“Maybe,” Horza said. He stopped by Wubslin, taking the man’s elbow and turning him round from Dorolow’s body. The engineer had been crying. “Wubslin,” Horza said, “guard that bastard. He might try and get you to shoot him, but don’t. That’s what he wants. I’m going to take the son of a bitch back to the fleet so they can courtmartial him. Dirtying his name is a punishment; killing him would be doing him a favour; understand?”
Wubslin nodded. Still rubbing the bruised side of his head, Horza went off down the platform with Yalson.
They came to where the Mind had been. Horza turned the lights on his suit up and looked over the floor. He picked up a small, burned-looking thing near the mouth of the foot tunnel leading to station seven.
“What’s that?” Yalson said, turning away from the body of the Idiran on the other access gantry.
“I think,” Horza said, turning the still warm machine over in his hand, “it’s a remote drone.”
“The Mind left it behind?” Yalson came over to look at it. It was just a blackened slab of material, some tubes and filaments showing through the lumpy, irregular surface where it had been hit by plasma fire.
“It’s the Mind’s, all right,” Horza said. He looked at Yalson. “What exactly happened when they shot the Mind?”
“When he eventually hit it, it vanished. It had started to move, but it couldn’t have accelerated that fast; I’d have felt the shock wave. It just vanished.”
“It was like somebody turning off a projection?” Horza said.
Yalson nodded. “Yes. And there was a bit of smoke. Not much. Do you mean to—”
“He got it eventually; what do you mean?”
“I mean,” Yalson said, putting one hand on her hip and looking at Horza with an impatient expression on her face, “that it took three or four shots. The first few went straight through it. Are you saying it was a projection?”
Horza nodded and held up the machine in his hand. “It was this: a remote drone producing a hologram of the Mind. Must have had a weak force field as well so that it could be touched and pushed as though it was a solid object, but all there was inside was this.” He smiled faintly at the wrecked machine. “No wonder the damn thing didn’t show up on our mass sensors.”
“So the Mind’s still around somewhere?” Yalson said, looking at the drone in Horza’s hand. The Changer nodded.
Balveda watched Horza and Yalson walk into the darkness at the far end of the station. She went over to where the drone floated above Neisin, monitoring his vital functions and sorting out some vials of medicine in the medkit. Wubslin kept his gun pointed at the trapped Idiran, but watched Balveda from the corner of his eye at the same time; the Culture woman sat down cross-legged near the stretcher.
“Before you ask,” the drone said, “no, there’s nothing you can do.”
“I had guessed that, Unaha-Closp,” Balveda said.
“Hmm. Then you have ghoulish tendencies?”
“No, I wanted to talk to you.”
“Really.” The drone continued to sort the medicines.
“Yes…” She sat forward, elbow on her knee, chin cupped in her hand. She lowered her voice a little. “Are you biding your time, or what?”
The drone turned its front to her; an unnecessary gesture, they both knew, but one it was used to making. “Biding my time?”
“You’ve let him use you so far. I just wondered: how much longer?”
The drone turned away again, hovering over the dying man. “Perhaps you hadn’t noticed, Ms Balveda, but my choices in this matter are almost as limited as yours.”
“I’ve only got arms and legs, and I’m locked away at night, trussed up. You’re not.”
“I have to keep watch. He has a movement sensor which he leaves switched on, anyway, so he would know if I tried to escape. And besides, where would I go?”
“The ship,” Balveda suggested, smiling. She looked back up the dark station, where the lights on their suits showed Yalson and the Changer picking something up from the ground.
“I would need his ring. Do you want to take it from him?”
“You must have an effector. Couldn’t you fool the ship’s circuits? Or even just that motion sensor?”
“Ms Balveda—”
“Call me Perosteck.”
“Perosteck, I am a general-purpose drone, a civilian. I have light fields; the equivalent of many fingers, but not major limbs. I can produce a cutting field, but only a few centimetres in depth, and not capable of taking on armour. I can interface with other electronic systems, but I cannot interfere with the hardened circuits of military equipment. I possess an internal forcefield which lets me float, regardless of gravity, but apart from using my own mass as a weapon, that is not really of much use, either. In fact, I am not particularly strong; when I needed to be, for my job, there were attachments available for my use. Unfortunately, I was not employing them when I was abducted. Had I been, I probably wouldn’t be here now.”
“Damn,” Balveda said into the shadows. “No aces up your sleeve?”
“No sleeves, Perosteck.”
Balveda took in a deep breath and stared glumly at the dark floor. “Oh dear,” she said.
“Our leader approaches,” Unaha-Closp said, affecting weariness in its voice. It turned and nodded its front towards Yalson and Horza, returning from the far end of the cavern. The Changer was smiling. Balveda rose smoothly to her feet as Horza beckoned to her.
“Perosteck Balveda,” Horza said, standing with the others at the bottom of the rear access gantry and holding out one hand towards the Idiran trapped in the wreckage above, “meet Xoxarle.”
“This is the female you claim is a Culture agent, human?” the Idiran said, turning his head awkwardly to look down at the group of people below him.
“Pleased to meet you,” Balveda muttered, arching one eyebrow as she gazed up at the trapped Idiran.
Horza walked up the ramp, passing Wubslin, who was training his gun on the trapped being. Horza still held the remote drone. He came to the second level ramp and looked down at the Idiran’s face.
“See this, Xoxarle?” He held the drone up. It glinted in the lights of his suit.
Xoxarle nodded slowly. “It is a small piece of damaged equipment.” The deep, heavy voice betrayed signs of strain, and Horza could see a trickle of dark purple blood on the floor of the ramp Xoxarle lay squashed upon.
“It’s what you two proud warriors had when you thought you’d captured the Mind. This is all there was. A remote drone casting a weak soligram. If you’d taken this back to the fleet they’d have thrown you into the nearest black hole and wiped your name from the records. You’re damn lucky I came along when I did.”
The Idiran looked thoughtfully at the wrecked drone for a short while.
“You,” Xoxarle said slowly, “are lower than vermin, human. Your pathetic tricks and lies would make a yearling laugh. There must be more fat inside your thick skull than there is even on your skinny bones. You aren’t fit to be thrown up.”
Horza stepped onto the ramp which had fallen on top of the Idiran. He heard the being’s breath suck in harshly through taut lips as he walked slowly over to where Xoxarle’s face stuck out beneath the wreckage. “And you, you goddamn fanatic, aren’t fit to wear that uniform. I’m going to find the Mind you thought you had, and then I’m going to take you back to the fleet, where if they’ve any sense they’ll let the Inquisitor try you for gross stupidity.”
“Fuck…” the Idiran gasped painfully, “…your animal soul.”