Look to Windward c-7

by Iain M. Banks

  Those souls described a heaven very similar to that of Chelgrian mythology, and even talked of entities which might have been the souls of Chelgrians dead long before the development of Soulkeeper technology, though none of these remote ancestor personalities could be contacted by the mortal world directly and the suspicion was that they were constructs of the Chelgrian-Puen, best guesses at what the ancestors might have been like if heaven had really existed from the start.

  There could, however, be no real doubt that people were saved by their Soulkeeper and did indeed enter the heaven fashioned for them by the Chelgrian-Puen in the image of the paradise envisaged by their ancestors.

  “But are the returned dead really the people we knew, Custodian?”

  “They appear to be, Tibilo.”

  “Is that enough? Just appearing?”

  “Tibilo, you might as well ask when we awake whether we are the same person who went to sleep.”

  He gave a thin, bitter smile. “I have asked that.”

  “And what was your answer?”

  “That, sadly, yes we are.”

  “You say ‘sadly’ because you feel bitter.”

  “I say ‘sadly’ because if only we were different people with every wakening then the me that wakes up would not be the one who lost his wife.”

  “And yet we are different people, very slightly, with every new day.”

  “We are different people, very slightly, with every new eye-blink, Custodian.”

  “Only in the most trivial sense that time has passed during the moment of that blink. We age with every moment but the real increments of our experience are measured in days and nights. In sleep and dreams.”

  “Dreams,” Quilan said, staring away again. “Yes. The dead escape death in heaven, and the living escape life in dreams.”

  “Is this something else you have asked yourself?”

  It was not uncommon, nowadays, for people with terrible memories either to have them excised, or to retreat into dreams, and live from then on in a virtual world from which it was relatively easy to exclude the memories and their effects that had made normal life so unbearable.

  “You mean have I considered it?”

  “Yes,”

  “Not seriously. That would feel as though I was denying her.” Quilan sighed. “I’m sorry, Custodian. You must get bored hearing me say the same things, day after day.”

  “You never say quite the same thing, Tibilo.” The old monk gave a small smile. “Because there is change.”

  Quilan smiled too, though more as a polite response. “What does not change, Custodian, is that the only thing I really wish for with any sincerity or passion now is death.”

  “It is hard to believe, feeling as you do at the moment, that there will come a time when life seems good and worthwhile, but it will come.”

  “No, Custodian. I don’t think it will. Because I wouldn’t want to be the person who had felt as I do now and then walked—or drifted—away from that feeling until things felt better. That is precisely my problem. I prefer the idea of death to what I feel just now, but I would prefer to feel the way I do now for ever than to feel better, because feeling better would mean that I am not the one who loved her any more, and I could not bear that.”

  He looked at the old monk with tears in his eyes.

  Fronipel sat back, blinking. “You must believe that even that can change and it will not mean you love her less.”

  Quilan felt almost as good at that point as he had since they had told him Worosei was dead. It was not pleasure, but it was a sort of lightness, a kind of clarity. He felt that he had at last come to some sort of decision, or was just about to. “I can’t believe that, Custodian.”

  “Then what, Tibilo? Is your life to be submerged in grief until you die? Is that what you want? Tibilo, I see no sign of it in you, but there can be a form of vanity in grief that is indulged rather than suffered. I have seen people who find that grief gives them something they never had before, and no matter how terrible and real their loss they choose to hug that awfulness to them rather than push it away. I would hate to see you even seem to resemble such emotional masochists.”

  Quilan nodded. He tried to appear calm, but a frightful anger had coursed through him as the older male had spoken. He knew Fronipel meant well, and was sincere when he said that he did not think Quilan was not such a person, but even to be compared to such selfishness, such indulgence, made him almost shake with fury.

  “I would have hoped to have died with honour before such a charge might be levelled against me.”

  “Is that what you wish, Tibilo? To die?”

  “It has come to seem the best course. The more I think about it, the better it becomes.”

  “And suicide, we are told, leads to utter oblivion.”

  The old religion had been ambivalent about taking one’s own life. It had never been encouraged, but different views of its rights and wrongs had been taken over the generations. Since the advent of a real and provable heaven, it had been firmly discouraged—following a rash of mass suicides—by the Chelgrian-Puen, who made it clear that those who killed themselves just to get to heaven more quickly would not be allowed in there at all. They would not even be held in limbo; they would not be saved at all. Not all suicides would necessarily be treated so severely, but the impression was very much that you’d better have an unimpeachable reason for showing up at the gates of paradise with your own blood on your hands.

  “There would be little honour in that anyway, Custodian. I would rather die usefully.”

  “In battle?”

  “Preferably.”

  “There is no great tradition of such martial severity in your family, Tibilo.”

  Quilan’s family had been landowners, traders, bankers and insurers for a thousand years. He was the first son to carry anything more lethal than a ceremonial weapon for generations.

  “Perhaps it’s time such a tradition started.”

  “The war is over, Tibilo.”

  “There are always wars.”

  “They are not always honourable.”

  “One may die a dishonourable death in an honourable war. Why should the converse not apply?”

  “And yet we are here in a monastery, not the briefing room of a barracks.”

  “I came here to think, Custodian. I never did renounce my commission.”

  “Are you determined to return to the Army, then?”

  “I believe I am.”

  Fronipel looked into the younger male’s eyes for some time. Finally, straightening himself in his side of the curl-chair, he said, “You are a major, Quilan. A major who would lead his troops when he wishes only to die might be a dangerous officer indeed.”

  “I would not want to force my decision on anyone else, Custodian.”

  “That is easily said, Tibilo.”

  “I know, and it is not so easily done. But I am not in any hurry to die. I am quite prepared to wait until I can be quite certain I am doing the right thing.”

  The old monk sat back, taking off his glasses and extracting a grubby-looking grey rag from a waistcoat. He breathed on the two large lenses in turn and then polished each. He inspected them. Quilan thought they looked no better than when he had started. He put them back with some care and then blinked at Quilan.

  “This is, you realise, Major, something of a change.”

  Quilan nodded. “It feels more like a… like a clarification,” he said. “Sir.”

  The old male nodded slowly.

  Dirigible

  Uagen Zlepe, scholar, was preparing an infusion of jhagel leaves when 974 Praf suddenly appeared on the window ledge of the small kitchen.

  The simian-adapted human and the fifth-order Decider-turned-interpreter had returned to the dirigible behemothaur Yoleus without mishap after retrieving the errant glyph stylo and spotting whatever it was they had spotted all that way below them in the airsphere’s blue, blue depths. 974 Praf had immediately flown off to report to her superi
or. Uagen had decided to have a snooze after all the excitement. This proved difficult, so he forced himself to sleep with some glanded shush. On waking, after exactly one hour, he had smacked his lips and come to the conclusion that some jhagel tea might be in order.

  The circular window of his little kitchen looked out across the sloping forest that was Yoleus’ upper forward surface. The window had a series of gauzy curtains he could fasten over it, but he usually left those gathered to each side. The view had once been wonderful and airy but for the last three years it had been in shadow beneath the looming bulk of Muetenive, Yoleus’ prospective mate. Yoleus’ skin foliage was starting to look shrunken and anaemic in the shade of the other creature. Uagen sighed and began the process of making the infusion.

  The jhagel leaves were very precious to him. He had only brought a few kilos from home; he had about a third of that amount left now and he’d been rationing himself to one cup every twenty days to eke out his supply. He should have brought seeds as well, he supposed, but somehow he’d forgotten.

  Making the infusion had become something of a ritual for Uagen. Jhagel tea was supposed to be calming, however it had occurred to him that the process of making it was itself quite relaxing. Perhaps when his supply was entirely gone he ought to go through the motions with some placebo mixture—stopping short of actually drinking it—to observe what degree of tranquillity might be induced just by the ceremony of preparation.

  Frowning with concentration, he began to transfer some of the steaming pale green infusion into a warmed cup through a deep container which held twenty-three graduated layers of filters, variously chilled to between four and twenty-four degrees below.

  Then Interpreter 974 Praf thudded onto his window ledge without warning. Uagen gave a start. Some of the hot liquid splashed over his hand.

  “Ow! Umm. Hello, Praf. Umm, yes; ow.”

  He put the strainer and the pot down, then placed his hand under cold running water.

  The creature hopped through the circular window, keeping its leathery wings tightly folded. In the small scullery, it suddenly seemed very big.

  It looked at the puddle of splashed infusion. “A time for dropping,” it observed.

  “Eh? Oh, yes,” Uagen said. He looked at his reddened hand. “What can I do for you, Praf?”

  “The Yoleus would talk with you.”

  This was unusual. “What, now?”

  “Immediately.”

  “What, face to—umm, well… ?”

  “Yes.”

  Uagen felt just a little frightened. He could do with some calming down. He pointed at the pot simmering on his little cooker. “What about my jhagel tea?”

  974 Praf looked at it, then him. “Its presence is not required.”

  “Are you sure, Yoleus? Umm. I mean, well…”

  “Sufficiently sure. Do you desire a percentage to be expressed?”

  “No. No, no need for that, it’s just. This is awfully. I’m not sure that. It’s very.”

  “Uagen Zlepe, scholar, you are not finishing your sentences.”

  “Amn’t I? Well, I mean.” Uagen felt himself go gulp. “Do you really think I need to go down there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh.”

  “Umm. The. Umm. Whatever it is couldn’t come up here, then?”

  “No.”

  “And you’re sure?”

  “Sufficiently sure. That which it is thought that you would be best to experience is in a situation/setting similar to this.”

  “Ah. I see.”

  Uagen was standing, a little precariously, on what felt like a particularly wobbly bit of marsh. In fact he was deep inside the body of the dirigible behemothaur Yoleus, within a chamber he had only once ever seen before and had rather hoped he might not have to visit again during his stay.

  The place was about the size of a ballroom. It was a hemisphere, with ribs and curves everywhere. Even the floor had curves, low swells and hollows. The walls looked like gigantic folded curtains, gathered into a sphincter shape at the summit. It was unlit and Uagen was having to use his in-built IR sense, which made everything look grey and grainy and even more frightening.

  The smell was that of a sewer under an abattoir. Stuck to the wall were dead, living-dead and still living things. One of them—one of the latter category, thankfully—was 974 Praf. Underneath 974 Praf, dwarfing her, were the recently attached and now drained-looking carcasses of two falficores, their wings and talons hanging loosely. Alongside the Interpreter was the even bigger body of a raptor scout.

  974 Praf didn’t look too bad; she appeared perched, wings neatly folded, feet drawn up. The creature hanging by her side, whose body was nearly the size of Uagen’s and whose wings were easily fifteen metres from tip to tip, looked limp and—if not dead—near death. Its eyes were half closed, its huge beaked head was slumped across its chest, its wings looked pinned to the in-curving wall of the chamber, and its legs hung slackly.

  What looked like a root or cable led from the back of its skull and into the wall. Where the cable entered its head, something like blood had leaked out, soaking its dark, scaly skin. The creature trembled suddenly and let out a low moan.

  “The raptor scout’s report on the fellow-creature below is not sufficient,” the dirigible behemothaur Yoleus said through 974 Praf. “The captured falficores knew less still; only that there was a recent rumour of food below. Your report might be sufficient.” Uagen swallowed. “Umm.” He stared at the raptor scout. It had not been tortured or really mistreated, by the locally prevailing standards, but whatever had happened to it didn’t look very pleasant. It had been dispatched to reconnoitre the shape that Uagen and 974 Praf had seen when they’d gone after the falling glyph stylo.

  The raptor scout had dived into the depths, escorted by the rest of its wing. It had landed on what was apparently another dirigible behemothaur, but one which had been injured or damaged, which had possibly lost its way and probably lost its mind. It had investigated inside a little, then it had rushed as fast as it could back to Yoleus, who had listened to its report and then concluded that the creature was not articulate enough to explain properly what it had seen—the raptor scout had not even been able to determine the identity of the other behemothaur—and so had decided to look directly into its memories by burrowing in with a direct link between its mind and Yoleus’ own—whatever and wherever that was.

  There was nothing all that unusual about this, or even anything cruel; the raptor scout was, in a sense, a part of the dirigible behemothaur and would have had no sense of having had interests or even an existence separate from the vast creature; probably it would have been proud that the information it was carrying was of such importance that Yoleus wanted to look at it directly. Nevertheless, to Uagen it still looked like some poor wretch chained to a wall in a torture chamber after the torturer had extracted what he wanted. The creature moaned again.

  “Umm. Yes,” Uagen said. “Ah. I would be able to make this report, umm. Verbally, wouldn’t I?”

  “Yes,” the dirigible behemothaur said through 974 Praf.

  Uagen felt just a little relief.

  Then the Interpreter sat back against the wall behind her. She blinked a few times and then said, “Hmm.”

  “What?” Uagen said, suddenly conscious of a funny taste in his mouth. He was aware that he was fingering the necklace his aunt Silder had given him. He put his hands down by his sides. They were shaking.

  “Yes.”

  “Yes what?”

  “There would also be…”

  “What? What?” He was aware that his voice was more of a yelp, now.

  “Your glyph tablet.”

  “What?”

  “The glyph tablet that belongs to you. If it might be used for the recording of the impressions you have, that would be of use to me.”

  “Ha! The tablet! Yes! Yes, of course! Yes!”

  “Then you will go and are so agreed.”

  “Oh. Umm. Well, yes, I su
ppose. That is—”

  “I release the fifth-order Decider of the 11th Foliage Gleaner Troupe which is now Interpreter 974 Praf.” There was a sound like a noisy kiss, and 974 Praf hinged away from her perch on the wall, falling untidily for the first couple of metres before collecting herself in an undignified clatter of wings and looking wildly about as though she had just woken up. 974 Praf hovered in front of Uagen’s face, wings beating the smell of something rotten against him. She cleared her throat. “Seven wings of raptor scouts will accompany you,” she told him. “They will take a deep-light signalling pod with them. They await.”

  “What, now?”

  “Soon equates to good, later to worse, Uagen Zlepe, scholar. Therefore, immediacy.”

  “Umm.”

  They fell en masse, hurtling mob-handed into the dark blue abyss of air. Uagen shivered and looked around. One of the suns had gone out. The other had moved. They were not real suns, of course. They were more like immense spotlights; eyeballs the size of small moons whose annihilatory furnaces switched on and off according to a pattern dictated by their slow dance round the vast world.

  Sometimes they glowed just sufficiently to stop themselves from falling further into Oskendari’s gravity faint well, sometimes they blazed, bathing the airsphere’s nearest volumes in radiance while the pressure of that released light kicked them further up and out, so that they would have escaped the airsphere’s pull altogether if they hadn’t then swivelled and sent out a pulse of light that sent them falling back in again.

  The sun-moons were worth lifetimes of study all on their own, Uagen knew, though probably they were more the province of somebody interested in physics, rather than someone like himself. He turned up the heating in his suit—Yoleus had been persuaded to allow him time to return to his quarters and put on something more in keeping with the role of explorer—but then he started to sweat. He wasn’t really cold, he decided, just afraid. He turned the heating down again.