[Hidden agenda? We only want what’s best for Clavain, Remontoire. As his friend I would have imagined that you’d have grasped that.]
Remontoire looked around. There was no sign of Felka, which did not surprise him in the slightest. She had every right to be present, but he doubted that she would have been on Skade’s list of invitees.
I am his friend, I admit that. He’s saved my life enough times, but even if he hadn’t . . . well, Clavain and I have been through more than enough together. If that means I don’t have an objective view on the matter, so be it. But I’ll tell you something. Remontoire glanced around the room, nodding as he made eye or sensor contact. All of you—or those of you whoneed reminding—no matter what Skade would like to make you think, Clavain owes us nothing. Without him, none of us would be here. He’s been as important to us as Galiana, and I don’t say that lightly. I knew her before anyone in this room.
Skade nodded. [Remontoire is right, of course, but you’ll note his use of the past tense. Clavain’s great deeds all lie in the past—the distant past. I don’t deny that since his return from deep space he has continued to serve us well. But then so have we all. Clavain has done no more and no less than any senior Conjoiner. But don’t we expect more of him than that?]
More than what, Skade?
[His tired devotion to mere soldiery, constantly putting himself at risk.]
Remontoire realised that, like it or not, he had become Clavain’s advocate. He felt a mild contempt for the other Council members. He knew that many of them owed their lives to Clavain, and would have admitted it under other circumstances. But Skade had them cowed.
It was down to him to speak up for his friend. Someone has to patrol the border.
[Yes. But we have younger, faster and, let us be frank here, more expendable individuals who can do precisely that. We need Clavain’s expertise here, in the Mother Nest, where we can tap it. I don’t believe that he clings to the fringes out of any sense of duty to the Nest. He does it out of pure self-interest. He gets to play at being one of us, being on the winning side, without accepting the full implications of what it means to be Conjoined. It hints at complacency, self-interest—everything that is inimical to our way. It even begins to hint at disloyalty.]
Disloyalty? No one’s shown more loyalty to the Conjoined faction than Nevil Clavain. Maybe some of you need to brush up on your history.
One of the detached heads spidered on to a seat-back. [I agree with Remontoire. Clavain doesn’t owe us anything. He’s proven himself a thousand times over. If he wants to stay outside the Council, that’s his right.]
Across the auditorium a brain lit up, its lights pulsing in synchronisation with its voice patterns. [Yes; no one doubts that, but it is equally the case that Clavain has a moral obligation to join us. He cannot continue to waste his talents outside the Council.]
The brain paused while fluid pumps throbbed and gurgled. The knotted mass of neural tissue swelled and contracted for several lethargic cycles, like some horrible lump of dough. [I cannot endorse Skade’s inflammatory rhetoric. But there is no escaping the essential truth of what she says. Clavain’s continued refusal to join us is tantamount to disloyalty.]
Oh, shut up, Remontoire interjected. If you’re anything to go by, I’m not surprised Clavain has second thoughts . . .
[The insult!] the brain spluttered.
But Remontoire detected a suppressed wave of amusement at his barb. The swollen brain was clearly not as universally respected as it liked to imagine. Sensing his moment, Remontoire leant forward, hands clasped tight around the railings of the balcony. What is this about, Skade? Why now, after all the years when the Closed Council has managed without him?
[What do you mean, why now?]
I mean, what exactly has precipitated this move? Something’s afoot, isn’t it?
Skade’s crest blushed maroon. Her jaw was clenched rigid. She stepped back and arched her spine like a cornered cat.
Remontoire pressed on. First we have a renewal of the starship-building programme, a century after we stopped building them for reasons so secret even the Closed Council isn’t allowed to know them. Then we have a prototype crammed with hidden machinery of unknown origin and function, the nature of which again can’t be revealed to the Closed Council. Then there’s a fleet of similar ships being put together in a comet not far from here—but again, that’s as much as we’re allowed to know. Of course, I’m sure the Inner Sanctum might have something to say on the matter . . .
[Be very careful, Remontoire.]
Why—because I might be in danger of harmless speculation?
Another Conjoiner, a man with a crest a little like Skade’s, stood up tentatively. Remontoire knew the man well, and was certain that he was not a member of the Inner Sanctum.
[Remontoire’s right. Something is happening, and Clavain’s just one part of it. The cessation of the shipbuilding programme, the strange circumstances surrounding Galiana’s return, the new fleet, the disturbing rumours I hear about the hell-class weapons—these things are all connected. The present war is just a distraction, and the Inner Sanctum knows it. Perhaps the true picture is simply too disturbing for we mere Closed Council members to grasp. In which case, like Remontoire, I will indulge in a little speculation and see where it takes me.]
The man looked intently at Skade before continuing. [There’s another rumour, Skade, concerning something called Exordium. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that that was the codeword Galiana gave to her final series of experiments on Mars—the ones she swore she would never repeat.]
Remontoire might have been imagining it, but he thought he saw a visible change of colour sweep through Skade’s crest at the mere mention of the word. What about Exordium? he asked.
The man turned to Remontoire. [I don’t know, but I can guess. Galiana never wanted the experiments to be repeated; the results were useful, incredibly useful, but they were also too disturbing. But once Galiana was away from the Mother Nest, off on her interstellar expedition, what was to stop the Inner Sanctum from re-running Exordium? She need never have found out about it.]
The codeword meant something to Remontoire; he had definitely heard it before. But if it referred to experiments Galiana had performed on Mars, it was something that had happened more than four hundred years earlier. It would require delicate mnemonic archaeology to dig through the strata of overlying memories, especially if the subject itself was shrouded in secrecy.
It seemed simpler to ask. What was Exordium?
“I’ll tell you what it was, Remontoire.”
The sound of a real human voice cutting through the chamber’s silence was as shocking as a scream.
Remontoire followed the sound until he saw the speaker, sitting on her own near one of the entry points. It was Felka; she must have arrived since the session had commenced.
Skade slammed a furious thought into his head. [Who invited her?]
“I did,” Remontoire said mildly, speaking aloud for Felka’s benefit, “on the assumption that you didn’t seem very likely to, and since the matter under discussion happened to be Clavain . . . it seemed the right thing to do.”
“It was,” Felka said. Remontoire saw something move in her hand and realised that she had brought a mouse into the privy chamber. “Wasn’t it, Skade?”
Skade sneered. [There’s no need to talk aloud. It takes too long. She can hear our thoughts as well as any of us.]
“But if you were to hear my thoughts, you’d probably all go mad,” Felka said. The way she smiled was all the more chilling, Remontoire thought, because what she said was probably true. “So rather than risk that . . .” She looked down, the mouse chasing its tail around her hand.
[You have no right to be here.]
“But I do, Skade. If I wasn’t recognised as a Closed Council member, the privy chamber wouldn’t have admitted me. And if I wasn’t a Closed Council member, I’d hardly be in a position to talk about Exordium, would I?”
The man who had first mentioned the codeword spoke aloud, his voice high and trembling. “So my guess was correct, was it, Skade?”
[Ignore anything she says. She knows nothing about the programme.]
“Then I can say what I like, can’t I, and none of it will matter. Exordium was an experiment, Remontoire, an attempt to achieve unification between consciousness and quantum superposition. It happened on Mars; you can verify that much for yourself. But Galiana got far more than she bargained for. She curtailed the experiments, frightened at what she had invoked. And that should have been the end of it.” Felka looked directly at Skade, tauntingly. “But it wasn’t, was it? The experiments were begun again, about a century ago. It was an Exordium message that made us stop making ships.”
“A message?” Remontoire said, perplexed.
“From the future,” Felka said, as if this should have been obvious from the start.
“You’re not serious.”
“I’m perfectly serious, Remontoire. I should know—I took part in one of the experiments.”
Skade’s thoughts scythed across the room. [We’re here to discuss Clavain, not this.]
Felka continued to speak calmly. She was, Remontoire thought, the only one in the room who was unfazed by Skade, including himself. Felka’s head already held worse horrors than Skade could imagine. “But we can’t discuss one without discussing the other, Skade. The experiments have continued, haven’t they? And they have something to do with what’s happening now. The Inner Sanctum’s learned something, and they’d rather the rest of us didn’t know anything about it.”
Skade clenched her jaw again. [The inner Sanctum has identified a coming crisis.]