The peculiar tour finished in the observation lounge, where the view was still half obscured by the hull of an over-friendly ship that had sidled up to the Ask Politely. Further out, nuzzling ships drifted around the sky, like bunches of misshapen balloons.
Mara showed a flicker of curiosity for the first time since leaving her cabin. ‘The ships are so strange,’ she said.
‘That they are,’ Poole said.
‘What are they doing?’
‘I don’t know. And the Captain won’t tell me.’
She pointed. ‘Look. Those two are fighting.’
Futurity and the others crowded to the window to see. It was true. Two ships had come together in an obviously unfriendly way. Both lumbering kilometre-long beasts, they weren’t about to do anything quickly, but they barged against each other, withdrew, and then went through another slow-motion collision. As they spun and ground, bits of hull ornamentation were bent and snapped off, and the ships were surrounded by a pale cloud of fragments, detached spires and shields, nozzles and antennae and scoops.
‘It’s a peculiar sort of battle,’ Futurity said. ‘They aren’t using any weapons. All they are doing is smashing up each other’s superstructure.’
‘But maybe that’s the point,’ Poole said.
‘So strange,’ Mara said again.
Captain Tahget blocked her way. ‘But,’ he said, ‘not so strange as the fact that you, madam, were able to smuggle a monopole bomb onto my ship.’
The mood immediately changed. Mara, obviously frightened, shrank back against Poole, coming so close she brushed against him, making his flank sparkle with disrupted pixels.
Poole said warningly, ‘Captain, you promised you wouldn’t interfere with her.’
Tahget held up his big hands. ‘And I will keep my word. Nobody will touch the bomb, or Mara here, and we’ll go through with our flight to Chandra as we agreed.’
‘But,’ Poole said heavily, ‘you had an ulterior motive in getting her out here, despite your promises.’
‘All right,’ Captain Tahget snapped. ‘I need some answers. I must know how she got us all into this situation.’
Futurity asked, ‘Why?’
Tahget barely glanced at him. ‘To stop it happening again.’ He glared at Mara. ‘Who helped you? Somebody must have. You’re nothing but a refugee from Chandra; you came to 478 with nothing. Who helped you smuggle a bomb on board? Who equipped you with the means to use it? And why? I know what you want - I don’t understand, but I’ve heard what you said. What I don’t know is what your benefactors want. And I need to know.’
She returned his stare defiantly. ‘I want to go back to my cabin.’
But Tahget wouldn’t back down. The stand-off was tense, and Futurity, his heart pumping, couldn’t see a way out.
Poole intervened. ‘Mara, it may be best to tell him what he wants to know.’
‘But—’
‘Telling him who helped you will make no difference to you. You aren’t going to come this way again, are you? And I can see the other point of view. Captain Tahget is responsible for his ship.’ Mara hesitated, but Poole continued to reassure her. ‘I believe he’ll keep his word. Just tell him.’
She took a deep breath. ‘Her name is Ideator First Class Leen.’
Tahget growled, ‘Who?’
But Futurity was shocked. He knew the name: the person who had helped Mara set all this up was a priest belonging to the Guild of Virtual Idealism.
Poole’s jaw dropped when he heard this. ‘My own makers! How delicious.’
Mara began to explain how the Ideator had helped her smuggle the bomb and other equipment aboard, but Tahget waved her silent. ‘If that bunch of illusionists was involved, anything could have been done to us and we wouldn’t know it.’ His suspicious frown deepened. ‘And then, once you were aboard, you asked for Poole himself. So was that part of the scheme?’
‘No,’ she insisted. ‘The Ideator did tell me Michael Poole had been reincarnated on 478. But it was my idea to ask for him, not hers.’
Poole shook his head. ‘I’m not part of this, captain, believe me. I’m a mere creature of the Idealists - rather like Mara here, I suppose.’
Now the Captain’s ferocious stare was turned on Futurity. ‘And you,’ Tahget snarled, his scar livid. ‘What do you have to do with it? The truth, now.’
Futurity, flustered, protested, ‘Why, nothing, Captain. You know why I was brought in - to negotiate with Mara. You asked for the Ecclesia’s help! And I don’t understand why you’re even asking me such a question. I’m an Engineer, not an Idealist.’
Tahget snorted. ‘But you’re all alike, you Guilds. All of you clinging to your petty worldlets, with your stolen fragments of the soldier’s faith, your saintly relics and your shrines!’
Futurity was shocked. ‘Captain - believe me, Engineers and Idealists would never cooperate on a scheme like this. It’s unthinkable.’ He hunted for the right word. ‘We may seem alike to you. But we are rivals.’
‘Maybe that’s the point,’ Poole said smoothly. ‘Acolyte, I imagine the Idealists have their own flow-through of pilgrims, along with their money.’
‘Yes, that’s true.’
‘What, then, if Mara’s bomb goes off? What will be the impact on the Ecclesia’s trading?’
‘We don’t think of it as trading but a duty to helpless—’
‘Just answer the question,’ Tahget growled.
Futurity thought it through. ‘It would be a disaster for us,’ he conceded. ‘A refugee makes her journey only once in her lifetime. She brings her children. If she can choose, nobody would come to a place so unsafe as to allow something like this to happen.’
‘No more refugees with their meagre savings for you to cream,’ Poole said, watching Futurity’s reaction with a cold amusement. ‘No more pilgrims and their offerings. Your rivals would have struck a mighty economic blow, would they not?’
Tahget said, ‘My company certainly wouldn’t touch your poxy little globe with a gloved hand, acolyte. Perhaps we won’t anyhow.’ A vein throbbed in his forehead. ‘So we are all puppets of those illusionists. And there’s not one of them within light years, whose head I can crack open!’
Mara had listened to all this. Now she said, ‘None of this matters. What does matter is me, and my daughter.’
‘And your bomb,’ said Poole softly.
‘Take me back to my cabin,’ she said. ‘And don’t ask me to leave it again before we get to Chandra.’
With a curt nod, Tahget dismissed her.
Futurity went back to his own room. He was relieved the little crisis was over, but his cheeks burned with shame and anger that this whole incident had been set up to get at his own Ecclesia - that another Guild should be responsible - and it had taken Poole to see it, Poole, a Virtual designed by the Idealists themselves!
But as he thought it over, he did see how alike the two Guilds were. And, he couldn’t help wondering, if the Idealists were capable of such deception, could it be that his own Ecclesia would not be above such dirty tricks? It was all politics, as Poole would probably say, politics and money, and a competition for the grubby trade of refugees and pilgrims. Perhaps even now the Ecclesiasts were plotting manoeuvres just as underhand and unscrupulous against their rivals.
An unwelcome seed of doubt and suspicion lodged in his mind. To burn it out he took his data desk and began furiously to write out a long report on the whole incident for his Hierocrat.
But before he had completed the work he was disturbed again. This time it wasn’t Mara who was causing trouble for the crew, but Poole - who had gone missing.
Tahget met Futurity in the observation lounge.
Futurity said, ‘I don’t see how you can lose a Virtual.’
Tahget grunted. ‘We know he’s being projected somewhere. We can tell that from the energy drain. What we don’t know is where. He isn’t on the monitors. We’ve checked out all the permitted zones by eye. What’s he up to, acolyte?’
Once again Futurity found himself flinching from Tahget’s glare. ‘You know, Captain, the way you use your physical presence to intimidate me—’
‘Answer the question!’
‘I can’t! I’m on this voyage because of Poole - believe me, I wish I wasn’t here at all - but I’m not his keeper.’
‘Acolyte, if you’re hiding something …’
Futurity was aware of a shadow passing over him. He turned.
There was Poole.
He was outside the hull, standing horizontally with his feet on the window’s surface, casting a diffuse shadow into the lounge. He was dressed in a skinsuit, and he looked down at Futurity with a broad grin, easily visible through his visor. The Virtual rendition was good enough for Futurity to see the pattern on the soles of Poole’s boots. Behind him, entangled ships drifted like clouds.
Futurity gaped. ‘Michael Poole! Why - how—?’
‘I can tell you how,’ Tahget said. He walked up to the window, huge fists clenched. ‘You hacked into your own software, didn’t you? You overrode the inhibiting protocols.’
‘It was an interesting experience,’ Poole said. His voice sounded muffled to Futurity, as if he was in another room. ‘Not so much like rewriting software as giving myself a nervous breakdown.’ He held up a gloved hand. ‘And you can see I didn’t do away with all the inhibitions. I wasn’t sure how far I could go, what was safe. Futurity, I think it’s possible that if I cracked this visor, the vacuum would kill me just as quickly as it would kill you.’
Futurity felt an urge to laugh at Poole’s antics. But at the same time anger swirled within him. ‘Poole, what are you doing out there? You’re the only one Mara trusts. All you’re doing is destabilising a dangerous situation, can’t you see that?’
Poole looked mildly exasperated. ‘Destabilising? I didn’t create this mess, acolyte. And I certainly didn’t ask to be here, in this muddled century of yours. But given that I am here - what do I want out of it? To find out, that’s what. That’s all I ever wanted, I sometimes think.’
Tahget said, ‘And what did you go spacewalking to find out, Poole?’
Poole grinned impishly. ‘Why, Captain, I wanted to know about your Hairy Folk.’
Futurity frowned. ‘What Hairy Folk?’
Tahget just glared.
Poole said, ‘Shall I show him?’ He waved a hand. A new Virtual materialised beside him, hanging in the vacuum. Its fragmentary images showed shadowy figures scurrying through the ship’s corridors, and along those translucent access tubes that snaked between the intertwined ships.
At first they looked like children to Futurity. They seemed to run on all fours, and to be wearing some kind of dark clothing. But as he looked closer he saw they didn’t so much crawl as scamper, climbing along the tube using big hands and very flexible-looking feet to clutch at handholds. There was something odd about the proportions of their bodies too: they had big chests, narrow hips, and their arms were long, their legs short, so that all four limbs were about the same length.
‘And,’ Futurity said with a shudder, ’that dark stuff isn’t clothing, is it?’
For answer, Poole froze the image. Captured at the centre of the frame, clearly visible through an access tube’s translucent wall, a figure gazed out at Futurity. Though this one’s limbs looked as well-muscled as the others, it was a female, he saw; small breasts pushed out of a tangle of fur. Her face, turned to Futurity, was very human, with a pointed chin, a small nose, and piercing blue eyes. But her brow was a low ridge of bone, above which her skull was flat.
‘A post-human,’ Futurity breathed.
‘Oh, certainly,’ said Poole. ‘Evidently adapted to micro-gravity. That even-proportioned frame is built for climbing, not for walking. Interesting; they seem to have reverted to a body plan from way back in our own hominid line, when our ancestors lived in the trees of Earth. The forests have vanished now, as have those ancestors or anything that looked like them. But a sort of echo has returned, here at the centre of the Galaxy. How strange! Of course these creatures would have been illegal under the Coalition, as I understand it. Evolutionary divergence wasn’t the done thing in those days. But the Galaxy is a big place, and evidently it happened anyhow. She doesn’t look so interested in the finer points of the law, does she?’
Futurity said, ‘Captain, why do you allow these creatures to run around your ship?’
Poole laughed. ‘Captain, I’m afraid he doesn’t understand.’
Tahget growled, ‘Acolyte, we call these creatures “shipbuilders”. And I do not allow them to do anything - it’s rather the other way around.’
Poole said cheerfully, ‘Hence the ship’s name - Ask Politely!’
‘But you’re the Captain,’ Futurity said, bewildered.
Poole said, ‘Tahget is Captain of the small pod which sustains you, acolyte, which I can see very clearly stuck in the tangle of the hull superstructure. But he’s not in command of the ship. All he does is a bit of negotiating. You are all less than passengers, really. You are like lice in a child’s hair.’
Tahget shrugged. ‘You insult me, Poole, but I don’t mind the truth.’