‘Great. I kept meaning to convert all these ships to Line control standards, but I just never got around to it.’
‘That’ll teach you.’
‘Teach me what?’
‘Never put off until the next million years what you can do during this million.’ After dispensing this advice, Hesperus fell silent, his hands twitching and the text and diagrams slamming past in a pink blur, impossibly fast.
‘Give me some good news,’ I asked after a while.
‘Well, there is power, as we already deduced. The important thing is that there is more than enough for our needs. The stardrive reports operational readiness. Life support appears to be functioning normally. We have inertia control and impassors. We have real-thrust engines, for taxiing to clear space. If there were no obstacles to our egress, we could take this ark out of the bay immediately.’
I scratched my neck. ‘So why don’t we?’
‘Cadence and Cascade have complete control, Purslane. They opened the door with the intention of killing you. Now that the air is gone, I have every confidence that they will have restored the curtain and sealed the bay again. We wouldn’t get very far, I’m afraid.’
‘We could try.’
‘We would die in the process. At least for now we are alive, with options.’
‘And they would be ...’
‘We can inconvenience our hosts by slowing down your ship. You will need to furnish me with a list of those vessels that have working parametric engines. There are too many for me to visit the entire contents of the bay.’
‘I can do that. What other options do we have?’
‘We will attempt to contact our pursuers, and thereby determine our position, speed and approximate heading. Then we may begin to speculate as to the nature of this undertaking.’
‘We’re heading back to Machine Space.’
‘Yes,’ he said, distractedly.
‘You sound as if you’re not sure of that.’
‘I am sure of nothing, Purslane. It has been a long time since I left the Monoceros Ring, but nothing in my experience suggested a widespread appetite for war. Quite the opposite. Most reasoning thinkers wanted nothing but peace and prosperity, for both our meta-civilisations. I was sent to investigate anomalous records in the Vigilance archive, for the sake of completeness and curiosity. I was not sent to make war or enemies.’
I realised this was the first time he had spoken with any certainty of his mission.
‘Then what about Cadence and Cascade?’
‘They may have been sent by another faction within the Machine People. What their agenda is, I cannot yet say.’
‘But you have ideas.’
‘I have pieces. Fragments of ideas. And one very large, very disturbing truth, which I will soon be obliged to reveal to you.’
‘Tell me what they sent you for,’ I said, with a sense that the world was about to spring open a trapdoor under my feet.
Hesperus made a few further adjustments to the controls, but did not answer my question. ‘I have secured the external doors. Nothing will be able to enter without the use of force.’
‘That’s not particularly reassuring under the circumstances.’
‘I will not overstate our chances. If they have access to
Silver Wings’
systems, they will be able to forge weapons and devices of vast penetrating force. But we have makers as well. We can defend ourselves. And, ultimately, we have an option they do not.’
I heard something ominous in his tone. ‘Which is?’
‘We can destroy this ark. If the engine were to self-destruct, I doubt that any containment system would be able to stop the detonation before it touched every other ship in this hold - not even if
Silver Wings
tried to place an impassor around her bay.’
‘Then we have a way of hurting them.’ I did not need to state the dark corollary.
‘It would be instantaneous, Purslane. If you were afraid, I could complete the operation while you were in abeyance.’
‘Well, let’s not jump the gun on that plan just yet.’
‘I just want to make sure we both understand what we are capable of doing.’
‘I get it. Will Cadence and Cascade work it out as well?’
‘They will know we are capable of it. Whether they think we will do it is another question entirely.’
‘Do you think they know we’re still alive?’
‘They know that I am still functioning, and that you were alive until you lost consciousness. I do not think they are capable of monitoring our activities inside this ark.’
‘They’ll see you when you leave.’
‘I’ll move fast, alter my coloration and endeavour to use the ships and other obstructions for concealment.’
‘I’ll need time to come up with that list. If I had access to my trove—’
‘I have confidence in your abilities.’ His tone became brisk, business-like. ‘Now - with your permission, I shall bring the ark’s engine to taxiing power. I will not risk a greater application of pseudo-thrust for fear that the ship would break itself free of its docking cradle.’
‘Do it,’ I said, standing back while he worked.
Hesperus coaxed the slumbering engine into life, warming it for the first time in tens of subjective millennia. Many ships would have balked at such a demand. For the ark, which had been outfitted for a long and venerable existence in its second life, this was not an unreasonable request. The red writing and symbols flowed onto white panels that had previously been blank, a series of chimes sounded and there was a momentary surging sensation that had me grabbing for support. Then there was only a distant throbbing, not so much a sound as a subsonic impression.
Silver Wings
was bending space in one direction, surfing the distortion; the ark was trying to flatten it out again.
‘Do you think they’ll notice?’
‘Undoubtedly. They’ll notice the effect even more when I’ve performed the same trick with a few more ships.’
I thought of the list he wanted from me. I could name some of the ships already, but I did not want him to leave until I was as sure as I could be that I had remembered them all.
‘I need something to write down the names and positions.’
‘Simply state them aloud. I will remember everything of importance.’ He made another delicate adjustment to the console, causing a new series of chimes to sound. ‘I have activated the ark’s hailing transmitter, at full strength. I have put it on a cycling frequency sweep so that it stands the best chance of penetrating the bay walls and the wake distortion behind us. The ship will inform us if it receives a return signal.’
‘There may not be anyone behind us.’
‘Do you think Campion would let you go without an explanation?’
‘He’d need Betony’s permission to come after me.’
‘I rather doubt that would have stopped him.’
‘You’re right. It wouldn’t.’ The thought that Campion might be out there cheered me on one level, but chilled me on another. I wanted him safe and sound somewhere, not risking his existence for my sake. ‘Hesperus,’ I said, hesitantly, ‘what you were saying just now, about a disturbing truth - are you ready to talk about it yet?’
He stood from the controls, having done everything necessary for the time being. ‘It’s not as if there will ever be a good time.’
‘So let’s make it now.’
He considered my request for a moment, then gestured towards one of the padded white chairs. ‘Take a seat, Purslane..’
‘Why?’
‘Because you are in a state of acute mental fragility, and what I am about to reveal to you will in no way bolster your strength of mind.’
‘I’m all right. I’m not going to faint.’
‘Sit.’
sat down.
Hesperus stood before me, his arms crossed. ‘I am not Hesperus,’ he said.
I let out a small, involuntary laugh. ‘What do you mean, you’re not Hesperus? I know you. I took you to the Spirit. I brought you back.’
‘I chose my words unwisely. I was Hesperus. Now I am something more than Hesperus. Hesperus is a part of what I am, a vital part, a treasured part, but not the sum of me. I am as much the man Abraham Valmik as I am the machine Hesperus.’
I felt cold, suddenly uncertain of my safety. ‘Stop talking like this.’
‘I can only express the truth. The Spirit no longer exists on Neume. Everything that it was, everything that it ever knew, everything it ever felt or witnessed, is now part of me.’
I shook my head in flat denial. ‘That isn’t possible. The Spirit was still there when we left.’
‘I left behind an empty shell, without a consciousness. It will continue to drift through the atmosphere, going through the old motions. But it is not me. I am in this golden body now. It was time to move on, to become compact once more. I am Abraham Valmik. I was once a man, then I became the Spirit of the Air. Now I am close to being a man again.’
I struggled to process what I had just been told. Out of all the millennia, all the centuries, all the long days - why would the Spirit choose this one to move on?
‘Why leave, when you were safe?’ I asked. ‘Nothing could touch you down there. Now you could be killed at any moment, if Cadence and Cascade decide to wipe us out.’
‘That is a risk. On balance, though, I saw that I had no choice. A time of great stability, lasting millions of years, is coming to an end. There was no guarantee that Neume would be any safer than here, aboard this ship.’
‘What do you know?’
‘Everything. Everything and nothing. I mentioned disturbing news, Purslane. What I have just told you, the information concerning my identity, may seem disturbing to you. But it is not the news to which I was referring.’
I sank back into the seat. ‘Whatever it is, I’m ready for it.’
‘When Hesperus was brought to me - a truly conscious being, albeit a broken one - he catalysed a change. It must have been imminent, poised to happen, for quite some time. Perhaps I had begun a slow process of waking, a slow realisation that it was time to gather myself and move on. But had I - Hesperus - not been brought to me - Valmik - I would still be in that state of delayed transition, like a sleeper trying to rouse himself from the coils of a lovely and seductive dream, one where the colours and emotions are brighter and stronger than they ever are in the waking world.’
‘We had to help him.’
‘It was an act of singular kindness. We are both grateful, Purslane. But now you need to know the whole story.’
My throat was tight. There was acid in my belly. ‘Go on.’
‘Machine People never came to Neume. Hesperus was the first, or at least the first to come into my presence. But when he came, when I took his broken body into myself, I remembered something. It was an experience that had happened so long ago that I could not truthfully distinguish it from a figment of my own imagination. But when I picked apart Hesperus’s memory, I found the key that unlocked the truthfulness of my recollection.’ He paused and regarded me with all the intensity of expression his golden mask was capable of. ‘He was not the first.’
‘You said no other Machine People had come before him.’
‘That is correct. A million years after the Golden Hour, four million years before the Machine People, there were others.’
‘Other what?’
‘Another machine civilisation. Another race of intelligent, conscious robots.’
‘No,’ I said, with a burning conviction. ‘I know my history. Nothing like the Machine People ever arose before them.’
‘That is what you believe to be true. But the Vigilance discovered evidence to the contrary. It found the remains of this robot civilisation on several worlds, scattered across galactic space. The evidence had been misinterpreted; it was assumed that the Priors had been responsible. The Vigilance detected anomalies in the official explanation - the temporal evidence did not fit the Prior hypothesis - and flagged the matter for further investigation. When news of this puzzle reached Machine Space, I was dispatched to penetrate the Vigilance and learn the extent of their knowledge.’
Your mission.’
‘Around the same time - within a circuit or so - Campion must have entered the Vigilance and compiled his report for Gentian Line. Campion’s strand must have mentioned this selfsame anomaly, even if that was simply one bright gem in a treasure chest of intelligence. But that gem is where all this began, Purslane. When Campion delivered this strand, the wheels of a great and terrible process were set in motion. That is why you were ambushed, two hundred kilo-years later.’
‘All this because of an anomaly in the Vigilance’s data?’
‘Because of the significance of that anomaly - to humanity, to the Machine People, and most especially to Gentian Line.’
I reeled, struggling to take all this in. It was not just difficult for me to accept the emergence of another machine civilisation, when the history books said otherwise. I had lived through that history, seen it within my own eyes. I remembered all the twists and turns, all the savage bottlenecks. I could reel off the names of a hundred thousand turnover cultures without stopping for breath. There was no room in that litany of known events for something as momentous as the coming of living machines.
‘I don’t get it, Hesperus. How does this have anything to do with Gentian Line? And if those machines existed, why don’t I remember them? How did they manage to come and go without leaving a dent in history?’
‘They didn’t.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘They left their mark on history. They left many marks. But one by one, systematically and with great thoroughness, the marks were erased.’
‘By the machines?’
‘They were already extinct.’
‘Then who did it?’
Hesperus waited a moment, then said, with infinite gentleness, as if he had no wish to cause me pain or anguish, ‘The House of Suns was the secret Line tasked to keep this knowledge buried. You and every shatterling of the Commonality played a part in bringing it into existence. When you were ambushed, it was your own dark instrument turning against you.’