Matter

by Iain M. Banks

  Oramen didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t embarrass the fellow further following such an outburst, so he just walked past him on his way to his toilet.

  A week later he was on his way to the Hyeng-zhar.

  What with all the preparations and general fuss caused by the move, he hadn’t seen Fanthile again before leaving Pourl. The morning of the day he was due to go, shortly after he’d heard he was to have his very own personal guard of two stalwart knights, he’d received a note from Fanthile asking to see him, but there hadn’t been time.

  Jerle Batra took the signal during a break in the peace negotiations. These were proving protracted. He wasn’t directly involved in the haggling, of course – it boggled one to think what the indigents would make of a cross between a talking bush and an expanding fence – but he was overseeing while some of the others in the mission did their best to keep people focused. In the end it had to be the natives themselves who made this work, but a bit of judicious prodding helped on occasion.

  He rose a couple of kilometres into the air from the marquee in the middle of the great tent city on the grassy swell of plain where the negotiations were taking place. Up here the air smelled fresh and clean. It felt deliciously cool, too. You experienced changes in temperature so quickly in this form; you felt the wind blow through you. There was nothing quite like it.

  My dear old friend, he communicated. The signal was passing from and to the excursion platform Quonber, currently almost directly overhead but on the fringes of space. To what, etc.?

  Jerle Ruule Batra, said a familiar voice. Good-day.

  The It’s My Party And I’ll Sing If I Want To was an Escarpment-class GCU which had been strongly associated with Special Circumstances for nearly as long as Jerle Batra himself. Batra had no idea where the ship actually was in a true, physical sense, but the old craft had gone to the trouble of sending a working-scale personality construct to talk to him here on Prasadal. This implied a matter of more than passing importance.

  To you too, he sent, wherever.

  Thank you. How goes your peace conference?

  Slowly. Having exhausted the possibilities of every other form of mass-murder they could possibly employ against each other, the natives now appear intent on boring each other to death. They may finally have discovered their true calling.

  Still, cause for optimism. My congratulations to all. And I’m told you have a child!

  I most certainly do not have a child. I am looking after a child for a colleague. That is all.

  Nevertheless, that is more than one might have expected of you.

  She asked. I could hardly refuse.

  How interesting. However, to business.

  By all means.

  Listen to this.

  There followed a compressed version of the message sent by the Now We Try It My Way to its old home MSV, the Qualifier, describing its odd encounter with what had appeared to be an Oct ship above the planet Zaranche, but hadn’t been.

  Very well. This was only mildly interesting and Batra did not see how it might involve him. And?

  It is believed that the whole Oct fleet above Zaranche, save for one Primarian-class ship, probably the first arrived, was not really there. It was a ghost fleet.

  The Oct are at that stage, though, aren’t they? Batra sent. They’re still trying to puff themselves up, still trying on parents’ shoes, making themselves look bigger.

  Batra immediately knew somebody somewhere in SC was going to be reading all sorts of paranoid nonsense into something like this. Ghost ships; pretend fleets. Scary! Except it wasn’t, it couldn’t be. The Oct were an irrelevance. Better still, they were the Morthanveld’s irrelevance, or the Nariscene’s irrelevance, depending on where you chose to draw the line. An equivtech Involved getting up to this sort of misdirection might mean something significant. The Oct doing the same thing was profoundly so-whattish. They were probably just trying to impress their Nariscene mentors or had left a switch on they shouldn’t or something.

  But SC took this sort of random dross terribly seriously. The finest Minds in the Culture had an almost chronic need for serious stuff to involve them, and this, patently, was their latest dose. We make our own problems, Batra thought. We’ve seeded the fucking galaxy with travellers, wanderers, students, reporters, practical ethnologists, peripatetic philosophers, hands-on ex-sociologists, footloose retirees, freelance ambassadors or whatever they’re called this season and a hundred other categories of far too easily amazed amateur and they’re all forever reporting back stuff that looks like deeply weird shit to them that wouldn’t pass the first filter of even the least experienced Contact Unit’s data intake systems.

  We’ve filled the known universe with credulous idiots and we think we’ve sneakily contributed to our own safety by making it hard for anything untoward to creep in under our sensor coverage whereas in fact we’ve just made sure we harvest zillions of false positives and probably made the really serious shit harder to spot when it does eventually come flying.

  No, the GCU’s construct sent. We don’t think the Oct are trying to look more impressive than they are, not in this case.

  Wind moved through Batra’s bushy body like a sigh. What happened after the close encounter? he asked, dutifully.

  We don’t know. Haven’t been able to contact the Erratic since. Could have been captured. Conceivably, even, destroyed. A ship – a warship, no less – has been sent to investigate, though it’s still eight days away.

  Destroyed? Batra suppressed a laugh. Seriously? Are we within capabilities here?

  The Oct Primarian-class has the weaponry and other systems to overwhelm a cobbled-together ex-GTC mongrel, yes.

  But are we within likelihood? Batra asked. Are we even still within the realm of anything other than paranoid lunacy? What is imagined to be their motive in doing whatever might have been done to this Erratic?

  To stop this getting out.

  But why? To what end? What’s so important about this Zaranche place they’d even try to kidnap any Culture ship, hopeless old junkyard oddball or not?

  Nothing about Zaranche; rather what this has led to.

  Which would be what?

  A subtle but thorough investigation into Oct ship movements and placements over the last fifty days or so. Which has involved quite a few Contact, SC and even VFP/warships dropping everything and hightailing off to a variety of obscure backwood destinations, many well within the Morthanveld sphere.

  I am suitably impressed. It must be regarded as awfully important for us to risk annoying our so-sensitive co-Involveds at such an allegedly delicate time. And what was the result of all this high-speed, high-value-asset sleuthing?

  There are lots of ghost fleets.

  What? For the first time, Batra felt something other than a sort of amused, studied disdain. Some legacy of his human form, buried in the transcribed systems that held his personality, made him suddenly feel the coldness of the air up here. Just for an instant he was fully aware that a naked human exposed to this temperature would have hairs standing up on their skin now.

  The ghost fleet above Zaranche is one of eleven, the ship continued. The others are here. A glyph of a portion of the galaxy perhaps three thousand light years in diameter displayed itself in Batra’s mind. He swam into the image, looked around, pulled back, played around with a few settings. That’s quite a large part of what one might call Oct Space, he sent.

  Indeed. Approximately seventy-three per cent of the entire Oct Prime Fleet would seem not to be where it appears to be.

  Why are they bunched like that? Why those places? All the locations, all the places where these ghost fleets had drawn up were out of the way: isolated planets, backwater habitats and seldom-frequented deep-space structures.

  It is believed they are grouped where they are to avoid detection.

  But they’re being open about it; they’re telling people where they are.

  I mean detection of the fact they are ghosts. The cover sto
ry, as it were, is that a series of special convocations is taking place which will lead to some profound new departure for the Oct; some new civilisational goal, perhaps. Possibly one linked to their continuing attempts at betterment and advancement upon the galactic stage. We suspect, however, that this is only partially true. The convocations are a ruse to excuse the departure of so many front-line ships.

  Had they better technology, the GCU’s personality construct continued, the Oct would, one imagines, have kept their ghost ships appearing to carry out normal duties while the real ones left for wherever it is they have in fact left for. Their ability so to deceive is limited, however. Any high-Involved ship – certainly one of ours or the Morthanveld, for example, and possibly most Nariscene craft – would be able to tell that what they were looking at was not a real Oct ship. So the genuine craft left the normal intercourse of galactic ship life and these rather crude representations were assembled in locations specifically chosen so that the ships’ lack of authenticity would most likely go unnoticed.

  Had he still inhabited human form Batra would, at this point, have frowned and scratched his head. But why? To what end? Are these maniacs going to war?

  We don’t know. They have outstanding disputes with a few species and there is a particular and recently inflamed gripe with the Aultridia, but the whole of Oct society does not appear to be presently configured for hostilities. It is configured for something unusual, certainly (Batra could hear puzzlement expressed in the ship’s voice), possibly including some sort of hostile or at least dynamic action, but not all-out war. The Aultridia are taken to be their most pressing potential adversaries but they would almost certainly defeat the Oct as matters stand at present. The models show ninety-plus per cent likelihood, very consistently.

  So where are the real ships?

  That, old chum, is very much the question.

  Batra had been thinking. And why am I being included here?

  More modelling. Using the pattern of affected snuck-away ships and a pre-existing profile of Oct interests, we have drawn up a list of likely destinations for the real craft.

  Another layered diaglyph blossomed in Batra’s mind. Ah-ha, he thought.

  The marginally most likely disposition is a distributed one, or rather one of two not dissimilar choices: in each, the Primarians and other strategic craft take up various different positions, either defensive or offensive, depending. The defensive model implies a more even spread of forces than the offensive one, which favours greater concentration. These represent options one and two respectively in the modelled plausibility grading. There is, however, a third option, shown here.

  The other layers fell away but Batra had already spotted the pattern and the place within it that was its focus.

  They could be gathering round Sursamen, he sent.

  The General Contact Unit It’s My Party And I’ll Sing If I Want To still sounded puzzled: Well, quite.

  The Integrity of Objects

  20. Inspiral, Coalescence, Ringdown

  The interior of the Morthanveld Great Ship Inspiral, Coalescence, Ringdown was generally experienced virtually even by those for whom it was designed and who had built it. Externally the ship was a flattened sphere fifty kilometres in diameter. It resembled a vast droplet of blue ice whose surface had been blasted with several million jewels, about half of which had subsequently fallen out, leaving behind small craters.

  Its main internal space was enormous; bigger than anything on a Culture GSV. The best way to think of it, Anaplian had been told by Skalpapta, her Morthanveld liaison officer, was as if you’d got nineteen balloons full of water each nearly ten kilometres in diameter, arranged them into a rough hexagon so that they formed as near a circle as possible, then squished them all together so that the walls between them flattened out. Then you added another two layers of seven spheres, one above and one below, under the same principle. Finally you removed all those flat, separating walls.

  The whole space was criss-crossed by strands and cables supporting hundreds of millions of polyp-like living quarters and multitudinous travel tubes, many with a vacuum inside to speed up transit times.

  As on most Morthanveld ships, the water was generally kept as clean as desirable by fixed and static scrubbing units; nevertheless, the fact was that the bait species and accrescent flora the Morthanveld liked to feed on needed water with nutrients in it, and the Morthanveld themselves regarded having to visit some special place to relieve oneself of waste as the mark of a species insufficiently at home with itself. Or gas-breathing, which was almost as embarrassing.

  The water they lived, swam, worked and played within, then, was not perfectly unclouded. However, it was always pleasant to have a clear view, especially in such a vast space.

  The Morthanveld very much approved of themselves, and the larger the numbers of their kind there were present, the more self-approval they felt. Being able to see the hundreds of millions of their fellows a Great Ship normally carried was generally regarded as an extremely good thing, so rather than rely on their naked eyes to see their way round a space as vast as that of a Great Ship’s interior, they used thin-film screens covering their eyes to present them with the view they’d be able to see had the water been perfectly clear.

  Djan Seriy had decided to adopt the same strategy and so swam with a modified thin-film screen over her own eyes. She moved through the water in a dark suit like a second skin. Around her neck was what looked like a necklace made of fluttering green fronds; a gill arrangement that provided oxygen to her nose through two small transparent tubes. This was somewhat ignominious to her, as with her old upgrades her skin would have ridged and puckered over whatever area was required to absorb the gases she needed straight out of the water.

  The thin-film screen was stuck across her eyes like a flimsy transparent bandage. She had switched off her blink reflex; the alternative was to let the screen bulge out far enough for her to blink normally, but the air-gap introduced unwanted distortions. The screen provided her with the virtual view of the real space, showing the cavernous semi-spherical spaces of the Great Ship like some staggeringly vast cave system.

  She could have patched directly into the ship’s internal sensory view to achieve the same effect, or just swum with her own senses and not bothered with the greater, seemingly clear view, but she was being polite; using the thin-film screen meant that the ship could keep an eye on her, seeing, no doubt, what she could see, and so knowing that she wasn’t getting into any Special Circumstances-style mischief.

  She could also have used any one of several different kinds of public transport to get to where she was going, but had opted instead for a small personal propulsion unit which she held on to with one hand as it thrummed its way through the water. The sex toy that was really a knife missile that was really a drone had wanted to impersonate such a propulsion unit, so staying close to her, but she reckoned this was just the machine fussing and had instructed it to remain in her quarters.

  Djan Seriy powered up and to the left to avoid a fore-current, found a helpful aft-current, curved round a set of long, bulbous habitats like enormous dangling fruits and then struck out towards a tall bunch of green-black spheres each between ten and thirty metres across, hanging in the water like a colossal strand of seaweed. She switched off the prop unit and swam into one of the larger spheres through a silvery circle a couple of metres across and let the draining water lower her to the soft, wet floor. Gravity again. She was spending more time aquatic than not, even including sleeping, as she explored the huge space vessel. This was her fifth day aboard and she only had another four to go. There was still much to see.

  Her suit, until now coating her body as closely as paint, promptly frizzed up, forcing the water to slide off and letting it assume the look of something a fashionable young lady would choose to wear in an air-breathing environment. She stuffed her necklace gill into a pocket and – as the suit’s head-part flowed downward to form an attractive frilled collar – flic
ked one earring to activate a temporary static field. This sorted her hair, which was, today, blonde. She kept the thin-film screen on. She thought it looked rather good on her; vaguely piratical.

  Djan Seriy stepped through the cling-field into the 303rd Aliens’ Lounge, where thumping music played loudly and the air was full of drug smoke and incense.

  She was quickly greeted by a small cloud of tiny brightly coloured creatures like small birds, each thrown by one of the bar’s patrons. Some sang welcomes, others fluttered strobed messages across their hazy wings and a few squirted scent messages at her. This was, currently, the latest greeting-fad for new arrivals at the 303rd Aliens’ Lounge. Sometimes the lobbed creatures would carry notes or small parcels of narcotics or declarations of love, or they would start spouting insults, witticisms, philosophical epigrams or other messages. As Djan Seriy understood it, this was meant to be amusing.

  She waited for the cloud of flittering creatures to start dissipating, thinking all the time how easy it would have been to bat, grasp and crush every one of the twenty-eight little twittering shapes around her, had she been fully enabled. She plucked the most lately arrived of the creatures out of the air and looked severely at the old-looking, purple-skinned humanoid who had thrown it. “Yours, sir,” she said, as she passed his table, handing it to him. He mumbled a reply. Others nearby were calling out to her. The denizens of the 303rd were gregarious and got to know people quickly; she was already regarded as a regular after only three visits. She refused various offers of company and waved away some especially thick and pungent drug smoke; the 303rd was something of a wide-spectrum humanoid stoners’ hang-out.