‘I wouldn’t say there’s any such thing as being too well prepared for a thing like Blood Spire, Celestine.’
‘That’s not what I mean.’ She fingered the fabric of her skintight. ‘These suits, for instance. How did he know we wouldn’t be able to go all the way with the larger ones?’
I shrugged, a gesture that was now perfectly visible. ‘I don’t know. Maybe he learned a few things from Argyle, before he died.’
‘Then what about Doctor Trintignant? That ghoul isn’t remotely interested in solving the Spire. He hasn’t contributed to a single problem yet. And yet he’s already proved his value, hasn’t he?’
‘I don’t follow.’
Celestine rubbed her shunt. ‘These things. And the neural modifiers — Trintignant supervised their installation. And I haven’t even mentioned Forqueray’s arm, or the medical equipment aboard the shuttle.’
‘I still don’t see what you’re getting at.’
‘I don’t know what leverage Childe’s used to get his co-operation — it’s got to be more than bribery or avarice — but I have a very, very nasty idea. And all of it points to something even more disturbing.’
I was wearying of this. With the challenge of the next door ahead of us, the last thing I needed was paranoiac theory-mongering.
‘Which is?’
‘Childe knows too much about this place.’
Another room, another wrong answer, another punishment.
It made the last look like a minor reprimand. I remembered a swift metallic flicker of machines emerging from hatches which opened in the seamless walls: not javelins now, but jointed, articulated pincers and viciously curved scissors. I remembered high-pressure jets of vivid arterial blood spraying the room like pink banners, the shards of shattered bone hammering against the walls like shrapnel. I remembered an unwanted and brutal lesson in the anatomy of the human body; the elegance with which muscle, bone and sinew were anchored to each other and the horrid ease with which they could be flensed apart — filleted — by surgically sharp metallic instruments.
I remembered screams.
I remembered indescribable pain, before the analgesics kicked in.
Afterwards, when we had time to think about what had happened, I do not think any of us thought of blaming Celestine for making another mistake. Childe’s modifiers had given us a healthy respect for the difficulty of what she was doing, and — as before — her second choice had been the correct one; the one that opened a route back to the Spire’s exit.
And besides…
Celestine had suffered as well.
It was Forqueray who had caught the worst of it, though. Perhaps the Spire, having tasted his blood once, had decided it wanted much more of it — more than could be provided by the sacrifice of a mere limb. It had quartered him: two quick opposed snips with the nightmarish scissors; a bisection followed an instant later by a hideous transection.
Four pieces of Forqueray had thudded to the Spire’s floor; his interior organs were laid open like a wax model in a medical school. Various machines nestled neatly amongst his innards, sliced along the same planes. What remained of him spasmed once or twice, then — with the exception of his replacement arm, which continued to twitch — he was mercifully still. A moment or two passed, and then — with whiplash speed — jointed arms seized his pieces and pulled him into the wall, leaving slick red skid-marks.
Forqueray’s death would have been bad enough, but by then the Spire was already inflicting further punishment.
I saw Celestine drop to the ground, one arm pressed around the stump of another, blood spraying from the wound despite the pressure she was applying. Through her visor her face turned ghostly.
Childe’s right hand was missing all the fingers. He pressed the ruined hand against his chest, grimacing, but managed to stay on his feet.
Trintignant had lost a leg. But there was no blood gushing from the wound; no evidence of severed muscle and bone. I saw only damaged mechanisms; twisted and snapped steel and plastic armatures; buzzing cables and stuttering optic fibres; interrupted feedlines oozing sickly green fluids.
Trintignant, nonetheless, fell to the floor.
I also felt myself falling, looking down to see that my right leg ended just below the knee; realising that my own blood was hosing out in a hard scarlet stream. I hit the floor — the pain of the injury having yet to reach my brain — and reached out in reflex for the stump. But only one hand presented itself; my left arm had been curtailed neatly above the wrist. In my peripheral vision I saw my detached hand, still gloved, perched on the floor like an absurd white crab.
Pain flowered in my skull.
I screamed.
SIX
‘I’ve had enough of this shit,’ Hirz said.
Childe looked up at her from his recovery couch. ‘You’re leaving us?’
‘Damn right I am.’
‘You disappoint me.’
‘Fine, but I’m still shipping out.’
Childe stroked his forehead, tracing its shape with the new steel gauntlet Trintignant had attached to his arm. ‘If anyone should be quitting, it isn’t you, Hirz. You walked out of the Spire without a scratch. Look at the rest of us.’
‘Thanks, but I’ve just had my dinner.’
Trintignant lifted his silver mask towards her. ‘Now there is no call for that. I admit the replacements I have fashioned here possess a certain brutal esthétique, but in functional terms they are without equal.’ As if to demonstrate his point, he flexed his own replacement leg.
It was a replacement, rather than simply the old one salvaged, repaired and reattached. Hirz — who had picked up as many pieces of us as she could manage — had never found the other part of Trintignant. Nor had an examination of the area around the Spire — where we had found the pieces of Forqueray — revealed any significant part of the Doctor. The Spire had allowed us to take back Forqueray’s arm after it had been severed, but it appeared to have decided to keep all metallic things for itself.
I stood up from my own couch, testing the way my new leg supported my weight. There was no denying the excellence of Trintignant’s work. The prosthesis had interfaced with my existing nervous system so perfectly that I had already accepted the leg into my body image. When I walked on it I did so with only the tiniest trace of a limp, and that would surely vanish once I had grown accustomed to the replacement.
‘I could take the other one off as well,’ Trintignant piped, rubbing his hands together. ‘Then you would have perfect neural equilibrium… shall I do it?’
‘You want to, don’t you?’
‘I admit I have always been offended by asymmetry.’
I felt my other leg; the flesh and blood one that now felt so vulnerable, so unlikely to last the course.
‘You’ll just have to be patient,’ I said.
‘Well, all things come to he who waits. And how is the arm doing?’
Like Childe, I now boasted one steel gauntlet instead of a hand. I flexed it, hearing the tiny, shrill whine of actuators. When I touched something I felt prickles of sensation; the hand was capable of registering subtle gradations of warmth or coldness. Celestine’s replacement was very similar, although sleeker and somehow more feminine. At least our injuries had demanded as much, I thought; unlike Childe, who had lost only his fingers, but who had appeared to welcome more of the Doctor’s gleaming handiwork than was strictly necessary.
‘It’ll do,’ I said, remembering how much Forqueray had irritated the Doctor with the same remark.
‘Don’t you get it?’ Hirz said. ‘If Trintignant had his way, you’d be like him by now. Christ only knows where he’ll stop.’