“You think it’s Hela, don’t you?”
“Doesn’t it intrigue you, Scorpio? Don’t you want to go there and see what you find?”
“We looked it up, Rem. Hela is an iceball, home to a bunch of religious lunatics tripping on the tainted blood of an indoc-trinal virus carrier.”
“Yet they speak of miracles.”
“A planet that disappears. Except no one you’d trust to fix a vac-suit seal has ever seen it happen.”
“Go there and find out. One-oh-seven Piscium is the system. The Inhibitors haven’t reached it yet, by all accounts.”
“Thanks for the information.”
“It will be your decision, Scorpio. You already know what Aura will recommend, but you don’t have to be swayed by that.”
“I won’t.”
“But keep this in mind: one-oh-seven Piscium is an outlying system. Reports of wolf incursions into human space are fragmentary at best, but you can be certain that when they move in, the core colonies—the worlds within a dozen or so light years of Earth—will be the first to fall. That’s how they work: identify the hub, attack and destroy it. Then they pick off the satellite colonies and anyone trying to flee deeper into the galaxy.”
Scorpio shrugged. “So nowhere’s safe.”
“No. But given your responsibilities—given the seventeen thousand individuals now in your care—it would be far safer to head outwards than to dive back towards those hub worlds. But I sense that you may feel otherwise.”
“I have unfinished business back home,” Scorpio replied.
“You don’t mean Ararat, do you?”
“I mean Yellowstone. I mean the Rust Belt. I mean Chasm City and the Mulch.”
Remontoire finished his tea, consuming the last drop with the fastidious neatness of a cat. “I understand that you still have emotional ties to that place, but don’t underestimate the danger of returning there. If the wolves have gathered any in-telligence on us, it won’t have taken them very long to identify Yellowstone as a critical hub. It will be high on their list of priorities. They may already be there, building a Singer, as they did around Delta Pavonis.”
“In which case there’ll be a lot of people needing to get out.”
“You can’t make enough of a difference to justify the risk,” Remontoire told him.
“I can try.” Scorpio gestured through the window of the inspection spider, towards the looming presence of the ship. “The Infinity brought one hundred and sixty thousand people from Resurgam. I may not be much of a mathematician, but with only seventeen thousand aboard her now, that means we have some spare capacity.”
“You will be risking all the lives we have already saved.”
“I know,” he replied.
“You will be squandering any advantage you gain in the next few days, as we draw the machines away from you.”
“I know,” he said again.
“You will also be risking your own life.”
“I know that as well, and it isn’t going to make one damned bit of difference, Rem. The more you try to talk me out of it, the more I know I’m going to do it.”
“If you have the backing of the seniors.”
“They either back me or sack me. It’s their choice.”
“You’ll also need the ship to agree to it.”
“I’ll ask nicely,” Scorpio said.
The tugs had dragged the cache weapon to a safe distance from the ship. He expected to see their main drives flick on, bright spears of scattered light from plasma exhausts, but the whole assembly just accelerated away, as if moved by an invisible hand.
“I don’t agree with your stance,” Remontoire said, “but I respect it. You remind me of Nevil, in some ways.”
Scorpio recalled the ludicrously brief episode of “grieving” Remontoire had undergone. “I thought you were over him now.”
“None of us are over him,” Remontoire said curtly. Then he gestured to the flask again and his mood lightened visibly. “More tea, Mr. Pink?”
Scorpio didn’t know what to say. He looked at the bland-faced man and shrugged. “If you don’t mind, Mr. Clock.”
The surgeon-general ushered Rashmika through the labyrinthine Lady Morwenna. It was clearly not a sightseeing trip. Though she dawdled when she was able—slowing down to look at the windows, or something of equal interest—Grelier always chivvied her on with polite insistence, tapping his cane against the walls and floor to emphasise the urgency of his mission. ‘Time is of the essence, Miss Els,“ he kept saying. That and, ”We’re in a wee bit of a hurry.“
“It would help if you told me what all this is about,” she said.
“No, it wouldn’t,” he replied. “Why would it help? You’re here and we’re on our way.”
He had a point, she supposed. She just didn’t like it very much.
“What happened with the Catherine of Iron?” she asked, determined not to give up too easily.
“Nothing that I’m aware of. There was a change of assignment. Nothing significant. You’re still being employed by the First Adventist Church, after all. We’ve just relocated you from one cathedral to another.” He tapped the side of his nose, as if sharing a grand confidence. “Frankly, you’ve done rather well out of it. You don’t know how difficult it is to get into the Lady Mor these days. Everyone wants to work in the Way’s most historic cathedral.”
“I was given to understand that its popularity had taken a bit of a knock lately,” she said.
Grelier looked back at her. “Whatever do you mean, Miss Els?”
“The dean is taking it over the bridge. At least, that’s what people are saying.”
“And if that were the case?”
“I wouldn’t be too surprised if people aren’t all that keen to stay aboard. How far from the crossing are we, Surgeon-General?”
“Navigation’s not really my thing.”
“You know exactly how far away we are,” she said.
He flashed a smile back at her. She decided that she did not like his smile at all. It looked altogether too feral. “You’re good, Miss Els. As good as I’d hoped.”
“Good, Surgeon-General?”
“The lying thing. The ability to read faces. That’s your little stock in trade, isn’t it? Your little party trick?”
They had arrived at what Rashmika judged to be the base of the Clocktower. The surgeon-general pulled out a key, slipped it into a lock next to a wooden door and admitted them into what was obviously a private compartment. The walls were made of trellised iron. Inside he pressed a sequence of brass knobs and they began to rise. Through the trelliswork, Rashmika watched the walls of the elevator shaft glide by. Then the walls became stained glass, and as they ascended past each coloured facet the light changed in the compartment: green to red, red to gold, gold to a cobalt blue that made the surgeon-general’s shock of white hair glow as if electrified.
“I still don’t know what this is about,” she persisted.
“Are you frightened?”
“A bit.”
“You needn’t be.” She saw that he was telling the truth, at least as he perceived it. This calmed her slightly. “We’re going to treat you very well,” he added. “You’re too valuable to us to be treated otherwise.”
“And if I decide I don’t want to stay here?”
He looked away from her, glancing out of the window. The light traced the outline of his face with dying fire. There was something about him—a muscular compactness to his body, that bulldog face—that made her think of circus performers she had seen in the badlands, who were actually unemployed miners touring from village to village to supplement their income. He could have been a fire-eater or an acrobat.