oEccentric Shoot Them Later
I think I have discovered something. Attached are course schedules for the Steely Glint and No Fixed Abode. (DiaGlyphs attached.) (The movements of the Not Invented Here can only be guessed at.) Note that both alter within hours of each other for no given reason, nineteen days ago. The GCU Fate Amenable To Change which discovered the Excession also made a sudden and acute course-change nineteen days ago; a new heading which took it almost straight to the Excession. Then there is a report from the GCU Reasonable Excuse - charged with oversight of our semidetached friend the GCU Grey Area - that the ship left its most recent place of interest two days ago and was last detected heading in the direction of the Lower Leaf Swirl; possibly Tier.
∞
[tight beam, M32, [email protected]]
xEccentric Shoot Them Later
oGSV Anticipation Of A New Lover’s Arrival, The
Yes?
∞
Do not be obtuse.
∞
I am not being obtuse.
You are being paranoid.
A lot of course schedules have been altered recently thanks to this thing.
I’m thinking about finding an excuse to edge in that direction myself.
And as you point out yourself, the Meatfucker is heading towards the Lower Swirl, not the Upper.
∞
There is a certain potential rendezvous implied in that direction;
do I have to spell it out? And the point remains; these are the
only three schedules which change at the same point.
∞
They alter over the course of five hours; hardly a ‘point’. And
even so; what if they do? And what’s so special about nineteen
or even nineteen/two days ago?
∞
[stuttered tight point, M32]
It does not worry you that there might be a conspiracy in the highest levels of a Contact/SC committee? I am suggesting that there may be prior knowledge here; that some tip or clue was received by one of our colleagues which was not passed on to anybody else. That is what is so special about nineteen days ago; it is less than fifty-seven days ago, when whatever took place in the vicinity of the excession appears to have occurred.
∞
Yes yes yes. But: SO WHAT? My dear ship, which of us has not taken part in some scheme, some ruse or secret plan, some stratagem or diversion, sometimes of quite a sizable and labyrinthine nature and involving matters of considerable import? They’re what makes ordinary life worth living! So some of our chums in the Core Group may have had a sniff of something interesting in that region. Good for them, I say! Have you never had some clue, some lead, a hint of some potential sport, amusement, jape or focus of contemplation that was certainly worth acting upon but equally decidedly did not merit advertising due to some reservation concerning potential embarrassment, the wish not to seem vain or simply a desire for privacy?
Really, I think there is no conspiracy here whatsoever, and that even if there is, it is a benign one. Apart from anything else, there is one question you have not, I believe, addressed: What is the conspiracy for? If it was merely a couple of Minds getting wind of something odd in the Upper Leaf Spiral and finessing a search there, are they not simply to be congratulated?
∞
But there has been nothing this important before! This is perhaps our first real OCP and we may not be up to the challenge it represents. Meat it makes me ashamed! I just find this all so distressing! For millennia we have congratulated ourselves on our wisdom and maturity and revelled in our freedom from baser drives and from the ignobility of thought and action that desperation born of indigence produces. My fear - my terror! - is that our freedom from material concern has blinded us to our true, underlying nature; we have been good because we have never needed to make the choice between that and anything else. Altruism has been imposed upon us!
Now suddenly we are presented with something we cannot manufacture or simulate, something which is to us as precious metals or stones or just other lands were to ancient monarchs, and we may find that we are prepared to cheat and lie and scheme and plot like any bloody tyrant and contemplate adopting any behaviour however reprehensible so that we may grab this prize. It is as if we have been children until this point, playing without care and dressing in but not filling adult clothes, blithely assuming that when we are grown we shall behave as we have done in the headlong, heedless innocence that has been our life so far.
∞
But, my dear friend, none of this has happened yet!
∞
Have you not carried out the projections? I took your advice to spend more time in metamathical pursuits, modelling the likely course of events, divining the shape of the future. The results worry me. What I feel myself worries me. I wonder what we may stop at, what we may not stop at to attain the prize this Excession may offer.
∞
I meant spend more time enjoying yourself, as you well know. Besides: simulations, abstractions, projections; these are only themselves, not the reality of what they claim to represent. Attend to the actuality of events. We have a fascinating phenomenon before us and we are taking all reasonable precautions as we deal, or prepare to deal, with it. Some of our colleagues show laudable enterprise and initiative while others - ourselves - exhibit caution just as commendable as - and in sum complementary to - their ambition. What is there to fear but the wild imaginings which may well be the result of looking too far beyond the scale of relevance?
∞
I suppose so. Perhaps it is me. Certainly I see worrying signs everywhere. I dare say it must be me. I may still make some further inquiries, but I take your point.
∞
Make your inquiries if you must, but frankly I think it is this constant urge to inquire that causes you such pain; when one is able to scrutinise a subject as closely as we are - and to do so with the cross-referential capacity we possess, then the closer one looks into anything the more coincidences one finds, perfectly innocent though they may be.
What is the point of inquiring at such depth that one loses sight of the sunlit surface?
Lay up that magnifying glass and take up thy drink glass, my friend.
Slip off the academic gown and on with the antic pants!
∞
I thank you for your advice. I am reassured somewhat. I shall consider what you say. Do keep in touch. Farewell for now.
[stuttered tight point, M32, tra. @n4.28.862.3465]
xEccentric Shoot Them Later
oLSV Serious Callers Only
The Anticipation Of A New Lover’s Arrival was in touch again
(signal file attached). I still think it could be one of them.
∞
[stuttered tight point, M32, tra. @n4.28.862.3980]
xLSV Serious Callers Only
oEccentric Shoot Them Later
And I still think you should let it in with us. It almost certainly now suspects you are part of the conspiracy.
∞
I have an image to maintain! And I would point out that we are still very much in the dark; we are not yet sure there is a conspiracy beyond the kind of normal outsmarting, outcliqueing nonsense in which all of us indulge from time to time. What purpose would formally extending the circumference of our concern serve, for now? Our sleuth is still behaving as though it is one of us but it knows nothing of our scepticism; we have naught to gain by bringing it aboard at present. If it is genuine it will apply itself to our purpose and if discovered the shadow of its guilt will not fall across us; if it is a test then it - they - may decide to bait us with more information of genuine interest, delivered at no cost to our virtue. Are we agreed? Have I convinced you? Anyway, enough of that; have we yet a plan? What was the result of your own investigations?
∞
Frustratingly vague. An exhaustive search has thrown up one remote possibility . . . but it remains an improbability predicated upon an uncertainty.
Pray tell.
∞
Well . . . Let me ask you a question. What do you understand results by our communicating with our mutual friend?
∞
Why, that we are allowed to share in its inimitable objectivity. What else?
∞
That is the general volume of my concern. I’ll say no more.
∞
What? Don’t be ridiculous. Elaborate.
∞
No. You know what you said to our unwitting fellow in suspicion about not advertising lines of inquiry which might end in embarrassment . . .
∞
Unfair! After all I’ve shared with you!
∞
Yes, including the exciting opportunity to get involved with this in the first place. Thanks a lot.
∞
Cast that up to me again would you? I’ve said I’m sorry. Wish I’d never said anything now.
∞
Yes, but if the Anticipation Of A New Lover’s Arrival finds out who passed on the information which led to the Fate Amenable To Change’s search in the first place . . .
∞
I know, I know. Look; I’m doing all I can. I have requested a sympathetic ship to divert itself to Pittance, just in case. That’s where my prognostications indicate a site for possible future mischief.
∞
Death! If it comes to that . . .
III
The twittering batball bounced off the centre of the high-scoring wall and flew straight towards Genar-Hofoen. The creature’s tiny, clipped wings paddled frantically at the atmosphere as it tried to right itself and flee. One of its stumpy wings was ragged, perhaps even broken. It started to curve away as it approached the human. He took a good back-swing with his bat and slammed it into the little creature, sending it yelping and spinning away. He’d intended it to head for the high-scoring wall, but the stroke had been slightly off-target, resulting in the spin he’d given the thing and its course towards the corner between the high-scoring wall and the right-side forfeit baffle. Shit, he thought; the batball thrashed at the atmosphere and curved further towards the forfeit baffle.
Fivetide darted forward and with a flip of the bat strapped to one of his front limbs - and a resounding, ‘Ha!’ - snapped the batball into the centre of the high-scoring wall again; it thudded against the roundel and ricocheted off at an angle Genar-Hofoen knew he wasn’t going to be able to intercept. He lunged at it anyway, but the creature sailed slackly past, half a metre away from his outstretched bat. He fell to the floor and rolled, feeling the gelfield suit tensing and squeezing him as it absorbed the shock. He picked himself up to a sitting position and looked around. He was breathing hard and his heart was hammering; playing this sort of game against another human would have been no joke in Affronter gravity. Playing it against an Affronter, even one with half his tentacles sportingly tied round its back, was even harder work.
‘Hopeless!’ Fivetide roared, crossing towards where the batball lay motionless near the back of the court. As he passed the human he flicked a tentacle under Genar-Hofoen’s chin and levered him up. The gesture was almost certainly meant to be helpful, but it would have broken the average unprotected human neck. Genar-Hofoen merely found himself propelled off the floor like a rock out of a catapult and sent sailing towards the ceiling of the court, arms flailing.
~ Idiot! the suit said, as Genar-Hofoen reached the top of his trajectory. He assumed the suit was talking about Fivetide.
A tentacle wrapped itself round his waist like a whip. ‘Oops!’ Fivetide said, and lowered him safely to the floor with surprising gentleness. ‘Sorry about that, Genar-Hofoen,’ he yelled. ‘You know what they say; “It’s a wise lad knows his own strength when he’s having fun,” eh!’ He patted the human relatively gently on the head, then continued over to the motionless body of the batball. He prodded it with the bat.
‘Don’t breed them like they used to,’ he said, then made a noise Genar-Hofoen had learned to interpret as a sigh.
~ Tentacled scumbag fuckwit, said the suit.
~ Suit, really! he thought, amused.
~ Well . . .
The suit was not in the best of moods. He and it were spending a lot more time together; the suit didn’t trust the containment around Genar-Hofoen’s quarters in the ship and had insisted that the human keep it on, even when he was asleep. Genar-Hofoen had grumbled, but not over-much; there were too many funny smells in his quarters for him to have complete faith in the Affront’s attempt at a human life-support system. The most the gelfield suit would let him do at night was peel aside its head section so that he could sleep with his face exposed; that way, even if his environment collapsed suddenly and totally, the suit would be able to protect him.
Fivetide flicked the batball up with the end of his bat and flicked it over the transparent wall of the court, into the spectators’ seats. Then he banged on the wall, waking the snoozing form of the gelding on the far side.
‘Wake up, you dozy pellet!’ Fivetide bellowed. ‘Another batball, dolt!’
The neutered Affronter adolescent jumped to its tentacle tips, its eye stalks waving around wildly, then it reached into a small cage by its side with one limb while another tentacle opened the door in the court wall. It picked one batball out of the dozen or so tied up in the cage and handed the squirming creature to the adult Affronter, who accepted it then jerked forward and hissed at the adolescent, making it flinch. It closed the door quickly.
‘Ha!’ Fivetide shouted, putting the trussed, wriggling batball to his forebeak and tearing the cord that had held it immobile. ‘Another game, Genar-Hofoen?’ Fivetide spat the short length of cord away and patted the batball up and down in one of his limbs while the little animal flexed its abbreviated wings.
‘Why not?’ Genar-Hofoen said coolly. He was exhausted, but he wasn’t going to let Fivetide know.
‘Nine-nil to me, I believe,’ the Affronter said, holding the batball up to his eyes. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Let’s make it more interesting.’ He put the struggling batball into the tip of his forebeak, his eye stalks bent forward and down to look at what he was doing. There was a delicate movement around Fivetide’s beak-fronds and a tiny screech, accompanied by a faint pop.
Fivetide withdrew the creature from his beak and inspected it, apparently satisfied. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Always good for a change, playing with a blinded one.’ He threw the writhing, mewling creature to Genar-Hofoen. ‘Your serve, I believe.’
The Culture had a problem with the Affront. The Affront had a problem with the Culture, too, for that matter, but it was a pretty plain thing in comparison; the Affront’s problem with the Culture was simply that the older civilisation stopped it doing all the things it wanted to do. The Culture’s problem with the Affront was like an itch they couldn’t scratch; the Culture’s problem with the Affront was that the Affront existed at all and the Culture couldn’t in all conscience do anything about it.
The problem stemmed from an accident of galactic topography and a combination of bad luck and bad timing.
The fuzzily specified region which had given rise to the various species that had eventually made up the Culture had been on the far side of the galaxy from the Affront home planet, and contacts between the Culture and the Affront had been unusually sparse for a long time for a variety of frankly banal reasons. By the time the Culture came to know the Affront better - shortly after the long distraction of the Idiran war - the Affront were a rapidly developing and swiftly maturing species, and short of another war there was no practical way of quickly changing either their nature or behaviour.
Some Culture Minds had argued at the time that a quick war against the Affront was exactly the right course of action, but even as they’d started setting out their case they’d known it was already lost; for all that the Culture was just then at a peak of military power it had never expected to attain at the start of that long and terrible conflict, just so there was a corre
sponding determination at all levels that - the task of stopping the Idirans’ relentless expansion having been accomplished - the Culture would neither need nor seek to achieve such a martial zenith again. Even while the Minds concerned had been contending that a single abrupt and crushing blow would benefit all concerned - including the Affront, not just ultimately, but soon - the Culture’s warships were being stood down, deactivated, componented, stored and demilitarised by the tens of thousands, while its trillions of citizens were congratulating themselves on a job well done and returning with the relish of the truly peace-loving to the uninhibited enjoyment of all the recreational wonders the resolutely hedonism-focused society of the Culture had to offer.
There had probably never been a less propitious time for arguing that more fighting was a good idea, and the argument duly foundered, though the problem remained.
Part of the problem was that the Affront had the disturbing habit of treating every other species they encountered with either total suspicion or amused contempt, depending almost entirely on whether that civilisation was ahead of or behind them in technological development. There had been one developed species - the Padressahl - in that same volume of the galaxy which had been sufficiently like the Affront in terms of evolutionary background and physical appearance to be treated almost as friends by the Affront and which yet had a moral outlook similar enough to the Culture’s to consider it worth the effort of chaperoning the Affront with the other local species, and, to their eternal credit, the Padressahl had been doggedly endeavouring to nudge the Affront into something remotely resembling decent behaviour for more centuries than they cared to remember or admit.
It was the Padressahl who had given the Affront their name; originally the Affront had called themselves after their home world, Issorile. Calling them the Affront - following an episode involving a Padressahl trade mission to Issorile which the recipients had treated more as a food parcel - had been most decidedly intended as an insult, but the Issorilians, as they then were, thought that ‘Affront’ sounded much better and had steadfastly refused to drop their new name even after they had formed their loose patron/protégé alliance with the Padressahl.
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