"And what am I supposed to do?"
"Why, just talk to her!" the avatar cried, holding its arms out (and, suddenly, Genar-Hofoen was reminded of Ulver).
"What if I won't play along?" he asked.
"Then you may get to share my fate," the ship's representative told him breezily. "Whatever that may be. At any rate, I may keep you here until you do at least agree to talk to her, even if — for that meeting to take place — I have to ask her to return after I've sent her away to safety."
"And what is likely to be your fate?"
"Oh, death, possibly," the avatar said, shrugging with apparent unconcern.
The man shook his head. "You haven't got any right to threaten me like that," he said, with a sort of half-laugh in his voice he hoped didn't sound as nervous as he felt.
"Nevertheless, I am threatening you like that, Genar-Hofoen," the avatar said, bending at the waist to lean towards him for a moment. "I am not as Eccentric as I appear, but consider this: only a craft that was predisposed to a degree of eccentricity in the first place would have taken on the style of life I did, forty years ago." The creature drew itself upright again. "There is an Excession without precedent at Esperi which may lead to an infinitude of universes and a level of power orders of magnitude beyond what any known Involved currently possesses. You've experienced the way SC works, Genar-Hofoen; don't be so naive as to imagine that Minds don't employ strong-arm methods now and again, or that in a matter resounding with such importance any ship would think twice about sacrificing another consciousness for such a prize. My information is that several Minds have been forfeited already; if, in the exceptional conditions prevailing, intellects on that scale are considered fair game, think about how little a single human life is likely to matter."
The man stared at the avatar. His jaw was clenched, his fists balled. "You're doing this for a single human life," he said. "Two, if you count the fetus."
"No, Genar-Hofoen," the avatar said, shaking its head. "I'm doing this for myself, because it's become an obsession. Because my pride will not now let me settle this any other way. Dajeil, in that sense, and for all her self-lacerating spite, has won. She forced you to her will forty-five years ago and she has bent me to hers for the last forty. Now more than ever, she has won. She has thrown away four decades of her life on a self-indulgent sulk, but she stands to gain by her own criteria. You have spent the last forty years enjoying and indulging yourself, Genar-Hofoen, so perhaps you could be said to have won by your criteria, and after all you did win the lady at the time, which was all you then wanted, remember? That was your obsession. Your folly. Well, the three of us are all paying for our mutual and intermingled mistakes. You did your part in creating the situation; all I'm asking is that you do your part in alleviating it."
"And all I have to do is talk to her?" The man sounded sceptical.
The creature nodded. "Talk. Try to understand, try to see things from her perspective, try to forgive, or allow yourself to be forgiven. Be honest with her and with yourself. I'm not asking you to stay with her or be her partner again or form a family of three; I just want whatever it is that has prevented her from giving birth to be identified and ameliorated; removed if possible. I want her to resume living and her child to start. You will then be free to return to your own life."
The man looked out to sea, then at his right hand. He looked surprised to see he was holding a stone in it. He threw it as hard and as far as he could into the waves; it didn't travel half the distance to the distant, invisible wall.
"What are you supposed to do?" the man asked the creature. "What is your mission?"
"Get to the Excession," Amorphia said. "Destroy it, if that's deemed necessary, and if it's possible. Perhaps just draw a response from it."
"And what about the Affront?"
"Added complication," the avatar agreed, squatting once more and looking around the stones around its feet. "I might have to deal with them too." It shrugged, and lifted a stone, hefting it. It put the stone back and chose another.
'Deal with them?" Genar-Hofoen said. "I thought they had an entire war fleet heading there."
"Oh, they do," the avatar said from beach level. "Still, you have to try, don't you?" It stood again.
Genar-Hofoen looked at it, trying to see if it was being ironic or just disingenuous. No way of telling. "So when do we get into the thick of things?" he asked, trying to skip a flat stone over the waves, without success.
"Well," Amorphia said, "the thick of things probably starts about thirty light years out from the point of the Excession itself, these days." The avatar stretched, flexing its arm far back behind it. "We should be there this evening," it said. Its arm snapped forward. The stone whistled through the air and skipped elegantly over the tops of half a dozen waves before disappearing.
Genar-Hofoen turned and stared at the avatar. "This evening? he said.
"Time is a httle tight," the avatar said with a pained expression, again peering into the distance. "It would be for the best for all of us lf you'd talk to Dajeil… soon." It smiled vacuously at him.
"Well, how about right now?" the man said, spreading his hands.
"I'll see," the creature said, and turned abruptly on its heel. Suddenly there was a reflecting ovoid, like a giant silver egg stood on its end, where the avatar had been. The Displacer field vanished almost before the man had time to register its existence, seeming to shrink and collapse almost instantly to a point and then disappearing altogether. The process produced a gentle pop.
XI
The Killing Time plunged intact through the third wave of ancient Culture ships; they rushed on, towards the Excession. It fended off a few more of the warheads and missiles which had been directed at it, turning a couple of the latter back upon their own ships for a few moments before they were detected and destructed. The hulk of the Attitude Adjuster fell astern behind the departing fleet, coasting and twisting and tumbling in hyperspace, still heading away from and outstripping the Killing Time as it braked and started to turn.
There was only a vestigial fourth wave; fourteen ships (they were targeting it now). Had it known there were so few in the final echelon, the Killing Time would have attacked the second wave of ships. Oh well; luck counted too. It watched the Attitude Adjuster a moment longer to ensure it really was tearing itself apart. It was.
It turned its attention to the remaining fourteen craft. On its suicide trajectory it could take them all on and stand a decent chance of destroying perhaps four of them before its luck ran out; maybe a half-dozen if it was really lucky. Or it could push away and complete its brake-turn-accelerate manoeuvre to make a second pass at the main fleet. Even if they'd be waiting for it this time, it could reckon on accounting for a good few of them. Again, in the four-to-eight range.
Or it could do this.
It pulled itself round the edge of the fourteen ships in the rump of the fleet as they reconfigured their formation to meet it. Bringing up the rear they had had more warning of its attack and so had had time to adopt a suitable pattern. The Killing Time ignored the obvious challenge and temptation of flying straight into their midst and flew past and round, targeting only the outer five craft nearest it.
They gave a decent account of themselves but it prevailed, dispatching two of them with engine field implosures. This was, it had always thought, a clean, decent and honourable way to die. The pair of wreckage-shells coasted onwards; the rest of the ships sped on unharmed, chasing the main fleet. Not one of the ships turned back to take it on.
The Killing Time continued to brake, oriented towards the fast vanishing war fleet and the region of the Excession. Its engine fields were gouging great livid tracks in the energy grid as it back-pedalled furiously.
It encountered the ROU which had dropped aft with engine damage, falling back towards it as the Killing Time slowed and the other craft coasted onward and struggled to repair its motive power units. The Killing Time attempted to communicate with the ROU, was fired upon,
and tried to take the craft over with its effector. The ROU's own independent automatics detected the ship's Mind starting to give in. They tripped a destruct sequence and another hypersphere of radiation blossomed beneath the skein.
Shit, thought the Killing Time. It scanned the hyper volumes around itself.
Nothing threatening.
Well, damn me, it thought, as it slowed. I'm still alive.
This was the one outcome it hadn't anticipated.
It ran a systems check. Totally unharmed, apart from the self-inflicted degradation to its engines. It slackened off the power, dropping back to normal maxima and watching the readouts; significant degradation from here in about a hundred hours. Not too bad. Self-repairing would take days at all-engines-stop. Warhead stocks down to forty per cent; remanufacturing from first principles would take four to seven hours, depending on the exact mix it chose. Plasma chambers at ninety-six per cent efficiency; about right for the engagement system-use profile according to the relevant charts and graphs. Self-repair mechanisms champing the bit. It looked around, concentrating on the view astern. No obvious threats; it let the self-repairers make a start on two of the four chambers. Full reconstruction time, two hundred and four seconds.
Entire engagement duration; eleven microseconds. Hmm; it had felt longer. But then that was only natural.
Should it make a second pass? It pondered this while it signalled the Shoot Them Later and a couple of other distant Minds with details of the engagement. Then it copied to the Steely Glint, without leaving the comm channels open. It needed time to think.
It felt excited, energised, re-purified by the engagement it had undergone. Its appetite was whetted. A further pass would be no-holds-barred multi-destructional, not a series of semi-defensive side-actions while it concentrated on searching for one individual ship. This next time it could really get nasty…
On the other hand, it had inflicted a more than reasonable amount of damage on the fleet for no ship-loss whatsoever and a barely significant degradation to its operational capacity. It had ignored the advice of a superior Mind in wartime but it had triumphed. It had gambled and won and there was a kind of unexpected elegance in cashing in its gains now. To pursue the matter further might look like obsessive self-regard, like ultra-militarism, especially now that the original object of its ire had been bested. Perhaps it would be better to accept whatever praise and/or calumny might now be heaped upon it and re-submit itself to the jurisdiction of the Culture's war-command structure (though it was starting to have its doubts about the part of the Steely Glint in all this).
It drew level with the debris clouds left by the two ships destroyed in the final wave of the war fleet. It let them drop astern.
The wreck of the Attitude Adjuster came tumbling slowly towards it in hyperspace; coasting, slowing, drifting gradually back up towards the skein. Externally, it looked unharmed.
The Killing Time slowed to keep pace with the slackly somersaulting craft. It probed the Attitude Adjuster carefully with its senses, its effector targeted on the other ship's Mind, ready on the instant. In human terms, this was like taking somebody's pulse while keeping a gun stuck in their mouth.
The Attitude Adjuster's weakened engine fields were still tearing at what was left of its Mind, teasing and plucking and forcing it apart strand by strand, demolishing and shredding and cauterising the last remaining quanta of its personality and senses. It looked like there had been a dozen or so Affronters aboard. They were dead too, killed by stray radiations from the Mind's self-destruction.
The Killing Time felt a modicum of guilt, even self-disgust at what it had forced upon what was still, in a sense, a sister ship, even while another part of its selfhood relished and gloried in the dying craft's agonies.
The sentimental side won out; it blitzed the stricken vessel with a profusion of plasma fire from its two operational chambers, and kept station with the expanding shell of radiation for a few moments, paying what little respect the traitor ship might be due.
The Killing Time came to its decision. It signalled the Steely Glint, informing the GCV that it would accept suggestions from now on. It would harry the war fleet if that was required, or it would join in whatever stand was to be made near Esperi if that was thought the best use that could be made of it.
It would probably still die, but it would meet its fate as a loyal and obedient component of the Culture, not some sort of rogue ship pursuing a private feud.
Then it slowly ramped its engines back to normal full power, pulling itself forward to a vanishingly brief moment of rest before powering onwards, accelerating hard and setting a hyperbolic course skirting around the fleet's more direct route, heading for the location of the Excession.
It should still get there before the war fleet.
XII
" What?"
"I said I've made up my mind. I won't talk to him. I won't see him. I don't even want to be on the same ship with him. Take me away. I want to leave- Now." Dajeil Gelian gathered her skirts about her and sat heavily on the seat in the circular room under translucent dome.
"Dajeil!" exclaimed Amorphia, going down on its knees in front of her, eyes wide and shining. It made to take her hands in its but she pulled them away. "Please! See him! He has agreed to see you!"
"Oh, has he?" she said scornfully. "How magnanimous of him!"
The avatar sat back on its haunches. It looked at the woman, then it sighed and said, "Dajeil, I've never asked anything of you before. Please just see him. For me."
"I never asked anything of you, the woman said. "What you gave me you gave unasked. Some of it was unwanted," she said coldly. "All those animals, those other lives, those eternal births and childhoods; mocking me."
"Mocking you!" the avatar exclaimed. "But-!"
Dajeil sat forward, shaking her head. "No, I'm sorry, that was wrong of me." Now she reached out and took Amorphia's hands. "I'm truly grateful for all you've done for me, ship. I am. But I don't want to see him. Please take me away."
The avatar tried to argue on for a while longer, but to no avail.
The ship considered a lot of things. It considered asking the Grey Area — still in its forward Mainbay — to dip inside the woman's brain the way it had insinuated its way into Genar-Hofoen's to discover the truth of the events on Telaturier (and to implant the dream of the long-dead captain Zreyn Enhoff Tramow, not that that had proved either required or particularly well done). It considered requesting that the GCU used its effectors to make her want to have the child. It considered Displacing chemicals or biotechs which would force Dajeil's body to have the child. It considered using one of its own effectors to do the same thing. It considered just Displacing her into Genar-Hofoen's proximity, or he into hers.
Then it came up with a new plan.
"Very well," the avatar said eventually. It stood. "He will stay. You may go. Do you wish to take the bird Gravious with you?"
The woman looked perplexed, even confused. I — " she began. "Yes, yes, why not? It can't do any harm, can it?"
"No," the avatar said. "No, it cannot." It bowed its head to her.
"Goodbye."
Dajeil opened her mouth to speak, but the avatar was Displaced away at the same instant; the sound it left behind was like a pair of hands giving a single, gentle clap. Dajeil closed her mouth, then put both her hands over her eyes and lowered her head, doubling up as well as she was able to. Next moment there was another, distant noise and from down the winding stairs she heard a thin, hoarse voice cry out.
"Waa! Shit! Grief, where-?" Then there was a confused flutter of wings.
Dajeil closed her eyes. Then there was another, closer-sounding pop. Her eyes flicked open.
A young woman, slim and black haired, was sitting looking surprised in the middle of the floor, dressed in black pyjamas and reading a small, old-fashioned book. Between her bottom and the room's carpet there was a neat circle of pink material, still in the process of collapsing, air expelling flutteringly rou
nd the edges. Around her floated a small snow-storm of white particles, settling with a feather-like slowness. She jerked once, as though she had been leaning back on something which had just been removed.
"What… the… fuck…?" she said softly. She looked slowly around, from side to side.
Her gaze settled on Dajeil. She frowned for a moment, then some kind of understanding imposed itself. She quickly completed her review of her surroundings, then pointed at the other woman. "Dajeil," she said. "Dajeil Gelian, right?"
Dajeil nodded.
XIII
[stuttered tight point, M32, tra. @4.28.885.3553]
xEccentric Shoot Them Later
oLSV Serious Callers Only
It was the Attitude Adjuster. It is dead now (signal + DiaGlyphs enclosed).
oo
[stuttered tight point, M32, tra. @n4.28. 885.3740] xLSV Serious Callers Only
oEccentric Shoot Them Later
Not a pleasant way to go. Your friend the Killing Time deserves congratulations, and probably merits therapy. However, as I'm sure it would point out, it is a warship. This implicates the Steely Glint; the Attitude Adjuster was its daughter and was demilitarised (supposedly) by it seventy years ago. I trust your friend will treat the SG's subsequent operational suggestions with a degree of caution.
oo
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