The Hydrogen Sonata

Twenty-five (S +24)

At sunset above the plains of Kwaalon, on a dark, high terrace balanced on a glittering black swirl of architecture forming a relatively microscopic part of the equatorial Girdlecity of Xown, Vyr Cossont — Lieutenant Commander (reserve) Vyr Cossont, as she had once been — sat, performing T. C. Vilabier’s 26th String-Specific Sonata For An Instrument Yet To Be Invented, catalogue number MW 1211, on one of the few surviving examples of the instrument developed specifically to play the piece, the notoriously difficult, temperamental and tonally challenged Antagonistic Undecagonstring — or elevenstring, as it was commonly known.

T. C. Vilabier’s 26th String-Specific Sonata For An Instrument Yet To Be Invented, MW 1211, was more usually known as “The Hydrogen Sonata”.

While she played, and the sun sank beyond the distant, hulking line of the dark, near-totally deserted Girdlecity, a lone Liseiden freighter took off from a part of the great structure just a few kilometres away, close enough for the sound of its relatively crude engines to impinge on Cossont’s consciousness.

She was able to ignore this potential distraction. She kept on playing.

Her own flier sat at the far edge of the terrace, twenty metres off, a few lights glowing in the cockpit, where Pyan lay curled asleep, exhausted after an afternoon and early evening spent playing with flocks of birds.

Eventually, almost an hour after she’d started, Cossont got to the end of the piece, and, as the last notes died away, she set the two bows in their resting places, kicked down the side-rest and, flexing her back carefully, stood up and out of the instrument.

She opened her mouth wide, rubbed her face with her top set of hands and massaged the small of her back with her lower pair, through the material of a Lords of Excrement jacket. She hooked her slippers off with her toes, then bent and pulled on her boots. She stood looking at the elevenstring for a while, listening to the quiet harmonics that the evening winds made in the external resonating strings.

She had walked the empty, echoing spaces of the Girdlecity many times over the last few days and evenings, and taken the flier to other places around the planet. You had to fly on manual now; the nav and safety systems were mostly still there, but not to be relied upon.

She had seen nobody at all within the Girdlecity. She had chanced upon the same abandoned school she had walked past that first evening, when Commissar-Colonel Etalde had appeared to whisk her away. It was twice deserted now, with all the Storage units opened, the people they had held departed. Even the guard arbite she’d accidentally activated had gone; maybe taken by the Liseiden. The winds moaned through the vast spaces of the Girdlecity, playing it like some colossal instrument.

In the cities and towns and villages scattered across the planet, she had seen a few people, though only ever from a distance; she was forming the impression that the only individuals left were those who’d always fantasised about having the world to themselves one day.

Most days, though, she saw nobody.

The closest encounter she’d had with anything large and living had been when she’d surprised a wandering skitterpaw late one evening, in a small windswept city on the Dry Coast bordering the Dust; the animal had gone loping off into the shadows after giving her a good long look, like it had been deciding whether to attack her or not. She had a little ten-millimetre knife missile with her — a gift from the ship, and a device not above reminding her whenever she was about to leave home without it — so it hadn’t been as frightening an experience as it might have been. Still, it had been scary enough, and it was surprising how quickly the wild had started to colonise the deserted structures of civilisation, and how much difference it made, there being — in most places — nobody about rather than almost nobody about.

The final figures for those making the transition into the Sublime had come in at over ninety-nine point nine per cent, as far as anyone could tell, with little variation between planets and habitats. Xown and Zyse had carried even greater proportions of their populations across into the Enfold. This was, unless you were absolutely determined to regard the whole process as an act of tragic collective insanity, an excellent and satisfying result.

A slightly stronger gust of wind swirled about the platform and the elevenstring made a new, deep, lowing sound, like it wanted to be released back into the wild now, even though there was nothing biological about its construction and it had been fashioned by a Culture ship, twenty years past and a quarter of the galaxy away.

She smiled ruefully in the dusk light, then turned her back on the instrument and walked to the flier, leaving the elevenstring standing, slightly lop-sided, where it was, with its protective case arranged, still open, neatly to one side.

She heaved herself up and into the flier, shooing Pyan out of the way; the creature protested sleepily and didn’t wake up properly, finally wrapping itself limply round her neck and hanging there without even bothering to form a knot. She suspected that if familiars had been prone to snoring, Pyan would have been snoring.

She sat in the flier for a moment, letting it check its systems. She gazed at the Girdlecity, focusing on where it dipped to meet the horizon. The sun had not long set, and the red-gold skies were swiftly darkening.

She had thought of looking for the couple with the child again, the little family she’d met inside the Girdlecity on that first evening. The search and successfully finding them would be sufficient, she’d decided; that would be difficult enough. She wouldn’t want to suggest that she stay with them or any such foolishness.

In addition, she had an invitation to go with the Mistake Not…, which would be departing before too long, having helped in the general business of keeping the peace amongst the Scavenger civs as they took stuff, dismantled things, occupied places or studied tech to copy. The Culture ship would be heading out on a long voyage to the planet called Cethyd, on the far side of the galaxy, to attempt to contact the original, biological QiRia, to see if he would like his eyes and his memories back, now that all the fuss was over.

Just getting to him might be interesting, given the bizarre hostility of the locals and not-quite-so-locals, so it promised to be an adventure.

There was no rush, anyway; though the whole Scavenger thing had quieted down, the Culture ships had stuck around for a bit, and were now awaiting the arrival of the last of the ships that had been involved in their recent discussions over what to do about the Gzilt. She’d got the impression they were all quietly pleased with themselves, also that this get-together was just an excuse for some mutual metaphorical back-slapping and whatever passed amongst Culture Minds for nights of drunken revelry and general carousing, and that they were already turning the whole fractious, murderous escapade into something semi-mythical to take its place in the ongoing history of Terrific Things The Culture And Its Brilliant Ships Had Got Up To Over The Years.

Though not one called the Caconym, apparently; it had just turned without ceremony and gone back to doing whatever it was it liked doing.

And not the Empiricist; it had more important things to do else-where. System-class ships always did, apparently.

Cossont strapped in, closed the canopy, took manual control and lifted the little flier away from the terrace, letting the craft rise and bank and pirouette all at once.

First she would go home.

After that, she had no idea what she might do.

The Antagonistic Undecagonstring, caught in the swirling breeze produced by the flier’s departure, hummed emptily.

The sound was swept away by the mindless air.