He wondered what he was missing. Perhaps his actual surroundings were so dull and Spartan that his mind would sooner or later have performed the same filtering trick, even if he still had his sight. He sensed only the echoless enclosure of rock; many megatonnes of it. He thought constantly of Pascale, but it became harder by the day to hold her in his mind. The grey seemed to be seeping into his memories, smearing over them like wet concrete. Then there came a day, just after Sylveste had finished his rations, when the cell door was unlocked and two voices joined him.
The first was that of Gillian Sluka.
‘Do what you can with him,’ her croak of a voice said. ‘Within limits.’
‘He should be put under while I operate,’ said the other voice, male and treacle-thick. Sylveste recognised the cabbagy smell of the man’s breath.
‘He should, but he won’t be.’ The voice hesitated, then added: ‘I’m not expecting any miracles, Falkender. I just want the bastard to see me.’
‘Give me a few hours,’ Falkender said. There was a thump as the man placed something down on the cell’s blunt-edged table. ‘I’ll do my best,’ he said, almost mumbling. ‘But from what I know, these eyes were nothing special before you had him blinded.’
‘One hour.’
She slammed the door as she exited. Sylveste, cocooned in silence since his capture, felt its reverberations jar his skull. For too long he had been striving to pick up the softest of noises, clues to his fate. There had been none, but in the process he had become sensitised to silence.
He smelled Falkender loom nearer. ‘A pleasure to work with you, Dr Sylveste,’ he said, almost diffidently. ‘I’m confident I can undo most of the damage she had inflicted on you, given time.’
‘She gave you one hour,’ Sylveste said. His own voice sounded foreign; it had been too long since he had done much except mumble incoherently to himself in his sleep. ‘What can you possibly do in one hour?’
He heard the man rummage through his tools. ‘At the very least improve things for you.’ He punctuated his remarks with clucking noises. ‘Of course, I can do more if you don’t struggle. But I can’t promise that this will be pleasant for you.’
‘I’m sure you’ll do your best.’
The man’s fingers skated over his eyes, lightly probing.
‘I always admired your father, you know.’ Another cluck, reminding Sylveste of one of Janequin’s chickens. ‘It’s well known that he fashioned these eyes for you.’
‘His beta-level simulation,’ Sylveste corrected.
‘Of course, of course.’ He could visualise Falkender waving aside this vaporous distinction. ‘And not the alpha, either — we all know that vanished years ago.’
‘I sold it to the Jugglers,’ Sylveste said blankly. After years of holding it in, the truth had popped out of his mouth like a small sour pip.
Falkender made an odd tracheal sound which Sylveste eventually decided might be the man’s mode of chuckling. ‘Of course, of course. You know, I’m surprised no one ever accused you of that. But that’s human cynicism for you.’ A shrill whirring sound filled the air, followed by a nerve-searing vibration. ‘I think you can say goodbye to colour perception,’ Falkender said. ‘Monochrome’s going to be about the best I can manage.’
Khouri had been hoping for some mental breathing-space, some time in which to collect her thoughts, in which to listen quietly for the breathing of the invasive presence in her head. But the Mademoiselle was still speaking.
‘I believe Sun Stealer has already attempted this once before,’ she said. ‘I’m speaking of your predecessor, of course.’
‘You mean the stowaway tried to get into Nagorny’s head?’
‘Exactly that. Except in Nagorny’s case, there would have been no bloodhounds on which to hitch a ride. Sun Stealer must have had to resort to something cruder.’
Khouri considered what she had learnt from Volyova about this whole incident.
‘Crude enough to drive Nagorny mad?’
‘Evidently so,’ her companion nodded. ‘And perhaps Sun Stealer only attempted to impose his will on the man. Escape from the gunnery was impossible, so Sun Stealer merely tried to make Nagorny his puppet. Perhaps it was all done via subconscious suggestion, while he was in the gunnery.’
‘Exactly how much trouble am I in?’
‘Little, for now. There were only a few dogs — not enough for him to do much damage.’
‘What happened to the dogs?’
‘I decrypted them, of course — learnt their messages. But in doing so, I opened myself up to him. To Sun Stealer. The dogs must have limited him somewhat, because his attack on me was far from subtle. Fortunately, because otherwise I might not have deployed my defences in time. He was not particularly hard to defeat, but of course I was only dealing with a tiny part of him.’
‘Then I’m safe?’
‘Well, not quite. I ousted him — but only from the implant in which I reside. Unfortunately my defences do not extend to your other implants, including those Volyova installed in you.’
‘He’s still in my head?’
‘He may not have even needed the dogs,’ the Mademoiselle said. ‘He might have entered Volyova’s implants as soon as she placed you in the gunnery for the first time. But he certainly found the dogs advantageous. If he hadn’t tried to invade me with them, I might not have sensed his presence in your other implants.’
‘I feel the same.’
‘Good. It means my countermeasures are effective. You recall how I used countermeasures against Volyova’s loyalty therapies?’
‘Yes,’ Khouri said, gloomily uncertain that those had worked quite as well as the Mademoiselle liked to imagine.
‘Well, these are much the same. The only difference is, I’m using them against those sites in your mind which Sun Stealer has occupied. For the last two years, we’ve been waging a kind of…’ She paused, and then seemed to experience a moment of epiphany. ‘I suppose you could call it a cold war.’
‘It would have to be cold.’
‘And slow,’ the Mademoiselle said. ‘The cold robbed us of the energies for anything more. And, of course, we had to be careful that we did not harm you. Your being injured was no use to either myself or Sun Stealer.’
Khouri remembered why this conversation was possible in the first place.
‘But now that I’m warmed…’
‘You understand well. Our campaign has intensified since the warming. I think Volyova may even suspect something. A trawl is reading your brain even now, you see. It may have detected the neural war Sun Stealer and I are waging. I would have relented — but Sun Stealer would have used the moment to overwhelm my counter-measures.’
‘But you can hold him at bay…’
‘I believe so. But should I not succeed in holding Sun Stealer at bay, I felt you needed to know what happened.’
That much was reasonable: better to know that Sun Stealer was in her than to suffer the delusion that she was clean.
‘I also wished to warn you. The bulk of him remains in the gunnery. I’ve no doubt that he will try to enter you fully, or as fully as is possible, when he finds the chance.’
‘You mean, next time I’m in the gunnery?’
‘I admit the options are limited,’ the Mademoiselle said. ‘But I thought it best that you knew the entirety of the situation.’