The Revelation Space Collection (282 page)

‘And yet you still think I am the puppet of some mysterious agency?’

‘I don’t know, Skade. I certainly haven’t ruled it out.’

‘I serve only the Mother Nest.’

‘Fine.’ He nodded, sensing that no matter what the truth was Skade believed that she was acting correctly. ‘Now give me Felka and I’ll leave.’

‘Will you destroy me once you have left?’

He doubted that she knew of the pinhead charges he and Scorpio had deployed. He said, ‘What will happen to you, Skade, if I leave you here, drifting? Can you repair your ship?’

‘I don’t need to. The other craft are not far behind me. They are your real enemy, Clavain. Vastly better armed than
Nightshade
, and yet just as nimble and difficult to detect.’

‘That still doesn’t mean I’d be better off not killing you.’

Skade turned around and raised her voice. ‘Bring Felka here.’

Half a minute later, two other Conjoiners appeared behind Skade, burdened with a spacesuited figure. Skade allowed them to pass it forwards. The visor was open so that Clavain could tell that the figure was Felka. She appeared unconscious, but he was certain that she was still alive.

‘Here. Take her.’

‘What’s wrong with her?’

‘Nothing fundamental,’ Skade said. ‘I told you she was becoming withdrawn, didn’t I? She misses her Wall very much. Perhaps she will improve in your care. But there is something you need to know, Clavain.’

He looked at her. ‘What?’

‘She isn’t your daughter. She never was. Everything she told you was a lie, to make you more likely to return. A plausible lie, and perhaps one she almost wanted to believe was true, but a lie nonetheless. Do you still want her now?’

He knew she was telling the truth. Skade would lie to hurt him, but only if it served her wider ambitions. She was not doing that now, although he dearly wished that she were.

His voice caught in his throat. ‘Why should I want her less?’

‘Be honest, Clavain. It might have made a difference.’

‘I came here to save someone I care for, that’s all.’ He fought to keep his voice from breaking. ‘Whether she’s my blood or not ... it doesn’t matter.’

‘No?’

‘Not at all.’

‘Good. Then I believe our business here is done. Felka has served us both well, Clavain. She protected me from you, and she was able to bring out the co-operative side of the Wolf, something I could never have done on my own.’

‘The Wolf?’

‘Oh, sorry, didn’t I mention the Wolf?’

‘Let’s leave,’ Scorpio said.

‘No. Not just yet. I want to know what she meant.’

‘I meant exactly what I said, Clavain.’ With loving care, Skade replaced her own head, blinking at the moment when it clicked home. ‘I brought the Wolf with me because I imagined it might prove valuable. Well, I was right.’

‘You mean you brought Galiana’s body?’

‘I brought Galiana,’ Skade corrected. ‘She isn’t dead, Clavain. Not in the way you always thought she was. I reached her shortly after she returned from deep space. Her personality and memories were still there, perfectly intact. We had conversations, she and I. She asked about you - and of Felka - and I told her a small white lie; it was better for all of us that she think you dead. She was already losing the battle, you see. The Wolf was trying to take her over, and in the end she wasn’t strong enough to fight it. But it didn’t kill her, even then. It kept her mind intact because it found her memories useful. It also knew that Galiana was precious to us, and so we would do nothing against it that would harm her.’

Clavain looked at her, hoping against hope that she was lying to him as she had lied before, but knowing that this was now the truth. And although he knew the answer she would give, he had to ask the question all the same.

‘Will you give her to me?’

‘No.’ Skade raised a black metal finger. ‘You leave with Felka only, or you leave with nothing. It’s your choice. But Galiana stays here.’ Almost as an afterthought she added, ‘Oh, and in case you were wondering, I do know about the pinhead munitions you and the pig left behind you.’

‘You won’t find them all in time,’ Scorpio said.

‘I won’t have to find them,’ Skade said. ‘Will I, Clavain? Because having Galiana protects me as fully as when I had Felka. No. I won’t show her to you. It isn’t necessary. Felka will tell you that she is here. She met the Wolf, too - didn’t you?’

But Felka did not stir.

‘C’mon,’ Scorpio said. ‘Let’s leave before she changes her mind.’

Clavain was with Felka when she came around. He was sitting in a seat next to her bed, scratching at his beard, a grasshopperlike
scritch, scritch, scritch
that burrowed remorselessly into her subconscious and tugged her towards wakefulness. She had been dreaming of Mars, dreaming of her Wall, dreaming of being lost in the endless, consuming task of maintaining the Wall’s inviolability.

‘Felka.’ His voice was sharp, almost stern. ‘Felka. Wake up. This is Clavain. You’re amongst friends now.’

‘Where is Skade?’ she asked.

‘I left Skade behind. She isn’t your concern now.’ Clavain’s hand rested on hers. ‘I’m just relieved that you’re all right. It’s good to see you again, Felka. There were times when I never thought this would happen.’

She had come around in a room that did not look like any of those she had seen on
Nightshade
. It had a slightly rustic feel. She was clearly aboard a ship, but it was not a sleekly engineered thing like the last vessel.

‘You never said goodbye to me before you defected,’ she said.

‘I know.’ Clavain poked a finger into the folds of one eye. He looked weary, older than she remembered him from their last meeting. ‘I know, and I apologise. But it was deliberate. You’d have talked me out of it.’ His tone became accusatory. ‘Wouldn’t you?’

‘I only wanted you to take care of yourself. That was why I convinced you to join the Closed Council.’

‘On balance, that was probably a mistake, wasn’t it?’ His tone had softened. He was, she was reasonably certain, smiling.

‘If you call this taking care of yourself, then yes, I’d have to admit it wasn’t quite what I had in mind.’

‘Did Skade take care of you?’

‘She wanted me to help her. I didn’t. I became . . . withdrawn. I didn’t want to hear that she had killed you. She tried very hard, Clavain.’

‘I know.’

‘She has Galiana.’

‘I know that as well,’ he said. ‘Remontoire, Scorpio and I placed demolition charges across her ship. Even now we could destroy it, if I was prepared to delay our arrival at Resurgam.’

Felka forced herself into a sitting position. ‘Listen to me carefully, Clavain.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘You must kill Skade. It doesn’t matter that she has Galiana. It’s what Galiana would want you to do.’

‘I know,’ Clavain said. ‘But that doesn’t make it any easier to do.’

‘No.’ Felka raised her voice, not afraid to sound angry with the man who had just saved her. ‘No. You don’t understand. I mean it is exactly what Galiana would want you to do. I
know
, Clavain. I touched her mind again, when we met the Wolf.’

‘There’s no part of Galiana still there, Felka.’

‘There is. The Wolf did its best to hide her, but ... I could sense her.’ She looked into his face, studying its ancient, latent mysteries. Of all the faces she knew, this was the one she had the least trouble recognising, but what exactly did that mean? Were they united by anything more than contingency, circumstance and shared history? She remembered how she had lied to Clavain about being his daughter. Nothing in his mood suggested that he had learned of that lie.

‘Felka ...’

‘Listen to me, Clavain.’ She clasped his hand, squeezing it to demand his attention. ‘Listen to me. I never told you this before because it disturbed me too much. But in the Exordium experiments, I became aware of a mind reaching towards mine, from the future. I sensed unspeakable evil. But I also sensed something that I recognised. It was Galiana.’

‘No . . .’ Clavain said.

She squeezed his hand harder. ‘It’s the truth. But it wasn’t her fault. I see it now. It was her mind, after the Wolf had taken her over. Skade allowed the Wolf to participate in the experiments. She needed its advice about the machinery.’

Clavain shook his head. ‘The Wolf would never have collaborated with Skade.’

‘But it did. She convinced it that it needed to help her. That way she would recover the weapons, not you.’

‘How would that benefit the Wolf?’

‘It wouldn’t. But it was better that the weapons be seized by an agency that the Wolf had some influence over, rather than a third party like yourself. So it agreed to help her, knowing that it could always find a way to destroy the weapons once they were close at hand. I was there, Clavain, in its domain.’

‘The Wolf allowed that?’

‘It demanded it. Or rather, the part of it that was still Galiana did.’ Felka paused. She knew how difficult this must be for Clavain. It was agonising for her, and yet Galiana had meant even more to Clavain.

‘Then there would have to be a part of Galiana that still remembers us, is that what you mean? A part that still remembers what it was like before?’

‘She still remembers, Clavain. She still remembers, and she still feels.’ Again Felka paused, knowing that this was going to be the hardest part of all. ‘That’s why you have to do it.’

‘Do what?’

‘What you always planned to do before Skade told you that she had Galiana. You have to destroy the Wolf.’ Again she looked into his face, marvelling at its age, feeling sorrow for what she was doing to him. ‘You have to destroy the ship.’

‘But if I do that,’ Clavain said suddenly and excitedly, as if he had spotted a fatal flaw in Felka’s argument, ‘I’ll kill Galiana.’

‘I know,’ Felka said. ‘I know. But you still have to do it.’

‘You can’t know that.’

‘I can, and I do. I felt her, Clavain. I felt her willing you to do this.’

He watched it alone and in silence, from the vantage point of the observation cupola near
Zodiacal Light’
s prow. He had given instructions that he was to remain undisturbed until he made himself available again, even though that might mean many hours of solitude.

After forty-five minutes his eyes had become highly dark-adapted. He stared into the sea of endless night behind his ship, waiting for the sign that the work was done. The occasional cosmic ray scratched a false trail across his vision, but he knew that the signature of the event would be different and impossible to mistake. Against that darkness, too, it would be unmissable.

It grew from the heart of blackness: a blue-white glint that flared to its maximum brightness over the course of three or four seconds, and then declined slowly, ramping down through spectral shades of red and rust-brown. It burned a vivid hole into his vision, a searing violet dot that remained even when he closed his eyes.

He had destroyed
Nightshade
.

Skade, despite her best efforts, had not located all the demolition charges that they had glued to her ship. And because they were pinheads, it had only taken one to do the necessary work. The demolition charge had merely been the initiator for the much larger cascade of detonations: first the antimatter-fuelled and -tipped warheads, and then the Conjoiner drives themselves. It would have been instantaneous, and there would have been no warning.

He thought of Galiana, too. Skade had assumed that he would never attack the ship once he knew or even suspected that she was aboard.

And perhaps Skade had been right, too.

But Felka had convinced him that it had to be done. She alone had touched Galiana’s mind and felt the agony of the Wolf’s presence. She alone had been able to convey that single, simple message back to Clavain.

Kill me
.

And so he had.

He started weeping as the full realisation of what he had done hit home. There had always been the tiniest possibility that she could be made well again. He had, he supposed, never fully come to terms with her absence because that tiny hope had always made it possible to deny the fact of her death.