Redemption Ark

‘I’ve learned to take my pleasures where I can find them, Ana. Especially in times of deep existential crisis…’ Ilya Volyova flicked a cigarette butt into the shadows and lit herself another.

They continued in silence. Eventually they reached one of the elevator shafts that threaded the ship lengthwise, like the main elevator shaft in a skyscraper. With the ship rotating rather than being under thrust it was much easier to move along its lateral axis. But it was still four kilometres from the tip of the ship to its tail, so it made sense to use the shafts wherever possible. To Khouri’s surprise, a car was waiting for them in the shaft. She followed Volyova into it with moderate trepidation, but the car looked normal inside and accelerated smoothly enough.

‘The elevators are still working?’ Khouri asked.

‘They’re a key shipboard system,’ Volyova said. ‘Remember, I’ve got tools for containing the plague. They don’t work perfectly, but I can at least steer the disease clear of anything I don’t want to become too corrupted. And the Captain himself is occasionally willing to assist. The transformations aren’t totally out of his control, it seems.’

Volyova had finally raised the matter of the Captain. Until that moment Khouri had been clinging to the hope that it might all turn out to be a bad dream she had confused with reality. But there it was. The Captain was very much alive.

‘What about the engines?’

‘Still functionally intact, as far as I can tell. But only the Captain has control of them.’

‘Have you been talking with him?’

‘I’m not sure talking is quite the word I’d use. Communicating, possibly… but even that might be stretching things.’

The elevator veered, switching between shafts. The shaft tubes were mostly transparent, but the elevator spent much of its time whisking between densely packed decks or boring through furlongs of solid hull material. Now and then, through the window, Khouri saw dank chambers zoom by. Mostly they were too large for her to see the other side in the weakly reflected light of the elevator. There were five chambers which were the largest of all, huge enough to hold cathedrals. She thought of the one Volyova had shown her during her first tour of Infinity, the one that held the forty horrors. There were fewer than forty of them now, but that was surely still enough to make a difference. Even, perhaps, against an enemy like the Inhibitors. Provided that the Captain could be persuaded.

‘Have you and him patched up your differences?’ Khouri asked.

I think the fact that he didn’t kill us when he had the chance more or less answers that question.‘

‘And he doesn’t blame you for what you did to him?’

For the first time there was a sign of annoyance from Volyova. ‘Did to him? Ana, what I «did to him» was an act of extreme mercy. I didn’t punish him at all. I merely… stated the facts and then administered the cure.’

‘Which by some definitions was worse than the disease.’

Now Volyova shrugged. ‘He was going to die. I gave him a new lease on life.’

Khouri gasped as another chamber ghosted by, filled with fused metamorphic shapes. ‘If you call this living.’

‘Word of advice.’ Volyova leant closer, lowering her voice. ‘There’s a very good chance he can hear this conversation. Just keep that in mind, will you? There’s a good girl.’

If anyone else had spoken to her like that they would have been nursing at least one interesting dislocation about two seconds later. But Khouri had long since learned to make allowances for Volyova.

‘Where is he? Still on the same level as before?’

‘Depends what you mean by «him». I suppose you could say his epicentre is still there, yes. But there’s really very little point in distinguishing between him and the ship nowadays.’

‘Then he’s everywhere? All around us?’

‘All-seeing. All-knowing.’

I don’t like this, Ilia.‘

‘If it’s any consolation, I very much doubt that he does either.’

After many delays, reversals and diversions the elevator finally brought them to the bridge of Nostalgia for Infinity. To Khouri’s considerable relief a consultation with the Captain did not seem to be imminent.

The bridge was much as she remembered it. The chamber was damaged and careworn, but most of the vandalism had been inflicted before the Captain changed. Khouri had even done some of it herself. Seeing the impact craters where her weapons discharges had fallen gave her a faint and mischievous sense of pride. She remembered the tense power-struggle that had taken place aboard the lighthugger when it was in orbit around the neutron star Hades, on the very edge of the present system.

It had been touch and go at times, but because they had survived she had dared to believe that a greater victory had been won. But the arrival of the Inhibitor machines suggested otherwise. The battle, in all likelihood, had already been lost before the first shots were fired. But they had at least bought themselves a little time. Now they had to do something with it.