‘No,’ I said. ‘You’re wrong. It’s much too late.’
Celestine reached out to help me make my awkward way to the next door. ‘Leave him, Richard. Leave him to the Spire. It’s what he’s always wanted, and he’s had his witnesses now.’
Childe eased himself onto the lip of the door leading into the room we had just come through.
‘Well?’ he said.
‘She’s right. Whatever happens now, it’s between you and the Spire. I suppose I should wish you the best of luck, except it would sound irredeemably trite.’
He shrugged; one of the few human gestures now available to him. ‘I’ll take whatever I can get. And I assure you that we will meet again, whether you like it or not.’
‘I hope so,’ I said, while knowing it would never be the case. ‘In the meantime, I’ll give your regards to Chasm City.’
‘Do that, please. Just don’t be too specific about where I went.’
‘I promise you that. Roland?’
‘Yes?’
‘I think I should say goodbye now.’
Childe turned around and slithered into the darkness, propelling himself with quick, piston-like movements of his forearms.
Then Celestine took my arm and helped me towards the exit.
THIRTEEN
‘You were right,’ I told her as we made our way back to the shuttle. ‘I think I would have followed him.’
Celestine smiled. ‘But I’m glad you didn’t.’
‘Do you mind if I ask something?’
‘As long as it isn’t to do with mathematics.’
‘Why did you care what happened to me, and not Childe?’
‘I did care about Childe,’ she said firmly. ‘But I didn’t think any of us were going to be able to persuade him to turn back.’
‘And that was the only reason?’
‘No. I also thought you deserved something better than to be killed by the Spire.’
‘You risked your life to get me out,’ I said. ‘I’m not ungrateful.’
‘Not ungrateful? Is that your idea of an expression of gratitude?’ But she was smiling, and I felt a faint impulse to smile as well. ‘Well, at least that sounds like the old Richard.’
‘There’s hope for me yet, then. Trintignant can put me back the way I should be, after he’s done with you.’
But when we got back to the shuttle there was no sign of Doctor Trintignant. We searched for him, but found nothing; not even a set of tracks leading away. None of the remaining suits were missing, and when we contacted the orbiting ship they had no knowledge of the Doctor’s whereabouts.
Then we found him.
He had placed himself on his operating couch, beneath the loom of swift, beautiful surgical machinery. And the machines had dismantled him, separating him into his constituent components, placing some pieces of him in neatly labelled fluid-filled flasks and others in vials. Chunks of eviscerated bio-machinery floated like stinger-laden jellyfish. Implants and mechanisms glittered like small, precisely jewelled ornaments.
There was surprisingly little in the way of organic matter.
‘He killed himself,’ Celestine said. Then she found his hat — the homburg — which he had placed at the head of the operating couch. Inside, tightly folded and marked in precise handwriting, was what amounted to Trintignant’s suicide note.
My dear friends, he had written.
After giving the matter no little consideration, I have decided to dispose of myself. I find the prospect of my own dismantling a more palatable one than continuing to endure revulsion for a crime I do not believe I committed. Please do not attempt to put me back together; the endeavour would, I assure you, be quite futile. I trust, however, that the manner of my demise — and the annotated state to which I have reduced myself — will provide some small amusement to future scholars of cybernetics.
I must confess that there is another reason why I have chosen to bring about this somewhat terminal state of affairs. Why, after all, did I not end myself on Yellowstone?
The answer, I am afraid, lies as much in vanity as anything else.
Thanks to the Spire — and to the good offices of Mister Childe — I have been given the opportunity to continue the work that was so abruptly terminated by the unpleasantness in Chasm City. And thanks to yourselves — who were so keen to learn the Spire’s secrets — I have been gifted with subjects willing to submit to some of my less orthodox procedures.
You in particular, Mister Swift, have been a Godsend. I consider the series of transformations I have wrought upon you to be my finest achievement to date. You have become my magnum opus. I fully accept that you saw the surgery merely as a means to an end, and that you would not otherwise have consented to my ministrations, but that in no way lessens the magnificence of what you have become.
And therein, I am afraid, lies the problem.
Whether you conquer the Spire or retreat from it — assuming, of course, that it does not kill you — there will surely come a time when you will desire to return to your prior form. And that would mean that I would be compelled to undo my single greatest work.
Something I would rather die than do.
Childe never returned. After ten days we searched the area about the Spire’s base, but there were no remains that had not been there before. I supposed that there was nothing for it but to assume that he was still inside; still working his way to whatever lay at the summit.
And I wondered.
What ultimate function did the Spire serve? Was it possible that it served none but its own self-preservation? Perhaps it simply lured the curious into it, and forced them to adapt — becoming more like machines themselves — until they reached the point when they were of use to it.
At which point it harvested them.
Was it possible that the Spire was no more purposeful than a flytrap?
I had no answers. And I did not want to remain on Golgotha pondering such things. I did not trust myself not to return to the Spire. I still felt its feral pull.
So we left.
‘Promise me,’ Celestine said.
‘What?’
‘That whatever happens when we get home — whatever’s become of the city — you won’t go back to the Spire.’
‘I won’t go back,’ I said. ‘And I promise you that. I can even have the memory of it suppressed, so it doesn’t haunt my dreams.’
‘Why not,’ she said. ‘You’ve done it before, after all.’
But when we returned to Chasm City we found that Childe had not been lying. Things had changed, but not for the better. The thing that they called the Melding Plague had plunged our city back into a festering, technologically decadent dark age. The wealth we had accrued on Childe’s expedition meant nothing now, and what small influence my family had possessed before the crisis had diminished even further.
In better days, Trintignant’s work could probably have been undone. It would not have been simple, but there were those who relished such a challenge, and I would probably have had to fight off several competing
