The Hydrogen Sonata

Four (S -22)

Septame Banstegeyn went from group to group, taking part in multiple hand-shakings, everybody standing side-on and putting a single hand into a big confused but well-meaning tangle in the centre. Sometimes the resulting “shake” was a trembling muddle, sometimes the ball of grasping hands would end up going up and down quite violently, as though they were all making it happen deliberately; everybody always looked slightly surprised when that happened. Doubtless this was an example of or metaphor for something or other.

Anyway, Banstegeyn didn’t enjoy the process; in fact he hated it. He took particular care, therefore, to look entirely as though nothing he could possibly be doing right now could conceivably give him greater pleasure. He was hearty, amiable, roaring with laughter when he needed to, but he had a continuing need to wash his hand or at least wipe it on his robes, as though to decontaminate it after all this sweaty touching.

Well, this was just one of the many objectionable things that a man in his position had to do. In the end it was worth it; it would all be worth it.

“Well, Ban, it’s all yours now!”

“Folrison,” Banstegeyn said, forcing a smile as the other, junior parliamentarian shook him by the shoulders. Over-familiarly, Banstegeyn thought. Folrison looked drunk, probably was; a lot of them were, though not him — never him. And he didn’t like being called “Ban”, either. “It’s all all of ours now, I think you’ll find,” he told the other man, then gestured modestly at his own chest. “Merely a caretaker.”

“Na, you finally got your way. You’re in charge.” Folrison smiled. “Of not very much for not very long, but, if it makes you happy…” He looked away as though distracted, seemed to catch somebody else’s gaze. “Excuse me,” he said, and wandered off.

Banstegeyn smiled at Folrison’s retreating back, in case anybody was looking, though what he was thinking was, Yes, just fuck off.

“Sir.”

“Septame.” His chief secretary and aide-de-camp both appeared out of the mêlée.

“Where were you two when I needed you?” he demanded.

Jevan, his chief secretary, looked dismayed. “But, sir,” he said, “you said—”

“Would you like a wipe, Septame?” Solbli said quietly, smiling as she pulled a moist square from her satchel and offering it to him discreetly.

Banstegeyn nodded, quickly wiped his hands and gave the towel back to Solbli. “Let’s go,” he said.

Eventually, shaking off the last overly effusive well-wisher from the lower ranks, they were able to make it to the doors leading from the still-crowded main assembly chamber to the Senior Levels and the terrace overlooking the darkened gardens and the near-deserted city.

Banstegeyn nodded to the parliamentary constable who’d opened the door, then, at the top of the steps leading down to the terrace, while Jevan and Solbli stood respectfully a couple of steps behind, had a brief moment to himself before anybody else rushed up to tell him what a historic day it had been. His earbud, released from the rule-imposed no-personal-comms restriction of the parliament interior, started to wake up, but he clicked it off again; Jevan and Solbli would be catching up and would let him know about anything urgent.

The gardens — roundels of paving and splashing pools surrounded by maze-like blocks of black hedges within which it had always been easy to find nooks where quiet words might be had — were just starting to look neglected, even under the soft, subdued lights shining from antique lampposts; the city — a quaint jumble of low domes and soaring spires, gently floodlit but looking empty as a stage set — lay quiet and still under a dark, clouded sky.

So late. The session really had gone on far too long.

A handful of aircraft drifted above M’yon, lights winking; not long ago there would have been hundreds. Banstegeyn had long thought of the old Ceremonial Capital as an open-air museum, with the parliament its dustiest exhibit. It was just that now it truly looked like it. Anyway, M’yon was not where the real power lay at all — that was in the teeming habs, the great ships, the orbiting manufacturies and the Regimental HQs — but rather where it had to look like it lay.

On the terrace, the principal knot of people surrounded the president: the usefully useless president, her cohort of effete trimes, a few of his fellow septames and a smattering of junior degans who must have ridden in on somebody more senior’s coat-tails. Secretaries, AdCs, advisors, a few Military Outright bigwigs and a smattering of accredited aliens made up the rest; some of the aliens were humanoid, some disconcertingly not.

The ambassadorial party from the Ronte — the insectiles who were one of the two Scavenger civs the Gzilt were actually talking to — existed inside heavy-looking exo-suits like tiny, complicated spaceships, all alarmingly sharp joints and angles and the occasional hiss and stink of some escaping gas. Their translators didn’t work as well as they seemed to think and it could be confusing to talk to them. They tended to huddle on the outskirts of gatherings like this, lucky to have a Gzilt military attaché to talk to, and even then only because the unfortunate officer had been ordered to do so. Four of the six suited Ronte were resting on their spindly-looking suit legs; the other two were floating over a pond, humming. Oh, and a few journalists and media people, he noted with some distaste; even the body politic had parasites.

It was the last day of the Gzilt Parliament. The very last day; it would never meet again. Anything relevant that needed dealing with from now on would be handled by transitional committees or temporary cabinets. The various representatives, having made their final farewells, would shortly be departing. A handful of those local to Zyse itself would head off in fliers, but all the rest would take ship to be with their families and/or loved ones, the great majority of them in conveniently distant systems where, Banstegeyn devoutly hoped, they’d be unable to cause any trouble if any difficult decisions had to be made over the next twenty-odd days.

Banstegeyn had made sure that he was chair of several of the most important committees, and that his people chaired or controlled almost all the rest; plus it was tacitly accepted that he would be in charge if there was need of an emergency temporary cabinet.

Which there might be, now, of course. Only a very few people knew this at the moment (very few, but, patently, at least one fucker too many), though it was looking increasingly likely. It gave him stomach contractions just thinking about it; Go! he wanted to scream at all of the other parliamentarians. Hurry up! Just go. Be gone! Leave him and the people he trusted to make the decisions that had to be made.

It had all got far too close for comfort, time-wise, over the last day or two. The Remnanter ship had appeared earlier than they’d been expecting and then what had happened out at Ablate had already leaked, it seemed. How the fuck had that happened so quickly? If he ever found out who’d been responsible… Bad news upon bad news; things crowding in, happening much faster than he’d anticipated.

It could all be handled — things could always be handled — but the handling might get rough. Well, that couldn’t be helped. The goal was what it had always been; a successful Sublime, his reputation and place in history assured.

He turned and looked up at the parliament building, where the Presence hung. He could hardly see it in the darkness.

The Presence was dark grey, shaped like some high-altitude balloon before it ascended; a slightly flattened semi-sphere curving down via a long, pendulous, narrowing tail to a point that looked to be aimed straight at the pinnacle of the parliament building’s central cupola. It was about sixty metres across near the top and nearly three hundred metres in height. That spike-like tip hovered silently just a few metres above the cupola’s spire; it looked as though somebody tall, balanced on the very top of the spire, could have reached up and touched it. A few of the parliament’s floodlights reflected dully off the bulbous near-black curve beneath its summit.

It had appeared twelve years earlier, on the day the parliament had passed the Act that confirmed the results of the Final Subliming Plebiscite, setting in train all the preparations for the event. A manifestation from the Sublimed Realm, a symbol from those who had already gone before. No more than a signpost, really; not animate or intelligent, as far as was known; just a reminder that the decision had been made and the course of the Gzilt was set. It was unmoved and unaffected by wind, rain, whatever, and barely there at all according to the military’s technical people; only just more than a projection. Real but unreal, like a shadow falling from another world.

They’d been expecting it; the Presence hadn’t come as a surprise — these things always appeared when a people, a civilisation, was preparing for and committed to Subliming — but, somehow, actually seeing it there had still come as a shock.

Banstegeyn remembered watching the poll figures wobble; parliament, the media and his own people were canvassing the general population all the time back then, and the commitment levels had dipped significantly when the Presence had appeared. He’d worried. This was so much what he wanted, what he believed in and knew was right, what he himself had spent his life working towards and staked his reputation on; this would be his legacy and his name would live for evermore in the Real, no matter what lay ahead in the Sublime. It was utterly the right thing to do; he had known this and still knew this with absolute certainty, and yet still he’d worried. Had he been too bold? Had he tried to make everybody go too soon: a decade early, a generation, even?

But then the figures had rallied. And only grown since. The commitment was still there. It would all happen.

He looked away, past Jevan’s handsome but slightly vacant face, and Solbli’s pleasantly matron-like look of admiration and pride, sparing them both a quick smile, then turned as he heard footsteps hurrying up towards him.

“Septame Banstegeyn! A historic day!”

“Another step closer,” President Geljemyn said as the group around her parted to admit him. Banstegeyn glanced at various faces, distributing quick smiles and curt nods of his own. There were three trimes: Yegres, Quvarond and Int’yom; the full extant set, basically, given that the rest were Stored, awaiting the pre-waking before the Sublime. Quvarond counted as an opponent, Int’yom was a geriatric nonentity but he was his geriatric nonentity, and Yegres did as Int’yom told him.

Six of his fellow septames were also present; five his, one neutral. An only slightly better than average for/against ratio, amongst those left. Two generals, an admiral, no press. Quite a lot of puffiness and glistening skin all round, he noticed; signs of drunkenness.

The president still wore her vulgarly cheap little time-to on a band round her wrist, he observed. It was the sort of thing retailers had given away, back in the day. She’d been gifted many far more elegant, tasteful and expensive time-tos since, but had made a point of sticking with this one. It cycled between showing the number of hours left, and the days. Currently it was on days, reading “S -22”. His own example, displayed on his chest like a small but important honour, was delicately beautiful, purely mechanical, exquisite in its workmanship and eye-poppingly expensive.

The almost normal-looking Ambassador Mierbeunes was there from the Iwenick, representing the Liseiden, as was the Culture’s current most senior representative to Gzilt; Ziborlun. This silver-skinned creature was an avatar of the ancient Systems Vehicle that was currently gracing the skies of somewhere not too far away, no doubt. There was a bigger, grander, much more flattering GSV on its way for the formal ceremonies in the days immediately preceding the Subliming, allegedly, but they’d yet to see any sign of it.

Banstegeyn was also aware of Orpe, the president’s beautiful AdC, looking at him as he joined the huddle round Geljemyn. The girl was trying not to smile too much, looking away from him now and again. He didn’t return the look. Doubtless many already guessed, but there was no need to make things easy for people.

“Another step closer, Madame President,” he agreed, accepting a soft drink from a steward and holding it aloft.

“Eternity here we come,” Trime Yegres said, raising his glass. “We go to our Reward.”

Drunk, Banstegeyn decided.

The president looked amused. Much seemed to amuse her. It was one of her faults. “The Subliming makes all of us sound like religious zealots,” she said.

Yegres swallowed, looked at the silver-skinned being across from him and said, “I’m sure our Culture friends think we’ve always sounded like religious zealots.”

Ziborlun made a small bow. Its silver skin looked less unnatural in lamp light. “Not at all,” it said.

Yegres frowned at it. “You’re very… diplomatic,” he told the creature, slurring his words. “Are you sure you’re Culture?”

“In all seriousness,” Ambassador Mierbeunes said, meaning he was about to say something fatuous, flattering or both, “I have never entirely understood why the Book of Truth is regarded as a religious work at all.” He looked round, blandly suave as ever, smiling. “It would seem more like—”

“That would be because it is the basis of our religion,” Trime Quvarond informed him curtly. Banstegeyn didn’t bother repressing his smile; he’d found the Iwenick male annoying while they’d been conducting negotiations; now they’d concluded them he was insufferable.

“Well, in that sense,” Mierbeunes said smoothly, still smiling, “obviously and completely a religious work, of course, without question…” He continued to witter.

Banstegeyn had just become aware of a uniform at his side.

“Marshal Chekwri,” Solbli whispered softly in his ear, overriding the earbud cancel. She rarely got this wrong.

“Marshal Chekwri!” Banstegeyn said loudly, mostly to shut the Iwenick up, and turned to greet the Commander in Chief of the Home System Regiment.

The marshal of the First bowed to all, clapped her hands gently in front of her. “May I drag you away?” she asked him. She looked at Geljemyn. “Madame President?”

Geljemyn nodded. “If you must,” she said.

“All yours!” Yegres said merrily. “Don’t hurry bringing him back! Ha ha!”

“Excuse me,” Banstegeyn said. He beamed a smile round all of them, though it soured a little when it got to Yegres.

He suspected only Orpe would be truly sad to see him go.

He followed the marshal back up the steps, trailed by Jevan and Solbli. When they got inside, the marshal turned to his AdC and secretary and smiled as she said, “Thank you.”

Jevan and Solbli looked at Banstegeyn, who gave the tiniest of nods. They looked forlorn as he and the marshal stepped into an elevator.

When the lift started to drop, he looked at the marshal and said, “What?”

The marshal just looked at him with her tired old eyes in her tired old face, and smiled thinly.

He hoisted one eyebrow, then nodded. “Hmm,” he said, more to himself than her.

There were places under the parliament building few people ever got to see, or even knew were there. This was one. The room was round with concave black walls but was otherwise unremarkable, holding a round table and some seats; Banstegeyn’s office was bigger. And had a better view, obviously. More of note had been the three metre-thick doors they had had to negotiate to get here, each of which had swung closed behind them.

“Now?” Banstegeyn asked the marshal after the room’s own massive door had thudded shut.

“Now,” the marshal confirmed.

“How bad is it?”

Chekwri nodded. “It is within what was expected. We just have more detail, choices for action.” She glanced towards the centre of the room. “Shall we?”

They sat. “Scavengers? The other thing? What?”

“The other thing,” Marshal Chekwri confirmed.

Banstegeyn sighed. Chekwri was one of only a handful of people who knew — not counting whoever knew who wasn’t supposed to; he shivered to think how many of them there might be. “What detail, what choices?” he asked her.

“The leak was only to the Fourteenth,” the marshal told him.

He nodded. One regiment. That wasn’t so bad. Still bad enough. “Would be, wouldn’t it?” he said. The Fourteenth — the Socialist-Republican People’s Liberation Regiment, 14, to give it its full title — had been the most sceptical regarding Sublimation from the start, even if it too had finally — at least apparently — come onside. “Who was responsible?”

“Nobody,” the marshal told him.

He looked at her. “Somebody is always responsible,” he told her.

She shook her head. “This was something generated within the Mind-set or the subsidiary substrate mechanisms of the Churkun itself. The ship had a one-off spy… you’d have to call it a program, it was so old and tiny; a virus, sitting in its computational matrix. Whatever it was — it deleted itself immediately — it had been in there since before the ship itself was constructed, while the Mind-set was still in virtual form, being test-run by the shipyard’s Technology and Processing Department, four hundred and seventy years ago. Even then, it might not have required anybody within the Tech Department to plant it; could be done from outside.”

“And it was doing nothing all that time?”

“Just waiting for something to come along sufficiently game-changing to be worth betraying its presence for.”

“And nobody found it?”

“Obviously.”

“Or nobody who wasn’t also a traitor, at least,” Banstegeyn said, glancing away.

The marshal frowned. “I think if we start assuming there might be traitors within the fleet’s virtual crews we make traitors of ourselves. Saboteurs, at the very least. This was something so small, in a set of substrates so vast, it was possible for it to hide. Once it was in there, no further—”

Banstegeyn’s eyes went wide. “What about the other ships?” he blurted.

The marshal sat back fractionally at being interrupted, but said, calmly, “All those still with us are checking. Now they have a rough idea what they’re looking for, it’s hoped they can either find anything similar or give themselves a clean bill of health within days.”

Banstegeyn was appalled. “Days?”

“Impossible to do any quicker. The fleet, such as it is, these days, remains fully operational in every other respect; the techs — the ships too — maintain there is absolutely zero possibility of anything similar taking over any part of the running of the vessels; stuff like this can watch and wait and signal if it finds a way, but it can’t affect.”

“And the Churkun?” Banstegeyn asked. “What’s it — is it returning to—?”

“The Churkun announced its determination to Sublime as soon as possible,” the marshal said. “Nothing more has been heard of it since so either it has already gone or it is still preparing to.” Chekwri smiled humourlessly. “I understand that the aftermath of battle, even a one-sided one, is not generally considered to constitute the most favourable condition for the instigation of Sublimation.” The pretended-at smile disappeared. “And kindly keep that secret, too, Septame. The ship didn’t announce this publicly and we’d rather people think it’s still with us; the fleet’s reduced enough as it is.”

Banstegeyn opened his mouth, seemed to catch himself, then said, “All right. Never mind. What about the Fourteenth?”

“We are almost certain—”

The septame held up one hand. “‘We’?”

“An absolute minimum of my best, most trusted people know we’re looking for something, not what it is,” the marshal said. “It’s all in hand, all working. The good, the very good news is that we are almost certain the information is held by probably only one substrate in the Fourteenth’s HQ, and known to a handful of their top brass, at most. Nobody else. Not yet.”

“Not yet for how long?”

“Can’t say. All we know is they haven’t tried to share this so far, to the best of our knowledge.”

Banstegeyn looked to one side and rubbed his fingers as though testing the feel of an invisible piece of cloth. “Of course, they might not do anything with it. They might just sit on it.”

“That is a possibility,” the marshal said, sounding doubtful.

“We could just ask them, I suppose,” he said, looking at the marshal, and smiling. “They might even listen to reason.”

“We could,” she said. “They might.” She held his gaze, kept her expression neutral.

“Let’s do that, then,” the septame said, sitting back. The marshal’s face betrayed the tiniest flicker of surprise. “Though,” Banstegeyn said, sitting forward again, “take me through what else you were thinking of.”

Chekwri frowned. “One approach might preclude the other. To ask would be to warn, and then any other choice would be closed off.”

“What if,” the septame said, “one waited to make this appeal to reason until the other choice was available… at a moment’s notice?”

The marshal seemed to think for a moment. “Given the capabilities of the technologies involved, especially the potential rapidity of response they possess, even a moment might be warning enough to turn a potentially successful action into one that was sure to fail.”

“Hmm,” Banstegeyn said, sitting back again. “Then it would certainly be foolish to give any greater degree of warning, wouldn’t it?”

The marshal’s eyes narrowed a little as she said, “Quite.”

“What did you have in mind?” he asked her. “What does it involve?”

“It involves a fast, powerful ship, a single surgical strike with full end-operator tactical-choice freedom and — in case any further action is required — a micro-force of just two: a highly augmented special forces field-colonel and a non-humanoid combat arbite.”

“And this would be in, on—”

“Eshri, Izenion system.”

Banstegeyn bit his lower lip. He looked away. “Against our own people…”

“Who put a piece of spyware into another regiment’s capital ship nearly five hundred years ago, who might have done the same thing to other elements of the fleet and who could, if they wanted…” The marshal let her voice trail off.

“… potentially jeopardise the whole Subliming,” the septame said, still looking to one side, rubbing his lip now. He looked at her. “How soon can we put all this together?”

“It already is together, Septame. The assets are presently in transit for Izenion.”

Banstegeyn widened his eyes. “Are they now?”

“I instructed the battle-cruiser Uagren to depart Zyse system for Izenion twenty minutes ago. It is recallable at any point. It seemed rash to hesitate once the materiel and personnel were collated. And nothing irresilable happens without your express permission.”

“How long until I would have to make a decision?”

“The Uagren’s travel time to Izenion is between forty-six and fifty-four hours, depending on whether it flies through or comes to a local stop. Say forty-five hours to go yes/no on any pre-agreed action re the former, though if there’s no further sign of development from the Fourteenth HQ, I’d advise the local stop; that way we have a chance of dealing with any loose ends or unanticipated post-strike outcomes immediately rather than half a day later; there’s nothing else we can get to Izenion sufficiently quickly to provide immediate back-up if the Uagren commits to a fly-through mission. In that case, say fifty-three hours. To leave time to switch from one mission profile to another — fly-through to local stop — a decision would be required thirty-eight hours from now. That would be your first decision-point: in thirty-eight hours.”

“And if I decide nothing; if no decision is made?”

“The ship flies straight through Izenion system and loops back to return here without taking any action at all.”

“Good. Let’s leave that as the default, for now.” He took a deep breath. “So. Thirty-eight hours, forty-five and fifty-three. I’ll try to remember.”

The marshal smiled thinly. “Obviously we must accept that the usual restrictions apply to committing any part of this to any form of memory other than that we were born with.”

Banstegeyn lifted his time-to from his chest and twirled a platinum knob on it. “I take it it won’t represent too great a security threat if I set an alarm.” He aligned the alarm hand, then looked up at the marshal’s expressionless face. She remained silent. He sighed, let the time-to fall back against his chest. “Really?”

“It would be circumstantial, but in the event of something going wrong and a subsequent investigation…”

“A subsequent investigation?” Banstegeyn said, incredulous. “We’re supposed to be Subliming in…” he glanced at the time-to, “… twenty-two days, one hour.”

“Nevertheless. Foolish to risk what need not be risked. I’ll be in touch shortly before a decision is needed.”

Banstegeyn sighed and unset the alarm. He looked at Chekwri. “This does have to happen, you know,” he said. “The Subliming. It has to happen now, and completely, or not…” Another sigh. He felt suddenly tired. “I’ve looked at the statistics, the sims. For a species like ours, if there’s a stall, it’s likely to take another three to five generations before it actually happens. That’s…” He shook his head. “That’s why this has to happen, Madame Marshal.”

Marshal Chekwri, Commander in Chief of the Home System Regiment, was silent a little while longer, then said, “That is why we will make sure that it does, Septame.”