House of Suns (29 page)

Aconite gaped. ‘But on the ship you told us—’

‘I was wrong, all right? I thought there might possibly be a working backup somewhere in the trove. There wasn’t. I screwed up.’

‘Why would anyone delete their own strand?’ Tansy asked, stupefied.

‘It was a mistake.’

‘An honest error. Happens to us all,’ Charlock said.

‘It wasn’t that kind of mistake,’ Campion said. ‘More of a misjudgement. I got rid of it because I was fed up hauling all that past around with me. I felt like a man dragging an endless chain of sacks behind him, each of them stuffed with enough experience for an entire lifetime.’ Seeing the expressions on the faces of many of the shatterlings, Campion reddened. ‘They were my memories - I did what I wanted with them. That’s my human right, above and beyond anything the Line tells me to do.’

‘Oh, Campion,’ I said, under my breath, because as much as I wanted to be on his side, I knew what he had done was almost unforgivable.

‘I didn’t think it really mattered,’ he went on. ‘I knew the threading apparatus would retain a clean copy, which would still be in its memory when we convened for the next reunion.’

‘The threading apparatus was destroyed by the H-guns,’ Betony said.

‘I wasn’t to know that.’

‘But you put us in a position where that was the only clean copy in existence.’

‘Hindsight’s a lovely thing,’ Campion said.

‘You were already skating very close to censure. This takes you well over the line.’

‘We were all smiles yesterday, Betony - what’s changed?’

‘You were owed a cordial welcome, like any survivors. But that doesn’t change the fact that you flouted Line traditions, took undue risks, treated your strand with cavalier disregard. Those weren’t your memories to erase, Campion - you were merely entrusted with them on behalf of Gentian Line.’

‘Well, whatever it is you want to do with me, you have my full permission. But can I just suggest that the punishment - whatever it is - waits until we’ve worked out who wants to kill us?’

‘Before we hang Campion out to dry,’ Cyphel said, ‘we should keep this in mind. We all received his strand. That means we still have fifty-odd copies of it between us, all of which will have been mnemonically tagged.’

‘But degraded by the passage of time, and buried under new memories,’ Mezereon said, sounding as if she was making a reasonable point rather than trying to twist the knife.

Cyphel nodded. ‘I know, but it isn’t irrecoverable. I’m not saying we can reassemble a clean copy, but I’m sure we can get very close if we pool our minds. If everyone is willing to submit to memory retrieval again, I can extract the individual versions of Campion’s strand and cross-correlate them until the holes are filled and the errors corrected.’

‘It’s worth a try,’ Aconite said.

‘That puts a lot of responsibility on your shoulders, Cyphel,’ said Betony.

‘I’ll cope.’

Betony tapped a chunk of bread against his head, like a judge about to deliver a verdict. ‘So shall it be. Mezereon will lead the inquisition into the prisoners. Cyphel will handle the retrieval of the Campion strand, insofar as it can be recovered. Tansy - I believe you are on patrol duty today. And that, I think, is more than enough business for one breakfast.’

‘Might I say something?’ I asked.

Betony smiled at me. ‘Naturally, Purslane.’

‘Are we to be censured or not? I’d like to get it out in the open, here and now.’

‘You’ve only just arrived. The nature of your censure is a complex one, with many factors. It can’t be decided instantly.’

‘As far as I’m concerned there’s only one factor. We consorted. The fact that we were late has nothing to do with it - it could have happened to anyone else. We brought the Line five survivors it wouldn’t otherwise have got back, and the prisoners, and Hesperus.’

‘To which we must also add Campion’s unfortunate treatment of his strand.’

‘Censure me for that, by all means, but leave Purslane out of it,’ Campion said.

‘Unfortunately, by consorting, by arriving together, by flaunting your feelings for each other, you have demonstrated your willingness to be censured as a couple. So shall it be.’

‘Shatterlings have wiped their strands before,’ I said. ‘No one got censured for it then, so why pick on Campion and me now?’

Betony looked strained. ‘Calm down, please. If there is to be censure it will be mild, and your former good conduct will be taken into account. There will be no talk of excommunication from the Line - nothing you have done even
begins
to warrant that. But there must be discipline, Purslane. Now more than ever.’

I sank back in my seat, feeling as if I had been slapped hard in the face. My hands were shaking, so I buried them in my lap. The worst thing was that I almost agreed with him. There did have to be discipline, especially considering our perilous position. Shatterlings had free will most of the time. But what if one of us were to whisk aboard our ship and head back to the reunion system, thereby alerting the ambushers to our hideaway? I would have no qualms about pursuing and executing a shatterling who did that, even if they were Gentian. I would even fire the gamma-cannon myself if I believed that the Line’s existence depended on it.

‘Can I make one request?’ I asked, when the colour had returned to my cheeks.

‘Go ahead,’ Betony said.

‘Before we arrived around Neume, Hesperus communicated a wish to Campion and me. It was clear that he wanted to be brought to Neume and into the presence of the Spirit of the Air.’

‘He made this explicit?’

‘As explicit as he could, given the circumstances.’ My throat grew dry;

I sensed that if I did not make my case convincingly now, I would not get a second chance. ‘I spoke to the magistrate already, but it wasn’t the right time to persuade her. Now I’d like Line backing to press for contact with the Spirit.’

‘Did you mention this to Cadence and Cascade?’

‘I didn’t want to mention the Spirit again with the magistrate around.’

‘They will have their own view as to how to proceed,’ Betony said. ‘If Hesperus is one of them, the simplest thing would be to hand him over and consider the matter closed.’

‘The simplest, but not necessarily the right thing,’ Aconite said. ‘If Hesperus communicated a specific desire to Purslane, we have to honour it.’

‘I agree,’ Henbane said.

‘But we can’t afford to anger the Machine People, either,’ said Whin, a male shatterling who had been silent until now. ‘If they want to examine Hesperus, what right do we have to insist otherwise?’

‘It does put us in a diplomatic bind,’ Sainfoin said thoughtfully. ‘But as a Line our responsibility has always been to our guests, above any other concerns. If Hesperus did make this request of Purslane, we must honour his wishes. That doesn’t necessarily imply a confrontation with the Machine People. Cadence and Cascade have been more than understanding until now, and I don’t expect that to change if we explain our predicament to them.’

‘You know them better than any of us,’ Betony said to Sainfoin, the shatterling who had brought the robots to the reunion in the first place.

‘They’re reasonable,’ she said. ‘They’ll see our side of things. But that doesn’t mean we should ignore any suggestions they make.’

Aconite said, ‘You have my unconditional backing, Purslane, for what it’s worth.’

‘Mine too,’ Mezereon said. ‘And you can include Valerian, Lucerne and Melilot. They’ll back you all the way when they learn what Hesperus did for us.’

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘Count me in,’ Henbane said.

Before the murmur of approval turned into a storm, Betony nodded once. ‘Very well - Purslane has Line authority to petition the Neume administration for access to the Spirit of the Air. But before you take the matter any further, Purslane ... have you the faintest idea what you’re dealing with?’

 

Campion came to my room later that morning, while I was waiting to hear back from the magistrate concerning my request for an audience. I was standing on the little low-walled balcony that jutted out from the side of the room, accessed through a matter-permeable window, composing my thoughts, trying to marshal the facts of my case into something resembling a persuasive, logically sustained argument. Betony’s had unsettled me, opening a chink of doubt where before there had been only neutron-dense certainty. I had gone into the trove and learned that the Spirit’s displeasure had brought down entire civilisations. But we also had the Spirit to thank for the fact that anyone could live on Neume in the first place. In the absence of any large-scale organisms, it was the Spirit that kept the atmosphere in its current dynamically unstable state, absorbing carbon dioxide from the air and returning oxygen. There was no way the machine intelligence was doing that simply for its own benefit.

So it tolerated us, even, perhaps, encouraged our presence. But that did not mean it would spare me if it judged me an irritation. I looked out towards the slivers of clear blue sky visible between the golden towers of Ymir and wondered if I had the nerve to do what had to be done.

‘I brought you this.’

I turned around at Campion’s voice, watching as he stepped through onto the balcony. He was clutching a piece of chocolate bread wrapped in paper.

‘Thank you.’

‘I didn’t have any more of an appetite than you did, but I reckoned you’d get some of yours back by mid-morning.’

I took the chocolate bread and bit into a corner. ‘You’re right, as usual. I’ve got a stomach full of butterflies, but I’m still hungry. How do you think we did back there?’

‘Atrociously. But I don’t think anyone could have done much better, given what we had to work with.’

‘I’m surprised at Betony.’

‘I’m not. He’s a schemer who’s just seen his chance to exert real influence within the Line. It was never a possibility when Fescue and the other alpha males were around, but now he’s almost got a clear field to himself.’

‘Don’t forget the alpha females.’

‘And did you see how he lorded it over that table, as if we’d already voted him emperor? And he has the gall to accuse
me
of flouting Line traditions! We’re supposed to be egalitarian, without leaders.’

‘In times of crisis, the Line is allowed to form a decision-making quorum.’

‘Yes - but we’ve managed to get by without one for most of our history. You can be sure that Betony was at the head of the queue when the idea of forming a new quorum was mooted. I wouldn’t be surprised if he suggested it. Why do we need a quorum, anyway? We’re perfectly capable of taking decisions en masse - more so now than ever.’

‘The others will keep him in check. We’ve still got friends. Did you see how they rallied when I asked for permission to visit the magistrate? Half the table was behind me.’

‘Hm.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Nothing, really. I’m just wondering whether that vote of support was as sympathetic as it appeared.’

‘How could it be anything other than sympathetic?’

‘Some of them could be hoping that you fall flat on your face, by being denied access. I wouldn’t even be surprised if one or two are hoping you do get access and then make a fool of yourself with the Spirit.’

‘No one wants me to die, though.’

‘No,’ Campion said. ‘They’re not that bad. Some of them may not like us, but we’re still kin. I wouldn’t wish death on another Gentian shatterling, and I don’t think the others are any different.’

‘I’d like to think so. I’m still worried about this censure thing, though. I feel as if there’s a sword hanging over me.’

‘If it works out with Hesperus, all our problems could be over.’

‘All of them?’

‘All right,’ Campion said, ‘some of them. But at least he’d speak up for us. Who’s going to doubt the word of a Machine Person?’

‘In other words, there’s even more reason to risk everything with the Spirit.’

‘That and the fact that he’s our friend, and it’d be great to have him back.’

‘I’ve been doing some reading. Betony wasn’t exaggerating - we could be putting ourselves at risk with the Spirit.’

‘We’ve been putting ourselves at risk since they hatched us.’

‘True.’ I finished the chocolate bread and started folding the paper into an origami dove. ‘Thanks for thinking of me. No matter what happens here, no matter what happens to us after Neume, I’m glad we’re together.’

‘I’m not going anywhere without you.’

‘At least our consorting is out in the open now. No need to be coy about it.’

Campion looked grave. ‘They’ll make us pay, one way or another. I hope you realise that.’

I finished the dove. It gained a pair of almond-coloured eyes and watercoloured feathers, and started flapping. I released it into the air and watched it fly away into the distance, heading off to be recycled. Campion and I held hands, then pulled ourselves close to each other. ‘Let them do their worst. I’m ready for it.’

Presently there was a chime from my room.

 

Jindabyne’s office was on the very summit of her building, in a foursided cupola affording excellent views in all directions. Wings, hung like ceremonial sabres, decorated the walls between the windows. Their glassy facets were stained in ruby, green and blue and inscribed with wavery lines of Ymirian script. There were also photographs and a couple of strange, rebus-like Neume art pieces, all of which resembled the blueprints for fiendishly difficult garden mazes. Three of the bulbous, convex windows revealed only a dense cityscape of golden spires, but the fourth, westerly facing window looked out to the silver desert, where the endlessly shifting barchans reached in serpentine waves all the way to the horizon. It was a clear, still day, and I could see a solitary white tower at the limit of visibility.