“Sounds like it,” the voice agreed.
Berdle smiled faintly, shook his head as he said, “Would you have any idea why you—?”
“No. None at all. Guess I must have thought I had something to hide. If so, glad I’ve done a good job of it, or made sure somebody else did.”
Cossont was sitting, looking deflated, eyes closed, shaking her head gently. “They can’t just have gone,” she said, as though to herself. “They can’t just have gone.” She looked at Berdle. “What now? Can we look for … the real QiRia, for the old guy himself? He might … he should still know.” She shook her head again. “Shouldn’t he?”
“We’ve already tried that,” the avatar told her. “They found him, but he’d had the memories encoded site-specific in his body, and then had those sites removed.”
“What?” Cossont said, frowning.
“Mr QiRia looks like this, now,” Berdle said, and a screen appeared in mid-air, of a man in a dark room, wearing a pair of dark, slatted glasses. “The person who tracked him down,” Berdle said; “their suit took this.” The screen image moved and the man took off the glasses, revealing that it was QiRia, but also that where his eyes should have been, there were the inner parts of ears.
The clip looped and the screen split to show different versions of the same sequence, in infra-red, slow motion, with the eye sockets zoomed in on, and combinations thereof.
Cossont just stared.
“How gross!” Pyan said.
“What are you looking at?” QiRia’s voice asked.
Cossont reached out and turned the cube off, then slumped back in her seat, eyes closed again. She had a feeling she might be about to cry.
“Do you remember this?” Berdle said softly, and when Cossont opened her eyes again the screen was showing a view that looked familiar, though at first she couldn’t quite place it. It was of a man looking slightly lost in what might have been a transit lounge. Then he left, following a modest amount of luggage on a float-trolley.
Of course: QiRia, arriving on Xown, five years ago. Then a similar set of images which seemed to show him in the same place, dressed similarly but wearing big dark glasses. If anything, he looked even less sure about where he was going this time. The images faded away and the screen went dark.
“And this?” The screen shone out again to show Ximenyr, the man with the many penises on the airship Equatorial 353, in the Girdlecity. It was almost exactly the view she recalled having at the time, though then the view flicked round and showed Cossont’s own face, before flicking back to the man in the bed again. So this had been Berdle’s point of view. This was the sight through his eyes, recorded.
“Mr Berdle, Ms Cossont,” Ximenyr said in his deep, thick voice. “Pleased to meet you.” He opened his mouth and a long tongue snaked out and delicately licked at first one eyebrow then the other, shaping them both neatly into place. The tongue disappeared again. He opened his eyes wide; he had bright, pale blue irises. His eyeballs went back into their sockets, the blue irises disappearing. They were replaced from below by dark red irises which rolled into place and steadied. “Excuse me,” he said. “These pupils work better in daylight.” He smiled widely, showing very white teeth.
Cossont was nodding now. “Mr Ximenyr, the body-amendment specialist,” she said.
This would be why QiRia had looked like he had, the second time in the transit lounge; wearing big dark glasses, seemingly – perversely – less sure of his surroundings than before: he’d been blind.
The screen view now was doing something she hadn’t done at the time, zooming in to a close-up of Ximenyr’s face; the teeth and the eyes at first, then down, to the necklace of trinkets adorning his neck.
The view came to rest and freeze on the tiny – at the time deactivated – scout missile that the ship had sent into the man’s bed-chamber. It was resting on Ximenyr’s chest between what looked like an android’s thumb and a thick crystal cylinder, striped with encrusted jewels.
The frozen image jerked to one side, zoomed in further on the cylinder, showing a hazy view of what looked like semi-transparent crystal with what might have been a pair of berries inside. They were pale green, and looked like they were floating in some sort of off-white surround.
“What colour were Mr QiRia’s eyes?” Berdle asked.
Cossont still had to think, just to be sure. Then she remembered. “When he was there, they were the colour of the ocean on Perytch IV,” she said. “The ocean could be lots of colours,” she told the avatar, “but mostly, in daylight, it was the colour of beach jade. Pale green.” She nodded at the extreme close-up of the jewel-encrusted cylinder with its imperfectly transparent little windows and the two soft-looking things inside that might have been berries. “That colour.”
Eighteen
(S -7)
She should never have trusted herself. She ought to have known what she was like. Well, she did know what she was like, but she should have paid more attention or taken the issue more seriously or something.
Scoaliera Tefwe, still within the virtual environment of a substrate housed within the LSV You Call This Clean?, looked at the two holo images of herself facing her and scowled. “So. Neither of you?”
“Certainly not me.”
“Certainly not me.”
They didn’t say it at quite the same time, but then the ships they were housed within were at quite different distances.
The original Scoaliera Tefwe, who thought of herself as the real one – but then, both the others would as well – sighed in exasperation and flicked the images off.
“Huh,” she said.
“I have their experiences, all the sensory data they collected,” the You Call This Clean? told her. “They can’t stop you reviewing those.”
“That,” Tefwe said, “will have to do.”
“There’s a surprise at the end,” the ship told her. “Shall I warn you?”
“What, and spoil the fun? Why no.”
So she watched herself take the aphore from the stables at Chyan’tya, by the Snake river, with its smells of bell-blossom and strandle flower, even-cluss and jodenberry, then head out across the Pouch to the hills. She saw the pair of raptors wheel across the blaze of blue sky, could taste the heat in her mouth at the day’s peak, and lay panting with the mount in the shade of the desiccant umbrel.
She went up into and then through the mountains. She skipped her other self’s memory of sleep; it saved time but also it felt like an intrusion too far, even though this person was still and really herself.
She met with the drone Hassipura, surveyed its intriguing but somehow pathetic little empire of tunnels, channels and pools of scald-dry sands. She heard where she – yet another, sequential version of her – might find QiRia, and left.
She watched herself – there was always that distance at first, like watching a play or a film, before you lost yourself in it – as she stood up within the tall sways of bronze and copper-coloured grasses, then walked to the deserted station and waited for the rattling train-tram thing.
She could smell the air, and sense the locals, the folds, trying not to stare at her. She was carried on up into the mountains, into the vast echoing kingdom of the Sound, and waited to be allowed in to the hearkenry, then followed the Docent Luzuge, and was, finally, granted her audience with the elusive Mr QiRia.
The eyes – the sockets that now housed ears – came as a shock. That certainly counted as a surprise.
She – her other self – didn’t get long to gawk at the man’s mutilated face. There was some commotion outside, audible over, or at least through, the crushing weight of the Sound.
The door at the rear of the cell was thrown splintering open and some sort of shining, multi-limbed drone, all angles and barbs, came tearing in and halted by QiRia’s seat. It drew itself up as though to strike. QiRia had jumped when the door had been thrown open and was turning towards the machine, which screeched, “Arrest! Surrender self!” in a metallic scream pitched
so high it cut right through the Sound.
Tefwe’s suit had gone to full deployment the instant the door had started moving, covering her head in a close-fitting semi-transparent helmet. She jumped up and threw open the shutters, letting the Sound roll in. There was a white flash and she felt something hit her hard in the back, though without causing pain. She threw herself through the matting curtains and out of the window, landing on the cold slope of scree outside and hurtling in a zigzag down towards the nearest cover – a dark mass of metre-high boulders. “Ship!” she yelled. “You getting all this? Get me off here!”
“Suit lower dorsal area seventy per cent compromised,” the suit told her solemnly. She could feel heat bleeding through where the blow from behind had hit, making her back warm.
“Shit!” she said as she dived for a gap between two of the boulders. She never got there. A second, much more powerful shot – from above, from a weapon platform she hadn’t even known was there – hit her between the shoulders and blew her neck and head off.
Most of her landed in a bloody, fiery, smoking heap just before the collection of boulders; her head flew further and thudded off the top of one of the boulders, bouncing to the ground just beyond. Then the view, from the scout missile or whatever had been accompanying her, flashed once and disappeared too.
The Rapid Random Response Unit, suddenly subject to the aggressive attentions of a small flotilla of Oglari vessels, executed a very risky manoeuvre, succeeded in snapping Tefwe’s still-just-about-alive head back to itself and then flared wildly off at its highest possible, engine-field-addling acceleration.
The whole incident caused some highly vocal distress and outrage for the Oglari, allegedly entirely on behalf of their valued allies and grateful charges, the Uwanui. Apologies for the misunderstanding were dutifully expressed by the Rapid Random Response Unit, its home GSV and other respected Culture worthies, but further favours and indulgences were now owed or at least expected by both the Oglari and the Uwanui.
Apparently, neither Contact nor Special Circumstances was particularly impressed with these developments.
“These things accrue,” Tefwe muttered to herself.
“All on-boarded?” the You Call This Clean? asked.
“I experienced everything the other two experienced, so I suppose so,” she said. “But I got killed, for fuck’s sake.”
“That was the surprise.”
“Thanks. Think I’ll go back to Storage now. Full asleep. No dreams.”
“Certainly.”
“And next time you want to wake me up—”
But the ship had already started putting her under. It strongly suspected that there had been only one more word to come in that sentence of Tefwe’s, and that it would have been the word “don’t”.
Yes, but … plausibly deniable, the ship decided.
“Of course we’re close. We’ve always been close. We’re mother and daughter. You might not understand; you’re a man. Men rarely do. It’s a different thing. You really have to be a mother to understand, frankly. Even some daughters don’t understand, to tell the Prophet’s truth. Not that I’m saying Vyr doesn’t. That would be going too far. But she is independent. Very independent. But I’m not complaining; I’m not the complaining sort, not at all. That’s how I raised her, you see? That’s what I wanted for her. I always meant her to be her own person, not tied to my purse strings. And she hasn’t wanted to become a mother herself, what with the Subliming, obviously. Or really had time, for that matter. Very busy. She’s always been very busy. And not always with things that she can tell me about either, if I’m telling the truth and you know what I mean. You know. Well, I’m sure you do, in your type of work. I’m not saying she was some sort of secret agent or anything, but you could tell – well, I could tell, being her mother, as I say, and I do have a gift for these things even if I say so myself, though it’s not just me, not really; it’s all my friends, I’m very modest, they’re the ones who’ll tell you I have a gift, almost a sight for these things … but there were things she obviously couldn’t tell me, things that were secret that it was best for me not to know I suppose. I’m not surprised, I’m really not. She’s very bright, very capable girl, very able to take care of herself, and trustworthy. And loyal. Loyal, too. Very loyal. She takes after me in that way, it’s part of the bond we share.”
“It’s just that according to the logs of the ship here, she doesn’t seem to visit very oft—” the first young man started to say, before his companion held up one hand to stop him.
She’d already forgotten their names, but the one who’d just been talking was the nicer of the two because he smiled more and looked at her properly and just had a nicer manner. The other one was even younger – barely more than a boy – and harder-looking somehow and didn’t even seem to have noticed let alone appreciated the very flattering and daringly clingy lounge dress she’d worn especially.
Inter-Regimental Intelligence on Trimestal Secondment! How grand did that sound! And they were interested in her little girl! In a good way, obviously; they had been very polite and deferential ever since they’d called the apartment from their aircraft on their way to see her, and even the small, hard-faced one who was probably only interested in boys anyway had been scrupulously courteous and mannerly from the instant he and the nice, jolly, fuller-faced one had crossed the threshold of the apartment.
Apparently, though they couldn’t confirm or deny anything, naturally, Vyr was still alive. And not just alive, but involved – the implication seemed to be – in something important. Her little girl! Well, it was no surprise really. She’d always known, at the back of her mind, despite all the silly, niggling things that the girl had done and said over the years, that Vyr would live up to the promise she’d shown when she was younger, and make her mother proud of her. It had only been a matter of time.
In fact, all the times she hadn’t bothered to visit or get in touch and had seemed indifferent or intolerant or just seemingly wanting to be hurtful on the rare occasions when she did deign to show up suddenly made complete sense now; she’d just been trying to protect her mother! She should have known that’s what it had been. Of course she’d loved and respected her old mum; how could she not? She just hadn’t been able to bring her into her secret life in case it jeopardised her safety. Logical. Loving and sensible at the same time. Well, frankly, about time!
Warib could feel herself getting quite excited with all these thoughts; her breath was coming rather quickly and she wouldn’t be at all surprised if she looked flushed and even more youthful to these two very well-dressed and immaculately groomed young men. The younger, harder-faced one was saying something. She really ought to concentrate; her attention had drifted there – not like her at all.
“… her being involved in something secret?” he said, eyes narrowed but a small smile – finally! – on his lean face. “Did I understand that right? Did you …?”
“Well, I can’t say too much. Obviously,” Warib said. “Oh, thank you, dear.” She accepted a health drink infusion from Garron. Garron had been a little brusque with the two young men initially – they were both probably even younger than he was – but that was all right. He’d even offered everybody drinks, which was a lot better than his usual What-am-I-just-a-steward-to-you? attitude. “But she’d always been so outstanding, it would only be sensible for the regiment to put her talents to good use. I mean, she would never actually tell me anything, but,” Warib winked at the two young men, “a mother can tell. I think especially when you’re very close – almost embarrassingly close! – in age to your daughter – oh, dear! – I think you can tell when there’s something going on she’s not telling you about. I can’t say any more. I don’t know any more, in the conventional sense of knowing, but, trust me; I know.”
The young, hard-faced one nodded. “That’s very interesting.”
Warib smiled, relaxed. She was much less worried about Vyr now.
xGSV Contents May Differ
oLOU Caconym
oGCU Displacement Activity
oGSV Empiricist
oGSV Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life’s Rich Tapestry
oUe Mistake Not …
oMSV Passing By And Thought I’d Drop In
oMSV Pressure Drop
oLSV You Call This Clean?
Well, I think we’ve all looked at the relevant signal streams by now. It would seem Mr QiRia really is going to some lengths not to let us know what happened in the way back when. The Mistake Not … has already thrown itself about – again – and is now heading straight back to Xown and the Girdlecity; however, I place this out there just in case there is anybody who knows of anything closer … No? Really? Nothing else within five days? No, then.
∞
xMSV Pressure Drop
Did our friend the Mistake Not … not leave any sort of presence at Xown?
∞
xUe Mistake Not …
The Mistake Not … did indeed, because the Mistake Not … is not a complete idiot.
∞
xMSV Pressure Drop
I certainly didn’t mean to suggest that you were. Would any of these items still on Xown be able to procure these two pieces of soft hardware independently?
∞
xUe Mistake Not …
Not by themselves. The gentleman in possession of what we assume are Mr QiRia’s eyes, which we assume are genuinely where his memories are, appears to have non-trivial resources to command in the field of surveillance and remote presences. The items I left in the vicinity might be of some assistance in getting hold of the objects in question, and a certain amount of preparatory work might be accomplished, but they would not be sufficient in themselves.
We could, of course, just send a message to Mr Ximenyr asking him to sell, trade or just out of the goodness of his hearts gift us the objects concerned and put them aside until I’m able to get there to pick them up; however, I imagine we might all feel that could serve to alert him – and possibly others – to their mooted importance.