Alastair Reynolds - Absolution Gap

“I did, did I?”

“The word was ‘Hella,’ or something like that. It appeared to mean something to you, but when we asked you about it, you gave me what I’d call a plausible denial. I’m inclined to believe you were telling the truth, that the word doesn’t mean anything to you. But I’m wondering if it might mean something to Aura.”

She looked at him with suspicion and interest. “Does it mean anything to you?”

“Not that I’m aware of. Certainly doesn’t mean anything to anyone on Ararat. But in the wider sphere of human culture? Could mean almost anything. Lot of languages out there. Lot of people, lot of places.“

“Still can’t help you.”

“I understand. But the thing is, while I was sitting here waiting for you to wake up, you said something else.”

“What did I say?”

“Quaiche.”

She lifted the beaker to her lips and finished what remained of the water. “Still doesn’t mean anything to me,” she said.

“Pity. I was hoping it might ring some bells.”

“Well, maybe it means something to Aura. I don’t know, all right? I’m just her mother. Remontoire wasn’t a miracle worker. He linked us together, but it’s not as if everything she thinks is accessible to me. I’d go mad if that was the case.” Khouri paused. “You’ve got databases and things. Why don’t you query them?”

“I will, when things quieten down.” Scorpio pushed himself up from the seat. “One other thing: I understand you communicated a particular desire to Doctor Valensin?”

“Yeah, I talked to the doc.” She said it in a lilting voice, parodying his earlier tone.

“I understand why you want that to happen. I respect your wish and sympathise with you. If there was a safe way…”

She closed her eyes. “She’s my baby. They stole her from me. Now I want to give birth to her, the way it was meant to happen.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I just can’t allow it.”

“There’s no room for argument, is there?”

“None at all, I’m afraid.”

She did not reply, did not even turn away from him, but there was a withdrawal and the sliding down of a barrier he didn’t have to see to feel.

Scorpio turned from the bed and walked slowly out of the room. He had expected her to weep when he broke the news. If not weeping, then hysterics or insults or pleading. But she remained still, silent, as if she had always known it would happen this way. As he walked away, the force of her dignity made the back of his neck tingle. But it changed nothing.

Aura was a child. But she was also a tactical asset.

In the deep cloisters of the ship, Antoinette halted. “John?” she said. “It’s me again. I’ve come down to talk to you.”

Antoinette knew he was nearby. She knew that he was watching her, alert to her every gesture. When the wall moved, pushing itself into the bas-relief image of a spacesuited figure, she controlled her natural instinct to flinch. It was not quite what she had been expecting, but it was still an apparition.

“Thanks,” she said. “Good to see you again.”

The figure was a suggestion rather than an accurate sketch. The image shimmered, the wall’s deformations undergoing constant and rapid change, fluttering and rippling like a flag in a stiff gale. When the image occasionally broke up, fading back into the rough texture of the wall, it was as if the figure was being hidden by scarves of windblown Martian dust cutting horizontally across the field of view.

The figure gestured to her, raising an arm, touching one gloved hand to the narrow visor of its space helmet.

Antoinette raised her own hand in greeting, but the figure on the wall merely repeated the gesture, more emphatically this time.

Then she remembered the goggles that the Captain had given her the time before. She slipped them from her pocket and settled them over her eyes. Again the view through the goggles was synthetic, but this time—for now, at least—nothing was being edited out of her visual field. This reassured her. She had not enjoyed the feeling that large and possibly dangerous elements in her vicinity were being masked from her perception. It was shocking to think that for centuries people had accepted such manipulation of their environment as a perfectly normal aspect of life, regarding such perceptual filtering as no more remarkable than the wearing of sunglasses or earmuffs. It was even more shocking to think that they had allowed the machinery controlling that filtering to creep into their skulls, where it could make the trickery even more seamless. The Demarchists—and, for that matter, the Conjoiners—truly were strange people. She was sad about many things, but not the fact that she had been born too late to participate in such reality-modifying games. She liked to reach out for something and know it was really there.

But the goggles were a necessary evil. In the Captain’s realm, she had to consent to his rules.

The bas-relief image took a definite step towards her and then emerged from the wall, solid now, taking on form and detail, exactly as if a physical person had stepped out of a highly localised sandstorm.

Now she did flinch, for the illusion of presence was striking. She could not help but take a step backwards.

There was something different about the manifestation this time. The space helmet was not quite as ancient as the one she remembered, and it was covered in different symbols. The suit, while still of an old design, was not as utterly archaic as the first he had worn. The chest-pack was more streamlined, and the whole suit fitted its wearer more tightly. Antoinette was no expert, but she judged that the new suit must be fifty-odd years ahead of the one he had worn last time.

She wondered what that meant.

She was on the point of taking another step backwards when the Captain halted his approach and again raised a gloved hand. The gesture served to calm her, which was probably the intention. Then he began to work the mechanism of his visor, sliding it up with a conspicuous hiss of equalising air pressure.

The face inside the helmet was instantly recognisable, but it was also the face of an older man. There were lines where there had been none before, grey in the stubble that still shadowed his cheeks. There were wrinkles around his eyes, which appeared more deeply set. The cast of his mouth was different, too, curving downwards at the corners.

His voice, when he spoke, was both deeper and more ragged. “You don’t give up easily, do you?”

“As a rule, no. Do you remember the last chat we had, John?”

“Adequately.” With one hand he punched a matrix of controls set into the upper surface of the chest-pack, keying in a chain of commands. “How long ago was it?”

“Do you mind if I ask you how long ago you think it was?”

“No.”

She waited. The Captain looked at her, his expression blank.

“How long ago do you think it was?” she asked, eventually.

“A couple of months. Several years of shiptime. Two days. Three minutes. One point one eight milliseconds. Fifty-four years.”

“Two days is about right,” she said. 1 “I’ll take your word for it. As you’ll have gathered, my memory isn’t quite the razor-sharp faculty it once was.”

“Still, you did remember that I’d come before. That counts for something, doesn’t it?”

“You’re a very charitable person, Antoinette.”

“I’m not surprised that your memory works in funny ways, John. But it’s enough for me that you remembered my name. Do you remember anything else we talked about?”

“Give me a clue.”

“The visitors, John? The presences in the system?”