Redemption Ark

‘I’ll consider it. In the meantime, Clavain, let’s get this little chat over with, shall we?’ Volyova smiled. ‘You caught me in the middle of something.’

Clavain’s image smiled back. ‘Nothing too serious, I hope.’

Even while she busied herself with the servitor, she continued the operation to deploy the cache weapons. She had told the Captain that she did not want him to make his presence known while the servitor was on, so his only means of speaking to her was through the same earpiece. He, in turn, was able to read her subvocal communications.

‘I don’t want Clavain learning any more than he has to,’ she had told the Captain. ‘Especially about you, and what’s happened to this ship.’

‘Why should Clavain learn anything? If the beta-level discovers something we don’t want it to know, we’ll just kill it.’

‘Clavain will ask questions later.’

‘If there is a later,’ the Captain had said.

‘Meaning what?’

‘Meaning… we aren’t intending to negotiate, are we?’

She escorted the servitor through the ship to the bridge, doing her best to pick a route that took her through the least strange parts of the interior. She observed the beta-level taking in its surroundings, obviously aware that something peculiar had happened to the ship. Yet it did not ask her any questions directly related to the plague transformations. It was, frankly, a lost battle in any case. The approaching ship would soon have the necessary resolution to glimpse Infinity for itself, and then it would learn of the baroque external transformations.

‘Ilia,’ Clavain’s voice said. ‘Let’s not beat about the bush. We want the thirty-three items now in your possession, and we want them very badly. Do you admit knowledge of the items in question?’

‘It would be a tiny bit implausible to deny it, I think.’

‘Good.’ Clavain’s image nodded emphatically. ‘That’s progress. At least we’re clear that the items exist.’

Volyova shrugged. ‘So if we’re not going to beat about the bush, why don’t we call them what they are? They’re weapons, Clavain. You know it. I know it. They know it, in all likelihood.’

She slipped her goggles off for a moment. Clavain’s servitor strode around the room, its movements almost but not quite fluidly human. She replaced the goggles, and the overlaid image moved with the same puppetlike strides.

‘I like you better already, Ilia. Yes, they’re weapons. Very old weapons, of rather obscure origin.’

‘Don’t bullshit me, Clavain. If you know about the weapons, you probably have just as much idea as me about who made them, maybe more. Well, here’s my guess: I think the Conjoiners made them. What do you say to that?’

‘You’re warm, I’ll give you that.’

‘Warm?’

‘Hot. Very hot, as it happens.’

‘Start telling me what the hell this is all about, Clavain. If they’re Conjoiner weapons, how have you only just found out about them?’

‘They emit tracer signals, Ilia. We homed in on them.’

‘But you’re not Conjoiners.’

‘No…’ Clavain conceded this point with a sweep of one arm, neatly synchronised with the servitor. ‘But I’ll be honest with you, if only because it might help swing the negotiations in my favour. The Conjoiners do want those weapons back. And they’re on their way here as well. As a matter of fact, there’s a whole fleet of heavily armed Conjoiner vessels immediately behind Zodiacal Light’

She remembered what the pig, Scorpio, had said about Clavain’s crew bloodying the noses of the spiders. ‘Why tell me this?’ Volyova said.

‘It alarms you, I see. I don’t blame you for that. I’d be alarmed, too.’ The image scratched its beard. ‘That’s why you should consider negotiating with me first. Let me take the weapons off your hands. I’ll deal with the Conjoiners.’

‘Why do you think you’d have any more luck than me, Clavain?’

‘Couple of reasons, Ilia. One, I’ve already outsmarted them on a few occasions. Two, and perhaps more pertinent, until very recently I was one.’

The Captain whispered in her ear. ‘I’ve done a check, Ilia. There was a Nevil Clavain with Conjoiner connections.’

Volyova addressed Clavain. ‘And you think that would make a difference, Clavain?’

He nodded. ‘The Conjoiners aren’t vindictive. They’ll leave you alone if you have nothing to offer them. If you still have the weapons, however, they’ll take you apart.’

‘There’s a small flaw in your thinking,’ Volyova said. ‘If I had the weapons, wouldn’t I be the one doing the taking apart?’

Clavain winked at her. ‘Know how to use them that well, do you?’

‘I have some experience.’

‘No, you don’t. You’ve barely switched the bloody things on, Ilia. If you had, we’d have detected them centuries ago. Don’t overestimate your familiarity with technologies you barely understand. It could be your undoing.’

‘I’ll be the judge of that, won’t I?’

Clavain — she had to stop thinking of it as Clavain — scratched his beard again. ‘I didn’t mean to offend. But the weapons are dangerous. I’m quite sincere in my suggestion that you hand them over now and let me worry about them.’

‘And if I say no?’