‘I’ve never felt so uneasy about a victory as I do about this one, Galiana. I’ve a sense you’d feel much the same way. You always used to be suspicious of anything that looked too simple, anything that looked like a ruse. I should know. I fell for one of your tricks once.’
He shivered. It was suddenly very cold and he had the prickly feeling that he was being watched. All around him the reefersleep caskets hummed, their banks of status lights and read-outs unchanging.
Clavain suddenly knew that he did not want to spend much longer in the vault. ‘Galiana,’ he said, too hastily for comfort, ‘I have to do it. I have to accede to Skade’s request, for good or ill. I just hope you understand.’
‘She will, Clavain.’
He turned around sharply, but even in the act of turning he realised that he knew the voice and it was nothing to be alarmed by. ‘Felka.’ His relief was total. ‘How did you find me?’
‘I assumed you’d be down here, Clavain. I knew Galiana would always be the one you spoke to last of all.’
She had entered the vault unheard. He could see now that the door at the end was ajar. What had made him shiver was the shift in air currents as the vault was opened.
‘I don’t know why I’m here,’ Clavain said. ‘I know she’s dead.’
‘She’s your conscience, Clavain.’
‘That’s why I loved her.’
‘We all did. That’s why she still seems to be alive, to be guiding us.’ Felka was by his side now. ‘It’s all right to come down here. It doesn’t make me think less of you, or respect you less.’
‘I think I know what I have to do.’
She nodded, as if he had merely told her the time of day. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here. It’s too cold for the living. Galiana won’t mind.’
Clavain followed her to the door leading out of the vault.
Once they were on the other side he worked the wheel, sealing the great piston-like stopper back into place, sealing memories and ghosts away where they belonged.
Clavain was ushered into the privy chamber. As he crossed the threshold he felt the million background thoughts of the Mother Nest drop from his mind like a single dying sigh. He imagined that the transition would have been traumatic for many of the Conjoined, but even if he had not just come from Galiana’s place of rest, where the same kind of exclusion applied, he would not have found it more than a little jarring. Clavain had spent too much time on the fringes of Conjoiner society to be troubled by the absence of other thoughts in his head.
He was not entirely alone, of course. He sensed the minds of those in the chamber, although the usual Closed Council restrictions still only allowed him to skim the surfaces of their thoughts. The chamber itself was unremarkable: a large sphere with many seats arranged in encircling balconies reaching almost to the chamber’s zenith. The floor was flat and gleaming-grey, with a single austere chair positioned in the chamber’s centre. The chair was solid, curving seamlessly into the floor as if it had been pushed through from beneath.
[Clavain.] It was Skade. She was standing on the tip of a protruding tongue jutting from one side of the chamber.
Yes?
[Sit in the seat, Clavain.]
He walked across the glittering floor, his soles clicking against the material. The atmosphere could not help but feel judicial; he might as well have been walking towards a place of execution.
Clavain eased himself into the seat, which was as comfortable as it had appeared. He crossed his legs and scratched his beard. Let’s get this over with, Skade.
[All in good time, Clavain. Do you appreciate that with the burden of knowledge comes the additional burden of holding that knowledge secure? That once you have learned Closed Council secrets, you cannot jeopardise them by risking enemy capture? That even communicating these secrets to other Conjoiners cannot be tolerated?]
I know what I’m letting myself in for, Skade.
[We just want to be certain, Clavain. You cannot begrudge us that.] Remontoire rose from his seat. [He’s said he’s ready, Skade. That’s enough.]
She regarded Remontoire with an absence of emotion that Clavain found far more chilling than mere anger. [Thank you, Remontoire.]
He’s right. I am ready. And willing.
Skade nodded. [Then prepare yourself. Your mind is about to be allowed access to previously excluded data.]
Clavain could not help gripping the armrests of his chair, knowing as he did so how ridiculous the instinct was. This was how he had felt four hundred years earlier, when Galiana had first introduced him to Transenlightenment. It had been in her nest on Mars, and she had infected his mind with droves of machines after he had been injured. She had given him a glimpse then, no more than that, but in the moments before it arrived he had felt like a man standing before the rushing wall of a tsunami, counting down the seconds until he was engulfed. He felt like that now, even though he was anticipating no actual change in consciousness. It was enough to know that he was about to be granted access to secrets so shattering that they merited layers of hierarchy within an otherwise omniscient hive mind.
He waited… but nothing happened.
[It’s done.]
He relaxed his grip on the seat. I feel exactly the same.
[You’re not.]
Clavain looked around him at the ringed walls of the chamber. Nothing had altered; nothing felt different. He examined his memory and there seemed to be nothing lurking there that had not been present a minute earlier. I don’t…
[Before you came here, before you made this decision, we permitted you to know that the reason for our seeking your assistance was a matter of recovering lost property. Isn’t that true, Clavain?]
You wouldn’t tell me what you were looking for. I still don’t know. [That’s because you haven’t asked yourself the right question.]
And what question would you like me to ask, Skade?
[Ask yourself what you know about the hell-class weapons, Clavain. I’m sure you’ll find the answer very interesting.]
I don’t know anything about any hell-class…
But he faltered, fell silent. He knew exactly what the hell-class weapons were.
Now that the information was available to him, Clavain realised that he had heard rumours of the weapons on many occasions during his time amongst the Conjoined. Their bitterest enemies told cautionary tales of the Conjoiners’ hidden stockpile of ultimate weapons, doomsday devices so ferocious in their destructive capability that they had hardly been tested, and had certainly never been used in any actual engagements. The weapons were supposedly very old, manufactured during the very earliest phase of Conjoiner history. The rumours varied in detail, but all the stories agreed on one thing: there had been forty weapons, and none of them were precisely alike.
Clavain had never taken the rumours seriously, assuming that they must have originated with some forgotten piece of fear-mongering by one of the Mother Nest’s counter-intelligence units. It was unthinkable that the weapons could ever have been real. In all the time he had been amongst the Conjoined, no official hint of the existence of such weapons had ever come his way. Galiana had never spoken of them, and yet if the weapons were truly old — dating back to the Mars era — she could not possibly have been unaware of their existence.