974 Praf had already angled a few meters away. “I shall attempt to catch your hat and try not to become eaten by falficores.”
“Oh. Right.”
Uagen’s speed through the air increased; the wind howled in his ears and tiny popping, crackling sounds from his ears and skull cavities told him the pressure was increasing. He had lost sight of the stylo just for a moment and now it seemed to be quite gone, swallowed up by the oceanic blue of the apparently infinite sky.
If only he’d kept his eyes on it he was sure he’d still be able to see it now. There was a similarity here, perhaps, with the glyph of the suddenly visible falficores. Something to do with perceptual concentration, with the way that one’s vision pulled meaning from the semi-chaos of the visual field.
Perhaps the stylo had drifted away to one side. Perhaps a well-cam-ouflaged raptor, mistaking it for a meal, had swept in and gobbled it up. Perhaps he would not regain sight of it until—having started out so low—they both hit the in-sloping side of the sphere. He supposed he might see it bounce. How steep was the slope? The airsphere was not really a sphere, indeed neither of its two lobes was a sphere; at a certain level the bottom of the airsphere’s curving sides inverted, dipping under the mass of the detritus neck.
How far away were they from the pole line of the airsphere? He recalled they’d been quite near; by all accounts the gigalithine lenticular entity Buthulne hadn’t strayed far from the pole line for several decades. Perhaps he would have to land on the detritus neck! He peered downwards. No sign of anything solid ahead at all. Besides, he’d been told you’d have to fall for days before you’d even see it. And anyway, if the stylo fell into the rubbish and muck of the neck, he’d never find it. Gracious, there were things down there. He might, as 974 Praf had put it, become eaten.
What if he landed on the detritus neck just as it was about to eject! Then he would surely die. In vacuum! As part of a glorified dung ball! How horrible!
Airspheres migrated around the galaxy, orbiting once every fifty to a hundred million years, depending on how close they were to the center. They swept up dust and gas on their forward-facing sides, and from their bases, every few hundred thousand years, they passed the waste that their scavenger flora and fauna had not been able to process any further. Droppings the size of small moons issued from globular impossibilities as big as brown dwarfs, leaving a trail of detritus globes scattered through the spiral arms that dated the bizarre worlds’ first appearance in the galaxy to one and a half billion years earlier.
People assumed airspheres must be the work of intelligence, but really nobody—or at least nobody willing to share their thoughts on the matter—had any idea. The mega fauna might know, but—frustratingly for scholars like Uagen Zlepe—creatures like Yoleus were so far, far beyond the term Inscrutable that for all practical purposes the word might as well have been a synonym of Forthright, or A Simple-Hearted Chatterbox.
Uagen wondered how fast he was falling now. Perhaps if he fell too fast he would fly straight into the stylo and impale and kill himself. How delightfully ironic! But painful. He checked his velocity on a little read-out in the corner of one eye-goggle. He was falling at twenty-two meters per second, and this rate of descent was smoothly increasing. He adjusted his speed to a constant twenty.
He turned his attention back to the blue gulf ahead and below, and saw the stylo, wobbling fractionally as it fell as though somebody invisible was doodling a spiral with it. He judged that he was drifting toward the thing at a satisfactory rate. When he was a few meters away he cut his speed still further, until he was catching up with the instrument no quicker than a feather might fall through still air.
Uagen reached out and caught the stylo. He tried to halt his fall the impressive way, the way a person of action might (Uagen, for all his studiousness, was a sucker for action adventures, however implausible), by swinging himself around so that his feet were underneath him and the propeller blades on his ankle bracelets were biting down into the air rushing up toward and past him. In retrospect, he had probably stood a good chance of mutilating himself with his own propellers, but instead he just lost all control and tumbled chaotically through the air, shouting and cursing, trying to keep his tail curled up tight and away from the propellers and letting go of the stylo again.
He spread out his limbs and waited until there was some sort of regularity to his tumble, then twisted back into a dive to regain control, and once more looked about for the stylo. He could see the vaguest hint of Yoleus’ shape, high, high above, and a tiny outline—just close enough to be a shape and not a dot—also above and to one side. This looked like 974 Praf. And there was the stylo; now above him, just stopping tumbling and beginning to settle into its crossbow quarrel attitude. He used his wrist controls to reduce power to the propellers.
The wind roar decreased; the stylo fell gently into his hand. He attached it to the side of the writing tablet, then used his wrist controls to feather and then repitch the motors’ blades. Blood rushed to his head, adding another roaring to that of the wind and making the blue view pulse and darken. His necklace—a gift from his aunt Silder, presented just before he left—slid down under his chin.
He let the propellers free-wheel for a bit, then fed in the power again. He still felt very head-down heavy, but that was the worst he experienced. His headlong plummet became a slow fall, the thick air stopped shaking him and the slipstream became a gentle breeze. Finally he stopped. He thought the better of trying to balance on the ankle bracelet motors. He would activate the cape and let it float him back up.
He hung there, head down, effectively motionless as the ankle motors spun lazily in the thick air.
His eyes narrowed.
There was something down there, something far below, almost but not quite lost in the haze. A shape. A very big shape, filling about the same part of his visual field as his hand would have, held out-stretched, and yet still so far away that it was barely visible in the haze. He squinted, looked away and looked back.
There was definitely something there. From the finned airship shape, it looked like another behemothaur, though Yoleus had let it be known that Muetenive had taken them unfashionably, hurtfully, almost unprecedentedly and arguably disgracefully low, and so Uagen thought it very strange to see another of the giant creatures so much deeper still beneath the courting couple. The shape, also, did not look quite right. There were too many fins, and in plan—making the very reasonable assumption that he was looking down on its back—the thing looked asymmetrical. Very unusual. Even alarming.
There was a fluttering noise nearby. “Here is your hat.”
He turned to look at 974 Praf, flapping her wings slowly in the dense air and holding his tasselled box hat in her beak.
“Oh, thank you,” he said, and rammed the hat on tight.
“You have the stylo?”
“Umm. Yes. Yes, I do. Look; down there. Can you see something?”.
974 looked down. Eventually she said, “There is a shadow.”
“Yes, there is, isn’t there? Does it look like a behemothaur to you?”.
The Interpreter cocked her head. “No.”
“No?”.
The Interpreter turned her head the other way. “Yes.”
“Yes?”.
“No and yes. Both at once.”
“Ah-ha.” He looked down again. “I wonder what it can be.”
“I wonder too. Shall we return to the Yoleus?”.
“Umm. I don’t know. Do you think we ought?”.
“Yes. We have fallen a long way. I cannot see the Yoleus.”
“Oh. Oh dear.” He looked up. Sure enough, the creature’s giant shape had disappeared in the haze above. “I see. Or rather, we can’t see. Ha ha.”
“Indeed.”
“Umm. Still, I do wonder what that is down there.”
The shadowy outline beneath appeared to be stationary. Air currents in the haze made it almost disappear for a few moments, so that all that was le
ft was the bias in the eye, making the assumption that it must still be there. And then it was back, distinguishable, but still no more than a shape, a one-shade-deeper blue shadow against the colossal gulf of air below.
“We should return to the Yoleus.”
“Do you think Yoleus will have any idea what it is?”
“Yes.”
“It does look like a behemothaur, doesn’t it?”.
“Yes and no. Maybe sick.”
“Sick?”.
“Injured.”
“Injured? What can—how can behemothaurs become injured?”.
“It is very unusual. We should return to the Yoleus.”
“We could take a closer look,” Uagen said. He wasn’t really sure he wanted to, but he felt he ought to say it. It was interesting, after all. On the other hand, it was a little disturbing, too. As 974 Praf had said, they had lost visual contact with Yoleus. It ought to be easy enough to find it again—Yoleus had not been moving quickly and so simply going straight back up would probably still bring them up almost underneath the creature—but, well, even so.
What if Muetenive decided to make a bolt for the anticipated convection bubble now, rather than in a day or two? Good grief, he and 974 Praf could both be left stranded. Yoleus might not have noticed that they’d gone. If it had realized they were no longer aboard, and then took off after a suddenly frisky Muetenive, it would probably leave some raptor scouts behind to protect them and escort them back. But there was no guarantee that it did know he and 974 Praf were not safely within its foliage.
Uagen looked around for falficores. He didn’t even have a weapon; when he’d refused any sort of bodyguard device the university had insisted he at least take a pistol with him, but he’d never even unpacked the damn thing.
“We should return to the Yoleus.” The Interpreter spoke very quickly, which was as close as she ever got to sounding nervous or disturbed. 974 Praf had probably never been in a position where she couldn’t see the great creature that was her home, host, leader, parent and beloved. She must be afraid, if such beings felt fear.
Uagen was afraid, he could admit that. Not very afraid, but afraid enough to hope that 974 Praf would refuse to accompany him down to the huge shape below. And they would have to go down quite a long way further. He didn’t like to think how many more kilometers.
“We should return to the Yoleus,” she said again.
“You really think so?”.
“Yes, we should return to the Yoleus.”
“Oh, I suppose so. All right.” He sighed. “Discretion, and all that. Best let Yoleus decide what to do.”
“We should return to the Yoleus.”
“Yes, yes.” He used the wrist controls to activate the stowed cape. It unfurled, collapsed slowly into a ball, then—even more slowly—began to expand.
“We should return to the Yoleus.”
“We are, Praf. We are. We’re going now.” He could feel himself starting to drift upwards, and a faint pull on his shoulders began to lift him toward the horizontal.
“We should return to the Yoleus.”
“Praf, please. That’s what we’re doing, don’t keep—”.
“We should return to the Yoleus.”
“We are!” He let the power to the bracelet-ankle motors tail off; the ballooning cape, still a perfect black sphere blossoming behind his head, slowly took all his weight and hoisted him upright.
“We should—”.
“Praf!”.
The propellers cut out and stowed themselves back in his ankle bracelets. He was floating upwards at last. 974 Praf beat her wings a little harder to keep up with him. She looked up at the still enlarging black sphere of the cape.
“Another thing,” she said.
Uagen was staring down, between his boots. Already the vast shape beneath was starting to disappear into the haze. He glanced at the Interpreter. “What?”.
“The Yoleus would like to know more of the vacuum dirigibles in your Culture.”
He looked up at the black balloon above his head. The cape produced lift by compressing itself into a ball and then expanding its surface area while leaving a vacuum inside. That vacuum was lifting him by the shoulders, up into the sky.
“What? Oh, well.” He wished he hadn’t mentioned the damn things now. He also wished he’d brought a more complete technical library from the Culture. “I’m hardly an expert. I have been a tourist on them a few times, on my home Orbital.”
“You mentioned pumping vacuum. How is that done?” 974 Praf seemed to be laboring to keep up with him now, flapping her wings as hard as the thickened atmosphere would allow.
Uagen adjusted the dimensions of the cape. His rate of climb tailed off. “Ah, well, as far as I understand it, you keep the vacuum in spheres.”
“Spheres.”
“Very thin-shelled spheres. You keep the spaces between the spheres full of, ah … well; helium or hydrogen, I think, depending on your inclination. Though I don’t think you get a vast amount of extra lift compared to using hydrogen or helium alone; just a few percent. One of those things that tend to be done because they can be rather than because they need to be.”
“One sees.”
“Then you can pump it. Them. The spheres and the gas.”
“One sees. And what is the manner of this pumping?”.
“Umm … ” He looked down again, but the great shadowy shape had gone.
5
A Very Attractive System
(Recording.)
“This is a great simulation.”
“It’s not a simulation.”
“Yeah. Of course. Still, it is though, isn’t it?”.
“Push! Push!”.
“I’m pushing, I’m pushing!”.
“Well, push harder!”.
“You don’t think this is a fucking simulation, do you?”.
“Oh no, not a fucking simulation.”
“Look, I don’t know what you’re on but whatever it is it’s the wrong stuff.”
“The flames are coming up the shaft!”.
“So get some water down it!”.
“I can’t reach the—”.
“I’m really impressed.”
“You are on something, aren’t you?”
“He must be glanding. Nobody can be this stupid straight.”
“I’m so glad we waited till night, aren’t you?”.
“Absolutely. Look at the day side! I’ve never seen it shimmer like that, have you?”.
“Not that I can recall.”
“Ha! I love this. Brilliant simulation.”
“It’s not a simulation, you buffoon. Will you listen?”
“We should get this guy out of here.”
“What is that, anyway?”.
“Who, not what; Homomdan guy. Called Kabe.”
“Oh.”
They were lava-rafting. Kabe sat in the center of the flat-decked craft, staring at the mottled yellow-bright flowing river of molten rock ahead and the darkly desolate landscape through which it ran. He could hear the humans talking but he wasn’t paying much attention to who said what.
“He’s already out of it.”
“Just brilliant. Look at that! And the heat!”.
“I agree. Get him zapped.”
“It’s on fire!”.
“Pole on the dark bits, you idiot, not the bright bits!”.
“Bring it in and put it out!”.
“What?”
“Fuck, it’s hot.”
“Yeah, it is, isn’t it? I never felt a sim this hot!”.
“This is not a simulation, and you’re getting zapped.”
“Can anybody—?”.
“Help!”
“Oh, throw it away! Grab another oar.”
They were on one of Masaq’s last eight uninhabited Plates. Here—and for three Plates to spinward and four anti-spinward—Masaq’ Great River flowed dead straight through a seventy-five-thousand-kilometer-long base-material tunnel across a landscape still in
the process of being formed.
“Wow! Hot hot hot! Some sim!”.
“Get this guy out of here. He shouldn’t have been invited in the first place. There are one-timers here with no savers. If this clown thinks we’re in a sim he could do anything.”
“Jump overboard, hopefully.”
“Need more bods on the starboard side!”.
“The what?”.
“Right. The right. This side. This side here. Fuck”.
“Don’t even fucking joke about that. He’s so twisted I wouldn’t trust him to punch out if he did fall in.”
“Tunnel ahead! Going to get hotter!”.
“Oh, shit.”
“It can’t get hotter! They don’t let it.”
“Will you fucking listen? This is not a simulation!”.
As was by now long-standing established practice for the Culture, asteroids from Masaq’s own system—most of them collected and parked in planetary holding orbits several thousand years earlier when the Orbital had first been constructed—were tugged in by Lifter craft and lowered to the Plate’s surface where any one of several energy delivery systems (planetary crust-busting weapons, if you insisted on looking on them that way) heated the bodies to liquid heat so that even more mind-boggling matter- and energy-manipulating processes either let the resulting slag flow and cool in certain designated directions or sculpted it to cloak the already existing morphology of the strategic base matter.
“On.”
“What?”.
“On. You fall on, not in. Don’t look at me like that; it’s the density.”
“I bet you know all about fucking density. Got a terminal?”.
“No.”
“Implanted?”.
“No.”
“Me neither. Try and find somebody who does or is and get that cretin off here.”
“It won’t come out!”.
“The pin! You have to knock the pin out first!”.
“Oh, yeah.”
People—especially Culture people, whether human, once human, alien or machine—had been building Orbitals like this for thousands of years, and not very long after the process had become a mature technology, still thousands of years earlier, some fun- (or at any rate risk-) loving individual had thought of using a few of the lava streams naturally generated by such processes as the medium for a new sport.