Redemption Ark

‘I didn’t expect to survive. But my aim wasn’t quite right.’

The servitor strode towards the bed. Unclothed of Clavain’s image, its motions appeared automatically more machinelike and threatening.

‘They know that I injected medichines into your head,’ it said, its voice no longer humanoid. ‘And now they know that you know.’

‘Clavain… the beta-level… had no choice,’ Volyova said before either of her two human visitors could speak. ‘Without the medichines I’d be dead now. Do they horrify me? Yes. Utterly, to the absolute core of my being. I am racked with revulsion at the thought of them crawling inside my skull like so many spiders and snakes. At the same time, I accept the necessity of them. They are the tools I have always worked with, after all. And I am fully aware that they cannot work miracles. Too much damage has been done. I am not amenable to repair.’

‘We’ll find a way, Ilia,’ Khouri said. ‘Your injuries can’t be…’

Volyova’s whisper of a voice cut her off. ‘Forget me. I don’t matter. Only the weapons matter now. They are my children, spiteful and wicked as they may be, and I won’t have them falling into the wrong hands.’

‘Now we seem to be getting to the crux of things,’ Thorn said.

‘Clavain — the real Clavain — wants the weapons,’ Volyova said. ‘By his own estimation he has the means to take them from us.’ Her voice grew louder. ‘Isn’t that so, Clavain?’

The servitor bowed. ‘I’d much rather negotiate their handover, Ilia, as you know, especially now that I’ve invested time in your welfare. But make no mistake. My counterpart is capable of a great deal of ruthlessness in pursuit of a just cause. He believes he has right on his side. And men who think they have right on their side are always the most dangerous sort.’

‘Why are you telling us that?’ Khouri said.

‘It’s in his — our — best interests,’ the servitor said amiably. ‘I’d far rather convince you to give up the weapons without a fight. At the very least we’d avoid any risk of damaging the damned things.’

‘You don’t seem like a monster to me,’ Khouri said.

‘I’m not,’ the servitor replied. ‘And nor is my counterpart. He’ll always choose the path of least bloodshed. But if some bloodshed is required… well, my counterpart won’t flinch from a little surgical butchery. Especially not now.’

The servitor said the last with such emphasis that Thorn asked, ‘Why not now?’

‘Because of what he has had to do to get this far.’ The servitor paused, its openwork head scanning each of them. ‘He betrayed everything that he had believed in for four hundred years. That wasn’t done lightly, I assure you. He lied to his friends and left behind his loved ones, knowing that it was the only way to get this done. And lately he took a terrible decision. He destroyed something that he loved very much. It cost him a great deal of pain. In that sense, I am not an accurate copy of the real Clavain. My personality was shaped before that dreadful act.’

Volyova’s voice rasped out again, instantly commanding their attention. ‘The real Clavain isn’t like you?’

‘I’m a sketch taken before a terrible darkness fell across his life, Ilia. I can only speculate on the extent to which we differ. But I would not like to trifle with my counterpart in his current state of mind.’

‘Psychological warfare,’ she hissed.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘That is why you’ve come, isn’t it? Not to help us negotiate a sensible settlement, but to put the fear of God into us.’

The servitor bowed again, with something of the same mechanical modesty. ‘If I were to achieve that,’ Clavain said, ‘I would consider my work well done. The path of least bloodshed, remember?’

‘You want bloodshed,’ Ilia Volyova said, ‘you’ve come to the right woman.’

Shortly afterwards she fell into a different state of consciousness, something perhaps not too far from sleep. The displays relaxed, sine waves and Fourier harmonic histograms reflecting a seismic shift in major neural activity. Her visitors observed her in that state for several minutes, wondering to themselves whether she was dreaming or scheming, or if the distinction even mattered.