The Hydrogen Sonata

by Iain M. Banks

  ~The atmosphere is saturated with compounds sexually stimulating to your species, Berdle sent as they ducked underneath an especially large hammock where several frolicking bed-fellows were contorting themselves in particularly inventive combinations.

  “Sex-scent city!” Pyan agreed, through the earbud.

  A male face and torso swung down from a nearby platform. Sweating, breathing hard, the man smiled at Vyr. “Like the arms,” he said, breathlessly. “You’d be so very welcome.” Then, with a look of slight surprise, he was pulled back up onto the platform by a couple of grinning naked women, who blew kisses at an uncomprehending Berdle.

  A short dark corridor led to another wide room where extravagantly costumed, masked people danced; some to a space-filling song of powerful beats and trembling ululations, some to rhythms they were hearing through earbuds, their wildly eccentric motions at odds with everybody else around them.

  DARK SOUND … SPACE AHEAD the soup-faced person told them, walking backwards down another intervening corridor, face turned towards them.

  “About to get really loud,” Cossont told Berdle.

  “I can feel it through my feet,” he told her.

  Cossont closed her ears.

  Double doors led to the dark-sound dance floor, where the whole point was to hear with every part of your body except your ears. It was night-dark, strobe-lit; with each staccato pulse of light the near-naked dancers looked like marionettes frozen in poses of either ecstasy or torment. Cossont heard the wild, thudding music through the jelly in her eyes, via her lungs, resonating in the long bones of her arms and legs.

  “Fuck me, that’s loud,” Pyan said in her ear, voice made high and tinny to get through.

  Cossont opened her mouth a little to say “Shh,” to the creature. As she did so it was as though her mouth filled with noise; she felt her teeth vibrate.

  Berdle looked unaffected.

  Away from the dark-sound room, they passed a large circular oil swimming pool with a screen ceiling where people seemed to be practising synchronised floating in giant flower-like patterns. They climbed through a couple of levels where tired-but-happy-looking people were eating at tables – though one section seemed to be set aside for food-fights, with one just starting – then ascended via an adventurously steep and long escalator to a tall, broad corridor with what appeared to be a transparent ceiling showing the fretwork of tunnel moving slowly past above.

  Ximenyr’s quarters lay through a sequence of intestinally curved, squishily floored round-section corridors hung with what looked like folds and strands of gaudy, hallucinatory vivid seaweeds, all moving and waving on invisible currents.

  ~That’s interesting, Berdle sent. ~Just lost feed from my scout missile. That is a little worrying.

  Finally, at a doorway bearing an unmistakable resemblance to a vulva, the soup-faced person bowed and left them. The vulva irised, opening.

  “This is a bit gross, isn’t it?” Pyan whispered. “It’s not just me thinking this, no?”

  Cossont followed Berdle down a short, narrow corridor. Cossont’s earbud beeped to signal it was losing all external reception – something it had never done anywhere else in or on the Girdlecity, in all the years she’d lived within it.

  They arrived into a chamber where a large, barrel-chested, handsome-looking man with vivid red skin and an unfeasible number of phalluses reclined on a giant, tipped bed. He was smiling at them. He wore a roomy-looking pair of shorts, so the penis he’d likely been born with was perhaps the only one not visible, but he had plenty of others, sprouting – short, stubby, flaccid – from at least forty points on his body, including four on his calves, six on each thigh, similar numbers on his upper and lower arms and one each where the nipples would have been on a mammal. His head, feet and hands looked normal. Around his thick neck lay something like a giant charm bracelet, weighed down with chunky trinkets, mostly jewel encrusted. He was attended by naked people – mostly females – all of whom had the heads of animals and mythical creatures.

  ~Again, Berdle sent, ~The atmosphere is full of sexually stimulating compounds. And I’ve found my scout missile. Oh-oh, as we say. I’m going to stop communicating like this for now, unless there’s an emergency. May no longer be secure.

  “Oh-oh?” Cossont was thinking.

  “Again,” Pyan whispered, “overdosing on sheer vulgarity.”

  The roof above was not transparent but fashioned from some luxuriantly thick, crimson ruched material, centrally gathered so that it looked like a sphincter, and glistening as though dripping wet.

  “Ms Berdle, Ms Cossont,” the man said in his deep, thick voice. “Pleased to meet you.” Then he opened his mouth a little wider and let a very long tongue snake out and delicately lick at first one eyebrow then the other, shaping them both neatly into place. The tongue disappeared again. He opened his eyes wide; he had fabulously pale blue irises, almost shining. His eyeballs rolled back into their sockets, the blue irises disappearing. They were replaced from below by dark red irises which rose into place and steadied. “Excuse me,” he said. “These pupils work better in daylight.” He smiled widely, showing very white teeth. “And to your familiar, Ms Cossont. Pyan, isn’t it? Welcome to you too.”

  “Permission to speak?” Pyan said, sounding excited.

  “No,” Cossont said quietly, then to Ximenyr said, “Hello. Thank you for seeing us.”

  “And thank you for watching me,” Ximenyr said, and unhooked something from his collar of trinkets, holding it up in front of his face and inspecting it. It looked like a short thin pen or stylus of some sort, barely bigger than a child’s finger. Ximenyr looked at Berdle. “Your life signs are weirder than the lady’s familiar, so I’m guessing this belongs to you.”

  “It does,” Berdle said. “My apologies. I was concerned you might refuse to see us initially and we might need some help in securing an audience. Also, I am impressed you were able to sense its presence and capture it. Congratulations.”

  “Thank you. Flattery is always so satisfying,” Ximenyr said with what certainly appeared to be a sort of beatific sincerity. “Especially from …” he waved one long, elegant hand, exquisitely manicured “… an avatar, avatoid? Something of that nature?”

  “Indeed, of the Culture vessel Mistake Not …”

  There was just a hint of a pause; Cossont was fairly sure their host was listening on his own earbud.

  “Voyeured upon by a Culture Mind,” Ximenyr said, sounding impressed. “I really am flattered. Though there is an all-hours feed from about eight different cameras all centred on this bed right here, so I’m not entirely sure why you bothered. Video only at points, so maybe you wanted the audio? Yeah? Anyway.” He nodded behind them. “Please; take a seat.”

  Two of the animal-headed people – the heads looked as real, alive and functional as every other part of their human bodies – set two tall chairs behind them. Cossont and Berdle both sat. The dozen or so unusually headed people stood, arms folded, round the curved wall of the cabin.

  Ximenyr held the tiny scout missile out. “I’m going to keep this, okay?” The little machine was secured to his charm necklace by an extendible chain.

  “I would prefer to have it returned,” Berdle said.

  “Don’t doubt,” Ximenyr said. “But you did invade my privacy.” There was some muffled spluttering and laughing at this from the people looking on, and Ximenyr’s face split into a smile again. He glanced round some of the animal-headed people. “Hey, you know what I mean.” He looked back at Berdle, grinning. “Anyway. Might let you have this back. But you need something from me, I’m sort of supposing, otherwise why, in an entirely cogent sense, would you be here in the first place? Hmm?” He set the tiny missile back where it had been, resting on his chest between what looked like an android’s thumb and a thick crystal cylinder, striped with encrusted jewels.

  “It’s about Ngaroe QiRia,” Cossont said, glancing at Berdle.

  “Gathered.” Ximenyr nodded at her
. “Like the arms, incidentally. Who did that for you?”

  “Frex Gerunke.”

  “Know him. Helped teach him. Nice work? All working fine?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “And a Lords jacket. You really into them?”

  “I played with them,” she confessed. “Briefly.” She really might have to change out of the Lords of Excrement jacket at some point, she realised.

  “Really? You’re not mentioned in the playgraphy.” He seemed to think. “Unless you’re Sister Euphoria.”

  Cossont sighed. “Guilty.”

  Ximenyr smiled broadly. “Estimable, Ms Cossont. I’ve played tenser, a little sling, never the volupt. Hear it’s harder.”

  “A little.”

  “Four arms make it easier?”

  “No; that’s for the elevenstring.”

  “Ha! The Undecagonstring? I’ve heard they’re fucking insane.”

  “No, that’s just those who play them.”

  Ximenyr laughed. “Nobody’s played an elevenstring for the Party; you could audition while you’re here. That would help round things off.”

  “Thank you, but we have more urgent business,” she told him.

  “Yes, my friend Mr QiRia.”

  “My friend too,” Cossont said.

  “Really?” Ximenyr looked sceptical. “Can’t recall him mentioning you.”

  Cossont sighed again. “That does not surprise me.”

  Ximenyr grinned, stroked his chin. “Well, his memories are a little … compartmentalised. How do you know him?”

  “I met him twenty years ago, just after he’d been a leviathid – a sea monster – for decades, on a place called Perytch IV. We only met up for a few days, but we talked a lot. How about you?”

  “Oh, I knew him before then, back when I was horribly young and doing …” he held up one arm and stroked a couple of the penises on it “… this kind of thing for what passes for a living, amongst us.” He shrugged. “Rather than a profound artistic statement both exploring and interrogating the prospect of a willed self-extinctive event being sold as a civilisational phase-change cum level upgrade.”

  “When he was here five years ago,” Berdle said, “was Mr QiRia having some sculption carried out?”

  The man in the bed frowned. “Sculption; now there’s a word I haven’t heard for a while. Technically correct, I guess. Used to be called plastic surgery or bodily amendment or, well, lots of things.” He waved one arm again. “Anyway, I’m afraid that’s a private matter, Mr Berdle; I can neither confirm nor deny, and … all that shit.”

  “May we simply ask why was he here, then?” Berdle asked.

  “Still not going to tell you, fella,” Ximenyr said, shaking his head. “QiRia and I are old pals, that’s all I can say. Met him a few times, last time just as the Party was starting. But he was friends with my mother, and with her father before her, so I guess he’s pretty ancient even by Culture standards – and I won’t be giving away too much if I say he’s sort of a profound throwback physiologically anyway, by true Culture genetech criteria. I don’t know what sort of weird congenital mixture of geriatric blood-lines he draws his particular bucketful of the vital fluids from, but it’s pretty end-spectrum whatever it is, I can tell you that.”

  “Did he leave anything with you?” Cossont asked.

  The Master of the Revels shrugged. “Nothing important, maybe a present or two. He was sort of … intermittently generous. Anyway, why? Is he in some sort of trouble?” Ximenyr looked from Cossont to Berdle. “How … official is this visit?”

  Cossont leaned forward. “He didn’t leave you a mind-state device or anything?”

  Ximenyr laughed. “Why on Zyse, Xown or anywhere would he do that?”

  “He …” Cossont began, about to say that QiRia had given her such a device, then remembering that she hadn’t told Berdle this was what she was looking for at the Ospin Dataversities. She’d nearly given that away. She wondered how much she already had.

  Berdle had already cut in. “He might have wanted to back himself up.”

  Ximenyr shook his head. “Doubt that. He was always kind of resistant regarding that sort of duplicated soul stuff.”

  “Do you know where else he might have gone when he was in Gzilt?” Cossont asked.

  “No,” Ximenyr said. “Secretive old boy. How about you, Vyr, did he come to visit you?”

  “No,” she admitted.

  “Oh, feeling jilted?” Ximenyr said softly, with a look of exaggerated sympathy.

  “We were never friends like that.”

  “You don’t have to be. You just have to care what people think of you.” He brought his blue irises rolling down for a moment, looked at her, then let them roll back up again to be replaced by the red ones. “If it’s any consolation, I know he visited Gzilt at least once without bothering to come see me. Didn’t even call.” He looked at Berdle. “We never did settle how official this visit is.”

  Berdle nodded. “Officiality is a slippery concept, in the Culture.”

  Ximenyr laughed. “Well,” he said, arching his back and stretching – all the penises gave a little jerk, as though they were separate tiny animals just waking – “this has all been very interesting; however, things have recharged and there is, frankly, pleasure to be secured. You may have to excuse me, shortly.” He looked at Cossont and Berdle, as all the animal- and beast-headed people joined him on the bed, kneeling by him and reaching out to stroke and caress him. All the phalluses dotted over Ximenyr’s body started, very slowly, to fatten and lever themselves upright. Wavy lines like veins that probably did not all carry blood were beginning to show all over his body, bulging and rippling beneath his ruby-red skin. “Unless you’d like to join in, of course?” he said brightly. “Both, either of you? You’d be very welcome. Plenty of time, plenty of places. We’ll turn the AG on shortly, I’ll start my last heart and we can get things going on my back …”

  “I would,” Pyan said in Cossont’s earbud.

  Cossont looked down at the creature. “Okay. I could just leave you here,” she told it.

  “Never mind.”

  “Thank you,” she said to Ximenyr. “But we’d best be on our way.”

  “Mr Berdle,” Ximenyr said, taking one hand from between the legs of one of the girls stroking him. He detached the little scout missile from his neck-chain. “You may have this back. Excuse the, ah …”

  Berdle had to kneel one-legged on the bed between Ximenyr’s legs and two naked bodies to retrieve the scout missile. “Thank you,” he said.

  “Always keep on the right side of the Culture,” Ximenyr murmured dreamily, his face just becoming obscured by a young man straddling him. Very little of his body was visible now, though what was was clearly quite excited.

  “You really are no fun,” Pyan said, petulant, as they descended the alarmingly long and steep escalator with the soup-faced person leading the way. In the cavernous space above and in front of them, an energetic game of sorball had begun, with people in transparent spherical suit-spheres leaping about in a zero-G volume, pinging off the inside walls of a giant diamond glass sphere forty metres across.

  “Tough,” Cossont said, then turned to Berdle, but could only get to the point where she opened her mouth to speak before he turned to her and said,

  “Later.”

  “So?” she said. They were back aboard the module. It had met them on a landing platform which cantilevered out from the mass of the Girdlecity like a round tray on an outstretched arm. The craft started to pull away, going astern to avoid some overhanging architecture a few kilometres above.

  “Mr Ximenyr has access to some surprisingly sophisticated tech,” Berdle said, lowering himself onto a lounge couch and examining the scout missile. “And some 4D shielding, of course, which is why we had to get in there.”

  “Not just prurience, then,” Pyan said, aloud, but was ignored.

  “They found and disabled this with embarrassing ease,” Berdle said, rolling t
he scout missile around on his palm. “Ah!” The little machine suddenly came alive and leapt into the air above his hand. It twisted quickly this way and that, as though confused at having just woken up.

  Most of the walls of the module’s living area had seemingly turned transparent, allowing a vertiginous view of the Hzu coast beneath as the module tipped, twisted and then reared suddenly upwards. Ribbons of ochre and jade stitched by slow-spreading breakers of alabaster white, the land and the shallow margins of the sea seemed to sink away beneath them like something dropped; the Girdlecity was a dark wall they climbed magically without touching, hurtling silently back to the stars. Cossont tore her gaze from the view and said, “But did you find anything?”

  Berdle frowned. “No. I was rather hoping for some sort of data store with information on Mr Q, something that would be kept close to Ximenyr, but there was nothing relevant anywhere on the airship. I’ve copied everything I found to the ship Mind to see if there’s some really clever cryptography in the storage, but it doesn’t look promising.”

  “Nothing in all that stuff round his neck?”

  “There was a minimal amount of processing left in the android digit, which was anyway unpowered, there was a dedicated, digital time-to device, functioning and correctly synchronised to the millisecond, but with zero spare capacity, a defunct model of an ancient Waverian Zoehn Dynasty spaceship, itself based on a primitively early form of processor technology called a vacuum tube, again with minimal and extremely crude processing, long burned out, a crystal container holding some animal or vegetable matter– two or three berries or small fruits, I believe – the baculum from a Vimownian Woller with an embedded particle-chip, probably from a hunter’s homing round, and a LastDitch Corp minicollar subsaver, hair-triggered to intervene should any of the gentleman’s hearts give out—”

  “Yeah. He said something about starting his last heart.”