Look to Windward

A Certain Loss of Control

He woke slowly, a little fuzzy-headed. It was very dark. He stretched lazily and could feel Worosei at his side. She moved sleepily towards him, curling into his body to fit. He put one arm around her and she snuggled closer.

Just as he was waking more completely and deciding that he wanted her, she turned her head to his, smiling, her lips opening.

She slid on top of him, and it was one of those times when the sex is so strong and balanced and exalted that it is almost beyond separate genders; it is as though it doesn’t matter who is male and who is female, and which part belongs to which person, when the genitalia seem somehow at once shared and separate, both belonging to each and to neither; his sex was a magical entity that penetrated both of them equally as she moved over him, while hers became like some fabulous, enchanted cloak that had spread and flowed to cover both their bodies, turning every part of them into a single sexually sensual surface.

It brightened very gradually as they made love, and then, after they had each finished and their pelts were matted with saliva and sweat and they were both panting heavily, they lay side by side, staring into each other’s eyes.

He was grinning. He couldn’t help it. He looked around. He still wasn’t entirely sure where he was. The room looked anonymous and yet extremely high-ceilinged and very bright. He had the odd feeling it ought to be making his eyes hurt, and yet it wasn’t.

He looked at her again. She had her head propped up on one fist and was looking at him. When he saw that face, took in that expression, he felt a strange shock, and then an exquisite, perfectly intense terror. Worosei had never looked at him like this; not just at him but around him, through him.

There was an utter coldness and a ferocious, infinite intelligence in those dark eyes. Something without mercy or illusion was staring straight into his soul and finding it not so much wanting, as absent.

Worosei’s fur turned perfectly silver and smoothed into her skin. She was a naked silver mirror and he could see himself in her long, lithe frame, perversely distorted like something being melted and pulled apart. He opened his mouth and tried to speak. His tongue was too big and his throat had gone quite dry.

It was she who spoke, not him:

“Don’t think I’ve been fooled for a moment, Quilan.”

It was not Worosei’s voice.

She pushed down on her elbow and rose from the bed with a powerful, fluid grace. He watched her go, and then became aware that behind him, on the other side of the curl-pad, there was an old male, also naked and staring at him, blinking.

The old fellow didn’t say a thing. He looked confused. He was at once utterly familiar and a complete stranger.

Quilan woke, panting. He stared wildly around.

He was in the broad curl-pad in the apartment in Aquime City. It looked to be about dawn and there was a swirl of snow beyond the dome of the skylight.

He gasped, “Lights,” and looked around the huge room as it brightened.

Nothing appeared to be out of place. He was alone.

It was the day that would end with the concert in the Stullien Bowl, which would climax with the first performance of Mahrai Ziller’s new symphony Expiring Light, which itself would end when the light from the nova induced upon the star Junce eight hundred years ago finally arrived at the Lacelere system and Masaq’ Orbital.

With an ignoble and tearing feeling of nausea he remembered that he had done his duty and the matter was out of his hands, out of his head, now. What would happen would happen. He could do no more about it than anybody else here. Less, in fact. Nobody else here had another mind aboard, listening to their every thought—

Of course; since last night, if not before, he no longer had his hour of grace at the end and beginning of each day.

~ Huyler?

~ Here. Have you had dreams like that before?

~ You experienced it too?

~ I’m watching and listening for any sign you might give which would warn them what’s going to happen this evening. I’m not invading your dreams. But I do have to monitor your body, so I know that was one hell of a hot dream that seemed to suddenly turn pretty frightening. Want to tell me about it?

Quilan hesitated. He waved the lights off and lay back in the darkness. “No,” he said.

He became aware that he had spoken rather than thought the word at the same time as he realised that he couldn’t say the next word he’d thought he was going to say. It would have been “No” again, but it just never made it to his lips.

He found that he could not move at all. Another moment of terror, at his paralysis and the fact he was at the mercy of somebody else.

~ Sorry. You were speaking there, not communicating. There; you’re, ah, back in charge.

Quilan moved on the curl-pad and cleared his throat, checking that he controlled his own body again.

~ All I was going to say was, No, no need. No need to talk about it.

~ You sure? You haven’t been that distressed until now, not in the whole time we’ve been together.

~ I’m telling you I’m fine, all right?

~ Okay, all right.

~ Even if I wasn’t it wouldn’t matter anyway, would it? Not after tonight. I’m going to try and get more sleep now. We can talk later.

~ Whatever you say. Sleep well.

~ I doubt it.

He lay back and watched the dry-looking dark flurries of snow fling themselves whirling at the domed skylight in a soundless fury that seemed poised in meaning exactly halfway between comic and threatening. He wondered if the snow looked the same way to the other intelligence watching through his eyes.

He didn’t think any more sleep would come, and it did not.

The dozen or so civilisations which would eventually go on to form the Culture had, during their separate ages of scarcity, spent vast fortunes to make virtual reality as palpably real and as dismissibly virtual as possible. Even once the Culture as an entity had been established and the use of conventional currency had come to be seen as an archaic hindrance to development rather than its moderating enabler, appreciable amounts of energy and time — both biological and machine — had been spent perfecting the various methods by which the human sensory apparatus could be convinced that it was experiencing something that was not really happening.

Thanks largely to all this pre-existing effort, the level of accuracy and believability exhibited as a matter of course by the virtual environments available on demand to any Culture citizen had been raised to such a pitch of perfection that it had long been necessary — at the most profoundly saturative level of manufactured-environment manipulation — to introduce synthetic cues into the experience just to remind the subject that what appeared to be real really wasn’t.

Even at far less excessive states of illusory permeation, the immediacy and vividness of the standard virtual adventure was sufficient to make all but the most determinedly and committedly corporeal of humans quite forget that the experience they were having wasn’t authentic, and the very ubiquity of this commonplace conviction was a ringing tribute to the tenacity, intelligence, imagination and determination of all those individuals and organisations down the ages who had contributed to the fact that, in the Culture, anybody anytime could experience anything anywhere for nothing, and never need worry themselves with the thought that actually it was all pretend.

Naturally, then, there was, for almost everybody occasionally and for some people pretty well perpetually, an almost inestimable cachet in having seen, heard, smelled, tasted, felt or generally experienced something absolutely and definitely for real, with none of this contemptible virtuality stuff getting in the way.

The avatar gave a snort. “They’re really doing it.” It laughed with surprising heartiness, Kabe thought. It was not the sort of thing you expected a machine, or even the human-form representative of a machine, to do at all.

“Doing what?” he asked.

“Reinventing money,” the avatar said, grinning and shaking its head.

Kabe frowned. “Would that be entirely possible?”

“No, but it’s partially possible.” The avatar glanced at Kabe. “It’s an old saying.”

“Yes, I know. ‘They’d reinvent money for this’,” Kabe quoted. “Or something similar.”

“Quite.” The avatar nodded. “Well, for tickets to Ziller’s concert, they practically are. People who can’t stand other people are inviting them to dinner, booking deep-space cruises together — good grief — even agreeing to go camping with them. Camping!” The avatar giggled. “People have traded sexual favours, they’ve agreed to pregnancies, they’ve altered their appearance to accommodate a partner’s desires, they’ve begun to change gender to please lovers; all just to get tickets.” It spread its arms. “How wonderfully, bizarrely, romantically barbaric of them! Don’t you think?”

“Absolutely,” Kabe said. “Are you sure about ‘romantically’?”

“And they have indeed,” the avatar continued, “come to agreements that go beyond barter to a form of liquidity regarding future considerations that sounds remarkably like money, at least as I understand it.”

“How extraordinary.”

“It is, isn’t it?” the silver-skinned creature said. “Just one of those weird flash-fashions that jumps out of the chaos for an instant every now and again. Suddenly everybody’s a live symphonic music fan.” It looked puzzled. “I’ve made it clear there’s no real room to dance.” It shrugged, then swept an arm round to indicate the view. “So. What do you think?”

“Most impressive.”

The Stullien Bowl was practically empty. The preparations for that evening’s concert were on schedule and under way. The avatar and the Homomdan stood on the lip of the amphitheatre near a battery of lights, lasers and effects mortars each of which quite dwarfed Kabe and, he thought, looked a lot like weapons.

The crisp blue day was a couple of hours old, the sun rising at their back. Kabe could just make out the tiny shadows he and the avatar were casting across a pattern of seats four hundred metres away.

The Bowl was over a kilometre across: a steeply raked coliseum of spun carbon fibres and transparent diamond sheeting whose seats and platforms focused around a generously, circular field which could adapt itself to accommodate various sports and a variety of concert and other entertainment configurations. It did have an emergency roof, but that had never been used.

The whole point of the Bowl was that it was open to the sky, and if the weather had to be of a certain type, well then Hub would do something it almost never did, and interfere meteorologically, using its prodigious energy projection and field-management capabilities to manipulate the elements until the desired effect was arrived at. Such meddling was inelegant, untidy and blunderingly coercive, but it was accepted that it had to be done to keep people happy, and that was, ultimately, Hub’s whole reason for being.

Technically, the Bowl was a giant specialised barge. It floated within a network of broad canals, slowly flowing rivers, broad lakes and small seas which stretched across one of Masaq’s more varied continent-Plates and along, through and across which it could — albeit rather slowly — navigate itself, so providing a wide choice of external backgrounds visible through the supporting structure and above the stadium’s lip, including jagged, snow-strewn mountains, giant cliffs, vast deserts, carpeting jungles, towering crystal cities, vast waterfalls and gently swaying blimp tree forests.

For a particularly wild event, there was a rapids course; a giant, quickly flowing river the Bowl could descend like a monstrous inflatable riding the world’s biggest flume, monumentally spinning, tipping and bobbing until it encountered the vast cliff-encircled whirlpool at the bottom, where it simply revolved atop a swirling column of spiralling water being sucked plunging into a set of colossal pumps capable of emptying a sea, until one of Hub’s Superlifters came to hoist it bodily back up to its normal elevation among the waterways above.

For tonight’s performance the Bowl would be staying where it was, at the point of a small peninsula on the shores of Bandel Lake, Guerno Plate, a dozen continents to spinward from Xarawe. The peninsula’s point housed a collection of underground access points, various elegantly disguised storage and support buildings, a broad concourse lined with bars, cafés, restaurants and other entertainment venues, and a giant bracket-shaped dock where the Bowl underwent any necessary maintenance and repair.

The Bowl’s in-built strategic tactile, sound and light systems, even without any in-person participatory enhancement, were as good as they could possibly be; Hub took responsibility for the remaining external conditions.

The Bowl was one of six, all specifically constructed to provide venues for events which needed to be held outside. They were distributed across the world so that there ought always to be one in the right place at the right time, no matter what the required conditions.

“Though of course,” Kabe felt bound to point out, “you could have just one, and then slow down or speed up the whole Orbital, to synchronise.”

“Been done,” the avatar said sniffily.

“I rather thought it might.”

The avatar looked up. “Ah ha.” Directly overhead, just visible through the morning haze above, a tiny roughly rectangular shape was glowing with reflected sunlight.

“What is that?”

“That is the Equator Class General Systems Vehicle Experiencing A Significant Gravitas Shortfall,” the avatar said. Kabe saw its eyes narrow fractionally and a small smile formed about its lips and eyes. “It changed its course schedule to come and see the concert too.” The avatar watched the shape grow bigger, and frowned. “It’ll have to move from there though; that’s where my air-burst meteorites are coming through.”

“Air burst?” Kabe said. He was watching the glowing rectangle of the GSV enlarge slowly. “That sounds, ah, dramatic.” Dangerous might seem a more suitable word, he thought.

The avatar shook its head. It too was watching the giant craft as it lowered itself into the atmosphere above them. “Na, it’s not that dangerous,” the avatar said, apparently but presumably not actually reading his mind. “The shower choreography is pretty much all set up. There might be a few bits of soft stuff that could still outgas and need retrajectoring, but they all have their own escort engines anyway.” The avatar grinned at him. “I used a whole bunch of old knife missiles; reactivated war stock, which seemed appropriate. Reckoned they needed the practice.”

They looked back up into the sky. The GSV was now about the same size as a hand held out at full arm’s stretch. Features were starting to appear on its golden-white surfaces. “All the rocks are fully set up; fired up and forgotten long ago,” the avatar continued, “sliding in simple as rings on an orrery. No danger there either.” It nodded at the GSV, which was close and bright enough now to be casting its own light over the surrounding landscape, like a strangely rectangular golden moon floating over the world.

“That is the sort of thing Hub Minds can’t help get worried about,” the avatar said, hoisting one silvery eyebrow. “A trillion tonnes of ship capable of accelerating like an arrow out of a bow coming close enough to the surface for me to feel the curve of the fucker’s gravity well if it wasn’t fielded out.” It shook its head. “GSVs,” it said, tutting as though over a mischievous but cute child.

“Do you think they take advantage of you because you used to be one?” Kabe asked. The giant craft seemed to have come to a halt at last, filling about a quarter of the sky. Some wispy clouds had formed underneath its lower surface. Concentric shells of field showed up as barely visible lines around it, like a set of cavernous nested bubbles floating in the sky.

“Damn right,” the avatar said. “Any native-to-Hub Mind would be baking its fuses at the very thought of letting something that big come inside perimeter; they like ships on the outside where if anything ever did go wrong they’d just fall away.” The avatar laughed suddenly. “I’m telling it to get the hell out of my jet stream now. It is, of course, being rude.”

The clouds forming underneath the giant ship started to flow in and flute upwards; the Experiencing A Significant Gravitas Shortfall was starting to draw away. Clouds boiled up around it like a million contrails forming at once, and lightning flickered between the blossoming towers of vapour.

“Look at that. Ruining the whole morning.” The avatar shook its head again. “Typical GSV. That little display had better not stop my nacreous clouds forming this evening or there’ll be big trouble.” It looked at Kabe. “Come on; let’s ignore this show-off and go below. I want to show you the engines on this thing.”

“But, Cr Ziller; your public!”

“Is back on Chel and would probably pay good money to see me hung, drawn and burned.”

“My dear Ziller, that is exactly my point. I’m sure what you say is a gross if understandable exaggeration, but even if it were remotely true, quite the opposite applies here; on Masaq’ there are huge numbers of people who would gladly give their own lives to save yours. It is them I was referring to, as I’m sure you well know. Many of them will be at the concert tonight; the rest will all be watching, immersed.

“They have waited patiently for years, hoping that one day you might feel inspired to complete another long work. Now that it has finally happened they cannot wait to experience it as fully as possible and pay you the homage they know you deserve. They are desperate to be there and hear your music and see you with their own eyes. They crave to see you conduct Expiring Light this evening!”

“They can crave all they like but they’re going to be disappointed. I have no intention of going, not if that suppurating piece of desk-fodder is going to be present.”

“But you won’t meet! We’ll keep you separate!”

Ziller stuck his big black nose up towards Tersono’s pink-blushed ceramic casing, causing the drone to shrink back from him. “I do not believe you,” he told it.

“What? Because I’m from Contact? But that’s ridiculous!”

“I bet Kabe told you that.”

“It doesn’t matter how I found out. I have no intention of trying to force you to meet Major Quilan.”

“But you’d like it if I did, wouldn’t you?”

“Well…” The drone’s aura field suddenly rainbowed with confusion.

“Would you or wouldn’t you?”

“Well, of course I would!” the machine said, wobbling in the air with what looked like anger, frustration or both. Its aura field looked confused.

“Ha!” Ziller exclaimed. “You admit it!”

“Naturally I would like you to meet; it is absurd that you haven’t, but I would only want it to happen if it occurred naturally, not if it was contrived against your expressed wishes!”

“Shh. Here comes one now.”

“But—!”

“Shh!”

Pfesine Forest, on Ustranhuan Plate — which was about as far away from the Stullien Bowl as it was possible to get without leaving Masaq’ altogether — was famous for its hunting.

Ziller had journeyed there from Aquime late the night before, stayed in a very jolly hunting lodge, woken late, found a local guide and gone to neck-jump Kussel’s Janmandresiles. He thought he could hear one of them coming now, shouldering its way through the dense bush bordering the narrow path directly beneath the tree he was hiding in.

He looked over at his guide, a stocky little guy in antique camouflage gear who was squatting on another bough five metres away. He was nodding and pointing in the direction of the noise. Ziller held onto a branch above him and peeked down, trying to see the animal.

“Ziller, please,” the drone’s voice said, sounding very odd in his ear.

The Chelgrian turned sharply to the machine floating at his side and glared at it. He held one finger to his lips and shook it. The drone went muddy cream with embarrassment. “I am talking to you by directly vibrating the inner membrane of your ear. There is no possibility that the animal you—”

“And I,” Ziller whispered through clenched teeth, leaning very close to Tersono, “am trying to concentrate. Now will you fucking shut up?”

The drone’s aura blanched briefly with anger, then settled to grey frustration mixed with spots of purple contrition. It quickly rippled into yellow-green, indicating mellowness and friendliness, hatched with bands of red to show it was taking this as a bit of a joke.

“And will you stop that fucking rainbow shit?” Ziller hissed. “You’re distracting me! And the animal can probably see you too!”

He ducked away as something very large and mottled blue passed underneath the branch. It had a head as long as Ziller’s whole body and a back broad enough to have accommodated half a dozen Chelgrians. He stared down. “God,” he breathed, “those things are big.” He looked over at his guide, who was nodding down at the animal.

Ziller gulped and dropped. The fall was only about two metres; he landed on all fives and was at the beast’s neck in one bound, swinging his feet over its neck on either side of its fan-like ears and grabbing a handful of its dark brown crest mane before it had time to react. Tersono floated down to accompany him. The Kussel’s Janmandresile realised it had something stuck to the nape of its neck and let out a deafening shriek. It shook its head and body as vigorously as it could and charged off along the path through the jungle.

“Ha! Ha ha ha ha ha!” Ziller yelled, clinging on while the huge animal bucked and shook beneath him. The wind whipped past; leaves, fronds, creepers and branches went zinging by, making him duck and dodge and gasp. The fur round his eyes pushed back in the breeze; the trees to either side of the path passed in a blue-green blur. The animal shook its head again, still trying to dislodge him.

“Ziller!” the drone E. H. Tersono shouted, riding the air just behind him. “I can’t help noticing you aren’t wearing any safety equipment! This is very dangerous!”

“Tersono!” Ziller said, teeth rattling as the beast beneath him went thudding along the winding trail.

“What?”

“Will you bugger off?”

There was some sort of break in the canopy ahead, and the animal’s pace increased as it went downhill. Pitched forward, Ziller had to lean way back towards the thing’s pounding shoulders to stop himself from being pitched over the animal’s head and trampled underfoot. Suddenly, through the trailing fronds of moss and pendulous leaves, there was a glint of sunlight from the forest floor. A broad river appeared; the Kussel’s Janmandresile thundered down the path and through the shallows in great kicking lines of spray, then threw itself into the deep water in the centre, ducking down and buckling its front knees as it went to throw Ziller off head first into the water.

He woke up spluttering in the shallows, being dragged on his back towards the river bank. He looked up and behind and saw Tersono pulling him with a maniple field coloured grey with frustration.

He coughed and spat. “Was I out for a bit there?” he asked the machine.

“A few seconds, Composer,” Tersono said, hauling him with what looked like enormous ease up onto a sandy bank and sitting him up. “It was probably just as well you went under,” it told him. “The Kussel’s Janmandresile was looking for you before it crossed to the far side. It probably wanted to hold you under or drag you to shore and stamp on you.” Tersono went behind Ziller and thumped his back while he coughed some more.

“Thank you,” Ziller said, bent over and spitting up some of the river water. The drone kept thumping away. “But don’t,” the Chelgrian continued, “think this means I’m going to go back to conduct the symphony in some fit of gratitude.”

“As if I would expect such graciousness, Composer,” the drone said in a defeated voice.

Ziller looked round, surprised. He waved away the machine’s field doing the thumping. He blew his nose and smoothed his face-fur down. “You really are upset, aren’t you?” he said.

The drone flashed grey again. “Of course I’m upset, Cr Ziller! You nearly killed yourself there! You’ve always been so dismissive, even contemptuous, of such dangerous pastimes. What is the matter with you?”

Ziller looked down at the sand. He’d torn his waistcoat, he noticed. Damn, he’d left his pipe at home. He looked around. The river flowed on past; giant insects and birds flitted over it, dipping, diving and zooming. On the far bank, something sizeable was making the deep fractaleaf sway and quiver. Some sort of long-limbed, big-eared furry thing was watching curiously from a branch high in the canopy. Ziller shook his head. “What am I doing here?” he breathed. He stood up, wincing. The drone put out thick maniple fields in case he wanted to lean on them, but did not insist on helping him up.

“What now, Composer?”

“Oh, I’m going home.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.” Ziller squeezed some water from his pelt. He touched his ear, where his terminal earring ought to be. He glanced out at the river, sighed and looked at Tersono. “Where’s the nearest underground access?”

“Ah, I do have an aircraft standing by, in case you don’t want to bother with the—”

“An aircraft? Won’t that take forever?”

“Well, it’s more of a little space craft, really.”

Ziller took a breath and drew himself up, brows furling. The drone floated back a little. Then the Chelgrian relaxed again. “All right,” he breathed.

Moments later a shape that looked like little more than an ovoid shimmer in the air swooped down between the trees overhanging the river, rushed towards the sandbank and came to an instant stop a metre away. Its camouflage field blinked off. Its sleek hull was plain black; a side door sighed open.

Ziller looked narrow-eyed at the drone. “No tricks,” he growled.

“As if.”

He stepped aboard.

The snow flew up against the windows in swirls and eddies that seemed sometimes to take on patterns and shapes. He was looking out at the view, at the mountains on the far side of the city, but every now and again the snow forced him to focus on it, just half a metre in front of his eyes, distracting him with its brief immediacy and taking his mind off the longer perspective.

~ So, are you going to go?

~ I don’t know. The polite thing would be not to go, so that Ziller will.

~ True.

~ But what is the point of politeness when some of these people will be dead at the end of the evening, and when I certainly will be?

~ It’s how people behave when they’re faced with death that shows you what they’re really like, Quil. You discover whether they really are as polite, and even as brave, as—

~ I can do without the lecture, Huyler.

~ Sorry.

~ I could stay here in the apartment and watch the concert, or just do something else, or I can go to hear Ziller’s symphony with a quarter of a million other people. I can die alone or I can die surrounded by others.

~ You won’t be dying alone, Quil.

~ No, but you will be coming back, Huyler.

~ No, only the me I was before all this will be coming back.

~ Even so. I hope you won’t think I’m being too sorry for myself if I regard the experience as being rather more profound for me than for you.

~ Of course not.

~ At least Ziller’s music might take my mind off it for a couple of hours. Dying at the climax to a unique concert, knowing you produced the final and most spectacular part of the light show, seems a more desirable context for quitting this life than collapsing over a café table or being found slumped on the floor here next morning.

~ I can’t argue with that.

~ And there’s another thing. The Hub Mind is going to be directing all the in-atmosphere effects, isn’t it?

~ Yes. There’s talk of aurorae and meteorite showers and the like.

~ So if the Hub’s destroyed there’s a good chance something could go badly wrong at the Bowl. If Ziller’s not there he’ll probably live.

~ You want him to?

~ Yes, I want him to.

~ He’s little better than a traitor, Quil. You’re giving your life for Chel and all he’s done is spit on all of us. You’re making the greatest sacrifice a soldier can make and all he’s ever done is whine, run away, soak up adulation and please himself. You really think it’s right that you go and he survives?

~ Yes I do.

~ That son-of-a-prey-bitch deserves… Well, no. I’m sorry, Quil. I still think you’re wrong about that, but you’re right about what happens to us tonight. It does mean more to you than me. I guess the least I can do is not try to argue the condemned male out of his last request. You go to the concert, Quil. I’ll take my satisfaction from the fact it’ll annoy the hell out of that scumbag.

“Kabe?” said a distinctive voice from the Homomdan’s terminal.

“Yes, Tersono.”

“I have succeeded in persuading Ziller to return to his apartment. I think there’s just the hint of a chance he might be wavering. On the other hand, I have just heard that Quilan is definitely going. Would you do me — all of us — the possibly incalculably enormous favour of coming here to help try and persuade Ziller to attend the concert nevertheless?”

“Are you sure I’d make any difference?”

“Of course not.”

“Hmm. Just a moment.”

Kabe and the avatar stood just in front of the main stage; a few technician drones were floating about and the orchestra were filing off stage after their final rehearsal. Kabe had watched but hadn’t wanted to hear; a trio of earplugs had fed him the sounds of a waterfall instead.

The musicians — not all human, and some of them human but very unusual looking — went back to their rest suite, doing a lot of muttering. They were troubled that one of Hub’s avatars had conducted the rehearsal. It had done a creditable impression of Ziller, though without the short temper, bad language and colourful curses. One might, Kabe thought, have imagined that the musicians would have preferred such an even-tempered conductor, but they seemed genuinely concerned that the composer might not be there for the real performance to conduct the work himself.

“Hub,” Kabe said.

The silver-skinned creature turned to him. It was dressed very formally in a severe grey suit. “Yes, Kabe?”

“Could I get to Aquime and back in time to catch the start of the concert?”

“Easily,” the machine said. “Is Tersono looking for reinforcements on the Ziller front?”

“You guessed. It appears to believe I may be of assistance in persuading him to attend the concert.”

“It might even be right. I’ll come too. Shall we underground it or take a plane?”

“A plane would be quicker?”

“Yes, it would. Displacing would be quickest.”

“I have never been Displaced. Let’s do that.”

“I have to draw your attention to the fact that a Displace incurs an approximately one in sixty-one million chance of utter failure resulting in death for the subject.” The avatar smiled wickedly. “Still willing?”

“Certainly.”

There was a pop, preceded by the briefest impression of a silver field disappearing alongside them, and another avatar stood beside the one he’d been talking to, dressed similarly but not identically.

Kabe tapped his nose-ring terminal. “Tersono?”

“Yes?” said the drone’s voice.

The silver-skinned twins bowed fractionally to each other.

“We’re on our way.”

Kabe experienced something he would later characterise as like having somebody else perform a blink for you, and as the avatar’s head rose back up after its brief bow, suddenly they were both standing in the main reception room of Ziller’s apartment in Aquime City, where the drone E. H. Tersono was waiting.