“You’ll keep searching, though?”
“I’d like to know what they are, wouldn’t you?”
“I don’t have to, Clavain. I have my own self-destruct systems grafted to each weapon, entirely independent of anything your own people might have installed at root level.”
“You strike me as a prudent woman, Ilia.”
“I take my work very seriously, Clavain. But then so do you.”
“Yes,” he said.
“So what happens now? I’m still not going to give you the things, you know. I still have other weapons.”
Clavain watched the battle on extreme magnification, glints of light peppering the space around the Triumvir’s ship. The first fatalities had already been recorded. Fifteen of Scorpio’s pigs were dead, killed by Volyova’s hull defences before they got within thirty kilometres of the ship. Other assault teams were reportedly closer—one team might even have reached the hull—but whatever the outcome, it no longer stood any chance of being a bloodless campaign.
“I know,” Clavain said, before ending the conversation.
Clavain was suited-up, cycling through the airlock connection that allowed access to the berthed ship, when she caught up with him.
“Clavain.”
He turned around, his helmet tucked under his arm. “Felka,” he said.
“You didn’t tell me you were leaving.”
“I didn’t have the nerve.”
She nodded. “I’d have tried talking you out of it. But I understand. This is something you have to do.”
He nodded without saying anything.
“Clavain . . .”
“Felka, I’m so sorry about what I . . .”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, taking a step closer. “I mean, it does matter—of course it matters—but we can talk about it later. On the way.”
“On the way where?” he said stupidly.
“To battle, Clavain. I’m coming with you.”
It was only then that he realised that she was carrying a suit herself, bundled under one arm, the helmet dangling from her fist like an overripe fruit.
“Why?”
“Because if you die, I want to die as well. It’s as simple as that, Clavain.”
“I can take it,” she told him.
“It’s not too late to turn back.”
“I’m coming with you. There’s a lot we need to discuss.”
Clavain called a battle realisation into view, appraising any changes that had taken place since he had gone to fetch his spacesuit. His ships swarmed around Nostalgia for Infinity like enraged hornets, arcing tighter with each loop. Twenty-three members of Scorpio’s army were now dead, most of them pigs, but the closest of the attack swarm were now within kilometres of the great ship’s hull; at such close range they became very difficult targets for Volyova’s medium-range defences. Storm Bird, identified by its own fat icon, was now approaching the edge of the combat swarm. The Triumvir had pulled all but one of her hell-class weapons back within cover of the lighthugger. Elsewhere, on the general system-wide view, the wolf weapon continued to sink its single gravitational fang into the meat of the star. Clavain contracted the displays until they were just large enough to view, and then turned to Felka. “I’m afraid talking isn’t going to be too easy.”
[Then we won’t talk, will we?]
He looked at her, startled that she had spoken to him in the Conjoiner fashion, opening a window between their heads, pushing words and much more than words into his skull. Felka . . .
[It’s all right, Clavain. Just because I didn’t do this very often doesn’t mean I couldn’t . . . ]
I never thought you couldn’t . . . it’s just . . . They were close enough for Conjoined thought, he realised, even though there was no Conjoiner machinery in the ship itself. The fields generated by their implants were strong enough to influence each other without intermediate amplification, provided they were no more than a few metres apart.
[You’re right. Normally I didn’t want to. But you aren’t just anyone.]
You don’t have to if you don’t . . .
[Clavain: a word of warning. You can look all the way into my head. There are no barriers, no partitions, no mnemonic blockades. Not to you, at least. But don’t look too deeply. It’s not that you’d see anything private, or anything I’m ashamed of . . . it’s just . . . ]
I might not be able to take it?
[Sometimes I can’t take it, Clavain, and I’ve lived with it since I was born.]
I understand.
He could see into the surface layers of her personality, feel the surface traffic of her thoughts. The data was calm. There was nothing that he could not examine; no sensory experience or memory that he could not unravel and open as if it were one of his own. But beneath that calm surface layer, glimpsed like something rushing behind smoked glass, there lay a howling storm of consciousness. It was frantic and ceaseless, like a machine always on the point of ripping itself apart, but one that would never find respite in its own destruction.
He pulled back, terrified that he might fall in.
[You see what I mean?]
I always knew you lived with something like that. I just didn’t . . .
[It isn’t your fault. It isn’t anyone’s fault, not even Galiana’s. It’s just the way I am.]
He understood then, perhaps more thoroughly than at any point since he had known her, just what Felka’s craving was like. Games, complex games, sated that howling machine, gave it something to work on, slowed it to something less furious. When she had been a child, the Wall had been all that she needed, but the Wall had been taken from her. After that, nothing had ever been enough. Perhaps the machine would have evolved as Felka grew. Or perhaps the Wall would always have turned out to be inadequate. All that mattered now was that she find surrogates for it: games or puzzles, labyrinths or riddles, which the machine could process and thereby give her the tiniest degree of inner calm.
Now I understand why you think the Jugglers might be able to help.
[Even if they can’t change me—and I’m not even sure I want them to change me—they might at least give me something to think about, Clavain. So many alien minds have been imprinted in their seas, so many patterns stored. I might even be able to make sense of something that the other swimmers haven’t. I might even be valuable.]
I always said I’d do what I could. But it hasn’t got any easier. You understand that, don’t you?
[Of course.]
Felka . . .