‘She was pretty damn clear he shouldn’t be allowed aboard the ship.’
‘The Mademoiselle told you that before you joined us?’
‘No; afterwards.’ She told Volyova about the implant in her head; how the Mademoiselle had downloaded an aspect of herself into Khouri’s skull for the purposes of the mission. ‘She was a pain,’ she said. ‘But she made me immune to your loyalty therapies, which I suppose was something to be grateful for.’
‘The therapies worked as intended,’ Volyova said.
‘No, I just pretended. The Mademoiselle told me what to say and when, and I guess she didn’t do too bad a job, or else we wouldn’t be having this discussion.’
‘She can’t rule out the possibility that the therapies worked partially, can she?’
Khouri shrugged again. ‘Does it matter? What kind of loyalty would make any sense now? You’ve as good as told me you’re waiting for Sajaki to make the wrong move. The only thing holding this crew together is Sylveste’s threat to kill us all if we don’t do what he wants. Sajaki’s a megalomaniac — maybe he should have double-checked the therapies he was running on you.’
‘You resisted Sudjic when she tried to kill me.’
‘Yeah, I did. But if she’d told me she was going after Sajaki — or even that prick Hegazi — I don’t know what I would have said.’
Volyova spent a moment in consultation with herself.
‘All right,’ she said finally. ‘I suppose the loyalty issue is moot. What else did the implant do for you?’
‘When you hooked me into the weapons,’ Khouri said, ‘she used the interface to inject herself — or a copy of herself — into the gunnery. To begin with I think she just wanted to assume control of as much of the ship as possible, and the gunnery was her only point of entry.’
‘The architecture wouldn’t have allowed her to reach beyond it.’
‘It didn’t. To the best of my knowledge, she never gained control of any part of the ship other than the weapons.’
‘You mean the cache?’
‘She was controlling the rogue weapon, Ilia. I couldn’t tell you at the time, but I knew what was happening. She wanted to use the weapon to kill Sylveste at long-range, before we’d ever arrived at Resurgam.’
‘I suppose,’ Volyova said, heavy with resignation, ‘that it makes a kind of twisted sense. But to use that weapon just to kill a man… I told you, you’re going to have to tell me why she wanted him dead so badly.’
‘You won’t like it. Especially not now, with what Sylveste wants to do.’
‘Just tell me.’
‘I will, I will,’ Khouri said. ‘But there’s one other thing — one other complicating factor. It’s called Sun Stealer, and I think you may already be acquainted with it.’
Volyova looked as if some recently healed internal injury had just relapsed; as if some painful seam had opened in her like ripping cloth. ‘Ah,’ she said eventually. ‘That name again.’
TWENTY-ONE
Sylveste had always known this point would come. But until now he had managed to keep it quarantined from his thoughts, acknowledging its existence without focusing his attention on what it actually entailed, the way a mathematician might ignore an invalidated part of a proof until the rest was rigorously tested and found to be free not just of glaring contradictions but of the least hint of error.
Sajaki had insisted that they journey alone to the Captain’s level, forbidding Pascale or any of the crew to accompany them. Sylveste did not argue the point, although he would have preferred his wife to be with him. It was the first time that Sylveste had been alone with Sajaki since arriving on the Infinity, and as they took the elevator downship, Sylveste ransacked his mind for something to talk about; anything except the atrocity that lay ahead of them.
‘Ilia says her machines aboard the Lorean will need another three or four days,’ Sajaki said. ‘You’re quite certain you wish her work to continue?’
‘I have no second thoughts,’ Sylveste said.
‘Then I have no choice but to comply with your wishes. I’ve weighed the evidence and decided to believe your threat.’
‘You imagine I hadn’t worked that out for myself already? I know you too well, Sajaki. If you didn’t believe me, you’d have forced me into helping the Captain while we were still around Resurgam, and then quietly disposed of me.’
‘Not true, not true.’ Sajaki’s voice had an amused quality to it. ‘You underestimate my sheer curiosity. I think I’d have indulged you this far just to see how much of your story was true.’
Sylveste was incapable of believing that for a moment, but equally, he saw no point in debating it. ‘Just how much of it don’t you believe, now that you’ve seen Alicia’s message?’
‘But that could so easily have been faked. The damage to her ship could have been inflicted by her own crew. I shan’t believe things entirely until something jumps out of Cerberus and starts attacking us.’
‘I rather suspect you’ll get your wish,’ Sylveste said. ‘In four or five days. Unless Cerberus really is dead.’
They spoke no more until they had reached their destination.
It was not, of course, the first time he had seen the Captain — not even during this visit. But the totality of what had become of the man was still shocking; each time it was as if Sylveste had never properly set eyes on the scene before. True enough: this was his first visit to the Captain’s level since Calvin had renewed his eyes using the ship’s superior medical capabilities, but there was more to it than that. It was also the case that the Captain had changed since last time; perceptibly now — as if his rate of spread was accelerating, racing towards some unguessable future state even as the ship raced towards Cerberus. Perhaps, Sylveste thought, he had arrived in the nick of time — assuming that any intervention at all could help the Captain now.
It was tempting to think that this quickening was significant; perhaps even symbolic. The man, after all, had been sick — if one could properly call this state sickness — for many decades, and yet he had chosen this period in which to enter a new phase of his malady. But that was an erroneous view. One had to consider the Captain’s time-frame: relativistic flight had compressed those decades to a mere handful of years. His latest blooming was less unlikely than it seemed; there was nothing ominous about it.
‘How does this work?’ Sajaki asked. ‘Do we follow the same procedures as last time?’
‘Ask Calvin — he’ll be running things.’
Sajaki nodded slowly, as if the point had only just occurred to him. ‘You should have a say in things, Dan. It’s you he’ll be working through.’
‘Which is exactly why you don’t need to consider my feelings — I won’t even be present.’
‘I don’t believe that for one moment. You’ll be there, Dan — fully aware, too, from what I remember last time. Maybe not in control, but you’ll be participating. And you won’t like it — we know that much from last time.’
‘You’re an expert all of a sudden.’
‘If you didn’t hate this, why would you have kept away from us?’
‘I didn’t. I wasn’t in any position to run.’
‘I’m not just talking about the time when you were in prison. I’m talking about you coming here in the first place; to this system. What were you doing if you weren’t running from us?’