Khouri awoke. Scorpio was with her when she opened her eyes, sitting in the seat next to her bed where Valensin had been earlier. Another hour had passed, and he had missed the meeting in the High Conch. He considered this an acceptable trade-off.
The woman blinked and rubbed sleep gum from her eyes. Her lips were caked in the stringy white residue of dried saliva. “How long have I been out?”
“It’s the morning of the day after we rescued Aura. You’ve been out for most of it. Doc says it’s just fatigue catching up with you. That whole time you were with us, you must have been running on vapour.”
Khouri’s head turned to the other side of the bed. “Aura?”
“Doc says she’s doing OK. Like you, she just needs rest. Considering ail the crap she’s been through, she’s doing pretty well.”
Khouri closed her eyes. She sighed. In that moment Scorpio saw tension flood out of her. It was as if the whole time she had been with them, ever since they had pulled her out of the capsule, she had been wearing a mask. Now the mask had been discarded.
She opened her eyes again. They were like windows into a younger woman. He remembered, forcefully, the way Khouri had been before the two ships had separated in the Resurgam system. Half his life ago.
“I’m glad she’s safe,” she said. “Thank you for helping me. And I’m sorry for what happened to Clavain.”
“So am I, but there was no choice. Skade has us. She set the trap, we walked into it. Once she knew she couldn’t benefit from holding on to Aura, she was ready to give her back to us. But she wasn’t going to let us leave without paying. She felt Clavain still owed her.”
“But what she did to him…”
Scorpio touched her head gently. “Don’t think about it now. Don’t ever think about it, if you can help it.”
“He was your friend, wasn’t he?”
“Guess so. Inasmuch as I’ve ever had friends.”
“I think you’ve had friends, Scorp. I think you still have friends. Two more now, if you want them.”
“Mother and daughter?”
“We both owe you.”
“I’ll take it under advisement.”
She laughed. It was good to hear someone laugh. Khouri was the last one he’d have expected it from. Before the trip to the iceberg she had struck him as monomanically driven, like a purposeful preprogrammed weapon sent down from the heavens. But he understood now that she was as fragile and human as the rest of them. Whatever “human” meant for a pig.
“Mind if I ask you something?” he said. “If you’re sleepy, I can come back in a little while.”
“Fetch me that water, will you?”
He brought her the beaker of water she’d indicated. She drank half of it down, then wiped the white scurf from her moistened lips. “Go on, Scorp.”
“You have a link to Aura, don’t you? A mental connection, via the implants Remontoire put in both of you?”
“Yes,” she said;, guardedly.
“Do you understand everything that comes through it?”
“How do you mean?”
“You said that Aura speaks through you. Fine, I think I understand that. But do you ever pick up unintentional stuff?”
“Like what?”
“You know the leakage we have from the wolf war? Stuff slipping through the defences? Do you ever get leakage from Aura, things that cross over the gap between you, but which you can’t process?”
“I wouldn’t know.” She sounded less happy now than she had a minute earlier. She was frowning. The windows had slammed shut again. “What sort of thing were you thinking of, exactly?”
“Not sure,” he said. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s just a shot in the dark. When we pulled you out of that capsule, Valensin hit you with sedatives because you wouldn’t let us examine you. Knocked you out good and cold. But in your sleep you still kept saying something.”
“I did, did I?”
“The word was ‘Hella,’ or something like that. It appeared to mean something to you, but when we asked you about it, you gave me what I’d call a plausible denial. I’m inclined to believe you were telling the truth, that the word doesn’t mean anything to you. But I’m wondering if it might mean something to Aura.”
She looked at him with suspicion and interest. “Does it mean anything to you?”
“Not that I’m aware of. Certainly doesn’t mean anything to anyone on Ararat. But in the wider sphere of human culture? Could mean almost anything. Lot of languages out there. Lot of people, lot of places.“
“Still can’t help you.”
“I understand. But the thing is, while I was sitting here waiting for you to wake up, you said something else.”
“What did I say?”
“Quaiche.”
She lifted the beaker to her lips and finished what remained of the water. “Still doesn’t mean anything to me,” she said.
“Pity. I was hoping it might ring some bells.”
“Well, maybe it means something to Aura. I don’t know, all right? I’m just her mother. Remontoire wasn’t a miracle worker. He linked us together, but it’s not as if everything she thinks is accessible to me. I’d go mad if that was the case.” Khouri paused. “You’ve got databases and things. Why don’t you query them?”
“I will, when things quieten down.” Scorpio pushed himself up from the seat. “One other thing: I understand you communicated a particular desire to Doctor Valensin?”
“Yeah, I talked to the doc.” She said it in a lilting voice, parodying his earlier tone.
“I understand why you want that to happen. I respect your wish and sympathise with you. If there was a safe way…”
She closed her eyes. “She’s my baby. They stole her from me. Now I want to give birth to her, the way it was meant to happen.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I just can’t allow it.”
“There’s no room for argument, is there?”
“None at all, I’m afraid.”
She did not reply, did not even turn away from him, but there was a withdrawal and the sliding down of a barrier he didn’t have to see to feel.
Scorpio turned from the bed and walked slowly out of the room. He had expected her to weep when he broke the news. If not weeping, then hysterics or insults or pleading. But she remained still, silent, as if she had always known it would happen this way. As he walked away, the force of her dignity made the back of his neck tingle. But it changed nothing.
Aura was a child. But she was also a tactical asset.
TWENTY-SEVEN
In the deep cloisters of the ship, Antoinette halted. “John?” she said. “It’s me again. I’ve come down to talk to you.”
Antoinette knew he was nearby. She knew that he was watching her, alert to her every gesture. When the wall moved, pushing itself into the bas-relief image of a spacesuited figure, she controlled her natural instinct to flinch. It was not quite what she had been expecting, but it was still an apparition.
“Thanks,” she said. “Good to see you again.”
The figure was a suggestion rather than an accurate sketch. The image shimmered, the wall’s deformations undergoing constant and rapid change, fluttering and rippling like a flag in a stiff gale. When the image occasionally broke up, fading back into the rough texture of the wall, it was as if the figure was being hidden by scarves of windblown Martian dust cutting horizontally across the field of view.
The figure gestured to her, raising an arm, touching one gloved hand to the narrow visor of its space helmet.
Antoinette raised her own hand in greeting, but the figure on the wall merely repeated the gesture, more emphatically this time.