‘Fascinating, I’m sure.’
‘The son was looking for work on the Way. I sat in on the recruitment interview, as I was permitted to do. Idle curiosity, really: I had no interest in this particular case, but you never know when someone interesting is going to show up.’ Grelier snapped shut the cabinet.
‘The son had aspirations to work in some technical branch of Way maintenance — strategic planning, something like that. At the time, however, the Way had all the pencil-pushers it needed. The only vacancies available were — shall we say — at the sharp end?’
‘Beggars can’t be choosers,’ Quaiche said.
‘Quite. But in this case the recruiting agent decided against a full and frank disclosure of the relevant facts. He told the son that there would be no difficulty in finding him a safe, well-paid job in the technical bureau. And because the work would be strictly analytical, requiring a clear-headed coolness of mind, there would be no question whatsoever of viral initiation.’
‘If he’d told the truth, he’d have lost the recruit.’
‘Almost certainly. He was a clever lad, no doubt about that. A waste, really, to throw him straight into fuse laying or something with an equally short life-expectancy. And because the family was secular — they mostly are, up in the badlands — he definitely didn’t want your blood in his veins.’
‘It isn’t my blood. It’s a virus.’
Grelier raised a finger, silencing his master. ‘The point is that the recruiting agent had good reason to lie. And it was only a white lie, really. Everyone knew those bureau jobs were thin on the ground. Frankly, I think even the son knew it, but his family needed the money.’
‘There’s a point to this, Grelier, I’m sure of it.’
‘I can barely remember what the son looked like. But the daughter? I can see her now, clear as daylight, looking through all of us as if we were made of glass. She had the most astonishing eyes, a kind of golden brown with little flecks of light in them.’
‘How old would she have been, Grelier?’
‘Eight, nine, I suppose.’
‘You revolt me.’
‘It wasn’t like that,’ Grelier said. ‘Everyone there felt it, I think, especially the recruiting agent. She kept telling her parents he was lying. She was certain. She was visibly affronted by him. It was as if everyone in that room was playing a game and she hadn’t been told about it.’
‘Children behave oddly in adult environments. It was a mistake to have her there.’
‘She wasn’t behaving oddly at all,’ Grelier said. ‘In my view, she was behaving very rationally. It was the adults who weren’t. They all knew that the recruiting agent was lying, but she was the only one who wasn’t in denial about it.’
‘I expect she overheard some remark before the interview, something about how the recruiting agents always lie.’
‘She may have done, but even at the time I thought it went a little deeper than that. I think she just knew that the recruiter was lying simply by looking at him. There are people, individuals, who have that ability. They’re born with it. Not more than one in a thousand, and probably even fewer who have it to the extent of that little girl.’
‘Mind-reading?’
‘No. Just an acute awareness of the subliminal information already available. Facial expression, primarily. The muscles in your face can form forty-three distinct movements, which enable tens of thousands in combination.’
Grelier had done his homework, Quaiche thought. This little digression had obviously been planned all along.
‘Many of these expressions are involuntary,’ he continued. ‘Unless you’ve been very well trained, you simply can’t lie without revealing yourself through your expressions. Most of the time, of course, it doesn’t matter. The people around you are none the wiser, just as blind to those microexpressions. But imagine if you had that awareness. Not just the means to read the people around you when they don’t even know they’re being read, but the self-control to block your own involuntary signals.’
‘Mm.’ Quaiche could see where this was heading. ‘It wouldn’t be much use against something like Heckel, but a baseline negotiator… or something with a face… that’s a different matter. You think you could teach me this?’
‘I can do better than that,’ Grelier said. ‘I can bring you the girl. She can teach you herself.’
For a moment, Quaiche regarded the hanging image of Haldora, mesmerised by a writhing filament of lightning in the southern polar region.
‘You’d have to bring her here first,’ he said. ‘Not easy, if you can’t lie to her at any point.’
‘Not as difficult as you think. She’s like antimatter: it would only be a question of handling her with the right tools. I told you something jogged my memory a few days ago. It was the girl’s name. Rashmika Els. She was mentioned in a general news bulletin originating from the Vigrid badlands. There was a photo. She’s eight or nine years older than when I last saw her, obviously, but it was her all right. I wouldn’t forget those eyes in a hurry. She’d gone missing. The constabulary were in a fuss about her.’
‘No use to us, then.’
Grelier smiled. ‘Except I found her. She’s on a caravan, heading towards the Way.’
‘You’ve met her?’
‘Not exactly. I visited the caravan, but didn’t reveal myself to Miss Els. Wouldn’t want to scare her off, not when she can be so useful to us. She’s very determined to find out what happened to her brother, but even she will be wary of getting too close to the Way.’
‘Mm.’ For a moment the beautiful conjunction of these events caused Quaiche to smile. ‘And what exactly did happen to her brother?’
‘Died in clearance work,’ Grelier said. ‘Crushed under the Lady Morwenna.’
TWENTY-ONE
Skade lay half-cocooned in ice and the frozen black froth of Inhibitor machinery. She was still alive. This much was clear as they squeezed through the narrow, crimped opening of the crushed bulkhead. From the control couch in which she still lay, Skade’s head tilted slightly in their direction, the merest glaze of interest troubling the smooth composure of her face. The fingers of one white-gauntleted hand hovered above a portable holoclavier propped in her lap, the fingers becoming a blur of white in time with the gunlike salvos of music.
The music stopped as her hand moved away from the keyboard. ‘I was beginning to wonder what had kept you.’
‘I’ve come for my child, bitch,’ Khouri said.
Skade showed no sign of having heard her. ‘What happened, Clavain?’
‘A little mishap.’
‘The wolves took your hand. How unfortunate.’
Clavain showed her the knife. ‘I did what had to be done. Recognise this, Skade? Today wasn’t the first time it’s saved my life. I used it to cut the membrane around the comet, when you and I had that little disagreement over the future policy of the Mother Nest. You do remember, don’t you?’
‘There’s been a lot of water under the bridge since I last saw that knife. I still had my old body then.’
‘I’m sorry about what happened, but I only did what I had to do. Put me back there now, I’d do the same thing again.’
‘I don’t doubt it for a moment, Clavain. No matter what people say, you always were a man of conviction.’
‘We’ve come for the child,’ he said.
She acknowledged Khouri with the tiniest of nods. ‘I had gathered.’
‘Are you going to hand her over, or is this going to become tedious and messy?’