Reynolds, Alastair: Redemption Ark

Volyova looked at him craftily. “You’ve changed your tune, Clavain. Since when was evacuating Resurgam your highest priority?”

He looked at Felka. “I realised that the possession of the weapons was not quite the clear-cut issue I’d been led to believe. There were choices to be made, harder choices than I would have liked, and I realised that I had been neglecting them because of their very difficulty.”

Volyova said, “Then you don’t want the weapons, is that it?”

Clavain smiled. “Actually, I still do. And so do you. But I think we can come to an agreement, can’t we?”

“We have a job to do here, Clavain. I’m not just talking about the evacuation of Resurgam. Do you honestly think I’d leave the Inhibitors to get on with their business?”

He shook his head. “No. As a matter of fact, I already had my suspicions.”

“I’m dying, Clavain. I have no future. With the right intervention I might survive a few more weeks, no more than that. I suppose they might be able to do something for me on another world, assuming anyone still retains a pre-plague technology, but that would entail the tedious business of being frozen, something I have had quite enough of for one existence. So I am calling it a day.” She raised a bird-boned wrist and thumped the bed. “I bequeath you this damned monstrosity of a ship. You can take it and the evacuees away from here once we’re done airlifting them from Resurgam. Here, I give it to you. It’s yours.” She raised her voice, an effort that must have cost her more than he could even begin to imagine. “Are you listening, Captain? It’s Clavain’s ship now. I hereby resign as Triumvir.”

“Captain . . . ?” Clavain ventured.

She smiled. “You’ll find out, don’t you worry.”

“I’ll take care of the evacuees,” Clavain said, moved at what had just happened. He nodded at Khouri as well. “You have my word on that. I promise you I will not let you down, Triumvir.”

Volyova dismissed him with one weary wave of her hand. “I believe you. You appear to be a man who gets things done, Clavain.”

He scratched his beard. “Then there’s just one other thing.”

“The weapons? Who gets them in the end? Well, don’t worry. I’ve already thought of that.”

He waited, studying the series of abstract grey curves that was the Triumvir’s bed-ridden form.

“Here’s my proposal,” she said, her voice as thin as the wind. “It happens to be non-negotiable.” Then her attention flicked to Antoinette again. “You. What did you say your name was?”

“Bax,” Antoinette said, almost stuttering on her answer.

“Mm.” The Triumvir sounded as if this was the least interesting thing she had heard in her life. “And this ship of yours . . . this freighter . . . is it really as large and fast as is claimed?”

She shrugged. “I suppose so.”

“Then I’ll take it as well. You won’t need it once we’ve finished evacuating the planet. You’d just better make sure you get the job done before I die.”

Clavain looked at Bax, and then back to the Triumvir. “What do you want her ship for, Ilia?”

“Glory,” Volyova said dismissively. “Glory and redemption. What else did you imagine?”

“Ship?”

“Yes, Antoinette?”

“It’s all right, you know. I don’t mind. You can still call me Little Miss.”

“It was only ever an act.” Beast—or Lyle Merrick, more properly—paused. “I did it rather well, wouldn’t you say?”

“Dad was right to trust you. You did look after me, didn’t you?”

“As well as I was able to. Which wasn’t as well as I hoped. But then again, you didn’t exactly make it easy. I suppose that was inevitable, given the family connection. Your father was not exactly the most cautious of individuals, and you are very much a chip off the old block.”

“We came through, Ship,” Antoinette said. “We still came through. That has to count for something, doesn’t it?”

“I suppose so.”

“Ship . . . Lyle . . .”

“Antoinette?”

“You know what the Triumvir wants, don’t you?”

Merrick did not answer her for several seconds. All her life she had imagined that the pauses were inserted cosmetically into the subpersona’s conversation, but she knew now that they had been quite real. Merrick’s simulation experienced consciousness at a rate very close to normal human thought, so his pauses indicated genuine introspection.

“Xavier did inform me, yes.”

Antoinette was glad at least that she did not have to reveal that particular piece of the arrangement. “When the evacuation is done, when we’ve got as many people away from the planet as we can, then the Triumvir wants to use Storm Bird for herself. She says it’s for glory and redemption. It sounds like a suicide mission, Lyle.”

“I more or less came to the same conclusion as well, Antoinette.” Merrick’s synthesised voice was quite unnervingly calm. “She’s dying, so I gather, so I suppose it isn’t suicide in the old sense . . . but that’s a fairly pointless distinction. I gather she wishes to make amends for her past.”

“Khouri, the other woman, says she isn’t the monster the people on the planet make out.” Antoinette struggled to keep her own voice as level and collected as Merrick’s. They were skirting around something dreadful, orbiting an absence neither wished to acknowledge. “But I guess she must have done some bad stuff in the past anyway.”

“Then I suppose that makes two of us,” Merrick said. “Yes, Antoinette, I know what you are concerned about. But you mustn’t worry about me.”

“She thinks you’re just a ship, Lyle. And no one will tell her the truth because they need her co-operation so badly. Not that it would make any difference if they did . . .” Antoinette trailed off, hating herself for feeling so sad. “You’ll die, won’t you? Finally, the way it would have happened all those years ago if Dad and Xavier hadn’t helped you.”

“I deserved it, Antoinette. I did a terrible thing, and I escaped justice.”

“But Lyle . . .” Her eyes were stinging. She could feel tears welling inside her, stupid irrational tears that she despised herself for. She had loved her ship, then hated it—hated it because of the lie in which it had implicated her father, the lie that she had been told; and then she had come to love it again, because the ship, and the ghost of Lyle Merrick that haunted it, were both tangible links back to her father. And now that she had come to that accommodation, the knife was twisting again. What she had learned to love was being taken away from her, the last link back to her father snatched from her hands by that bitch Volyova . . .

Why was it never easy? All she had wanted to do was keep a vow.

“Antoinette?”

“We could remove you,” she said. “Take you out of the ship and replace you with an ordinary subpersona. Volyova wouldn’t have to know, would she?”

“No, Antoinette. It’s my time as well. If she wants glory and redemption, then why can’t I take a little of that for myself?”

“You’ve already made a difference. There isn’t any need for a larger sacrifice.”

“But this is still what I choose to do. You can’t begrudge me that, can you?”

“No,” she said, her voice breaking up. “No, I can’t. And I wouldn’t.”

“Promise me something, Antoinette?”

She rubbed her eyes, ashamed at her tears and yet oddly exultant at the same time. “What, Lyle?”

“That you will continue to take good care of yourself, no matter what happens from here on in.”

She nodded. “I will. I promise.”

“That’s good. There’s one other thing I want to say, and then I think we should go our separate ways. I can continue with the evacuation unaided. In fact, I positively refuse to let you put yourself in further danger by continuing to fly aboard me. How does that sound for an order? Impressed, aren’t you? You didn’t think I was capable of that, did you?”