‘Had what in you, Quaiche?’ Sometimes the ship felt obliged to engage in conversation, as if secretly bored.
‘Never mind,’ he said, distracted by something. Normally when he emerged from the coffin he had plenty of room to twist around and align himself with the long, thin axis of the little ship’s main companionway. But now something chafed his elbow, something that was not usually there. He turned to look at it, half-knowing as he did so exactly what it would be.
Corroded and scorched metal skin the colour of pewter. A festering surface of manic detail. The vague half-formed shape of a person with a dark grilled slot where the eyes would have been.
‘Bitch,’ he said.
‘I am to inform you that the presence of the scrimshaw suit is a spur to success in your current mission,’ the ship said.
‘You were actually programmed to say that?’
‘Yes.’
Quaiche observed that the suit was plumbed into the life-support matrix of the ship. Thick lines ran from the wall sockets to their counterparts in the skin of the suit. He reached out again and touched the surface, running his fingers from one rough welded patch to another, tracing the sinuous back of a snake. The metal was mildly warm to the touch, quivering with a vague sense of subcutaneous activity.
‘Be careful,’ the ship said.
‘Why — is there something alive inside that thing?’ Quaiche said. Then a sickening realisation dawned. ‘Dear God. Someone’s inside it. Who?’
‘I am to inform you that the suit contains Morwenna.’
Of course. Of course. It made delicious sense.
‘You said I should be careful. Why?’
‘I am to inform you that the suit is rigged to euthanise its occupant should any attempt be made to tamper with the cladding, seams or life-support couplings. I am to inform you that only Surgeon-General Grelier has the means to remove the suit without euthanising the occupant.’
Quaiche pulled away from the suit. ‘You mean I can’t even touch it?’
‘Touching it would not be your wisest course of action, given the circumstances.’
He almost laughed. Jasmina and Grelier had excelled themselves. First the audience with the queen to make him think that she had at last run out of patience with him. Then the charade of being shown the suit and made to think that punishment was finally upon him. Made to believe that he was about to be buried in ice, forced into consciousness for what might be the better part of a decade. And then this: the final, mocking reprieve. His last chance to redeem himself. And make no bones about it: this would be his last chance. That was clear to him now. Jasmina had shown him exactly what would happen if he failed her one more time. Idle threats were not in Jasmina’s repertoire.
But her cleverness ran deeper than that, for with Morwenna imprisoned in the suit he had no hope of doing what had sometimes occurred to him, which was to hide in a particular system until the Gnostic Ascension had passed out of range. No — he had no practical choice but to return to the queen. And then hope for two things: firstly, that he would not have disappointed her; and secondly, that she would free Morwenna from the suit.
A thought occurred to him. ‘Is she awake?’
‘She is now approaching consciousness,’ the ship replied.
With her Ultra physiology, Morwenna would have been much better equipped to tolerate slowdown than Quaiche, but it still seemed likely that the scrimshaw suit had been modified to protect her in some fashion.
‘Can we communicate?’
‘You can speak to her when you wish. I will handle ship-to-suit protocols.’
‘All right, put me through now.’ He waited a second, then said, ‘Morwenna?’
‘Horris.’ Her voice was stupidly weak and distant. He had trouble believing she was only separated from him by mere centimetres of metaclass="underline" it might as well have been fifty light-years of lead. ‘Horris, where am I? What’s happened?’
Nothing in his experience gave him any clue about how you broke news like this to someone. How did you gently wend the topic of a conversation around to being imprisoned alive in a welded metal suit? Well, funny you should mention incarceration…
‘Morwenna, something’s up, but I don’t want you to panic. Everything will be all right in the end, but you mustn’t, mustn’t panic. Will you promise me that?’
‘What’s wrong?’ There was now a distinctly anxious edge to Morwenna’s voice.
Memo to himself: the one way to make people panic was to warn them not to.
‘Morwenna, tell me what you remember. Calmly and slowly.’ He heard the catch in her voice, the approaching onset of hysteria. ‘Where do you want me to begin?’
‘Do you remember me being taken to see the queen?’
‘Yes.’
‘And do you remember me being taken away from her chamber?’
‘Yes… yes, I do.’
‘Do you remember trying to stop them?’
‘No, I…’ She stopped and said nothing. He thought he had lost her — when she wasn’t speaking, the connection was silent. ‘Wait. Yes, I do remember.’
‘And after that?’
‘Nothing.’
‘They took me to Grelier’s operating theatre, Morwenna. The one where he did all those other things to me.’
‘No…’ she began, misunderstanding, thinking that the dreadful thing had happened to Quaiche rather than herself.
‘They showed me the scrimshaw suit,’ he said. ‘But they put you in it instead. You’re in it now, and that’s why you mustn’t panic.’
She took it well, better than he had been expecting. Poor, brave Morwenna. She had always been the more courageous half of their partnership. If she’d been given the chance to take the punishment upon herself, he knew she would have done so. Equally, he knew that he lacked that strength. He was weak and cowardly and selfish. Not a bad man, but not exactly one to be admired either. It was the flaw that had shaped his life. Knowing this did not make it any easier.
‘You mean I’m under the ice?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he said. ‘No, it’s not that bad.’ He realised as he spoke how absurdly little difference it made whether she was buried under ice or not. ‘You’re in the suit now, but you’re not under the ice. And it isn’t because of anything you did. It’s because of me. It’s to force me to act in a certain way.’
‘Where am I?’
‘You’re with me, aboard the Dominatrix. I think we just completed slowdown into the new system.’
‘I can’t see or move.’
He had been looking at the suit while he spoke, holding an image of her in his mind. Although she was clearly doing her best to hide it, he knew Morwenna well enough to understand that she was terribly frightened. Ashamed, he looked sharply away. ‘Ship, can you let her see something?’
‘That channel is not enabled.’
‘Then fucking well enable it.’
‘No actions are possible. I am to inform you that the occupant can only communicate with the outside world via the current audio channel. Any attempt to instate further channels will be viewed as…’
He waved a hand. ‘All right. Look, I’m sorry, Morwenna. The bastards won’t let you see anything. I’m guessing that was Grelier’s little idea.’
‘He’s not my only enemy, you know.’
‘Maybe not, but I’m willing to bet he had more than a little say in the matter.’ Quaiche’s brow was dripping with condensed beads of zero-gravity sweat. He mopped himself with the back of his hand. ‘All of this is my fault.’
‘Where are you?’
The question surprised him. ‘I’m floating next to you. I thought you might be able to hear my voice through the armour.’
‘All I can hear is your voice in my head. You sound a long way away. I’m scared, Horris. I don’t know if I can handle this.’
‘You’re not alone,’ he said. ‘I’m right by you. You’re probably safer in the suit than out of it. All you have to do is sit tight. We’ll be home and dry in a few weeks.’
Her voice had a desperate edge to it now. ‘A few weeks? You make it sound as if it’s nothing at all.’
‘I meant it’s better than years and years. Oh, Christ, Morwenna, I’m so sorry. I promise I’ll get you out of this.’ Quaiche screwed up his eyes in pain.
‘Horris?’
‘Yes?’ he asked, through tears.
‘Don’t leave me to die in this thing. Please.’