In the Mouth of the Whale (49 page)

But there were other watchers in the crowd, cool intelligences who were manipulating and guiding us, who were about to make themselves known.

A few of us followed the small welcoming committee out on to the field, watching as Maria hugged her daughter, lifted her up, whirled her around. Then the Child was set on to a chair and the chair was raised by four soldiers who each held a leg, and she was paraded around the edge of the futbol field in the midst of wild music, cheers and applause, and the crackle of fireworks exploding in the bright sky beyond the looming bulk of the blimp.

The Child looked all around, dazed and confused. She was searching for Jaguar Boy, expecting him to step from the people pressing all around, feeling a profound disappointment when he did not. Feeling as if she was the only real person in a great crowd of ghosts.

She was driven to the hospital in an army jeep and given a brisk medical examination by her mother, ending with a scan of her brain activity that her mother and several of the other doctors studied with grave intensity.

At last, the Child and Maria were alone. Maria gave her clean clothes, underwear and a white dress with a flounced skirt that dropped to her ankles. Red slippers. Telling her that they had much to talk about, and much to do.

They were shy and awkward with each other. The Child wanted to tell her mother about her adventures, but the great flood of words was dammed by a prickling caution. Everything was familiar, and everything seemed unreal.

Her mother said that she understood. ‘You think that your captor was your friend. You don’t want to betray him. That will change. Tomorrow we’ll explain everything. It will all become clear to you. And then you’ll know the true nature and intentions of your so-called friend, and the true nature of those who truly care for you. But first you need to sleep. You need to remember who you really are.’

‘He said that, too.’

‘Jaguar Boy. Don’t look so surprised. We know his name, and we know how he lied to you and how he wanted to use you, and a lot more besides.’

‘Everyone says they know what I want and what I should do. But they don’t.’

‘Hush now. Sleep.’

And then, somehow, the Child was in her bed, and a great wave of exhaustion was rolling through her, carrying her away. Her last thought was that the stars stuck to the ceiling had been rearranged into new and unfamiliar constellations.

5

‘It’s splendid,’ the Horse said. ‘But it isn’t war.’

‘It seems to fit every definition,’ I said.

‘That’s the point. It looks like war, but it isn’t. Or at least, it is not the main event. It’s a sideshow. It’s distraction. It’s bait-and-switch.’

‘Bait-and-switch?’

‘A trick shills use in the Permanent Floating Market. It’s older than the market, older than the Quick or the True for that matter. Shills on Old Earth used it before the first ships hit vacuum. They were probably using it in the first cities. You and your partner show the marks a fancy box and open it to show something desirable inside. Nepenthe, fine tea, a handwrought pistola . . . Any old goods at a bargain price. You show it round, you let them handle it, sniff it, taste it, and then you start them bidding on it. You get the patter flowing, and you and your partner throw the box back and forth between you. Distraction, you see? The patter confuses the marks; the hand is faster than the eye. You get the marks to bid against each other and drive up that bargain price. That’s one thing. The other, when the hammer comes down on the bidding, you throw the lucky winner a box containing dodgy goods. Like but not like the stuff you showed them at the start. Cheaper stuff. Shoddy stuff.’

‘What happens when your customers finds out they’ve been cheated?’

‘The odd one that comes back looking for restitution gets a refund, of course. But most don’t come back. They don’t like to admit they’ve been fooled. Or they think it’s all part of the entertainment, the price for the thrill they had outbidding everyone else. But that’s not the point. The point is that even the cleverest mark can be fooled. And that’s what’s this is,’ the Horse said. ‘Bait-and-switch.’

We were strapped in facing crash seats in a niche deep inside the cramped quarters of an assault ship. Windows hung between us showed various views of the laser array. It was the first time we’d been able to talk in private since we’d harrowed the back door in the Library. We’d been taken aboard the assault ship separately, had spent the journey – a straight slam across some two hundred million kilometres – doped up and breathing an oxygen-rich silicone liquid inside coffins packed with gel to protect us from the worst of the brutal acceleration and deceleration.

The assault ship was part of a wing that was standing off at a distance of more than three million kilometres, behind spinning mirrored sails designed to deflect any energy beams. Spy drones sent zipping past the array at tremendous velocities were transmitting updates and there were multiple views from the third wave of combat drones that was sweeping towards the enemy defences. Several windows gave views at different distances and angles of the five laser-cannon assemblies in the array, silvery ship-sized cylinders forming the points of a pentagon that orbited a small planetoid. Another window mapped the clouds of aggressive machines that defended them. Two waves of combat drones had attacked these defences while we still slept, opening up holes through which the third wave would manoeuvre towards the planetoid at the centre of the array. And when the planetoid was secure, we would be sent in to harrow the machines that controlled the laser array, so that Yenna Singleton’s philosophers could take command and guide the starship to a safe harbour in the Archipelago.

That was the plan according to the Redactor Svern and Yenna Singleton, but although I had done my best to seem eager for action when they had explained it to me, in truth I’d felt anxious and resentful, realising that I would be no more than a small component of a scheme whose architects I did not entirely trust. I had enjoyed being a free agent more than I cared to admit. I’d thought that I had been the hero of my story; the discovery that I was instead a pawn, that the Redactor Svern had used and manipulated me, even if it was for the greater good of the clan and the Library, had cut deeper than Prem’s casual betrayal. And I feared and disliked Yenna Singleton, and was worried that she was using and deceiving the Redactor Svern as he had used and deceived me.

So I wasn’t angered by the Horse’s impertinent ridicule of the plan to capture the array. No, I was intrigued, because it chimed with my own feelings.

I asked him if by bait-and-switch he meant that there might be another laser array. ‘One more powerful than this?’

The Horse shook his head. ‘There could be a hundred arrays. A thousand. It wouldn’t make any difference. Yenna Singleton and her generals think that whoever controls the array controls the ship. They’re wrong.’

‘And you know this because?’

‘Why were we able to find out about the array in the first place?’

‘We defeated a demon and secured the locations of the back doors—’

‘Aside from our guile and cunning,’ the Horse said.

‘If you interrupt me like that in front of anyone who counts, I’ll have to punish you,’ I said. ‘The Singleton clan is very old-fashioned, and this is a ship of the line besides.’

‘This one would like to explain that his presumption is motivated by his desire to protect his master.’

The Horse didn’t look especially scared. Defiant, certainly. A shine in his eyes, his expression grim and eager. We sat face to face amongst the windows inside the little niche, like equals.

I said, ‘Your master would like you to break the habit of a lifetime, and speak plainly for once.’

‘We followed Bree Sixsmith from hell to hell,’ the Horse said. ‘Each was collapsed to a minimum size and data was erased. But the data about the array and the probes was not only left intact, all of it was left in plain sight.’

‘She couldn’t erase that data because it was in the Library. She could only attempt to prevent access to it. And she underestimated the speed at which we were able to unravel her traps.’

‘Or perhaps we were meant to find it,’ the Horse said. ‘Because it’s sham masquerading as quality.’

‘All right. Let’s suppose Bree led us here. To what end?’

‘The demon riding her wanted us to come here because it works for the enemy. The enemy wants us to come here because it wastes our time and resources. Because it distracts us from what is really going on. There is no point capturing the laser array because it does not control the trajectory of the starship. It doesn’t control the starship because the enemy already has it.’

‘I see. And what about the ship imaged by Yenna Singleton’s philosophers?’

‘Also a sham. A clever duplicate carved from some icy rock and powered by a drone.’

‘And yet, despite your amazing insight, you are not even a trooper, let alone a general.’

The Horse ducked his head. ‘I had help,’ he said.

‘I think you had better tell me everything.’

‘Back on T, I got out of that treehouse where we were being held in custody, and I came back with a flitter and fresh clothes—’

‘That was my plan.’

‘And very good it was. But after I got out, I was intercepted by two Quicks. They knew why we were there, and what we were searching for.’

‘Let me guess. They were cultists.’

‘They did not admit it, but yes, I am certain that they were. They told me that Yakob Singleton’s quest had something to do with the ancient starship and its passenger. As I told you, later on. But I didn’t tell you everything—’

‘No, you didn’t. To begin with, you didn’t tell me who told you.’

The Horse ducked his head again. ‘I also didn’t tell you that the cultists had made direct contact with the starship’s passenger.’

‘I assume you had a good reason.’

I was angry now.

‘This one believed that you would be endangered if you knew too much. Also, like the laser array, that you would provide a useful distraction.’

‘I see.’

‘There’s more.’

The Horse threw a package at me and said it would explain everything.

‘It appears to come from Prem,’ I said.

He nodded.

‘She gave it to you? When?’

‘One of the techs slipped it to me while I was being prepped for the voyage,’ the Horse said.

‘And you opened it.’

‘It is addressed to both of us.’

‘It probably isn’t from Prem at all, but from some clique inside her clan that wants to use or confuse me to further some petty intrigue.’

‘If it is, I’m sure you’ll see through it.’

Deep inside my security, I watched as Prem walked out of the shadows between two black cypresses into bright sunlight, stepping beside a small stream that ran down a dusty slope towards a mud-rimmed pool. I recognised the place immediately: the platform owned by Lathi Singleton. Prem was wearing the same white shirt that she’d worn when we’d first met, its hem clinging to her bare thighs. Her gaze was cool and steady. She looked imperious and infinitely desirable.

‘If I’m talking to you now, it’s because things have gone wrong,’ she said, and I realised at once that she had recorded this message before we had met. That she had prepared for this moment.

‘It means,’ she said, ‘that poor Yakob is dead, and Yenna Singleton has found out about our quest. You’re in her power; I’ve had to flee. But I must be alive because you’re listening to this message, and not the other one. So there’s still a chance, Isak. We can still make something good from this.

‘I have friends. And they are your friends, too. One of them made sure you received this message. He’s ready to take you to me.’ She smiled. ‘Wherever I am. I can’t tell you that, because I don’t know. But if you’re watching this, it means that my future self knows what Yakob found, and what to do about it. But I need your help. So come to me, Isak. Please. Any conditions you like. Any precautions. Any price. My friends will agree to them all. But I hope you’ll come to me because you know it’s the right thing to do.’

The final assault on the enemy position began like most engagements in the war: flocks of insensate killing machines zipping past each other at high relative velocities, each using microsecond windows of opportunity to try to destroy the other. Views of the array began to flicker and jump as the enemy locked on to camera drones and took them out with kinetic weapons, or blinded them with X-ray or gamma pulses. But there were more drones behind them, and more behind that. The planetoid and the five cannon of the laser array were each enclosed in loose shells of brilliant flashes and sheets of raw lightnings. Tiny novae blinked as antimatter bomblets let go. Expanding clouds of debris were pierced by the violet or red threads of particle beams.

Deep inside the energetic displays, microscopic Q-drones were attaching to each of the cannon. Most died before they could hatch their nanoassemblers, zapped or poisoned by the equally small machines of the cannons’ immune system. The few survivors grew networks that pierced the integuments of the cannons and shook hands with their nervous systems and attempted to subvert them.

Every attempt failed. One after the other, the cannon self-destructed in fierce blinks of raw light as antimatter batteries yielded all their stored energy at once, scorching the surface of the planetoid and washing past the first wave of assault ships and killing everyone on board.