And reading up on Dweller society proved the truth of one old cliche for sure: the more you learned, the more you realised how little you knew. (An image of the planet, Liss had suggested when he'd first tried to articulate this feeling; unending depths.)
'Of course our military decide when we go to war,' Gruonoshe said, calm again. 'They're the experts.'
'I think that, if I might be allowed to "butt in",' Chief Seer Meretiy said from his gascraft, 'the point at issue is our different ways of looking at our two societies' military capacity. We -that is, humans, and perhaps one might even presume to speak in this for the whole Mercatoria - regard our military as a tool, to be used by our politicians, who of course rule in the name of all. Conversely, our Dweller friends regard their military as an ancient and venerable calling for those with the relevant vocation, an institution to be honoured for its antiquity which has, almost as an afterthought, the duty of defending Dweller planets from any outside threat. As such, they are like what one might term a "fire brigade", and a volunteer fire brigade, at that, for which no political clearance or oversight is required for it to spring into action, you see? Their raison d'etre is to respond as quickly as possible to emergencies, no more.'
- Fuck me, that actually made a sort of sense, Liss sent.
Just those first two words, delivered in her voice, with her so close behind him, gave Sal the start of an erection. He wondered how strong gravity had to be for hard-ons to become impossible.
'Fire brigades have ... leaders, captains, don't they?' Sorofieve said plaintively, looking from Meretiy to Saluus. 'We might talk to them. Mightn't we?'
Yawiyuen did the little bob-shrug again. 'Absolutely not.'
'But we need to!' Sorofieve almost wailed.
'Why?'
'That thing even looks fast,' Guard-General Thovin said, gazing out at the sleek, dark ship from one of the requisitioned liner's viewing galleries. The stars swung around them. 'It have a name?'
'Hull 8770,' Saluus told him. 'The military will give it a proper name when it's time to hand it over. Though it's a prototype, probably not suitable for full military service.'
'Desperate times,' Thovin said, shrugging, picking something from between his teeth. 'Probably get used for something. Even if it's just a missile.'
That's what you think, Sal thought. 'We haven't quite got to that stage yet,' he said. They were alone. Thovin had suggested a stroll through the mostly empty ex-civilian ship.
'Think we're wasting our time here, Kehar?' Thovin swung round to look at Saluus, his near-neckless head raised and tilted to him.
'Talking to the Dwellers?'
'Yes. Talking to the fucking Dwellers.'
'Probably. But then our friend Fassin Taak is probably wasting his time - if he's still alive - looking for this Transform that probably doesn't exist.'
'He was your friend, wasn't he?' the Guard-General said, eyes narrowing. 'Old school pals. Right, isn't it?'
'Yes, we went to school and college together. We've kept in touch over the years. Matter of fact, probably the last bit of R and R he got before delving into Nasq. was at my house on Murla.'
'Straight to Guard academy for me,' Thovin said, changing tack again and looking away at the dartlike ship floating in space just outside. 'That your escape route, is it, Kehar?' he asked innocently.
Not quite as stupid as you look, are you? Sal thought. 'Where to?' he asked, smiling.
'The fuck out of harm's way, that's where,' Thovin said. 'Keep your head down during the Starveling occupation. Return when it's safe.'
'You know, I hadn't thought of that,' Sal said. 'Why, are you going to make me an offer for it?'
'Wouldn't know how to fly it. 'Course, you do, that right?'
It was no secret that Saluus had flown the Hull 8770 here himself. He was a capable enough pilot. Anybody could be with a little training and a modicum of computer help.
'Frees one of our brave boys for the front line,' he told Thovin, deadpan.
'Be funny if we won against the invaders, or the Summed Fleet lost. Eh?'
'Hilarious.'
'Think we'll get anything out of the floats?'
'I think our Dweller pals have probably given us all we're ever going to get, but it's still worthwhile keeping on looking.'
'Uh-huh? You think?'
'Maybe the crew of one of their hyper-weapons will suddenly decide it'd be fun to defend Sepekte just for the sheer hell of it, or one of the scouts down in Nasq. will find the Transform, or Fassin Taak will just appear with it and we can all escape down a wormhole or bring in Summed Fleet ships from wherever we want. Who knows?'
'So we're not wasting our time here?'
'No, probably we are. But what else could we be doing? Filling sandbags?'
Thovin almost smiled. "Course, if they did suddenly turn up with some fancy super-weapon ship, maybe we wouldn't need to build warships any more, eh?'
'I'm sure Kehar Heavy Industries could happily switch to building nothing but cruise ships.' Sal looked round the viewing gallery they stood in. 'I can see a few areas fit for improvement just standing here.'
Thovin nodded out at the slim, dark ship cradled outside. 'You would hand that over to the Hierchon for his personal yacht if he asked for it, wouldn't you?'
Sal thought for a moment. 'I'd almost sooner destroy it,' he said.
Thovin turned and looked at him, expression open, waiting.
'I'm not kidding. It really is a prototype,' Sal said, smiling. 'You wouldn't put the head of state of an entire system in something as untried as that, certainly not if you meant to take it up to anything near top speed, which would kind of have to be the only reason for choosing it in the first place, right? I'll entrust myself to the thing, but I couldn't let the Hierchon take it. What if it killed him? Think of the publicity. Good grief, man, think of our share price.'
Thovin nodded for a few moments, looking back at the ship. 'Missile, then,' he said.
'Me too,' Liss said quietly in the darkness. 'I thought he was just an idiot kicked upstairs.'
'I think he does a good idiot act,' Sal said. 'Actually, I think he's probably as genuinely stupid as our Dweller negotiators are genuinely naive. Maybe Thovin should take over the talks. Doubt he could do any worse.'
They were lying in bed on board the prototype ship. It was more secure than staying on the liner or one of the other Embassy support ships, if also far less luxurious and much more cramped. There was no absolute guarantee that somebody hadn't sneaked a bug aboard during the ship's construction, but Saluus had had the craft built by his most trustworthy people and supervised the work as closely as he could; it was as safe as anyplace to say things that you might not want others to hear.
'Do you think he was trying to make a deal, get himself included if you did decide to escape?'
Saluus hesitated. This was not something he'd ever discussed straight out even with Liss. He was quite sure she'd guessed that using the ship as a way out was a possibility - so, for that matter, had Thovin, apparently, which kind of made you wonder who else might regard it as obvious (there was a slightly sweat-inducing idea) - but there was nothing to gain for either of them in saying it out loud.
'No,' Sal said, deciding against bringing that particular truth blinking into the light. 'You know, I actually thought that maybe Thovin's a kind of spy himself.'
'Really?'
'I wouldn't be at all surprised if he reports to the Hierchon direct, or at least to the big guy's top intelligence people. I think all this rough-as-bricks bluff stuff is just a way of getting people to drop their guard with him. Fucker could be a traitor-sniffer.'
Liss fitted her long body against his, rubbing slowly, gently. 'He didn't sniff you, then?'
'How could he?' Sal said. 'For I am straight and true.'
'Ah, yes.'
Sometimes, if she was still holding him when she was falling asleep, he would feel her fingers making strange patterns on his side or back, as though her hands we
re trying to spell out some secret code of love. Then she would be asleep and stop, or jerk awake, as though embarrassed, and roll away and curl up.
*
Groggy again. Aboard the Velpin. Still. No idea yet how long they had taken. The truetwin had just told the three of them that it would take 'some days' to get to where they were going. Then, to Fassin and Y'sul when the Sceuri couldn't see, they had signal-whispered, 'That thing about Just Trust Us applies to you two, too. But shh, right?'
Y'sul and Fassin had exchanged looks.
Some days. The travel time was near-instant, of course, portal to portal. It was the getting to and from the portals at either end that took days. That and, perhaps, some sleight-of-course manoeuvres to fool anybody watching or following and trying to spot the hidden portals that way. Who knew? Quercer & Janath did, of course, but they weren't telling, wouldn't even contemplate any arguments about letting him or even just Y'sul stay awake during these bizarre, so casually-taken galaxy-spanning transfers.
Watching, following. How could you have all those ship movements and never be seen? Telescopes of every wavelength, gravity sensors, neutrino patternisers, something somewhere in practically every developed system that kept a devastatingly detailed close eye on every sort of signal that ever emanated from space close, near, mid or far: something had to show up. Or did they only have portals in undeveloped systems, so that they had less chance of being observed?
No, they had them in Ulubis and Ashum.
Watching, following. Followed by something small enough to be even less visible, perhaps? Somebody, something must have followed a Dweller ship in-system, somewhere, and suddenly found itself plunging into a secret wormhole ... And yet, apparently, nobody and nothing ever had.
So casual, so lackadaisical, so la-la-la; could it all be a perfect, never-failing act? Could the Dwellers all really be geniuses at acting, brilliant at stealth, flawless exponents of the disciplines required to keep complete discipline for every single solitary journey-transfer-jump-whatever? Dear reason and fate, they'd had ten billion years to get perfect at anything they wanted. Who knew what skills they'd developed to perfection in that time? (Yet there was still chaos, extreme chance, the simple stacking-up of odds that something had to go wrong sometime, no matter how close to perfection you could get…)
Coming round, slowly. Rovruetz, Direaliete. Shit, more names to deal with, more places to take in, another damn step along the way. He would die forever following this elusive fuck of a Dweller, or accumulate such dislocation, accrue so much summed grogginess that he'd forget what the whole insane quest was for, and find Leisicrofe one day, finally, when it was all too late anyway, and just stare at the fellow, utterly unable to recall what it was he wanted to ask him or what it might be that the Dweller could possibly have that would be remotely interesting or important to him.
The passenger compartment of the Velpin was mostly taken up by the esuit of the Sceuri called the Aumapile of Aumapile: a huge white-stippled black lozenge like a strange distorting viewport into space. Fassin, waking slowly, feeling grubby and sore as usual, couldn't even see Y'sul or the anyway useless screen on the far wall.
'Urgh!' the giant black esuit exclaimed. 'So that is unconsciousness? How disagreeable. And I strongly suspect inherently so.'
Fassin was glad that somebody agreed. He started checking out the arrowhead's systems as he warmed them up again. The left manipulator arm was proving sticky, the self-repair mechanisms reaching the limits of their abilities. On past form it would sort of half-work, jerkily, for a few real-time months and then jam completely. He supposed he was lucky he'd got this far without any equipment failure, especially given the punishment the little gascraft had taken since the flight from Third Fury.
'And yet interesting!' the Sceuri announced, voice booming round the near-full space. The Aumapile of Aumapile was even louder than Y'sul. 'Hmm,' it said. 'Yes, interesting, more than certainly. Are you two awake yet or am I first up? Ha-ha!'
'Either awake or having a very noisy nightmare,' Y'sul said testily and unseen from the creature's other side.
'Ditto,' said Fassin.
'Super! So, are we there yet?'
They were.
And they weren't.
When the fuzzy screen cleared, it showed they were in the middle layers of a gas-giant atmosphere. The Velpin had done some high-speed spinning after all, and the zapping-unconscious had been more rough and ready than before. They had taken two days to get where they were going.
This, their travelcaptain assured them, was Rovruetz, Direaliete, a weather district and gas region of Nhouaste, the system's own gas-giant.
The Aumapile of Aumapile was delighted. Just as it had thought! It fairly bounced out of the Velpin's gaslock into the vast, shaded scape of towering RootClouds and horizon-spanning RayCanopies. It twirled like a centrifuge from sheer happiness. They spent another day, perfectly undisturbed by any native Dwellers, investigating the supposedly Toiler remains, which actually looked remarkably like an abandoned Dweller globe-city sitting on top of a damaged and discarded mega-klick BandTurbine. All very impressive, but not, Fassin and Y'sul both realised, what or where they were really looking for.
- This is not Rovruetz, Direaliete, is it? Fassin asked the truetwin shortly after they arrived, while the Aumapile of Aumapile dashed to and fro throughout the ruins, calibrating instruments and grabbing screenage.
- Are you mad? Of course not.
- Direaliete's on the far side of the galaxy.
- Take days to get there.
- A system? Fassin asked.
- A system.
- I've no record of it, Fassin told the truetwin.
- You wouldn't. Direaliete is its name in the Old Language.
- Well, variant thereof.
- So, Fassin sent, - this is just a trick.
- Correct.
- Our friend has what it wanted, we have what we wanted. Two out of two. One of our more successful missions.
- Meanwhile, Fassin sent, - we're wasting time.
- Time wastes itself.
- Who are we to float in its way?
After offering to leave the breathless Sceuri scholar behind and come back for it - it wasn't quite that easily fooled - and then telling it they really needed to be getting back now - it declared there was too much it still had to look for - Quercer & Janath just abandoned the Sceuri, waiting until it had whirred off into the centre of the abandoned city before telling Fassin that the Aumapile of Aumapile had finally seen sense and was coming aboard in a moment for the trip back, getting the human and Y'sul secured, and then closing the external doors and taking off, warning their passengers there was some fairly intense spiralling ahead.
- What the fuck? Fassin signalled to Y'sul before the gascraft's systems were shut down. - What about the Sceuri?
The Dweller had been in on it.
- A good joke, eh? he sent back, laughing.
Fassin signalled at the wall-screen, getting through to Quercer & Janath in the command space.
- Did you warn the Aumapile you were about to leave?
-Yes.
Fassin waited. No more came. After a few moments he sent, -And?
- Didn't believe us.
- Laughed.
- So you're just abandoning this fabulously wealthy, appar-ently politically well-connected, Dweller-naive idiot in a gas-giant in its home system?
- About sums it up.
- Can't say we didn't warn him. It.
- Conditions of Passage.
- Don't you think it might get hunted or just die anyway?
Fassin asked. - Or get back home, eventually, deeply annoyed?
- Suppose it's a possibility.
- Keep going?
- Get back home, eventually, deeply annoyed with all Dwellers? And that that might be a bad thing for the Dwellers who live in Nhouaste?
- Point.
- Could cause friction.
- Kudos loss!
&nb
sp; - Maybe we should have warned somebody we were leaving the flop-backed suck-puncture behind.
- Thinking. Suggestion. Know! We'll send a signal.
- Happy?
Fassin didn't even get time to reply.
- No more talk time. Switch off now, start spiralling.
*
The Archimandrite Luseferous reviewed his forces. The nearest parts were right here, within the curved, concentric hulls of the Main Battle Craft Luseferous VII: they were his space and ground crack troops, all stood at attention by their sleek all-environments attack craft and high-skill-spec weaponry. The warships, support craft, troop carriers, landers, bombardment monitors, harrier drones, missile carriers, scout and surveillance machines and other vessels plus miscellaneous heavy devices he could discern - stretching as far as the unaided eye could see into the distance - were just projections. But they were live, real-time, and mostly clustered within a few light seconds of the invasion fleet's core, whose absolute, steely heart was the Main Battle Craft Luseferous VII.
This was, in a way, the Archimandrite's favourite bit. He had made a tradition of reviewing his forces like this before every major engagement, and especially before every system invasion, simply because it was such an astoundingly rewarding experience. Even the feeling of victory achieved - of having crushed and overcome, of having utterly prevailed - was hardly any better than this, when all the forces that would soon be thrown into the unavoidable mess and untidiness of battle - getting killed and shot up and dirty and lost and damaged and so on -stood or sat or lay or hovered or flew in perfect formation before him, gleaming, serried, grouped, exactly aligned, neatly laid out, symmetrically and systematically arranged, all just glistening with power and threat and promise.
He stood on the reviewing balcony at one end of the vast curved series of halls that formed the layered outer hulls of the giant ship, and took a series of deep breaths, eyes wide, heart pounding. God or Truth, it was a beautiful sight. This was, in a way, genuinely better than sex.
They were coasting in now, most of the deceleration completed, just one final burst of a few days' weight and discomfort to come. Another week and they would be in the system, finally attacking. They had encountered little opposition so far, partly due to the high, angled course they'd taken. Any mine clouds and drone flocks that might have been set out to trap them would have been thrown across the more direct approaches, and by taking this longer but safer line they'd avoided them all so far. The only danger had lain in their mid-course correction, subjective years earlier, when their drives might have shown up on any deep-space monitoring systems in Ulubis, had they been turned in the right direction. The risk had been slight and as far as they could tell they'd got away with it.