The Attitude Adjuster was puzzled. The Killing Time was a Torturer class Rapid Offensive Unit. It could be — it ought to be — devastating the fleet for these instants as it tore through it; it was capable of -
Then it realised. Of course. It was a grudge.
The Attitude Adjuster experienced a tingle of fear, merged with a kind of contempt. The Killing Time's effector focus was a few ships away now, spiralling out towards the Attitude Adjuster. It signalled hurriedly to the five Rapid Offensive Units immediately around it. Each listened, understood and obeyed. The Killing Time's effector focus flicked from craft to craft, still coming closer.
You fool, the Attitude Adjuster thought, almost angry at the attacking ship. It was behaving stupidly, irresponsibly. A Culture craft should not be so prideful. It had thought the venom directed at itself by the Killing Time in its signal to it back at Pittance had been bluster; cheap bravado. But it had been worse; it had been sincere. Wounded self-esteem. Upset that it personally had been subject to a ruse designed to destroy it. As though its enemies cared an iota who it was.
The Attitude Adjuster doubted this was an attack sanctioned by the Killing Time's peers. This wasn't war, this was peevishness; this was taking it personally when, if there was anything war could be characterised as being, it was impersonal. Idiot. It deserved to perish. It did not merit the honour it doubtless thought would accrue to it for this reckless and selfish act.
The surrounding warships completed their changes. Just in time. When the attacking ship's effector targeted the first of those craft, the focus did not flit onto the next as it had with all the rest; instead it stayed, latching on, concentrating and strengthening. The ROU caved in alarmingly quickly; the Attitude Adjuster guessed that it was made to reconfigure its engine fields to focus them inside its Mind — there was a sort of signalled shriek an instant before communication was lost — but the exact nature of its downfall was hidden in an accompanying shower of CAM warheads which obliterated it instantaneously. A mercy; it would have been a grisly way for a ship to die.
But too quick, thought the Attitude Adjuster; it was sure the attacker would have let the ROU — which the Killing Time had mistaken for the Attitude Adjuster — tear its intellect apart with its engines for longer if it had been totally fooled; the CAM dusting had been either a coup de grâce or a howl of frustration, perhaps both.
The Attitude Adjuster signalled to the rest of the fleet, instructing them too to impersonate itself, but even as it watched the ROU which had been attacked alongside it disappear astern in a fragmenting cage of radiations, it began to be afraid.
It had originally contacted the five nearest ships, hoping that the first one found and interrogated by the attacker's systems would fool the Killing Time into believing it had found the one ship it was obviously seeking.
But that was stupid. It sensed the Torturer class ship's effectors sweep over the craft on the far side of the hole in the wave of ships which the ROU's destruction had created.
Insufficient elapsed time, the Attitude Adjuster whispered to itself. The ROU being quizzed at the moment was still reconfiguring its internal systems signature to resemble that of the Attitude Adjuster. The effector sweep flicked away from it, dismissing. The Attitude Adjuster quailed.
It had made itself a target! It should have- HERE IT CAME!
A feeling of-
No, it had gone, swept over it! Its own disguise had worked. It had been dismissed too, like the ROU alongside!
The effector focus jumped to another craft still further away. The Attitude Adjuster was dizzy with relief. It had survived! The plan still held, the huge filthy trick they were pulling was free to continue!
The way to the Excession lay open; the other Minds in the conspiracy would commend it if it survived; the-… but it mustn't think of the other ships involved. It had to accept responsibility for what had happened. It and it alone. It was the traitor. It would never reveal who had instigated this ghastly, gigadeathcrime-risking scheme; it had to assume the blame itself.
It had wrestled with the Mind at Pittance and pressed it when it had insisted it would die rather than yield (but it had had no choice!); it had allowed the human on Pittance to be destroyed (but it had fastened its effector on his puny animal brain when it had seen what was happening to him; it had read the animal's brain-state, copied it, sucked it out of him before he'd died, so that at least he might live again in some form! Look! It had the file here… there it went…). It had fooled the surrounding ships, it had lied to them, sent them messages from… from the ships it could not bear to think about.
But it was the right thing to do!
… Or was it just the thing it had chosen to believe was the right thing to do, when the other ships, the other Minds had persuaded it? What had its real motives been? Had it not just been flattered to be the object of such attention? Had it not always resented being passed over for certain small but prestigious missions in the past, nursing a bitter resentment that it was not trusted because it was seen as being — what? A hard-liner? Too inclined to shoot first? Too cynical towards the soft ideologies of the meat-beings? Too mixed up in its feelings about its own martial prowess and the shaming moral implications of being a machine designed for war? All those things, a little, perhaps. But that wasn't all its fault!.. And yet, did it not accept that one had an irreducible ethical responsibility for one's own actions? It did. And it accepted that and it had done terrible, terrible things. All the attempts it had made to compensate had been eddies in the flood; tiny retrograde movements towards good entirely produced by the ferocious turbulence of its headlong rush to ill.
It was evil.
How simple that reductive conclusion seemed.
But it had been obliged!.. And yet it could not say by whom, so it had to accept the full responsibility for itself.
But there were others!.. And yet it could not identify them, and so the full weight of their distributed guilt bore down on the single point that was itself, unbearable, insupportable.
But there were others!.. And yet still it could not bear to think of them.
And so somebody, some other entity, looking in from outside, say, would have to conclude, would it not, that perhaps these others did not really exist, that the whole thing, the whole ghastly abomination that was this plot was its idea, its own little conspiracy, thought up and executed by itself alone? Was that not the case?
But that was so unfair! That wasn't true!.. And yet, it could not release the identities of its fellow plotters. Suddenly, it felt confused. Had it made them up? Were they real? Perhaps it ought to check; open the place where they were stored and look at the names just to make sure that they were even the names of real Minds, real ships, or that it was not implicating innocent parties.
But that was terrible! Whichever way it fell after that, that was awful! It hadn't made them up! They were real!.. But it couldn't prove it, because it just couldn't reveal them.
Maybe it ought to just call the whole thing off. Maybe it ought to signal all the other ships around it to break away, stop, retreat, or just open their comm channels so they could accept signals from other ships, other Minds, and be persuaded of the folly of their cause. Let them make up their own minds. They were intelligent beings no less than it. What right had it to send them to their deaths on the strength of a heinous, squalid lie? But it had to!.. And yet, still, no; no it couldn't say who the others had been.
It mustn't think of them! And it couldn't possibly call off the attack! It couldn't! No! NO! Grief! Meat! Stop! Stop it! Let it go! Sweet nothingness, anything was better than this wracking, tearing uncertainty, any horror preferable to the wrenching dreadfulness boiling uncontrollably in its Mind.
Atrocity. Abomination. Gigadeathcrime.
It was worthless and hateful, despicable and foul; it was wrung out, exhausted and incapable of revelation or communication. It hated itself and what it had done more, much more than it had ever hated anything; more, it was sure, than anyt
hing had ever been hated in all existence. No death could be too painful or protracted…
And suddenly it knew what it had to do.
It de-coupled its engine fields from the energy grid and plunged those vortices of pure energy deep into the fabric of its own Mind, tearing its intellect apart in a supernova of sentient agony.
VIII
Genar-Hofoen reappeared, exiting from the front door of the tower.
"Up here," croaked a thin, hoarse voice.
He looked up and saw the black bird on the parapet. He stood there watching it for a moment, but it didn't look like it was coming down. He frowned and went back into the tower.
"Well?" it asked when he joined it at the summit of the tower.
He nodded. "Locked," he confirmed.
The bird had insisted that he was a captive, along with it. He'd thought maybe there was just something wrong with his terminal. It had suggested he attempted to get out the way he had come in. He'd just tried; the lift door in the tower's cellar was closed, and as solid and unmoving as the stones surrounding it.
Genar-Hofoen leant back against the parapet, staring with a troubled expression at the tower's translucent dome. He'd had a quick look at each of the levels as he'd climbed the winding stair. The tower's rooms looked furnished and yet bare as well, all the personal stuff he and Dajeil had added to it missing. It was like the original had been when they'd first arrived on Telaturier, forty-five years ago.
"Told you."
"But why?" Genar-Hofoen asked, trying not to sound plaintive. He'd never even heard of a ship keeping somebody captive before.
"'Cause we're prisoners," the bird told him, sounding oddly pleased with itself.
"So you're not an avatar; you're not part of the ship?"
"Na; I'm an independent entity, me," the bird said proudly, spreading its feathers. It turned its head almost right round, glancing backwards. "Currently being followed by some bloody missile," it said loudly. "But never mind." It rotated its head back to look at him. "So what did you do to annoy the ship?" it asked, black eyes twinkling. Genar-Hofoen got the impression it was enjoying his dismay.
"Nothing!" he protested. The bird cocked its head at him. He blew out a breath. "Well…" he looked around at where he was. His brows flexed. "Yes, well, from our surroundings, maybe the ship doesn't agree."
"Oh, this is nothing," said the bird. "This is just a Bay; just a hangar sort of thing. Not even a klick long. You should have seen the one outside, when we still had an outside. Whole sea we had, whole sea and a whole atmosphere. Two atmospheres."
"Yes," the man said. "Yes, I heard."
"Sort of all for her, really. Except it turned out its nibs had an ulterior motive, too. All that stuff; became engine, you know. But otherwise. It was all for her, for all that time."
The man nodded. It looked like he was thinking.
"You're him, aren't you?" the bird said. It sounded pleased with itself.
"I'm who?" he asked.
"The one that left her. The one that was here, with her. The real here, I mean. The original here."
Genar-Hofoen looked away. "If you mean Dajeil; yes, she and I lived in a tower like this one once, on an island that looked like this place."
"An-hah!" the bird said, jumping up and down and shaking its feathers. "I see! You're the bad guy!"
Genar-Hofoen scowled at the bird. "Fuck you," he said.
It cackled with laughter. "That's why you're here! Ho-ho; you'll be lucky to get off at all, you will! Ha ha ha!"
"And what did you do, arse-hole?" Genar-Hofoen asked the bird, more in the hope of annoying the creature than because he really cared.
"Oh," the bird said, drawing itself up and settling its feathers down in a dignified sort of way. "I was a spy!" it said proudly.
"A spy?"
"Oh yes," the bird said, sounding smug. "Forty years I spent, listening, watching. Reported back to my master. Using the Stored ones who were going back. Left messages on them. Forty years and never once discovered. Well, until three weeks ago. Rumbled, then. Maybe even before. Can't tell. But I did my best. Can't ask better than that." It started preening itself.
The man's eyes narrowed. "Who were you reporting back to?"
"None of your business," the bird said, looking up from its preening. It took a precautionary couple of hop-steps backwards along the parapet, just to make sure it was well out of reach of the human.
Genar-Hofoen crossed his arms and shook his head. "What's this fucking crazy ship up to?"
"Oh, it's off to see the Excession," the bird said. "At some lick, too."
"This thing at Esperi?" the man asked.
"Heading straight for it," the bird confirmed. "What it told me, anyway. Can't see why it'd lie. Could be, I suppose. Wouldn't put it past it. But don't think it is. Straight for it. Has been for the past twenty-two days. You want my opinion? Going to give it you anyway. I think it's stooping." The creature put its head on one side. "Familiar with the term?"
Genar-Hofoen nodded absently. He didn't like the sound of this.
"Stooping," the bird repeated. "If you ask me. Thing's mad. Been a bit loopy the last four decades. Gone totally off the boulevard now. In the hills and bouncing along full speed for the cliff edge. That's my opinion. And I've been round its loopiness for forty years. I know, I do. I can tell. This thing's dafter than a jar of words. I'm getting away on the Jaundiced Outlook, if it'll let me. It being the Sleeper. Don't think the Jaundiced bears me any ill will. Shouldn't think it does. No." Then, as though remembering a rich joke, it shook its head and said, "The bad guy; ha! You, on the other hand. You'll be here forty years you will, chum. If it doesn't wreck itself ramming this excession thing, that is. Ha! How'd it get you here anyway? You come here to see old perpetually pregnant?"
Genar-Hofoen looked momentarily stricken. "It's true then; she never did have the child?"
"Yep," the bird said. "Still in her. Supposed to be hale and hearty, too. If you can believe that. So I was told. Sounds unlikely. Addled, I'd have thought. Or turned to stone by now. But there you are. Either way, she just isn't having it. Ha!"
The man pinched his lower lip with his fingers, looking troubled.
"What did you say brought you here?" the bird asked.
It waited. "Ahem!" it said loudly.
"What?" the man asked. The bird repeated the question.
The man looked like he still hadn't heard, then he shrugged. "I came here to talk to a dead person; a Storee."
"They've all gone," said the bird. "Hadn't you heard?"
The man shook his head. "Not one of the live ones," he said. "Somebody without a bod, somebody who's Stored in the ship's memory."
"Na, they've gone too," the bird said, lifting one wing to peck briefly underneath. "Dropped them off at Dreve," it continued. "Complete download. Upload. Acrossload. Whatever you call it. Didn't even keep copies."
'What?" the man said, stepping towards the bird.
"Seriously," the creature said, taking a couple of hops backwards on the stonework of the parapet. "Honest." The man was staring at it now. "No, really; so I was told. I could have been misinformed. Can't see why. But it's possible. Doubt it though. They've gone. That was my information. Gone. Ship said it didn't want even the copies aboard. Just in case."
The man stared wildly at it for a bit longer. "Just in case wbat?" he cried, stepping forward again.
"Well, I don't know!" the bird yelped, hopping backwards and flexing its wings, ready to fly.
Genar-Hofoen glared at the creature for a moment longer, then spun round, grasping the stones of the parapet with both hands and staring out into the false panorama of sea and cloud.
IX
Then it was in the wrong place. As simple as that.
The Fate Amenable To Change looked around, incredulous. Stars. Just stars. Initially alien, in a way a starscape had never been before.
This wasn't where it had just been. Where was the Excession? Where were the Elencher ships? W
here was Esperi? Where was this?
It called up from-scratch position-establishing routines no ship ever had to call up after they'd run through them in the very earliest part of their upbringing and self-fettling, in the Mind equivalent of infancy. You did this sort of thing once to show the Minds supervising your development you could do it, then you forgot about it, because nobody ever lost track of where they were, not over this magnitude of scale. And yet here it was having to do just that. Quite bizarre.
It looked at the results. There was something almost viscerally relieving about the discovery that it was still in the same universe. For a moment it had been contemplating the prospect of finding itself in a different one altogether. (At the same time, at least one part of its intellect experienced a corresponding flicker of disappointment for exactly the same reason.)
It was nowhere near Esperi. Its position was thirty light years away from where it had been, apparently, a moment ago. The nearest star system was an undistinguished red-giant/blue-white dwarf double called Pri-Etse. The binary lay roughly along that same imaginary straight line that joined the Excession to the incoming MSV Not Invented Here. Where the ship itself had ended up was even closer to that imaginary line.
The Fate checked itself over. Unharmed. Uninvaded, unjeopar-dised, uncontacted.
It replayed those last few picoseconds while it multiple-checked its systems.
… The Excession rushed out to meet it. It was enveloped in — what? Skein fabric? Some sort of ultradense field? It all happened at close to hyperspace-light speeds. The outside universe was pinched off and in the following moment there was an instant of nothing; no external input whatsoever, a vanishingly minute, perfectly indivisible fraction of a picosecond when the Fate was cut off from everything; no outside sensor data whatsoever. Events within the ship itself had continued as normal (or rather its internal state had remained the same for that same infinitesimally microscopic instant- there had been no time for anything appreciable to actually happen). In its Mind, there had been time for the hyperspatial quanta-equivalents to alter their states for a few cycles; so time had still elapsed.
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