"You could," the machine said with a pronounced sigh. "But you'd never get into Contact, and SC would be forced to try and get a double — a synthetic entity — to impersonate this woman on Tier. The authorities there wouldn't be amused if they found out."
She gazed levelly at the machine for a moment. She sighed and shook her head. "Bugger," she breathed, snatching the glass of fruit juice from the floating tray and looking in distaste at where the juice had run down the outside of the glass. "I hate this acting adult shit." She knocked the juice back, set the glass back down and licked her lips. "Okay; let's go, let's go!"
The goodbyes took a while. Churt Lyne glowed greyer and greyer with frustration until it turned into a sort of off-black sphere; then it dropped its aura field altogether and sped out of the nearest opened window. It raced around in the air outside for a while; a couple of sonic booms nearly had the mounts bolting.
Eventually, though, Ulver had said her farewells, decided to leave all her animals and two trunks of clothes behind and then — having remained serene in the midst of much hullabaloo and some tears from Klatsli — entered a traveltube with a frostily blue Churt Lyne and was taken to the Forward Docks and a big, brightly lit hangar, where the Psychopath Class ex-Rapid Offensive Unit Frank Exchange of Views was waiting for her.
Ulver laughed. "It looks," she snorted, "like a dildo!"
"That's appropriate," Churt Lyne said. "Armed, it can fuck solar systems."
She remembered when she was a little girl and had stood on a bridge over a gorge in one of the other Interior Spaces; she had a stone in her hand and her mother had held her up to the bridge parapet so that she could look over the edge and drop the stone into the water below. She'd held the stone — it was about the same size as her little fist — right up to one eye and closed her other eye so that the dark stone had blotted out everything else she could see. Then she'd let it go.
She and Churt Lyne stood in the ship's tiny hangar area, surrounded by her cases, bags and trunks as well as a deal of plain but somehow menacing-looking bits and pieces of military equipment. The way that stone had fallen towards the dark water then, shrinking and shrinking, was very like the way Phage Rock fell silently away from the old warship now.
This time, of course, there was no splash.
When Phage had entirely disappeared, she switched out of the view her neural lace had imported into her head and turned to the drone, thinking a thought that would have occurred to her a lot earlier, she hoped, if she'd been sober and unimpassioned over the last day.
"When was this ship sent to Phage, Churt, and from where?"
"Why don't you ask it yourself?" it said, turning to indicate a small drone approaching over the jumble of equipment.
— Churt? she asked via the neural lace.
— Yes?
— Damn; I was hoping the ship's rep might be a dazzling handsome young man. Instead it's something that looks like a-
Churt Lyne interrupted:
— Ulver; you are aware that the ship itself acts as exchange hub for these communications?
— Oh dear, she thought, and felt herself colour as the little drone approached. She smiled broadly at it.
"No offence," she said.
"None taken," said the little machine as it came to a halt in front of her. It had a reedy but reasonably melodious voice.
"For the record," she said, still smiling, and still blushing, "I thought you looked a bit like a jewellery box."
"Could have been worse," chipped in Churt Lyne. "You should hear what she calls me sometimes."
The little drone's snout dipped once in a sort of bow. "That's quite all right, Ms Seich," it said. "Delighted to meet you. Allow me to welcome you aboard the Very Fast Picket Frank Exchange of Views.
"Thank you," she said, also nodding slowly. "I was just asking my friend where you'd come from, and when you'd been dispatched."
"I didn't come from anywhere except Phage," the ship told her.
She felt her eyes widen. "Really?"
"Really," it said laconically. "And the answer to your next three questions, I'd guess, are: because I was very well hidden and that's actually quite easy in a conglomeration of matter the size of Phage; getting on for five hundred years; and there are another fifteen like me back home. I trust you are reassured rather than shocked and that we may rely on your discretion in the future."
"Oh, golly, absolutely," she said, nodding, and felt half inclined to click her heels and salute.
V
Dajeil had been spending a lot more time with the beasts. She swam with the great fish and the sea-evolved mammals and reptiles, she donned a flyer suit and cruised high above the sea with her wide wings extended alongside the dirigible creatures in the calm currents of air and the cloud layers, and she donned a full gelfield suit with a secondary AG unit and carved her way amongst the poison gases, the acid clouds and the storm bands of the upper atmosphere, surrounded by noxiousness and the ferocious beauty of the ecosystem there.
She even spent some time walking in the ship's top-side parks, the nature reserves which the Sleeper Service had possessed even when it had been a regular, well-behaved GSV and diligent member of the Contact section; the parks — complete landscapes with hills, forests, plains, river and lake systems and the remains of small resort villages and hotels — covered all the great ship's flat top surfaces and together measured over eight hundred square kilometres. With the humans gone from the ship there were fairly large populations of land animals in the park lands, including grazers, predators and scavengers.
She'd never really paid any of them much attention — her interests had always been with the larger, buoyant animals of the fluid environments — but now that they were all likely to suffer the same exile or unconsciousness as the rest, she had started to take a belated, almost guilty interest in them (as though, she thought ruefully, her attention bestowed some special significance on the behaviour she witnessed, or meant anything at all to the creatures concerned).
Amorphia did not come for its regular visit; another couple of days passed.
When the avatar came to her again, she had been swimming with the purple-winged triangular rays in the shallow part of the sea extending beyond the sheer, three-kilometre cliff which was the rear of the craft. Returning, she had taken the flyer which the ship habitually put at her disposal, but asked it to drop her at the top of the scree slope beneath the cliff facing the tower.
It was a bright, cold day and the air tasted sharp; this part of the ship's environment was cycling towards winter; all the trees save for a few everblues had lost their leaves, and soon the snows would come.
The air was very clear and from the top of the scree slope she could see the Edge islands, thirty kilometres away, out close to where the inner containment field of the ship came down like a wall across the sea.
She had scrambled down the scree in small rattles of stones like dry, fanning rivers of pebbles and dust. She had long ago learned how to use her altered centre of gravity to her advantage in this sort of adventure, and had never yet fallen badly. She got to the bottom, her heart beating hard, her leg muscles warm with the effort expended and her skin bright with sweat. She walked quickly back through the salt marsh, along the paths the ship had fashioned for her.
The sun-line was near setting when she returned to the tower, breathless and still perspiring. She took a shower and was sitting by the log fire the tower had lit for her, letting her hair dry naturally, when Gravious the black bird rapped once on the window and then disappeared again.
She pulled her robe tighter about her as the tall, dark-dressed figure of Amorphia climbed the stairs and entered the room.
"Amorphia," she said, tucking her wet hair into the hood of the robe. "Hello. Can I get you anything?"
"No. No, thank you," the avatar said, looking nervously around the circular living room.
Dajeil indicated a chair while she sat on a couch by the fire.
"Please." She pulled
her legs up underneath her. "So, what brings you here today?"
"I — " the avatar began, then stopped, and pulled at its lower lip with its fingers. "Well, it seems," it started again, then hesitated once more. It took a breath. "The time," it said, then stopped, looking confused.
"The time?" Dajeil Gelian said.
"It's… it's come," Amorphia said, and looked ashamed.
"For the changes you talked about?"
"Yes," the avatar said, sounding relieved. "Yes. For the changes. They have to start now. In fact, they have already begun. The rounding-up of the creatures comes first, and the…" It looked unsure again, and frowned deeply. "The… the de-landscaping," it gulped. It tripped up on the next words in its rush to say them. "The un-geometri-… The un-geomorphologising. The… the pristinisation!" it said, almost shouting.
Dajeil smiled, trying not to show the alarm she felt. "I see," she said slowly. "So it is all definitely going to happen?"
"Yes," Amorphia said, breathing heavily. "Yes, it is."
"And I will have to leave the ship?"
"Yes. You'll have to leave the ship. I… I'm sorry." The avatar looked suddenly crestfallen.
"Where am I to go?"
"Where?" Confused.
"Where are you going to stop, or where will I be taken? Is it another ship, or a habitat, or an O or a planet, a rock? What?"
"I…" The avatar frowned again. "The ship does not know yet," it said. "Things are being worked out."
Dajeil looked at Amorphia for a while, her hands absently stroking the bulge of her belly under her robe. "What is happening, Amorphia?" she asked, keeping her voice soft. "Why is all this taking place?"
"I can't… there is no need… no need for you to know," the avatar said hesitantly. It looked exasperated, and shook its head as though angry, gaze flicking up and around the room, as though seeking something.
Finally it looked back at her. "I might be able to tell you more, later, if you will agree to stay on board until… until a time comes when I can only evacuate you by another vessel."
She smiled. "That sounds like no great hardship. Does that mean I can stay here longer?"
"Not here; the tower and everything else will have gone; it will mean living inside. Inside the GSV."
Dajeil shrugged. "All right. I suppose I can suffer that. When will that have to happen?"
"In a day or two," Amorphia said. Then the avatar looked concerned, and sat forward on the seat. "There… it's possible… it's possible there… might be a slightly increased risk to you, staying aboard until then. The ship will do all it can to minimise that, of course, but the possibility exists. And it might be…" Amorphia's head shook suddenly. "I — the ship, would like you to remain on board, if possible, until then. It might be… important. Good." The avatar looked as though it had startled itself. Dajeil suddenly recalled having held a tiny baby when it had farted loudly; the look of utter, blinking surprise on its face was not dissimilar to that on Amorphia's face now. Dajeil choked back an urge to laugh, and it disappeared anyway when, as though prompted by the thought, her child kicked within her. She clamped a hand to her belly. "Yes," Amorphia said, nodding vigorously. "It would be good if you stayed on board… Good might come of it altogether." It sat staring at her, panting as though from exertion.
"Then I had better stay, hadn't I?" Dajeil said, again keeping her voice steady and calm.
"Yes," said the avatar. "Yes; I'd appreciate that. Thank you." It stood up suddenly from the seat, as though released by a spring within. Dajeil was startled; she almost jumped. "I must go now," Amorphia said.
Dajeil swung her legs out and stood too, more slowly. "Very well," she said as the avatar made its way to the staircase set onto the wall of the tower. "I hope you'll tell me more later."
"Of course," the avatar mumbled, then it turned and bowed quickly and was gone, bootsteps clattering down the stairs.
The door slammed some moments later.
Dajeil Gelian climbed the steps to the parapet of the tower. A breeze caught her robe's hood and spilled her heavy, still-wet hair out and down. The sun-line had set, throwing highlights of gold and ruby light across the sky and turning the starboard horizon into a fuzzy violet border. The wind stiffened. It felt cold.
Amorphia was not walking back this evening; after the creature had hurried up the narrow path through the tower's walled garden and out of the land-gate, it just rose up into the air, without any obvious AG pack or flying suit, and then accelerated through the air in a dark, thin blur, curving through the air to disappear a few seconds later over the edge of the cliff beyond.
Dajeil looked up. There were tears in her eyes, which annoyed her. She sniffed them back angrily and wiped her cheeks. A few blinks, and the view of the sky was steady and unobscured again.
It had indeed already begun.
A flight of the dirigible creatures were dropping down from the red-speckled clouds above her, heading for the cliffs. Looking closely, she could see the accompanying drones that were their herders. Doubtless the same scene was being repeated at this moment both beneath the grey surface of the sea on the far side of the tower as well as above, in the region of furious heat and crushing pressure that was the gas-giant environment.
The dirigible creatures hesitated in the skies above; in front of them, a whole area of the cliff, perhaps a kilometre across and half that in height, simply folded in on itself in four parcel-neat sections and disappeared backwards into four huge, long glowing halls. The reassured dirigible creatures were shepherded towards one of the opened bays. Elsewhere, other parts of the cliffs were performing similar tricks; lights sparkled in the spaces revealed. The entire swathe of grey-brown scree — easily twenty kilometres across and a hundred metres in both depth and height — was folding and tipping in eight gigantic Vs and channelling several billion tonnes of real-enough rock into eight presumably reinforced ship bays, doubtless to undergo whatever transformational process was in store for the sea and the gas-giant atmosphere.
A titanic, bone-resounding tremor shook the ground and rumbled over the tower while huge clouds of dust leapt billowing into the chilly air as the rock disappeared. Dajeil shook her head — her wet hair flapping on the sodden shoulders of her robe — then walked towards the doorway which led to the rest of the tower, intending to retreat there before the clouds of stone dust arrived.
The black bird Gravious made to settle on her shoulder; she shooed it off and it landed flapping uproariously on the edge of the opened trap door.
"My tree!" it screamed, hopping from leg to leg. "My tree! They've — I - my — it's gone!"
"Too bad," she said. The sound of another great tumble of falling rock split the skies. "Stay wherever it puts me," she told the bird. "If it'll let you. Now get out of my way."
"But my food for the winter! It's gone!"
'Winter has gone, you stupid bird," she told it. The black bird stopped moving and just perched there, head thrown forward and to one side, right eye staring at her, as though trying to catch some more meaningful echo of what she had just told it. "Oh, don't worry," she said. "I'm sure you'll be accommodated." She waved it off its perch and it flapped noisily away.
A last earthquake of sound rolled under and over the tower. The woman Dajeil Gelian looked round at the twilight-lit rolling grey dust clouds to see the light from opened bays beyond shine through, as the pretence at natural form was dispensed with and the overall shape of the craft's fabric began to reveal itself.
The Culture General Systems Vehicle Sleeper Service. No longer just her gallant protector and a grossly over-specified mobile game reserve… It seemed that the great ship had finally found something to become involved with which was more in keeping with the extent of its powers. She wished it well, though with trepidation.
The sea like stone, she thought. She turned and stepped down into the warmth of the tower, patting the bulge that was her sleeping, undreaming child. A stern winter indeed; harder than any of us had anticipated.
VI
Leffid Ispanteli was trying desperately to remember the name of the lass he was with. Geltry? Usper? Stemli?
"Oh, yes, yes, ffffuck! Gods, yes! More, more; now, yes! There! There! Yes! That's oohhh…!"
Soli? Getrin? Ayscoe?
"Oh, fuck! There! More! Harder! Right… right… now! …Aah!"
Selas? Serayer? (Grief; how ungallant of him!)
"Oh, sweet providence! Oh FUCK!"
No wonder he couldn't think of her name; the girl was kicking up such a racket he was surprised he could think at all. Still, a chap shouldn't grumble, he supposed; always nice to be appreciated. Even if it was the yacht that was doing most of the work.
The diminutive hire yacht continued to shudder and buck beneath them, spiralling and curving through space a few hundred kilometres away from the huge stepped world that was Tier.
Leffid had used these little yachts for this sort of thing before; if you fed a nicely jagged course into their computers they'd do most of the bumping and grinding for you while leaving just enough apparent gravity to brace oneself without leaving one feeling terribly heavy. Programming in the odd power-off interval gave moments of delicious free-fall, and drew the small craft further away from the great world, so that gradually the view beyond the viewing ports increased in majesty as more and more of the conical habitat was revealed, turning slowly and glittering in the light of the system's sun. Altogether a wonderful way of having sex, really, providing one found a suitable and willing partner.
"Aw! Aw! Aaawww! Force! Push, push, push; yes!"
She held his thrusting hips, smoothed his feathered scalp and used her other hand turned out to stroke his lower belly. Her huge dark eyes glittered, myriad tiny lights sparkling somewhere inside them in pulsing vortexes of colour and intensity that varied charmingly with the intensity of her pleasure.
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