Brother Seyfarth stepped through the aperture and stood eye to eye with Scorpio. ‘Don’t trust us, sir?’
‘Got a job to do,’ Scorpio said. ‘That’s all.’
The leader nodded gravely. ‘Don’t we all? Well, no hard feelings. I take it you didn’t find anything suspicious?’
‘I didn’t
The man winked at him, as if the two of them were sharing a joke. The other nineteen delegates bustled through, Scorpio’s distorted reflection gleaming back at him in the buffed and polished plates of their armour. He looked worried.
Now that they were aboard he had to keep them where he wanted them. They didn’t need to see the whole of the ship, just the parts that related to their specific areas of interest. No tour of the cache weapon chambers, no tour of the hypometric weapon shafts or any of the other modifications installed after their departure from Ararat. He’d be careful to keep the delegates away from the weirder manifestations of the Captain’s transforming illness, too, although some of the changes were always going to be apparent. They bobbed along behind him like twenty ducklings, showing emphatic interest in everything he stopped to point out.
‘Interesting interior design you have here,’ the leader said, fingering — with vague distaste — a riblike extrusion sticking out from a wall. ‘We always knew that your ship looked a little odd from the outside, but we never imagined you’d have extended the theme all the way through.’
‘It grows on you,’ Scorpio said.
‘I don’t suppose it makes very much difference, from our point of view. As long as the ship does what you’ve claimed it can, who are we to care about the decor?’
‘What you really care about is our hull defences and long-range sensors, I imagine,’ Scorpio said.
‘Your technical specifications were very impressive,’ Brother Seyfarth said. ‘Naturally, we’ll have to double- check. The security of Hela depends on our knowing that you can deliver the protection you promised.’
‘I don’t think you need lose any sleep over that,’ Scorpio said.
‘You’re not offended, I hope?’
The pig turned back to him. ‘Do I look like someone easily offended? ’
‘Not at all,’ Seyfarth said, his fists clenching.
They were uneasy around him, Scorpio realised. He doubted that they saw many pigs on Hela. ‘We’re not great travellers,’ he elaborated. ‘We tend to die on the way.’
‘Sir?’ asked one of the other delegates. ‘Sir, if it isn’t too much bother, we’d really like to see the engines.’
Scorpio checked the time. They were on schedule. In fewer than six hours he would be able to launch the two instrument packages into Haldora. They were simply modified automated drones, hardened slightly to tolerate passage into the atmosphere of a gas giant. No one was exactly certain what they would encounter when they hit the visible surface of Haldora, but it seemed prudent to take every precaution, even if the planet popped like a soap bubble.
‘You want to see the engines?’ he said. ‘No problem. No problem at all.’
The light from Hela’s sun was low on the horizon, casting the cathedral’s great gothic shadow far ahead of it. It was more than two days since Vasko and Khouri had first visited Quaiche, and in the intervening time the Lady Morwenna had nearly reached the western edge of the rift. The bridge lay before it: a sparkling, dreamlike confection of sugar-ice and gossamer. Now that they were so close to it, the cathedral looked heavier, the bridge less substantial, the very idea of taking one across the other even more absurd.
A thought occurred to Vasko: what if the bridge didn’t exist any more? It was a foolhardy thing to take the Lady Morwenna across such a fragile structure, but in Quaiche’s mind there must have been at least a glimmer of hope that he might succeed. But if the bridge was destroyed, surely he wouldn’t take the cathedral over the edge, to certain destruction?
‘How far?’ Khouri asked.
‘Twelve, thirteen kilometres,’ Vasko said. ‘She travels about a kilometre per hour, which gives us around half a day before it really wouldn’t be a good idea to be aboard any more.’
‘That doesn’t give us much time.’
‘We don’t need much time,’ he said. ‘Twelve hours should be more than enough time to get in and out. All we have to do is find Aura, and whatever we need from Quaiche. How difficult can it be?’
‘Scorpio needs time to drop those instrument packages into Haldora, ’ she said. ‘If we break our side of the agreement before he’s done, there’s no telling how much trouble we’ll be in. Things could start getting messy. That’s exactly what we spent nine years trying to avoid.’
‘It’ll be all right,’ Vasko said. ‘Trust me on this, it’ll be all right.’
‘Scorp didn’t like the idea of those delegates,’ she said.
‘They’re church dignitaries,’ Vasko said. ‘How much of a problem can they be?’
‘In these matters,’ Khouri said, ‘I’m inclined to trust Scorpio’s judgement. Sorry, but he’s got a bit more mileage on him than you have.’
‘I’m getting there,’ Vasko said.
Their shuttle picked its way down to the cathedral. It grew from something small and delicate, like an ornate architectural model, to something huge and threatening. Something more than a building, Vasko thought: more like a pinnacled chunk of the landscape that had decided to make a slow circumnavigation of its world.
They landed. Suited Adventist officials were there to usher them deep into the iron heart of the Lady Morwenna.
FORTY-ONE
At long last, Quaiche could see the bridge for himself. The spectacle sent a shiver of excitement through him. There was less ground to cover to reach it now than the span of the bridge itself. Everything he had planned, everything he had schemed into existence, was now tantalisingly close to fruition.
‘Look at it, Rashmika,’ he said, inviting the girl to stand by the garret window and admire the view for herself. ‘So ancient, yet so sparklingly ageless. From the moment I announced that we were to cross the rift, I’ve been counting every second. We’re not there yet, but at least now I can see it.’
‘Are you really going to do it?’ she asked.
‘You think I’ve come all this way just to back down now? Not likely. The prestige of the church is at stake, Rashmika. Nothing matters more to me than that.’
‘I wish I could read your face,’ she said. ‘I wish I could see your eyes and I wish Grelier hadn’t deadened all your nerve endings. Then I’d know if you were telling the truth.’
‘You don’t believe me?’
‘I don’t know what to believe,’ she said.
‘I’m not asking you to believe anything,’ he said, turning his couch around so that all the mirrors had to adjust their angles. ‘I’ve never asked you to submit to faith, Rashmika. All I’ve ever asked of you is honest judgement. What troubles you, all of a sudden?’
‘I need to know the truth,’ she said. ‘Before you take this thing over the bridge, I want some answers.’
His eyes quivered in their sockets. ‘I’ve always been open with you.’
‘Then what about the vanishing that never happened? Was that you, Dean? Did
‘Make that happen?’ he echoed, as if her words made no sense at all.
‘You had a lapse of faith, didn’t you? A crisis during which you began to think that there was a rational explanation for the vanishings after all. Maybe you’d developed immunity to whatever was the strongest indoctrinal virus Grelier could offer you that week.’
‘Be very, very careful, Rashmika. You’re useful to me, but you’re far from indispensable.’
She gathered her composure. ‘What I mean is, did you decide to test your faith? Did you arrange for an
