Inhibitor Sequence 2 - Redemption Ark by Alastair Reynolds

Author:Alastair Reynolds
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2004-05-24T22:00:00+00:00

The military shuttle Voi had arrived in was docked outside, clamped to the underside of Carousel New Copenhagen via magnetic grapples. Clavain was marched aboard and told where to sit. A black helmet was lowered over his head, with only a tiny glass viewing window in the front. It was intended to block neural signals, preventing him from interfering with ambient machinery. Their caution did not surprise him in the slightest. He was potentially valuable to them—in spite of Voi’s earlier comments to the contrary, any kind of defector might make some difference, even this late in the war—but as a spider he could also cause them considerable harm.

The military ship undocked and fell away from Carousel New Copenhagen. The windows in the armoured hull were quaintly fixed. Through the scratched and scuffed fifteen-centimetre-thick glass Clavain saw a trio of slim police craft shadowing them like pilot fish.

He nodded at the ships. “They’re taking this seriously.”

“They’ll escort us out of Convention airspace,” Voi said. “It’s normal procedure. We have very good relations with the Convention, Clavain.”

“Where are you taking me? Straight to Demarchist HQ?”

“Don’t be silly. We’ll take you somewhere nice and secure and remote to begin with. There’s a small Demarchist camp on the far side of Marco’s Eye . . . of course, you know all about our operations.”

Clavain nodded. “But not your precise debriefing procedures. Have you had to do many of these?”

The other person in the room was a male Demarchist, also of high status, whom Voi had introduced as Giles Perotet. He had a habit of constantly stretching the fingers of his gloves, one after the other, from hand to hand.

“Two or three a decade,” he said. “Certainly you are the first in a while. Do not expect the red-carpet treatment, Clavain. Our expectations may have been coloured by the fact that eight of the eleven previous defectors turned out to be spider agents. We killed them all, but not before valuable secrets had been lost to them.”

“I’m not here to do that. There wouldn’t be much point, would there? The war is ours anyway.”

“So you came to gloat, is that it?” Voi asked.

“No. I came to tell you something that will put the war into an entirely different perspective.”

Amusement ghosted across her face. “That’d be some trick.”

“Does the Demarchy still own a lighthugger?”

Perotet and Voi exchanged puzzled glances before the man replied, “What do you think, Clavain?”

Clavain didn’t answer him for several minutes. Through the window he saw Carousel New Copenhagen diminishing, the vast grey arc of the rim revealing itself to be merely one part of a spokeless wheel. The wheel itself grew smaller until it was nearly lost against the background of the other habitats and carousels that formed the Rust Belt.

“Our intelligence says you don’t,” Clavain said, “but our intelligence could be wrong, or incomplete. If the Demarchy had to get its hands on a lighthugger at very short notice, do you think it could?”

“What is this about, Clavain?” Voi asked.

“Just answer my question.

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