Excession c-5

by Iain M. Banks

  Across her belly, the scar was already starting to fade.

  Byr already knew her recovery would be complete. Whether Dajeil had actually intended murder or just some insane abortion, she didn't know.

  Looking down into herself, in a light trance to further judge the extent of the damage that had been done and was now diligently repairing itself, Byr noted that her body had come to the decision, apparently on its own accord, while she'd been unconscious, to become male again. She let the decision hold.

  Byr walked out of the tower that day with one hand still held over the wide scar in her abdomen. She discovered Dajeil sitting cross-legged and big-bellied on the egg-round stones a few metres up from the surf line.

  The sound of the stones sliding under Byr's unsteady feet brought Dajeil out of her reverie. She looked round at Byr, then away again, out to sea. They sat together.

  "I'm sorry," Dajeil said.

  "So am I."

  "Did I kill it?"

  Byr had to think for a moment. Then she realised. She meant the fetus.

  "Yes," Byr said. "Yes, it's gone."

  Dajeil lowered her head. She would not talk again.

  Byr left with the Unacceptable Behaviour a week later. Dajeil had told her, through one of the tower's drones, that she would not be having the baby in a week, as expected. She would halt its development. For a while. Until she knew her own mind again. Until she felt ready for it. She didn't know how long the wait would be. A few months; a year, maybe. The unborn child would be safe and unharmed, just waiting, until then. When she did give birth, the tower and its drones would be able to look after her. She did not expect Byr to stay. They had done most of the work they had set out to do. It might be best if Byr left. Sorry was not remotely enough, but it was all there was to say. She would let Byr know when the child was born. They would meet again then, if she wanted, if he wanted.

  Contact was never told what had happened. Byr claimed a bizarre accident had happened at sea to make her lose the fetus; a predator fish attacking; near death and saved by Dajeil… They seemed well enough pleased with what she and Dajeil had done and accepted Byr's leaving early. The "Ktik were a highly promising species, hungry for advancement; Telaturier was in for some big-time development.

  Genar-Hofoen became male again. One day, going through some old clothes, he found the little figurine of Dajeil the old "Ktik had carved. He sent it back to Dajeil. He didn't know if she received it or not. Still on the Unacceptable Behaviour, he fathered a child by Aist. A Contact appointment a few months afterwards took him aboard the GSV Quietly Confident. One of the ship's avatars — the same one he had slept with — gave him a very hard time for leaving Dajeil; they shouted at each other.

  To his knowledge, the Quietly Confident subsequently blocked at least one request he put in for a post he wanted.

  Over two years after he had left Telaturier he heard that Dajeil, still pregnant, had requested to be Stored. The place was becoming busy, and a whole new city was growing up round their old tower, which was going to become a museum. Later still he heard that she was not Stored after all, but had been picked up by the GSV turned Eccentric which had once been called the Quietly Confident, and which was now called the Sleeper Service.

  XIII

  — Don't do this!

  — I am determined.

  — Well, at least let me get my avatar off!

  — Take it.

  — Thank you; beginning Displace sequence, the Fate Amenable To Change sent to the Appeal To Reason, and then continued: ~ Please; don't risk this.

  — I am risking only the drone; in cognizance of your concerns I shall not remain in contact with it in-flight.

  — And if it returns apparently unharmed, what will you do then?

  — Take every reasonable precaution, including a stepped-intellect-level throttled datastream-squirt approach, a-

  — Sorry to interrupt, but don't tell me any more, in case our friend is listening in. I appreciate the lengths you are prepared to go to try and ensure you remain free from contamination, but surely the point is that at any stage what you will find, or start to find, will look like the most valuable and interesting data available, and any intellectual restructuring suggested will look unambiguously like the most brilliant up-grade. You will be taken before you know it; indeed, you will cease to be in a sense, unless your own automatic systems attempt to prevent the take-over, and that will surely lead to conflict.

  — I shall resist ingesting any data requiring or suggesting either intellect restructuring or mimetic redrafting.

  — That may not be enough. Nothing may be enough.

  — You are overly cautious, cousin, sent the Sober Counsel. ~ We are the Zetetic Elench. We have ways of dealing with such matters. Our experience is not without benefit, especially once we are fore-warned.

  — And I am of the Culture, and I hate to see such risks being taken. Are you sure you have the full agreement of your human crews concerning such a foolhardy attempt at contact?

  — You know we have; your avatar sat in on the discussions, sent the Appeal To Reason.

  — That was two days ago, the Fate Amenable To Change pointed out. ~ You have just given a two-second launch notice; at least hold off long enough to carry out a poll of your humans and sentient drones and so ensure that they still agree with your proposed course of action now that the business is coming to a head. After all, another few minutes or so is not going to make much difference, is it? Think; I beg you. You know humans as well as I do; things can take a while to sink in with them. Perhaps some have only now finished thinking about the matter and have altered their position on it. Please, as a favour, hold back a few minutes.

  — Very well. Reluctantly, but very well.

  The Appeal To Reason stopped the drone's launch countdown before a hundredth of a second had elapsed. The Fate Amenable To Change stood down its Displacer and left its avatar aboard.

  It all made little difference. The Fate Amenable To Change had secretly been upgrading its effectors over the past couple of days and had intended attempting to carry out its own subtle jeopardising of any drones dispatched towards the Excession, but it was not to have the chance. Even while the hurriedly called vote was taking place on board the Appeal To Reason, the Fate received a message from another craft.

  xExplorer Ship Break Even (Zetetic Elench, Stargazer, 5th)

  oGCU Fate Amenable To Change (Culture)

  Greetings. Please be advised I and my sister craft the Within Reason and Long View are also in attendance, just out of your primary scanner range. We have reconfigured to an Extreme Offence back-up form and shall soon be joined by the two remaining ships of our fleet, similarly recast. We would hope that you do not intend any interference with the plan our sister craft Appeal To Reason intends to effect.

  Two other, confirmatory signals came in from divergent angles compared to that first message, purporting to be from the Within Reason and the Long View.

  Shit, thought the GCU. It had been reasonably confident it could either fool the two nearby Elench craft or just plain overpower their efforts to contact the Excession, but faced with five ships, three of them on a war footing, it knew it would never be able to prevail.

  It replied, saying that of course it intended no mischief, and glumly watched events unfold.

  The vote aboard the Appeal To Reason went the same way as before, though a few more humans did vote against the idea of sending the drone in than had the last time. Two requested an immediate transfer to the Sober Counsel, then changed their minds; they would stay aboard. The Fate took its avatars off both the Elencher ships. It had used its heavy-duty displacer for the task, attenuating it to make it look as though it had utilised one of the lesser systems. It left the unit running at full readiness.

  The Appeal To Reason's drone was duly launched; a small, fragile-looking, gaily adorned thing, its extremities sporting ribbons, flowers and little ornaments and its casing covered with drawings, cartoons and well
-wishing messages scrawled by the crew. It puttered hesitantly towards the Excession, chirpily beaming signals of innocent goodwill.

  If the Fate Amenable To Change had been a human, at this point it would have looked down, put one hand over its eyes, and shake.n its head.

  The small machine took minutes to creep up to the seemingly unnoticing Excession's dull skein-surface; an insect crawling up to a behemoth. It activated a short-range, one time hyperspace unit and disappeared from the skein as though passing through a mirror of dark fluid.

  In Infraspace, it… disappeared too, for an instant.

  The Fate Amenable To Change was watching the drone from a hundred different angles via its remotes. They all saw it just disappear. An instant later it reappeared. It looped back through its little quantum burrow, returning to the skein of real space to start back, no less hesitantly, towards the Appeal To Reason.

  The Fate Amenable To Change crash-ramped its plasma chambers then isolated and readied a clutch of fusion warheads. At the same moment, it signalled urgently.

  — Was the drone meant to disappear that way?

  — Hmm, sent the Appeal To Reason. ~ Well…

  — Destroy it, the Fate urged. ~ Destroy it, now!

  — It has communicated, slim-text only, as per instructions, the Appeal To Reason replied, sounding thoughtful, if wary. ~ It has gathered vast quantities of data on the entity. There was a pause, then, excitedly; ~ It has located the mind-state of the Peace Makes Plenty!

  — Destroy it! Destroy it!

  — No! sent the Sober Counsel.

  — How can I? the Appeal To Reason protested.

  — I'm sorry, the Fate Amenable To Change signalled to both the nearby craft, an instant after initiating a Displace sequence which flicked compressed spheres of plasma and a spray of fusion bombs down their own instantaneous wormholes towards the returning drone.

  XIV

  Ulver Seich tossed her damply tangled black hair over her shoulder and plonked her chin on Genar-Hofoen's chest. She traced gentle circles round his left nipple with one finger; he put a sweaty arm round her slim back, drew her other hand to his mouth and delicately kissed her fingers, one by one. She smiled.

  Dinner, talk, drink, shared smoke-bowl, agreeing fuzzy heads might be cleared by a dip in the Grey Area's pool, splashing, fooling around… and fooling around. Ulver had been holding back a little for part of the evening until she'd been certain the man didn't just expect anything to happen, then when she'd convinced herself that he wasn't taking her for granted, that he liked her and that — after that awful time in the module — they did get on, that was when she'd suggested the swim.

  She raised her chin off his chest a little and flicked her finger back and forth over his tinily erect nipple. "You were serious?" she asked him. "An Affronter?"

  He shrugged. "Seemed like a good idea at the time," he said. "I just wanted to know what it was like to be one of them."

  "So now would you have to declare war on yourself?" she asked, pressing down on his nipple and watching it rise back up, her brows creased with concentration.

  He laughed. "I suppose so."

  She looked into his eyes. "What about women? You ever wonder the same? You took the change once, didn't you?" She settled her chin back on his chest.

  He breathed in deeply, raising her head as though on an ocean swell. He put one arm behind his head and stared up at the roof of her cabin. "Yes, I did it once," he said quietly.

  She smoothed her palm over his chest for a while, watching his skin intently. "Was it just for her?"

  He craned his head up. They looked at each other.

  "How much do you know about me?" he asked her. He'd tried quizzing her over dinner on what she knew and why she'd been sent to Tier to intercept him, but she'd played mysterious (and, to be fair, he wasn't able to tell her exactly why he was on his way to the Sleeper Service).

  "Oh, I know all about you," she said softly, seriously. Then she looked down. "Well, I know the facts. I suppose that's not everything."

  He lowered his head to the pillow again. "Yes, it was just for her."

  "Mm-hmm," she said. She continued to stroke his chest. "You must have loved her a lot."

  After a moment, he said, "I suppose I must have."

  She thought he sounded sad. There was a pause, then he sighed again and, in a more cheerful voice, he said; "What about you? Ever a guy?"

  "No," she said, with a laugh that might have held a trace of scorn. "Maybe one day." She shifted a little and circled his nipple with the tip of her tongue for a moment. "I'm having too much fun being a girl."

  He reached down and pulled her up to kiss her.

  Then in the silence, a tiny chime sounded in the room.

  She broke off. "Yes?" she said, breathing hard and scowling.

  "I'm very sorry to intrude," said the ship, making no great effort to sound sincere. "May I speak to Mr Genar-Hofoen?"

  Ulver made an exasperated noise and rolled off the man.

  "Good grief, can't it wait?" Genar-Hofoen said.

  "Yes, probably," said the ship reasonably, as though this had just occurred to it. "But people usually like to know this sort of thing immediately. Or so I thought."

  "What sort of thing?"

  "The sentient module Scopell-Afranqui is dead," the ship told him. "It conducted a limited destruct on the first day of the war. We have only just heard. I'm sorry. Were you close?"

  Genar-Hofoen was silent for a moment. "No. Well… No. Not that close. But I'm sorry to hear it. Thank you for telling me."

  'Could it have waited?" the ship asked conversationally.

  "It could, but I suppose you weren't to know."

  "Oh well. Sorry. Good night."

  "Yes, good night," the man said, wondering at his feelings.

  Ulver stroked his shoulder. "That was the module you lived on, wasn't it?"

  He nodded. "We never really got on," he told her. "Mostly my fault, I suppose." He turned his head to look at her. "I can be a scum-bag sometimes, frankly." He grinned.

  "I'll take your word for it," she said, climbing back on top of him.

  10. Heavy Messing

  I

  Grief, nothing worked! The Fate Amenable To Change's ordnance directed at the Elench drone ship just disappeared, snatched away to nowhere; it had to react quickly to deal with the collapsing wormholes as they slammed back, now endless, towards its Displacers. How could anything do that? (And had the watching Elench warships noticed?) The little Elench drone flew on, a few seconds away from its home ship.

  — I confess I just tried to destroy your drone, the Fate sent to the Appeal To Reason. ~ I make no apologies. Look what happened. It enclosed a recording of the events. ~ Now will you listen? There seems little point in trying to destroy the machine. Just get away from it. I'll try to work out another way of dealing with it.

  — You had no business attempting to interfere with my drone, the Appeal To Reason replied. ~ I am glad that you were frustrated. I am happy that the drone appears to be under the protection of the entity. I take it as an encouraging sign that it is so.

  — What? Are you mad?

  — I'll thank you to stop impugning my mental state with such regularity and allow me to get on with my job. I have not informed the other craft of your disgraceful and illegal attack on my drone; however, any further endeavours of a similar nature will not be treated so leniently.

  — I shall not try to reason with you. Goodbye and fare well.

  — Where are you going?

  — I am not going anywhere.

  II

  The General Contact Unit Grey Area was about to rendezvous with the General Systems Vehicle Sleeper Service. The GCU had gathered its small band of passengers in a lounge for the occasion; one of the ship's skeletal slave-drones joined them as they watched the view of hyperspace behind them on a wall screen. The GCU was making the best speed it could, rushing beneath the skein at a little over forty kilolights on a gently, decreasin
gly curved course that was now almost identical to that of the larger craft approaching from astern.

  "This will require a coordinated full engine shut-off and Displace," the small cube of components that was the drone told them. "For an instant, none of us will be within my full control."

  Genar-Hofoen was still trying to think of a cutting remark when the drone Churt Lyne said, "Won't slow down for you, eh?"

  "Correct," the slave-drone said.

  "Here it comes," said Ulver Seich. She sat cross-legged on a couch drinking a delicately scented infusion from a porcelain cup. A dot appeared in the representation of space behind them; it rushed towards them, growing quickly. It swelled to a fat shining ovoid that rushed silently underneath them; the view dipped quickly to follow it, beginning to perform a half-twist to keep the orientation correctly aligned. Genar-Hofoen, standing near where Ulver sat, had to put his hand out to the back of the couch to steady himself. In that instant, there was a sensation of a kind of titanically enveloping slippage, the merest hint of vast energies being gathered, cradled, unleashed, contained, exchanged and manipulated; unimaginable forces called into existence seemingly from nothing to writhe momentarily around them, collapse back into the void and leave reality, from the perspective of the people on the Grey Area, barely altered.

  Ulver Seich tssked as some of her infusion spilled into the cup's saucer.

  The view had changed. Now it snapped to a grey-blue expanse of something curved, like a cup of cloud seen from the inside. It pivoted again, and they were looking at a series of vast steps like the entrance to an ancient temple. The broad shelves of the stairs led up to a rectangular entrance lined with tiny lights; a dark space beyond twinkled with still smaller lamps. The view drew back to reveal a series of such entrances arranged side by side, the rest of which were closed. Above and below, set into the faces of the steps, were smaller doors, all similarly shut.