Finally, I decided I had to silence her. Faking her suicide required only a little preparation, as did bringing her to the torture chamber unseen by anyone else. She had spent most of that time drugged and restrained, of course, but I had allowed her little windows of lucidity now and again.
It was good to have someone to talk to.
‘Why did you keep him alive for so long?’ Constanza said.
I looked at her, marvelling at how aged she had become. I remembered when we had both stood against the glass of the large dolphin tank; near-equals.
‘The Chimeric? I knew he’d come in useful, that’s all.’
‘To torture?’
‘No. Oh, I saw that he was punished for what he’d done, but that was only the start of it. Here. Why don’t you take a better look at him, Constanza?’ I adjusted the angle of her stretcher, until she faced the infiltrator. He was completely mine now, and did not require restraining at all. Nonetheless — for my peace of mind — I kept him chained to the wall.
‘He looks like you,’ Constanza said wonderingly.
‘He has twenty additional facial muscles,’ I said, with paternal pride. ‘They can pull the flesh of his skin into any configuration he wants, and hold it there. And he hasn’t aged much since I brought him here. I think he can still pass for me.’ I rubbed my face, feeling the rough texture of the cosmetics I wore to offset my unnatural youthfulness. ‘And he’ll do anything — anything — that I ask of him. Won’t you, Sky?’
‘Yes,’ the Chimeric answered.
‘What are you planning? To use him as a decoy?’
‘If it comes to that,’ I said. ‘Which, frankly, I doubt.’
‘But he only has one arm. They’ll never mistake him for you.’
I wheeled Constanza back into the position she had been in upon my arrival. ‘That’s not an insurmountable problem, believe me.’ I paused and produced a huge, long-needled syringe from the kit of medical instruments I kept next to the God-Box, the device I had used to smash and remake the infiltrator’s mind.
Constanza saw the syringe. ‘That’s for me, isn’t it?’
‘No,’ I said, moving over to the dolphin tank. ‘It’s for Sleek. Dear old Sleek, who has served me so loyally over the years.’
‘You’re going to kill him?’
‘Oh, I’m sure he’d regard it as a mercy by now.’ I unlatched the top of his tank, wrinkling my nose at the appalling smell of the brackish water in which he lay. Sleek flexed again, and I put a calming hand across his dorsal region. His skin, once as smooth and glossy as polished stone, was now like concrete.
I injected him, pushing the needle through an inch of fat. He moved again, almost thrashing, and then became stiller. I looked at his eye, but it looked as expressionless as ever.
‘He’s dead, I think.’
‘I thought you’d come to kill me,’ Constanza said, unable to keep the nervous relief from her voice.
I smiled. ‘With a syringe like that? You must be joking. No; this one’s for you.’
I picked up another one; smaller this time.
Journey’s End, I thought, gripping the support strut in the Santiago’s free-fall observation blister. It was an apt name. The world hung below me now, like a green paper lantern lit by a dimming candle. Swan, 61 Cygni-A, was not a bright sun, and even though the world was in a tight orbit around the dwarf, daylight here was not the same thing that Clown had shown me in pictures of Earth. It was a sullen, paltry kind of illumination. The star’s spectrum was acutely red, even though it still looked white to the naked eye. But none of this was surprising. Even before the Flotilla had left home, a century and a half earlier, they had known how much energy the world would receive in its orbit.
Deep in Santiago’s cargo hold, too light to have ever been worth sacrificing, was a thing of diaphanous beauty. Teams were preparing it even now. They had extracted it from the starship, anchored it to an orbital transfer tug and towed it beyond the planet’s gravitational field, out to the Lagrange point between Journey’s End and Swan. There, stationed by minute adjustments of ion-thust, the thing would float for centuries. That at least was the plan.
I looked away from the limb of the planet, towards interstellar space. The other two ships, the Brazilia and the Baghdad, were still out there. Current estimates placed their arrival three months in the future, but there was an inevitable margin of error.
No matter.
The first wave of shuttle flights had already made several return trips to and from the surface, and many transponder-equipped cargo packages had already been dropped, ready to be found in a few months’ time. A shuttle was descending now, its deltoid shape dark against a tongue of equatorial landmass which the geography section was calling the Peninsula. Doubtless, I thought, they would come up with something less literal given a few more weeks. Five more flights would be all it took to get all the remaining colonists down to the surface. Another five would suffice to transport all the crew and the heavy equipment which could not be dropped via cargo packages. The Santiago would remain in orbit, a skeletal hulk denuded of anything remotely useful.
The shuttle’s thrusters fired briefly, kicking it onto an atmospheric insertion course. I watched it dwindle until it was out of sight. A few minutes later, near the horizon, I thought I saw the glint of re-entry fire as it touched air. It would not be long before it was on the ground. A preliminary landing camp had already been established, near the southern tip of the Peninsula. Nueva Santiago, we were thinking of calling it — but again, it was early days.
And now Swan’s Pupil was opening.
It was too far away to see, of course, but the angstrom-thin plastic structure was being unfurled at the Lagrange point.
The placement was almost perfect.
A torch beam seemed to fall on the sombre world below, casting an ellipsoidal region of brightness. The beam moved, hunting — reshaping. When they had adjusted it properly, it would double the solar illumination falling on the Peninsula region.
There was life down there, I knew. I wondered how it would adjust to the change in ambient light, and found it hard to stir up much enthusiasm.
My communications bracelet chimed. I glanced down, wondering who amongst my crew would have the nerve to interrupt this moment of triumph. But the bracelet merely informed me that there was a recorded message waiting for me in my quarters. Annoyed — but nonetheless curious — I pushed myself out of the observation blister, through a gasket of locks and transfer wheels, until I reached the main, spinning part of our great ship. Now that I was in a gravitational zone, I walked freely, calmly, not allowing the faintest hint of doubt to show on my face. Now and then crew and senior officers passed me, saluting; sometimes even offering to shake my hand. The general mood was one of utter jubilation. We had crossed interstellar space and arrived safely at a new world, and I had brought us here before our rivals.