‘Not this way,’ Khouri said. ‘Please, not this way.’
‘I’m afraid I’ve already given the matter a great deal of consideration. I am dying, you see. This palace will also be my mausoleum. The options — for me, at least — are remarkably restricted. If I die, I take Aura with me. Humanity — whatever that means — will lose whatever gifts she carries. But if I give her to you, those gifts may be put to some practical use. In the long run it may not be the difference between extinction and survival, but it may be the difference between extinction now, this century, and extinction a few thousand years down the line. Not much of a stay of execution, really… but human nature being what it is, I’m sure we’ll take what we’re given.’
‘She might make more of a difference than that,’ Clavain said.
‘Well, that’s not something you or I will ever know, but I take your point. Aura’s value is — as yet — indeterminate. That’s why she remains such a prized asset.’
‘So give her up,’ Khouri said. ‘Give her up and do something good for once in your fucking existence.’
‘Brought her along to help oil the negotiations, did you?’ Skade asked, winking at Clavain. For an agonising moment they might have been old friends sharing a humorous recollection.
‘It’s all right,’ Clavain said to Khouri. ‘We’ll get Aura back for you.’
‘No, Clavain, not this way,’ she said.
‘This is the only way it’s going to happen,’ he said. ‘Trust me, I know Skade. Once she’s made her mind up, it stays made up.’
‘I’m glad you understand that,’ Skade said. ‘And you’re right. There is no flexibility in my position.’
‘We could kill her,’ Khouri said. ‘Kill her and operate quickly.’
‘Worth a try,’ Scorpio said. Often in Chasm City — for the purposes of deterrence — he had been called upon to kill people with maximum slowness. He thought now of all the swift ways he knew to end the life of a sentient being. Those methods had their uses, too: mercy executions, button jobs. Some of them were very swift indeed. The only drawback was that he had never knowingly tried any of his methods on a Conjoiner. He had certainly never killed a Conjoiner carrying a hostage in their womb.
‘She won’t let it happen,’ Clavain said soothingly. He touched Khouri’s arm. ‘She’d find a way to kill Aura before we got to her. But it’s all right, this is the way it has to be.’
‘No, Clavain,’ Khouri repeated.
He shushed her. ‘I came here to secure Aura’s release. That’s still my mission objective.’
‘I don’t want you to die.’
Scorpio saw a smile crinkle the skin at the corners of Clavain’s eyes. ‘No, I doubt that you do. Frankly, I don’t want to, either. Funny how these things seem a lot less attractive when it’s someone else doing the deciding for you. But Skade’s made up her mind, and this is how it’s going to happen.’
‘I suggest we get a move on,’ Skade interrupted.
‘Wait,’ Scorpio said. The words had an unreality in his head as he marshalled what he was about to say. ‘If we give you Clavain… and you kill him… what’s to stop you reneging on your part of the deal?’
‘She’s thought of that,’ Clavain said.
‘Of course I have,’ Skade answered. ‘And I’ve also considered the opposite scenario: what’s to prevent you from taking Clavain away if I give you Aura first? Clearly our mutual trust is an insufficient guarantee of compliance. So I’ve devised a solution I believe both parties will find entirely satisfactory.’
‘Tell them,’ Clavain said.
Skade gestured at Jaccottet. ‘You — security man — will perform the Caesarean.’ Then her attention flicked to Scorpio. ‘You — pig — will perform the execution of Clavain. I will direct both procedures, incision by incision. They will take place in parallel, step by step. One must last precisely as long as the other.’
‘No,’ Scorpio gasped, as the horror of her words slammed home.
‘The message isn’t getting through, is it?’ Skade asked. ‘Shall I kill her now, and be done with it?’
‘No,’ Clavain said. He turned to his friend. ‘Scorp, you have to do this. I know you have the strength to do it. You’ve already shown me that a thousand times. Do it, friend, and end this.’
‘I can’t.’
‘It’s the hardest thing anyone’s ever asked you to do, I know that. But I’m still asking.’
Scorpio could only say the same thing again. ‘I can’t.’
‘You must.’
‘No,’ said another voice. ‘He doesn’t have to. I’ll do it.’
All of them, including Skade, followed the voice to its source. There, framed in the ruined bulkhead, was Vasko Malinin. He had a gun in his hand and looked as cold and bewildered as the rest of them.
‘I’ll do it,’ he repeated. He had obviously been standing there for some time, unnoticed by those present.
‘You were given orders to stay outside,’ Scorpio said.
‘Blood countermanded them.’
‘Blood?’ Scorpio repeated.
‘Urton and I heard gunfire. It sounded as if it was coming from inside here. I contacted Blood and he gave me permission to investigate.’
‘Leaving Urton alone outside?’
‘Not for long, sir. Blood’s sending a plane. It’ll be here in under an hour.’
‘That isn’t the way it’s supposed to happen,’ Scorpio said.
‘Pardon, sir, but Blood’s view was that once shooting started, it was time to tear up the rules.’
‘You can’t argue with that,’ Clavain said.
Scorpio nodded, still burdened by the vast weight of what lay before him. He could not let Vasko do it, no matter how devoutly he wished to abdicate this particular responsibility. ‘Anything else to report?’ he asked.
‘The sea’s funny, sir. It’s greener, and there are mounds of biomass appearing all around the iceberg, as far as the eye can see.’
‘Juggler activity,’ Clavain said. ‘Blood already told us it was hotting up.’
‘That’s not all, sir. More reports of things in the sky. Eyewitnesses even say they’ve seen things re-entering.’
‘The battle’s coming closer,’ Clavain said, with something close to anticipation. ‘Well, Skade, I don’t think any of us really want to delay things now, do we?’
‘Wiser words were never spoken,’ she said.
‘You tell us how you want it done. I presume we’ll need to get that armour off you first?’
‘I’ll deal with that,’ she said. ‘In the meantime, make sure you have the incubator ready.’
Scorpio made a shooting gesture in Vasko’s direction. ‘Return to the boat. Inform Blood that we are in the process of delicate negotiations, then bring the incubator back through the iceberg.’
‘I’ll do that, sir. But seriously, I know how hard it is for you to…’ Vasko could not complete his sentence. ‘What I mean is, I’m willing to do it.’
‘I know,’ Scorpio said, ‘but I’m his friend. The one thing I know is that I wouldn’t want anyone else to have this on their conscience.’
‘There’ll be nothing on your conscience, Scorp,’ Clavain said.
No, Scorpio thought. There’d be nothing on his conscience. Nothing save the fact that he had tortured his best friend — his only genuine human friend — to death, slowly, in return for the life of a child he neither knew nor cared for. So what if he had no choice in the matter? So what if it was only what Clavain wanted him to do? None of that made it any easier to do, or would make it any easier to live with in times to come. Because he knew that what happened in the next half hour — he did not think the procedure could last much longer than that — would surely be burned into his memory as indelibly as the self-inflicted scar on his shoulder, the one that covered his original emerald-green tattoo of human ownership.