“Why the change in tactics?” Vasko asked.
“Something’s got them scared,” Cruz said. “They’re becoming nervous, unwilling to do face-to-face trade. Some Ultras must have met something they didn’t like, and now they’re spreading the word, switching to long-range trading of data rather than material commodities.”
“No prizes for guessing what’s spooked them,” Vasko said.
“It works to our advantage, though,” Cruz said. “They may not be authoritative transmissions, and half of those we do intercept are riddled with errors and viruses, but over the years we’ve been able to keep our databases more up to date than we could ever have hoped given our lack of contact with external elements.”
“So what do we know about Quaiche’s system, then?” Vasko asked.
“Not as much as we’d like,” Cruz said. “There were no conflicts with prior assignments, which means that the system Quaiche was investigating must have been very poorly explored prior to his arrival.”
“So whatever Aura is referring to happened—what—fifty, sixty years ago?” Vasko asked.
“Easily,” Cruz said.
Vasko stroked his chin. It was clean-shaven, smooth as sandpapered wood. “Then it can’t mean much to us, can it?”
“Something happened to Quaiche,” Scorpio said. “Accounts vary. Seems he was doing scutwork for Ultras, getting his hands dirty exploring planetary environments they weren’t happy around. He witnessed something, something to do with Haldora.” Scorpio looked at them all, one by one, daring anyone—especially Vasko—to interrupt or quibble. “He saw it vanish. He saw the planet just cease to exist for a fraction of a second. And because of that he started up a kind of religion on Hela, Haldora’s moon.”
‘That’s it?“ Antoinette asked. ”That’s the message Aura came all this way to give us? The address of a religious lunatic?“
‘There’s more,“ Scorpio said.
“I sincerely hope there is,” she replied.
“He saw it happen more than once. So, apparently, did others.”
“Why am I not surprised?” she said.
“Wait,” Vasko said, holding up a hand. “I want to hear the rest. Go on, Scorp.”
The pig looked at him with an utter absence of expression. “Like I need your permission?”
“That’s not how I meant it to sound. I just…” Vasko looked around, perhaps wondering whom he might solicit for support. “I just think we shouldn’t be too quick to dismiss anything we learn from Aura, no matter how little sense it seems to make.”
“No one’s dismissing anything,” Scorpio said.
“Please tell us what you learned,” Antoinette interrupted, sensing that things were about to get out of hand.
“Not much happened for decades,” Scorpio continued. “Quaiche’s miracle drew a few people to Hela. Some of them signed up for the religion, some of them became disillusioned and set up shop as miners. There are alien artefacts on Hela—nearly useless junk, but they export enough to sustain a few settlements. Ultras buy the junk off them and sell it on to curio collectors. Someone probably makes a bit of money out of it, but you can guess that it isn’t the poor idiots who dig the stuff out of the ground.”
“There are alien artefacts on a bunch of worlds,” Antoinette said. “I’m guessing this lot went the same way as the Amarantin and a dozen or so other civilisations, right?”
“The databases didn’t have much on the indigenous culture,” Scorpio said. “The people who run Hela don’t exactly encourage free-thinking scientific curiosity. But yes, reading between the lines, it looks as though they met the wolves.”
“And they’re extinct now?” she asked.
“So it would seem.”
“Help me out here, Scorp,” Antoinette said. “What do you think all this might mean to Aura?”
“I have no idea,” he said.
“Perhaps she wants us to go there,” Vasko said.
They all looked at him. His tone of voice had been reasonable, as if he was merely voicing something the rest of them were taking for granted. Perhaps that was even true, but hearing someone articulate it was like a small, quiet profanity in the most holy of audiences.
“Go there?” Scorpio said, frowning, the skin between his snout and forehead crinkling into rolls of flesh. “You mean actually go there?”
“If we conclude that she’s suggesting it would help us, then yes,” Vasko said.
“We can’t just go to this place on the basis of a sick woman’s delirious ramblings,” said Hallatt, one of the colony seniors from Resurgam who had never trusted Khouri.
“She isn’t sick,” said Dr. Valensin. “She has been tired, and she has been traumatised. That’s all.”
“I hear she wanted the baby put back inside her,” Hallatt said, a revolted sneer on his face, as if this was the most debased thing anyone had ever imagined.
“She did,” Scorpio said, “and I vetoed it. But it wasn’t an unreasonable request. She is the child’s mother, and the child was kidnapped before she could give birth to her. Under the circumstances, I thought it was an entirely understandable desire.”
“But you still turned her down,” Hallatt said.
“I couldn’t risk losing Aura, not after the price we paid for her.”
“Then you were cheated,” Hallatt said. “The price was too high. We lost Clavain and all we got back was a brain-damaged child.”
“You’re saying Clavain died in vain?” Scorpio asked him, his voice dangerously soft.
The moment stalled, elongated, like a fault in a recording. Antoinette realised with appalling clarity that she was not the only one who did not know what had happened in the iceberg. Hallatt, too, must be ignorant of the actual events, but his ignorance was of an infinitely more reckless kind, trampling and transgressing its own boundaries.
“I don’t know how he died. I don’t care and I don’t need to know. But if Aura was all it was about then no, it wasn’t worth it. He died in vain.” Hallatt locked his fingers together and pursed his lips in Scorpio’s direction. “You might not want to hear it, but that’s the way it is.”
Scorpio glanced at Blood. Something passed between them: an interplay of minute gestures too subtle, too familiar to each participant, ever to be unravelled by an outsider. The exchange only lasted for an instant. Antoinette wondered if anyone else even noticed it, or whether she had simply imagined it.
But another instant later, Hallatt was looking down at something parked in his chest.
Languidly, as if standing up to adjust a picture hung at a lopsided angle, Blood eased to his feet. He strolled towards Hallatt, swaying from side to side with the slow, effortless rhythm of a metronome.
Hallatt was making choking sounds. His fingers twitched impotently against the haft of Blood’s knife.
“Get him out of here,” Scorpio ordered.
Blood removed his knife from Hallatt, cleaned it against his thigh, sheathed it again. A surprisingly small amount of blood leaked from the wound.
Valensin moved to stand up.
“Stay where you are,” Scorpio said.
Blood had already called for a pair of SA aides. They arrived within the minute, reacting to the situation with only a momentary jolt of surprise. Antoinette gave them top marks for that. Had she walked into the room and found someone bleeding to death from an obvious knife wound, she would have had a hard time staying conscious, let alone calm.
“I’m going after him,” Valensin said, standing up again as the SA aides removed Hallett.
“I said, stay put,” Scorpio repeated.
The doctor hammered a fist on the table. “You just killed a man, you brutal little simpleton! Or at least you will have if he doesn’t get immediate medical attention. Is that something that you really want on your conscience, Scorpio?”