But now she knew. Perhaps it had changed her mind. Perhaps she didn't want to be here any more. Perhaps she was now regretting jumping so eagerly for the offer I'd made her.
I didn't ask her. She'd tell me if she had to. We were all too committed now.
'Eisenhorn?' Aemos reached out his hands and I placed the cool hard ball of the Pontius in them. With almost priestly care, he fitted it into place.
I ordered everyone back out of the hold, even the servitors, everyone except Bequin and Aemos. Fischig closed the hold door behind him.
Aemos looked at me and I nodded assent. He made the final connection and then backed away from the casket as hurriedly as his old and augme-tised limbs could manage.
At first, nothing. Small tell-tale lights winked along the edge of the casket – Eyclone's casket – and the internal wiring glowed.
Then I felt a change in air-pressure. Bequin looked at me sharply, feeling it too.
The metal walls of the hold began to sweat. Beads of moisture popped and dribbled down the wall plating.
There was a faint crackling sound, like the gentle crisping of paper in flames. It spread, growing louder. Frost was forming on the casket, on the floor around it, spreading out across the hold's decking, up the walls, across the ceiling. A glittering thickness of diamond frost coated the interior of the hold in less than ten seconds. Our breath steamed in the air and we brushed jewels of ice-dust off our clothes and eyelashes.
'Pontius Glaw,' I said.
There was no answer, but after a moment or two, a series of animal grunts and barks mewled from the vox-speakers built into the casket.
'Glaw/1 repeated.
'What-' said an artificial voice.
Bequin stiffened.
'What have you woken me to?'
'What is the last thing you remember, Glaw?'
'Promises… promises…' the voice said, coming and going as if drifting away from the microphone and then back. 'Where is Urisel?'
What promises were made to you, Glaw?'
'Life…' it murmured. 4Vhere is Urisel?' There was a tone now, an anger or an impatience. 'Where is he?'
I began to frame another question, but there was a sudden flash of activity, a crackle of electronic synapses firing across the crystal surface of the ball. It had lashed out with its mind, with its potent psychic powers. If Bequin had not been here, cancelling it out, no doubt Aemos and I would have been dead.
Temper, temper…' I said. I took a step towards the casket. '1 am Eisenhorn, Imperial inquisitor. You are my prisoner and you only enjoy cognitive function because I allow it. You will answer my questions.'
'I… will… not.'
I shrugged. 'Aemos, disconnect this menace and prepare it for disintegration!'
Wait! Wait!' the voice was pleading despite its colourless artificiality.
I knelt down in front of the casket. 'I know that your life and intellect were preserved in this device, Pontius Glaw. I know you have waited for two centuries, trapped in a bodiless state, desperate to be made whole again. That is what your family promised you, wasn't it?'
'Urisel promised… he said it be so… the methods were prepared…'
To sacrifice the nobility of Hubris so that their life energies might be siphoned off into you through this casket. To give you the power to create a body for yourself
'He promised!' The stress fell on the second word, anguished and deep.
'Urisel and the others abandoned you, Pontius. They abandoned the Hubris project at the last minute in favour of something else. They are now all in the custody of the Inquisition.'
'Nooooo…' The word turned into a hiss that died away. They would not…'
'I'm sure they wouldn't… unless it was something so vital, so unmissable that they had no choice. You'd know what that would be, wouldn't you?'
Silence.
What would be more important to them than you, Pontius Glaw?'
Silence.
'Pontius?'
They are not caught/
'What? Who are not?'
'My brethren. My kin… If you had them, you would not be asking these questions. They are free and you are desperate/
'Not at all. You know how it is… so many lies, so many conflicting stories. Your pitiful family trying to sell each other out in exchange for freedom. I came to you for the truth/
