On the other hand, she was usually woken lying down, with time to take stock if she wanted, and swing herself off the couch, perhaps take the air and take in the view from the balcony, and only go to sit at the table when she felt she wanted to. Not this time, though; getting the basic minimum here.
“Scoaliera,” the virtual avatar said, smiling.
“YC,” she replied. The You Call This Clean? didn’t name its avatars or avatoids separately; people usually just called them ‘YC’. “Are we both well?”
“We are.”
Always good to know that your Stored self and the ship carrying it/you were judged to be well according to the punctilious standards of a Culture Mind. “So,” she said, “what is it?”
“Hoping you’ll agree to take a trip, fully uploaded-style, then to be downloaded into an avatoid.”
“Where? Why?”
“Not sure where yet; you might be able to help answer that yourself. The why is that we need you to look for Ngaroe QiRia.”
She raised one eyebrow. “Do you now?” The “we” the ship was referring to would be either Contact section, or Special Circumstances. Exactly who would become clear shortly, she didn’t doubt.
The avatar nodded. “If you’d be so kind.”
“Why?”
“He might have some information it would be useful to know.”
“He’s been alive for nearly ten millennia; I’m sure he has a lot of information it would be useful to know.”
“No doubt. But this is probably something quite specific.”
“What?”
“Not sure, but somehow relating to the shortly forthcoming Sublimation of the Gzilt.”
This was news to her. She’d been Stored, this time, over four hundred years earlier, when, as far as she could recall, the Gzilt had seemed no more likely to go for Subliming than the Culture itself.
“That the best you’ve got?”
“More detail?” YC asked.
“More detail.”
“You insist?”
“I do.”
The ship told her about the intercepted message from the Zihdren-Remnanter and subsequent developments.
Tefwe thought. “Do we have a view on or interest in whether the Gzilt Sublime or not?”
“No.”
“Take me through the levels.”
“Culture as a whole; no – their business. Contact; not really – opinions differ, mildly. Some temporary local upset to be expected, in the short term especially relating to Scavengers, but all part of the process. SC; no stated interest. Probably some difference of opinion but nobody expressing. Not even a grumble of discussion let alone action. And things are otherwise quiet, so lack of interest not a result of distraction, temporary or otherwise.”
“So this isn’t an SC thing?”
“Not directly, though elements usually associated are cooperating. Specifically, a fast ship will be made available; whatever’s closest to wherever you say you need to go. Other ships at your disposal if necessary should serial uploading and embodiment be required. Simming as unlikely to become an SC focus. Probably.”
“So why are we bothering?”
“Just in case.”
“Just in case what?”
“Just in case it turns out to be something we should have bothered about. Always try to avoid setting up future opportunities for kicking yourself.” The YC smiled apologetically. “Very small thing attached to very momentous thing. One point three trillion people heading into the big Enfold in less than twenty days from now, but if the Zihdren-Remnanter news about the Book of Truth gets out, that might change things. And maybe it should change things. But either way, it would be good to know the truth. Even if we discover the truth, we don’t have to volunteer it, and even if we discover the truth, don’t volunteer it but are asked to provide it, we still don’t have to – though that’d be harder to justify. The point is, if we are asked and we haven’t even bothered to look, we look bad, and if we are asked and decide to tell what we know, we want to be confident what we’re able to offer really is the truth, or as close as we could reasonably get to it.”
“How many new faces know the old guy’s not a figment?”
“Just one beyond reasonable doubt; the GSV Contents May Differ. There was no leak as such; the ship just did some inspired digging and was owed favours by the right mix of craft. Though the others in the handling group will have been briefed there’s a possibility.”
“The ITG?”
“No. Fresh group. Nobody’s heard from the Interesting Times Gang all the while you’ve been Stored.”
“How remiss.”
“As well as waking you with the suggestion you might care to return to the fray, I’ve been asked to enquire if you know of any other ships that might have helped Mr QiRia over the years. Aside from the Warm, Considering, which we know about.”
“The only other one I remember was called the Smile Tolerantly, an ancient GCU, but the last I heard it was about to become Eccentric or Sublime or do something equally unhelpful.”
“Thank you. So …”
“You will recall I said I wouldn’t go looking for QiRia unless it was something really important. Are you – they – deeming this to be?”
“Let’s say suggesting rather than deeming. But tell me: what are your feelings?”
“Mixed. I dare say I’ll do it, but I’m not terribly happy about it.”
Tefwe had never liked the idea of being fully downloaded into something remote who got to play at being you – who thought they were you. You stayed who you were but then the remote “you” became somebody different, over time. The two of you – or more – could be re-integrated, but it was, she thought, an intrinsically messy process of frankly dubious morality.
“Thank you,” the YC said, exhibiting relief. “May I transmit your mind-state now? There are various craft dotted throughout the galaxy, charged up, ready to roll. Rude to keep them waiting.”
“I want to be kept informed about what the remotes get up to,” she told it. Tefwe had been around Contact’s less salubrious outskirts in one form or another for so long she could remember when there hadn’t been anything called Special Circumstances, just a bunch of ships and others that acted like it, so she knew how to negotiate an agreement with a Mind acting as control such that she wouldn’t end up kicking herself.
“Agreed.”
“In full.”
“Agreed.”
“And a no-constraints chance to negotiate over subsequent re-integration, just me and it, or them.”
“Also agreed.”
“You’ll let me know which ship?”
“Of course.”
“Hmm.” Tefwe sat back, thought. “All right,” she said. “I agree.”
“Done. Once again, thank you. Where do you want to head for?”
“Dibaldipen Orbital, Angemar’s Prime system.”
The YC looked blank for a moment, then said, “Ah, one of ours. We might be able to work through the O Hub. That’d be even quicker. We’ll see. Hub Minds can be reluctant to indulge this sort of thing without demanding to know everything there is to know. Do we have a full name for the guy? First thing a Hub Mind’s going to ask for.”
Tefwe smiled. “He’s so old full names hadn’t been invented when he was born, but if they had been he’d have been Tursensa Ngaroe Hgan QiRia dam Yutton. And he has used that name in the past. The far past.”
“Thank you. In any event, the nearest ship is an ex-Psychopath VFP. The Outstanding Contribution To The Historical Process. Just a few days away.” YC looked puzzled. “Dibaldipen. That’s where QiRia is?”
“I have no idea. But there’s a drone there that ought to know.”
“You think it’ll still be there?” YC asked, sounding a little sceptical. “It has been four hundred years.”
“It is retired and set in its ways. Gone native and to seed. I suspect it’ll be there.”
“So, if you’re really so old, tell me what you�
�ve learned over the years, over the millennia. What are the fruits of your wisdom?”
“They are remarkably few. I have managed to avoid learning too many lessons. That may be what keeps me alive.”
Cossont lay on her bed; the grey cube with QiRia’s mind-state inside it sat on a bedside shelf. It was only the second time she’d turned the cube on since returning home. She, the volupt and the elevenstring had just moved out of her mother’s house in M’yon into a place of her own, half the world away; she was starting to make new friends but struggling to get worthwhile gigs and maybe she was feeling lonely.
“So,” she said, “living all this time has been to no purpose, basically.”
“True, but that hardly distinguishes me from anybody else, does it?”
“But shouldn’t it, or there’s no point?”
“No. Living either never has any point, or is always its own point; being a naturally cheery soul, I lean towards the latter. However, just having done more of it than another person doesn’t really make much difference.” The voice from the grey cube paused, then said, “Although … I think living so long might have persuaded me that I am not quite as pleasant a person as I once thought I was.”
Cossont, presented with two opportunities to be scathing just in these last few sentences, was aware she was choosing to take neither. She confined herself to, “Really?” said in a slightly sarcastic tone.
“Well,” the voice said, seemingly oblivious, “one thing that does happen when you live a long time is that you start to realise the essential futility of so much that we do, especially when you see the same patterns of behaviour repeated by succeeding generations and across different species. You see the same dreams, the same hopes, the same ambitions and aspirations, reiterated, and the same actions, the same courses and tactics and strategies, regurgitated, to the same predictable and often lamentable effects, and you start to think, So? Does it really matter? Why really are you bothering with all this? Are these not just further doomed, asinine ways of attempting to fill your vacuous, pointless existence, wedged slivered as it is between the boundless infinitudes of dark oblivion book-ending its utter triviality?”
“Uh-huh,” she said. “Is this a rhetorical question?”
“It is a mistaken question. Meaning is everywhere. There is always meaning. Or at least all things show a disturbing tendency to have meaning ascribed to them when intelligent creatures are present. It’s just that there’s no final Meaning, with a capital M. Though the illusion that there might be is comforting for a certain class of mind.”
“The poor, deluded, fools.”
“I suspect, from your phrasing and your tone of voice, that, as a little earlier, you think you are being sarcastic. Well, no matter. However, there is another reaction to the never-ending plethora of unoriginal idiocies that life throws up with such erratic reliability, besides horror and despair.”
“What’s that?”
“A kind of glee. Once one survives the trough that comes with the understanding that people are going to go on being stupid and cruel to each other no matter what, probably for ever – if one survives; many people choose suicide at this point instead – then one starts to take the attitude, Oh well, never mind. It would be far preferable if things were better, but they’re not, so let’s make the most of it. Let’s see what fresh fuckwittery the dolts can contrive to torment themselves with this time.”
“Not necessarily the most compassionate response.”
“Indeed not. But my point is that it might be the only one that lets you cope with great age without becoming a devout hermit, and therefore represents a kind of filter favouring misanthropy. Nice people who are beginning to live to a great age – as it were – react with such revulsion to the burgeoning horrors that confront them, they generally prefer suicide. It’s only us slightly malevolent types who are able to survive that realisation and find a kind of pleasure – or at least satisfaction – in watching how the latest generation or most recently evolved species can re-discover and beat out afresh the paths to disaster, ignominy and shame we had naively assumed might have become hopelessly over-grown.”
“So basically you’re sticking around to watch us all fuck up?”
“Yes. It’s one of life’s few guaranteed constants.”
Cossont thought about this. “If that’s true, it’s a bit sad.”
“Tough. Life is sometimes.”
“And you’re right: it doesn’t exactly show you in the best light.”
“You’re supposed to admire me for my honesty.”
“Am I?” she said, and reached over and turned the grey cube off.
That was when she decided she’d give the cube to somebody else, who might want it, or at least agree to care for it.
Twelve
(S -16)
“This isn’t Ospin! These aren’t the Dataversities! What the fuck’s going on?”
Cossont had woken from a very deep and pleasant sleep, ordered breakfast and then asked the ship to show her where they were; ahead view or whatever it was called. The Mistake Not … had obliged, presenting the semblance of a deep screen across the bottom of her billow bed, just above her toes. The image it displayed was of a yellow-orange sun apparently setting behind a large rocky planet with dark striated clouds half obscuring a surface of mottled dark-tan land and deep-blue seas. Given that Ospin was a red giant system devoid of any rocky planets, this was all wrong.
“Eh? What?” Pyan yelped, fluttering untidily up from where it had settled on the floor during the night. “Not another emergency! My processing isn’t built to take this!”
The ship appeared to be sinking quickly through a multiply banded set of assorted manufacturies, small habs and other planetary satellites, dipping rapidly into the shadow of the planet so that the sun winked out. A bright spread of the satellites continued to shine against the dark surface beneath, then the ship was beneath them too.
“Change of plan,” Berdle told her, the Mistake Not …’s avatar appearing in one corner of the holo, face absurdly big against the landscape below. “You’d better get dressed.”
The image continued to show the planet getting nearer; they were almost in the atmosphere. The place looked familiar somehow. Also, there was something wrong about something here but she hadn’t worked out what yet.
“Where the hell are we?” she wailed.
“Xown, in the Mureite system.”
“What!”
“Oh for goodness’ sake,” Pyan said dramatically, and flopped over backwards, spread out over the bed, lying limp.
“I just fucking left Xown!” Cossont yelled, watching the landscape whip past underneath. “That’s where I started out!”
“Welcome back,” Berdle said, deadpan. “Are you getting dressed yet?”
“Wait a moment …” Cossont was staring at a black line filling the horizon ahead. Entirely filling the horizon ahead, from one extent to the other, like a vast dam across the sky. “Is that the fucking Girdlecity?”
“We’re just a few minutes away. Better get dressed fast.”
She jumped out of bed, started pulling on clothes, muttering and cursing. She stopped, frowned, sniffed, looked carefully at the Lords of Excrement jacket. Everything had been cleaned, and repaired. “Not so much as a by-your-fucking-leave,” she muttered, pulling on freshly polished boots.
She glanced at the screen again. Thin wispy cloud, not far below. Sea beneath. Dark-blue sky above. Still sea beneath. A few filmy wisps of cloud shot past, level.
“Wait a fucking—” she said, just as she’d started pushing her fingers through her unkempt hair. “We’re not even on the fucking ship, are we? It’d never come this far down—”
“No, we’re not,” Berdle said. “We left about five minutes ago.”
“We’re still on the shuttle.”
“Yes.”
She looked round the cabin. “So where are you?”
A double door parted in one wall and Berdle, sat in some sort of
complicated seat with a giant screen in front, turned and looked back at her. “Hello.” The avatar waved.
“Why the fuck are we – why am I – back on Xown?” She strode through to what proved to be a flight deck or something and threw herself down in the seat beside Berdle’s. She glared at him as hard as she could but the avatar appeared impervious.
The wrap-screen showed the Girdlecity as a black mass filling most of the view. Spread across the huge, near-vertical cliff confronting them there were hints and slivers of something lighter than its pitch-black surface where patches of dark-blue sky were visible through its filigree of open-work sections.
“We are here,” Berdle told her, “because while you were asleep, more information came in, as information is prone to do, and one particular detail passed on by another ship involved happened to be the Culture full name of your friend Mr QiRia. Which would be Tursensa Ngaroe Hgan QiRia dam Yutton.”
“But I didn’t—!” Cossont started to say, then stopped herself.
Berdle nodded. “No, you didn’t say who the Culture person was you were talking about earlier, but we’d already kind of worked that out.”
“Oh, had you now?” Cossont said, trying to sound defiant, but feeling herself sink a little further into the seat.
“First thing I did with the full name was plug it into all the data I’ve been soaking up since I’ve been here; Gzilt stuff,” Berdle said. “All the Gzilt stuff; everything not officially private, anyway. And in amongst the passenger manifests for people making a trip to Xown five years ago a name popped out; Yutten Turse. Claimed to be Peace Faction Culture and to have come all the way from somewhere called Neressi, which, on closer inspection, is somewhere that doesn’t exist, or is perhaps a colloquial name for a place nobody’s catalogued properly.” Berdle glanced at her, grinning. “Tut, tut.”
The Girdlecity really did fill the screen now. Cossont had to crane her neck to see anything that wasn’t the vast, dark mass of it. Right at the top she could see the sky, speckled with stars and orbiting sats, but it was just a thin band above the striated black curtain of the structure. Below, there were waves; the Girdlecity was crossing sea. She knew it did, in two places. Here, its colossal architecture was even more mind-boggling than anywhere else on its circuit of the planet. It extended undersea, still growing in girth, descending an extra kilometre beneath the waves if this was the Hzu Sea, an extra two and half thousand metres if this was Ocean.
The Hydrogen Sonata Page 22
