‘That’s a cold way of looking at things,’ he said. ‘Makes me think you spent more time with those Ultras than you told me.’‘I’m not an Ultra, Thorn. I used them. They used me. That doesn’t make us the same.’ She closed up the medical kit and slammed it back into the desk. ‘Try to keep that in mind, will you?’‘I’m sorry. It’s just that this whole business is so Goddamned brutal. We’re treating the people of this planet like sheep, herding them to where we know is best for them. Not trusting them to make their own minds up.’‘They haven’t got time to make their minds up, that’s the problem. I’d love to do this democratically, I really would. I’d like nothing better than a clean conscience. But it ain’t going to happen that way. If the people know what’s going to happen to them — that what they’ve got in store, other than remaining on this doomed fuckhole of a planet, is a trip to a starship which just happens to have been consumed and transformed by the plague-infected body of its former captain, who incidentally happens to be a totally deranged murderer — do you think there’s going to be a stampede for those shuttles? Throw in the fact that rolling out the red carpet when they get there will be Triumvir Ilia Volyova, Resurgam’s number-one hate figure, and I think a lot of people will say “thanks, but no thanks”, don’t you?’Thorn said, ‘At least they’d have made their own minds up.’‘Yeah. A lot of consolation that’ll be when we watch them getting incinerated. Sorry, Thorn, but I’ll take the bitch option now and worry about ethics later, when we’ve saved a few lives.’‘You won’t save everyone even if your plan works.’‘I know. We could, but we won’t. It’s inevitable. There are two hundred thousand people out there. If we started now, we could get all of them off this planet in six months, although a year is more likely given all the variables. But even that might not be enough time. I think I’ll have to consider this operation a success if we save only half of them. Maybe fewer than that. I don’t know.’ She rubbed her face, suddenly looking very much older and wearier than she had before. ‘I’m trying not to think how badly this might all go.’The black telephone on her desk rang. Khouri let it ring for a few seconds, one eye on the silver cylinder. The lights stayed green. She motioned to Thorn to stay quiet and then picked up the heavy black handset, holding it against the side of her head.‘Vuilleumier. I hope this is important. I’m interviewing a suspect in the Thorn inquiry.’The voice on the other end of the phone spoke back to her. Khouri let out a sigh and then closed her eyes. The voice continued talking. Thorn could hear none of the actual words, but enough of the voice’s tone reached him for a certain rising desperation to become apparent. Someone sounded as if they were trying to explain something that had gone awfully wrong. The voice reached a crescendo and then fell silent.‘I want the names of those involved,’ Khouri said, and then placed the handset back on to its cradle.She looked at Thorn. ‘I’m sorry.’‘What for?’‘They killed someone, when the police broke up the meeting. She died a few minutes ago. A woman…’He stopped her. ‘I know which one you mean.’Khouri said nothing. The silence filled the room, amplified and trapped by the masses of paperwork surrounding them; lives annotated and documented in numbing precision, all for the purposes of suppression.‘Did you know her name?’ Khouri asked.‘No. She was just a follower. Just someone who wanted a way to leave Resurgam.’‘I’m sorry.’ Khouri reached across the desk and took his hand. ‘I’m sorry. I mean it, Thorn. I didn’t want it to begin this way.’Despite himself he laughed hollowly. ‘Well, she got it, didn’t she? What she wanted. A way off this planet. She was the first.’CHAPTER 25
Armoured in black, Skade strode through the ship that was now fully hers. For the time being they were safe, having slipped undetected through the last shell of Demarchist perimeter defences. Now there was nothing between Nightshade and its destination except empty light-years.Skade brushed her steel fingers against the corridor plating, loving the sleek conjunction of artificial things. For a time the ship had carried Clavain’s stench of ownership, and even after he had defected there had been Remontoire to contend with, Clavain’s sympathiser and ally, but now they were both gone, and she could rightfully consider Nightshade her own. She could, if she were minded, change the name to one of her own choosing, or perhaps discard the very idea of naming the ship at all, so resolutely against the grain of Conjoiner thinking. But Skade decided that there was a perverse pleasure to be had in keeping the old name. There would be enjoyment in turning Clavain’s prized weapon against himself, and that enjoyment would be all the sweeter if the weapon still carried the name he had bestowed upon it. It would be a final humiliation, rich reward for all that he had done to her.Yet, for all that she despised what he had done, she could not deny that she was adjusting to her new state of body in a way that might have alarmed her weeks earlier. Her armour was becoming her. She admired her form in the gleam of bulkheads and portals. The initial clumsiness was gone now, and in the privacy of her quarters she spent long hours amusing herself with astonishing tricks of strength, dexterity and prestidigitation. The armour was learning to anticipate her movements, freeing itself from any need to wait for signals to crawl up and down her spine. Skade played lightning-fast one- handed fugues on a holoclavier, her gauntleted fingers becoming a blur of metal as quick and lethal as threshing machinery. Toccata in D , by someone called Bach, collapsed under her mastery. It became a rapid blast of sound like Gatling-gun fire, requiring neural post-processing to separate it into anything resembling ‘music’.It was all a distraction, of course. Skade might have slipped through the Demarchists’ final line of defences, but in the last three days she had become aware that her difficulties were not entirely at an end. There was something following her, coming out of the Yellowstone system on a very similar trajectory.It was time, Skade decided, to share this news with Felka.Nightshade was silent. Skade’s footsteps were all she heard as she made her way down to the sleep bay. They rang hard and regular as hammers in a foundry. The ship was accelerating at two gees, the inertia-suppressing machinery running smooth and quiet, but walking for Skade was effortless.Skade had frozen Felka shortly after news reached Skade of her most recent failure. At that point it had become clear, following scrutiny of news items around Yellowstone, that Clavain had eluded her again; that Remontoire and the pig had not succeeded in capturing him
