Soon, the tapping of a cane announced Grelier’s arrival. He had not been far away, listening in on the proceedings via concealed cameras and microphones.
‘Seems promising enough,’ the surgeon-general ventured. ‘They didn’t dismiss you out of hand, and they do have a ship. My guess is they can’t wait to make the deal.’
‘That’s what I thought as well,’ Quaiche said. He rubbed a smear of condensation from one of his mirrors, restoring Haldora to its usual pinpoint sharpness. ‘In fact, once you stripped away Heckel’s not very convincing bluster I got the impression they needed our arrangement very badly.’ He held up a sheet of paper, one that he had held tightly to his chest throughout the negotiations. ‘Technical summary on their ship, from our spies in the parking swarm. Doesn’t make encouraging reading. The bloody thing’s falling to bits. Barely made it to 107 P.’
‘Let me see.’ Grelier glanced at the paper, skimming it. ‘You can’t be certain this is accurate.’
‘I can’t?’
‘No. Ultras routinely downplay the worthiness of their ships, often putting out misinformation to that effect. They do it to lull competitors into a false sense of superiority, and to dissuade pirates interested in stealing their ships.’
‘But they always overstate their defensive capabilities,’ Quaiche said, wagging a finger at the surgeon-general. ‘Right now there isn’t a ship in that swarm that doesn’t have weapons of some kind, even if they’re disguised as innocent collision avoidance systems. They’re scared, Grelier, all of them, and they all want their rivals to know they have the means to defend themselves.’ He snatched back the paper. ‘But this? It’s a joke. They need our patronage so they can fix their ship first. It should be the other way around, if their protection is to have any meaning to us.’
‘As I said, where the intentions of Ultras are concerned nothing should be taken at face value.’
Quaiche crumpled the paper and threw it across the room. ‘The problem is I can’t read their bloody intentions.’
‘No one could be expected to read a monstrosity like Heckel,’ Grelier said.
‘I don’t mean just him. I’m talking about the other Ultras, or the normal humans that come down with them, like that woman just now. I couldn’t tell if she was being sincere or patronising, let alone whether she really believed what Heckel was having her say.’
Grelier kissed the head of his cane. ‘You want my opinion? Your assessment of the situation was accurate: she was just Heckel’s mouthpiece. He wanted to do business very badly.’
‘Too bloody badly,’ Quaiche said.
Grelier tapped the cane against the floor. ‘Forget the Third Gazometric for the time being. What about the Lark Descending? The third-party summaries suggested a very useful weapons allocation, and the captain seemed willing to do business.’
‘The summaries also mentioned an instability in her starboard drive. Did you miss that bit?’
Grelier shrugged. ‘It’s not as though we need them to take us anywhere, just to sit in orbit around Hela intimidating the rest of them. As long as the weapons are sufficient for that task, what do we care if the ship won’t be capable of leaving once the arrangement is over?’
Quaiche waved a hand vaguely. ‘To be honest, I didn’t really like the fellow they sent down. Kept leaking all over the floor. Took weeks to get rid of the stain after he’d left. And a drive instability isn’t the mild inconvenience you seem to assume. The ship we come to an agreement with will be sitting within tenths of a light-second of our surface, Grelier. We can’t risk it blowing up in our faces.’
‘Back to square one, in that case,’ Grelier said, with little detectable sympathy. ‘There are other Ultras to interview, aren’t there?’
‘Enough to keep me busy, but I’ll always come back to the same fundamental problem: I simply cannot read these people, Grelier. My mind is so open to Haldora that there isn’t room for any other form of observation. I cannot see through their strategies and evasions the way I once could.’
‘We’ve had this conversation before. You know you can always seek my opinion.’
‘And I do. But — no insult intended, Grelier — you know a great deal more about blood and cloning than you do about human nature.’
‘Then ask others. Assemble an advisory council.’
‘No.’ Grelier, he realised, was quite right — they had been over this many times. And always it came round to the same points. ‘These negotiations for protection are, by their very nature, extremely sensitive. I can’t risk a security leak to another cathedral.’ He motioned for Grelier to clean his eyes. ‘Look at me,’ he went on, while the surgeon-general opened the medicine cabinet and prepared the antiseptic swabs. ‘I’m a thing of horror, in many respects, bound to this chair, barely able to survive without it. And even if I had the health to leave it, I would remain a prisoner of the Lady Morwenna, still enmeshed in the optical sightlines of my beloved mirrors.’
‘Voluntarily,’ Grelier said.
‘You know what I mean. I cannot move amongst the Ultras as they move amongst us. Cannot step aboard their ships the way other ecumenical emissaries do.’
‘That’s why we have spies.’
‘All the same, it limits me. I need someone I can trust, Grelier, someone like my younger self. Someone able to move amongst them as I used to. Someone they wouldn’t dare to suspect.’
‘Suspect?’ Grelier dabbed at Quaiche’s eyes with the swabs.
‘I mean someone they would automatically trust. Someone not at all like you.’
‘Hold still.’ Quaiche flinched as the stinging swab dug around his eyeball. It amazed him that he had any nerve endings there at all, but Grelier had an unerring ability to find those that remained. ‘Actually,’ Grelier said, musingly, ‘something did occur to me recently. Perhaps it’s worth mentioning.’
‘Go ahead.’
‘You’re aware I like to know what’s happening on Hela. Not just the usual business with the cathedrals and the Way, but in the wider world, including the villages.’
‘Oh, yes. You’re always on the hunt for uncatalogued strains, reports of interesting new heresies from the Hauk settlements, that sort of thing. Then out you ride with your shiny new syringes, like a good little vampire.’
‘I won’t deny that Bloodwork plays a small role in my interest, but along the way I do pick up all sorts of interesting titbits. Keep still.’
‘And you keep out of my sightlines! What sort of titbits?’
‘The last but one time I was awake was a two-year interval, between ten and eight years ago. I remember that revival very welclass="underline" it was the first occasion on which I found myself needing this cane. Towards the end of that period awake I made a long trip north, following leads on those uncatalogued strains you just mentioned. On the return journey I rode with one of the caravans, keeping my eyes peeled — sorry — for anything else that might take my fancy.’
‘I remember that trip,’ Quaiche said, ‘but I don’t recall you saying that anything of significance happened during it.’
‘Nothing did. Or at least nothing seemed to, at the time. But then I heard a news bulletin a few days ago and it reminded me of something.’
‘Are you going to drag this out much longer?’
Grelier sighed and began returning the equipment to its cabinet. ‘There was a family,’ he said, ‘from the Vigrid badlands. They’d travelled down to meet the caravan. They had two children: a son and a younger daughter.’