The Hydrogen Sonata

Eighteen (S -7)

She should never have trusted herself. She ought to have known what she was like. Well, she did know what she was like, but she should have paid more attention or taken the issue more seriously or something.

Scoaliera Tefwe, still within the virtual environment of a substrate housed within the LSV You Call This Clean?, looked at the two holo images of herself facing her and scowled. “So. Neither of you?”

“Certainly not me.”

“Certainly not me.”

They didn’t say it at quite the same time, but then the ships they were housed within were at quite different distances.

The original Scoaliera Tefwe, who thought of herself as the real one — but then, both the others would as well — sighed in exasperation and flicked the images off.

“Huh,” she said.

“I have their experiences, all the sensory data they collected,” the You Call This Clean? told her. “They can’t stop you reviewing those.”

“That,” Tefwe said, “will have to do.”

“There’s a surprise at the end,” the ship told her. “Shall I warn you?”

“What, and spoil the fun? Why no.”

So she watched herself take the aphore from the stables at Chyan’tya, by the Snake river, with its smells of bell-blossom and strandle flower, even-cluss and jodenberry, then head out across the Pouch to the hills. She saw the pair of raptors wheel across the blaze of blue sky, could taste the heat in her mouth at the day’s peak, and lay panting with the mount in the shade of the desiccant umbrel.

She went up into and then through the mountains. She skipped her other self’s memory of sleep; it saved time but also it felt like an intrusion too far, even though this person was still and really herself.

She met with the drone Hassipura, surveyed its intriguing but somehow pathetic little empire of tunnels, channels and pools of scald-dry sands. She heard where she — yet another, sequential version of her — might find QiRia, and left.

She watched herself — there was always that distance at first, like watching a play or a film, before you lost yourself in it — as she stood up within the tall sways of bronze and copper-coloured grasses, then walked to the deserted station and waited for the rattling train-tram thing.

She could smell the air, and sense the locals, the folds, trying not to stare at her. She was carried on up into the mountains, into the vast echoing kingdom of the Sound, and waited to be allowed in to the hearkenry, then followed the Docent Luzuge, and was, finally, granted her audience with the elusive Mr QiRia.

The eyes — the sockets that now housed ears — came as a shock. That certainly counted as a surprise.

She — her other self — didn’t get long to gawk at the man’s mutilated face. There was some commotion outside, audible over, or at least through, the crushing weight of the Sound.

The door at the rear of the cell was thrown splintering open and some sort of shining, multi-limbed drone, all angles and barbs, came tearing in and halted by QiRia’s seat. It drew itself up as though to strike. QiRia had jumped when the door had been thrown open and was turning towards the machine, which screeched, “Arrest! Surrender self!” in a metallic scream pitched so high it cut right through the Sound.

Tefwe’s suit had gone to full deployment the instant the door had started moving, covering her head in a close-fitting semi-transparent helmet. She jumped up and threw open the shutters, letting the Sound roll in. There was a white flash and she felt something hit her hard in the back, though without causing pain. She threw herself through the matting curtains and out of the window, landing on the cold slope of scree outside and hurtling in a zigzag down towards the nearest cover — a dark mass of metre-high boulders. “Ship!” she yelled. “You getting all this? Get me off here!”

“Suit lower dorsal area seventy per cent compromised,” the suit told her solemnly. She could feel heat bleeding through where the blow from behind had hit, making her back warm.

“Shit!” she said as she dived for a gap between two of the boulders. She never got there. A second, much more powerful shot — from above, from a weapon platform she hadn’t even known was there — hit her between the shoulders and blew her neck and head off.

Most of her landed in a bloody, fiery, smoking heap just before the collection of boulders; her head flew further and thudded off the top of one of the boulders, bouncing to the ground just beyond. Then the view, from the scout missile or whatever had been accompanying her, flashed once and disappeared too.

The Rapid Random Response Unit, suddenly subject to the aggressive attentions of a small flotilla of Oglari vessels, executed a very risky manoeuvre, succeeded in snapping Tefwe’s still-just-about-alive head back to itself and then flared wildly off at its highest possible, engine-field-addling acceleration.

The whole incident caused some highly vocal distress and outrage for the Oglari, allegedly entirely on behalf of their valued allies and grateful charges, the Uwanui. Apologies for the misunderstanding were dutifully expressed by the Rapid Random Response Unit, its home GSV and other respected Culture worthies, but further favours and indulgences were now owed or at least expected by both the Oglari and the Uwanui.

Apparently, neither Contact nor Special Circumstances was particularly impressed with these developments.

“These things accrue,” Tefwe muttered to herself.

“All on-boarded?” the You Call This Clean? asked.

“I experienced everything the other two experienced, so I suppose so,” she said. “But I got killed, for fuck’s sake.”

“That was the surprise.”

“Thanks. Think I’ll go back to Storage now. Full asleep. No dreams.”

“Certainly.”

“And next time you want to wake me up—”

But the ship had already started putting her under. It strongly suspected that there had been only one more word to come in that sentence of Tefwe’s, and that it would have been the word “don’t”.

Yes, but… plausibly deniable, the ship decided.

“Of course we’re close. We’ve always been close. We’re mother and daughter. You might not understand; you’re a man. Men rarely do. It’s a different thing. You really have to be a mother to understand, frankly. Even some daughters don’t understand, to tell the Prophet’s truth. Not that I’m saying Vyr doesn’t. That would be going too far. But she is independent. Very independent. But I’m not complaining; I’m not the complaining sort, not at all. That’s how I raised her, you see? That’s what I wanted for her. I always meant her to be her own person, not tied to my purse strings. And she hasn’t wanted to become a mother herself, what with the Subliming, obviously. Or really had time, for that matter. Very busy. She’s always been very busy. And not always with things that she can tell me about either, if I’m telling the truth and you know what I mean. You know. Well, I’m sure you do, in your type of work. I’m not saying she was some sort of secret agent or anything, but you could tell — well, I could tell, being her mother, as I say, and I do have a gift for these things even if I say so myself, though it’s not just me, not really; it’s all my friends, I’m very modest, they’re the ones who’ll tell you I have a gift, almost a sight for these things… but there were things she obviously couldn’t tell me, things that were secret that it was best for me not to know I suppose. I’m not surprised, I’m really not. She’s very bright, very capable girl, very able to take care of herself, and trustworthy. And loyal. Loyal, too. Very loyal. She takes after me in that way, it’s part of the bond we share.”

“It’s just that according to the logs of the ship here, she doesn’t seem to visit very oft—” the first young man started to say, before his companion held up one hand to stop him.

She’d already forgotten their names, but the one who’d just been talking was the nicer of the two because he smiled more and looked at her properly and just had a nicer manner. The other one was even younger — barely more than a boy — and harder-looking somehow and didn’t even seem to have noticed let alone appreciated the very flattering and daringly clingy lounge dress she’d worn especially.

Inter-Regimental Intelligence on Trimestal Secondment! How grand did that sound! And they were interested in her little girl! In a good way, obviously; they had been very polite and deferential ever since they’d called the apartment from their aircraft on their way to see her, and even the small, hard-faced one who was probably only interested in boys anyway had been scrupulously courteous and mannerly from the instant he and the nice, jolly, fuller-faced one had crossed the threshold of the apartment.

Apparently, though they couldn’t confirm or deny anything, naturally, Vyr was still alive. And not just alive, but involved — the implication seemed to be — in something important. Her little girl! Well, it was no surprise really. She’d always known, at the back of her mind, despite all the silly, niggling things that the girl had done and said over the years, that Vyr would live up to the promise she’d shown when she was younger, and make her mother proud of her. It had only been a matter of time.

In fact, all the times she hadn’t bothered to visit or get in touch and had seemed indifferent or intolerant or just seemingly wanting to be hurtful on the rare occasions when she did deign to show up suddenly made complete sense now; she’d just been trying to protect her mother! She should have known that’s what it had been. Of course she’d loved and respected her old mum; how could she not? She just hadn’t been able to bring her into her secret life in case it jeopardised her safety. Logical. Loving and sensible at the same time. Well, frankly, about time!

Warib could feel herself getting quite excited with all these thoughts; her breath was coming rather quickly and she wouldn’t be at all surprised if she looked flushed and even more youthful to these two very well-dressed and immaculately groomed young men. The younger, harder-faced one was saying something. She really ought to concentrate; her attention had drifted there — not like her at all.

“… her being involved in something secret?” he said, eyes narrowed but a small smile — finally! — on his lean face. “Did I understand that right? Did you…?”

“Well, I can’t say too much. Obviously,” Warib said. “Oh, thank you, dear.” She accepted a health drink infusion from Garron. Garron had been a little brusque with the two young men initially — they were both probably even younger than he was — but that was all right. He’d even offered everybody drinks, which was a lot better than his usual What-am-I-just-a-steward-to-you? attitude. “But she’d always been so outstanding, it would only be sensible for the regiment to put her talents to good use. I mean, she would never actually tell me anything, but,” Warib winked at the two young men, “a mother can tell. I think especially when you’re very close — almost embarrassingly close! — in age to your daughter — oh, dear! — I think you can tell when there’s something going on she’s not telling you about. I can’t say any more. I don’t know any more, in the conventional sense of knowing, but, trust me; I know.”

The young, hard-faced one nodded. “That’s very interesting.”

Warib smiled, relaxed. She was much less worried about Vyr now.

xGSV Contents May Differ

oLOU Caconym

oGCU Displacement Activity

oGSV Empiricist

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

oLSV You Call This Clean?

Well, I think we’ve all looked at the relevant signal streams by now. It would seem Mr QiRia really is going to some lengths not to let us know what happened in the way back when. The Mistake Not… has already thrown itself about — again — and is now heading straight back to Xown and the Girdlecity; however, I place this out there just in case there is anybody who knows of anything closer… No? Really? Nothing else within five days? No, then.

∞

xMSV Pressure Drop

Did our friend the Mistake Not… not leave any sort of presence at Xown?

∞

xUe Mistake Not…

The Mistake Not… did indeed, because the Mistake Not… is not a complete idiot.

∞

xMSV Pressure Drop

I certainly didn’t mean to suggest that you were. Would any of these items still on Xown be able to procure these two pieces of soft hardware independently?

∞

xUe Mistake Not…

Not by themselves. The gentleman in possession of what we assume are Mr QiRia’s eyes, which we assume are genuinely where his memories are, appears to have non-trivial resources to command in the field of surveillance and remote presences. The items I left in the vicinity might be of some assistance in getting hold of the objects in question, and a certain amount of preparatory work might be accomplished, but they would not be sufficient in themselves.

We could, of course, just send a message to Mr Ximenyr asking him to sell, trade or just out of the goodness of his hearts gift us the objects concerned and put them aside until I’m able to get there to pick them up; however, I imagine we might all feel that could serve to alert him — and possibly others — to their mooted importance.

Or we might ask some remaining element of the Fourteenth Regiment — its innocence/on-sidedness presumably taken as read following the attack on its HQ — to help us, but that takes control away from those we entirely and implicitly trust, and might be seen to confer potentially too much power on a Gzilt person, group of people or entity regarding the release or not of the information Mr QiRia’s ocular out-board data storage devices may or may not contain. I think that covers all the available alternatives to my heading back as fast as my little engine fields will carry me to Xown and trusting to my own abilities to retrieve the situation.

∞

xGCU Displacement Activity

Speaking of Gzilt people potentially having too much power through access to what may be contained in Mr QiRia’s memories; what of Ms Cossont?

∞

xUe Mistake Not…

Ms Cossont has been no trouble so far, and of some use. Also, having been allowed to look inside the device holding Mr QiRia’s mind-state, with his permission and indeed at his insistence, I’ve discovered that to access his memories is by no means simple; his cooperation may well be required to make sense of the encoded data we’re looking for, certainly if it’s to be done quickly and without fault. As he appears to have, at the least, a sentimental attachment to Ms Cossont, we need to keep both him and her with us. In any event, I wouldn’t imagine that she would either harbour the desire or be in the position to affect matters materially.

∞

xGCU Displacement Activity

So you’re vouching for her.

∞

xUe Mistake Not…

Yes. As much as one can for a bio.

∞

xGSV Contents May Differ

Good. Meanwhile, we are faced with the problem of this disputed preferred Scavenger status between the Ronte and the Liseiden. Just because they’ve been taking their time crawling through space doesn’t mean they have gone away. On the contrary, their most powerful fleet sub-units have each been crawling their way to the same place, Zyse, and are due there in the next day or two. Given what the avatar of the Passing By And Thought I’d Drop In has had to report on what still seems like a delicate political situation, this is not encouraging. Any thoughts?

∞

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

Yes. I think we should be glad those two Delinquents are there, not to mention the Passing By…’s pair of Thugs.

∞

xGSV Contents May Differ

I was looking for something a little more constructive.

∞

xMSV Passing By And Thought I’d Drop In

My responsibility. My avatar continues to seek audiences with the various personalities involved, especially Septame Banstegeyn. However, he is proving a hard man to pin down; he can’t be quite as busy with his official responsibilities as he claims, but he certainly appears to have plenty of other interests with which to fill his remaining time. As a result, sadly, for now, I am no more able to suggest anything more constructive than is the Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life’s Rich Tapestry.

∞

xLOU Caconym

oMSV Pressure Drop

The Passing By… would appear to be of the Effectively Useless persuasion. It needs — it has needed throughout — to be much more aggressive in monitoring these “various personalities involved, especially Septame Banstegeyn”; and — indeed — especially Septame Banstegeyn. It should not be lodging polite requests to see these people if-they’d-be-so-kind-when-they’re-able-pretty-fucking-please; it should be spying and eavesdropping on and bugging the fuck out of the fucking lot of them. This is what happens when you let an antiquated academic with a special interest in a civ take on any sort of serious role involving them because it “understands” them. It doesn’t just understand them; it identifies with them, mimics them — it wants to fucking be them. Not good enough.

∞

To be fair, this posting did look like a sinecure until all this Z-R shit hit the impellers.

∞

These things always do. Perhaps the lesson is that there are no sinecures, just matters of potentially grave consequence we happen to get away with most of the time. Can we ask the Empiricist to lean on the Passing By…? These big System-class fuckers are supposed to cast a long shadow ahead of them, or what use are they?

∞

I’ll make the suggestion. Back to the general babble.

∞

xGSV Contents May Differ

oLOU Caconym

oGCU Displacement Activity

oGSV Empiricist

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

oLSV You Call This Clean?

Well, we must await further developments. Let us hope nothing too momentous occurs in the meantime.

The first part of the ship dance “The Approaching Eclipsing of One Sun by Another” was performed with due ceremony on the achievement of the Gzilt system outskirts, with the Gzilt home planet of Zyse only hours away. The dance was augmented with the participation of the Culture ship Beats Working. This vessel’s accrued inferred alien cachet value (positive), honorary, had, by general acclaim within the fleet and squadron, now become so great that it might actually be embarrassing for it to be informed of the level to which it had ascended so rapidly.

It was probably and arguably already over the limit that even as august a being as Ossebri 17 Haldesib, holding a position as elevated as Swarmprince and Sub-Swarm Divisional Head and Fleet Officer in Charge, could be properly expected to confer-by-informing. It was decided therefore to allow the Culture ship to continue to accrue inferred alien cachet value (positive), honorary, for the meantime, while still not disturbing the metaphorical airflow-through-the-hive by informing the vessel of this distinction.

Regardless, Gzilt and Zyse now lay ahead, and close.

“Hello again. Sorry for being so… abrupt.”

“That’s all right. I take it we’re still aboard the same Culture ship, the Mistake Not…”

“Yes, we are.”

“So, what were you looking at that disturbed you so?” the voice from the silver-grey cube asked. “Or are you going to turn me off again?”

“We were looking at what you’d done to yourself.”

“Really? What?… Come on; tell me. The version of me in here and version of me that did whatever I did to myself are less than twenty years apart. When you’ve lived as long as I have, that’s nothing. I won’t have changed much in between. Effectively I’m the same person. Tell me.”

“You’d put your earliest memories into your eyes, then had those removed,” she said. “You went to Ximenyr, in the Girdlecity, to have it done. You had extra ears put where your eyes should have been.”

“…Well, that’s certainly taking my predilection for the audible over the visible to an extreme.” The voice sounded genuinely amused.

“It just seemed… drastic. Shocking,” Cossont said. “It looked like… like self-mutilation.”

“It’s my body to mutilate as I see fit, Cossont. And, from somebody currently possessing four arms, that’s an odd criticism.” Cossont opened her mouth, but then the voice went on. “This wouldn’t have been on a place called Cethyd, would it? In the Mountains of the Sound?”

“Yes.”

“Ha! Makes sense. Heard about that place quarter of a millennium or more ago; been meaning to go ever since. Good for me for taking it seriously enough to dedicate more than the standard proportion of sensory equipment to the task. I admire myself.”

Cossont, lying on her bed with the cube sitting on the pillow next to her, raised her eyebrows at that, but let it pass. “An old friend of yours called Tefwe went there,” she said, “to try and persuade you to talk about what had happened back when the Culture was coming together and the Gzilt nearly joined but didn’t.”

“Huh. So much for swearing old lovers to secrecy and respect for one’s privacy.”

“But what the hell were you thinking? Taking out your own eyes? Leaving them with Ximenyr?”

“Did I? I bet it seemed like a good idea at the time. Also, less obvious than leaving the data with all the other informational detritus orbiting Ospin. For example.”

“What were you — what are you trying to hide, though?”

“Who knows? Maybe I’m better without the memories. So: we’re heading for Xown?”

“Yes,” Cossont said quietly to the cube. “We’re going to see Ximenyr, in the Girdlecity, to try and get your eyes, your memories back.”

“Interesting that I didn’t want the memories destroyed, just… parked.”

“Whatever they may be.”

“Whatever they may be… Of course, just because the eyes are there doesn’t mean the memories are too. I could have had those wiped… It’s gone very quiet out there. Hello?”

“That would be a joke too far, Ngaroe.”

“All the same. I wouldn’t put it past me.”

“This. I love this, when you are over me, when I can barely see you or touch you but I know that you are there and just a breath away and I feel each exhaling is like a warm breeze across the land, when I can hear each beat of your heart over mine, when you are close enough that I can feel the heat of you on my skin. Then you are my presence, over and above me, like a promise. I live for these moments. I die at the thought they might stop in the Sublime.”

“You say the sweetest things to me. I wish I could say such things to you, so beautifully.”

“You draw them from me, you are their muse, their true creator; we make them between us. I am a hopeless stumbler and stutterer, always have been, with anybody else. So you must take half the credit. At least.”

“If you say I must, I must, but I feel embarrassed that you say, that you give so much and I can’t give you the same.”

“Words are just one language, Virisse. Just one way of expression. You speak with your eyes, you speak with your sweet tongue and gentle fingers, with your whole body. Like this, and this. What?”

“No, I just, no; here, come here, hold me, hold me like this. Here, I’ll… Be my presence, hang over me, embrace me. I need you. Do anything for you. I give myself. I need to give myself. Oh, you don’t hate me for being so needed, do you? I am. I know I am. My own needing, it betrays me.”

“Oh, my darling. I love that you need me as much as I, desperately, need you. But don’t distress. What is it? What can…?”

“You don’t think they’re lying to us, the Sublimed, the Presence; you don’t think they’re lying to us, deceiving us, do you?”

“What? Is that…? Not for a moment. Oh, be calm, Virisse. Of course not. Do you think I would risk losing you? If I thought for a moment there was any danger they lied to us, that what we’re offered isn’t true, that we might simply die or be blown away like mist, I’d never even think of this, for myself, for you, for us, for all the people.”

“Isn’t it like a threat, though, this thing, hanging over us? I look at it some days, hanging over the city, over us, and it makes me shiver.”

“It used to make me catch my breath, sometimes, I’ll give you that. What can I say, Virisse? Promises take many shapes, and the more… momentous they are, the more they might look like threats. All great promises are threats, I suppose, to the way things have been until that point, to some aspect of our lives, and we all suddenly become conservative, even though we want and need what the promise holds, and look forward to the promised change at the same time. So we have that great grey shape hanging over us, over the parliament itself, as a reminder that this is where the final decision was taken, this is where we made up our minds. And it reminds us that there are powers and forces beyond us, that we are in the process of surrendering our full authority in this, and of taking a great new leap.”

“Is it too late?”

“What? I’m sorry, my love, I didn’t—”

“Is it too late? Can we still unmake our minds?”

“Well, no, it isn’t. We can all change our minds, right up until the last moment.”

“Must there always be forces beyond us?”

“Oh, my love, there always have been. The Sublimed have been there for ten billion years, the Elders too; we are just one species, not here for the longest time, then here for a while, then gone again, just like everybody else. But we’ve always known there is something worthwhile in just being ourselves, in being us as well as we can. We’ve found, been given a way, to symbolise this, in the Book of Truth, but the real truth is that every species feels the same thing, and every one is right.

“We all think we’re special, and in a way we are, but, at the same time, that feeling of being special is one of the things that’s common to us all, that unites us and makes us the same as each other. And when that feeling of… specialness is questioned, we feel threatened, naturally. We all do. I do. We have the Subliming drawing near, and we seem to be collecting alien warships, with Culture ships already arrived — two more this evening, the Empiricist tomorrow — and the Liseiden and the Ronte arriving in days, both seeming to think the other is the interloper while we feel they both are. The eyes of the galaxy are on us, and this ought to be a time of quietness and reflection and measured preparation, a time of looking back with gentle pride on all we’ve achieved, and yet… we have a regiment HQ attacked and thousands killed, and an undignified scramble going on over our heads over our spoils, and all sorts of absurd rumours and stories swirling about, but we—”

“I just worry. I worry that we’ve swept ourselves along somehow, got all too excited over something we haven’t thought through, that… that… people have persuaded us to do something we’re still not ready for.”

“Well, Septame Banstegeyn is a very persuasive man, I’ll give you that.”

“I didn’t just mean—”

“No, you did. And I know what you mean. But you have to see that we become… symbols for ourselves. One person can seem to be the instigator, the power behind some… great powerful current within a society, but they’re not necessarily producing it; they may be at the front, and they may have some small, immediate influence over its direction hour by hour or day by day, but really they are swept along by it too, by the force of all those people behind them, by the idea they all represent and are all borne along by. But, Virisse, what talk is this for the bed? We have so few of these opportunities, my love, let’s not waste this one in worry. Let’s sweep each other away, like this… and this… and this…”

“Yes. Yes, you’re right. I’ll be your spoils, fight over—”

“Ow! What—?”

“What?”

“I don’t know. My finger. A jab, like a thorn. My love, there? Of all places? Why, what have you been doing?”

“What? Don’t laugh! No, what? Let me see!”

“Here. My finger. See? Poor finger.”

“Let me see, let me see!”

“Ah, so pleasantly engaged, so sharply interrupted.”

“Let me—”

“Oh. Worth one tiny injury for such a sweet kiss. You make me swoon… Oh, wait a moment, you really are. I really am… swoon. My. My head is quite… quite…”

“No!”

“It’s all right. I’m just, it’s just… Oh… I’m glad I’m lying dow—”

“No, Sef, no! Say…! Oh. Oh, of course; me too. I should. Should have… he… how could…? Oh, the fool…”

“Going dark… What, you too? My love? Have we…? Is this some…? Are we being…? Are we be—?”

“Doesn’t know. Oh, the cruel, the stupid!”

“Not, not feeling… so good. Where’s my — it was here. I need to call — Oh, fuck, I’m really…”

“I’m so sorry, I’m so, so sorry. Please…”

“Never — it doesn’t… just hold…”

“I’m sorry! I’m so—”

“Just hold…”

“So sorry…”

“Just…”

“So…”