The Algebraist

by Iain M. Banks

  Y'sul looked at Fassin and quietly rippled his mantle, the Dweller equivalent of a head-shake.

  The travelcaptain was silent for a moment or two, then said,

  'If we do take you with us ...'

  'Ah! But I have my own ship! Indeed, you are in it!'

  'Won't work.'

  'Have to come with us in ours.'

  'I have smaller ships! Many of them! A choice!'

  'Makes no difference. Has to be ours.'

  'Conditions of Passage.'

  'Well . . .' the Sceuri said.

  'Passengers travel unconditionally.'

  'Unconditionally.'

  'What does that mean?'

  'Trust us.'

  'Yes. No matter what.'

  'Means you get zapped unconscious every time we travel, is what it means,' Y'sul told their host. Quercer & Janath made a hissing noise. 'Plus,' Y'sul added, oblivious, 'you may not end up where you thought you were going to.'

  'How primitive! Why, of course!'

  *

  Eleven hundred ships. They were facing eleven hundred ships. All of them had to be beyond a certain size, capable of crossing the great gulf of space between the E-5 Discon and here in reasonable time, and they would probably all be armed. Ulubis could muster less than three hundred true space-capable war-craft, even after their frenzy of building. The Summed Fleet on its way to their rescue was of similar size, but its ships would be of another order of magnitude in hitting power: a full mix of destroyers, light, medium and heavy cruisers, plus the real big guys, the battlecruisers and battleships.

  Ulubis had frigates, destroyers and light cruisers, and one old battlecruiser, the Carronade. They'd built a significant fleet in the centuries following the destruction of the portal, and a few more ships in the half year since the news of the coming invasion, but nothing like enough to offer the invaders serious opposition.

  They'd lost about a sixth of their total fighting force in the few minutes of action in the storm on Nasqueron, months earlier, including their only other battlecruiser. Those had mostly been light units, but it had been a grievous loss.

  The latest bit of bad news was that the consortium working on the rail gun had fallen so far behind schedule that it was highly doubtful they'd even get to the trials stage before the invasion took place. The giant gun was being dismantled so it wouldn't fall into the hands of the Starveling Cultists. There was something almost sublimely elegant, Sal thought, about how perfect a waste of time, people, resources and hard work the whole project had been.

  Kehar Heavy Industries and the other manufacturers had worked as hard as they could to construct, repair, upgrade and modify as many warships as they could, and had militarised dozens of civilian craft. But there was only so much they could do and it was never going to be enough. They were outnum­bered. They could go down fighting, but they were going down.

  'It couldn't be any worse!' Guard-General Thovin spluttered, practically spraying his drink. They were on a requisitioned ex-cruise liner, one of the Embassy support ships, rolling in orbit around Nasqueron. Saluus and the Propylaea sub-master Sorofieve had been sent by the rest of the War Cabinet to add, if it were possible, an extra note of urgency to the talks with the Dwellers. Thovin, seconded from his Guard duties to be Commander-in-Chief, Ulubis Orbital Forces, was there in charge of the very lightly armed escort detachment because he was out of the way and couldn't do too much harm. The grandeur of his new title seemed to almost entirely make up for the lack of viable military hardware at his disposal.

  'We can't even surrender to the Starvelings because if we do the Summed Fleet will clobber us when they arrive,' he said. 'We're going to get fucked-over twice!' He threw back his drink.

  Saluus didn't like Thovin - he was one of those people who got to the top of an organisation through luck, connections, the indulgence of superiors and that sort of carelessness towards others that the easily impressed termed ruthlessness and those of a less gullible nature called sociopathy. But sometimes, just through his sheer unthinking brusqueness and inability to think through the consequences of a remark, he said what everybody else was only thinking. A comic poet working in obscene doggerel.

  'There is no need to talk of surrender,' sub-master Sorofieve said quickly, and, to Sal's amusement, actually looked round, glancing left and right to make sure nobody else had heard the 'S' word in the old cruise ship's lounge, which was deserted apart from a few bar staff, the three men and a half-dozen or so of their closest staff. (Liss was there, looking darkly beau­tiful, mostly silent, occasionally talking quietly with one or other of the other assistants, secretaries and ADCs. When the Propylaea sub-master did his glancing-around act, her gaze met Sal's; she smiled and flexed her eyebrows.)

  If there were any spies here, Sal thought, they weren't lurking behind the furniture in the shadows, they were sitting right here, around them. The indispensable aides and helpers they all relied on to run their so-important lives were the obvious candidates for the post of spy. If anything ever got back to the Hierchon - or any other more lowly but still important branch of the Ulubine Mercatoria - regarding talk of surrender or anything else deemed Unspeakable it would probably be one of these people they'd have to thank.

  Saluus knew one could never be one hundred per cent certain, but he was pretty sure that the lovely Liss wasn't working for anybody else. He'd seemingly let slip a couple of things early on in their relationship which he'd have expected to come back to him if she'd been in the pay of somebody else. It had been a sort of recommendation that she'd come via Fassin and he'd obviously known her from decades earlier. That was far too long a game just to get to an industrialist, even Saluus Kehar.

  'No need?' Thovin said, turning to his secretary, holding up his glass and winking theatrically. 'It's what we'd be talking about if the Summed Fleet wasn't on its way. Be the rational thing to do.' He snorted. 'I'm not saying we should surrender. Been ordered not to, been ordered to fight to the last, but if the Fleet wasn't coming and we weren't looking for this . . . this thing, supposedly somewhere on Nasq.' (The fabled Transform, of course, Saluus thought. The mythical magic bullet which Fassin, if he was still alive, might be chasing yet.) 'What else would we be doing but thinking how to not all get ourselves killed?'

  'We are prepared, we are forewarned,' sub-master Sorofieve said, smiling desperately. 'We shall give a good account of ourselves, I am sure. We are fighting for our homes, for our honour, for -' the man looked round again '- for our very humanity!' Ah, Sal realised, Sorofieve had been checking there were no aliens present whom he might be offending. 'We have millennia of Mercatorial, ah, wisdom and martial ability behind us. What are these Starveling renegades in comparison?'

  Eleven hundred ships, that's what they were, Saluus thought. Eleven hundred to our three hundred, and a balance of forces the strategists say is way up the force-yield spectrum compared to ours, too: medium-heavy to our light. Plus one mega-ship, to our one antique battlecruiser.

  They had had another meeting with some of the Dweller representatives just that afternoon. They went down these days in person, reclined in human-form spacesuits held in small circular gascraft of two or three seats, congregating in a great hall in one of a whole fleet of giant Dreadnought-sized craft the Dwellers had dedicated to the purpose. With the gascraft canopies hinged open it was possible to sitlie there in some comfort and talk directly to the Dwellers, face-to-hub or what­ever it was.

  Saluus wouldn't want to spend more than a day like that in multiple gees, but it was worth doing. The Dwellers seemed to appreciate it and - thanks to some cram-coaching by the senior Seers who also came down with them to the meetings and stayed with them for all but the most delicate and high-security-clear­ance matters - Saluus was even starting to get the hang of Dweller expressions and nuances of meaning and demeanour, both as put across in speech and as displayed on their signal skin. Probably all too late, and - so far - to no avail whatso­ever. But at least it felt like he was doing something - the
ship­yards of KHI were basically on autopilot, working flat out and so synched-in to what the military wanted that they'd effec­tively become part of a command economy. He'd just been getting in the way.

  'This is a threat to the whole of Ulubis system,' Sorofieve said. Sal suppressed a sigh. This was only Sorofieve's third day in this latest round - he'd replaced First Secretary Heuypzlagger, who'd found the high gravity too wearing - and he was talking to a Dweller called Yawiyuen who was also new to the process, but even so. They'd been circling over this same ground for weeks now.

  'These Starveling Cult people will show no respect for Nasqueron's neutrality,' the sub-master concluded.

  'How do you know?' Gruonoshe, another of the Dwellers, asked. They were nine in all: the two human negotiators and a couple of assistants each - Liss was there in a seat behind Sal, having declared herself quite happy in the high gravity - Chief Seer Meretiy of Sept Krine, and just the two Dwellers, both in ceremonial half-clothes, ribboned and jewelled.

  'Know what?' Sorofieve asked.

  'Know that these Starveling Cult people will show no respect for Nasqueron's neutrality,' Gruonoshe said, innocently.

  'Well,' Sorofieve said, 'they are invaders, warmongers. Indeed, not to put too fine a point on it, they are barbarians. They respect nothing.'

  'Still, it does not follow that they'd quarrel with us,' Yawiyuen said, signal skin showing reasonableness.

  'They want to take over the whole system,' Sorofieve said, looking to Saluus for help. 'To them that would include Nasqueron.'

  'We have heard of the Starveling Cult,' Yawiyuen told them. (- Wonder from where? Liss sent to Saluus via his ear stud.) 'It appears to be an unremarkable Quick hegemonist diffusion, concerned with conquering its own kind and species-type-suitable environments, uninterested in attacking gas-giants.'

  'The point here,' Saluus said smoothly, his amplified voice sounding rich and powerful, 'is that they are only attacking Ulubis system to get to Nasqueron.'

  'Why?' Gruonoshe asked.

  'We're not entirely sure,' Saluus said. 'We are sure they want something from Nasqueron, something they can't get from any other gas-giant, but exactly what that may be, we can't say. But we are quite positive that that is why they are mounting this attack in the first place.'

  'Why are you sure?' Gruonoshe again.

  'We intercepted intelligence to that effect,' Sorofieve replied.

  'What intelligence?' Yawiyuen asked.

  'The intelligence,' Sorofieve said, 'came from the personal diary of the Supreme Commander of the Starveling Cult inva­sion fleet sent to the Ruanthril system nearly eighteen years ago. The fleet was intercepted by a Mercatorial force. The captured records show that the enemy commander complained specifically about the need to divert so many of the E-5 Discon's forces to somewhere as out of the way and strategi­cally unimportant as Ulubis, just for some item or piece of information in Nasqueron.'

  'Nasqueron was mentioned by name?' Gruonoshe asked.

  'It was,' Sal said.

  He half-expected a little voice in his ear to say something like 'Good lie' but then remembered that even Liss hadn't been told the full truth about the Dweller List and the mythical Transform. She would have an idea, as a lot of people close to the epicen­tres of power did, that Fassin had been sent on a secret mission to look for something valuable in Nasqueron, and that the object of this search might have some bearing on the war, but that was about all. She hadn't been present at the briefing by the AI projection of Admiral Quile, hadn't been let in on the secret subsequently by some of those who had been there - as Sal had - and so didn't know the details of the intelligence they'd been given.

  'Well then,' Yawiyuen said reasonably, 'you should let the Starveling Cult attack us and we will deal with them.'

  This, of course, was exactly what the Emergency War Cabinet hoped would happen.

  - Can we just say yes here? Liss sent.

  'Wouldn't you then want some help from us?' Sorofieve asked.

  'Oh, no!' Gruonoshe exclaimed, as though the idea was just too preposterous even to think about.

  'As sub-master Sorofieve has said,' Saluus said, 'we are quite certain that the Starveling Cultists intend to take the entirety of Ulubis system, including Nasqueron. We're all under threat. That's why it would make sense for you and us to organise our defence together.'

  'A common threat requires a common response,' Sorofieve told the Dwellers.

  'Or maybe a pincer movement,' Yawiyuen suggested brightly.

  Saluus wanted to sigh again. These two guys were suppos­edly top-grade negotiators with the authority to speak provi­sionally - in advance of some sort of still undefined plebiscite procedure - for the entire Dweller society on Nasqueron, but they frequently sounded like children. 'Well, perhaps,' he said. 'Providing we can, at the very least, coordinate our actions.'

  'And of course,' Sorofieve said, 'it may be that we can share defence technologies.'

  'Oh!' Yawiyuen said, rising above his dent-seat a fraction. 'Good idea! What do you have that we might want?' He appeared guilelessly enthusiastic.

  'Our strengths would lie more in intelligence, in knowing how these Starveling Cultists will think,' Saluus said. 'They're basically humans, too. For all our differences, we think pretty much the same way they do. Our contribution would be to try to anticipate them, to out-think them.'

  'And ours?' Yawiyuen asked, settling back down in his seat again.

  'Weaponry, I bet,' Gruonoshe said, sounding unimpressed.

  'As we have discovered, very much to our cost,' Saluus said, 'you have the better of us in offensive capability, certainly—'

  'Defensive capability,' Gruonoshe interrupted. 'Surely?'

  Sal did his best to move his helmeted head in an acknow­ledging nod, straining his neck muscles in the high gravity. 'Defensive capability, as you say,' he said. ‘If we were able to share some of your knowledge of—'

  'Weapons technology is not something we are going to share,' Gruonoshe said crisply.

  'We could say we wanted to,' Yawiyuen told them. 'We could even mean it - you might argue us round, somehow, to said point of view - but those who control the weapons themselves would not permit it.'

  'Well, can we perhaps talk to them?' Saluus asked.

  Yawiyuen bobbed over his seat. 'No.'

  'Why would that be?' Sorofieve asked.

  'They don't talk to aliens,' Yawiyuen told them bluntly.

  'They barely talk to us,' Gruonoshe admitted.

  'How might we be able to—?' Saluus began.

  'We are not the Mercatoria,' Gruonoshe said, interrupting Saluus again. This was not an experience he was used to. He could see how it might get annoying. 'We are not the Mercatoria,' the Dweller repeated. He sounded indignant. 'We are not one of your states or mercenary- or irrationality-inspired groupings or forces.'

  - Bit of stress there, Sal heard in his ear.

  'If I may,' Chief Seer Meretiy began. The Seers were under instruction only to take a part in the talks when they felt there was some sort of basic misunderstanding taking place. Meretiy obviously felt that was happening now, but he didn't get a chance to take his point further.

  'What is meant, one believes,' Yawiyuen said, 'is that things do not work with us the way that they work with you. We are delegated to speak to you, and what we take from here will be shared with all who wish to take notice. We are not in a posi­tion to order other Dwellers to do or not do certain things. No Dweller is, not in the hierarchical sense that you may be used to. We can share information. The information regarding the approach of the Starveling Cultists has been made available to whoever it may concern, as was the information regarding the build-up of Mercatorial forces immediately prior to the unfor­tunate incident which took place within C-2 Storm Ultra-Violet 3667. Those in charge of the relevant defensive systems will doubtless have taken note of said information. That is really all we can share with you. Our colleagues in charge of the defen­sive systems would not cons
ider talking to outsiders and there is no precedent for sharing, lending, leasing or giving such tech­nologies to others.'

  'You talk of your colleagues in charge of the defensive systems,' Sorofieve said. 'But who is in charge of them?'

  — And so to the point.

  Yawiyuen gave a little bob-shrug. 'Nobody is.'

  'Somebody has to be,' Sorofieve insisted.

  'Why?'

  'Well,' Sorofieve said, 'how do they know what to do?'

  'Lots of training,' Yawiyuen told him.

  'But when? When do they know what to do? Who directs them, who decides when it's time to stop talking and start shooting?'

  'They do.'

  'They do?' Sorofieve sounded incredulous. 'You let your mili­tary decide when to go to war?'

  — Our sub-master hasn't done his homework, has he? Sal sent to Liss.

  — He may have read, she replied. - He didn't believe.

  Saluus had done as much research as he could into the Dwellers. Amazing how little he'd known. He was smart, well-educated and extremely well-connected and yet he'd been near-shamed by how little he'd known about the creatures that his own species shared the system with. It was as though, having realised how little the Dwellers were concerned with or cared about them, Ulubine humanity had decided to pay them back in the same coin. And this in a Seer system, with more inter-species contact than any save another half-dozen or so similarly favoured, scattered through the galaxy. Yet even here most people didn't know or want to know much of anything about the Dwellers. There was a large minority who did, but they were seen as slightly embarrassing - nerdy alien-fans. Facing the threat they were, desperately needing the Dwellers' help, how short-sighted they all seemed now.