He looked up again. The three machines were moving around near the airlock doors. Gestra sniffed back his tears. The three machines drew back from the doors, then settled down onto the ground. Gestra waited to see what would happen next.
There was a flash, and an explosion. The middle set of doors blew out in a burst of smoke that rolled up the corridor and then collapsed backwards, seemingly sucking the whole explosion back into where the doors had been. The doors had gone, leaving a dark hole.
A breeze tugged at Gestra, then the breeze turned to a wind and the wind became a storm that howled and then screamed past him and then started moving him bodily along the floor. He shouted in fear, trying to grab hold of the carpet with his one good arm; he slid down the corridor in the roar of air, his fingers scrabbling for a grip. His nails dug in, found purchase, and his fingers closed around the fibres, pulling him to a stop.
He heard thuds and looked up, gasping, towards the reception area, eyes streaming with tears as the wind whipped by him. Something moved, bouncing in the lighted doorway of the circular lounge. He saw the vague, rounded shape of a couch thudding into the floor twenty metres away and flying towards him on the howling stream of air. He heard himself shout something. The couch thudded into the floor ten metres away, tumbling end over end.
He thought it was going to miss him, but one end of it smashed into his dangling feet, tearing him away; the storm of air picked him up bodily and he screamed as he fell with it past the shapes of the three watching machines. One of his legs hit the jagged edges of the breach in the airlock doors and was torn off at the knee. He flew out into the huge space beyond, the air pulled from his mouth first by his scream and then by the vacuum of the hangar itself.
He skidded to a stop on the cold hard floor of the hangar fifty metres from the wrecked doors, blood oozing then freezing around his wounds. The cold and the utter silence closed in; he felt his lungs collapse and something bubbled in his throat; his head ached as if his brain were about to burst out of his nose, eyes and ears, and his every tissue and bone seemed to ring with brief, stunning pain before going numb.
He looked into the enveloping darkness and up at the towering, heedless heights of the bizarrely patterned ships.
Then the ice crystals forming in his eyes fractured the view and made it splinter and multiply as though seen through a prism, before it all went dim and then black. He was trying to shout, to cry out, but there was only a terrible choking coldness in his throat. In a moment, he couldn't even move, frozen there on the floor of the vast space, immobile in his fear and confusion.
The cold killed him, finally, shutting off his brain in concentric stages, freezing the higher functions first, then the lower mammal brain, then finally the primitive, near-reptilian centre. His last thoughts were that he would never see his model sea ships again, nor know why the warships in the cold, dark halls were patterned so.
Victory! Commander Risingmoon Parchseason IV of the Farsight tribe nudged the suit forward, floating out through the torn doors of the airlock and into the hangar space. The ships were there. Gangster class. His gaze swept their ranks. Sixty-four of them. He had, privately, thought it might all be a hoax, some Culture trick.
At his side, his weapons officer steered his suit across the floor — over the body of the human — and up towards the nearest of the ships. The other suited figure, the Affronter Commander's personal guard, rotated, watching.
"If you'd waited another minute," the voice of the Culture ship said tiredly through the suit's communicator, "I could have opened the airlock doors for you."
"I'm sure you could," the Commander said. "Is the Mind quite under your control?"
"Entirely. Touchingly naive, in the end."
"And the ships?"
"Quiescent; undisturbed; asleep. They will believe whatever they are told."
"Good," the Commander said. "Begin the process of waking them."
"It is already under way."
"Nobody else here," his security officer said over the communicator. He had gone on into the rest of the human accommodation section when they had made their way to the airlock doors.
"Anything of interest?" the Commander asked, following his weapons officer towards the nearest warship. He had to try to keep the excitement out of his voice. They had them! They had them! He had to brake the suit hard; in his enthusiasm he almost collided with his weapons officer.
In the ruined suite that had been the place where the human had lived, the security officer swivelled in the vacuum, surveying the wreckage the evacuating whirlwind of air had left. Human coverings; clothes, items of furniture, some complicated structures; models of some sort. "No," he said. "Nothing of interest."
"Hmm," the ship said. Something about the tone communicated unease to the Commander. At the same moment, his weapons officer turned his suit to him. "Sir," he said. A light flicked on, picking out a metre-diameter circle of the ship's hull. Its surface was riotously embellished and marked, covered in strange, sweeping designs. The weapons officer swept the light over nearby sections of the vessel's curved hull. It was all the same, all of it covered with these curious, whorled patterns and motifs.
"What?" the Commander said, concerned now.
"This… complexity," the weapons officer said, sounding perplexed.
"Internal, too," the Culture ship broke iri.
"It…" the weapons officer said, spluttering. His suit moved closer to the warship's hull, until it was almost touching. "This will take for ever to scan!" he said. "It goes down to the atomic level!"
'What does?" the Commander said sharply.
"The ships have been baroqued, to use the technical term," the Culture ship said urbanely. "It was always a possibility." It made a sighing noise. The vessels have been fractally inscribed with partially random, non-predictable designs using up a little less than one per cent of the mass of each craft. There is a chance that hidden in amongst that complexity will be independent security nano-devices which will activate at the same time as each ship's main systems and which will require some additional coded reassurance that all is well, otherwise they will attempt to disable or even destroy the ship. These will have to be looked for. As your weapons officer says, the craft will each have to be scanned at least down to the level of individual atoms. I shall begin this task the instant I have completed the reprogramming of the base's Mind. This will delay us, that's all; the ships would have required scanning in any event, and in the meantime, nobody knows we're here. You will have your war fleet in a matter of days rather than hours, Commander, but you will have it."
The weapons officer's space suit turned to face the Commander's. The light illuminating the outlandish designs switched off. Somehow, from the way he performed these actions, the weapons officer conveyed a mood of scepticism and perhaps even disgust to the Commander.
"Ka!" the Commander said contemptuously, whirling away and heading back towards the airlock doors. He needed to wreck something. The accommodation section ought to provide articles which would be satisfying but unimportant. His personal guard swept after him, weapons ready.
Passing over the still, frozen body of the human — even that hadn't provided any sport — Commander Risingmoon Parchseason IV of the Farsight tribe and the battleship Xenoclast — on secondment to the alien ship Attitude Adjuster — unholstered one of the external weapons on his own suit and blasted the small figure into a thousand pieces, scattering fragments of frosty pink and white across the cold floor of the hangar like a small, delicate fall of snow.
7. Tier
I
Such investigations took time. There was the time that even hyperspacially transmitted information took to traverse the significant percentages of the galaxy involved, there were complicated routes to arrange, other Minds to talk to, sometimes after setting up appointments because they were absent in Infinite Fun space for a while. Then the Minds had to be casualed up to, or gossip or jokes or thoughts on a mutual interest had to be exchanged before
a request or a suggestion was put which re-routed and disguised an information search; sometimes these re-routes took on extra loops, detours and shuntings as the Minds concerned thought to play down their own involvement or involve somebody else on a whim, so that often wildly indirect paths resulted, branching and re-branching and doubling back on themselves until eventually the relevant question was asked and the answer, assuming it was forthcoming, started the equally tortuous route back to the original requester. Frequently simple seeker-agent programs or entire mind-state abstracts were sent off on even more complicated missions with detailed instructions on what to look for, where to find it, who to ask and how to keep their tracks covered.
Mostly it was done like that; through Minds, AI core memories and innumerable public storage systems, information reservoirs and databases containing schedules, itineraries, lists, plans, catalogues, registers, rosters and agenda.
Sometimes, though, when that way — the relatively easy, quick and simple way — was closed to the inquirer for some reason, usually to do with keeping the inquiry secret, things had to be done the slow way, the messy way, the physical way. Sometimes there was no alternative.
The vacuum dirigible approached the floating island under a brilliantly clear night sky awash with moon and star light. The main body of the airship was a giant fat disk half a kilometre across with a finish like brushed aluminium; it glinted in the blue-grey light as if frosted, though the night was warm, balmy and scented with the heady perfume of wineplant and sierra creeper. The craft's two gondolas — one on top, one suspended underneath — were smaller, thinner disks only three storeys in height, each slowly revolving in different directions, their edges glowing with lights.
The sea beneath the airship was mostly black-dark, but in places it glowed dimly in giant, slowly fading Vs as giant sea creatures surfaced to breathe or to sieve new levels of the waters for their tiny prey, and so disturbed the light-emitting plankton near the surface.
The island floated high in the breeze-ruffled waters, its base a steeply fluted pillar that extended a kilometre down into the sea's salty depths, its thin, spire-like mountains thrusting a similar distance into the cloudless air. It too was scattered with lights; of small towns, villages, individual houses, lanterns on beaches and smaller aircraft, most of them come out to welcome the vacuum dirigible.
The two slowly revolving gondola sections slid gradually to a halt, preparatory to docking. People in both segments congregated on the sides nearest the island, for the view. The airship's system registered the imbalance building up and pumped bubblecarbon spheres full of vacuum from one lot of tanks to another, so maintaining a suitably even keel.
The island's main town drifted slowly closer, the docking tower bright with lights. Lasers, fireworks and searchlights all fought for attention.
"I really should go, Tish," the drone Gruda Aplam said. "I didn't promise, but I did kind of say I'd probably stop by…"
"Ah, stop by on the way back," Tishlin said, waving his glass. "Let them wait."
He stood on the balcony outside one of the lower gondola's mid-level bars. The drone — a very old thing, like two grey-brown rounded cubes one on top of the other and three-quarters the size of a human — floated beside him. They'd only met that day, four days into the cruise over the Orbital's floating islands and they'd got on famously, quite as though they'd been friends for a century or more. The drone was much older than the man but they found they had the same attitudes, the same beliefs and the same sense of humour. They both liked telling stories, too. Tishlin had the impression he hadn't yet scratched the veneer off the old machine's tales of when it had been in Contact — a millennium before he had, and goodness knew he was considered an old codger these days.
He liked the ancient machine; he'd really come on this cruise looking for romance, and he still hoped to find it, but in the meantime finding such a perfect companion and raconteur had already made him glad he'd come. The trouble was the drone was supposed to get off here and go to visit some old drone pals who lived on the island, before resuming its cruise on the next dirigible, due in a few days" time. A month from now, it would be leaving on the GSV that had brought it here.
"But I feel I'd be letting them down."
"Look, just stay another day," the man suggested. "You never did finish telling me about — what was it, Bhughredi?"
"Yes, Bhughredi." The old drone chuckled.
"Exactly. Bhughredi; the sea nukes and the interference effect thing or whatever it was."
"Damnedest way to launch a ship," the old drone agreed, and made a sighing noise.
"So what did happen?"
"Like I said, it's a long story."
"So stay tomorrow; tell me it. You're a drone for goodness" sake; you can float back by yourself…"
"But I said I'd visit them when the airship got here, Tish. Anyway; my AG units are due a service; they'd probably fail and I'd end up at the bottom of the sea having to be rescued; very embarrassing."
"Take a flyer back!" the man said, watching the island's shore slide underneath. People gathered round fires on the beach waved up at the craft. He could hear music drifting on the warm breeze.
"Oh, I don't know… They'd probably be upset."
Tishlin drank from his glass and frowned down at the waves breaking on the beach which led towards the lights of the town. A particularly large and vivid firework detonated in the air directly above the bright docking tower. Oos and Aahs duly sounded round the crowded balcony.
The man snapped his fingers. "I know," he said. "Send a mind-state abstract."
The big drone hesitated, then said, "Oh, one of those. Hmm. Well; still not really the same thing, I think. Anyway, I've never done one. Not sure I really approve. I mean, it's you but it's not you, you know?"
Tishlin nodded. "Certainly do know. Can't say I think they're as, you know, benign as they're cracked up to be either; I mean, it's supposed to act sentient without being sentient, so isn't it actually sentient? What happens to it when it's just turned off? I'm not convinced there isn't some sort of iffy morality here, either. But I've done it myself. Talked into it. Reservations, like you say, but…" He looked round, then leant closer to the machine's dull brown casing. "Bit of a Contact thing, actually."
"Really?" the old machine said, tipping its whole body away from him for a moment, then tipping it back so that it leant towards him. It extended a field round the two of them; the exterior sounds faded. When it spoke again, it was with a slight echo that indicated the field was keeping whatever they said between the two of them. "What was that… Well, wait a moment, if you aren't supposed to tell anybody…"
Tishlin weaved his hand. "Well, not officially," he said, brushing white hair over one ear, "but you're a Contact veteran, and you know how SC always dramatises things."
"SC!" the drone said its voice rising. "You didn't say it was them! I'm not sure I want to hear this," it said, through a chuckle.
"Well, they asked… a favour," the man said, quietly pleased that he seemed finally to have impressed the old drone. "Sort of a family thing. Had to record one of these damn things so it could go and convince a nephew of mine he should do his bit for the great and good cause. Last I heard the boy had done the decent thing and taken ship for some Eccentric GSV." He watched the outskirts of the town slide underneath. A flower-garlanded terrace held groups of people pattern-dancing; he could imagine the whoops and wild, whirling music. The scent of roasting meat came curling over the balcony parapet and made it through the hushfield.
"They asked if I wanted it to be reincorporated after it had done its job," he told the drone. "They said it could be sent back and sort of put back inside my head, but I said no. Gave me a creepy feeling just thinking about it. What if it had changed a lot while it was away? Why, I might end up wanting to join some retreatist order or autoeuthenise or something!" He shook his head and drained his glass. "No; I said no. Hope the damn thing never was really alive, but if it was, or is, then it's
not getting back into my head, no thank you, I'm sorry."
"Well, if what they told you was true, it's yours to do with as you wish, isn't it?"
"Exactly."
"Well, I don't think I'll take the same step," the drone said, sounding thoughtful. It swivelled as though to face him. The field around them collapsed. The sound of the fireworks returned. "Tell you what," the old drone said. "I will get off here and see the guys, but I'll catch up with you in a couple of days, all right? We'll probably fall out in a day or two anyway; they're cantankerous old buggers, frankly. I'll take a flyer or try floating myself if I feel adventurous. Deal?" It extended a field.
"Deal," Tishlin said, slapping the field with his hand.
The drone Gruda Aplam had already contacted its old friend the GCU It's Character Forming, currently housed in the GSV Zero Gravitas which was at that point docked under a distant plate of Seddun Orbital. The GCU communicated with the Orbital Hub Tsikiliepre, which in turn contacted the Ulterior Entity Highpoint, which signalled the LSV Misophist, which passed the message on to the University Mind at Oara, on Khasli plate in the Juboal system, which duly relayed the signal, along with an interesting series of rhyme-scheme glyphs, ordinary poems and word games all based on the original signal, to its favoured protege, the LSV Serious Callers Only…
[stuttered tight point, M32, tra. @n4.28. 866.2083]
xLSV Serious Callers Only
oEccentric Shoot Them Later
It is Genar-Hofoen. I am now convinced. I am not certain why he may be important to the conspiracy, but he surely is. I have drawn up a plan to intercept him, on Tier. The plan involves Phage Rock; will you back me up if I request its aid?
Excession c-5 Page 25