Look to Windward

Returning to Leave, Recalling, Forgetting

“How many will die?”

“Perhaps ten per cent. That is the calculation.”

“So that would be… five billion?”

“Hmm, yes. That is about what we lost. That is the approximate number of souls barred from the beyond by the catastrophe visited upon us by the Culture.”

“That is a great responsibility, Estodien.”

“It is mass murder, Major,” Visquile said, with a humourless smile. “Is that what you are thinking?”

“It is revenge, a balancing.”

“And it is still mass murder, Major. Let us not mince our words. Let us not hide behind euphemisms. It is mass murder of non-combatants, and as such illegal according to the galactic agreements we are signatory to. Nevertheless we believe it is a necessary act. We are not barbarians, we are not insane. We would not dream of doing something so awful, even to aliens, if it had not become obvious that it had become — through the actions of those same aliens — something which had to be done to rescue our own people from limbo. There can be no doubt that the Culture owes us those lives. But it is still an appalling act even to be contemplating.” The Estodien sat forward and grasped one of Quilan’s hand in his. “Major Quilan, if you have changed your mind, if you are beginning to reconsider, tell us now. Do you still have the taste for this?”

Quilan looked into the old male’s eyes. “One death is an appalling thing to contemplate, Estodien.”

“Of course. And five billion lives seems an unreal number, does it not?”

“Yes. Unreal.”

“And do not forget; the gone-before have read you, Quilan. They have looked inside your head and know what you are capable of better than you do yourself. They pronounced you clear. Therefore they must be certain that you will do what must be done, even if you feel doubts about that yourself.”

Quilan lowered his gaze. “That is comforting, Estodien.”

“It is disturbing, I would have thought.”

“Perhaps that a little, too. Perhaps a person who might be called a confirmed civilian would be more disturbed than comforted. I am still a soldier, Estodien. Knowing that I will do my duty is no bad thing.”

“Good,” Visquile said, letting go Quilan’s hand and sitting back. “Now. We begin again.” He stood up. “Come with me.”

It was four days after they’d arrived in the airsphere. Quilan had spent most of that time within the chamber containing the temple ship Soulhaven with Visquile. He sat or lay in the spherical cavity that was the innermost recessional space of the Soulhaven while the Estodien attempted to teach him how to use the Soulkeeper’s Displacer function.

“The range of the device is only fourteen metres,” Visquile told him on the first day. They sat in the darkness, surrounded by a substrate holding millions of the dead. “The shorter the leap, and of course the smaller the size of the object being Displaced, the less power is required and the less likelihood there is of the action being detected. Fourteen metres should be quite sufficient for what is required.”

“What is it I’m trying to send, to Displace?”

“Initially, one of a stock of twenty dummy warheads which were loaded into your Soulkeeper before it was emplaced within you. When the time comes for you to fire in anger, you will be manipulating the transference of one end of a microscopic wormhole, though without the wormhole attached.”

“That sounds—”

“Bizarre, to say the least. Nevertheless.”

“So, it’s not a bomb?”

“No. Though the eventual effect will be somewhat similar.”

“Ah,” Quilan said. “So, once the Displacement has taken place, I just walk away?”

“Initially, yes.” Quilan could just make out the Estodien looking at him. “Why, Major, were you expecting that to be the moment of your death?”

“Yes, I was.”

“That would be too obvious, Major.”

“This was described to me as being a suicide mission, Estodien. I would hate to think I might survive it and feel cheated.”

“How annoying that it is so dark in here I can’t see the expression on your face as you say that, Major.”

“I am quite serious, Estodien.”

“Hmm. Probably just as well. Well, let me put your mind at rest, Major. You will assuredly die when the wormhole activates. Instantaneously. I hope that doesn’t conflict with any desire you might have harboured for a lingering demise.”

“The fact will be enough, Estodien. The manner is not something I can bring myself to be concerned with, though I would prefer it to be quick rather than slow.”

“Quick it will be, Major. You have my word on that.”

“So, Estodien, where do I carry out this Displacement?”

“Inside the Hub of Masaq’ Orbital. The space station which sits in the middle of the world.”

“Is that normally accessible?”

“Of course. Quilan, they run school trips there, so their young can see the place where the machine squats that oversees their pampered lives.” Quilan heard the older male gather his robes about him. “You simply ask to be shown round. It will not seem in the least suspicious. You carry out the Displacement and return to the surface of the Orbital. At the appointed time the wormhole mouth will be connected with the wormhole itself. The Hub will be destroyed.

“The Orbital will continue to run using other automatic systems situated on the perimeter, but there will be some loss of life as particularly critical processes are left to run out of control; transport systems, largely. Those souls stored in the Hub’s own substrates will be lost, too. At any given moment those stored souls can number over four billion; these will account for the majority of the lives the Chelgrian-Puen require to release our own people into heaven.”

QUILAN THOUGHTS.

The words rang suddenly in his head, making him flinch. He sensed Visquile go quiet beside him.

~ Gone-before, he thought and bowed his head. ~ Just one thought, really. The obvious one; why not let our dead into the beyond without this terrible action?

HEROES HEAVEN. HONOURING KILLED BY ENEMIES WITHOUT REPLY DISGRACES ALL COME BEFORE (MANY MORE). DISGRACE ASSUMED WHEN WAR BELIEVED OUR FAULT. OWN RESPONSIBILITY: ACCEPT DISGRACE/ACCEPT DISGRACED. KNOW NOW WAR CAUSED BY OTHERS. FAULT THEIRS DISGRACE THEIRS RESPONSIBILITY THEIRS: DEBT THEIRS. REJOICE! NOW DISGRACED BECOME HEROES TOO ONCE BALANCE OF LOSS ACHIEVED.

~ It is hard for me to rejoice, knowing that I will have so much blood on my hands.

YOU GO TO OBLIVION QUILAN. YOUR WISH. BLOOD NOT ON YOU BUT ON MEMORY OF YOU. THAT RESTRICTED TO FEW IF MISSION WHOLLY SUCCEEDS. THINK ACTIONS LEADING TO MISSION NOT RESULTS. RESULTS YOUR NOT CONCERN. OTHER QUESTIONS?

~ No, no other questions, thank you.

“Think of the cup, think of the interior of the cup, think of the space of air that is the shape of the inside of the cup, then think of the cup, then think of the table, then of the space around the table, then of the route you would take from here to the table, to sit down at the table and take up the cup. Think of the act of moving from here to there, think of the time it would take to move from this place to that place. Think of walking from where you are now to where the cup was when you saw it a few moments ago… Are you thinking of that, Quilan?”

“…Yes.”

“Send.”

There was a pause.

“Have you sent?”

“No, Estodien. I don’t think so. Nothing has happened.”

“We will wait. Anur is sitting by the table, watching the cup. You might have sent the object without knowing it.” They sat a few moments longer.

Then Visquile sighed and said, “Think of the cup. Think of the interior of the cup, think of the space of air that is the shape of the inside of the cup…”

“I will never do this, Estodien. I can’t send the damn thing anywhere. Maybe the Soulkeeper is broken.”

“I do not think so. Think of the cup…”

“Don’t be disheartened, Major. Come now; eat. My people come from Sysa originally. There’s an old Sysan saying that the soup of life is salty enough without adding tears to it.”

They were in the Soulhavens small refectory, at a table apart from the handful of other monks whose watch schedule meant it was their lunchtime too. They had water, bread and meat soup. Quilan was drinking his water from the plain white ceramic cup he had been using as a Displacement target all morning. He stared into it morosely.

“I do worry, Estodien. Perhaps something has gone wrong. Perhaps I don’t have the right sort of imagination or something; I don’t know.”

“Quilan, we are attempting to do something no Chelgrian has ever done before. You’re trying to turn yourself into a Chelgrian Displacement machine. You can’t expect to get it right first time, on the first morning you try it.” Visquile looked up as Anur, the gangly monk who had shown them round the behemothaur’s exterior the day they had arrived, passed their table with his tray. He bowed clumsily, nearly tipping the contents of his tray onto the floor, only just saving it. He gave a foolish smile. Visquile nodded. Anur had been sitting watching the cup all morning, waiting for a tiny black speck — possibly preceded by a tiny silver sphere — to appear in its white scoop.

Visquile must have read Quilan’s expression. “I asked Anur not to sit with us. I don’t want you to think of him sitting looking at the cup, I want you to think only of the cup.”

Quilan smiled. “Do you think I might Displace the test object into Anur by mistake?”

“I doubt that would happen, though you never know. But in any event, if you start to see Anur sitting there, tell me and we’ll replace him with one of the other monks.”

“If I did Displace the object into a person, what would happen?”

“As I understand it, almost certainly nothing. The object is too small to cause any damage. I suppose if it materialised inside the person’s eye they might see a speck, or if it appeared right alongside a pain receptor they might feel a tiny pin-prick. Anywhere else in the body it would go unnoticed. If you could Displace this cup,” the Estodien said, lifting his own ceramic cup, identical to Quilan’s, “into somebody’s brain then I dare say their head might explode, just from the pressure produced by the sudden extra volume. But the dummy warheads you are working with are too small to be noticed.”

“It might block a small blood vessel.”

“A capillary, perhaps. Nothing large enough to cause any tissue damage.”

Quilan drank from his own cup, then held it up, looking at it. “I shall see this damn thing in my dreams.”

Visquile smiled. “That might be no bad thing.”

Quilan supped his soup. “What’s happened to Eweirl? I haven’t seen him since we arrived.”

“Oh, he is about,” Visquile said. “He is making preparations.”

“To do with my training?”

“No, for when we leave.”

“When we leave?”

Visquile smiled. “All in due time, Major.”

“And the two drones, our allies?”

“As I said, all in good time, Major.”

“And send.”

“Yes!”

“Yes?”

“…No. No, I hoped… Well, it doesn’t matter. Let’s try again.”

“Think of the cup…”

“Think of a place you know or knew well. A small place. Perhaps a room or a small apartment or house, perhaps the interior of a cabin, a car, a ship; anything. It must be a place you knew well enough to be able to find your way around at night, so that you knew where everything was in the darkness and would not trip over things or break them. Imagine being there. Imagine going to a particular place and dropping, say, a crumb or a small bead or seed into a cup or other container…”

That night he again found it difficult to sleep. He lay looking into the darkness, curled on the broad sleeping platform, breathing in the sweet, spicy air of the giant bulbous fruit-like thing where he, Visquile and most of the others were billeted. He tried thinking about that damn cup, but gave up. He was tired of it. Instead he tried to work out exactly what was going on here.

It was obvious, he thought, that the technology inside the specially adapted Soulkeeper he had been fitted with was not Chelgrian. Some other Involved was taking a part in this; an Involved species whose technology was on a par with the Culture’s.

Two of their representatives were probably housed inside the pair of double-cone-shaped drones he’d seen earlier, the ones who had spoken to him inside his head, before the gone-before had. They had not reappeared.

He supposed the drones might be remotely operated, perhaps from somewhere outside the airsphere, though the Oskendari’s notorious antipathy towards such technology meant that the drones probably did physically contain the aliens. Equally, that made it all the more puzzling that the airsphere had been chosen as the place to train him in the use of a technology as advanced as that contained within his Soulkeeper, unless the idea was that if the use of such devices escaped attention here, it would also go unnoticed in the Culture.

Quilan went through what he knew of the relatively small number of Involved species sufficiently advanced to take the Culture on in this way. There were between seven and twelve other species on that sort of level, depending which set of criteria you used. None were supposed to be particularly hostile to the Culture; several were allies.

Nothing he knew of would have provided an obvious motive for what he was being trained to do, but then what he knew was only what the Involveds allowed to be known about some of the more profound relationships between them, and that most certainly did not include everything that was really going on, especially given the time scales some of the Involveds had become used to thinking on.

He knew that the Oskendari airspheres were fabulously old, even by the standards of those who called themselves the Elder races, and had succeeded in remaining mysterious throughout the Scientific Ages of hundreds of come-and-gone or been-and-Sublimed species. The rumours had it that there was some sort of link left between whoever it was who had created the airspheres and subsequently quit the matter-based life of the universe, and the mega and giga fauna which still inhabited the environments.

This link with the gone-before of the airspheres’ builders was reputedly the reason that all the hegemonising and invasive species — not to mention the unashamedly nosy species, such as the Culture — who had encountered the airspheres had thought the better of trying to take them over (or study them too closely).

These same rumours, backed up by ambiguous records held by the Elders, hinted that, long ago, a few species had imagined that they could make the big wandering worlds part of their empire, or had taken it upon themselves to send in survey devices, against the expressed wishes of the behemothaurs and the megalithine and gigalithine globular entities. Such species tended to disappear quickly or gradually from the records concerned thereafter, and there was firm statistical evidence that they disappeared more rapidly and more completely than species which had no record of antagonising the inhabitants — and by implication the guardians — of the airspheres.

Quilan wondered if the gone-before of the airspheres had been in contact with the gone-before of Chel. Was there some link between the Sublimed of the two (or more, of course) species?

Who knew how the Sublimed thought, how they interacted? Who knew how alien minds worked? For that matter, who was entirely satisfied that they knew how the minds of one of their own species worked?

The Sublimed, he supposed, was the answer to all those questions. But any understanding seemed to be resolutely oneway.

He was being asked to perform a sort of miracle. He was being asked to commit mass murder. He tried to look into himself — and wondered if, even at that moment, the Chelgrian-Puen were listening in to his thoughts, watching the images that flitted through his mind, measuring the fixity of his commitment and weighing the worth of his soul — and was faintly, but only faintly, appalled to realise that while he doubted his ability ever to perform the miracle, he was, at the very least, quite resigned to the commission of that genocide.

And, that night, not quite gone over to sleep, he remembered her room at the university, where they discovered each other, where he came to know her body better than his own, better than he had known any thing or subject (certainly better than anything he was supposed to be studying), and knew it in darkness and light and indeed placed a seed in a container over and over again.

He could not use that. But he remembered the room, could see the shape of darkness that was her body as she moved about it sometimes, late at night, switching something off, dousing an incense coil, closing the window when it rained. (Once, she brought out some antique script-strings, erotic tales told in knots, and let him bind her; later she bound him, and he, who had always thought himself the plainest of young males, bluffly proud of his normalcy, discovered that such sex-play was not the preserve of those he’d considered weak and degenerate.)

He saw the pattern of shadow her body made across the tell-tale lights and reflections in the room. Here, now, in this strange world, so many years of time and millennia of light away from that blessed time and place, he imagined himself getting up and crossing from the curl-pad to the far side of the room. There was — there had been — a little silver cuplet on a shelf there. Sometimes when she wanted to be absolutely naked, she would take off the ring her mother had given her. It would be his duty, his mission to take the ring from her hand and place the gold band in the silver cuplet.

“All right. Are we there?”

“Yes, we’re there.”

“So. Send.”

“Yes… No.”

“Hmm. Well, we begin again. Think of—”

“Yes, the cup.”

“We are quite certain the device is working, Estodien?”

“We are.”

“Then it’s me. I just can’t… It’s just not in me.” He dropped some bread into his soup. He laughed bitterly. “Or it is in me, and I can’t get it out.”

“Patience, Major. Patience.”

“There. Are we there?”

“Yes, yes, we’re there.”

“And; send.”

“I — Wait. I think I felt—”

“Yes! Estodien! Major Quilan! It worked!” Anur came running through from the refectory.

“Estodien, what do you think our allies will gain from my mission?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, Major. It is not really a subject it would benefit either of us to worry ourselves with.”

They sat in a small runabout; a sleek little two-person craft of the Soulhaven, in space, outside the airsphere.

The same small airship that had carried them from the airsphere portal the day they’d arrived had taken Quilan and Visquile on the return trip. They had walked through the solid-seeming tube of air again, this time to the runabout. It had drifted away from the portal, then picked up speed. It seemed to be heading towards one of the sun-moons which provided the airsphere with light. The moon drifted closer. Sunlight poured from what looked like a gigantic near-flat crater covering half of one face. It looked like the incandescent eyeball of some infernal deity.

“All that matters, Major,” Visquile said, “is that the technology appears to work.”

They had conducted ten successful trials with the supply of dummy warheads loaded inside the Soulkeeper. There had been an hour or so of failed attempts to repeat his initial success, then he’d managed to perform two Displacements in succession.

After that the cup had been moved to different parts of the Soulhaven; Quilan had only two unsuccessful attempts before he became able to Displace the specks wherever he was asked. On the third day he attempted and conducted only two Displacements, to either end of the ship. This, the fourth day, was the first time Quilan would attempt a Displacement outside the Soulhaven.

“Are we going to that moon, Estodien?” he asked as the giant satellite grew to fill the view ahead.

“Nearby,” Visquile said. He pointed. “You see that?” A tiny fleck of grey floated away to one side of the sun-moon, just visible in the wash of light pouring from the crater. “That is where we are going.”

It was something between a ship and a station. It looked like it could have been either, and as though it might have been designed by any one of thousands of early-stage Involved civilisations. It was a collection of grey-black ovoids, spheres and cylinders linked by thick struts, revolving slowly in an orbit round the sun-moon configured so that it would never fly over the vast light beam issuing from the side facing the airsphere.

“We have no idea who built it,” Visquile said. “It has been here for the last few tens of thousands of years and has been much modified by successive species who have thought to use it to study the airsphere and the moons. Parts of it are currently equipped to provide reasonable conditions for ourselves.”

The little runabout slid inside a hangar pod stuck to the side of the largest of the spherical units. It settled to the floor and they waited while the pod’s exterior doors revolved shut and air rushed in.

The canopy unsucked itself from the little craft’s fuselage; they stepped out into cold air that smelled of something acrid.

The two big double-cone-shaped drones whirred from another airlock, coming to hover on either side of them.

There was no voice inside his head this time, just a deep humming from one of them which modulated to say, “Estodien, Major. Follow.”

And they followed, down a passageway and through a couple of thick, mirror-finish doors to what appeared to be a sort of broad gallery with a single long window facing them and curving back behind where they had come in. It might have been the viewing cupola of an ocean liner, or a stellar cruise ship. They walked forward and Quilan realised that the window — or screen — was taller and deeper than he had at first assumed.

The impression of a band of glass or screen fell away as he understood that he was looking at the single great ribbon that was the slowly revolving surface of an immense world. Stars shone faintly above and below it; a couple of brighter bodies which were, just, more than mere points of light must be planets in the same system. The star providing the sunlight had to be almost directly behind the place he was looking from.

The world looked flat, spread out like the peel from some colossal fruit and thrown across the background stars. Edged top and bottom in the glinting grey-blue translucency of enormous containing walls, the surface was separated into long strips by numerous, regularly positioned verticals of grey-brown, white and — in the centre — stark grey-black. These enormous mountain ranges stretched from wall to wall across the world, parcelling it up into what must have been a few dozen separate divisions.

Between them there lay about equal amounts of land and ocean, the land partly in the form of island continents, partly in smaller but appreciably large islands — set in seas of various hues of blue and green — and partly in great swathes of green, fawn, brown and red which extended from one retaining wall to the other, sometimes dotted with seas, sometimes not, but always traversed by a single darkly winding thread or a collection of barely visible filaments, green and blue tendrils laid across on the ochres, tans and tawns of the land.

Clouds swirled, speckled, waved, dotted, arced and hazed in a chaos of patterns, near-patterns and patches, brush strokes strewn across the canvas of terrain and water below.

“This is what you will see,” one of the drones hummed.

The Estodien Visquile patted Quilan on the shoulder. “Welcome to Masaq’ Orbital,” he said.

~ Five billion of them, Huyler. Males, females, their young. This is a terrible thing we’re being asked to do.

~ It is, but we wouldn’t be doing it if these people hadn’t done something just as terrible to us.

~ These people, Huyler? These people right here, on Masaq’?

~ Yes, these people, Quil. You’ve seen them. You’ve talked to them. When they discover where you’re from they tone it down for fear of insulting you, but they’re so obviously proud of the extent and depth of their democracy. They’re so damned smug that they’re so fully involved, they’re so proud of their ability to have a say and of their right to opt-out and leave if they disagree profoundly enough with a course of action.

So, yes, these people. They share collective responsibility for the actions of their Minds, including the Minds of Contact and Special Circumstances. That’s the way they’ve set it up, that’s the way they want it to be. There are no ignorants here, Quil, no exploited, no Invisibles or trodden-upon working class condemned forever to do the bidding of their masters. They are all masters, every one. They can all have a say on everything. So by their own precious rules, yes, it was these people who let what happened to Chel happen, even if few actually knew anything about the details at the time.

~ Do only I think that this is… harsh?

~ Quil, have you heard even one of them suggest that they might disband Contact? Or reign-in SC? Have we heard any of them even suggesting thinking about that? Well, have we?

~ No.

~ No, not one. Oh, they tell us of their regret in such pretty language, Quilan, they say they’re so fucking sorry in so many beautifully expressed and elegantly couched and delivered ways; it’s like it’s a game for them. It’s like they’re competing to see who can be most convincingly contrite! But are they prepared to really do anything apart from tell us how sorry they are?

~ They have their own blindnesses. It is the machines we have our real argument with.

~ It is a machine you are going to destroy.

~ And with it five billion people.

~ They brought it upon themselves, Major. They could vote to disband Contact today, and any one or any group of them could leave tomorrow for their Ulterior or for anywhere else, if they decided they no longer agreed with their damned policy of Interference.

~ It is still a terrible thing we’re asked to do, Huyler.

~ I agree. But we must do it. Quil, I’ve avoided putting it in these terms because it sounds so portentous and I’m sure it’s something you’ve thought about yourself anyway, but I do have to remind you; four and a half billion Chelgrian souls depend on you, Major. You really are their only hope.

~ So I’m told. And if the Culture retaliates?

~ Why should they retaliate against us because one of their machines goes mad and destroys itself?

~ Because they will not be fooled. Because they are not so stupid as we would like them to be, just careless sometimes.

~ Even if they do suspect anything, they will still not be certain it was our doing. If everything goes according to plan it will look like the Hub did it itself, and even if they were certain we were responsible, our planners think that they will accept that we brought about an honest revenge.

~ You know what they say, Huyler. Don’t fuck with the Culture. We are about to.

~ I don’t buy the idea that this is some piece of wisdom the other Involveds have arrived at thoughtfully after millennia of contact with these people. I think it’s something the Culture came up with itself. It’s propaganda, Quil.

~ Even so, a lot of the Involveds seem to think it’s true. Be even slightly nice to the Culture and it will fall over itself to be still nicer back. Treat them badly and they—

~ —And they act all hurt. It’s contrived. You have to come on really evil to get them to drop the ultra-civilised performance.

~ Slaughtering five billion of them, at least, will not constitute what they’d regard as an act of evil?

~ They cost us that; we cost them that. They recognise that sort of revenge, that sort of trade, like any other civilisation. A life for a life. They won’t retaliate, Quil. Better minds than ours have thought this through. The way the Culture will see it, they’ll confirm their own moral superiority over us by not retaliating. They’ll accept what we’re going to do to them as the due payment for what they did to us, without provocation. They’ll draw a line under it there. It’ll be treated as a tragedy; the other half of a debacle that began when they tried to interfere with our development. A tragedy, not an outrage.

~ They might wish to make an example of us.

~ We are too far down the Involved pecking order to be worthy opponents, Quilan. There would be no honour for them in punishing us further. We have already been punished as innocents. All you and I are trying to do is even up that earlier damage.

~ I worry that we may be being as blind to their real psychology as they were to ours when they tried to interfere. With all their experience, they were wrong about us. We have so little training in second-guessing the reactions of alien species; how can we be so certain that we will get it right where they failed so dismally?

~ Because this matters so much to us, that’s why. We have thought long and hard about what we’re going to do. All this began exactly because they failed to do the same thing. They have become so blasé about such matters that they try to interfere with as few ships as possible, with as few resources as possible, in search of a sort of mathematical elegance. They have made the fates of entire civilisations part of a game they play amongst themselves, to see who can produce the biggest cultural change from the smallest investment of time and energy.

And when it blows up in their faces, it is not they who suffer and die, but us. Four and a half billion souls barred from bliss because some of their inhuman Minds thought they’d found a nice, neat, elegant way to alter a society which had evolved to stability over six millennia.

They had no right to try to interfere with us in the first place, but if they were determined to do it they might at least have had the decency to make sure they did it properly, with some thought for the numbers of innocent lives they were dealing with.

~ We still may be committing a second mistake upon a first. And they may be less tolerant than we imagine.

~ If nothing else, Quilan, even if there is some retaliation by the Culture, however unlikely that might be, it doesn’t matter! If we succeed in our mission here then those four and a half billion Chelgrian souls will be saved; they’ll be admitted to heaven. No matter what happens after that they’ll be safe because the Chelgrian-Puen will have allowed them in.

~ The Puen could allow the dead in now, Huyler. They could just change the rules, accept them into heaven.

~ I know, Quilan. But there is honour to be considered here, and the future. When it was first revealed that each of our own deaths had to be balanced by that of an enemy—

~ It wasn’t revealed, Huyler. It was made up. It was a tale we told ourselves, not something the gods graced us with.

~ Either way. When we decided that was the way we wanted to lead our lives with honour, don’t you think that people realised then that it might lead to what looked like unnecessary deaths, this instruction to take a life for a life? Of course they knew that.

But it was worth doing because in the long run we benefited as long as we maintained that principle. Our enemies knew we would not rest while we had deaths unavenged. And that still applies, Major. This is not some dry bit of dogma consigned to the history books or the string-frames in monastic libraries. This is a lesson that we have to keep reinforcing. Life will go on after this, and Chel will prevail, but its rules, its doctrines must be understood by each new generation and each new species we encounter.

When this is all over and we are all dead, when this is just another piece of history, the line will have been held, and we’ll be the ones who held it. No matter what happens, as long as you and I do our duty, people in the future will know that to attack Chel is to invite a terrible revenge. For their good — and I mean this, Quil, for their good as well as Chel’s, it’s worth doing now whatever has to be done.

~ I’m glad you seem so certain, Huyler. A copy of you will have to live with the knowledge of what we are about to do. At least I’ll be safely dead, with no back-up. Or at least not one that I know about.

~ I doubt they’d have made one without your consent.

~ I doubt everything, Huyler.

~ Quil?

~ Yes?

~ Are you still on board? Do you still intend to carry out your mission?

~ I do.

~ Good fellow. Let me tell you; I admire you, Major Quilan. It’s been an honour and a pleasure to share your head. Just sorry it’s coming to an end so soon.

~ I haven’t carried it out yet. I haven’t made the Displace.

~ You’ll do it. They suspect nothing. The beast is taking you to its bosom, to the very centre of its lair. You’ll be fine.

~ I’ll be dead, Huyler. In oblivion. That’s all I care about.

~ I’m sorry, Quil. But what you’re doing… there’s no better way to go.

~ I wish I could believe that. But soon it won’t matter. Nothing will.

Tersono made a throat-clearing noise. “Yes, it is a remarkable sight, isn’t it, Ambassador? Quite stunning. Some people have been known to stand here or sit here and drink it in for hours. Kabe; you stood here for what seemed like half a day, didn’t you?”

“I’m sure I must have,” the Homomdan said. His deep voice echoed round the viewing gallery, producing echoes. “I do beg your pardon. How long half a day must seem for a machine that thinks at the pace you do, Tersono. Please forgive me.”

“Oh, there is nothing to forgive. We drones are perfectly used to being patient while human thoughts and meaningful actions take place. We possess an entire suite of procedures specifically evolved over the millennia to cope with such moments. We are actually considerably less boreable, if I may create a neologism, than the average human.”

“How comforting,” Kabe said. “And thank you. I always find such a level of detail rewarding.”

“You okay, Quilan?” the avatar said.

He turned to the silver-skinned creature. “I’m fine.” He gestured towards the sight of the Orbital surface sliding slowly past, gloriously bright, one and a half million kilometres away but apparently much closer. The view from the gallery was normally magnified, not shown as it would have been if there was nothing between viewer and view but glass. The effect was to bring the interior perimeter closer, so that one could see more detail.

The rate it was sliding past at also gave a false impression; the Hub’s viewing gallery section revolved very slowly in the opposite direction to the world’s surface, so that instead of the entire Orbital taking a day to pass in front of the viewer, the experience commonly occupied less than an hour.

~ Quilan.

~ Huyler.

~ Are you ready?

~ I know the real reason they put you aboard, Huyler.

~ Do you?

~ I believe I do.

~ And what would that be, Quil?

~ You’re not my back-up at all, are you? You’re theirs.

~ Theirs?

~ Of Visquile, our allies — whoever they are — and the military high-ups and politicians who sanctioned this.

~ You’ll have to explain, Major.

~ Is it supposed to be too devious for a bluff old soldier to have thought of?

~ What?

~ You’re not here to give me somebody to moan to, are you, Huyler? You’re not here to provide me with company, or to be some sort of expert on the Culture.

~ Have I been wrong about anything?

~ Oh, no. No, they must have loaded you with a complete Culture database. But it’s all stuff anybody could get from the standard public reservoirs. Your insights are all second-hand, Huyler; I’ve checked.

~ I’m shocked, Quilan. Do we think this counts as slander or libel?

~ You are my co-pilot though, aren’t you?

~ That’s what you were told I was to be. That’s what I am.

~ In one of those old-fashioned, manual-only aeroplanes the co-pilot is there, at least partly, to take over from the pilot if he’s unable to perform his duties. Is that not true?

~ Perfectly.

~ So, if I changed my mind now, if I was determined not to make the Displacement, if I decided that I didn’t want to kill all these people… What? What would happen? Tell me. Please be honest. We owe each other honesty.

~ You’re sure you want to know?

~ Quite perfectly.

~ You’re right. If you won’t make the Displace, I make it for you. I know exactly the bits of your brain you used to make it happen, I know the precise procedures. Better than you, in a way.

~ So the Displace takes place regardless?

~ So the Displace takes place regardless.

~ And what happens to me?

~ That depends on what you try to do. If you try to warn them, you drop down dead, or become paralysed, or undergo a fit, or start babbling nonsense, or become catatonic. The choice is mine; whatever might arouse the least suspicion in the circumstances.

~ My. Can you do all that?

~ I’m afraid so, son. All just part of the instruction set. I know what you’re going to say before you say it, Quil. Literally. It’s only just before, but that’s enough; I think pretty quickly in here. But Quil, I wouldn’t take pleasure in doing any of that. And I don’t think I’m going to have to. You’re not telling me you just thought of all this?

~ No. No, I thought of it a long time ago. I just wanted to wait until now to ask you, in case it spoiled our close relationship, Huyler.

~ You are going to do it, aren’t you? I won’t have to take over, will I?

~ I haven’t really had those hours of grace at the beginning and end of each day at all, have I? You’ve been watching all the time to make sure I didn’t give any sign to them, just in case I had already changed my mind.

~ Would you believe me if I told you that you did have that time without me watching?

~ No.

~ Well, it doesn’t really matter anyway. But, as you might imagine, I will be listening in from now on, until the end. Quilan, again; you are going to do it, aren’t you? I won’t have to take over, will I?

~ Yes, I’m going to do it. No, you won’t have to take over.

~ Well done, son. It is truly hateful, but it does have to be done. And it will all be over soon, for both of us.

~ And many more besides. All right then. Here we go.

He had made six successful Displacements in a row within the mock-up of the Hub which had been constructed within the station orbiting the sun-moon of the airsphere. Six successes out of six attempts. He could do it. He would do it.

They stood within the mock-up of the observation gallery, faces lit by the image of an image. Visquile explained the thinking behind his mission.

“We understand that in a few months’ time the Hub Mind of Masaq’ Orbital will mark the passing of the light from the two exploding stars that gave the Twin Novae Battle of the Idiran War its name.”

Visquile stood very close to Quilan. The broad band of light — a simulation of the image that he would see when he really stood in the viewing gallery of Masaq’ Orbital Hub — seemed to pass in one of the Estodien’s ears and out the other. Quilan fought the urge to laugh, and concentrated on listening intently to what the older male was saying.

“The Mind that is now that of Masaq’ Hub was once embodied within a warship which played a major part in the Idiran War. It had to destroy three Culture Orbitals during the same battle to prevent them falling into enemy hands. It will commemorate the battle, and the two stellar explosions in particular, when the light of first one and then the other passes through the system Masaq’ lies within.

“You must gain access to the Hub and make the Displacement before the second nova. Do you understand, Major Quilan?”

“I do, Estodien.”

“The destruction of the Hub will be timed to coincide with the real-space light from the second nova arriving at Masaq’. It will therefore appear that the Hub Mind destroyed itself in a fit of contrition due to its guilty conscience over the actions it was responsible for during the Idiran War. The death of the Hub Mind and the humans will look like a tragedy, not an outrage. The souls of those Chelgrians held in limbo by the dictates of honour and piety will be released into heaven. The Culture will suffer a blow that will affect every Hub, every Mind, every human. We will have our numerical revenge and no more, but we will have that extra satisfaction that costs no more lives, only the additional discomfiture of our enemies, the people who, in effect, carried out an unprovoked surprise attack on us. Do you see, Quilan?”

“I see, Estodien.”

“Watch, Major Quilan.”

“I’m watching, Estodien.”

They had quit the orbiting space station. He and Visquile were in the two-person runabout. The two alien drones were in a slightly larger cone-shaped black-body craft alongside.

One of the ancient space station’s pressurised containment vessels had suffered a carefully contrived blowout which looked exactly like a chance catastrophe due to long-term neglect. It started to fall away on an altered orbit, its new heading taking it quickly towards the vast outpouring of energies erupting from the airsphere-facing side of the sun-moon.

They watched for a while. The station curved closer and closer to the edge of the invisible light column. The little runabout’s head-up display printed a line across the canopy for each of them, showing where that edge was. Just before the station encountered the column’s perimeter, Visquile said, “That last warhead was not a dummy, Major. It was the real thing. The other end of the wormhole is located possibly inside the sun-moon itself, or possibly inside something very like it, a long way away. The energies involved will be very similar to what will happen to Masaq’ Hub. That is why we are here rather than anywhere else.”

The station never quite hit the edge of the light column. An instant before it would have, its slowly spinning, erratically configured shape was replaced with a shockingly, blindingly bright blast of light which caused the runabout’s canopy to black out over half its area. Quilan’s eyes closed instinctively. The after-image burned behind his eyelids, yellow and orange. He heard Visquile grunt. Around them, the small runabout hummed and clicked and whined.

When he opened his eyes only the after-image was still there, glowing orange against the anonymous black of space and jumping ahead of his gaze every time he shifted it about, trying, in vain, to see what might be left of the stricken, tumbling space station.

~ There.

~ That looked good to me. I think you’ve done it. Well done, Quil.

“There,” Tersono said, placing a ring of red light onto the screen, over a group of lakes in one continent. “That is where the Stullien Bowl is. The venue for tomorrow’s concert.” The drone turned to the avatar. “Is everything ready for the concert, Hub?”

The avatar shrugged. “Everything except the composer.”

“Oh! I’m sure he is just teasing us,” Tersono said quickly. Its aura field positively shone with ruby light. “Of course Cr Ziller will be there. How could he not be? He’ll be there. I’m quite certain.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” Kabe rumbled.

“No, he will! I’m quite positive.”

Kabe turned to the Chelgrian. “You will be taking up your invitation, won’t you, Major Quilan?… Major?”

“What? Oh. Yes. Yes, I’m looking forward to it. Of course.”

“Well,” Kabe said, nodding massively, “they’ll find somebody else to conduct, I dare say.”

The major seemed distracted, Kabe thought. Then he seemed to pull himself together. “Well, no,” he said, looking to each of them in turn. “If my presence is really going to prevent Mahrai Ziller from attending his own first night then of course I’ll stay away.”

“Oh no!” Tersono said, aura flushing briefly blue. “There’s no need for that. No, not at all; I’m sure that Cr Ziller has every intention of being there. He may leave it until the last moment before he sets off, but set off he will, I’m quite positive. Please, Major Quilan, you must be there for the concert. Ziller’s first symphony in eleven years, the first ever première outside Chel, you, coming all this way, you two the only Chelgrians for millennia… You must be there. It will be the experience of a lifetime!”

Quilan looked steadily at the drone for a moment. “I think Mahrai Ziller’s presence at the concert is of more importance than mine. To go knowing that I would be keeping him away would be a selfish, impolite and even dishonourable act, don’t you think? But please, let’s talk no more of it.”

He left the airsphere the next day. Visquile saw him off from the little landing stage behind the giant hollowed-out husk which had provided their quarters.

Quilan thought the older male seemed distracted. “Is everything all right, Estodien?” he asked.

Visquile looked at him. “No,” he said, after what looked like a little thought. “No, we had an intelligence update this morning and our wizards of counter-espionage have come up with two pieces of worrying news rather than the more common single bombshell; it appears that not only do we have a spy amongst our number, but also there may be a Culture citizen here somewhere in the airsphere.” The Estodien rubbed the top of his silver stave, frowning at his distorted reflection there. “One might have hoped they could have told us these things earlier, but I suppose later is better than never.” Visquile smiled. “Don’t look so worried, Major, I’m sure everything is still under control. Or soon will be.”

The airship touched down. Eweirl stepped out. The white-furred male smiled broadly and bowed minutely when he saw Quilan. He bowed more deeply when he faced the Estodien, who patted him on the shoulder. “You see, Quilan? Eweirl is here to take care of things. Go back, Major. Prepare for your mission. You will have your co-pilot before too long. Good luck.”

“Thank you, Estodien.” Quilan glanced at the grinning Eweirl, then bowed to the older male. “I hope everything goes well here.”

Visquile let his hand rest on Eweirl’s shoulder. “I’m sure it will. Goodbye, Major. It’s been a pleasure. Again, good luck, and do your duty. I’m sure you will make us all proud.”

Quilan stepped aboard the little airship. He looked out through one of the gauzy windows as the craft lifted away from the platform. Visquile and Eweirl were already deep in conversation.

The rest of the journey was a mirror-image of the route he had taken on the way out except that when he got to Chel he was taken from Equator Launch City in a sealed shuttle straight to Ubrent, and then by car, at night, directly to the gates of the monastery at Cadracet.

He stood on the ancient path. The night air smelled fragrant with sigh tree resin, and seemed thin like water after the soup-thick atmosphere of the airsphere.

He had returned only to be called away. As far as the official records were concerned, he had never left, never been taken away by the strange lady in her dark cloak all those months ago, never descended with her to the road that led back to the world and was spotted with fresh blood.

Tomorrow he would be summoned to Chelise itself, to be asked to undertake a mission to the Culture world called Masaq’, to attempt to persuade the renegade and dissident Mahrai Ziller, composer, to return to his home-place and be the very symbol of the renaissance of Chel and the Chelgrian domain.

Tonight, while he slept — if all went according to plan and the temporary microstructures, chemicals and nano-glandular processes which had been imparted into his brain had the desired effect — he would forget all that had happened since Colonel Ghejaline had appeared out of the snow in the courtyard of the monastery those hundred and more days ago.

He would remember what he needed to remember, no more, bit by bit. His most available memories would be kept safe from intrusion and comprehension by all but the most obvious and damaging procedures. He thought he could feel the process of forgetting starting to happen even as he recalled the fact that it would take place.

Summer rain fell gently around him. The engine sound and the lights of the car that had brought him here had disappeared into the clouds below. He raised his hand to the little door set within the gates.

The postern opened quickly and silently and he was beckoned to come in.

~ Yes. Well done.

It had crossed his mind that now he had done what he was supposed to do, now that the mission was over, he might start — or try to start — telling the drone Tersono, or the Hub avatar itself, or the Homomdan Kabe, or all three, what he had just done, so that Huyler would have no choice but to disable him, hopefully kill him, but he did not.

Huyler might not kill him, after all, just disable him, and besides, he would be partially jeopardising the mission. It was better for Chel, better for the mission, to make everything appear as normal, until the light from the second nova poured through the system and across the Orbital.

“Well, that completes the tour,” the avatar said.

“So. My friends; shall we go?” the drone E. H. Tersono said chirpily. Its ceramic casing was surrounded by a healthy pink glow.

“Yes,” Quilan heard himself say. “Let’s go.”