Taggart did not answer.
“What is it the Archer’s ship is harbouring? Why are you trying to cross the galactic center?”
“Who said we were trying to cross the galactic center?”
“I am surprised you do not realise how transparent it is. It is obvious that is your course. It is a dangerous route, and only one breed of man can navigate it, and even they will not go there without due cause.”
Taggart bared his teeth. “What is in the galactic center, castellan?”
“I know not, for I have not been there. None have been there, and lived, save the Archers, and they are beyond our reach.”
Taggart wondered. He knew Viprion had only agreed to help him in the hope of deposing the Carck-Westmath tyrant. Now both the tyrant and the circumfercirc were gone, he did not know what leverage he had and how he might bargain to get Viprion back on side. The threats and torture that went on aboard the
Bellwether
were mostly aimed at Geminals, and involved the mutilation of one half before the other, either until the individual was sundered or the unmolested half gave way. If he mutilated an Insular and went too far, there’d be no individual left, nothing to make that final bargain, to beg for death in exchange for a confession. They had never needed to extract information from an Insular before. He kept his thoughts to himself. “You appear to have failed in your mission to ground the Archer vessel and, also I divine, to find the device I was looking for.”
Viprion turned his head and opened his mouth, showing elongated canines. He turned his head back, and composed himself. “Taggart, if you ask a lone man to run aground an Archer’s ship and keep it there, you request the impossible. T’would be easier to kill the Archer.”
“What do you know, then?” Taggart waved a hand.
“The man, Wolff. Either he or the Archer has the device. He knows something is afoot, and possibly the Archer does too. She has spared his life, although for what reason I cannot possibly fathom.”
Taggart marvelled at the promptness of Viprion’s replies. The Insular thought almost as fast as a person of the intelligentsia, but it was wrong. This Insular had been born to be intelligent, and others below him had not. “Could this Archer have been in collusion with Wolff?”
“Some sort of armistice, maybe, but anything deeper would be highly unlikely. The Archers abide by an extremely strict code of solitude and servitude.” Viprion ran the dark tip of his tongue across his lips, a flicker of nervousness showing in his expression. “Have you managed to trace the vessel of this Archer and identify it?”
Taggart looked back at him, but said nothing.
“The computer aboard the
Bellwether
will know it, if someone can commune with it.”
“Do not make vile jests! You know my kind do not commune with computers!”
“Then how do you fly the ship?”
“Being unable to commune with computers does not mean incapable of anything we are!”
“But you are then incapable of retrieving information from it?”
Taggart narrowed his eyes. “What would you suggest?”
“Let me sense it.”
“Never!”
Viprion examined his fingernails. “Then you must live without the Archer’s ship, and whatever function this device on it serves.”
Taggart glared at Viprion. He paced the length of the cell, faced the wall, and breathed deeply. “Winters, get in here!”
Winters arrived, looking flustered. “What is it?”
Taggart pointed at Viprion. “Can he affect the computer from in here?”
“No. I mean, I think not. The cells are—lined with metal. It’s what their kind call a Faraday cage.”
“Get medics in here! I want him searched, and if there’s anything made of metal on him or in him that shouldn’t be there, I want to know about it!”
A few minutes later, Dales and Falcons had identified a metal object in one of Viprion’s pockets, and another that seemed to be embedded somewhere in his head.
“Well, what is the meaning of this, Viprion?”
“There are two parts to an interface,” Viprion explained. “The shunt, the port where the metal of the machine joins to the organic material of the brain, and the interface bolt itself, which is what you hold in your hand there.”
“I do not trust your words,” said Taggart, looking at the mushroom-like metal thing in his hand. “You are saying that interface with computers you cannot, without both this and the thing in your head. What is the sense in that?”
“A failsafe. If a computer were to be damaged, you would wish to physically remove your connection to prevent yourself from being contaminated.”
“He can’t affect the computer, how he is now?”
Falcons shrugged. “I don’t think so.”
“Winters, get me a neutron pistol.”
Winters fetched it. He handed it to Taggart, an awkward tension in his face. Had Winters seen the razor blade on the floor of Taggart’s quarters?
Taggart held the gun to the Insular’s head. “If you do anything to make me suspect you, I will kill you, Viprion. Now take him to the bridge.”
Winters restrained Viprion by both arms in a bent-forward position. On the bridge, Taggart inserted the metal tine into the port on Viprion’s forehead while aiming the gun in his other hand. Winters tensed, his knees ready to kick Viprion should anything happen.
The result was not what either of them had expected. Viprion cringed, and his legs lost their strength. Winters yanked him up by the arms, and looked at himself with a puzzled expression.
Viprion groaned as though in pain. “What have you done to it? It is blind. It is screaming for release.”
“Do what you said you needed!” Taggart ordered him.
An image blinked onto the wall screen. It showed a rotating schematic of the spiny-winged Archer ship. Viprion raised his head laboriously, and oddly, Taggart could see what must surely be anticipation on his face.
“The ship is called the
Shamrock
of the clan
hortica
,” he said. “The Archer is...is...Jed.” The strange expression melted from his features as the screen inset changed to depict a female, hardly old enough to be considered a woman by anyone’s standards, with a wasted, desperate look to her and the signs of much fear and suffering in her countenance, and the same drained complexion and dark hair as Viprion. “The picture will by now be seven years out of date.” There was a tone of relief and disappointment to his voice.
Taggart reached over and pulled the interface bolt out of Viprion’s head. The man relaxed with a shuddering gasp. “Take him back to the cell,” Taggart ordered Winters.
Taggart waited until Winters and the medics had left them before resuming the interrogation. “I understand that something of an authority you are on these...chimaera-hunters.”
“Since reaching adulthood I have studied them.” Viprion paused, as though weighing up his next remark. “I witnessed your attempts to capture the Archer’s vessel back on Carck-Westmathlon. They struck me as foolish beyond description, and the damage the circumfercirc suffered for it was severe for such a mild affront.”
“Then why did you not say so, castellan?”
“I had to consider it very carefully against my safety as a double agent. In the end, the distinction was small. You must remember this, Taggart. The Archers surrender to no man. Not the men of the Blood, and certainly not common men, or Geminals.”
“Do you know why they such exorbitant prices charge for this quarry they bring down?”
“Allow me to explain, Taggart.” Viprion interlocked his long fingers, flexing his hands. “A chimaera, we are given to believe, is an organometallic beast, neither creature nor machine, and the only physical object currently known to be capable of exceeding the speed of light. How they survive in the void is a mystery, but many have dissected specimens in search of the secret of superlumina, only to find the mechanisms these beasts use to compress time and space are too complex to be emulated by men. Hence every ship and every projectile which is to travel faster than light must use one of these chimaera, as they are termed, in its propulsion engine.”
“Oh, nature’s joyous bounty,” said Taggart.
“The greatest problem with chimaera is obtaining them. Small ones can be trapped where they are abundant, lured into pots using electromagnetic signals of selected wavelength, but the large ones, which are the only ones useful for driving ships, have destructive mandibles and can demolish such traps. The only option is to actively hunt them.”
“With an advanced computer?” Taggart interrupted.
“A computer?” Viprion’s strained eyebrows jumped up his forehead farther than Taggart would have thought possible.
“Computer be programmed to calculate velocities and trajectories precisely.”
“It can not calculate the trajectories and velocities of something moving unpredictably at near-light velocity.”
“Then nothing can,” said Taggart.
“Perhaps with an extremely large neural network and a great deal of experience it would. But there is a neural network in the human brain larger and more advanced than any that could be built for a computer.”
“So you say these Archers in effect are Insulars who think like computers, only capable of tracking and shooting chimaera?”
“What they are is computer-operator fusions. The Archer is inextricably connected to the functions of the vessel. What more efficient way of doing it is there?”
“So these Archers of which everyone speaks with such fear are just Insulars like you?”
“Not exactly. To maximise efficiency, only Archers with certain superior genetic traits are taken into the clans, and they are trained rigorously. They devote their entire lives to wandering the galaxy alone, hunting chimaera.”
“I see. I cannot imagine there would be many recruits for such a career.”
Viprion paused. “Conscription is not voluntary.”
Was his other component killed in self-defense? Or was he murdered from behind? Taggart pulled at his ill-fastened shirt. He cared not about his murderer’s origins. Whether she was the heir of a monarch or the spawn of a vagabond could not affect Taggart’s feelings on the subject. “You know this Archer, possibly with Wolff’s collaboration, did maim me thus?”
“I am given to understand so.”
Taggart glared at the man. “You do not understand. No Insular can understand.”
Viprion shrugged. “The closest analogy for my people would be the death of a much-cherished brother. Vengeance would seem just.”
“No, the closest analogy for you would be your own death. A long and painful death.”
Viprion fidgeted, twisting his mouth in badly concealed annoyance. “Taggart, I assume you did not come in here in search of sympathy.”
Taggart calmed himself down. “So, then, how does one go about slaying an Archer?”
Viprion dipped his head, rolling his eyes upward. “The obvious method is to destroy her ship.”
“Not an option. You know fine well the device is most likely aboard that vessel.”
“Tell me the nature of this device, and why you are bound on a course that takes you though the galactic center, and I will help you.”
Taggart waited. He considered. Viprion would not assist on a suicide mission. “No. Help me, or be tortured and killed.”
Viprion raised his eyebrow. He appeared to consider for a moment. “T’would only do to pit fire against fire. These Archers have a strict hierarchy. All we need do is to persuade a stronger Archer to attack the
Shamrock
. She will leave the vessel intact.”
“Intact?”
“The wise do not destroy what they can use.”
“And Gerald Wolff?”
“Gerald Wolff, if he still rides with the
Shamrock
, will ride no longer should he get in her way. I doubt an Archer would find any use for him.”
“That is good,” said Taggart. “But we still need a torchbearer to guide us on our path.”
“I assume that is why you tried to take an Archer’s ship by force in the first place?”
“Precisely.”
A slimy, sneering smile parted Viprion’s lips. “Quaint. No Archer would steer a ship under duress. They are a proud race, and even the most basic knowledge of the interface system the Archers’ ships use would have told you that if the Archer was killed, the navigational data remaining on her computer would be completely unintelligible.”
Taggart bared his teeth. “Do not trifle with me, castellan. Can you or can you not accomplish what you brag of?”
“An alliance with the Archers, you ask? What better grounds to forge an alliance on than the clans themselves? Yes, I believe I can, Taggart.”
“Clans?”
“The Archers are from the four great Blood lineages. They are females—
women
as you call them—of the strongest Blood possible.”
“Why women?”
“Because an Archer is a man homozygous for all the Blood genes. Some of the Blood genes are on the x-chromosome, and a man with two x-chromosomes is by definition a female. It’s said the males have the instinct and the reflex, but not the concentration.”
“These clans defend one another, do they?”
Viprion’s eyes made a nervous darting movement, and he ran the tip of his tongue across the corner of his mouth. “They are mortal enemies.”