Redemption Ark

He wondered if she had read his reaction — the minute dilation of his pupils that betrayed his guilt. Or perhaps she had a laser trained on the back of his neck, sampling his skin’s salinity. Either way, she might have a good idea of what he thought of her assertion. Perhaps she even had a trawl somewhere in this building. It was rumoured that Inquisition House had at least one, lovingly tended since the early days of the colony.

‘I don’t know who you think I am.’

‘Oh, but you do. So why play games? Come with me.’

He followed her into the smaller room. It was windowless. He glanced around, looking for signs of a trap or any indication that the room might double as an interrogation chamber, but it looked innocent enough. The walls were lined with bulging paperwork-stuffed shelves, except for one that was largely occupied by a map of Resurgam studded with many pins and lights. She offered him a chair on one side of the large desk that took up much of the floor space. Another woman was already seated opposite him, with her elbows propped on the edge of the desk, looking faintly bored. She was older than the Inquisitor, but possessed something of the same wiry build. She wore a cap and a heavy drab-coloured coat with a fleeced collar and cuffs. Both women struck him as faintly avian, thin yet quick and strong-boned. The one behind the desk was smoking.

He settled down into the seat that the Inquisitor had indicated.

‘Coffee?’

‘No thanks.’

The other woman pushed her pack of cigarettes towards him. ‘Have a smoke, then.’

‘I’ll pass on those as well.’ But he picked up the packet and turned it over, studying the odd markings and sigils. It hadn’t been manufactured in Cuvier. In fact, it didn’t look as if it had been manufactured anywhere on Resurgam. He pushed it back towards the older woman. ‘Can I go now?’

‘No. We haven’t even started yet.’ The Inquisitor eased into her own seat, next to the other woman, and fixed herself a mug of coffee. ‘Introductions, I think. You know who you are, and we know who you are, but you probably don’t know much about us. You have an idea about me, of course… but probably not a very accurate one. My name is Vuilleumier. This is my colleague…’

Trina,‘ she said.

‘Irina… yes. And you, of course, are Thorn; the man who has done so much harm of late.’

‘I’m not Thorn. The government doesn’t have a clue who Thorn is.’

‘How would you know?’

‘I read the papers, like everyone else.’

‘You’re right. Internal Threats doesn’t have much of an idea who Thorn is. But only because I have been doing my best to keep that particular department off your trail. Have you any idea how much effort that’s cost me? How much personal anguish?’

He shrugged, doing his best to look neither interested nor surprised. ‘That’s your problem, not mine.’

‘Hardly the gratitude I was expecting, Thorn. But we’ll let it pass. You don’t know the big picture yet, so it’s understandable.’

‘What big picture?’

‘We’ll come to that in good time. But let’s talk about you for a moment.’ She patted a fat government folder resting at the edge of the desk and then pushed it over to him. ‘Go on, open it. Have a gander.’

He looked at her for several seconds before moving. He opened the folder at random and then thumbed back and forth through the paperwork jammed within. It was like opening a box of snakes. His whole life was here, annotated and cross-referenced in excruciating detail. His real name — Renzo; his personal details. Every public move he had made in the last five years. Every significant antigovernment action he had played any significant part in — voice transcripts, photographs, forensic evidence, long-winded reports.

‘Makes interesting reading, doesn’t it?’ said the other woman.

He flicked through the rest of it in horror, a plummeting sensation in his gut. There was enough to have him executed many times over, after ten separate show trials.

‘I don’t understand,’ he said feebly. He did not want to give up now — not after so long — but anything else suddenly seemed futile.

‘What don’t you understand, Thorn?’ asked Vuilleumier.

‘This department… it’s External Threats, not Internal Threats. You’re the person in charge of finding the Triumvir. I’m not the… Thorn isn’t the one you’re interested in.’

‘You are now.’ She knocked back some coffee.

The other woman puffed on a cigarette. ‘The fact is, Thorn, my colleague and I have been engaged in a concerted effort to sabotage the activities of Internal Threats. We’ve been doing our best to make sure they don’t catch you. That’s why we’ve needed to know at least as much about you as they do, if not more.’

She had a funny accent, this one. He tried to place it and found that he couldn’t. Except… had he heard it once before, when he was younger? He racked his memory but nothing came.

‘Why sabotage them?’ he asked.

‘Because we want you alive, not dead.’ She smiled, quick and fast like a monkey.

‘Well, that’s reassuring.’