Katya thought back. “We detected the Leviathan in the middle of the Weft. There’re lakes of this stuff there. It must have been lying in one. Maybe its airlock seal isn’t as tight as it should be and some of the stuff leaked in” She shrugged. “Okay, it’s interesting, but why should we care?”
Kane sighed in sharp exasperation. “Why should..? Katya, use your eyes. We’re not in the airlock! How is it in the corridor but there’s not a trace of it in the airlock itself?”
“Maybe there was but it washed out when it picked us up the first time,” she replied sharply.
Kane opened his mouth and then shut it again; he hadn’t thought of that. “That’s possible. I’m just trying to understand why the Leviathan’s been behaving so oddly, even before Tokarov joined with it. I thought perhaps the matrix of its synthetic intelligence had been contaminated with particles of Soup.” He looked so crestfallen that Katya felt sorry she had snapped at him and even sorrier that she had shot down his theory. “I’m just trying to understand.”
“If the airlock seal failed under the pressure,” she offered, “maybe some other seal did too. Perhaps Soup did get in and poison the AI.”
That cheered Kane up. “Yes. Yes, of course, you’re right. If your idea’s right, that doesn’t mean mine isn’t right too. Or at least, some of it.”
Lukyan was eager to get on. “Some of it?” he grumbled. “There’s more of it?”
Mistaking Lukyan’s sarcasm for interest, Kane nodded. “Yes, I was also wondering if the trace of Soup was simply evidence that the airlock had been used after I left the first time and before coming back with you and Tokarov.”
Lukyan’s disinterest faded slightly. “Are you suggesting somebody might have come aboard and sabotaged the Leviathan? Who? When?”
“Why?” added Katya.
“Three excellent questions and I have a single answer for all of them. I don’t know. It was just a thought. It just occurred to me that an accidental contamination would be more likely to cripple the Leviathan. What happened seems so…”
“Deliberate,” finished Katya. She was beginning to think he had a point. “But we don’t know who or how or why or when. You need motive, opportunity and method before you have a case, and you have nothing.”
“No,” he admitted, “I don’t. Just an ugly sense of purpose behind everything that’s happened. That’s not much.” He sighed. “Oh, come on. Let’s get this over with.” The three of them continued walking up the blank white corridor towards the interface chamber.
They paused at the door as Kane stopped them. “Do we have anything that, in poor visibility, might just possibly be mistaken for a plan? Once we’re through that door, things might happen very quickly.”
“Talk to Tokarov,” said Katya. “We have to talk him around.”
“I doubt there’s much of Tokarov left, at least mentally. It’s still worth a try. And if his personality has been completely destroyed, what then?”
“We kill him,” said Lukyan.
“Uncle!”
“I’m sorry, Katya, I know that sounds cold. There’s no choice, though.”
“You can try killing him, but you’d be wasting your time,” said Kane. “If the Leviathan has finished processing him, it will just be using his brain for extra storage space. If he dies, it’s a nuisance to the Leviathan, but that is all.”
Lukyan crossed his arms. “What, then?”
Kane looked uncomfortable. “Let’s just see how it goes, shall we?”
“That’s it then? If there isn’t enough of Tokarov left to talk to, we don’t know what we’re going to do next?”
“In a nutshell, yes.”
Lukyan shook his head. “We’re doomed.”
“War’s have been won on thinner plans than that,” said Kane.
“Not as many as have been lost,” retorted Lukyan. He stepped up to the door. “Not much point in asking if we’re ready, is there?” He tapped the control and the hatch opened.
Some images are destined to stay in the mind’s eye for the rest of one’s life. Katya knew that, if she lived through this, what she saw in that room would haunt her in the moments before sleep and in the dreams that followed. She had braced herself for the worst thing she could imagine; Tokarov’s mummified corpse caught in a paroxysm of agony forever perhaps, the moment of interface caught forever in tableau. What she actually found was far, far worse.
Tokarov was alive, but what a diseased impersonation of life it was. The interface chair had grown into him, the matter of the throne having grown hundreds, thousands of wiry cables like the grappling tentacles in the docking bay. The cables were thinner here, black and glistening in a foul oily fashion. The tips of the tentacles were all imbedded in Tokarov’s flesh, latching onto nerve endings and muscle ganglion, hijacking his motor functions and devouring his reason. His pale skin seemed dark with the mass of tentacles, some as thin as threads, some as broad as fingers, that cut and penetrated and usurped and writhed his whole body. A hemisphere in the ceiling directly above the throne dangled yet more, vanishing into his ears, his nose and his eyes. Only his mouth had been left alone and they could all hear his ragged breathing even from the door.
Lukyan swore. Katya fought down the urge to vomit. Kane only watched. He lifted his own hand to inspect it and Katya noticed several small crescent-shaped scars on him, the marks of the Leviathan’s failed attempt to interface with him. She wanted to hate him for shirking this fate and leaving it to befall somebody else, but she couldn’t. She didn’t like to think what she might have done herself to avoid this hideous devouring.
Kane lowered his hand and, with infinite reluctance, took a step forwards. Instantly, a section of the chamber’s ceiling dilated and the Medusa sphere descended on its stalk. Kane froze in mid-step as several purple targeting dots appeared on his face and chest. He took a slow breath and said quietly to himself, “I’m not dead, am I? No? That’s good. Stepping back now.” He reversed his stride, but the sphere continued to target him.
“Kane, you’re the only one who’s been targeted. Katya and I are clear,” said Lukyan in a measured, conversational tone, “that’s different from last time.”
“It seems personal,” whispered Katya.
“I was thinking that myself.” Kane looked down at the half dozen targeting spots that moved slowly across his chest like confused insects.
“You knew,” said the Leviathan, but it was not the even tones of their last visit. The intonation was human. “You knew!”
“Of course I knew, Tokarov,” said Kane directly to the human wreckage in the chair. “I warned you to stay away from that thing. I wish I’d known about your ulterior motive for staying behind. I’d never have agreed if I had.”
“I can feel it. It’s eating my mind.” The Leviathan’s voice –Tokarov’s voice — was full of horror and, worse still, defeat. Katya knew he’d given up and accepted this terrible fate.
“Every time you express your personality, the Leviathan will monitor it as a malfunction, hunt down the section of your brain that generated it and… I don’t know what to call what it does. Reconfigures it, I suppose.” There was no catch in Kane’s voice, but Katya was surprised to see a silent tear roll down his cheek. “I’m so sorry, Tokarov. If there was anything I could do, I would do it.”
“I… No! Not me! The Leviathan doesn’t trust you anymore.” The machine voice modulated and cracked with emotions it had never been created to express. “The Yagizba Conclaves attacked. You are their ally. You are an enemy. You warned me. You are the only one who knows. You are a friend.” The targeting dots shuddered around Kane as man and machine warred. “Kane is a real and present threat. Kane can help me. Kane is a category one threat. Kane has to… It fears you, Kane. It fears you!”