Alastair Reynolds - Absolution Gap

“How do you know they weren’t part of the Inhibitors? We know so little about them.”

“Because their movements suggested they were as wary of the Inhibitors as we were. Not to the same degree, but cautious nonetheless.”

“Then who are they?”

“I don’t know, Scorp. I only have this shard. It was recovered after an engagement during which one of their vehicles may have been damaged by drifting too close to the battle. It is a piece of debris, Scorp. The same applies, I think, to every piece of conch material you have ever found on Ararat. They are the remains of ships, fallen into the sea.”

“Then who made them?”

“We don’t know.”

“What do they want with us?”

“We don’t know that, either, only that they have taken an interest .”

“I’m not sure I like the sound of that.”

“I’m not sure I like it either. They haven’t contacted us directly, and everything they’ve done suggests they have no intention of making their presence known. They’re more advanced than us, that’s for sure. They may skulk in the darkness, slinking around the Inhibitors, but they’ve survived. They’re still out there, when we’re on the brink of extinction.”

“They could help us.”

“Or they could turn out to be as bad for us as the Inhibitors.”

Scorpio looked into the old Conjoiner’s face: so maddeningly calm, despite the vast implications of their conversation. “You sound as if you think we’re being judged,” he said.

“I wonder if that isn’t the case.”

“And Aura? What does she have to say?”

“She has never made any mention of another party,” Remontoire said.

“Perhaps these are the shadows, after all.”

“Then why go to Hela to make contact with them? No, Scorp: these aren’t the shadows. They’re something else, something she either doesn’t know about, or chooses not to tell us.”

“Now you’re making me nervous.”

“That, Mr. Pink, was very much the idea. Someone has to know this, and it might as well be you.”

“If she doesn’t know about the other party, how can we be sure the rest of her information’s correct?”

“We can’t. That’s the difficulty.”

Scorpio fingered the shard. It was cool to the touch, barely heavier than the air it displaced. “I could talk to her about it, see if she remembers.”

“Or you could keep the information to yourself, because it is too dangerous to reveal to her. Remember: it may be misinformation created by Skade to destroy our confidence in Aura. If she were to deny knowledge of it, will you be able to trust her any more?”

“I’d still like the data,” Scorpio said.

“Too dangerous. If I passed it to you, it might find its way into her head. She’s one of us, Scorp: a Conjoiner. You’ll have to make do with the shard—call it an aide-memoire— and this conversation. That should suffice, should it not?”

“You’re saying I shouldn’t tell her, ever?”

“No, I’m merely saying you must make that decision for yourself, and that it should not be taken lightly.” Remontoire paused, and then offered a smile. “Frankly, I don’t envy you. Rather a lot may depend on it, you see.”

Scorpio pushed the shard into his pocket.

[Help us, Rashmika,] the voice said, when she was alone. [Don’t let us die when the cathedral dies.]

“I can’t help you. I’m not even sure I want to.”

[Quaiche is unstable,] the voice insisted. [He will destroy us, because we are a chink in the armour of his faith. That cannot be allowed to happen, Rashmika. For your sakes—for the sake of all your people—don’t make the same mistake as the scuttlers. Don’t close the door on us.]

She thrashed her head into the damp landscape of her pillow, smelling her own days-old sweat worked into the yellowing fabric during sleepless, voice-tormented nights such as this. All she wanted was for the voice to silence itself; all she wanted was a return to the old simplicities, where all she had to worry about was the imposition of her own self-righteous convictions.

“How did you get here? You still haven’t told me. If the door is closed—”

[The door was opened, briefly. During a difficult period with the supply of the virus, Quaiche endured a lapse of faith. In that crisis he began to doubt his own interpretation of the vanishings. He arranged for the firing of an instrument package into the face of Haldora, a simple mechanical probe crammed with electronic instrumentation.]

“And?”

[He provoked a response. The probe was injected into Haldora during a vanishing. It caused the vanishing to last longer than usual, more than a second. In that hiatus, Quaiche was granted a glimpse of the machinery the scuttlers made to contact us across the bulk.]

“So was everyone else who happened to see it.”

[That’s why that particular vanishing had to be stricken from the public record,] the voice said. [It couldn’t be allowed to have happened.]

She remembered what the shadows had told her about the mass-synthesiser. “Then the probe allowed you to cross over?”

[No. We are still not physically embodied in this brane. What it did reestablish was the communication link. It had been silenced since the last time the scuttlers spoke to us, but in the moment of Quaiche’s intervention it was reopened, briefly. In that window we transmitted an aspect of ourselves across the bulk, a barely sentient ghost, programmed only to survive and negotiate.]

So that was what she was dealing with: not the shadows themselves, but their stripped-down minimalist envoy. She did not suppose that it made very much difference: the voice was clearly at least as intelligent and persuasive as any machine she had ever encountered.

“How far did you get?” Rashmika asked.

[Into the probe, as it fell within the Haldora projection. From there—following the probe’s telemetry link—we reached Hela. But no further. Ever since then, we have been trapped within the scrimshaw suit.]

“Why the suit?”

[Ask Quaiche. It has some deeply personal significance for him, irrevocably entwined with the nature of the vanishings and his own salvation. His lover—the original Morwenna—died in it. Afterwards, Quaiche couldn’t bring himself to destroy the suit. It was a reminder of what had brought him to Hela, a spur to keep looking for an answer, for Morwenna’s memory. When it came time to send the probe into Haldora, Quaiche filled the suit with the cybernetic control system necessary to communicate with the probe. That is why it has become our prison.]

“I can’t help you,” she said again.

[You must , Rashmika. The suit is strong, but it will not survive the destruction of the Lady Morwenna. Yet without us, you will have lost your one channel of negotiation. You might establish another, but you cannot guarantee it. In the meantime, you will be at the mercy of the Inhibitors. They’re coming closer, you know. There isn’t much time left.]

“I can’t do this,” she said. “You’re asking too much of me. You’re just a voice in my head . I won’t do it.”

(You will if you know what’s good for you. We don’t know all that we would like to know about you, Rashmika, but one thing is clear: you are most certainly not who you claim to be.]

She pulled her face from the pillow, brushed lank, damp hair from her eyes. “So what if I’m not?”

[It would probably be for the best if Quaiche didn’t find out, don’t you think?]

The surgeon-general sat alone in his private quarters in the Office of Bloodwork, high in the middle levels of the Clocktower. He hummed to himself, happy in his environment. Even the faint swaying motion of the Lady Morwenna—exaggerated now that she was moving over the rough ground of the ungraded and potholed road that led to the bridge—was pleasing to him, the sense of continuing motion spurring him to work. He had not eaten in many hours and his hands trembled with anticipation as he waited for the assay to finish. The task of prolonging Quaiche’s life had offered many challenges, but he had not felt this sense of intellectual excitement since his days in the service of Queen Jasmina, when he was the master of the body factory.