The Mademoiselle’s smile was patient. ‘Rather complicates matters, doesn’t it? I’ll admit I considered the possibility that the crew might have some connection with him. It seemed logical, given their intention of travelling to Resurgam. But I never extrapolated anything this convoluted.’
‘I suppose that’s one word for it.’
‘Their relationship is…’ The ghost seemed to take a moment to choose her words, though Khouri knew it was all annoying fakery. ‘Interesting. It may limit our options in the future.’
‘Are you still sure you want him killed?’
‘Absolutely. This news merely heightens the urgency. Now there is the danger that Sajaki will try to bring Sylveste aboard.’
‘Won’t it be easier for me to kill him then?’
‘Certainly, but at that point killing him would not suffice. You would then have to find a way of destroying the ship itself. Whether or not you found a way to save yourself in the process would be your problem.’
Khouri frowned. Perhaps it was her, but very little of this made very much sense.
‘But if I guarantee that Sylveste’s dead…’
‘That would not suffice,’ said the Mademoiselle, with what Khouri sensed was a new candour. ‘Killing him is part of what you must do, but not the entirety. You must be specific in the manner of killing.’
Khouri waited to hear what the woman had to say.
‘You must allow him absolutely no warning; not even seconds. Furthermore, you must kill him in isolation.’
‘That was always part of the plan.’
‘Good — but I mean precisely what I say. If it isn’t possible to ensure solitude at any given moment, you must delay his death until it is. No compromises, Khouri.’
This was the first time they had discussed the manner of his death in any detail. Evidently the Mademoiselle had decided that Khouri was now fit to know slightly more than before, if not the whole picture.
‘What about the weapon?’
‘You may use any which suits you, provided the weapon incorporates no cybernetic components above a certain level of complexity, which I will stipulate at a later date.’ Before Khouri could object she added, ‘A beam weapon would be acceptable, provided the weapon itself was not brought into proximity with the subject at any stage. Projectile and explosive devices would also serve our purpose.’
Given the nature of the lighthugger, Khouri thought, there ought to be enough suitable weapons lying around for her use. When the time came, she should be able to appropriate something moderately lethal and allow herself time to learn its nuances before deploying it against Sylveste.
‘I can probably find something.’
‘I’m not finished. You must not approach him, nor must you kill him when he is in the proximity of cybernetic systems — again, I will stipulate my requirements nearer the time. The more isolated he is, the better. If you can manage to do it when he is alone and far from help, on Resurgam’s surface, you will have accomplished your task to my complete satisfaction.’ She paused. Evidently all this was hugely important to the Mademoiselle, and Khouri was doing her best to remember it, but so far it sounded no more logical than the incantations of a Dark Age prescription against fever. ‘But on no account must he be allowed to leave Resurgam. Understand that, because when a lighthugger arrives around Resurgam — even this lighthugger — Sylveste will try and find a way to get himself aboard. That must not be allowed to happen, under any circumstances.’
‘I get the message,’ Khouri said. ‘Kill him down below. Is that everything?’
‘Not quite.’ The ghost made a smile; a ghoulish one Khouri had never seen before. Maybe, she thought, the Mademoiselle had yet to exhaust her reservoir of expressions, keeping a few in store for moments such as this. ‘Of course I want proof of his death. This implant will record the event, but on your return to Yellowstone I also want physical evidence to corroborate what the implant records. I want remains, and more than just ashes. Preserve what you can in vacuum. Keep the remains sealed and isolated from the ship. Bury them in rock if that suits you, but just bring them back to me. I must have proof.’
‘And then?’
‘Then, Ana Khouri, I will give you your husband.’
Sylveste did not stop to catch his breath until he and Pascale had reached and passed the ebony shell encasing the Amarantin city, taking several hundred footsteps into the tangled maze which wormholed through it. He chose his directions as randomly as was humanly possible, ignoring the signs added by the archaeologists, desperately trying to avoid following a predictable path.
‘Not so quickly,’ Pascale said. ‘I’m worried about getting lost.’
Sylveste put a hand to her mouth, even though he knew that her need to talk was only a way to obliterate the fact of her father’s assassination.
‘We have to be quiet. There must be True Path units in the shell, waiting to mop up escapees. We don’t want to draw them down on us.’
‘But we’re lost,’ she said, her voice now hushed. ‘Dan, people died in this place because they couldn’t find their way out before they starved.’
Sylveste pushed Pascale down a constricting bolthole into steadily thickening darkness. The walls were slippery here; no friction flooring had been installed. ‘The one thing that isn’t going to happen,’ he said, more calmly than he felt, ‘is that we get lost.’ He tapped his eyes, though it was already much too gloomy for Pascale to notice the gesture. Like a seeing person among the blind, he had trouble remembering that much of his nonverbal communication was wasted. ‘I can replay every step we take. And the walls reflect infrared from our bodies reasonably well. We’re safer here than back in the city.’
She panted along behind him, saying nothing for long minutes. Finally she mumbled, ‘I hope this isn’t one of the rare occasions when you’re wrong. That would be a particularly inauspicious start to our marriage, don’t you think?’
He did not much feel like laughing; the hall’s carnage was still garishly fresh in his mind. He laughed all the same, and the gesture seemed to lessen the reality of it all. Which was all for the better, because when he thought about it rationally, Pascale’s doubts were perfectly justified. Even if he knew the precise way out of the maze, that knowledge might be unusable, if the tunnels were too slippery to climb, or if, as rumour had it, the labyrinth occasionally changed its own configuration. Then, magic eyes or no, they would starve along with all the other poor fools who had wandered away from the marked path.
They worked deeper into the Amarantin structure, feeling the lazy curve of the tunnel as it wound its way maggottishly through the inner shell. Panic was as much an enemy as disorientation, of course. But forcing oneself to stay calm was never easy.
‘How long do you think we should stay here?’
‘A day,’ Sylveste said. ‘Then we leave after them. By then, reinforcements will have arrived from Cuvier.’
‘Working for whom?’
Sylveste shouldered into a wasp-waist in the tunnel. Beyond, it bottled out into a triple-junction; he made a mental coin-flip and took the left way. ‘Good question,’ he said, too softly for his wife to hear him.
But what if the incident had merely been part of a colony-wide coup, rather than an isolated act of publicly visible terrorism? What if Cuvier was now out of Girardieau government control, fallen to True Path? Girardieau’s death left behind a lumbering party machine, but many of its cogs had been removed in the wedding hall. In this moment of weakness, blitzkrieg revolutionaries might accomplish much. Perhaps it was already over, Sylveste’s former enemies dethroned, strange new faces assuming power. In which case, waiting in the labyrinth might be completely futile. Would True Path regard him as an enemy, or as something infinitely more ambiguous; an enemy’s enemy?