Mostly it was done like that; through Minds, AI core memories and innumerable public storage systems, information reservoirs and databases containing schedules, itineraries, lists, plans, catalogues, registers, rosters and agenda.
Sometimes, though, when that way - the relatively easy, quick and simple way - was closed to the inquirer for some reason, usually to do with keeping the inquiry secret, things had to be done the slow way, the messy way, the physical way. Sometimes there was no alternative.
The vacuum dirigible approached the floating island under a brilliantly clear night sky awash with moon and star light. The main body of the airship was a giant fat disk half a kilometre across with a finish like brushed aluminium; it glinted in the blue-grey light as if frosted, though the night was warm, balmy and scented with the heady perfume of wineplant and sierra creeper. The craft’s two gondolas - one on top, one suspended underneath - were smaller, thinner disks only three storeys in height, each slowly revolving in different directions, their edges glowing with lights.
The sea beneath the airship was mostly black-dark, but in places it glowed dimly in giant, slowly fading Vs as giant sea creatures surfaced to breathe or to sieve new levels of the waters for their tiny prey, and so disturbed the light-emitting plankton near the surface.
The island floated high in the breeze-ruffled waters, its base a steeply fluted pillar that extended a kilometre down into the sea’s salty depths, its thin, spire-like mountains thrusting a similar distance into the cloudless air. It too was scattered with lights; of small towns, villages, individual houses, lanterns on beaches and smaller aircraft, most of them come out to welcome the vacuum dirigible.
The two slowly revolving gondola sections slid gradually to a halt, preparatory to docking. People in both segments congregated on the sides nearest the island, for the view. The airship’s system registered the imbalance building up and pumped bubblecarbon spheres full of vacuum from one lot of tanks to another, so maintaining a suitably even keel.
The island’s main town drifted slowly closer, the docking tower bright with lights. Lasers, fireworks and searchlights all fought for attention.
‘I really should go, Tish,’ the drone Gruda Aplam said. ‘I didn’t promise, but I did kind of say I’d probably stop by . . .’
‘Ah, stop by on the way back,’ Tishlin said, waving his glass. ‘Let them wait.’
He stood on the balcony outside one of the lower gondola’s mid-level bars. The drone - a very old thing, like two grey-brown rounded cubes one on top of the other and three-quarters the size of a human - floated beside him. They’d only met that day, four days into the cruise over the Orbital’s floating islands and they’d got on famously, quite as though they’d been friends for a century or more. The drone was much older than the man but they found they had the same attitudes, the same beliefs and the same sense of humour. They both liked telling stories, too. Tishlin had the impression he hadn’t yet scratched the veneer off the old machine’s tales of when it had been in Contact - a millennium before he had, and goodness knew he was considered an old codger these days.
He liked the ancient machine; he’d really come on this cruise looking for romance, and he still hoped to find it, but in the meantime finding such a perfect companion and raconteur had already made him glad he’d come. The trouble was the drone was supposed to get off here and go to visit some old drone pals who lived on the island, before resuming its cruise on the next dirigible, due in a few days’ time. A month from now, it would be leaving on the GSV that had brought it here.
‘But I feel I’d be letting them down.’
‘Look, just stay another day,’ the man suggested. ‘You never did finish telling me about - what was it, Bhughredi?’
‘Yes, Bhughredi.’ The old drone chuckled.
‘Exactly. Bhughredi; the sea nukes and the interference effect thing or whatever it was.’
‘Damnedest way to launch a ship,’ the old drone agreed, and made a sighing noise.
‘So what did happen?’
‘Like I said, it’s a long story.’
‘So stay tomorrow; tell me it. You’re a drone for goodness’ sake; you can float back by yourself . . .’
‘But I said I’d visit them when the airship got here, Tish. Anyway; my AG units are due a service; they’d probably fail and I’d end up at the bottom of the sea having to be rescued; very embarrassing.’
‘Take a flyer back!’ the man said, watching the island’s shore slide underneath. People gathered round fires on the beach waved up at the craft. He could hear music drifting on the warm breeze.
‘Oh, I don’t know . . . They’d probably be upset.’
Tishlin drank from his glass and frowned down at the waves breaking on the beach which led towards the lights of the town. A particularly large and vivid firework detonated in the air directly above the bright docking tower. Oos and Aahs duly sounded round the crowded balcony.
The man snapped his fingers. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Send a mind-state abstract.’
The big drone hesitated, then said, ‘Oh, one of those. Hmm. Well; still not really the same thing, I think. Anyway, I’ve never done one. Not sure I really approve. I mean, it’s you but it’s not you, you know?’
Tishlin nodded. ‘Certainly do know. Can’t say I think they’re as, you know, benign as they’re cracked up to be either; I mean, it’s supposed to act sentient without being sentient, so isn’t it actually sentient? What happens to it when it’s just turned off? I’m not convinced there isn’t some sort of iffy morality here, either. But I’ve done it myself. Talked into it. Reservations, like you say, but . . .’ He looked round, then leant closer to the machine’s dull brown casing. ‘Bit of a Contact thing, actually.’
‘Really?’ the old machine said, tipping its whole body away from him for a moment, then tipping it back so that it leant towards him. It extended a field round the two of them; the exterior sounds faded. When it spoke again, it was with a slight echo that indicated the field was keeping whatever they said between the two of them. ‘What was that . . . Well, wait a moment, if you aren’t supposed to tell anybody . . .’
Tishlin weaved his hand. ‘Well, not officially,’ he said, brushing white hair over one ear, ‘but you’re a Contact veteran, and you know how SC always dramatises things.’
‘SC!’ the drone said its voice rising. ‘You didn’t say it was them! I’m not sure I want to hear this,’ it said, through a chuckle.
‘Well, they asked . . . a favour,’ the man said, quietly pleased that he seemed finally to have impressed the old drone. ‘Sort of a family thing. Had to record one of these damn things so it could go and convince a nephew of mine he should do his bit for the great and good cause. Last I heard the boy had done the decent thing and taken ship for some Eccentric GSV.’ He watched the outskirts of the town slide underneath. A flower-garlanded terrace held groups of people pattern-dancing; he could imagine the whoops and wild, whirling music. The scent of roasting meat came curling over the balcony parapet and made it through the hushfield.
‘They asked if I wanted it to be reincorporated after it had done its job,’ he told the drone. ‘They said it could be sent back and sort of put back inside my head, but I said no. Gave me a creepy feeling just thinking about it. What if it had changed a lot while it was away? Why, I might end up wanting to join some retreatist order or autoeuthenise or something! ’ He shook his head and drained his glass. ‘No; I said no. Hope the damn thing never was really alive, but if it was, or is, then it’s not getting back into my head, no thank you, I’m sorry.’
‘Well, if what they told you was true, it’s yours to do with as you wish, isn’t it?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Well, I don’t think I’ll take the same step,’ the drone said, sounding thoughtful. It swivelled as though to face him. The field around them collapsed. The sound of the fireworks returned. ‘Tell you what,’ the old drone said. ‘I will get off here and see the guys, but I’ll catch up with you in
a couple of days, all right? We’ll probably fall out in a day or two anyway; they’re cantankerous old buggers, frankly. I’ll take a flyer or try floating myself if I feel adventurous. Deal?’ It extended a field.
‘Deal,’ Tishlin said, slapping the field with his hand.
The drone Gruda Aplam had already contacted its old friend the GCU It’s Character Forming, currently housed in the GSV Zero Gravitas which was at that point docked under a distant plate of Seddun Orbital. The GCU communicated with the Orbital Hub Tsikiliepre, which in turn contacted the Ulterior Entity Highpoint, which signalled the LSV Misophist, which passed the message on to the University Mind at Oara, on Khasli plate in the Juboal system, which duly relayed the signal, along with an interesting series of rhyme-scheme glyphs, ordinary poems and word games all based on the original signal, to its favoured protégé, the LSV Serious Callers Only . . .
[stuttered tight point, M32, tra. @n4.28.866.2083]
xLSV Serious Callers Only
oEccentric Shoot Them Later
It is Genar-Hofoen. I am now convinced. I am not certain why he
may be important to the conspiracy, but he surely is. I have drawn
up a plan to intercept him, on Tier. The plan involves Phage Rock;
will you back me up if I request its aid?
∞
[stuttered tight point, M32, tra. @n4.28.866.2568]
xEccentric Shoot Them Later
oLSV Serious Callers Only
My dear old friend, of course.
∞
Thank you. I shall make the request immediately. We shall be
reduced to dealing with amateurs, I’m afraid. However, I hope to
find a high-profile amateur; a degree of fame may protect where SC
training is not available. What of our fellow counter-conspirator?
∞
No word. Perhaps it’s spending more time in The Land of IF.
∞
And the ship and Pittance?
∞
Arriving in eleven and a half days’ time.
∞
Hmm. Four days after the time it will take for us to get somebody to Tier.
It is within the bounds of possibility this ship will be heading into
a threatening situation. Is it able to take care of itself?
∞
Oh, I think it capable of giving a good account of itself.
Just because I’m Eccentric doesn’t mean I don’t know some
big hitters.
∞
Let us hope such throw-weight is not required.
∞
Absolutely.
II
On a certain scale, a Plate class General Systems Vehicle was quite a simple construction. Contained within its wrapping of external fields, its material body was four kilometres thick; the lowest thousand metres was almost all engine, the middle two vertical kilometres were ship space - an enclosed network of dockyards, hangars and bays, like a vast multi-layered cubist cave-system - and the topmost thousand metres comprised accommodation, most of it for humans.
Using these broad-brush figures, it was a simple matter for anybody to work out the craft’s approximate maximum speed from the cubic kilometrage of its engines, the number of ships of any given size it could contain according to the volume given over to the various sizes of bays and engineering space, and the total number of humans it could accommodate by simply adding up how many cubic kilometres were given over to their living-space.
The Sleeper Service had retained an almost pristine original specification internally, which was a rare thing in an Eccentric vessel; usually the first thing they did was drastically reconfigure their physical shape and internal lay-out according to the dictates of some private aesthetic, driving obsession or just plain whim, but the fact the Sleeper Service had stuck to its initial design and merely added its own private ocean and gas-giant environment on the outside made it relatively easy to measure its actual behaviour against what it ought to be capable of, and so ensure that it wasn’t up to any extra mischief besides being Eccentric in the first place.
In addition to such simple, arithmetical estimates of a ship’s capability, it was, of course, always a good idea when dealing with an Eccentric craft to have just that little extra bit of an edge. Intelligence, to be specific; an inside view; a spy.
As it approached the Dreve system, the Plate class GSV Sleeper Service was travelling at its usual cruising speed of about forty kilolights. It had already announced its desire to stop off in the inner system, and so duly started braking as it passed through the orbit of the system’s outer-most planet, a light week distant from the sun itself.
The Yawning Angel, the GSV which was shadowing the larger craft, decelerated at the same rate, a few billion kilometres behind. The Yawning Angel was the latest in a long line of GSVs which had agreed to take a shift as the Sleeper Service’s escort. It wasn’t a particularly demanding task (indeed, no sensible GSV would wish it to be), though there was a small amount of vicarious glamour associated with it; guarding the weirdo, letting it roam wherever it wanted, but maintaining the fraternal vigilance that such an enormously powerful craft espousing such an eccentric credo patently merited. The only qualifications for being a Sleeper Service shadow were that one was regarded as being reliable, and that one was capable of staying with the SS if it ever decided to make a dash for it; in other words, one had to be quicker than it.
The Yawning Angel had done the job for the best part of a year and found it undemanding. Naturally, it was somewhat annoying not to be able to draw up one’s own course schedule, but providing one took the right attitude and dispensed with the standard Mind conviction that held efficiency to the absolute bottom line of everything, it could be an oddly enhancing, even liberating experience. GSVs were always wanted in many more places at the same time than it was possible to be, and it was something of a relief to be able to blame somebody else when one had to frustrate people’s and other ships’ wishes and requests.
This stop at Dreve had not been anticipated, for example - the SS’s course had seemed set on a reasonably predictable path which would take it through the next month - but now it was here, the Yawning Angel would be able to drop off a few ships, take another couple on, and swap some personnel. There should be time; the SS had never acknowledged the presence of any of the vessels tailing it, and it hadn’t posted a course schedule since it had turned Eccentric forty years earlier, but it had certain obligations in terms of setting re-awakened people back in the land of the living again, and it always announced how long it would be staying in the systems it visited.
It would be here in Dreve for a week. An unusually long time; it had never stayed anywhere for longer than three days before. The implication, according to the group of ships considered experts on the behaviour of the Sleeper Service, and given what the GSV itself had been saying in its increasingly rare communications, was that it was about to off-load all its charges; all the Storees and all the big sea, air and gas-giant-dwelling creatures it had collected over the decades would be moved - physically, presumably, rather than Displaced - to compatible habitats.
Dreve would be an ideal system to do this in; it had been a Culture system for four thousand years, comprising nine more or less wilderness worlds and three Orbitals - hoops, giant bracelets of living-space only a few thousand kilometres across but ten million kilometres in diameter - calmly gyrating in their own carefully aligned orbits and housing nearly seventy billion souls. Some of those souls were far from human; one third of each of the system’s Orbitals was given over to ecosystems designed for quite different creatures; gas-giant dwellers on one, methane atmospherians on another and high temperature silicon creatures on another. The fauna the SS had picked up from other gas-giant planets would all fit comfortably into a sub-section of the Orbital designed with such animals in mind, and the sea and air creatures ought to be able to find homes on that or either of the other worlds.
A week to
hang around; the Yawning Angel thought that would go down particularly well with its human crew; one of the many tiny but significant and painful ways a GSV could lose face amongst its peers was through a higher than average crew turn-over rate, and, while it had been expecting it, the Yawning Angel had found the experience most distressing when people had announced they were fed up not being able to have any reliable advance notice of where they were going from week to week and month to month and so had decided to live elsewhere; all its protestations had been to no avail. What would in effect be a week’s leave in such a cosmopolitan, sophisticated and welcoming system really should convince a whole load of those currently wavering between loyalty and ship-jumping that it was worth staying on with the good old Yawning Angel, it was sure.
The Sleeper Service came to an orbit-relative stop a quarter-turn in advance along the path of the middle Orbital, the most efficient position to assume to distribute its cargo of people and animals evenly amongst all three worlds. Permission to do so was finally received from the last of the Orbitals’ Hub Minds, and the Sleeper Service duly began getting ready to unload.
The Yawning Angel watched from afar as the larger craft detached its traction fields from the energy grid beneath real space, closed down its primary and ahead scan fields, dropped its curtain shields and generally made the many great and small adjustments a ship normally made when one was intending to stick around somewhere for a while. The Sleeper Service’s external appearance remained the same as ever; a silvery ellipsoid ninety kilometres long, sixty across the beam and twenty in height. After a few minutes, however, smaller craft began to appear from that reflective barrier of fields, speeding towards the three Orbitals with their cargoes of Stored people and sedated animals.
Excession Page 26
