The Black Lung Captain (38 page)

'Trinica, do you ever question what you're doing?' he said.

She peered suspiciously at the pastry in her hand. 'Should I?'

'No, I mean, do you ever wonder if you're on the right road?'

'My road chose me, rather than the other way around.'

'But, I mean . . . You're rich, right? Even without your family. You could sel your craft, retire. Do anything you wanted.'

She laughed a little laugh. 'Like what? Keep bees? Potter about my manse looking at the flowers?'

'You could read. You always liked to read.'

Trinica gave him a look that was midway between indulgent and patronising. 'I rather think it's you we're talking about here, not me.'

She was right. It had begun as an idle thought, but it had always been heading somewhere. He knitted his fingers behind his head, trying to think of a way to explain the empty, directionless feeling he'd had ever since this whole affair began.

'Let me guess,' said Trinica. 'You're looking for something, but you don't know what it is.'

He was amazed that she'd summed it up so neatly. 'How'd you know?'

'Because you've been saying the same thing since you were seventeen.'

Frey looked blank. 'Have I?'

'Yes!' she said. 'When I met you, you were flying for my father. You'd mortgaged yourself to the eyebals to afford a second-hand rust bucket caled the
Ketty
Jay,
but you were regretting it already, because you'd decided you wanted to join the Navy and fly a frigate.'

Frey did dimly recal wanting to join the Navy at some point, but it seemed unimaginable now.

'Then you decided you were in love with me, and you wanted to be with me for ever, and we al know how that turned out.'

Again, there was no hurt or accusation in the tone. Simple fact. He was a little offended that she could talk about it so lightly.

'I
did
join the Navy!' he said, suddenly remembering. 'Second Aerium War, flying cargo to the front.'

'You didn't
join the Navy
,' she said. 'You flew a lot of insanely dangerous freelance missions with the intention of getting yourself kiled. And when you almost did, you
blamed
the Navy and you've hated them ever since.'

She had him there. He tried to think of a rejoinder and couldn't.

'Sorry, Darian. I don't mean to rake over old coals. I'm just making a point. You don't know what you want. You never have.'

Frey thought of Amalicia Thade, how he'd run away from a life of luxury with a beautiful woman. 'Things just seem so much better in theory than in practice. I even wanted to be a pirate for a while, like a
real
pirate. But it turns out I'm just not that cold-blooded. No offence.'

'None taken,' she said, sipping at her coffee.

"I suppose, at some point, you just have to make a choice and stick to it." he said, unconvincingly. 'Make the best of things.'

'So they say.'

'Hardly seems fair, does it? Al that compromise. Never quite getting what you dreamed of.'

'No one gets what they dream of, Darian. That's why they cal them dreams.'

'You think so?'

'Even if you get everything you ever wanted, it's rarely al it's cracked up to be. The rich are as unhappy and screwed-up as the poor. Just in a different way."

She looked down into the black surface of her coffee. 'You can't get away from yourself.'

'What does
that
mean?'

'Wel, wherever you go, whatever you do, you're stil
you
. You can change your surroundings, start a new life, but you'l always fal into the same old patterns, make the same kind of friends, commit the same mistakes. The thing you need to change is yourself.'

'What's wrong with we?' Frey protested indignantly.

'I'm speaking generaly. The thing a
person
has to change is themselves.'

'Like you did?'

'Like I did.'

'And you're happier?'

'No,' she said. 'But I'm alive.'

She gave him a sad sort of smile. Frey was overwhelmed by a surge of affection. That smile made him want to sweep her up in his arms, to protect her from al harm, to erase the damage of the past somehow.

'I forgot what it was like, talking to you,' he said. 'I mean, realy talking, without al the threats and recriminations and stuff.'

'We have a lot to recriminate about,' she said.

He opened his mouth to speak, to say something complimentary, something to express his feelings, even in a smal way. But she'd already detected the change in him. She'd seen the tenderness in his eyes and heard the softening of his voice.

'Darian, don't,' she said quietly.

So he didn't. The feeling curled up and died in the heat of bitterness and embarrassment. He got to his feet and threw some money on the table.

'Let's go see this professor, then,' he said.

Trinica nodded wordlessly, left her coffee, and folowed him.

Professor Kraylock was a smal, thin, elderly man, with a tidy white moustache and a bald head speckled with liver spots. Little round glasses perched on a nose purpled with broken veins: the sign of a man who enjoyed his hard liquor. He was dwarfed by his chair and a colossal desk of walnut and leather. Sunlight beamed through two tal, arched windows behind him, edging him in dazzling light and casting his face into shadow. Blazing dust motes hung in the air around him.

Frey and Trinica sat on the other side of the desk. Trinica and the professor were talking and laughing. Preamble stuff: greetings, inquiries about each other's health, that kind of thing. Frey had stayed largely silent. He wasn't good making smal talk with educated folk.

Trinica was, though. She chatted pleasantly with Kraylock, asking him about his studies and the affairs of the university, commenting on some rare sculpture he had in an alcove. This was the Trinica he remembered. The Trinica who would charm the socks off her father's guests at some swanky dinner function. The Trinica who you could talk to for hours, because she made you feel that everything you said was fascinating and important.

Frey's eyes roamed the study, idly wondering if there was anything worth stealing. There was a lot of potentialy valuable junk here. A brass orrery, an ornamental spyglass. Furniture that looked older than the planet. And books. Lots of books.

Frey distrusted books. He had a sneaking suspicion that most people only bought them to make themselves seem impressive. He couldn't possibly imagine anyone reading so many massive, boring tomes. Had Kraylock
really
ploughed through every one of the forty volumes of the
Encyclopaedia Vardia?
Or the whole of
Abric's Discourses on The Nature of Mankind?
He doubted it.

'I do appreciate you taking the time to speak with us,' Trinica was saying. 'But could I ask why Professor Grist wasn't able to meet us himself?'

'Because he's dead,' Kraylock replied. 'In fact, I was rather surprised you didn't know that yourself. It's been almost two years now.'

Great
, thought Frey.
Just great.

Trinica looked appropriately bewildered. 'I'm sorry. We didn't know.'

'You didn't, hmm? Your letter said you were interested in discussing his research. What research, exactly, were you interested in discussing?'

It was obvious by his tone that the game was up before it had begun. He didn't believe their cover story for a moment. Trinica was stil searching for a response when Frey leaned forward. 'Look,' he said. 'We're not students. We're searching for Professor Grist's son, Harvin. He's stolen something from us and we want it back. Wel, actualy the Awakeners stole it first, but that's by the by. We were hoping to talk to his dad and get an idea where he was. But his dad's dead, so . . .'

He spread his hands. 'Sorry to have wasted your time.'

He was getting out of his chair when Kraylock spoke. 'The Awakeners, you said. They stole something from you?'

'Right.'

'May I hazard a guess as to what it was?'

'If you like.'

'Something to do with the Manes?'

Frey became suddenly interested again. 'That's quite a guess.'

Kraylock motioned at him with one thin hand. 'Sit down.'

Frey did so. Kraylock regarded them both from behind his glasses. 'Do you intend to kil him? Harvin, I mean?'

Trinica leaned forward, her face solemn. 'He has a Mane artefact that could be extremely dangerous. We believe he intends to use it to cause harm to a lot of people. We're trying to stop him. But first we need to find him.'

Kraylock studied them, searching for a lie, finding none. Eventualy he sighed. 'That boy,' he said. 'He was nothing but heartache for Maurin. I always knew he'd come to a bad end.'

'Can you tel us about Maurin Grist?' Trinica said. 'What was his field of research?'

Kraylock blinked. 'Isn't it obvious? Manes. He was foremost authority on Manes in Vardia. Perhaps the world.'

Frey and Trinica exchanged a glance.

'We were friends for thirty years,' he said. 'We spoke often about his research. He believed the Manes' condition was a result of daemonic possession. That is nothing new, of course. It is a theory that has been widely discussed in the scientific community. But his unique idea concerned the nature of the daemon itself. Do you know what a symbiote is?'

Trinica gave the answer. Frey suspected it was more for his sake than anything else. 'It's an entity that bonds with another entity for the mutual benefit of both.'

'Exactly. The daemon doesn't consume or destroy its host. Maurin had assembled witness testimonies from survivors of Mane raids. He—'

'Hang on,' said Frey. 'I though Manes didn't leave survivors? I heard they hunt down everyone. They say there's no point hiding from them; they even get you inside locked rooms.'

Kraylock snorted, irritated at being interrupted. 'It's true there have been cases where Manes have got into apparently impossible places. When the bodies are found, the doors are stil locked from the inside. No one knows how the A lanes do it. But no, they don't hunt down everyone. There have been plenty of survivors over the years.' He glared at Frey. 'May I continue?'

'Sony,' said Frey meekly. He was having flashbacks to his days in the orphanage, when he'd be chewed out by teachers for interrupting in class.

'Anyway, Maurin saw evidence of free wil, decision-making, even arguments and disagreements. In the past, it was popularly supposed that they were mindless puppets, al under the control of a single guiding force - the daemon. It was the only way we could make sense of the way they acted.'

'How's that?' Frey asked.

'Wel, for example, their manner is savage and they are never heard to speak. But during a raid they wil al retreat together back to their dreadnoughts, without any signal being seen or heard. That, we thought, was evidence of control. They build and fly aircraft of their own, using technologies that even we don't understand. But they seemed so bestial, we had to believe that some other inteligence was responsible for that.'

'And Maurin thought otherwise?' Trinica prompted.

'He came to believe that the Manes were not being
controlled
at al. Instead, they were communicating silently. Speaking without words. He deduced from the evidence that each Mane always knew where the other A lanes were, even if they could not see or hear them. From this, he decided that they were connected in some way. The daemon forges that connection between its host bodies. But it does not control them. You've heard the story, perhaps, of the boy whose father came home a Mane?'

'I know it,' said Frey. 'It was thirty years later, but his father hadn't aged a day. The boy kiled him.'

'Yes. The tale is true. But before the boy kiled him, the father tried to reason with him. Father to son. Tried to persuade him to become a Mane. Spoke of brotherhood and belonging. The Navy has records of the son's story.'

There was a moment's silence while they digested that.

'So why do they look like they do?' Frey asked. When Trinica raised an eyebrow at him, he roled his eyes. 'Yes, yes, I judge by appearances.'

'It may be supposed that the daemon wreaks some physical change. Maurin never knew why. It differs from Mane to Mane. But there are certain advantages to having longer teeth, specialised vision, and so on. The daemon protects itself by enhancing its host.'

'Enhancing? By making them ugly?'

'They have no need to mate, as far as we can tel. They reproduce by converting other humans. Infecting them, like a virus. So why would they need to look pretty?'

Frey shrugged. 'I dunno. Just because.'

'Maurin theorised that mind-speech means that facial expressions and verbal communication become redundant. Perhaps they lose the finer facets of communication while keeping the more primal, animalistic ones, like snarling.'

Frey thought of Jez, back on board the
Ketty Jay.
What about her? Would she lose the power of speech? Was she part of this . . . connection that Kraylock was talking about? What if she was speaking to the Manes, even now? Feeding them information from al over Vardia while they waited eagerly to invade? How could he be sure where her loyalties lay?

'What happened to Maurin?' he asked.

The professor looked momentarily uncomfortable. The sun went behind a cloud, and the light from the windows dimmed. Kraylock seemed frail in his huge chair.

'He just died. There was no reason. His heart.' He rapped the desk with his knuckles. 'Stopped.'

His manner was too casual. Frey wasn't fooled. 'But you think there's more to it, don't you?'

Kraylock met his gaze steadily.

'The Awakeners,' Frey said. It had been the mention of the Awakeners that had got Kraylock talking in the first place. And from the Awakeners, Kraylock had guessed their business concerned the Manes. 'You think the Awakeners kiled him.'

'An Imperator,' Trinica said, catching on. 'His heart stopped, just like that.' She nodded to herself. 'Sounds like something they'd do. But why?'

Kraylock didn't reply for a moment. Debating whether or not to say anything. Then he sighed wearily and spoke.