Look to Windward c-7

by Iain M. Banks

  The avatar and the Chelgrian stood in a little eight-person module, underneath the outer-facing surface of the Orbital. The craft was an all-media general run-about, capable of travelling under water, flying in atmosphere or, as now, voyaging in space, albeit at purely relativistic speeds. The two of them stood facing forward; the screen started at their feet and swept above their heads. It was like standing in the front of a glass-nosed spaceship, except that no glass ever made could have transmitted such a faithful representation of the view ahead and around.

  It was two days after the death of Ilom Dolince, three before the concert in the Stullien Bowl. Ziller, his symphony completed and rehearsals under way, felt consumed by a familiar restlessness. Trying to think of sights on Masaq’ he hadn’t yet seen, he’d asked to be shown what the Orbital looked like from underneath as it sped by, and so he and the avatar had descended by sub-Plate access to the small space port deep under Aquime.

  The plateau Aquime sat on was mostly hollow, the space inside taken up by old ship stores and mostly mothballed general-product factories. Sub-Plate access over the majority of the Orbital’s area was a matter of descending a hundred metres or less; from Aquime there was a good kilometre straight down to open space.

  The eight-person module was slowing now, relative to the world above them. It was facing spinwards, so the effect was of the Orbital fifty metres above their heads starting to move past overhead, slowly at first but gradually more and more quickly, while the stars beneath their feet and to either side, which had been slowly wheeling, appeared now to be slowing down to a stop.

  The undersurface of the world was a greyly shining expanse of what looked like metal, lit dimly by the starlight and the sunlight reflected from some of the system’s nearer planets. There was something intimidatingly flat and perfect about the vast plain hanging above their heads, Ziller thought, for all that it was dotted with masts and access points and woven by the underground car tracks.

  The tracks rose slowly in places to cross other routes which sank halfway into the fabric of the under-surface before returning to the vast and level plain. In other places the tracks swung round in vast loops that were tens or even hundreds of kilometres across, creating a vastly complicated lacework of grooves and lines etched into the under-surface of the world like a fabulously intricate inscription upon a bracelet. Ziller watched some of the cars zip across the under-surface, in ones or twos or longer trains.

  The tracks provided the best gauge of their relative speed; they had moved above them languidly at first, seeming to slide gradually away or come curving smoothly back. Now, as the module slowed, using its engines to brake, and the Orbital appeared to speed up, the lines started to flow and then race by above.

  They went under a Bulkhead Range, still seeming to gather speed. The ceiling of greyness above them raced away, disappearing into a darkness hundreds of kilometres in height, strung with microscopic lights way above. The car tracks here rested on impossibly slender sling-bridges; they flashed past, perfectly straight thin lines of dim light, their supporting monofils invisible at the relative speed the module had built up.

  Then the far slope of the Bulkhead Range came swooping down to meet them, flashing towards the module’s nose. Ziller tried not to duck. He failed. The avatar said nothing, but the module moved further out, so that they were half a kilometre away from the under-surface. This had the temporary effect of seeming to slow the Orbital down.

  The avatar started to tell Ziller its story.

  Once, the Mind that had become Masaq’ Hub—replacing the original incumbent, who had chosen to Sublime not long after the end of the Idiran War—had been the mind in the body of a ship called the Lasting Damage. It was a Culture General Systems Vehicle, built towards the end of the three uneasy decades when it gradually became clear that a war between the Idirans and the Culture was more likely to occur than not.

  It had been constructed to fulfil the role of a civilian ship if that conflict somehow didn’t happen, but it had also been designed to play a full part in the war if it did come, ready to continually construct smaller warships, transport personnel and materiel and—packed with its own weaponry—become directly involved in battle.

  During the first phase of the conflict, when the Idirans were pressing the Culture on every front and the Culture was doing little more than falling further and further back and mounting only very occasional holding actions where time had to be bought to carry out an evacuation, the number of genuine warships ready to fight was still small. The slack was mostly taken up by General Contacts Vehicles, but the few war-prepped GSVs took their share of the burden as well.

  There were frequent occasions and battles when military prudence would have dictated the dispatch of a fleet of smaller war craft, the non-return of some—even most—of which would be deplorable but not a disaster, but which, while the Culture was still completing its preparations for full-scale war production, could only be dealt with by the commitment of a combat-ready GSV.

  A tooled-up General Systems Vehicle was a supremely powerful fighting machine, easily outgunning any single unit on the Idiran side, but it was not just inherently less flexible as an instrument of war compared to a fleet of smaller craft, it was also unique in the binary nature of its survivability. If a fleet ran into serious trouble usually some of its ships could run away to fight another day, but a similarly beset GSV either triumphed or suffered total destruction—at its own behest if not because of the actions of the enemy.

  Just the contemplation of a loss on such a magnitude was sufficient to give the strategic planning Minds of the Culture’s war command the equivalent of ulcers, sleepless nights and general conniptions.

  In one of the more desperate of those engagements, buying time while a group of Culture Orbitals was readied for flight and slowly accelerated to a velocity sufficient to ensure the worlds’ escape from the volume of space under threat, the Lasting Damage had thrown itself into a particularly wild and dangerous environment deep inside the blossoming sphere of Idiran hegemony.

  Before it had departed on what most concerned, including itself, thought would be its last mission, it had, as a matter of course, transmitted its mind-state—effectively its soul—to another GSV which then sent the recording onwards to another Culture Mind on the far side of the galaxy, where it might be held, dormant and safe. Then, along with a few subsidiary units—barely meriting the name warships, more like semi-devolved powered weapon pods—it set off on its raid, climbing up and out above the lens of the galaxy on a high, curving course, hooked above the swell of stars like a claw.

  The Lasting Damage plunged into the web of Idiran supply, logistic support and reinforcement routes like a berserk raptor thrown into a nest of hibernating kittens, devastating and disrupting all it could find in an erratic series of pulverisingly murderous full-speed attacks spread throughout centuries of space the Idirans had thought long since swept free of Culture ships.

  It had been agreed that there would be no communication from the GSV unless by some miracle it made it back into the rapidly withdrawing sphere of Culture influence; the only sign that reached its comrade craft that it had escaped immediate detection and destruction was that the pressure on the units remaining behind to resist the direct thrust of the Idiran battle fleets lessened appreciably, as enemy vessels were either intercepted before they reached the front or diverted from it to deal with the emerging threat.

  Then there came rumours, through some of the refugee craft of neutrals fleeing the hostilities, of a knot of Idiran fleets swarming round a volume of space near a recent raid location on the very outskirts of the galaxy, followed by a furious battle culminating in a gigantic annihilatory explosion, whose signature, when it was finally picked up and analysed, was exactly that produced when a beleaguered military GSV of the Culture had had time to orchestrate a maximally extraneously damaging destruct sequence.

  News of the battle and the GSVs martial success and final sacrifice was headlining, m
ain-menu stuff for less than a day. The war, like the Idiran battle fleets, swept onwards, burgeoning with distraction and ruse, incident and havoc, horror and spectacle.

  Gradually the Culture implemented its shift to full-scale war production; the Idirans—already slowed by the commitments they’d had to make to control the colossal volumes of their newly conquered territories—found the pace of their advance faltering in places, initially through their own inability to bring the requisite combat apparatus to bear but increasingly due to the growing ability of the Culture to push back, as whole fleets of new warships were produced and dispatched by the Culture’s Orbital manufacturies, far away from the war.

  New evidence of the destruction of the GSV Lasting Damage—and the Idiran war vessels it had taken with it—came in from a neutral ship of another Involved species which had passed near the battle site. The stored personality of the Lasting Damage was duly resurrected from the Mind it had been stored with and emplaced into another craft of the same class. It joined—rejoined—the encompassing struggle, thrown into battle after battle, never knowing which might be its last, and holding within itself all the memories of its earlier incarnation, intact right up until the instant it had cast off its fields and set its looping, trajectorial course for Idiran space, a full year earlier.

  There was just one complication.

  The Lasting Damage, the original ship Mind, had not been destroyed. As a GSV it had struggled to the end and fought to the last, dutifully, determinedly and without thought for its own safety, but finally, as an individual Mind, it had escaped in one of its slaved weapon pods.

  Having suffered its due portion of the profoundly focused attentions of not one but several Idiran war fleets, the not-quite-warship was by then little more than a wreck; a not-quite-not-quite-warship.

  Thrown from the erupting energies of the self-destructing GSV, flung out of the main body of the galaxy with barely sufficient energy to maintain its own fabric, it flew above and away from the plane of the galaxy more like a gigantic piece of shrapnel than any sort of ship, largely disarmed, mostly blind, entirely dumb and not daring to use its all-too-rough and barely ready engines for fear of detection until, at length, it had no choice. Even then it turned them on for only the minimum amount of time necessary to stop itself colliding with the energy grid between the universes.

  If the Idirans had had more time, they would have searched for any surviving fragments of the GSV, and probably they would have found the castaway. As it was, there had been more pressing matters to attend to. By the time anybody thought to double-check that the GSV’s destruction had been as complete as it had first appeared, the half-ruined vessel, now millennia distant from the upper limit of the great disc of stars that was the galaxy, was just about far enough away to escape detection.

  Gradually it had started to repair itself. Hundreds of days passed. Eventually it risked using its much worked-upon engines to start tugging it towards the regions of space where it hoped the Culture still held sway. Uncertain who was where, it abstained from signalling until, at last, it arrived back in the galaxy proper in a region which it was reasonably confident must still be outside Idiran control.

  The signal announcing its arrival caused some confusion at first, but a GSV rendezvoused with it and took it aboard. It was informed it had a twin.

  It was the first but not the last time something like this would happen during the war, despite all the care the Culture took to confirm the deaths of its Minds. The original Mind was re-emplaced in another newly built GSV and took the name Lasting Damage I. The successor ship renamed itself Lasting Damage II.

  They became part of the same battle fleet following their mutual request and fought together through another four decades of war. Near the end they were both present when the Battle of the Twin Novae took place, in the region of space known as Arm One-Six.

  One survived, the other perished.

  They had swapped mind-states before the battle began. The survivor incorporated the soul of the destroyed ship into its own personality, as they had agreed. It too was almost annihilated in the fighting, and again had to take to a smaller craft to save both itself and the salvaged soul of its twin.

  “Which one died,” Ziller asked, “I or II?”

  The avatar gave a small, diffident smile. “We were close together at the time when it happened, and it was all very confused. I was able to conceal who died and who survived for a good many years, until somebody did the relevant detective work. It was II who was killed, I who lived.” The creature shrugged. “It didn’t matter. It was only the fabric of the craft housing the substrate which was destroyed, and the body of the surviving ship met the same fate. The result was the same as it would have been the other way round. Both Minds became the one Mind, became me.” The avatar seemed to hesitate, then gave a dainty little bow.

  Ziller watched the Orbital race by overhead. Car lines whipped past, almost too fast to follow. Only the vaguest impressions of actual cars, even in long trains, were visible unless they were moving in the same direction as the module appeared to be. Then they seemed to move more slowly for a while, before drawing away, pulling ahead, falling behind or curving away to either side.

  “I imagine the situation must have been confused indeed if you were able to hide who’d died,” Ziller said.

  “It was pretty bad,” the avatar agreed lightly. It was watching the Orbital under-surface whiz by with a vague smile on its face. “The way war tends to be.”

  “What was it made you want to become a Hub Mind?”

  “You mean beyond the urge to settle down and do something constructive after all those decades spent hurtling across the galaxy destroying things?”

  “Yes.”

  The avatar turned to face him. “I’d have to assume you’ve done your research here, Cr Ziller.”

  “I do know a little of what happened. Just think of me as old-fashioned enough, or primitive enough, to like hearing things straight from the person who was there.”

  “I had to destroy an Orbital, Ziller. In fact I had to blitz three in a single day.”

  “Well, war is hell.”

  The avatar looked at him, as though trying to decide whether the Chelgrian was trying too hard to make light of the situation. “As I said, the events are all entirely a matter of public record.”

  “I take it there was no real choice?”

  “Indeed. That was the judgement I had to act upon.”

  “Your own?”

  “Partially. I was part of the decision-making process, though even if I’d disagreed I might still have acted as I did. That’s what strategic planning is there for.”

  “It must be a burden, not even being able to say you were just obeying orders.”

  “Well, that is always a lie, or a sign you are fighting for an unworthy cause, or still have a very long way to develop civilisationally.”

  “A terrible waste, three Orbitals. A responsibility.”

  The avatar shrugged. “An Orbital is just unconscious matter, even if it does represent a lot of effort and expended energy. Their Minds were already safe, long gone. The human deaths were what I found affecting.”

  “Did many people die?”

  “Three thousand four hundred and ninety-two.”

  “Out of how many?”

  “Three hundred and ten million.”

  “A small proportion.”

  “It’s always one hundred per cent for the individual concerned.”

  “Still.”

  “No, no Still,” the avatar said, shaking its head. Light slid across its silver skin.

  “How did the few hundred million survive?”

  “Shipped out, mostly. About twenty per cent were evacuated in underground cars; they work as lifeboats. There are lots of ways to survive: you can move whole Orbitals if you have the time, or you can ship people out, or—short-term—use underground cars or other transport systems, or just suits. On a very few occasions entire Orbitals have been evacuate
d by storage/transmission; the human bodies were left inert after their mind-states were zapped away. Though that doesn’t always save you, if the storing substrate’s slagged too before it can transmit onwards.”

  “And the ones who didn’t get away?”

  “All knew the choice they were making. Some had lost loved ones, some were, I suppose, mad, but nobody was sure enough to deny them their choice, some were old and/or tired of life, and some left it too late to escape either corporeally or by zapping after watching the fun, or something went wrong with their transport or mind-state record or transmission. Some held beliefs that caused them to stay.” The avatar fixed its gaze on Ziller’s.

  “Save for the ones who experienced equipment malfunctions, I recorded every one of those deaths, Ziller. I didn’t want them to be faceless, I didn’t want to be able to forget.”

  “That was ghoulish, wasn’t it?”

  “Call it what you want. It was something I felt I had to do. War can alter your perceptions, change your sense of values. I didn’t want to feel that what I was doing was anything other than momentous and horrific; even, in some first principles sense, barbaric. I sent drones, micro-missiles, camera platforms and bugs down to those three Orbitals. I watched each of those people die. Some went in less than the blink of an eye, obliterated by my own energy weapons or annihilated by the warheads I’d Displaced. Some took only a little longer, incinerated by the radiation or torn to pieces by the blast fronts. Some died quite slowly, thrown tumbling into space to cough blood which turned to pink ice in front of their freezing eyes, or found themselves suddenly weightless as the ground fell away beneath their feet and the atmosphere around them lifted off into the vacuum like a tent caught in a gale, so that they gasped their way to death.

  “Most of them I could have rescued; the same Displacers I was using to bombard the place could have sucked them off it, and as a last resort my effectors might have plucked their mind-states from their heads even as their bodies froze or burned around them. There was ample time.”