“They just destroyed the ship’s drone and seem to be trying to kill us – isn’t that fairly extreme already?”
“It is, rather,” the avatar agreed reasonably, looking at the vehicle’s controls until lights came on. “Though drones, avatars and even humans are one thing; the loss of any is not without moral and diplomatic import, of course, but might be dismissed as merely unfortunate and regrettable, something to be smoothed over through the usual channels. Attacking a ship, on the other hand, is an unambiguous act of war.” A screen flashed on, filled with what looked like a city road map.
“Thank you,” Yime said. “It is always salutary to be reminded of one’s true place in the proper arrangement of matters.”
Himerance nodded. “Yes, I know.”
In the distance, up a short ramp, a large door to what appeared to be the outside was rising open. “Many of these are automatic too,” Himerance muttered to himself. “That’s useful.”
Most of the other vehicles in the car park were turning their lights on; some were already moving, all heading for the ramp and the doorway.
“We’ll leave in the middle, I think,” he said, as their vehicle made a low, distant humming noise and moved smoothly off, joining the line of quickly moving cars. Judging by the ones she could see into, none of the others had any occupants.
“Are you doing this, or the ship?” Yime asked as they left the underground garage.
“Me,” the avatar said. “The ship left some ninety seconds ago.”
Outside, the enormous tunnel of the city was bright with artificial lights, the cupped spread of the place disappearing upwards and down into a faint haze. The far side of the city – a perpendicular jumble of mostly tall, variegated buildings – was only a kilometre or so distant but looked further away in the murk. Around them, the driverless vehicles the avatar had set in motion were all heading off in as many different directions as they could find amongst the city’s jumbled network of streets. Above, little tethered aircraft flitted back and forth along the great cavern.
As Yime watched, one of the larger empty vehicles a short way in front of them in a side-lane slowed, met with some hanging cables and was hoisted rapidly into the air.
“We’re going to do the same thing,” Himerance said, shortly before their vehicle followed the other one, though it then promptly headed off in the opposite direction.
Their vehicle rose quickly amongst the hundreds of cable-held craft.
They had reached a steady height and held it for about twenty seconds when the avatar sucked in a breath, the black glass around parted directly overhead then started to sink back into the sides of the vehicle. Before the retracting glass had reached shoulder level, Himerance’s arm flicked almost too fast to see as he threw the stubby tube of the neural blaster out of the vehicle. Immediately, the glass moved back up around them.
Moments later there was a flash from behind, quickly followed by a great thudding bang which left the vehicle swinging back and forth, causing it to slow automatically, briefly, to correct the oscillation. Himerance and Yime looked back to see a blossoming cloud of smoke and debris rising from near the centre-line of the cavern city; pieces of a great bridge, sundered in the middle, were starting to fall slowly towards the river on the tunnel’s floor. Directly above, more glowing pieces of wreckage and cinders were falling from a tiny, yellow-rimmed hole in the cavern ceiling. Echoes of the detonation slammed back and forth amongst the buildings, disappearing slowly down the tunnel city.
Himerance shook his head. “I beg your pardon. I should have thought they might trace that somehow. My mistake,” he said, as they drew level with a tall stone tower. The glass around them flowed fully down into the sides of the vehicle. The vehicle was beeping irately, though it was almost drowned out by multitudinous echoing sirens starting to sound around the city. They bumped gently against the summit of the tower.
“We need to get out,” the avatar said, rising, taking Yime’s hand and together making the small jump onto the grass beyond the tower’s parapet. The impact hurt her knees. The vehicle stopped beeping and swung away again, glass panels rising back into place as the cables above whisked it back to the heights.
Himerance hauled an old but stout-looking trap-door open in a flurry of earth and popping rivets. They hurried down an unlit spiral staircase and had descended about two complete turns – Yime following Himerance and trusting him to see in a darkness so profound even her moderately augmented eyes could register next to nothing – when there was a distant-sounding thud from outside. The tower shook, just a little.
“That was the vehicle we were just in, wasn’t it?” she said.
“It was,” the avatar agreed. “Whoever’s coordinating this is thinking commendably quickly. NR, almost certainly.” They thudded down more steps, spiralling downwards all the time, so fast Yime felt she was starting to get dizzy. It was hurting her knees and ankles and back, too. “Best not to tarry, then,” the avatar said, putting on a burst of speed. She heard and vaguely sensed him disappearing round the curve of the winding stair.
“I can’t go that fast!” she shouted.
“Of course not,” he said, stopping; she thudded into him. “My apologies. Jump on my back; we’ll go faster. Just keep your head down.”
She was too breathless to argue. She climbed onto his back, legs round his waist, arms about his neck.
“Hold tight,” the avatar said. She did. They set off, whirling down the steps so fast it was almost falling.
Those who had seen the first two incursions reported seeing a cerise beam destroy first the high bridge and then the wheeled, airborne cable-craft. In both cases the beam simply came angling down from the ceiling of the cavern having bored through many tens of metres of rock before transfixing its target.
The third and the last time the beam assaulted Iobe Cavern City, it hit an ancient ornamental stone tower, part of the original Central University buildings. The beam struck the old tower near its base, bringing the whole edifice tumbling down.
At first it was thought there had been no casualties, until, half a day later, the bodies of a man and a woman were discovered, still locked together, her legs round his waist, her arms round his neck, under the hundreds of tonnes of rubble.
*
There was a house which was the shape of the galaxy. It was a virtual house, of course, but it was very highly detailed and well imagined, and although the scale on which it modelled the galaxy could vary quite a lot from time to time and from place to place within it, the general effect was convincing for the beings who had brought the house into existence, and, at least as far as they were concerned, the surroundings felt agreeably familiar.
The beings concerned were Culture Minds: the very high-level AIs which were, by some distance, the most complicated and intelligent entities in the whole civilisation, and – arguably – amongst the most complicated and intelligent entities in the whole galaxy-wide meta-civilisation.
The house was used to indicate where the individual Minds were in the real galaxy, so that a Mind which existed within an Orbital Hub close to the galactic centre would be located in the great bulbous, multi-storeyed centre of the house, while a ship Mind in a vessel currently somewhere towards the wispy tip of one of the galaxy’s arms would appear in one of the single-room tall outer wings. There were special arrangements for those Minds who didn’t want their location known by all and sundry: they tended to inhabit pleasingly dilapidated outbuildings within what were effectively the grounds of the main construction, communicating at a remove.
The house itself manifested as an echoingly vast baroque edifice of extraordinary, ornamental richness, every room the size of a cathedral and full of intricately carved wooden walls and pierced screens, gleaming floors of inlaid wood and semi-precious stone, ceilings dripping with precious metals and minerals, and populated, usually quite sparsely, by the avatars of the Minds, which took on pretty much every form of being and object known.
Unrest
ricted by such tiresome three-dimensional constraints as the laws of perspective, every one of the many thousands of rooms was visible from every other, if not through doorways then through tiny icons/screens/apertures in the walls which, on sufficiently close inspection, let one see into those immensely distant rooms in some detail. Minds, of course, being used to existing within four dimensions as a matter of tedious day-to-day reality, had no problem dealing with this sort of topological sleight-of-hand.
The only reality-based restriction the galactic house modelled accurately was that produced by the deeply annoying fact that even hyperspacial light did not travel with infinite speed. To carry on a normal conversation with another Mind, one had to be in the same room and reasonably close to it. Even two Minds being within the same vast room but on opposite sides created a noticeable delay as they shouted back and forth.
Being any further away meant sending messages. These usually showed up as gently glowing symbols flickering disembodied in the air in front of the recipient, but – subject to the witheringly prodigious imaginations of Minds in general and the particular and quite possibly highly eccentric predilections of the sender in particular – could show up as almost anything. Swift-moving ballets consisting of multiply-limbed aliens, on fire and throwing shapes which just happened briefly to resemble Marain symbols (for example) were by no means unknown.
Vatueil had vaguely heard of this place. He’d always wondered what it actually looked like. He gazed around, astounded, wondering how you would describe it, how a poet might find the words to portray something of its bewildering richness and complexity. In appearance he was a pan-human male; tall and wearing the dress uniform of a Space Marshal. He stood in this vast room – shaped like the inside of a vast beach-shell to resemble the general volume of space called the Doplioid Spiral Fragment – and watched as what looked like a substantial chandelier lowered itself from the ceiling. Inspected closely, the ceiling was mostly composed of such chandeliers. When its lower-middle section got level with his head, the chandelier – a riot of fabulously inter-twined multi-coloured glass spirals and corkscrew shapes – stopped.
“Space Marshal Vatueil, welcome,” it said. Its voice had a sort of gentle, tinkling quality appropriate to its appearance. “My name is Zaive; I’m a Hub-mind with a special interest in the Quietus section. I’ll let the others introduce themselves.“
Vatueil turned to find that – without him having noticed them arriving – there were two humans, a large, hovering blue bird and what looked like a crudely carved, garishly painted ventriloquist’s dummy sitting on a small multi-coloured balloon, all standing or floating around him.
“I’m the Fixed Grin,” the first human told him; the avatar had silvery skin and looked vaguely female. “Representing Numina.” It nodded/bowed.
“The Scar Glamour,” the blue bird told him. “SC.”
“Beastly To The Animals,” the other humanoid avatar said, a thin-looking male. “I represent the interests of Restoria.”
“Labtebricolephile,” the dummy may have announced, having what sounded like trouble with the “L” sounds. “Civilian.” It paused. “Eccentric,” it added, needlessly.
“And that,” the chandelier called Zaive said, as the others help-fully looked off to one side, “is the Dressed Up To Party.”
The Dressed Up To Party was a small orange-red cloud hanging more or less over the hovering blue bird.
“The Dressed Up To Party is also non-aligned and is some non-specific distance away; its contributions will be sporadic,” Zaive said.
“And probably beside the point, as well as trailing it,” the blue bird representing the Scar Glamour said. It cocked its iridescently plumaged head to look up at the orange-red cloud, but there was no visible response.
“Together,” Zaive said, “we make up the Specialist Agencies Prompt Response Committee, or at least the local chapter, as it were. A small number of other interested parties, each no less security-conscious than ourselves, will be listening in at greater removes and may contribute subsequently. Do you need any explanation regarding our titles or terminology?”
“No, thank you,” Vatueil said.
“We understand that you represent the highest strategic level of command within the anti-Hell side in the current confliction regarding the Hells, is that right?”
“Yes,” Vatueil confirmed.
“So, Space Marshal Vatueil,” the bird said flapping its short wings lazily – too slowly for it to have truly hovered had this all been taking place in the Real. “You indicated this was both urgent and of the highest importance. What is it you wish to tell us?”
“It’s about the war over the Hells,” Vatueil said.
“That kind of came presupposed,” the bird said.
Vatueil sighed. “Are you aware that the anti-Hell side is losing?”
“Of course,” the bird said.
“And that we attempted to hack the substrates of the pro-Hell side?”
“We had guessed as much,” the thin-looking male said.
“Those attempts failed,” Vatueil said. “Therefore we decided to bring the war into the Real, to construct a fleet of ships which would destroy as many of the Hell-containing substrates as possible.”
“So the entire decades-long confliction was for nothing,” the blue bird said crisply, “putting it on the same level as the vows one assumes you must have taken at the start of the war renouncing resort to precisely the two courses you have just outlined.”
“That’s … a weighty thing to have done, Space Marshal,” the dummy said, hinged jaws clicking as it spoke.
“It was not a step we took lightly,” Vatueil agreed.
“Perhaps it was not a step you should have taken at all,” the blue bird said.
“I am not here to justify my actions or decisions or those of my comrades or co-conspirators,” Vatueil said. “I am here only to—”
“Try to implicate us?” the blue bird said. “Half the galaxy assumes we’re behind the anti-Hell forces anyway. Perhaps by coming here – and being allowed audience despite the earnest entreaties of some of us – you intend to persuade the other half?” Directly above the bird’s head, the little orange-red cloud had just started to rain, though no moisture seemed to reach the Scar Glamour’s avian avatar.
“I’m here to tell you that the anti-Hell forces came to an agreement with the GFCF and elements of the Sichultian Enablement – behind the backs of the NR and their allies, the Flekke and the Jhlupians – to build us our fleet using the Tsungarial Disk. However, we have received intelligence that the NR thought that they too had an agreement with the Sichultia, promising that they – the Sichultia – would refuse to help the anti-Hell side and would do whatever the NR wanted them to do to stop any war fleet being built.”
“The Sichultia sound as free with their agreements as you and your fellows are with your solemn undertakings, Space Marshal,” the blue bird representing SC said.
“Must you be quite so unpleasant to our guest?” the silver-skinned avatar asked the Scar Glamour’s avatar. The bird bristled its feathers and said:
“Yes.”
“We have also heard,” Vatueil said, “that the NR, the Culture and the GFCF are currently in some way engaged in the Sichultian Enablement, especially around the Tsungarial Disk. Assuming this is the case, it was thought important that you were informed – at the highest level – that the Sichultia are on the side which everyone assumes you wish to win in the confliction.”
“Difficult though it may be for you to imagine somebody keeping their word in any circumstances, Space Marshal,” the blue bird said, “what makes you think that the Sichultia will stick to the agreement they made with you rather than the one they made with the NR?”
“The agreement made with the NR basically meant doing nothing. The agreement made with us meant becoming involved with a conspiracy that would be largely under the control of others and that would proceed regardless of the Sichultians’ initial operationa
l involvement, while exposing them to a substantial risk of being punished by the NR even if they changed their minds before their part in the conspiracy became crucial. It makes no sense for them to have entered into the agreement unless they were going to see it through.”
“That does make sense,” Zaive said, voice tinkling. “So,” the thin male avatar said, “we should do nothing to stop the Sichultia from doing whatever it is they are doing in and around the Tsungarial Disk?”
Vatueil shrugged. “I can’t tell you what to do. I’m not even going to make any suggestions. We just thought you should know what’s going on.”
“We understand,” Zaive said.
“I have some intelligence,” the blue bird announced.
Vatueil turned and looked levelly at it.
“My intelligence tells me that you are a traitor, Space Marshal Vatueil.”
Vatueil continued to look at the bird as it flapped lazily in front of him. The orange-red cloud above the Scar Glamour’s avatar had stopped raining. Vatueil turned to address Zaive. “I have no more to report. If I may be excused …”
“Yes,” the chandelier said. “Though there was no indication with the signal carrying you what was to be done with your mind-state following delivery of your message. I think we all assumed that you were to be returned to your war sim high command, but perhaps you had something else in mind?”
Vatueil smiled. “I’m to be deleted,” he said. “To avoid any further unseemly hint at complicity with the anti-Hell forces on your part.”
“How very thoughtful,” the silver-skinned vaguely female avatar said. Vatueil chose to assume that she meant it.
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