Or we might ask some remaining element of the Fourteenth Regiment – its innocence/on-sidedness presumably taken as read following the attack on its HQ – to help us, but that takes control away from those we entirely and implicitly trust, and might be seen to confer potentially too much power on a Gzilt person, group of people or entity regarding the release or not of the information Mr QiRia’s ocular out-board data storage devices may or may not contain. I think that covers all the available alternatives to my heading back as fast as my little engine fields will carry me to Xown and trusting to my own abilities to retrieve the situation.
∞
xGCU Displacement Activity
Speaking of Gzilt people potentially having too much power through access to what may be contained in Mr QiRia’s memories; what of Ms Cossont?
∞
xUe Mistake Not …
Ms Cossont has been no trouble so far, and of some use. Also, having been allowed to look inside the device holding Mr QiRia’s mind-state, with his permission and indeed at his insistence, I’ve discovered that to access his memories is by no means simple; his cooperation may well be required to make sense of the encoded data we’re looking for, certainly if it’s to be done quickly and without fault. As he appears to have, at the least, a sentimental attachment to Ms Cossont, we need to keep both him and her with us. In any event, I wouldn’t imagine that she would either harbour the desire or be in the position to affect matters materially.
∞
xGCU Displacement Activity
So you’re vouching for her.
∞
xUe Mistake Not …
Yes. As much as one can for a bio.
∞
xGSV Contents May Differ
Good. Meanwhile, we are faced with the problem of this disputed preferred Scavenger status between the Ronte and the Liseiden. Just because they’ve been taking their time crawling through space doesn’t mean they have gone away. On the contrary, their most powerful fleet sub-units have each been crawling their way to the same place, Zyse, and are due there in the next day or two. Given what the avatar of the Passing By And Thought I’d Drop In has had to report on what still seems like a delicate political situation, this is not encouraging. Any thoughts?
∞
oGSV Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life’s Rich Tapestry
Yes. I think we should be glad those two Delinquents are there, not to mention the Passing By …’s pair of Thugs.
∞
xGSV Contents May Differ
I was looking for something a little more constructive.
∞
xMSV Passing By And Thought I’d Drop In
My responsibility. My avatar continues to seek audiences with the various personalities involved, especially Septame Banstegeyn. However, he is proving a hard man to pin down; he can’t be quite as busy with his official responsibilities as he claims, but he certainly appears to have plenty of other interests with which to fill his remaining time. As a result, sadly, for now, I am no more able to suggest anything more constructive than is the Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life’s Rich Tapestry.
∞
xLOU Caconym
oMSV Pressure Drop
The Passing By … would appear to be of the Effectively Useless persuasion. It needs – it has needed throughout – to be much more aggressive in monitoring these “various personalities involved, especially Septame Banstegeyn”; and – indeed – especially Septame Banstegeyn. It should not be lodging polite requests to see these people if-they’d-be-so-kind-when-they’re-able-pretty-fucking-please; it should be spying and eavesdropping on and bugging the fuck out of the fucking lot of them. This is what happens when you let an antiquated academic with a special interest in a civ take on any sort of serious role involving them because it “understands” them. It doesn’t just understand them; it identifies with them, mimics them – it wants to fucking be them. Not good enough.
∞
To be fair, this posting did look like a sinecure until all this Z-R shit hit the impellers.
∞
These things always do. Perhaps the lesson is that there are no sinecures, just matters of potentially grave consequence we happen to get away with most of the time. Can we ask the Empiricist to lean on the Passing By …? These big System-class fuckers are supposed to cast a long shadow ahead of them, or what use are they?
∞
I’ll make the suggestion. Back to the general babble.
∞
xGSV Contents May Differ
oLOU Caconym
oGCU Displacement Activity
oGSV Empiricist
oGSV Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life’s Rich Tapestry
oUe Mistake Not …
oMSV Passing By And Thought I’d Drop In
oMSV Pressure Drop
oLSV You Call This Clean?
Well, we must await further developments. Let us hope nothing too momentous occurs in the meantime.
* * *
The first part of the ship dance “The Approaching Eclipsing of One Sun by Another” was performed with due ceremony on the achievement of the Gzilt system outskirts, with the Gzilt home planet of Zyse only hours away. The dance was augmented with the participation of the Culture ship Beats Working. This vessel’s accrued inferred alien cachet value (positive), honorary, had, by general acclaim within the fleet and squadron, now become so great that it might actually be embarrassing for it to be informed of the level to which it had ascended so rapidly.
It was probably and arguably already over the limit that even as august a being as Ossebri 17 Haldesib, holding a position as elevated as Swarmprince and Sub-Swarm Divisional Head and Fleet Officer in Charge, could be properly expected to confer-by-informing. It was decided therefore to allow the Culture ship to continue to accrue inferred alien cachet value (positive), honorary, for the meantime, while still not disturbing the metaphorical airflow-through-the-hive by informing the vessel of this distinction.
Regardless, Gzilt and Zyse now lay ahead, and close.
“Hello again. Sorry for being so … abrupt.”
“That’s all right. I take it we’re still aboard the same Culture ship, the Mistake Not …”
“Yes, we are.”
“So, what were you looking at that disturbed you so?” the voice from the silver-grey cube asked. “Or are you going to turn me off again?”
“We were looking at what you’d done to yourself.”
“Really? What? … Come on; tell me. The version of me in here and version of me that did whatever I did to myself are less than twenty years apart. When you’ve lived as long as I have, that’s nothing. I won’t have changed much in between. Effectively I’m the same person. Tell me.”
“You’d put your earliest memories into your eyes, then had those removed,” she said. “You went to Ximenyr, in the Girdlecity, to have it done. You had extra ears put where your eyes should have been.”
“… Well, that’s certainly taking my predilection for the audible over the visible to an extreme.” The voice sounded genuinely amused.
“It just seemed … drastic. Shocking,” Cossont said. “It looked like … like self-mutilation.”
“It’s my body to mutilate as I see fit, Cossont. And, from somebody currently possessing four arms, that’s an odd criticism.” Cossont opened her mouth, but then the voice went on. “This wouldn’t have been on a place called Cethyd, would it? In the Mountains of the Sound?”
“Yes.”
“Ha! Makes sense. Heard about that place quarter of a millennium or more ago; been meaning to go ever since. Good for me for taking it seriously enough to dedicate more than the standard proportion of sensory equipment to the task. I admire myself.”
Cossont, lying on her bed with the cube sitting on the pillow next to her, raised her eyebrows at that, but let it pass. “An old friend of yours called Tefwe went there,” she said, “to try and persuade you to talk about what had happened back when the
Culture was coming together and the Gzilt nearly joined but didn’t.”
“Huh. So much for swearing old lovers to secrecy and respect for one’s privacy.”
“But what the hell were you thinking? Taking out your own eyes? Leaving them with Ximenyr?”
“Did I? I bet it seemed like a good idea at the time. Also, less obvious than leaving the data with all the other informational detritus orbiting Ospin. For example.”
“What were you – what are you trying to hide, though?”
“Who knows? Maybe I’m better without the memories. So: we’re heading for Xown?”
“Yes,” Cossont said quietly to the cube. “We’re going to see Ximenyr, in the Girdlecity, to try and get your eyes, your memories back.”
“Interesting that I didn’t want the memories destroyed, just … parked.”
“Whatever they may be.”
“Whatever they may be … Of course, just because the eyes are there doesn’t mean the memories are too. I could have had those wiped … It’s gone very quiet out there. Hello?”
“That would be a joke too far, Ngaroe.”
“All the same. I wouldn’t put it past me.”
“This. I love this, when you are over me, when I can barely see you or touch you but I know that you are there and just a breath away and I feel each exhaling is like a warm breeze across the land, when I can hear each beat of your heart over mine, when you are close enough that I can feel the heat of you on my skin. Then you are my presence, over and above me, like a promise. I live for these moments. I die at the thought they might stop in the Sublime.”
“You say the sweetest things to me. I wish I could say such things to you, so beautifully.”
“You draw them from me, you are their muse, their true creator; we make them between us. I am a hopeless stumbler and stutterer, always have been, with anybody else. So you must take half the credit. At least.”
“If you say I must, I must, but I feel embarrassed that you say, that you give so much and I can’t give you the same.”
“Words are just one language, Virisse. Just one way of expression. You speak with your eyes, you speak with your sweet tongue and gentle fingers, with your whole body. Like this, and this. What?”
“No, I just, no; here, come here, hold me, hold me like this. Here, I’ll … Be my presence, hang over me, embrace me. I need you. Do anything for you. I give myself. I need to give myself. Oh, you don’t hate me for being so needed, do you? I am. I know I am. My own needing, it betrays me.”
“Oh, my darling. I love that you need me as much as I, desperately, need you. But don’t distress. What is it? What can …?”
“You don’t think they’re lying to us, the Sublimed, the Presence; you don’t think they’re lying to us, deceiving us, do you?”
“What? Is that …? Not for a moment. Oh, be calm, Virisse. Of course not. Do you think I would risk losing you? If I thought for a moment there was any danger they lied to us, that what we’re offered isn’t true, that we might simply die or be blown away like mist, I’d never even think of this, for myself, for you, for us, for all the people.”
“Isn’t it like a threat, though, this thing, hanging over us? I look at it some days, hanging over the city, over us, and it makes me shiver.”
“It used to make me catch my breath, sometimes, I’ll give you that. What can I say, Virisse? Promises take many shapes, and the more … momentous they are, the more they might look like threats. All great promises are threats, I suppose, to the way things have been until that point, to some aspect of our lives, and we all suddenly become conservative, even though we want and need what the promise holds, and look forward to the promised change at the same time. So we have that great grey shape hanging over us, over the parliament itself, as a reminder that this is where the final decision was taken, this is where we made up our minds. And it reminds us that there are powers and forces beyond us, that we are in the process of surrendering our full authority in this, and of taking a great new leap.”
“Is it too late?”
“What? I’m sorry, my love, I didn’t—”
“Is it too late? Can we still unmake our minds?”
“Well, no, it isn’t. We can all change our minds, right up until the last moment.”
“Must there always be forces beyond us?”
“Oh, my love, there always have been. The Sublimed have been there for ten billion years, the Elders too; we are just one species, not here for the longest time, then here for a while, then gone again, just like everybody else. But we’ve always known there is something worthwhile in just being ourselves, in being us as well as we can. We’ve found, been given a way, to symbolise this, in the Book of Truth, but the real truth is that every species feels the same thing, and every one is right.
“We all think we’re special, and in a way we are, but, at the same time, that feeling of being special is one of the things that’s common to us all, that unites us and makes us the same as each other. And when that feeling of … specialness is questioned, we feel threatened, naturally. We all do. I do. We have the Subliming drawing near, and we seem to be collecting alien warships, with Culture ships already arrived – two more this evening, the Empiricist tomorrow – and the Liseiden and the Ronte arriving in days, both seeming to think the other is the interloper while we feel they both are. The eyes of the galaxy are on us, and this ought to be a time of quietness and reflection and measured preparation, a time of looking back with gentle pride on all we’ve achieved, and yet … we have a regiment HQ attacked and thousands killed, and an undignified scramble going on over our heads over our spoils, and all sorts of absurd rumours and stories swirling about, but we—”
“I just worry. I worry that we’ve swept ourselves along somehow, got all too excited over something we haven’t thought through, that … that … people have persuaded us to do something we’re still not ready for.”
“Well, Septame Banstegeyn is a very persuasive man, I’ll give you that.”
“I didn’t just mean—”
“No, you did. And I know what you mean. But you have to see that we become … symbols for ourselves. One person can seem to be the instigator, the power behind some … great powerful current within a society, but they’re not necessarily producing it; they may be at the front, and they may have some small, immediate influence over its direction hour by hour or day by day, but really they are swept along by it too, by the force of all those people behind them, by the idea they all represent and are all borne along by. But, Virisse, what talk is this for the bed? We have so few of these opportunities, my love, let’s not waste this one in worry. Let’s sweep each other away, like this … and this … and this …”
“Yes. Yes, you’re right. I’ll be your spoils, fight over—”
“Ow! What—?”
“What?”
“I don’t know. My finger. A jab, like a thorn. My love, there? Of all places? Why, what have you been doing?”
“What? Don’t laugh! No, what? Let me see!”
“Here. My finger. See? Poor finger.”
“Let me see, let me see!”
“Ah, so pleasantly engaged, so sharply interrupted.”
“Let me—”
“Oh. Worth one tiny injury for such a sweet kiss. You make me swoon … Oh, wait a moment, you really are. I really am … swoon. My. My head is quite … quite …”
“No!”
“It’s all right. I’m just, it’s just … Oh … I’m glad I’m lying dow—”
“No, Sef, no! Say …! Oh. Oh, of course; me too. I should. Should have … he … how could …? Oh, the fool …”
“Going dark … What, you too? My love? Have we …? Is this some …? Are we being …? Are we be—?”
“Doesn’t know. Oh, the cruel, the stupid!”
“Not, not feeling … so good. Where’s my – it was here. I need to call – Oh, fuck, I’m really …”
“I’m so sorry, I’m so, so sorry. Please …”
/> “Never – it doesn’t … just hold …”
“I’m sorry! I’m so—”
“Just hold …”
“So sorry …”
“Just …”
“So …”
Nineteen
(S -6)
“Wasn’t anything found?”
“Mere traces, Septame. Some form of highly sophisticated, very hi-tech device, already starting to dissolve into her flesh and blood the moment after it had delivered its payloads.”
“Payloads?”
Physician General Locuil nodded. “The first, almost certainly, into the president. The second, into Ms Orpe. Possibly a few seconds apart, perhaps almost at the same time. There is so little left of the device – so little not turned into its constituent molecules, at any rate – it’s hard to tell, but the likelihood is it was something tuned to Sef’s own genes, something that would only activate at her touch. Then, once it had delivered the toxin into her, it would deliver its second payload into the carrier, into Orpe.” Locuil held up his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “To stop her talking, we have to assume. We also have to assume that she knew the device was in there, but didn’t know it would kill the president. She might have thought it was going to drug her, or – given where it was – she might have thought it would, you know, enhance things for her, for both of them. We can’t know.”
The physician general sighed, sat back. He massaged his face with one hand. He sat across the septame’s desk from Banstegeyn. Marshal Chekwri sat nearby; no others were present in the septame’s private study in his town house, though both the marshal and the physician general had staff waiting in an ante-room along with Banstegeyn’s own people, including Jevan and Solbli.
Outside, it was almost dawn.
The two bodies had been discovered by the president’s own security team when her comm bracelet – taken off, lying by the bedside – had finally registered that the local sets of vital signs had altered anomalously. Both women had been beyond saving for many minutes before they were discovered, the fast-acting targeted synthetic neuro-toxins still multiplying within what was left of their brains and nervous systems, even as they gradually dissolved. A medical team of the best people and most exclusive machines had been working all night, trying to work out what had happened.
The Hydrogen Sonata Page 40
