Look to Windward (32 page)

“If I really have to I can make sure there are several avatars there at the concert. They don't always have to have silver skin, you know. And I'll have drones present, too.”

“Big bulky drones?”.

“Better; small, mean ones.”

“No good. No deal.”

“And knife missiles.”

“Still no.”

“Why not? I do hope you are not going to say that you don't trust me. My word is my word. I never break it.”

“I do trust you. The reason that it's no deal is because of the people who would want this meeting to happen.”

“Go on.”

“Tersono. Contact. Grief, Special fucking Circumstances, for all I know.”

“Hmm.”

“If they want the two of us to meet—I mean really, determinedly want—could you definitely, certainly stop it from happening, Hub?”.

“Your question could apply to any moment since Quilan's arrival.”

“Yes, but until now a seemingly chance meeting would have been too artificial, too obviously contrived. They'd have expected me to react badly, and they'd have been absolutely right. Our meeting must look like fate, like it was inevitable, as though my music, my talent, my personality and very being have made it pre-ordained.”

“You could always go and if you're forced to meet still react badly.”

“No. I don't see why I should. I don't want to meet him; simple as that.”

“I give you my word I will do everything I can to make sure that you do not meet.”

“Answer the question: if SC were determined to force a meeting, could you stop them?”.

“No.”

“As I thought.”

“I'm not doing very well here, am I?”.

“No. However there is one thing that might change my mind.”

“Ah. What's that?”.

“Look into the bastard's mind.”

“I can't do that, Ziller.”

“Why not?”.

“It is one of the very few more-or-less unbreakable rules of the Culture. Nearly a law. If we had laws, it would be one of the first on the statute book.”

“Only more-or-less unbreakable?”.

“It is done very, very rarely, and the result tends to be ostracism. There was a ship called the
Grey Area,
once. It used to do that sort of thing. It became known as the
Meatfucker
as a result. When you look up the catalogs that's the name it's listed under, with its original, chosen name as a footnote. To be denied your self-designated name is a unique insult in the Culture, Ziller. The vessel disappeared some time ago. Probably it killed itself, arguably as a result of the shame attached to such behavior and resulting disrespect.”

“All it is is looking inside an animal brain.”

“That's just it. It is so easy, and it would mean so little, really. That is why the not-doing of it is probably the most profound manner in which we honor our biological progenitors. This prohibition is a mark of our respect. And so I cannot do it.”

“You mean you won't do it.”

“They are almost the same thing.”

“You have the ability.”

“Of course.”

“Then do it.”

“Why?”.

“Because I won't attend the concert otherwise.”

“I know that. I mean what would I be looking for?”.

“The real reason he's here.”

“You really imagine he might be here to harm you?”.

“It's a possibility.”

“What would stop me saying I would do this thing and then only pretend to do it? I could tell you I had looked and found nothing.”

“I'd ask you to give your word you would really do it.”

“Have you not heard of the idea that a promise made under duress does not count?”.

“Yes. You know you could have said nothing there.”

“I wouldn't want to deceive you, Ziller. That too would be dishonorable.”

“Then it sounds like I'm not going to that concert.”

“I will still hope that you might, and work toward it.”

“Never mind. You could always hold another competition; the winner gets to conduct.”

“Let me think about this. I'll release the sound field. Let's watch the dune riders.”

•   •   •   

The avatar and the Chelgrian turned from facing each other to stand with the others by the parapet of the trundling feast hall's viewing platform. It was night, and cloudy. Knowing the weather would be so, people had come to the dune slides of Efilziveiz-Regneant to watch the biolume boarding.

The dunes were not normal dunes; they were titanic spills of sand forming a three-kilometer-high slope from one Plate to another, marking where the sands from one of the Great River's sandbank spurnings were blown across toward the Plate's spinward edge to slip down to the desert regions of the sunken continent below.

People ran, rolled, boarded, ski'd, skiffed or boated
down the dunes all the time, but on a dark night there was something special to be seen. Tiny creatures lived in the sands, arid cousins of the plankton that created bioluminescence at sea, and when it was very dark you could see the tracks left by people as they tumbled, twisted or carved their way down the vast slope.

It had become a tradition that on such nights the freeform chaos of individuals pleasing only themselves and the occasional watching admirer was turned into something more organized, and so—once it was dark enough and sufficient numbers of spectators had turned up on the crawler-mounted viewing platforms, bars and restaurants—teams of boarders and skiers set off from the top of the dunes in choreographed waves, triggering sand-slip cascades in broad lines and vees of scintillating light descending like slow, ghostly surf and weaving gently sparkling trails of soft blue, green and crimson tracks across the sighing sands, myriad necklaces of enchanted dust glowing like linear galaxies in the night.

Ziller watched for a while. Then he sighed and said, “He's here, isn't he?”.

“A kilometer away,” the avatar replied. “Higher up on the other side of the run. I'm monitoring the situation. Another one of me is with him. You are quite safe.”

“This is as close as I ever want to get to him, unless you can do something.”

“I understand.”

12
A Defeat of Echoes

~ So unterritorial.

~ I suppose when you have this much territory you can afford to be.

~ Do you think I'm old-fashioned to be disturbed by it?

~ No. I think it's quite natural.

~ They have too much of everything.

~ With the possible exception of suspicion.

~ We can't be sure of that.

~ I know. Still; so far, so good.

Quilan closed the lockless door to his apartment. He turned and looked out at the floor of the gallery, thirty meters below. Groups of humans strolled amongst the plants and pools, between the stalls and bars, the restaurants and—well; shops, exhibitions? It was hard to know what to call them.

The apartment they had given him was near the roof level of one of Aquime City's central galleries.
One set of rooms looked out across the city to the inland sea. The other side of the suite, like this glazed lobby outside, looked down into the gallery itself.

Aquime's altitude and consequently cold winters meant that a lot of the life of the city took place indoors rather than out, and as a result what would have been ordinary streets in a more temperate city, open to the sky, here were galleries, roofed-over streets vaulted with anything from antique glass to force fields. It was possible to walk from one end of the city to the other under cover and wearing summer clothes, even when, as now, there was a blizzard blowing.

Free of the driving snow that was bringing visibility down to a few meters, the view from the apartment's exterior was delicately impressive. The city had been built in a deliberately archaic style, mostly from stone. The buildings were red and blond and gray and pink, and the slates covering the steeply pitched roofs were various shades of green and blue. Long tapering fingers of forest penetrated the city almost to its heart, bringing further greens and blues into play and—with the galleries—dicing the city into irregular blocks and shapes.

A few kilometers in the distance, the docks and canals would glitter under a morning sun. Spinward of those, on a gentle slope of ridge rising to the outskirts of the city, Quilan could, when it was clear, see the tall buttresses and towers of the ornately decorated apartment building which contained the home of Mahrai Ziller.

~ So could we just go and walk into his apartment?

~ No. He got somebody to make him locks when
he heard I was coming. Apparently this was mildly scandalous.

~ Well, we could have locks, too.

~ I think it better not to.

~ Thought you might.

~ We wouldn't want it to look like I have something to hide.

~ That would never do.

Quilan swung open a window, letting the sounds of the gallery into the apartment. He heard tinkling water, people talking and laughing, birdsong and music.

He watched drones and people in float harnesses waft by beneath him but above the other humans, saw people in an apartment on the other side of the gallery wave—he waved back almost without thinking—and smelled perfumes and the scent of cooking.

He looked up at the roof, which was not glass but some other more perfectly transparent material—he supposed he could have asked his little pen-terminal to find out exactly what it was, but he had not bothered—and he listened in vain for any sound of the storm swirling and blowing outside.

~ They do love their little insulated existence, don't they?

~ Yes, they do.

He remembered a gallery not so dissimilar to this, in Shaunesta, on Chel. It was before they had married, about a year after they had met. They had been walking hand-in-hand, and had stopped to look in a jeweller's window. He had gazed in casually enough at all the finery, and wondered if he might buy something for her. Then he'd heard her making this little noise, a
sort of appreciative but barely audible, “Mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm.”

At first he'd assumed she was making the noise for his amusement. It had taken him a few moments to realize that not only was she not doing that, but she was not aware that she was making the noise at all.

He realized this and suddenly felt as though his heart would burst with joy and love; he turned, swept her into his arms and hugged her, laughing at the surprised, confused, blinkingly happy look on her face.

~ Quil?

~ Sorry. Yes.

Somebody laughed on the gallery floor below; a high, throaty, female laugh, unrestrained and pure. He heard it echo around the hard surfaces of the closed-in street, remembering a place where there were no echoes at all.

They'd got drunk the night before they left; Estodien Visquile with his extended entourage including the bulky, white-furred Eweirl, and he. He had to be helped from his bed the next morning by a laughing Eweirl. A drenching under a cold shower just about brought him round, then he was taken straight to the VTOL, then to the field with the sub-orbital, then to Equator Launch City, where a commercial flight hoisted them to a small Orbiter. A demilled ex-Navy privateer was waiting. They'd left the system headed for deep space before his hangover started to abate, and he realized that he had been selected as the one to do whatever it was he had to do, and remembered what had happened the night before.

They were in an old mess hall, decorated in an antique style with the heads of various prey animals adorning three of the walls; the fourth wall of glass doors opened onto a narrow terrace which looked out to sea. There was a warm wind blowing and the doors were all opened, bringing the smell of the ocean into the bar. Two Blinded Invisible servants dressed in white trousers and jackets attended them, bringing the various strengths of fermented and distilled liquors a traditional drinking binge required.

The food was sparse and salty, again as dictated by tradition. Toasts were proposed, drinking games indulged in, and Eweirl and another of the party, who seemed nearly as well built as the white-furred male, balanced their way along the wall of the terrace from one end to the other, with the two-hundred-meter drop to one side. The other male went first; Eweirl went one better by stopping halfway along and downing a cup of spirit.

Quilan drank the minimum required, wondering quite what it was all in aid of and suspecting that even this apparent celebration was part of a test. He tried not to be too much of a wet blanket, and joined in several of the drinking games with a forced heartiness he thought must easily be seen through.

The night wore on. Gradually people went off to their curl-pads. After a while, only Visquile, Eweirl and he were left, served by the larger of the two Invisibles, a male even bulkier than Eweirl who maneuverd his way amongst the tables with surprising adroitness, his green-banded head swinging this way and that and his white clothes making him look like a ghost in the dim light.

Eweirl tripped him up a couple of times, on the second occasion causing him to drop a tray of glasses. When this happened Eweirl put his head back and laughed loudly. Visquile looked on like the indulgent parent of a spoiled child. The big servant apologized and felt his way to the bar to bring back a dustpan and broom.

Eweirl sank another cup of spirit and watched the servant lift a table out of the way one-handed. He challenged him to an arm-wrestling contest. The Invisible declined, so Eweirl ordered him to take part, which eventually he did, and won.

Eweirl was left panting with exertion; the big Invisible put his jacket back on, inclined his green-banded head, and resumed his duties.

Quilan was slumped in his curl-seat watching events with one eye closed. Eweirl did not look happy that the servant had won the contest. He drank some more. Estodien Visquile, who did not seem very drunk at all, asked Quilan some questions about his wife, his military career, his family and his beliefs. Quilan remembered trying not to appear evasive. Eweirl watched the big Invisible go about his duties, his white-furred body looking tensed and coiled.