He was not going to tell her anything useful; she could see that. Certain it would not get her far, she said: “Who are you, then?”
“Carlos Manoukhian.”
That worried her more than the way he handled the gun. He said it too truthfully. It was not a cover-name. And now that she knew it—and guessed that this man was at best some kind of criminal, laughable as that category seemed in Chasm City’s lawlessness—it meant he planned to kill her later.
The cable-car’s door clammed shut. Manoukhian pressed a button on the console which purged the Chasm City air, blasting out in steam jets below the car as it lofted itself via a nearby cable.
“Who are you, Manoukhian?”
“I help the Mademoiselle.” As if that was not blindingly obvious. “We have a special relationship. We go back a long way.”
“And what does she want with me?”
“I would have thought it was obvious by now,” Manoukhian said. He was still keeping the gun on her, even as he kept one eye on the car’s navigation console. “There’s someone she wants you to assassinate.”
“That’s what I do for a living.”
“Yeah.” He smiled. “Difference is, this guy hasn’t paid for it.”
The biography, needless to say, had not been Sylveste’s idea. Instead, the initiative had come from the one man Sylveste would have least suspected. It had been six months earlier; during one of the very few occasions when he had spoken face to face with his captor. Nils Girardieau had brought up the subject almost casually, mentioning that he was surprised no one had taken on the task. After all, the fifty years on Resurgam virtually amounted to another life, and even though that life was now capped by an ignominious epilogue, it did at least put his earlier life into a perspective it had lacked during the Yellowstone years. “The problem was,” Girardieau said, “your previous biographers were too close to the events—too much part of the societal milieu they were attempting to analyse. Everyone was in thrall to either Cal or yourself, and the colony was so claustrophobic there was no room to step back and see the wider perspective.”
“You’re saying Resurgam is somehow less claustrophobic?”
“Well, obviously not—but at least we have the benefit of distance, both in time and space.” Girardieau was a squat, muscular man with a shock of red hair. “Admit it, Dan—when you think back to your life on Yellowstone, doesn’t it sometimes seem like it all happened to someone else, in a century very remote from our own?”
Sylveste was about to laugh dismissively, except that—for once—he found himself in complete agreement with Girardieau. It was an unsettling moment, as if a basic rule of the universe had been violated.
“I still don’t see why you’d want to encourage this,” Sylveste said, nodding towards the guard who was presiding over the conversation. “Or are you hoping you can somehow profit from it?”
Girardieau had nodded. “That’s part of it—maybe most of it, if you want the truth. It probably hasn’t escaped your attention that you’re still a figure of fascination to the populace.”
“Even if most of them would be fascinated to see me hung.”
“You’ve a point, but they’d probably insist on shaking your hand first—before helping you to the gibbet.”
“And you think you can milk this appetite?”
Girardieau had shrugged. “Obviously, the new regime determines who gains access to you—and we also own all your records and archival material. That gives us a headstart already. We have access to documents from the Yellowstone years which no one beyond your immediate family even knows exist. We’d exercise a certain discretion in using them, of course—but we’d be fools to ignore them.”
“I understand,” Sylveste said, because suddenly it was all very clear to him. “You’re actually going to use this to discredit me, aren’t you.”
“If the facts discredit you…” Girardieau left the remark hanging in the air.
“When you deposed me… wasn’t that good enough for you?”
“That was nine years ago.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning long enough for people to forget. Now they need a gentle reminder.”
“Especially as there’s a new air of discontent abroad.”
Girardieau winced, as if the remark was in spectacularly poor taste. “You can forget about True Path—especially if you think they might turn out to be your salvation. They wouldn’t have stopped at imprisoning you.”
“All right,” Sylveste said, boring rapidly. “What’s in it for me?”
“You assume there has to be something?”
“Generally, yes. Otherwise, why bother telling me about it?”
“Your co-operation might be in your best interest. Obviously, we could work from the material we’ve seized—but your insights would be valuable. Especially in the more speculative episodes.”
“Let me get this straight. You want me to authorise a hatchet job? And not just give it my blessing but actually help you assassinate my character?”
“I could make it worth your while.” Girardieau nodded around the confines of the room in which Sylveste was held. “Look at the freedom I’ve given Janequin, to continue his peacock hobby. I could be just as flexible in your case, Dan. Access to recent material on the Amarantin; the ability to communicate with your colleagues; share your opinions—perhaps even the occasional excursion beyond the building.”
“Field work?”
“I’d have to consider it. Something of that magnitude…” Sylveste was suddenly, acutely aware that Girardieau was acting. “A period of grace might be advisable. The biography’s in development now, but it’ll be several months before we need your input. Maybe half a year. What I propose is that we wait until you’ve begun to give us what we need. You’ll be working with the biography’s author, of course, and if that relationship is successful—if she considers it successful—then perhaps we’ll be ready to enter into discussions about limited field work. Discussions, mind—no promises.”
“I’ll try and contain my enthusiasm.”
“Well, you’ll be hearing from me again. Is there anything you need to know before I leave?”
“One thing. You mentioned that the biographer would be a woman. Might I ask who it’ll be?”
“Someone with illusions waiting to be shattered, I suspect.”
Volyova was working near the cache one day, thinking of weapons, when a janitor-rat dropped gently onto her shoulder and spoke into her ear.
“Company,” said the rat.
The rats were a peculiar quirk of the Nostalgia for Infinity; quite possibly unique aboard any lighthugger. They were only fractionally more intelligent than their feral ancestors, but what made them useful—what turned them from pest into utility—was that they were biochemically linked into the ship’s command matrix. Every rat had specialised pheromonal receptors and transmitters which allowed it to receive commands and transmit information back to the ship, encoded into complex secreted molecules. They foraged for waste, eating virtually anything organic which was not nailed down or still breathing. Then they ran some rudimentary preprocessing in their guts before going elsewhere in the ship, excreting pellets into larger recycler systems. Some of them had even been equipped with voiceboxes and a small hardwired lexicon of useful phrases, triggered into vocalisation when external stimuli satisfied biochemically programmed conditions.
In Volyova’s case, she had programmed the rats to alert her as soon as they began to process human detritus—dead skin cells, and the like—which had not come from her. She would know when the other crew members were awake, even if she was in a completely different district of the ship.