Reynolds, Alastair: Redemption Ark

Galiana tried to force the memory of the wolves from her mind, thinking back to the time she had first met Clavain. It had been on Mars, when he had been fighting against her, a soldier in the Coalition for Neural Purity. The Coalition opposed her mind-augmenting experiments and saw the utter annihilation of the Conjoiners as the only tolerable outcome.

But Clavain had seen the larger picture. First, as her prisoner, he had made her realise how terrifying her experiments had seemed to the rest of the system. She had never really grasped that until Clavain patiently explained it to her, over many months of incarceration. Later, when he had been freed and terms of cease-fire were being negotiated, it was Clavain who had brought in the Demarchists to act as a neutral third party. The Demarchists had drawn up the cease-fire document and Clavain had pushed Galiana until she signed it. It had been a masterstroke, cementing an alliance between the Demarchists and the Conjoiners that would endure for centuries, until the Coalition for Neural Purity barely merited a footnote in history. Conjoiners continued with their neurological experiments, which were tolerated and even encouraged provided they made no attempts to absorb other cultures. Demarchists made use of their technologies, brokering them to other human factions.

Everyone was happy.

But at heart, Skade was right: the union had always been an uneasy one. A war, at some point, was almost inevitable—especially when something like the Melding Plague came along.

But fifty-four damned years? Clavain would never have tolerated that, she thought. He would have seen the terrible waste in human effort that such a war entailed. He would either have found a way to end it decisively, or he would have sought a permanent cease-fire.

The migrainelike pressure was still with her, now a little more intense than before. Galiana had the disturbing sense that something was peering through her eyes from inside her skull, as if she was not its only tenant.

We narrowed the distance to your two ships, with the unhurried lope of ancient killers who had no racial memory of failure. You sensed our minds: bleak intellects poised on the dangerous verge of intelligence, as old and cold as the dust between the stars.

You sensed our hunger .

“But Clavain . . .” she said.

“What about Clavain?”

“He would have found a way to end this, Skade, one way or another. Why hasn’t he?”

Skade looked away for an instant, so that her crest was a narrow ridge turned edge-on. When she turned back she was attempting to shape a very odd expression on to her face.

You saw us take your first ship, smothering it in a caulk of inquisitive black machines. The machines gnawed the ship apart. You saw it detonate: the explosion etched a pink swan-shape on to your retina, and you felt a net of minds being ripped away, like the loss of a thousand children.

You tried to get farther away, but by then it was too late.

When we reached your ship we were more careful .

“This isn’t easy, Galiana.”

“What isn’t?”

“It’s about Clavain.”

“You said he returned.”

“He did. And so did Felka. But I’m sorry to tell you that they both died.” The words arrived one after another, slow as breaths. “It was eleven years ago. There was a Demarchist attack, a lucky strike against the Nest, and they both died.”

There was only one rational response: denial. “No!”

“I’m sorry. I wish there was some other way . . .” Skade’s crest flashed ultramarine. “I wish it had never happened. They were valuable assets to us . . .”

“‘Assets’?”

Skade must have sensed Galiana’s fury. “I mean they were loved. We grieved their loss, Galiana. All of us.”

“Then show me. Open your mind. Drop the barricades. I want to see into it.”

Skade lingered near the side of the casket. “Why, Galiana?”

“Because until I can see into it, I won’t know whether you’re telling the truth.”

“I’m not lying,” Skade said softly. “But I can’t allow our minds to talk. There is something inside your head, you see. Something we don’t understand, other than that it is probably alien and probably hostile.”

“I don’t believe . . .”

But the pressure behind her eyes suddenly became acute. Galiana experienced a vile sense of being shoved aside, usurped, crushed into a small ineffectual corner of her own skull. Something inexpressibly sinister and ancient now had immediate tenancy, squatting behind her eyes.

She heard herself speak again.

“Me, do you mean?”

Skade seemed only mildly taken aback. Galiana admired the other Conjoiner her nerve.

“Perhaps. Who would you be, exactly?”

“I don’t have a name other than the one she gave me.”

“‘She’?” Skade asked amusedly. But her crest was flickering with nervous pale greens, showing terror even though her voice was calm.

“Galiana,” the entity replied. “Before I took her over. She called us—my mind—the wolves. We reached and infiltrated her ship, after we had destroyed the other. We didn’t understand much of what they were at first. But then we opened their skulls and absorbed their central nervous systems. We learned much more then. How they thought; how they communicated; what they had done to their minds.”

Galiana tried to move, even though Skade had already placed her in a state of paralysis. She tried to scream, but the Wolf—for that was exactly what she had called it—had complete control of her voice.

It was all coming back now.

“Why didn’t you kill her?” Skade said.

“It wasn’t like that,” the Wolf chided. “The question you should be asking is a different one: why didn’t she kill herself before it came to this? She could have, you know; it was within her power to destroy her entire ship and everyone inside it simply by willing it.”

“So why didn’t she?”

“We came to an arrangement, after we had killed her crew and left her alone. She would not kill herself provided we allowed her to return home. She knew what it meant: I would invade her skull, rummage through her memories.”

“Why her?”

“She was your queen, Skade. As soon as we read the minds of her crew, we knew she was the one we really needed.”

Skade was silent. Aquamarines and jades chased each other in slow waves from brow to nape. “She would never have risked leading you here.”

“She would, provided she thought the risk was outweighed by the benefit of an early warning. It was an accommodation, you see. She gave us time to learn, and the hope of learning more. Which we have, Skade.”

Skade touched a finger to her upper lip and then held it before her as if testing the direction of the wind. “If you truly are a superior alien intelligence, and you knew where we were, you’d already have come to us.”

“Very good, Skade. And you’re right, in a sense. We don’t know exactly where Galiana has brought us. I know, but I can’t communicate that knowledge to my fellows. But that won’t matter. You are a starfaring culture—fragmented into different factions, it is true—but from our perspective those distinctions do not matter. From the memories we drank, and the memories in which we still swim, we know the approximate locus of space that you inhabit. You are expanding, and the surface area of your expansion envelope grows geometrically, always increasing the likelihood of an encounter between us. It has already happened once, and it may have happened elsewhere, at other points on the sphere’s boundary.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Skade asked.

“To frighten you. Why else?”

But Skade was too clever for that. “No. There’s got to be another reason. You want to make me think you might be useful, don’t you?”