Revelation Space (Revelation Space, #1)

by Alastair Reynolds

Ordinator Massinger took the wedding gun from the mahogany box and snapped it open. She loaded the reddish vial - the one Pascale’s party had delivered - into the breech, then reclosed the instrument. Status entoptics briefly haloed it. Girardieau placed his hand on Sylveste’s upper arm, steadying him as the Ordinator pressed the conic end of the instrument against his temple, just above his eye-level. Sylveste had been right when he told Girardieau that the ceremony was not painful, but neither was it entirely pleasant. What it was was a sudden flowering of intense cold, as if liquid helium were being blasted into his cortex. The discomfort was brief, however, and the thumb-sized bruise on his skin would not last more than a few days. The brain’s immune system was weak by comparison with the body as a whole, and Pascale’s cells - floating as they did in a stew of helper medichines - would soon bond with Sylveste’s own. The volume was tiny - no more than a tenth of one per cent of the brain’s mass - but the transplanted cells carried the indelible impression of their last host: ghost threads of holographically distributed memory and personality.