“I’m sorry, Cassandra.”
“Oh, don’t get me wrong—it’s better than being dead. And when we sort out this mess, there’ll always be a chance that I can reintegrate backed-up memories from the Polity mnemonic archives. If they survive.”
“I hope they do.”
“We’ll see. The main thing is that I’ve made it this far. I have you to thank for that, Auger. You could have refused me.”
“I don’t remember a discussion taking place.”
Cassandra gave a half-smile. “Well, it didn’t take very long, I’ll admit. And in the process of me storming your brain, you probably lost the last few seconds of your short-term memory. But I assure you I had your permission to do what needed to be done.”
“You saved us,” Auger said. “And when I was injured, when Floyd came back to rescue me, you stayed with me.”
“What else was I supposed to do?”
“You could have fled my body… abandoned me in Paris. I’m sure your machines would have coped until they found another host. You could have made do with Floyd, after all.”
“You have the wrong idea about us,” Cassandra said. “I would never have abandoned you. I would rather have died than live with that.”
“Then I’m grateful.”
“You saved me as well. After all that has gone between us, it was nothing I counted on. You have my thanks, Auger. I just hope that in some way this has taught both of us a lesson.”
“I was the one who needed the lesson,” Auger said. “I hated you because you told the truth about me.”
“Then I’ll make a small confession. Even as I was preparing to testify against you, I admired your dedication. You had the fire in your belly.”
“It nearly burnt me.”
“But at least you cared. At least you were ready to do something.”
“This little mess,” Auger said, “is all because of people who were ready to do something. People like me, who always know when they’re right and everyone else is wrong. Maybe what we need is a few less of us.”
“Or the right kind,” Cassandra said, shrugging. She shifted awkwardly. “Look, I’ll come to the point. I meant everything that I just said, but the reason I came to talk to you is very simple: it’s your choice now.”
“What’s my choice?”
“What you do with me. You’re healed. You no longer need me in your head to keep you alive.”
“Then you’ve identified a new host?”
“Not exactly. Tunguska would take me if he had spare capacity… which he doesn’t, not with all the extra tactical processing he’s having to do. The same goes for the rest of the crew. But there are techniques. They can hold my machines in suspension until we return to the Polities and find a host.”
“Answer me truthfully: how stable would that suspension be, compared to you remaining where you are?”
“The suspension procedure is more than capable—”
“Truthfully,” Auger said.
“There’d be some additional losses. Impossible to quantify, but almost inevitable.”
“Then you’re staying put. No ifs, no buts.”
Cassandra flicked aside her lick of black hair. “I don’t know what to say. I never expected this kindness.”
“From me?”
“From any Thresher.”
“Then I suppose we both had things wrong. Let’s just hope we aren’t the only ones who can find some common ground.”
“There’ll be others,” Cassandra said. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t play our part. When we’ve dealt with Niagara, when we’ve returned to Sedna, there’ll be some very raw wounds that need healing.”
“If anyone’s left alive.”
“We’ll just have to hope things haven’t gone to the brink. If they haven’t… if the progressive Threshers and the moderate Slashers can put their differences aside… then there may be hope for all of us. Whatever the case, an example of co-operation could make all the difference.”
“An example like us, you mean?”
The little girl with the dark hair nodded. “I’m not saying I should stay in your head for ever. But when the peace is being negotiated, someone who could be trusted by both parties might be a very important player indeed.”
“Or they might choose not to trust us at all.”
“That’s a risk,” Cassandra conceded. “But one I’d be prepared to take.” Then something seemed to amuse her. “And you never know, Auger.”
“Never know what?”
“This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
After much insistence, Tunguska finally caved in and permitted Auger to walk around the ship. She was washed and alert, the voices in her head no longer quite so insistent. A sheet of intelligent bedclothing hugged her every move, preserving her modesty and—whenever she caught a glimpse of herself in some polished surface or actual mirror—quietly flattering her as well, she noticed. A little while ago, she would have been appalled at the thought of allowing Slasher machinery to become so intimate with her. Now, whenever she tried to summon the appropriate reflex disgust, it just wasn’t there. In spite of her little tête à tête with Cassandra, she wondered whether this was because the machines were surreptitiously doctoring her thoughts, or whether the events of the last few days had finally forced her to realise that not everything about the Slashers was automatically repugnant. At the same time, she wondered if she really needed an answer. The simple fact was that she no longer hated them as a matter of principle. It was also a source of shameful amazement that she could ever have wasted so much energy on groundless prejudice, when acceptance and tolerance would have been the easier, even the lazier, course.
Tunguska and Floyd sat on one side of an extruded table, watching patterns play across the wall opposite them. As Auger approached the table, a chair bulged up from the floor in anticipation.
“You’re quite sure you feel well enough for this?” Tunguska asked.
“I’m fine. Cassandra and I have come to an… accommodation.”
Tunguska offered her the newly formed seat. She took it, sitting between the two men. Tunguska was dressed in a simple two-piece outfit of white flannel, slashed low across his broad, hairless chest, while Floyd wore a clean white shirt, with black trousers supported by striped elastic braces. Those were definitely not the clothes that Floyd had been wearing when they left Paris, so Tunguska must have conjured them up for him. She wondered if he had dug them out of some obscure memory, or followed Floyd’s specifications.
“We have an echo from Niagara’s ship,” Tunguska said, gesturing towards one of the image panels on the wall. Gold-threaded lines formed a flowing contour map reminiscent of the navigational display in the transport, but with a great deal more complexity. Cryptic symbols hovered in boxes around the edge of the diagram, connected by thin lines back to knotty features in the contour plot. As the features shifted and merged, the symbols altered from one perplexing configuration to another.
“We’re sending acoustic signals up the line,” Tunguska continued, “using the same high-speed propagation layer you employ for your navigation and communications channel.”
“I thought you’d have come up with something more sophisticated than that by now,” Auger said.
“We’ve tried various things, but the acoustic technique is still the only reliable method open to us. As you probably know, it’s difficult to push a signal through when a ship is in transit. The ship acts as a mirror, bouncing the signal back to us with a high reflection efficiency.”