Clavain’s attention flicked to the reason for all that activity. He was not surprised to see the ships — not even surprised to see that they were starships — but the degree to which they had been completed astonished him. He had been expecting half-finished hulks, but he could not believe that these ships were far from flight-readiness. There were twelve of them packed side by side in clouds of geodesic support scaffolding. They were identical shapes, smooth and black as torpedos or beached whales, barbed near the rear with the outflung spars and nacelles of Conjoiner drives. Though there were no obvious visual comparisons, he was certain that each of the ships was at least three or four kilometres long, much larger than Nightshade.
Skade smiled, obviously noting his reaction. [Impressed?]
Who wouldn’t be?
[Now you understand why the Master was so concerned about the risk of an unintentional weapons discharge, or even a powerplant overload. Of course, you’re wondering why we’ve started building them again.]
It’s a fair question. Would the wolves have anything to do with it, by any chance?
[Perhaps you should tell me why you think we ever stopped making them.]
I’m afraid no one ever had the decency to tell me.
[You’re an intelligent man. You must have formed a few theories of your own.]
For a moment Clavain thought of telling her that the matter had never really concerned him; that the decision to stop making starships had happened when he was in deep space, a fait accompli by the time he returned, and — given the immediate need to help his side win the war — not the most pressing issue at hand.
But that would have been a lie. It had always troubled him.
Generally it’s assumed that we stopped making them for selfish economic reasons, or because we were worried that the drives were falling into the wrong hands — Ultras and other undesirables. Or that we discovered a fatal flaw in the design that meant that the drives had a habit of exploding now and again.
[Yes, and there are at least half a dozen other theories in common currency, ranging from the faintly plausible to the ludicrously paranoid. What was your understanding of the reason?]
We’d only ever had a stable customer relationship with the Demarchists. The Ultras bought their drives off second– or third-hand sources, or stole them. But once our relationship with the Demarchists began to deteriorate, which happened when the Melding Plague crashed their economy, we lost our main client. They couldn’t afford our technology, and we weren’t willing to sell it to a faction that showed increasing signs of hostility.
[A very pragmatic answer, Clavain.]
I never saw any reason to look for any deeper explanation.
[There is, of course, quite a grain of truth in that. Economic and political factors did play a role. But there was something else. It can’t have escaped your attention that our own internal shipbuilding programme has been much reduced.]
We’ve had a war to fight. We have enough ships for our needs as it is.
[True, but even those ships have not been active. Routine interstellar traffic has been greatly reduced. Travel between Conjoiner settlements in other systems has been cut back to a minimum.]
Again, effects of a war—
[Had remarkably little to do with it, other than providing a convenient cover story.]
Despite himself, Clavain almost laughed. Cover story?
[Had the real reason ever come out, there would have been widespread panic across the whole of human-settled space. The socio-economic turmoil would have been incomparably greater than anything caused by the present war.]
And I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me why?
[You were right, in a sense. It was to do with the wolves, Clavain.]
He shook his head. It can’t have been.
[Why not?]
Because we didn’t learn about the wolves until Galiana returned. And Galiana didn’t encounter them until after we separated. There was no need to remind Skade that both of these events had happened long after the edict to stop shipbuilding.
Skade’s helmet nodded a fraction. [That’s true, in a sense. Certainly, it wasn’t until Galiana’s return that the Mother Nest obtained any detailed intelligence concerning the nature of the machines. But the fact that the wolves existed — the fact that they were out there — that was already known, many years before.]
It can’t have been. Galiana was the first to encounter them.
[No. She was merely the first to make it back alive — or at least the first to make it back in any sense at all. Before that, there had only been distant reports, mysterious instances of ships vanishing, the odd distress signal. Over the years the Closed Council collated these reports and came to the conclusion that the wolves, or something like the wolves, was stalking interstellar space. That was bad enough, yet there was an even more disturbing conclusion, one that led to the edict. The pattern of losses pointed to the fact that the machines, whatever they were, homed in on a specific signature from our engines. We concluded that the wolves were drawn to us by the tau-neutrino emissions that are a characteristic of our drives.]
And Galiana?
[When she returned we knew we’d been right. And she gave a name to our enemy, Clavain. We owe her that much, if nothing else.]
Then Skade reached into his head and planted an image. What she showed him was pitiless blackness studded by a smattering of faint, feeble stars. The stars did nothing to nullify the darkness, serving only to make it more absolute and cold. This was how Skade now perceived the cosmos, as ultimately inimical to life as an acid bath. But between the stars was something other than emptiness. The machines lurked in those spaces, preferring the darkness and the cold. Skade made him experience the cruel flavour of their intelligence. It made the thought processes of the Master of Works seem comforting and friendly. There was something bestial in the way the machines thought, a furious slavering hunger that would eclipse all other considerations.
A feral, ravenous bloodlust.
[They’ve always been out there, hiding in the darkness, watching and waiting. For four centuries we’ve been extremely lucky, stumbling through the night, making noise and light, broadcasting our presence into the galaxy. I think in some ways they must be blind, or that there are certain kinds of signal they filter from their perceptions. They never homed in on our radio or television transmissions, for instance, or else they would have scented us en masse centuries ago. That hasn’t happened yet. Perhaps they are designed only to respond to the unmistakable signs of a starfaring culture, rather than a merely technological one. Speculation, of course, but what else can we do but speculate?]
Clavain looked at the twelve brand-new starships. And now? Why start shipbuilding again?
[Because now we can. Nightshade was a prototype for these twelve much larger ships. They have quiet drives. With certain refinements in drive topology we were able to reduce the tau-neutrino flux by two orders of magnitude. Far from perfect, but it should allow us to resume interstellar travel without immediate fear of bringing down the wolves. The technology will, of course, have to remain strictly within Conjoiner control.]