They turned and walked around the corner of the deck. The barge powered its way through the chaos of waves, its bows smacking into surging piles of white and green water and throwing great curtains of spray into the air to land like torrential squalls of rain across the decks. The buffeted vessel tipped and heaved. Behind it, the cradle was slowly and steadily submerging itself again in the raging currents.
A lump of water crashed onto the deck behind them, turning the promenade into a surging river half a meter deep. Ziller had to drop to all threes and use one hand on the deck rail to steady himself as they made their way through the torrent to the nearest doors. The avatar walked sloshing through the stream surging around its knees as though indifferent. It held the doors open and helped Ziller through.
In the foyer, Ziller shook himself again, spattering the gleaming wooden walls and embroidered hangings. The avatar just stood and the water fell off it, leaving its silvery skin and its matte clothes completely dry while the water drained away from its feet across the decking.
Ziller dragged a hand through his face fur and patted his ears. He looked at the immaculate figure standing smiling opposite him while he dripped. He wrung some water out of his waistcoat as he inspected the avatar’s skin and clothing for any remaining sign of moisture. It appeared to be perfectly dry. “That is a very annoying trait,” he told it.
“I did offer earlier to shelter both of us from the spray,” the avatar reminded him. The Chelgrian pulled one of his waistcoat pockets inside out and watched the resulting stream of water hit the deck. “But you said you wanted fully to appreciate the experience with all your senses including that of touch,” the avatar continued. “Which I have to say I did think was a little casual at the time.”
Ziller looked ruefully at his sodden pipe and then at the silver-skinned creature. “And that,” he said, “is another one.”
A small drone carrying a very large, neatly folded white towel of extreme fluffiness banked around a corner and sped along the passage toward them, coming to a sudden stop at their side. The avatar took the towel and nodded to the other machine, which dipped and raced away again.
“Here,” the avatar said, handing the Chelgrian the towel.
“Thank you.”
They turned to walk down the passageway, passing saloons where small groups of people were watching the tumbling waters and roiling mists of spray outside.
“Where’s our Major Quilan today?” Ziller asked, rubbing his face in the towel.
“Visiting Neremety, with Kabe, to see some sworl islands. It’s the first day of the local school’s Tempt Season.”
Ziller had seen this spectacle himself on another Plate six or seven years earlier. Tempt Season was when the adult islands released the algal blooms they’d been storing to paint fabulous swirling patterns across the craterine bays of their shallow sea. Allegedly the display persuaded the sea-floor-dwelling calves of the year before to surface and blossom into new versions of themselves.
“Neremety?” he asked. “Where’s that?”.
“Half a million klicks away if it’s a stride. You’re safe for now.”
“How very reassuring. Aren’t you running out of places to distract our little message-boy with? Last I heard you were showing him around a factory.” Ziller pronounced the last word through a snorting laugh.
The avatar looked hurt. “A starship factory, if you please,” it said, “but yes, a factory nevertheless. Only because he asked, I might add. And I’ve no shortage of places to show him, Ziller. There are places on Masaq’ you haven’t even heard of you’d love to visit if only you knew about them.”
“There are?” Ziller stopped and stared at the avatar.
It halted too, grinning. “Of course.” It spread its arms. “I wouldn’t want you to know all my secrets at once, would I?”.
Ziller walked on, drying his fur and looking askance at the silver-skinned creature stepping lightly at his side. “You are more female than male, you know that, don’t you?” he said.
The avatar raised its brows. “You really think so?”.
“Definitely.”
The avatar looked amused. “He wants to see Hub next,” it told him.
Ziller frowned. “Come to think of it, I’ve never been there myself. Is there much to see?”.
“There’s a viewing gallery. Good outlook on the whole surface, obviously, but no better than most people get when they arrive, unless they’re in a terrible hurry and fly straight up to the undersurface.” It shrugged. “Apart from that, not much to see.”
“I take it all your fabulous machinery is just as boring to look at as I imagine it to be.”
“If not more so.”
“Well, that ought to distract him for a good couple of minutes.” Ziller towelled under his arms and—rising to walk, stooped, on his hind legs alone—around his midlimb. “Have you mentioned to the wretch that I may well not appear at the first performance of my own symphony?”.
“Not yet. I believe Kabe might be raising the subject today.”
“Think he’ll do the honorable thing and stay away?”.
“I really have no idea. If the suspicions we share are correct, E. H. Tersono will probably try and talk him into going.” The avatar flashed Ziller a wide smile. “It will employ some sort of argument based on the idea of not giving in to what it will probably characterize as your childish blackmail, I imagine.”
“Yes, something as shallow as that.”
“How fares Expiring Light?” the avatar asked. “Are the primer pieces ready yet? We’re only five days away and that’s close to the minimum time people are used to.”
“Yes, they’re ready. I just want to sleep on a couple of them one more night, but I’ll release them tomorrow” The Chelgrian glanced at the avatar. “You’re quite sure this is the way to do it?”.
“What, using primer pieces?”.
“Yes. Won’t people lose out on the freshness of the first performance? Whether I conduct it or not.”
“Not at all. They’ll have heard the rough tunes, the outlines of the themes, that’s all. So they’ll find the basic ideas recognizable, although not familiar. That’ll let them appreciate the full work all the more.” The avatar slapped the Chelgrian across the shoulders, raising a fine spray from his waistcoat. Ziller winced; the slight-looking creature was stronger than it appeared. “Ziller, trust us; this way works. Oh, and having listened to the draft you’ve sent, it is quite magnificent. My congratulations.”
“Thank you.” Ziller continued drying his flanks with the towel, then looked at the avatar.
“Yes?” it said.
“I was wondering.”
“What?”.
“Something I’ve wondered about ever since I came here, something I’ve never asked you, first of all because I was worried what the answer would be, later because I suspected I already knew the answer.”
“Goodness. What can it be?” the avatar asked, blinking.
“If you tried, if any Mind tried, could you impersonate my style?” the Chelgrian asked. “Could you write a piece—a symphony, say—that would appear, to the critical appraiser, to be by me, and which, when I heard it, I’d imagine being proud to have written?”.
The avatar frowned as it walked. It clasped its hands behind its back. It took a few more steps. “Yes, I imagine that would be possible.”
“Would it be easy?”.
“No. No more easy than any complicated task.”
“But you could do it much more quickly than I could?”.
“I’d have to suppose so.”
“Hmm.” Ziller paused. The avatar turned to face him. Behind Ziller, the rocks and veil trees of the deepening gorge moved swiftly past. The barge rocked gently beneath their feet. “So what,” the Chelgrian asked, “is the point of me or anybody else writing a symphony, or anything else?”.
The avatar raised its brows in surprise. “Well, for one thing, if you do it, it’s you who gets the feeling of achievement.”
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“Ignoring the subjective. What would be the point for those listening to it?”.
“They’d know it was one of their own species, not a Mind, who created it.”
“Ignoring that, too; suppose they weren’t told it was by an AI, or didn’t care”.
“If they hadn’t been told then the comparison isn’t complete; information is being concealed. If they don’t care, then they’re unlike any group of humans I’ve ever encountered.”
“But if you can—”.
“Ziller, are you concerned that Minds—AIs, if you like—can create, or even just appear to create, original works of art?”.
“Frankly, when they’re the sort of original works of art that I create, yes.”
“Ziller, it doesn’t matter. You have to think like a mountain climber.”
“Oh, do I?”.
“Yes. Some people take days, sweat buckets, endure pain and cold and risk injury and—in some cases—permanent death to achieve the summit of a mountain only to discover there a party of their peers freshly arrived by aircraft and enjoying a light picnic.”
“If I was one of those climbers I’d be pretty damned annoyed.”
“Well, it is considered rather impolite to land an aircraft on a summit which people are at that moment struggling up to the hard way, but it can and does happen. Good manners indicate that the picnic ought to be shared and that those who arrived by aircraft express awe and respect for the accomplishment of the climbers.
“The point, of course, is that the people who spent days and sweated buckets could also have taken an aircraft to the summit if all they’d wanted was to absorb the view. It is the struggle that they crave. The sense of achievement is produced by the route to and from the peak, not by the peak itself. It is just the fold between the pages.” The avatar hesitated. It put its head a little to one side and narrowed its eyes. “How far do I have to take this analogy, Cr. Ziller?”.
“You’ve made your point, but this mountain climber still wonders if he ought to re-educate his soul to the joys of flight and stepping out onto someone else’s summit.”
“Better to create your own. Come on; I’ve a dying man to see on his way.”
• • •
Ilom Dolince lay on his death bed, surrounded by friends and family. The awnings which had covered the aft upper deck of the barge while it had descended the falls had been withdrawn, leaving the bed open to the air. Ilom Dolince sat up, half submerged in floating pillows and lying on a puff mattress that looked, Ziller thought, appropriately like a cumulus cloud.
The Chelgrian hung back, at the rear of the crescent of sixty or so people arranged standing or sitting around the bed. The avatar went to stand near the old man and took his hand, bending to talk to him. It nodded then beckoned over to Ziller, who pretended not to see, and made a show of being distracted by a gaudy bird flying low over the milky white waters of the river.
“Ziller,” the avatar’s voice said from the Chelgrian’s pen terminal. “Please come over. Ilom Dolince would like to meet you.”
“Eh? Oh. Yes, of course,” he said. He felt quite acutely awkward.
“Cr. Ziller, I am privileged to meet you.” The old man shook the Chelgrian’s hand. In fact he did not look that old, though his voice sounded weak. His skin was less lined and spotted than that of some humans Ziller had seen, and his head hair had not fallen out, though it had lost its pigment and so appeared white. His handshake was not strong, but Ziller had certainly felt limper ones.
“Ah. Thank you. I’m flattered you wanted to, ah, take up some of your, ah, time with meeting an alien note dabbler.”
The white-haired man in the bed looked regretful, even pained. “Oh, Cr. Ziller” he said. “I’m sorry. You’re a little uncomfortable with this, aren’t you? I’m being very selfish. It didn’t occur to me my dying might—”.
“No, no, I, I … Well, yes.” Ziller felt his nose color. He glanced around the other people nearest the bed. They looked sympathetic, understanding. He hated them.” It just seems strange. That’s all”.
“May I, Composer?” the man said. He stretched out one hand and Ziller allowed one of his to be grasped again. The grip was lighter this time. “Our ways must seem odd to you.”
“No odder than ours to you, I’m sure.”
“I am very ready to die, Cr. Ziller.” Ilom Dolince smiled. “I’ve lived four hundred and fifteen years, sir. I’ve seen the Chebalyths of Eyske in their Skydark migration, watched field liners sculpt solar flares in the High Nudrun, I’ve held my own newborn in my hands, flown the caverns of Sart and dived the tube-arches of Lirouthale. I’ve seen so much, done so much, that even with my neural lace trying to tie my elsewhere memories as seamlessly as it can into what’s in my head, I can tell I’ve lost a lot from in here.” He tapped one temple. “Not from my memory, but from my personality. And so it’s time to change or move on or just stop. I’ve put a version of me into a group mind in case anybody wants to ask me anything at any time, but really I can’t be bothered living anymore. At least, not once I’ve seen Ossuliera City, which I’ve been saving for this moment.” He smiled at the avatar. “Maybe I’ll come back when the end of the universe happens.”
“You also said you wanted to be revived into an especially nubile cheerleader if Notromg Town ever won the Orbital Cup,” the avatar said solemnly. It nodded and took a breath in through its teeth. “I’d go with the universe-ending thing, if I were you.”
“So you see, sir?” Ilom Dolince said, his eyes glittering. “I’m stopping.” One thin hand patted Ziller’s. “I’m only sorry I won’t be here to listen to your new work, maestro. I was very tempted to stay, but … Well, there is always something to keep us, if we are not determined, isn’t there?”
“I dare say.”
“I hope you’re not offended, sir. Little else would have made me even think of delaying. You’re not offended, are you?”.
“Would it make any difference if I was, Mr. Dolince?” Ziller asked.
“It would, sir. If I thought you were especially hurt, I could still delay, though I might be straining the patience of these good people,” Dolince said, looking around those gathered by his bedside. There was a low chorus of friendly-sounding dissent. “You see, Cr. Ziller? I have made my peace. I don’t think I have ever been so well thought of.”
“Then I’d be honored to be included in that regard.” He patted the human’s hand.
“Is it a great work, Cr. Ziller? I hope it is.”
“I can’t say, Mr. Dolince,” Ziller told him. “I’m pleased with it.” He sighed. “Experience would indicate that provides no guide whatsoever either to its initial reception or eventual reputation.”
The man in the bed smiled widely. “I hope it goes wonderfully well, Cr. Ziller”.
“So do I, sir.”
Ilom Dolince closed his eyes for a moment or two. When they flickered open his grip gradually loosened. “An honor, Cr. Ziller,” he whispered.
Ziller let the human’s hand go and stepped gratefully away as others flowed in around him.
• • •
Ossuliera City emerged from the shadows around a corner of the gorge. It was partly carved from the fawn-colored cliffs of the chasm itself, and partly from stones brought in from other areas of the world, and beyond. The River Jhree was tamed here, running straight and deep and calm in a single great channel from which smaller canals and docks diverged, arched over by delicate bridges of foametal and wood both living and dead.
The quaysides on either bank were great flat platforms of golden sandstone running into the blue-hazed distance, speckled with people and animals, shadeplant and pavilions, leaping fountains and tall twisted columns of extravagantly latticed metals and glittering minerals.
Tall and stately barges sat moored by steps where troupes of chaurgresiles sat grooming each other with solemn intensity. The mirror sails of smaller craft caught fitful, swirling breezes to slide angled shadows along the quiet waters behind and ca
st flitting, shimmering reflections along the bustling quays to either side.
Above, the stepped city rose in set-back terrace after set-back terrace from these vast and busy shelves of stone; awnings and umbreltrees dotted the galleries and piazzas, canals disappeared into vaulted tunnels cut into the chiselled cliffs, perfume fires sent thin coils of violet and orange smoke rolling up toward the pale blue sky, where flocks of pure white lucent plowtails wheeled on outstretched wings inscribing silent spirals in the air, and arcing overhead a layered succession of higher and longer and more tenuously poised bridges bowed like rainbows made solid in the misty air, their intricately carved and dazzlingly inlaid surfaces brimming with flowers and strung with leafchain, storycreep and veilmoss.
Music played, echoing amongst the canyons, decks and bridges of the city. The barge’s sudden appearance caused a volley of excited trumpeting from a shambling pack of cumbrosaurs arranged on a flight of steps descending to the river.
Ziller, at the deck rail, turned from the tumult of the view to look back to the bed where Ilom Dolince lay. A few people seemed to be crying. The avatar was holding a hand over the man’s forehead. It smoothed its silver fingers down over his eyes.
The Chelgrian watched the beautiful city glide past for a while. When he looked back again a long gray Displacement drone was hovering over the bed. The people gathered around stood back a little, forming a rough circle. A silvery field shimmered in the air where the man’s body was, then shrank to a point and vanished. The bedclothes settled back softly over the place where the body had been.
“People always look up to the sun at such moments,” he remembered Kabe pointing out once. What he was witnessing was the conventional method of disposing of the dead both here and throughout most of the rest of the Culture. The body had been Displaced into the core of the local star. And, as Kabe had pointed out, if they could see it, the people present always looked up to that sun, even though it would usually be a million years or more before the photons formed from the dispatched corpse would shine down upon wherever it was they stood.
A million years. Would this artificial, carefully maintained world still be here after all that time? He doubted it. The Culture itself would probably be gone by then. Chel certainly would. Perhaps people looked up now because they knew there would be nobody around to look up then.