“The repairs took longer than we anticipated,” Khouri replied. “We had problems obtaining the raw materials now that the Inhibitors had so much of the system under their control.”
“But not twenty years, surely,” said Scorpio.
“No, but once we’d been there a few years it became clear we were in no immediate danger of persecution by the Inhibitors provided we stayed near the Hades object, the re-engineered neutron star. That meant we had more time to study the thing. We were scared at first, but the Inhibitors always kept clear of it, as if there was something about it they didn’t like. Actually, Thorn and I had already guessed as much.”
‘Tell us a bit more about Thorn,“ Clavain said gently.
They all heard the crack in her voice. “Thorn was the resis-tance leader, the man who made life difficult for the regime until the Inhibitors showed up.”
“Volyova and you struck up some kind of relationship with him, didn’t you?” Clavain asked.
“He was our way of getting the people to accept our help to evacuate. Because of that I had a lot of involvement with Thorn. We got to know each other quite well.” She faltered into silence.
“Take your time,” Clavain said, with a kindness Scorpio had not heard in his voice lately.
“One time, stupid curiosity drew Thorn and I too close to the Inhibitors. They had us surrounded, and they’d even started pushing their probes into our heads, drinking our memories. But then something—some entity—intervened and saved us. Whatever it was, it appeared to originate around Hades. Maybe it was even an extension of Hades itself, another kind of probe.”
Scorpio tapped the summary before him. “You reported contact with a human mind.”
“It was Dan Sylveste,” she said, “the same self-obsessed bastard who started all this in the first place. We know he found a way into the Hades matrix all those years ago, using the same route that the Amarantin took to escape the Inhibitors.”
“And you think Sylveste—or whatever he had become by then—intervened to save you and Thorn?” Clavain asked.
“I know he did. When his mind touched mine, I got a blast of… call it remorse. As if the penny had finally dropped about how big a screw-up he’d been, and the damage he’d done in the name of curiosity. It was as if he was ready, in a small way, to start making amends.”
Clavain smiled. “Better late than never.”
“He couldn’t work miracles, though,” Khouri said. “The envoy that Hades sent to Roc to help us was enough to intimidate the Inhibitor machines, but it didn’t do more than hamper them, allowing us to make it back to Ilia. But it was a sign, at least, that if we stood a hope of doing something about the Inhibitors, the place to look for help was in Hades. Some of us had to go back inside.”
“You were one of them?” Clavain said.
“Yes,” she said. “I did it the same way I’d done it before, because I knew that would work. Not via the front door inside the thing orbiting Hades, the way Sylveste did it, but by falling towards the star. By dying, in other words; letting myself get ripped apart by the gravitational field of Hades and then reassembled inside it. I don’t remember any of that. I guess I’m grateful.”
It was clear to Scorpio that even Khouri had little idea of what had really happened to her during her entry into the Hades object. Her earlier account of things had made it clear that she believed herself to have been physically reconstituted within the star, preserved in a tiny, quivering bubble of flat space-time, so that she was immune to the awesome crush of Hades’ gravitational field. Perhaps that had indeed been the case. Equally, it might have been some fanciful fiction created for her by her once-human hosts. All that mattered, ultimately, was that there was a way to communicate with entities running inside the Hades matrix—and, perhaps more importantly, a way to get back out into the real universe.
Scorpio was contemplating that when his communicator buzzed discreetly. As he stood up from the table, Khouri halted her monologue.
Irritated at the interruption, Scorpio lifted the communicator to his face and unspooled the privacy earpiece. “This had better be good.”
The voice that came was thready and distant. He recognised it as belonging to the Security Arm guard that had met them at the landing stage. “Thought you needed to know this, sir.”
“Make it quick.”
“Class-three apparition reported on five eighty-seven. That’s the highest in nearly six months.”
As if he needed to be told. “Who saw it?”
“Palfrey, a worker in bilge management.”
Scorpio lowered his voice and pressed the earpiece in more tightly. He was conscious that he had the full attention of everyone in the room. “What did Palfrey see?”
“The usual, sir: not very much, but enough that we’ll have a hard time persuading him to go that deep again.”
“Interview him, get it on record, make it clear that he speaks of this to no one. Understood?”
“Understood, sir.”
“Then find him another line of work.” Scorpio paused, frowning as he thought through all the implications. “On second thoughts, I’d like a word with him as well. Don’t let him leave the ship.”
Without waiting for a reply, Scorpio broke the link, spooled the earpiece back into the communicator and returned to the table. He sat down, gesturing at Khouri for her to continue.
“What was all that about?” she asked.
“Nothing that need worry you.”
“I’m worried.”
He felt a splinter of pain between his eyes. He had been getting a lot of headaches lately, and this kind of day didn’t help. “Someone reported an apparition,” he said, “one of the Captain’s little manifestations that Antoinette mentioned. Doesn’t mean anything.”
“No? I show up, he shows up, and you think that doesn’t mean something?” Khouri shook her head. “I know what it means, even if you don’t. The Captain understands there’s some heavy stuff going down.”
The splinter of pain had become a little broken arrowhead. He pinched the bridge of skin between snout and forehead. “Tell us about Sylveste,” he said with exaggerated patience.
Khouri sighed, but did as she was asked. “There was a kind of welcoming committee inside the star, Sylveste and his wife, just as I’d last met them. It even looked like the same room—a scientific study full of old bones and equipment. But it didn’t feel the same. It was as if I was taking part in some kind of parlour game, but I was the only one not in on it. I wasn’t talking to Sylveste any more, if I ever had been.”
“An impostor?” Clavain asked.
“No, not that. I was talking with the genuine article… I’m sure of that… but at the same time it wasn’t Sylveste, either. It was as if… he was condescending to me, putting on a mask so that I’d have something familiar to talk to. I knew I wasn’t getting the whole story. I was getting the comforting version, with the creepy stuff taken out. I don’t think Sylveste thought I was capable of dealing with what he’d really become, after all that time.” She smiled. “I think he thought he’d blow my mind.”
“After sixty years in the Hades matrix, he might have,” Clavain said.
“All the same,” Khouri said, “I don’t think there was any actual deception. Nothing that wasn’t absolutely essential for the sake of my sanity, anyhow.”
“Tell us about your later visits,” Clavain said.