House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds Read Free Book Online Page A

memories.’
    ‘How many are we looking at?’ I asked.
    ‘I took good care of them,’ Ateshga said.
    ‘You can prove that by showing them to us,’ Purslane told him. ‘Bring them out, as many as you can.’
    ‘That will take a little while.’
    ‘No one’s going anywhere in a hurry. When you’re done with the people, we can discuss the other ships.’
    ‘The other ships?’
    ‘That thing I was saying to you just now, about not keeping anything from me ...’
    ‘Of course. The other ships. I was going to get to those.’
    I whispered, ‘What other ships?’
    ‘Wait and see,’ Purslane hissed back.
    It took a while, as Purslane must have known it would, but I do not think Ateshga could have arranged matters any faster if he had wanted to. The people were stored in ones, twos, clusters of three or more, and much larger aggregations. Each unit - whether it held one or a hundred individuals - consisted of an armoured, independently powered shell equipped with abeyance mechanisms and a small impassor; not large enough to swallow a ship but sufficient to protect a sleeping capsule.
    Floating in the atmosphere after being liberated from the belly of the moonship, the units were a cloud of glassy baubles, each with a differently coloured and shaped trinket at the heart. Some of the units were very ancient, while others were of a design and antiquity completely unfamiliar to me.
    They reminded me of the marbles in the playroom, in the family house in the Golden Hour.
    ‘Are there any Line members here?’ I asked.
    ‘Gentian Line, honoured shatterling? Insofar as one is aware, no.’
    ‘And other Lines? Did you dupe anyone else?’
    ‘I believe there may be some members of other Lines - Chancellor, Tremaine, Parison and Zoril amongst them - although one cannot of course vouch for their provenance.’
    I shivered, realising what a startling bounty I was about to receive. The liberation of members of other Lines - shatterlings who might already have been presumed to be victims of attrition - would inflate the prestige of the Gentians by a huge margin.
    ‘Have the Line members - and anyone you think might be a Line member - moved into the hold of my ship. There’ll be room if the impassors are turned off as soon as they enter Dalliance’s own bubble.’
    ‘And the others?’ Purslane cut in. ‘What are we dealing with? Nascents? Lost starfarers from turnover cultures, I presume?’
    Ateshga’s voice quavered on the edge of some perilous truth. ‘For the most part.’
    ‘Here is what you’ll do,’ I said. ‘Take whichever ship is large enough to hold all the subliminals. Pack them inside, with enough support machinery to keep them in abeyance until they get somewhere. Then send that ship away, programmed to stop in promising systems until they all find somewhere to live. We’ll be keeping an eye on that ship.’
    ‘Of course, of course,’ Ateshga replied, as if this was all perfectly reasonable.
    ‘Now let’s see the other ships,’ I said.
    Purslane raised a finger. ‘Wait a second. Who haven’t we accounted for, Ateshga? If we’ve cleared out the Lines and the turnovers, who does that leave behind? And remember what I said about the consequences of holding anything back.’
    I sensed vast hesitation in his voice. ‘There is one. He has been in my care for some considerable while.’
    ‘We’re listening.’
    ‘His name is Hesperus. He’s an emissary of the Machine People.’
    I shook my head in astonishment. ‘You trapped and imprisoned a member of the Machine People, and you’re still alive?’
    ‘It was a simple mistake. Hesperus was posing as a biological traveller, so that he might journey unobtrusively. Had I known his true nature, I would never have detained him. Needless to say, once I had announced my intentions, I had no choice but to follow through. I could not let Hesperus return home.’
    ‘Because you fear the Machine People even more than you fear the Lines,’ Purslane said.