"I am afraid it will be necessary for you to be thoroughly searched," Jeon added.
"Really? I've been searched once before by Fleet personnel and I cannot say I enjoyed the experience. Will this search also include an exploration of my more intimate cavities, followed by a beating?"
The older woman looked genuinely insulted at this. "Fleet personnel would never—"
"Spare me the platitudes." Yishna began trying to remove her spacesuit, and when, because of her damaged shoulder, it became evident she was having difficulties, one of the marines stepped forward to assist. He was young and good-looking, so she gave him a special smile and watched him blush. Once down to her usual clothing, she quickly retrieved her baton from the spacesuit's belt cache, then turned to Jeon. "Do I need to take off any more?"
"That will be enough," the woman replied. She nodded to the same young marine, who did a quick touch search of Yishna, then stepped back.
"Now can I see my brother?" Yishna asked.
Two marines remained behind to guard the access to her shuttle—why, she had no idea, since the small craft would have been intensively scanned on its way in, and they would have discovered there was no one else aboard. Accompanying Jeon and the young marine, she entered a lift that shortly deposited them on a platform right beside one of the hilldigger's internal trains. As they entered the vehicle Yishna gazed about at the vast internal space and the massive machinery surrounding her. She briefly speculated on the psychological effect on Fleet personnel of being enclosed in so massive a war machine. Then she dismissed such idle speculation. She was tired, her shoulder hurt, and she urgently needed to acquaint her brother with some unpalatable truths.
A short, high-acceleration train ride brought them to another platform, then another lift, then more corridors. Hard metal all around and the taste of steel in her mouth. As she entered through the rear doors of Ironfist's Bridge the marine remained behind in the lift while, without a word, Jeon walked away from her and sat down before a console. Two waiting security personnel eyed her carefully, then one of them stepped forward.
"I've already been searched," she said tiredly.
The man, a scar-faced individual with two fingers missing from his right hand, ignored her comment and searched her anyway, and with notably more robustness than the young marine. He extracted the baton from her pocket, studied the personal device for a moment, then ran a small hand scanner over it.
"If I was going to hit him, I'd use my fist, not that bloody thing," she said.
He grinned and tossed the baton back to her, then led the way across the Bridge, his companion falling in neatly behind her. Shortly they reached the stairs leading up into the Admiral's Haven, whereupon the scar-faced guard waved her ahead. As she climbed, she felt a sudden nervousness at meeting Harald again. But once she reached the top of the stairs, shock displaced that feeling.
For a moment she thought a ghost had appeared to haunt her, for Harald looked as cadaverous as Orduval had done during his later years in the asylum. Yet this was certainly Harald: the hard uncompromising expression, the long blonde hair tied back, that blank re-engineered eye. She noted the sealed wound on his head, but there was no way of knowing how serious that injury had been.
"Come in, sister." Harald gestured to a low chair directly facing the sofa he had risen from.
Rather than sit as instructed, Yishna walked over to the narrow window giving her a view across the hilldigger's exterior. She felt no connection with him, none of that sliding into a strange fugue state that usually happened between the Strone siblings when they met after being apart for a while. Was that because the Worm had now gone, or was it a side-effect of his head injury?
"How are you, Harald?" she asked, then winced at such a commonplace.
"I've been better," he replied drily. "I see we both bear our war wounds, so how did you receive yours?"
"I was shot by Combine security officers while trying to break into that Ozark Cylinder."
"Then we both have the distinction of having been shot at by our own side. But now is not the time for civilities; those are only for the civilised, I'm told. You have something to say to me?"
Gazing out across the hilldigger, Yishna felt a sudden panic. Out there lay the three Corisanthe stations, containing hundreds of thousands of Sudorians. All Harald needed to do was pick up his control glove and send some codes, and all of them would be gone. She took a shaky breath.
"The Worm," she began, "started affecting the Sudorian people from the moment we captured it, then some little while after that, it began to manipulate them." She turned towards him. "Indirect evidence of this is the distorted society to be found on Corisanthe Main, and the levels of mental illness on Sudoria itself. Bleed-over was direct evidence of its reach extending beyond the supposed containment canisters. I have my suspicions that Director Gneiss is himself evidence of that same reach."
"Really," he said.
"Really," she replied. "You know that Sudorian mental-illness rates are ridiculously high. And the Shadowman? If we had been thinking straight we would soon have recognised that for what it was. It was simply the Worm trying to present a human face, perhaps the more easily to twist us to its will."
"But I have never seen a Shadowman in my life."
"No, because the Worm's communication with us is so much more direct, for we too are direct evidence of its reach."
"And at some point you'll explain your obscure assertions."
"Our mother," she continued doggedly, "had her womb standard-monitored for conception. She conceived us during a fumarole breach on Corisanthe Main." She turned towards him. "Now that you are the Admiral you have access to all Fleet's secrets, so you will know precisely what is meant by a fumarole breach?"
Harald nodded carefully. "I do know."
"Then add to that the knowledge that she conceived us actually within the Ozark Cylinder where the breach occurred."
"Really?"
"Yes, really. And after giving birth to us she didn't die in an accident. Combine covered up the true details. She stepped out of an airlock without wearing a spacesuit, and then detonated a home-made explosive strapped against her body. They never managed to recover even bits of her."
Harald did not look as shocked as she had hoped—just slightly puzzled.
"And the relevance of this?" he suggested.
"Who was our father?" she countered.
"Does it matter?"
"It matters because I don't think our real father was human at all."
Harald smiled in that superior manner of his and crossed his arms. She noticed he wasn't now wearing his control glove, and momentarily speculated on the possibility of killing him hand to hand. But no, Harald had always beaten her and he always would. He was the best of the four of them—the most perfect example of what they were all meant to be.
"I feel I should point out the absolute requirement for sperm in such matters," he said.
I'm not going to get through to him. He's playing with me.
"Maybe there was sperm involved, but something alien had much more of an influence on our conception, and on our subsequent development, than any merely human father."
"Evidently," said Harald.
Yishna was momentarily stunned. There was no sarcasm in his voice; he wasn't ridiculing her. He just seemed to be agreeing with an established fact.
Evidently.
He continued, "I've thought more about this since our last conversation. I've thought about it a lot. The connections I've worked out take that fact beyond mere coincidence. You've now confirmed some of them for me, and given me others to ponder. It strikes me as highly likely that the Worm was sentient and that, after healing sufficiently to break away from its prison, it instead chose to remain there and toy with us—to wreak vengeance upon us." He paused for a moment, unfolded his arms and began reaching for something at his belt, then abruptly snapped his hand away in irritation. "In fact we've been manipulated by it."