The Hydrogen Sonata c-10

by Iain M. Banks

  Reikl nodded. “Kind of in the whole culture, whole society, preparing, since before you were born,” she agreed. “Now,” she said, “I’m going to ask you again: are you willing to do what we might ask, what I might ask?”

  Cossont looked into the other woman’s eyes for a moment. She thought of all the people you heard about who had resigned commissions, disobeyed orders, committed ludicrous crimes, especially just recently, all because the Subliming was so close and the wheels of justice ground so slow; by the time they might expect to be punished, they’d have gone with everybody else. Every individual got their own chance, apparently, with no way — aside from summary execution — for society to pick and choose who went.

  She suspected most people had been tempted to do something crazy in these final days, maybe something they’d always thought about but never dared do, until now. She’d gone for the other option, of just keeping your head down and maybe taking on an absorbing life-task until the big day came. One way of looking at this was that it was less self-obsessed. Another was that it was less daring, a cop-out, almost cowardly.

  She could say no, she was aware of that. Reikl she trusted, and had heard good things about, but the uselessness of the other two senior officers had been a shock. She hadn’t realised how mad things had become. They’d all be Sublimed soon anyway — what was the point of taking on some mission that might be even slightly dangerous? It was all very romantic, but she had no illusions regarding her own abilities — she was no spy, no hero, no super-agent.

  Still, there was something about the intensity of the other woman’s gaze and the way she carried herself, some expression of the force of her personality — and maybe just some residual need in Cossont to obey somebody so much more senior, inculcated from childhood and throughout her life — that made her want to please Reikl, to do as she said or even demanded. It was also, she admitted to herself, a way of abandoning her idiotic life-task without losing too much self-respect. “All right,” she said. “I’ll do whatever I can, ma’am. But it would help to know—”

  “Yes.” Reikl nodded, as though just remembering something. “Yes, well, sorry to make it sound so melodramatic, Lieutenant Commander, but let me get to the point: the Book of Truth is a lie.”

  Cossont stared at her.

  The Gzilt holy book was something you just grew up with, something you took for granted, and felt proud of. It might, in a sense, have outlived its most useful period, when it had demonstrably been telling the Gzilt people truths — facts — they could never have guessed at the time, but it was still revered. Of course there were doubts about it, there always had been; when you found out about all the other holy books there had ever been throughout the histories of other peoples throughout the galaxy, you realised how common they were, and how fallible, how restricted they were by the usually tribal prejudices and traditions of the people who — it took real blind faith not to accept — had made them up.

  But even then, of course, the Book of Truth stood alone, as the one that had made sense throughout.

  That the Zihdren had turned out to be not quite so important, and not unique, as the book implied, made little difference. Because another thing that you learned was that everybody had their own point of view; all species and civilisations saw things from their own perspective — and with themselves, generally, naturally, at the centre of things. The Gzilt were in one sense no different, and in another were rather better off, more justified in their self-regard, because they had had less to repudiate, less baggage to renounce; their holy book had little to apologise for.

  “A lie?” she heard herself saying.

  “Not just a misinterpretation or a good deed or helping hand taken too far: an outright, deliberate lie, coated with a selection of scientific truths to make it easier to swallow, but otherwise fashioned purely to deceive,” Reikl told her.

  “By the Zihdren?”

  “By the Zihdren,” Reikl confirmed. “In fact, by a tiny faction within the Zihdren: a solitary university faculty, a small renegade research team with a single dissident individual at its head. We are, and always have been since the Book was put together, an experiment, Ms Cossont. The Scribe was just a clever man down on his luck with a gift for speculation, embroidery and marketing. He was selected by the Zihdren — profiled, chosen — and then given the basis of the Book. The rest, of course, he just made up.

  “We know all this because there was a Zihdren-Remnanter ship on its way to Zyse and the parliament for the final ceremonies. It was carrying a… an android, some sort of humanoid entity that was to represent the Zihdren at the ceremonies, but it was also supposed to confess all this deception to the political high-ups just before Subliming, so that technically the confession would have been made and the Zihdren’s revelation would have been delivered, but too late — you’d assume, they were assuming — to make any difference, and not for general consumption, of course. The political establishment is more locked into the whole Subliming idea than anybody else; they might be a little shocked, dazed even, to have confirmed what cynics and apostates have been muttering for millennia, but they would never call off the whole Subliming or think to put it to a vote or a plebiscite.”

  The general smiled. It was not a convincing expression. “Only, the Zihdren ship never arrived at Zyse. It was intercepted by a Gzilt ship en route, and destroyed on some pretext,” she said. “Just before it was incinerated the Zihdren ship tried to reason with the Gzilt craft by explaining how important its mission was. It released the sealed information it was carrying. Until that point we believe it hadn’t known itself what the message contained. It was destroyed anyway and a component of the Gzilt ship loyal to something beyond the regiment it belonged to ensured the information duly made its way to us.”

  Reikl stepped a little closer to Cossont, making Vyr want to step back. She resisted the urge, let the other woman put her face close to hers. “And the thing is,” the general continued, “the message mentioned Ngaroe QiRia by name, as somebody who might help provide proof that this was all true, even if there would have been precious little time to have done the checking required by the time this information was supposed to have been passed on.” Reikl did her faux smile thing again. “So, Ms Vyr Cossont, Lieutenant Commander Cossont, reserve, in her civilian blouse and the Lords of Excrement jacket she’s been trying to hide,” Reikl said, reaching out with both hands and gently patting down Cossont’s shirt collar, “we are looking to you to help us here, because some of us would dearly love to know if all this really is all true, and what further light on matters Mr QiRia — in any of his incarnations — might be able to throw on things. Because we understand — I understand — that the gentleman concerned might exist in more than one form now, is that not right?”

  “Ah,” Cossont said, “that.”

  “Yes,” Reikl said softly. “That.”

  “The mind-state thing.”

  “Just as you say; the mind-state thing.”

  “It’s not something that I have any more, ma’am,” Cossont confessed.

  “I know,” Reikl told her, leaning back a little from her. “You donated it to one of the Centralised Dataversities on the Bokri microrbital, Ospin.”

  Cossont nodded. “The Incast facility. They specialise—”

  “—specialise in that sort of thing,” Reikl said, nodding. “Yes, I’ve read your journal.”

  Cossont frowned. “But that was in the private—”

  “Don’t be naive,” Reikl said, shaking her head. “We’re your regiment. The point is, would you be prepared to go there and get it back?”

  “To Ospin?”

  “We’re practically en route,” the general said, her gaze wandering all over Cossont now, as though inspecting her in some military parade, taking in her overall appearance, her clothes, everything. Cossont felt oddly helpless, transfixed. In a parade the inspecting officer traditionally looked for the slightest thing out of place or badly done; perhaps Reikl was looking for anything on
her that had any military merit whatsoever. “It would be very helpful,” Reikl was saying, still inspecting her. “You could even be doing something Gzilt as a whole would be most grateful for. Obviously we all respect life-tasks but this could be rather more important than playing a piece of music all the way through, however difficult it might be. Really, promotion and medals and awards and such nonsenses mean nothing if we’re all about to step into the big bright and shining light, Vyr, but there is just a chance that we’d be doing so under false pretences, and it would be good to know the truth, don’t you think? Just in case we wanted to rethink, and stay in the Real and accomplish more here first, and leave Subliming for another time. That ought to be a choice, don’t you agree?”

  “I—”

  “Shouldn’t even be too dangerous. And much better than us going piling in. The regiment, I mean, mob-handed, fully tooled. That could be awkward. There might be ructions. In fact, ructions would be pretty much guaranteed, given that Ospin and the Dataversities fall under the protection of the Home Systems Regiment, and it was one of their ships, we think, that wasted the Zihdren vessel. Powf! Like that.” She snapped her fingers gently in front of Cossont’s face. “You, however, have a plausible motive for inspecting something you donated, so we’d like to send you to see if the shade of Mr QiRia will talk to you and shed any light. Do you think you could do that? Would you be prepared? I’m very much hoping it’s not too much to ask. Is it, Vyr? Is it too much to ask?” The general was suddenly quite close to her again.

  Cossont shook her head; she felt she’d been half hypnotised. “No, ma’am. I’ll… I’ll go. I’ll… it’ll be my…” Cossont shook her head, cleared her throat, pulled herself upright. “I will do what you ask.”

  The general leaned back again, smiled — sincerely, this time, or so it appeared. “Thank you,” she said, with a little side-nod of the head. “Now, let’s find your android bodyguard, shall we?” She turned and walked smartly along the awkwardly curved floor of the corridor; the door ahead rolled open. Cossont followed.

  The mind-state thing.

  It had been a final present she’d received from the Anything Legal Considered; a copy of QiRia’s soul, basically. The ship hadn’t handed it over to her until the day and the moment she was leaving, a bag in her hand and the elevenstring’s case sitting on a float-pallet slaved to her, hovering obediently at her side like a slightly annoying pet.

  She’d been bade farewell by the ship’s golden-skinned avatar and had started to turn — one foot still on the floor of the ship’s hangar, her other foot on the rear ramp of the Gzilt transfer shuttle — when the avatar had said, “Oh, and there’s this,” and, when she’d turned, handed her a little dark-grey, subtly glittering cube which lay heavy in her palm.

  “From our old friend on Perytch IV,” the avatar had told her. “That’s him, in there, in a sense. For you alone; to be ignored, consulted, insulted, thrown aside, as you wish, he told me to say.” The creature had held up its gleaming golden hand. “Goodbye.”

  Outside the corridor end, in a wider cross-chamber, there was sudden noise and a line of men and women in a mixture of uniform and fancy dress, dancing past, roaring with laughter. Almost all sobered instantly the moment they saw the general, and stood to attention, breathless, grinning. One or two stood at ease, or even hunched over, hands on knees, getting their breath back or still laughing.

  “At ease, all of you,” Reikl said, then put some volume and steel into her voice and repeated, “All of you,” to bring the last couple into line. She looked at them as Cossont stood behind her, finding herself the object of some interest. Reikl caught the glances. “Yes,” she said, “somebody in civilian clothes, behaving with rather more decorum than any of you.” She nodded. “However; as you were.” She glanced at Cossont and they set off up the larger corridor.

  Behind them, the hilarity quickly resumed.

  A travel capsule was waiting, door open for them, a few metres away. The doors closed. Reikl muttered something Cossont didn’t catch — the general might even have been sub-vocalising badly.

  The only thing indicating they were moving was a holo display showing the capsule travelling through the asteroid moon from near the centre towards the stern where the hangar complex lay. Cossont watched this with Reikl next to her. The general was gnawing at a finger pad, a brooding look on her face.

  They exited into a large room like a cross between a laboratory and a small manufacturing plant, crossing to the only apparent activity, where three people in tech uniforms, one a commander, fussed round a raised seat where a figure reclined, bottom half in standard fatigues, top half naked, the back of his head enclosed by some sort of bulky helmet. A series of giant holo screens, all displaying graphics of colourfully complex incomprehensibility, arced around the group.

  The man opened his eyes as they approached, looked about, eyes swivelling, gaze fixing briefly on each of the faces around him. His expression looked uncertain, fearful. Cossont noticed that he was restrained in the semi-reclined seat, held at ankles and wrists, a thin metallic band round his waist.

  “So, Gaed,” Reikl said to the tech commander, “is this… are we ready yet?” The man in the seat stared at her as she spoke, as though he’d never heard anybody make such a noise before. He was tall, muscled, with a lean face. If this was the android Reikl had spoken about, Cossont thought, he was quite convincingly human-looking, apart from the rather immature, bewildered expression on his face.

  “Another few hours, I think, ma’am,” the tech commander said. He held a small control pad, like his two assistants, both of whom — a young man and a young woman — saluted Reikl, ignored Cossont completely and then, after a nod from the general, got on with what they’d been doing, which was mostly staring at the giant screens, muttering into thin air and to each other, and consulting their control units, manipulating holo displays hovering above the screens like the ghostly projected images of wildly complicated plumbing systems. The man in the chair twitched, looked surprised, most times they did this.

  “What’s the delay?” Reikl asked impatiently.

  “It’s, ah, software, ma’am,” the tech commander said, glancing at Cossont for the first time. He returned his attention to the general. “Not expecting a re-emplacement, not of something at this level. Taken us a bit by surprise. It’ll all happen, ma’am, depend on it, but…” His voice trailed off as one of his assistants twisted something within the holo display above his hand-held screen, and the man in the chair relaxed suddenly, slumping into what looked like unconsciousness, head lolling to one side, mouth slack. He jerked awake a moment later, stared straight up and in a deep but controlled voice said, “Unit Y988, Parinherm, Eglyle, systems checked, all enabled. Sim status ready, engaged, chron scale subjective one-to-one.”

  “Default status assumptions keep kicking in,” the tech commander said with a sigh. “Safety thing.” He looked at Reikl, possibly for support or sympathy.

  “Is it ready to roll or not?” she asked.

  “Not as he is, ma’am; still thinks he’s in simulation mode.”

  “That’s unhelpful, Commander,” Reikl said frostily. “Get it ready. As a matter of extreme urgency.”

  “Ma’am,” the commander said.

  Reikl turned to Cossont, opened her mouth, then frowned, looked away. She held up one hand, turning to pace off a couple of steps. “How fast?” Cossont heard her say.

  “Unit Y988, Parinherm, Eglyle,” the deep male voice said behind Cossont. “Systems checked, all enabled. Sim status ready, engaged, chrawww…” The voice slurred into silence as she watched Reikl stiffen.

  “—thing in its way?” the general said, her voice urgent. She spun on one booted heel, her face raised to the light-studded ceiling. She stamped on the floor. Cossont stared. She looked round at the tech commander and his two assistants. They had their heads down, exchanging worried glances.

  “No,” Reikl said, facing away from the others but making no attempt to keep
her voice down. “No. Don’t. Take too long.” A pause. “Temporary command incapacity.” Another pause. “My fucking authority! Yes. All ships full autonomy; F-Z priority. Up and out, max, immediate. Yes. What? Yes! Full; now.”

  A moment later an urgent warbling tone rang throughout the lab space and lights started flashing. The floor trembled beneath Cossont’s feet and a bassy, near sub-sonic rumble seemed to fill the air, her bones and lungs. The general wheeled, stamping back towards them.

  “Gaed,” she said to the tech commander, who was looking up at the ceiling. He refocused on Reikl. “We’re heading down a deck,” she told him. She nodded at the figure in the chair, slumped unconscious again. “Bring this thing.” The tech commander opened his mouth to speak. Reikl raised one finger. “Right now. Fast as. Bring it. Work on it as we go. No more; just do,” she said, as the tech commander opened his mouth again. She spun away once more, saying “What?”

  “You heard,” the tech commander said to the assistants, raising his voice over the incessant urgent warbling of the alarm. Cossont watched him flick something in the holo display over his hand-held. The restraints fell away from the man in the chair just as he jerked awake again and said, “Unit Y988, Parinherm, Eglyle, systems checked, all enabled. Sim status ready, engaged, chron scale subjective one-to-one.”

  “…get off while—” the general was saying. “Stut it; few seconds’ gap, let the shut—”

  The figure in the chair sat up suddenly, hinging at the waist. It blinked in the light. “Reporting!” it shouted, then seemed to freeze. The commander and his assistants were tapping feverishly at their screens, reaching into the holo displays, fingers dancing, muttering commands. The figure in the chair jerked, spasmed, turned its head quickly from side to side, then said, calmly, “Fleet alarm program identified.” Its voice was almost drowned out by the racket.

  “Then prep a disloc from the fucking hangar!” Reikl was shouting to somebody unseen. “Parametered for a class T shuttle.” She sucked air through her mouth as she listened. “Well get them out and put them in one; we can throw it further.” Another pause. “Just as far as possible!”