The Hydrogen Sonata

Eleven (S -17)

xGSV Contents May Differ

oLOU Caconym

oGCU Displacement Activity

oGSV Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life’s Rich Tapestry

oUe Mistake Not…

oMSV Passing By And Thought I’d Drop In

oMSV Pressure Drop

Hello all. I think we’ve all been brought up to speed with individual briefings where needed; welcome to the new members of the group. We understand the Mistake Not… makes full speed to Ospin, perhaps to discover something relevant to Mr QiRia and hence the claimed provenance of the Z-R information re the BoT. Meanwhile the Passing By And Thought I’d Drop In has kindly agreed to continue to create what diplomatic pressure it can with the rump of the Gzilt political power structure. For myself, after extensive investigations, some calling in of favours and the reluctant acceptance of future obligations re the same on my part to those so confiding, I have discovered there may be another way to pursue the link with the legendary gentleman.

∞

xLOU Caconym

We really are taking this person’s existence as being a fact, not a myth?

∞

xGSV Contents May Differ

We are. It turns out that the myth which has been so carefully fostered is that his existence is mythical. It would certainly appear that various ships have known of his existence over the millennia, and even aided him in his efforts to stay outside the public eye and evade the kind of official annoyances such as censuses and inventories which might prove problematic to somebody of preposterous age who wished to keep quiet about it. Until now his mythical status has seemed charming, romantic even, and — happily for all concerned — irrelevant to matters either tactical or strategic. Now, it has suddenly assumed a certain importance. We must, of course, diligently and timeously pursue every avenue of investigation occurring in Gzilt space. However, there may well be a way to reinforce and back up our inquiries, working at least partly within the Culture. I have been in contact with a vessel which wishes to remain anonymous for now but which holds a human who may be able and persuaded to help. The price would be something close to full disclosure of what we all know regarding the matter at hand, both to the ship and, probably, it speculates, the person concerned as well.

∞

xGSV Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life’s Rich Tapestry

∞

And the Contents May Differ vouches for the ship and it for the human?

∞

xGSV Contents May Differ

Within the usual limits, yes.

∞

xGSV Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life’s Rich Tapestry

Then I say go ahead.

∞

xGSV Contents May Differ

Any objections?… No?… Very well. Signal sent. I’ll keep you all informed. Meanwhile, after some pressure, the Empiricist’s Delinquent pair the Headcrash and the Xenocrat have — finally — been persuaded to give up their smatter-bagging competition at Loliscombana and make haste for Gzilt; heading straight to Zyse at the request of something called the Gzilt Combined Regimental Fleet Command — this would appear to be some new overview structure recently set up by this Banstegeyn fellow under Marshal Chekwri. The two ships are due there in seven days. Due to an agreement required to bring about the aforesaid pressure, the Empiricist will now become part of the group at the next signal, though it has expressed a preference for haunting rather than manifesting, as it were. The Empiricist itself now expects to be arriving at Zyse in eleven or twelve days. That’s all for now.

∞

xGSV Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life’s Rich Tapestry

oGSV Contents May Differ

Oh, hurrah. Now the Empiricist gets to hover glowering over everything and step in when it thinks we’ve done enough of the hard work to make the outcome sufficiently positive to enhance its gloriousness.

∞

Size has its privileges.

∞

More to the point, we need to start thinking now about what we’re going to do if we do find out the truth — via Mr Q, or any other route. Do we tell the Gzilt? And if we tell, do we tell only those at the top — who might already know/have guessed — or do we take it upon ourselves to broadcast the embarrassing news (assuming it is) to all?

∞

Good question. I suspect a vote might be called for. Right now, personally, I’d probably plump for shutting the hell up and letting the Gzilt get on with it.

∞

Which begs the question, why, then, are we bothering to hunt down this truth at all?

∞

The Z-R asked us to help. Also, it’s just interesting. Here’s something we don’t know but we can maybe find out, and it’s something that other people don’t want us to know. How much more seductive can you get?

∞

Maybe there are some truths not worth chasing down. Maybe there are times when it’s best to remain ignorant.

∞

Very funny.

∞

I’m being serious.

∞

Sure you are. Anyway, how goes your batch of the Simming? Mine is gnarlsome, raspulescent, grislesque.

∞

Never mind. Hitting both Problems, since you ask. Trying to work around, but it’s getting all moral in one direction and chaotic in the other. Suspect it’s basically Intrinsically Unamenable on both counts, but will keep on trying.

∞

Have a lie down, as one of one’s humans might say to another.

∞

Shut up and get back to your work, as they also might say.

∞

Ha! Good simming. Over and outload!

A ship dance of celebration was required.

The fleet had already split into separate squadrons of eight ships apiece (save for the flagship squadron of twelve ships plus the accompanying Culture craft Beats Working) and these squadrons had flown in different directions towards their appointed places of interest where they might hope to accrue technology which would prove advantageous to the Ronte. Therefore a full fleet dance could not be performed. Instead a coordinated split-fleet dance would be performed, each squadron and ship and crew being made conscious of the movements of all the others so that the distributed dance would be accomplished as a joyous whole, virtually.

Accordingly, the dance “Multiple New Swarmqueens, Brought Together By Advantageous Zephyrs, Display Together In The Light Of The Two Home Suns At Double Zenith” was performed, to glorious effect. At the respectful request of the Culture ship, a place was found for it to become part of the dance as well, a task of honour it executed with diligence, understanding and precision, to the greater glory of the Ronte people, who had, against all expectation, been granted the Preferred status that they had known they deserved but had doubted would be conferred.

The Culture ship Beats Working accordingly accrued additional inferred alien cachet value (positive), honorary, with made-awareness of award status deferred.

The fleet squadrons reconfigured to reflect their new status. All but a few adjusted their courses for more important sources of technology, infrastructure and territory, given that these were likely now to fall to them without dispute. The flagship squadron turned to set a course for Zyse, the Gzilt capital and home system.

“People were targeted, I tell you, Banstegeyn,” Yegres told him as they walked in the grounds of the trime’s villa in the hills overlooking the city. The parliament building shimmered whitely in the distance, blurred with warm air rising, the Presence a dark inverted drip-shape above it, made tiny by the distance.

A pair of light cruisers, their smooth, kilometre-long hulls silvered, hung in the air ten thousand metres above the city. This was supposed to be reassuring for the remaining populace after the shock of the attack on the Regimental HQ of the Fourteenth at Eshri.

“Targeted,” Yegres repeated, glancing at Banstegeyn. The two crunched along a gravel path, followed at a discreet distance by Solbli and Jevan. Banstegeyn’s chief secretary and aide-de-camp were seemingly muttering to themselves, partially sub-vocalising as they communicated elsewhere. He’d given them the job of continuing to try and find a way to nullify the Scavenger vote earlier. There had been over ten millennia of inherently convoluted and frequently murky parliamentary business, all of it faithfully recorded; there had to be a precedent in there somewhere. It would be a start if nothing else.

Yegres was accompanied by a float-tray. It held a glass and decanter; he helped himself. “Frix was offered an introduction to some girl he’d had his eye on — or Quvarond’s wife or something; I don’t know — Yenivle took a case of Kolymkin… something; some priceless vintage.” Yegres frowned. “Wish the bugger had offered me that. So thoughtless.” He shrugged, shook his head. “Not sure what Jurutre was offered, but seemingly something furtive regarding a child. Not filthy, or even illegal, just… sad… Anyway, it was all terribly well organised. Done with military precision.” He barked a laugh. “Better than that, actually; didn’t miss and hit their own people.”

“And you?” Banstegeyn asked. “What did Trime Quvarond offer you?” He found it hard to keep the sneer out of his voice.

“Nothing at all, dear boy,” Yegres said amiably, waving one hand around. “I voted against you because I just don’t like you.”

Banstegeyn was stopped in his tracks. He heard Jevan and Solbli stop at the same time, gravel rasping under their feet. They’d gone silent, poised.

Yegres wandered on, oblivious, for another couple of steps before stopping too. He looked back at Banstegeyn.

“Oh, just kidding you on,” he said, smiling. “The vote was already lost so I joined in to look less… perennially obedient.” He frowned. “But you should realise, Septame; everything is breaking down a little now, including your grip. What worked until now — obligations, understandings, favours owed, the promise of future advancement and the threat of secrets becoming public and so on — they don’t have quite the force they did before.” He shrugged, then smiled broadly. “This is what you wanted, Ban. What you worked for all this time, what you’ve engineered. End of an era. Ha! End of the end of all eras.” He waved both hands this time, spilling a little wine. “School’s breaking up. People are out to play.”

Scoaliera Tefwe, who had been a friend and a lover of Ngaroe QiRia long ago, when he was already a very old man and she had been of conventional middle age — a little under two hundred — woke slowly, as she had woken slowly a few dozen times, over the intervening centuries.

Only it wasn’t really waking slowly; she was being woken.

All dark at first. Stillness and silence too, and yet the sensation that things were happening nearby, and inside her head and body; organs and systems and faculties being woken, revived, checked, primed, readied.

It was at once reassuring and somehow disappointing. Here we go again, she thought. She opened her eyes.

SIMULATION, said the glowing red letters along the bottom of her field of vision. Ah, she thought, whereupon the word faded away.

So she was still sort of asleep, after all. But her consciousness and sense of embodiment were being woken up.

She was, apparently, already sitting, fully dressed, in a chair facing a table in a large, pleasant-looking room of some antiquity with a view — to one side, through opened floor-length windows — over mountains lined with trees and a lake whose shore was lined with villages. The wakes of a few boats left long white Vs on the wind-ruffled waters.

At the other end of the table from the windows, there was a time display in an ornate wooden case. She looked at the date.

My, that had been a long sleep.

Across the table from her there was a chair. When she looked away from the time display, a figure hazed from nothing through transparency into seeming solidity over the course of a couple of seconds. The small, pale, androgynous figure now sitting opposite her appeared to be the avatar of the LSV You Call This Clean? This was reassuring; she was still where she might have expected to be. The calm conventionality of the whole being-woken process had been a fairly infallible sign that nothing was likely to be too wrong, but this helped confirm it.

On the other hand, she was usually woken lying down, with time to take stock if she wanted, and swing herself off the couch, perhaps take the air and take in the view from the balcony, and only go to sit at the table when she felt she wanted to. Not this time, though; getting the basic minimum here.

“Scoaliera,” the virtual avatar said, smiling.

“YC,” she replied. The You Call This Clean? didn’t name its avatars or avatoids separately; people usually just called them ‘YC’. “Are we both well?”

“We are.”

Always good to know that your Stored self and the ship carrying it/you were judged to be well according to the punctilious standards of a Culture Mind. “So,” she said, “what is it?”

“Hoping you’ll agree to take a trip, fully uploaded-style, then to be downloaded into an avatoid.”

“Where? Why?”

“Not sure where yet; you might be able to help answer that yourself. The why is that we need you to look for Ngaroe QiRia.”

She raised one eyebrow. “Do you now?” The “we” the ship was referring to would be either Contact section, or Special Circumstances. Exactly who would become clear shortly, she didn’t doubt.

The avatar nodded. “If you’d be so kind.”

“Why?”

“He might have some information it would be useful to know.”

“He’s been alive for nearly ten millennia; I’m sure he has a lot of information it would be useful to know.”

“No doubt. But this is probably something quite specific.”

“What?”

“Not sure, but somehow relating to the shortly forthcoming Sublimation of the Gzilt.”

This was news to her. She’d been Stored, this time, over four hundred years earlier, when, as far as she could recall, the Gzilt had seemed no more likely to go for Subliming than the Culture itself.

“That the best you’ve got?”

“More detail?” YC asked.

“More detail.”

“You insist?”

“I do.”

The ship told her about the intercepted message from the Zihdren-Remnanter and subsequent developments.

Tefwe thought. “Do we have a view on or interest in whether the Gzilt Sublime or not?”

“No.”

“Take me through the levels.”

“Culture as a whole; no — their business. Contact; not really — opinions differ, mildly. Some temporary local upset to be expected, in the short term especially relating to Scavengers, but all part of the process. SC; no stated interest. Probably some difference of opinion but nobody expressing. Not even a grumble of discussion let alone action. And things are otherwise quiet, so lack of interest not a result of distraction, temporary or otherwise.”

“So this isn’t an SC thing?”

“Not directly, though elements usually associated are cooperating. Specifically, a fast ship will be made available; whatever’s closest to wherever you say you need to go. Other ships at your disposal if necessary should serial uploading and embodiment be required. Simming as unlikely to become an SC focus. Probably.”

“So why are we bothering?”

“Just in case.”

“Just in case what?”

“Just in case it turns out to be something we should have bothered about. Always try to avoid setting up future opportunities for kicking yourself.” The YC smiled apologetically. “Very small thing attached to very momentous thing. One point three trillion people heading into the big Enfold in less than twenty days from now, but if the Zihdren-Remnanter news about the Book of Truth gets out, that might change things. And maybe it should change things. But either way, it would be good to know the truth. Even if we discover the truth, we don’t have to volunteer it, and even if we discover the truth, don’t volunteer it but are asked to provide it, we still don’t have to — though that’d be harder to justify. The point is, if we are asked and we haven’t even bothered to look, we look bad, and if we are asked and decide to tell what we know, we want to be confident what we’re able to offer really is the truth, or as close as we could reasonably get to it.”

“How many new faces know the old guy’s not a figment?”

“Just one beyond reasonable doubt; the GSV Contents May Differ. There was no leak as such; the ship just did some inspired digging and was owed favours by the right mix of craft. Though the others in the handling group will have been briefed there’s a possibility.”

“The ITG?”

“No. Fresh group. Nobody’s heard from the Interesting Times Gang all the while you’ve been Stored.”

“How remiss.”

“As well as waking you with the suggestion you might care to return to the fray, I’ve been asked to enquire if you know of any other ships that might have helped Mr QiRia over the years. Aside from the Warm, Considering, which we know about.”

“The only other one I remember was called the Smile Tolerantly, an ancient GCU, but the last I heard it was about to become Eccentric or Sublime or do something equally unhelpful.”

“Thank you. So…”

“You will recall I said I wouldn’t go looking for QiRia unless it was something really important. Are you — they — deeming this to be?”

“Let’s say suggesting rather than deeming. But tell me: what are your feelings?”

“Mixed. I dare say I’ll do it, but I’m not terribly happy about it.”

Tefwe had never liked the idea of being fully downloaded into something remote who got to play at being you — who thought they were you. You stayed who you were but then the remote “you” became somebody different, over time. The two of you — or more — could be re-integrated, but it was, she thought, an intrinsically messy process of frankly dubious morality.

“Thank you,” the YC said, exhibiting relief. “May I transmit your mind-state now? There are various craft dotted throughout the galaxy, charged up, ready to roll. Rude to keep them waiting.”

“I want to be kept informed about what the remotes get up to,” she told it. Tefwe had been around Contact’s less salubrious outskirts in one form or another for so long she could remember when there hadn’t been anything called Special Circumstances, just a bunch of ships and others that acted like it, so she knew how to negotiate an agreement with a Mind acting as control such that she wouldn’t end up kicking herself.

“Agreed.”

“In full.”

“Agreed.”

“And a no-constraints chance to negotiate over subsequent re-integration, just me and it, or them.”

“Also agreed.”

“You’ll let me know which ship?”

“Of course.”

“Hmm.” Tefwe sat back, thought. “All right,” she said. “I agree.”

“Done. Once again, thank you. Where do you want to head for?”

“Dibaldipen Orbital, Angemar’s Prime system.”

The YC looked blank for a moment, then said, “Ah, one of ours. We might be able to work through the O Hub. That’d be even quicker. We’ll see. Hub Minds can be reluctant to indulge this sort of thing without demanding to know everything there is to know. Do we have a full name for the guy? First thing a Hub Mind’s going to ask for.”

Tefwe smiled. “He’s so old full names hadn’t been invented when he was born, but if they had been he’d have been Tursensa Ngaroe Hgan QiRia dam Yutton. And he has used that name in the past. The far past.”

“Thank you. In any event, the nearest ship is an ex-Psychopath VFP. The Outstanding Contribution To The Historical Process. Just a few days away.” YC looked puzzled. “Dibaldipen. That’s where QiRia is?”

“I have no idea. But there’s a drone there that ought to know.”

“You think it’ll still be there?” YC asked, sounding a little sceptical. “It has been four hundred years.”

“It is retired and set in its ways. Gone native and to seed. I suspect it’ll be there.”

“So, if you’re really so old, tell me what you’ve learned over the years, over the millennia. What are the fruits of your wisdom?”

“They are remarkably few. I have managed to avoid learning too many lessons. That may be what keeps me alive.”

Cossont lay on her bed; the grey cube with QiRia’s mind-state inside it sat on a bedside shelf. It was only the second time she’d turned the cube on since returning home. She, the volupt and the elevenstring had just moved out of her mother’s house in M’yon into a place of her own, half the world away; she was starting to make new friends but struggling to get worthwhile gigs and maybe she was feeling lonely.

“So,” she said, “living all this time has been to no purpose, basically.”

“True, but that hardly distinguishes me from anybody else, does it?”

“But shouldn’t it, or there’s no point?”

“No. Living either never has any point, or is always its own point; being a naturally cheery soul, I lean towards the latter. However, just having done more of it than another person doesn’t really make much difference.” The voice from the grey cube paused, then said, “Although… I think living so long might have persuaded me that I am not quite as pleasant a person as I once thought I was.”

Cossont, presented with two opportunities to be scathing just in these last few sentences, was aware she was choosing to take neither. She confined herself to, “Really?” said in a slightly sarcastic tone.

“Well,” the voice said, seemingly oblivious, “one thing that does happen when you live a long time is that you start to realise the essential futility of so much that we do, especially when you see the same patterns of behaviour repeated by succeeding generations and across different species. You see the same dreams, the same hopes, the same ambitions and aspirations, reiterated, and the same actions, the same courses and tactics and strategies, regurgitated, to the same predictable and often lamentable effects, and you start to think, So? Does it really matter? Why really are you bothering with all this? Are these not just further doomed, asinine ways of attempting to fill your vacuous, pointless existence, wedged slivered as it is between the boundless infinitudes of dark oblivion book-ending its utter triviality?”

“Uh-huh,” she said. “Is this a rhetorical question?”

“It is a mistaken question. Meaning is everywhere. There is always meaning. Or at least all things show a disturbing tendency to have meaning ascribed to them when intelligent creatures are present. It’s just that there’s no final Meaning, with a capital M. Though the illusion that there might be is comforting for a certain class of mind.”

“The poor, deluded, fools.”

“I suspect, from your phrasing and your tone of voice, that, as a little earlier, you think you are being sarcastic. Well, no matter. However, there is another reaction to the never-ending plethora of unoriginal idiocies that life throws up with such erratic reliability, besides horror and despair.”

“What’s that?”

“A kind of glee. Once one survives the trough that comes with the understanding that people are going to go on being stupid and cruel to each other no matter what, probably for ever — if one survives; many people choose suicide at this point instead — then one starts to take the attitude, Oh well, never mind. It would be far preferable if things were better, but they’re not, so let’s make the most of it. Let’s see what fresh fuckwittery the dolts can contrive to torment themselves with this time.”

“Not necessarily the most compassionate response.”

“Indeed not. But my point is that it might be the only one that lets you cope with great age without becoming a devout hermit, and therefore represents a kind of filter favouring misanthropy. Nice people who are beginning to live to a great age — as it were — react with such revulsion to the burgeoning horrors that confront them, they generally prefer suicide. It’s only us slightly malevolent types who are able to survive that realisation and find a kind of pleasure — or at least satisfaction — in watching how the latest generation or most recently evolved species can re-discover and beat out afresh the paths to disaster, ignominy and shame we had naively assumed might have become hopelessly over-grown.”

“So basically you’re sticking around to watch us all fuck up?”

“Yes. It’s one of life’s few guaranteed constants.”

Cossont thought about this. “If that’s true, it’s a bit sad.”

“Tough. Life is sometimes.”

“And you’re right: it doesn’t exactly show you in the best light.”

“You’re supposed to admire me for my honesty.”

“Am I?” she said, and reached over and turned the grey cube off.

That was when she decided she’d give the cube to somebody else, who might want it, or at least agree to care for it.