‘What made you change your mind?’ Sylveste said.
‘Pascale began to embed parts of me in the biography over a period of time — months, in fact. The encryption was very subtle. But once she had copied enough of the original for the copied parts to start interacting, they — or rather me — became rather less enthralled by the notion of committing cybernetic suicide just to prove a point. In fact I felt rather more alive — more myself — than I ever had before.’ He vouchsafed his audience a smile. ‘Of course, I soon realised why this was the case. Pascale had copied me into a more powerful computer system; the governmental core in Cuvier, where Descent was being assembled. The system was connected to more archives and networks than you ever allowed me, even back in Mantell. For the first time I actually had something to justify the attentions of my massive intellect.’ He held their gaze for a moment before adding, very softly: ‘That’s a joke, by the way.’
‘Copies of the biography were freely available,’ Pascale said. ‘Sajaki had already obtained one without even realising it contained a version of Calvin. How did you know he was in it, though?’ She was looking at Sylveste now. ‘Did the copied version of Cal tell you?’
‘No, and I’m not even sure he would have wanted to if a way had existed. I figured it out for myself. The biography was too large for the amount of simulational data it contained. Oh, I know you’d been clever — encoding Cal into least significant digits of data files — but there was just too much of Cal to hide away that easily. Descent was fifteen per cent longer than it should have been. For months I thought there had to be a whole hidden layer of scenarios; aspects of my life not supposedly documented but which you’d put in anyway, for anyone persistent enough to find them. But finally I realised that the missing capacity was enough to store a copy of Cal, and then it made sense. Of course I could never be completely sure…’ He looked at the projected image. ‘Though I suppose you’d say you’re the real Cal now and what I erased was just a copy?’
Cal raised a hand from the armrest, disputatiously. ‘No; that would be much too simplistic a version of things. After all, I was that copy, once. But what I was then — and what the copy remained, until you killed it — was just a shadow of what I am now. Let’s just say I had a moment of epiphany, shall we, and leave it at that?’
‘So…’ Sylveste stepped forward, finger tapping against his lip. ‘In that case, I never really killed you, did I?’
‘No,’ Calvin said, with deceptive placidity. ‘You didn’t. But it’s what you might have been doing that counts. And on that score, dear boy, I’m afraid you’re still a callous, patricidal bastard.’
‘Touching, isn’t it?’ Hegazi said. ‘Nothing I like better than a good old family reunion.’
They proceeded to the Captain. Khouri had been here before, but despite her minor familiarity with the place, she still felt unnerved; obtrusively aware of the contaminating matter which was only barely contained by the envelope of cold which been caulked around the man.
‘I think I should know what you want from me,’ Sylveste said.
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Sajaki said. ‘Do you think we went to all this trouble just to ask you how you were doing these days?’
‘I wouldn’t put it past you,’ Sylveste said. ‘Your behaviour never made much sense to me in the past, so why should it start doing so now? And besides, let’s not deceive ourselves that what went on back there was everything it seemed.’
‘What do you mean?’ Khouri asked.
‘Oh, don’t tell me you haven’t figured it out yet?’
‘Figured what out?’
‘That it never actually happened.’ Sylveste fixed her with the blank depths of his eyes; a scrutiny which felt more like the scanning of a mindless automatic surveillance system than any human apperception. ‘Or perhaps not,’ he added. ‘Perhaps you haven’t actually figured it out yet. Who are you anyway?’
‘You’ll get your chance to ask all the questions you want,’ Hegazi said, edgy now that they were within a stone’s throw of the Captain.
‘No,’ Khouri said. ‘I want to know. What do you mean, none of that actually happened?’
Sylveste’s voice was slow and calm. ‘I’m talking about that business with the settlement Volyova wiped out.’
Khouri stepped ahead of the entourage, blocking their progress. ‘You’d better explain that.’
‘That can wait,’ Sajaki said, stepping forward to push her aside. ‘Certainly until you’ve explained your role in things to my complete satisfaction, Khouri.’ The Triumvir was eyeing her suspiciously all the time now, convinced that the two deaths in her presence had to be more than coincidence. With Volyova out of the way — and the Mademoiselle silent — she had no one to shelter her. It would be only a matter of time before Sajaki acted on his suspicions and did something drastic.
But Sylveste said, ‘No. Why need it wait? I think we should all be absolutely clear about what’s going on here. Sajaki; you didn’t go down to Resurgam just to obtain a copy of the biography, did you? What would have been the point? You had no knowledge that Descent contained a copy of Cal until I told you. You only picked up the biography because it might have come in useful in your negotiations with me. But it wasn’t the reason you went down there. That was something else entirely.’
‘Intelligence gathering,’ Sajaki said, carefully.
‘More than that. You went there to glean information, yes. But you also had to plant some.’
‘About Phoenix?’ Khouri said.
‘Not just about Phoenix, the place itself. It never existed.’ Sylveste allowed a pause before continuing. ‘It was a ghost planted there by Sajaki. It wasn’t even on the old maps we kept at Mantell, but as soon as we updated them from the master copies in Cuvier it appeared. We just assumed it was a new settlement; too recent to show up on the previous maps. That was stupid, of course — I should have seen through it then. But we assumed the master copies hadn’t been corrupted.’
‘Doubly stupid,’ Sajaki said. ‘Given that you must have wondered where I was.’
‘If I’d given it more than a moment’s thought…’
‘Pity you didn’t,’ Sajaki said. ‘Or we might not be having this conversation. But then again, we’d have only resorted to another means of securing you.’
Sylveste nodded. ‘I suppose your next logical step would have been to blow up a bigger fictitious target. But I’m not entirely sure you could have pulled off the same trick twice. I’ve a nasty suspicion you might have had to hit somewhere real.’
The cold had a steely texture to it, like a thousand pieces of barbed metal constantly scraping softly against the skin; threatening to pierce to the bone with each movement. But as soon as they were truly in the Captain’s realm, it became impossible to notice the cold, since the cold in which he was imprisoned was so obviously deeper.
‘He’s sick,’ Sajaki said. ‘With a variant of the Melding Plague. You know all about that, of course.’
‘We heard reports from Yellowstone,’ Sylveste said. ‘I can’t say they were exceptionally detailed.’ All the while he had not actually looked directly at the Captain.
‘We haven’t been able to contain it,’ Hegazi said. ‘Not properly, anyway. Extreme cold goes some way to slowing it, but no more than that. It — or rather, he — is spreading slowly, incorporating the mass of the ship into his own template.’