The Algebraist (4 page)

‘It’s when they send a tuned suite of queries and responses to a physically remote location, by light beam. To play the part of an emissary.’

‘"They", sir?’

‘Engineers, the Administrata. Perhaps the Omnocracy.’ Fassin sat back. ‘Indeed?’

‘Indeed. If we are to believe what we are told, the object they send is something like a library, transmitted by signal laser. Suitably housed and emplaced within enabled equipment of sufficient capacity and complexity, this… entity, though it is simply a many-branched array of statements, questions and answers, with a set of rules governing the order in which they are expressed, is able to carry out what seems very like an intelligent conversation. It is as close as one is allowed to come to an artificial intelligence, post-War.’

‘How singular.’

Slovius wobbled in his pool. ‘They are assuredly surpassing rare,’ he agreed. ‘One is being sent here.’

Fassin blinked a few times. ‘Sent here?’

‘To Sept Bantrabal. To this house. To us.’

‘To us.’

‘From the Administrata.’

‘The Administrata.’ Fassin became aware that he was sounding simple-minded.

‘Via the Engineership
Est-taun Zhiffir
.’

‘My,’ Fassin said. ‘We are… privileged.’

‘Not we, Fassin; you. The projection is being sent to talk to you.’

Fassin smiled weakly. ‘To me? I see. When will--?’

‘It is currently being transmitted. It ought to be ready by late evening. You may wish to clear your schedule for this. Did you have much arranged?’

‘Ah… a supper with Jaal. I’m sure--’

‘I would make it an early supper, and don’t tarry.’

‘Well, yes. Of course,’ Fassin said. ‘Do you have any idea, sir, what I might have done to deserve such an honour?’

Slovius was silent for a moment, then said, ‘None whatsoever.’

Guime replaced an intercom set on its hook and left his place by the agate wall to kneel and whisper to Slovius, who nodded, then looked at Fassin. ‘Major-Domo Verpych would like to talk to you, nephew.’

‘Verpych?’ Fassin said, with a gulp. The household’s major-domo, Sept Bantrabal’s most senior servant, was supposed to rest dormant until the whole sept moved to its winter lodgings, over eighty days from now. It was unheard of for him to be roused out of sequence. ‘I thought he was asleep!’

‘Well, he’s been woken up.’

*

The ship had been dead for millennia. Nobody seemed to be sure quite how many, though the most plausible estimates put it at about six or seven. It was just one more foundered vessel from one or other of the great fleets which had contended the War of the New Quick (or perhaps the slightly later Machine War, or possibly the subsequent Scatter Wars, or maybe one of the brief, bitter, confused and untidy engagements implicit in the Strew), another forgotten, discarded piece from the great game of galactic power-mongering, civilisational competition, pan-species manoeuvring and general grand-scale meta-politicking.

The hulk had lain undiscovered on the surface of ‘glantine for at least a thousand years because although ‘glantine was a minor planet by human standards - slightly smaller than Mars - it was by the same measure sparsely populated, with fewer than a billion inhabitants, most of those concentrated in the tropics, and the area where the wreck had fallen - the North Waste Land - was a rarely visited and extensive tract of nothing much. That it had taken a long time for the local surveillance systems to return to anything like the sort of complexity or sophistication they’d exhibited before the commencement of hostilities also helped the ruins avoid detection. Lastly, for all the vessel’s hulking size, some portion of its auto-camouflage systems had survived the craft’s partial destruction, the deaths of all the mortals aboard and its impact on the planet-moon’s surface, and so had kept it disguised for all that time, seemingly just another fold of barren, rocky ejecta from the impact crater left by a smaller but much faster-travelling derelict which had crashed and vaporised in a deep crater ten kilometres away right at the start of the New Quick dispute.

The ship’s ruins had only been discovered because somebody in a flier had crashed, fatally, into one of its great curving ribs (perfectly holo-disguised at the time as sheer and shiningly inviting clear sky). Only then had the wreck been investigated, plundered for what little of its systems still worked (but which were not, under the new regime, proscribed. Which basically did not leave much.) and finally - the lifting of its hull and major substructures being prohibitively expensive to contemplate, its cutting-up and carting away difficult, also not cheap and possibly dangerous, and its complete destruction only possible with the sort of serious gigatonnage weaponry people tended to object strongly to when used in peacetime in the atmospheres of a small planet-moon, even in a wilderness area - it had been cordoned off and a series of airborne loiter-drones posted on indefinite guard above, just in case.

‘No, this could be good, this could be positive,’ Saluus Kehar told them, and swung the little flier low across the high desert towards the broken lands where the tattered-looking ribs of the great downed ship lay like folded shadow against the slowly darkening purple sky. Beyond the ruins, a vast, shimmering blue-green curtain of light flickered into existence, silently waving and rippling across the sky, then faded away again.

‘Yeah, you would fucking say that,’ Taince said, fiddling with the controls of the comms unit. Static chopped and surfed from the speakers.

‘Should we be this close to the ground?’ Ilen asked, forehead against the canopy, looking down. She glanced at the young man sharing the back seat of the little aircraft with her. ‘Seriously, Fass, should we?’

But Fassin was already saying, ‘The idea that his relentless positivism could ever produce feelings of negativity in others is a concept Sal’s still struggling with. Sorry, Len. What?’

‘I was just saying--’

‘Yeah,’ Taince muttered, ‘get that goddam dirt-pinger on.’

‘All I mean,’ Saluus said, waving one hand around and taking the craft still lower, even closer to the sable blur of ground. Taince made a tutting sound and reached over to tap a screen button; there was a pinging noise and the craft rose a few metres and began tracking the ground more smoothly. Sal glared at her but didn’t turn the ground-avoidance device off as he continued, ‘Is that we’re still okay, we haven’t been blasted yet, and now we have an opportunity to explore something we wouldn’t be allowed to get anywhere near normally. Right place, right time, perfect opportunity. What’s not to be positive about there?’

‘You mean,’ Fassin drawled, glancing skyward, ‘aside from the unfortunate fact that some over-enthusiastic and doubtless deeply misunderstood Beyonders appear to be trying to turn us all into radioactive dust?’

Nobody seemed to be listening. Fassin made a show of stifling a yawn - nobody noticed that, either - and leaned back against the leather seat, stretching his left arm across the top of the couch in the general direction of Ilen Deste (still with her head against the canopy, staring as though hypnotised at the near-featureless sands speeding by beneath). He tried to look at least unconcerned and preferably bored. In fact, of course, he felt completely terrified, and more than a little helpless.

Sal and Taince were the dynamic couple in this group: Saluus the pilot, the dashing, handsome, headstrong but undeniably gifted (and, Fassin thought, just plain lucky) heir to a vast commercial empire, the unabashed son of a fabulously rich, buccaneering father. Greedboy, Fassin had christened Sal in their first year at college, a term that their mutual friends had only used behind the youth’s back until he got wind of it and adopted it enthusiastically as his personally approved tag. And Taince, co-pilot, navigator and comms supremo, as ever the knowing, abrasive commentator of the group (Fassin saw himself as the knowing,
sarcastic
commentator). Officer-in-Training Taince Yarabokin as she was supposed to be known now. Taince, the Milgirl - another of Fassin’s coinings - had top-percentiled her college classes but had already been halfway to being an officer in the Navarchy Military through Reservist credits gleaned after hours, at weekends and on vacations, even before she’d taken a short degree and gone to Military Academy for her final year; fast-tracked from pre-induction, bumped from years One to Two midway through term and rumoured, even at such an almost unprecedentedly early stage, to be in contention for a chance later to join the Summed Fleet, the directly Culmina-controlled overarching ultra-power of the whole galaxy. In other words as seemingly surely destined for martial eminence as Sal was scheduled for commercial prodigiousness.

They’d both been out-system, too, making the journey to the Ulubis-system portal at Sepekte’s trailing Lagrange point for the transition to Zenerre and the Complex, the network of wormholes threading the galaxy like a throw of dark lace beneath the tiny scattered lights of suns. Saluus’s father had taken him on a Grand Tour on his long vacation last year, girdling the middle galaxy, visiting all the great accessible sites, encountering some of the more outré alien species, bringing back souvenirs. Taince had been to fewer but in some cases further places, courtesy of the Navarchy, its exercises and distributed specialist teaching facilities. They were the only two of their year to have travelled so widely, putting them in a little bubble of exoticism all by themselves.

Fassin had often thought that if his young life was to be tragically cut short before he’d even decided what he wanted to do with it (join the family firm and become a Seer?… Or something else?), it would very likely be because of these two, probably when they were each trying to outdo the other in daring or élan or sheer outrageous showing-off in front of their long-suffering friends. Sometimes he succeeded in persuading himself that he didn’t particularly care if he did die anyway, that he’d already seen enough of life and love and all the crassness and stupidities of people and reality and would almost prefer to die a sudden, young, savagely beautiful death, with his body and mind as yet unspoiled and fresh and everything - as older relations still insisted on telling him - before him.

Though it would be a pity if Ilen - achingly beautiful, wanly pale, shamelessly blonde, effortlessly academically accomplished, bizarrely un-self-assured and insecure Ilen - had to perish in the wreck too, Fassin thought. Especially before they had fulfilled what he kept telling her - and what, frustratingly, he even sincerely believed - was their destiny, and established between the two of them some sort of meaningful but intense physical relationship. At the moment, though - head craned out over the side of the flier, nuzzling the canopy - it looked like the girl was thinking about throwing up.

Fassin looked away and attempted to distract himself from thoughts of imminent death and probably all too non-imminent sex by staring at the starry sweep emerging from the false horizon of Nasqueron’s shadowy, departing bulk and the quickly darkening sky being revealed beyond. Another burst of aurora activity sent shimmering shawls of light across the heavens, briefly fading out the stars.

Ilen was looking in the opposite direction. ‘What’s that smoke?’ she cried, pointing beyond the half-collapsed nose of the fallen ship, where a tall, ragged strand of dark grey smoke leaned away from the breeze.

Taince glanced up and muttered something, then busied herself with the comms unit controls. The rest looked. Sal nodded. ‘Probably the guard drone that got zapped earlier,’ he said, though sounding uncertain.

The speakers crackled and a calm female voice said, ‘--lier two-two-niner… --sition? --ave you… --seven-five-three… --outh of Prohibited Area Ei--- -peat you are now or wi--- - ortly be off-grid… --firm your…’

Taince Yarabokin leaned closer to the comms unit. ‘This is flier two-two-nine, we have no place safe to put down under cover as advised so we are making maximum speed at minimum altitude towards--’

Saluus Kehar reached over with one coppery-gold hand and clicked the comms unit off.

‘Fuck
you!’ Taince said, slapping his hand away even as it went back to the flier’s control yoke.

‘Taince, really,’ Sal said, shaking his head but keeping his gaze on the rapidly approaching ship ruins, ‘you don’t have to
tell
them.’

‘Cretin,’ Taince breathed. She switched the comms back on.

‘Yes, see previous comment,’ Fassin said, shaking his head.

‘Will you leave that
alone?’
Sal said, trying and failing to turn the comms unit off again as Taince searched for a working channel and kept slapping his hand away. (Fassin was about to say something to the effect that she was better practised at this form of behaviour than he’d ever have assumed. Then thought the better of it.) ‘Look,’ Sal said, ‘I’m ordering you, Taince; leave the damn thing off. Who does this flier belong to, anyway?’

‘Your dad?’ Fassin suggested. Sal glanced back at him, reproachful. Fassin nodded forwards at the swiftly enlarging wreck of the ship. ‘Eyes ahead.’

Sal turned back.
I’m ordering you,
thought Fassin, with a sneer. Saluus, really. Had he used that form of words because Taince was in the military and he thought she’d just obey anything anybody called an order, even if it came from a civilian, or because he thought he could start throwing his dynastic weight around already? He was surprised that Taince hadn’t laughed in Sal’s face.