Galactic North (45 page)

The Voice’s face registered disapproval. “So now you resort to threats of physical violence.”

“I’m not threatening anything: just pointing out the options. I know you care about self-preservation: it’s wired deep into your architecture.”

“I would be well advised to kill you now, in that case.”

“That wouldn’t work. Do you think Martinez kept your coordinates to himself? He always knew this was a risky extraction. He’d have made damn sure another party knew of your whereabouts, and who you were likely to be sheltering. If we don’t make it back, someone will come in our place. And you can bet they’ll bring their own limpet mines as well.”

“In which case I would gain nothing by letting you go, either.”

“No, you’ll get to stay alive. Just give us Jax, and we’ll leave you alone. I don’t know what you’re doing out here, what keeps you sane, but really, it’s your business, not ours. We just want the colonel.”

The ship’s persona regarded me with narrowed, playful eyes. I had the impression she was thinking things through very carefully indeed, examining my proposition from every conceivable angle.

“It would be that simple?”

“Absolutely. We take the man, we say goodbye and you never hear from us again.”

“I’ve invested a lot of time and energy in the colonel. I would find it difficult to part company with him.”

“You’re a resourceful persona. I’m sure you’d find other ways to occupy your time.”

“It isn’t about occupying my time, Dexia.” She’d spoken my name for the first time. Of course she knew who I was: it would only have taken a blood or tissue sample to establish that I’d already been aboard the ship. “It’s about making my feelings felt,” she continued. “Something happened to me around Sky’s Edge. Call it a moment of clarity. I saw the horrors of war for what they were. I also saw my part in the self-perpetuation of those horrors. I had to do something about that. Removing myself from the sphere of operation was one thing, but I knew there was more that I could do. Thankfully, the colonel gave me the key. Through him, I saw a path to redemption.”

“You didn’t have to redeem yourself,” I said. “You were a force for good,
Nightingale.
You healed people.”

“Only so they could go back to war. Only so they could be blown apart and returned to me for more healing.”

“You had no choice. It was what you were made to do.”

“Precisely.”

“The war’s over. It’s time to forget about what happened. That’s why it’s so important to bring Jax back home, so that we can start burying the past.”

The Voice studied me with a level, clinical eye. It was as if she knew something unspeakable about my condition, some truth I was as yet too weak to bear.

“What would be the likely sentence, were Jax to be tried?”

“He’d get the death penalty, no question about it. Cruci fixion at the Bridgetop, like Sky Haussmann.”

“Would you mourn him?”

“Hell, no. I’d be cheering with the rest of them.”

“Then you would agree that his death is inevitable, one way or another.”

“I guess so.”

“Then I will make a counter-proposition. I will not permit you to take Jax alive. But I will allow you an audience with him. You shall meet and speak with the colonel.”

Wary of a trap, I asked, “Then what happens?”

“Once the audience is complete, I will remove the colonel from life support. He will die shortly afterwards.”

“If you’re willing to let him die . . . why not just hand him over?”

“He can’t be handed over. Not any more. He would die.”

“Why?”

“Because of what I have done to him.”

Fatigue tugged at me, fogging my earlier clarity of thought. On one level I just wanted to get out of the ship, with no additional complications. I’d expected to die when the hospital sent its machines against us. Yet as glad as I was to find myself alive, as tempted as I was to take the easier option and just leave, I couldn’t ignore the prize that was now so close at hand.

“I need to talk to the others.”

“No, Dexia. This must be your decision, and yours alone.”

“Have you put the same proposition to them?”

“Yes. I told them they could leave now, or they could meet the colonel.”

“What did they say?”

“I’d rather hear what you have to say first.”

“I’m guessing they had the same reaction I did. There’s got to be a catch somewhere.”

“There is no catch. If you leave now, you will have the personal satisfaction of knowing that you have at least located the colonel, and that he remains alive. Of course, that information may not be worth very much to you, but you would always have the option of returning, should you still wish to bring him to justice. Alternatively, you can see the colonel now—see him and speak with him—and leave knowing he is dead. I will allow you to witness the withdrawal of his life support, and I will even let you take his head with you. That should be worth more than the mere knowledge of his existence.”

“There’s a catch. I know there’s a catch.”

“I assure you there isn’t.”

“We all get to leave? You’re not going to turn around and demand that one of us takes the colonel’s place?”

“No. You will all be allowed to leave.”

“In one piece?”

“In one piece.”

“All right,” I said, knowing the choice wasn’t going to get any easier no matter how many times I reconsidered it. “I can’t speak for the others . . . and I guess this has to be a majority decision . . . but I’m ready to see the son of a bitch.”

I was allowed to leave the room, but not the bed. The sheet tightened against me again, pressing me flat to the mattress as the bed tilted to the vertical. Two squid robots entered the room and detached the bed from its mountings, and then carried it between them. I was glued to it like a figure on a playing card. The robots propelled me forward in an effortless glide, silent save for the soft metallic scratch of their tentacles where they touched the wall or the floor.

The Voice of
Nightingale
addressed me from the bedside panel, a small image of her face appearing above the touchpads.

“It’s not far now, Dexia. I hope you won’t regret your decision.”

“What about the others?”

“You’ll be joining them. Then you can all go home.”

“Are you saying we all made the same decision, to see the colonel?”

“Yes,” the Voice said.

The robots carried me out of the centrifuge section, into what I judged to be the forward part of the ship. The sheet relinquished its hold on me slightly, just enough so that I was able to move under it. Presently, after passing through a series of air-locks, I was brought to a very dark room. Without being able to see anything, I sensed that this was as large as any pressurised space we’d yet entered, save for the skin-cultivation chamber. The air was as moist and blood-warm as the inside of a tropical greenhouse.

“I thought you said the others would be here.”

“They’ll arrive shortly,” the Voice said. “They’ve already met the colonel.”

“There hasn’t been time.”

“They met the colonel while you were still asleep, Dexia. You were the last to be revived. Now, would you like to speak to the man himself?”

I steeled myself. “Yes.”

“Here he is.”

A beam of light stabbed across the room, illuminating a face that I recognised instantly. Surrounded by blackness, Jax’s face appeared to hover as if detached from his body. Time had done nothing to soften those pugnacious features; the cruel set of that heavy jaw. Yet his eyes were closed, and his face lolled at a slight angle, as if he remained unaware of the beam.

“Wake up,” the Voice of
Nightingale
said, louder than I’d heard her speak so far. “Wake up, Colonel Jax!”

The colonel woke. He opened his eyes, blinked twice against the glare, then gazed out steadily. He tilted his head to meet the beam, projecting his jaw forward at a challenging angle.

“You have another visitor, Colonel. Would you like me to introduce her?”

His mouth opened. Saliva drooled out. From the darkness, a hand descended from above the colonel’s face to wipe his chin dry. Something about the trajectory of the hand’s movement was terribly, terribly wrong. Jax saw my reaction and let out a soft, nasty chuckle. That was when I realised that the colonel was completely, irrevocably insane.

“Her name is Dexia Scarrow. She’s the last member of the party you’ve already met.”

Jax spoke. His voice was too loud, as if it was being fed through an amplifier. There was something huge and wet about it. It was like hearing the voice of a whale.

“You a soldier, girl?”

“I was a soldier, Colonel. But the war’s over now. I’m a civilian.”

“Goodee for you. What brought you here, girly girl?”

“I came to bring you to justice. I came to take you back to the war crimes court on Sky’s Edge.”

“Maybe you should have come a little sooner.”

“I’ll settle for seeing you die. I understand that’s an option. ”

Something I’d said made the colonel smile. “Has the ship told you the deal yet?”

“The ship told me she wasn’t letting you out of here alive. She promised us your head.”

“Then I guess she didn’t get into specifics.” He cocked his head away from me, as if talking to someone standing to my left. “Bring up the lights,
Nightingale
: she may as well know what she’s dealing with.”

“Are you sure, Colonel?” the ship asked.

“Bring up the lights. She’s ready.”

The ship brought up the lights.

I wasn’t ready.

For a moment I couldn’t process what I was seeing. My brain just couldn’t cope with the reality of what the ship had done to Colonel Jax, despite the evidence of my eyes. I kept staring at him, waiting for the picture before me to start making sense. I kept waiting for the instant when I’d realise I was being fooled by the play of shadows and light, like a child being scared by a random monster in the folds of a curtain. But the instant didn’t come. The thing before me was all that it appeared to be.

Colonel Jax extended in all directions: a quivering expanse of patchwork flesh, of which his head was simply one insignificant component; one hill in a mountain range. He was spread out across the far wall, grafted to it in the form of a vast breathing mosaic. He must have been twenty metres wide, edged with a crinkled circular border of toughened flesh. Under his head was a thick neck, merging into the upper half of an armless torso. I could see the faint scars where the arms had been detached. Below the slow-heaving ribcage, the torso flared out like the melted base of a candle. Another torso rose from the flesh two metres to the colonel’s right. It had no head, but it did have an arm. A second torso loomed over him from behind, equipped with a pair of arms, one of which must have cleaned the colonel’s chin. Further away, emerging from the pool of flesh at odd, arbitrary angles, were other living body parts. A torso here; a pair of legs there; a hip or shoulder somewhere else. The torsos were all breathing, though not in perfect synchronisation. When they were not engaged in some purposeful activity, such as wiping Jax’s chin, the limbs twitched, palsied. The skin between them was an irregular mosaic formed from many ill-matched pieces that had been fused together. In places it was drum-tight, pulled taut over hidden armatures of bone and gristle. In other places it heaved like a stormy sea. It gurgled with hidden digestive processes.

“You see now why I’m not coming with you,” Colonel Jax said. “Not unless you brought a much bigger ship. Even then, I’m not sure you’d be able to keep me alive very long without
Nightingale
’s assistance.”

“You’re a fucking monstrosity.”

“I’m no oil painting, that’s a fact.” Jax tilted his head, as if a thought had just struck him. “I am a work of art, though, wouldn’t you agree, girly girl?”

“If you say so.”

“The ship certainly thinks so—don’t you,
Nightingale
? She made me what I am. It’s her artistic vision shining through. The bitch.”

“You’re insane.”

“Very probably. Do you honestly think you could take one day of this and not go mad? Oh, I’m mad enough, I’ll grant you that. But I’m still sane compared to the ship. Around here, she’s the imperial fucking yardstick for insanity.”

“Sollis was right, then. Leave a sentience engine like that all alone and it’ll eat itself from the inside out.”

“Maybe so. Thing is, it wasn’t solitude that did it.
Nightingale
turned insane long before she ever got out here. And you know what did it? That little war we had ourselves down on Sky’s Edge. They built this ship and put the mind of an angel inside it. A mind dedicated to healing, compassion, kindness. So what if it was a damned machine? It was still designed to care for us, selflessly, day after day. And it turned out to be damned good at its job, too. For a while, at least.”

“Then you know what happened.”

“The ship drove herself mad. Two conflicting impulses pushed a wedge through her sanity. She was meant to treat us, to make us well again, to alleviate our pain. But every time she did her job, we were sent back down to the theatre of battle and ripped apart again. The ship took our pain away only so that we could feel it again. She began to feel as if she was complicit in that process: a willing cog in a greater machine whose only purpose was the manufacture of agony. In the end, she decided she didn’t much like being that cog.”

“So she took off. What happened to all the other patients? ”

“She killed them. Euthanised them painlessly rather than have them sent back down to battle. To
Nightingale
, that was the kinder thing to do.”