Redemption Ark

‘Let’s go upstairs,’ Khouri said. ‘On to the balcony. We’ll be able to see things more clearly.’

There were vehicles moving around now, more than normal for a rainy night. Below, police vans were assembling outside the building. Thorn watched riot officers troop into the vans, jostling each other with their armour, shields and electrically tipped prods. One by one the vans whisked away, dispersing the police to trouble spots. Other vans were being driven into a cordon around the building, the spaces between them spanned by metal barricades that had been perforated with narrow slits.

On the balcony it was much clearer. City sounds reached them through the rain. There were bangs and crashes, sirens and shouting. It almost sounded like a carnival, except there was no music. Thorn realised that it had been a long time since he had heard music of any kind.

Presently, despite the best efforts of the police, there was a crowd massing outside Inquisition House. There were simply too many people to hold back, and all the police could do was prevent them from entering the building itself. A number of people were already lying on the ground at the front of the crowd, stunned by grenades or prods. Their friends were doing their best to get them to safety. One man was thrashing in an epileptic frenzy. Another man looked dead, or at least deeply unconscious. The police could have murdered most of the people in the crowd in a few seconds, Thorn knew, but they were holding back. He studied the faces of the police as well as he was able. They appeared just as frightened and confused as the crowd they were supposed to be pacifying. Special orders had obviously decreed that their response should be measured rather than brutal.

The balcony was surrounded by a low fretted wall. Thorn walked to the edge and looked over, peering down towards street level. Khouri followed him, Triumvir Volyova remaining out of sight.

‘It’s time,’ Thorn said. ‘I need to speak to the people in person. That way they’ll know the statement wasn’t faked up.’

He knew that all he needed to do was shout and someone would hear him, even if it were only one person in the crowd. Before very long everyone would be looking upwards, and they would know, even before he spoke, who he was.

‘Make it good,’ Volyova said, barely raising her voice above a whisper. ‘Make it very good, Thorn. A lot will depend on this little performance.’

He looked back at her. ‘Then you’ll reconsider?’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘Irina…’ Khouri said. ‘Please think about this. At least give us a chance here, before you use the weapons.’

‘You’ll have a chance,’ Volyova said. ‘Before I use the weapons, I’ll move them across the system. That way, even if there is a response from the Inhibitors, Infinity won’t be the obvious target.’

‘That will take some time, won’t it?’ Khouri asked.

‘You have a month, no more than that. Of course, I’m not expecting you to have the entire planet evacuated by then. But if you’ve kept to the agreed schedule — and perhaps improved on it a little — I may consider delaying the use of the weapons a while longer. That’s reasonable, isn’t it? I can be flexible, you see.’

‘You’re asking too much of us,’ Khouri said. ‘No matter how efficient our operation on the surface is, we can’t move more than two thousand people at a time between low orbit and the starship. That’s an unavoidable bottleneck, Ilia.’ She seemed unaware that she had spoken the Triumvir’s real name.

‘Bottlenecks can always be worked around, if it matters enough,’ she said. ‘And I’ve given you every incentive, haven’t I?’

‘It’s Thorn, isn’t it?’ Khouri said.

Thorn glanced back at her. ‘What about me?’

‘She doesn’t like the way you’ve come between us,’ Khouri told him. The Triumvir made the same derisive snort he had heard before.

‘No. It’s true,’ Khouri said. ‘Isn’t it, Ilia? You and I had a perfect working relationship until I brought Thorn into the arrangement. You’ll never forgive either me or him for destroying that beautiful little partnership.’

‘Don’t be absurd,’ Volyova said.

‘I’m not being absurd, I’m just…’

But the Triumvir whipped past her.

‘Where are you going?’ Khouri asked.

She stopped long enough to answer her. ‘Where do you think, Ana? Back to my ship. I have work to do.’

‘Your ship, suddenly? I thought it was our ship.’

But Volyova had said all she was going to say. Thorn heard her footsteps recede back into the building.

‘Is that true?’ he asked Khouri. ‘Do you really think she’s resentful of me?’

But she said nothing either. Thorn, after a long moment, turned back to the city. He leaned out into the night, formulating the crucial speech he was about to deliver. Volyova was right: a lot depended on it.

Khouri’s hand closed around his own.

The air reeked of fear-gas. Thorn felt it worming into his brain, brewing anxiety.

CHAPTER 28

Skade stalked around her ship. Nothing felt right aboard Nightshade now. The pressure on her spine had eased and her eyeballs had returned to more or less the right shape, but those were the only real compensations. Every living thing inside the ship was now within the field’s detectable sphere of influence, embedded in a bubble of artificially modified quantum vacuum. Nine-tenths of the inertial mass of every particle in the field no longer existed.

The ship was hurling itself towards Resurgam at ten gees.

Even though Skade had her armour, and was therefore insulated from the more physiologically upsetting effects of the field, she still moved around as little as possible. Walking was not in itself difficult since the acceleration that the armour felt was only a gee, a tenth of the actual value. The armour no longer laboured under the extra load, and Skade had lost the feeling that a fall would automatically dash her brains out. But everything else was worse. When she willed the armour to move a limb, it accommodated her wishes too quickly. When she moved what should have been a heavy piece of equipment, it shifted too easily. It was as if the apparently substantial furniture of the ship had been replaced by a series of superficially convincing paper-thin facades. Even changing the direction of her gaze took care. Her eyeballs, no longer distorted by gravity, were now too responsive and tended to overshoot and then over-compensate for the overshooting. She knew this was because the muscles that steered them, which were anchored to her skull, had evolved to move a sphere of tissue with a certain inertial mass; now they were confused. But knowing all this did not make dealing with it any easier. She had turned off her Area Postrema permanently, since her inner ear was profoundly disturbed by the modified inertial field.

Skade reached Felka’s quarters. She entered and found Felka where she had left her last time, sitting cross- legged on a part of the floor that she had instructed to become soft. Her clothes had a stale, crumpled look. Her flesh was pasty and her hair was a nestlike tangle of greasy knots. Here and there Skade saw patches of raw pink scalp, where Felka had tugged out locks of her own hair. She sat perfectly still, one hand on either knee. Her chin was raised slightly and her eyes were closed. There was a faint glistening trail of mucus leading from one nostril to the top of her lip.

Skade audited the neural connections between Felka and the rest of the ship. To her surprise, she detected no significant traffic. Skade had assumed that Felka must have been roaming through a cybernetic environment, as had been the case on her last two visits. Skade had explored them for herself and found vast puzzlelike edifices of Felka’s own making. They were clearly surrogates for the Wall. But this was not the case on this occasion. After abandoning the real, Felka had taken the next logical step, back to the place where it had all begun.

She had gone back into her skull.

Skade lowered herself to Felka’s level, then reached out and touched her brow. She expected Felka to flinch against the cold metal contact, but she might as well have been touching a wax dummy.

Felka… can you hear me? I know you’re in there somewhere. This is Skade. There is something you need to know.