Redemption Ark

[Help me into it, please. The servitor can do it, but it always seems to take an eternity to do it properly.]

Help you into it? Remontoire queried.

[Grasp the support pillar immediately beneath my neck.]

Remontoire placed both hands around the silver pedestal and pulled. There was a soft click and the upper part, along with the head, came loose in his hands. He elevated it, finding it much heavier than he had imagined it would be. Hanging beneath the place where the pedestal had separated was a knot of slimy wriggling cables. They thrashed and groped like a fistful of eels.

[Now carry me — gently — to the servitor.]

Remontoire did as she asked. Perhaps the possibility of dropping the head flickered through his mind once or twice, though rationally he doubted that the fall would do Skade very much harm: the floor would most likely soften to absorb the impact. But he fought to keep such thoughts as well censored as he could.

[Now pop me down into the body of the servitor. The connections will establish themselves. Gently now… gently does it.]

He slid the silver core into the machine until he encountered resistance. Is that it?

[Yes.] Skade’s eyes widened perceptibly, and her skin took on a blush it had lacked before. [Yes. Connection established. Now, let’s see… motor control…]

The servitor’s forearm jerked violently forwards, the fist clenching and unclenching spasmodically. Skade pulled it back and held the outspread hand before her eyes, studying the mechanical anatomy of gloss-black and chrome with rapt fascination. The servitor was of a quaint design that resembled medieval armour; it was both beautiful and brutal.

You seem to have the hang of it.

The servitor took a shuffling step forwards, both arms held slightly in front of it. [Yes… This is my quickest adjustment yet. It almost makes me think I should instruct Delmar not to bother.]

‘Not to bother doing what?’ asked Felka.

[Healing my old body. I think I prefer this one. That’s a joke, incidentally.]

‘Of course,’ Felka said uneasily.

[But you should be grateful that this has happened to me. It makes me more likely to try to bring Clavain back into our possession alive.]

‘Why’s that?’

‘Because I would very much like him to see what he has done to me.’ Skade turned around with a creak of metal. ‘Now, there is something else you wanted to see, I think. Shall we continue?’

The suit of armour led them out of the room.

CHAPTER 15

A word pressed itself into Volyova’s skull, as hard and searing as a cattle brand.

[Ilia.]

She could not speak, could only shape her own thoughts in response. Yes. How do you know my name?

[I’ve come to know you. You’ve shown such interest in me — in us — that it was difficult not to know you in return.]

Again she moved to hammer on the door that had sealed her inside the cache weapon, but when she tried to lift her arm nothing happened. She was paralysed, though still able to breathe. The presence, whatever it was, continued to feel as if it was directly behind her, looking over her shoulder.

Who … She sensed a terrible mocking delight in her own ignorance.

[The controlling subpersona of this weapon, of course. You can call me Seventeen. Who else did you think I was?]

You speak Russish.

[I know your preferred natural language filters. Russish is easy enough. An old language. It hasn’t changed much since the time we were made.]

Why… now?

[You have never reached this deeply into one of us before, Ilia.]

I… have. Nearly.

[Perhaps. But never under quite these circumstances. Never with so much fear before you even began. You are quite desperate to use us, aren’t you? More than you’ve ever been before.]

She felt, despite still being paralysed, a tiny easing of her terror. So the presence was a computer program, no more than that. She had simply triggered a layer of the weapon’s control mechanism that she had never knowingly invoked before. The presence felt almost preternaturally evil, but that — and the paralysis — was obviously just a refinement of the usual fear-generation mechanism.

Volyova wondered how the weapon was talking to her. She had no implants, and yet the weapon’s voice was definitely speaking directly into her skull. It could only be that the chamber she was in was functioning as a kind of high-powered inverse trawl, stimulating brain function by the application of intense magnetic fields. If it could make her feel terror, Volyova supposed, and with such finesse, it would not have been a great deal more difficult for it to generate ghost signals along her auditory nerve or, more probably, in the hearing centre itself, and to pick up the anticipatory neural firing patterns that accompanied the intention to speak.

These are desperate times…

[So it would seem.]

Who made you?