was behaving very rationally. It was the adults who weren’t. They all knew that the recruiting agent was lying, but she was the only one who wasn’t in denial about it.’

‘I expect she overheard some remark before the interview, something about how the recruiting agents always lie.’

‘She may have done, but even at the time I thought it went a little deeper than that. I think she just knew that the recruiter was lying simply by looking at him. There are people, individuals, who have that ability. They’re born with it. Not more than one in a thousand, and probably even fewer who have it to the extent of that little girl.’

‘Mind-reading?’

‘No. Just an acute awareness of the subliminal information already available. Facial expression, primarily. The muscles in your face can form forty-three distinct movements, which enable tens of thousands in combination.’

Grelier had done his homework, Quaiche thought. This little digression had obviously been planned all along.

‘Many of these expressions are involuntary,’ he continued. ‘Unless you’ve been very well trained, you simply can’t lie without revealing yourself through your expressions. Most of the time, of course, it doesn’t matter. The people around you are none the wiser, just as blind to those microexpressions. But imagine if you had that awareness. Not just the means to read the people around you when they don’t even know they’re being read, but the self-control to block your own involuntary signals.’

‘Mm.’ Quaiche could see where this was heading. ‘It wouldn’t be much use against something like Heckel, but a baseline negotiator… or something with a face… that’s a different matter. You think you could teach me this?’

‘I can do better than that,’ Grelier said. ‘I can bring you the girl. She can teach you herself.’

For a moment, Quaiche regarded the hanging image of Haldora, mesmerised by a writhing filament of lightning in the southern polar region.

‘You’d have to bring her here first,’ he said. ‘Not easy, if you can’t lie to her at any point.’