The pain went on, fading, as he was dragged now, held by the neck, through the alien ship. His limbs hung limp, cut off from his brain; he was a rag, a broken puppet. The corridors still smelled of rotting fruit. Eyes gummed with his own blood. Nothing to be done, nothing to hope for.
Mechanical noises. Then the feeling of being dropped. A surface beneath him. Released, his head felt barely joined to his body, rolling onto its side.
Sounds of growling and tearing and slashing, sounds he felt ought to connect to pain, to some sensation at least, but which meant nothing. Then silence, and darkness, and the inability to do anything but witness this slow fading-away of sensation itself And another small pain near the nape of his neck; a final, tiny jab, like an afterthought; almost comical.
Failed. Failed to get back. Failed to warn. Failed to be the hero. It was not supposed to end this way, dying a lonely, painful death, conscious only of betrayal, fear and hopelessness.
Hissing. Fading. Cold. Movement; being scraped along inside a sudden, chill breeze.
Then utter silence, utter cold, and no weight whatsoever.
Uagen Zlepe, scholar, felt cheated that his blood-gummed eyes prevented him from seeing the distant stars in their vacuum-naked state as he died.
• • •
—Great Yoleusenive, this is that which was found in the without by the servants of the Hiarankebine six thousand and three hundred beats to aft. It was brought within the world for the inspection of the Hiarankebine, which sends these remains with its esteem and compliments, believing that your self might add to the sum of knowledge with its revered evaluation.
—This form may have been known to the one to whom you address your remarks. Its appearance brings associations, memories. They are old, though. Now beginning is a deep search of our long-term memory archival storage capacity. This will take some time to complete. Let us talk further on the subject before us while said search is taking place.
—Very well. Of interest is that the analysis of the creature’s cellular instruction set indicates that the form in which it appears here is not that with which it was first birthed. A representation of the form it would have according to the original cellular instruction set is shown here:
—That form was once known to us, we are sure, just as this one might have been once known to us. The representation that you have shown here corresponds to the form which is, or was, known as human. Appended to the deep search of our memory archives which was mentioned earlier will be the image that you are showing here. This search has not discovered anything of note thus far. It will take a little longer to complete because of the appendment of the visual image of the human form to it.
—Human. This is interesting to us, though the nature of the interest is historical.
—The creature concerned would appear to have accrued injuries that are not those one would associate with exposure to the conditions which prevail in the without, that is primarily the lack of medium, which absence is commonly termed vacuum, and the associated lack of any temperature save the most negligible.
—Yes. The creature’s neck is not supposed to be of the appearance that one may see here, either in the form shown physically before us or in the form which has been recreated in visual form from the biological assignment array. Similarly, its torso appears to have been forcefully and injuriously opened, while these surfaces seem to have been lacerated.
—The creature has been bitten, gouged and slashed.
—Such are the actions one would most naturally associate with the alterations to the creature’s physiology.
—What is known of these injuries, and in particular what is known of their timing relative to the apprehension of the object from the without?
—It is believed that this damage was incurred very shortly before the creature was expelled from whatever medium-containment artifact it inhabited prior to said expulsion. The various injuries indicate that the creature was in a state not compatible with the continuance of its life—save for immediate and most highly enabled medical assistance—before its expulsion into the without, where it would, naturally, die. The circulatory fluid has sprayed out here, here and here and then frozen subsequently as a result of the low temperatures encountered in the without.
—The frozen nature of the creature as we see it here is as it was when it was found originally, then.
—That is the case. The medium-repelling bubble in which it can be seen to reside was emplaced before its induction from the without. Only very small particles of its body have been brought to ambient conditions to allow the analyzes concerning which we have already communicated.
—These small and widespread tissue damages would indicate that the creature was at least still of a temperature approximate to its normal and healthy operating state and possibly still in an alive condition when it was expelled into the without. Would it be the case that the Hiarankebine might agree?
—It is the case.
—This level of most-small damage would indicate that the creature’s remains have been exposed in the without for a long time, an interval which might be of the order of a significant proportion of a Grand Cycle, though not in the order of many such intervals.
—The Hiarankebine is of a similar belief.
—Is it the case that the direction and velocity of the creature’s remains at the time of its discovery have been recorded?
—It is. The creature’s remains were static in the without according to accepted definition number three to within approximately the speed of slow breath at standard temperature and pressure. Such vectoriality was of an orientation similar to the world’s to within a quarter-paring.
—The deep search which it was intimated was begun remains under way but has still failed to discover anything of interest. What other results from the particles that have been brought to ambient conditions have been added to the store of knowledge?
—Some of the frozen liquid taken from the edges of the wound which the creature suffered upon its neck region has provided biological instruction set information which tends to indicate that the wound-inflicting agent may have been an individual of the species known as the Lesser Reviled.
—That is interesting. Their name was earlier the Chelgrians, or the Chel, before the outrage that befell the Sansemin occurred. To what level of completeness was the analysis of the human form which was found to be implicit in the creature that we see before us taken?
—Sufficient to provide the image which is seen here.
—It is the case that a more complete image of the creature, even to the order of recreated biological corporeality, might further refine and focus the knowledge of the creature’s species’ place in the greater world of all life.
—This might be accomplished with equal honor and ability by the Hiarankebine or by that to which these remarks are respectfully addressed.
—The task is one we are happy to assume. It is noted that the creature is still clothed and has about its neck a piece, or the remains of a piece, of jewelry. Is it the case that an analysis of any depth regarding these extraneous objects has been carried out?
—It is not, mighty Yoleusenive.
—The deep search of our stored and non-volatile and off-system recall functions which it was intimated was earlier begun has now concluded. The creature that is before us was of the name Uagen Zlepe, a scholar who came to study the embodiment of the self to which you speak from the civilization which was once known as the Culture.
—These names are not known to us.
—No matter. The body of this creature must have drifted in the without for a little over the period accounted for by one complete world-cycle, waiting here with that close-to-imperceptible fore-directed drift which was earlier mentioned, until the world fulfilled another revolution about the galaxy and sailed again into this region of space. This is good to know. This piece of information ramificates and completes. It adds considerably to the sum of knowledge, as will be explained in a report to be
prepared for the Hiarankebine. Is it possible for that to whom these remarks are addressed to attend the finalization of said report, the more expeditiously to convey it to the Hiarankebine?
—It is.
—Good. It may then be worthwhile carrying out further investigations, which that to whom you have addressed your remarks would be glad to undertake. It is to be hoped that the Hiarankebine will share the pleasure that is both experienced and anticipated by the Yoleusenive. A series of events which before had no conclusion now may have. This is satisfying to ourselves.
• • •
His eyes flicked open. He stared straight ahead. Where there should have been the awful white-furred face above him, jaws hinging open, or the cold stars spinning slowly as he tumbled, there was instead a familiar figure, hanging upside down from a branch inside a large, brightly lit circular space.
He was sitting up in a sort of cross between a bed and a giant nest. He blinked, ungumming his eyes. It did not feel as though it had been blood keeping them shut.
He squinted at the creature hanging a few meters in front of him. It blinked and turned its head a little.
“Praf?” he said, coughing. His throat felt sore, but at least it was properly connected to his head again.
The small, dark creature shook its leathery wings.
“Uagen Zlepe,” it said, “I am charged with welcoming you. I am 8827 Praf, female. I share the bulk of the memories associated with the fifth-order Decider of the 11th Foliage Gleaner Troupe of the dirigible behemothaur Yoleus which was known to you as 974 Praf, including, it is believed, all those regarding yourself.”
Uagen coughed up some fluid. He nodded and looked around. This looked like the interior of Yoleus’ Invited Guests’ Quarters, with the sub-divisions removed.
“Am I back on Yoleus?” he asked.
“You are aboard the dirigible behemothaur Yoleusenive.”
Uagen stared at the hanging creature in front of him. It took him a moment or two to work out the implications of what he’d just heard. He felt his mouth go dry He swallowed. “The Yoleus has … evolved?” he croaked.
“That is the case.”
He put his hand up to his throat, feeling the tender but whole flesh. He looked slowly up and around. “How was I” he began, then had to stop and swallow and start again. “How was I brought back? How was I rescued?”
“You were found in the without. You wore a piece of equipment which stored your personality. The Yoleusenive has repaired and reconstructed your body and quickened your mind-life within said body.”
“But I wasn’t wearing any … ” Uagen began, then his voice trailed off as he looked down to where his fingers were stroking the skin around his neck where, once, there had been a necklace.
“The piece of equipment that stored your personality was where your fingers are now” 8827 Praf confirmed, and clacked her beak once.
Aunt Silder’s necklace. He remembered the tiny sting at the back of his neck. Uagen felt tears well in his eyes. “How much time has passed?” he whispered.
Praf’s head tipped to one side again and her eyelids flickered.
Uagen cleared his throat and said, “Since I left the Yoleus; how much time has passed?”
“Nearly one Grand Cycle.”
Uagen found he could not speak for a little while. Eventually he said, “One … one, ah, galactic, umm Grand Cycle?”
8827 Praf’s beak clacked a couple of times. She shook herself, adjusting her dark wings as though they were a cloak. “That is what a Grand Cycle is,” she said as though explaining something obvious to someone just hatched. “Galactic.”
Uagen swallowed on a dry, dry throat. It was as though it was still ripped out and open to the vacuum. “I see,” he said.
Closure
She went bounding across the grass toward the cliff, nostrils flared to the wind and the tang of ozone, her face-fur flattened in the breeze. She came to the great double bowl where the land had long ago been vaporized and blown away. The grass fell curving beneath her. Beyond lay the ocean. In front, the seastacks rose like the trunks of immense fossilized trees, their bases awash with creamy foam. She leapt.
A small drone had been sent to investigate the running figure. Its weapons were armed and ready to fire. Just as it was about to intercept the female and shout a challenge, she came to the grassy edge of the crater and jumped. What happened next was unexpected. The drone’s camera showed the leaping figure disintegrate and turn into a flock of birds. They flew past the drone, flowing around its casing like water about a stone. The machine twitched this way and that, then turned and followed.
The order came to attack the flock of birds. The drone instigated a prey-rich-environment targeting regime, but then another order countermanded the first and told it to attack a group of three more defense drones which had just risen from the nearest seastack. It curved away, zooming to gain height.
Lasers flickered from cupolas high on two of the seastacks, but the flock of birds had become a swarm of insects; the weapon light found few of them and those it did simply reflected it. Then the two laser towers began to fire at each other, and both exploded in balls of flame.
The first drone attacked the other three as they spread out and accelerated toward the swarm of insects. It shot down one before it was itself destroyed. Then the other two drones attacked each other, swooping in and ramming at high speed in a flash and a single sharp detonation of sound; much of the resulting wreckage was composed of pieces small enough to drift in the wind.
Several small- and medium-sized explosions shook each of the seastacks, and smoke began to drift across the blue sky.
The insect swarm collected on a broad balcony and resumed the form of a Chelgrian female. She knocked the balcony doors down and stepped into the room. Alarms warbled. She frowned and they fell silent. The only sensory or command system not fully under her control was a tiny passive camera in one corner of the room. She was to leave the complex’s security monitoring system uncorrupted, so that what was done was seen to be done, and recorded. She listened carefully.
She strode into the bathroom and found him in the emergency one-person lift which had been disguised as a shower cabinet. The lift had jammed in the shaft. She flowed over the hole, formed a partial vacuum and sucked the capsule back up. She pulled open the door and reached in for the naked, cowering male.
Estodien Visquile opened his mouth to scream for mercy. She became insects—they represented something of a phobia for the Estodien—and poured into his throat, choking him and forcing open the route to his lungs and to his stomach. The insects packed each tiny air-sac in his lungs tight; others bulked out the Estodien’s stomach to the point of bursting and beyond, then invaded his body cavity, while others rammed down into the rest of his digestive system, forcing an explosion of fecal matter from his anus.
The Estodien crashed and battered about the shower cabinet lift capsule, smashing the ceramic fittings and denting the plastics. More insects streamed into his ears and forced their way around his horrified, staring eyes, burning their way into his skull while his skin crawled and writhed with the insects which had invaded his body cavity and gone onto slide their way under his flesh.
The insects infested his entire body eventually, as he lay thrashing on the floor on a film of his own blood. They continued to insinuate their way into every bodily part of him until, about three minutes after the attack had begun, Visquile’s movements gradually ceased.
The insects, the birds and the Chelgrian female were made of EDust. Everything Dust was composed of tiny machines of varying sizes and capabilities. With the exception of one type, none was larger than a tenth of a millimeter in any direction. Interestingly, the dust had originally been designed as the ultimate building material.
The one class of exception to the tenth-of-a-millimeter rule was that of AM nanomissiles, which were only a tenth of a millimeter in diameter, but an entire millimeter in length. One of those lodged in the center of th
e Estodien’s brain, beside his Soulkeeper, while all the other components withdrew and reformed into the Chelgrian female.
She padded away from the deflated body lying in its bloody pool. The nanomissiles were, she thought, a give-away to the identity of her makers; an integral part of the message she was delivering. She went out of the bathroom and the apartment, down some stairs and across a terrace. Somebody shot at her with an ancient hunting rifle. It was the only projectile weapon left working for several kilometers around; she let the bullet pass through a hole in her chest and out the other side, while a set of components in one of her eyes briefly lased and blinded the male who had shot at her.
In the accommodation block behind her, the nanomissile embedded in Visquile’s brain sensed his Soulkeeper about to read and save his mind. The explosion of the missile’s warhead destroyed the whole building. Debris rained down, around and through her as she walked calmly away.
She found her second target trapped in a small two-person flyer, trying to smash his way out of the cockpit canopy with an oxygen cylinder.
She pulled the canopy open. The white-furred male lashed out with an antique knife; it penetrated her chest and she let it hang there while she took him by the throat and lifted him bodily out of the machine. He kicked and spat and gurgled. The knife in her chest was swallowed inside her as she walked to the edge of the terrace. He hung easily in her grip, as though he weighed nothing; his kicks seemed to have no appreciable effect on her whatsoever.
At the terrace edge she held him over the balustrade. The drop to the sea was about two hundred meters. The knife he had tried to harm her with appeared smoothly out of the palm of her hand, like magic. She used it to skin him. She was ferociously quick; it took a minute or so. His screams wheezed out through his partially crushed windpipe.
She let his bloody white pelt drop away toward the waves like a heavy, sodden rug. She threw the knife away and used her own claws to rip him open from midlimb to groin, then reached inside, pulling and twisting at the same time as she let go of his neck.