eternity. Machines might still stalk those cosmic steppes, and they might in some sense continue to process and interpret data, but there would be no recognition, no love, no hate, no loss, no pain, only analysis, until the last flicker of power faded from the last circuit, leaving a final stalled algorithm half-executed. He was being hopelessly anthropomorphic, of course. This entire drama concerned only the local group of galaxies. Out there — not just tens, but hundreds of millions of light years away — there were other such groups, clumps of one or two dozen galaxies bound together in darkness by their mutual self-gravity. Too far to imagine reaching, but they were there all the same. They were ominously silent — but that didn’t mean they were necessarily devoid of sentience. Perhaps they had learned the value of silence. The grand story of life in the Milky Way — across the entire local group — might just be one thread in something humblingly vast. Perhaps, after all, it didn’t actually matter what happened here. Blindly executing whatever instructions they had been given in the remote galactic past, the wolves might strangle sentience out of existence now, or they might guard a thread of it through its gravest crisis. And perhaps neither outcome really mattered, any more than a local cluster of extinctions on a single island would make any significant difference when set against the rich, swarming ebb and flow of life on an entire world. Or perhaps it mattered more than anything. Clavain saw it all with sudden, heart-stopping clarity: all that mattered was the here and now. All that mattered was survival. Sentience that bowed down and accepted its own extinction — no matter what the long-term arguments, no matter how good the greater cause — was not the kind of sentience he was interested in preserving. Nor was it the kind he was interested in serving. Like all the hard choices he had ever made, the heart of the problem was childishly simple: he could concede the weapons and accept his complicity in humanity’s coming extinction, while knowing that he had done his part for sentient life’s ultimate destiny. Or he could take the weapons now — or as many of them as he could get his hands on — and make some kind of stand against tyranny. It might be pointless. It might just be postponing the inevitable. But if that was the case, what was the harm in trying? note 401 He felt a vast, searing, calm. All was clear now. He was about to tell her that he had made his mind up to take the weapons and make a stand, future history be damned. He was Nevil Clavain and he had never surrendered in his life. But suddenly something else merited his immediate attention. Zodiacal Light had been hit. The great ship was breaking in two. CHAPTER 39 ‘Hello, Clavain,’ Ilia Volyova said, her voice a fine papery rasp that he had to struggle to understand. ‘It’s good to see you, finally. Come closer, will you?’
He walked to the side of her bed, unwilling to believe that this was the Triumvir. She looked dreadfully ill, and yet at the same time he could feel a profound calm about the woman. Her expression, as well as he could read it, for her eyes were hidden behind blank grey goggles, spoke of quiet accomplishment, of the weary elation that came with the concluding of a lengthy and difficult business.
‘It’s good to meet you, Ilia,’ he said. He shook her hand as gently as he could. She had already been injured, he knew, and had then gone back into space, into the battle. Unprotected, she had received the kind of radiation dose that even broad-spectrum medichines could not remedy.
She was going to die, and she was going to die sooner rather than later. ‘You are very like your proxy, Clavain,’ she said in that quiet rasp. ‘And different, too. You have a gravitas that the machine lacked. Or perhaps it is simply that I know you better now as an adversary. I am not at all sure I respected you before.’ ‘And now?’ ‘You have given me pause for thought, I will certainly say that much.’ There were nine of them present. Next to Volyova’s bed was Khouri, the woman Clavain took to be her deputy. Clavain, in turn, was accompanied by Felka, Scorpio, two of Scorpio’s pig soldiers, Antoinette Bax and Xavier Liu. Clavain’s shuttle had docked with Nostalgia for Infinity after the immediate declaration of cease-fire, with Storm Bird following shortly after. ‘Have you considered my proposal?’ Clavain asked, delicately. ‘Your proposal?’ she said, with a sniff of disdain. ‘My revised proposal, then. The one that didn’t involve your unilateral surrender.’ ‘You’re hardly in a position to be putting proposals to anyone, Clavain. The last time I looked, you only had half a ship left.’ She was right. Remontoire and most of the remaining crew were still alive, but the damage to the ship was acute. It was a minor miracle that the Conjoiner drives had not detonated. ‘By proposal I meant… suggestion. A mutual arrangement, to the benefit of both of us.’ ‘Refresh my memory, will you, Clavain?’ He turned to Bax. ‘Antoinette, introduce yourself, will you?’ She came closer to the bed with something of the same trepidation that Clavain had shown. ‘Ilia…’ ‘It’s Triumvir Volyova, young lady. At least until we’re better acquainted.’ ‘What I meant to say is… I’ve got this ship… this freighter…’ Volyova glared at Clavain. He knew what she meant. She was acutely conscious that she did not have a great deal of time left, and what she did not need was indirection. ‘Bax has a freighter,’ Clavain said urgently. ‘It’s docked with us now. It has limited transatmospheric capability — not the best, but it can cope.’ ‘And your point, Clavain?’ ‘My point is that it has large pressurised cargo holds. It can take passengers, a great many passengers. Not in anything you’d call luxury, but…’ Volyova gestured for Bax to come closer. ‘How many?’ ‘Four thousand, easily. Maybe even five. The thing’s crying out to be used as an ark, Triumvir.’ Clavain nodded. ‘Think of it, Ilia. I know you’ve got an evacuation plan going here. I thought it was a ruse before, but now I’ve seen the evidence. But you haven’t made a dent in the planet’s population.’
