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But they did.
As always, the narrowing was imperceptible from room to room, but after five or six it could not be
ignored. After ten or fifteen more rooms we would again have to scrape our way between them.
And what if the narrowing continued beyond that point?
'We won't be able to go on,' I said. 'We won't fit - even if we're naked.'
'You are entirely too defeatist,' Trintignant said.
Childe sounded reasonable. 'What would you propose, Doctor?'
'Nothing more than a few minor readjustments of the basic human body-plan. Just enough to enable us
to squeeze through apertures which would be impassable with our current . . . encumbrances.'
Trintignant looked avariciously at my arms and legs.
'It wouldn't be worth it,' I said. 'I'll accept your help after I've been injured, but if you're thinking that I'd
submit to anything more drastic . . . well, I'm afraid you're severely mistaken, Doctor.'
'Amen to that,' Hirz said. 'For a while back there, Swift, I really thought this place was getting to you.'
'It isn't,' I said. 'Not remotely. And in any case, we're thinking many rooms ahead here, when we might
not even be able to get through the next.'
'I agree,' Childe said. 'We'll take it one at a time. Doctor Trintignant, put your wilder fantasies aside, at
least for now.'
'Consider them relegated to mere daydreams,' Trintignant said.
So we pushed on.
Now that we had passed through so many doors, it was possible to see that the Spire's tasks came in
waves; that there might, for instance, be a series of problems which depended on prime number theory,
followed by another series which hinged on the properties of higher-dimensional solids. For several
rooms in sequence we were confronted by questions related to tiling patterns - tessellations - while
another sequence tested our understanding of cellular automata: odd chequerboard armies of shapes
which obeyed simple rules and yet interacted in stunningly complex ways. The final challenge in each set
would always be the hardest; the one where we were most likely to make a mistake. We were quite
prepared to take three or four hours to pass each door, if that was the time it took to be certain - in
Celestine's mind at least - that the answer was clear.
And though the shunts were leaching fatigue poisons from our blood, and though the modifiers were
enabling us to think with a clarity we had never known before, a kind of exhaustion always crept over us
after solving one of the harder challenges. It normally passed in a few tens of minutes, but until then we
generally waited before venturing through the now open door, gathering our strength again.
In those quiet minutes we spoke amongst ourselves, discussing what had happened and what we could
expect.
'It's happened again,' I said, addressing Celestine on the private channel.
Her answer came back, no more terse than I had expected. 'What?'
'For a while the rest of us could keep up with you. Even Hirz. Or, if not keep up, then at least not lose
sight of you completely. But you're pulling ahead again, aren't you? Those Juggler routines are kicking in
again.'
She took her time replying. 'You have Childe's medichines.'
'Yes. But all they can do is work with the basic neural topology, suppressing and enhancing activity
without altering the layout of the connections in any significant way. And the 'chines are broad-spectrum;
not tuned specifically to any one of us.'
Celestine looked at the only one of us still wearing one of the original suits. 'They worked on Hirz.'
'Must have been luck. But yes, you're right. She couldn't see as far as you, though, even with the
modifiers.'
Celestine tapped the shunt in her wrist, still faintly visible beneath the tight-fitting fabric of her suit. 'I
took a spike of the modifiers as well.'
'I doubt that it gave you much of an edge over what you already had.'
'Maybe not.' She paused. 'Is there a point to this conversation, Richard?'
'Not really,' I said, stung by her response. 'I just . . .'
'Wanted to talk, yes.'
'And you don't?'
'You can hardly blame me if I don't, can you? This isn't exactly the place for small talk, let alone with
someone who chose to have me erased from his memory.'
'Would it make any difference if I said I was sorry about that?'
I could tell from the tone of her response that my answer had not been quite the one she was expecting.
'It's easy to say you're sorry, now . . . now that it suits you to say as much. That's not how you felt at the
time, is it?'
I fumbled for an answer which was not too distant from the truth. 'Would you believe me if I said I'd
had you suppressed because I still loved you, and not for any other reason?'
'That's just a little too convenient, isn't it?'
'But not necessarily a lie. And can you blame me for it? We were in love, Celestine. You can't deny
that. Just because things happened between us . . .' A question I had been meaning to ask her forced itself
to the front of my mind. 'Why didn't you contact me again, after you were told you couldn't go to
Resurgam?'
'Our relationship was over, Richard.'
'But we'd parted on reasonably amicable terms. If the Resurgam expedition hadn't come up, we might
not have parted at all.'
Celestine sighed; one of exasperation. 'Well, since you asked, I did try and contact you.'
'You did?'
'But by the time I'd made my mind up, I learned about the way you'd had me suppressed. How do you
imagine that made me feel, Richard? Like a small, disposable part of your past -something to be wadded
up and flicked away when it offended you?'
'It wasn't like that at all. I never thought I'd see you again.'
She snorted. 'And maybe you wouldn't have, if it wasn't for dear old Roland Childe.'
I kept my voice level. 'He asked me along because we both used to test each other with challenges like
this. I presume he needed someone with your kind of Juggler transform. Childe wouldn't have cared about
our past.'
Her eyes flashed behind the visor of her helmet. 'And you don't care either, do you?'
'About Childe's motives? No. They're neither my concern nor my interest. All that bothers me now is
this.'
I patted the Spire's thrumming floor.
'There's more here than meets the eye, Richard.'
'What do you mean by that?'
'Haven't you noticed how ' She looked at me for several seconds, as if on the verge of revealing
something, then shook her head. 'Never mind.'
'What, for pity's sake?'
'Doesn't it strike you that Childe has been just a little too well prepared?'
'I wouldn't say there's any such thing as being too well prepared for a thing like Blood Spire, Celestine.'
'That's not what I mean.' She fingered the fabric of her skintight. 'These suits, for instance. How did he
know we wouldn't be able to go all the way with the larger ones?'
I shrugged, a gesture that was now perfectly visible. 'I don't know. Maybe he learned a few things from
Argyle, before he died.'
'Then what about Doctor Trintignant? That ghoul isn't remotely interested in solving the Spire. He
hasn't contributed to a single problem yet. And yet he's already proved his value, hasn't he?'
'I don't follow.'
Celestine rubbed her shunt. 'These things. And the neural modifiers - Trintignant supervised their
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