‘Medic!’ she snapped. ‘He’s awake!’ She kept hold of his hand, though. And again he felt it was as much for her benefit as his.
The doctor who hurried over wasn’t Partheni – a lean, hawk-faced man in white, his hollow cheeks scruffy with salt-and-pepper stubble. His clothes looked Hugh-issue, something governmental.
‘Menheer Telemmier,’ he said, his voice severe. ‘Your readings are still slightly outside what I’m comfortable with. I’d advise you not to think too hard about anything – but it’s probably unavoidable, under the circumstances.’ He seemed somehow distant, dismissive, as though dealing with a commodity not a person.
Idris was about to thank him when the clothes and manner threw up an unpleasant suggestion. ‘You’re Liaison Board, aren’t you?’ The body that had taken over from the old Intervention Program when Hugh decided it needed a corps of Peacetime Ints and didn’t much care about how it got them.
The doctor stared at him with faint outrage. Maybe he wasn’t used to being addressed by experimental subjects. Solace squeezed his hand again.
‘We had to reach out to them,’ she said flatly. ‘Who else knew Int neurology?’
‘So . . . what does it mean?’ Idris asked weakly, still eyeballing the doctor. ‘We’re on one of your ships but there’s . . . a Hugh medical team or . . .?’
‘Not just a medical team,’ she confirmed. ‘Because you and the others are here, and Trine and the regalia, that means everyone’s here. Hugh diplomats, Hegemonic cult, everyone.’
‘Aklu?’
‘Well, not quite everyone, then,’ she admitted. ‘Thankfully. Look, people are going to want to talk to you. If you’re up to it?’
‘I want to talk to people. Let’s have all the people. Let’s just get this over with.’
‘Idris—’
‘Thank you.’
She blinked. ‘What?’
‘For sticking with me. Then and now.’ He closed his eyes. ‘We’re over Berlenhof, right? That was where I was trying to get us. That was the only landmark . . . Because of what we did back in the war. Well good. Let’s get it done. Let’s open the diplomatic bag.’
Solace went to pass that on. But of course, the united diplomatic staffs of the major galactic powers weren’t going to assemble at Idris’s personal request. So that left him in the infirmary, sampling the Partheni a-grav, which always seemed a hair stronger than Colonial standard.
‘The others will want to know you’re awake,’ Solace said when she came back. ‘Kris has been frantic.’
‘What happened, exactly?’ He was asking Solace, but the Liaison Board doctor was suddenly at his elbow, running a rod-like instrument over his head like a magician.
‘You suffered a recursive loop from too many subordinate layers,’ the man told him. ‘How many sequential jumps, precisely?’
‘Lost count. I was being hunted.’ Idris glared mulishly at the man.
‘The sensation of a predatory presence is entirely the human mind’s reaction to the peculiar properties of unspace,’ the doctor told him. ‘The modern literature is fully in agreement.’
‘That’s what you tell your convicts is it? Before you screw with their brains?’ Idris asked, smiling pleasantly. ‘I was being hunted by an Ogdru navigator. They can track a mind through unspace. Who knew?’
‘That is entirely impossible,’ the doctor told him, spreading condescension like a rich man with butter.
‘You’d better hope we don’t really end up in a war, because we’re so screwed with people like you in charge.’ Idris was maintaining his smile, though he felt it was tearing at the edges.
That saw off the doctor, but not Solace’s judging expression.
‘They did bring you back,’ she pointed out. ‘I don’t even know what a recursive subordinate loop layer is.’
‘Neither do I,’ Idris admitted. ‘I think they imported all the long words after my time. He blinked at her. ‘You haven’t been sitting there all this time, have you?’
‘Sometimes it was Olli. Sometimes Kris. Kit’s been in a tank most of this time, but he was on his feet today. Came round to look at you. So there’s a Hanni mercenary-surgeon on board too, by the way. On the Parthenon’s tab, all of this, in case you were wondering.’
‘Well, I hope they’re not saving my friends’ lives just to bribe me.’ He smiled weakly, but it was far more genuine than what he’d offered the doctor. Solace’s expression, though, told him that might be exactly what was happening here. And that the Partheni’s offer was going to come up sooner rather than later – probably delivered direct from her superiors.