INHIBITOR PHASE by Alastair Reynolds

Author:Alastair Reynolds [Reynolds, Alastair]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780575090750
Publisher: Orion Publishing Group
Published: 2021-05-18T10:52:05+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The pigs were in a state of consternation, which had nothing to do with our impending arrival at Lady Arek’s ship. They were already being dealt with by Scythe: dozens of sphere robots had bustled out of somewhere (I had only ever seen a few of them at a time before) and were now encouraging, or in some cases forcing, the refugees to adopt fixed postures with their backs to the floor. Once they obeyed, the area of floor beneath them puckered in as if it were made of rubber, forming a partial enclosure around the recumbent form. The floor did not close over completely – it left a snug opening so that the occupant could still breathe and communicate. But in all other senses they were totally imprisoned by the floor, unable to move their limbs or in any way free themselves.

I understood instantly: the ship was making provision for the deceleration burst. But to the refugees, it was as if they were being forcibly absorbed into the floor like so many trophies. Some, including Barras, were trying to impose some kind of calm, insisting that this had to be part of some plan for their protection. But for too many of the refugees the whole experience must have brought back sharp memories of imprisonment and torture in the Swinehouse. The worst of the resistors were being pinned in place by the spheres, literally pressed into the yielding floor until the floor swaddled itself around their forms and stopped them thrashing.

Barras was one of the ones not yet interred.

‘Tell me this is for our benefit.’

‘It will be,’ I said, equally astonished and enraged that the ship had not thought fit to tell me that my concerns had been noted and acted upon. ‘When this weightless phase is over, which will be in about eighty minutes, Scythe will have to brake very hard. If you were left to float around, I don’t think many of you would survive the process. This way it will be uncomfortable but survivable.’

‘Some of us only just made it through the last one.’

‘I know, and this will be worse. I’m sorry, Barras.’ I looked out among the confusion of refugees and sphere robots, a storm of rags and scraps littering the air as the unwilling patients resisted their fates. ‘It will be all right. Can you give them my word that this isn’t anything bad, and they’ll be let out of the floor once our manoeuvres are complete?’

Barras eyed me quizzically. ‘You know that for a fact?’

‘I don’t, but everything I’ve seen so far suggests to me that this ship wants to protect its occupants, including you.’

‘They’d feel better if that reassurance came from Pinky.’

I wondered how much of the truth to share with him. Then decided that any trust was better consolidated by absolute openness, no matter how unpalatable the news.

‘Snowdrop is going to die, Barras. The wolves have hit Lady Arek’s stronghold. There are a few folk still inside, and they’re using whatever weapons they have to delay the wolf incursion.

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