No. No. No and fuck this, lady.
Byr stuck both hands over the wound and the awful, heavy flap of flesh and swung out of the bed on the far side, dragging the blood-heavy top sheet with her. She stumbled to the bathroom, holding her guts in and trying all the time to watch the other woman. Dajeil stood staring at the bed, as though not realising Byr had gone, as though staring at a projection she alone could see, or at a ghost.
Byr’s legs and feet were covered in blood. She slipped against the door jamb and almost blacked out, but managed to stagger into the room’s pastel fragrance. The bathroom door locked behind her. She sank to her knees. Loud roar in head now; tunnel vision, like wrong end of a telescope. Deep, sharp smell of blood; startling, shocking, all by itself.
The life-support collar was in a box with the other emergency medical supplies, thoughtfully located below waist level so you could crawl to it. Byr clamped the collar on and curled up on the floor, clamped and curled around the fissure in her abdomen and the long gory umbilical of shiningly red sheet. Something hissed and tingled around her neck.
Even staying curled up was too much effort. She flopped over on the tiles’ soft warmth. It was easy, all the blood made it so slippery.
XI
In the dream, he watched as Zreyn Tramow rose from a bed of pink petals. Some still adhered, like small local blushes dispensed upon her pink-brown nakedness. She dressed in her uniform of soft grey and made her way to the bridge, nodding to and exchanging pleasantries with the others on her shift and those going off-watch. She donned the sculpted shell of the induction helmet, and - in half an eye-blink - was floating in space.
Here was the vast enfolding darkness, the sheer astringent emptiness of space colossal, writ wide and deep across the entire sensorial realm; an unending presagement of consummate grace and meaninglessness together. She looked about the void, and far stars and galaxies went swivelling within her field of vision. The view settled on:
The strange star. The enigma.
At such moments she felt the loneliness not just of this fathomless wilderness and this near-utter emptiness, but of her own position, and of her whole life.
Ship names; she had heard of a craft called I Blame My Mother, and another called I Blame Your Mother. Perhaps, then, it was a more common complaint than she normally allowed for (and of course she had ended up on this ship, with its own particular chosen name, forever wondering whether it had been one of those little conceits of her superiors to pair them so). Did she blame her mother? She supposed she did. She did not think she could claim any technical deficiency in the love attending her upbringing, and yet - at the time - she had felt there was, and to this day she would have claimed that the technicalities of a childhood did not cover all that might be required by certain children; in short, her aunts had never been enough. She knew of many individuals raised by people other than their natural parent, and to a man and to a woman they all seemed happy and content enough, but it had not been that way for her. She had long ago accepted that whatever it was she felt was wrong, it was in some sense her fault, even if it was a fault that derived from causes she could do nothing to alter.
Her mother had chosen to remain in Contact following the birth of her child and had left to return to her ship not long after the girl’s first birthday.
Her aunts had been loving and attentive and she had never had the heart - or worked up the hurtful malice - to let them or anybody else know the aching void she felt inside herself, no matter how many times she had lain in tears in her bed, rehearsing the words she would use to do just that.
She supposed she might have transferred some of her need for a parent to her father, but she had scarcely felt that he was a part of her life; he was just another man who came to the house, sometimes stayed for a while, played with her and was kind and even loving, but (she had known instinctively at first, and later admitted rationally to herself after a few years of self-delusion) had played, been kind and even loved her in a more cheerily vague and off-hand sort of way than many of her uncles; she imagined now that he had loved her in his own fashion and had enjoyed being with her, and assuredly she had felt a certain warmth at the time, but still, before very long, even as an infant, before she knew the precise reasons, motives and desires involved, she had guessed that the frequency and length of his visits to the house had more to do with his interest in one or two of her aunts than in any abiding tenderness he felt towards his daughter.
Her mother returned now and again, for visits that for both of them veered wildly between painful feelings of love and furious rages of resentment. Somehow, later, exhausted and dismayed by these sapping, abrasive, attriting episodes, they came to a sort of truce; but it was at the expense of any closeness.
By the time her mother returned for good, she was like just another girlfriend; they both had better friends.
So she had always been alone. And she suspected, she almost knew, that she would end her days alone. It was a source of sadness - though she tried never to wallow in self-pity - and even, in a subsidiary way, of shame, for at the back of her mind she could not escape the nagging desire for somebody - some man, if she was honest with herself - to come to her rescue, to take her away from the vacuum that was her existence and make her no longer alone. It was something she had never been able to confess to anybody, and yet something that she had an inkling was known to the people and machines who had allowed her to assume this exalted, if onerous position.
She hoped that it was secret within herself, but knew too well the extent of the knowledge-base, the sheer experience behind those who exercised power over her and people like her. An individual did not outwit such intelligence; he or she might come to an understanding with it, an accommodation with it, but there was no outthinking or outsmarting it; you had to accept the likelihood that all your secrets would be known to them and trust that they would not misuse that knowledge, but exploit it without malice. Her fears, her needs, her insecurities, her compensating drives and ambitions; they could be plumbed, measured and then used, they could be employed. It was a pact, she supposed, and one she did not really resent, for it was a mutually beneficial arrangement. They and she each got what they wanted; they a canny, dedicated officer determined to prove herself in the application of their cause and she the chance to seek and gain approval, the reassurance that she was worth something.
Such trust, and the multiplying opportunities to provide proof of her diligence and exercised wisdom, ought at last to be enough for her, but still sometimes it was not, and she yearned for something that no fusion of herself with any conglomerative could provide; a need to be reassured of a personal worth, an appreciation of her individual value which would only be valid coming from another individual.
She went through cycles of admitting this to herself and hoping that one day she would find somebody she could finally feel comfortable with, finally respect, finally judge worthy of her regard when measured against her own strict standards . . . and then rejecting it all, fierce in her determination to prove herself on her terms and the terms of the great service she had entered, forging the resolve to turn her frustrations to her and their advantage, to redirect the energies resulting from her loneliness into her practical, methodically realisable ambitions; another qualification, a further course of study, a promotion, command, further advancement . . .
The enigma attracted her, no less than the impossibly old star. Here, in this discovery, might eventually lie a kind of fame that could sate her desire for recognition. Or so she told herself, sometimes. Here, after all, was already a strange kind of kinship, a sort of twinning, even if it was that of an implausibility and a mystery.
She directed her attention to the enigma, seeming to rush towards it in the darkness, swelling its black presence until it filled her field of vision.
A blink of light focused her awareness near its centre. Somehow, without much more than that single glimmer, the light had a kind of character to it, something familiar, recogni
sable; it was like the opening of a door, like gaining an unexpected glimpse into a brightly lit room. Attention drawn, she looked closer automatically.
And was instantly sucked into the light; it erupted blindingly, exploding out at her like some absurdly quick solar flare, engulfing her, snapping around her like a trap.
Zreyn Enhoff Tramow, captain of the General Contact Ship Problem Child, barely had time to react. Then she was plucked away and disappeared into the coruscating depths of the falling fire, struggling and trapped and calling for help. Calling to him.
He bounced awake on the bed-field, eyes suddenly open, breath fast and shallow, heart hammering. The cabin’s lights came on, dim at first and then brightening gently, reacting to his movements.
Genar-Hofoen wiped his face with his hands and looked around the cabin. He swallowed and took a deep breath. He hadn’t meant to dream anything like that. It had been as vivid as an implanted dream or some game-scenario shared in sleep. He had meant to dream one of his usual erotic dreams, not look back two thousand years to the time when the Problem Child had first found the trillion-year-old sun and the black-body object in orbit around it. All he’d wanted was a sex-simulation, not an in-depth inquisition of a bleakly ambitious woman’s arid soul.
Certainly it had been interesting, and he’d been fascinated that he had somehow been the woman and yet not been her at the same time, and had been - non-sexually - inside her, in her mind, close as a neural lace to her thoughts and emotions and the hopes and fears she had been prompted to think about by the sight of the star and the thing she had thought of as the enigma. But it hadn’t been what he’d expected.
Another strange, unsettling dream.
‘Ship?’ he said.
‘Yes?’ the Grey Area said through the cabin’s sound system.
‘I . . . I just had a weird dream.’
‘Well, I have some experience in that realm, I suppose,’ the ship said with what sounded like a heavy sigh. ‘I imagine now you want to talk about it.’
‘No . . . well . . . no; I just wondered . . . you weren’t . . . ?’
‘Ah. You want to know was I interfering with your dreams, is that it?’
‘It just, you know, occurred to me.’
‘Well now, let’s see . . . If I had been, do you think I would answer you truthfully?’
He thought. ‘Does that mean you were or you weren’t?’
‘I was not. Are you happy now?’
‘No I’m not happy now. Now I don’t know if you were or you weren’t.’ He shook his head, and grinned. ‘You’re fucking with my head either way, aren’t you?’
‘As if I would do such a thing,’ the ship said smoothly. It made a chuckling noise which contrived to be the most unsettling sound it had articulated so far. ‘I expect,’ it said, ‘it was just an effect caused by your neural lace bedding in, Genar-Hofoen. Nothing to worry about. If you don’t want to dream at all, gland somnabsolute.’
‘Hmm,’ he said slowly, and then; ‘Lights out.’ He lay back down in the darkness. ‘Good night,’ he said quietly.
‘Sweet dreams, Genar-Hofoen,’ the Grey Area said. The circuit clicked ostentatiously off.
He lay awake in the darkness for a while, before falling asleep again.
XII
Byr woke up in bed, hopelessly weak, but cleansed and whole and starting to recover. The emergency medical collar lay, also cleaned, at the side of the bed. By it lay a bowl of fruit, a jug of milk, a screen, and the small figurine Byr had given Dajeil, from the old female ’Ktik called G’Istig’tk’t’, a few days earlier.
The tower’s slave-drones brought Byr her food and attended to her toilet. The first question she asked was where Dajeil was, half afraid that the other woman had taken the knife to herself or just walked into the sea. The drones replied that Dajeil was in the tower’s garden, weeding.
On other occasions they informed Byr that Dajeil was working in the tower’s top room, or swimming, or had taken a flier to some distant island. They answered other questions, too. It was Dajeil - along with one of the drones - who had forced open the bathroom door. So she could still have killed Byr.
Byr asked Dajeil to come visit her, but she would not. Eventually, a week later, Byr was able to get out of bed by herself and walk around. A pair of drones fussed at her side.
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 no
t 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.
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