Volyova had slept only a few hours in the last thirty, but her nervous energy currently seemed limitless. She would, of course, pay a price for it at some point in the near future, but for now she felt like she was careering, imbued with unstoppable momentum. Even so, she did not immediately snap to alertness when Hegazi steered his chair next to hers.
‘What is it?’
‘I’m getting something which might very much be our boy.’
‘Sylveste?’
‘Or someone pretending to be him.’ Hegazi entered one of his intermittent phases of fugue, which to Volyova signified that he was in deep rapport with the ship. ‘Can’t trace the communication route he’s using. It’s coming from Cuvier, but you can bet Sylveste isn’t physically there.’
She did not raise her voice, even though the two of them were quite alone in the bridge.
‘What’s he saying?’
‘He’s just asking to speak to us. Over and over again.’
Khouri heard footsteps sloshing through the inch-thick sludge which flooded the entire Captain’s level.
She did not have a rational answer for why she had come down here. Perhaps that was the point, really: now that she no longer trusted Volyova — the one person she had thought she could place her faith in — and now that the Mademoiselle was absent, as she had been ever since the attack against the cache-weapon, Khouri had to turn to the irrational. The only person left on the ship who had not in some way betrayed her, or had not earned her hatred, was the one she could never expect an answer from.
She knew almost immediately that the footsteps did not belong to Volyova, but there was a purposefulness to them which suggested that the person knew exactly where they were going, and had not simply strolled into this area of the ship by accident.
Khouri got up out of the muck. The seat of her trousers was wet and cold with the stuff, but the darkness of the fabric concealed most of the damage.
‘Relax,’ said the person, strolling casually round the bend, her boots sloshing through the sludge. There was a glint of metal from the woman’s free-swinging arms and a multicoloured glow from the holographic designs worked into the arms’ metalwork.
‘Sudjic,’ Khouri identified. ‘How the hell did you—’
Sudjic shook her head with a tight-lipped smile. ‘How did I find my way down here? Simple, Khouri. I followed you. Once I saw which general direction you’d gone, it was obvious you must be headed here. So I came after you, because I reckon you and I could use a little chat.’
‘A chat?’
‘About the situation here.’ Sudjic gestured expansively. ‘On this ship. More specifically, the fucking Triumvirate. It can’t have escaped you that I have a grievance against one of them.’
‘Volyova.’
‘Yes, our mutual friend Ilia.’ Sudjic managed to make the woman’s name sound like a particularly unsavoury expletive. ‘She killed my lover, you know that.’
‘I understand there’d been… problems.’
‘Problems, ha. That’s a good one. Do you call turning someone psychotic a problem, Khouri?’ She paused, stepped a little closer, but still kept a respectful distance from the fused, angelic core of the Captain. ‘Or maybe I should call you Ana, now that we’re on — uh — closer terms.’
‘Call me what you want. It doesn’t alter anything. I may hate her guts right now, but that doesn’t mean I’m about to betray her. We shouldn’t even be having this conversation.’
Sudjic nodded sagely. ‘She really hit you with that loyalty therapy, didn’t she? Look, Sajaki and the others are not nearly as omniscient as you’d think. You can tell me everything.’
‘There’s a lot more to it than that.’
‘Such as?’ Sudjic was standing akimbo now, her gauntleted hands placed daintily against her narrow hips. The woman was beautiful, in the emaciated way which was common among the spaceborn. Her physiology was wraith-like; had her underlying skeletal-muscular structure not been chimerically enhanced, it was doubtful she would have been fully ambulatory in normal gravity. But now, with those subcutaneous augmentations, Sudjic was undoubtably stronger and faster than any non-augmented human. Her strength was double-edged, because she looked so fragile. She was like an origami sculpture of a woman folded from razor-sharp paper.
‘I can’t tell you,’ Khouri said. ‘But Ilia and I — we have mutual secrets.’ Instantly she regretted saying that, but she wanted to deflate the smug superiority of the Ultra. ‘What I mean is—’
‘Listen, I’m sure that’s the way she wants you to feel. But ask yourself this, Khouri. How much of what you remember is real? Isn’t it possible that Volyova’s been screwing with your memories? She tried it with Boris. She tried to cure him by erasing his past, but it didn’t work. He still had the voices to deal with. That go for you too? Any new voices floating around in your head?’
‘If there are,’ Khouri said, ‘they haven’t got anything to do with Volyova.’
‘So you admit it.’ Sudjic smiled primly, like a valiant schoolgirl acknowledging victory in a game, but hoping not to look too proud of the fact. ‘Well, whether you do or don’t, it doesn’t matter. The fact is you’re disillusioned with her. With the Triumvirate as a whole. You can’t kid yourself you liked what they just did.’
‘I’m not sure I understand what it was they just did, Sudjic. There are a few things I haven’t got right in my head.’ Khouri felt the cold, wet fabric of her trousers clinging to her buttocks. ‘That’s why I came down here, as a matter of fact. For some peace and quiet. To get my head together.’
‘And see if he had wisdom to spare?’
Sudjic had nodded towards the Captain.
‘He’s dead, Sudjic. I may be the only person here who recognises that, but it’s true all the same.’
‘Maybe Sylveste can cure him.’
‘Even if he could, would Sajaki want it to happen?’
Sudjic nodded knowingly. ‘Of course, of course. I understand totally. But listen.’ Her voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper, though the only possible eavesdroppers were the skulking rats. ‘They’ve found Sylveste — I just heard, before I came down.’
‘Found him? You mean he’s here?’
‘No, of course not. They’ve just made contact. They don’t even know where he is yet, just that he’s alive. Still got to get the bastard aboard somehow. And that’s where you come in. Me too, in fact.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t pretend to understand what happened with Kjarval in the training chamber, Khouri. Maybe she just cracked, although I knew her better than anyone else on this ship, and I’d say she wasn’t really the cracking type. Whatever it was, it gave Volyova an excuse to finish her off — not that I ever thought the bitch really hated her that much…’