Scorpio was contemplating that when his communicator buzzed discreetly. As he stood up from the table, Khouri halted her monologue.
Irritated at the interruption, Scorpio lifted the communicator to his face and unspooled the privacy earpiece. ‘This had better be good.’
The voice that came was thready and distant. He recognised it as belonging to the Security Arm guard that had met them at the landing stage. ‘Thought you needed to know this, sir.’
‘Make it quick.’
‘Class-three apparition reported on five eighty-seven. That’s the highest in nearly six months.’
As if he needed to be told. ‘Who saw it?’
‘Palfrey, a worker in bilge management.’
Scorpio lowered his voice and pressed the earpiece in more tightly. He was conscious that he had the full attention of everyone in the room. ‘What did Palfrey see?’
‘The usual, sir: not very much, but enough that we’ll have a hard time persuading him to go that deep again.’
‘Interview him, get it on record, make it clear that he speaks of this to no one. Understood?’
‘Understood, sir.’
‘Then find him another line of work.’ Scorpio paused, frowning as he thought through all the implications. ‘On second thoughts, I’d like a word with him as well. Don’t let him leave the ship.’
Without waiting for a reply, Scorpio broke the link, spooled the earpiece back into the communicator and returned to the table. He sat down, gesturing at Khouri for her to continue.
‘What was all that about?’ she asked.
‘Nothing that need worry you.’
‘I’m worried.’
He felt a splinter of pain between his eyes. He had been getting a lot of headaches lately, and this kind of day didn’t help. ‘Someone reported an apparition,’ he said, ‘one of the Captain’s little manifestations that Antoinette mentioned. Doesn’t mean anything.’
‘No? I show up, he shows up, and you think that doesn’t mean something?’ Khouri shook her head. ‘I know what it means, even if you don’t. The Captain understands there’s some heavy stuff going down.’
The splinter of pain had become a little broken arrowhead. He pinched the bridge of skin between snout and forehead. ‘Tell us about Sylveste,’ he said with exaggerated patience.
Khouri sighed, but did as she was asked. ‘There was a kind of welcoming committee inside the star, Sylveste and his wife, just as I’d last met them. It even looked like the same room — a scientific study full of old bones and equipment. But it didn’t feel the same. It was as if I was taking part in some kind of parlour game, but I was the only one not in on it. I wasn’t talking to Sylveste any more, if I ever had been.’
‘An impostor?’ Clavain asked.
‘No, not that. I was talking with the genuine article… I’m sure of that… but at the same time it wasn’t Sylveste, either. It was as if… he was condescending to me, putting on a mask so that I’d have something familiar to talk to. I knew I wasn’t getting the whole story. I was getting the comforting version, with the creepy stuff taken out. I don’t think Sylveste thought I was capable of dealing with what he’d really become, after all that time.’ She smiled. ‘I think he thought he’d blow my mind.’
‘After sixty years in the Hades matrix, he might have,’ Clavain said.
‘All the same,’ Khouri said, ‘I don’t think there was any actual deception. Nothing that wasn’t absolutely essential for the sake of my sanity, anyhow.’
‘Tell us about your later visits,’ Clavain said.
‘I went in alone the first few times. Then it was always with someone else — Remontoire sometimes, Thorn, a few other volunteers.’
‘But always you?’ Clavain asked.
‘The matrix accepted me. No one was willing to take the risk of going in without me.’
‘I don’t blame them.’ Clavain paused, but it was apparent to all present that he had something more to say. ‘But Thorn died, didn’t he?’
‘We were falling towards the neutron star,’ she said, ‘just the way we always did, and then something hit us. Maybe an energy burst from a stray weapon, we’ll never know for sure; it might have been orbiting Hades for a million years, or it could have been something from the Inhibitors, something they risked placing that close to the star. It wasn’t enough to destroy the capsule, but it was enough to kill Thorn.’
She stopped speaking, allowing an uncomfortable silence to invade the room. Scorpio looked around, observing that everyone had their eyes downcast; that no one dared look at Khouri, not even Hallatt.
Khouri resumed speaking. ‘The star captured me alive, but Thorn was dead. It couldn’t reassemble what was left of him into a living being.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Clavain said, his voice barely audible.
‘There’s something else,’ Khouri said, her voice nearly as quiet.
‘Go on.’
‘Part of Thorn did survive. We’d made love on the long fall to Hades, and so when I went into the star, I took a part of him with me. I was pregnant.’
Clavain waited a decent while before answering, allowing her words to settle in, giving them the dignified space they warranted. ‘And Thorn’s child?’
‘She’s Aura,’ Khouri said. ‘The baby Skade stole from me. The child I came here to get back.’
FOURTEEN
The room in which Palfrey had been told to wait for Scorpio was a small annexe off one of the larger storage areas used by bilge management, the branch of the administration tasked with keeping the lower levels of the ship as dry as possible. The curved walls of the little chamber were layered with a glossy grey-green plaque that had hardened into stringy, waxy formations. The smooth floor was sheet metal. Anchored to it with thick bolts was a small, battered desk from Central Amenities, upon which lay an ashtray, a half-empty beaker of something tarlike and the parts of several dismantled bilge pump assemblies. Bookended by the pump parts was what Scorpio took to be a vacuum helmet of antique design, silver paint peeling from its metal shell. Behind the desk, Palfrey sat chain-smoking, his eyes red with fatigue, his sparse black hair messed across the sunburned pink of his scalp. He wore khaki overalls with many pockets, and some kind of breathing apparatus hung around his neck on frayed cords.
‘I understand you saw something,’ Scorpio said, pulling up another chair, the legs squealing horribly against the metal, and sitting in it the wrong way around, facing the man with his legs splayed either side of the backrest.
‘That’s what I told my boss. All right if I go home now?’
‘Your boss didn’t give me a very clear description. I’d like to know a bit more.’ Scorpio smiled at Palfrey. ‘Then we can all go home.’
Palfrey stubbed out his current cigarette. ‘Why? It’s not as if you believe me, is it?’
Scorpio’s headache had not improved. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘Everyone knows you don’t believe in the sightings. You think we’re just finding reasons to skive off the deep-level duties.’
‘It’s true that your boss will have to arrange a new detail for that part of the ship, and it’s true that I don’t believe all the reports that reach my desk. Many of them, however, I’m inclined to take seriously. Often they follow a pattern, clustering in one part of the ship, or moving up and down a series of adjacent levels. It’s as if the Captain focuses on an area to haunt and then sticks with it until he’s made his point. You ever seen him before?’
‘First time,’ Palfrey said, his hands trembling. His fingers were bony, the bright-pink knuckles like blisters ready to pop.