The Algebraist

by Iain M. Banks

  Locked into a centrally positioned space which doubled as a passenger compartment and hold, restrained by webbing, Fassin and Y'sul felt the ship commit to spirals within spirals within spirals, tiny corkscrew motions threaded into a whole ramped course of greater coils, themselves part of a still wider set of ever quicker, tighter loops.

  'Fucking hell,' Y'sul commented.

  A faulty screen was set in the far wall, hazed over with static. It made buzzing noises and occasionally flashed with images of ragged, striated clouds whipping past in distorted twists of light and shade. Fassin could see and hear, though both senses were degraded. All the systems in the gascraft had been switched off. Webbed upright, he could see out of the de-opaqued plate over his face - he'd let some of the shock-gel drain away so he could see better. The sound that came through the little arrowhead was at once dulled and high. Y'sul's voice sounded like squeaks, barely comprehensible.

  Fassin and Y'sul were stuck to the inner surface of the compartment, pinned there by the ship's wild spins.

  'Any idea why they have to do all this fractal spiralling?' Fassin had asked when they'd both been secured and Quercer & Janath had gone to their command space a single compart­ment away.

  'Could just be pure mischief,' Y'sul had said.

  Fassin looked at Y'sul now. Both the Dweller's sense fringes were turned in.

  The ship accelerated hard, executing a broad curve. The screen flashed black pitted with stars, all revolving frantically, then blanked out.

  The insane, nested sets of spirals resolved down to a single long-axis spin, as though the Velpin was a shell travelling down the barrel of some vast gun.

  The ship resounded with a high, singing note around them and seemed to settle into something like a cruise. The rate of spin slackened off gradually. Fassin watched as Y'sul's sense fringes gradually opened. The screen showed slowly spinning stars for several minutes. Then it blanked out again. The spin­ning picked up once more and Y'sul turned his fringes outside-in again. The spin built up until Fassin could feel his whole body being pressed through the shock-gel. It was his own coffin, he realised. Of course it was. He was getting tunnel vision now, starting to see the view down that great gun barrel, the view ahead shrunk to a single point far away; way, way in the distance, nothing but darkness and grey beyond darkness on either side, down that never-ending tube towards the last defined place they were aiming towards, never coming any closer.

  Fassin woke up. Still spinning, but the rate was slackening off again. His nose itched and it felt like he needed to pee, even though he knew he didn't. This never happened when the shock-gel and gillfluid were doing their jobs. He fell asleep.

  *

  Taince Yarabokin woke up. One of her first thoughts as she surfaced slowly to full consciousness was that Saluus Kehar would not have received the message she'd prepared for him, that there was still time for more reviewings and re-recordings and revisions, that she would be able to spend more time watching and listening to herself on the recording, and reduce herself to tears every time. Still time and a chance to confront him, maybe kill him, if that was both possible and something she felt driven to do at the time (she had no idea - sometimes she wanted to kill him, sometimes she wanted him alive to suffer the shame of knowing that she had released the story to the newsnets, and sometimes she just wanted him to know that she knew what had really happened that long-ago night in the ruined ship on the high desert).

  She checked the time, feeling woozily around in virtual space for information. Still half a year out from Ulubis. She would be awake now until the attack itself, one of the first to be wakened for the final run-in, because she represented the closest thing they had to local knowledge. Privately she doubted she'd be able to offer much practical help, given that she'd last seen Ulubis over two centuries earlier and it might, to put it mildly, have changed somewhat after having been invaded, but she was the best they had. She thought of herself in that respect more as a talisman than anything else, a small symbol of the system that they would be fighting for. If that had been one consider­ation in her getting a place in the fleet, it didn't bother her. She was confident that she was a good, competent and brave officer and deserved her post on merit alone. The fact that it was her own home system she was riding to the rescue of was just a bonus.

  The fleet had spread out a little since the battle with the Beyonders in mid-voyage, sacrificing the immediate weight of arms it could bring to bear for a net of forward picket craft which would flag any trouble long before the main body of the fleet got to it. Taince had spent most of the intervening years slow-asleep in her pod, but - thanks to that relative security provided by the advance ships - she'd had some recreational and morale-time out of the shock-gel as well, walking around almost like a normal human being in the spun-gravity of the battleship, feeling odd and strange confronted with such normality, like an alien inhabiting a human's body; clumsy, astonished at tiny things like fingernails and the hairs on an arm, awkward, especially at first, with meeting other off-duty humans, and missing the richness of her in-pod, wired-up virtual existence - with the ability to dip in and out of entire high-definition sensoria of data and meaning - like an amputated limb.

  It would be like that again now, once she had finally come round. Taince wasn't really looking forward to it. When she was stumbling about on two legs she wanted to be back in the pod, synched in, but when she was there she was forever nostalgic for a normal, physical one-speed, one-reality life. Blue skies and sunlight, a fresh breeze blowing through her hair and green grass and flowers under her bare feet.

  Long time ago. And maybe never again, who knew?

  Another of Taince's first thoughts, even when she realised that she was being woken up slowly, without alarms going off, as part of the programmed, pre-agreed duty-shift system rather than some fateful emergency that might end in her death at any moment, was that she had not yet escaped into death, that it was not yet all over, and any terrors and agonies that might be hers to encounter before the peace of oblivion were still ahead of her.

  *

  'Hoestruem,' Quercer & Janath said.

  'Where?' Fassin asked.

  'What do you mean, "Where?"?'

  'You're in it.'

  Fassin had recovered from his blackout once they'd turned his little gascraft's systems back on. He still felt disorientated and oddly dirty, a sensation that was only gradually disappearing as the shock-gel enveloped him fully again. Y'sul had seemed a bit groggy too, wobbly in the air when released from his webbing.

  Now they were looking at the passenger-compartment screen, which Quercer & Janath, still dressed in their shiny overalls, had hit with one rim-arm and got to work. Fassin looked care­fully at the image on the screen but all he could see was a star field. He could not, for now, work out in which direction he was looking. Certainly not a direction he was used to looking in. He didn't recognise anything.

  'In it?' he asked, feeling fuzzy, and foolish.

  'Yes, in it.'

  Fassin looked at Y'sul, who still looked a little grey about the mantle.

  The Dweller just shrugged. 'Well,' he said, 'I certainly give in. Who, what or where the fuck is Hoestruem?'

  'A Clouder.'

  'A Clouder?' Fassin said. This had to be a translation thing, or a simple misunderstanding. Clouders were part of the Cincturia: the beings, devices, semi-civs and tech dross that were beyond the Beyonders, way on the outside of everything.

  Y'sul shook himself. 'You mean a WingClouder or TreeClouder or StickyClouder or—'

  'No.'

  'None of the above.'

  'Just a Clouder.'

  'But—' Fassin said.

  'Aopoleyin, then!' Y'sul shouted. 'Let's start with that! Is that where we are?'

  'Yes.' 'Indeed.'

  'Well, sort of.' 'Depends.'

  'It's the nearest place.' 'The nearest system.'

  'Eh?' Y'sul said.

  'The nearest what?' Fassin asked, simply not understa
nding. He peered at the star field. This didn't look right. This didn't look right at all. Not in any way whatsoever, not upside down or mirrored or backside-holo'd or anything.

  'I think I'm still confused,' Y'sul said, rippling his sense mantles to wake himself up.

  Fassin felt as though he was at the bottom of that gun barrel again, about to be blasted out of it, or already being blown out of it, up the biggest, longest most unspeakably enormous and forever unending gun barrel in all the whole damn universe.

  'How far are we from Nasqueron?' he heard himself say.

  'Wait a moment,' Y'sul said slowly. 'What do you mean, "system"?'

  'About thirty-four kiloyears.'

  'Stellar, not gas-giant. Apologies for any confusion.'

  'Thirty-four kiloyears?' Fassin said. It felt like he was going to black out again. 'You mean . . .' His voice just trailed off.

  'Thirty-four thousand light years, standard. Roughly. Apologies for any confusion.' 'I already said that.'

  'Know. Different person, different confusion.'

  They were in another system, another solar system, another part of the galaxy altogether; they had, if they were being told the truth, left Ulubis - system and star - thirty-four thousand light years behind. There was a working portal in Ulubis system linked via a wormhole to this distant stellar system neither Fassin nor Y'sul had ever heard of.

  The Clouder being Hoestruem was a light year across. Clouders were - depending who you talked to - sentient, semi-sentient, proto-sentient, a-sentient or just plain not remotely sentient -though that last extreme point of view tended to be held only by those for whom it would be convenient if it were true, such as those who could do useful, profitable things with a big cloud of gas. Providing it wasn't alive. Arguably closer to vast, distrib­utedly-smart plants than any sort of animal, they had a compo­sition very similar to the clouds of interstellar gas which they inhabitedwere (the distinction was moot).

  Clouders were part of the Cincturia, the collection of beings, species, machine strains and intelligent detritus that existed -generally - between stellar systems and didn't fit into any other neat category (so they weren't the deep-space cometarians called the Eclipta, they weren't drifting examples of the Brown Dwarf Communitals known as the Plena, and they weren't the real exotics, the Non-Baryonic Penumbrae, the thirteen-way-folded Dimensionates or the Flux-dwelling Quantarchs).

  Valseir's friend Leisicrofe was a scholar of the Cincturia. The research trip he was making was a field trip, visiting actual exam­ples of Cincturia - Clouders, Sailpods, Smatter, Toilers and the rest - throughout the galaxy. He had come to visit Hoestruem because it was one of the few Clouders anywhere near a worm-hole portal. Only it wasn't a wormhole or a portal that anybody in the Mercatoria or the rest of what called itself the Civilised Galaxy knew anything about.

  The star Aopoleyin was only a dozen light days away. The Clouder Hoestruem - much larger than the stellar system as meas­ured to its outermost planet - was passing partly through the outer reaches of the system, intent (if that was not too loaded a word) on its slow migration to some far-distant part of the great lens. The Dweller Leisicrofe was somewhere here, in his own small craft, or at least had been. The Velpin set out to look for him.

  'How long were we really under?' Fassin asked Quercer & Janath. They were floating in the Velpin's control space, watching the scanners chatter through their sweeps, searching for anything that might be a ship. The progress was slow. The Dwellers had long had an agreement with the Clouders that meant their ships made very slow speed when moving through one. Clouders were resilient, but their individual filaments, the wispy bands and channels of tenuous gas that formed their sensory apparatus and nervous systems, were surpassing deli­cate, and a ship the size of the Velpin had to move slowly and carefully amongst the strands of Clouder substance to avoid causing damage. The Velpin was broadcasting a signal hail looping a request for Leisicrofe to get in touch, though Quercer & Janath was not optimistic this would raise their quarry; these academics were notorious for turning off their comms.

  The truetwin looked genuinely puzzled. The double-creature shook itself, rustling the shiny crinkles of the mirror-finish coveralls. 'How long were you under what?'

  'How long were we really unconscious?' Fassin asked.

  'Some days.'

  'And then some more days.'

  'Seriously,' Fassin said.

  'And what's this "we"?' Y'sul protested. 'I wasn't uncon­scious!'

  'There.' 'You see?'

  'Your friend disagrees.'

  'Some days, you said,' Fassin quoted.

  'Some days?' Y'sul said. 'Some days? We weren't unconscious for some days, any days, a single day!' He paused. 'Were we?'

  'The process takes some time, requires forbearance,' the truetwin Dweller said. 'Sleep is best. No distractions.' 'How could we possibly keep you amused?'

  'And then there's the security aspect.' 'Of course.'

  'I was only briefly drowsy!' Y'sul exclaimed. 'I shut my eyes for a moment, in contemplation, no more!'

  'About twenty-six days.'

  'We were unconscious for twenty-six days?' Fassin asked. 'Standard.'

  'Roughly.'

  'What?' Y'sul bellowed. 'You mean we were kept unconscious?'

  'In a manner of speaking, yes.'

  'In a manner of speaking!' a plainly furious Y'sul roared. 'What we said.'

  'And what manner of speaking would that be, you kidnap­ping piratical wretches?'

  'The manner of speaking complete truth.'

  'You mean you drugged or zapped us unconscious?' Y'sul fairly howled.

  'Yes. Very boring otherwise.'

  'How dare you?' Y'sul shrieked.

  'Plus it's part of the terms for using the tube.'

  'Conditions of Passage,' the left side of Quercer & Janath intoned.

  The other side of the truetwin made a whistling noise.

  'Oh, yes! Those Conditions of Passage; they'll get you every time.'

  'Can't be helpful with them.'

  'Can't use the tube without 'em.'

  'Don't— What? - You—Condi—!' Y'sul spluttered.

  'Ah,' Fassin said, signalling to Y'sul to let him speak. 'Yes. I'd like to ask you some questions about, ah, tube travel, if you don't mind.'

  'Absolutely.' 'Ask away.'

  'Make the questions good, though; the answers may well be baloney.'

  '. . . Never heard anything so disgraceful in all my . . .' Y'sul was muttering, drifting over to a set of medium-range scanner holo tanks and tapping them as though this would aid the locating of Leisicrofe's ship.

  Fassin had known they'd been under for more than an hour or two. His own physiology, and the amount of cleaning-up and housekeeping the shock-gel and gillfluid had had to do had told him that. Finding out that it had been twenty-six days left him more relieved than anything else. Certainly losing that amount of time when you hadn't been expecting to and hadn't been warned about it was disconcerting and left one feeling sort of retrospectively vulnerable (and would it be the same on any way back?) but at least they hadn't said a year, or twenty-six years. Fate alone knew what had happened in Ulubis during that time - and of course, with all his gascraft's systems switched off, Fassin had no way of checking whether this really was the amount of time they had spent unconscious - but it looked like at least one small part of the Dweller List legend was true. There were secret wormholes. There was one, for sure, and Fassin thought it unlikely in the extreme that the one between Ulubis and Aopoleyin was the only one. It was well worth losing a couple of dozen days to find that out.

  Fassin felt himself try to draw a breath inside the little gascraft. 'We did come through a wormhole?' he asked.

  'Excellent first question! Easily answerable in every sense! Yes.'

  'We did. Though we call them Cannula.'

  'Where is the Ulubis end - the Nasqueron end - of the worm-hole, the Cannula? Where is the Adjutage?' Fassin asked.

  'Ah! He knows
the terminology.' 'Most impressive.'

  'And a very good question in one sense.'

  'Couldn't agree more. Phenomenally hopeless in another.'

  'Can't tell you.' 'Security.'

  'Sure you understand.'

  'Of course I understand,' Fassin said. Getting a straight answer to that one would have been too good to be true. 'How long has the wormhole existed?' he asked.

  The truetwin was quiet for a moment, then said,

  'Don't know.'

  'For sure. Billions of years, probably.'

  'Possibly.'

  'How many others are there like it?' Fassin asked. ‘Imean wormholes; Cannula?'

  'Ditto.'

  'Ditto?'

  'Ditto as in - again - don't know.' 'No idea.'

  'Well, some.'

  'All right, some idea. But can't tell. Conditions of Passage again.'

  'Drat those Conditions of Passage.' 'Oh yes, drat.'

  'Are there any other wormholes from Ulubis - from anywhere near Ulubis system, say within its Oort radius - to anywhere else?'

  'Another good question. Can't tell you.'

  'More than our travelcaptaincy's worth.' 'This one, to Aopoleyin; does it link up with a Mercatoria wormhole? Does one of their wormholes have a portal, an Adjutage, here too?' 'No.'

  'Agree. Straight answer. What a relief. No.' 'And from here, from Aopoleyin,' Fassin said. 'Are there other wormholes?'

  Silence again for a moment. Then, 'Seems silly, but can't tell you.'

  'Like anybody's going to have just one stupid tube to this place.' 'But still.'

  'Can't say.' 'And that's official.'

  Fassin signalled resignation. 'Conditions of Passage?' he asked.

  'Catching on.'

  'But why me?' Fassin asked. 'Why you?'

  'Why you what?'

  'Why have I been allowed to travel here, to use the worm-hole?'

  'You asked.'

  'More to the point, Valseir, Zosso and Drunisine asked on your behalf.'

  'How could we refuse?'