But it also had a perfect operational record, a flawless history of preserving its human occupants in frozen stasis during the years of relativistic travel between stars. It had never killed anyone, never brought anyone back to life with anything other than the full spectrum of mental faculties. It incorporated the minimum of nanotechnology. The Melding Plague had never touched it, nor had the Captain’s own transforming influences. A baseline human contemplating a spell in the casket could have been quietly confident of revival. The transitions to and from the cryogenic state were slow and uncomfortable compared to the sleeker, more modern units. There would be discomfort, both physical and mental. But there would be little doubt that the unit would work as intended, and that the occupant would wake again at the other end of the journey.
The only problem was, none of this applied to pigs. The caskets were tuned to baseline human physiology on the unforgiving level of cell chemistry. Scorpio had made it through reefersleep before, but each time had been a gamble. He told himself that the odds didn’t get any worse each time he submitted himself to a casket, that he was no more likely to die in this unit than in the first one he had used. But that wasn’t strictly true. He was much older now. His body was intrinsically weaker than the last time he had been through the process. Everyone was being very coy about the hard numbers—whether it was a ten or twenty or even a thirty per cent chance of him not making out—but their very refusal to discuss the matter alarmed him more than a cold assessment of the risk would ever have done. At least then he could have compared the risks of taking the casket and staying awake for the entire trip. Five or six years of shiptime, making him fifty-five or fifty-six, against a thirty per cent chance of not making it there at all? It wouldn’t have been an easy decision—as a pig, he had no guarantee of making it to sixty under normal circumstances. But at least full disclosure of the facts would have enabled him to make a considered choice. Instead, what drove him to the casket was a simple desire to skip over the intervening time. Damn the odds; he had to get the waiting over with. He had to know if it was worth their while making it to Hela.
And before that, of course, he had to know if he had made a terrible mistake by persuading the ship to travel to Yellowstone first.
He thought of the dust leaking from his hand, spilling on to the table, the trail drifting towards the Y he had marked rather than the H. Within minutes it had been confirmed: the ship was executing a slow turn, steering for Epsilon Eridani rather than the dim, unfamiliar star of 107 Piscium.
He had been pleased with the Captain’s decision, but it also frightened him. The Captain had followed the minority view rather than the democratic wish of the seniors. It had suited Scorpio, but he wondered how he would have felt if the Captain had sided with the others. It was one thing to know that he had an ally in John Brannigan. It would be quite another to feel himself the prisoner of the ship.
“It’s not too late,” Khouri said. “You can stop now, spend the trip awake.”
“Is that what you’re planning to do?”
“At least until Aura is older,” she said.
The girl laughed.
“I can’t take the risk,” Scorpio said. “I may not last the journey if they don’t freeze me. Five or six years might not be much to you, but it’s a big chunk out of my life.”
“It might not be that long if they can get the new machines to work. Our subjective time to Yellowstone might only be a couple of years.”
“Still too long for my liking.”
“It worries you that much? I thought you said you never thought much about the future.”
“I don’t. Now you know why.”
She came closer to the black cabinet, lowering down on one knee, presenting Aura to him. “She thinks this is the wrong thing to do,” Khouri said. “I feel it coming through. She really thinks we should be going straight to Hela.”
“We’ll get there eventually,” he said. “John willing.” He directed his attention to Aura, looking into her golden-brown eyes. He expected her to flinch, but she held his gaze, barely blinking.
“Shadows,” she said, in her liquid gurgle, a voice that always seemed on the edge of hilarity. “Negotiate with shadows.”
“I don’t believe in negotiation,” Scorpio said. “All it gets you into is a world of pain.”
“Maybe it’s time you changed your opinion,” Khouri said.
Khouri and Aura left him alone with the technicians. He had been glad of the visit, but he was also glad to have a moment to marshal his thoughts, making sure that he did not forget the important things. One thing in particular assumed particular importance in his mind. He had still not told either of them about the private conversation he had had with Re-montoire just before the Conjoiner’s departure. The conversation had not been recorded, and Remontoire had given little more than his words: no data, no written evidence, just a shard of translucent white material small enough to fit in his pocket.
Now that omission was beginning to weigh upon him. Was it right to keep Remontoire’s doubts from Aura and her mother? Remontoire had left the final decision to him, in the end: a measure of the extent to which he trusted Scorpio.
Now, in the casket, Scorpio could have done with a bit less of that trust.
He didn’t have the shard with him now. It was with his personal effects, awaiting his revival. It had no intrinsic worth in its own right, and had anyone else found it, it was more than likely that they would have left it undisturbed, assuming only that it was some personal trinket or totem of purely sentimental value. What mattered was where Remontoire had found it. And aboard the ship, to the best of his knowledge, Scorpio was the only one who knew.
“I don’t know what to make of it,” Remontoire said, handing him the curved white shard. Scorpio examined it, immediately disappointed at what had he been given. He could see through it. The edges were sharp enough to be dangerous, and it was too hard to flex or break. The thing looked like a dinosaur’s toenail clipping.
“I know what it is, Rem.”
“You do?”
“It’s a piece of conch material. We found it all the time on Ararat, washed up after storms or floating out at sea. Much bigger than this piece.”
“How big?” Remontoire asked, steepling his fingers.
“Large enough to use for dwellings, sometimes. Sometimes even for major administrative structures. We didn’t have enough metal or plastic to go around, so we were always trying to make the best use of local resources. We had to anchor the conch pieces down, because otherwise they blew away in the first storm.”
“Difficult to work with?”
“We couldn’t cut them with anything other than torches, but that’s not saying much. You should have seen the state of our tools.”
“What did you make of the conch pieces, Scorp? Did you have a theory about them?”
“We didn’t have much time for theories about anything.”
“You must have had an inkling.”
Scorpio shrugged and passed the fragment back to him. “We assumed they were the discarded shells of extinct marine creatures, bigger than anything now living on Ararat. The Jugglers weren’t the only organism in that ocean; there was always room for other kinds of life, maybe relics of the original inhabitants, before the Juggler colonisation.”
Remontoire tapped a finger against the shard. “I don’t think we’re dealing with marine life, Scorp.”
“Does it matter?”
“It might do, especially given the fact that I found this in space, around Ararat.” He handed it back to the pig. “Interested now?”