‘Did you not even upload my file?’ Scab asked.
‘We had hoped that murdering your offspring was as much a phase as propagating them had been in the first place.’
‘When did you kill your children?’ Vic asked.
‘Be quiet, Vic.’ Then to the Monk: ‘Stop cloning him, destroy the genetic material and his personality and memory uploads.’
‘Is that a condition of your cooperation?’
‘Was that when you killed me the last time and the ship got damaged?!’ Vic demanded.
‘Shut up, Vic. And yes, it is a condition of my cooperation.’ The Monk gave this some consideration.
‘Agreed,’ she finally said, somewhat reluctantly. Scab studied her for a while.
‘You’re good. The only reason I know you’re lying is because you agreed too quickly to kill a member of the Church. But there were no tells whatsoever.’
The Monk looked less than pleased. She shifted in her seat and leaned towards Scab.
‘I think you underestimate the importance of this.’
‘Your monopoly. I think we understand the motivations of power and greed in the Seeder Church,’ the Elder said. Vic was fascinated by the display of bioelectric energy that played through his internal organs as he said this. The Monk said nothing but Vic noticed that she swallowed.
‘What?’ Scab said suspiciously. Apparently he had noticed it as well. ‘You don’t feel it’s about that?’
The Monk shook her head, a degree of defiance in the set of her mouth.
‘You actually believe the shit you peddle?’ Scab asked.
‘Did you when you were the leader of a heretical street sect on Cyst?’ she asked – somewhat combatively, Vic thought.
‘What are you bringing to the table?’ Scab asked her, changing the subject.
Instead of answering, the Monk turned to the Elder.
‘We have access to the biotechnology and enough intelligence as well as experience from the Art Wars to enable you to infiltrate the Game and hopefully get you close to the cocoon you’re after,’ the Elder told them
‘What’s in this for you?’ Scab asked.
‘The Absolute, despite his power, is a very immature lord. He is playing games of control and empire that many of us have left behind. He has too much influence over what you call the Monarchist systems as it is. With his control of the Elite, access to bridge technology would give him the power to remake the entirety of the Monarchist systems in his image. He wants it all because he will never realise that it won’t make him happy.’
‘The Absolute’s a man then?’ the Monk asked. ‘I find myself unsurprised.’
The Elder actually laughed at this. ‘You’ve no idea how much of a male he is.’
‘Are you sure you don’t just want to fuck him over for your humiliating defeat in the Art Wars?’ Scab asked.
‘Would it make any difference to you if it was?’
‘No, but I respect honesty.’
‘This has considerably more to do with self-preservation.’
Scab nodded and turned back to the Monk.
‘So why do we need to take the risk of working with people who don’t have our best interests at heart?’
‘Because they can get you in –’ the Monk pointed at the Elder ‘– but only I can get you out.’
The plan was suicidal, Vic thought as he inspected a food bladder and watched a bioelectric charge arc from one organ, designed to store harnessed energy, to another. Despite sometimes making him feel like he was being digested, Vic loved the Living City. The Elder, who was basically just an avatar representation of the city, had given him the freedom to roam around and look at the biotechnological wonder. He was standing on an artery that curved underneath the roughly saucer-shaped domed city. Far below he saw the windswept and scarred rock of the planet’s surface, the skirt of tendrils trailing towards it.
Vic reviewed the information he’d bid for from Pythia. He would have to erase it and trust to the remaining meat in his head to remember it. If he didn’t then Scab would find it the next time he neurally audited him. It would be enough for Scab to cause Vic pain but not enough to kill him.
Jide and his crew had been on Pythia to buy information on a completely separate case. To Pythia’s knowledge there was no bounty being offered for Scab and Vic, despite what Scab had done on Arclight. Scab had found who the most dangerous crew in the area were and had picked a fight with them to make an example. He had then paid bribes to manipulate the media so it looked like Jide had come after them.
Arguably the example could have been made without destroying Jide and his crew’s chance at being cloned. Vic guessed that Scab had decided that it wouldn’t be enough. He wanted other crews to know that if they came after him it was permanent death. He didn’t want any distractions on this job.
It was too much for Vic though. Even if they got the cocoon, he still had no idea what it was about or how it connected to bridge technology. They also had the three most powerful organisations in Known Space about to squash them like bugs. They would probably let them experience the cutting edge of prolonged torture immersions first.
All of this contributed to Vic’s decision. He felt that it was the only rational thing to do, though he giggled a little, his mandibles clattered together and he got a little aroused when he thought about it.
He was going to kill Scab.
The Elite was a photographic negative, a human-shaped shadow after a nuclear explosion in the all-encompassing light.
‘Well?’ the man behind the desk asked.
‘I delivered your message,’ the Elite said somewhat belligerently. ‘Though I don’t think I understood it.’
The man behind the desk just smiled.
20. Southern Britain, a Long Time Ago
She felt his weight on her. His skin on her flesh was hot, almost feverish. The tang of copper in his mouth, he tasted like the air just before a spring storm. Her fingers traced down his skin. She saw the dark pools of his somehow sad eyes before he entered her and she closed her eyes, back arching as she cried out. Strong fingers against her skin, his arms wrapped around her as she opened herself to him.
But there was something else in the room, something just out of sight, little more than a shadow that whispered to her. Promised her this and so much more, if only she’d give in.
Britha sat up straight, flushed, hot, covered in sweat and gasping for breath. She had wrapped her robes around herself to go to sleep as she always did, but they were in disarray now. The intensity of the dream had shocked her. An intense heat burned through her body.
‘Britha?’ Her head shot round to stare at the deformed man. She narrowed her eyes. She could see perfectly even in the depths of the night. Something had changed in Teardrop’s eye: there was something in it now, a tiny glint of silver. ‘Bad dream?’
Anything but, she thought. That was the problem.
There was a dry chuckle from the other side of Teardrop where Fachtna lay wrapped in his cloak.
‘It didn’t sound like a bad dream,’ Fachtna said.
‘That’s what pleasure sounds like, boy. You’re unlikely to ever hear it as the result of anything you do,’ Britha spat.
The deck of the ship moved with the gentle lapping of the waves. They were anchored off a sandy beach below towering cliffs that should have been little more than shadows in this light, but she could make out every detail of them clearly.
‘Perhaps if you had the real thing, you wouldn’t need dreams to make you sigh?’ Fachtna suggested.
The sound of the waves against the wood of the ship was drowned out by the prayers of the god-slaves that had come aboard with them at the harbour beneath the Goddodin hill fort.