The Algebraist

by Iain M. Banks

  The human and the oerileithe, still within the relative calmness of the companionway shelter, exchanged glances, then quickly put the crude-looking harnesses on. The colonel's fitted well over her esuit. Fassin's-tied tight enough but looked messy, not designed for his alien shape. Slyne had insisted that everybody should wear the things whenever they went on deck while the Poaflias was at full speed, even though both Hatherence and Fassin - in the unlikely event that they were somehow blown off the deck - could easily have caught up with the ship under their own power.

  'What's going on?' Hatherence shouted as they neared Y'sul, clinging to the rails near the bow harpoon gun. 'Going to shoot the storm!' Y'sul bellowed back. 'That sounds dangerous!' Hatherence yelled. 'Oh, assuredly!'

  'So, what does it entail, exactly?'

  'Punching through the storm wall,' Y'sul shouted. 'Tackling the rim winds. Should be spectacular!' Ahead, a great dark wall of tearing, whirling cloud could be glimpsed beyond the tatters and scraps of gas that the ship was stabbing its way through. Jagged lines of lightning pulsed across this vast cliff like veins of quicksilver.

  They were still making maximum speed towards the wall, which seemed to stretch as far to each side as they could see, and up for ever. Downwards was a more swirling mass of even darker gas, boiling like something cooking in a cauldron. The wind picked up, thrumming the rails and rigging and aerials like an enormous instrument. The Poaflias shuddered and buzzed. 'Time to get below, suspect,' Hatherence shouted. A julmicker bladder blew off a nearby railing - it looked like it had been the last one left - smacked Y'sul across his starboard side and was instantly lost to the shrieking gale. 'Could be,' Y'sul agreed. 'After you.'

  They watched from the ship's armoured storm deck, crowded in with Slyne beneath a blister of thick diamond set at midships, looking out across the deck and watching the Poaflias's nose plunge into the storm like a torpedo thrown at a horizontal waterfall of ink. The ship groaned, started to spin, and they were all thrown against each other. They disappeared into the wall of darkness. The Poaflias shook and leapt like a Dweller child on the end of a harpoon line.

  Slyne whooped, pulling on levers and whirling wheels. Stuck in the far reaches of the ovaloid space, Slyne's pet-children whimpered.

  'This entirely necessary?' Fassin asked Y'sul. 'Doubt it!' the Dweller said. A big flat board covered in studs above Slyne started to light up. In the darkness, it was quite bright..

  Hatherence pointed at it as dozens more of the studs lit. 'What's that?'

  'Damage-control indicators!' Slyne said, still working levers and spinning wheels. They all rose to the ceiling as the ship dropped sharply, then crashed back down again.

  'Thought it might be,' Hatherence said. She was thrown hard against Fassin in a violent turn, and apologised.

  When the glare started to get too distracting, Slyne turned the damage-control board off.

  In the worst of the turbulence, one of Slyne's pet-children threw itself at its master and had to be torn off and smacked unconscious before being thrown into a locker. It was unclear whether it had been desperately seeking comfort or attacking. Y'sul was sick. Fassin had never seen a Dweller be sick. Stuck to the ceiling again, coated in a greasy film of vomit, Slyne cursing as he tried to keep hold of the controls, his pet-children keening from all sides, somebody mumbled, 'Fuck, we're going to die.' They all denied responsibility afterwards. The Poaflias burst out of the torrent of storm cloud into a vast and hazy calm and started to drop like a lump of iron. Slyne drew in gas to whoop but caught some of Y'sul's earlier output and just spluttered. Coughing and retching and cursing Y'sul's lineage to some point only shortly after the Big Bang, he got the ship level and under control, contacted Regatta Control and limped - the ship had lost all its rigging, railings and four of its six engines - to the Lower Marina and a berth in a Storm Repair Facility.

  Looking up, into the colossal bowl of the circling storm and on into the haze and the star-specked sky beyond, tiny shapes could be seen, slow-circling against the brassy glare of light.

  - The pick-up fleet and relaying craft are all in orbit, Hatherence told him.

  They were in a steep-pitched, multi-tiered viewing gallery packed with Dwellers. Protected by carbon ribs ready to be explo­sively deployed should a competition craft come too close - and attached to the Dzunda, a klick-long Blimper riding just inside the storm-wall boundary - the gallery was a relatively safe place to watch GasClipper races. Giant banner screens could scroll up on either side of the fan of dent-seats to provide highlights of other races and relay events too distant to witness directly.

  - The pick-up fleet? Fassin asked.

  - That is as it was described to me, Hatherence said, settling into her seat alongside his. Dwellers around them were staring at them, seemingly fascinated by their alienness. Y'sul had gone off to meet an old friend. While he was with them, Dwellers only glanced at Fassin and Hatherence now and again. With him gone, they stared shamelessly. They had both got used to it, and Fassin was confident that, if Valseir was here and looking for him, he wouldn't have too difficult a job finding him.

  - How big a fleet? Fassin asked.

  - Not sure.

  There were hundreds of accommodation and spectator Blimpers within the storm's vast eye, scores of competing GasClippers and support vessels, plus dozens of media and ancillary craft, not to mention a ceremonial - and War-neutral

  —Dreadnought, the Puisiel. This was decked out with multi­-tudinous bunting, lines of ancient signal flags and festoons of

  Dweller-size BalloonFlowers, just so that there'd be no possi-bility of anyone mistaking it for a Dreadnought taking part in the greater and fractionally more serious competition taking

  place beyond the Storm.

  The side screens lit up and they watched some early action from a race which had taken place the day before. Around them, a thousand Dwellers hooted and roared and laughed, threw food, made spoken kudos bets that they would later deny or inflate accordingly, and traded insults.

  - Any other news from outside? Fassin asked.

  - Our orders remain as they were. There have been more semi-random attacks throughout the system. Nothing on the same scale as the assaults on the Seer assets earlier. The defen-sive preparations continue apace. Manufacturers continue to make heroic efforts. The people continue to make great but willing sacrifice. Morale remains most high. Though, unoffi­cially, people would seem to be growing more frightened. Some rioting. Deep-space monitors have picked up still ambiguous traces of a great fleet approaching from the direction of the E-5 Disconnect.

  - How great?

  - Great enough to be bad.

  - Much rioting?

  - Not much rioting.

  The Blimper powered up, distantly revving its engines. A ragged cheer resounded around them as the Dwellers realised things were about to start happening.

  - Well, major, the colonel sent, signal strength low in the clat-tering hubbub of noise. - We are finally off the ship Poaflias, we are alone, I think it unlikely we can be overheard, and I have built up an extravagant desire to know quite why we are here. Unless you have, in the course, perhaps, of your studies, discov-ered that you are an insatiable fan of GasClippering.

  - According to Oazil, Valseir is alive.

  The colonel was silent for a while. Then she sent, - You tell me so, do you?

  - Of course, Oazil may be mad or deluded or a fantasist or just a mischief-maker, but from what he said he knew Valseir, or had at least been instructed by Valseir on what to ask me to make sure I really was who I claimed to be.

  - I see. So, his turning up at the house was not chance?

  - I suspect he'd been keeping a watch on it. Or somebody

  had, waiting for us - for me - to turn up.

  - And he told you to come here?

  - He did.

  - And then?

  - Valseir will find me.

  Another cheer went up as the Dzunda began to pick up speed, becoming part of a s
mall fleet of similar spectator craft flocking through the gas towards the starting grid of GasClippers arranged a couple of kilometres ahead. This would be a short race, only lasting an hour or so, with turns around buoys set in the Storm Wall. The races would grow longer and more gruelling as the meet progressed, culminating in a last epic struggle all the way round the vast storm's inner surface.

  - So Valseir knew you were or might be looking for him,

  and had put in place arrangements to ... Hmm. That is inter­-esting. Any contact so far?

  - Not yet. But now you know why we're here.

  - You will keep me informed?

  - Yes. Though you will understand if I have to go off by myself at some point, I hope. Your presence might make Valseir, or whoever, nervous.

  The Blimper picked up more speed, still heading towards the storm-inward side of the starting grid. The slipstream started to blow away balloons and trays not secured.

  - Nervous? You think this is all that . . . serious?

  - What do you think?

  - I think Oazil is probably one or several of the things you thought he might be. However, we are here now and if he was telling the truth no doubt you will be contacted. Of course, the other possibility is that we might have been getting close to something of interest back at Valseir's house and this was simply a method of getting us out of the way. What exactly did Oazil say to you?

  Fassin had kept a record of the conversation he'd had with the wandering Dweller, deep beneath the house. He signalled it across to Hatherence.

  The fleet of spectator craft passed by the starting grid like an unruly flock of fat birds. Another great cheer sounded. The GasClippers stayed on the starting plane, awaiting their own signal.

  - Still, little enough to go on, major, Hatherence told him. - You should have shared this with me earlier and let me decide on the correct course of action. I may have been overly indul-gent with you. Your loss is still something I appreciate, of course. However, I fear I might have been guilty of dereliction.

  - I won't report you if you don't, Fassin sent, without humour.

  The GasClippers - the larger, plural-crewed versions of the single-Dweller StormJammers - were sharp, angular-looking things, all jag-sails, keel-lode and high-gallants. Fifty metres long - fifty metres in most directions - bristling with glittering sails like enormous blades, they looked like the result of some monstrous permanent magnet being thrown into a hopper full of exotic edged weapons. Pennant sails carried identifying marks, little flowers of colour within the silvery blades, all bright beneath the glittering point of light that was Ulubis.

  It was not possible to sail in a single medium. True sailing required a keel (or something like one) in one medium, and sails (or something like them) in another. In a single great stream of gas, you could not sail: you flew. On the edges of two streams, the boundary between a zone moving in one direction and a belt moving in the other, you could, in theory, sail, if you could build a ship big enough. The Dwellers had tried to build ships on that scale that would stay together. They had failed.

  Instead, StormJammers and GasClippers exploited the titanic magnetic fields that most gas-giant planets possessed. Flux lines were their water, the place where their steadying keels lay. With a colossal magnetic field trying to move them along one course and the planet-girdling atmospheric bands of a Dweller-inhab­ited gas-giant expecting them to move along with everything else in a quite different direction, the possibility of sailing arose. And by sailing with sails dipped into the inside edges of giant storm systems, the sport could be made satisfactorily dangerous.

  - We must hope that this was not a ruse to get us away from the house, the colonel told Fassin. - And we must hope that Valseir will indeed contact you. If he is alive. We were given no hint that such might be the case. She looked at him. - Were we?

  - None.

  Almost the entire fleet of spectator craft had passed the starting grid. The GasClippers shook as one, then - bewilder­ingly quickly, when one knew they had no proper engines -they swung away towards the massive wall of dark, tearing cloud that was the inner limit of the great storm, peeling and jostling, weaving and carving through the gas as they fought for posi­tion, using the light breezes and simple gaseous inertia of the medium to allow them to steer while they rode their lines of force towards the storm wall.

  - They never did find a body, though. This is right? Hatherence asked.

  - That's right, Fassin told her. - Lost in a squall that could tear apart a StormJammer he wouldn't have had much of a chance, but he might have lived.

  - Yet there is no ... water or the like? They cannot drown, and it is not too cold or hot. How do they die, just in a strong wind?

  - Ripped apart, spun until they lose consciousness and then just whirled round too fast to hold together. Or left in a coma that means they do drop into the Depths. And they do need to breathe. If the pressure is too low, they can't.

  - Hmm.

  The GasClippers swung at the storm's inner surface, half disappearing as their extending blade-sails cut into the stream of gas. They accelerated hard. Even with their head start and their bellowing engines labouring, even taking a shorter, inner-curve route, the spectator craft began to lose ground to the small fleet of speeding GasClippers.

  - It is possible that Valseir somehow arranged the accident? the Colonel asked.

  - Possible. He might have arranged to have some friend, some accomplice nearby, to rescue him. It would make surviving likely rather than not.

  - Do Dwellers often fake their own deaths?

  - Almost never.

  - So I thought.

  The group of GasClippers was level with the centre of the greater fleet of spectator ships and the shouting and hollering in the spectator craft rose still further in pitch and volume as the whole mass of GasClippers and their accompanying squadrons of Blimpers and ancillary vessels seemed to move briefly as one, the dark storm wall a vertical sea, troubled and tattered, tearing past in front of them. A vast slanting band of shade rose up to meet them all as they moved into the shadow of the storm, the hazy point of Ulubis eclipsed by a roaring circlet of dementedly gyrating gas a hundred klicks high and ten thousand kilometres across.

  'Fassin. Made any bets yet?' Y'sul said, settling into his dent-seat alongside. A pet-child in a waiter's uniform floated with a tray at his side, held back until the older Dweller settled into his seat, then left the tray with its drug paraphernalia clipped to the seat and retreated.

  'No. I'd be relying on your kudos, wouldn't I?'

  'Oh! I suppose you would,' Y'sul agreed, apparently only now thinking this through. 'Obviously I must trust you subcon­sciously. Most odd.' He flipped to one side and started rummaging through the various drug works he'd brought back.

  'How was your friend?' Hatherence asked him.

  'Oh, in very good spirits,' Y'sul said, not looking at her. 'Father died yesterday in action. Stands to inherit kudos points for bravery or something.' He kept on rummaging. 'Sworn I got some FeverBrain . . .'

  'Good to know he's taking it so well,' Fassin said.

  'Ah! Here we are,' Y'sul said, holding up a large bright orange capsule to take a good look at it. 'Oh yes, Fassin: bumped into some youngster who claimed to know you. Gave me this.' Y'sul dug into a pocket in his forebritch and came out with a tiny image-leaf, passing it to Fassin.

  The human held it in one of the gascraft's fine-scale manip­ulators and looked at the photograph. It was of white clouds in a blue sky.

  'Yes, colour's all wrong, obviously,' Y'sul commented. 'Couldn't help noticing.'

  Fassin was aware of the colonel looking at the image too. She sat back, silent.

  'Did this person who claimed to know me actually say anything?' Fassin asked.

  'Eh?' Y'sul said, still studying the finger-sized orange lozenge. 'Oh, yes. Said to take good care of that thing, and that they'll be in the stern viewing-gallery restaurant if you wanted to see them. Alone, they said. Bit rude, I thought.
Very young, though. Almost expect that.'

  'Well, thanks,' Fassin said.

  'Nothing,' Y'sul said with a wave. He popped the giant pill.

  - With your permission, colonel, Fassin sent to Hatherence.

  - Granted. Take care.

  'Excuse me,' Fassin said as he rose from his dent-seat. Y'sul didn't hear; two of the leading GasClippers were having a private duel, swerving dangerously close, weaving in and out of each other's course, trying to tangle field lines, steal wind and so eddy-wake the other into dropping behind or crashing out, and Y'sul was floating high up out of his seat, shouting and whooping with all the other spectators not yet in their own little narcotic world.

  The Dweller - a youth by his simple clothing and certainly looking at least that young — intercepted Fassin on the broad central corridor of the Dzunda, falling into pace with him as he made his way towards the rear of the ship. Fassin turned fractionally towards his sudden companion, kept on going.

  'Seer Taak?' the youth said.

  'Yes.'

  'Would you come with me, please?'

  Fassin followed the young Dweller not to the stern viewing restaurant but to a private box slung low beneath the Blimper. The captain of the Dzunda was there, talking to an old Dweller who looked to be at least early Sage in years. The captain turned when Fassin and the youth entered, then - with a small bow to Fassin - left with the youth, leaving Fassin alone in the round, diamond-bubble space with the aged Dweller. A few screens showed silent views of the race. A float tray to one side carried a large narcincenser, grey-blue smoke uncoiling from it, filling the cabin with haze and scent.

  'Is it you, old one?'

  'I am still me, young Taak,' the familiar voice said.

  The Dweller floated up to him. If it was Valseir, he was no more shrunken but rather more dark than the last time Fassin had seen him. He had lost all the life charms and decorations and was dressed now in severely formal, almost monastic yellow part-robes.

  'You have the token I sent?'