He was not allowed off this stack. He strongly suspected that some of his unseen comrade-adversaries – the others who might be chosen to go on the mission rather than him – were on some of the other stacks, across the long, locked bridges the Combined Services had thrown between the rocky columns.
He held up one arm and studied his unsheathed claws. He turned his arm left and right. He had never been so muscled, so fit. He wondered if he really needed to be at such a physical peak for this mission, or whether the Army – or whoever was really behind this – just trained you up like this as a matter of course.
A large circular parade ground was located high up on the seaward side of the stack. It was open at the sides but roofed by white awnings like old-fashioned ship sails. There they had taught him fencing, trained him with a crossbow and with projectile weapons and early laser rifles. They inculcated in him the finer and less fine points of fighting with knives, and with teeth and claws. The point had been made that close-in fighting would differ when you tackled species other than your own, but it had been left at that.
A small team of medics flew in one day and took him to a big but obviously rarely used hospital hollowed out of the rock deep beneath the stack’s buildings. They equipped him with an improved Soulkeeper, but that was the only implant they touched or introduced. He had heard of agents and people on special missions being fitted with brain-linked communi- cations rigs, poison-detection nasal glands, poison-producing sacs, subcutaneous weapon systems … the list was long but he, apparently, was going to receive none of these. He won- dered why.
At one point there was a hint that whoever undertook the mis- sion might not be entirely alone. He wondered about that, too.
Not all his training and education was martial; at least half of each waking day was spent being a student again, sitting in a curl-chair learning through screens or listening to Chuelfier.
The old male instructed him in Chelgrian history, in religious philosophy both before and after the partial Sublimation of the Chelgrian-Puen, and in the discovered history of the rest of the galaxy and its other sentient beings.
He learned more than he’d ever imagined wanting or needing to know of what Soulkeepers did and how they did it, and what limbo and heaven were like. He learned where the old religion had been overly fanciful or just plain wrong in its assumptions and tenets, where it had inspired the Chelgrian-Puen and so been made real, and where it had been superseded. He had no direct contact with any of the gone-before, but he came to understand the afterlife better than he ever had before. Sometimes, knowing that it was almost beyond doubt that Worosei would never experience anything of this created glory, he felt that they had chosen him only to torture him, that all of this was an elaborate and cruel charade to find the knife of Worosei’s loss that was forever buried in his flesh and twist it with all their might.
He learned all there was to know about the Caste War and the Culture’s involvement in the changes that had led to it.
He learned about the personalities who had contributed to the War’s background, and listened to some of the music of Mahrai Ziller, at turns so achingly full of loss he cried, at others so full of anger he wanted to smash something.
A number of suspicions and possible scenarios began to form in his mind, though he kept them to himself.
Sometimes now he dreamt of Worosei. In one dream they were being married here on the seastack, and a great wind off the sea whipped people’s hats away; he went to grab hers as it flew towards the parapet and then crashed into the whitewashed concrete, tipping over it with her hat still just out of reach. He started to fall towards the sea, and felt himself gather in the breath for a scream, then recalled that of course Worosei wasn’t really here, and could not be here; she was dead, and he might as well be. He smiled at the waves as they rushed up to meet him, and woke before he hit with a feeling of somehow having been cheated, the salty dampness on his pillow like sea.
One morning he was walking across the parade ground beneath the snapping white tents of the awnings, heading towards Chuelfier’s class room for the first lecture of the day, when he saw a small group of people directly ahead. Colonel Ghejaline, Wholom and Chuelfier were standing talking to the white- and black-clothed figure in the middle of the group.
There were five others, three on the right of the central group, two on the left. All were males dressed as clerks. The male in the middle was small and old-looking, with a sort of sideways hunch to his stance. It was something of a shock for Quilan to realise that the male was dressed in the black and white striped robe of an Estodien, one of those who went between this world and the next. He wore a lop-sided smile and held onto a long mirror staff. His fur looked slick, as though it had been oiled.
Quilan was about to greet the Colonel, but as he approached the three people he knew dropped back to let the Estodien take a couple of small steps forward.
‘Estodien,’ Quilan said, bowing deeply.
‘Major Quilan,’ the old male said in a soft, smooth voice. He reached his hand out to Quilan, who had become aware that the male standing on the extreme right of the group bulked out his clerical robes differently to the rest, and that this same male had started moving round to the side, as if starting to circle behind him. When the male disappeared from his view, the semi-shadow he cast by the attenuated light coming through the white awnings suddenly moved faster.
What finally made Quilan certain he might be about to be attacked was something about the way that the old Estodien stretched when he reached out his hand. He was frail, and could not help but keep his distance from something that might prove violent.
Quilan made as though to take the older male’s hand, then ducked and spun, went back on his haunches and brought his midlimb and hands out in the classic pounce-defence stance.
The bulky-looking male dressed as a clerk had been about to strike; he had rocked back on his haunches and his sleeves were rolled back to reveal tightly muscled arms, though his claws were only half exposed. There was a radiant, almost feral look on his white-furred face that lasted for a moment and even brightened for an instant as Quilan turned to confront him but then he glanced at the Estodien and relaxed, sitting back and lowering his arms and his head in what might have been a bow.
Quilan stayed exactly as he was, his head turning slightly to and fro, his gaze flicking as far behind him as he could manage without losing sight of the white-furred male. There did not appear to be any other movement or threat.
There was a frozen moment when nothing happened, save for the distant calls of the sea birds, the far-away thudding of the waves. Then the Estodien clicked his staff on the parade ground’s concrete once, and the white-furred male rose and turned in one fluid movement and went to stand where he had before.
‘Major Quilan,’ the old male said again. ‘Please, stand.’ He held out his hand once more. ‘No more unpleasant surprises, at least not for today, I give you my word.’
Quilan took the Estodien’s hand and rose from his crouch.
Colonel Ghejaline came forward. She looked pleased, Quilan thought. ‘Major Quilan, this is Estodien Visquile.’
‘Sir,’ Quilan said as the older male released his hand.
‘And this is Eweirl,’ Visquile said, indicating the white-furred male to his left. The bulky-looking male nodded and smiled. ‘I hope you have the wit to realise you passed two little tests there, Major, not one.’
‘Yes, sir. Or the same one, twice, sir.’
Visquile’s smile broadened, revealing small, sharp teeth. ‘You don’t really have to call me “sir”, Major, though I confess I rather like it.’ He turned to Wholom and Chuelfier, and then to Colonel Ghejaline. ‘Not bad.’ He looked back to Quilan, looking him down then up. ‘Come along, Major, we’ll have a talk, I think.’
‘We are told it is very unusual for them to make such a mistake. We are told that we should feel flattered they took such an interest in us in the first place. We are told that they respect us. We are told that it is an accident of development and the evolution of galaxies, stars, planets and species that we meet them on less than equal technological terms. We are told that what happened is unfortunate but that we may eventually gain from it. We are told they are honourable people who only wished to help and now feel that they are in our debt because of their carelessness. We are told that we may profit more through their crushing guilt than we might have gained thanks to their easy patronage.’ The Estodien Visquile smiled his thin, sharp smile. ‘None of this matters.’