[Yes.] Skade’s eyes widened perceptibly, and her skin took on a blush it had lacked before. [Yes. Connection established. Now, let’s see . . . motor control . . . ]
The servitor’s forearm jerked violently forwards, the fist clenching and unclenching spasmodically. Skade pulled it back and held the outspread hand before her eyes, studying the mechanical anatomy of gloss-black and chrome with rapt fascination. The servitor was of a quaint design that resembled medieval armour; it was both beautiful and brutal.
You seem to have the hang of it.
The servitor took a shuffling step forwards, both arms held slightly in front of it. [Yes . . . This is my quickest adjustment yet. It almost makes me think I should instruct Delmar not to bother.]
“Not to bother doing what?” asked Felka.
[Healing my old body. I think I prefer this one. That’s a joke, incidentally.]
“Of course,” Felka said uneasily.
[But you should be grateful that this has happened to me. It makes me more likely to try to bring Clavain back into our possession alive.]
“Why’s that?”
“Because I would very much like him to see what he has done to me.” Skade turned around with a creak of metal. “Now, there is something else you wanted to see, I think. Shall we continue?”
The suit of armour led them out of the room.
FIFTEEN
A word pressed itself into Volyova’s skull, as hard and searing as a cattle brand.
[Ilia.]
She could not speak, could only shape her own thoughts in response. Yes. How do you know my name?
[I’ve come to know you. You’ve shown such interest in me—in us—that it was difficult not to know you in return.]
Again she moved to hammer on the door that had sealed her inside the cache weapon, but when she tried to lift her arm nothing happened. She was paralysed, though still able to breathe. The presence, whatever it was, continued to feel as if it was directly behind her, looking over her shoulder.
Who . . . She sensed a terrible mocking delight in her own ignorance.
[The controlling subpersona of this weapon, of course. You can call me Seventeen. Who else did you think I was?]
You speak Russish.
[I know your preferred natural language filters. Russish is easy enough. An old language. It hasn’t changed much since the time we were made.]
Why . . . now?
[You have never reached this deeply into one of us before, Ilia.]
I . . . have. Nearly.
[Perhaps. But never under quite these circumstances. Never with so much fear before you even began. You are quite desperate to use us, aren’t you? More than you’ve ever been before.]
She felt, despite still being paralysed, a tiny easing of her terror. So the presence was a computer program, no more than that. She had simply triggered a layer of the weapon’s control mechanism that she had never knowingly invoked before. The presence felt almost preternaturally evil, but that—and the paralysis—was obviously just a refinement of the usual fear-generation mechanism.
Volyova wondered how the weapon was talking to her. She had no implants, and yet the weapon’s voice was definitely speaking directly into her skull. It could only be that the chamber she was in was functioning as a kind of high-powered inverse trawl, stimulating brain function by the application of intense magnetic fields. If it could make her feel terror, Volyova supposed, and with such finesse, it would not have been a great deal more difficult for it to generate ghost signals along her auditory nerve or, more probably, in the hearing centre itself, and to pick up the anticipatory neural firing patterns that accompanied the intention to speak.
These are desperate times . . .
[So it would seem.]
Who made you?
There was no immediate answer from Seventeen. For a moment the fear was gone, the neural thrall interrupted by a blank instant of calm, like the drawing of breath between agonised screams.
[We don’t know.]
No?
[No. They didn’t want us to know.]
Volyova marshalled her thoughts with the care of someone placing heavy ornaments on a rickety shelf. I think the Conjoiners made you. That’s my working hypothesis, and nothing you’ve told me has led me to think it might need reconsidering.
[It doesn’t matter who made us, does it? Not now.]
Probably not. I’d like to know for curiosity’s sake, but the most important thing is that you’re still capable of serving me.
The weapon tickled the part of her mind that registered amusement. [Serving you, Ilia? Whatever gave you that impression?]
You did what I asked of you, in the past. Not you specifically, Seventeen—I never asked anything of you—but whenever I asked anything of the other weapons, they always obeyed me.
[We didn’t obey you, Ilia.]
No?
[No. We humoured you. It amused us to do what you asked of us. Often that was indistinguishable from following your commands—but only from your point of view.]
You’re just saying that.
[No. You see, Ilia, whoever made us gave us a degree of free will. There must have been a reason for that. Perhaps we were expected to act autonomously, or to piece together a course of action from incomplete or corrupted orders. We must have been created to be doomsday weapons, you see, weapons of final resort. Instruments of End Times.]
You still are.
[And are these End Times, Ilia?]
I don’t know. I think they might be.
[You were frightened before you came here, I can tell. We all can. What exactly is it that you want of us, Ilia?]
There’s a problem you might have to attend to.