Trintignant shrugged. ‘I merely repair what the Spire damages.’
‘Yeah. The two of you make a great team, Doc.’ She looked at him with an expression of pure loathing. ‘Well, sorry, but you’re not getting your hands on me.’
Trintignant appraised her. ‘No great loss, when there is so little raw material with which to work.’
‘Screw you, creep.’
Hirz left the room.
‘Looks like she means it when she says she’s quitting,’ I said, breaking the silence that ensued.
Celestine nodded. ‘I can’t say I entirely blame her, either.’
‘You don’t?’ Childe asked.
‘No. She’s right. This whole thing is in serious danger of turning into some kind of sick exercise in self-mutilation.’ Celestine looked at her own steel hand, not quite masking her own revulsion. ‘What will it take, Childe? What will we turn into by the time we beat this thing?’
He shrugged. ‘Nothing that can’t be reversed.’
‘But maybe by then we won’t want it reversed, will we?’
‘Listen, Celestine.’ Childe propped himself against a bulkhead. ‘What we’re doing here is trying to beat an elemental thing. Reach its summit, if you will. In that respect Blood Spire isn’t very different from a mountain. It punishes us when we make mistakes, but then so do mountains. Occasionally, it kills. More often than not it leaves us only with a reminder of what it can do. Blood Spire snips off a finger or two. A mountain achieves the same effect with frostbite. Where’s the difference?’
‘A mountain doesn’t enjoy doing it, for a start. But the Spire does. It’s alive, Childe, living and breathing.’
‘It’s a machine, that’s all.’
‘But maybe a cleverer one than anything we’ve ever known before. A machine with a taste for blood, too. That’s not a great combination, Childe.’
He sighed. ‘Then you’re giving up as well?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘Fine.’
He stepped through the door which Hirz had just used.
‘Where are you going?’ I said.
‘To try and talk some sense into her, that’s all.’
SEVEN
Ten hours later — buzzing with unnatural alertness; the need for sleep a distant, fading memory — we returned to Blood Spire.
‘What did he say to make you come back?’ I said to Hirz, between one of the challenges.
‘What do you think?’
‘Just a wild stab in the dark, but did he by any chance up your cut?’
‘Let’s just say the terms were renegotiated. Call it a performance-related bonus.’
I smiled. ‘Then calling you a mercenary wasn’t so far off the mark, was it?’
‘Sticks and stones may break my bones… sorry. Given the circumstances, that’s not in the best possible good taste, is it?’
‘Never mind.’
We were struggling out of our suits now. Several rooms earlier we had reached a point where it was impossible to squeeze through the door without first disconnecting our airlines and removing our backpacks. We could have done without the packs, of course, but none of us wanted to breathe Spire air until it was absolutely necessary. And we would still need the packs to make our retreat, back through the unpressurised rooms. So we kept hold of them as we wriggled between rooms, fearful of letting go. We had seen the way the Spire harvested first Forqueray’s drone and then Trintignant’s leg, and it was likely it would do the same with our equipment if we left it unattended.
‘Why are you doing it, then?’ asked Hirz.
‘It certainly isn’t the money,’ I said.
‘No. I figured that part out. What, then?’
‘Because it’s there. Because Childe and I go back a long way, and I can’t stand to give up on a challenge once I’ve accepted it.’
‘Old-fashioned bullheadedness, in other words,’ Celestine said.
Hirz was putting on a helmet and backpack assembly for the first time. She had just been forced to get out of her original suit and put on one of the skintights; even her small frame was now too large to pass through the constricted doors. Childe had attached some additional armour to her skintight — scablike patches of flexible woven diamond — but she must have felt more vulnerable.
I answered Celestine. ‘What about you, if it isn’t the same thing that keeps me coming back?’
‘I want to solve the problems, that’s all. For you they’re just a means to an end, but for me they’re the only thing of interest.’
I felt slighted, but she was right. The nature of the challenges was less important to me than discovering what was at the summit; the secret the Spire so jealously guarded.
‘And you’re hoping that through the problems they set us you’ll eventually understand the Spire’s makers?’
‘Not just that. I mean, that’s a significant part of it, but I also want to know what my own limitations are.’
‘You mean you want to explore the gift that the Jugglers have given you?’ Before she had time to answer I continued, ‘I understand. And it’s never been possible before, has it? You’ve only ever been able to test yourself against problems set by other humans. You could never map the limits of your ability; any more than a lion could test its strength against paper.’
She looked around her. ‘But now I’ve met something that tests me.’
‘And?’
Celestine smiled thinly. ‘I’m not sure I like it.’
We did not speak again until we had traversed half a dozen new rooms, and then rested while the shunts mopped up the excess of tiredness which came after such efforts.
The mathematical problems had now grown so arcane that I could barely describe them, let alone grope my way towards a solution. Celestine had to do most of the thinking, therefore, but the emotional strain which we all felt was just as wearying. For an hour during the rest period I teetered on the edge of sleep, but then alertness returned like a pale, cold dawn. There was something harsh and clinical about that state of mind — it did not feel completely normal — but it enabled us to get the job done, and that was all that mattered.
We continued, passing the seventieth room — fifteen further than we had reached before. We were now at least sixty metres higher than when we had entered, and for a while it looked like we had found a tempo that suited us. It was a long time since Celestine had shown any hesitation in her answers, even if it took a couple of hours for her to reach the solution. It was as if she had found the right way of thinking, and now none of the challenges felt truly alien to her. For a while, as we passed room after room, a dangerous optimism began to creep over us.
It was a mistake.
In the seventy-first room, the Spire began to enforce a new rule. Celestine, as usual, spent at least twenty minutes studying the problem, skating her fingers over the shallowly etched markings on the frame, her lips moving silently as she mouthed possibilities.
Childe studied her with a peculiar watchfulness I had not observed before.
‘Any ideas?’ he said, looking over her shoulder.
‘Don’t crowd me, Childe. I’m thinking.’
‘I know, I know. Just try and do it a little faster, that’s all.’
Celestine turned away from the frame. ‘Why? Are we on a schedule suddenly?’
‘I’m just a little concerned about the amount of time it’s taking us, that’s all.’ He stroked the bulge on his forearm. ‘These shunts aren’t perfect, and—’
‘There’s something else, isn’t there?’
‘Don’t worry. Just concentrate on the problem.’
But this time the punishment began before we had begun our solution.
It was lenient, I suppose, compared to the savage dismembering that had concluded our last attempt to reach the summit. It was more of a stern admonishment to make our selection; the crack of a whip rather than the swish of a guillotine.