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 MSV’s 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?
∞
[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 suggested 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 I 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 responsibility, 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.’
‘And what am I supposed to do?’
‘Why, just talk to her!’ the avatar cried, holding its arms out (and, suddenly, Genar-Hofoen was reminded of Ulver).
‘What if I won’t play along?’ he asked.
‘Then you may get to share my fate,’ the ship’s representative told him breezily. ‘Whatever that may be. At any rate, I may keep you here until you do at least agree to talk to her, even if - for that meeting to take place - I have to ask her to return after I’ve sent her away to safety.’
‘And what is likely to be your fate?’
‘Oh, death, possibly,’ the avatar said, shrugging with apparent unconcern.
The man shook his head. ‘You haven’t got any right to threaten me like that,’ he said, with a sort of half-laugh in his voice he hoped didn’t sound as nervous as he felt.
‘Nevertheless, I am threatening you like that, Genar-Hofoen,’ the avatar said, bending at the waist to lean towards him for a moment. ‘I am not as Eccentric as I appear, but consider this: only a craft that was predisposed to a degree of eccentricity in the first place would have taken on the style of life I did, forty years ago.’ The creature drew itself upright again. ‘There is an Excession without precedent at Esperi which may lead to an infinitude of universes and a level of power orders of magnitude beyond what any known Involved currently possesses. You’ve experienced the way SC works, Genar-Hofoen; don’t be so naïve as to imagine that Minds don’t employ strong-arm methods now and again, or that in a matter resounding with such importance any ship would think twice about sacrificing another consciousness for such a prize. My information is that several Minds have been forfeited already; if, in the exceptional conditions prevailing, intellects on that scale are considered fair game, think about how little a single human life is likely to matter.’
The man stared at the avatar. His jaw was clenched, his fists balled. ‘You’re doing this for a single human life,’ he said. ‘Two, if you count the fetus.’
‘No, Genar-Hofoen,’ the avatar said, shaking its head. ‘I’m doing this for myself, because it’s become an obsession. Because my pride will not now let me settle this any other way. Dajeil, in that sense, and for all her self-lacerating spite, has won. She forced you to her will forty-five years ago and she has bent me to hers for the last
forty. Now more than ever, she has won. She has thrown away four decades of her life on a self-indulgent sulk, but she stands to gain by her own criteria. You have spent the last forty years enjoying and indulging yourself, Genar-Hofoen, so perhaps you could be said to have won by your criteria, and after all you did win the lady at the time, which was all you then wanted, remember? That was your obsession. Your folly. Well, the three of us are all paying for our mutual and intermingled mistakes. You did your part in creating the situation; all I’m asking is that you do your part in alleviating it.’
‘And all I have to do is talk to her?’ The man sounded sceptical.
The creature nodded. ‘Talk. Try to understand, try to see things from her perspective, try to forgive, or allow yourself to be forgiven. Be honest with her and with yourself. I’m not asking you to stay with her or be her partner again or form a family of three; I just want whatever it is that has prevented her from giving birth to be identified and ameliorated; removed if possible. I want her to resume living and her child to start. You will then be free to return to your own life.’
The man looked out to sea, then at his right hand. He looked surprised to see he was holding a stone in it. He threw it as hard and as far as he could into the waves; it didn’t travel half the distance to the distant, invisible wall.
‘What are you supposed to do?’ the man asked the creature. ‘What is your mission?’
‘Get to the Excession,’ Amorphia said. ‘Destroy it, if that’s deemed necessary, and if it’s possible. Perhaps just draw a response from it.’
‘And what about the Affront?’
‘Added complication,’ the avatar agreed, squatting once more and looking around the stones around its feet. ‘I might have to deal with them too.’ It shrugged, and lifted a stone, hefting it. It put the stone back and chose another.
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