Excession c-5

by Iain M. Banks

  But outside; nothing.

  Then the skein or field substrate had vanished, snapping out of existence to precisely nowhere, disappearing too quickly for the ship's sensors to register where it had gone.

  The Fate replayed that section of its records slower and slower until it was dealing with the equivalent of individual frames; the smallest possible sub-division of perception and cognizance the Culture or any other Involved knew of.

  And it came down to four frames; four snapshots of recent history. In one frame the Excession seemed to be rushing out, accelerating out to meet it, in the next the skein/field had wrapped itself almost totally around the ship — at a distance of perhaps a kilometre from ship-centre, though it was hard to estimate — leaving only a tiny hole staring out to the rest of the universe on the opposite side of the ship from the Excession, in the third frame the total cut-off from the universe was in place, and in the next it had gone, and the Fate had moved, or had been moved, thirty light years in less than a picosecond.

  How the fuck does it do that? the ship wondered. It started checking that time was still working properly, directing its sensors at distant quasars which had been used as time reference sources for millennia. It also started checking that it was not in the centre of some huge projection, extending its still-stopped engine fields like vast whiskers, feeling for the (as far as anybody knew) unfakeable reality that was the energy grid and minutely — and randomly — scrutinising sections of the view around it, searching for the equivalent of pixels or brush strokes. The Fate Amenable To Change was experiencing a sense of elation at having survived what it had feared might be a terminal encounter with the Excession. But it was still worried that it had missed something, that it had been interfered with somehow. The most obvious explanation was that it had been fooled, that it had been tricked into moving itself here under its own power or been moved to this position via another tractive force over time. The further implication was that the interval when it had been moving had somehow been expunged from its memory. That would be bad. The very idea that its Mind was not absolutely inviolate was anathema to a ship.

  It tried to accustom itself to the idea that this was what had happened. It tried to steel itself to the prospect that — at the very least — it would have to have its mental processes investigated by other Minds to establish whether it had suffered any lasting damage or had had any unpleasant sub-routines (or even personalities) buried in its mind-state during the time it had been — effectively — unconscious (horrible, horrible thought).

  The check-time results started coming in.

  Relief and incredulity. If this was the real universe and not a projection, or — worse still — something it had been persuaded to. imagine for itself inside its Mind, then there had been no extra elapsed time. The universe thought it was exactly the same time as the Mind's internal clock did.

  The ship felt stunned. Even while another part of its intellect, an opt-in, semi-autonomous section, was restarting its engines and discovering they worked just fine, the ship was trying to come to terms with the fact it had been moved thirty light years in an instant. No Displacer could do that. Not with something the size it was, not that quickly, not over that sort of distance. Certainly not without even the merest hint that a wormhole had been involved.

  Unbelievable. I'm in a fucking Outside Context situation, the ship thought, and suddenly felt as stupid and dumb-struck as any muddy savage confronted with explosives or electricity.

  It sent a signal to the Not Invented Here. Then it tried contacting its remotes still — presumably — in station around the Excession. No reply. And no sign of the Elencher ships either. Anywhere.

  The Excession was invisible too, but then it would be from this distance.

  The Fate nudged itself tentatively towards the Excession. Almost immediately, its engines started to lose traction, their energies just seeming to disappear through the energy grid as though it wasn't there. It was a progressive effect, worsening as it proceeded and with the implication that about a light minute or so further in towards the Excession it would lose grid adhesion altogether.

  It had only progressed about ten light seconds in; it slowed while it still could and backed up until it was the same distance away from the Excession as it had been when it had found itself dumped here in the first place. Once it was there, its engines responded perfectly normally again.

  It had made the initial attempt in Infraspace; it tried again in Ultraspace, with exactly the same result. It went astern once more and resumed its earlier position. It tried moving at a right angle to its earlier course; the engines worked as they always did. Weird. It hove to again.

  Its avatars amongst the crew started yet another explanation regarding what was going on. It compiled a preparatory report and signalled it to the MSV Not Invented Here. The report crossed with the MSVs reply to the Fate's earlier signal:

  [stuttered tight point, M32, tra. @4.28. 882.8367]

  xMSV Not Invented Here

  oGCU Fate Amenable To Change

  I don't understand. What's going on? How did you get to where you are?

  oo

  [stuttered tight point, M32, tra. @4.28.882.8379]

  xGCU Fate Amenable To Change

  oMSV Not Invented Here

  Thereby hangs a tale. But in the meantime I'd slow down if I were you and tell everybody else coming this way to slacken off too and get ready to draw up at thirty years off the E. I think it's trying to tell us something. Plus there is a record I wish to claim…

  X

  The rest of that day passed, and the following night. The black bird, which had said its name was Gravious, had flown off, saying it was tired of his questions.

  The next morning, after checking that his terminal still did not work and the lift door in the cellar remained locked and unresponding, Genar-Hofoen walked as far along the shingle beach as he could in each direction; a few hundred steps in each case, before he encountered a gelatinously resilient field. The view beyond looked perfectly convincing, but must be a projection. He discovered a way through part of the salt marsh and found a similar force field wall a hundred steps into the hummocks and little creeks. He came back to the tower to wash his boots free of the authentically fine and clinging mud he'd had to negotiate on his way through the salt marsh. There was no sign of the black bird he'd talked to the day before.

  The avatar Amorphia was waiting for him, sitting on the shelf of shingle beach sloping down to the restive sea, hugging its legs and staring out at the water.

  He stopped when he saw it, then came on. He walked past it and into the tower, washed his boots and came back out. The creature was still there.

  "Yes?" he said, standing looking down at it. The ship's representative rose smoothly up, all angles and thin limbs. Close up, in that light, there was a sort of unmarked, artless quality about its thin, pale face; something near to innocence.

  "I want you to talk to Dajeil," the creature said. "Will you?"

  He studied its empty-looking eyes. "Why am I being kept here?"

  "You are being kept because I would like you to talk to Dajeil. You are being kept here because I thought this… model would be conducive to putting you in the mood to talk to her about what passed between you forty years ago."

  He frowned. Amorphia had the impression the man had a lot more questions, all jostling each other to be the first one asked. Eventually he said, "Are there any mind-state Storees left on the Sleeper Service?

  "No," the avatar said, shaking its head. "Does this refer to the ruse that brought you here?"

  The man's eyes had closed briefly. They opened again. "Yes, I suppose so," he said. His shoulders seemed to have slumped, the avatar thought. "So," he asked, "did you make up the story about Zreyn Enhoff Tramow, or did they?"

  The avatar looked thoughtful. "Gart-Kepilesa Zreyn Enhoff Tramow Afayaf dam Niskat," it said. "She was a mind-state Storee. There's quite an interesting story associated with her, but not one I ever sug
gested be told to you."

  "I see," he said, nodding. "So, why?" he asked.

  "Why what?" the creature said, looking puzzled.

  "Why the ruse? Why did you want me here?"

  The avatar looked at him for a moment. "You're my price, Genar-Hofoen," it told him.

  "Your price? he said.

  The avatar smiled suddenly and put out one hand to touch one of his. Its touch was cool and firm. "Let's throw stones," it said. And with that it walked down towards the waves breaking on the slope of shingle.

  He shook his head and followed the creature.

  They stood side by side. The avatar looked along the great sweep of shining, spray-glistened stones. "Every one a weapon," it muttered, then stooped to pick a large pebble from the beach and threw it quickly, artlessly out at the heaving waves. Genar-Hofoen selected a stone too.

  "I've been pretending to be Eccentric for forty years, Genar-Hofoen," the avatar said matter-of-factly, squatting again.

  "Pretending?" the man asked, chucking the stone on a high arc. He wondered if it was possible to hit the far force wall. The stone fell, vanishing into the tumbling "scape of waves.

  "I have been a diligent and industrious component of the Special Circumstances section for all that time, just awaiting the call," the ship told him through the avatar. It glanced over at him as he bent, choosing another stone. "I am a weapon, Genar-Hofoen. A deniable weapon. My apparent Eccentricity allows the Culture proper to refuse any responsibility for my actions. In fact I am acting on the specific instructions of an SC committee which calls itself the Interesting Times Gang."

  The creature broke off to heave a stone towards the false horizon. Its arm was a blur as it threw; the air made a burring noise and Genar-Hofoen felt the wind of the movement on his cheek. The avatar's momentum spun it round in a circle, then it steadied itself, gave a brief, almost childish grin, and peered out at the stone disappearing into the distance. It was still on the upward part of its arc. Genar-Hofoen watched it too. Shortly after it started to drop, the stone bounced off something invisible and fell back into the waters. The avatar made a contented noise and looked pleased with itself.

  "However," it said, "when it came to it, I refused to do what they wanted until they delivered you to me. That was my price. You." It smiled at him. "You see?"

  He weighed a stone in his hand. "Just because of what happened between Dajeil and me?"

  The avatar smiled, then stooped to choose another stone, one finger to its lips, childlike. It was silent for a while, apparently concentrating on the task. Genar-Hofoen continued to weigh the stone in his hand, looking down at the back of the avatar's head. After some moments, the creature said, "I was a fully functioning throughput-biased Culture General Systems Vehicle for three hundred years, Genar-Hofoen." It glanced up at him. "Have you any idea how many ships, drones, people — human and not human — pass through a GSV in all that time?" It looked down again, picked a stone and levered itself upright once more. "I was regularly home to over two hundred million people; I could, in theory, hold over a hundred thousand ships. I built smaller GSVs, all capable of building their own ship children, all with their own crews, their own personalities, their own stories.

  "To be host to so much is to be the equivalent of a small world or a large state," it said. "It was my job and my pleasure to take an intimate interest in the physical and mental well-being of every individual aboard, to provide — with every appearance of effortlessness — an environment they would each find comfortable, pleasant, stress-free and stimulating. It was also my duty to get to know those ships, drones and people, to be able to talk to them and empathise with them and understand however many of them wished to indulge in such interactions at any one time. In such circumstances you rapidly develop, if you don't possess it originally, an interest in — even a fascination with — people. And you have your likes and dislikes; the people you do the polite minimum for and are glad to see the back of, the ones you like and who interest you more than the others, the ones you treasure for years and decades if they remain, or wish could have stayed longer once they've gone and subsequently correspond with regularly. There are some stories you follow up into the future, long after the people concerned have left; you trade tales with other GSVs, other Minds — gossiping, basically — to find out how relationships turned out, whose careers flourished, whose dreams withered…"

  Amorphia leant back and over and then threw the stone almost straight up. The creature jumped a half-metre or so into the air as it released the missile, which climbed on into the air until it bounced off the invisible roof, high above, and fell into the waves twenty metres off shore. The avatar clapped its hands once, seemingly happy.

  It stooped again, surveying the pebbles. "You try to keep a balance between indifference and nosiness, between carelessness and obsession," it went on. "Still, you have to be ready for accusations of both types of failure. Keeping them roughly in numerical accord, and within the range experienced by your peers is one measure of success. Perfection is impossible. Additionally, you have to accept that in such a large collection of personalities and stories, there will be some loose ends, some tales which will fizzle out rather than conclude neatly. Those don't matter so long as there are some which do work out satisfactorily, and especially so long as the ones you have taken the greatest interest in — and have been personally particularly involved with — work out."

  It looked up at him from where it squatted. "Sometimes you take a hand in such stories, such fates. Sometimes you know or can anticipate the extent to which your intervention will matter, but on other occasions you don't know and can't guess. You find that some chance remark you've made has affected somebody's life profoundly or that some seemingly insignificant decision you've come to has had profound and lasting consequences."

  It shrugged, looked down at the stones again. "Your story — yours and Dajeil's — was one a little like that," it told him. "It was who was instrumental in deciding that you ought to be allowed to accompany Dajeil Gelian to Telaturier," it said, rising. It held two stones this time; one larger than the other. "I could see how finely balanced the decision was between the various parts of the committee concerned; I knew the decision effectively rested with me. I got to know you and I made the decision." It shrugged. "It was the wrong decision." It threw the larger stone on a high trajectory, then looked back at the man as it hefted the smaller stone. "I've spent the last forty years wishing I could correct my mistake." It turned and threw the other pebble low and fast; the stone flew out over the waves and struck the larger rock about two metres before it plunged into the water; they burst into whizzing fragments and a brief cloud of dust.

  The avatar turned to him again with a small smile on its face. "I agreed to pretend to become Eccentric; suddenly I had a freedom very few craft ever have, able to indulge my whims, my fantasies, my own dreams." It flexed one eyebrow. "Oh, in theory, of course, we can all do that, but Minds have a sense of duty, and a conscience. I was able to become very slightly Eccentric by pretending to be very Eccentric — while knowing that I was in fact being more martially responsible than anybody else — and, in appearing to enjoy such Eccentricity with a clear conscience — even enhance my Eccentric reputation. Other craft looked on and thought that they could do what I was doing but not for long, and therefore that I must be thoroughly thoroughly weird. As far as I know, not one guessed that my conscience was kept clear by having a purpose serious enough to compensate for even the most clown-like disguise and regressively obsessive behaviour."

  It folded its arms. "Of course," it said, "you don't normally expect to be continually reminded of your folly every day for four decades, but that was the way it was to be. I didn't anticipate that at the start, though it became a useful and fit part of my Eccentricity. I picked Dajeil up a short while into my internal exile. She was the single last significant loose end from my previous life. All the other stories didn't concern me so directly, or bore no similar weight of responsibil
ity, or were well on the way to being satisfactorily resolved or decently forgotten through the due process of time elapsing and people changing. Only Dajeil remained; my responsibility." The avatar shrugged. "I had hoped to talk her round, to cause her to accept whatever it was had happened to you both and get on with the rest of her life. Bearing the child would-be the signal that she was mended; that labour would be the end of her travails, that birth mark an end." The avatar looked away, out to sea for a moment, a frown creasing its brows. "I thought it would be easy," it said, looking back at him. "I was so used to power, to being able to influence people, ships and events. It would have been such a simple thing even to have tricked her body into giving birth — I could have started the process chemically or via an effector while she was asleep and by the time she was awake there would have been no going back- that I was sure my arguments, my reasoning — grief, even my cherished facility at emotional blackmail — would find scarcely more of an obstacle in her will than all my technologies could face in her physiology."

  It shook its head quickly. "It was not to be. She proved intransigent. I hoped to persuade her — to shame her, indeed- by the very totality of my concern for her, re-creating all you see here," the avatar said, glancing round at the cliffs, marsh, tower and waters, "for real; turning my entire outer envelope into a habitat just for her and the creatures she loved." Amorphia gave a sort of dipping sideways nod, and smiled. "I admit I had another purpose as well, which such exaggerated compassion would only help disguise, but the fact is my original design was to create an environment she would feel comfortable within and into which she would feel safe bringing her baby, having seen the care I was prepared to lavish just on her." The avatar gave a rueful smile. "I got it wrong," it admitted. "I was wrong twice and each time I harmed Dajeil. You are — and this is — my last chance to get it right."