Galactic North (32 page)

“Shallice’s men, by any chance?”

“I obtained the Denizen from Captain Ritter, of the
Number Theoretic.
I’ve had no dealings with Shallice, although I know the name. As for Ritter—in so far as one can ever believe anything said by an Ultra—I was told that he acquired the Denizen during routine trade with another group of Ultras, in some other godforsaken system. Apparently the Denizen was kept aboard ship as a pet. The Ultras had little appreciation of its wider value.”

“How did Ultras get hold of it in the first place?”

“I have no idea. Perhaps only the Denizen can tell us the whole story.”

“I’ll need better provenance than that.”

“You may never get it. We’re talking about beings created in utmost secrecy two hundred years ago. Their very existence was doubted even then. The best you can hope for is a plausible sequence of events. Clearly, the Denizen must have left Europa’s ocean after Cadmus-Asterius and the other hanging cities fell. If it passed into the hands of starfarers—Ultras, Demarchists, Conjoiners, it doesn’t matter which—it would have had a means to leave the system, and spend much of the intervening time either frozen or at relativistic speed, or both. It need not have experienced anything like the full bore of those two hundred years. Its memories of Europa may be remarkably sharp.”

“Have you asked it?”

“It doesn’t speak. Not all of them were created with the gift of language, Mister Grafenwalder. They were engineered to work as underwater slaves: to take orders rather than to issue them. They had to be intelligent, but they didn’t need to answer back.”

“Some of them had language.”

“The early prototypes, and those that were designed to mediate with their human overseers. Most of them were dumb.”

Grafenwalder allows the disappointment to wash over him, then bottles it away. He’d always hoped for a talker, but Rifugio is correct: it could never be guaranteed. And perhaps there is something in having one that won’t answer back, or plead. It’s going to be spending a lot of time in his tank, after all.

“You’ll treat it with kindness, of course,” Rifugio continues. “I didn’t liberate it from the Ultras just so it can become someone else’s pet, to be tormented between now and kingdom come. You’ll treat it as the sentient being it is.”

Grafenwalder sneers. “If you care so much, why not hand it over to the authorities?”

“Because they’d kill it, and then go after anyone who knew of its existence. Demarchists made the Denizens in one of their darker moments. They’re more enlightened now—so they’d like us to think, anyway. They certainly wouldn’t want something like a living and breathing Denizen—a representative of a sentient slave race—popping out of history’s cupboard, not when they’re bending over backwards to score moral points over the Conjoiners.”

“I’ll treat it fairly,” Grafenwalder says.

At that moment the analyser announces that the blood composition and genetic material are both consistent with Denizen origin, to high statistical certainty. It’s not enough to prove that Rifugio has one, but it’s a large step in the right direction. Plenty of hoaxers have already fallen at this hurdle.

“Well, Mister Grafenwalder? Have you reached a decision yet?”

“I want to see the other samples.”

Rifugio fingers another vial from the case. “Skin tissue. ”

“I don’t have the means to run a thorough analysis on skin—not here anyway. Give me what you have, and I’ll take it back with me.”

Rifugio looks pained. “I’d hoped that we might reach agreement here and now.”

“Then you hoped wrong. Unless you want to lower your price . . .”

“I’m afraid that part of the arrangement isn’t negotiable. However, I’m willing to let you take these samples away.” Rifugio snaps shut the lid. “As a further token of my goodwill, I’ll provide you with a moving image of the living Denizen. But I will expect a speedy decision in return.”

Grafenwalder’s palanquin takes the sealed case and stores it inside its bombproof cargo hatch. “You’ll get it. Don’t worry about that.”

“Take me at my word, Mister Grafenwalder. You’re not the only collector with an eye for one of these monsters.”

Grafenwalder spends most of the return trip viewing the thirty-second movie clip, over and over again. It’s not the first time he’s seen moving imagery of something purporting to be a Denizen, but no other clip has withstood close scrutiny. This one is darker and grainier than some of the others, the swimming humanoid shifting in and out of focus, but there’s something eerily naturalistic about it, something that convinces him that it could be real. The Denizen looks plausible: it’s a monster, undoubtedly, but that monstrosity is the end result of logical design factors. It swims with effortless ease, propelling itself with the merest flick of the long fluked tail it wears in place of legs. It has arms, terminating in humanoid hands engineered for tool-use. Its head, when it swims towards the camera, merges seamlessly with its torso. It has eyes, very human eyes at that, but no nose, and its mouth is a smiling horizontal gash crammed with an unnerving excess of needle-sharp teeth. Looking at that movie, Grafenwalder feels more certain than ever that the creatures were real, and that at least one has survived. And as he studies the endlessly repeating thirty-second clip, he feels the closed book of his past creak open even wider. A question forms in his mind that he would rather not answer.

What
exactly
is it that he wants with the Denizen?

Things go tolerably well the next day, until the guests are almost ready to leave. They’ve seen the adult-phase hamadryad and registered due shock and awe. Grafenwalder is careful to remind them that, in addition to its size, this is also a living specimen, not some rotting corpse coaxed into a parodic imitation of life. Even Ursula Goodglass, who has to endure this, registers stoic approval. “You were lucky,” she tells Grafenwalder through gritted teeth. “You could just as easily have ended up with a dead one.”

“But then I wouldn’t have tried to pretend it was alive,” he tells her.

It’s Goodglass who has the last laugh today, however. She saves it until the guests are almost back aboard their shuttles.

“Friends,” she says, “what I’m about to mention in no way compares with the spectacle of an adult-phase hamadryad, but I have recently come into possession of something that I think you might find suitably diverting.”

“Something we’ve already seen two days ago?” asks Lysander Carroway.

“No. I chose to keep it under wraps then, thinking my little hamadryad would be spectacle enough for one day. It’s never been seen in public before, at least not in its present state.”

“Put us out of our misery,” says Alain Couperin.

“Drop by and see it for yourself,” Goodglass says, with a teasing twinkle in her eye. “Any time you like. No need to make an appointment. But—please—employ maximum discretion. This is one exhibit that I really don’t want the authorities to know about.”

For a moment Grafenwalder wonders whether she has the Denizen. But surely Rifugio can’t have lost faith in the deal already, when they’ve barely opened negotiations.

But if not a Denizen—what?

He has to know, even if it means the indignity of another visit to her miserable little habitat.

When he arrives at the Goodglass residence, hers is the only shuttle docked at the polar nub. He’s a little uncomfortable with being the only guest, but Goodglass did say to drop in whenever he liked, and he has given her fair warning of his approach. He’s waited a week before taking the trip. Ten days would have been better, but after five he’d already started hearing that she has something special; something indisputably unique. In the meantime, he has run every conceivable test on the biological samples Rifugio gave him in Chasm City and received the same numbing result each time: Rifugio appears to be in possession of the genuine article. Yet Grafenwalder is still apprehensive about closing the deal.

Inside the habitat, he’s met by Goodglass and Edric, her palanquin-bound husband. The couple waste no time in escorting him to the new exhibit. Despite the indignities they have brought upon each other, it’s all smiles and strained politeness. No one so much as mentions hamadryads, dead or alive.

Grafenwalder isn’t quite sure what to expect, but he’s still surprised at the modest dimensions of the chamber Goodglass finally shows him. The walkway brings them level with the chamber’s floor, but there’s no armoured glass screen between them and the interior. Even with the lights dimmed, Grafenwalder can already make out an arrangement of tables, set in a U-formation like a series of laboratory benches. There are upright glassy things on the tables, but that’s as much as he can tell.

“I was expecting something alive,” he says quietly.

“It is alive,” she hisses back. “Or at least as alive as it ever was. Merely distributed. You’ll see in a moment.”

“I thought you said it was dangerous.”

“Potentially it would be, if it was ever put back together. ” She pauses and extends her hand across the gloomy threshold, as if beckoning to the nearest bench. Grafenwalder catches the bright red line on her hand where it has broken a previously invisible laser beam, sweeping up and down across the aperture. Quicker than an eyeblink, a heavy armoured shield slams down on the cell. “But that’s not to stop it getting out,” she says. “It’s to prevent anyone taking it and trying to put it back together. There are some who’d attempt it, just for the novelty.”

She pulls back her hand. After an interval, the shield whisks up into the ceiling.

“Whatever it is, you’re serious about it,” Grafenwalder says, intrigued despite himself.

“I have to be. You don’t take monsters lightly.”

She waves on the lights. The room brightens, but although he can now make out the benches and the equipment upon them, Grafenwalder is none the wiser.

“You’ll have to help me here,” he says.

“It’s all right. I wouldn’t know what to make of it either if I didn’t know what I was looking at.”

“My God,” he says wonderingly, as his eyes alight on one of the larger glass containers. “Isn’t that a brain?”

Goodglass nods. “What was once a human brain, yes. Before he—before
it
—started doing things to itself, throwing pieces of its humanity away like a child flinging toys from a sandpit. But what’s left of the brain is still alive, still conscious and still capable of sensory perception.” A mischievous smile appears on her face. “It knows we’re here, Carl. It’s aware of us. It’s listening to us, watching us, and wondering how it can escape and kill us.”

He allows himself to take in the grisly scene, now that its full implication is clearer. The brain is being kept alive in a liquid-filled vat, nourished by scarlet and green cables that ram into the grey-brown dough of the exposed cerebellum. A stump of spinal cord curls under the brain like an inverted question mark. It looks pickled and vinegary, cob-webbed with ancient growth and tiny filaments of spidery machinery. Next to the flask is a humming grey box whose multiple analog dials twitch with a suggestion of ongoing mental processes. But that’s not all. There are dozens of glass cases, linked to other boxes, and the boxes to each other, and each case holds something unspeakable. In one, an eye hangs suspended in a kind of artificial socket, equipped with little steering motors. The eye is looking straight at Grafenwalder, as is its lidless twin on another bench. Their optic nerves are knotted ropes of fatty white nerve tissue. In another flask floats a pair of lungs, hanging like a puffed-up kite. They expand and contract with a slow, wheezing rhythm.

“Who . . . ? What . . . ?” he says, barely whispering.

"Haven’t you guessed yet, Carl? Look over there. Look at the mask.”

He follows her direction. The mask sits at the end of the furthest table, on a black plinth. It’s less a mask than an entire skull, moulded in sleek silver metal. The face is handsome, in a streamlined, air-smoothed fashion, with an expression of calm amusement sculpted into the immobile lips and the blank silver surfaces that pass for eyes. It has strong cheekbones and a strong cleft chin. Between the lips is only a dark, grilled slot. The mask has a representation of human ears, and its crown is moulded with longitudinal silver waves, evoking hair that has been combed back and stiffened in place with lacquer.

Grafenwalder knows who the skull belongs to. There isn’t anyone alive around Yellowstone who wouldn’t recognise Dr. Trintignant. All that’s missing is Trintignant’s customary black Homburg.

But Trintignant shouldn’t be here. Trintignant shouldn’t be anywhere. He died years ago.

“This isn’t right,” he says. “You’ve been duped . . . sold a fake. This can’t be him.”

“It is. I have watertight provenance.”

“But Trintignant hasn’t been seen around Yellowstone for years . . . decades. He’s supposed to have died when Richard Swift—”

“I know about Richard Swift,” Ursula Goodglass informs him. “I met him once—or what was left of him after Trintignant had completed his business. I wanted Swift for an exhibit—I was prepared to pay him for his time—but he left the system again. They say he went back to that place—the same world where Trintignant supposedly killed himself.”

Grafenwalder thinks back to what he remembers of the scandal. It had been all over Yellowstone for a few weeks. “But Swift brought back Trintignant’s remains. The doctor had dismantled himself, left a suicide note.”

“That was his plan,” Goodglass says witheringly. “That was what he wanted us to think—that he’d ended his own life upon completing his finest work.”

“But he dismantled—”

“He took himself apart in a way that implied suicide. But it was a methodical dismantling. The parts were stored in a fashion that always allowed for their eventual reassembly. Trintignant was too vain not to want to stay alive and see what posterity made of his creations. But with the Yellowstone authorities closing in on him, staying in one piece wasn’t an option.”