Redemption Ark

‘It’s a long story, Mr Clavain, and one I don’t intend to detain you with. Suffice it only to say the following. I vowed to save the creature from his tormentors — part of my plan for personal atonement, you might say. But I could not do it immediately. It took planning, a vast amount of forethought. I amassed a team of trusted helpers and made elaborate preparations. Years passed but the moment was never right. Then a decade went by. Two decades. Every night I dreamed of that thing suffering, and every night I renewed my vow to help him.’

‘And?’

‘It’s possible that someone betrayed me. Or else her intelligence was better than my own. The Mademoiselle reached the creature before I did. She brought him here, to this room. How, I don’t know; that alone must have taken enormous planning.’

Clavain looked down again, struggling to comprehend what kind of animal had needed a room this large as a prison. ‘She kept the creature here, in the Chateau?’

H nodded. ‘For many years. It was no simple matter to keep him alive, but the people who had imprisoned him before her had worked out exactly what needed to be done. The Mademoiselle had no particular interest in torturing him, I think; she was not cruel in that sense. But every instant of the creature’s continued existence was a kind of torture, even when his nervous system was not being poked and prodded with high-voltage electrodes. But she refused to let him die. Not until she had learned all that she could from him.’

H went on to tell Clavain that the Mademoiselle had found a way to communicate with the creature. As clever as the Mademoiselle had been, it was the creature that had expended the greater effort.

‘I gather there was an accident,’ H said. ‘A man fell into the creature’s pen, from all the way up here. He died instantly, but before they could get him out the creature, which was unrestrained, ate what remained of him. They had been feeding him morsels, you see, and until that moment he did not have very much idea of what his captors actually looked like.’

H’s voice grew quietly enthusiastic. ‘Anyway, a strange thing happened. A day later a wound appeared in the creature’s skin. The wound enlarged, forming a hole. There was no bleeding, and the wound looked very symmetrical and well formed. Structures lurked behind it, moving muscles. The wound was becoming a mouth. Later, it began to make humanlike vowel sounds. Another day or so passed and the creature was attempting recognisable words. Another day, and he was stringing those words together into simple sentences. The chilling part, from what I have gathered, was that the creature had inherited more than just the means to make language from the man he had eaten. He had absorbed his memories and personality, fusing them with his own.‘

‘Horrible,’ Clavain said.

‘Perhaps.’ H appeared unconvinced. ‘Certainly, it might be a useful strategy for an interstellar trading species that expected to encounter many other cultures. Instead of puzzling over translation algorithms, why not simply decode language at the level of biochemical representation? Eat your trading partner and become more like him. It would require some co-operation from the other party, but perhaps this was an accepted form of business millions of years ago.’

‘How did you learn all this?’

‘Ways and means, Mr Clavain. Even before the Mademoiselle beat me to the alien, I had become dimly aware of her existence. I had my own webs of influence in Chasm City, and she had hers. For the most part we were discrete, but now and then our activities would brush against each other. I was curious, so I tried to learn more. But she resisted my attempts to infiltrate the Chateau for many years. It was only when she had the creature that I think she became distracted by him, consumed by his alien puzzle. Then I was able to get agents into the building. You’ve met Zebra? She was one of them. Zebra learned what she could and put in place the conditions I needed for the takeover. But that was long after Skade had come here.’

Clavain thought things through. ‘So Skade must have known something about the alien?’

‘Evidently. You’re the Conjoiner, Mr Clavain — shouldn’t you know?’

‘I’ve learned too much already. That’s why I chose to defect.’

They walked on, exiting the prison. Clavain was as relieved to be out of it as when he had left the room holding the palanquin. Perhaps it was his imagination, but he felt as if some of the creature’s isolated torment had imprinted itself on the room’s atmosphere. There was a feeling of intense dread and confinement that only abated once he had left the room.

‘Where are you taking me now?’

‘To the basement first, because I think there is something there that will interest you, and then I will take you to some people I would very much like you to meet.’

Clavain said, ‘Do these people have something to do with Skade?’

‘I think everything’s to do with Skade, don’t you? I think something may have happened to her when she visited the Chateau.’