The Algebraist

by Iain M. Banks

Hatherence asked the old Dweller his thoughts on whether his species had always been unable to experience pain, or had had this bred out of them.

  'Ah! If we only knew! I am fascinated that you ask the ques­tion, for it is one that I believe is of the utmost importance in the determining of what our species really means in the universe…'

  Fassin, resting lightly in a cushioned dent across the cere­monial table from the old wanderer, found his attention slip­ping. It seemed to do this a lot now. Perhaps a dozen Nasqueron days had elapsed since the news of the Winter House's destruc­tion. He had spent almost all that time in the various libraries, searching for anything that might lead to their goal, the (to him, at least) increasingly mythical-seeming third volume of the work that he had taken from here over two hundred years ago and which had, supposedly, led to so much that had happened since. He looked, he searched, he trawled and combed and scanned, but so often, even when it seemed to him that he was concentrating fully, he'd find that he'd spent the last few minutes just staring into space, seeing in his mind's eye some aspect of the Sept and family life that was now gone, recalling an inconsequential conversation from decades ago, some at-the-time so-what? exchange that he would not have believed he'd ever have remembered, let alone have found brought to mind now, when they were all gone and he was in such a far and different place.

  He felt the welling of tears in his eyes sometimes. The shock-gel drew them gently away.

  Sometimes he thought again of suicide, and found himself longing, as though for a lost love or a treasured, vanished age, for the will, the desire, the sheer determination to end things that would have made killing himself a realistic possibility. Instead, suicide seemed as pointless and futile as everything else in life. You needed desire, the desire for death, to kill yourself. When you seemed to have no desire, no emotions or drives of any sort left - just their shadows, habits - killing oneself became as impossible as falling in love.

  He looked up from the books and scrolls, the fiches and crys­tals, the etched diamond leaf and glowing screens and holos, and wondered what the point of anything was. He knew the standard answers, of course: people - all species, all species-types - wanted to live, wanted comfort, to be free from threat, needed energy in some form - whether it was as direct as absorbed sunlight or as at-a-remove as meat - desired to procreate, were curious, wanted enlightenment or fame andor success andor any of the many forms of prosperity, but - ulti­mately - to what end? People died. Even the immortal died. Gods died.

  Some had faith, religious belief, even in this prodigiously, rampantly physically self-sufficient age, even in the midst of this universal, abundant clarity of godlessness and godlack, but such people seemed, in his experience, no less prone to despair, and their faith a liability even in its renunciation, just one more thing to lose and mourn.

  People went on, they lived and struggled and insisted on living even in hopelessness and pain, desperate not to die, to cling to life regardless, as if it was the most precious thing, when all it had ever brought them, was bringing them and ever would bring them was more hopelessness, more pain.

  Everybody seemed to live as though things were always just about to get better, as though any bad times were just about to end, any time now, but they were usually wrong. Life ground on. Sometimes to the good, but often towards ill and always in the direction of death. Yet people acted as though death was just the biggest surprise - My, who put that there? Maybe that was the right way to treat it, of course. Maybe the sensible atti­tude was to act as though there had been nothing before one came to consciousness, and nothing would exist after one's death, as though the whole universe was built around one's own individual awareness. It was a working hypothesis, a useful half-truth.

  But did that mean that the urge to live was the result of some sort of illusion? Was the reality, in fact, that nothing mattered and people were fools to think that anything did? Were the choices either despair, the rejection of reason for some idiot faith, or a sort of defensive solipsism?

  Valseir might have had something useful to say on the matter, Fassin thought. But then, he was dead too.

  He looked at Oazil and wondered if this self-proclaimed wanderer really had known the dead Cuspian whose house this had been. Or was he just a chancer, a blow-hard, a fantasist and liar?

  Thinking like this, circling round his studied despair, Fassin only half-listened to the old Dweller with his theories about gas-giant fauna development and his tales of wandering.

  Oazil told how once he had circumnavigated the South Tropical Band without seeing another Dweller in all those hundred and forty thousand kilometres, how he had once fallen in with a gang of Adolescent Sculpture Pirates, semi-renegades who seeded public RootCloud and AmmoniaSluice forests, him becoming their figurehead, mascot, totem, and how, many millennia ago in the little-travelled wastes of the Southern Polar Region, he had wandered into a vast warren of empty CloudTunnel. (The work of a troop of rogue Tunnel-building machines since disappeared? An artwork? The lost prototype for a new kind of city? He didn't know - nobody had ever heard of this place, this thing.) He was lost inside this vast tree, this giant lung, this colossal root system of a labyrinth for a thousand years, exiting eleven-twelfths starved and nearly mad. He had reported the find and people had looked for it but it had never been found again. Most people thought he'd imag­ined it all, but he had not. They believed him, did they not?

  The tapping noise was there again. He had been vaguely aware of it but had ignored it, not even getting as far as dismissing it as some function of the house's plumbing or differential expan­sion or reaction to some brief current in the surrounding gas. It had stopped after a while - he had half-noticed that, too, though still thought no more about it. Now it was there again, and slightly louder.

  Fassin was in Library Three, one of the inner libraries, speed-reading through the contents of a sub-library that Valseir appeared to have picked up as part of a job lot untold ages ago. From the earliest date that anybody had bothered to note, this stuff had been lying around uncalled-up and unread for thirty millennia, dating from an era several different species of Slow Seers ago, long before humans had come to Ulubis. Fassin suspected this was traded material, data - second-hand, third-hand, who knew how many-hand - dredged from who knew where, possibly auto-translated (it certainly read like it when­ever he dipped into the text itself, to make sure that the contents were what the abstracts claimed), bundled and presented and handed over to the Dwellers of Nasqueron by some long-super­seded (possibly even long-extinct) species of Seer in return for - presumably - still older information. He wondered at what point most of the data the Dwellers held would become traded data, and if that point had already been reached. He was not the first Seer to think of this and, thanks to the absolute opaque­ness of the Dwellers' records, he would certainly not be the last.

  The volumes he was checking were mostly composed of stories concerning the romantic adventures and philosophical musings of some group of Stellar Field Liners, though they were either much-translated or the work of not just another species but another species-type altogether. They seemed fanciful, anyway.

  The tapping wasn't going to go away.

  He looked up from the screen to the round skylight set in the ceiling. Library Three, though now surrounded and surmounted by other spheres, had once been on the upper outskirts of the house and had a generous expanse of diamond leaf at its crown, though nowadays - even had the house been situated in less gloomy regions - it would let in little natural light.

  There was something small and pale out there. When Fassin looked up the tapping stopped and the thing waved. It looked like a Dweller infant, a pet-child. Fassin watched it waving for a while, then went back to the screen and the not especially feasible exploits of the S'Liners. The tapping started again. He felt himself attempt to sigh inside his little gascraft. He stopped the screen scroll and lifted out of the dent-seat, rising to the centre of the ceiling.

  It was indeed a Dwelle
r child: a rather elongated, deformed-looking one, to human eyes more like a squid than a manta ray. It was dressed in rags and decorated with a few pathetic-looking life charms. Fassin had never seen an infant wearing clothes or decorations. It was oddly, maturely dark for one so young. It pointed in at what looked like some sort of catch or lock on the side of one of the skylight's hexagonal panes.

  Fassin looked at the curious infant for a while. It kept pointing at the catch. There had been no sign of pet-children round the house in all the time they'd been here. This one looked entirely like it might belong to Oazil, but he had not displayed any earlier, and hadn't mentioned owning one. The child was still indicating the pane's lock. It started to mime pressing and twisting and pulling motions.

  Fassin opened the pane and let the creature in. It flipped inside, made a sign that was probably meant to be the Dweller equivalent of 'Shh!' and floated towards him, curling and cupping its body so that it formed a sickle shape, just a metre away from the prow of the arrowhead craft. Then, on its signal skin, now shielded from sight in all directions save that Fassin was watching from, it spelled out,

  OAZIL: MEET ME 2KM STRAIGHT DOWN, HOUR 5. RE. VALSEIR.

  It waited till he light-signalled back OK, then it sped out the way it had come, one slim tentacle staying behind after the rest of it had exited just long enough to pull the ceiling pane shut after it. It disappeared into the night-time gloom between the dark library globes outside.

  Fassin looked at the time. Just before hour Four. He went back to his studies, finding nothing, thinking about nothing, until just before five, when he went back to Library Twenty-One and slipped out through the secret doorway again. He dropped the two thousand metres down through the slowly increasing heat and pressure and met the old Dweller Oazil, complete with his float-trailer. Oazil signalled,

  - Fassin Taak?

  -Yes.

  - What did Valseir once compare the Quick to? In some detail, if you please.

  - Why?

  The old Dweller sent nothing for some time, then, - You might guess, little one. Or do this just because I ask. To humour an old Dweller.

  Fassin waited a while before answering. - Clouds, he sent, eventually. - Clouds above one of our worlds. We come and we go and we are as nothing compared to the landscape beneath, just vapour compared to implacable rock, which lasts seemingly beyond lasting and is always there long after the clouds of the day or the clouds of the season have long gone, and yet other clouds will always be there, the next day and the next and the next, and the next season and the next year and for as long as the mountains themselves last, and the wind and the rain wear away mountains in time.

  - Hmm, Oazil sent, sounding distracted. - Mountains.

  Curious idea. I have never seen a mountain.

  - Nor ever will, I imagine. Do you want me to add any more?

  I don't think I recall much else.

  - No, that will not be necessary.

  - Then?

  - Valseir is alive, the old Dweller said. - He sends his regards.

  - Alive?

  - There is a GasClipper regatta at the C-2 Storm Ultra-Violet 3667, beginning in seventeen days' time.

  - That's in the war zone, isn't it?

  - The tournament was arranged long before the hostilities were first mooted and so has been cleared with the Formal War Marshals. A special dispensation. Be there, Fassin Taak. He will find you.

  The old Dweller roted forward a metre, taking up the slack on the float-trailer's traces. - Farewell, Seer Taak, he signalled. - Remember me to our mutual friend, if you'd be so kind.

  He turned and floated away into the deep hot darkness. In a few moments he was lost to most passive senses. Fassin waited until there was no sign of him at all, then rose slowly back up to the house.

  'Ah, Fassin, I understand commiserations are in order,' Y'sul said, floating up to the bubble house's reception balcony from the Poaflias. Nuern, Fassin and Hatherence had watched the ship motor out of the dim haze, hearing its engines long before they'd seen it.

  'Your sympathy is noted,' Fassin told Y'sul. He'd got Hatherence to call the Poaflias the day before and order it back from its hunting patrol. The little ship returned with a modest number of trophies strung from its rigging: various julmicker bladders, bobbing like grisly balloons on sticks, three gas-drying RootHugger hides, the heads of a brace of gracile Tumblerines and - patently the most prized, mounted above the craft's nose - a Dweller Child carcass, already gutted and stretched wide on a frame so that it looked like some slightly grotesque figure­head, flying just ahead of the ship. Fassin had sensed the colonel's esuit rolling fractionally back when she'd realised what the new addition to the Poaflias's nose actually was.

  'What is your state of mind, Fassin, now that you have lost so many of your family?' Y'sul asked, coming to a stop in front of the Seer. 'Are you decided to return to your own people?'

  'My state of mind is ... calm. I may still be in shock, I suppose.'

  'Shock?'

  'Look it up. I have not decided to return to my own people yet. There are almost none to return to. We are, however, finished here. I wish to return to Munueyn.'

  He'd told the colonel that morning that he'd discovered something and they needed to leave.

  'What have you discovered, major? May I see it?' 'I'll tell you later.'

  'I see. So where next are we bound?' 'Back to Munueyn,' he'd lied.

  'Munueyn? Our captain will be pleased,' Y'sul said.

  They left that evening. Nuern and Livilido seemed relaxed, positively cheered, that they were departing. Y'sul had returned with news of the war, in which two important Dreadnought actions had already taken place, resulting, in one engagement alone, in the loss of five Dreadnoughts and nearly a hundred deaths. The Zone forces were retreating in two volumes at least and the Belt certainly had the upper grasp at the moment.

  Fassin and Hatherence recorded short messages of gratitude for Jundriance to read at his leisure.

  Nuern asked them if they wanted to take any of the books or other works from the house.

  'No, thank you,' Fassin said.

  'I found this humorous thesaurus,' the colonel said, holding up a small diamond-leaf book. 'I'd like this.'

  'Be our guest,' Nuern told her. 'Anything else? Diamond-based works like that will burn up in a few decades when the house has dropped further into the heat. Take all you want.'

  'Over-kind. This alone is most sufficient.'

  'The GasClipper regatta?' Captain Slyne said. He scratched his mantle. 'I thought you wanted to go back to Munueyn?'

  'There was no reason to let our hosts know where we were really heading,' Fassin told Slyne.

  'You are suspicious of them?' Y'sul asked.

  'Just no reason to trust them,' Fassin said.

  'The regatta takes place around the Storm Ultra-Violet 3667, between Zone C and Belt 2,' the colonel said. 'Starting in sixteen days. Have we time to get there, captain?'

  They were in Slyne's cabin, a fairly grand affair of flickering wall-screens and antique furniture, the ceiling hung with ancient ordnance: guns, blaster tubes and crossbows all swaying gently as the Poaflias powered away at half-throttle from Valseir's old house. So far Fassin had told Hatherence where they were really going, though not why.

  Slyne let himself tilt, looking as though he was about to fall over. He did some more mantle scratching. ‘Ithink so. I'd better change course, then.'

  'Leave the course change for a little longer, would you?' Fassin asked. They were only a half-hour away from the bubble house. 'Though you might go to full speed.'

  'Have to anyway, if we're to get to that Storm in time,' Slyne said, turning and manipulating a holo cube floating over his halo-shaped desk. The largest screen, just in front of him, lit up with a chart of the volume and quickly became covered in gently curved lines and scrolling figure boxes. Slyne peered at this display for a few moments, then announced: 'Full speed, we can be there in eighteen days. Best I can do.' S
lyne gripped a large, polished-looking handle sitting prominently on his desk and pushed it, with a degree of obvious relish, if also a little embar­rassment, to its limit. The tone of the ship's engines altered and the vessel began to accelerate gradually.

  'We might contact Munueyn and hire a faster ship,' Y'sul suggested. 'Have it rendezvous with the Poaflias en route and transfer to it.'

  Slyne rocked back, staring at the older Dweller with patterns of betrayal and horror (non-mild) spreading across his signal skin.

  'Eighteen days will have to do, captain,' Fassin told Slyne. 'I don't think we need be there for the very start of the tourna­ment.'

  'How long do these competitions last, in generality?' Hatherence asked.

  Slyne tore his gaze from an unconcerned-looking Y'sul and said, 'Ten or twelve days, usually. They might cut this one a little short because of the War. We'll be there in time for most of it.'

  'Good,' Fassin said. 'Stay on your current course for another half-hour, if you please, captain. Turn for the Storm then.' Slyne looked happier. 'Consider it done.'

  Slyne took advantage of a WindRiver, a brief-lived ribbon of still faster current within the vast, wide jet stream of the whole rotating Zone, and they made good time. They were challenged twice by war craft but allowed to continue on their way, and slipped through a mine net, a wall of dark lace thrown across the sky, dotted with warheads. Dreadnought-catcher, nothing to worry them, Slyne assured them. They had, oh, tens of metres to spare on almost every side.

  The screwburster Poaflias got to very near the bottom of the

  Storm called Ultra-Violet 3667 within sixteen days, arriving more or less as the regatta began.

  'Keep clipped on! Could get a bit rough!' Y'sul yelled, then repeated the warning as a signal, in case they hadn't heard.

  Fassin and Hatherence had come up on deck when the Poaflias had started bucking and heaving even more than usual. The gas around them, darker even than it had been at Valseir's house, though less dense and hot, was fairly shrieking through the ship's vestigial rigging. Ribbons and streaks, just seen coiling briefly round the whole vessel, were then torn away again as the ship plunged into another great boiling mass of cloud.