may be asking — why am I interested in it?’
‘That’s a reasonable question,’ Hegazi said.
‘Because there’s something strange about it.’ Sylveste enlarged the image, until the planet was clearly visible, streaking around the neutron star in its ludicrously rapid orbit.
‘The planet was of extraordinary significance to the Amarantin. It appears in their late-phase artefacts with increasing frequency as one approaches the Event — the stellar flare which wiped them out.’
He knew he had their attention now. If the threat to destroy their ship had appealed to them on the level of self-preservation, now he had fully snared their intellects. He had never doubted that this part would be simpler than with the colonists, for Sajaki’s crew already had the advantage of a cosmic perspective.
‘So what is it?’ Sajaki said.
‘I don’t know. That’s what you’re going to help me find out.’
Hegazi said, ‘You think there might be something on the planet?’
‘Or inside it. We won’t know for sure until we get a lot closer, will we?’
‘It could be a trap,’ Pascale said. ‘I don’t think we should dismiss that possibility — especially if Dan’s right about the timing.’
‘What timing?’ Sajaki said.
Sylveste steepled his fingers. ‘It’s my suspicion — no; not a suspicion, my conclusion — that the Amarantin eventually progressed to the point where they could achieve space travel.’
‘From what I gathered on the surface,’ Sajaki said, ‘there’s very little in the fossil record to substantiate that.’
‘But there wouldn’t be, would there? Technological artefacts are inherently less durable than more primitive items. Pottery endures. Microcircuits crumble to dust. Besides, it took a technology comparable to our own to bury the city under the obelisk. If they were capable of that, we’ve no grounds for presuming they weren’t also capable of reaching the edge of their solar system — perhaps even interstellar space.’
‘You don’t think the Amarantin reached other systems?’
‘I don’t rule it out, no.’
Sajaki smiled. ‘Then where are they now? I can accept one technological civilisation being wiped out without a trace, but not one spread across many worlds. They would have left something behind.’
‘Perhaps they did.’
‘The world around the neutron star? You think that’s where you’ll find the answers to your questions?’
‘If I knew that, I wouldn’t need to go there. All I’m asking is that you let me find out, which means taking me there.’ Sylveste rested his chin on his steepled fingers. ‘You’ll get me as close to the planet as possible, and ensure my safety at the same time. If that means putting the nastier capabilities of this vessel at my disposal, so be it.’
Hegazi looked fascinated and fearful. ‘Do you think we’ll encounter something when we get there — something we need the weapons for?’
‘There’s no harm in taking precautions, is there?’
Sajaki turned to his fellow Triumvir. For a moment it was as if none of the others were present at all as something flickered between them, perhaps on the level of machine thought. When they spoke, it might only have been to repeat the discussion for Sylveste’s benefit. ‘What he said about the device in his eyes — is that possible? I mean, assuming what we know of the technical expertise on Resurgam, could they have installed such an implant in the time we gave them?’
Hegazi took his time before answering. ‘I think, Yuuji-san, that we should seriously consider the possibility.’
Most of Volyova woke up in the recovery suite of the medical bay. She did not need to be told that she had been unconscious for more than a few hours. She had only to examine her state of mind, the feeling that she had been dreaming, deeply so — for centuries — to know that her injuries, and her recuperation, had not been trivial. Sometimes one could feel like one had been dreaming for a lifetime in the shortest of catnaps. But not now, for these dreams were as long, and as saturated with event, as the most turgid of pretechnological fables. She felt that she had lived through dusty, deathless volumes of her own wanderings.
Yet she remembered very little. She had been aboard this ship, yes, and then not aboard it — somewhere else, though where, she was not yet clear — and then something dreadful had happened. All she really remembered was the sound and the fury — but what did they signify? Where had she been?
Dimly — at first wary that it was merely a dislodged fragment of the dream — she remembered Resurgam. And then, slowly, events returned, not as a tidal wave, or even as a landslide, but as a slow, squelching slippage: a disembowelment of the past. They did not even have the decency to return in anything like chronological order. But when she ordered things to her own satisfaction, she remembered the delivering of ultimata, in her voice, oddly enough, announced from orbit to the waiting world below. And then waiting in the storm, and feeling at first a terrible hotness and then an equally terrible coolness in her stomach, and seeing Sudjic standing over her, dispensing pain.
The room’s door opened; Ana Khouri entered, alone.
‘You’re awake,’ she said. ‘Thought so. I had the system advise me when your neural activity passed a certain level consistent with conscious thought. It’s good to have you back, Ilia. We could use some sanity around here.’
‘How long…’ Volyova swallowed her words — they sounded broken and slurred — before beginning again. ‘How long have I been here? And where are we now?’
‘Ten days since the attack, Ilia. We’re — well, I’ll come to that. It’s a long story. How do you feel?’
‘I’ve felt worse.’ Then she wondered why she had said it, because she could not think of an occasion when she had felt this bad, ever. But it seemed to be what one said under the circumstances. ‘What attack?’
‘I don’t think you remember much, do you?’
‘I did just ask that question, Khouri.’
She had joined Volyova, the room extruding a blocky chair by the bedside for her comfort. ‘Sudjic,’ she said. ‘She tried to kill you when we were on Resurgam — you remember, don’t you?’
‘Not really.’
‘We’d gone down to escort Sylveste up to the ship.’
Volyova was silent for a moment, the man’s name ringing in her head with a peculiarly metallic quality, as if a scalpel had just crashed to the floor. ‘Sylveste, yes. I remember that we were about to bring him in. Did it work, then? Did Sajaki get what he wanted?’
‘Yes and no,’ Khouri said, after deliberation.
‘And Sudjic?’
‘She wanted to kill you because of Nagorny.’
‘No pleasing some people, is there?’
‘I think she’d have found some excuse, whatever happened. She thought I’d join with her, as well.’
‘And?’
‘I killed her.’
‘Then I’d hazard a guess that you saved my life.’ For the first time Volyova lifted her head from the pillow; it felt as if it were attached to the bed by elastic cables. ‘You really ought to cut down on it, Khouri, before it becomes a habit. But if there was another death… you can probably expect Sajaki to start asking questions.’ That was as much as she would risk saying now; the warning she had just given was exactly what any senior crewperson might give to an understudy; it did not necessarily mean — to anyone listening in — that Volyova knew anything more about Khouri than the other Triumvirs.
But the warning was sincere enough. First the killing in the training chamber… then another on Resurgam. In neither situation had Khouri exactly instigated the trouble, but if her proximity to both happenings was enough to trouble Volyova, it would certainly give Sajaki pause for thought. Asking questions was probably at the milder end of the Triumvir’s likely interrogative process, if it came to that. Sajaki might opt for torture… perhaps even a dangerous deep-memory trawl. Then — if he did not fry Khouri’s mind in the process — he might learn her identity as infiltrator, put aboard to steal the cache. His next question would almost certainly be: how much of this did Volyova know? And if he deemed it worthwhile to trawl Volyova as well…
