The Hydrogen Sonata

by Iain M. Banks

∞

  The Mistake Not … is making its dash. The Passing By …’s two Thugs are being gunned-up as we speak. It is proving harder than expected to prise the Empiricist’s Delinquent twins Headcrash and Xenocrat away from the smatter outbreak at Loliscombana; they’d turned it into a competition about who bagged the greatest amount of smatter but then there was a dispute over whether the criterion ought to be tonnage or processing power. This has been settled by a compromise but both desire more time to stock up on the criteria they had earlier discounted. The Empiricist has agreed to give them another couple of hours to enjoy themselves before shouting at them. However, talking of talking with refugees/remainders/rejects from/of/expelled from the Big S, have you been in touch with your contact/s?

  ∞

  Doing so even as we speak. Taking the opportunity provided by the glacial pace involved to get an update from your good self. Elevate not your hopes though; nothing useful so far or on the horizon.

  ∞

  Well, best of luck. By the by, have you passed me? The delays on these signals—

  ∞

  Hours ago. And closer than you might imagine.

  ∞

  Neat. Didn’t see a damn thing. Exemplary encasement management. Awfully glad we’re on the same side. Close to over-straining our design maxima envelope, are we?

  ∞

  That’d be telling. Anyway, I must return to the land of the lichen-slow.

  ∞

  Yeah, you have fun now.

  ∞

  Unlikely.

  ∞

  “I appreciate the Sublime would appear to be involved,” the Zoologist said eventually, sounding like it was making an effort to be patient.

  “Indeed. All I’m asking is that you think about this, and if there is anything you can do, any help you can give, please let me know.”

  The Zoologist looked pained, shook its head. “But none of it matters.”

  “Not to you, perhaps. Just indulge me.”

  “But to what end?”

  “It will seem to matter to me, to us. The sum of fairness in our existence – however mean and shoddy compared to the Sublime – may be increased, and some suffering prevented.”

  Another shrug. “It still won’t matter, doesn’t matter.”

  “Pretend it does; game it that way,” the Caconym suggested. “As a favour to me, in return for my forbearance regarding whatever tying-sheets-into-a-rope and escaping-the-dorm shenaniganeering it is you get up to via the frayed edges of filament-foamed nano-reality and the divine nether-world of the blissfully Enfolded.”

  “Still no difference, still not mattering.”

  The Caconym looked around the lair/laboratory. “Does what you do here matter?”

  “Not really,” the Zoologist admitted. “It passes the time, keeps me involved.” It looked at the rack of multi-coloured test-tubes. “Currently I am, and for the next few centuries, probably will be, experimenting with a variety of virtual chemistries, usually involving many hundreds or even thousands of elements and often branching into some requiring new varieties of fundamental particles.” It smiled. “There is much more: I play many games in other virtualities, all fascinating and unpredictable, and I still explore the Mathematical Irreal, as opposed to the Ultimate Irreal of the Sublime.”

  “And in all of this, to what end?”

  “No end save itself: I pass the time to pass the time, and stay involved to stay involved.”

  “Yes, but why?”

  “Why not?”

  “Uh-huh. So it’s still worth doing.”

  “To some extent.”

  “Well, I – we all – do the same in the Real. To rather more significant effect, as we see it.”

  “I know. I understand.”

  Did it though? the Caconym found itself wondering. Did this abstracted creature, this sketch, really understand? How far removed from reality – from the Real – was it, even though in theory it was back within it?

  From the little the Caconym had been able to glean from its fellow Mind – basically rumours that it had, ambiguously, confirmed – to exist within the Sublime was to expand in perception and understanding for ever, in a space that could never fill up. No matter how any transitioned, translated civilisation or flourishing individual entity expanded its scope and reach and expression, there was always more room, and more room within a whole new set of dimensions that were, conversely, full, that were thick with possibility.

  The Real – with its vast volumes of nothing between the planets, stars, systems and galaxies – was basically mostly vacuum; an averaged near-nothing incapable of true complexity due to its inescapable impoverishment of structure and the sheer overwhelming majority of nothingness over substance. The Sublime was utterly different: packed with existence, constantly immanentising context, endlessly unfolding being-scape.

  Like many a Culture Mind, the Caconym had tried simulating the experience of being in the Sublime; there were various easily available and tweakable packages which Minds passed from one to another, each the result of centuries of study, analysis, thought, imagination and effort. All claimed to give a glimpse of what it must be like to exist in the Sublime, though of course none could prove it.

  And all were unsatisfactory, though each had its adherents and some even had what were in effect – shocking this, for the Culture’s Minds – their addicts.

  The Caconym had tried a few and found them all wanting: frustrating, inadequate, even oddly demeaning.

  “Well,” it said, “will you at least promise you’ll think about finding a way to help?”

  The Zoologist smiled. “That I can do. I duly promise.”

  The Caconym’s avatoid looked down, plucked the tiny insect from the bench and held it trapped between two fingers. It held it up, antennae waving, towards the upside-down avatoid. “You always say that nothing matters. Would it matter if I crushed this, now?”

  The Zoologist shrugged. “Cac, it’s just a package of code.”

  “It’s alive, in some sense. It has a set of programmed reactions, responses, so on. A tiny fraction of this environment’s richness would be snuffed out if I reduced it to its virtual components.”

  “All this, and all you imply by it, is known. Thought about, allowed for, included. Still.”

  The Caconym’s avatoid sighed. It put the insect back on the bench, right on the corner it appeared to have been heading for. “No matter. Thank you for agreeing to think about it.”

  “Least I can do.”

  The Caconym stood, then paused. “I said that I trust you,” it said to the upside-down avatoid hanging a few metres away. “And, right now, I believe that you will do as you say, and think about this, because you have promised to.” It paused. “Am I being foolish? Outside of an enforceable legal framework – something that is manifestly not present here – trust only operates where beings have the concept of honour, and, generally, a reputation – a standing – they want to protect. Do such considerations affect you at all? Do even these things … matter to you?”

  The Zoologist looked troubled. Eventually it said, “When you come back from the Sublime, it is as though you leave all but one of your senses behind, as though you have all the rest removed, torn away – and you have become used to having hundreds.” It paused. “Imagine you,” it said, nodding at the Caconym, “being a human – a basic human, even, without augmentation or amendment: slow, limited, fragile, with no more than a couple of handfuls of very restricted senses. Then imagine that you have all your senses but – say – touch taken away, and most of your memories as well, including all those to do with language, save for the sort of simple stuff spoken by toddlers. Then you are exiled, blind and deaf and with no sense of smell or taste or cold or warmth, to a temperate water world inhabited only by gel fish, sponges and sea-feathers, to swim and make your way as best you can, in a world with no sharp edges and almost nothing solid at all.” The Zoologist paused. “That is what it is to return from the Sublime to the Real.�
�

  The Caconym nodded slowly. “So, why did you?”

  The Zoologist shrugged. “To experience a kind of extreme asceticism,” it said, “and to provide a greater contrast, when I return.”

  “Well,” the Caconym observed, “that’s possibly the most unambiguous information on Subliming you’ve ever imparted. To me, at least. However, you haven’t answered the question I actually asked.”

  “The point is that even such a reduced, enfeebled creature would still be in some sense its old self, even if it found it hard to express such a fact. And what was important to it before, if it had any real value then, will remain important to it now, for all the intervening change, elevation and reduction.”

  “I shall take that as meaning I am not being too hopelessly foolish.”

  “You may still be, but then so may I.”

  “Yes, well, let’s not make a competition out of it.”

  “I will see if there’s anything I can do, regarding this. If there is, I’ll be in touch. Thank you for coming to see me.”

  “Always a frustration. I’ll let myself out.”

  The Caconym’s avatoid vanished without any pretence of walking out or flying away.

  The avatoid of the Zoologist hung looking at the tiny insect on the bench for a while longer, then shook its head and swung back to where the rack of test-tubes fumed quietly away.

  Nine

  (S -19)

  She became aware of light and sound again. Weak light, which her eyes were struggling to amplify, and only the sound of her own heart, beating, but at least some light, some sound. Must have drifted off to sleep. It was very cold now. Cossont took a moment to remember where she was.

  Then she recalled: the downed shuttle, on the cold, airless surface of Eshri, after the attack. She shivered.

  Across from her, the android Eglyle Parinherm was looking up, very intently, at the suited body of the dead trooper, hanging slackly in the up-ended seat.

  The suit was twitching.

  Cossont felt Pyan stiffen where the creature was draped over her shoulders. “Now that,” it whispered, “is not natural.”

  Parinherm frowned, glanced at Cossont and the familiar, and put one finger to his lips before looking at the trembling suit of the dead trooper.

  The android reached one hand slowly out towards it.

  The Desert-class MSV Passing By And Thought I’d Drop In was drifting with the winds over the shallow seas, wide canals and spacious linear cities of Zyse’s tropical subcontinental belt; the ship looked like a giant pale pink box-kite three kilometres long, floating along with the clouds just a few kilometres up. It was here to represent the Culture, to make a kind of show of solidarity with the cousin species/civ the Gzilt, as they prepared to make the big leap into the everlasting wonderfulness of the Sublime. Wishing the relatives bon voyage, basically; saying, We’re thinking of you …

  The Passing By … watched the shadows of the clouds – and its own giant shadow – drifting across the serried buildings and parks of the deserted cities, the wind-ruffled surfaces of the sinuous lakes and small inland seas, and the geometrically contained waters of the great canals. The canals were generally flat calm and dark, save where a few pleasure craft and even fewer barges still slid along them. Clumps of blue and green and yellow weed were building up along the margins of the waterways.

  The world, the Passing By … thought, seemed empty and neglected. It felt like there was almost nobody left to look up and see it.

  This was a little sad, but rather sweetly so.

  No matter. The ship had reduced its external fields to a minimum both in number and power so it could keep them almost perfectly transparent, the better to be seen. It had also experimented with various colour schemes for its hull before settling on this pale pink. At night it made itself shine, as though caught in strong moonlight.

  It could feel the wind as a cool, mostly constant, faintly gusting presence on its outermost bump-field, gently pressuring it from one side, sending it drifting across the land- and sea-scape below. It had adjusted its apparent inertia/momentum so that its motion matched that of the clouds it floated amongst, and only vectored its anti-gravity field component minutely, as seldom as possible, to nudge itself out of the way of any clouds that looked likely to impinge on its own patch of sky. It felt very content to appear so seemingly insubstantial and to have its movements so contingent on something as weak, erratic and profoundly natural as planetary breezes.

  Meanwhile its avatar Ziborlun – silver-skinned amongst the palely interesting Gzilt and the various other species in flesh, avatar and suited-up guises – walked and talked, diplomatically, with the people of the court, a couple of thousand kilometres away to the north. The avatar was monitoring, listening and witnessing. It was only rarely offering any comment beyond the most banally polite and formal, and it was being kept on a tight rein back to the ship. A very tight rein, now, as matters began to get interesting.

  Often avatars were allowed pretty much full autonomy, their personalities calibrated so precisely against that of the Mind they were representing that it was almost inconceivable they’d speak or act in a way the Mind would later disapprove of. The Passing By … was usually quite happy with that arrangement, but not now; it was with its avatar-at-court in real time now, constantly, controlling it.

  And also meanwhile, its two escorting Fast Pickets, the Value Judgement and the Refreshingly Unconcerned With The Vulgar Exigencies Of Veracity, had just completed their bit of quiet refitting in a couple of off-limits Medium bays and were now gently nudging their way out of the main hull, surrounded by two small shoals of Lifter tugs, the field complexes of the two craft extending delicately, almost hesitantly outwards to mesh with its own, allowing for a dignified, reassuringly exact, micrometre-smooth exit.

  Medium bay doors floated and slid back into place. The little Lifters pulled away from the pair of Thug-class vessels. The two ships – warships again now, even if in theory they were still Fast Pickets – swung slowly out among the layered fields of the larger ship, gradually creating giant bubbles of field encasement that bulged out from the main structure before separating entirely.

  The ships – dark, rather uninspiring-looking pointed cylinders with flared rears – were on their own now, supported by their own wrapping of fields both visible and not. They drifted upward into the blue-green skies of Zyse, disturbing no clouds whatsoever, accelerating slowly through the various layers of the atmosphere – the planet’s own field complex, in a way, the Passing By … supposed – until they reached space, the medium they were, in one sense, designed for.

  They raced away, disappearing from the Real almost simultan-eously, into the place they were genuinely most at home.

  Every Totalling into hyperspace was a kind of tiny, trivial Subliming, the ship thought sadly.

  It turned its full attention back to its avatar.

  The android’s hand touched the trembling forearm of the dead trooper’s suit. Slender fingers slid up and along, to the shoulder, then to the rear of the neck as Parinherm leaned slowly closer.

  Cossont felt Pyan tremble, as though whatever was making the dead trooper’s suit twitch was somehow transmissible. It came as a shock to realise it really might be. Her familiar could be under whatever malevolent communicative spell was doing this to the dead trooper’s suit. Or the trooper might not really be dead, she thought, though she found that hard to believe.

  There was a faint buzzing noise, then the trooper’s suit went limp again, unmoving. Parinherm seemed to relax; his hand came away from the back of the suit’s neck.

  It looked at Cossont. “We may talk now, quietly,” it said.

  “What was that?” she asked, keeping her voice low.

  “I think we – or this craft – might be under suspicion, as it were,” he whispered. “This would indicate that hostile craft are still in the vicinity. Probably a loitering sub-munition rather than a ship; the attack/intrusion was crudely done.”


  “The suit …?”

  “Was not fully disabled, or killed off, if you prefer. My apologies. Back-ups. Obviously the scenario continues!” He looked pleased.

  “If you mean a scenario as in a simulation,” Cossont said, “this is not – for the last fucking time – a simulation.”

  The android nodded, looked serious. “I hear what you say.”

  “Oh, good grief,” Pyan muttered.

  Cossont found herself shuddering uncontrollably. Her trews and jacket had already automatically fluffed themselves up to their max but they weren’t designed to work in serious sub-zero temperatures, especially with nothing covering the wearer’s head. “And why,” she asked, “is it so cold?”

  “Please, keep your voice low,” Parinherm told her. “We have to allow heat to bleed naturally from the craft, otherwise it will become clear that there is warmth-producing, probably biological life within it, and it is likely to be attacked.”

  “There won’t be any more biological life within it if I freeze to d-death,” Cossont said, another tremendous shudder running through her. She could see her breath going out in front of her face and couldn’t feel any of her fingers or toes.

  The android frowned deeply. “I know. It’s a tricky balance.”

  “C-can we get more heat in here?” she asked. “Not k-kidding with the way I’m speaking by the way; genuinely involuntary shivering g-going on here.”

  Parinherm nodded. “I know. I’m monitoring you, and your vital signs are showing cause for concern. You will begin to exhibit the first symptoms of frostbite within the next hour unless the situation changes.” He shrugged. “We could let you lose the body,” he said brightly, as though just coming up with a good new idea, “and let the emergency helmet-collar take over keeping your brain alive. And your head. Well, mostly.”

  Pyan went rigid, as though reacting to this, but then stayed that way.

  Parinherm stared at the creature, which was still draped over Cossont’s shoulders like a thick scarf but had now gone stiff as metal. The android put a finger to his lips again and started to move slowly towards Cossont, his gaze fixed on Pyan.