The Algebraist

by Iain M. Banks

  The colonel floated over to look at the enormous though ancient and highly directional flat screen which Fassin was using in his attempt to find out what had been happening. They were in Y'sul's home, a ramshackle wheel-house in a whole vast district of equally shabby-looking wheel-houses hanging on skinny spindles underneath the city's median level like a frozen image of an entire junkyard's worth of exploded gearboxes.

  Y'sul had escorted them back from his club in a state of some excitement. Then he'd left them alone, taken his servant Sholish and gone off in search of a decent tailor - his usual tailor had most inconveniently taken it into his mind to change trades and become a Dreadnought rating; probably trying to get in on the ground floor of this upcoming war.

  - What have you found? the colonel asked, watching the flat screen fill with an image of the Third Fury moon. - Hmm. The moon appears almost undamaged.

  - This is an old recording, Fassin explained. - I'm trying to find an updated one.

  - Any mention of the hostilities?

  - Not very much, Fassin told her, using a manipulator to work the massive, stiff controls of the old screen. - There's been a mention on a minority radio news service, but that's it.

  - It is regarded as news, though? This is encouraging, I think?

  - Well, don't get too excited, Fassin sent. - We are talking about a station some amateurs run for the few people like them­selves who are actually interested in things happening in the rest of the system; maybe a few thousand Dwellers out of a planetary population of five or ten billion.

  - The number of Dwellers in Nasqueron is really that uncer-tain?

  - Oh, I've seen estimates as low as two billion, as high as two hundred, even three.

  - I encountered this degree of uncertainty in my research, Hatherence said as Fassin switched manually between channels, data sets and image-trails. - I recall thinking it must be a mistake. How can one be two base-ten orders of magnitude out? Can't one just ask the Dwellers? Don't they know themselves how

  many they are?

  - You can certainly ask, Fassin agreed. He put some humour into his signal. - An old tutor of mine used to say of questions like this that the answers will prove far more illuminating regarding Dweller psychology than they will concerning their actual subject.

  - They lie to you or they don't know themselves?

  - That is a good question too.

  - They must have an idea, the Colonel protested. - A society has to know how many people it contains, otherwise how would it plan infrastructure and so on?

  Fassin felt himself smiling. - That's how it would work in pretty much any other society, he agreed.

  - There are those who would assert that Dwellers are not in fact civilised, the colonel said thoughtfully, - that they could scarcely be said to possess a society in any single planet, and on a galactic scale cannot be said to constitute a civilisation at all. They exist rather in a state of highly developed barbarism.

  - I'm familiar with the arguments, Fassin told her.

  - Would you agree?

  - No. This is a society. We are in a city. And even just in the one planet, this is a civilisation. I know the definitions will have changed over the years and you might take a different view from me, but in the history of my planet we'd refer to a civilisation based around a single river system or on a small island.

  - I forget how small-scale one has to think when dealing with planets with solid-surface living-environments, the colonel said, apparently without meaning to insult. - But even so, the defi-nition of a civilisation has to move on when one ascends to the

  galactic stage, and the Dwellers, taken as a whole, might seem deficient.

  - I think it comes down to one's own definition of the terms, Fassin said. - Hold on; this looks promising.

  He swung back from a mosaic of sub-screens to a single moving image. Third Fury again, though this time looking hazier, less defined, and shot from some distance away. The shallow domes of the Shared Facility were obvious if not clear, down near one tipped edge of the little moonlet. A flash on the surface away to one side, and a semi-spherical cloud of debris, spreading. A glowing crater left where the flash had come from.

  - This looks like yesterday, Hatherence said.

  - Does, doesn't it? Fassin agreed. - Looks like it was taken from high up on Belt A or the south of Zone 2. Just some amateur pointing a camera. Fassin found how to spin the stored recording back and then forward, then discovered how to zoom in. - And that's us.

  They watched a cerise spot appear on a glittering blister near the edge of the Shared Facility, and could just make out the grainily defined debris of the hangar dome blowing outward in front of a sudden haze of quickly dissipating mist. A tiny dark grey dot rose from the shattered dome and crawled away: the drop ship, making its desperate dive for the planet.

  Fassin spun the recording forward. The moon's position altered quickly, flying away across the dark sky as Third Fury continued on its orbit and whoever was recording the images was whirled away in the opposite direction by the twenty-thou­sand-kilometre-wide jet stream beneath them. - Definitely Band A, Fassin said.

  A brilliant white flash washed out the whole screen. It faded, and a crater kilometres across was left. Debris spread every­where like a flower's seed-head, just ready to shed, caught in a sudden hurricane. The interior of the crater was white, yellow, orange, red. The debris continued to spread. It looked like most of it would stay in more or less the same orbit as Third Fury itself

  They both watched in silence. The moon had changed shape. It wobbled, seemed to partially collapse in on itself, slowly, plas­tically resuming a spherical form after losing so much of its earlier mass. Yellow cloud tops came up in a near-flat line to meet it and the small glowing globe spun under the horizon.

  Fassin let the recording play out and start to loop. He stopped it. The screen froze on the recording's first image of Third Fury, almost overhead, just after the first impact.

  - That did not look like a survivable event, the colonel sent.

  Her sent voice sounded quiet.

  - I think you're right.

  - I am very sorry. How many people would have been in the

  Shared Facility base?

  - A couple of hundred.

  - I saw no sign of your Master Technician's craft, or of the attacks on us once we quit the drop ship.

  Fassin compared the recording's time code with the gascraft's own event list. - Those happened after what we saw here, he told the colonel. - Over the horizon from where this recording was taken, anyway.

  - So much for back-up or reinforcements. The colonel turned

  towards him. - We still go on, though, yes?

  -Yes.

  - So, now what, Fassin Taak?

  - We need to talk to some people.

  'So you want to communicate with your own kind?' Y'sul asked. 'Via a relay at a remote site,' Fassin said.

  'Why haven't you done so already?'

  'I wanted to get your permission.'

  'You don't need my permission. You just find a remote dish and send away. I suspect any vicarious effect on my kudos level will be too small to measure.'

  They were in an antechamber of the city's Administrator. The antechamber was a sizeable room furnished with wall hangings made from ancient CloudHugger hides, all yellow-red and whorled. A few sported the holes where the creatures had been punctured. One curved section of wall was a giant window, looking out over the vast floating scape of wheels that was Hauskip. Evening was starting to descend and lights were coming on throughout the city. Y'sul floated over to the window and caused it to hinge down by the unsubtle tactic of bumping into it reasonably hard. He then floated out over the impromptu bow of balcony so produced, muttering something about liking the view and maybe moving his own house up here. A breeze blew in, ruffling the old CloudHugger hides as though their long-dead occupants were still somehow fleeing from their hunters.

  Colonel Hatherence leaned over towards Fassin. -
This kudos thing, then, she sent. - It is really how they calculate their worth?

  - I'm afraid so.

  - So it's the truth! I thought it was a joke.

  - Distinguishing between the two is not a Dweller strong point.

  Y'sul wandered back, failing to shut the window. His vanes made a quiet burring noise as he roted through the gas towards them. 'Give me the message,' he said. 'I'll forward it.'

  'Via an out-of-the-way transceiver?' Fassin asked.

  'Of course!'

  "Well, just send to Sept Bantrabal, letting them know I'm all right and asking whether they're okay at their end. I imagine they already know what happened to the Third Fury moon. You might ask them whether anything has been heard of Master Technician Apsile and the drop ship which escaped the moon's assault, and what happened to the ships supposed to be protecting Third Fury.'

  'Ahem,' the colonel said.

  They both looked at her. ‘Is this wise?' she asked.

  'You mean should I pretend to be dead?' Fassin said.

  'Yes.'

  'That did occur to me. But there are people I'd like to know I'm alive.' He thought of that glimpse of a flash which might have been something hitting 'glantine while Third Fury was being bombarded. 'And I'd like to know my friends and family are all right.'

  'Of course,' the colonel said. 'However, I wonder if it might be more sensible for me to communicate with my superiors first. We might ask Dweller Y'sul here to let me use this remote relay. Once a more secure link had been established, perhaps via one of the warships, which I assume are still somewhere around the planet, a message might be sent to your Sept to let them know you are well. None of which need take long.'

  While Hatherence had been speaking, Y'sul had floated right up to her, seemingly intent on peering through the front plate of her esuit, which was in fact completely opaque, and indeed armoured. Eventually he was within a centimetre of her, towering above the oerileithe. The colonel did not retreat. One of Y'sul's rim limbs tapped - more delicately this time - on the colonel's esuit casing.

  'Would you mind not doing that, sir?' she said frostily.

  'Why are you still inside that thing, little dweller?' Y'sul asked.

  'Because I am evolved for higher, colder levels with a different gas-mix and pressure gradient, Dweller Y'sul.'

  'I see.' Y'sul drew back. 'And you have a very strange accent and way with grammar. I swear this human speaks better than you do. What were you saying again?'

  'I was asking you kindly to refrain from making physical contact with my esuit.'

  'No, before that.' .

  'I was suggesting I make contact with my superiors.'

  'Military superiors?'

  'Yes.'

  Y'sul turned to Fassin. 'That sounds more interesting than your plan, Fassin.'

  'Y'sul, two hundred of my people died yesterday. If not more. I'd like—'

  'Yes yes yes, but—'

  'I might have to signal 'glantine direct, if no satellites are left,' Hatherence was saying, as a tall door swung up in one wall and a Dweller in ceremonial clothes poked its rim out.

  'I'll see you now,' said the City Administrator.

  The Administrator's office was huge, the size of a small stadium. It was ringed with holo-screen carrels. Fassin counted a hundred or so of the study stations, though only a few were occupied by Dwellers, mostly fairly young. There were no windows but the ceiling was diamond leaf, with most of the sections slid round to leave the place open to the rapidly darkening sky. Floatlamps bobbed, casting a soft yellow light over them as they followed the Administrator to her sunken audience area in the centre of the giant room.

  'You are pregnant!' Y'sul exclaimed. 'How delightful!'

  'So people keep telling me,' the Administrator said sourly. Dwellers were, for want of a better term, male for over ninety-nine per cent of their lives, only changing to the female form to become pregnant and give birth. Becoming female and giving birth was regarded as a social duty; the fact that the obligation was more honoured than not made it unique in Dweller mores. It contributed mightily to one's kudos tally and anyway had a sort of sentimental attraction for all but the most determinedly misanthropic members of the species (statistically, about forty-three per cent). Still, it was undeniably a burden, and very few Dwellers went through the experience without complaining mightily about it.

  'I myself have thought of becoming female, oh, several times!' Y'sul said.

  'Well, it's overrated,' the City Administrator told him. 'And particularly burdensome when one had an invitation to the forthcoming war that one is now apparently morally obliged to turn down. Please; take a dent.'

  They floated to a series of hollows in the audience area and rested gently within them.

  'Why, I too hope to be going to the war!' Y'sul said brightly. 'Well, somewhere very near it, at least. I have only just now returned from my tailor's after being measured for the most lately fashionable conflict attire.'

  'Oh, really?' the Administrator said. 'Who's your tailor? Mine just left for the war.'

  'Not Fuerliote?' Y'sul exclaimed.

  'The same!'

  'He was mine also!' 'Just the best.'

  'Absolutely.'

  'No, I had to go to Deystelmin.'

  'Is he any good?'

  'Weeeelll.' Y'sul waggled his whole double-discus. 'One lives in hope. Good mirror-side manner, as it were, but will it trans­late into a flattering cut? That's the question one has to ask oneself.'

  'I know,' agreed the Administrator. 'And off to become a junior officer on a Dreadnought!'

  'Not even that! A rating!'

  'No!'

  'Yes!'

  'Very lowly, for someone so distinguished!'

  'I know, but a smart move. Getting in as a rating before the recruitment window even properly opens makes sense. The smoking-uniform effect.'

  'Ah! Of course!'

  Fassin tried making a throat-clearing noise in the midst of all this, but to no effect.

  - The smoking-uniform effect? The colonel light-whispered to him.

  - Dead men's shoes, Fassin explained. - They only promote from within once hostilities have begun. If he's lucky this tailor's Dreadnought will suffer heavy damage and lose a few officers and he'll end up an officer after all. If he's really lucky he could rise to admiral.

  Hatherence thought about this. - Would a tailor, however distinguished, necessarily make a good admiral?

  - Probably no worse than the one he'd be replacing.

  The problem was that to the Dwellers all professions were in effect hobbies, all posts and positions sinecures. This tailor that Y'sul and the City Administrator were babbling on about would have had no real need to be a tailor, he was just some­body who'd found he possessed an aptitude for the pastime (or, more likely, for the gossiping and fussing generally associated with it). He would take on clients to increase his kudos, the level of which would increase proportionally the more powerful were the people he tailored for, so that somebody in a position of civil power would constitute a favoured client, even if that position of power had come about through a lottery, some arcanely complicated rota system or plain old coercive voting - jobs like that of City Administrator were subject to all those regimes and more, depending on the band or zone concerned, or just which city was involved. The City Administrator, in return, would be able to drop casually into just the right conver­sations the fact she had such a well-known, high-kudos tailor. Obviously Y'sul had had sufficient kudos of his own to be able to engage the services of this alpha-outfitter too. People further down the pecking order would have employed less well-connected tailors, or just got their clothes from Common, which was Dweller for, in this particular case, off-the-peg, and in general just meant mass-produced, kudos-free, available-as-a-matter-of-right-just-because-you're-a-Dweller . . . well, pretty much anything, up to and including spaceships.

  Though having seen round a few Dweller spaceships, Fassin thought the stack-'em-high-and-give-th
em-away-free approach had its limitations.

  'Indeed,' Y'sul was saying. 'My own bid for JO status has been languishing for centuries and wasn't even mentioned this time round. Entering as a rating seems demeaning, but it could pay off big if there are casualties.'

  'Of course, of course,' the Administrator said, then fastened her gaze on the colonel. 'What's this?'

  'An oerileithe, a little dweller,' Y'sul said, with what sounded like pride.

  'Gracious! Not a child?' 'Or food. I asked.'

  'Pleased to meet you,' the colonel said with as much dignity as she could muster. An oerileithe, it appeared, attracted even less respect amongst Dwellers than Fassin - and, he suspected, the colonel herself - had expected. The oerileithe had evolved relatively recently, quite independently of the vast, unutterably ancient mainstream of galactic Dwellerdom and as such were seen by their more venerable co-gas-giant-inhabitants as some­thing between an annoying collective loose end and a bunch of impudent, planet-usurping interlopers.

  'And this must be the Slow Seer.' The Administrator looked briefly at Fassin's gascraft before returning her gaze to Y'sul. 'Do we need to talk slowly for it?'

  'No, Administrator,' Fassin said before Y'sul could reply. ‘Iam running on your timescale at the moment.'

  'How fortunate!' She flicked to one side and stabbed at a screen remote, her frontal radius edge lit up by the holo's glow.

  'Hmm. I see. So all the mayhem of the last day or two is your fault, then?'

  'Has there been much mayhem, ma'am?'

  'Well, the partial destruction of a close-orbit moon would fit most people's definition of mayhem,' the Administrator said pleasantly. 'An attractive feature in the sky whenever one ventured towards the cloud tops. Been there millions of years, slagged within a few per cent of breaking up completely, a ring of debris scattered round its orbit, that orbit itself changed significantly, causing everything else up there to have to shuffle round to accommodate the alteration, a small bombardment of debris across three bands, some chunks narrowly missing several items of infrastructure with more than sentimental value and others setting off automatic planetary-defence laser batteries, a cascade of satellite destruction that has yet to be put entirely right. Oh, and an unauthorised fusion explosion. Middle of nowhere, granted, but still. None of this, happily, within my jurisdiction, but trouble does appear to be rather following you around, human Taak, and here you are in my city.' The Administrator rolled fractionally towards Fassin's gascraft. 'Thinking of staying long?'