Alastair Reynolds - Revelation Space

“I see Manoukhian managed to get you here in one piece,” said a woman’s voice.

“Me or him?”

“Both, dear girl,” the invisible speaker said. “Your reputations are equally formidable.”

Behind her the double doors clicked shut. Khouri began to take in her surroundings; difficult in the strange pink light of the room. The enclosure was kettle-shaped, with two eyelike shuttered windows set into one concave wall.

“Welcome to my place of residence,” the voice said. “Make yourself at home, won’t you.”

Khouri walked to the shuttered windows. To one side of the windows sat a pair of reefersleep caskets, gleaming like chromed silverfish. One of the units was sealed and running, while the other was open; a chrysalis ready to enfold the butterfly.

“Where am I?”

The shutters whisked open.

“Where you always were,” the Mademoiselle said.

She was looking out across Chasm City. But it was from a higher vantage point than she had ever known. She was actually above the Mosquito Net, perhaps fifty metres from its stained surface. The city lay below the Net like a fantastically spiny sea-creature preserved in formaldehyde. She had no idea where she was; except that this had to be one of the tallest buildings; one that she had probably assumed was uninhabited.

The Mademoiselle said: “I call this place the Chateau des Corbeaux; the House of Ravens; by virtue of its blackness. You’ve undoubtedly seen it.”

“What do you want?” Khouri said, finally.

“I want you to do a job for me.”

“All this for that? I mean, you had to kidnap me at gunpoint just to ask me to do a job? Couldn’t you go through the usual channels?”

“It isn’t the usual sort of job.”

Khouri nodded towards the open reefersleep unit. “Where does that come into it?”

“Don’t tell me it alarms you. You came to our world in one, after all.”

“I just asked what it meant.”

“All in good time. Turn around, will you?”

Khouri heard a slight bustle of machinery behind her, like the sound of a filing cabinet opening.

A hermetic’s palanquin had entered the room. Or had it been here all along, concealed by some artifice? It was as dark and angular as a metronome, lacking ornamentation, and with a roughly welded black exterior. It had no appendages or obvious sensors, and the tiny viewing monocle set into its front was as dark as a shark’s eye.

“You are doubtless already familiar with my kind,” said the voice emanating from the palanquin. “Do not be disturbed.”

“I’m not,” Khouri said.

But she was lying. There was something disturbing about this box; a quality she had never experienced in the presence of Ng or the other hermetics she had known. Perhaps it was the austerity of the palanquin, or the sense—entirely subliminal—that the box was seldom unoccupied. None of this was helped by the smallness of the viewing window, or the feeling that there was something monstrous behind that dark opacity.

“I can’t answer all your questions now,” the Mademoiselle said. “But obviously I didn’t bring you here just to see my predicament. Here. Perhaps this will assist matters.”

A figure grew to solidity next to the palanquin, imaged by the room itself.

It was a woman, of course—young, but paradoxically clothed in the kind of finery which no one had worn on Yellowstone since the plague; enrobed in swirling entoptics. The woman’s black hair was raked back from a noble forehead, held in a clasp inwoven with lights. Her electric-blue gown left her shoulders bare, cut away in a daring dйcolletage. Where it reached the floor it blurred into nothingness.

“This is how I was,” the figure spoke. “Before the foulness.”

“Can’t you still be like that?”

“The risk of leaving enclosure is too great—even in the hermetic sanctuaries. I distrust their precautions.”

“Why have you brought me here?”

“Didn’t Manoukhian explain things fully?”

“Not exactly, no. Other than explaining how it wouldn’t be good for my health not to go along with him.”

“How indelicate of him. But not inaccurate, it must be admitted.” A smile upset the pale composure of the woman’s face. “What do you suppose were my reasons for bringing you here?”

Khouri knew that, whatever else had happened, she had seen too much to return to normal life in the city.

“I’m a professional assassin. Manoukhian saw me at work and told me I was as good as my reputation. Now—maybe I’m jumping to conclusions here—but it occurs to me you might want someone killed.”

“Yes, very good.” The figure nodded. “But did Manoukhian tell you this would not be the same as your usual contracts?”

“He mentioned an important difference, yes.”

“And would this trouble you?” The Mademoiselle studied her intensely. “It’s an interesting point, isn’t it? I’m well aware that your usual targets consent to be assassinated before you go after them. But they do so in the knowledge that they will probably evade you and live to boast about it. When you do catch them, I doubt that many of them go gently.”

She thought of Taraschi. “Usually not, no. Usually they’re begging me not to do it, trying to bribe me, that kind of thing.”

“And?”

Khouri shrugged. “I kill them anyway.”

“The attitude of a true professional. You were a soldier, Khouri?”

“Once.” She did not really want to think about that now. “How much do you know about what happened to me?”

“Enough. That your husband was a soldier as well—a man named Fazil—and that you fought together on Sky’s Edge. And then something happened. A clerical error. You were put aboard a ship destined for Yellowstone. No one realised the error until you woke up here, twenty years later. Too late by then to return to the Edge—even if you knew Fazil was still alive. He would be forty years older by the time you got back.”

“Now you know why becoming an assassin didn’t exactly give me any sleepless nights.”

“No; I can imagine how you felt. That you owed the universe no favours—nor anyone living in it.”

Khouri swallowed. “But you don’t need an ex-soldier for a job like this. You don’t even need me: I don’t know who you want to take out, but there are better people around than me. I mean, I’m technically good—I only miss one shot in twenty. But I know people who only miss one in fifty.”

“You suit my needs in another manner. I need someone who is more than willing to leave the city.” The figure nodded towards the open reefersleep casket. “And by that, I mean a long journey.”

“Out of the system?”

“Yes.” Her voice was patient and matronly, as if the rudiments of this conversation had been rehearsed dozens of times. “Specifically, a distance of twenty light-years. That’s how far away Resurgam is.”

“I can’t say I’ve heard of it.”

“I would be troubled if you had.” The Mademoiselle extended her left hand, and a little globe sprang into existence a few inches above her palm. The world was deathly grey—there were no oceans, rivers or greenery. Only a skein of atmosphere—visible as a fine arc near the horizon—and a pair of dirty-white icecaps suggested this was anything other than some airless moon. “It’s not even one of the newer colonies—not what we’d call a colony, anyway. There are only a few tiny research outposts on the whole planet. Until recently Resurgam has been of no significance whatsoever. But all that has changed.” The Mademoiselle paused, seeming to collect her thoughts, perhaps debating how much to reveal at this stage. “Someone has arrived on Resurgam—a man called Sylveste.”

“That’s not a very common name.”