As was the case with each of their impressive if arguably rather pointless Sculpt worlds, the main point of the Girdlecity, as far as its builders had been concerned, appeared to have been the building of it, rather than any subsequent use it might have been put to. The Werpesh – famously secretive and opaquely motivated – had never chosen to elaborate on their reasons for constructing it. Some of them had lived in portions of it and it did function as a kind of grossly over-engineered spaceport, but the main use it might have had – attracting alien tourists – wasn’t one the Werpesh had ever chosen to promote. Most of the time, before the Werpesh finally did the decent thing and Sublimed, the sparsely populated, barely used Girdlecity had just sort of sat there.
The Gzilt had made better use of it, but even then, in nearly eleven thousand years of custodianship, they had never even come close to filling it entirely, and rarely ventured into the sections above the level where there was natural atmosphere to breathe, leaving over ninety per cent of it empty of life. Space habitats, for all their even greater intrinsic artificiality, were capable of providing far more agreeable, pleasantly rural, less brutally industrial-feeling places in which to live.
Still, the Girdlecity had contained many billions, and even now contained hundreds of millions of Gzilt. And in a sense, of course, it still contained those billions, except the vast majority of them were Stored, existing in a state of suspended animation, awaiting the pre-waking just before the Instigation that would itself lead to their new life in the Sublime.
There had always been open tunnels within the Girdlecity; routes – some never less than half a kilometre in diameter – within the length of it that stretched throughout its fretwork of vast tubes, girders, walls and components both structural and habitative to provide a kind of large-scale transport network for airships. The great dirigibles had plied the vast tunnels for millennia, carrying people and occasionally goods, even though there were many faster, more efficient systems built into the Girdlecity. Airship travel was seen as romantic.
Now, as far as was known, there was only one airship still making its way through the structure, and it was home to the Last Party.
The Last Party was a five-year-long Debaucheriad aboard the airship Equatorial 353; it circled the Girdlecity once a year, the last revolution being timed to coincide with the Instigation, when, a day or two earlier, the Equatorial 353 would arrive back at Launch Falls, the section of the Girdlecity where it had begun its voyage.
The Equatorial 353 was a fairly conventional vacuum dirigible two kilometres long and four hundred metres across; it had always been a kind of contained cruise ship, slipping through the structure of the Girdlecity, taking one or other of the various routes made available through the structure by the network of tunnels, throughways and assorted larger spaces dispersed within it.
Nominally owned by one of the many collectives which had been set up within the Girdlecity, it had been due to cease flying with all the other ships as the waking population of the structure dwindled to less than five per cent of what it had once been. Then a small group within the collective – one based on the pursuit of art and experimental living, so it had been pretty eccentric even at the best of times – had suggested keeping the thing flying, right to the end, and making a proper going-away party of its last flight.
The original idea had been to have a year-long party, one that would have started over four years after the suggestion was first put forward, but such was the excitement the idea produced, nobody could stand to wait that long so the plan was altered: it would be a five-year-long party, and fate help all who dared to sail on it.
The small group within the collective had been led, or at least fronted, by a man called Ximenyr, who’d been into a variety of radical body arts and amendment. He was one of the founding members of the Last Party, and one of a few dozen out of the original few hundred who had started out who was still determinedly partying; most of the rest had given up, burned out, been hospitalised or died. A few had even got religion. The party hadn’t fizzled out, though; quite the opposite. It had grown in size over the years as more and more people heard about it and arrived to sample its delights until it entirely filled the two thousand accommodation and social units aboard the ship and there was supposedly a waiting list if you wanted to stay overnight. Though, given that one of the (few) guiding principles of the Last Party was that all things ought to be as shambolic as possible at all times – and it had entirely lived up to this rule – nobody really took this restriction especially seriously. Unless, of course, the sheer weight of bodies aboard led to the airship starting to bump along the bottom of its open-work tunnel, in which case it was time to restore buoyancy by disposing of any blatantly unnecessary items, such as articles of furniture.
“Are we clear?”
“Consider me briefed. How close do you have to get?”
“Just inside might make all the difference, though the closer to the man himself the better. ROAT, preferably.”
“Roat?”
“Reach Out And Touch. This sort of distance.”
“Okay.”
~Hear me via the earbud?
“Yes,” she said. She’d never been great at sub-vocalising.
“Do you want me to wake the android Eglyle Parinherm?”
“Not especially.”
“And how necessary is it that your familiar accompanies us?”
“Very!”
“I wasn’t really talking to you. Ms Cossont?”
“Let’s compromise on moderately. It can be useful.”
“‘Useful’?” Pyan screeched. “Is that all?”
“Can you ask it to be discreet?”
“Certainly. Pyan; until further notice, shut the fuck up.”
“Well, really!”
Cossont took a step back. “Is your face …?” she said. “Your head’s changing!”
Berdle shrugged. In the last few moments the avatar had gone from its earlier appearance to looking like a tall, handsome Gzilt male with a dramatically sculpted facial bone structure.
“Just fitting in,” the avatar said reasonably. Berdle definitely looked masculine now, Cossont thought. Its whole body had altered; it/he looked like a strikingly attractive and leanly fit Gzilt male.
“How are you doing this?” she asked.
“Skilfully,” Berdle replied, expressionless.
WHAT WANT? said the face in front of them.
“You can hear, can’t you?” Cossont said, speaking loudly and clearly and even bending forward a little.
The person in front of them appeared to have a round flat face exactly like a large plate of alphabet soup: a yellow-brown liquid holding lots of little white letters, somehow held at ninety degrees to vertical when it looked convincingly as though the whole lot should be spilling to the floor of the balcony hangar. It could, Cossont supposed, be a screen or more likely a holo, but when she’d first bent forward to look at it she’d have sworn it was real; there was vapour coming off it and she could smell the soup. Otherwise the person looked physically relatively normal; either a thin female or a rather hippy male of average height dressed in a motley of violently spray-painted military gear. The top, sides and chin of his/her head flowed seemingly naturally into the bowl making up their face.
The letters in the soup bowl rearranged themselves: COURSE HEAR!
Berdle, standing alongside Cossont, crossed one leg over the other, put his arm over her shoulders and drew deeply on a fat drug stick. He held the breath, grinned at the person with the soup-bowl face. Berdle was dressed like a badly lagged pipe; a thick, red, pillowy material wrapping his limbs and torso was held in place by loose-looking black straps.
“We’d like to talk to The Master of the Revels,” Cossont said, a little more quietly. This was the title Ximenyr had taken nearly a year earlier, for the last circuit of the Girdlecity and the planet before the Big Enfold.
WHO?
Cossont sighed. “Ximenyr.”
Berdle
brushed some ash off Cossont’s jacket. She hadn’t even seen Berdle change; in some moment between the module touching down on a deserted piazza about a kilometre above the waves and them walking off the deck into the structure he’d gone from whatever he’d been wearing earlier (she couldn’t remember) to what he was wearing now.
She’d looked back, frowned, and started wondering if this was some projection. She’d stepped towards him as they’d walked, rubbed his sleeve fabric between thumb and finger. Nope; real.
“Sorry,” she’d said.
“None taken,” he’d replied. She’d looked askance.
Maybe, she’d thought, it was some ultra-clever and adaptable piece or pieces of clothing, or – along with his whole face-and-body-altering thing earlier – maybe it meant the entire avatar was some sort of swarm-being, made up of tiny machines. She’d looked him hard in the eye, from very close up, but he’d still contrived to look like flesh and blood.
She’d pulled away. “Sorry, again.”
“Still none taken.”
She was dressed as she had been, freshly repaired Lords of Excrement jacket included, with Pyan rolled into a scarf shape and draped over her shoulders.
They’d walked through the empty tubularity of the local architecture, their way lit by a few small and distant lights. They’d come to a long gallery where the nose of the airship was just starting to slide past like a colossal walking-speed tube train. It was moving so slowly she’d thought it had stopped, but it was still going, if only at a slow stroll. Thirty thousand klicks in a year; she supposed that did equate to strolling speed. The tunnel the ship moved in looked like a gigantic woven basket of dark filaments, stretching to a hazed curve within the greater structural and architectural elements of the Girdlecity. A few random lights shone; so few the average unaided eye would have interpreted the gloom as something close to utter darkness. Good to have augmentation, she’d thought. She’d glanced at the avatar. Berdle probably had eyes that could see through planets.
A thin metal net strung on stanchions protected them from the drop into the curve of tunnel.
The molecule-thin hull of the ship was probably red underneath, though it was hard to tell in the paltry light because the surface was so thoroughly splattered with a berserk variety of patterns, diagrams, logos and drawings, some illuminated, some moving – some looping, some not – and covered with flowing, bedraggled banners, gently waving pennants and ragged flags.
The nose pushed slowly out past them, right to left, the ship seeming to broaden out to meet them, metre by metre, until it looked like the airship was going to collide with the gallery she and Berdle stood on. There was what looked like a trench gouged in the side of the ship, level with the gallery they stood on.
~Lateral hangar-balcony, the avatar had sent. Then he looked down, and she had the very strong impression Berdle was looking somehow through the airship. ~Hmm. Taking on a lot of water. Interesting.
The hangar-balcony was closed off with what were probably lengths of diamond film. One of these had slid aside just as that part of the trench had started to pass them. Berdle had reached down, lifted the metal net away. The floor of the hangar-balcony was so close they could just step onto it across a half-metre gap. That had been when the soup-faced person had come, almost tumbling, out of a nearby door and asked them WHAT WANT?
~Combat arbite just behind the door, Berdle had told Cossont. ~One-legged combat arbite with no ammunition and the mechanical equivalent of arthritis, but just so’s you know.
The letters forming the word WHO! had taken their time drifting apart. Now they slipped beneath the yellow-brown surface while others surfaced and rearranged themselves.
ASLEEP said the word now seemingly floating on the soup-face.
The avatar was exhaling, blowing the smoke out his ears.
~No, he’s not, he said quietly via Cossont’s earbud. Berdle claimed to have something called a scout missile within metres of Ximenyr, inserted into his cabin without him noticing while the module had still been approaching the Girdlecity. ~Shall I call him now?
“We could just call him,” Cossont said to the soup-face, glancing at Berdle. “Or we could wait. That would only be polite. Tell him an old friend of Mr QiRia is here to see him.”
~We ought to call him. Time’s a-wasting.
APPOINTMENT?
“That’s very kind,” Cossont said. “But we won’t need one. I’m sure he’ll see us as soon as he can.”
The soup-face jerked back a little as though surprised. New letters arranged themselves quickly, struggling to find enough room in the space available.
NODOYO UHAV EAPP Some letters disappeared; the rest rearranged themselves again. NO. YOU HAVE APP?
“No, we don’t,” Cossont said patiently. “This is, in its own small way, urgent. You don’t have appointments for urgent things, as a rule, do you?”
NO APPOINT?
“We’d be terribly obliged if you’d just let him know we’re here, right now. Don’t forget to mention Mr QiRia’s name.”
SORRY.
“Sorry?” Cossont said. She tapped one booted foot while the letters swam about.
STILL ASLEEP
~Call? Berdle sent.
“We’ll call him ourselves,” Cossont said.
~Thank you. Calling.
YBL
“Cheers, I’m sure we will be lucky,” Cossont said.
~Ringing.
Somewhere beyond the open-work wall behind them, the grey light of dawn was introducing a wash of colour into the detail of the giant multiply pierced tunnel.
~About to get bright, Berdle sent via the earbud. ~Little danger. Still ringing.
An instant later, light burst and flooded all around them and a cacophony assailed Cossont’s ears. She looked round and saw the basket-work of the great open tunnel and the parts of the structure immediately beyond all lit up with stuttering pulses of multi-coloured light. Deep thuds were followed by the crackling boom and partial echo of air explosions.
DAWN FIREWKS
“How quaint,” Cossont said.
~He’s picked up. Over to you.
“Mr Ximenyr?” Cossont said, turning slightly away from the soup-face.
“Who is this?” a deep male voice drawled. He sounded sleepy or just stoned.
“My name is Vyr Cossont. I’m—”
“Wait, wait, girl; how did you get through to – nobody’s supposed to be—”
~Privacied, Berdle sent to her, voice quick and clipped. ~Continues: “—able to get through on this without …” Cossont heard Ximenyr’s voice continue, even though the connection was quiet. “You any …?” the human voice said. “Yeah, check the bases, pull it off replay. Veer Kossin or something.”
“Yeah,” the man said via the earbud again. “How’d you get through to me here? Not supposed to accept …” His voice trailed off. It sounded like he’d been distracted.
~An acolyte is performing a sexual act on Mr Ximenyr, Berdle reported.
Cossont listened to some heavy breathing for a moment or two, then said, quite loudly, “I’m an old friend of Mr QiRia; he visited you five years ago, at the start of the party. Do you remember him?”
The heavy breathing stopped.
~Mr Ximenyr has pushed the acolyte away, Berdle reported. ~The sexual act has ceased.
“Well, if I don’t, something or somebody will remember for me, I’m sure,” Ximenyr said. “Assuming this actually happened. Who did you say again?”
“My name is Vyr Cossont. Friend of Ngaroe QiRia. I’d like to meet with you.”
“Yeah … How did you get through?”
~Mr Ximenyr is gesturing to call up a video feed from here, the avatar sent. Berdle sucked on the drug stick, bent close to Cossont’s ear and said, “With great difficulty!” Cossont coughed, waved the resulting smoke away. The avatar smiled up at the corner of the hangar-balcony. Cossont looked too but couldn’t see anything. “Hi,” the avatar said, and waved. The rest of the smoke came
out of his ears again.
“Uh-huh,” the deep voice said. “And you would be?”
“Dying to meet you, Master of the Revels, sir,” Berdle said cheerily. “My name’s Berdle.”
Cossont heard silence on the connection for a moment.
~He’s saying: “‘Berdle’? … Nothing? Vyr Cossont? Mil reserve? Just civilian? … Muso, yeah? Wearing an Excrements top; that’s cool enough. And look at her; I’d – Wait a fucking minute. I remember that name. No, QiRia. Fucking QiRia fella. Fuck, him. Fuck. Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Fucking … welcome aboard, classical girl. Yeah. Right.”
“Hello?”
“Mr Ximenyr.”
“Come on in. Welcome. Hope you’re broad-minded.”
PLEASE COME IN
The wide door behind the soup-faced person was swung open by a one-legged combat arbite which made a slight creaking noise as it gestured for them to enter. Berdle handed the machine the stub of his blunt and it stood there looking at the drug stick as they followed the soup-faced person into the body of the airship.
The Last Party had grown to become several parties. There were at least four party cycles happening at any one point, roughly aligned with the times of the day/night cycle, so that no matter when you felt like partying – even if it was immediately after your own randomly houred breakfast – there would be a party just started or just about to start.
Led by the soup-faced person, they walked through broad open spaces, red-lit, where it looked like the party had been over for some time; small floating machines were picking up litter, the air was full of strange scents and the space part-full of ceiling-suspended pods and shallow platforms and things like giant hammocks, many of them transparent or translucent. There was quite a lot of sex happening, Cossont noticed, in and on the hammocks, and the air was also full of soft cries, the occasional piercing scream and all the other sounds associated with physical passion, unreservedly expressed. Cossont felt herself becoming surprisingly hot and bothered by it all; usually she had pretty good control of herself.