Look to Windward (6 page)

~ I'm sorry there wasn't more time to brief you, sir. We thought we had lost you. Twice, in a sense. When we discovered that your substrate had survived, my mission had already been decided on. And yes, your consciousness would be transferred entirely into the substrate within my body; you would have access to all my senses and we would be able to communicate, though you would not be able to control my body unless I became deeply unconscious or suffered brain death. The only technical detail I know is that the device is a crystalline nanofoam matrix with links to my brain.

~ So I'd just be along for the ride? What sort of itch-shit mission profile is that? Who's putting you up to this, Major?

~ It would be a novel experience for both of us, sir, and one that I would consider a privilege. It is believed that your presence and advice would increase the likelihood of the mission's success. As to who put me up to it, I was trained and briefed by a team under the command of Estodien Visquile.

~ Visquile? Is that old horror still alive? And made it to Estodien, too. I'll be damned.

~ He sends his regards, sir. I carry a personal and private communication from him addressed to you.

~ Let me hear it, Major.

~ Sir, we thought you might like a little more time to—

~ Major Quilan, I'm mightily suspicious that I'm being shovelled into something pretty damn dubious here. I'll be
honest with you, youngster; it's not very likely that I'm going to agree to take part in your unknown mission even after I've heard Visquile's message, but I'm sure as shit not going willingly through your ears, up your ass, or anywhere else unless I do hear what that old whoreboy's got to say, and I might as well hear it now as later. Making myself clear here?

~ Very, sir. Sister technician; please replay the message from Estodien Visquile to Hadesh Huyler.

~ Proceeding, said the female.

Quilan was left alone with his thoughts. He realized how tense he had become communicating with the ghost of Hadesh Huyler, and deliberately relaxed his body, easing his muscles and straightening his back. Again, his gaze swept over the gleaming surfaces of the medical facility, but what he was seeing was the interior of the hull of the ship they were floating alongside, the privateer cruiser
Winter Storm
.

He had been aboard the wreck once so far, while they were still trying to locate and extract Huyler's soul from the thousand or so others stored within the rescued substrate, which they'd located in the wreck with a specially adapted Navy drone. He had been promised that later, if there was time, he would be allowed to go back to the wreck with that drone and attempt to discover any other souls the original sweeps had missed.

Time was running out, though. It had taken time to get permission for what he wanted to do, and it was taking time for the Navy technical people to adjust the machine. Meanwhile they'd been told that the Culture warship was on its way, just a few days out. At the moment the techs were pessimistic that they'd get the drone finished in time.

The image of the wrecked ship's scooped-out hull seemed fixed in his brain.

~ Major Quilan?

~ Sir?

~ Reporting for duty, Major. Permission to come aboard.

~ Just so, sir. Sister technician? Transfer Hadesh Huyler into the substrate within my body.

~ Directly, the female said. ~ Proceeding.

He had wondered if he'd feel anything. He did: a tingling, then a warmth in a small area on the nape of his neck. The sister technician kept him informed; the transfer went well and took about two minutes. Checking it had gone perfectly took twice that time.

What bizarre fates our technologies dream up for us, he thought as he lay there. Here I am, a male, becoming pregnant with the ghost of an old dead soldier, to travel beyond the bounds of light older than our civilization and carry out some task I have spent the best part of a year training for but of which I presently have no real knowledge whatsoever.

The spot on his neck was cooling. He thought his head felt very slightly warmer than it had before. He might have been imagining it.

You lose your love, your heart, your very soul, he thought, and gain—“a land destroyer!” he heard her say, so falsely, bravely cheerful in his mind, while the rain-filled sky flashed above her and the vast weight pinned him utterly. Some memory of that pain and despair squeezed tears from his eyes.

~ Complete.

~
Testing, testing,
said the dry, laconic voice of Hadesh Huyler.

~ Hello, sir.

~ You okay, son?

~ I'm fine, sir.

~ Did that hurt you there, Major? You seem a little … distressed.

~ No, sir. Just an old memory. How do you feel?

~
Pretty damn strange. I dare say I'll get used to it. Looks like everything checks out. Shit, that female techie doesn't look any better through a male's eyes than she does through a camera
. Of course; what he could see, Huyler could see. Before he could reply, Huyler added,
You sure you're okay?

~ Positive, sir. I'm fine.

•   •   •   

He stood within the hulk of the
Winter Storm
. The Navy drone went back and forth across the strange, almost flat floor of the wreck, searching in a grid pattern. It passed the hole in the floor where the substrate from Aorme had been wrenched out.

In the two days since they'd found the substrate, Quilan had persuaded the techs that it was worth recalibrating the drone to look for substrates much smaller than the one Huyler had been in, substrates the size of a Soulkeeper, in fact. They had already performed a standard search, but he got them at least to try and look more closely. The Mendicant Sisters on the temple ship had helped with the persuading; any chance to rescue a soul had to be pursued to the utmost.

By the time the drone was ready, though, the Culture ship which would take him on the first leg of his journey was already starting to decelerate. The Navy
drone would have time for one sweep and one sweep only.

He watched it make its passes, following its own unseen grid across the flat floor. He looked up and around the gaping shell of the ship's hull.

He tried to recreate in his mind the interior of the vessel as it had been when it had been intact, and wondered in what part of it she had stayed, where she had moved and where she had lain her head to sleep in the ship's false night.

The main drive units might be up there, filling half the ship, the flyer hangar was there, in the stern, the decks would spread here and here; individual cabins would have been over there, or over there.

Maybe, he thought, maybe there was still a chance, maybe the techs had been wrong and there was still something left to find. The hull only held because it was energised somehow. They still didn't understand everything about these great, gifted ships. Perhaps somewhere within the hull itself …

The machine floated up to him, clicking, ceiling lights glittering across its metallic carapace. He looked at it.

~ Sorry to break in, Quil, but it wants you to get the hell out the way.

~ Of course. Sorry. Quilan stepped to one side. Not too clumsily, he hoped. It had been a while since he'd worn a suit.

~ I'll leave you alone again.

~ No, it's all right. Talk if you want to talk.

~ Hmm. Okay. I've been wondering.

~ What?

~ We've spent so much time doing technical, calibrating stuff, but we haven't touched on some of the basic assumptions being made here, like is it really true we can hear each other when we talk like this but not when we think? Seems a damn fine distinction to me.

~ Well, that's what we've been told. Why, have you had any hint of—?

~ No, it's just that when you look at something through another person's eyes and you think something, after a while you start to wonder if it's really what you think or some sort of bleed-over from what they're thinking.

~ I think I see what you mean.

~ So, think we should test it out?

~ I suppose we could, sir.

~ All right. See if you can catch what I'm thinking.

~ Sir, I don't think … he thought, but there was silence, even as his own thoughts tailed off. He waited a few more moments. Then a few more. The drone continued on its search pattern, each time passing by further and further away.

~ Well? Catch anything?

~ No, sir. Sir, I—

~ You don't know what you missed, Major. Okay, your turn. Go on. Think of something. Anything.

He sighed. The enemy ship—no, he shouldn't think of them that way … The ship could be here by now. He felt that what he and Huyler were doing right now was a waste of time, but on the other hand there was nothing they could do to make the drone carry out its task any faster, so they weren't really wasting any time at all. All the same, it felt like it.

What a strange interval, he thought, to be here in
this hermetic mausoleum, standing in the midst of such forlorn desolation with another mind inside his own, trading absences in the face of a task he knew nothing about.

And so he thought of the long avenue at Old Briri in the fall, the way she scuffed through the amber drifts of fallen leaves, kicking golden explosions of leaves into the air. He thought of their marriage ceremony, in the gardens of her parents' estate, with the oval bridge reflected in the lake. As they'd made their vows a wind out of the hills had ruffled the reflection and taken it away, snapping at the awning above them, blowing off hats and making the priest clutch at her robes, but the same strong, spring-scented breeze had stroked the tops of the veil trees and sent a shimmering white cloud of blossom falling around them, like snow.

A few of the petals were still resting on her fur and eyelashes at the end of the service when he turned to her, removed his own ceremonial muzzle and hers, and kissed her. Their friends and family hurrahed; hats were thrown into the air and some were caught by another gust of wind, to land in the lake and sail off across the little waves like a dainty flotilla of brightly colored boats.

He thought again of her face, her voice, those last few moments. Live for me, he had said, and made her promise. How could they have known it would be a promise she could never keep, and he would still live to remember?

Huyler's voice broke in. ~
Done your thinking, Major?

~ Yes, sir. Did you catch anything?

~ No. Just physiological stuff. Looks like we've still got some degree of privacy. Oh; the machine says it's finished.

Quilan looked at the drone, which had arrived at the far end of the spoon of floor. ~ What does it … Look, Huyler, can I talk to that thing directly?

~ I think I can set that up, now it's finished. I'll still be able to hear though.

~ I don't mind, I just …

~ There. Try that.

~ Machine? Drone?

~ Yes, Major Quilan.

~ Are there any other personality constructs in here, anywhere within the hull?

~ No. Only the one I was tasked with discovering earlier which now shares coordinates with yourself, that of Admiral-General Huyler.

~ Are you sure? he asked, wondering if any hint of his hope and despair could color his communicated words.

~ Yes.

~ What about within the fabric of the hull material itself?

~ That is not relevant.

~ Have you scanned it?

~ I cannot. It is not open to my sensors.

The machine was merely clever, not sentient. It would probably not have been able to recognize the emotions behind his words anyway, even if they had been communicated.

~ Are you absolutely certain? Have you scanned everything?

~ I am certain. Yes. The only three personalities
present within the ship's hull in any form appreciable to my senses are: you, the personality through which I am communicating to you, and my own.

He looked down at the sworl of floor between his feet. So there was no hope. ~ I see, he thought. ~ Thank you.

~ You are welcome.

Gone. Gone utterly and forever. Gone in a way that was new, bereft of the comforts of ignorance, and without appeal. Before, we believed that the soul might be saved. Now our technology, our better understanding of the universe and our vanguard in the beyond, has robbed us of our unreal hopes and replaced them with its own rules and regulations, its own algebra of salvation and continuance. It has given us a glimpse of heaven, and made more intense the reality of our despair when we know that truly it exists and that those we love will never be found there.

He switched on his communicator. There was a message waiting: THEY'RE HERE, said the letters on the suit's little screen. It was timed eleven minutes earlier. A lot more time had passed than he'd have estimated.

~ Looks like our ride's arrived.

~ Yes. I'll let them know we're ready.

~ You do that, Major.

“Major Quilan here,” he transmitted. “I understand our guests have arrived.”

“Major.” It was the voice of mission CO, Colonel Ustremi. “Everything all right in there?”.

“Everything is fine, sir.” He looked across the glassy
floor and around the huge empty space. “Just fine.”

“Did you find what you were looking for, Quil?”.

“No, sir. I did not find what I wanted.”

“I'm sorry, Quil.”

“Thank you, sir. You can open the hatchway again. The machine's finished its work. Let the techs see what else they can find by just digging.”

“Opening now. One of our guests wants to come and say hello.”

“In here?” he said, watching the tiny cone in the ship's bow hinge away.

“Yes. That okay with you?”.

“I suppose.” Quil looked back at the drone, which was hovering where it had completed its search. “Tell your machine to switch itself off first, will you?”.