“Perhaps. But you see, this particular Yves Mercier was already a student at the time. He was well advanced on studies into exactly the same quantum-vacuum phenomena that would, according to Sukhoi, eventually bring him into my orbit.”
Clavain no longer wanted to be in the room. He stepped up, back into the blue-lanterned corridor. “You’re saying her Mercier really existed?”
“Yes, I am. At which point I found myself faced with two possibilities. Either Sukhoi was somehow aware of the dead Mercier’s life story, and for one reason or another chose to believe that he had not in fact died, or that she was actually telling the truth.”
“But that isn’t possible.”
“I rather think it may be, Mr. Clavain. I think everything Pauline Sukhoi told me may have been the literal truth; that in some way we can’t quite comprehend, Yves Mercier never died for her. That she worked with him, here in the room you have just left, and that Mercier was present when the accident happened.”
“But Mercier did die. You’ve seen the records for yourself.”
“But suppose he didn’t. Suppose that he survived the Melding Plague, went on to work on general quantum-vacuum theory, and eventually attracted my attention. Suppose also that he ended up working with Sukhoi, together on the same experiment, exploring the less stable state transitions. And suppose then that there was an accident, one that involved a shift to a very dangerous state indeed. According to Sukhoi, Mercier was much closer to the field generator than she was when it happened.”
“It killed him.”
“More than that, Mr. Clavain. It made him cease to have existed.” H watched Clavain and nodded with tutorly patience. “It was as if his entire life story, his entire world-line, had been unstitched from our reality, right back to the point when he was killed during the Melding Plague. That, I suppose, was the most logical point at which he could have died in our mutual world-line, the one you and I share.”
“But not for Sukhoi,” Clavain said.
“No, not for her. She remembered how things had been before. I suppose she was close enough to the focus that her memories were entangled, knotted-up with the prior version of events. When Mercier was erased, she nonetheless retained her memories of him. So she was not mad at all, not remotely delusional. She was merely the witness to an event so horrific that it transcends all understanding. Does it chill you, Mr. Clavain, to think that an experiment could have this outcome?”
“You already told me it was dangerous.”
“More than we ever realised at the time. I wonder how many world-lines were wrenched out of existence before there was ever a witness close enough to feel the change?”
Clavain said, “What exactly was it that these experiments were related to, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“That’s the interesting part. State transitions, as I have said—exploring the more exotic quantum-vacuum manifolds. We can suck some of the inertia out of matter, and depending on the field state we can keep sucking it out until the matter’s inertial mass becomes asymptotic with zero. According to Einstein, matter with no mass has no choice but to travel at the speed of light. It will have become photonic, light-like.”
“Is that what happened to Mercier?”
“No—not quite. In so far as I understood Sukhoi’s work, it appeared that the zero-mass state would be very difficult to realise physically. As it neared the zero-mass state, the vacuum would be inclined to flip to the other side. Sukhoi called it a tunnelling phenomenon.”
Clavain raised an eyebrow. “The other side?”
“The quantum-vacuum state in which matter has imaginary inertial mass. By imaginary I mean in the purely mathematical sense, in the sense that the square root of minus one is an imaginary number. Of course, you immediately see what that would imply.”
“You’re talking about tachyonic matter,” Clavain said. “Matter travelling faster than light.”
“Yes.” Clavain’s host seemed pleased. “It appears that Mercier and Sukhoi’s final experiment concerned the transition between tardyonic—the matter we are familiar with—and tachyonic matter states. They were exploring the vacuum states that would allow the construction of a faster-than-light propulsion system.”
“That’s simply not possible,” Clavain said.
H put a hand on his shoulder. “Actually, I don’t think that is quite the right way to think about it. The grubs knew, of course. This technology had been theirs, and yet they chose to crawl between the stars. That should have told us all we needed to know. It is not that it is impossible, merely that it is very, very inadvisable.”
For a long time they stood in silence, on the threshold of the bleak room where Mercier had been unthreaded from existence.
“Has anyone attempted those experiments again?” Clavain asked.
“No, not after what happened to Mercier. Quite frankly, no one was very keen to do any further work on the grub machinery. We’d learned enough as it was. The basement was evacuated. Almost no one ever comes down here these days. Those who do sometimes say they see ghosts; perhaps they’re the residual shadows of all those who suffered the same fate as Mercier. I’ve never seen the ghosts myself, I have to say, and people’s minds do play tricks on them.” He forced false cheer into his voice, an effort that had the opposite effect to that intended. “One mustn’t credit such things. You don’t believe in ghosts, do you, Mr. Clavain?”
“I never used to,” he said, wishing devoutly to be somewhere other than in the basement of the Château.
“These are strange times,” H said, with no little sympathy. “I sense that we live at the end of history, that great scores are soon to be settled. Difficult choices must soon be made. Now, shall we go and see the people I mentioned earlier on?”
Clavain nodded. “I can’t wait.”
“Xavier . . .” she called.
But if he was deep inside Storm Bird he would never hear her. She would either have to find him or wait until he came out. She had told him she would arrive in twenty minutes.
She went through into the main flight deck. Everything looked normal. Xavier had called up some of the less commonly used diagnostic read-outs, some of which were sufficiently obscure that even Antoinette viewed them with mild incomprehension. But that was exactly what she would have expected when Xavier had half the ship’s guts out on the table.
“I’m really, really sorry.”
She looked around, seeing Xavier standing behind her with an expression on his face that meant he was begging forgiveness for something. Behind him were two people she did not recognise. The taller of the two strangers indicated that she should follow them back into the lounge area aft of the main bridge.
“Please do as I tell you, Antoinette,” the man said. “This shouldn’t take long.”
Xavier said, “I think you’d better do it. I’m sorry I made you come here, but they said they’d start trashing the ship if I didn’t.”
Antoinette nodded, stooping back along the connecting corridor. “You did right, Xave. Don’t eat yourself up over it. Well, who are these clowns? Have they introduced themselves?”
“The tall one’s Mr. Clock. The other one, the pig, he’s Mr. Pink.”
The two of them nodded in turn as Xavier spoke their names.
“But who are they?”
“They haven’t said, but here’s a wild stab in the dark. They’re interested in Clavain. I think they might possibly be spiders, or working for the spiders.”
“Are you?” Antoinette asked.
“Hardly,” Remontoire said. “And as for my friend here . . .”
Mr. Pink shook his gargoylelike head. “Not me.”
“I’d let you examine us if the circumstances were more amenable,” Remontoire continued. “I assure you there are no Conjoiner implants in either of us.”
“Which doesn’t mean you aren’t spider stooges,” Antoinette said. “Now, what do I need to do in order for you to get the fuck off my ship?”
“As Mr. Liu correctly judged, we’re interested in Nevil Clavain. Have a seat . . .” The one called Clock said it with steely emphasis this time. “Please, let’s be civil.”
Antoinette folded out a chair from the wall and parked herself in it. “I’ve never heard of anyone called Clavain,” she said.
“But your partner has.”