“I might be.”
Remontoire told him the rest. During the last phase of the battle around Ararat, he had been contacted by a group of Conjoiners from Skade’s party. “They knew she was dead. Without a leader, they were devolving into a directionless squabble. They approached me, hoping to steal the hypometric technology. They’d learned much already, but that was the one thing they didn’t have. I resisted, fought them off, but I also let them go with a warning. I considered it rather late in the day to be making new enemies.”
“And?”
“They came back to help me when the wolf aggregate was about to finish me off. A suicidal move on their part. I think it convinced me and my associates to accept terms of cooperation from Skade’s people. But there was something else.”
“The shard?”
“Not the shard itself, but data pertaining to the same mystery. I viewed it with suspicion, as I still do. I can’t rule out the possibility that it may have been a piece of disinformation sown by Skade when she knew her days were numbered. Just like her to throw a posthumous spanner into our works, wouldn’t you say?”
“I wouldn’t put it past her for a second,” Scorpio replied. Now that he knew it had some deeper significance, the piece of conch material felt like some holy relic in his hands. He held it with reverential care, as if he might damage it. “What did the data tell you?”
“Before they transmitted the data, they spoke of the situation around Ararat being more complicated than we had assumed. I didn’t admit it at the time, but what they said chimed with my own observations. There had, for some time, been hints of something else in the game. Not my people, nor Skade’s, not even the Inhibitors, but another party, lurking on the very edge of events, like spectators. Of course, in the confusion of battle it was easy to dismiss such speculation: ghost returns from mass sensors, vague phantom forms glimpsed during intense energy bursts. There was a great deal of deliberate confusion.“
“And the data?”
“It only confirmed those fears. Added to my own observations, the conclusion was inescapable: we were being watched. Something else—neither human nor Inhibitor—had followed us to Ararat. It may even have been there before us.”
“How do you know they weren’t part of the Inhibitors? We know so little about them.”
“Because their movements suggested they were as wary of the Inhibitors as we were. Not to the same degree, but cautious nonetheless.”
“Then who are they?”
“I don’t know, Scorp. I only have this shard. It was recovered after an engagement during which one of their vehicles may have been damaged by drifting too close to the battle. It is a piece of debris, Scorp. The same applies, I think, to every piece of conch material you have ever found on Ararat. They are the remains of ships, fallen into the sea.”
“Then who made them?”
“We don’t know.”
“What do they want with us?”
“We don’t know that, either, only that they have taken an interest.”
“I’m not sure I like the sound of that.”
“I’m not sure I like it either. They haven’t contacted us directly, and everything they’ve done suggests they have no intention of making their presence known. They’re more advanced than us, that’s for sure. They may skulk in the darkness, slinking around the Inhibitors, but they’ve survived. They’re still out there, when we’re on the brink of extinction.”
“They could help us.”
“Or they could turn out to be as bad for us as the Inhibitors.”
Scorpio looked into the old Conjoiner’s face: so maddeningly calm, despite the vast implications of their conversation. “You sound as if you think we’re being judged,” he said.
“I wonder if that isn’t the case.”
“And Aura? What does she have to say?”
“She has never made any mention of another party,” Remontoire said.
“Perhaps these are the shadows, after all.”
“Then why go to Hela to make contact with them? No, Scorp: these aren’t the shadows. They’re something else, something she either doesn’t know about, or chooses not to tell us.”
“Now you’re making me nervous.”
“That, Mr. Pink, was very much the idea. Someone has to know this, and it might as well be you.”
“If she doesn’t know about the other party, how can we be sure the rest of her information’s correct?”
“We can’t. That’s the difficulty.”
Scorpio fingered the shard. It was cool to the touch, barely heavier than the air it displaced. “I could talk to her about it, see if she remembers.”
“Or you could keep the information to yourself, because it is too dangerous to reveal to her. Remember: it may be misinformation created by Skade to destroy our confidence in Aura. If she were to deny knowledge of it, will you be able to trust her any more?”
“I’d still like the data,” Scorpio said.
“Too dangerous. If I passed it to you, it might find its way into her head. She’s one of us, Scorp: a Conjoiner. You’ll have to make do with the shard—call it an aide-memoire—and this conversation. That should suffice, should it not?”
“You’re saying I shouldn’t tell her, ever?”
“No, I’m merely saying you must make that decision for yourself, and that it should not be taken lightly.” Remontoire paused, and then offered a smile. “Frankly, I don’t envy you. Rather a lot may depend on it, you see.”
Scorpio pushed the shard into his pocket.
[Help us, Rashmika,] the voice said, when she was alone. [Don’t let us die when the cathedral dies.]
“I can’t help you. I’m not even sure I want to.”
[Quaiche is unstable,] the voice insisted. [He will destroy us, because we are a chink in the armour of his faith. That cannot be allowed to happen, Rashmika. For your sakes—for the sake of all your people—don’t make the same mistake as the scuttlers. Don’t close the door on us.]
She thrashed her head into the damp landscape of her pillow, smelling her own days-old sweat worked into the yellowing fabric during sleepless, voice-tormented nights such as this. All she wanted was for the voice to silence itself; all she wanted was a return to the old simplicities, where all she had to worry about was the imposition of her own self-righteous convictions.
“How did you get here? You still haven’t told me. If the door is closed—”
[The door was opened, briefly. During a difficult period with the supply of the virus, Quaiche endured a lapse of faith. In that crisis he began to doubt his own interpretation of the vanishings. He arranged for the firing of an instrument package into the face of Haldora, a simple mechanical probe crammed with electronic instrumentation.]
“And?”
[He provoked a response. The probe was injected into Haldora during a vanishing. It caused the vanishing to last longer than usual, more than a second. In that hiatus, Quaiche was granted a glimpse of the machinery the scuttlers made to contact us across the bulk.]
“So was everyone else who happened to see it.”
[That’s why that particular vanishing had to be stricken from the public record,] the voice said. [It couldn’t be allowed to have happened.]
She remembered what the shadows had told her about the mass-synthesiser. “Then the probe allowed you to cross over?”
[No. We are still not physically embodied in this brane. What it did reestablish was the communication link. It had been silenced since the last time the scuttlers spoke to us, but in the moment of Quaiche’s intervention it was reopened, briefly. In that window we transmitted an aspect of ourselves across the bulk, a barely sentient ghost, programmed only to survive and negotiate.]