Look to Windward (20 page)

At about four hundred meters, the barge was nearly twice as long as the river here was wide; it was a tall, beamy craft tiered with decks and studded with masts, some of which held highly decorated sails, most of which trailed banners and flags.

Quilan had seen lots of people, though the vessel was hardly crowded.

“This isn't all for me, is it?” he'd asked the drone Tersono as the module approached one of the barge's half-decks stern first.

“Well,” it had said, sounding uncertain. “No. Why, would you prefer to have a private craft?”.

“No, I was just wondering.”

“There are various other receptions, parties and different events taking place on the barge just now,” the avatar had told him. “Plus there are several hundred people for whom the vessel is their temporary or permanent home.”

“How many people have come to see me?”.

“About seventy,” the avatar replied.

“Major Quilan,” the drone had said. “If you've changed your mind—”

“No, I—”.

“Major, might I make a suggestion?” Estray Lassils had said.

“Please do.”

And so the module had positioned itself so that he could walk straight out onto the barge's high forecastle; Estray Lassils had disembarked at the same time and shown him the route to take; she'd hung back while he found his way across a sort of gantry, through a rather riotous party, and eventually fetched up on one of the set-back decks looking out over the vessel's bows.

There were a few humans there, mostly in couples. He had remembered a hot hazy day on a much smaller boat on a broad but almost infinitely tinier river, thousands of light years away now; her touch and smell, the weight of her hand on his shoulder …

The humans had looked at him with curiosity, but had left him alone. He'd gazed out, taking in the view. The day was bright but cool. The great river and the vast, stunning world flowed and revolved beneath him, taking him with them both.

8
The Retreat at Cadracet

A
fter a while he turned away from the view.

Estray Lassils emerged from a dance at the noisy party—flushed and breathing heavily—and walked with him toward the section of the barge set aside for his reception.

“You're sure you're quite happy to meet all these people, Major?” she asked.

“Quite certain, thank you.”

“Well, do say the instant you want to get away. We won't think you rude. I did some research into your order. You sound quite, ah, ascetic, and semi-trappist. I'm sure we'd all understand if you found our gibbering gaggle tiresome.”

~ Wonder just how much they were able to research.

“I'm sure I'll survive.”

“Good for you. I'm supposed to be an old hand at this sort of thing but even I find it pretty damn tedious
sometimes. Still, receptions and parties are pan-cultural, so we're told. I've never been sure whether to be reassured or appalled by that.”

“I suppose both are appropriate, depending on one's mood.”

~ Well said, son. Think I'll go back to hovering. You concentrate on her; this one's devious. I can feel it.

“Major Quilan, I do hope you appreciate how sorry we are for what happened to your people,” the woman said, looking at her feet, then up at him. “You may all be heartily fed up hearing this by now, in which case I can only apologize for that as well, but sometimes you feel you just have to say something.” She glanced away into the hazy depth of the view. “The war was our fault. We'll make what amends and reparations we can, but for what it's worth—and I realize it may not seem like very much—we do apologize.” She made a small gesture with her old, lined hands. “I think all of us feel that we owe you and your people a particular debt.” She looked down at her feet again for a moment, before catching his gaze once more. “Do not hesitate to call upon it.”

“Thank you. I appreciate your sympathy, and your offer. I've made no secret of my mission.”

Her eyes narrowed, then she gave a small, hesitant smile. “Yes. We'll see what we can do. You're not in too great a hurry, I hope, Major.”

“Not too great,” he told her.

She nodded and continued walking. In a lighter tone, she said, “I hope you like the house Hub's prepared for you, Major.”

“As you say, my order is not renowned for its indulgence
or its luxury. I'm sure you will have provided me with more than I need.”

“I imagine we probably have. Do let us know if there's anything else you require, including less of anything, if you know what I mean.”

“I take it this house is not next door to Mahrai Ziller's.”

She laughed. “Not even next Plate. You're two away. But I'm told it has a very nice view and its own sub-Plate access.” She looked at him through narrowed eyes. “You know what all this stuff means? The terminology, I mean?”.

He smiled politely. “I have done my own research, Ms. Lassils.”

“Yes, of course. Well, just let us know what sort of terminal or whatever you want to use. If you've brought a communicator of your own I'm sure Hub can patch you through, or it's certainly prepared to put an avatar or some other familiar at your disposal, or … well it's up to you. What would you prefer?”.

“I think one of your standard pen terminals would suffice.”

“Major, I strongly suspect by the time you get to your house there'll be one there waiting for you. Ah ha.” They were approaching a broad upper deck scattered with wooden furniture, partially covered by awnings and dotted with people. “And it may well be a more welcome sight than this: a bunch of people all desperate to talk your ears off. Remember; bail out any time.”

~ Amen.

Everybody turned to face him.

~ We must join the fray, Major
.

•   •   •   

There were indeed about seventy people there to meet him. They included three from the General Board—whom Estray Lassils recognized, hailed and went into a huddle with as soon as was decent—various scholars of matters Chelgrian or whose speciality description included the word
xeno
—mostly professors—and a handful of other nonhumans, none of whose species Quilan had even heard of, who coiled, floated, balanced or splayed about the deck, tables and couches.

The situation was complicated by various other nonhuman creatures which, but for the avatar, Quilan might easily have mistaken for other sentient aliens but that turned out to be no more than animal pets. All this was in addition to a bewildering variety of other humans who had titles that were not titles and job descriptions that had nothing to do with jobs.

~ Intra-cultural mimetic transcriptioneer? What the hell does that mean?

~ No idea. Assume the worst. File under Reporter.

The Hub's avatar had introduced all of them; aliens, humans and drones, which really did seem to be treated as full citizens and people in their own right. Quilan nodded and smiled and nodded or shook hands and made whatever other gesture appeared appropriate.

~ I supposed this silver-skinned freak is just about the perfect host for these people. It know all of them. And knows all of them intimately, too; foibles, likes, dislikes, everything.

~ Not what we were told.

~ Oh, yes; all it knows is your name and that you're somewhere here within its jurisdiction. That's the tale. It only
knows what you want it to know. Ha! don't you find that just a little hard to believe?

Quilan didn't know how close a watch on all its citizens a Culture Orbital Hub kept. It didn't really matter. He did know a lot about such avatars, though, he realized, when he thought about it, and what Huyler had said about their social skills was perfectly true. Tireless, endlessly sympathetic, with a flawless memory and with what must seem like a telepathic ability to tell exactly who would get on with who, the presence of an avatar was understandably judged indispensable at every social occasion above a certain size.

~With one of these silvery things and an implant people here probably never have to actually remember the name of a single other person.

~ I wonder if they ever forget their own.

Quilan talked, guardedly, to a lot of people, and nibbled from the tables loaded with food, all of it served on plates and trays which were image-coded to indicate what was suitable for which species.

He looked up at one point and realized that they had left the colossal aqueduct and were traveling across a great grassy plain punctuated by what looked like the frameworks of gigantically tall tents.

~ Dome tree stands.

~ Ah ha.

The river had slowed here and broadened to over a kilometer from bank to bank. Ahead, just starting to show above and through the haze, another sort of massif was beginning to make itself visible.

What he had earlier assumed were clouds in the far distance turned out to be the peaks of snow-covered
mountains strung around the massif's top. Deeply corrugated cliffs rose almost straight up, bannered with thin white veils that might be waterfalls. Some of these slender columns stretched all the way down to the base of the cliffs, while other, still thinner white threads faded and disappeared part-way down or vanished into and merged with layered clouds drifting slowly across the great serrated wall of rock.

~ Aquime Massif. Apparently this little creek of theirs goes around both sides and straight through. Aquime City, in the middle, on the shores of the High Salt Sea, is where our friend Ziller lives.

He stared at the great folded sweep of snow-settled cliff and mountain as it materialized out of the haze, becoming more real with each beat of his heart.

In the Gray Mountains was the monastery of Cadracet, which belonged to the Sheracht Order. He went there on a retreat once he was released from the hospital, becoming a griefling. He was taking extended furlough from the Army, which allowed such compassionate leave at his rank. The offer of de-enlistment and an honorable discharge, plus a modest pension, had been left open for him.

He already had a batch of medals. He was given one for being in the Army at all, one for being a combatant who'd held a gun, another for being a Given who could easily have avoided fighting in the first place, another for being wounded (with a bar because he had been seriously wounded), yet another for having been on a special mission and a last medal which had been decreed when it had been realized that the
war had been the Culture's responsibility, not that of the Chelgrian species. The soldiers were calling it the Not-Our-Fault prize. He kept the medals in a small box within the trunk in his cell, along with the posthumous ones awarded to Worosei.

The monastery sat on a rocky outcrop on the shoulder of a modest peak, within a small stand of sigh trees by a tumbling mountain stream. It looked across the forested gorge beneath to the crags, cliffs, snow and ice of the tallest peaks in the range. Behind it, crossing the stream by a modest but ancient stone bridge celebrated in songs and tales three thousand years old, passed the road from Oquoon to the central plateau, momentarily straightening from its series of precipitous hairpins.

During the war, a troupe of Invisible servants who had already put to death all their own masters at another monastery further up the road had taken over Cadracet and captured the half of the monks who had not fled—mostly the older ones. They had thrown them over the parapet of the bridge into the rock-strewn stream below. The fall was not quite sufficient to kill all the old males, and some suffered, moaning, throughout that day and into the night, only dying in the cold before dawn the following morning. Two days later, a unit of Loyalist troops had retaken the complex and tortured the Invisibles before burning their leaders alive.

It had been the same story of horror, malevolence and escalatory retribution everywhere. The war had lasted less than fifty days; many wars—most wars, even those restricted to one planet—barely properly began in that time because mobilizations had to be carried out,
forces had to be put in place, a war footing had to be established within society and territory had to be attacked, captured and consolidated before further attacks could be prepared and the enemy could be closed with. Wars in space and between planets and habitats of any number could in theory effectively be over in a few minutes or even seconds but commonly took years and sometimes centuries or generations to come to a conclusion, depending almost entirely on the level of technology the civilizations involved possessed.

The Caste War had been different. It had been a civil war; a species and society at war with itself. These were notoriously amongst the most terrible conflicts, and the initial proximity of the combatants, distributed throughout the civilian and military population at virtually every level of institution and facility, meant that there was a kind of explosive savagery about the conflict almost the instant that it commenced, taking many of the first wave of victims utterly by surprise: noble families were knifed in their beds, unaware that any real problem existed, whole dormitories of servants were gassed behind locked doors, unable to believe those they'd devoted their lives to were murdering them, passengers or drivers in cars, captains of ships, pilots of aircraft or space vessels were suddenly assaulted by the person sitting next to them, or were themselves the ones who did the attacking.

Cadracet monastery itself had escaped relatively unscarred from the war, despite its brief occupation; some rooms had been ransacked, a few icons and holy books had been burned or desecrated, but there had been little structural damage.

Quilan's cell was at the back of the building's third
courtyard, looking out onto the grooved cobbled roadway to the dank green mountainside and the sudden yellow of the gaunt sigh trees. His cell contained a curl-pad on the stone floor, a small trunk for his personal possessions, a stool, a plain wooden desk and a wash-stand.