‘He’ll know the difference, Betony. He won’t feel pain.’
‘Then you’ll have to make do without it. He’ll still feel himself being deleted, slice by slice. That’s got to be unpleasant enough without adding pain into the equation.’
‘He’ll know the process is reversible.’
‘Not for certain he won’t. There’ll still be that doubt, especially if you keep discharging the pistol. At the moment there’s a chance he could be put together again, a walking, talking human being. Keep deleting panes and he’ll be like a book with half its pages torn out. There’ll come a point when he’ll have lost too much to be reconstructed, and he’ll know that.’
Mezereon did not look convinced, but neither did she look as if she was ready for a showdown with Betony and the others. They were offering her a way of saving face before the audience, by allowing her to remain in charge of the interrogation. Her hands would be tied, but it would still be less humiliating than being removed from the role entirely.
‘I don’t like this,’ she said.
‘But you’ll do it anyway,’ Betony finished for her. ‘That’s how it has to be, Mez. If we’re wrong, if this gets us nowhere, then I’ll be the first to admit my error. But until that point, we’re doing it my way.’
Mezereon scowled. She turned around and stalked back to the waiting weapon, snatching it from the air as if grabbing a wasp. She adjusted the dial again, then looked back at us, her fingers white around the pistol’s grip.
‘Have it your way, boys and girls.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The robots came to see me in the early afternoon. I had left Campion watching Mezereon’s continued interrogation of Grilse and had returned to the private room where we had left Hesperus, exactly where he had been before we had taken him to the Spirit. There had been no change in his condition since morning, but I felt obliged to keep vigil in case there was a flicker of life, a momentary attempt at communication that ould otherwise be missed.
‘It was a very good effort,’ Cadence said, making me start by appearing at the door without warning. ‘You should not blame yourself for the lack of success.’
‘It isn’t a total failure,’ I said, noticing Cascade lurking just behind the female robot. ‘He’s not attached to that mass any more. He’s been put back the way he used to be. Even his arm.’
‘His arm?’ the male robot quizzed.
‘There was human flesh beneath the metal skin of his left arm. He was trying to disguise himself as one of us, so that he could enter the Vigilance.’
‘We had no idea,’ Cadence said.
‘It doesn’t matter now. But the point is, the Spirit did something - it didn’t just put him back on the platform exactly as he arrived. It saw what was wrong with him, what was damaged, or not to be expected.’
‘Superficial matters,’ Cascade said.
‘Maybe. But what’s to say it didn’t look deep into him and fix what was wrong with him there as well? His broken memory, the damage he sustained in the attack by the H-gun.’
‘The evidence would suggest otherwise,’ said Cadence. ‘Although it pains us to admit it, he does not appear any more cognitively functional than when we last observed him.’
‘There are still lights in his head.’
‘But faint, and hardly moving. You would be unwise to put too much stock in them.’
‘Do you think he’s dead?’
I had the impression that the robots were exchanging thoughts - the air grew momentarily tense, as if accumulating charge before an electrical storm.
‘He is not beyond hope,’ Cadence said, sounding more doubtful than certain. ‘But with every day that passes, patterns may be lost. The sooner he is on his way to Machine Space, the better.’
‘We did not want to press you after the death of Cyphel,’ Cascade said, managing to sound kind and firm at the same time, ‘but if it is not too painful, perhaps we might discuss the matter of transportation again?’
‘I think we agreed everything that needed to be agreed,’ I said. ‘We’ve said goodbye to Cyphel and I’ve got Hesperus back. If you want my ship, you can have her today.’
‘Are you certain?’ Cadence asked.
‘Totally. Take her. Get her out of my sight.’
‘That would be most satisfactory from our standpoint,’ Cascade said.
‘If it helps Hesperus, if it helps the Line, if it helps the Machine People, I’m happy with it.’ Which was halfway to the truth. Before Cyphel’s death, before the return of Hesperus, I had been indignant about losing
Silver Wings.
Now all I felt was emptiness, a sense that I had been betrayed and let down not just by elements of my Line, but by the universe itself. Getting my ship back would make no difference to that; it would be like throwing a single stone into a canyon and hoping to fill it to the brim.
‘There were things you wished to retrieve from the ship,’ Cadence said.
I nodded, although the task filled me with nothing resembling enthusiasm. ‘It won’t take long - most of those old ships should still be able to fly out by themselves.’
‘As discussed, we will begin the process of familiarisation with your vehicle’s systems while you evacuate the hold.’ Cascade nodded his white mask at the golden form before us. ‘We may as well convey Hesperus into orbit now. That way we can also begin preparing him for the journey, as best as we are able.’
‘I won’t see him again, will I?’
‘If he can be healed, and if you live long enough, anything is possible,’ Cadence answered.
‘Maybe he won’t even remember us. You can’t be sure of that, can you?’
Cascade said, ‘We will ensure that his debt to you is made clear.’
‘It isn’t about a debt. It’s about friendship. We liked him. I think he iked us back.’
‘He is in safe hands now,’ Cadence said. ‘You need have no fear about that.’
‘Will you take care of moving him?’ I asked. ‘I can have my shuttle ready at the main landing stage within the hour. Betony will need to authorise a visit to orbit, but there shouldn’t be any objection. This was his idea to begin with.’
‘This does not inconvenience you?’ Cascade asked.
‘It’s not as if I had anything else planned today.’
‘Then your offer is most acceptable to us. We shall make the necessary arrangements for Hesperus.’
‘Take good care of him,’ I said.
I left the robots with him and went back to the open auditorium where I had last seen Campion. He was still sitting with Betony and the others, keeping a careful eye on Mezereon. As I approached he stood from his seat and moved to an empty position out of earshot of the others. I went up to him and said, ‘I’m going up to
Silver Wings,
so that I can assign control to Cadence and Cascade. They’re going to take Hesperus with them.’
‘Will you be long?’
‘I only need to empty the hold and authorise the change of ownership. I should be back on Neume by midnight. At worst, breakfast.’
He made to move from his seat. ‘I’ll come with you.’
‘You don’t have to. In all honesty, I’d rather you didn’t come. It’s going to be difficult enough handing that ship over, but having you up there as a witness will make it even worse. You know what she means to me.’
‘I understand,’ Campion said. ‘This is something you’d rather do on your own.’
‘I’ll be all right once I’m back down. I just wanted you to know where I was going. I promise I’ll be fine.’
‘Don’t let those machines take anything that isn’t part of the deal.’
‘I won’t, trust me.’
He got up and kissed me, holding me tight until I forced myself free. ‘They’ll regret this, one day,’ he said. ‘They’ll see that they did the wrong thing. Betony probably knows it already - Cyphel’s death has put everything else into perspective. But he can’t back down, not now the offer’s already been made to the robots.’
‘If they bring her back with a scratch on her, there’ll be hell to pay.’
He smiled. ‘That’s the spirit. Now go up there and get it over and done with.’
I kissed him again; our hands linked and then parted. I turned to Betony, whom I sensed had been watching us.
‘I’m going up to my ship, to sign her over to the robots. I presume you have no objections?’
‘Of course not,’ he said, then looked back at Mezereon, as if he could not quite meet my eyes. Feeling a flicker of triumph, I walked away from the auditorium, my back straight, my head held high, to the landing stage. My shuttle was there by the time I arrived, and I did not have long to wait for the robots, or their golden cargo.
We lifted from Ymir without incident. I watched the spires fall away, curving the shuttle around so that I caught a fleeting view of the auditorium. Mezereon’s array of panes glittered in the sun, spangles of light flashing from the two hundred and fifty-six facets that had once been a single human being. I caught a glimpse of a tiny black-clad figure stalking between the panes, and then the ruby discharge of an energy-pistol, and then another tower swung into place to block my line of sight. I pushed the shuttle higher and was soon knifing into the high, thin layers of atmosphere where we had played out Cyphel’s life. Behind me, the robots stood on either side of their fallen kinsman, who was resting horizontally between them. Their hands were pressing into him, one on each shoulder. As I had noticed when they had attempted to commune with him previously on
Silver Wings of Morning,
it was as if the gold armour of his skin had become as malleable as clay.
I instructed the shuttle to match position and speed with my ship’s polar orbit.
Silver
came quickly into view, enlarging with frightening rapidity until the shuttle braked viciously to avoid the collision that until the absolute last moment had appeared inevitable. Inside, we felt nothing of that brutal slowdown. The shuttle sent a command for the cargo bay to open and we slipped inside the lovely chrome swan that had been my ship for so long. Selecting manual controls, I guided the shuttle through the maze of parked vehicles until I found the vacant docking berth I had used on my last visit. Field clamps locked it home; I set the drive to idle and we disembarked. Cadence and Cascade carried Hesperus; I strode ahead of them, walking through a good half-kilometre of bay until we reached the nearest whisking chamber.
‘Welcome, Purslane,’ said
Silver Wings,
speaking directly into my head. ‘I see you are accompanied. Are they guests, or are you being coerced?’
I am being coerced,
I thought sourly,
but by the Line, not these innocent machines.
‘They’re friends of mine,’ I said aloud. ‘Please make them welcome. Cadence is the silver one, Cascade the white one.’
‘Welcome, Cadence and Cascade.’
‘Hesperus you know,’ I said. ‘He’s still unwell, but the robots are going to take him somewhere where he can be healed. In a little while I’ll be assigning command authority to the robots, so you’ll have a good chance to get to know them better.’
‘Are you disposing of me, Purslane?’
Silver Wings
asked, still in my head.
‘Not by choice. We’ll talk about it on the bridge. If all goes well, we’ll see each other again, in half a million years or so.’
The whisking chamber was large enough to receive cargo, and therefore easily spacious enough for me and the three robots. I began to tap our destination into the hovering go-board, then looked back at my guests and hesitated. ‘Hesperus whisked, so I’m assuming you can do it as well. That was before he was injured, though. Will he be all right? We can walk if you like, but the bridge is a good fifteen kilometres away.’
‘We can whisk,’ Cadence said. ‘Hesperus will come to no harm.’
‘If you’re sure.’
A grid of lights in the chamber’s walls flashed red to signify that the whisking field was about to activate, and that we should confine ourselves to the area indicated on the floor. There was a moment’s bright rush - a subliminal sense of being syringed down swerving, chicaning tubes - and then, less than an eyeblink later, we were standing in the counterpart to the first chamber, fifteen kilometres up-ship.
‘Has there been a mistake?’ Cascade asked, looking into the echoing, gloomy concourse onto which the whisking chamber had opened. ‘This does not resemble the bridge I had imagined.’
‘The bridge is still a little way from here,’ I said. ‘There used to be a direct link between the cargo bay and the bridge, but that wasn’t a very good idea - it made the ship too vulnerable to attack by infiltrating parties. It was like putting an express elevator between the city gates and the mayor’s office - asking for trouble.’
‘Do we have far to go now?’
‘Just a stroll.’ The concourse was ringed by whisking chambers. I pointed to the one opposite us and set off at a brisk pace, leading the robots across a bridge. Above and below, rising and plunging to similarly dizzying vanishing points, stretched a shaft filled with slowly moving anvil-shaped mechanisms. Local gravity here was aligned with
Silver Wings’
long axis, so the shaft ran most of her length, until it butted against the mountainous bulkhead of the cargo bay. The machines were engaged in a never-ending process of repair and overhaul.
Every sixth whisking chamber was designed for cargo as well as people. The rest were only large enough to take one or two people at once, but there were enough of those to accommodate hundreds of simultaneous journeys. Although her origins were buried almost beyond recall, it was evident from the capacity of her whisking system - which pre-dated the redesign to prevent boarders - that she had once been intended to carry millions of passengers. I sometimes wondered if my ship pined for those days when her halls and atria, her vast concourses and plazas, teemed with human life. Now all she ever had was me, and a handful of guests if she was lucky. We rattled around like ghosts in an empty mansion.
We reached the other whisking chamber. I tapped the go-board, knowing that in a few moments we would be on the bridge and that there would be no further reason to delay handing over the ship. I had been steeling myself for it ever since we had left Neume, to the point where I had begun to think I could sail through it without an emotional hiccup. But now that the time was almost upon me I felt a tightening in my throat. This was not going to be as easy as I had thought.