And something else entirely within the Shroud; and another reason entirely for its existence…
But the recollection itself seemed elusive, seemed to slip out of mental reach, until he was left again with Pascale, and only the aftertaste of doubt.
“Promise me you won’t go,” she said.
“We’ll talk about it in the morning,” Sylveste said.
He woke in his quarters, the little sleep he had snatched insufficient to purge fatigue from his blood.
Something had stirred him awake, but for a moment he could not see or hear any disturbance. Then Sylveste noticed that the bedside holo screen was glowing palely, like a mirror turned to moonlight.
He moved to activate the link, taking care not to wake Pascale. Not that there seemed any danger of that; she was sleeping soundly. The discussion they had shared before sleeping seemed to have given her the mental calm she needed for that.
Sajaki’s face appeared on the holo, backdropped by the apparatus of the clinic. “Are you alone?” he asked, softly.
“My wife is here,” Sylveste said, whispering. “She’s sleeping.”
“Then I’ll be brief.” He held up his damaged hand for inspection, revealing how the glistening caul had now filled out, returning his wrist to its normal profile, although the caul still glowed with subcutaneous industry. “I am well enough to leave here. But I have no intention of duplicating Hegazi’s current predicament.”
“Then you’ve got a problem. Volyova and Khouri have all the weapons, and they’ve made sure we won’t get our hands on any more.” He lowered his voice even further. “I don’t think it would take much to persuade her to lock me up as well. My threats against the ship don’t seem to have impressed her.”
“She’s assuming you’d never go that far.”
“What if she’s right?”
Sajaki shook his head.
“None of this matters any more. In a matter of days—five at the most—her weapon will begin to fail. You have that window in which to get inside. And don’t pretend that her little robots will teach you anything.”
“I know that much already.”
Next to him Pascale stirred.
“Then accept this proposition,” Sajaki said. “I will lead you inside. The two of us; no one else. We can take two suits, of the same type that brought you here from Resurgam. We don’t even need a ship. We’ll reach Cerberus in less than a day. That gives you two days to get in, a day to look around and then a day to leave the way you came in. By which time of course you will know the route.”
“What about you?”
“I accompany you. I told you already how I believe we should proceed with the Captain.”
Sylveste nodded. “You think you’ll find something inside Cerberus; something that can heal him.”
“I have to start somewhere.”
Sylveste looked around. Sajaki’s voice had been like the wind stirring trees, and the room seemed preternaturally still; more like a tableau glimpsed through a magic lantern than anything real. He thought of the fury taking place on Cerberus at that very moment; the fury of clashing machines, even if they were, for the most part, smaller than bacteria; and the din of their conflict inaudible to any human senses. But it was happening and Sajaki was right: they had only days before the numberless machines owing allegiance to Cerberus would begin to erode Volyova’s mighty siege engine. Every second he delayed entering that place was a second less he would have to spend inside it, and a second which would make his eventual return take place that much closer to the end; that much more hazardous, since by then the bridge would be closing. Pascale stirred again, but he sensed that she was still deep in dream. She seemed no more present than the interlocked birds which mosaicked the room’s walls; no more capable of being quickened to wakefulness.
“It’s all very sudden,” he said.
“But you’ve waited for this moment all your life,” Sajaki said, his voice rising. “Don’t tell me you’re not ready to seize it. Don’t tell me you’re scared of what you might find.”
Sylveste knew he had to make a decision before the true alienness of the moment had registered.
“Where do I meet you?”
“We’ll meet outside the ship,” Sajaki said, and then explained why it had to be that way; why it was too risky for them to meet, because then Sajaki would run the risk of meeting Volyova or Khouri, or even Sylveste’s wife. “They still think I’m ill,” Sajaki added, rubbing the membrane casing his wounded wrist. “But if they find me outside the clinic, they’ll do to me what they did to Hegazi. But from here, I can reach a suit in a few minutes, without entering any areas of the ship still capable of registering my presence.”
“And me?”
“Go to the nearest elevator. I’ll arrange for it to take you to a suit nearer to you. You don’t have to do anything. The suit will take care of everything.”
“Sajaki, I…”
“Just be outside in ten minutes. Your suit will bring you to me.” Sajaki smiled before signing off. “And I strongly advise that you don’t wake your wife.”
Sajaki was true to his word: the elevator and the suit both seemed to know exactly where it was that Sylveste had to go. He met no one during his journey, and no one troubled him as the suit measured him, adjusted itself and then folded affectionately around him.
There was no indication that the ship even noticed as the airlock opened; still less as he reached space.
Volyova was startled awake, interrupted from monochromatic dreams of raging insect armies.
Khouri was banging on her door, shouting something, though Volyova was too bleary to make it out. When she opened the door she was looking down the barrel of the leatherclad plasma-rifle. Khouri hesitated for a fraction of a second before lowering it, as if unsure just what she had been expecting beyond the door.
“What is it?” Volyova asked.
“It’s Pascale,” Khouri said, sweat beading her forehead, shining in slick patches around the gun’s grips. “She woke up and Sylveste wasn’t there.”
“Wasn’t there?”
“He’d left this. She’s pretty cut up about it, but she wanted me to show it to you.” Khouri let the gun drop in its sling and fished out a sheet of paper from her pocket.
Volyova rubbed her eyes and took the paper. Tactile contact activated its stored message; Sylveste’s face appeared on it, sketched darkly against a background of interlocking birds.
“I’m afraid I’ve lied to you,” he said, his voice buzzing from the paper. “Pascale, I’m sorry—you’re entitled to hate me for this, but I hope you won’t; not after what we went through.” His voice was very low now. “You asked me to promise I wouldn’t go into Cerberus. But I’m going, and by the time you read this I’ll be well on my way, far too late to stop. There’s no justification I can give for this, except it’s something I have to do, and I think it’s something you’ve always known I would do, if we ever got this close.” He paused, either to draw breath or think what he would say next. “Pascale, you were the only one who guessed what really happened around Lascaille’s Shroud. I admired you for that, you know. That was why I wasn’t afraid to admit the truth to you. I swear, what I told you was the way I thought it happened; not just another lie. But now this woman—Khouri—says that she has been sent by someone who might have been Carine Lefevre, and that she’s been sent to kill me because of what I might do.”
Again the paper was silent for a moment.
“I acted as if I didn’t believe a word of it, Pascale, and maybe that was how I thought at the time. But I have to put those ghosts to rest; finally convince myself that none of this has any connection to what happened back around the Shroud.