Surface Detail(64)

“Which, given that the latter will probably leave her out of her mind,” Irkun said, “may be for the best.”

“She could be treated,” Irkun said. There are techniques.”

“These techniques ever been tried on somebody carrying all the nightmares of Hell in their head?” Yolerre asked.

Irkun just shook his head and made a sucking noise.

“How long before any re-integration becomes impossible?” Prin asked.

“At worst, problematic within hours,” Biath said. “Few days probably. Week at the most. Over-write would be brutal, could leave her … catatonic at best. Only humane course would be trying to prise the Hell memories in piecemeal.” He shook his head. “Very likely her continuance personality would just reject the memories completely. Nightmares would need watching.”

“You really don’t think she’s likely to pop out soon?” Irkun asked Prin. Irkun had his tablet remote propped up in front of him, monitoring Chay’s condition in the clinic room just a few metres away.

Prin shook his head. “I don’t think there’s any chance,” he said. “She’d forgotten what the emergency code was, what it was for, how you operated it; like I keep saying, she even denied that there was any Real. And those bastard demons would have been on her in seconds after I barged through. If she didn’t follow me in a few heartbeats, she isn’t following me for . . . months.” He started crying again. The others saw, huddled closer, made soothing noises, and those closest reached out to touch him with their trunks.

He looked round them all. “I think we have to wake her,” he told them.

“What happens if we do get her back?” Yolerre asked.

“She can be given some sort of existence in a virtual world,” Sulte said. “Fact is it’ll be easier to treat her there, yes?” he said glancing at Biath, who nodded.

“Do we need to take a vote?” Irkun asked.

“I think it’s Prin’s call,” Sulte said. The others nodded, made noises of assent.

“You’ll have her back, Prin,” Yolerre said, reaching out to stroke him gently with one trunk.

Prin looked away. “No, I won’t,” he said.

When they did wake her, the following morning, he had already left.

He didn’t want to see her. He didn’t want to abandon the one he loved and who was still in Hell by accepting the love of the one who had never been there, no matter how whole, perfect and un-traumatised she might be.

No doubt this Chay, this one who had never seen Hell, would feel injured by his actions, and not understand how he could be so cruel to her, but then he had seen what real hurt and real cruelty was, and the person that he was now could never pretend that what had happened to the two of them in Hell had somehow not taken place, and changed who he was for ever.

The room where Lededje had woken, to see Sensia sitting outside on the balcony, was hers for as long as she stayed on the ship. After their tour in a small, very quiet aircraft – the GSV was appropriately mind-boggling from every external angle and internal corridor – Sensia had dropped Lededje off nearby, where one of the kilometres-long internal corridors abutted one of the little stepped valleys of accommodation units, given her a long, silvery and elaborate ring – a thing called a terminal that let her talk to the ship – then left her to find her own way back to the room and otherwise sort herself out. Sensia said she’d be a call away, happy to be a guide, companion or whatever. In the meantime, she imagined Lededje might want to rest, or just have some time to herself.

The ring fitted itself to Lededje’s longest finger and gave spoken directions back to her room. One wall of the room acted as a screen and allowed apparently unrestricted access to the ship’s equivalent of the Sichultian datasphere. She sat, started asking questions.

“Welcome aboard,” said the avatar drone of the Bodhisattva. “May I take your bag?”

Yime nodded. Instead of the avatar taking it from her, the bag simply disappeared from her hand, leaving the skin on her fingers with a tingling feeling. She wobbled on her feet and almost staggered as the bag’s weight was suddenly removed from that side of her body, leaving her unbalanced. “You’ll find it in your cabin,” the avatar said.

“Thank you.” Yime looked down. She was standing on nothing. It felt like a very hard nothing, but – just looking – there didn’t seem to be anything beneath her feet except stars arranged in familiar-looking wispy sprays and whorls. Stars to the sides, too. Above her, a vast dark presence; a ceiling of polished black reflecting the stars shining beneath her feet. Looking straight up, she saw a ghost-pale version of herself, looking straight back down.