It was possible that no culture emerged intact; that none of the players who entered the Dawn War actually emerged, victorious or otherwise. The lengthscale of the war, while short by galactic time, was nonetheless hideously long by species-time. It was long enough for species to self-evolve, to fragment, to coalesce with other species or assimilate them, to remake themselves beyond recognition, or even to jump from organic to machine-life substrates. Some had even made the return trip, becoming machine, then returning to the organic when it suited their purposes. Some had sublimed, vanishing from the theatre of the war entirely. Some had converted their essences to data and found immortal storage in carefully concealed computer matrices. Others had self-immolated.
Yet in the aftermath, one culture emerged stronger than the others. Possibly they had been a fortunate small-time player in the main fray, now rising to supremacy amongst the ruins. Or possibly they were the result of a coalition, a merging of several battle-weary species. It hardly mattered, and they themselves probably had no hard data on their absolute origin. They were — at least then — a hybrid machine-chimeric species, with some residual vertebrate traits. They did not bother giving themselves a name.
‘Still,’ Fazil said, ‘they acquired one, whether they liked it or not.’
Khouri looked at her husband. As he had been relating to her the story of the Dawn War, she had come to a kind of understanding about where she was, and the unreality of it all. What Fazil had said about the Mademoiselle had finally connected with some lingering memory of the true-present. She remembered the gunnery room clearly now, and knew that this place, this tampered-with shard of her past — was no more than an interlude. And this was not properly Fazil, though — because he had been resurrected from her memories — he was at least as real as the Fazil she recalled.
‘What were they called?’ she asked.
He waited before answering, and when he did, it was with almost theatrical gravity. ‘The Inhibitors. For a very good reason, which will shortly become apparent.’
And then he told her, and she knew. The knowledge crashed home, vast and impassive as a glacier, something she could never begin to forget. And she knew something else, which was, she supposed, the whole point of this exercise. She understood why Sylveste had to die.
And why — if it took the death of a planet to ensure his death — that was an entirely reasonable price to pay.
Guards came just as Sylveste was falling into shallow dreams, exhausted by the latest operation.
‘Wake up, sleepy-head,’ said the taller of the two, a stocky man with a drooping grey moustache.
‘What have you come for?’
‘Now that would spoil the surprise,’ said the other guard, a weaselly individual hefting a rifle.
The route along which they took him was clearly intended to disorientate, its convolutions too frequent to be accidental. Quickly they succeeded in their aim. The sector where they arrived was unfamiliar; either an old part of Mantell extensively refurbished by Sluka’s people, or else a completely new set of tunnel workings dug since the occupation. For a moment he wondered if he were being moved permanently to a differerent cell, but that seemed unlikely — they had left his other clothes in the first room, and had only just changed the bedsheets. But Falkender had spoken of the possibility of his status altering, in connection with the visitors he had mentioned, so maybe there had been a sudden change of plan.
But there been no change of plan, as he soon discovered.
The room where they left him was no less Spartan than his own; a virtual duplicate down to the same blank walling and food hatch; the same crushing sense that the walls were infinitely thick, reaching endlessly back into the mesa. So similar, in fact, that for a moment he wondered if his senses had deceived him, and all that had happened was the guards had frogmarched him in a loop which eventually returned to his own place of imprisonment. He would not have put it past them… and at least it was exercise.
But as soon as he had absorbed the room’s contents fully, he knew it was not his own. Pascale was sitting on her bed — and when she glanced up, he could tell she was just as astonished as Sylveste.
‘You’ve got an hour,’ the moustachioed guard said, patting his partner on the back.
And then he closed the door, Sylveste having already entered the room without their bidding.
The last time he had seen her, she had been wearing the wedding dress; her hair sculpted in brilliant purple waves, entoptics adorning her like an army of attendant fairies. He might as well have dreamt that. Now she wore overalls, as drab and shapeless as those Sylveste himself was dressed in. Her hair was a lank black bowl, eyes rouged by sleeplessness or bruising, possibly both. She looked thinner and smaller than he remembered — probably because she was hunched over, bare feet hooked under her calves, and the room’s whiteness seemed so large.
He was unable to remember a time when she had looked more fragile or beautiful; when it had been harder to believe that she was his wife. He thought back to the night of the coup, when she had waited in the dig with her patient, probing questions; questions which would later open a wound into the very core of who he was; what he had done and was capable of doing. It seemed very strange indeed that a confluence of events had brought them together, in this loneliest of rooms.
‘They kept telling me you were alive,’ he said. ‘But I don’t think I ever really believed them.’
‘They told me you’d been hurt,’ Pascale said, her voice quiet, as if she dared not shatter a dream by speaking aloud. ‘They wouldn’t say what — and I didn’t want to ask too much — in case they told me the truth.’
‘They blinded me,’ Sylveste said, touching the hard surface of his eyes; the first time he had done so since the surgery. Instead of the little nova of pain to which he had become accustomed there was only a vague fog of discomfort which faded as soon as he removed his fingers.
‘But you can see now?’
‘Yes. As a matter of fact you’re the first thing it’s been worth having sight for.’
And then she rose from the bed, slipping into his arms, hooking a leg round his own. He felt her lightness and delicacy; was almost afraid to return her embrace in case he crushed her. Yet he drew her nearer, and she reciprocated, seemingly just as nervous of damaging him, as if the two of them were spectres uncertain of each other’s reality. They held each other for what seemed like many more hours than the one they had been allocated; not because time dragged, but because for now time was unimportant; it was in abeyance, and it seemed as if it could be held that way by the act of will alone. Sylveste drank in the vision of her face; her eyes found something human even in the blankness of his own. There had been a time when Pascale had lacked the courage to look at him face-on, let alone stare into his eyes — but that time had long passed. And for Sylveste, gazing into Pascale’s eyes had never been difficult, since she need never be aware of his scrutiny. Now, though, he wished she could tell when he was staring; wished her the vicarious pleasure of knowing that he found her intoxicating.