Reynolds, Alastair - Redemption Ark

He nodded without saying anything.

“Clavain . . .”

“Felka, I’m so sorry about what I . . .”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, taking a step closer. “I mean, it does matter—of course it matters—but we can talk about it later. On the way.”

“On the way where?” he said stupidly.

“To battle, Clavain. I’m coming with you.”

It was only then that he realised that she was carrying a suit herself, bundled under one arm, the helmet dangling from her fist like an overripe fruit.

“Why?”

“Because if you die, I want to die as well. It’s as simple as that, Clavain.”

“I can take it,” she told him.

“It’s not too late to turn back.”

“I’m coming with you. There’s a lot we need to discuss.”

Clavain called a battle realisation into view, appraising any changes that had taken place since he had gone to fetch his spacesuit. His ships swarmed around Nostalgia for Infinity like enraged hornets, arcing tighter with each loop. Twenty-three members of Scorpio’s army were now dead, most of them pigs, but the closest of the attack swarm were now within kilometres of the great ship’s hull; at such close range they became very difficult targets for Volyova’s medium-range defences. Storm Bird, identified by its own fat icon, was now approaching the edge of the combat swarm. The Triumvir had pulled all but one of her hell-class weapons back within cover of the lighthugger. Elsewhere, on the general system-wide view, the wolf weapon continued to sink its single gravitational fang into the meat of the star. Clavain contracted the displays until they were just large enough to view, and then turned to Felka. “I’m afraid talking isn’t going to be too easy.”

[Then we won’t talk, will we?]

He looked at her, startled that she had spoken to him in the Conjoiner fashion, opening a window between their heads, pushing words and much more than words into his skull. Felka . . .

[It’s all right, Clavain. Just because I didn’t do this very often doesn’t mean I couldn’t . . . ]

I never thought you couldn’t . . . it’s just . . . They were close enough for Conjoined thought, he realised, even though there was no Conjoiner machinery in the ship itself. The fields generated by their implants were strong enough to influence each other without intermediate amplification, provided they were no more than a few metres apart.

[You’re right. Normally I didn’t want to. But you aren’t just anyone.]

You don’t have to if you don’t . . .

[Clavain: a word of warning. You can look all the way into my head. There are no barriers, no partitions, no mnemonic blockades. Not to you, at least. But don’t look too deeply. It’s not that you’d see anything private, or anything I’m ashamed of . . . it’s just . . . ]

I might not be able to take it?

[Sometimes I can’t take it, Clavain, and I’ve lived with it since I was born.]

I understand.

He could see into the surface layers of her personality, feel the surface traffic of her thoughts. The data was calm. There was nothing that he could not examine; no sensory experience or memory that he could not unravel and open as if it were one of his own. But beneath that calm surface layer, glimpsed like something rushing behind smoked glass, there lay a howling storm of consciousness. It was frantic and ceaseless, like a machine always on the point of ripping itself apart, but one that would never find respite in its own destruction.

He pulled back, terrified that he might fall in.

[You see what I mean?]

I always knew you lived with something like that. I just didn’t . . .

[It isn’t your fault. It isn’t anyone’s fault, not even Galiana’s. It’s just the way I am.]

He understood then, perhaps more thoroughly than at any point since he had known her, just what Felka’s craving was like. Games, complex games, sated that howling machine, gave it something to work on, slowed it to something less furious. When she had been a child, the Wall had been all that she needed, but the Wall had been taken from her. After that, nothing had ever been enough. Perhaps the machine would have evolved as Felka grew. Or perhaps the Wall would always have turned out to be inadequate. All that mattered now was that she find surrogates for it: games or puzzles, labyrinths or riddles, which the machine could process and thereby give her the tiniest degree of inner calm.

Now I understand why you think the Jugglers might be able to help.

[Even if they can’t change me—and I’m not even sure I want them to change me—they might at least give me something to think about, Clavain. So many alien minds have been imprinted in their seas, so many patterns stored. I might even be able to make sense of something that the other swimmers haven’t. I might even be valuable.]

I always said I’d do what I could. But it hasn’t got any easier. You understand that, don’t you?

[Of course.]

Felka . . .

She must have read enough of his mind to see what he was about to ask. [I lied, Clavain. I lied to save you, to get you to turn around.]

He already knew; Skade had told him. But until now he had never entirely dismissed the possibility that Skade herself might have been lying; that Felka was indeed his daughter. It would have been a white lie, in that case. I’ve been responsible for enough of those in my time.

[It was still a lie. But I didn’t want Skade to kill you. It seemed better not to tell the truth . . . ]

You must have known that I’d always wondered . . .

[It was natural for you to wonder, Clavain. There was always a bond between us, after you saved my life. And you were Galiana’s prisoner before I was born. It would have been easy for her to harvest genetic material . . . ] Her thoughts became hazy. [Clavain . . . do you mind if I ask you something?]

There aren’t any secrets between us, Felka.

[Did you make love with Galiana, when you were her prisoner?]

He answered with a calm clarity of mind that surprised even himself. I don’t know. I think so. I remember it. But then what do memories mean, after four hundred years? Maybe I’m just remembering a memory. I hope that isn’t the case. But afterwards . . . when I had become one of the Conjoined . . .

[Yes?]

We did make love. Early on, we made love often. The other Conjoiners didn’t like it, I think—they saw it as an animal act, a primitive throwback to baseline humanity. Galiana didn’t agree, of course. She was always the sensual one, the one who revelled in the realm of the senses. That was what her enemies never truly understood about her—that she honestly loved humanity more than they did. It was why she made the Conjoined. Not to be something better than humanity, but as a gift, a promise of what humanity could be if we only realised our potential. Instead, they painted her as some coldly reductionist monster. They were so terribly wrong. Galiana didn’t think of love as some ancient Darwinian trick of brain chemistry that had to be eradicated from the human mind. She saw it as something that had to be brought to its culmination, like a seed that needed to be nurtured as it grew. But they never understood that part. And the trouble was you had to be Conjoined before you appreciated what it was that she had achieved.

Clavain paused, taking a moment to review the disposition of his forces around the Triumvir’s ship. There had been two more deaths in the last minute, but the steady encroachment of his forces continued. Yes, we did make love, back in my first days amongst the Conjoined. But there came a time when it was no longer necessary, except as a nostalgic act. It felt like something that children do: not wrong, not primitive, not even dull, just no longer of any interest. It wasn’t that we had stopped loving each other, or had lost our thirst for sensory experience. It was simply that there were so many more rewarding ways of achieving that same kind of intimacy. Once you’ve touched someone else’s mind, walked through their dreams, seen the world through their eyes, felt the world through their skin . . . well . . . there never seemed to be any real need to go back to the old way. And I was never much one for nostalgia. It was as if we had stepped into a more adult world, crammed with its own pleasures and enticements. We had no reason to look back at what we were missing .