‘You have no idea how this feels,’ Calvin said. ‘It’s the first time in years I’ve been able to act on a part of the physical universe — not since I first repaired your eyes.’ And as he spoke, the multi-jointed arms executed a shimmering dance, blades, lasers, claws, molecular-manipulators and sensors scything the air in a whirl of vicious silver.
‘Very impressive,’ Sylveste said, feeling the breeze on his face. ‘Just be careful.’
‘I could rebuild your eyes in a day,’ Calvin said. ‘I could make them better than they ever were. I could make them look human — hell; with the technology here I could implant biological eyes just as easily.’
‘I don’t want you to rebuild them,’ Sylveste said. ‘Right now they’re all I have on Sajaki. Just repair Falkender’s work.’
‘Ah, yes — I’d forgotten about that.’ Calvin, who remained essentially immobile, raised an eyebrow. ‘Are you sure this procedure is wise?’
‘Just be careful what you poke.’
Alicia Keller Sylveste had been his last wife before Pascale. They had married on Yellowstone, during the long years when the Resurgam expedition had been planned in excruciating detail. They had been together at the founding of Cuvier and had worked in harmony during the earliest years of the digs. She had been brilliant; too much so, perhaps, to stay comfortably within his orbit. Independently minded, she had begun to draw away from him — both personally and professionally — as their time on Resurgam entered its third decade. Alicia was not alone in her conviction that enough had been learned of the Amarantin; that it was time for the expedition — never meant to be permanent — to return to Epsilon Eridani. After all, if they had not learned anything shattering in thirty years, there was no promise that the next thirty years, or the next century, would bring anything more overwhelming. Alicia and her sympathisers believed that the Amarantin did not merit further detailed study; that the Event had only been an unfortunate accident of no actual cosmic significance. It was not hard to see the sense in this. The Amarantin, after all, were not the only dead species known to humankind. Out in the ever-expanding bubble of explored space, it was entirely possible that other cultures were about to be discovered, potent with archaeological treasures waiting to be unearthed. Alicia’s faction felt that Resurgam should be abandoned; that the colony’s finest minds should return to Yellowstone and select new targets of study.
Sylveste’s faction, of course, disagreed in the strongest terms. By then Alicia and Sylveste were estranged, but even in the depths of their enmity they preserved a cool respect of each other’s abilities. If love had withered, detached admiration remained.
Then came the mutiny. Alicia’s faction had done just what they always threatened to do: abandoned Resurgam. Unable to convince the rest of the colony to travel with them, they had stolen the Lorean from its parking orbit. The mutiny had been quite bloodless, but in their theft of the ship, Alicia’s faction had inflicted a much more insidious harm upon the colony. The Lorean had contained all the intra-system vessels and shuttles, meaning that the colonists were confined to Resurgam’s surface. They had no means to repair or upgrade the comsat girdle until Remilliod’s arrival, decades later. Servitors, replicating technology and implants had all been in excruciatingly short supply after Alicia’s departure.
But, in fact, Sylveste’s faction had been the fortunate ones.
‘Log entry,’ said Alicia’s ghost, floating disembodied in the bridge. ‘Twenty-five days out from Resurgam. We’ve decided — against my better judgement — to approach the neutron star on our way out. The alignment’s propitious; it doesn’t take us very far from our planned heading for Eridani, and the net delay to our journey will be tiny compared with the years of flight that are ahead of us in any case.’
She was not quite what Sylveste remembered. It had been a long time, in any case. She no longer seemed hateful to him; merely errant. She wore dark green clothes of a kind no one had worn in Cuvier since the mutiny itself, and her hairstyle seemed almost theatrical in its antiquity.
‘Dan was convinced there was something important out here, but the evidence was always lacking.’
That surprised him. She was speaking from a time long before the unearthing of the obelisk with its curious orrery-like inscriptions. Had his obsession been that strong, even then? It was entirely possible, but the realisation was not a comfortable one. Alicia was right in what she said. The evidence had been lacking.
‘We saw something strange,’ Alicia said. ‘A cometary impact on Cerberus, the planet orbiting the neutron star. Such impacts must be quite rare, this far out from the main Kuiper swarm. It naturally drew our attention. But when we were close enough to examine the surface of Cerberus, there was no sign of a new impact crater.’
Sylveste felt the hairs on the back of his neck tingle. ‘And?’ he found himself mouthing, almost silently, as if Alicia were standing before them in the bridge, and not a projection dredged from the memory banks of the wrecked ship.
‘It was not something we could ignore,’ she said. ‘Even if it seemed to lend tacit support to Dan’s theory that there was something strange about the Hades/Cerberus system. So we altered our course to come in closer.’ She paused. ‘If we find something significant… something we can’t explain… I don’t think we’ll have any ethical choice but to inform Cuvier. Otherwise we could never again hold our heads high as scientists. We will know better tomorrow, anyway. We’ll be within probe range by then.’
‘How much more of this is there?’ Sylveste asked Volyova. ‘How much longer did she continue with log entries?’
‘About a day,’ Volyova said.
Now they were in the spider-room, safe — or so Volyova wished to believe — from the prying eyes of Sajaki and the others. They had still not listened to everything Alicia had to say, for the very act of sifting through the spoken records was time-consuming and emotionally draining. Yet the basic shape of the truth was emerging, and it was far from encouraging. Alicia’s crew had been attacked by something near Cerberus, suddenly and decisively. Shortly Volyova and her crewmates would know a great deal more about the danger they were being impelled towards.
‘You realise,’ Volyova said, ‘that if we encounter trouble, you may have to enter the gunnery.’
‘I don’t think that would necessarily be for the best,’ Khouri said. Justifying herself, she added, ‘We both know there have been some worrying events related to the gunnery recently.’
‘Yes. As a matter of fact… during my convalescence, I convinced myself that you know more than you admit.’ Volyova relaxed back into the maroon plush of her seat, toying with the brass controls in front of her. ‘I think you told me the truth when you said you were an infiltrator. But I think that was as far as it went. The rest was a lie, designed to satisfy my curiosity and yet stop me taking the matter to the rest of the Triumvirate… which worked, of course. But there were too many things you didn’t explain to my satisfaction. Take the cache-weapon, for instance. When it malfunctioned, why did it point itself at Resurgam?’