formed my surroundings. I did not know whether I was more disturbed at the presence of the alien object under my flesh, or my unnatural reaction to it.
I stumbled groggily into the common quarters of the shuttle, presenting my wrist to Childe, who was sitting there with Celestine.
She looked at me before Childe had a chance to answer. ‘So you’ve got one too,’ she said, showing me the similar shape lurking just below her own skin. The shape rhymed — there was no other word for it — with the surrounding panels and extrusions of the commons. ‘Um, Richard?’ she added.
‘I’m feeling a little strange.’
‘Blame Childe. He put them there. Didn’t you, you lying rat?’
‘It’s easily removed,’ he said, all innocence. ‘It just seemed more prudent to implant the devices while you were all asleep anyway, so as not to waste any more time than necessary.’
‘It’s not just the thing in my wrist,’ I said, ‘whatever it is.’
‘It’s something to keep us awake,’ Celestine said, her anger just barely under control. Feeling less myself than ever, I watched the way her face changed shape as she spoke, conscious of the armature of muscle and bone lying just beneath the skin.
‘Awake?’ I managed.
‘A… shunt, of some kind,’ she said. ‘Ultras use them, I gather. It sucks fatigue poisons out of the blood, and puts other chemicals back into the blood to upset the brain’s normal sleeping cycle. With one of these you can stay conscious for weeks, with almost no psychological problems.’
I forced a smile, ignoring the sense of wrongness I felt. ‘It’s the almost part that worries me.’
‘Me too.’ She glared at Childe. ‘But much as I hate the little rat for doing this without my permission, I admit to seeing the sense in it.’
I felt the bump in my wrist again. ‘Trintignant’s work, I presume? ’
‘Count yourself lucky he didn’t hack your arms and legs off while he was at it.’
Childe interrupted her. ‘I told him to install the shunts. We can still catnap, if we have the chance. But these devices will let us stay alert when we need alertness. They’re really no more sinister than that.’
‘There’s something else…’ I said tentatively. I glanced at Celestine, trying to judge if she felt as oddly as I did. ‘Since I’ve been awake, I’ve… experienced things differently. I keep seeing shapes in a new light. What exactly have you done to me, Childe?’
‘Again, nothing irreversible. Just a small medichine infusion—’
I tried to keep my temper. ‘What sort of medichines?’
‘Neural modifiers.’ He raised a hand defensively, and I saw the same rectangular bulge under his skin. ‘Your brain is already swarming with Demarchist implants and cellular machines, Richard, so why pretend that what I’ve done is anything more than a continuation of what was already there?’
‘What the fuck is he talking about?’ said Hirz, who had been standing at the door to the commons for the last few seconds. ‘Is it to do with the weird shit I’ve been dealing with since waking up?’
‘Very probably,’ I said, relieved that at least I was not going insane. ‘Let me guess — heightened mathematical and spatial awareness?’
‘If that’s what you call it, yeah. Seeing shapes everywhere, and thinking of them fitting together…’
Hirz turned to look at Childe. Small as she was, she looked easily capable of inflicting injury. ‘Start talking, dickhead.’
Childe spoke with quiet calm. ‘I put modifiers in your brain, via the wrist shunt. The modifiers haven’t performed any radical neural restructuring, but they are suppressing and enhancing certain regions of brain function. The effect — crudely speaking — is to enhance your spatial abilities, at the expense of some less essential functions. What you are getting is a glimpse into the cognitive realms that Celestine inhabits as a matter of routine.’ Celestine opened her mouth to speak, but he cut her off with a raised palm. ‘No more than a glimpse, no, but I think you’ll agree that — given the kinds of challenges the Spire likes to throw at us — the modifiers will give us an edge that we lacked previously.’
‘You mean you’ve turned us all into maths geniuses, overnight?’
‘Broadly speaking, yes.’
‘Well, that’ll come in handy,’ Hirz said.
‘It will?’
‘Yeah. When you try and fit the pieces of your dick back together.’
She lunged for him.
‘Hirz, I…’
‘Stop,’ I said, interceding. ‘Childe was wrong to do this without our consent, but — given the situation we find ourselves in — the idea makes sense.’
‘Whose side are you on?’ Hirz said, backing away with a look of righteous fury in her eyes.
‘Nobody’s,’ I said. ‘I just want to do whatever it takes to beat the Spire.’
Hirz glared at Childe. ‘All right. This time. But you try another stunt like that, and…’
But even then it was obvious that Hirz had come to the conclusion that I had already arrived at myself: that, given what the Spire was likely to test us with, it was better to accept these machines than ask for them to be flushed out of our systems.
There was just one troubling thought which I could not quite dismiss.
Would I have welcomed the machines so willingly before they had invaded my head, or were they partly influencing my decision?
I had no idea.
But I decided to worry about that later.
FIVE
‘Three hours,’ Childe said triumphantly. ‘Took us nineteen to reach this point on our last trip through. That has to mean something, doesn’t it?’
‘Yeah,’ Hirz said snidely. ‘It means it’s a piece of piss when you know the answers.’
We were standing by the door where Celestine had made her mistake the last time. She had just pressed the correct topological symbol and the door had opened to admit us to the chamber beyond, one we had not so far stepped into. From now on we would be facing fresh challenges again, rather than passing through those we had already faced. The Spire, it appeared, was more interested in probing the limits of our understanding than getting us simply to solve permutations of the same basic challenge.
It wanted to break us, not stress us.
More and more I was thinking of it as a sentient thing: inquisitive and patient and — when the mood took it — immensely capable of cruelty.
‘What’s in there?’ Forqueray said.
Hirz had gone ahead into the unexplored room.
‘Well, fuck me if it isn’t another puzzle.’
‘Describe it, would you?’
‘Weird shape shit, I think.’ She was quiet for a few seconds. ‘Yeah. Shapes in four dimensions again. Celestine — you wanna take a look at this? I think it’s right up your street.’
‘Any idea what the nature of the task is?’ Celestine asked.
‘Fuck, I don’t know. Something to do with stretching, I think…’
‘Topological deformations,’ Celestine murmured before joining Hirz in the chamber.
For a minute or so the two of them conferred, studying the marked doorframe like a pair of discerning art critics.
On the last run through, Hirz and Celestine had shared almost no common ground: it was unnerving to see how much Hirz now grasped. The machines Childe had pumped into our skulls had improved the mathematical skills of all of us — with the possible exception of Trintignant, who I suspected had not received the therapy — but the effects had differed in nuance, degree and stability. My mathematical brilliance came in feverish, unpredictable
