‘I have much to tell concerning the colony,’ he said, ‘and this window is short. So I will begin with the news you are undoubtedly waiting for. We have located Sylveste; now it is simply a matter of bringing him into our custody.’
Sluka was pushing coffee down her throat, sitting across from Sylveste with a black oblong table positioned between them. Early morning Resurgam sun was filtering into the room via half-closed jalousies, casting fiery contours across her skin.
‘I need your opinion on something.’
‘Visitors?’
‘How astute.’ She poured him a cup, offered the palm of her hand towards the chair. Sylveste sank down into the seat, until he was the lower of the two. ‘Indulge my curiosity, Doctor Sylveste, and tell me exactly what you’ve heard.’
‘I’ve heard nothing.’
‘Then it won’t take much of your time.’
He smiled through the fog of tiredness. For the second time in a day he had been awakened by her guards, dragged in a state of semi-consciousness and disorientation from his room. He still smelt Pascale, her scent cloaking him, and wondered if she was still sleeping in her own cell somewhere across Mantell. As lonely as he now felt, the feeling was tempered by the gladdening news that she was alive and unharmed. They had told him as much in the days before their meeting, but he had had no reason to believe Sluka’s people were telling the truth. What use, after all, was Pascale to the True Pathers? Even less than he — and it was already clear enough that Sluka had been debating the value of retaining him alive.
Yet now, perceptibly, things were changing. He had been allowed time with Pascale, and he believed that this would not be the only occasion. Did this development stem from some basic humanity on Sluka’s behalf, or did it imply something entirely different — perhaps that she might have need of one of them in the near future, and that now was the time when she had to begin winning favour?
Sylveste swigged the coffee, blasting away his residual tiredness. ‘All I’ve heard is that there may be visitors. From then on I drew my own conclusions.’
‘Which I presume you’d care to share with me.’
‘Perhaps we could discuss Pascale for a moment?’
She peered at him over the rim of her cup, before nodding with the delicacy of a clockwork marionette. ‘You’re venturing an exchange of knowledge in return for — what? Certain relaxations in the regime under which you’re held?’
‘That wouldn’t be unreasonable, I feel.’
‘It would all depend on the quality of your speculations.’
‘Speculations?’
‘As to who these visitors might be.’ Sluka glanced towards the slatted rising sun, eyes narrowed against the ruby-red glare. ‘I value your point of view, though heaven knows why.’
‘First you’d have to tell me what it is you know.’
‘We’ll come to that.’ Sluka bit on a smile. ‘First I should admit that I have you at something of a disadvantage.’
‘In what way?’
‘Who are these people, if they aren’t Remilliod’s crew?’
Her remark meant that his conversations with Pascale — and by implication everything that had gone on between them — had been monitored. The knowledge shocked him less than he would have expected. He had obviously suspected it must be so the whole time, but perhaps he had preferred to ignore his own qualms.
‘Very good, Sluka. You ordered Falkender to mention the visitors, didn’t you? That was quite clever of you.’
‘Falkender was just doing his job. Who are they, then? Remilliod already has experience trading with Resurgam. Wouldn’t it make sense for him to return here for a second bite?’
‘Much too soon. He’ll have barely had time to reach another system, let alone anything with trading prospects.’ Sylveste freed himself of the chair’s embrace, strolling to the slatted window. Through the iron jalousies he watched the northerly faces of the nearest mesas radiate cool orange, like stacked books on the point of bursting into flame. The thing he noticed now was the bluer tone of the sky; no longer crimson. That was because megatonnes of dust had been removed from the winds; replaced with water vapour. Or maybe it was a trick of his impaired colour perception.
Fingering the glass, he said, ‘Remilliod would never return so quickly. He’s among the shrewdest of traders, with very few exceptions.’
‘Then who is it?’
‘It’s the exceptions I’m bothered about.’
Sluka called an aide to remove the coffee. With the table bare, she invited Sylveste back to his seat. Then she printed a document from the table and offered it to him.
‘The information you’re about to see reached us three weeks ago, from a contact in the East Nekhebet flare-watch station.’
Sylveste nodded. He knew about the flare-watches. He had pushed to set them up himself; small observatories dotted around Resurgam, monitoring the star for evidence of abnormal emission.
Reading was too much like trying to decipher Amarantin script: creeping letter by letter along a word until the meaning snapped into his mind. Cal had known that much of reading boiled down to mechanics — the physiology of eye movement along the line. He had built routines into Sylveste’s eyes to accommodate this need, but it had not been within Falkender’s gift to restore everything.
Still, this much was clear:
The flare-watch in East Nekhebet had picked up an energy pulse, much brighter than anything seen previously. Briefly, there was the worrying possibility that Delta Pavonis was about to repeat the flare which had wiped out the Amarantin: the vast coronal mass ejection known as the Event. But closer examination revealed that the flare did not originate from the star, but rather from something several light-hours beyond it, on the edge of the system.
Analysis of the spectral pattern of the gamma-ray flash indicated that it was subject to a small but measurable Doppler shift; a few per cent of the speed of light. The conclusion was inescapable: the flash originated from a ship, on the final phase of deceleration from interstellar cruising speed.
‘Something happened,’ Sylveste said, absorbing the news of the ship’s demise with calm neutrality. ‘Some kind of malfunction in the drive.’
‘That was our guess as well.’ Sluka tapped the paper with her fingernail. ‘A few days later we knew it couldn’t possibly be the case. The thing was still there — faint, but unmistakable.’
‘The ship survived the blast?’
‘Whatever it was. By then we were getting a detectable blueshift off the drive flame. Deceleration was continuing normally, as if the explosion had never happened.’
‘You’ve got a theory for this, I presume.’
‘Half of one. We think the blast originated from a weapon. What kind, we haven’t a clue. But nothing else could have liberated so much energy.’
‘A weapon?’ Sylveste tried to keep his voice completely calm, allowing only natural curiosity to show, purging it of the emotions he really felt, which were largely variations on pure dread.
‘Odd, don’t you think?’
Sylveste leant forwards, a damp chill along his spine.
‘These visitors — whoever they are, I presume they understand the situation here.’
‘The political picture, you mean? Unlikely.’
‘But they’d have attempted contact with Cuvier.’
‘That’s the funny thing. Nothing from them. Not a squeak.’
‘Who knows this?’
His voice by now was almost inaudible, even to himself, as if someone were standing on his windpipe.
‘About twenty people on the colony. People with access to the observatories, a dozen or so of us here; somewhat fewer in Resurgam City… Cuvier.’