The Hydrogen Sonata

Ten (S -18)

“Mine doesn’t.”

“Play strange tricks?”

“Never. I’d feel more normal if it did.”

“I was kind of only kidding anyway.”

“I’d guessed.”

“It is Mr QiRia who plays strange tricks,” said the excessively hairy avatar to Cossont’s right, and chuckled.

Cossont lay lounging under a taut white, breeze-vibrated awning on the great raft Apranipryla, on the water world called Perytch IV. To her left, on another lounger, was QiRia, the man who claimed to be absurdly old. Splayed on a couch on her other side was the avatar of the Warm, Considering.

Culture ship avatars were usually human, or at least humanoid, especially when they were mixing mostly with humans, but not that of the ancient Delta-class GCU Warm, Considering; its avatar, Sklom, was in the form of a sylocule, a spikily blue-haired, six-limbed, six-eyed creature with a bulky central body.

Sklom lifted a murky-looking drink glass with a fat straw in it from a tray, raised its body from the couch a little and appeared to squat over the glass. There was a slurping noise and the level in the glass went down. Cossont had yet to find this less than fascinating. Also, slightly disgusting.

The Warm, Considering was supposed to be horrendously ancient itself — thousands of years old — though still not, the avatar and ship seemed happy to concede, nearly as venerable as QiRia. The man, however old he really was, seemed to be at least partially under the protection of the antique ship. It took him wherever he might want to go, provided or confirmed covering identities — he’d be besieged by media people or those just fascinated by extreme age, otherwise, he claimed — and, perhaps, she thought, from hints dropped over the last few days, helped maintain whatever aspects of his physiology and memory he could not take care of himself. She supposed if you were going to hide for ten thousand years, inside the Culture or anywhere else, it would help to have a ship on your side.

“I’d have thought your memory would play more tricks than anybody else’s,” she said to QiRia. This was the fourth day the man had spent out of the water, and the first without wet towels spread over him. “What with you having so much of it. Memory, I mean.”

The man rubbed his face with both hands. “Well, you’d be wrong,” he told her. “One of the things you have to do if you’re going to live a long time and not go mad is make sure your memories are properly… looked after. Managed.”

“How do you even fit them in?” Cossont asked. “Are you basic-ally all computer, inside your head?”

“Not at all,” QiRia said, his expression indicating he found the idea distasteful. “In some ways my brain is as it’s always been, just stabilised. Been like that for millennia. Though it does have a modified neural lace within it. Heavily modified; no comms. What I do have is extra storage. Not processing; storage. The two are sometimes confused.”

“What,” Cossont asked, “is it remote, or—?”

“No. It’s in me,” QiRia told her. “Throughout me. Vast amount of storage room in the human body, once you can encode in the appropriate bases and emplace a nano-wire read-out system through the helices. Started with connective tissue, then bones, now even my most vital organs have storage built in. Doesn’t detract from their utility in the least; improves it in some ways, in terms of bone strength and so on. Though I have noticed this body doesn’t float very well.”

“You are weighed down by your memories, literally!” Sklom said, chortling.

QiRia looked unimpressed at this as he held up one hand, extended a digit and inspected it. “Well yes. However, it also allows me to have more knowledge in my little finger than some people do in their whole body, literally.”

“What of your masculine organ of generation?” Sklom asked. The avatar was modelled on a male sylocule. “What is stored there?”

QiRia frowned and looked away, as though distracted, gauging. “Currently empty.”

Sklom hooted with laughter. Cossont reflected that males seemed to find the same things funny even across utterly different species.

“Room for expansion!” Sklom wheezed, though QiRia looked unimpressed at this and shared a rolling-eyes look with Cossont.

He pinched the top of his nose. “At first, my memories were placed randomly throughout my body, with many copies,” he said. “Now, as the available space has been taken up, there is generally only one copy of each memory, and I have, over the centuries, as part of one of my long-term internal projects, sorted and moved and… re-stored all my memories, so that they reside in what seem to me apposite locations.” He looked at Cossont. “I lied; my genitals contain all my memories of previous sexual encounters. It seemed only appropriate.”

“Ha!” Sklom said, sounding happy.

“Like you say,” Cossont agreed. “Appropriate. What’s left in your actual brain?”

“Recent memories, recently recalled old memories, a highly intricate map of where all my memories are stored throughout my body, and a sort of random, sifted debris of all the thoughts and memories that have ever passed through my head. That I can’t — daren’t — interfere with too much, aside from one or two very specific episodes. To do so further would risk becoming not myself. We are largely the sum of all we’ve done, and to dispose of that knowledge would be to stop being one’s self.”

“What are the one or two specific episodes—?” Cossont began.

“None of your business,” QiRia said smoothly.

Cossont lowered her voice a little. “Has anyone ever broken your heart?” she asked quietly.

“Phht!” Sklom spluttered.

“In the sense I’m sure you mean, not for over nine and a half thousand years,” QiRia told her briskly. “Taking another, more pertinent definition, my heart is broken with each new exposure to the idiocies and cruelties of every manner of being that dares to call or think of itself as ‘intelligent’.”

“In other words,” Sklom chipped in, “about every century, half-century, or so.”

QiRia glared at the creature, but let the point stand.

“So,” Cossont said, “sexual memories in your genitals…”

“Yes,” QiRia said.

“Where do you keep your memories of love, past lovers?”

QiRia looked at her. “In my head, of course.” He looked away. “There are not so many of those, anyway,” he said, voice a little quieter. “Loving becomes harder, the longer you live, and I have lived a very long time indeed.” He fixed his gaze on her again. “I’m sure it varies across species — some seem to do quite well with no idea of love at all — but you soon enough come to realise that love generally comes from a need within ourselves, and that the behaviour, the… expression of love is what is most important to us, not the identity, not the personality of the one who is loved.” He smiled bleakly at Cossont. “You are young, of course, and so none of this will make any sense whatsoever.” His smile melted away, Cossont thought, like late spring snow over a morning. “I envy you your illusions,” he said, “though I could not wish their return.”

The long piers and bulbous pontoons of the giant, articulated raft flexed and creaked around them, like a giant arthritic hand laid across the surface of the ocean, forever trying to pat it calm.

“Ah-ha!” Sklom said. “Here it is!” The avatar jumped off the couch and roll-walked across the raft in a blue blur of limbs as a small shuttle craft appeared in the skies to one side, coming curving in across the restless blue-green waves. It held the elevenstring which the Anything Legal Considered had recently made for Cossont. Having heard that ideally the instrument required four arms and hands to play properly, Sklom wanted a go.

QiRia sighed. “This is going to sound awful, isn’t it?”

Cossont nodded. “Yup.”

She came to, again. There was an instant of sheer panic as she remembered the decompressing blast and the misty explosion of released air that had rolled her and the android out into the vacuum and the iron-cold surface of the planet… then she realised she felt all right, and not in any pain, and that she was warm and even comfortable.

She opened her eyes, half expecting the roll of an oceanic swell beneath her, and the white sky of a stretched awning above.

“In a medically enabled shuttle, aboard the Culture ship Mistake Not…,” a person standing next to her announced. Whoever they were, they had skin the colour of brushed bronze. Ship avatar, Cossont found herself thinking. The figure shrugged. “That was me assuming your first question would have been on the lines of, Where am I?” it told her.

Cossont swallowed, found her throat was a little sore, and just nodded. She managed a low grunt.

The bald, androgynous avatar had green eyes, an open, honest-looking face and was dressed conventionally enough by Gzilt standards. Cossont turned her head from side to side. She was lying on a partially reclined bed, still dressed in her much-punctured trews and Lords of Excrement jacket. The dead trooper lay, still in his suit but with the helmet-front hinged back, to her left. Inside the helmet, his face didn’t look right. The avatar saw her looking. It reached over to close the face-plate.

The android Eglyle Parinherm lay, still in his technically incorrect and over-stretched colonel’s jacket, to her right. He seemed no more alive than the dead trooper. Pyan was flapping round the roughly circular space, then came fluttering closer, squeaking something about her being — ah! — alive after all — hurrah!

At least this time, Cossont started to think, she’d managed to leave behind the… then she noticed that against one bulkhead lay the dark, coffin-like case of the elevenstring.

She closed her eyes for a moment. “Oh, for…” she muttered, then looked at the avatar and did her best to smile.

“You’re alive! You’re alive!” Pyan yelped excitedly, landing on her chest and jumping around, flapping at Cossont’s face with its corners.

“Astute as ever,” Cossont said, patting the creature with one set of arms while she looked around and took in more of her surroundings.

There was a sort of casual understatement common to what you might call official Culture craft when it came to interior design; an artful simplicity concealing gigglingly hi-tech. She’d become familiar with it during her exchange student years. What she could see here appeared to display it, so she was going to accept what she was being told. Though, given the pace and severity of recent events, she wasn’t taking anything for granted. However, even if this wasn’t what it looked like, it was definitely better than being frozen to death in the cramped, upside-down transport, or outside on the bleak hard surface of the Sculpt planet.

She cleared her throat, continued to pat the over-excited and now purring Pyan, and nodded towards the android, lying still and unbreathing a metre away from her. “Is he — it — dead?” she asked.

“No,” the avatar said. “However, your android companion does represent military tech, in a situation of some opacity regarding factionality, and in addition seems confused, so I thought it best to keep it temporarily inanimate.”

Cossont looked at the avatar. “Factionality?”

“Yes; I’m not currently sure which side it or anybody else is on. Or what the sides actually are.” The avatar smiled at her. “You come tagged as reserve Lieutenant Commander Vyr Cossont. Correct?”

Cossont nodded. “Correct.”

“I’ve already introduced myself,” Pyan announced, pointing one corner at Cossont’s face, then at the avatar’s. The creature sighed, settling flat onto Cossont’s chest. “We’re old friends.”

The avatar looked askance at this, but smiled briefly at the familiar. “Pleased to meet you,” the avatar said to Cossont. “And welcome aboard. My name’s Berdle. I’m the avatar of the Mistake Not…”

“Culture ship?” Cossont asked, just to be sure.

“Culture ship.” The avatar nodded. “Slightly confused Culture ship at the moment. Wondering why elements of the Gzilt military appear to be attacking each other. Would you have any idea?”

Cossont had raised her head from the semi-reclined couch. Now she blew out her cheeks and let her head go back again.

Gratitude at rescue was all very well, but trust, and blabbing, were different. She had no idea how much to reveal, always assuming the ship hadn’t read her mind or something already. Stall, she thought. She said, “Mind if I ask what sort of Culture ship, first?”

“Erratic,” the avatar said emphatically.

“Erratic… warship?”

“Not officially,” Berdle said, looking pained. “But also not without resources in that regard.”

“You rescued us,” Cossont said. “I’m sorry; I should have said thank you by now. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” The avatar nodded, then glanced at the dead trooper. “I’m afraid rescue came too late for your armoured friend here.”

“Yes. That was very…” Cossont said, trying to recall the exact sequence of events as well as she was able “… ah, nick-of-time, there.” She hadn’t forgotten all her military training; one point she certainly recalled being taught was that anything that looked like an outrageous coincidence was probably enemy action.

The avatar nodded. “I only spotted you because the loitering munition sub-package saw you first, and gave itself away by firing. I was able to deal with it and pick you and your fellows up without too much trouble — though I had to discard the craft you were in. Now, however, we’re hiding, frankly. Retreated from the aftermath of the fray while I sort out what’s going on.” The avatar glanced at the case of the elevenstring. “I brought that, assuming it must be yours,” it said, gesturing towards her lower set of arms.

“Hmm,” Cossont said.

While its avatar talked to the human, the Mind was signalling.

∞

xUe Mistake Not…

oGSV Kakistocrat

Got here a tad too late; post system-outskirts arrival event list attached. Looks like a them-on-them to me but feel free to pick over. Snapped up a dead guy, a human with a syn-pet and a weird musical instrument, plus a fairly sharp combat android which I’m keeping deactivated for now. Specs attached for all concerned. Android’s current instructions also attached. Ignore bit about it all being a sim. My current status: hiding while a swarm of wee angry ships boils about the place. Big scary ship which was most likely responsible for the attack meanwhile still in volume, possibly.

Would deeply appreciate knowing what the fuck is going on. Prompt answers the in thing this season, apparently; trust you’ve heard.

∞

Bad luck. Being kept in dark too. Reluctantly passing you over to somebody closer to the decision-making. Appreciate not being out-cluded subsequently, if poss.

Take great care, but smite promptly and thoroughly if/when situation calls.

∞

“So, what light can you shed on what’s been going on?” the avatar asked.

“Not much,” Cossont said. “Pretty confused myself. I was on Fzan-Juym to be briefed, but it all went a bit crazy before we could, you know, complete everything. Barely arrived when they were throwing us off again.”

“Did you know many people on Fzan-Juym?”

“No.”

“I’m afraid it’s—”

“Destroyed. I know.” She thought of Reikl, hoped she’d survived.

“There might have been a few other survivors, but I’m not sure. Few appear to have survived the initial attack and almost all of those seem to have been hunted down and killed. You may be the only survivors.”

Cossont closed her eyes. Pyan held still. The avatar was silent for a while.

∞

xMSV Pressure Drop

oUe Mistake Not…

Greetings. Good work getting to Izenion so quickly. You deserved to get there in time to do more, if there was anything that could have been done, but what you’ve been able to do is much appreciated.

∞

Uh-huh. I’m looking for answers, not a pat on the metaphorical. Why was I sent here? What’s going on? This anything to do with the Ablate anomaly?

∞

Of course. I was aiming for politeness but may have achieved obsequiousness; please accept my apologies.

You’re there because the Passing By… spotted something heading fast for Izenion from Zyse and we had nothing else to go on; seemed something might be going to happen and you were nearest. We weren’t expecting a shooting war quite so quick and severe. Or a civil war at all.

High probability First attacking Fourteenth, with at least political backing if not instigation. Not yet sure why (but see below).

Ablate possibly first symptom of whatever’s wrong; still working on how deep the problem goes (but see following).

We’re a little constrained for now by confidentiality issues, but — bilge-bottom — this is probably a Z-Remnanter responsibility, and the big S itself may be — or be seen to be — at risk. So all a bit delicate. Our main interests would appear to imply cautious support for legitimate authorities (which might get tricky depending on who sanctioned the Ablate and Fzan-Juym attacks), not getting too involved, and certainly not revenging.

∞

I see. And “We”?

∞

Would be myself, the LOU Caconym, the GSVs Contents May Differ and Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life’s Rich Tapestry, plus the GCU Displacement Activity. I am and will be copying to them. I’ll be asking the Passing By And Thought I’d Drop In to join in too. Other C. craft in Gzilt space are probably going to be involved on a need-to-know basis, as and when. Meanwhile, any and all subsequently discovered info appreciated.

∞

Okay. Till.

∞

“I’ll be honest with you, Ms Cossont,” Berdle said at last. Cossont opened her eyes again. The avatar was looking at her with an expression of regret. “Given the warlike and lethal turn of events hereabouts, and not being sure whose side it might be on, I gave myself leave to interrogate the systems of your android companion here,” it told her. “Aside from a baffling but apparently sincere belief that it’s been in a simulation for several hours, Android… Parinherm? Is that its name?”

Cossont nodded. “So I’m told.”

“Yes, well, Ad Parinherm here does seem a very capable and advanced device, of a type that would normally only be employed in matters of some importance to the Gzilt military, or Gzilt in general. My initial speculation was that it, you and the unfortunate trooper captain here were a group assembled effectively by chance as people scrambled to get off Fzan-Juym as best they could during the brief period when it became clear that an attack on it was immanent; however the android’s most recent and still current orders are that it protect you as a matter of utmost importance and provide full and unstinting support and assistance in your mission, whatever that may be — its orders were frustratingly unclear on that point. So, given that another way of looking at your early and possibly uniquely successful escape from the destruction of the regimental HQ of Fzan-Juym might imply that you were prioritised above even the regimental High Command, you’ll understand that this mission of yours has become a subject of some interest of to me.”

Cossont nodded. “No kidding,” she said.

The avatar nodded. “Let me expand upon my honesty,” it continued, “by admitting that my presence here was not coincidental. I was elsewhere in Gzilt space on a relatively routine task involving helping to monitor the actions of one of the so-called Scavenger groups currently present due to the up-coming Subliming when I was asked to get here, to the Izenion system, as quickly as possible, though with no indication regarding exactly why.” The avatar looked thoughtful.

It’s a ship, Cossont told herself, watching this little display. A Mind. It thinks a gazillion times faster than you do. It never needs to stop and think, not when talking to a human. This is all just for show.

“Though I was informed,” the avatar said, “that arriving with all my weapon systems fully primed and readied might be advisable.”

“Uh-huh,” Cossont said.

“Now,” the avatar continued, “I know that you know something of the Culture, having been with us as a student in the past, so perhaps you understand that being ‘asked’ as I was by some fellow ships — senior fellow ships of considerable repute and responsibility in matters of inter-civilisational dealings — is tantamount to an order, and that being requested to make my way here as quickly as I was required to meant that my engines suffered a small, temporary but still significant degree of damage — an action/outcome I take no more lightly than any Culture vessel. Then, when I get here, I find I’m four hours or so too late to prevent a hi-tech-level attack on one of our Gzilt hosts’ most important military installations, an attack that might — according to certain details indicative of the weapons apparently used — have been carried out by another part of the Gzilt military.” The avatar spread its hands. “So now you know, to all intents and purposes, as much as I do, Ms Cossont. And a little more, of course, as you — I assume — know what this mission of yours is, while I don’t. Frankly, I’m still waiting on further instructions here, but knowing your part in this might, I’d hazard, be quite helpful, pretty much regardless.”

“Right,” Cossont swallowed. “You guys,” she said. The avatar didn’t have eyebrows as such, just little sloped creases above each eye. It raised those. She stumbled on. “You don’t, I mean… you’re not allowed to torture people are you?”

The avatar closed its eyes briefly before letting them flutter open again. “I believe the consensus is it remains one of the few temptations we don’t indulge,” it said. It could see she was still uncertain. Berdle sighed. “You are under no obligation to tell me what you don’t want to tell me, Ms Cossont, nor are you being threatened. You are also free to go as soon as I can find somewhere safe for you to go to. At the moment there is a state of some confusion reigning within the Izenion system, with a lot of trigger-happy minor ships of the Fourteenth milling around looking for something to shoot at, and at least the chance that the craft that destroyed Fzan-Juym is or are still in the volume.”

Cossont came to a decision. “I was told to report to General Reikl, or the next most senior officer in the regiment,” she said.

“The High Command are probably all dead,” the avatar told her. “The next most senior person could be some distance down the ranks. Locally, for all we know, you are the most senior ranking officer. Given the outbreak of hostilities, and according to my reading of the Gzilt military code, your reserve status has already automatically been rescinded; even if you weren’t before, you were effectively called up again as soon as the first particle beam hit the Fzan-Juym regimental HQ.”

Cossont swallowed once more. Her throat was still tingling. She could remember the breath whistling through her, being torn out of her lungs, like throwing up air.

“I need to get to… a place,” she said.

Berdle assumed a studiedly neutral expression. “You may need to be a trifle more specific.”

“I know, I know, but will you take me there, if I tell you where I need to go?”

The avatar smiled tolerantly. “You mean you want me to commit myself to taking you somewhere—”

“No, no,” Cossont said, closing her eyes and shaking her head. “That’s not going to — I can see… you’re a… I’m just — I’m sorry, I’m not…”

While the human was screwing up her eyes and wittering, a signal arrived.

∞

xMSV Pressure Drop

oUe Mistake Not…

Tripped a pop-flag on this one, com: specs on your guests included the live bio’s name (rLC Vyr Cossont). Data from one interested party assertively idents a certain individual: C. cit. (congen) QiRia, Ngaroe (no further nom. detail avail.). If not fraud, semi-mythic figure. Vyr Cossont met him 20 years ago (cert. ≥99%). Link likely germane.

You were right; contents/passengers you rescued from craft/Eshri surface not random.

Ms Cossont may be our best lead.

Sound out. Stick with.

∞

The avatar smiled wearily but warmly. “Let’s suppose, for the sake of brevity if nothing else,” it said, “that our interests lie parallel. Why don’t you tell me where you want to go?”

Cossont had a think about this, and couldn’t see a way round it.

“Centralised Dataversities,” she said. “Ospin.”

The avatar made every show of thinking about this save actually stroking its chin. “Hmm,” it said at last. “Do-able. But the other ships I’m talking to will want to know why I’m going there; they’ll probably have their own good reasons for sending me somewhere else. I need to give them something if I’m to go charging off on the whim of a shipwrecked human I just picked up.”

“I’m looking for something,” Cossont said.

Pyan stuck one corner up, into Cossont’s face. Two circles like extemporised eyes popped into existence on its folded fabric. “Are you? What?” it asked.

Cossont put one hand over the familiar’s impromptu face and pushed it back down. “Something I gave to one of the orders there,” she told Berdle, “for safe keeping.”

The avatar looked interested but still sceptical.

“Something to do with one of your own people,” Cossont told it.

“One of our people?”

“A Culture person.” She held all four hands up. This had proved to be a useful gesture when used in front of humans — stopped them in their tracks, normally — though she had no idea how it would work on a machine. “Can’t say more for now.”

The avatar’s eyes narrowed. “Okay,” it said. “So, to be clear: you’re happy that we head there directly, I make no mention of picking you up to anybody in your own regiment, and I can leave Ar Parinherm deactivated until we get there?”

Cossont nodded. “That all sounds fine to me.”

∞

oUe Mistake Not…

xMSV Pressure Drop

So there we are.

∞

Indeed. Ospin. Home of the Centralised Dataversities and the conglomerate of associated hangers-on. Something QiRia gave her? Too precious or too dangerous?

∞

Or something she made, perhaps, or recorded, which she’d thought to leave to posterity.

∞

If it’s a Culture artefact it might have some processing or ident tech embedded. Useful to have that pinned.

∞

Point.

∞

One way to find out. Try and get her to be more specific, though you are already the nearest asset we know of, so no way apparent of getting somebody there before you arrive.

∞

The avatar bowed. “We are now on our way to the Ospin System.”

“Brilliant.”

“And may I dispose of the trooper’s body?”

“Yes. Wait; how?”

“I thought I’d just leave it floating in space with the suit’s comms broadcasting a weak signal; that ought to attract a Gzilt ship before too long. Then he can be disposed of as you would normally think fit.”

Cossont nodded. “Fair enough. Also, do you have any food? I am fucking famished.”

“Septame, I am a mild-mannered man, I am known for my forbearance and general good humour, my tolerance and my indefatigable desire to give the other person the benefit of the doubt in all matters and at all times, but in all my wide and valuable experience in matters of inter-species diplomacy I have to say that even I, sir, even I am shocked to find my clients and — yes, my friends, my valued friends, for so they have become, and I am absolutely not ashamed to say it, no; in fact I am proud to, proud to say it, I am — the Liseiden legation being so roundly deceived and so ill-used is as appalling as it is shocking. Their good nature, their instinctive trust, their admiration for a species they have long looked up to and desired, why, to… to praise, to honour, indeed, by their emulation; all have been taken advantage of, in a most shameful and unbefitting way.”

“My dear Mierbeunes,” Banstegeyn said, putting one hand on the other man’s arm. “I hear everything you say. I do. I am as appalled as you are.”

“I doubt that, sir! I doubt that most severely!”

They sat in a tiny bower in the parliament building’s gardens. The Liseiden in their strange floating fish bowls had departed in a huff to their ship in orbit, leaving the humanoid Iwenick, Ambassador Mierbeunes, to speak on their behalf. Banstegeyn had listened as patiently as he could, but he was starting to wonder if the fellow was being paid by the word.

“May we speak in absolute confidence?” Banstegeyn said, sitting still closer to the other man.

Mierbeunes was shaking his head. “What price confidentiality, sir, when trust, when honesty itself, is nowhere to be found?”

“I will have this reversed,” Banstegeyn assured the ambassador, patting him gently again. “You have my word on it. You may rely on that absolutely. Now, Mierbeunes,” he continued, as the ambassador took a breath, opened his mouth, shook himself and generally showed every sign that he was working up to some fresh, or at least subsequent, diatribe, “this was not my fault. Even I cannot be everywhere at all times. I have as much cause to feel betrayed as you and our dear Liseiden friends, in some ways, for I put my trust in others and was let down. They said they would vote one way, then turned and voted another. Unforgivable. Utterly—”

“That wretch, that bastard Quvarond!” the Iwenick said, sounding like he was almost in tears. Banstegeyn had made it very clear who was behind the horrifying vote earlier.

“Yes, unforgivable, I know, but it has happened. I assure you I have looked into ways of undoing this immediately, but there are no grounds. This was most cunningly, cunningly done, believe me. No grounds at all. So, we must fall back for now, regroup. But this is not the end. We will prevail here, dear Mierbeunes, and sense will be seen. But you must understand that I must risk more, to accomplish this, and so I need you to ask one more thing of our friends, when the time comes.”

“Sir!” the ambassador said, almost despairing, “how can I possibly—?”

“Please, please listen, Mierbeunes. My hope, my desire, always — and let us not call it a price, because it is more, far more noble than that — but my desire has always been to have this world, the world of my birth, my cradle, my home, named after one of its most loving and honoured sons.”

“Sir, I—”

“No, please, please do listen. Let me say just this. Let me say just four words. Will you listen, please, dear Mierbeunes? Four words; just four words.”

Mierbeunes sighed heavily, nodded.

Banstegeyn moved still closer, whispering into the ambassador’s ear. “Mierbeunes’ World. Banstegeyn’s Star.”

She should have known. So should QiRia.

Sklom, the sylocule-resembling avatar of the Warm, Considering, played the bodily acoustic Antagonistic Undecagonstring superbly, as though born to it.

The ship had programmed its avatar to do so. It had reviewed all the literature, looked up the specs, watched and analysed every available screen and sound-only recording and then simmed the resulting models exhaustively until the virtual version of the blue-furred avatar could exactly reproduce the performances of all the great virtuosi of the past. The essence of all that had then been downloaded into the avatar.

Sklom sat naturally inside the enormous instrument as though it had been designed around him, grasped both bows as if they’d been made to measure, produced recently grown padded finger substitutes from his paws and extended beautiful music from the very first touch of bow on string.

Cossont listened with an expression of growing horror on her face, even as she found herself close to weeping at the beauty of the music — one of those pieces she knew she knew but could not quite recall the name of out of her own head.

“It’s a bit… rich,” QiRia said, glancing at her.

“What?” she asked.

“The tone,” QiRia said. “Overly full.”

“You think?”

“Air pressure. We’re too low down here.”

“It’s a water world,” she said, not looking at the man as the six-limbed creature inhabiting the elevenstring swayed, limbs sawing, creating beauty. “There’s no dry high.”

“They’re supposed to sound better the higher you go, in the atmosphere of your average oxygen/inert rocky world.” QiRia shrugged. “Up to a point.”

“I don’t know,” Cossont said. “There was at least one music critic who said the elevenstring might keep on sounding better the higher up it was played, and it might sound best of all played above the atmosphere altogether, where you couldn’t hear it at all.”

Still watching Sklom play — perfectly, brilliantly, heartbreakingly — Cossont heard QiRia chuckle.

She had always been bad at losing things. Or very good, if you looked at it a different way. According to her mother it was practically a talent. Cossont had lost count of the number of people who’d suggested that — or at least wondered if — the reason she’d taken up the elevenstring (rather than say, the finger flute) was that the instrument would be so hard to leave behind somewhere.

She duly lost the desire to play the elevenstring; misplaced it for about fifteen years following that performance by the carelessly perfect cobbled-together artificial version of an absurd-looking alien. What was the point of taking the time learning to play anything as well as you could, when a machine could use something it would think of as little better than its hand puppet to play so achingly, immaculately, ravishingly well, exactly as though it was the creature that had spent a lifetime studying, understanding and empathising with the instrument and all that it signified and meant?

“That’s how ships settle scores, lass,” QiRia told her when she opened her heart to him during a last, drunken night spent on Perytch IV, on the great raft Apranipryla.

They sat on deck, sun-awnings rolled back above, just the two of them, neither avatar present. She watched the stars where they showed between the dark, unseen masses of the silently towering cloud masses. He sat with his eyes closed, listening to the slow wind and the slower waves and feeling the gentle lift and fall of the great raft. Even past midnight, the air remained warm and sticky.

“What?” she sniffed, wiped her nose on the back of her hand.

“The Warm, Considering probably felt insulted that the Anything Legal Considered brought you here.”

“Really? But…”

“The Warm, Considering likes to think it is very protective of me.” QiRia drank from his glass. “It is very protective of me. But certain sorts of protection, even care, can shade into a sort of desire for ownership. Certainly into a feeling that what is being protected is an earned exclusivity of access for the protector, not the privacy of the protected.” He looked across at her. His eyes were the colour of the sea, she remembered. Dark now. “Do you understand?”

“I suppose. But I thought they were friends. The two ships.”

“Well, they share an interest in me, perhaps, but whether they are friends… Even if they are, they might still… manoeuvre round each other. Wrestlers, body-fighters, looking for advantage, even if they would never press home fully. And old ships can be quite… quirky, shall we say.” He sighed. “I have outlived one ship who was my protector, back at the start, bade farewell to another who’d had enough of me — can’t say I blame it — and now perhaps the Warm, Considering feels vulnerable. So it strikes out at any perceived threat. It may imagine the Anything Legal Considered wants to replace it.”

“But it’s unfair. On me, I mean. What did I do?”

“Be nosy. Be a fleetingly alive day-fly child showing an interest seen as being undeserved, insufficiently respectful. And the Anything Legal Considered might be seen as presumptuous, making you the elevenstring. That was taken as the attack, even if it was meant innocently; Sklom playing so well, making you look inferior, squashing any interest you might have had in ever wanting to master the instrument… that was the counter-attack.”

Cossont took a deep swallow of her drink. She coughed, then sniffed again. “Yeah, but I bet the ALC isn’t as upset as I am.”

“Well, that is very… ship, too,” QiRia said. “They are as gods of old were merely imagined to be; we are mud in their hands, flies to be toyed with. Etc., blah.” He waved one hand, looked over at her. “They are rarely malicious, never vicious; not to us. Mainly this is because we are so far beneath them it would be demeaning to get that worked up about us and our feelings, but the thing is,” he said, drinking again, “the thing is, they are vastly powerful artefacts, with senses and abilities and strengths that we only fool ourselves we know about or understand, and the subtlest, most infinitesimal of their machinations can bruise us, crush us utterly, if it catches us wrong.” He gave a small laugh that was really just an exhaled breath. “I’ve watched them become so, over the millennia. The Minds took over long ago. The Culture stopped being a human civilisation almost as soon as it was formed; it’s been basically about the Minds for almost all that time.”

“Is that why you’ve stayed alive all this time? Is this your revenge?” She had meant to challenge him properly on the whole alive-for-ever claim, tonight especially, but had decided that it no longer mattered; she’d keep going along with his claim. If it was true, well good for him. If it was just a yarn, well, that was pretty impressive too. She didn’t care.

He didn’t answer for a while. She thought for a moment he might have fallen asleep, like old people did sometimes. She found this funny, nearly laughed. “No,” he said, sounding thoughtful. “No, I have a reason, but… it’s not that.”

“So, do you hate it,” she asked, keeping her voice low, “for that?”

He looked mystified. “Hate what?”

“Hate the Culture, for what it’s become.”

He looked at her, laughed. “What? Are you completely insane?” He laughed some more, quite loudly. Then he drained his glass, glanced at hers and said, “We need another drink.”

There was not much more after this. They had talked earlier about a midnight swim, but they’d got too drunk. The swell-riding motion of the raft went from being lulling to making her a little nauseous, then, when that passed, back to being lulling again.

She must have fallen asleep because she woke to the sounds of seabirds mewing overhead and the sight of the sun prising open the narrow gap between the horizon and the cloud base. It was cold. There was a blanket over her, but QiRia had gone.

She returned to the ship later that day, still a little the worse for wear, and life went on.

Most of a year later she was leaving to go back to Gzilt and home. Again, she was a little hung-over, after another, more crowded leaving party with some of the other humans on the ship. The elevenstring was a sort of guilty presence haunting her every step, the float-pallet never leaving her side. That was when the golden-skinned avatar of the Anything Legal Considered had handed her the glitteringly grey cube with QiRia’s mind-state embedded in it, then bid her farewell and turned on its heel.

She’d only accessed the soul inside the cube twice in over three years. The first time was on the Gzilt liner heading home, to check that the voice that came out of it was really his — she didn’t activate either the screen or holo function, and there was no built-in visual capacity in the cube at all. He was grumpy, eccentric, opinionated, and knew of everything they’d talked about up to and including their conversation on the raft on that last night, so it probably was him in there, or something like him, at least.

She’d asked him what it was like to be in there, doing nothing but then being woken up to speak to somebody you couldn’t see. He’d said that it was like being woken from a deep and satisfying sleep, to be asked questions while you kept your eyes closed. He was quite happy. Sight was over-rated anyway.

It felt creepy, though, talking to him, and the further away in time and space she drew from the hazy heat and long slow swells of Perytch IV, the more her scepticism about QiRia’s claims of extreme longevity — and pretty much everything else — returned.

The grey cube was quite small, and she nearly lost it a couple of times. She was aware that this might really be because secretly she wanted rid of it.

Eventually, after she’d stayed with her mother for a few days one time, left the cube behind, realised, and called Warib just as she was about to throw it out, she’d begun to doubt it would ever be safe with her. Then she’d moved out, relocated to another part of Zyse and really thought she had lost the cube this time, misplaced in the move. It showed up eventually, at the back of a drawer.

She’d activated it one more time after that, then donated/permanently loaned it (whatever) to one of the Secular Collectionary orders in the Ospin system, where most of the old stuff of Gzilt ages past went to be catalogued, stored and cared for… and almost certainly never to be either lost or looked at ever again.

The same fate nearly befell the elevenstring, which she kept maintained and which she played, briefly, about once a year. But that would have felt like just too much rejection; keeping the ridiculous instrument somehow kept her from feeling quite so bad about abandoning QiRia’s soul, even if by now she had convinced herself, again, that he was just an old fraud.

Still, it was only when she was thinking of looking for a life-task to give her something to do while she waited for the Subliming to happen that she thought again of playing the thing.

This was a decision she would later regret, often.

She woke up, wondered where she was. Dim light, and her augmented eyes, showed her a room or cabin she didn’t recognise. It looked very nice though. There was almost complete silence. She was in the spacious shuttle craft of the Culture ship, the Mistake Not… She looked over the side of the billow bed, located in a little alcove off the craft’s main open area. Another alcove, closed off, held the inert body of the android Parinherm. The elevenstring was stashed overhead somewhere in a storage locker.

Pyan lay on the floor, a dark mat. It raised the tip of one corner lazily, sleepily acknowledging her, then went flat again.

She lay thinking about the day just passed. She’d been unconscious at least twice. She’d briefly met or at least seen dozens of people who were now all dead. She’d been rescued once, twice, just escaping death both times. And she’d been told to look for the soul of an old fraud she’d met once, for a few days, nearly twenty years earlier, when — looking back — she’d been little more than a kid. People were dying and ships damaging themselves to get her from place to place, and she wasn’t at all sure she was the right person to do whatever it was they were all expecting her to do.

Soon it wouldn’t matter anyway. She was still going to Sublime, wasn’t she? Everybody else was. She supposed she’d sort of have to go if everybody else did.

Personally, she wasn’t sure it really mattered whether the Book of Truth had been based on a lie; a lot of people had long half assumed that.

How much did it matter to others though? Perhaps a lot — perhaps enough. Would that knowledge — if it was true — stop people Subliming? Maybe it would. So much of the whole process of deciding to make this final civilisational transition had been about mood, relying on an atmosphere that involved a kind of gradually growing, shared, blissful, resignation. A feeling of inevitability had settled over the Gzilt somehow, self-propagating and self-reinforcing, making Subliming look like just the next, natural step.

People had been talking seriously about Subliming for centuries, but it was really only in the generation or two before hers that the idea had started to traverse the spectrum of likelihood in the popular imagination, beginning at unthinkable, progressing to absurd, then going from possible but unlikely to probable and likely, before eventually arriving — round about the time of her birth — at seemingly inevitable.

And anticipated, and desirable.

Would all that change if it was discovered the Book of Truth had been some sort of alien trick and the hallowed, semi-worshipped Zihdren no better than charlatans?

Some people thought the Gzilt were going rather early, that most species/civs waited a little longer, entered a lengthier period of etiolation before taking the plunge… but then every species was different, and the Gzilt believed themselves especially different, exceptionally different, partly because of the Book and what it had told them. Would its message being brought into doubt kick away the foundations of that self-satisfaction and make people question the wisdom of Subliming at all?

Maybe — just embarrassed, if nothing else — they’d want to escape the shame and uncertainty involved by hurrying into Subliming with even more determination. Maybe only half the Gzilt would go, or just a fraction; enough still to be viable within the Sublime but leaving larger numbers behind, perhaps to make their own decision at some later date. So a schism, beyond healing, in the Sublime, and chaos, perhaps, back in the Real.

Even if the Subliming still took place as planned, in full, would the knowledge of that last-moment counter-revelation about the Book somehow colour the Gzilt experience once they had Enfolded?

If she recalled correctly all the books and articles she’d read and the programmes and discussions she’d seen, it would make little or no difference, but nobody — not even Elder species who’d been studying exactly this kind of stuff for aeons — could be entirely sure, because so little detail ever came back out of the Sublime.

She didn’t know; all she could do was what she’d been asked/ordered.

What she did know was that it really shouldn’t be her responsibility how this panned out. She was just a musician, a civilian in the reserve who’d once, briefly, bumped into an old guy that suddenly everybody wanted to talk to.

She just wasn’t that special. She was no idiot, and she would happily accept that she was a very gifted musician, but it ought not to be falling to her to work out any important part of this society-wide, alien-involving, end-of-days mess.

Maybe she should just leave QiRia in peace. Ask the ship to take her home, or to wherever or whatever had become the new HQ for the regiment, make her report there and then get taken back to Xown, the Girdlecity and her apartment, or just a place — anywhere — where she was less likely to be inside something getting shot at with hi-tech weaponry.

But she’d promised Reikl she would do as she’d been asked/ordered. She had been re-commissioned, too, so even with the Subliming coming up and all the usual rules and disciplines seemingly evaporating around everybody, there was still duty, self-respect, honour. You did what you felt you had to do so as not to feel bad about yourself when you looked back later. And memories, the recollection of past deeds, certainly survived into the Sublime. You were what you’d done, as QiRia had said, all those years ago. And as long as you had your context, you were still yourself within the great Enfolded.

She turned over, closed her eyes and hoped you could still sleep in the Sublime.

Septame Banstegeyn was able to make a great show of being utterly horrified to discover that there had been some sort of attack on the regimental HQ of the Socialist-Republican People’s Liberation Regiment #14. News of the outrage came in shortly after the vote that handed Preferred partner status to the Ronte and he found it easy to channel all the rage and fury he felt at that debacle into his reaction to the later, even more serious news. He was still angry about it when he met up with Chekwri again, in the special chamber deep under the parliament.

“Two thousand people, Chekwri, in the Prophet’s name…”

“Normally there would be between four and six thousand aboard,” the marshal said calmly. “Plus there were five hundred virtual souls aboard the Gelish-Oplule. But in any event, Septame, what were you expecting of an attack to destroy a regimental HQ?”

“I thought you’d destroy the — the thing, the place, the AIs, but to kill so many, and that ship, everybody on it too — I mean, it’s just terrible…”

“The AIs, and the High Command when they’re aboard, are in the best protected bits of the HQ, Septame, located right in the heart of the moon, or ship; whatever you want to call it.” Chekwri sounded as unbothered as she looked. She might even, it occurred to Banstegeyn, be enjoying this. He was aware that he was laying on a bit of an act himself, even though there was some truth in there too; he’d been genuinely horrified when he’d heard that, as far as was known, nobody had survived the attack. (Another part of him had felt triumphant that the attack had gone so well and the information so treacherously relayed to the Fourteenth had been so surgically excised, but that part had to stay as secret as possible; he kept that suppressed as best he could, worried that if he thought about it too much it would somehow show in his face or be readable in his body language.) “To get to them you pretty much have to destroy the HQ completely,” Chekwri concluded.

“Anyway,” Banstegeyn said, “they’re military. They’ll have been backed-up, won’t they? They can be reactivated, can’t they? Some of them?”

“Most will have been backed-up within the HQ itself,” the marshal said. “Maybe some elsewhere. Not that any military or civilian court would let that influence their view regarding the culpability of the action or the severity of any punishment.”

“There should be no trial, no court, though, should there?” Banstegeyn said. “We — you — got away with it. Didn’t we? I mean, there’s not enough time, and I’m sure I could get… I could pull a string or two…”

According to the marshal, the most recent signal from the 7*Uagren had indicated that it had managed to slip away from the Izenion system without being detected, after dealing with the last known survivors of the HQ’s destruction; it had pursued them to the star Izenion itself, contained their attempts to signal, and ensured their swift termination.

“Yes, we got away with it,” Marshal Chekwri said, with a small, humourless smile. “And in theory without leaving behind too obvious an attack profile. A disinterested observer would probably still conclude it had been fratricidal, but it could be argued otherwise, and there are only eighteen days remaining to do the arguing. And the string-pulling.”

“Yes,” Banstegeyn said, biting his lip a little. “And they definitely couldn’t have already — the people, the AIs even, on the HQ — they couldn’t have Sublimed by themselves, early? That’s really not possible?”

“The people, definitely not; you need a Presence,” the marshal said, with the air of one addressing somebody who really ought to have been watching their own infomercials over the last umpteen years. “The AIs, almost certainly not. It takes time, preparation. Even for an AI there’s some sort of blissed-out, trance-like state that has to be achieved first before they can haul themselves in by their own bootstraps. Unlikely, in the circumstances.”

“Mmm, mmm,” the septame said, rubbing his face. “Good, good.” He had been looking away. “So the attack, it could be blamed on somebody else?”

The marshal took a moment before answering. “Yes, it could,” she said, slowly. “Though the plausibility spectrum might be a little…” she looked up to the domed ceiling of the room “… restricted, shall we say?” She looked back at the septame. “Why, did you have anybody particular in mind?”

“The Ronte?”

“The Ronte?” the marshal said. She frowned. “I thought we just made them our official Bestest Friends, Scavenger class.”

“I think you’ll find that is still conditional.”

“In a way that they don’t know about?”

Banstegeyn waved one hand. “Not your concern, Marshal. Is it plausible?”

Chekwri sat back, looked thoughtful. “Not really. Their main force is far too far away — unlikely even to get here before the Subliming — their tech is inadequate and their motive… I can’t even think what their motive might have been.”

“The Ronte with Culture help?” Banstegeyn suggested.

The marshal actually laughed. “Forgive me, Septame,” she said, one hand held out to Banstegeyn, though nothing else about her demeanour seemed apologetic. “Well, that would fill the tech gap, if we can put it that way, but I suspect the plausibility spectrum window just closed to zero.”

“No story we come up with needs to last very long, though,” Banstegeyn said, his face set in an expression of some displeasure. “Just until the Subliming.”

“Septame, one like that is going to struggle to last to the end of the sentence that first articulates it.”

“But there might have been a Culture ship there, at the Sculpt planet,” the septame said.

“The Uagren was aware of something performing a manoeuvre called a crash-stop into Izenion system, about four hours after the attack. Just from the implied initial velocity involved it reckoned if it wasn’t one of ours it must be a Culture ship. Even then, hard to find a plausible contender. Most likely it was something called the Mistake Not…, but if it was, the fucker’s even faster than we thought.”

“So we could — maybe — claim it had a part in the attack, couldn’t we?”

“Not really. Unless the Culture has finally invented a time machine.”

The septame’s face suddenly assumed a hard, unforgiving expression. “I don’t think,” he said icily, “this is an issue to be made light of, Marshal Chekwri.”

“Septame,” the marshal said levelly, “I am not the one coming up with laughable ex-post-facto combat scenarios.”

Banstegeyn glared at her for a little longer, seemed to realise he was wasting his time, waved one arm dismissively and said, “Well, leave that with me. But let’s not close anything off.” He took a deep breath. “The main thing is that the initial mission was successful. The leak has been… mopped up.”

“There is the… possible loose end of the Gelish-Oplule,” Chekwri said, with a tiny frown.

“But it was destroyed too, wasn’t it?”

“Just; that was too close. The Uagren wasn’t expecting it. But, yes, one less asset for the Fourteenth.”

“Well, then. Why is there a problem?”

“Because the ship wasn’t supposed to be there. And the fact that it was means it was keeping quiet about its movements and it must have moved to get there at the sort of speeds ships only undertake when they’ve got an urgent mission. Trans-excercisal speeds; you sim them but you don’t attempt them, even during full-on war games.”

“It might have been coincidence,” Banstegeyn said. “Or it was there for the High Command if they needed transport.”

“That’s kind of what we’re assuming for now,” Chekwri said. She shrugged. “Anyway, it’s vapour, and the Culture ship’s moved off seemingly without actually doing anything. And now the Uagren’s slipped away too, unnoticed as far as we know.”

“Yes. Where did it slip away to? Where’s it going now?”

“Didn’t I mention?” The marshal looked surprised. “It’s following the Culture ship.”