what she had long known she had to accept, which was that one life was over and another must begin. It was about making the choice to discard her past, and accepting — forcing herself to believe — that she was not dishonouring her husband by that act of disavowal. She just hoped that wherever he was, alive or dead now, Fazil Khouri had come to the same realisation and had found the strength to close the chapter on the part of his life that had included Ana Khouri. They had been in love, desperately in love, but the universe cared nothing for the vicissitudes of the human heart. Now they both had to follow their own paths. Thorn touched her hand gently, the gesture hidden in the shadows that hung between them. ‘No,’ he said. ‘We’re not taking them back to Resurgam. But can we honestly say we’re taking them to a better place? What if all we’re doing is taking them to a different place to die?’ ‘It’s a starship, Thorn.’ ‘Yes, one which isn’t going anywhere in a hurry.’ ‘Yet,’ she said. ‘I sincerely hope you’re right.’ ‘Ilia made progress with the Captain,’ she said. ‘He began to come out of his shell. If she managed to persuade him to deploy the cache weapons, she can talk him into moving.’ He turned from the porthole, harsh shadows emphasising his face. ‘And then?’ ‘Another system. It doesn’t matter which one. We’ll take our pick. Anything’s got to be better than staying here, hasn’t it?’ ‘For a while, perhaps. But shouldn’t we at least investigate what Sylveste can do for us?’ She took her hand from his and said guardedly, ‘Sylveste? Are you serious?’ ‘He took an interest in our affairs inside Roc. At the very least, something did. You recognised it as Sylveste, or a copy of his personality. And the object, whatever it was, returned to Hades.’ ‘What are you suggesting?’ ‘That we consider the unthinkable, Ana: seeking his help. You told me that the Hades matrix is older than the Inhibitors. It may be something stronger than them. That certainly appeared the case inside Roc. Shouldn’t we see what Sylveste has to say on the matter? He might not be able to help us directly, but he might have information we can use. He’s been in there for subjective aeons, and he’s had access to the archive of an entire starfaring culture.’ ‘You don’t understand, Thorn. I thought I told you, but obviously it didn’t sink in. There’s no easy way into the Hades matrix.’ ‘No, I remember that. But there is a way, even if it involves dying, isn’t there?’ ‘There was another way, but there’s no guarantee it still works. Dying is the only way I know. And I’m not going there again, not in this life or the next.’ Thorn looked down, his face a mask that she found difficult to read. Was he disappointed or understanding? He had no idea what it had been like to fall towards Hades knowing that certain death awaited her. She had been resurrected once, after meeting Sylveste and Pascale, but there had been no promises that they would repeat the favour. The act itself had consumed a considerable fraction of the computational resources of the Hades object, and they — whoever were the agents that directed its endless calculations — might not sanction the same thing again. It was easy for Thorn; he had no idea what it had been like. Thorn…‘ she began. But at that moment pink and blue light stammered across the side of his face. Khouri frowned. ‘What was that?’ Thorn turned back towards space. ‘Lights. Flashing lights, like distant lightning. I’ve been watching them every time I walk past a porthole. They seem to lie near to the ecliptic plane, in the same half of the sky as the Inhibitor machine. They weren’t there when we left orbit. Whatever it is must have started in the last twelve hours. I don’t think it’s anything to do with the weapon itself.’ ‘Then it must be our weapons,’ Khouri said. ‘Ilia must have started using them already.’ ‘She said she’d give us a period of grace.’ It was true; Ilia Volyova had promised them that she would not deploy any of the cache weapons for thirty days, and that she would review her decision based on the success of the evacuation operation. ‘Something must have happened,’ Khouri said. ‘Or she lied,’ Thorn said quietly. In the shadows he took her hand again, and with one finger traced a line from her wrist to the conjunction of her middle and forefingers. ‘No. She wouldn’t have lied. Something’s happened, Thorn. There’s been a change of plan.’ It came out of the darkness two hours later. There was nothing that could be done to prevent some of the occupants of the transfer craft from seeing Nostalgia for Infinity from the outside, so all Khouri and Thorn could do was wait and hope that the reaction was not too extreme. Khouri had wanted to slide baffles across the portholes — the ship was of too old a design for the portholes to be simply sphinctered out of existence — but Thorn had warned her that she should do nothing that implied that the view was in any way odd or troublesome. He whispered, ‘It may not be as bad as you expect. You know what a lighthugger’s meant to look like, and so the ship disturbs you because the Captain’s transformations have turned it into something monstrous. But most of the people we’re carrying were born on Resurgam. Most of them haven’t ever seen a starship, or even any images of what one should look like. They have a very vague idea based on the old records and the space operas they’ve been fed by Broadcasting House. Nostalgia for Infinity may strike them as a bit… unusual… but they won’t necessarily jump to the conclusion that she’s a plague ship.’ ‘And when they get aboard?’ Khouri asked. ‘Now that might be a different story.’ Thorn, however, turned out to be more or less correct. The shocking excrescences and architectural flourishes of the ship’s mutated exterior looked pathological to Khouri, but she knew more about the plague than anyone on Resurgam. It turned out that relatively few of the passengers were as disturbed as she had expected. Most were prepared to accept that the flourishes of diseased design served some obscure military function. This, after all, was the ship that they believed had wiped out an entire surface colony. They had few preconceptions about what it should look like, other than that it was, by its very nature, evil. ‘They’re relieved that there’s a ship here at all,’ Thorn told her. ‘And most of them can’t get anywhere near a porthole anyway. They’re taking what they’re hearing with a large pinch of salt, or they just don’t care.’ ‘How can they not care when they’ve thrown away their lives to come this far?’ ‘They’re tired,’ Thorn told her. ‘Tired and past caring about anything except getting off this ship.’
