Quaiche understood none of Heckel’s utterances, but that was all right: Heckel had also brought along a baseline interpreter. She was a small doe-eyed woman dressed in a more modern spacesuit. Her helmet had folded back on itself, retracting like a cockatoo’s crest so that everyone could see her face.
‘You’re not an Ultra,’ Quaiche remarked to the interpreter.
‘Does it matter?’
‘I just find it amusing, that’s all. It’s where I started, doing the same line of work as you.’
‘That must have been a long time ago.’
‘But they still don’t find it any easier to negotiate with the likes of us, do they?’
‘Us, Dean?’
‘Baseline humans, like you and me.’
She hid it well, but he read her amused reaction. He saw himself from her point of view: an old man reclining on a couch, deathly frail, surrounded by an audience of moving mirrors, his eyes peeled open like fruits. He was not wearing the sunglasses.
Quaiche moved a hand. ‘I wasn’t always like this. I could pass for a baseline human, once, move in normal society with no one so much as batting an eyelid. I was taken into the employment of Ultras, just as you have been. Queen Jasmina, of the Gnostic Ascension…’
Heckel adjusted his chest knobs, then piped out something incomprehensible.
‘He says Jasmina did not have the best of reputations, even amongst other Ultras,’ the interpreter said. ‘He says that even now, in certain Ultra circles, mentioning her name is considered the height of bad taste.’
‘I didn’t know Ultras even recognised bad taste as a concept,’ Quaiche replied archly.
Heckel piped back something shrill and peremptory.
‘He says there is a lot you need to remember,’ the interpreter said. ‘He also says he has other business he needs to attend to today.’
Quaiche fingered the edge of his scarlet blanket. ‘Very well, then. Just to clarify… you would be willing to consider my offer?’
The interpreter listened to Heckel for a moment, then addressed Quaiche. ‘He says he understands the logic of your proposed security arrangement.’
Quaiche nodded enthusiastically, forcing the mirrors to nod synchronously. ‘Of course, it would work to the benefit of both parties. I would gain the protection of a ship like the Third Gazometric, insurance against the less scrupulous Ultra elements we all know are out there. And by agreeing to provide that security — for a fixed but not indefinite period, naturally — there would be compensations in terms of trading rights, insider information, that sort of thing. It could be worth both our whiles, Captain Heckel. All you’d have to do is agree to move the Third Gazometric closer to Hela, and to submit to some very mild mutual friendship arrangements… a small cathedral delegation on your ship and — naturally — a reciprocal party on the Lady Morwenna. And then you’d have immediate access to the choicest scuttler relics, before any of your rivals.’ Quaiche looked askance, as if seeing enemies in the garret’s shadows. ‘And we wouldn’t have to be looking over our shoulders all the time.’
The captain piped his reply.
‘He says he understands the benefits in terms of trading rights,’ the interpreter said, ‘but he also wishes to emphasise the risk he would be taking by bringing his ship closer to Hela. He mentions the fate that befell the Gnostic Ascension…’
‘And there was me thinking it was bad taste to mention it.’
She ignored him. ‘And he wishes to have these beneficial trading arrangements clarified before any further discussion takes place. He wishes also to specify a maximum term for the period of protection, and…’ She paused while Heckel piped out a series of rambling additions. ‘He also wishes to discuss the exclusion from trade of certain other parties currently in the system, or approaching it. Parties to be excluded would include, but not be limited to, the trade vessels Transfigured Night, Madonna of the Wasps, Silence Under Snow…’
She continued until she noticed Quaiche’s raised hand. ‘We can discuss these things in good time,’ he said, his heart sinking. ‘In the meantime, the cathedral would — of course — require a full technical examination of the Third Gazometric, to ensure that the ship poses no hazard to Hela or its inhabitants…’
‘The captain wonders if you doubt the worthiness of his ship,’ the interpreter said.
‘Not at all. Why should I? He made it this far, didn’t he? On the other hand, if he has nothing to hide…’
‘The captain wishes to retire to his shuttle to consider matters.’
‘Of course,’ Quaiche said with sudden eagerness, as if nothing was too much to ask. ‘This is a serious proposal, and nothing should be agreed in haste. Sleep on it. Talk to some other parties. Get a second opinion. Shall I call an escort?’
‘The captain can find his own way back to the shuttle,’ she said.
Quaiche spread his fingers in farewell. ‘Very well, then. Please convey my best wishes to your crew… and consider my offer very seriously.’
The captain swung around, his assistants continuing to adjust the control valves and levers in his ludicrous kettle of a suit. With a mad rhythmic clanking he began to locomote towards the door. His departure was as painfully slow as his arrival had been, the suit appearing incapable of moving more than an inch at a time.
The captain paused, then laboriously turned around. The wiper blades flicked back and forth. The pipe organ chimed out another sequence of notes.
‘Begging your pardon,’ the interpreter said, ‘but the captain has another question. Upon his approach to the Lady Morwenna, he made an unscheduled excursion from the usual flight path due to a technical problem with the shuttle.’
‘A technical problem? Now there’s a surprise.’
‘In the process of this deviation he witnessed significant excavation work taking place a little to the north of the Permanent Way, near the Jarnsaxa Flats. He saw what appeared to be a partially camouflaged dig. Investigating with the shuttle’s radar, he detected a sloping cavity several kilometres in length and at least a kilometre deep. He assumed that the dig was related to the unearthing of scuttler relics.’
‘That may be the case,’ Quaiche said, affecting an uninterested tone.
‘The captain was puzzled. He admits to being no expert on Hela affairs, but he was given to understand that most significant scuttler relics have been unearthed in the circumpolar regions.’
‘Scuttler relics are found all over Hela,’ Quaiche said. ‘It’s just that due to quirks of geography they’re easier to get at in the polar regions. I don’t know what this dig was that you saw, or why it was camouflaged. Most of the digging work takes place outside the direct administration of the churches, alas. We can’t keep tabs on everyone.’
‘The captain thanks you for your most helpful response.’
Quaiche frowned, and then corrected his frown to a tolerant smile. What was that: sarcasm, or had she just not hit quite the right note? She was a baseline human, like himself, the kind of person he had once been able to read like a diagram. Now she and her kind — not just women, but almost everyone — lay far beyond the boundaries of his instinctive understanding. He watched them leave, smelling something hot and metallic trailing in the captain’s wake, waiting impatiently while the room cleared of the noxious steam.