Redemption Ark

He was toying with her, she suspected. He might have guessed that she was from the government, but he might also have guessed that she had no time to report minor instances of wayward thought.

‘So if they’ve shot him,’ she said, ‘why don’t they announce the fact? Thousands of people think Thorn’s going to lead them into the Promised Land.’

‘Yes, but the only thing worse than a martyr is a dead martyr. There’d be a lot more trouble if word got around that he was really dead.’

She shrugged and folded the paper. ‘Well, I’m not really sure that he ever existed. Maybe it suited the government to create a fictitious hope figure, just so that they could clamp down on the population even more effectively. You don’t really believe all the stories, do you?’

‘About him finding a way to lead us off Resurgam? No. Nice if it happened, I suppose. Get rid of all the whiners, for a start.’

‘Is that really your attitude? That the only people who want to leave Resurgam are whiners?’

‘Sorry, love. I can tell which side of the fence you’d come down on. But some of us actually like it on this planet. No offence.’

‘None taken.’ Then she leant back in the seat and placed the folded paper across her eyes, so that it served as a mask. If that message failed to get through to the driver, she decided, there was really no hope for him.

Fortunately it did.

This time when she nodded off it was into deep sleep. She dreamed about the past, memories flashing back now that the voice of Operative Four had unlocked them. It was not that she had been able to stop thinking about Four completely, but in all that time she had managed to avoid thinking of Four as a person. It was too painful. To remember Four was to think about how she had arrived on Resurgam, and that in turn meant thinking about her other life, the one that, compared with the bleak reality of the present, seemed like a distant and improbable fiction.

But Four’s voice had been like a trapdoor into the past. There were now certain things that could not be ignored.

Why the hell had Four called her now?

She woke when the motion of the vehicle changed. The driver was backing them into an unloading bay.

‘Are we there yet?’

‘Solnhofen it is. Not exactly bright lights, big city, but this is where you wanted to go.’

Through a gap in the slats of the depot wall she could see a sky the colour of anaemic blood. Dawn, or near enough.

‘We’re a bit on the late side,’ she commented.

‘We arrived in Solnhofen a quarter of an hour ago, love. You were sleeping like a log. I didn’t want to wake you.’

‘Of course you didn’t.’ Grudgingly, she handed over the rest of the driver’s fee.

*

Remontoire watched the last few members of the Closed Council take their seats around the tiered inner surface of the privy chamber. A number of the very old were still able to make their own way to their seats, but the majority were aided by servitors, exoskeletons or black clouds of thumb-sized drones. A few were so near the end of physical life that they had nearly abandoned the flesh entirely. They came in as heads, hooked up to spiderlike mobility prostheses. One or two were massively swollen brains so full of machinery that they could no longer be housed in skulls. The brains rode inside transparent fluid-filled domes dense with throbbing support machinery. They were the most extreme Conjoined, and by this stage most of their conscious activity would have devolved into the distributed web of greater Conjoiner thought. Each retained their brain like a family unwilling to demolish a crumbling mansion even though they hardly ever lived in it.

Remontoire tasted the thoughts of each newcomer. There were people in this room he had long assumed dead, individuals who had never attended any of the Closed Council sessions in which he had participated.

It was the matter of Clavain. He brought everyone out of retirement.

Remontoire felt the sudden presence of Skade as she entered the privy chamber. She had emerged on a ring-shaped balcony halfway up the side of the spherical room. The chamber was opaque to all neural transmissions; those within it could communicate freely, but they were totally isolated from the other minds in the Mother Nest. It enabled the Closed Council to meet in session and communicate more freely than through the usual restricted neural channels.

Remontoire shaped a thought and assigned it high priority, so that it immediately cut across the general wash of gossip and gained everyone’s attention. Does Clavain know about this meeting?

Skade snapped around to address him. [Why should he know about it, Remontoire?]

Remontoire shrugged. Isn’t it him we’ve come to talk about, behind his back?

Skade smiled sweetly. [If Clavain consented to join us, there’d be no need to talk about him behind his back, would there? The problem’s his, not mine.]

Remontoire stood up, now that everyone was looking at him or directing some sort of sensory apparatus in his direction. Who said anything about a problem, Skade? What I’m objecting to is the hidden agenda behind this meeting.

[Hidden agenda? We only want what’s best for Clavain, Remontoire. As his friend I would have imagined that you’d have grasped that.]

Remontoire looked around. There was no sign of Felka, which did not surprise him in the slightest. She had every right to be present, but he doubted that she would have been on Skade’s list of invitees.

I am his friend, I admit that. He’s saved my life enough times, but even if he hadn’t… well, Clavain and I have been through more than enough together. If that means I don’t have an objective view on the matter, so be it. But I’ll tell you something. Remontoire glanced around the room, nodding as he made eye or sensor contact. All of you — or those of you who need reminding — no matter what Skade would like to make you think, Clavain owes us nothing. Without him, none of us would be here. He’s been as important to us as Galiana, and I don’t say that lightly. I knew her before anyone in this room.

Skade nodded. [Remontoire is right, of course, but you’ll note his use of the past tense. Clavain’s great deeds all lie in the past — the distant past. I don’t deny that since his return from deep space he has continued to serve us well. But then so have we all. Clavain has done no more and no less than any senior Conjoiner. But don’t we expect more of him than that?]

More than what, Skade?

[His tired devotion to mere soldiery, constantly putting himself at risk.]

Remontoire realised that, like it or not, he had become Clavain’s advocate. He felt a mild contempt for the other Council members. He knew that many of them owed their lives to Clavain, and would have admitted it under other circumstances. But Skade had them cowed.

It was down to him to speak up for his friend. Someone has to patrol the border.

[Yes. But we have younger, faster and, let us be frank here, more expendable individuals who can do precisely that. We need Clavain’s expertise here, in the Mother Nest, where we can tap it. I don’t believe that he clings to the fringes out of any sense of duty to the Nest. He does it out of pure self-interest. He gets to play at being one of us, being on the winning side, without accepting the full implications of what it means to be Conjoined. It hints at complacency, self-interest — everything that is inimical to our way. It even begins to hint at disloyalty.]

Disloyalty? No one’s shown more loyalty to the Conjoined faction than Nevil Clavain. Maybe some of you need to brush up on your history.

One of the detached heads spidered on to a seat-back. [I agree with Remontoire. Clavain doesn’t owe us anything. He’s proven himself a thousand times over. If he wants to stay outside the Council, that’s his right.]

Across the auditorium a brain lit up, its lights pulsing in synchronisation with its voice patterns.  [Yes; no one doubts that, but it is equally the case that Clavain has a moral obligation to join us. He cannot