The Fate Amenable To Change’s avatars began the task of telling the human crew what was happening. Meanwhile the ship turned onto a course at a right-angle to its initial heading and powered away at maximum acceleration. The Appeal To Reason targeted its effector on the fleeing Culture ship as it curved out trying to intercept it, but the attack - configured more as a last attempt to communicate - was easily fended off. That wasn’t what the Fate was concerned about.
It watched that imaginary line from the Excession to the MSV Not Invented Here, focusing, magnifying its attention on that line’s middle distance.
Movement. Probing filaments of effector radiations. Three foci, clustered neatly around that line.
The Elencher ship Break Even and its two militarily configured sister craft had been awaiting it.
Congratulating itself on its perspicacity, the GCU headed on out, leaving the immediate vicinity of the Excession for the first time in almost a month.
Then its engines stopped working.
IV
‘I was told,’ Genar-Hofoen said in the traveltube, to the blank-faced and cadaverous ship’s avatar, ‘that I’d be off here in a day. What do I need quarters for?’
‘We are moving into a war zone,’ the avatar said flatly. ‘There is a good chance that it will not be possible to off-load the Grey Area or any other ship between approximately sixteen and one hundred plus hours from now.’
A deep, dark gulf of the Sleeper Service’s cavernous interior space was briefly visible, sliding past, then the tube car zipped into another tunnel. Genar-Hofoen stared at the tall, angular creature. ‘You mean I might be stuck on here for four days?’
‘That is a possibility,’ the avatar said.
Genar-Hofoen glared at the avatar, hoping he looked as suspicious as he felt. ‘Well, why can’t I stay on the Grey Area?’ he asked.
‘Because it might have to leave at any moment.’
The man looked away, swearing softly. There was a war on, he supposed, but even so, this was typical SC. First the Grey Area was allowed on board the Sleeper Service when he’d been told it wouldn’t be, and now this. He glanced back at the avatar, which was looking at him with what could have been curiosity or just gormlessness. Four days on the Sleeper. He’d thought earlier, stuck on the module, that he’d be grateful when he could leave Ulver Seich and her drone behind on the GCU while he came aboard the Sleeper Service, but as it turned out, he wasn’t.
He shivered, and imagined that he could still feel Ulver’s lips on his, from when they’d kissed goodbye, just a few minutes earlier. The flash-back tremor passed. Wow, he thought to himself, and grinned. That was like being an adolescent again.
Two nights, one day. That was all he and Ulver had spent together as lovers. It wasn’t remotely long enough. And now he’d be stuck aboard here for up to four nights.
Oh well. It could be worse; at least the avatar didn’t look like it was the one he’d slept with. He wondered if he was going to see Dajeil at all. He looked at the clothes he was wearing, standard loose fatigues from the Grey Area. Wasn’t this how he’d been dressed when he and Dajeil had last parted? He couldn’t recall. Possibly. He wondered at his own subconscious processes.
The tube car was slowing; suddenly it was stopped.
The avatar gestured to the door that rolled open. A short corridor beyond led to another door. Genar-Hofoen stepped into the corridor.
‘I trust you find your quarters acceptable,’ he heard the avatar say quietly, behind him. Then a soft rrring noise and a faint draught on his neck made him look back in surprise. The traveltube had gone, the transparent tube door was closed and the corridor behind him was empty. He looked about but there was nowhere the avatar could have gone. He shrugged and continued on to the door ahead. It opened onto a small lift. He was in it for a couple of seconds, then the door rotated open and he stepped out, frowning, into a dimly lit space full of boxes and equipment that somehow looked vaguely familiar. There was a strange scent in the air . . . The lift door snicked closed behind him. He saw some steps over to one side in the gloom, set into a curved stone wall. They really did look familiar.
He thought he knew where he was. He went to the steps and climbed them.
He came up from the cellar into the short passageway which led to the main door on the ground storey of the tower. The door was open. He walked down the passageway to it and stood outside.
Waves beat on the shining, sliding shingle of the beach. The sun stood near noon. One moon was visible, a pale eggshell half hidden in the fragile blueness of the sky. The smell he’d recognised earlier was that of the sea. Birds cried from the winds above him. He walked down the slope of beach towards the water and looked about. It was all pretty convincing; the space couldn’t really be all that big - the waves were perhaps a little too uncomplicated, a little too regular, further out - but it certainly looked like you were seeing for tens of kilometres. The tower was just the way he remembered it, the low cliffs beyond the salt marsh equally familiar.
‘Hello?’ he called. No answer.
He pulled out his pen terminal. ‘Very amusing . . .’ he said, then frowned, looking at the terminal. No tell-tale light. He pressed a couple of panels to institute a systems check. Nothing happened. Shit.
‘Ah hah,’ said a small, crackly voice behind him. He turned to see a black bird, folding its wings on the shelf of stones behind him. ‘Another captive,’ it cackled.
V
The Fate Amenable To Change let its engine fields race for a moment, running a series of tests and evaluation processes. It was as if its traction fields were just sinking through the energy grid, as if it wasn’t there. It tried signalling, telling the outside universe of its plight, but the signals just seemed to loop back and it found itself receiving its own signal a picosecond after it had sent it. It tried to create a warp but the skein just seemed to slide out of its fields. It attempted Displacing a drone but the wormhole collapsed before it was properly formed. It tried a few more tricks, finessing its field structures and reconfiguring its senses in an attempt at least to understand what was going on, but nothing worked.
It thought. It felt curiously composed, considering.
It shut everything down and let itself drift, floating gradually back through the four-dimensional hypervolume towards the skein of real space, propelled by nothing more than the faint pressure of radiations expelled from the energy grid. Its avatars were already starting to explain the change in the situation to its human crew. The ship hoped the people would take it calmly.
Then the Excession seemed to swell, bulging as though under an enormous lens, reaching out towards the Culture ship with a vast enclosing scoop of presence.
Well, here we go, the ship thought. Should be interesting . . .
VI
‘No.’
‘Please,’ the avatar said.
The woman shook her head. ‘I’ve thought about it. I don’t want to see him.’
The avatar stared at Dajeil. ‘But I brought him all this way!’ it cried. ‘Just for you! If you knew . . .’ Its voice trailed off. It brought its feet up onto the front of the seat, and put its arms round its legs, hugging them.
They were in Dajeil’s quarters, inside another version of the tower’s interior housed within the GCU Jaundiced Outlook. The avatar had come straight here after leaving Genar-Hofoen in the Mainbay where the original copy of the tower - the one Dajeil Gelian had spent forty years living in - had been moved to when the ship had converted all its external spare mass to engine. It had thought she would be pleased that the tower had not had to be destroyed, and that Genar-Hofoen had finally been persuaded to return to her.
Dajeil continued watching the screen. It was a replay of one of her dives amongst the triangular rays in the shallow sea that was now no more, as seen from a drone which had accompanied her. She watched herself move amongst the gracefully undulating wings of the great, gentle creatures. Swollen, awkward, she was the only graceless thing in the pictur
e.
The avatar didn’t know what to say next.
The Sleeper Service decided to take over. ‘Dajeil?’ it said quietly, through its representative. The woman looked round, recognising the new tone in Amorphia’s voice.
‘What?’
‘Why don’t you want to see him now?’
‘I . . .’ she paused. ‘It’s just been too long,’ she said. ‘I think . . . I suppose for the first few years I did want to see him again; to ... to--’ she looked down, picking at her fingernails. ‘--I don’t know. Oh, to try and make things all right . . . grief, that sounds so lame.’ She sniffed and looked upwards at the translucent dome above her. ‘I felt there were things we needed to have said that we never did say to each other, and that if we did get together, even for a little while, we could . . . work things out. Draw a line under all that happened. Tie up loose ends; that . . . that sort of thing. You know?’ she said, looking bright-eyed at the avatar.
Oh, Dajeil, thought the ship. How wounded about the eyes. ‘I know,’ it said. ‘But now you feel that too much time has passed?’
The woman smoothed her hand over her belly. She nodded slowly, looking at the floor. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s all too long ago. I’m sure he’s forgotten all about me.’ She glanced up at the avatar.
‘And yet he is here,’ it said.
‘Did he come to see me?’ she asked it, already sounding bitter.
‘No, and yes,’ the ship said. ‘He had another motive. But it is because of you he is here.’
She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No; too much time . . .’
The avatar unfolded itself from the seat and crossed to where Dajeil sat; it knelt down before her, and hesitantly extended one hand towards her abdomen. Looking into her eyes, it gently placed its palm on Dajeil’s belly. Dajeil felt dizzy. She could not recall Amorphia ever having touched her before, either under its own control or under the Sleeper Service’s. She put her own hand on top of the avatar’s. The creature’s hand was steady, soft and cool.
‘And yet,’ it said, ‘in some ways, no time has passed.’
Dajeil gave a bitter laugh. ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘I’ve been here, doing nothing except growing older. But what about him?’ she asked, and suddenly there was something fierce about her voice. ‘How much has he lived in forty years? How many loves has he had?’
‘I don’t believe that signifies, Dajeil,’ the ship told her quietly. ‘The point is that he is here. You can talk to him. The two of you can talk. Some resolution might be achieved.’ It pressed very lightly on her belly. ‘I believe it can be achieved.’
She sighed heavily. She looked down at her hand. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know. I need to think. I can’t . . . I need to think.’
‘Dajeil,’ the ship said, and the avatar took her hand in both of its. ‘Were it possible, I would give you as long as you could desire, but I am not able to. There is some urgency in this. I have what might be termed an urgent appointment near a star called Esperi. I cannot delay my arrival and I would not want to take you with me there; it is too dangerous. I would like you to leave in this ship as soon as possible.’
She looked hurt, the Sleeper thought.
‘I won’t be forced into this,’ she told it.
‘Of course not,’ it said. It attempted a smile and patted her hand. ‘Why not sleep on it? Tomorrow will be soon enough.’
VII
The Attitude Adjuster watched the attacking craft fall amongst the surrounding shield of ships; they had no time to move more than fractionally from their original positions. Their weaponry did their moving for them, focusing on the incoming target as it plunged into their midst. A scatter of brightly flaring missiles preceded the Killing Time, a hail of plasma bubbles accompanied it and CAM, AM and nanohole warheads cluster munitions burst everywhere around it like a gigantic firework, producing a giant orb of scintillations. Many of the individual motes themselves detonated in a clustering hyperspherical storm of lethal sparks, followed sequentially by another and another echelon of explosions erupting amongst the wave of ships in a layered hierarchy of destruction.
The Attitude Adjuster scanned the real-time reports coming back from its war flock. One was caught by a nanohole, vanishing inside a vast burst of annihilation; another was damaged beyond immediate repair by an AM munition and dropped behind, engines crippled. Fortuitously, neither were crewed by Affronters. Most of the rest of the warheads were dealt with; the fleet’s own replies were fended, detonated or avoided by the attacker. No sign of the craft using its effectors to do more than cause interference; flittingly interrogating and probing amongst the collected mass of ships. The focus of its attention had begun near the centre of the third wave of craft and was spirally erratically outwards, occasionally flicking further out towards the other waves.
The Attitude Adjuster was puzzled. The Killing Time was a Torturer class Rapid Offensive Unit. It could be - it ought to be - devastating the fleet for these instants as it tore through it; it was capable of--
Then it realised. Of course. It was a grudge.
The Attitude Adjuster experienced a tingle of fear, merged with a kind of contempt. The Killing Time’s effector focus was a few ships away now, spiralling out towards the Attitude Adjuster. It signalled hurriedly to the five Rapid Offensive Units immediately around it. Each listened, understood and obeyed. The Killing Time’s effector focus flicked from craft to craft, still coming closer.
You fool, the Attitude Adjuster thought, almost angry at the attacking ship. It was behaving stupidly, irresponsibly. A Culture craft should not be so prideful. It had thought the venom directed at itself by the Killing Time in its signal to it back at Pittance had been bluster; cheap bravado. But it had been worse; it had been sincere. Wounded self-esteem. Upset that it personally had been subject to a ruse designed to destroy it. As though its enemies cared an iota who it was.
The Attitude Adjuster doubted this was an attack sanctioned by the Killing Time’s peers. This wasn’t war, this was peevishness; this was taking it personally when, if there was anything war could be characterised as being, it was impersonal. Idiot. It deserved to perish. It did not merit the honour it doubtless thought would accrue to it for this reckless and selfish act.
The surrounding warships completed their changes. Just in time. When the attacking ship’s effector targeted the first of those craft, the focus did not flit onto the next as it had with all the rest; instead it stayed, latching on, concentrating and strengthening. The ROU caved in alarmingly quickly; the Attitude Adjuster guessed that it was made to reconfigure its engine fields to focus them inside its Mind - there was a sort of signalled shriek an instant before communication was lost - but the exact nature of its downfall was hidden in an accompanying shower of CAM warheads which obliterated it instantaneously. A mercy; it would have been a grisly way for a ship to die.
But too quick, thought the Attitude Adjuster; it was sure the attacker would have let the ROU - which the Killing Time had mistaken for the Attitude Adjuster - tear its intellect apart with its engines for longer if it had been totally fooled; the CAM dusting had been either a coup de grâce or a howl of frustration, perhaps both.
The Attitude Adjuster signalled to the rest of the fleet, instructing them too to impersonate itself, but even as it watched the ROU which had been attacked alongside it disappear astern in a fragmenting cage of radiations, it began to be afraid.
It had originally contacted the five nearest ships, hoping that the first one found and interrogated by the attacker’s systems would fool the Killing Time into believing it had found the one ship it was obviously seeking.
But that was stupid. It sensed the Torturer class ship’s effectors sweep over the craft on the far side of the hole in the wave of ships which the ROU’s destruction had created.
Insufficient elapsed time, the Attitude Adjuster whispered to itself. The ROU being quizzed at the moment was still reconfiguring its internal systems signature to resemble
that of the Attitude Adjuster. The effector sweep flicked away from it, dismissing. The Attitude Adjuster quailed.
It had made itself a target! It should have-- HERE IT CAME!
A feeling of--
No, it had gone, swept over it! Its own disguise had worked. It had been dismissed too, like the ROU alongside!
The effector focus jumped to another craft still further away. The Attitude Adjuster was dizzy with relief. It had survived! The plan still held, the huge filthy trick they were pulling was free to continue!
The way to the Excession lay open; the other Minds in the conspiracy would commend it if it survived; the-- . . . but it mustn’t think of the other ships involved. It had to accept responsibility for what had happened. It and it alone. It was the traitor. It would never reveal who had instigated this ghastly, gigadeathcrime-risking scheme; it had to assume the blame itself.
It had wrestled with the Mind at Pittance and pressed it when it had insisted it would die rather than yield (but it had had no choice!); it had allowed the human on Pittance to be destroyed (but it had fastened its effector on his puny animal brain when it had seen what was happening to him; it had read the animal’s brain-state, copied it, sucked it out of him before he’d died, so that at least he might live again in some form! Look! It had the file here ... there it went . . .). It had fooled the surrounding ships, it had lied to them, sent them messages from . . . from the ships it could not bear to think about.
But it was the right thing to do!
... Or was it just the thing it had chosen to believe was the right thing to do, when the other ships, the other Minds had persuaded it? What had its real motives been? Had it not just been flattered to be the object of such attention? Had it not always resented being passed over for certain small but prestigious missions in the past, nursing a bitter resentment that it was not trusted because it was seen as being - what? A hard-liner? Too inclined to shoot first? Too cynical towards the soft ideologies of the meat-beings? Too mixed up in its feelings about its own martial prowess and the shaming moral implications of being a machine designed for war? All those things, a little, perhaps. But that wasn’t all its fault!