Some sort of double liquid-lock had allowed Ximenyr to enter the sphere without any fluid spilling. There was a pause while he stood and fluid swirled up around him, then a sphincter valve at the top of the sphere opened and he rose quickly and easily up, out of the sphere and into the liquid-filled tank above.
“…And so,” the reporter arbite began to intone, gravely.
Cossont switched the sound off and just watched Ximenyr’s pale-looking body as he swam out at an angle into the darkness. The extra lights he’d asked for earlier, or the enhancement, had been switched off, so his shape disappeared into the watery shadows after barely half a minute; the vast tank was now an almost entirely dark megatonne presence hanging over the scene below. The view switched to the other party-goers taking off their own shifts and preparing to step naked into the translucent spheres to follow Ximenyr.
“The locker in the medical suite’s got nothing,” Berdle said quietly, shaking his head.
“Can I see?” she asked.
“Need a helmet to see properly,” the avatar told her. “Use the inner suit.” She brought the hood-helmet up. The view darkened, stabilised. A space like a small dark room, one wall edged all round with dim light; quilts on the floor, a small rug, rolled, and a couple of ancient-looking flat screens. “A pair of pants,” Berdle announced. “A single sock. The end of a roll of antiseptic splint-bandage patches. A tooth plectrum. A pair of time-to devices. That’s all.”
“Sure this isn’t art too?”
“Fairly certain.”
“We’re going to have to go up through that fucking tank, aren’t we?”
“Looking like it.”
Cossont redirected her attention to local reality in time to watch Berdle stand, and then saw what looked like his skin and flesh just falling away, under his clothes, exactly as if his flesh had turned to jelly. She felt her mouth open, had time to wonder if they were under attack from some sort of flesh-melting weapon, then noticed that the avatar was watching this whole process with nothing more than interest.
“Shedding excess weight,” Berdle said through her helmet.
He stood in a neatly circular pool of fleshy stuff, reduced to something not far off a skeleton, though one with what still looked like a covering of skin; clothes hanging off him, face like a skull, his knees the widest part of his legs and his elbows the widest part of his arms above his wire-thin wrists, wrinkled skin covering all exposed surfaces.
Then he filled slowly out again, as though his still-skin-covered bones — or what passed for bones — were themselves expanding. His skin became smooth again, his face filled out. Then his clothes fell away too, joining the thick puddle at his feet, all of which turned white and developed folds. The avatar — equipped with a perfectly respectable-looking penis, Cossont was pleased, in a general kind of way, to see — stooped and picked up the stuff that had recently been the equivalent of skin, flesh and muscle and which was now a convincing, if quite thick, white robe, which he let drop on from above. There was another one, still round his feet. He lifted it with one foot, handed it to her.
“Best I can do,” he said.
“No, no; bravo.”
“You’ll need to lose the outer suit; sorry.”
“That’s okay.” The suit split down the front and she stepped out of it. It collapsed and compressed into something that looked like a sort of flattened, elongated black crash helmet.
“We won’t have to go out the same way we came in, will we?” she asked.
Berdle shook his head. “Highly unlikely. Just the under-suit would keep you safe, anyway.”
The under-suit was changing too; expanding slightly, so that, in most places, its surface was about a centimetre or so out from her own skin. It was changing colour and texture too, coming to look convincingly like skin. A thin layer crept over her face, making her skin feel tight.
“That feels weird.”
“Yes, but you’re unrecognisable,” the avatar told her. Berdle’s face had changed too; he looked nothing like he had the last time they’d been here. Still good-looking, but less striking.
Cossont looked down at herself. “Weird,” she said. “I feel more naked now than I do when I’m naked.” She pulled the thick, heavy shift on over her head. It lay, weighty, on her shoulders. “There’s only one set of arm holes!”
Her lower arms had to hang down inside the pale shift.
“Those extra arms are the one thing about you it’s hard to disguise,” Berdle said.
“Hmm,” she said. “Yeah, I suppose it is better if we don’t advertise those.”
“Take the shift off as late as you can,” Berdle suggested.
“Okay. What about Mr Q?” Cossont asked, She recalled the avatar telling her while they’d still been on the Mistake Not… that QiRia’s mind-state had been put into the outer suit.
“I’ve already transferred him to the inner suit,” Berdle told her. “He’ll run slower but feel free to wake him up and talk to him if you want; he’s functional.”
“Maybe later.” Cossont used one foot, toeing the compacted outer suit. “This?”
“Stays here unless we need it, when it becomes a drone. Though it’ll blow its cover the instant it switches on its AG or a lift-field.” Berdle straightened, flexed, looked at her. “Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be. Let’s go.”
~We are quite certain there is no way they could already be aboard? Colonel Agansu asked the Churkun’s captain.
~We are reasonably certain, the captain replied. ~Not absolutely certain.
Agansu found this reply inadequate, but chose not to say anything. People were cheering all around him. He looked at the airship. The Equatorial 353 was displaying a countdown on its hull now; giant numbers three hundred metres high were clicking down the time to zero. There was half a minute to go.
Boarding gantries had swung out from various opened galleries and balconies dotted along the side of the airship, where crew could be seen opening doors and preparing to extend the gantries the last few metres that would let people use them to board. The gantries ended in complicated-looking up-and-over constructions that let them extend over the roadway parapet. Agansu watched the nearest one lower slowly towards the roadway surface, just ahead. A crew-person from the airship stood on the bottom step of the lowering gantry, holding a flimsy-looking gate closed, preparing to open it.
People were already jostling to get close to the steps. Agansu, simply massing much more than any human of his size, had no difficulty in shouldering people out of the way and making his way quickly to the front. He made suitably placatory gestures and muttered, “Excuse me,” several times, to avoid unnecessary unpleasantness, though he did hear some complaints. Soon he was walking at a slow stroll with the gated steps facing him and various people jostling him ineffectually at his sides and back.
~Colonel, I’m going to hand you over to our marine operations officer now, the captain sent. ~The Culture ship is returning and showing every indication it intends to pull to a stop here in about ten minutes, and my full attention is required to be focused on this development.
~I see, Agansu replied.
~Marine operations here, Colonel. I’ve had all units looking for anything remotely like a ship avatar and so far nothing’s registering. With this many units in a minimum double-shell configuration we’ve got really good triangulation and background grain size, so something ought to have shown up by now. I think the person or people you’re looking for is/are already aboard. Also, a closer inspection of the airship has identified a few spaces that are not fully shielded. Our surveillance specialist has started putting equipment in there, though it’s not proving easy to gain access to the rest of the vessel. Do you want us to look for a place to disloc you aboard?
~That will not be necessary, Agansu replied, looking across to the giant figures displayed on the airship’s skin. Just a few seconds left. He could see more galleries appearing on the side of the vessel as portions of the hull folded in
wards. Doors were opening. ~I am about to board now, conventionally. Inform Marshal Chekwri.
~Acknowledged, sir. Will do. We’ve got insect-plausible surveillance devices entering the apertures opening in the airship, though the shielding is going to make keeping in touch with them difficult; we’ll need a lot to keep a comms chain open. Also, I’m just getting some civilian feed here from the airship; public channel. Seems this Ximenyr person is heading… for the top of the ship, but the only way in is through some big water tank, from the bottom.
~Thank you, Agansu sent, as the countdown shown on the side of the airship reached zero. A great ragged cheer went up all around and the crew-person on the steps just ahead of him opened the boarding gate.
Agansu stepped onto the gantry, feeling it dip under his weight. ~Continue to monitor me, he sent, ~and have arbites near, ready to lend close support.
~Sir.
He smiled at the crew-person.
Cossont was letting the shift drop from round her shoulders, with Berdle just behind her, sheltering her — “The lady is modest,” he’d told the people helping. Just then, right at the entrance to one of the translucent spheres, something happened to several of the lights shining into the giant tank. One in particular, off to the side, flared brightly, then seemed to go out entirely. Most of the rest kept on flickering as they dimmed.
Everybody in the space under the tank was looking at the lights. Cossont, forewarned by Berdle, was almost the only person not distracted. She stepped quickly out of the fallen shift and into the glutinously resisting field protecting the entrance to the sphere. Warm water swirled rapidly up round her almost immediately; she was raised off her feet a little as it reached her neck. She lifted her head, with the breather device clamped in her mouth and over her nose, as the waters closed over her and the valve above opened. She was borne up anyway, but kicked as well, catching a hazy, distorted glimpse of Berdle picking up her shift and walking across the space — beneath her, now — to deposit it on a shelf. The lights seemed to return to normal as the view below disappeared.
“The maze is fairly simple,” Berdle said through the suit’s earbuds as she bumped head-first into what felt like a ceiling of something elastic and giving, but strong. “The suit will tell you the direction to head in, using this voice. For now, turn ninety degrees to your left, follow the ceiling until you feel a downward current and then swim to your right.”
She did as she was told. She could see a couple of other people exiting from other spheres and striking out into the darkness: shadowy forms moving slowly in the darkness like smooth and liquid flames of flesh. She kept her lower set of arms tight against her body as she swam with the upper set until the other people had faded into the darkness, taking different routes. Then she pulled hard with all four arms, and kicked.
She felt a current heading down, and so turned right. “Straight up now,” the voice said, and she zoomed, passing into a strange gel-like region in the water where it seemed to grow thicker and press in against her from all sides. Through it, she felt the water pressure change a little, decreasing. The temperature was a little cooler, too. “Just entering the tank now,” Berdle told her. “Keep going. I’ll stay behind you.”
Prevented from speaking by the breather in her mouth, and unable to just think-send speech the way the avatar could, she found herself nodding, and wondered if the suit would transmit the action to Berdle.
She swam on up through the darkness, alone save for the sound of her own breathing and a few dim, wavering lights.
“Firearms are not permitted on board, sir,” the crew-person told Agansu. “We’re showing that you have a side-arm secreted by your lower back. That will have to be left here, with us.”
He had been stopped at the far end of the boarding gantry, on a sort of gallery set into the side of the airship. Two people, both large and dressed in standard-looking private security garb, barred his way. The woman who was talking was in front, her male colleague behind, standing in the open doorway in the hull of the Equatorial 353.
“I am a colonel in the Home System Regiment on a special assignment,” Agansu said quietly to the woman, aware of people starting to queue up behind him on the narrow gantry. “I appreciate and commend your alertness, however I do require entry to the vessel and I may well have need of my side-arm.”
~Marine operations officer, Agansu sent, ~are you reading all this?
~Yes, sir.
~Kindly bring one of your units to bear here, would you? Prepare to stun to temporary unconsciousness the two people blocking my way. Ten minutes should be sufficient. And have… four units ready to accompany me inside the vessel.
~Sir. Using AG inside the vessel is likely to make the units obvious to the airship’s systems.
~Have them switch to limbed locomotion on entry.
~Sir. Five units switched to your immediate control, now.
~I have them, Agansu confirmed, aware, in a virtual space behind his eyes, of exactly where the five marine arbites were in relation to him and his immediate surroundings.
“I’m afraid our orders make no allowance for that, sir, the security officer was telling him.
~Sir? the marine operations officer sent. ~Getting some data on a person of interest — the Cossont, Vyr, woman — entering the water tank in the airship, sir. Not a definite ID though; small bug, a distance off, and comms link unsteady.
“Hey!” somebody shouted in the queue behind Agansu. “Get moving!”
The security officer glanced behind him, then frowned at him. “Also, sir,” she said, “I’m just hearing from our colleagues on board that you are showing as very non-standard physiologically. There is a new policy in force aboard which means that if you’re an android or avatar you will need special permission to board.”
The man behind her had stepped back a pace and one hand had fallen to a holstered side-arm.
~Stun both, now.
~Sir.
The woman’s eyes closed. She collapsed, her knees giving way first so that she just seemed to sit heavily. Then she fell over backwards. The man behind performed the same actions a half-second later, as though in impersonation.
Agansu stepped over the two inert bodies and into the doorway; two marine arbites, visible more as disturbances in the air than as anything physical, darted in before him. They landed on the threshold with audible thumps, the air shimmering as they entered.
“Whoa!”
“Hey, what—?” voices said, inside.
~Stun, Agansu sent, as he looked within.
Two more bodies were folding into unconsciousness, a couple of metres inside the door. Agansu turned and looked back at the faces of the people crowding the boarding gantry. They were all looking either at the two fallen security guards outside, or at him. He smiled. The other two arbites made shimmering shapes in the air and landed in the doorway, slipping inside like shadows, only half seen.
~Close and lock the door, he said, over the channel to the arbite marines. The door swung to, then made clunking, locking noises. The space he was in now was perhaps twenty metres long but only five deep. Various fixtures and fittings, none of them relevant, save that there seemed to be a large number of white tabards or shifts, neatly wrapped and stacked. Another open doorway led into the rest of the ship.
~Show yourselves, please, Agansu said over the marines’ channel.
The four marine arbites dropped their camouflage, revealing them as stocky, metallic, vaguely humanoid shapes, crouched on pairs of zigzag legs. Each looked like something crayoned by a child then rendered in gun-metal. Their heads were long, flat, featureless.
~You will be arbites one through four, from lowest to highest serial number, Agansu told them. ~Understood?
~Understood, the arbites said in unison. They even sounded metallic.
She swam up through the layers and corridors of dark, warm water. The suit spoke to her in Berdle’s voice now and again, directing her — or Berdle spoke to her, it was hard to tell.
/> She looked about as she swam, and noticed that some of the tiny, dim lights visible through the fluid had been arranged so as to look like the most familiar constellations visible from Xown. This made the experience like swimming through space. She wondered if the avatar would feel this. She saw only one other person, briefly, some distance off, and below.
She and Berdle had joined the unhurried groups of people heading towards the access spheres from the rest of the airship near the start of the whole process; fewer than fifty people had preceded them into the giant tank. Most of the Last Party-goers would ascend before anybody from outside, though a few would hold back to help guide any stragglers, and there were some who just wanted to be last, or amongst the last, to make the journey.
The other person swam off, away from her, and disappeared. She felt oddly abandoned, almost sad. She hoped the other swimmer would make it to the top of the tank without incident. There were, Berdle had assured her, various viable routes to the top of the tank; she and the avatar were taking the shortest and quickest.
The skin-contact hallucinogens in the water were diluted to deliver a modest dose to somebody swimming completely naked, so they were having no discernible effect on her at all. Still, there was a dreaminess and unreality to the dark swim that — along with the relative simplicity of only having to think to the extent of following an instruction every half minute or so, and the pleasant glow of continuous but unstressed physical effort — allowed her mind to wander, allowed her to think.
What a strange way to be approaching the end of one’s life, she thought. Swimming through a vast tank of water and Scribe-knew-what towards a little artificial heaven with no escape, or only one. In search of a man’s discarded eyes. With the avatar of a Culture ship following, swimming. And one of her own people’s ships seemingly intent on stopping them. She had done a few strange things in her life, she supposed; why not leave one of the weirdest of all till last? To be topped only by the Subliming itself, she guessed.
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