‘Tell me. Please. I do want to know.’ He paused, perhaps reading something in her expression. ‘Is your husband dead, Ana?’ ‘It isn’t that simple, either. My husband was a soldier. I used to be one as well. We were both soldiers on Sky’s Edge, in the Peninsula wars. I’m sure you’ve heard of our quaint little civil dispute.’ She did not wait for his answer. ‘We were fighting together. We were wounded and shipped into orbit unconscious. But something went wrong. I was misidentified, mis-tagged, put on the wrong hospital ship. I still don’t know all the details. I ended up being loaded aboard a bigger ship heading out-system. A lighthugger. By the time the error was discovered I was around Epsilon Eridani, Yellowstone.’ ‘And your husband?’ ‘I still don’t know. At the time I was led to think that he’d been left behind around Sky’s Edge. Thirty, forty years, Thorn — that’s how long he’d have had to wait, even if I’d managed to get on a ship making the immediate return trip.’ ‘What kind of longevity therapies did you have on Sky’s Edge?’ ‘None at all.’ ‘So there would have been a good chance of your husband being dead by the time you got back?’ ‘He was a soldier. Life expectancy in a freeze/thaw battalion was already pretty damned short. And anyway, there wasn’t any ship headed straight back.’ She rubbed her eyes and sighed. ‘That was what I was told had happened to him. But I still don’t know for sure. He might have come with me on the same ship; everything else might have been a lie.’ Thorn nodded. ‘So your husband might still be alive, but in the Yellowstone system?’ ‘Yes — supposing he ever got there, and supposing he didn’t ship back on the next outbound ship. But even then he’d be old. I spent a long time frozen in Chasm City before I came here. And I’ve spent even more time frozen since then, while Ilia and I waited for the wolves.’ Thorn was silent for a minute. ‘So you’re married to a man you still love, but who you probably won’t ever see again?’ ‘Now you understand why it isn’t easy for me,’ she said. ‘I do,’ Thorn said quietly, with something close to reverence in his voice. ‘1 do, and I’m sorry.’ Then he touched her hand again. ‘But maybe it’s still time to let go of the past, Ana. We all have to one day.’ It took much less time to reach Yellowstone than Clavain had expected. He wondered if Zebra had drugged him, or whether the thin cold air in the cabin had caused him to slip into unconsciousness… but there appeared to be no gap in the sequence of his thoughts. The time had simply passed very rapidly. Three or four times Manoukhian and Zebra had spoken quietly and urgently between themselves, and shortly thereafter Clavain had felt the ship change its vector, presumably to avoid another tangle with the Convention. But there had never been any tangible sense of panic. He had the impression that Zebra and Manoukhian regarded another conflict as something to be avoided out of a sense of decorum or neatness, rather than a pragmatic matter of survival. Whatever else they were, they were professionals. The ship looped above the Rust Belt, avoiding it by many thousands of kilometres, and then made a spiralling approach towards Yellowstone’s cloud layers. The planet swelled, filling every window within Clavain’s field of view. A skin of neon-pink ionisation gases surrounded the ship as she cleaved into atmosphere. Clavain felt his gravity return after hours of weightlessness. It was, he reminded himself, the first actual gravity that he had felt in years. ‘Have you visited Chasm City before, Mr Clavain?’ Zebra asked him, when the black ship had completed its atmospheric insertion. ‘Once or twice,’ he said. ‘Not lately. I take it that’s where we’re going?’ ‘Yes, but I can’t say where exactly. You’ll have to find out for yourself. Manoukhian, can you hold her steady for the next minute or so?’ ‘Take your time, Zeb.’ She unbuckled from her acceleration couch and stood over Clavain. It appeared that the stripes were zones of distinct pigmentation rather than tattoos or skin paint. Zebra flipped open a locker and slid out a metallic-blue box the size of a medical kit. She opened it and dithered her finger over the contents, like someone puzzling over a box of chocolates. She pulled out a hypodermic device. i’m going to put you under, Mr Clavain. While you’re unconscious I’ll run some neurological tests, just to verify that you really are a Conjoiner. I won’t wake you until we’ve arrived at our destination.‘ ‘There’s no need to do that.’ ‘Ah, but there is. My boss is very protective of his secrets. He’ll want to decide for himself what you get to know.’ Zebra leaned over him. ‘I can get this into your neck, I think, without getting you out of that suit.’ Clavain saw that there was no point in arguing. He closed his eyes and felt the cold tip of the hypodermic prick his skin. Zebra was good, no doubt about that. He felt a second flush of cold as the drug hit his bloodstream. ‘What does your boss want with me?’ he asked. I don’t think he really knows yet,‘ Zebra said. ’He’s just curious. You can’t blame him for that, can you?‘ Clavain had already willed his implants to neutralise whatever agent Zebra had injected into him. There might be a slight loss of clarity as the medichines filtered his blood — he might even lapse into brief unconsciousness — but it would not last. Conjoiner medichines were good against any… He was sitting upright in an elegant chair fashioned from scrolls of rough black iron. The chair was anchored to something tremendously solid and ancient. He was on planetary ground, no longer in Zebra’s ship. The blue-grey marble beneath the chair was fabulously veined, streaked and whorled like the gas flows in some impossibly gaudy interstellar nebula. ‘Good afternoon, Mr Clavain. How are you feeling now?’ It was not Zebra’s voice this time. Footsteps padded across the marble without haste. Clavain looked up, taking in more of his surroundings. He had been brought to what appeared to be an immense conservatory or greenhouse. Between pillars of veined black marble were finely mullioned windows that reached tens of metres high before curving over to intersect above him. Trellised sheets climbed nearly to the apex of the structure, tangled with vivid green vines. Between the trellises were many large pots or banks of earth that held too many kinds of plant for Clavain to identify, beyond a few orange trees and what he thought was some kind of eucalyptus. Something like a willow loomed over his seat, its dangling vegetation forming a fine green curtain that effectively blocked his vision in a number of directions. Ladders and spiral staircases provided access to aerial walkways spanning and encircling the conservatory. Somewhere, out of Clavain’s field of view, water trickled constantly, as if from a miniature fountain. The air was cool and fresh rather than cold and thin. The man who had spoken stepped softly before
