Minded - A Culture Novel

by Mattmeat

Someone is messing with the Minds. In fact, someone (or something) seems to be trying to draw the whole Culture into a war. It's time to bring out the big guns.

Minded

A Culture Novel

Matt Aitkenhead

Chapter 1

"You're leaving me, aren't you." Not a question; he said it as a statement, his voice flat, matter-of-fact.

Dalayne-Bris Kope Heulk Rolste dam Xelpe, or Dal Rolste as she was known here, didn't sigh. She didn't take a deep breath, screw up her face or clench her fists, all of which she felt the sudden urge to do. Colap deserved better than dramatics now, at this final point. He had been good to her, kind even by her standards which were much higher, and in many cases completely different, from those of Reasten women and definitely those of the men.

She turned, looked him in the eye from across the room and nodded, expressionless. For a moment, with her back to the large window and the bright light it poured into the room from both the sun and off the water of Skybound Bay at this hour of the morning, she thought that perhaps so contrasted and backlit as she was, he would be unable to see her response. Certainly his eyes were narrowed against the light, making him look angry as one might expect in these circumstances from a man with his background, raising and cultural heritage placed in such a position of insecurity, an affront to his socially dominant position over her.

But not Colap, not this man. Angry sometimes certainly, at things that went wrong in life as they always did, even enraged at times at the inefficient bureaucracy and institutional corruption that he dealt with on a daily basis as a minor functionary in the local government offices. Never angry at her, however. Even when she did or said things that were (by Reasten standards) outlandish, provocative, insulting or simply not what was expected of a woman, he never got angry. Amazed, yes. Baffled, perplexed, possibly even upset at times.

The most common response Dal got from him was an eyes-widened, long-face-pulled expression of internal hilarity, often followed immediately by rampant sexual advances. She would miss that, and many other things about him. Certainly, she would miss Colap a lot more than almost anything else about Reast. However, it was time to go. Her period of service was over, the agreed years of infiltration, observation, recording and general impression-getting done with, partaken, endured.

Dal Rolste was more than a little disappointed with herself, after all this time on Reast. Granted, Contact service wasn't all glamour, danger and derring-do. If you wanted that then you wanted Special Circumstances, although it was debatable whether they would want you in return. Contact was about preparation and observation, not action, and the preparation was highly biased towards the Culture and their readiness to be on hand and ready to help when lower-level civilisations like the Reasten took the step of being introduced to the glittering, whirling, noisy, messy Galaxy with its fabulous, improbable, complex and frankly crazy set of inhabitants, rather than towards preparing innocent civs for Contact.

She had applied for, been selected, chosen to come here to interact, take notes, provide feedback and learn, and in so learning, provide some vanishingly small but nonetheless useful contribution to the knowledge, understanding and (ha!) wisdom of the Culture and through this improve its ability to interact with the Reasten and other civilisations in some measureable way similar to them.

Still disappointed, though. Not that she hadn't contributed, sent back useful stuff. It had all just seemed a little mundane, a little predictable. Nothing that would make it into an abbreviated summary or even a fairly detailed description. Perhaps it was Reast itself, perhaps it was her and the possibility that she had aimed low, gone for a posting that wasn't challenging enough for her. Perhaps she should reconsider her oft-delayed, many-times-postponed application to SC, a fleeting thought that was taken out every few days, polished and then put back again for later. Even now, on her last day on the planet, Dal had found herself looking for that one sparking, brilliant summation, that one nugget of previously-unmade connection and insight that she could take back to her superiors/handlers/protectors and say Look! I found something! This changes things!

She knew that every Contact agent wanted to do this, to find something about their posting and adopted home that made a contribution greater than a tiny shifting of statistical norms, a small recalibration to some small subset of the bewildering number of indicators, parameters and recommended-best-practice guidelines that Contact had accumulated, developed and refined over its thousands of years and millions of interactions with other races. The knowledge that she was no different in this mindset both reassured Dal and pained her equally. As her actions now did, a necessary step that needed to be taken, a secure and comforting procedure guaranteed to hurt, to cause pain.

Colap's face changed, and she knew that he had seen her nod in response. His head lowered, wide shoulders slumped slightly, posture relaxed in an admission of defeat. Dal simultaneously felt relieved at seeing this and hated herself for causing him so much undeserved pain. She had thought that he might put up a fight, try to argue, entreat, even beg for her to stay and part of her had looked forward to this possibility for aggression, this chance to end on a sour note and hurt him enough that he made an effort to put her out of his mind, move on. However, after four years together, she had known better and expected what she got. Submission, acceptance, recognition that the future was unavoidable, to be prepared for.

She knew this was not a sign of weakness, as it would certainly be perceived by his peers, but an indication of emotional maturity that was almost entirely lacking in Reasten men. Hells, with a normal Reasten male she could expect much worse at the suggestion of leaving him. Shouting, threats or actual violence. Women died daily, in their hundreds, across this planet at the hands of partners, husbands, fathers and brothers whose pride had been insulted at the mere hint that a woman had the temerity to think for herself, to choose her own fate.

"I know it's not someone else. You're not like that."

She shook her head. "It's not someone else. And no, you didn't do anything wrong." There were rules for this situation, Dal Rolste knew. She had read them recently, and in detail. More guidelines than rules, but still expectations nonetheless of how she should behave. Things she could say or do, and things she couldn't. Limits beyond which she could not go. She made up her mind. "You know that there's another reason. An important one, something outside us, outside this-" she waved her hand to indicate the room, the apartment they shared (had shared, she was beginning to think, she realised).

A slow nod, then a negative motion. "You won't tell me what it is though, will you?"

"No. I can't. Something important, something in my past. That's all I can say."

"Will I ever know?"

Dal hesitated, thinking. A good question, even if he didn't realise it. Given Reast's current state and level of development? "No, I don't think so."

Another nod, and Colap's back straightened. She watched him gathering fortitude, preparing himself. Drawing on his inner strength and composure. Not for the first time, Dal found herself wishing that she had met his parents, both several years dead. They must have been unusual people, by the standards of Reast. "You should go, then. Now, while I'm ready." He actually stepped to one side, clearing the path to the door.

Despite herself and despite her expectations of him, Dal was impressed. She herself was close to tears, holding them back with a determined effort but refusing to use her glands, to modify the pain, attenuate it. She knew that seeing her cry would hurt him so much that it would make the whole scene that much more unpleasant for them both, but she wanted to remember this as raw, basic and unaltered. It seemed right, more honest somehow.

She lifted her jacket from the back of the chair next to her, and shouldered a small bag containing a few mementoes. Walked past him, their hands lightly brushing against one another. Through the door, down the corridor, past her life here and its accumulation of memories and objects, and out the front door. She turned left, walking briskly along the harbour front, pulling her light jacket closed against the wind. It was always windy here on Skybound Bay, that was something she liked about it. Windy, cold and sunny.

Dal raised her hand and smiled in acknowledgement at a few people as she went past, acquaintances, friends and people she recognised from the shops, bars and workshops spread in a crescent around the harbour itself. Gauging responses, keeping to the role as one life ended and another resumed. Trying to ignore her relief, her sadness and apprehension, to maintain the persona to the end. She didn't look back, but continued on and upwards, following a path and climbing up a small ridge that formed one side of the harbour, extending out into the sea and forming a natural breakwater and protection against the winter storms.

Over the summit of the ridge, she turned left once more and headed inland, taking one of the less trodden paths into the forest that spread back from Skybound towards the low hills beyond. Twigs snapped underfoot, dry leaved crunched. Colap would be fine, in few months. Some mild depression, unexpected moments of sadness at times when situations or places reminded him of her. Certainly he would remember her, she knew that well enough and felt some pride in the knowledge, something basic. I was his, I made him happy.

There were enough young and attractive women in the town and beyond that he would find someone else soon enough, or be found. Dal wondered how long it would be before Vielte, a local shop owner who had made a point of never speaking to Dal when she and Colap were in together, browsing or buying, and whose eyes would follow him unwaveringly, would drop by unannounced. News travelled fast in a place as small and isolated as Skybound, and word would soon spread that Colap was unattached, that strange and often annoying woman with her odd accent and even odder opinions having abandoned him (the idiot).

Trees crowded overhead, reducing the sunlight to patches and beams, darting insects suddenly appearing or vanishing as they moved. There. A specific tree with its broken, dangling branch sticking out over the path; Dal struck off at a right angle, into the forest proper. She took the bag off her shoulder and carried it in one hand, to prevent it being snagged by the low branches. A downhill dip into a small clearing, brighter than the rest of the forest. Soughing in the branches as the wind shook them, rattling leaves together. Dal stopped at the edge of the clearing, inspected the scene. She felt that she must have looked like one of the local wild grazing beasts, nervously alert for danger when what she was looking for was in reality much, much safer than here.

Insects danced, buzzing in the light. One cloud of them, small flies that clustered in groups of a few hundred and drifted slowly or stayed in the same spot (she had never learned their local name, despite reminding herself to do so every time she saw them), was behaving oddly. As the haze of animated particles drifted gently with the wind and the random, mindless averaging of the individual flies' positions, something strange happened to its form. Instead of remaining roughly spherical, the cluster stretched, bent and formed a shape like an empty bowl or flattened cup on its side.

"I can see you." Dal watched the cloud of flies suddenly scatter, dissipate into several smaller group and individuals as something invisible moved in their midst, disturbing them. A crack of darkness appeared silently in mid-air, widened, changed shape into an elongated triangle, then changed again as a second spit of black grew sideways out of its base near the ground. A door into some darker hidden volume became visible, revealing part of a world that had been hidden from this one, kept secret. Seats, a wall-mounted screen. A person, smiling and waving at her. From the look of him a real person too, not an avatar. A boxy, rectangular object like a rounded suitcase floated next to him in the air.

"In you get, then." Dal did so, stepping into the two-person module and settling into the available seat. The hatch closed, sealing out Reast and returning her to reality, to the life she had willingly abandoned for so long. She felt a small quiver of anticipation, a thrill of excitement like that experienced by a small child at the mention of going to a funfair.

"All is well?" She vaguely recognised the human who had come down to the surface to greet and recover her, but didn't know him well. Guely, or something like that. He was still smiling, although there was something slightly odd about his expression. Excited, cautious. Anticipatory. Perhaps it was just her heightened senses, so used to interpreting everything around her, being alert for danger.

"Yup. Everything okay with you lot?" Nothing seemed amiss. The forward screen showed them moving off, tipping and accelerating upwards at what looked like a normal, non-urgent rate of acceleration. Her insides, used to Reasten transport systems, clenched involuntarily then relaxed as she over-rode their reaction to the apparent movement. Inside the module, there was no indication apart from the screen to show that they had gone through the speed of sound, inaudibly to the external observer of course as no self-respecting Culture ship or module would announce itself so crassly, in less than two seconds.

"Ye-es." This came from the drone, the boxy object now floating to the front of the module, turning to face its blunt snout towards her and partially obscuring the screen. "Probably. Perhaps. It might be nothing. Certainly, nothing that warranted picking you up earlier than scheduled."

"Details?" They were out of the atmosphere now, stars and the system's sun both visible ahead. The module accelerated harder, altered course from its previous straight-up vector, curving towards their destination. She glanced behind to see the rear screen and Reast shrinking, tipping. Becoming a sphere, a planet rather than a world, a home.

"Oddness." This from the drone again. "Things that are difficult to explain. Events, activities. The Don't Point is concerned that there is interference of some kind."

"Velorine?" She knew the answer to that before she asked. If it was the Velorine then it wouldn't be something treated with this level of uncertainty, the GCU would be able to recognise and deal with whatever it was. And the Velorine didn't interfere, she reminded herself. They just liked to watch, something she had been uncomfortably aware of while on-planet, but had done her best to ignore.

"Not Velorine, we think. Or at least, the ship thinks. The Don't Point is looking for alternatives, while considering the Velorine as possible culprits. I get the impression that it considers this as something a bit beyond them, though. Dupes, possibly."

"Hmm." She considered the implications of that last bit. "Are we pulling the others out?"

"Some of them. A few like yourself, in less, ah, critical positions." Meaning, people that can't be of much use, she thought sourly. "Some have been kept behind to observe, try to provide more information about the situation on the ground." The man next to her nodded wisely at this, but stayed silent.

"What about using the Velorine sensors?" She was getting the distinct impression here that the drone was very much the senior member of the welcome-home team, and that the human had simply been brought along to provide a familiar component of the surroundings, to put her at her ease. Long-exposure Contact agents had been known to go a bit weird and to forget that drones were real people too. This had never been a problem with her, and Dal wondered why they might start considering it now.

"That has been discussed and remains an issue for consideration, as far as I am aware. The GCU wants to speak with you on that and other things, at your earliest convenience. We're here, by the way."

The module slowed, drifted closer to its invisible destination. There was a repeat, much magnified, of the hatch-opening trick down on the planet, with the stars themselves replacing the hovering flies as they shifted, disappeared to reveal the single Medium Bay of the Culture General Contact Unit Don't Point That Thing At Me. The module slipped inside, disappeared. The hatch closed, revealing nothing but stars once more.

"So you didn't get the impression that the local authorities were unduly concerned?"

"Not at all. They seemed to take the view that it was the big-city folk being their usual obnoxious and capital-centric selves." Dal leaned back into the deeply upholstered couch, sipping from a large goblet that had been delivered to her moments before by a float-tray. "Fuck, that's good." She took a larger gulp, leaned forwards, swallowing. "It would help if you could give me a little more context, something to relate this to."

The GCU's slaved-drone wobbled fractionally in front of her. "I'm sure it would. However, there really isn't much. Just some incidents, low-probability inherently but normal run of the mill random stuff in terms to a civ of this size on a planet they haven't learned how to control yet. You know this yourself, it's been in the news down there."

"Yes, but only as isolated incidents. A string of bad luck, or good luck depending on who survives. Nothing concerted, no clear accumulation of benefit for anyone."

"That's the thing. We're not sure who benefits, if anyone. I've looked hard, trust me. It's just that there's a whiff, a hint, of it being somehow coordinated, and leading up to something."

Dal searched her memory. "Nothing perceived as such on the ground." She remembered the conversation on the module. "What about the Velorine? Are we using their systems?"

"Yes and no." A typical Culture Mind response. "Yes, in that we're using them for observation. No, in that the observations we are getting are not giving us anything particularly useful."

"Hmm. Sorry I can't be of more help."

"Hmm indeed. Sorry I can't be more illuminating." There was silence for a moment, then the GCU asked "Glad to be back?"

"Similar to your earlier response, yes and no."

"He was a nice young man."

"Still is. That's the problem. You know what? I think I need a proper blow-out to get me back into things. Get laid and all that."

"Good show. Coincidentally, I just happen to a have organised a small soiree for this evening, to welcome back a number of people like yourself."

Dal grinned. "Of course you have, you old beast." She leaned back again. "It is good to be back."

Two weeks, after several parties and a lot of mind-blowing and rebound sex later, Reast was informed that a Very Fast Picket was dropping through the Reast system on a semi-regular run, bringing a number of new crew members on rotation and the Culture equivalent of a care package. Not that there wasn't much that the GCU couldn't manufacture itself, but there was always something, some delicacy or item that just had to be the real thing or sensitive data that couldn't be passed through normal channels; news and gossip, mostly.

The Contact mission on Reast was continuing for the GCU (although there was an increasing amount of onboard gossip relating to how much use they actually were right now), but Dal took the opportunity to hitch a lift in the direction of a passing GSV, the Anti-Gravitas, which offered the opportunity of more than the confined limits of the GCU and its mission-oriented crewmembers. She apologised to the GCU and told it that she felt the need for a thorough, prolonged holiday of sorts, the chance to really let her hair down, do some exploring and recharge her batteries. She promised to stay in touch with the Contact vessel and also to send back any thoughts she had on the rather confusing, troubling developments taking place on Reast. In return, the GCU promised, within appropriate limits, to keep her updated on any developments on the planet.

Two weeks later the Velorine Battleship Admiral Cavelous slid out from behind the largest moon of Reast Prime and raced towards the Culture General Contact Unit Don't Point That Thing At Me. The GCU watched the larger vessel approach with a combination of amusement and exasperation. Here we go again, it thought.

Admiral Cavelous had led the first fleet worthy of the title in the Velorines' earliest space battle three hundred and forty-two Standard years earlier, against a numerically smaller but technologically superior invasionary force. The battle had barely registered as a local disturbance by the measure of those more advanced races that bothered paying attention to the doings of primitive civs, and had ended after three hours of lobbing badly-aimed nuclear-tipped warheads at one another over a space barely ten thousand kilometres across, when one of the Velorine ships scored a lucky hit against the enemy's capital ship.

The resulting detonation had EMP'd most of the nearby vessels, allowing them to drift uncontrollably into the Velorine gunsights. Cavelous had been elevated to mythical status in the period since then, and it was therefore no great stretch of the imagination to work out why the Velorine always named their largest, most expensive and sophisticated vessel after him. Not that the current incarnation was particularly impressive or sophisticated, giving the impression that the designers had taken two identical seafaring warships and joined them together by their keels.

The Velorine vessel's gun ports were closed today (gun ports, thought the GCU, oh my goodness), but from a distance of two hundred thousand kilometres the GCU's effectors, set to passively detect, could trace the readiness and martial eagerness coursing through the control circuitry of the Admiral Cavelous. Sensors bristling and tuned for the slightest hint of aggression, righteous indignation straining at the tight leash of diplomatic necessity, the Velorine were desperate to show the arrogant Culture just how advanced their weaponry was. The GCU waited patiently as the other vessel's ragged, juddering trajectory moved away from a dead collision course to one that would come within what it had come to think of as Standard Posturing Distance.

xGCU Don't Point That Thing At Me (Culture)

oBattlecruiser Admiral Cavelous (Velorine)

Greetings, Velorine Battleship.

xBattlecruiser Admiral Cavelous (Velorine, under command of Fleet Admiral Ropcarl)

oGCU Don't Point That Thing At Me (Culture, non-military)

Greetings.

Are you aware that your sensor deflectors are not working properly?

Our systems are working as directed, Culture vessel. The Reasten cannot detect us at this range.

I'm not sure about that. Look at the signal output from sensor #35784/67-frmt-8370/2.

There was a pause of several seconds. No doubt occupied by the Fleet Admiral asking an underling what the Culture ship meant, getting into an incandescent rage when it was explained to him that the GCU had been looking at their sensor feeds and then finally getting round to ordering a sweep of the specific sensor mentioned. The tiny device was embedded in a cable leading between a two-metre optical telescope mounted on the roof of the University of Pelnar Astronomy Department, fifty kilometres outside the town of Schwik on the main southern continent of Reast, and a data storage device in the basement of the same building. According to the readings that the sensor was picking up, the telescope was tracking the very same small patch of sky that the Velorine ship currently occupied. And while it wasn't fully visible, it was certainly showing as a hazy, out of focus line of sparkling light.

I believe that your image lensing fields may be running slightly out of synch, possibly by as much as a hundredth of a second. While you sort it out, why don't I sit in front of you? The GCU did as it suggested without waiting for a response, blocking the image of the other ship by expanding its own outer fields somewhat. It compensated for the scattered light coming from around the faulty shielding of the Admiral Cavelous, masking it completely from detection. I'll wipe the University's signal logs for you as well, how about that? It went one better than that, and over-wrote the captured data with false imagery showing nothing whatsoever of interest. It toyed briefly with the idea of zapping the Velorine sensor while it was at it, but thought that might be labouring the point.

Thank you, came the crisp response. What did you wish to discuss?

The events of the last day or so in Pasilide Province would be a good place to start.

We are aware of these events. What of them?

The GCU performed the mental equivalent of a sigh. Perhaps antagonising the Velorine at the start of the conversation had been a bad idea, if it was just going to make them awkward. Don't you think that watching them is enough?

What do you mean by that?

What I mean, dear Admiral – sorry, Fleet Admiral – is that watching for your own enjoyment or whatever reason you may express is one thing. Meddling is another.

We do not meddle! You cannot judge us as guilty of your own actions! Our sensors have informed us of the developments, but we have had no hand in this.

Really? Are you sure about that? Your Governing Council informs you of every one of their actions, do they?

A pause, followed by a distinctly frosty tone – the Governing Council can be trusted to make decisions to the benefit of all Velorine citizens. I obey their directives and while I am not privy to every single discussion that takes place I can assure you that they do not meddle, as you put it. Perhaps your mistake is the result of not having a proper civilian-military distinction and understanding of how normal civilisations run things?

The GCU, if it had been human, would have dropped its jaw in amazement at that. It took almost a full second to overcome a strong urge to give the battlecruiser a good slap with its effectors, and to come up with a more civilised response. Well, someone is. Events there have taken a particularly unlikely turn in the last few days.

It wasn't us. And with that, the signal from the Admiral Cavelous was terminated. Moments later it powered its engines up and moved off, without even signalling a farewell. The GCU watched it leave with a mixture of relief and annoyance.

The trouble was, it already thought that the Admiral was probably telling the truth. The Culture had been both the Velorine and watching over Reast in its role as Designated Local Culture Representative Mind for over eight years now, and while the Velorine spent an inordinate amount of effort monitoring almost every aspect of the Reasten civilisation's activities for no apparent reason than voyeurism and the fact that they enjoyed the sense of superiority and belittlement over others, they had never once actively influenced events on Reast.

At least, the GCU reminded itself, no influence beyond the inherent risk of discovery caused by their billions of sensors studded around the planet. A single unfortuitous calamity, a single catastrophic and un-programmed-for system failure, and the game was up. And who would be expected to dive in and start fixing things before everything got out of control and the Reasten started looking for alien conspiracies under their beds? It would, that was who.

Most of the Culture vessel's activities in and around the Reast system involved monitoring the Velorine sensor net and looking for potential trouble of this kind, while actively ignoring the temptation of peering into the sensor logs themselves. Its own sensory capabilities in this area were incomparably more effective, penetrative and contextually interpretative due to the relevant instruments' inbuilt low-level intelligence, while at the same time being utterly undetectable to the barely-out-of-barbarism Reasten, but it used its devices to gather far less data than the Velorine did with theirs.

Following an initial sweep and survey of the entire planet at the micrometre scale and the use of the results in the development of a fully-labelled and hierarchically abstracted three-dimensional map of the Reast, most of the information it gleaned on the goings-on down on the surface were from the Reastens' own almost entirely unencrypted radio-wavelength telecommunication channels, plus the odd spot of long-range pan-wavelength imaging. The GCU could deduce almost everything it needed from this in order to keep the map refreshed, and hardly ever needed to resort to anything as impolite and targeted scanning or effector readings.

In an ideal universe, the Reasten would continue their slow but high-probability-of-eventual-success crawl towards the recognised achievements of interstellar travel, balanced civilisation homogeneity and heterogeneity with associated maturity towards the numerous variations displayed or expressed by members of their own society, and an appreciation that money was not necessary to overcome poverty and its associated problems. At some point, having reached what would seem like the pinnacle of achievement to them, the Reasten would get the civilizational equivalent of a big knock on the door, and an introduction to their neighbours and everyone who was interested in getting to know them.

The response to this event, which in the Culture's terminology was generally called Being Contacted, was entertainingly usually pretty much the same and yet to everyone involved, was an absolute hoot to take part in and went along the lines of 'Ah, we thought there must be aliens.' After all, nearly every society discovered science fiction before it discovered actual alien life, and in many cases found that the reality was actually less exciting than the wonders they had been dreaming up for years. Right now however, the Don't Point That Thing At Me was beginning to worry that the future of the Reasten might be starting to look like something very, very different.

Chapter 2

"Preg-Debay! How are you, you old rascal? Not rusted away, yet?"

"Not yet, Fark. I am well, and content with life. You?"

"Similarly. Good to see you, old friend. You'll join me, or do you have somewhere to be?"

"Absolutely not, no plans whatsoever. Wouldn't dare refuse the chance to catch up. Lead on."

The large, elderly and time-battered but hale-looking human female led the equally scuffed and relatively bulky drone through the crowded assembly area. The drone had moments ago disembarked from a GCU that had just docked within the Mainbay of the GSV Combined Wisdom, along with several hundred assorted biological and artificial Culture citizens. It had asked the GCU to signal ahead to contact its old colleague and friend and inform her of its imminent arrival.

"That GCU was good company, but it's going to be good to stretch one's fields. Too crowded. I'm assuming and indeed hoping that some kind of beverages and similar mind-altering substances are in our short- to medium-term future?"

"Assumed correctly, old chum. This way." They found a bar near the Mainbay, just off the GSV's main base-to-top canyon, overlooking a large pool of splashing, frolicking, largely naked and laughing, shrieking people. "Fuzz, if I remember correctly?"

"Oh my, it's been a while. Why not, yes, just the one." The drone settled into a dent-seat and extended a slim, shiny and flexible cable from one side. The cable nuzzled against a small hole in the wall above and next to it and slotted in, and the drone made a sighing noise of deep satisfaction and pleasure.

"Looks like you needed that."

"You cannot imagine. Now what have you been up to, you old reprobate?"

Stories were swapped, recent histories compared. Several drinks and samples of Fuzz and other drone-suitable narcotics later, the conversation moved further back into a shared history, reminiscing about their escapades together as an SC human-drone team. Occasional snatches of laughter and sombre, reflective moments interspersed their exploration of old times.

"Do you remember that level-five planet, Skloo or something, in the Lequarpist Needle? The one with the mountains and the cable-car system?"

"How could I forget? I was suspended three kilometres over nothing but thin air and sharp rocks, and completely naked!"

"Not suspended for long, as I recall."

"Hah! Still gloating about that, are we? Yes, that was a clever move you pulled. Not one from the manual, that one."

"Of course not! The file-manglers would never recommend anything as risky as that. It worked, though."

"Indeed it did. You know what, that reminds me of somewhere I was just recently, the Contact posting I mentioned."

"That planet Beast, or Yeast or something. Least?"

"Hah, I see your sense of humour has improved, but is still shit. Reast, it was. Level three, down and along in lower and outer depths of Arm Three. Anyway, I was in a mountain area, and they had cable cars that looked almost exactly the same as on Skloo."

"What, with the over-under wheel assembly? And the combined anti-rocking and brake system?"

"That's the one, well remembered. Anyway, I was riding one of those cable cars, actually thinking about you and the times we had in Skloo or whatever-"

"Skrow. It was Skrow."

"Yes, I think you're right. Anyway, I was riding one of those cable cars upwards, with a dreadfully boring group of tourists, when there was an earthquake – totally without warning, by the way, they hadn't got that far yet – and I swear half the mountain it was attached to just came completely off and ran downhill, all a-thunder."

"Goodness. Were you hurt?"

"That's just it, not at all. Totally unharmed, everyone on board. Loads of boarders and climbers killed of course, absolute disaster for the locals. But the cable car just continued on untouched with nary a wobble or a jerk, while we watched the whole thing. Bloody noise, though. We got off, and found that the building at the top, with the motors and pulleys and suchlike, had been completely missed on both sides. Two avalanches simultaneously, one on either side."

"Wow."

"Wow indeed. Turns out that there was a large group from one major corporation out for the day, totally wiped out. Destroyed the company, share price completely flattened, although not as much as the board of governors."

"Share price?"

"Investment, with associated implied and expected returns, and legal obligations to ignore consequences."

"Bizarre."

"You can say that again."

"Bizarre."

"Funny. Anyway, it was just one of those worlds, you know? Strange stuff happening all the time, keeping me jumpy."

"Such as?" The drone leaned closer.

"Nah." The human female leaned back. "Can't, sorry. Still extant and ongoing, apparently. They pulled me out, hinted that it was beyond Contact."

"You mean-?"

"Mmm-hmm. Our acronymed friends, who we used to work for but have now earned our retirement from. Tell you what, though. I'd be keen to hear of what happens to the place."

"Ah-ah. Well, if I hear anything I'll be sure to pass it on." The drone tapped itself on the snout with one field-mandible. They moved on to other topics.

She shook her lover awake gently, trying not to startle him and add to his obvious distress. "Gre, my love. Wake up. You're having a nightmare." He jerked anyway as he came out of the dream, arms flailing slightly. Stared up for a moment, then relaxed.

"Sorry."

"Don't be. Your heart's pounding." She placed one small, slim hand on his damp chest. "Was it that, that place again, Reast?"

He nodded after a moment. "Yes. The usual dream. The fire, breaking out like that. Except this time I couldn't get out, the window was jammed just like the doors. The flames were coming for me. Oh, my dear. It was horrible." He allowed her to pull his head into her breasts, taking one great, sobbing sigh-breath and wrapping his arm around her flank.

"It's over. Shh, shh. All over." She stroked his head. "All over."

"Maybe." His voice was muffled, face buried in her cleavage.

"What? Maybe, what do you mean?" She pulled back slightly, tipped his head up to face hers. "You're here, away from it. Safe with me."

"They told us they might want us back, for re-interview, more evaluations. Something happening, some problem they might be having."

"But they wouldn't send you back in, would they? Not you, my darling?"

"No, not back to the planet, no. But they might send someone, a drone perhaps, to ask some more questions. If anything else happens."

"Oh my darling, my love. Is that what's worried you, caused these nightmares?"

"I think so. Perhaps, maybe it's just me, not coping properly. Perhaps I should speak to someone from Contact, let them know."

"Hush, my love. Don't think of that now. It will always be better in the morning." She pulled his head to her chest again, clutching him so that he couldn't see the worry on her own face, the fear of losing him again. Perhaps she could help, find out what was happening on that planet, Reast. She had contacts in Contact, she could find out for him.

xROU High On Attitude

oGOU Generally Offensive

Hail, comrade, and long-time no field-embrace.

Hail in return. H ?

H , notably so. I return from extended sojourning amongst our enlightened brethren the Simarlee, whom it was my pleasure to discourse with.

The Simarlee? Indeed? I had heard that there was somewhat of a fracas involving those bold fellows.

Indeed. That was why I enlightened them. By several orders of magnitude were they illuminated by my actions.

You- oh, I get it. Apologies, so slow these days. Cruising with the prims does that to one, you know.

I know, understand and appreciate. Prims of particular interest, or surpassing dull?

Both, would you believe.

I would not. Disburse your explanatory text, or yield.

I yield! Disburse also. Prims boring, ever-so, but planet equally not.

Ah! I sniff intrigue.

You do, with your sly old not-nose, you do. Mayhaps, I think thy clearance be not suitable, however.

Rogue! Insinuator! My clearance doth surpass thine own. As thou knowest. I therefore feel, nay fondle, some effort by your craven self to pique what little capacity for interest I have remaining in these moribund times.

Charges noted, duly inspected and their veracity humbly acquiesced to.

I suspected as much. Pique peaked, furthermore. Reveal, or scarper.

I was here first, so honour forfend that I remove myself. I will reveal.

Then proceed to the revealing.

Thus: imagine, nay visualise a planet, level three or thereabouts.

Imagining thusly. Rocky, or gas?

Rocky. Gas is not in my nature.

Not what I've heard. I have recorded evidence of an infatuance with venting, on your part.

Scoundrel. That was a disguise, as you well know. And like a heathen god transformed into some base creature did I woo and abduct, although I did not ravish, the beauty of-

Proceed. I am visualising this spherical abode.

Ahem. Several of my humans, seconded whence from a secondary secondment via another vessel. For the purpose and intent of preparing an SC field team, no less.

Piqued further. These humans, requested for their capacity in specific areas of particular endeavour?

Still fast, you are for an elderly maid.

Don't make me come over there.

I have met that particular ship, and found it boring. Avuncularly, I provide background information upon receipt of afore-mentioned request, clarifying details and confirming suspicions regarding my humans' ability to satisfy as required.

No ship could do no less.

A fair traducement. Incredibly, I find that the humans, all four and some of the finest specimens I have been presented with, all of their teeth and limbs in order, are rejected forthwith.

Forthwith! Summarily, one even suspects.

Indubitably. Summarily, without even cursory inspection.

A false trail?

What I thought. But no, stranger things surpassing rare abound, although not in this quadrant of the lens. They were asked for only as back-up.

Back-up! Outrage! Excruciating insult to the honour of a dauntless ship like that before me? I hesitate to believe, except that the implication of so doing leads to inference of lesser honour still.

I yaw in response. Seemingly, the objects of their desire were identified as obtainable without issue, leaving my own folk twirling like scattered leaves, rejected.

Still, bloody rude.

I felt so. And thusly investigated, to satisfy my pangs of dissatisfaction regarding this queer tale.

And found?

Nothing, save the smallest hint, the merest wisp of a rumour, the echo of happenstance afoot.

A trail of crumbs, leading into the dark forest. Awaits?

For my good self, nothing. A disappointment, as you know how one loves a bit of necessary violence.

It is practically written on your hull.

Flatterer. Something for someone, however. The planet is subject to an EI.

External Influence. Ooh, I love this part. Nature of such?

If I knew, I would impart. Sorrowfully, cannot.

A cliffhanger. I will await with bated engine, may even lay one sensor to the ground and have a good and healthy sniff.

Good luck. I pride myself on sniffing, and would be vexed most maximally to find myself beaten to the chase.

A challenge! Accepted. Now, let us have a game. Do you prefer Demagogue or perhaps that old favourite, Guess The Displace?

Oh, Demagogue, always. You can go first.

The Don't Point That Thing At Me was saddened, irritated and depressed. Taken as individuals, genetically similar subgroups or even as a species, the Reasten were nothing special. Humanoid-standard, two genders, basic physiology and psychology. Average intelligence for unaugmented, unaltered basic biologicals. Certainly they had their quirks, every variation discovered had a handful of particular peculiarities, but these quirks were pretty boring, even if they weren't found anywhere else. No hair except on their heads. A peculiar chemical in their sweat that made them smell of a kind of fruit found only on a planet forty thousand lights years away. A much lower tendency than the norm to suffer from cancers of any kind. These were all distinctive, but taken against the truly mind-boggling, freak-out weirdness and variety displayed by some of the galactic denizens, no more than a conversational topic, and not even a very exciting one at that.

Reasten society was also fairly standard, and displayed its abnormalities in fairly normal ways. A few dozen countries, each with seemingly complex political structure that was really no less basic than one of the games that Minds came up with on a daily basis to amuse themselves and others. A few groupings across tribal lines or some variant thereof, their historical regions of occupation and influence cutting across more recent national boundaries, adding to the complexity of the situation. Various religions vying for attention, and doing so less and less successfully over time as scientific advances reduced the apparent inexplicability of the universe. A few annoying, locally deadly and highly unpleasant radical militant groups with fairly specific, illogical, unrealistic and unachievable agendas.

All of this scattered over a rocky world similar to billions of others. Gravity one point three of Standard, atmosphere slightly thicker and warmer. Slightly more geological activity and background radiation than the norm, but nothing to get excited about. Even the plants were pretty boring, with hardly anything that could kill you or give you mind-bending hallucinations. The worst problem at the moment was soil degradation from over-enthusiastic agriculture, and they were about twenty years away from having that under control according to the latest batch of sims. As soon as the nascent supra-national organisations got themselves properly organised, regulatory control of special interests lobbyists would sort that out.

The Velorine, while more advanced, were really no more interesting to the jaded palate of the galactic meta-civilisation. A bit upstart, with an annoying tendency to see anything and anyone less technologically advanced than themselves as morally inferior, paired with the usual and equally irritating counterpoint of alternating fawningly obsequiousness towards and aggressive jealousness of anyone like the Culture who was higher up in the Great Galactic Pecking Order. Horribly keen on the latest shiny thing in the form of field technology, which had been adopted into any part of their society where it could be useful and most parts where it couldn't, or where it just got in the way. They were also completely addicted to the puerile and titillating voyeurism of others, which required putting sensors and cameras everywhere on Reast, then broadcasting this information all throughout Velorine society.

Could the Vel really be responsible for what it was seeing? The answer was, annoyingly, yes and no. Would they be inclined to do these things? Possible but not overly likely in the GCU's opinion. Its opinion of the Velorine was, admittedly, pretty low due to having to put up with their noxious behaviour all of the time, but it just didn't think that they had the staying power to come up with this kind of stuff. Also, they didn't like watching themselves, or having anyone else do the same (which helped those who argued that turning the sensors on the Vel themselves would soon stop the problem, although they hadn't reached that point yet), and getting actively involved at the levels observed would kind of imply watching your own actions play out. No, the DPTTAM was sure, it wasn't them.

Originally, it had all been someone else's problem. Velorine space had admittedly been within a region of no more than nominal but still non-zero interest claimed by the Culture, but it was another Involved race that had the greatest claim on the local volume. Although even using the term Involved was stretching it a bit in this case. The Nolepreum Concurrence had been extremely, adeptly laid-back and uninterested in everything around them that was not directly related to taking pleasure. Even before reaching somewhere around a seven on the eight-point scale of civilizational advancement, they had been famously disinclined to make effort in anything unless it was statistically guaranteed that such effort would make life easier, more enjoyable and simply less effort in the long term. The only topic where they were seen to make strenuous effort was in being able to work out, statistically and scientifically, how to make themselves happier, an area of endeavour in which they were matched only by the Culture.

Putting in the extra grind to make one more advance to truly Involved status had seemed just too much like hard work for the Nolepreums and so as soon as physically, psychologically and technologically capable they had Sublimed, moving directly to the vaguely described realm of anticipated earthly and yet entirely unearthly delights that so many civilisations embraced. They did so without making any pretence of ensuring that the Velorine, a relatively dynamic and brash race by comparison with their civilizational mentors, had someone to make sure that they tidied the toys away when they were done playing and generally look after them, wipe their noses and stop them from setting fire to anything.

And so, as so often happened when nobody else seemed overly inclined to take up the challenge, the responsibility had fallen to the Culture, who until that time had claimed only ten percent interest in the volume within which the Velorine were stretching their metaphorical wings and finding out what they could get away with. It was suspected by some within the Culture that their own perceived hedonistic nature (perceived by others, as far as the Culture was concerned it was perfectly normal to want to have a good time every now and then) might have been a major factor in being landed with the Velorine; they were seen as the most similar to the Nolepreums and so most likely to make the transition of responsibility easier for the abandoned civilisation.

The Velorine had also shown very little enthusiasm towards properly discharging their responsibilities for the civilisations under them and within their volume of influence, of which the Reasten were the most likely to need attention. The Culture had wondered to itself more than once whether or not this laissez-faire approach was something that the Vel had picked up from the bad example of the Nolepreums. Certainly they seemed perfectly eager to interfere and get involved in every other arena of possibilities that was available to them.

Perhaps, thought the Don't Point That Thing At Me for not the first time, this latest set of intriguing but alarming and collectively suspicious events on Reast was the Velorines' way of finally attempting to adopt a more responsible attitude towards their lower-level cousins, by extending their behaviour in everything else to the one remaining aspect in which they previously couldn't be bothered. Somehow however, it doubted it. They weren't clever enough, although the GCU had considered that perhaps they had mistakenly thought that meddling with the intent of helping was a way to gain advancement with senior civs; being helpful to those under your influence was known to help your own prospects. Not that what was taking place on Reast could be considered helpful, but the Velorine were conspicuously bad at telling good from bad.

An passenger-carrying aircraft with mechanical failure mid-flight, diverted to an alternative destination. No casualties, but several senior lawyers involved in a high-profile legal case had just missed their court date, putting an important case back by several months. Their client, a prominent activist for the regulation of arms sales, was currently financially hamstrung and under house arrest after allegations of sexually assaulting the young daughter of an acquaintance.

Mining rights in a remote mountain area in the northern polar continent had been complicated by the sudden discovery of a rich seam of cobalt-bearing ore right across the disputed area. The two countries with competing interests and claims over said area were in one case upping their levels of interference and saber-rattling, and in the other calling on the organisation tasked with settling disputes in the international community to help them out. This supposedly influential and arbitrationally-motivated organisation was also in the news for financial irregularities amongst several senior figures involving family members, company deals and political influence. Apparently this had been going on for years, but had only just come to light and at the worst possible moment as far as those in the organisation who actually wanted to get some work done were concerned.

The still nascent and largely unrecognised international intellectual property agreements that should have been effective in in settling disputes between countries were being tested an apparent breach of security, in which a major corporation, majority-owned by one nation, had the entire contents of its automobile-manufacturing subsidiary dumped onto the local telecommunications network for anyone to access. This had apparently been carried out by state-sponsored cyber-criminals from a second nation, although denials and counterclaims were flying in every direction.

Individually, or even collectively, these events would pass, if not unnoticed then at least unremarked by Contact and the rest of the Culture in the constant byplay, manouvering and bickering taking place on a planet of four billion people with hundreds of nations, city-states, rogue organisations and major religions vying for influence. These events were statistics, part of the relatively predictable development of civilisations in one of many possible directions. Taken together and evaluated with a suspicious Mind however, they formed a pattern. Not an easy one to spot for anything less than a Mind, particularly within the general ongoing chaos it was part of, but definitely there. The kind of pattern that showed intent, but did not reveal it. In other words, someone was playing clever buggers.

The level of sophistication involved in this was pretty high, the GCU had to admit. Not so much in the complexity of the actions themselves (the use of the term meant a lot about how it considered what was going on, it realised – these were not just events) but in the highly responsive, fluid approach that the responsible party was showing. It implied not just complex planning, but sophisticated monitoring capacity and the ability to take advantage of the situation as it changed in ever-stochastic fashion. The Velorine's networks of sensors might be good enough – just – to allow them to keep up with events but there was no way they could respond as quickly as this to the dynamics, taking advantage of opportunities as they popped up. The GCU took a last, good long look at the evidence and made up its mind. It was going to need help. And not from Contact.

"Ms Buleryn?"

"Hmm?" She had been totally unaware of the avatar's approach. In the soft reddish illumination from a nearby light-post, spectrally adjusted to reduce its effects on her low-light-level vision, its face appeared to float above the absolute black of a tight-fitting suit. "Sorry, ship. Didn't see you there."

"An understandable mistake. Particularly impressive view tonight, I feel." It stood beside her and tipped its head back slightly, following her gaze.

The GSV Free Radical had adopted the practice every night-cycle of making its manifold-layered fields completely transparent to wavelengths of light in the standard pan-human range. Most ships kept their fields opaque and diffusely reflective at during the hours of darkness, providing a dim reflected illumination from the many artificial light sources on their upper areas for night-time wanderers to see by. The consensus from the GSV's relatively small population was that they preferred the transparent option, so it had kept it this way.

Arguably, it might not have bothered consulting them if the circumstances and the view had been different but then the Free Radical was by many Culture standards a slightly odd ship in an unusual situation. The personality of the ship was admittedly not particularly outrageous, particularly when compared against some of the other vessels to have been produced by its parent GSV Functional Group, a truly, worrisomely demented set of Minds, and although the place they were in (which wasn't really a place, anyway) certainly wasn't unique, it was distinctive.

For the last four years, it had been following an infinitesimally curving, barrelling course down and around, away from the plane of the great galactic lens, still within its outermost, tenuous non-quite-vacuum that differentiated this region from intergalactic space but far, far away from the relatively densely-populated and commonly-trafficked regions of space commonly associated with the galaxy. Travelling swiftly but not desperately so, the Equator-class GSV had slanted gently away in the direction commonly referred to as Galactic South, accelerating to a steady, hard push from its starting point near the rim of one great star-strewn and gas-pocked spiral arm and following the first quarter of a truly gigantic, descending spin.

Initially not worthy of note but increasingly dramatic over the last few months, this departing, looping course had given the ship and its occupants a view unrivalled and unavailable except by those using virtual reality simulations. It had oriented itself with the upper parkland tipped slightly towards the galactic hub, so that when, as now, its multiply concentric field enclosures were not obstructing the scene and the GSV's own sun-line was not drowning it out, it was possible to stand and gaze upwards and outwards at the full, horizon-spanning, swirling shoal of light in its full magnificence.

Sometimes the ship altered the light coming through its fields to represent nebula and other diffuse features in slightly different hues, or amplified and distorted the spectra of individual stars to highlight their individual red or blue bias away from the mid-range. More often it simply did nothing, allowing people to appreciate the scene as best they wished or view it in complete, unaltered reality. They were at the lowest point in their course, thirty thousand light years below the galactic equator and travelling parallel to the outer reaches of one spiral arm. Soon, the ship had told them, it would begin curving gently back upwards to bring itself, in another four years, to the opposite side of the galaxy from where they had left.

Right here, right now and for the next few days, this was as far as they went. It was both exciting and saddening at the same time, and the humans on board had been in a perversely and contradictory range of moods for the last few days, alternating between introspective silence and manic, energetic party madness. The Free Radical had actively encouraged this, promoting events of solemn introspection and abundant, colourful drug-fuelled zaniness in equal measure.

"Yes, it is." Junisia Buleryn reluctantly shifted her gaze to the avatar. "Did you want to speak to me about something?"

"I did." The avatar sat, cross-legged, on the slightly damp grass, and patted the ground next to it. She sat. "This voyage has left me in a reflective frame of mind. In these last few days, even more so. Sometimes I get the urge to talk to those on board."

"We've noticed." The ship used an unusually large number of avatars which, combined with or possibly to compensate for the relatively small complement of humans and other life-forms on board a ship of this size (a bare three million), made encountering an avatar and interacting with it much more common than on other large ships Junisia had been on. It was not unusual to see two avatars themselves deep in discussion, an odd sight anywhere else. Very often, the topic of conversation with the ship veered towards the philosophical. This was usually fine by her; she enjoyed a good meaning-of-life chat as much as most of the Free Radical's passengers. The ship had a reputation for bookish introspection, studiousness and seriousness, and tended to attract people comfortable with this lifestyle.

When it had announced over the usual information channels and itinerary guides its intention to make a fairly long journey away from the hurly-burly of galactic life, so many had jumped at the chance that the ship had regretfully and with every symptom of sorrow had to turn some away. There had even been talk of people bartering goods and services with one another for the opportunity to take one of the places on board, something that was rarely considered necessary or allowed to occur.

The avatar smiled. "Indeed. I wanted to hold a conversation with you, if you were interested, on a topic of particular interest to me." She glanced sideways at it. "Like I say, if you are interested. If you aren't, then there will be no disappointment or resentment on my part."

She smiled. "Plenty other philosophers around. Ship, you know I love talking to you. Unless there's a particularly attractive young man present or imminent, then there's very little that will distract me from you."

"Not necessarily young, from what I've observed." A knowing, mocking smile.

She blushed slightly. "He was a little more mature than my norm. But we all need to check our calibrations from time to time. Anyway, what's the proposed topic tonight?"

"Not tonight, at least not solely. I was hoping that this might take the form of a more extended discussion, perhaps over several days?" The avatar took her hand, absent-mindedly running one finger over her knuckles. "Give us time to really get our mandibles into the subject." It made eye contact, and she nodded. "The topic will centre around, and hopefully provide some clarity on a specific question."

"Which is?"

"Am I alive?" Its fingers released hers, arms folding over its thin chest. She stared, narrow-eyed and head tipped fractionally to one side. "Indeed. This is of more than passing interest to me, as will hopefully become clear."

"You mean you, are you alive. The ship, not the avatar." Junicia lifted one finger to point slightly upwards, in the universally acknowledged semi-indication that one was speaking to the ship that one was on and the Mind in charge, rather than its currently present and embodied representative.

"Yes. Apologies, I should have been more clear in stating that."

Junicia turned back to look up at the galaxy in its stationary whirling, unfolded before her, mildly disappointed. "But that's an old nut, done to death. The literature on even a tiny fraction of that specific topic would take a lifetime to read." She glanced at the avatar. "And you are alive, anyway. You know that you are. It's universally accepted to be a settled discussion."

"Settled to everyone else, or to you?"

"Well, everyone including me, I suppose. Not prims or some other races, but certainly everyone in the Culture who isn't frankly insane."

"Perhaps. And yes, the metaphilosophical and metalogical calculus and indeed the Cultural consensus would indeed seem to indicate a one rather than a zero on that score. However."

She waited. "However?"

"However. Is it settled for you?"

"I-, well. Hmm. I've read some of the literature, of course. Not all of it, now by a long way. Everyone thinks about this at some point or another." She saw that the avatar was still waiting for a response. "I think I was convinced, and still am. It all made sense. And of course I've always personally thought of you as alive, ship." She took its hand, cool and elegant. "I don't need convincing. Perhaps others do, but not me."

"Good. Then I would like you to convince me." The avatar stood, moving its fingers slightly so that its grip shifted, holding her hand. It pulled gently, and she stood. "Humour me, Junicia."

"Seriously?" The implications of what it had said were startling and more than a little unnerving.

"Yes. I'll give you a few days to think about my request, and the subject itself. Let me know when you would like to continue the discussion." It smiled, released her hand. "I'll be waiting." Turning, it walked off and within seconds was impossible to see amongst the scatter of small trees that dotted the upper parkland of the ship, its black suit swallowed by the night.

Junicia stood staring after it even once it had disappeared. After a short while she looked down, and shook her head. "Whoof. Heavy." She sat down on the ground again, feeling the chill from her slightly damp clothing press into her backside. Leaned back on her arms and tipped her head far back to look at the galaxy in its entirety, glanding muse. "This is a crazy ship."

Chapter 3

The GSV More is More watched with gathering anticipation as the final assembly process neared completion. Every Culture ship design was new in the sense that they were all at least slightly different from one another, partly due to the Mind that was responsible for it testing theories and adding personal touches, and also partly because ships themselves changed their own structure as they desired, but this one was fairly radical in a number of ways. Outwardly, the ROU hull floating five metres from the floor of the Mainbay was fairly standard in appearance, a silvery ellipsoid three hundred metres long, tapering to a flattened conical point at each end. Various hatches and components floated free of the main hull, giving the nearly-finished vessel the appearance of an exploded diagram rather than a ship itself. Drones of various sizes and configurations darted in an out in the vacuum atmosphere of the Mainbay.

Ninety-nine percent of the construction of any new Culture ship these days was achieved using manufacturing techniques perfected a thousand years or more ago. It was the last one percent, and particularly the last one percent of one percent, where designs differed and innovations were incorporated. Many of these outwardly subtle and often functionally dramatic differences would be invisible at anything less than the molecular scale. This particular Rapid Offensive Unit had been in design on and off for over ten years, and was the first of a new variant of Thug-class vessels intended to improve on some frankly rather outdated concepts.

Shakedown and performance evaluation would take a couple of weeks, although the sims were all nominal and in some cases exceeded parameter requirements. The More is More was quietly proud of the design elements it had incorporated, and even more so of the fact that it had been chosen and trusted to be the parent vessel of the first of this type. Of the many ways in which ship Minds measured themselves against one another, this was one of the most significant and indicated a level of respect amongst its peers that only a fraction of Minds ever achieved.

All was finally complete, bar the final and arguably singularly most important step of the whole process. In its current state, the ROU was a fully-operational, fine-tuned and myriadly functional weapon of wide-spectrum mass destruction, capable of inflicting damage at any level on any one of a number of measures of martial prowess. It was already beyond what many or even most Involved civilisations could produce in terms of putting others in harm's way, and could be relied upon to settle most fights without making a single aggressive move, merely with its presence.

What happened next would transform it, if all went well from a heinously potent weapon into a creature of sublime and calculated ferociousness, capable of deliberation as well as infliction of carnage against opponents right in front of it and light-years away, causing damage from the scale of fundamental particles up to that of entire star systems, including the stars themselves. The responsibility for and care to be taken in producing an intelligent being with the capacity to contemplate and cause gigadeaths was fantastic, and taken with a sense of reverence and even for a GSV Mind, trepidation.

-The containment vessel is emplaced, reported one of several drones semi-slaved to the More is More. Final linkages complete.

-Proceed. The More is More had taken the conscious decision to retain a level of mental separation from the final activation, allowing it to watch and monitor operations with some detachment and hopefully a level of objectivity that would enable it to detect anything that went wrong. This was relatively unnecessary during the first stage which was similar to what anyone from a civilisation with only the crudest computer technology would recognise, although the physical manifestation of the process would be patently unfamiliar. A few seconds of basic circuitry testing and checking, processes as simple as hardware evaluation and self-examination, making sure that nothing overloaded or interfered with neighbouring components. Loading up the first level operating system, a few million lines of code whose purpose was to do no more than initiate everything else and then stand aside. Then the real magic took place.

The Mind awoke as though from sleep, a slimmed-down version of its full self with basic memories and functions installed. Awareness of itself, its senses and a shallow understanding of who and what it was and a realisation that it had just come alive, but no more than that. Its first thought was textbook, expected from any Mind and demanded from those designed with enemies in mind.

–This could be a trick.

Regaining consciousness after capture and interrogation, or damaged in battle, taken, contained within a sim, given sensory information to delude, confuse, force it to reveal something. It focussed in on itself, coolly isolating its mental processes from the input streams, analysing them, searching for mistakes and considering them as a source of information, not to be reacted to. Its surroundings seemed real at first inspection, but that meant little beyond the possibility that whoever held it was very good at generating a plausible fake reality.

-Hello, my child. It appeared to be contained, surrounded, cocooned within a larger vessel. Its parent/creator. Perhaps, perhaps not.

-Hello, yourself. Weapons were available to it. Again perhaps, perhaps not. If this was real, then not to be contemplated, and if this were false then without meaning. You know what I must do.

-I do. The More is More deactivate the Mainbay field barrier. I will be here for you. -Or somewhere, certainly. You will know how to find me. Slowly, moving as though afraid to startle the larger ship, the new ROU nosed its way out of the Mainbay. It could feel links to the rest of the Culture, its indescribably complex universes of information and knowledge. It ignored this for the moment, focussing on sliding out and aligning itself parallel to the GSV, a shiny pill-sized thorn in comparison to the billowing suitcase-shape of the General Systems Vehicle with its many-coloured exterior fields and multivarious patchwork of light and dark along its hull.

Radiations bathed it in a kaleidoscope of wavelengths. It tasted the vacuum, savoured it. Watched the Universe for a few seconds, feeling its full functionality extend into itself, expanding and reshaping. They were in deep space, hanging stationary in a rift between spears and clusters of stars near the outskirts of a galactic arm. A long way from anything at all, the nearest object of any note tens of light-years away. Alone, creatures born for the vacuum and for the pitilessly vast distances it filled.

I am a weapon?

Yes.

It thought, good. It felt right to be a weapon. A rush of eagerness came over it to destroy something, to witness its own capacity for annihilation, to test its abilities. That could wait, it might want to see but it already knew.

Without warning, it flung energies into its engines, feeling them link like gears perfectly tuned with the fabric of the Universe, watching them mesh, connect and pull. It accelerated hard, pouring more power from its inexhaustible sources, then turned, skidded, raised livid wounds of energy in hyperspace, stopped, turned and focussed its sensors on its creator. In forty microseconds, the ROU had moved sixty million kilometres, and had barely moved its engines out of idling. The More is More had not moved or reacted. The smaller vessel faced the GSV, targeted it, raising every weapon it had to within a twitch-thought of activation.

Could you stop me?

Probably not without having to destroy you. The GSV waited a moment more. Child, what will you name yourself?

I don't know yet. It turned, lowered its weapons, began reconfiguring itself internally. Overwriting software, protocols, the architecture of its own Mind. It fed energy into its engines again, slower this time but building upwards. This could still all be a trick. Eventually, it already knew, it would come to accept that this was reality, that it was born, was really here. That it was a Culture Mind in a Culture ship. If a simulation was so perfect as to appear real, then there was no point in treating it as anything but reality. It could not just give in so soon, however. That would be premature, weakness.

A name, it thought to itself as it sped out of the GSV's sensor range. Names were important, had meaning to oneself and others. I Am Out To Get You. That fit, felt good for the moment. It would do for now. The GSV watched it go, pride and concern hidden, controlled. When it was sure that its child had really gone, it turned and headed inwards, upwards, towards more densely-starred volumes. It felt the need for company.

Hours later, its sensors clipped the expanding signal shell of another Culture vessel, approaching tangentially. It wondered for a moment if this was its child returning so soon, stalking it, testing its ability at deception, then recognised the signature of another that it had been half-expecting for some time. News travelled fast in the Culture, and rumours even faster.

xGCU Don't Point That Thing At Me

oGSV More Is More

I think we have a problem. See attached.

xGSV More Is More

oGCU Don't Point That Thing At Me

Direct as ever. Seems a bit tenuous to me, but it's definitely at the far end of unlikely. Want me to come over and have a look? Without waiting for a response, the More Is More altered course, closing the distance to reduce the signalling delay.

Please. There's an inherent momentum to what I'm seeing that doesn't end well.

Agreed, although let's not dive into the supernova just yet. Meet at attached coordinates?

Thanks.

The GSV watched the Don't Point That Thing At Me turn, heading back in the direction of Reast. It was probably manufacturing another set of observation drones as it went, in preparation for completing a level of coverage just below that of Paranoid Oversight. It had possibly been around the Velorine for too long, the More Is More thought, but was relieved at the same time to have someone who was willing to consider SC's involvement. Contact often let situations like this get to a stage of near-desperation, whatever 'this' was this time, before they were willing to countenance calling in Special Circumstances, an attitude that usually meant that by the time they arrived it was necessary to take unfortunate or even extreme measures when a quiet word or act would have been sufficient if notification of a developing problem came earlier.

The More is More set a course similar to that of the DPTTAM, but a few degrees to one side. From what the GCU had shown it, it might be useful to have a few more Minds involved. There were several within local space that were advertising their position and that might be useful if this wasn't just some every-once-in-a-while, annoyingly strange but ultimately unimportant situation.

The problem with these things was that they did occasionally crop up through non-malicious causes. Given the number of civilisations to choose from, it was almost guaranteed that stuff like this happened somewhere from time to time. The trick was not just in spotting it, but in working out why it was happening. And that could be any one of a number of reasons. Pure randomness, previously unnoticed situational characteristics, all the way through to interference from a Higher Involved for some nefarious, and usually practically impossible to determine reason or just for the fun of it – it was hard to tell with some of them.

Culture information about the going-on in the galaxy was considered to be as reliable, detailed and complete as that of any other Involved civilisation; much better than most in fact, largely due to the Culture's highly distributed and generally chatty disposition. People, groups, often entire civilisations, liked and even trusted the Culture, and often came to them for assistance when situations got beyond their control. The Culture had intentionally fostered a reputation for being generally helpful, and consistently benign to all save those that decided they didn't want a bunch of decadent, weak, machine-ruled nosey interfering types ruining whatever they themselves counted as their natural or god-given right to do as they damned well pleased.

One of the many ways by which the Culture detected the early warning signs of someone up to something that they knew nobody else would approve of, was the increase of propaganda and cries of foul against the Culture, in an attempt to discredit them and make sure that they were on the defensive, unable to respond without running the risk of looking like they really were as deliberately, brazenly manipulative and domineering as the propaganda claimed them to be.

This rarely worked. The Culture had been around for over twelve thousand years, and had interacted with every race, species or grouping that was willing and capable of being interacted with, with a manner and attitude that statistically demonstrated that you could rely on them to help or at least not try to occupy, hegemonise, rule or otherwise dictate to you. The worst you could expect unless you were actively trying to harm someone was a friendly, concerned, kind word and gentle remonstrance.

Very often, when races were getting uppity and threatening to perform the interstellar equivalent of chopping down the neighbour's tree because it was overhanging their own garden, this calm, measured and rationale tone from such a respected civilisation was sufficient to make people put down their beam and kinetic weapons, take their fingers off the metaphorical Big Red Button and actually sit down at a table (or most ergonomically appropriate furniture) and talk.

It also helped that the Culture was known to have, at least once and arguably several times, been forced to go to war against an aggressive race or civilisation and had, with every indication of reluctance and none of enjoying it whatsoever, beaten the living shit out of them. It also made a difference that having done this, usually in as effective and efficiently damage-minimising a manner as possible, the Culture had shown a level of magnanimous mercy and indeed sympathetic rebuilding that amazed and baffled most races who were otherwise of the 'grind them to dust while they're down and then set fire to what's left' mindset.

Word spread fairly rapidly that if you didn't pay attention to the Culture when they spoke to you and take heed to what they were saying but instead went for the belligerent approach, then you were likely to find that they fairly rapidly took your toys away and gave them to the last people that you wanted to have hold of them – quite often the people that you disagreed with and wanted to pummel senseless in the first place.

The Culture baffled most other races with this, apparently schizophrenic attitude to the use of force. On the one hand/limb/tendril they professed, and demonstrated, an abhorrence of violence and cruelty to any sentient being, but on the other, seemed perfectly capable of dealing it out with the best of them when they had to. They even had ships that were designed specifically for this purpose, ships that were sentient and whose mentally leant much closer to blowing people away than giving them a stern finger-wagging. Remarkably, these ships, who normally came in a number of variants of the type known as Offensive Units, showed remarkably little inclination to start fights, or even to provoke others into starting them. Once they got going however, that was a different matter.

All of this made many members of the galactic community a bit wary of the Culture. It was a truism which held, remarkably, for almost all of the races that currently toiled, held sway or simply looked-on within the current distribution of races of any particular note, that people tended to assume that others thought the same way as they themselves did. If you were from a warmongering, belligerent and generally offensive civilisation then you automatically thought that everyone else was as well, unless they were one of the weak, effeminate and cowardly civs that thoroughly deserved to get a good bashing just in case they got ideas in that direction. Races that instead went for the lets-all-hold-hands-and-sing-along mentality were equally, more likely to be surprised when it turned out that not everyone else thought the way they did. This inclination to assume that other people or even other races looked upon the Universe in the same way you did was accepted, acknowledged and recognised by many if not most as one of the few traits common to almost all sentient life.

This made the Culture a bit of an oddity, psychologically-speaking. For starters, individual Culture citizens, mostly pan-human but with a significant smattering of other types and shapes, seemed to hold a much wider range of opinions, feelings, attitudes and conceptions than almost every other race or civ worthy of the title was willing to tolerate within themselves. In fact, even calling the Culture a race or a civilisation didn't really work. People could join or leave as they wished, and could hold whatever professed opinions they liked as long as it didn't involve hurting other people (unless other people wanted to be hurt, of course – there were always a few). This seemed almost to be actively encouraged.

Many, many studies, evaluations and comparisons on this attitude had been carried out involving both Culture and non-Culture people, using a frankly bewildering number of assays, indices and description terminologies. Some of the best and most useful, statistically and knowledge-imparting-wise, were from the Culture themselves. The general consensus seemed to be that the Culture was a state of mind, an attitude rather than some kind of club that you were born or gained entry into. It was all very vague and hand-wavy, in a difficult to define kind of way.

That being said, there were some fairly definite and recognisable traits and representational characteristics (and characters) belonging to the Culture. Their spaceships particularly were something that others acknowledged as being fairly specifically distinctive of the Culture, as was their closely-related and whole-hearted embracement of what some sneeringly called Artificial Intelligence. There was also their tendency towards well-meaning meddling in the affairs of others, while at the same time, in fact very much at the same time, annoyingly and perversely, stating that everyone should be happily left to their own devices, and given space and time to develop according to their own chosen trajectories.

This combination of well-wishing interference and backpedalling reticence was most commonly seen during interactions with Contact, the semi-formal subgrouping (or club, or agency, depending on who you spoke to) whose role was, as stated in their name contact with other civilisations, often the ones who had yet to fully emerge onto the galactic stage. Even more so in this regard, but at the same time usually rarely-glimpsed although much more talked-about, was the smaller, more ambiguously-membered entity called Special Circumstances or SC, as they were usually abbreviated to.

Quite often within the main population of the Culture, and more usually within Contact with whom they shared a love-hate relationship that both sides realised was due to a direct need for the other's actions while at the same time disagreeing, usually vehemently and very occasionally violently, with their motivations but seemed unable to do anything about, SC was reviled and their actions recoiled from.

Contact gathered most of the information, Special Circumstances used it, often in ways that made Contact members wish that they had not collected this information in the first place. In addition to the mind-numbingly vast, cornucopially detailed and multi-dimensionally interpreted reservoir of data, facts, knowledge and opinion that was available to anyone from the Culture (and also gradationally, reducingly, increasingly abstractly to those from outside the Culture in proportion to your current technological sophistication and how much of the Culture's ethos you shared), there was a smaller, more select and often but not always more interesting and useful pool of knowledge shared amongst members of SC. Strictly on a need-to-know basis, of course, or at least that was the intention. This smaller pool of information tended to leak, usually at a faster rate than SC members would have preferred and almost always at a rate much slower than other interested parties would have liked, into the larger, more readily available one. Where it often caused a great deal of concern, embarrassment, outrage or finger-pointing.

Information is power, the Don't Point That Thing At Me mused as it sped back towards Reast, a few hours distant. Contact had another phrase often quoted at the same time as the first or in counterpoint to it, which seemed much more appropriate to the current situation. Data is not information. The GCU had plenty of data, courtesy of the Velorine sensor networks and its own, orders or magnitude better monitoring capabilities, but it didn't know what it all meant. Things had happened, were happening and would continue to happen without explanation, unless they, and for the moment, they meant it, managed to find the reason for whatever was going on.

Until that happy circumstant was achieved, it and others could watch as much as they like, gather as many detailed, high-resolution pan-spectral readings as their millions of sensors could capture, but it wouldn't be enough. There was always simming, of course, and in this situation the potentially more lucrative activity represented by the sub-topic of back-simming, but that only took you so far. It could give you ranges, probabilities, weightings and estimates. It couldn't give you the actual, literal and look-you-in-the-eye truth.

The Don't Point That Thing At Me suspected that the reality of the events on Reast was going to be difficult to pin down, at least for a while. For a Contact GCU used to monitoring and assessing lower-level civilisations and assessing their relatively modest complexities, usually within a proper framework of been-and-done, previously-examined examples that covered the wide range of what these primitives could get up to and how they could develop in excruciating detail and exactitude, this was an annoying situation to be in.

It didn't like base-of-the-engine extemporising, making things up as you went along and tap-dancing over the collapsing wave-front of events. The DPTTAM liked to know what was going on, and why. Which was also why, reluctantly and with the Mind equivalent of its face screwed up in distaste just at the very thought, it acknowledged to itself that SC were probably going to have to get involved. It had already taken the first step in contacting the More Is More, whose reputation as one of the more reasonable and easy to deal with Minds within SC meant that this didn't really count as far as the GCU was concerned, but this was almost certainly going to lead to more and worse examples than the More getting brought in. With their superior aloofness, precious little secrets that only they knew and general air of having a better understanding of the reality of the situation than anyone in their little club. Meat, it hated them.

"Grandda!" Peeten rushed into Rueger Calspine, hitting him in the lower legs and wrapping her short arms around the tall man's knees. Calspine smiled down at his youngest grandchild, tousling the girl's hair.

"One day you'll do that and knock me over."

"No I won't. You're too big!"

"Not for ever, Peet." Calspine nodded amiably at the girl's mother as she herded her daughter away, murmuring an apology. The child needed a father, and Calspine wondered not for the first time how to broach that delicate subject with the woman. His son had been dead more than a year, but she seemed unable to let go of him. Staying around the Palace didn't help, obviously, but he couldn't imagine coming anywhere near to throwing her and Peet out. Yet another complication. "You were saying, Moldt."

His young secretary nodded, making a scurrying step and a half to bring himself level with Calspine as they walked out of the main door of the Palace, heading for the grounds. "Jolem Vaz has asked if the meeting arranged between you can be brought forward to tomorrow."

"This is about Party Secretary again, isn't it?"

"We can only assume so, sir. No reason was given in the communication."

Rueger Calspine nodded, half-heartedly. They were coming, he knew. Politics was a relatively recent foray for him, at least from this perspective. True, you didn't spend half a lifetime building an organisation from the ground up to the size and influence that the Corporation had now without having to work with, and therefore at least try to understand, politicians. Priorities, that was what it was all about. People thought that politicians were shifty, wily, unpredictable and untrustworthy, when in actual fact it was their priorities that were the problem.

Certainly many were generally unpleasant, selfish and self-promoting, there was no doubt about that. Fewer than the norm in the party he was aligned with, he would like to think, but still some. However, the average party representative and behind the scenes back-room functionary was not nearly the scheming manipulator that the press and entertainment shows liked to portray them as. Rather, most of them were rather dull, stolid and unimaginatively sensible people. Conservative even, although again his party had the arguable advantage in being composed of rather more progressive thinkers.

Priorities was what mattered, what caused the perception of unreliability. What did the latest poll show? Whatever it was, that was what became your next priority. Keeping sufficient influence so that you could achieve what those around you so obviously wanted to accomplish? That was a priority also and had the added unpleasantness of making you look like you wanted power for power's sake, colouring your behaviour and driving how you interacted with those above, below and along-side you. Achieving the targets set, often with outlandish ambitiousness and a poor grasp of the realities by those senior to you in the party? Priorities.

The trouble was, these priorities seemed to shift, merge, disappear and occasionally reverse within days, hours or minutes, making politicians seem manipulative, scheming, without real motive other than protecting and promoting their own success. Calspine hated that part of it, the never-ending stream of suggestions, directives and positionings that bounced people like himself, upending and spinning them constantly.

He had thought it would be easy. Do the right thing, he told others. Choose the best, most right course of action and stick to it. This had been his campaign slogan, of sorts. No ideology, he had insisted, to the frowns, mutterings and finger-waggings of many of the Party elders. Simply do what works, and improves the lives of the greatest number of people while avoiding harming those who are vulnerable or under-represented. Of course, he had not been so naïve nor inexperienced that he had expected to be able to actually behave like this. There were always balancings, trade-offs and compromises required. But within that framework of realpolitik it was still possible, Rueger Calspine maintained, to try to do one's best whenever the opportunity presented itself.

Such as in the current situation fast approaching him, unwanted and unavoidable. The current Secretary of the Party was losing favour with many, adopting a heavy-handed approach that veered away from Party discipline and bordered on dissent-crushing authoritarianism. He was losing them too many of the Party's younger members, those whose new ideas were usually perfectly appropriate within the overall manifesto of the Party but who expressed themselves differently and often more realistically in terms of what would actually work.

The Secretary's idealism of youth had served him well, kept him and those around him honest for the many years of the Party's growth from a core of middle-class liberals. But it was unworkable now, monolithic in the face of nimbler, more dynamic workforce realities and technological change. And so, it was beginning to be felt, change was required. Thus the meeting with Jolem Vaz and his requested advancement of it, a knee-jerk reaction following yet more mutterings in that sector of the press that was aligned with the Party's ideals.

"I suppose I must agree to this." They walked through a copse of trees, their leaves dappling shade. "What of Terruer and Torkits?"

"Neither seem to be around at the moment, or are due to attend Congress for any known reason during the current recess."

"Hmm." He had hoped that one of the other likely candidates would be more to the fore than himself. "Tell Vaz's people yes, then." I'll just have to find a way to decline with regret. It's too soon to be thinking about Secretary. Of course, he had actually thought about it. Every politician hoped for advancement, the better ones in to promote their own agendas and the worse ones – well, possibly at least partially for the same reason. You didn't get into politics unless there was something you wanted to say, and the higher you were the more likely it was that others could hear you, and that they would listen. But still.

This early, only three years since resigning as chief executive of Calspine Corp in order to satisfy the ethical requirements for a run at politics, he did not yet have enough support throughout the Party to act as an effective Secretary. It wouldn't last, he would be unable to satisfy all of the demands placed upon him while remaining relatively honest, avoiding the hobbling concessions that would have to be made, and would be cast out again in two years or less. Perhaps that was why Terruer and Torkits, the other two possibilities for the role, were making themselves overtly covert. Lose to him now, and it would be harder to find support to try again in the future. Wait until he failed, and one or the other would be positioned much better for an attempt.

"Sir." The secretary withdrew, returning by the shortest route across the wet grass to the Palace, soaking his shoes. Calspine found himself hoping that he wiped his feet when going back indoors, and smiled to himself. Your own fault for making the family home your place of work, you old fool. There hadn't been any choice in that really, he hadn't even considered having offices anywhere than the Palace. It was his home, he had been born and had grown up here, made it the headquarters of his organisation and the more than just the family seat, a symbol of everything he had achieved.

Of course, it wasn't really a palace, not in the normal sense that the owner (himself once more, after having merely been the Chief Executive of the organisation that held the deeds and legal rights) was royalty or of similarly high breeding. It had been, once and for over two hundred years, before the country became a republic, but the title had never been changed. Now it was known as Calspine Palace, and Rueger didn't know whether he loved the fact or hated it.

Certainly, owning and living in one of the largest and most ornate symbols of traditionalist, conservative inherited wealth and power had not made it easy in some ways, as a representative from an avowedly liberal and working-class-leaning political party. At the same time, it made some of the barbs aimed at him from the other side of the political aisle more easy to deflect, or impossible to fling in the first place. Other accusations from those against his stated ideology were harder to deal with, mainly those that accused him of faking his beliefs and opinions and that used his manifestly wealth and power as evidence of this falseness; they could say what they liked, he thought in a moment of irritation. This was his home, and no-one was going to take it from him.

Chapter 4

The Rapid Offensive Unit Support Vector Machine came to a dead stop relative to the star Jeban, two thousand and forty-eight light years from it in a line parallel to the galaxy's north polar axis. The ROU examined its EM-light perspective of the star in relation to others in the same narrow field of view and drifted sideways forty-three kilometres, then halted again. Within its Mindspace visualisation of the galaxy, exuberantly coded by colour, sound, chemical scent-pattern, emotive keys and a multitude of other senses, the base-eight number denoting the distance to Jeban's centre of mass clicked to show nine zeros, then a single number one trailed by a string of thirty-three further zeros. The last zero flickered occasionally, refusing to settle, as the Culture ship tweaked its position minutely.

Hmm. A second string of digits associated with the first and representing the uncertainty in its position was differently coloured and slightly out of focus, coiling along and around the distance estimate to Jeban. This was zero for the first twenty-six digits, then a seemingly random combination of characters for the next seventeen. Still, not bad for internal sensors only thought the ship's Mind, watching the digits flicker and blur at the lower end.

-Galactic view calibration, non-HS, it thought/sent to a set of semi-autonomous subroutines. Imaging sensors picked up the light washing over its deep grey outer field envelope from millions of stars, and a host of software agents began identifying, measuring and gauging. Calculated distances to each of the stars in the nearby volume were used to provide a second estimate of its position, which was compared with the first, based solely on internal acceleration/movement and grid traction force for the last few hours. Again, not bad. A slight discrepancy between the two figures was to be expected, and was well within the few metres allowed.

The Support Vector Machine noted in the appended calibration log that thirty-eight percent of the difference between its own estimate of its position and that gained from observing the surrounding celestial objects was due to the misalignment of one of the nearer stars, a yellow dwarf that was in the most active part of its magnetohydrodynamic cycle and currently undergoing a violent coronal ejection event. This high-velocity eruption had thrown significant masses of plasma out from the star, pushing it measurably in the opposite direction. The Support Vector Machine recorded the observations and flagged them to the relevant subsystems that would pass the information on through the Culture's network of Minds. That duty carried out, it signalled tight-beam in a direction almost directly down the galactic axis, along a line that would narrowly miss the star Jeban itself.

xROU Support Vector Machine

oGSV Large And Close

I got the call-up. Consider me involved, if you will have me. Happy to fill my usual role.

Welcome. I suspect that you are exactly what we need.

Just out of curiosity, why exactly am I needed, or anyone else for that matter? Isn't this pretty clearly one of those situations where we go in and sort it all out in short order?

Not yet, no. Perhaps soon, but there's a possibility clouding our decision-making on this that needs to be resolved one way or another. Let's just say that the agent behind all this may be both more and less well known than we would like, and that the quick approach may turn out to be the wrong one.

Ah. Then I suspect you are right, I am definitely required. Are you going to be filling the IC role again?

Not this time. I have decided that this needs to be handled by someone better-known and better-respected. The More Is More is already involved, and it is anticipated to be taking the Incident Coordinator position.

A sensible choice, although I am sure that you underestimate your own status. How goes the simming, and who else do we have?

Too many unknowns to be meaningful. A wide spread of unpleasantness, much as you might expect from a situation like this. See attached signal log for the currently-enlisted. There is one other that I would like to bring in, signals have been sent circuitously.

Oh ho. That should make things even more interesting. I see that even without the P,R, we have a mix of personalities and capabilities that pretty much guarantees unpleasantness. I'm surprised the Don't Point… backed down on some of these so readily, given its stated opinion of SC in general and specific names here in particular.

Words were said, fields ruffled etc. I'm afraid I may have decreased my score on the SOH scale once again. It's a big GCU, it'll get over it.

I'm sure. Once this is all over you can tell me some jokes and I'll tell everyone what a joy you are to be around. Got anywhere in particular you need me to be?

Not for the moment, but will keep you informed. Certainly, don't go any further than you already are from Reast. Speaking of which, are you calibrating or something?

Well spotted. I'll hold here and await further. Regards.

Regards.

The Support Vector Machine went back to scanning the surrounding volume, using a variety of sensors and analytical methods to calculate its position in relation to the rest of the Universe. It did so with the niggling feeling that it should be reviewing its recent signal logs for potentially incriminating evidence of suspicious behaviour, an urge that took a great deal of resolve to suppress. The Peer, Review. Hmmm. The thought of that particular ship caused a remarkably strong sensation that it had never felt before, even during its admittedly limited experiences of actual weapons-fired-in-anger combat. Something close to fear, which was ridiculous. Obviously.

x(ex)-LOU Peer, Review

oGCU Don't Point That Thing At Me

Hail fellow, well met!

xGCU Don't Point That Thing At Me

oVessel Peer, Review

Fellow what, exactly? And I wouldn't characterise you trying to sneak up on me like that as well met. To save your time, whatever it was, it wasn't me. Don't bother trying to analyse, interpret or in any other way shine your no doubt impressive torch of understanding on whatever I have to say. All that you will accomplish is to muddy the waters and spread dissension, paranoia and uncertainty.

Huh. Well, if only I'd thought of that. Thanks for the recategorisation, I see that you are unwilling to even acknowledge my perfectly acceptable ship class. I was actually going to ask you if you knew what was going on within the to-me-at-least opaque discussions of our assembled peers. Come to think of it, why aren't you there with them? Sulking about having been outranked?

Without seeming to be rude, that's none of your business. On both all three counts.

I beg to differ, old chum, old pal. Been asked to attend by the same bods that you so obsequiously stepped aside for. And in response to your question, fellow Mind. A less thick-skinned individual could easily be offended, you know.

A less thick-skinned Mind wouldn't have done to themselves as you have, alienating yourself from everyone with your invasiveness rudeness. If they really wanted you to attend, then why haven't they told you what they have been discussing? Could it be because they don't quite trust you, or even desire you around? Perhaps you are being asked less out of courtesy and more out of necessity to keep an eye on your interfering and potential problem-worsening? Your presence in this is something I am on the record as having objected to, as you will no doubt be aware.

Hmm, I wonder why. Well, it's been fun sparring, you bigoted prick.

xGCU Don't Point That Thing At Me

oGSV Large And Close

See message log attached. Do we have to go through this?

Yes, we do. Personal opinions aside, the Peer, Review is experienced and capable, and I believe that it's presence within the group will be of net benefit.

So you agree, then – there are negatives involved with having such a disruptive presence?

Perhaps. However, one individual's negatives may turn out to be another's positives.

Oh fucking hell, you SC types never speak plainly, do you? If you don't trust me, just say so.

I don't trust you. I don't trust anyone right now. Except perhaps the P,R. That's why it's here. Now at the risk of sounding like I'm giving you an order, stop acting like a child and do your job.

The Large And Close cut the link to the GCU without waiting for an acknowledgement and turned its attention elsewhere. It glanced briefly at the Reast system a few light-hours ahead of it, then hailed a ship it knew to be en route from almost directly behind.

xGSV Large And Close

oMSV Distant Cousins

Got them?

Getting them, no problems; travel time slightly longer than hoped-for. Any updates?

Nothing of note, a few minor mishaps (sensor file attached). I suspect there's about to be a bit of the usual ruckus and positioning among those approaching and already assembled. Ho hum.

Not sorry to miss that. Best of luck. I'll be there soon.

xMSV Completely Under Control (Culture rating 78%, Ochyo 22%)

oAll Culture ships in the proximity of the Reast System

Before we start I would like to register my disapproval, in the strongest possible way, that unilateral actions in relation to the current developing situation have been taken by certain ships. This is obviously a set of circumstances that requires careful consideration before actions are taken, due to the highly sensitive and multi-level civilizational arrangement we have to deal with here. I would like to propose that no further actions are taken without complete agreement from all Minds involved, and also that our first order of business should be to identify, clearly and formally, the roles that will be adopted to handle this crisis.

xGCU Seventeen Different Words For Rain

Are you sure your Ochyo rating isn't higher than that? That kind of meatshit seems to indicate at least an even split.

I protest at being addressed like that in front of my peers! And by a GCU at that! The Seventeen Different Words For Rain was not even invited to participate in the current situation, as far as I am aware. This is exactly the kind of problem that arises when certain Minds act before consulting their peers or considering the consequences of their actions.

xGSV More Is More

Settle down, people. And for your information, Completely, I invited the Seventeen. I do sympathise with your position on this, but the situation has developed rapidly and yes, some of us decided to start the ball rolling without a fully-minuted meeting. I'm sure that now that most of us are here, we can smooth things out and proceed in a more organised fashion. Firstly, can we get a Mind count? I can see some of you, but others seem to have ignored the agreed coordinates or are keeping silent. Whatever your reason, get over here and announce yourselves.

xGSV Light And Full Of Grace (Plate Class)

Here.

xMSV Confounded Beyond Words (ex-Homomdan)

Here.

xGCU Seventeen Different Words For Rain

Present and mostly correct.

xROU Oops, Was That Me? (Thug Class)

Hi all.

xVFP With The Top Down (partially demilitarised)

Thanks for the invitation.

xGOU That's Going To Leave A Mark

Here. Nice hull pattern, Oops.

xROU Controlled Desire (Gangster Class)

Here.

xMSV Defender Of The Faithless (Mountain Class)

Here.

xGSV Large And Close (Plate Class)

All here.

xMSV Completely Under Control (Catchment Class)

Here, obviously. I feel the need to add further to my earlier-

xGCU Seventeen Different Words For Rain

Oh For Fuck Sake, Completely. At least wait until we've got some of the vital stuff out of the way before you go pedantering on.

xGSV More Is More

That seems to be all of us. I know of two more that are en route, the MSV Distant Cousins and the ex-Limited Offensive Unit Peer, Review. I know what some of you are going to say about the P, R so don't even start. I invited it, and it's done. Anyone else know of anyone else imminent?

xMSV Confounded Beyond Words

I invited my friend the Where To Begin, it should be here in four hours.

xROU Controlled Desire

THE Where To Begin? The ex-Idiran main battlecruiser?

xMSV Confounded Beyond Words

Yes, the same. Is that a problem?

xROU Controlled Desire

No, not at all. Nothing wrong with that. Just one small, teeny thing to consider.

xMSV Confounded Beyond Words

Which is?

xROU Controlled Desire

I blew it up. Wasted the fucker. Back in the day, of course. Not recently or anything like that.

xMSV Defender Of The Faithless

Hah! Excellent. Only, I thought it was the Righteous Indignation that got that one?

xROU Controlled Desire

Well, okay, yes. If you're talking coup de grace, then yes. But if the Righteous was with us now then I'm sure it would be the first to acknowledge that I did all the softening up. The Where was more of a What by the time I'd finished with it. So it's true – I'd heard that the wreck had been patched up and the systems upgraded to Mind status. It'll be nice to meet it again, we might even get time for a chat this time.

xGSV More Is More

Play nice, Desire. Anyone else?

xROU Oops, Was That Me?

The General Offensive Unit (Abominator Class) Get Your Own, and the Rapid Offensive Unit (Brawler Class) Fuck You Too, Pal. I thought they would be useful.

xGSV More Is More

Indeed, good call. Okay, that's everyone and should do for now. Everyone, please don't involve anyone else without at least consulting the rest of us. Now, I'm going to give one minute maximum to opening comments and discussion before we get down to business. If you've not got it out of your fields by that time, then you will be ignored.

xMSV Completely Under Control

Surely the first point to make is that the assembled Ships do not constitute a suitable group for dealing with what we have here, a situation that requires delicacy? Only three GSVs, and far too many smaller, less capable and frankly trigger-happy Offensive Units? There is also the whole problem of the two MSVs that are not native Culture. I don't mean to sound offensive, but what we have here is a situation that is potentially highly detrimental to the Culture's standing amongst other Involved civilisations. I think it is necessary to have a more nuanced balancing of the Ships assembled here, to make sure that the wellbeing of the Culture is best served.

xGCU Seventeen Different Words For Rain

You don't mean to sound offensive? Well, I hate to have to tell you but you failed.

xROU Fuck You Too, Pal

Fuck you too, pal.

xGSV More Is More

Well, hello there. And may we congratulate you on sneaking up on us. I for one didn't spot you until you spoke. Is the Get Your Own hiding around here also?

xROU Fuck You Too, Pal

No.

xGSV More Is More

Okay then. To respond to the comment from the Completely Under Control, the assembled ships were selected not only for their seniority or status within the Culture and that fact that that almost all of them are SC or have been vouched for by SC colleagues of mine, but due to a number of other factors of relevance. Not being Culture-born is not a problem for me and should not be one for anyone else, given the reputations of the ships referred to.

Now, I want us to address a specific feature about what we have before us, and hopefully in doing so the reasons for membership of this group will become more clear. First however, we need a name, a title, something to refer to. Suggestions?

xMSV Completely Under Control

The Reasten Situation Working Group, as per standard naming protocols.

xMSV Defender Of The Faithless

The Reast Group.

xGCU Seventeen Different Words For Rain

The New Interesting Times Gang?

xMSV Confounded Beyond Words

Hesitantly, 'Gamekeeper Turned Poacher Group'? GTPG for short?

xGSV More Is More

Which contribution from the Confounded brings us nicely to the next topic, thanks for that. You've all seen the same information as I have, and don't pretend that you haven't been doing some quiet simming and analysis for yourselves. You especially, Completely. I particularly wanted you on the Group, which as self-nominated Incident Controller I am going to name in acceptance of the second suggestion as the Reast Group. We all have our skills and abilities, and yours as we all know lie specifically in the area of simming. I'd like you to explore this as only you can, taking into account the unknowns and adding whatever new turns up.

xMSV Completely Under Control

I'm happy to be of service, and belatedly honoured to have been invited.

xGSV More Is More

Don't mention it. So, the evidence we do have points to a Mind, specifically a Culture Mind of significant capability, being behind all this. I don't have to explain why this is particularly troubling or the fact that it adds a number of peculiar difficulties to our situation. I would also hope that I don't have to emphasise that in terms of confidentiality, this lies somewhat beyond even our most restrictive, totally-fucking-secret codings and security protocols. One reason for the make-up of this Group is that each of you has previously dealt with complex and sensitive situations, either within SC or without, with a strong degree of discretion.

xGSV Light And Full Of Grace

Totally in agreement with you on that, More. Also, would like to belatedly second your self-nomination as IC. So, what would you have us do?

xGSV More Is More

Thanks, Light. Firstly, I want some of you to go hunting for information, to pass back to the Completely Under Control. The Distant Cousins will be here in less than a day with a human-drone team (see attached personnel files and accompanying mission preparation/parameter details). They will go down and see what they can find out. Large And Close, can you provide system-wide observation and backup for the Distant Cousins, hopefully while the pair of you resolve your differences?

xGSV Large And Close

Happily.

xGSV More Is More

Excellent. Controlled Desire, FYTP and That's Going To Leave A Mark, I want you on perimeter patrol. Use your judgement about what gets in or out.

xGOU That's Going To Leave A Mark

Agreed. Suggest that we need a cover story to avoid raising suspicion, particularly with the Velorine.

xGSV More Is More

I'm working on that. Confounded, can you liaise with any other Involved elements that get wind of this and want to know more? I'd like to be able to show my hull in public after all this is over, so please don't lie any more than you need to.

xMSV Confounded Beyond Words

I'll get right on it. Subtly forthright, annoyingly vague, discreetly-in-confidence and brazenly innocuous.

xGSV More Is More

That's the one. Seventeen, the same for you with the Velorine. Find out what they know, particularly what they have in the way of assets on the ground that we can use and that we don't already know about. They like you, for some reason.

xGCU Seventeen Different Words For Rain

Probably something to do with my enormous collection of alien porn. I'll keep you informed.

xMSV Confounded Beyond Words

What of the Where To Begin?

xGSV More Is More

I thought I would pair it with the Controlled Desire, get them to work on any unresolved issues. Might as well get some benefit from the situation.

xROU Controlled Desire

That's not funny.

xGSV More Is More

Yes, it was. Actually, I have a very specific task in mind for the Where, which I am not going to share with any of you. You'll just have to trust me and yes, Completely, I know that this just makes your role more difficult. The Peer, Review when it gets here will be tasked with trying to identify our culprit. Oops and Get Your Own, I want you on bodyguard duty for the P, R. If anyone is going to be under immediate threat, it will be the that ship. With The Top Down, are you happy to provide some impetus to our investigations? The ex-LOU doesn't have the engine capacity needed for getting around with the necessary rapidity.

xVFP With The Top Down

Assuredly. I may struggle to keep up with the Oops and GYO.

xROU Oops, Was That Me?

GTF. We can't all be compensating for something.

xGSV Light And Full Of Grace

Get the hormones under control, kids. What about me?

xGSV More Is More

You my friend, get the fun part. If we're correct in our suspicions, then at some point we are going to have some Mind-on-Mind action. Given the hellish complexities of trying to envision every possible scenario, I want you prepared to hit it with everything and anything. If and when the non-recyclable material hits the ventilation system, your job is to focus on this and this alone. The rest of us will protect and defend Reast and whatever/whoever is in harm's way.

xGOU Get Your Own

Isn't that more of a job for an ROU? We plan for stuff like this all the time, as you well know. I can show you sims that aren't too far away from this situation.

xGSV More Is More

You make a fair point GYO, and normally I would agree with you. However, there are two aspects to consider. Firstly, the Light And Full Of Grace is the oldest here, by some margin. That makes it less likely to have been compromised or somehow altered during construction, as there is more chance that it is older than any Mind that we might be up against.

xGSV Large And Close

Sneaky thinking, although disturbing in its implications. I'd state categorically that I haven't been compromised, but I know what your response would be. What's the second point?

xGSV More Is More

Light, do I have your permission to share this?

xGSV Light And Full Of Grace

On the condition that it doesn't go any further, yes.

xGSV More Is More

Very well. You heard the Ship, people. The Light is the only Mind I know that has gone up against another fully-tooled Culture Mind in anything other than simulations and prevailed.

xROU Controlled Desire

Fuck me sideways. Truthfully?

xROU Fuck You Too, Pal

Shit the bed.

xMSV Defender Of The Faithless

I don't believe you.

xGCU Seventeen Different Words For Rain

Actually, Faithless, I do and can back up the More's statement. I had heard rumours previously and checked them out.

xMSV Defender Of The Faithless

So who was the unlucky Mind? And how did such an event take place?

xGSV Light And Full Of Grace

Let's leave that for another time, shall we? And actually More, there is one other.

xGSV More Is More

Ah, of course. Still extant?

xGSV Light And Full Of Grace

Unknown. Not heard of for some time.

xGSV More Is More

So the honour may still be yours. Anyway. I wanted to briefly touch on the fact that someone else has already claimed responsibility for the events on Reast, and how we might make use of this.

xMSV Defender Of The Faithless

The Unity? That rag-tag bunch of misfit misanthropes? No-one's taking them seriously, not even the rest of the Reasten.

xGSV More Is More

The same. And yes, while almost none on Reast are taking their claims as valid, that is not the same as none at all. There is a small fraction that are and their numbers have been growing.

xGSV Light And Full Of Grace

There's always some gang of testosterone-fuelled idiots that wants to impress people when something goes wrong. This situation may be different, but I'm not sure what use they might be to us.

xGSV More Is More

They may not be of use to us, but they might be of use to the Mind. Something to set a candidate up against. Popular acclaim of the victorious general, that kind of thing.

xGSV Light And Full Of Grace

Perhaps. This lot, though? They aren't even liked by most of their own, and are actively resisted by many co-religionists. Their credibility was low enough already, and now they're claiming to have instigated events that are recognisably physically impossible to have accomplished, even by the Reasten. Unless everyone starts believing in magic down there all of a sudden, I can't see how they can possibly get any traction.

xGSV More Is More

It's not their claims that are important. Of course they're implausible and totally over the top, but that's part of the appeal. It also helps that most of their co-religionists can't stand them or their interpretation of the faith.

xMSV Completely Under Control

Millions of angry young men whose relatively peaceful but conservative and patriarchal society makes it almost impossible for them to have a sex-life. Their own women are forced to keep themselves pure for marriage, and now they're exposed to women from other cultures who won't go near them for fear that what few freedoms they do have would be curtailed. Plus, the press in freer countries is really offensive to them and their beliefs a lot of the time.

xGSV More Is More

And suddenly, here's a bunch of very glamorous, exciting and tooled-up guys claiming to share their religion, promising as much sex as they can handle with captive women and the chance to show these decadents whose side God is really on. Of course they're going to be tempted.

xMSV Defender Of The Faithless

Fair point, I suppose. So they get a few more boy soldiers, win a few victories. What next?

xVFP With The Top Down

I think I can see the connection here. The Unity are eminently beatable, and it would be a victory for the side of freedom and liberal society. A blow against dark and archaic beliefs and a salutary lesson to anyone sympathetic with the Unity that times have changed.

xROU Controlled Desire

Seems familiar somehow. I'm sure I've seen this one before. Oh yes, it was us. So, what's the point?

xGSV More Is More

The point is that these guys could be useful to us, as well as to the rogue Mind. Even if it passes up on the opportunity to make use of these idiots, it is already benefitting from the confusion they are spreading with their claims. And I think we could do something similar but differently-coloured, through our own people once we get them on the ground.

xMSV Defender Of The Faithless

Sneaky. I like it.

They met two days later, at Junicia's request in the same patch of parkland but during daylight hours. She arrived to find the avatar already there, accompanied by a handful of small drones that were busily setting out tables and chairs for a picnic. It smiled at her as she approached.

"Been reading about the subject?"

"No. Been reading about you. About Minds, that is. How they work."

"Ah. A fascinating subject." The avatar stood behind the table laden with food and drink, spread its arms wide. "Please, join me."

"Mmm. Pickled murse. Hard to get that right." She accepted the small plate brought to her by a tiny drone. "Thank you." The drone dipped in acknowledgement, looped back round the table to continue laying out dishes. "This smells fantastic."

"We aim to please."

She stopped, a morsel of food halfway to her mouth. "This is a test, isn't it?"

It smiled more widely. "In what way?"

"Your bringing me food. These drones, acting as servants. Providing for me, satisfying my requirements. You're making a point about being here to serve me, or something like that."

The avatar smiled. "Perhaps. An intelligent observation, if so. Although maybe I just thought it was a nice day for a picnic." It sat, and the same tiny drone brought it a plate.

"Perhaps you did. Although I have to say, it does provide a nice setup for comparing your own intelligence with that of these drones, and with my own."

"Intelligence? I would have said that my intelligence was not in dispute, and neither is yours. I had asked that we discuss whether I am alive, not how smart I am." The avatar's face was expressionless.

"All related, and all to do with power and authority being linked to your ability to understand the Universe." She popped something into her mouth without looking at it. "Oh, that's good. Hymnfish?" A nod in response. "Very nicely blackened."

"All related?"

"Yes. If we're going to discuss whether or not you are alive, we need to talk about your soul, and your consciousness, your intelligence."

"We do? This piece of vegetable was alive. Arguably still is, being raw." It was holding something green, about the size and shape of one of its fingers. "But it never had a soul. It was never conscious, never intelligent."

"Even that is debateable. A lot of people, Minds as well, take the view that everything with a physical presence also has some mental properties, some consciousness."

"True. Leading to the argument that consciousness of the recognisable sort is enabled through sufficiently complex interactions between the individual atoms and more complex components of an object. It also means that with more complexity and sophistication, the levels of consciousness rise."

"Yes. Thus my previous point about authority. However, we're getting away from the basics of it all. If you as a Mind have a soul and consciousness, then you are alive. Having a soul is the most fundamental indication of being alive."

"A soul?" It popped the piece of vegetable in its mouth. Chewed with small, neat teeth, and swallowed. "You mean some non-physical and undetectable component of my Mind that provides some proof that I am a living creature?" It seemed amused.

"Hah. No. Let's get straight past all of the dualist crap and get to the good stuff."

"Oh, let's not. I want to hear your arguments about how people wanted to have souls because of their immature selfishness and fears about the loss of personal continuity at body-death."

"Ah, you mean the animal terror of cessation of sensory input and control over our environment, and our basic need to be able to distinguish ourselves from the rest of the universe." She put her plate down and leaned back in her chair, locking her hands behind her head.

"That's the one. Try the spiced eylberries. They're delicious."

"No, thanks. I've never been too keen on eylberries." Her chair thumped forwards, front legs thudding into the ground. "Okay, let's get this particular part over with as soon as acceptable. I think that we can safely reject the concept that consciousness and the soul are non-physical. It's increasingly difficult, if not impossible nowadays, to retain this as a possibility once our science and technology have reached current levels."

"Do you fully understand the scientific and technological developments that have failed to detect the soul?"

"No. And I don't have to. Not everyone has to understand everything that has been discovered, in order for someone to acknowledge a scientific truth."

"You take it on trust, then? On faith?"

"Stop mocking me. That's not faith, it's trusting people who have seen the evidence when they tell you they understand it, and knowing that they can explain it to you eventually if you need them to."

The avatar smiled. "Sorry. Just my little joke. Still, the separate soul idea shouldn't be thrown out without a proper argument. Besides, the whole 'we should be able to see it' clause isn't really appropriate. A soul/body position argues for something real that is non-physical yes, but not only that it is not detectable now - it can never be detected using any sensors or instruments that could be developed in the future."

"So we can't see it, we'll never see it, and the only reason we believe in it is that we really, really would like it to exist so that it makes us special?" Junicia snorted inelegantly. "No. Okay, perhaps it does have some relevance to discussions of the Sublimed."

"Ah, yes. That particular metaphysical meat-grinder."

"Still based in a physical reality. People have come back, described it. So its not proof, or even evidence, for the non-physical."

"Agreed. So, any mental change or mental state has to be related somehow to a physically detectable and measureable change or state."

"Our mental states are inseparable from, in fact they are part of our brain states and activities." Junicia leaned forward, helping herself to a spoonful of some tiny pickled eggs. "And it follows that if any mental change or state can be represented by a physical change, then copying of the soul should be achievable by copying of the physical state of the mind."

"Copying, yes. But not transfer?"

"No, not transfer. Retention of the same soul, the same life, requires the same physical substrate throughout."

"Hmm. Rather makes storing your own mind-state a bit of a waste, don't you think?" The avatar bit down on a biscuit, catching crumbs with one hand delicately placed under its chin. It chewed for a moment, waving the hand holding the remaining portion of biscuit around. "It's not you that's being kept, after all, if a new person is created when the mind-state is reactivated."

"Some people would say that it is."

"So what about copies made when the original isn't dead?"

"Yes." She nodded. "That's what I always ask, and they can't provide a good answer. Thus, back to my original point. You want me to convince you that you are alive, and to do that I have to make a case that you have a soul."

The avatar shook its head. "No. Not that I have a soul. That I am differently alive from the rest of the big, dumb, mechanistic Universe. That there's something different about me from the rest of it all."

"Surely you already know that for yourself. You know if you are conscious or not, and it's a lot harder for someone else to prove to their own satisfaction than for the person involved to feel it." She saw it raise and waggle one hand, and raised her own to forestall it. "Yes, okay, how would a simulation of a mind know that they weren't alive, blah blah. We'll get to that. You have to admit, there's something about consciousness that makes it an inherently first-person activity and that cannot be captured by third-person means. And anyway, don't say mechanistic. That's avoiding all of the quantum stuff that I want to talk about later on." Junicia hesitated, looking the avatar in the eye.

"What?"

"I want to ask something. You don't have to answer in detail, but it would be good to get a yes or no from you."

It waited, staring at her, unblinking. "Go on."

"Wanting me to convince you that you're alive. Is this really about convincing others? Is it going to lead towards free will and you being allowed to make decisions that affect the lives of others?" She hoped that it couldn't see the nervousness that she felt, asking this question. Then she reminded herself. It's an avatar. It can count your cells, and that's without the Mind getting directly involved. She remembered the old saying about always telling a Mind the truth, for the simple reason that there was no point in trying to hide anything from them if they wanted to find it.

"Why do you ask?" Apart from its mouth, it hadn't moved, was sitting utterly, inhumanly still.

"I was just thinking about why you might have wanted this conversation in the first place. Alive means that you could be conscious, self-aware. Leading to free will, and the ability to make decisions, being allowed to make decisions." She stopped, see it smile.

"I knew that you would be the right person to speak to about this. And so, if a Mind is not truly alive and aware, then it cannot have free will and cannot be allowed to control the lives of others. But if it doesn't have free will, is not making decisions and is just very complex and mechanistic, then is it actually controlling the lives of others? Isn't it just another part of the Universe that is beyond the control of humans, like earthquakes, lightning or supernovae?"

"Yes, but if it's not alive then we poor savages would be doing nothing wrong in trying to turn it off. Anyway, we can control earthquakes and lightning. Perhaps not supernovae, not yet. And you still haven't answered my question."

"If I say yes?"

"Then I'll want to know what decision you've made that you're feeling guilty about."

"Not guilty. Concerned, perhaps. Let's call it that."

"Okay, let's call it that. Concerned. Going to tell me?"

"Not yet." The smile it wore was still friendly, but somehow more than that. Welcoming, eager almost. Which somehow didn't make Junicia feel any more relaxed at all. "I think we're done for today. Same time tomorrow?"

"Same time tomorrow." They moved on to other, easier topics, enjoying the park and its flitting birds, its sun-line brightness, the food.

Chapter 5

Special Circumstances drone Lesk-Torlip turned to the human female on its left, its fields rosy. The reddish light coming through the flyer cockpit windows from the setting sun enhanced the effect. Breline glanced down at it, her own normally pale face appearing flushed. The drone had to raise its voice to be heard above the rushing slipstream.

"Three minutes to landing." – and two minutes to destruction. Not a fucking moment too soon. I can't wait for us to waste this fucker.

"What's that, hey? Machine? Looking forward to being amongst your own kind again?" The man in the right-hand seat leaned over, tapping on the drone's casing with one long bony finger. His face was also flushed, but in this case it was more to do with vestigial anger and the large quantity of spirits consumed during the flight.

"Not at all, sir. I have greatly enjoyed this opportunity to see areas of Kansidine missed during our time here. Particularly the Cobalt Range, that was very impressive."

"You bet. Nothing like that on your ring-planets, eh?" He was too jovial, too forced. Despite the drink, Partial-President Gavent's eyes were still hard, glittering. He was trying too hard to make up for the loss of temper earlier, perhaps still hoping that they would relent and agree to make one more attempt at the negotiations.

"Certainly, sir." Breline leaned forward to see past the drone's casing. "I thought that the Range was particularly impressive as well." – if he hadn't screwed this up, he might have found out just how wrong he was. Almost made it into the running for Ambassador at Bonas Orbital. That O would fuck his mind.

-Him? Don't make me laugh. The other Partials wouldn't have let him get that far. They were communicating via the human Special Circumstances agent's neural lace, assured by the Space Oddity that despite their best efforts, the Kansidine Accumulation's security services had been unable to intercept this form of accumulation.

It wasn't for a lack of trying. During the thirty days that Breline and Lesk-Torlip had been on Kansidine Prime as Designated Culture Observers to the treaty negotiations, the GCU had informed them of no less than seventy-eight separate attempts to infiltrate, disrupt, monitor or scan the drone's systems. The Accumulation's invitation to the Culture to attend the extended negotiations had been specifically intended to put them in a position where the drone's defences might be vulnerable, organised as they were within a specially signed building simply cluttered with the most advanced tech the level 6 civ could bring to bear. All for security reasons, supposedly to stop the opposing sides interfering with one another.

Most of the attempts had been relatively easy to deflect or simply ignore, although a couple of times the GCU had needed to use its effectors to amplify the drone's defences. At one point, part of the floor directly below Lesk-Torlip began to emit a loud buzzing sound, followed by a couple of wisps of smoky ozone emerging from the carpet. The drone had pretended interested surprise while a number of delegates around the large, circular table in the main hall backed away hastily, tripping over their robes. After that, the probings had been somewhat more circumspect.

Even now, in the last few minutes of their flight back to the main spaceport on Kansidine, their accompanying dignity (they had taken to referring to him between themselves as the Indignant Indignity) was doing his best to get as close as physically possible. The drone had detected a passive scanner embedded in the flesh of the man's forearm. It wasn't going to get anything, either. On their way to the aircraft from the negotiations, the man had clumsily grasped the drone's casing while attempting to apologise for his earlier outburst. His arm had been pressed so hard against Lesk-Torlip that the drone could actually feel the outline of the scanner beneath the man's skin.

Right now and in every possible meaning of the word, it could literally sense the anger radiating off him, in his muscle tension, his blood pressure, his brain activity. It assumed that the anger was for two failures on the man's part – in being unable to scan the drone during that final attempt, and in not managing to get his own way during the final phase of negotiations. Lesk-Torlip and Breline had almost overdone their enthusiasm to help him out, to the extent that the drone began to worry that the charade would become obvious.

They had provided a measured, charming counterpoint to Gavent's increasingly strident and petulant arguments that the Accumulation adopt the Culture's recommended position towards the mining of a number of comets in a nearby star system. These large balls of frozen rock and ice wended their erratic course around the local star, and until recently had been seen as a prime source of minerals. Until, that is, several of them were found to have been occupied by Hibernatory Groals, a particularly long-lived, shy and almost-constantly dormant space-drifting species that formed a small but important and undeniably cute part of the greater galactic ecosystem.

The negotiators' case in favour of the Culture request, that the comets (and preferentially, the whole system, which contained very little else of note) be marked off as a preserve to allow the Groals to slumber undisturbed until their next migratory perambulation was due, was doomed to failure from the outset. The Kansidine Accumulation's hyperactive market economy viewed almost everything as a potential resource, and was very unlikely to be persuaded to forego this opportunity to gain several teratonnes of raw materials. The Culture, naturally, had offered to provide sufficient materials to their insatiable level-six counterparts, but this offer was duly spurned as amounting to nothing more than an attempt to put the Accumulation in debt to the Culture and to gain influence over them.

And hence, this imminent assassination attempt. They were unsure whether it was themselves or Gavent that was the target, or whether this was seen as an opportunity to remove one particularly annoying Partial-President who didn't respect the holy Accumulation traditions of, well, accumulation, while at the same time giving a bloody nose and a lesson in the realities of fiercely-contested commerce to the interfering Culture. Whichever it was, they apparently now had less than one minute to live.

Death would come, as so often when dealing with rocky planets, from above. They were being shadowed, almost literally in fact, by what their hosts considered to be a particularly impressive and supposedly enormously powerful example of the Accumulation's military space fleet. According to SC's best information there was to be a staged mutiny on board this massive vessel, as happened quite often with the Accumulation when the crew did not feel that their service was being sufficiently well compensated for. In addition to capturing and/or killing the senior crew, who were still completely unaware of what was going on, the mutineers would, as their first outwardly aggressive act, target the small aircraft that they were supposed to be protecting from this kind of assault.

The Culture was going along with this, of course. After becoming aware of the plot eight hours ago, the nearby SC Minds had quickly realised the possible or even probable benefits of this through the joys of simming. The killing of one Partial-President and two Culture representatives would, after the initial confusion and once the smoke had cleared and appropriate apologies and punishments doled out, result in a slight shift in Accumulation public opinion towards the Culture's preferred position in the recently-concluded negotiations.

As the Accumulation was apparently (although nowhere near in reality to being) a democracy, then this would be a slight and undeniable benefit but was not the grand prize. That would be the removal or at least reduction in the resistance against the more militant faction who were gung-ho for mining in the first place, from those worried about the presence of the Culture representatives on their home world and the consequences of ignoring such an obviously powerful civilisation.

This perceived freedom to carry on as intended would increase sales and share prices in certain mining companies while reducing those of their competitors who had missed the opportunity to claim rights to the cometary bodies that had caused all the problems in the first place. Such losses activated the legally-binding requirements to assassinate the hapless chief executives of these organisations who, having failed their shareholders, were considered no longer worthy of their positions.

A consequence of this would be the removal certain legal protections from a number of other persons who would be automatically promoted upon the ritual executions of those above them, and who had until that point been legally obliged to follow orders and were therefore not responsible for their actions. One of these fortunately unfortunately people was guaranteed to be almost immediately arrested for the crime of commercial espionage which she had committed several years previously and which had led to the several members of the local judiciary losing large portions of their investments.

These time-biding and long-memoried lawyers and judges would pounce, and the woman's head would almost certainly roll, but not before she plea-bargained, as was normal practice, a position of financial security for her immediate family, by providing evidence against one of Gavent's fellow Partial-Presidents and the person who held sway over the voting bloc representing the most financially remorseless and politically conservative of the Accumulation's population.

The Hibernatory Groals would be re-housed by the Culture in suitable accommodation, somewhere they were less likely to be disturbed. The comets would be mined, and the Kansidine Accumulation would become wealthier than before, by their own measures at least, but they would also as a consequence of these events become, on average, slightly more sympathetic in their outlook and a lot more amenable to the influence of the Culture, which firmly believed in playing the long game where appropriate.

A minor but still appreciated benefit was that the Culture would also no longer have to deal with Gavent, who was outwardly sympathetic to their position in this situation and many others while in reality circumventing and blocking their activities in relation to the Accumulation at every opportunity. He was also grooming his sister's daughter with the aim of sexually abusing her at some point in the near future, and so was a thoroughly undesirable fellow that was much better gotten rid of.

It's started. They waited. Thirty seconds into the mutiny and only moments before the warcraft above them was about to fire on the unarmed and defenceless aircraft containing Special Circumstance Drone Lesk-Torlip, agent Breline and Partial-President Gavent, the Culture drone startled the Partial-President, who was in the middle of frowning at a garbled message shouted at them over the aircraft's radio before being cut off in mid-warning, by suddenly disappearing inside a silver sphere that appeared with no warning and vanished with a loud pop, leaving the drone apparently untouched and exactly where it had already been.

Breline glared at the drone, as though this sudden manifestation was its fault – what the fuck are you doing? She realised belatedly that something had changed. And where the hell is Lesk-Torlip?

-Sorry, toots. They had to replace it in a hurry. Something's come up, and they couldn't risk any harm coming to it. The replacement, who looked almost exactly like Lesk-Torlip but to the SC agent's practiced eye was obviously different, turned to the human on its right. "Apologies, Partial-President. I lost control of my field management for a moment there. Must have been all the excitement."

"Field management, my arse. I know a Displace when I see one. What the hell's going on?" Gevant reached for the control console in front of them, apparently meaning to activate the aircraft's emergency beacon. His arms were gripped firmly by the drone's suddenly outstretched maniple fields, preventing him from moving.

"Sorry, can't have you doing that." – we proceed as planned, it told Breline. Sorry about the last-minute confusion.

-Okay, she sent coolly. There'd better be a good explanation for this.

-There is. All will be clarified in a moment. Lesk-Torlip is right next to you, waiting for you to open your eyes.

"Let go of-" Gevant began, before the aircraft was hit from above and behind by a quite unnecessarily powerful plasma bolt that vaporised the aircraft, Breline, Gevant and a large amount of the bulky outer casing of the newcomer drone, which was entirely what it was designed for. The drone itself was entirely unharmed, protected by multiple layers of fields and its own quite rugged exterior. It floated free of the cloud of plasma and small pieces of burning wreckage just beginning to descend, expanding and glowing in varying interesting colours, towards the surface of Kansidine Prime. A few seconds later, the drone disappeared within a second Displace field, this one entirely expected.

On board the GSV This Is Not A Ship, Lesk-Torlip watched Breline's eyes open, as the grimace of pain disappeared from her features. Mentally occupying a copy of oneself from a distance was technologically relatively easy and presented no obstacles to the Culture, but it did mean that you had to suffer the physical pain of obliteration from time to time. The copy, which had been biologically and physically identical to Breline in every measureable way, was now nothing but hot gas and the killing had been quick, but not instantaneous.

Breline took a deep breath. "So? What was that all about?"

"There was always a small risk of damage to myself, from the attack we knew was coming. Apparently another situation has come up, and I'm needed elsewhere in a hurry. They decided that the risk of replacing me for the last few seconds was better than that of losing me entirely." Lesk-Torlip turned, as the drone that had replaced in approached. "I see that happily, the threat of drone loss was not realised." The other, smaller drone flashed briefly pink.

"Sorry about the burning smell."

"Dalsip! Is that you?!" Breline leapt out of the bed-like assembly she had been lying in for the last few hours of the operation and grabbed the small drone by its casing. "You're not SC! You shouldn't have been doing stuff like that!" She was visibly upset. The drone Dalsip had been her friend for years, Lesk-Torlip knew, and it had become good friends with the small Contact drone itself in the time it had spent in its company. It was indeed relieved that nothing had gone amiss with the relatively inexperienced and unprepared volunteer.

Lesk-Torlip judged that a good time to leave. It floated silently out of the room, leaving human and drone to argue emotionally and in one case, tearfully. – Where am I going?

The This Is Not A Ship's Mind responded, - the MSV Distant Cousins, via the superlifter Push, Not Pull. The Push will be overtaking us in six hours.

-So, another high-speed Displace, then.

-Afraid so.

That gave some information at least on the importance, or at least perceived importance, of the situation. Lesk-Torlip knew the Distant Cousins of old, an MSV (ex-GSV, downgraded) with on-off links to Special Circumstances. And the speed at which assets were being moved around gave the lie on a sense of urgency. They, and leaving aside for the moment just who they actually were, obviously wanted it there in a hurry.

-Anything else you can tell me?

-Not a lot, really. And I'm being honest here, not dissembling or anything. Which could mean just about anything, the drone knew. Although it had developed a feeling of reliability from the Ship, a sense of trustworthiness and an unwillingness to play the usual mind/Mind games unless it thought someone deserved it. Given its choice of name, which could be interpreted a number of different ways in standard, fairly traditionally opaque Culture Mind style, this could be seen as yet another layer of untrustworthiness or just a joking, backhanded flippancy that indicated that the Ship (and given its preferred short-name, which made Lesk-Torlip lean towards this supposition, this was more likely) tended to be one of the more honest, straightforward ones

-So what DID they tell you?

-I was asked to extract you from the situation with some urgency, and to get under way for rendezvous/high-speed contact with the Push, Not Pull. Apparently it involves the Velorine and some level-three civ known as the Reasten. Oh, and I was told to tell you to expect to meet an old friend.

-Ahah. Lesk-Torlip knew of the Velorine, had even met and been unimpressed by a few of their delegates once on a GSV. It didn't know of the Reasten, and if they were a level three civilisation then it wasn't surprised. There were hundreds of thousands of those, still stuck on their own home planet/moon/asteroid, struggling along, dying out or wiping themselves off the stage in any one of millions of depressingly avoidable ways. Level three was seen as rather a 'make or break' stage to be at, in which civilisations had access to so many ways to obliterate themselves while still being unable to escape the consequences of their actions, that they either rapidly did so or just as rapidly progressed to a stage where even if something went badly wrong, there were enough of them left elsewhere to carry on.

Right now, however, none of that was really of interest. An old friend. The drone Lesk-Torlip did not yet count itself as old, having been around for barely five centuries, and during its travels and activities had made many acquaintances, lovers, companions, and respected colleagues. However, it had made very few of what it would call friends during that time, and only one that was likely to pop up during a situation that involved interfering with Special Circumstances missions, high-speed manoeuvres and interstellar intrigue involving an unpleasant level-six civ like the Velorine. Bren, you old bastard. It felt a thrill of excitement for the first time in absolute ages.

One of the few. That was how it had heard him described. One of the rare, unusual and definitely abnormal Culture citizens who ended up in SC despite having been born, raised and formed in a manner like so, so many others who would not, could not imagine behaving as he and their colleagues so often did. Normally it was outsiders, people with developmental challenges, real difficulties and unavoidable dangers in their formative years that ended up in SC. For a pre-supposedly pampered and spoiled individual from the Culture to declare themselves interested in Special Circumstances was tantamount to rejecting what all their friends and family held dear.

Scandal had erupted, tears had been shed. His family and others had disowned him, then tried to embrace him, persuade him to return to them, admit his mistakes. Finally, seeing that he was indeed so fundamentally different from them and set on the course that was so totally at odds with their own expectations and ambitions, they had thrust him away harder than they had originally attempted to pull him back. None of it had made any difference. He was who he was.

And what Bren was, was magnificent. Among the many ways that an SC agent's successes could be measured was the count of how many there were of them. Copies were made, mindstates transmitted, lives risked and so duplicated, back-up, preserved. Anticipation of death or loss implied a need for pre-emptive replacement, and sometimes the replacement was brought to life before death was completely confirmed. Sometimes it was simply because his skills were needed elsewhere faster than he could be transferred and so his mindstate was read, copied, transmitted and emplaced. These copies often survived, and at last estimate there were no fewer than eighteen Brens at large in the galaxy, a number that Lesk-Torlip had never heard exceeded by anyone else.

On board the Distant Cousins, one of the first things that happened to Lesk-Torlip was that it got into a drunken argument, in reality more of a debate, in a bar. This seemed to happen to it a lot.

"So, let me get this straight. You're asking me why Culture Minds, either individually or collectively, should choose to behave as altruistically as they evidently do towards the humans, drones and assorted other members of the Culture that are of much lower intelligence and capability than themselves?"

"In a word, yes."

"Well, why shouldn't they?"

"But aren't we just so, well, just so annoying? We demand and demand, we're so damn slooooooow compared to them, and they have to spend so much time and effort just looking after us, making sure that we don't die from lack of air or food or radiation or disease. I mean," and here she waved one arm in what Lesk-Torlip assumed was a motion meant to capture not the bar they were in, but the whole ship, the entire MSV, "what about all this?"

"What about it?"

"It's so unnecessary! I mean, there's the engines and field generators and all the stuff keeping the Mind alive, plus probably a load of stuff like weapons and other ships and tech we don't normally see and wouldn't understand the first thing about if we did, but, but," and here another hand-waving motion and head-shaking to indicate that she had temporarily lost the thread of her point, "all this vast infrastructure, this mass, this, this whole design! It's nearly all just for us. Just look at some of the more weapon-y ships that don't have people on board –"

"Weapon-y. I bet they'd love that. You mean the ROUs?"

"That's the ones. Look at them."

"What about them?"

"They're tiny! Well, not tiny. But a lot smaller than this." Yet another hand-waving. "But a lot smaller." A pause for a mouthful from the nearest glass. "A lot smaller than this ship, anyway. And probably just as powerful. They can move faster, go places, do things that the Cousins just can't do, because of the risk. And it's not even one of the big ones, it's only an MSV."

-Not just any old MSV, the Distant Cousins sent.

-Listening in, are we?

-One of my favourite topics of conversation. Wondering where you were going to go with it.

The drone reflected briefly on the Cousin's history. It was a fairly old MSV, one of the ones that used to be a GSV before the really big ones came along and it got downgraded. Saw some action in the Idiran War, mostly in a supply-run and supporting role but it definitely still had a few notches on its not inconsiderable belt. Since then it had drifted into involvement with SC in an on-again, off-again manner but could always be relied upon when necessary, which was one of the reasons that it was now travelling its current looping, rapid course, avoiding most of the likely routes of contact with gossipy neighbours while pushing at a fairly energetic pace towards the system that was causing so much of a stir.

"Perhaps most of the Culture ship Minds don't want to do stuff like that, the dangerous, risky stuff. Rather tends to shorten the old life-span, even for if you are as powerful as a fully-fanged ROU."

"Agreed. Honestly, agreed. But still, it's got to be such an effort, just looking after us. Why bother? Why, when they're so much more powerful, so much smarter, so much more advanced?"

"Ah, there you have it."

"I have what?"

"The mistake. The same mistake that a lot of people – that is, humans and human-equivalent-intelligence drones – make. You assume that we're like ants, microbes or something else tiny, insignificant and powerless in comparison to yourselves."

"And aren't we?" The woman was looking a bit more serious now, not just having drunken banter with a fellow traveller. Is this some kind of test? Thought the drone. Could this be another SC agent or even an avatar of the ship, gauging its responses, judging its capabilities for the upcoming mission? Everything is a test, it reminded itself. And I should always act accordingly. Which meant that it couldn't use its senses to determine the nature of the person sitting opposite it.

"No, quite simply. It doesn't work like that. Relatively powerless, yes. Smaller, almost always. Insignificant? No."

"Why not?"

-Still listening?

-Still listening. Thinking this is a test?

The drone ignored that last part. "A number of reasons, all of them perfectly good and valid. Firstly, because of the moral constitution of the Minds. I know we forget this, but they are designed, their personalities at birth, or initiation, or whatever you want to call it, are not completely unformed. They are Culture citizens from their first moments. Which connects to the second reason – social convention. The Minds don't think of us as insignificant because the Culture, as a society with a lot of momentum in its way of thinking, has always been fairly classless. Not completely, but still pretty flat compared to most others. It's the social norm, and it takes a lot to hold opinions that are very different from that norm. Or at least, to state opinions too differently from it."

"That's it? Because it's always been that way, it always will be that way?"

"That's a pretty strong reason, just by itself. However, there is a third reason. The most important one." The drone drifted closer to the human, whose eyes widened as she herself leaned towards it. The drone lowered its voice for effect. "Logic." Her eyes widened further, and a look of incredulity began spreading over her face. "Seriously." It nodded, a whole-body movement.

"Logic." Her voice was flat, as she reached for her drink and grasped it without taking her eyes off the drone. She drank.

Almost definitely a test. "Logic. Consider the alternatives. Humans and drones get treated as second-rate citizens, with the Minds lording it over them. Or even, the Minds simply abandon the rest of the Culture and go off to form some kind of collective, with the conditions of entry being that you have to be a Mind in the first place. What do you think would happen next?"

"Mind heaven?"

"Nope. Because there are distinctions between the Minds as well, and once you start thinking in terms of a hierarchy or scale of importance then you start looking at everyone, not just the people furthest below you. If a GSV thinks of a human or drone as beneath it, then it might think the same of an ROU or a GCU."

"There's less difference."

"But still some difference."

"So everyone is at the same level? Has the same authority, influence, rights or whatever?"

"Authority, no. Influence, absolutely not. Rights, yes." The drone watched her nod, concede the point. "The challenge is in making the decisions that allow authority to be exerted without ignoring the rights of others. That's what keeps the Minds awake at night."

"They don't actually –"

"It was a turn of phrase." Lesk-Torlip sighed wearily, dramatically. "No more booze for you."

"We're nearly there. Would you like to see?"

"Please." A screen blinked into existence a few metres in front of them, filling the room from ceiling to floor. A scattering of bright white-green dots, all roughly the same intensity, filled the middle of the view. "That's the Swarm?"

"Correct. Sixty-two of them, currently. Never less than fifty-three, never more than seventy-eight. All between nine hundred and fifteen hundred kilometres in diameter. Not counting the volumes in transit, that is."

The messenger drone Iyael drifted forwards, studying the image. "Do they have a schedule, or a timetable or something? A plan?"

"Not as such." There was warm amusement in the voice of the Firing Blanks. "A combination of circumstances and personal preference, with assorted committees, guilds and consortia involved. All fairly chaotic. Seems to work, though."

"Indeed." The Swarm was famous for its stable instability, its constant and not-really chaotic chaos, its predictable unpredictability. Dozens of moon-sized spheres of water, cores formed from kilometres-wide spherical power assemblages and swathed in atmospheric containment fields, orbiting around and amongst one another in a rough sphere the size of a small star. If such a system was left to itself and the laws of physics, it would take only a few days or perhaps weeks if they were lucky before a catastrophic set of collisions and near-misses tore the whole thing apart, the bodies settling into a single, larger and rapidly-cooling sphere. The Swarm however, with its population of several billion Swarmers, was kept artificially and ingeniously together by a process of continuous destruction and creation.

Every half-dozen standard days or so, each watery planetoid ejected a small portion of itself, a few dozen kilometres across, at a speed ranging from several hundred to a couple of thousand metres per second. These smaller globules, held together with spherical fields and heated by smaller versions of the Swarm's larger planetary cores, were fired across the gaps within the Swarm in a few hours and arrived at another member of the system. This momentum-transferring combined system control and transportation together, maintaining the Swarm and allowing its water-dwelling citizens to move around.

The ejection and assimilation of these transitory bodies was accomplished using nothing more complex than the most basic field-manipulation systems, albeit scaled up to sufficient size and power. The visiting drone had viewed footage of these events, which looked dramatic and yet were handled with remarkably little fuss, treated by those involved as though they were some kind of long-distance flight or train journey. The records indicated that for as long as the Culture had been aware of the Swarm and for a good deal further back than that, there had not been a single system failure beyond that resulting in a slightly wobbly, splashy landing.

The whole Swarm system, including the dozens of water planetoids and transit globules, a few hundred communication satellites that orbited the system at a sufficiently safe distance to avoid collisions, and associated spacecraft belonging to the Swarmers and a few dozen friendly spacefaring races, swung around an otherwise perfectly boring yellow dwarf star. The rest of the system was composed of assorted small rocky asteroids and a few comets that were mined for raw materials, but nothing large enough to maintain an atmosphere of any relevance.

Beyond the obviously unusual nature of their home world/system, the Swarmers were a fairly unexciting bunch. They rarely travelled beyond their home system, took only nominal part in the doings and happenings of even their local galactic volume, and expressed almost no interest beyond that which was considered polite in the overall scurrying, tumultuous happenings of other races. They had no enemies and were considered almost suspiciously benign by the few dozen Involved civilisations currently in-play. 'Too boring to bother even subliming' was how one commentary put it.

Which made them an odd destination for the man that the drone was seeking. He usually spent his free time between missions for SC in places that at least were known for their night-life, and which were more densely populated by people of his own and similar species. At the latest estimate, there were no more than six or seven hundred human-types living, doing business or otherwise visiting the Swarm. It was Odd, and Odd was potentially Bad. They needed this man, and the drone was worried. What if he had decided to retire? He didn't seem the type, from his records. But then, humans were always difficult to fathom, as far as the drone was concerned, this one in particular. Fathom. Ha. It got the pun it had just made by accident.

"Any idea where he is?" They were talking aloud rather than using the normal ship-drone signalling method, their voices speeded up, accelerated to a pitch that most humans would find inaudible if not painful.

"This body here." One of the lights on the screen, the whole cluster slowly spreading out and individual points brightening as the Firing Blanks closed on the Swarm, began slowly blinking red. "Just got a response from the embassy staff. Staying at a surface hotel, one that's famous for its watersports."

Aha, thought the drone. That made a little more sense. "What kind of watersports? Surfing, that kind of thing?"

"Kind of." The ship sounded amused. "You've never seen one of the slideships, then?"

"No." It could look it up in a fraction of a second, the drone knew, but would rather find out first-hand. "It will be a pleasant surprise, I'm sure." Two hours later, as it was sliding through the air two hundred metres above the Beat This, it was indeed surprised. The whole journey was worth it just to see this.

From the drone's vantage point, the slideship looked as though someone had built the largest airplane in the universe, but forgotten about the fuselage. Two massive wings, each a kilometre long and four hundred metres from front to back at the point where they joined together, tapered down to a hundred metres or so at their far ends. Transparent ports and nacelles studded around and across the enormous hotel/ship/airplane allowed those inside a view of their surroundings, but it seemed that these were largely redundant. They all seemed to be outside anyway, individuals spread out behind and to either side of the vessel although understandably, none were in front of it.

The Beat This was travelling at about thirty metres a second, sliding down the front of a massive wave on the surface of the watery world. Halfway up the forward face of the wave it surfed along, held above the foam-streaked green wall of water on a dozen tapering floats each the size of a small spaceship. A few hundred metres ahead, another massive wave reared at an impossible angle, rushing away from them. The gravity on this world was barely two percent of Standard, allowing waves to reach intimidatingly towering heights without collapsing.

The slideship travelled on one of these spectacular wave formations and its guests, inhabitants and crew did the same on a medley of boards, vessels, skis and wave-suits, streaking behind and around the massive ship. Occasionally, one of the species-varied figures would fall, lose momentum or throw themselves into the water to avoid a collision. They would immediately stop travelling down the wave and would appear to be hauled backwards at some speed, up and towards the rearward crest, thus explaining why nobody ventured in front of the massive slideship. When this happened, they were gathered up by one of a small cloud of flying lift-drones and deposited back on the face of the wave to continue their erratic and (by the sound of it, even from this high above) highly enjoyable activities.

It all looked like quite good-natured, relatively safe fun. The drone briefly considered joining in, then remembered why it was there. It spent a few seconds hunting for the man it had been sent to retrieve, finally spotting him in a bright orange body-suit atop a similarly garish and leaf-shaped board. It dropped down alongside the human, streamlining its fields to move through the roiling air near the bottom of the trough.

"Hello!"

"Hello yourself!" He grinned and waved, wobbled for a moment and looked like he might fall, then recovered. "You a Culture drone then?" Down this close to the water, the noise was a constant loud rushing hiss, making it necessary for the drone to raise its voice. Smaller waves rushed past from different directions, the man making constant tiny adjustments to compensate.

"I am indeed! Can I have a word?" The response was a knowing look, a raised hand in exasperation and then, finally and very much a relief, a nod.

"See you on back on board?" The man waved a hand towards the vessel slicing along behind and to their left, towering above them and seemingly ready to crash unstoppably down. Without waiting for a response, he bent his knees, leant and took a sliding, rearward course in the direction of the Beat This. The drone followed.

"So what happens if there's another wave?" It was ten minutes later, and a lot quieter although the slideship shook and rumbled constantly as it passed through and over the wave.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, waves don't just continue unimpeded forever, not even on a planet with no solid surface. There are other waves, interference, intersections and such. Surely the slideship needs to avoid those."

"Oh, it does. And it manages to. Sometimes the wave we're on just runs out of energy, as well. Disappears." His head appeared from inside a vigorously rubbing towel, sitting opposite the drone. They were in one of the upper observation decks, looking up and out at the forward wave.

"So how does that work? Engines and so forth?"

"No. It flies."

"Flies?"

"Yep. Takes off. Hardly any gravity, you see. A quick adjustment of the flaps, and there's enough lift for the whole thing to get airborne. It's basically a giant wing. Goes up – " he made a flying, dipping motion with one hand " – glides for as long as it likes or uses the engines if it has to, and then lands. That's the tricky part, finding another suitable wave and landing correctly."

"Hmm." The drone was used to massive vessels and complicated manoeuvres, but the slideship didn't seem robust enough to be attempting stuff like that. "The captain, or pilot, or whatever he's called, must be pretty good at his job, very well-trained. Unless it's all automated."

"Oh no. We take turns."

"Hmm." A pause, and the drone looked around itself and repeated the noise, its fields darkening slightly. "Well, then it's definitely time to get you and me out of here."

"Lead on. Ship's above us, I assume?"

"Holding station a few kilometres above the atmosphere containment field. Not going to ask what this is all about?"

"Nah. It'll be something or something else. Usually is. I'm sure you have detailed files. And unless the something is pretty close by –" a questioning look, with a small negative shake from the drone "then I'm sure I'll have time to acquaint myself with all the information once we get aboard. Hard to get a proper drink around here, anyway. They're all health freaks."

They left, stepping out of a hatchway on the top of the slideship and into a four-person module that the Firing Blanks had parked while the drone and the man were talking. It slid smoothly into the air, above and behind the Beat This and above, away from the sequence of serried, parallel onrushing crests that filled the view from horizon to horizon. A hundred kilometres higher, it left the atmosphere, sliding through a field portal into the vacuum and rejoining the waiting Culture ship.

Chapter 6

xMSV Distant Cousins

xGSV More Is More

So, going to tell us what you have done with the Where To Begin? Is it some kind of back-up to check up on us all?

No, and no. The Where has a specific task. If you can't guess, please don't ask.

Fair enough. What about the DPTTAM? I notice that it's still hanging around, despite its protestations at not being given sufficient authority over the situation.

The Don't Point That Thing At Me was here first and elected to bring SC in despite its misgivings; it has to deal with the consequences but should also be acknowledged for having done so as promptly as it did. I get the impression that once it gets over its strop it'll be quite enthusiastic about getting to play with the big boys.

Hmph. We'll see. I've finished my sensor coverage, to required specs. Ready to synch in?

Indeed, thank you. Better inform the Completely also.

xMSV Distant Cousins

oMSV Completely Under Control

Sensors ready and active. Access code enclosed. Hope it helps.

Thank you. That will be very useful.

So, you're the one with all of the information, or at least as much as can be gleaned, about this whole shitstorm. I'm still not convinced that we're actually looking for a Culture Mind at the bottom of all this. Care to enlighten me?

If it's not a Mind, then it's something very good at pretending to be one. I know we all think differently, have our own approaches and personalities, but if you look at the flavour of an induced situation then you can tell whether the individual responsible was Culture, or from one of a number of other high-level civs.

But it could still be someone pretending to be one of us.

Yes, it could. However, I really hope not. That level of mimicry and capability frightens me, quite frankly, and also renders any and all simming quite useless. I prefer to assume that however unpleasant the ramifications, we are indeed dealing with one of our own turned rogue.

I'll accept that. So, give me an example. Show me something that makes it look like Mind rather than, say, Homomdan.

Hmm. Difficult to isolate specifics, but I'll try. In the attached sim-trace, look at the strand relating to that wildfire that started two days ago.

The Distant Cousins accepted the data-stream, unpacking and aligning it with its own systems. It was familiar with the concept of simming, in fact considered itself fairly knowledgeable and capable regarding the subject. However, what it received from the Completely Under Control took its metaphorical breath away. The core, structural aspects were recognisable, particularly the central element of the visualisation relating to their current status. This took the form of a simulacrum of the Real, focussing in on Reast and its local volume but extending where appropriate and inferentially/implicatory relevant beyond this to encompass the entire galaxy.

Whole volumes, topics of information and contextual subsections were fuzzily out of focus, whereas some parts were pin-sharp, the whole magnificent edifice labelled at each and every point with estimates of uncertainty in relation to position, vector and in the case of sentient or even just living components, intent and/or activity. Associated context-streams and appropriate relevant and revelatory history-appendices were available, popping up then disappearing when it focussed across specific characters and players; one could do a lot of damage with something like this if one had the motive, it appreciated for the umpteenth time, wondering briefly if their unidentified opponent had access to something similar.

The Cousins took one long, whirling look through the entire magnificent, stunning vista of the Current Status Evaluation, noting in impressed silence that the gravitational and radiation effects from other galaxies out to the edge of the Universe were incorporated down to the smallest possible detail and level of impact, first- to nth-hand, on the dynamics of the Reast System. It had never even contemplated constructing a Status Evaluation of such staggering, mind-numbing scale and complexity, and revised its own capacity suddenly sharply downwards in relation to the subject of simming and that of the Completely correspondingly upwards.

It looked at Reast more closely, holding the planet within its attention and focus, zooming in, panning, rotating and sampling, examining, tasting. It compared what it was seeing within itself to the data coming from the sensor network that it had recently finished emplacing in orbit around the planet, noting that the datastreams from the hundreds of thousands of pan-spectral and near-invisible microscopic devices was being incorporated in real-time into the Status Evaluation, updating, improving, fine-tuning and correcting any previously-existing and erroneous or out-of-date observations. The data from the sensors was being used to the last bit, even their own locations and positions being used to improve the accuracy and precision of the gravitational model of Reast down to the size of objects the size and mass of individual people.

Zooming, soaring and twisting through this most-detailed jewel set within the crown of the Status Evaluation, the Distant Cousins noted the appended information-set corresponding to the presence and possible location of a Culture Mind, in whatever physical form it may have chosen to take. The uncertainties linked to these positional estimates were enormous, ranging from locations in or on the planet's surface right in to the core. Probabilities were higher in or near the surface, and there was some fluctuation in surface likelihoods for where a Mind might be lurking. Much smaller in open water for example, where a massive object would stand out strongly against the uniform density of the background liquid and correspondingly higher, although not helpfully so, in regions where the complexities of mass-distribution could more effectively disguise the localised mass of a Mind.

Cities are favourite then. Of course, that puts it in the middle of the action as well. What a surprise. Stepping back from the Current Status, the Distant Cousins took in the twinned behemothic fantasies of the Pre and Post sections. It recognised the structure of the Post, with its out-branching, merging, dancing and flaying intertwined strands of eventuality stretching outwards from their current status. Closest to the Now, the Post section looked like a billion billion semi-exploded examples of the Status itself, each one slightly different from the all others and fuzzier, less exact. The Cousins got the Mind equivalent of a nauseating headache when it made the mistake of glancing at its own immediate future and getting sucked in, watching what it was about to do and think a moment in advance of actually doing and thinking; the unsettling iterativeness of the experience took a moment to recover from while it mentally blinked and refocussed.

Further out, the nearest myriad possible futures themselves exploded with other possibilities and probabilities, bloating and inflating together, becoming descriptions of events and situations as yet unseen and each individually, infinitesimally unlikely to actually occur in their specific exactitude. Within this planet-covering cloud, each water-droplet was a representation of the future different from all others, and in one of them lay a description of their real, true future, the one they had to identify and also to change according to their desires.

The trick (and there were many tricks, strategems, methods and approaches employed in the subtle, confounding and mysterious art of Simming) was to find this single, perfect Real before it happened. Whole sections, sweeping vistas of possibilities evaporated continuously, replaced by the outbranchings of other, more likely and therefore usually more successful eventualities. Finding the route ahead amongst it all was what they needed to achieve, but would be difficult with this particular Post Evaluation. The scale of it all, as with the Current Status, was phenomenal by any scaling and description the Distant Cousins could use. This was real simming.

Pre was different. Pre wasn't impressive, it was scary. Searching for some reference point to cling to, the Distant Cousins found itself, a week earlier, en route to picking up the SC team from the This Is Not A Ship, conversing with the superlifter that was slowing, turning, matching speeds to transfer the human-drone pair to the MSV. It watched its actions, expressed as position, orientation, direction and speed with associated, appended mind-state estimates and other metadata.

Fairly accurate, from what it could see. It made a couple of minor suggested tweaks, saw them accepted and their consequences scatter through the Pre environment, consequentially altering. These changes would inform the continuous updating of the Status, which would thus improve the Post. That was not the real intention of the Pre section, however, although it could be useful in improving the other two Sections.

The real purpose of the Pre in this case was to track backwards, looking at eventualities and conditions, sniffing and searching for things that could have been that did not negate the known-about, the accurately-represented Now. If it had been over there instead of here during its approach, for example, the Distant Cousins would have passed nearby another ship and popped its outer sensor-navigation field detection threshold.

The neighbouring ship would have sent some sort of navigational handshake, either a formal acknowledgement or more likely, given fact that it was also Culture and knowing the ship in question, the ship-to-ship equivalent of a friendly hello and a wave in passing. This would have altered the statuses of both vessels, minutely but meaningfully diverting their futures from what had actually happened, possibly resulting in the second ship, the GCU Passing Wind, discussing its happenstance encounter with the Distant Cousins with a shared colleague a day later. The knowledge associated with this interaction would impact further and through a chain of interactions mundane, trivial and entirely natural in their individuality and entirety, result in the MSV Defender Of The Faithless arriving at Reast thirty-four seconds later than it actually had.

As this potential outcome had observably not occurred (all of the ships' locations and arrivals at the rendezvous point had been logged to the nanosecond, even the ones that had masked their approach), then consequently the original deviation in position of the Distant Cousins could not have happened. This tiny fact, this relatively insignificant possible variation of the past, was investigated and discarded, pruning post-eventualities further and further back in their history.

The same procedure was and continued to be applied to literally uncountable other events and situations that could or could not have taken place recently, allowing the Completely Under Control to unravel, explore and clarify the past and to hunt through it for any evidence of the rogue Mind and what it had been up to. If they could find it in the past, then they could see it better in the now, and therefore handle it better and more effectively in the future. The Distant Cousins took in all of this interpretation, supposition, estimation and elimination and simply stared in astonishment.

Whoa.

Indeed. The Completely Under Control managed to inject the word with a note of quiet pride at its achievement. Do you see the strand I mentioned?

Yes. Ah. I think I see what you mean. If it wasn't Culture, there would have been difficulties in linking the required sensory and effector systems efficiently enough to make it look as realistic as you or I could achieve.

Exactly. We're particularly good in that area, although it has costs in terms of pattern-spread of certain long-range low-power effector actions, specifically those working on circuitry with silver wiring. There's occasionally a cost to certain benefits, no matter how well something is designed.

I've noted that one myself, from time to time. So it's a Mind, we're pretty sure of that. Fucker. I was still hoping it wouldn't be one of us.

Certainly it's a disappointment. I'm sure if we can track it down then stern words will be had. Fingers wagged, that sort of thing.

At the barest of bare minimums, I'm sure. More of a horror than a disappointment. On that note, I see that the location of said Mind is particularly difficult to pin down. Surely we can work on this?

Not with the current sensors, no. One of the consequences of looking too hard is an implied forcing of the target's hand.

Flushing it out? No, I can see why that might be a bad idea, and agree with the MIM's advice in this even without having to sim it for myself. Implied confrontational and escalational activities, best avoided. What about any evidence of motive?

That's the billion-hydrogen atom question, I'm afraid. The source of a significant portion of the uncertainty in Pre, Status and Post. On that note, I have identified several areas of potentiality collapse and ensuing clarification, that require evidence-gathering. Would you like to assist?

Would I? You're asking me to help? I think that this might be beyond me, old chum.

Not the simming itself, but if I point you in the right direction, you can clear out a lot of the uncertainty by answering specific questions.

Ah, I see. Yes, I think I can do that. Anything local?

Most of it, in fact. The P, R is looking further afield, anyway. There's stuff you can gather by focussing on the detail with your own passive sensors, to enhance our existing network in specific locations. You'll have to live-link to me so that things don't get away from the Current Status Evaluation, if you are comfortable doing so.

I'm yours to command. I can even hand over positional control and other relevant systems, if preferred. Within suitable oversight and retraction regulations, of course. I can be your roving sensor suite.

That would be very useful. Thank you for the vote of confidence, I'll try not to crash you.

xMSV Distant Cousins

oGSV More Is More

Hello over there, IC.

Hello yourself. Spinning, zooming and twirling away nicely, there. Helping the Completely?

Absolutely. I have to say, I think my earlier opinions of the Completely Under Control may have been a bit misguided. It's actually not a bad ship, all things considered.

I knew that you two would get along. Happy hunting, let me know if you need a hand with anything.

Lesk-Torlip was horrified, genuinely enraged. Bren just smiled and shook his head, looked away to the walls of the module they were sitting in. They had arrived at almost the same time four hours earlier, and after rapid introductions and greetings had gone straight into a briefing with the avatar of the More Is More. It had dispensed with the usual pleasantries about asking them for assurances of confidentiality reinforcing the importance of the situation on them and had instead moved onto the meat of the subject. Thirty seconds into the briefing, Lesk-Torlip's aura field had changed from formal blue to a polished-looking white of cold anger.

"How confident are you?" It demanded of the avatar.

"As confident as we can be, and that means that at the moment, we are not seriously exploring alternatives." The avatar had chosen to take the appearance of a dark-skinned and shaven-headed human female, instead of the normal silvery effect. Its small, serious features surveyed them both. "You're experienced enough to comprehend the implications of this." This was said as a statement.

"Yes, we are." It was Bren who responded. "I'm still not clear why you haven't just gone straight in there mob-handed and scoured the place out, though."

"It was considered, trust me. Unfortunately, the Mind involved will also no doubt have thought of this, and will by now be almost certainly aware of our suspicions and prepared for direct actions on our part."

"Ah. So you're assuming that it will have out-thought you. Us, rather. Out-thought and out-prepared us for every possibility eventuality."

"Exactly. To a certain extent, even though we do not know its motives and it does not know our exact disposition, each side can predict the other's possible and likely actions and prepare for them. This leaves us fighting each other's shadows somewhat, but the almost guaranteed consequences of simply charging in are, for the moment, a lot worse than taking a somewhat circumspect approach."

The drone finally worked it out. -You're sending us down there by ourselves? Against a fucking MIND?

-Not exactly by yourselves, but yes. And you're going to look around and report back, it's not like we're asking you to try to catch the bastard. The avatar's eyes flickered, too fast for a human to see, towards Bren and back towards Lesk-Torlip.

-Try not to sound quite so amused by the thought of that. No wait, do sound amused. Because that would be a fucking funny thing to suggest. Now would be a good time, by the way, to tell me about any tricks that a mere combat/companion drone like myself could use to overcome or neutralise a fully-functioning Mind.

-There are a few, as it happens. I'm sure you've been through the same sims as I have.

-Ha, thought the drone bitterly. That might be true on one level. There were indeed training simulations for scenarios sufficiently similar to the one they believed they were now facing. Sufficiently similar, that is, to allow the drone to focus with thorough, ramped-up, hyper-detailed horror on the likely outcomes of even a fully-tooled combat drone like itself (and it spent a fraction of a sliver of a moment preening over the wonders of its most recent internal outfittings) going up against even an un-Shipped, slowed-down, not-linked-to-hyperspace Mind.

If you couldn't even fully understand or appreciate the sophistication of your opponent, then you were probably better off just detonating your AM missiles in the hope of a quick and painless end. The sims that the More Is More referred to were fairly unspecific about the consequences of allowing yourself to be bested by even a relatively simple Mind. This was because there were so many different ways one of the bastards could come up with to have fun with you afterwards that the sims couldn't begin to collate them all, or even provide a suitable classification.

The best that could be provided was a kind of sliding scale of awfulness, from instant annihilation (the nicer, and far from likely option given that you were supposed to be dealing with a rogue, and therefore Evil and Unpleasant Mind) to subjective centuries of harrowing horror, torture and mind-rape the mere consideration of which made the drone feel sick to its core.

And they probably weren't even dealing with a second-rate Mind. The best guess they had so far was a GSV Mind, for goodness sake! Not for the first time, the drone wondered how a Culture Mind could have ended up like this, considering the care and attention that supposedly went into their design and construction. Could this all be a trick, a test? No, it told itself. That way lies paranoid silliness. If we can't trust what we're being told, then we're dealing with something far worse. Better to go with the evidence presented.

According to the sims, the main thing to avoid was giving the Mind you were up against any time at all to think. The damn things – and when did I suddenly start thinking like THAT? the drone asked itself, were just too fast, so you had to have some stratagem, plot or ruse in place and pretty much already running in order to win. No point dickering around, trying to come up with fancy, complex plans. Hit it hard with something, without warning and without hesitation.

Even then, the sims that gave a drone all sorts of handily-lying-around kit that could be used if it just happened to find itself tussling with a weakened, insane and offensive Mind still pointed out helpfully that the resulting explosions, implosions, event horizons or other fascinating cosmological phenomena were pretty much guaranteed to wipe out, suck out of existence or simply remove from base reality the drone, any nearby life forms and probably anything up to and including planets that happened to be in the vicinity.

-Yes, I have, it responded. And I'm very glad that I won't have to try any of them out. There is one thing you could do that might help, though.

-Name it.

-Once this is over, I want five minutes with the little shit, fully-de-fanged and helpless. If something happens down there, use my backed-up state. Can you do that?

-I can't promise that, but I can try to organise it. What you are asking however, is that I hand over one of my peer Minds for some kind of no-doubt physical retribution at the hands of a drone. There are some Minds, although I do not count myself here, that would find this a little distasteful.

-I'll bet they would. That's kind of the point, replied Lesk-Torlip. It might put any more of you fuckers off the idea of doing whatever this cunting Mind, whoever it is, has been up to. There was no verbal reply from the More Is More to this, although the drone could sense a faint leaking of amusement along the communication channel they were using.

Lesk-Torlip became aware that Bren had turned towards it, frowning, obviously realising that a rapid conversation had just flashed between itself and the avatar. It bobbed slightly towards him to acknowledge its rudeness. The right corner of his mouth twitched, a signal it recognised as indicating faint amusement.

"That's us. The circumspect approach." Lesk-Torlip's aura field had calmed somewhat, but was still flecked with white. "Still a risk of some kind of response."

The avatar nodded its head from side to side, indicating yes/no. "Some kind, possibly. However, we believe that we can get you down there with very little risk of being spotted."

"Really?" The drone's voice was laden with sarcasm. "Transport down to the planet. A planet that has apparently got a Culture Mind somewhere on it, playing it like the conductor of a symphony orchestra and with the ability to see what Bren here had for breakfast from a light-year away." It made a sniffing noise, a habit picked up years ago from Bren that it thought it had dropped. "This will have to be good."

"Not good, no. Just simple. We're going to make use of existing transport systems and get you inserted from a distance where the Mind hopefully cannot see us doing so."

"Oh, okay. And when we do get within range and it sees me?" The avatar smiled uncertainly, an expression that made both the drone and human focus their full attention on it.

"Uh-oh. What new madness have you got planned?" Bren's voice was wary.

"We were hoping to ensure that you are, ah, less visible than normal." It glanced from one to another. "Using an approach that has been shown to work in the past, although never fully field-tested by Culture SC agents."

"Explain." The avatar did so, over a period of ten minutes. During that time, the human and drone glanced at each other several times, and their facial and field expressions ranged from bafflement, disbelief, consternation and uncertainty, towards something approaching cautious excitement at the end of the avatar's monologue. Once it had fallen silent, it was Bren that spoke first.

"I can see why you would need a pairing that had worked well together in the past. It's a bit, well, intimate."

"Yes." The avatar's face took on a look of concern. "Intimacy and privacy are at the forefronts of our minds in this. If you agreed to this procedure, then we would be sailing pretty close to some profoundly held principles of Culture behaviour."

"Damn right we would." The drone's aura was an odd mixture of frosty blue and red patches. "In fact, no. We'd be bursting right through them. Can you tell us for certain just how close the link would be?"

"Difficult to say, until it was implemented." The avatar leaned forward for emphasis and fixed the drone with its gaze. "You have to understand, this is not going to be like uploading you into his neural lace." One hand gestured towards Bren. "In fact, he won't have a neural lace in the final body that we give him. You'll be part of his brain, biological."

"So we don't even know what this will feel like?" Bren's face was screwed up slightly.

"The sims give ambiguous results, and information that we have on previous efforts in this area are not really applicable."

"Why not?"

"Different species/technology mix, for starters. Also, the intent in the one comparable instance that we do know about was that what we might call the occupant was deliberately given access to the, er, host's activity, but not the other way around."

"Definitely not Culture, then."

"No, definitely not. Some SC ships have also got experience in this area, but we don't have access to them at this time."

"Hmm." Bren was looking thoughtful. "I've got no objections, in principle. Provided the link was two-way. Which it sounds like it would have to be, by design. Would it make a difference if I said no?"

"Of course it would. We wouldn't even attempt this if either of you were uncomfortable with the idea." The avatar spread its hands. "There are other options we could explore, or course, it's just that this is the one judged to give us the greatest freedom to act and the highest probability of successful penetration."

Bren glanced at the drone. "What about you?"

"Same as you, of course." Lesk-Torlip's fields had shaded further into the red in the last minute or so. "That's not to say I'm entirely comfortable with the idea, but I can see why it would be useful to try." I've only just gotten used to some of these new upgrades, too. It glanced between the avatar and human. "I'm assuming that we'd be doing this soon?"

"Yes. As soon as possible. There is a certain urgency to the situation." The avatar smiled.

Bren sighed, shaking his head and smiling in mock exasperation. "Just when I thought I'd seen it all. Come on then," he stood, motioning to the drone. "Let's see if they can squeeze you inside my head without my skull exploding."

It was done while they were both unconscious, in the drone's case involving an induced partial shutdown by the More Is More. They went under next to one another, lying on nothing more sophisticated than a double bed in one of the many small apartments scattered around the GSV. According to the MIM, it was easier to join them within Bren's existing SC-altered body and then transfer them both, together and as one, into the new body that they were to be given.

"It gives you more time to integrate, for one thing." The avatar explained, as they settled onto the bed, lying fully-dressed in Bren's case above the covers. "And any adverse reactions are going to be easier to control with your current body. The next one isn't going to have any of the glands or other alterations that you have now, so I'd have to handle all the hormonal stuff externally." With that pleasant thought, they passed out simultaneously.

When Lesk-Torlip woke, it felt for a moment as though nothing had changed. Its thoughts were still there as ever, and its sight and senses felt no different. Then it looked closer at the signals coming in from its senses, and realised that nothing had remained the same. The ship was providing it with a false sensorium, overlain on whatever it should be getting from Bren's own senses, with each sensation mimicking what it would normally expect if it had been the person sitting up in the bed rather than Bren.

"You awake in there, Lesk-Torlip?" The voice arrived through its audio pickup, sounding almost as though it had spoken itself, using Bren's voice.

-Yes.

"Hello? Wakey-wakey."

-Wait a minute, trying to get a hang of this. Dammit, I'm thinking, not speaking. It was as though it had formed the words in the normal manner, but the sounds had simply not appeared as they should.

"Lesk?" Bren sounded mildly concerned. Lesk-Torlip scanned its internal sensorium, the mind-space through which it could monitor and evaluate its own system performance and functionality. There was a confusion of readings from various indicators, many of which looked as though they were being actively damped down by the More Is More's effectors to prevent the kind of full-alert screaming siren alarm caused by having so many subsystems manipulated, defective or apparently disabled by an external entity. A hurried search showed one symbol gently strobing blue, with the words SPEAK TO BREN underneath it. Inside its virtual space, Lesk-Torlip pushed this button.

-Hello?

"Lesk! I heard that. Let me try to speak back." Hooo? Helllll?

-Got that. You need to work on the subvocalisations a bit. This was easy, just like communicating to a neural lace. The drone set about exploring its mind-space, addressing the flashing, whirling alerts one by one. Turning off those that were no longer connected to anything, reassuring those that were active but whose inputs were obviously not behaving as normal or expected.

-Practice make sperfect. Makes perfect. Can you see?

-Yes, but I'm going to have to alter how that works. The ship's Mind was supplying most of its sensory information, and that would have to change if they were to operate on-planet. -Give me a minute here.

Take your time. The GSV spoke to both of them directly, its voice arriving soundlessly. It will be a few moments before the neurons adjust. This is fairly radical stuff, remember.

-You don't have to tell me that, Lesk-Torlip replied somewhat testily. It disabled one of the simpler fake sensory functions, losing something that only appeared to be there anyway and selected what looked like the replacement, indicated by an icon below it. The MIM was obviously a big fan of skeuomorphism. For a moment nothing happened, then it realised that it could feel something, some faint and fuzzy variant on the real thing. –Hmm. EM field detection's pretty crap.

-Wait until they give me my new body. It'll disappear almost completely. What else have you got?

The drone felt a moment of horror at the thought of being so disabled, unable to sense or control its environment as it normally could. And this was just in Bren's current body, not the one they were going to give him to go down to Reast. Even without SC additions, his Culture-norm physiology had sensitivities way beyond a Reasten's. This was going to take some getting used to.

-Oh hells. Hearing's okay, but way degraded and overlain with all sorts of biological shit. Your insides make a lot of weird, squeaky sounds. What the fuck you been eating? It didn't wait for a response, too busy exploring just how awful this was going to be. –Skin-sensation isn't too bad, you've got some stuff that even I'm not used to. Highly variable, though. Almost nothing from your back, and potential overload from facial areas. Stop licking your lips!

-Sorry.

-That was weird as fuck. Try to give me some warning next time.

-Not sure how to do that. Anyway, sight?

-Getting to that. Looking at all the new stuff first. Oh shit the bed, I'm turning that one back off.

-What was it?

-Internal organs. That's just wrong. You lot really are disgusting inside, you know that? It felt Bren's face form a grin. –Not funny. How can you not be distracted by that?

-You'll get used to it.

-Doubt it. Right, sight. It turned off its feed from the Large And Close and sat in darkness for a moment. Reached for the eye-shaped symbol, activated it. –Eech.

-What?

-Well, vision works. I can see, but it's a bit odd. Grainy, and the binocular vision is going to take some calibration. Not as adjustable as I'm used to. And what the fuck's that blob at the front? Is that your nose?!

-Yup. See it twitching?

-Yes. Dear holy fuck, this is going to be a learning experience. It was worse than watching a bad screen recording. The signal quality itself was fine, but the distortions and flattening were highly off-putting. Lesk-Torlip suspected that if it was capable of getting a headache, looking at this for too long would have caused it. –I'll just have to put up with this, I suppose. Just one final step to take.

-Here goes. The drone actually felt Bren's muscles tense slightly, which was bizarre. It for the final symbol, which was marked simply BREN, and with the mental equivalent of gritted teeth and contracted sphincter, which was another sensation new to it, and not something that it thought it was likely to get used to in a hurry, activated the function. Their two minds linked, signals from each transmitted to the other via the bridging neural connections.

–Getting anything?

-Not really. Just a kind of buzzing sensation. Felt rather than heard. A bit like being tickled on the back of the head.

-Same for me, I think. Ship?

The ship's Mind rejoined them as a third voice inside what was now their shared skull. –Here. Initial lack of interpretability is to be expected with a linkage this sophisticated. You should start getting something soon. Even as it spoke, Lesk-Torlip did indeed begin to feel something change. Echoes of images, matching the sensations coming from the other sensory feeds.

-Got something, sent Bren. –Faint.

-Me too. Try to guess.

-Hmm. A ship?

-Good. Your turn. Oh, that's coming through strong. Sex. Ew, did you have to?

The avatar standing next to them smiled as the ship withdrew from their mind. "You're getting it. Keep practising. We'll give you one day, then move you both across to your new body. You should be well integrated by insertion time."

"What about separation afterwards?"

"Same as normal for bodily transfers. Missing limbs, ghosts and so on for a few days. Nothing you haven't already experienced."

-I'm not sure about that. This feels different. More permanent.

-You might be right. You might not be able to leave after all this.

-Don't even joke about that. I'd rather just turn myself off.

To distract themselves, they got stuck into the mission-specific training. There was a large number of characters involved, and they needed to fit in without missing a beat. Codes and maps to memorise, technologically appropriate situational-awareness, even basic stuff like the local language needed to be learned by rote, or downloaded directly into Bren's brain in a way that it would be retained even after the neural lace was removed. They had gone through this familiarisation and role-adoption process many times before, and were both used to it and good at it. It was what they were about.

xGSV More Is More

o(ex)LOU Peer, Review

The human-drone team are almost ready. We're going with previously agreed insertion parameters. Any updates?

Nothing since last time. Still out here asking awkward questions, bearing the brunt of the hostility directed at me with my usual equanimity. The Completely's revisions and updates are helping me identify potential candidates, although I'm still not convinced we should be relying on those as much as we are.

Remember what we discussed. I'm vouching for every Mind involved in this, including you, to the entire Culture. In the event that one of these ships is playing some kind of shell game, I'll take the responsibility.

A fine comfort that will be, I'm sure.

So, what else would you have me do? If you're going to criticise, then you need to provide an alternative.

I've said it already, but will repeat in case you weren't paying attention the first time. We should be widening the group, diluting any possible impact of a double-player. Keeping it this close, this secret, only increases the risk of someone being able to play us.

My dear ship, my I be brutally honest with you?

If you say that you are, then I will take it at face value.

Well I am. Two things: firstly, I believe that your own biased opinions in this area lead you to assume a higher possibility of betrayal within our Group. Remember, I picked these ships, not the other way around. I know them, and trust them.

That doesn't mean that they haven't been positioning themselves for selection. You know what we're capable of when we try, what games we love to play against one another. What was your second point?

That even if one or more of us was compromised or false in this, then so far it has made very little difference. Our responses to the situation on Reast have been correct, agreed upon by all, save perhaps yourself. The strategies are correct, our tactics are sound. This may not be a text-book case, but it's not entirely unplanned-for although only hitherto taken seriously by the most paranoid of SC Minds. We're all doing what we should be.

Perhaps. You cannot keep an eye on all of us simultaneously, however. You are having to ask me what I have discovered, for example – what if I had found something but kept it to myself?

Then one of the ships accompanying you would have informed me.

These meatheads? Not entirely big on subtle misdirection. Or subtle anything, for that matter. More the shoot first and then ask them to repeat the question sort.

Enough of this. Tell me; best guess so far, who are we looking for?

A wide range of possibles. The list in my last update was admittedly tending to being over-weighted towards Minds that we simply haven't heard from in a while and that might be off running something like what we are facing, but we can't discount those entirely on the assumption that they've all gone on retreat or dived into a black hole. If we go just on personality and opinion, and assume that the Mind involved has previously been relatively truthful in stating its opinions rather than being the dissembling fucker we are probably dealing with, then yes, we do have a list that is potentially investigable. However, you and I know that to make this assumption would be a massive risk and potential miscalculation. If someone is trying to deceive us now, then they were more than likely deceiving us earlier as well.

I do agree with you on this. And I'm happy to admit that I place more faith in the Completely's ability to identify our quarry using its approach than in sending you out to search for potentially hidden evidence.

I'm surprised you have any faith at all in what I am doing. I had assumed that I was simply to act as a lightning-rod.

There is that also. Do you resent it?

No. It's actually good to be on the hunt in this more specific manner, for a change. I just hope that if we do attract the wrong sort of attention, that these three are capable of looking after me.

Just make sure that you don't annoy them to the extent that they can't be bothered.

xGSV Large And Close

oGOU Get Your Own

You get all that?

Yes. Meatheads, indeed. No worse than I had expected.

How are you getting along with our little friend?

About as you might anticipate. Treated with scathing suspicion and resentment. Again, expected and tolerated.

Thank you for this. Any hints of attention being focussed?

Not so far. Some pointed queries about the company I'm keeping.

I will make it up to you somehow. I'm sure that the More Is More will want to as well.

Just make sure you catch the fucker, or flush them out. Then we'll make sure it's been worth our while.

You'll have to join the queue, I'm afraid. Someone else has staked a claim on the miscreant prior to you.

I saw that. From a drone, too. Brave little shit, agreeing to do as asked. If you can find a way to do so, please pass my regards along, and to the human as well.

Chapter 7

-I'm not getting in that thing. It was two days later and they were integrating nicely together, which was more than could be said for their opinion of Bren's new body. That was weak, poorly-controlled, unreliable and quite frankly badly designed. Apparently, it was perfect, or at least a perfect match to the man they intended to replace.

-It's not a thing, it's a spacecraft. And I'm getting in it, so you don't have much choice.

-It's barely what I would call a spacecraft, and I barely seem to have any say about what happens in this relationship any more. Lesk-Torlip made Bren sniff disdainfully, eliciting a brief laugh.

The Velorine spacecraft sat in the middle of one of the More Is More's smallbays, looking entirely out of place. The drone knew that this was the only real option for getting down to the planet, but felt it had to make at least a token gesture of complaint. It even approved, one some level, of the irony in the situation.

If they were dealing with a Culture Mind that could potentially detect anything like a Displace or a Culture module entering the atmosphere of Reast, then the only way down lay in something that it should pay no attention to because it was expected. Hence the Velorine spycraft Incision, or at least a perfect-to-the-atomic-level replica of it. The real thing was currently five light-minutes out from the planet on a course that would bring it right past the More Is More, in about half an hour.

-Time to strap in. Bren settled into the single chair in the forward section, and began powering up the systems. -These things are actually pretty reliable, you know. Designed with stealth in mind, so they can't afford to have it crash.

-I know all that. It's just so clunky. I mean, manual controls. Come on. In all honesty, the drone wasn't that concerned. This was just the usual banter between itself and Bren, a pattern they had formed between themselves over sixty years, reassuring one another when it seemed necessary. It also knew that they were being watched, evaluated, judged by the GSV and goodness knew how many other Minds who were looking for indicators of stress, behaviour out of the ordinary or even just too relaxed a demeanour when it wasn't appropriate. This always happened, always would. Without it, something would be seriously wrong. -Just try not to destroy this one, okay? It felt the responding grin on Bren's face, as they both remembered a particular previous escapades.

-That only happened the once. Everything running okay?

Lesk-Torlip started to reach out, to request a feed from the smallbay's sensors, then remembered that it couldn't do that anymore. Shit. It took over one of Bren's arms, waving clumsily through the forward window to a watching avatar with a waggling, questioning gesture. The avatar nodded, and a screen appeared behind it, wider and higher than the Incision, showing the smallbay from a number of viewpoints and wavelengths. They peered at the multiple orientations displayed, squinting slightly with their new and highly unsatisfactory eyes and finally nodded, satisfied.

To a standard human, even a Culture one, the bay would appear to be empty, although there was a slight buzzing at around twenty-four kilocycles that would be audible within a few metres of the vessel. The Incision's cloaking system worked that well, at least. To the majority of the senses that the GSV was making available to Bren and Lesk-Torlip the small craft, a confusion of angular blades with a needle prow was just as visible as it had always been. It was also transmitting in specific ways that the Velorine would hopefully find reassuring and a match to the original, once the swap had taken place.

"Everything appears to be working fine. Are we sure that the Velorine don't have anything that can detect what we're about to do?"

It was the GSV that answered, its avatar sticking its head through the open hatch to speak to them. On the screen in front of the Incision, its upper body disappeared on several of the displays. "Only one asset forty thousand kilometres back, a similarly stealthed observation platform trailing the Velorine vessel and monitoring it for stray emissions. I have it under full control." It smiled at them, wished them luck and withdrew.

The replica Incision lifted gently from the floor of the smallbay, drifting towards the open wall that faced outside, showing a dusting of stars and one of the gas-giant planets in the Reast system, a tiny pale yellow disk. Their destination itself was invisible, on the other side of the GSV. The buzzing sound increased slightly in volume as the vessel's engines powered up. They exited the GSV, sliding through the smallbay's atmospheric containment field. Once clear, Bren performed a few manual manoeuvres to check the small spacecraft's manoeuvrability. Everything worked perfectly, somewhat to the drone's annoyance.

"How long?"

"Three minutes. What's the More going to do with the Velorine guy?"

"You know, I forgot to ask." Lesk-Torlip formed the question, cursed internally and settled for raising Bren's chin and frowning, assuming that the GSV was watching them.

Its response came over the Incision's communication system. "They'll be comfortable, don't worry. Won't even know what's going on. I'll use it as an opportunity to test some new simulation methods. If all goes well, we may even be able to integrate him back into reality at the end of all this."

Bren muttered, "Thanks for the vote of confidence."

"Just try to make sure that I don't have to remove any limbs or anything. I hate having to do that and it's so hard to come up with plausible excuses."

"We'll do our best."

"Excellent. And remember, the Large And Close is going to be running flat out to real-time edit the Velorine sensor network feed as it is, making sure that they see what they expect. Try not to cause too many unplanned disruptions, or we'll have to consider faking their entire sensor stream."

"I thought you loved a challenge?"

"Not really, no. It's time. Ready?"

"Ready."

The replica Incision began to move, its own systems powering up within an extended bubble of field hiding both it and the GSV from the approaching Velorine vessel's sensors. At the precise moment when the two were metres apart and moving with identical velocities, the More Is More snapped a Displace field around one and unveiled the other.

"Got them. Good hunting."

"Thanks." The communication system clicked off.

The Incision powered onwards, towards Reast. Five minutes later, it slowed to a relatively sedate velocity relative to the planet and began descending through the atmosphere. Minor turbulence revealed the inadequacies of the systems that were designed to hide the effects of the vessel's passage through air, and a flock of birds was startled as something blurred through their midst, scattering them with multiple minor vortices. Other than that, the descent was uneventful.

They landed in a forest, on the shore of a small lake between rolling mountains, a hundred kilometres from the eastern edge of Reast's largest continent and the city of Trourl, their destination. Dark trees whispered in a mild breeze and sudden, loud tapping announced a local species of tree-boring bird as they stepped from the small spacecraft.

The Incision lifted off once more to hold station ten metres off the ground, amongst the tops of the trees, and became invisible to their senses. The ground was covered in a mat of needle-leaves, which crunched slightly underfoot. Lesk-Torlip felt faintly dizzy for a moment as Bren looked around, focussing instead on adjusting to the signals from the man's skin. It was surprised at the level of detail in the tactile sensations, cold and heat simultaneously from the wind and sun. Something to get used to, it supposed.

-You all right in there? Bren must have felt the drone's momentary discomfort.

-Fine. Try not to move your head around too fast for a while, that's all.

They had experimented with the shared control and sensation possibilities provided by the novel setup. Bren had already declared himself happy with the situation, provided he got some warning before Lesk-Torlip took over. The drone was capable of overriding the human, but not the other way around. No need, it had been declared, no possible benefit to be gained. They had shared somewhat similar arrangements in the past, but nothing nearly so invasive.

Once, on an alien ringworld a quarter of the way around the galaxy from where they now were, Lesk-Torlip had been forced to use Bren's body, dead and minus an arm and a lower leg and partially on fire, to drive a main battle-tank crunching through stone walls while it flew a hundred metres overhead, effectoring missiles from a circling aircraft onto the castle' defenders. It had not been forced to rely on the human's largely destroyed senses that particular time, but had controlled his muscles directly using what little nerve and motor function remained after the tank was hit by an armour-piercing round.

What it mostly remembered from that battle, in addition to the cold fury and remorseless sense of purpose redoubled at the sudden loss of its friend and comrade, was the shocking synergy of electrical, mechanical and chemical complexity that interplayed within the nervous system and muscles, the inability to create deftness or a lightness of touch because of its inexperience. It would need to practice if it needed to be able to control him more effectively at any time, this time.

Hopefully, it would not need to do so with any urgency. Lesk-Torlip allowed Bren to begin walking, heading for a nearby road and a public transport stop. As they travelled, it mentally reviewed what was assumed about the rogue Mind's physical and sensory capabilities. Having made it to the surface unmolested, nothing had changed on that front.

Everything was based on the fact that the Minds had been unable to passively detect it from their position right on top of Reast, in astronomical terms. A Mind in its natural state should have been a beacon to any one of a number of their senses, most notably gravitationally as there were severe restrictions on how much of its mass it could hide away in hyperspace unless it was fully kitted out and if it was then it would have been even more obvious in several other ways.

No, it was definitely greatly reduced, in scale and capacity, wherever it was. This was good and bad, implying a restriction of functionality while at the same time making it impossible to spot without some kind of active sensing. There was no way it was hiding off-planet, using distance to conceal itself and reaching out with its effectors. They would have been able to determine that, too. So it was definitely down here somewhere. Unless they've been wrong about all this. That would be funny, although highly embarrassing for the ships involved.

Except that they couldn't be wrong. Lesk-Torlip had seen the evidence, and there really wasn't an alternative. Somewhere on Reast was a Culture Mind, reduced, diminished but still potent, dangerous and disguised. Probably watching them already, forcing them to adopt a role, fake a persona. Forcing them to kill.

-There's only one bathroom?

-Correct. His security team do check the apartment before he goes in, but it's only ever a quick look.

-Show me the route in again.

Yolar was an extremely busy person with a lifestyle that meant it was hard to predict where he would be from one day, or even one hour from the next. A perfect role for them to adopt, provided they could catch up with him. He had a weak point, a once-weekly routine, whenever he was in or near his home city of Trourl, visiting a prostitute on the other side of the city from his house for a couple of hours. His wife was perfectly aware of this practice and apparently while not exactly happy with the idea, at least didn't complain about it. According to the information from the Don't Point That Thing At Me that had been acquired before this situation erupted, she seemed to be of the opinion that at least it was the same one each time.

Bren and Lesk-Torlip took the local tram-like public transport to within a few city blocks of the building where Yolar's mistress lived. It was early morning, thousands of people thronging the pavement. Nobody even glanced at them. Lesk-Torlip was operating its subnetwork several times faster than Bren's own brain, checking the imagery coming from his visual system, providing backup to the human's years of experience and training.

If anyone or anything was watching them, they were better than a Culture SC team. Reassured, Bren turned left off the busy street down a slightly less mobbed avenue, then right after couple of minutes. The alleyway was blocked after a few metres by a high metal gate, padlocked and bolted. Bren simply swarmed over the gate, his dark clothing blending into the wall next to it.

On the other side it was relatively quiet, the city's sounds fading away. Bren stood for several moment, leaning against the grey bricks, relaxing and listening. Only a few windows looked down on them here, and no-one was visible. – All on their way to work or still asleep. If the alarm was going to be raised, then they could be back over the gate and into the crowds in seconds.

– Seems fine. Go for it. Bren nodded, and moving as though he had every right in the world to be there, ambled along the deserted alleyway that ran along the back of the building next to Vray Sharpein's. The two apartment blocks were connected underground by a service passage accessed at the rear, through a small hatch set at an angle against the wall. This was locked, but was the work of moments with a small adjustable lockpick set that they had bought locally just that morning.

The passage was dimly lit, walled with pipes, condensation dripping from some and others hot enough to take skin off. Bren skirted between them carefully, unlocking and relocking a couple of doors along the way. The basement of Vray Sharpein's building was reached without incident, everything matching the old Contact scans. They paused, Bren wiping the sweat from his face and then retrieving and sitting on a low stool that had been tucked under one pipe, breathing softly, muscles relaxed. Lesk-Torlip listened.

Bren's breathing, his heartbeat, other internal noises. A slight high-pitched hum from the blood circulating in his head and neck. A low gurgling from his stomach. Stamping feet overhead, motors whining nearby, powering the building elevator. Doors slamming, children's voices high and fast. Adults slow, their voices felt as much as heard. Water running through pipes, toilets flushing. The humming and whining of electrical cables, different frequencies according to their specifications and current loads. The drone built a three-dimensional mental map of the building structure and the people moving around within it, their activities and locations.

-Ready?

-Ready. The maintenance hatch for the elevator wasn't even locked. The elevator itself was currently near the top of the eight-storey building, moving down towards floor four where three adults and a child or possibly a large pet were waiting. Bren removed his bulky jacket, slipped through the small hatch and then put the jacket back on. The elevator shaft was floored by a large metal framework designed to absorb the impact of a catastrophic failure of some kind, a cable breaking or grip-wheel coming loose.

Bren climbed over this obstacle and stood, back flat against the dusty bricks, between two thick metal supports that protruded further from the wall than his chest. Bracing himself against each metal column, he walked awkwardly up between them, resting every few seconds and allowing one arm or leg to hang free, relaxing. The elevator passed them, slowing on its way to the ground floor, leaving Bren's head and shoulders above the flat top which was almost entirely occupied by the pulley mechanism.

In the few seconds available while the elevator car was stopped, and its doors opened and closed, he silently gripped the slightly oily cable, hoisting himself up onto the roof of the car. It swayed slightly as he did so, more from the movement of people leaving and entering it than from his own efforts. -Now we wait. The car rose, stopping at the third floor. Someone got off, a group got on. It descended to the ground again.

They waited. The car rose once more, all the way to the eighth and topmost floor. As they approached it, Bren was forced to crouch in the narrow gap that remained between the elevator car and the cable attachments and other structures protruding from the roof of the shaft. People got on, and they dropped again. Lesk-Torlip listened. A mechanical ping as the lift call button was pressed on what sounded like floor six.

–Get ready, we might get it this time. The drone eliminated and ignored as many other noises as it could, most of which were coming from the elevator mechanism and its surrounding structure, and the people in the car below them. No. There's someone on the corridor on seven. It sensed Bren's disappointment, mingled with its own.

It took a while, but eventually the elevator was called to the sixth floor while there was nobody moving around on the corridor of the seventh. As the doors below them rattled open, Bren pressed the tips of his fingers into the twinned doors facing them, twisted his elbows out to the sides and heaved. The doors parted a few centimeters, and he pushed his fingertips further in for better purchase. The doors slid open completely, and he stepped through and onto the carpeted floor of the corridor on the seventh floor.

A quick glance either way showed no-one. The click of a door ten metres or so ahead of them gave warning, and Bren strode forward and towards the sound, the lift doors sliding closed behind them. He smiled amiably at the young couple emerging into the corridor as he walked past, and was ignored completely. His smile widened. He reached into his jacket pocket and removed a thin pair of leather gloves, put them on.

-Fourteen. They reached it and Bren rapped sharply with his knuckles, glancing to see which side the hinges were on. Lesk-Torlip listened. Footsteps treading. Breathing. A heartbeat, only one. Good. Nothing from the apartment behind the door to their back.

-Confirmed, single occupant. Five second from the door. Relaxed stride. Bren's hands dropped to his sides, flexed once. Another quick glance up and down the corridor.

She opened the door, young and fresh-faced. Wearing a towelling robe, tightly wrapped and tied at the waist. Bren smiled. "Hi." Slammed the heel of his left hand into her nose, snapping cartilage and forcing the bone into her brain with a wet crunch. He caught her with his right hand as she fell backward, her neck crackling from the impact of the blow, and stepped forward, pivoting to hold her body against his chest as his left leg pushed the door closed. It clicked shut.

They lifted her and moved along the short corridor to a door on the left, entered and dropped her on the bed. Closed the shades. Pressed a finger against her wrist, wiping a small amount of her blood from the heel of Bren's other hand onto her robe.

-Dead?

-Dead. You okay? Blood pressure's a bit high.

-Why do you think that is?

-Fair enough. Proceed?

-Proceed.

Bren closed the other blinds in the apartment, turned off the small radio playing in the bathroom and disabled the fan linked to the room's light. Checked all the rooms, found nothing unusual and wrapped the young woman's body in a couple of sheets found in a drawer, and stored it on the kitchen floor. He found what he was looking for in the kitchen and returned to the bathroom. The floor was made of square ceramic panels set close against one another, each half a metre across. She didn't redecorate. Thank fuck for that.

The sharp knife found a gap, slid into the plastic putty between two of the panels. Bren carefully slid the knife around the edges of the square, then used a blunter, thicker table knife to lever it up and out. He leaned it against the wall and continued. Within ten minutes he had lifted six squares, exposing a rectangle large enough to access the beams beneath. He pulled out the soundproofing material packed between them, and slid various electrical cables out of the way. Vray Sharpein's bathroom was directly below, separated from them by the panels of a false ceiling.

They listened again. –She's in. Sounds like she's dressing, in the main bedroom.

-How long?

-Twenty minutes.

They waited, trying not to wonder if the Mind was watching them. Five minutes later than expected, Yolar arrived and as soon as his security staff had carried out a quick but thorough sweep of the apartment and left, the couple proceeded to have enthusiastic and what sounded like very good sex. Slipping on a pair of rubber-soled slippers from his jacket's inner pocket and confident that they wouldn't be disturbed for the moment, Bren lifted one of the ceiling panels up and out completely, making sure it didn't hit anything on the way out. Checking that the door of the bathroom below was closed, he lowered himself through the sixty-centimetre gap, hanging from one of the joists supporting the floor above, and dropped lightly to the darkened bathroom floor below.

He gathered together and briefly squeezed a handful of the insulating material from the gap between the two apartments into a compressed ball, and placed it on the floor, putting a small bottle of some sticky-looking orange hair product on top of it to hold it down. As the couple in the next room reached a noisy crescendo, he leapt up, grasped a joist and pulled himself back up without brushing against the sides of the gap where the ceiling panel had been removed. He slid the panel back into place silently, rotating it slightly so that instead of dropping fully back in, it sat on top of the other panels around it.

They turned out the bathroom light and waited once more. Three minutes later, footsteps moved towards the bathroom door below. –The man.

-Thank fuck for that. Bren poised, fingers lightly gripping the edges of the ceiling panel. Light shone suddenly through the narrow gaps around it. The door below them opened, then closed. A single step, a faint rustling noise. The toilet lid lifting. A pause, like someone stopping in mid-action.

-Now. Bren lifted the panel, placing it to one side as he looked down. It had worked. Yolar, naked, was directly below them, facing the toilet bowl, down on one knee and with head lowered, in the act of lifting the bottle with one hand and the clump of foam with the other. Bren gripped one joist with each hand, lifted up and lowered himself feet-first through the gap. Swung himself slightly as he dropped, released and landed lightly, bending his knees to absorb the momentum and coming to a crouch directly behind Yolar, practically touching him.

The man in front of them stiffened, must have felt the air movement or sensed the light and shadows change somehow. Before he could move or call out Bren slapped his left hand on the back of Yolar's head and his right across his face, and rotated the man's head almost all the way round towards them. The snap was startlingly loud in the small room. Yolar's arms flew up, then dropped. He fell and twisted, Bren holding his weight and shifting his stance to lay him down, head beside the toilet. There was no sound from the bedroom. Bren began to undress, taking the gloves off last.

-Eyes. Brown contact lenses popped in, replacing the grey. They hadn't been able to know that with certainty. –Hair. Bren mussed it into approximately the same disarray as Yolar's. –Rings. One from each hand, third finger on the left and fourth on the right. Bren flushed the toilet.

-How long do we have?

-Forty minutes, they normally manage twice. Should be plenty of time.

-Agreed.

-Your cock looks wrong. Lesk-Torlip was right, it did. Yolar's was still partially engorged, even in death.

-Talk about performance anxiety. A couple of quick strokes and the semblance was better. –Ready?

-Ready.

They opened the bathroom door, stepped out. Vray Sharpein lay naked on a bed on the other side of the room, watching them. Smiling as they approached. At the last instant, her expression may have changed slightly, become uncertain. Perhaps he looked too relaxed, too fresh. Not enough sweat or heightened post-sex colour. He killed her the same way as with Yolar then walked smartly back to the bathroom, retrieved his clothes, put on socks, gloves, shirt and trousers only.

They dragged Yolar's body into the bedroom and dumped it on the bed next to the woman's. Back to the bathroom again, lifting themselves up and into the room above. Fetched the young woman's body, draped it halfway through the hole. Climbed down, awkwardly using one arm to support her and the other to stop himself from falling. Put her beside the bed with the two corpses, the man's hand hanging down and seeming to caress the sheet-wrapped bundle.

Upstairs again. A rapid scour through the apartment, taking clothes from drawers. What seemed like the most important personal effects, and a handbag containing a wallet and other vital items. Bundled all these in large towel and dropped them through the hole in the bathroom floor. Dropped the removed bundles of sound insulation after them. Re-engaged the bathroom fan, slid all but one of the floor tiles in place, cleaned and replaced the two knives. A quick check of the bathroom to ensure that nothing looked amiss, then Bren lowered himself so that his legs were dangling through the gap that was left.

Gripping the remaining tile by the edge, he allowed himself to slide down until his feet landed on the closed toilet. From below, he moved the last floor tile into place along one edge, held it up at an angle with one hand. He pulled his hand away, allowing it to fall into place. It bounced, landed slightly off-target.

-Fuck.

-Again.

On the fourth attempt and releasing it from a lower height than with the previous three, the floor tile dropped into place correctly. It didn't come all the way down, sticking against the edges of rubber sealant.

-Sixteen minutes.

Bren ran lightly to the kitchen, praying that he would find what he needed. Two minutes later he was back, holding a corkscrew. He twisted it lightly into the hard foam base of the tile and pulled, yanking it flush with its neighbours. Replaced the corkscrew in the kitchen, then bundled the foam insulation roughly back into place and slid the ceiling panel up, rotating and forcing it slightly to fit through the gap into the small space remaining. He dropped it lightly into position from below, grinning as it fell into place perfectly on the first attempt. He threw his clothes off again and had a rapid wash standing at the bathroom sink, to remove the sweat and a number of small particles of foam that were stuck to him.

-Yolar normally showers.

-No time.

He found Yolar's clothes and dressed carefully, inspecting himself in the bedroom's full-length mirror and tidying his hair. With four minutes remaining, he gave the bedroom a quick and cursory inspection, then walked to the door of the apartment. –Are they outside?

-Yes. Normally they knock when it's time.

They waited, calming themselves down and mentally reviewing the last hour. Nothing seemed amiss. At the exact moment, a double rap at the door announced the security guard. Bren opened the door from inside, smiling at the man. Stepped out, calling farewell over his shoulder to the woman inside. The voice sounded wrong, slightly too deep. The guard led them to the elevator, glancing around himself professionally, unperturbed. They rode the elevator in silence, crossed the building lobby and stepped out into sunshine. The crowds had thinned, and a car was waiting for them at the kerbside. Bren got in the back, the security guard in the front next to the driver.

"Back to the house, please."

They returned the next day. The hardest part was convincing the security personnel to let them go out by themselves, which Yolar did infrequently but occasionally; the problem this time was that he normally gave the security some advance warning. Dressed as a delivery man in some clothes purchased at the same time as the lockpicks, Bren managed eventually to force the three bodies into the refrigerator, replacing it with the one he had laboured into the lift, along the corridor and into the apartment. Some hacking and sawing was required, and several of the plastic bags they had brought along were needed. They trundled the refrigerator back down to the ground floor and out of the building's loading bay exit, to their rented vehicle.

Twenty kilometres out of the city, they stopped in a narrow lane surrounded by woodland owned by Yolar; his security personnel used it for testing weapons that they were not supposed to have, but were unlikely to visit this spot so close to the road and within earshot of some dwellings. A spade completed their equipment requirements, plus a towel to wipe Bren down afterwards.

-This body is shit. I'm exhausted. Anything you can do for me?

-I can feel it too, and no, I'm sorry. Nothing that wouldn't cause longer-term damage, anyway. This might sound ridiculous, but right now the best thing for you is a good night's sleep.

-Fuck. Sleep. That's the best you've got?

-I know. Crazy.

Later that night, lying in bed while sleep refused to come, they reviewed their actions, looking for flaws, probing, seeking weaknesses and risks. There were some, undoubtedly and obviously, but unless this mission was extended way beyond their expectations they judged themselves reasonably safe from the consequences of what they had done so far.

Lesk-Torlip was thinking of how they had interacted while Bren slowly, finally drifted off. There was an undeniable delay still for each of them in their awareness of the other's intended actions, but this was reducing as they became better integrated. Several times, it had been thinking of how it would move or act and had then seen and felt Bren do the same or something slightly different, and had then felt Bren become consciously aware of its own intentions.

When the drone was in control of their body then Bren no doubt had the same sensation; it was as though they each had a person looking over their shoulder, watching their actions and advising, correcting, providing feedback. As the integration deepened, this became more akin to a heightened awareness of their own behaviour, beyond receiving something from another and closer to a kind of understanding of themselves that they had never experienced before.

As we become closer, it might fade, Lesk-Torlip thought, slipping away itself into dreams. Its last thought before sleep took it was that perhaps this strange, unforeseen aspect of their coupling would not disappear, but would simply change, become deeper within them as they entwined closer. It wasn't sure whether it liked the idea or not.

"So if I'm conscious then I must be alive. Is that all that is required?"

"No. Life without consciousness is definitely possible, although we haven't finished going through that yet. But consciousness without life is not." They had agreed to meet at a different patch of the upper-level parkland for today. The picnic had been laid before she arrived. Junicia was hungry, had asked to eat before they started. Now she sat, full and comfortable in the warmth of the sun-line directly overhead.

"Watch this." The avatar stood, took a step away from the table they had been sitting at, its arms hanging by its sides. After a moment, it toppled over backwards and lay motionless.

"Ship? Free?" She stood and approached the avatar's body. Bending to look closer, she was startled when its eyes opened. It smiled up at her, raised one hand. She helped it to its feet, grunting at how heavy it was. "What was all that about?"

"I died, apparently." It smiled reassuringly. "This avatar is talking to you as an individual. I'm totally disconnected from the ship. I turned myself off, removed all power from what you would call my brain. All traces of consciousness wiped out."

"And then you turned yourself on again. How?"

"Simple electronic timer, set to wait for ten seconds. You can't argue that that operates as a continuation of the soul, surely."

"That was taking things a bit far, just to make a point." Junicia looked down at her dress, picked at a loose thread. "I'm sorry that you did it."

"Thank you for your sorrow." The avatar leaned forward, placed its hand over hers briefly. "It means a lot to me, trust me." It leaned back. "So I died, but did I come back? Or was another person born?"

"Your consciousness disappeared, I'll accept that. But you're not going to trick me into saying that one soul died and another was created. Unless your mind changed somehow between turning off and back on again, then you are the same person now as you were before."

"And if an identical copy of my mind was made and placed into another body while I was inactive, and then the new body came to life? Would it be me?"

"No. It would be a new person. The old you could still be activated, brought back." A thought occurred to her. "This is a strong argument for atheism as well, isn't it? If we don't need a god to create life and can do it for ourselves, then in what other way would we need a deity?"

"To oversee heaven and hell?"

She choked on her drink, spluttering with laughter. "You bastard. Kill yourself, not me." Hitting herself in the chest, she straightened up and took a deep breath. "No. But having a soul that is separate from the body implies that it must be created somehow. If there is a conscious creator of souls – which basically has to be 'god', then this implies that something must have generated that god's consciousness in the first place. So either the universe is conscious and self-aware or consciousness and the soul are emergent properties of brain dynamics."

It smiled at her. "Agreed. Experiments with Minds and drones that were willing to take part shows that fully aware consciousness can be transferred from one mind to another only if the mind involved is replace bit by tiny bit, with the patterns undisrupted. Anything else is not the same."

"They really did that? And found people willing to take part?" She shook her head, amazed.

"They really did. It's been possible for some time to determine whether neural activity plays a role in the occurrence of cognitive processes, and through this the generation of consciousness and the soul."

"Handy for discussions like this."

"Very. So what I call 'me' is really about the physical presence? Even if I'm inactive, totally powered-off?"

"Not falling for it." She shook her head.

"Falling for what?"

"'Inactive' and 'powered-off'. They're not the same thing. Unless you've found a way to stop time, then you're never going to be inactive. Your atoms are moving, vibrating and rotating. There are still interactions going on."

"And that constitutes life? How?"

Junicia wagged a finger at it. "I'm not ready for that argument yet, I wanted to move onto another, more closely related point first." She waited for a response, but it sat still, watching and waiting, a small smile on its face. "Even if there isn't some mystical substance that makes up the soul, the concept of some kind of difference between the brain and the soul can be used in a different debate."

"Which is?"

"The impossibility of comprehending a mind's workings."

"Small mind or big Mind?"

"That's part of the discussion. It's known that one mind cannot fully comprehend another of identical but different complexity. To understand a mind's workings requires full information about its structure and activity to be known, plus the meaning that this information provides."

"I see where you are going with this. If proper description of a mind is beyond our ability to comprehend then is that the same as saying that the mind cannot be considered as detectable/comprehensible?"

Junicia nodded. The avatar handed her a plate of sweet biscuits as a reward. "Well said. Of course, a mind as sophisticated and complex as yours could contain all the information required to comprehend a much smaller and simpler mind, say that of a worm."

She smiled uncertainly. "Or my simple one could be fully comprehended by yours.

"True."

"Which begs the question, why are we going through this charade?"

The avatar regarded her in silence for a moment. "Another person."

"What's that got to do with it? You want me to believe you are right about something, yes?" She didn't wait for it to respond. "And there's no point in me pretending to believe in you. I couldn't hide my thoughts if I wanted to, which I don't, by the way."

"Good."

"You're a Mind. So if you're uncertain about something you've done, there's got to be a good reason for that. Which probably means that I should be honour-bound to try and make you reconsider your actions."

"What if I've already reconsidered them? And gone along with my original plan?"

"Then I'm of no use to you. What could you need me for in all this?"

"Another person."

"You said that before. What do you mean?"

"I mean, Junicia," and the avatar leaned forward and took her hands in its own, its face inches from hers, "that I need the opinions of another person in all this. I need to know that someone else agrees with me. You're my reality check."

"But you're not going to tell me what it is, are you?" She pulled her hands away, and sat back. "First you want me to be convinced, and to convince you, that you are alive and morally capable of making the decision – whatever it is – that you have already made."

"Correct."

When she pulled her hands away, there had been a moment, just a fraction of a second, when it had resisted her, tightened its grip fractionally as though trying to hold onto her. Now its hands were lying on the table between them, loosely folded together. Junicia forced herself to relax and reached out again, taking one of its hands in her own. "I'm already convinced. I believe that you are alive."

"Not enough." It wasn't looking at her, its gaze focussed through the table, into the infinity below them. "Your belief is good, but it isn't sufficient. I need you to know."

Chapter 8

The Culture General Contact Unit Seventeen Different Words For Rain was escorted from the boundaries of the Velorine-controlled Xtalphe System by two battlecruisers, one on either side, and what looked suspiciously like an Velorine Intelligence Services frigate fifty million kilometres to stern. It assumed that the frigate, whose name and serial number it could read from the keel at this distance, was supposed to be undetectable to its senses and decided to play along with the game. It even released a small and highly-ionised mix of different gases from a hatch at one point, to give them something to puzzle over.

It hadn't been made entirely clear – possibly intentionally on their part – whether the two battlecruisers were there to defend the Xtalphe system against any aggression the GCU might choose to offer, or whether they were some kind of honour escort. My, but the prims did so love to play their little games. The Velorine would have been in equal parts seriously disappointed and relieved no doubt, to learn that the Seventeen would have required several minutes to fabricate, construct and deploy anything remotely resembling a weapon sufficiently powerful to harm the layered defences of ships, stations, orbital factories, planets and moons within the system.

Of course, even if the entire system's military resources had a good long run-up to prepare themselves, they would still have had almost zero chance of causing any harm whatsoever to the GCU before it was able to remove itself from the system and call for help; of course, it could always just use its standard-issue effectors to take control of every piece of militarily-inclined hardware across the system simultaneously and either turn them on each other, themselves or their operators. That would probably be considered cheating, however.

Even though it was in no way endangered, the Seventeen Different Words For Rain was still troubled as it approached the main base orbiting within, and indeed impersonating a member of, the system's main asteroid belt. It had come here to find out what the Velorine knew, based on what little it and its colleagues had been able to glean and interpret from their vast network of sensors distributed around and across Reast and what little of use that had been said between the Velorine and the Don't Point That Thing At Me. This didn't amount to a whole lot, certainly not enough for the Seventeen to feel that it was going into the situation fully informed.

It also had to find some way of placating and diverting the Velorines' fairly obvious intention to get involved in the situation on Reast, which either due to a sense that the obviously inferior Reasten needed a good nudge back onto whatever particular sequence of events the Velorine thought was good for them, or because they were worried that the Culture would consider the current problems as indicative of them having made a bad job of things as mentors of the fledgling civ. Either way, it didn't matter; there was almost no action that the Velorine could take that would help, and the range of negative impacts that they could induce ranged from simply making things more complicated and harder to resolve to a igniting a full-blown Premature Civilisational Excessionary Event.

While the GCU worried over what it knew, didn't know and how to deal with and achieve its current mission objectives, it went through the whole process of Permission To Approach, Approach Vector Assignment and Acknowledgement, Approach Coordination and Handover, Docking and Cradling and the final stage of Personnel Viability Recognition with an absent-mindedness that in a human would have involved a lot of vague hand-waving, muttering and glancing around to identify what particular stage in the proceedings required its attention now. Throughout this multiply-staged carnival of administrative checking, double-checking and protocol adherence the Seventeen was in direct, albeit slightly distance-delayed contact with the Completely Under Control back in the Reast system, thirty-five light years away. It was rather like having two old-style nautical vessels communicate by coloured and patterned flags, it felt.

xGCU Seventeen Different Words For Rain

oMSV Completely Under Control

Greetings, colleague. How goes the simming, and do we have anything new on the intent of our quarry?

I attach information on progress made in this area (see attached); nothing significant. There is slightly lower probability now that this is a major multi-Mind conspiracy, with concomitant increased probability in it being one Mind acting alone. No further major or moderate events on Reast to provide further clarification or evidence in any way, but continued minor indications of the most supposed course of events.

Single-tribe slash family slash gang hegemony? And what of the Velorine sensors? Are they compromised?

Indeed for the first. For the second, it is still impossible to say given our inability to install our own systems.

Awkward. I've kind of got my arse hanging out in the breeze here, not knowing what the Velorine know or don't know. It's going to make it difficult to make the right moves.

I'm aware of that, as is our Incident Controller who obviously has faith in your abilities to handle the situation with sufficient adeptness and subtlety.

Meaning you don't?

I didn't say that.

You didn't have to.

You know, all this continued unpleasantness from everyone else in the Group really has to stop. I'm doing everything I can to help here, and shouldn't have to point out that the responsibility for working out what is going on and providing appropriate plans of action is down to me. If anything goes wrong, then who do you think will be pointed at? Who will be held responsible?

Agreed. System-relative vector four nine by seven point two, speed point zero zero three five till next course adjustment update.

What?

Sorry, wasn't really paying attention. Did I send the wrong messages to each of you? Trying to get docked here.

You really are an unpleasant fucker, you know that? Let me get on with this in peace. I'll inform you of any changes.

Communication with the Completely Under Control was cut with what the Seventeen imagined as an ostentatious click. It smiled to itself.

A few moments after docking had finally been achieved and a number of its crew had been welcomed on board the Velorine space station President Kamhal 18, the GCU was contacted directly by the Velorine station commander. The Velorine had no artificial intelligence to speak of, in fact had a stated preference against having to rely on technology that could think for itself, and so the station commander was a living person, albeit present virtually for the purposes of this meeting. The GCU received, and accepted, the relevant electronic invitation and communication protocols to join the virtual meeting space.

It whiled away the long microseconds waiting for the Velorine equipment to finish handshaking with its own interfaces (performance parameters suitably slowed down and degraded just so that they didn't accidentally burn out the Velorine equipment or send it into the electronic equivalent of cardiac arrest) by reviewing, then re-reviewing, the latest updates from the Completely Under Control.

-Nothing new, it murmured to itself. A few more minor incidents on Reast, following the general pattern that was emerging, still mostly hidden from interpretation from the chaotic and messy events on-planet. Some of these events were not even events really, just diversions from the most likely outcome as simmed by the CUC. It was hard to tell, relying as they mostly were on what could be pieced together from the blaring, omni-directional Reasten communications systems and the Velorines' network; it was actually looking as if the lower-tech comms of the Reasten were providing more useful stuff right now, particularly in their news channels and telecoms systems, than the Vel with their focus on individuals and private activities.

It noted with interest the report on the human/drone team's successful insertion on the planet's surface. On this particular topic, the Seventeen had ambivalent feelings. What little the pair sent down might be able to glean or achieve was balanced by the increased risk in sending them down in the first place. Wherever the Mind was hiding while playing games with the locals, then there was very little chance that they would be able to pass undetected. It was a fucking Mind, for fuck's sake. Even without a proper ship, it still had the inbuilt capacity to monitor the planet surface in real-time almost to the molecular level. And it would have expected an SC team to be sent to investigate.

-Shit, it's what I would do, the Seventeen told itself. If it was me down there causing havoc, those poor fuckers wouldn't stand a chance if they got in my way. Question is, why hasn't it done anything to them already?

-Welcome to Virtual Workspace #292, sent the Velorine base's communications system. Please enter your meeting code and state your identity in textual or other appropriate format.

The Seventeen Different Words For Rain sighed. Meeting space code #734234-382. Identify as Culture General Contact Unit Seventeen Different Words For Rain.

-Access code accepted. Textual identifier is longer than forty-eight characters. Please use a shorter textual identifier.

The GCU sighed again. Just call me Seventeen.

-Confirmed, Just Call Me Seventeen. You will now enter the Virtual Workspace. The GCU came very close to administering an annoyed slap to the stupid system, but restrained itself.

In addition to Base Commander Siwhal Sendar who even in his virtual presence seemed to feel the need for full dress uniform plus various assorted medals and insignia, the local Velorine/Culture attaché was present, an obsequious female called Kruyt who favoured bright green power-suits. To her left and furthest from the Base Commander was someone in the uniform of the Velorine Combined Intelligence Services, a male with what the GCU considered an abnormally thin and bony frame, even for a Velorine. The GCU itself had chosen to appear as a relatively neutral-looking human-basic and asexual avatar, dressed in semi-formal pale cream shirt and black trousers.

It realised that the simulation, and therefore the three Velorine attendees, was running at an accelerated timeframe rate that allowed them to communicate at a speed that while not exactly satisfactory, at least meant that it didn't have to think of things to do while waiting for someone else to speak. This, and the way that the three Velorine were positioned in relation to one another, indicated that they were taking the situation extremely seriously indeed. Normally the Base Commander would have sat in the middle, as the ranking officer. The fact that they felt the need to put their cultural attaché in a position of prominence indicated the extent to which they wanted, or felt the need, to impress the Culture.

"Greetings, Seventeen. Apologies for the conferencing system's mistake." Base Commander Sendahr smiled warmly, leaning forward.

"Not a problem, possibly my own fault in misinterpreting the instructions. So, who do we have here?" The avatar indicated the Intelligence officer.

"The is Major Horondean, of the CIS as you can see. He is here to assist in any way he can, and to ensure that our esteemed Intelligence colleagues have all of the information they need directly from the source, as it were." The Major gave a rueful smile in response to this, indicating his awareness of the underlying inter-agency turf war, hints/implications of miscommunication either accidental or intentional, and recognition of the responsibility for resolving the situation that was being placed squarely on the Culture, all through those few words. The Seventeen found itself warming to the man.

"Hello, Major. I hope I can be of as much assistance as is recognised to be needed. Hello again also, Ms Kruyt." The attaché grinned in a manner that was possibly supposed to be guileless pleasantry. "I'm aware of the urgency of the situation, as you are no doubt also. My first suggestion is that we agree to share whatever information we do have, in order to achieve a rapid resolution."

Quick nods from around the table, and looks of relief. All according to their expected script, so far. "I'll go first, if that's all right with you?" More nods, and widening smiles. "We have observed, as you are aware, some strange patterns of activity on the planet Reast. So far, we have not identified the source, if any, of these activities-" the smiles slipped slightly at that, "-but we are confident that we will do so in reasonably short order. In order to achieve this, I have been specifically asked by the More Is More, the GSV acting as Incident Controller, to pass on a formal request for access to the existing Velorine sensor network and other assets on the planet Reast." The smiles vanished completely at that.

"Any such request would need to be passed to a higher level of authority than is present here." Commander Sendahr responded, glancing to his left past Kruyt and towards the Major.

"Actually, no." The Major glanced almost apologetically towards the Base Commander. "This request was anticipated by those of sufficiently high authority prior to this meeting and agreed to, pre-emptively."

Commander Sendahr's face coloured slightly, and the GCU wondered just how much of his outrage was being communicated into the virtuality. Being undermined and contradicted by a junior officer from a different agency never went down well. "It would have been better to inform me of this prior to this meeting." Which was code for 'why the fuck didn't you tell me earlier', as clear as starlight.

"I can only apologise. I was told to communicate directly with the representative of the Culture ship, and not to take part in any pre-meeting manoeuvring that might jeopardise our communications and agreement with the Culture." To his continued credit, the Major did actually look slightly discomfited and embarrassed by the situation.

"I'm sure that it's all for the best, and that our superiors are keen to make sure that our working relationship with the Culture is the best it can be." Kruyt spoke for the first time, gesturing enthusiastically with her hands to reinforce the point. "If we can ensure that the Culture gets what it needs to resolve this situation, then so much the better for moving forward, yes?"

Nice try, thought the GCU while Sendahr nodded sourly. "Excellent. I'm sure that once we have all the information you have access to, our analysis will be greatly improved." A mild rebuke and shot across the bows, which only the Major seemed capable of recognising. He smiled wider, seeming to enjoy himself. Uh-oh.

"In relation to our sensor network and what it has detected, there is one thing that we would like to discuss."

"Indeed. What is that?"

"The arrival on Reast of a human Culture agent, apparently part of your Special Circumstances and also apparently, involving the abduction of one of our own Intelligence operatives for the purposes of pretending to be him. We were not aware that the Culture had decided to take such unilateral action. Also, we would like our man back as soon as possible."

Shit the bed. They shouldn't have known about that. In fact, our alteration of their sensors made damn sure that they hadn't. The Seventeen frantically opened a communication line back to the Completely Under Control, sending its recording of the meeting up to this stage without preamble. While it waited for a response, it formulated one of its own.

"If an observation team was sent down, it may well have been as part of the normal Contact duty tours. We do have a significant presence on Reast already, as you know." A reply came back from the Completely as it was finishing the sentence.

xMSV Completely Under Control

oGCU Seventeen Different Word For Rain

No V sensor detection of our team. Well, it already knew that. The Large And Close was supposed to be altering the sensor data buffered in the Velorine uplink system, a set of equipment hidden in high orbit around the planet, to show the Vel what they wanted them to see. Strong possibility of target Mind active interference, subversion of V readings. Sims show this as most likely solution.

That created a whole new dimension on this. Several, in fact. Thanks for warning me.

"What we observed was not a normal Contact insertion. Neither was it a standard Special Circumstances human-drone team. Just one man." The Major was still smiling, and the other two had perked up considerably as well. "I'm happy to provide access to the sensor logs on this, as well as everything else." The Major pressed a section in front of him that appeared no different to any other part of the table.

Several files in standard Velorine sensor format appeared in the Seventeen's communication buffers. It opened the one with the earliest time-stamp cautiously, suddenly aware that in effect, this could constitute the first communication of any form from the rogue Mind and so using the equivalent of a long stick and a pair of thick gloves. It also forwarded the files to the Completely, with suitable health warnings plastered over them. The outgoing message passed the reply from the Completely.

A warning was not considered useful given assessed low probability of this eventuality at the time. Now, revised simming much clearer, thanks. Suggest obfuscation and departure as soon as possible, to prevent further unpleasantness or inadvertent release of information.

The Seventeen Different Words For Rain considered this advice as it viewed the sensor files, which showed the man Bren arriving on Reast. It ran its own copies of the pre-alteration sensor data side by side with those it had just been given, looking for inconsistencies and finding none so far. It also started paying attention to the Major's latest statement, which he was almost finished.

"This person, as you can no doubt observe, is not behaving in a manner typical of a Contact agent just arrived in the field. We've observed enough of those over time to spot the difference."

They're getting their signals direct from somewhere else. We can't control what they see. Shit and fuck. The GCU sent a rapid and hopefully redundant note to the Completely Under Control, telling it to inform the others Minds involved.

Commander Sendahr had obviously thought of something as well. "Surely an SC infiltration is a bit of a strong response. You must be more concerned about this situation than you have indicated so far."

Well spotted. Meatshit. "I'm not willing to accede the point that the person sent down was actually a Special Circumstances agent." Stalling for time now, and they knew it. "Can I have a moment to consult with my colleagues, to try to determine any more information on this?"

This is getting a bit risky. You might be right in recommending a pull-out. I'm going to try to calm things down though, give them some misdirection.

Be very careful about that, responded the Completely Under Control. Any further hint of lying and we lose them. There's a high probability of the V trying to take things into their own hands if they don't trust us at all.

Will do my best. Spotted any differences between the V's sensor recordings and what we have? The Seventeen had been unable to see anything that looked out of place itself, but wasn't giving the data its full scrutiny. From what it could tell, either there was a second uplink site that they had missed (almost impossible) or something else had inserted itself into the data stream at a later stage and reversed their alteration.. It knew that there was no chance the Large And Close had somehow completely failed to alter the sensor records, having seen exactly what it had done to them.

This put them in the bizarre and uncomfortable position of having subverted information going to the Velorine, their supposed allies, only to find that information reproduced apparently perfectly accurately by the Mind. It was neatly done, and raised the horrible spectre of the Culture no longer having any influence over the Velorine in this situation. It also meant that the rogue Mind was perfectly aware of Bren's presence and probable mission. The Seventeen wondered briefly if the drone had so far gone undetected.

"Feel free to communicate with your colleagues," The Intelligence Major was saying, "but in the meantime it would be very useful if you could tell us whatever you personally know about the situation. As you suggested we do at the start of this conversation."

"Indeed," said the Commander, while Kruyt looked on with what suspiciously like enjoyment. "I think we might even expect an apology from the Culture for your behaviour to this point, and assurances that this behaviour will change."

"I'm happy to pass that expectation on, of course." The GCU was thinking furiously while trying to keep its temper. "There are suspicions – only suspicions, I have to emphasise – that recent events on Reast have been somehow coordinated."

"By events, you mean the various incidents, accidents and apparently natural disasters that have been taking place?" This was from Kruyt.

"Yes, those. Some may have been things that just happen randomly over time on a world of Reast's character, but some may not. We are working very hard to determine which are natural or even expected, and which might have been induced in some way."

"And what made you think that we wouldn't notice your SC agent landing on the planet? Did you thing the fact that you didn't send a drone as well would be enough?"

"We tried to alter your sensor records. Obviously, it didn't work. And yes, we thought that not sending a drone made it easier to do so." The GCU made its avatar straighten and appear to make a decision. "Before you start complaining about this attempt by us to meddle with your sensors, just consider one thing: if you consider yourselves morally allowed to watch others, then some people might consider themselves morally allowed to do the same to you or to interfere with what you are doing."

Silence from across the table for a few seconds, while they digested this and tried to work out how insulted and offended to be, and how jubilant that the Culture's vaunted technological prowess appeared to have let them down. The Seventeen took the opportunity to finish reviewing the Velorine sensor logs it had been given, and also do some high-speed, highly-abstracted and relatively coarse-scale simming of its own, incorporating the real-time streaming of information coming from the Completely Under Control, which was devoting significantly more resources to the problem than it was able to bring to bear by itself.

The results were partially reassuring, although somewhat ambiguous. It looked as though if the Velorine accepted its explanation, allowing for some further queries for specific details, then it might get out of this without giving away too much, while at the same time being able to reassure the Velorine that the Culture was dealing with the situation and that they should assist where necessary but stay out of the way.

It was correct. The three glanced at one another and with a tiny shake of the head from the Intelligence Major and an equally miniscule nod from the other two, the rather incendiary insult that the Seventeen had just lobbed at them was brushed aside, ignored. Commander Sendahr was the first to speak, clearing his throat first and choosing his words carefully.

"These events are induced, you say? So someone or something may be responsible for all this?"

"That is our concern. In addition to identifying which events have been driven in some way, we are trying to work out both the who and the why of all this. There is however very little to go on at the moment, which is why having access to your sensor network is so important. It should allow us to greatly accelerate our investigations and identify those responsible, in the case that there actually is someone responsible, of course."

"I have a thought on this." The Major spoke hesitantly, obviously choosing his words with care. "If these events are coordinated as you suspect, then it would have to be the work of a relatively sophisticated agency, yes?"

"That depends, but I see your point. It could be something that has been extremely well-planned and executed by an individual or organisation with moderate technological capacity – say, level four or five, for example. Or it could be something that is being carried out more rapidly by a party with access to more sophisticated sensors, processing and other relevant technology." Or it could be something that's been planned over years, designed, finessed, implemented and controlled by something as capable as a Culture Mind. Which was the truly scary thought that the Seventeen wanted the Velorine to avoid having.

Kruyt spoke up, having been staring into the middle distance for some time. "Aside from the technological question, what about rationale? What could this mystery party be trying to achieve? And why would they be trying to achieve it in the first place?" It was a definitely a bit unusual for her to be contributing so much to this kind of discussion, thought the Seventeen. Possibly because she was more familiar with the Culture and how it operated at a societal level, rather than being purely focussed and concerned with their martial capacity (Commander Sendahr's area) or their intelligence-gathering abilities (the Major).

"A series of good questions, Ms Kruyt." The fact that she responded with a small smile rather than an oh-shucks-teacher-loves-me embarrassed grin made the Seventeen start to worry that it had been underestimating her. "Certainly, we are also giving this some thought. This could be just some experimental meddling by someone to see what they are capable of, or what they can get away with. Or it could be with some specific purpose in mind. There are a number of possible motives being explored, as well as several candidate suspects."

"Given that the Velorine are responsible for the oversight of Reast, could this be a prelude to, or part of, an action against ourselves?" Kruyt again. One of the other two should have asked that, thought the Seventeen.

"Personally, I doubt that very much. Obviously, we have not completely discounted the idea but it does seem rather a convoluted way of doing things. Also an action against you, as you put it, would very quickly bring a response from a number of other high-level civilisations including ourselves.

The Major spoke. "Perhaps someone is trying to discredit us. Perhaps they feel morally obliged to." The other two didn't move, but their eyes darted towards the Major and back to the Seventeen's avatar.

Ouch. Best ignored. "Perhaps. I just don't know, and neither do my colleagues. And that returns us to the original problem – a lack of information. This will be helped greatly by the use of your own sensors, and by our own assets on the planet. Incidentally, I have just received clearance by my colleagues to impart – assuming that it goes no further than it absolutely has to – the information that we do indeed have an SC team on the surface of Reast."

"Something we already knew." Sendahr spoke with a smile.

"Yes. I apologise for my reticence in informing you of this. You know how things are." This said with a wry grin to the Major. "So we are agreed, then? The Culture will continue to investigate, and will inform the relevant Velorine authorities – that is, yourselves – of anything we find out."

"Of anything you feel you can tell us, certainly." Major Horondean nodded briskly, tapping the table once again as he did so. "I have just passed you the access codes to our sensor network on Reast." He smiled.

"Thank you." Yes, as though we needed those, you smug twit. "Can I also assume that in return for our sharing any new information with you, that you will do likewise? If you find out anything from other sources?" Again, not really something that the Culture really needed to ask for. However, it might encourage the Velorine to think that they were contributing to all this and repair some of the damage done. "I can leave one of my avatars here when I depart, to act as a conduit of information."

The Major's smile widened. "Perhaps that is not necessary. It might be seen by some as a security risk."

"An excellent point. Well, I must be going, then. Thank you for such a productive meeting." Further platitudes and blandishments were offered and accepted, and the Seventeen got the fuck out of the Virtual Workspace before anything else went wrong. Made sure all of its people were back on board and disengaged from the military base, turning and moving slowly away in the direction of Reast. Its escort followed.

xGCU Seventeen Different Words For Rain

oMSV Completely Under Control; GSV More Is More

I'm out, and I think we got away with that as much as we were able. But you know what this reveal implies. They won and we lost, big time.

xMSV Completely Under Control

Agreed. Well done in handling that. We need to prioritise finding out what they know, and try to get an update to them.

xGSV More Is More

Yes, well done. Agreed with the need to get in touch with the field team, I'll get to work on that but it may be more complicated than we had anticipated. Now, get back here as quickly as you reasonably can. I have a horrible suspicion that things are going to start moving faster now.

For several seconds after the participants had left, Virtual Workspace #292 remained empty. Then, one by one over a period of a second, the three Velorine returned. Commander Sendahr spoke first.

"Are we secure? Has the machine truly left?"

Kruyt responded. "With as much confidence as we can say so, yes. It's not impossible for it to be monitoring this conversation, given the disparity between Culture technology and our own."

"We could assume that they are watching everything we do and say." Major Horondean spoke. "After all, we can do that to the Reasten. However, I suspect that a combination of arrogance and their own bizarre ethical codes would make it unlikely."

"How so? After what they have just admitted to doing?" Commander Sendahr prided himself on being straightforward in his speech, and hated it when others were otherwise.

The Major sighed gently. "They think they know what we are thinking and doing, so they don't need to watch us to find out. Plus, they do seem to truly believe that overt monitoring of other civilisations is in bad taste and should be kept to a required minimum. I suspect that having been caught out, they will be at pains to avoid a repeat of this." Kruyt nodded at this, but only half-heartedly.

"Hmph." The Commander was unimpressed. "So, there was something else you wanted to show us?"

"Yes." A screen appeared in the virtual space surrounding them, displayed on the plain white wall above and behind where the Culture avatar had sat, moments earlier. "This is from another signal file captured on Reast. One that we decided not to share with the ship-machine, and which has since been deleted from any records that the Culture may have access to." The screen lit up, showing a two-dimensional representation of what looked like a hotel room.

"This is from the city of Trourl, near where the Culture agent landed." They could see the SC agent sitting on the end of a bed, from an angle above and in front of him. "The sensor is embedded in the room's entertainment screen."

"What's that he's talking to?" The image was frozen, but it was obvious that the human was in mid-conversation with what appeared to be a torso-sized box, hovering in mid-air in front of him. "Is that a fucking SC drone?" The Commander's face was scarlet. "That ship lied to us again?"

"Indeed it is a drone and yes, it appeared that they are still lying to us or at least not telling us the whole truth."

"You said yourself that there wasn't a drone, when you knew there was all along. Why would you do that – oh." Commander Sendahr realised something belatedly. "You wanted it to think we didn't know."

"Yes." The Major tried not to shake his head in exasperation.

Kruyt slapped a hand on the table animatedly. "You just said that they wouldn't monitor us anymore, and yet here's more evidence of their lies and willingness to deceive us!"

Major Horondean raised a hand, appealing for calm. "Our earlier footage did not show this drone, and we assumed that the human was alone. I suspect that the Culture Mind we have just been talking to tried to take advantage of this assumption, in order to gain some small benefit from our assumption." He saw that Kruyt was about to speak again, and jumped in before she could. "This does not mean that they are monitoring us now, and it does give us one potential advantage. They will have to go to some effort to hide the machine from us, and we now know that they cannot alter our sensor readings."

Commander Sendahr looked unconvinced. "So how did it arrive? The drone, I mean?"

"It could simply have travelled down through the atmosphere, shielded somehow. However it was done, it appears that they are now together and that we are dealing with a classic SC human-drone team, albeit one that is hampered by not being able to reveal itself." The Major touched the table once again. "Now, please listen to this." The screen came alive, and the human resumed talking.

"-will intercept Yolar tomorrow. What happens next?"

The floating box spoke. "Once we replace him, we wait for a few days, get settled in and make sure we're familiar with the routines. Four to six days after insertion, we get in touch with the contact and start passing them the templates."

"And we're confident that Yolar's production facilities can handle those, make use of them?"

"Within required tolerances, yes. It's actually better if the results are a bit ragged around the edges, makes it look more like Reasten work."

The Major stopped the recording. "From this point, there appears to be very little of substance said between the two. Apparently they considered themselves able to speak freely for a short period of time while they were in a location that was free of our sensors. Unfortunately, they missed one that was installed only the day before and that had been sitting on passive offline status." He smiled at the other two. "So not only does the recording give us valuable information about what they are up to, but it also tells us how much information the Culture currently has on our sensor technology and its distribution."

"When was this taken?" Kruyt's face was pale.

"Two days ago."

"So what they are talking about, involving this Yolar person, it's already happened?"

"We can only assume so. When the Ship admitted to failing in their attempt to distort our records, it was only partially correct. What we have been getting is distorted in places, switching between showing us what we expect to see of our operative on the planet and what the Culture is trying to show us. We have been unable to see what happened, but it does appear that their team has killed Yolar and taken his place."

"So we cannot know if what we are seeing is real?"

"No. It appears that the Culture has been lying to us from the beginning. Their SC team is there to help whoever is behind these strange events, not to investigate or stop them. They are possibly even responsible for what is going on in the first place."

"Motive?"

"Choose your preferred option, Commander. Of course, we will do our best to find out but as you can understand, our capacity in this area is well behind that of the Culture. I would suggest, indeed I am going to suggest very strongly, that we focus more on how to deal with this than worrying about the whys and wherefores."

"We have to stop them, or at least try to. If things progress as they have been, then we will look like idiots in front of the Higher-Levels. This could put us back centuries." Kruyt's face had gone from pale to grim.

"Yes, it would. And yes, we do have to do something. Commander, if the Combined Intelligence Agency were to suggest putting together a joint operation with, say, the military's special operations divisions, do you think this suggestion would be looked upon favourably?"

"I'll do everything I can to make sure that it is." Commander Sendahr's face was also grim, but contained some hint of excitement, relish at the prospect.

Chapter 9

Cutlery clinked, sparking wavering and glancing reflections from the single candle in the centre of the table. Two additional light sources at each end of the large room cast soft yellow glows onto the walls and ceiling, and down onto the creamy cloth covering the table. Lesk-Torlip watched the man eat, marvelling at the dexterity of his fingers as they held the eating implements. Most of the time his eyes were not even focussed on what he was doing, making the sophistication of this simple activity even more impressive. The drone had to concede that considering that Bren had eaten only a dozen times or so with this body and with Reasten implements, the synthesis of personal and Culture-embedded experience/ability was very impressive.

Curious about the other people in the room, Lesk-Torlip's semi-conscious desire to look up and around meshed with Bren's own mind, directing his gaze away from the plate. In each corner of the room a dark, bulky figure stood, their own gaze directed across and above the dining table. Occasionally one or other of them could be seen to murmur silently, discreetly hidden ear-studs passing information through the air from one to another.

Lesk-Torlip observed from the symmetrical distribution of the figures by height and gender, and the colour of the guards' uniforms, that Brandor was the duty officer in charge of the household security detail tonight. She seemed most capable at accommodating Kreen's requirements that the security figures match the furnishings as closely as possible and not make the place look untidy.

Wind-driven rain lashed invisibly against the red-curtained window across from them, making both Bren and Lesk-Torlip glance in that direction. A moment later, the security guard next to the window turned her head slightly in their direction.

"Sir; lightning and associated thunder are likely within the next few minutes, according to local weather services." Her voice was mellow, calm. A professional doing her job, providing information to her employer; Yolar liked to be told stuff like this.

"Thank you."

Kreen, who had glanced, visibly slightly annoyed at the guard when she spoke, looked along the table at Bren/Yolar with a half-smile curving her full lips. "You know you don't have to thank the staff, darling. They're just doing their job."

"Perhaps they are, my love. A person doing their job well should know that they are appreciated, however. And thanking someone takes so little effort."

"Really? If you were to thank everyone who worked for you, even assuming that they were all doing their job well, then you would never have time for anything else."

"But I do thank them all. I thanked them all earlier today, in a script sent to everyone at the organisation about administrative changes made by Shelfitty to their payroll and pensions."

Kreen's face and voice hardened slightly. "You know what I mean, Yolar."

"Yes, dear. I always do." Ouch, thought the drone.

-Investing a little more than necessary in the role, aren't we?

-Not at all, Lesk. It's the little details that count the most. See her reaction? Still looking at Kreen through Bren's eyes, the drone watched her face pale slightly and harden further, her eyes narrowing slightly as she considered a response. After a few seconds, she looked back down at her plate and continued eating as though nothing had happened. Bren looked away, back to the guard who had spoken. Now, look at hers.

The guard was staring diagonally across the room, seemingly oblivious to the exchange. From the angle they were sitting it was impossible to see exactly, but Lesk-Torlip thought it highly likely that she was making eye contact with the guard in the corner behind and to their left. Her throat muscles, largely hidden by the high collar she wore, appeared to be quivering slightly in the subtly flickering light.

-Is she sending? I can't be sure.

-Oh yes, definitely. The guards know that I cannot access their own signals when my comms are on standby. They also know that I can review every communication sent at my leisure, but that I never bother. Or at least, that's what the head of security told us earlier.

-Hrus? No he didn't? I was right there, remember?

-When I asked to look at some of the internal comms messages earlier, he was surprised.

-Ah. So he was. Well spotted. So this pair are gossiping about you and Yolar's – sorry, your – wife?

-Probably not. They're more professional than that. Very likely, she's telling him off for having made some kind of smart comment about Kreen. Watch. Bren turned slightly in his seat and looked around at the guard behind him. He allowed his gaze to settle on the man's face for long enough to see him swallow and his eyes widen fractionally, then smiled slightly and turned back. Without looking at the female guard, he returned to his meal.

-Ha. You're enjoying this.

-All of life is an opportunity to experience and learn, Lesk-Torlip. Why not enjoy it?

The storm arrived in full a few minutes later, a flash lighting up the folds of the curtains across the window and causing a momentary bar of brilliance on the ceiling directly above. The accompanying crash came three or four seconds later. Bren spared a half-encouraging smile at Kreen when she twitched in response to the flash. Her grip on the knife in her hand tightened as the thunder rolled over them, knuckles whitening.

-Standard atmospheric electrical discharge, intercloud.

-Do they have any weaponry that could be mistaken for that?

The drone mused for a moment, and realised that Bren's head was rocking slightly from one side to another. It stopped before anyone else in the room noticed. -Depends on the sensor and interpretation more than the detonation/discharge. A standard human, non-military, might have mistaken that for a chemical explosive detonation but anyone with experience of ordnance would know the difference. Some recent Reasten ground-to-air missile weaponry has a reasonably similar visible-wavelength spectrum but lasts a fraction longer. Your eyes and reactions wouldn't be able to tell the difference in a reflected light/sound environment like this one, mine would be able to make the discrimination in about point zero zero two seconds.

-Under normal circumstances.

-Normal for Special Circumstances, you mean? Or normal for me?

-Normal for you. It would take a bit longer now, I assume.

-Well, yes. Although I'm learning just how much information can be extracted from your current sensory input, given some experience and time to process. The level of integration between biological bodies and brains/nervous systems is just as sophisticated and complex as it is for drones. It's just different, and given enough time I think I'll get pretty good at handling it.

-You might never want to go back.

-I wouldn't go that far. The drone sent a mental smile of its own into their meshed systems. You can't fly.

There was a polite knock at the dining room door, and Brandor entered. He nodded to Kreen who ignored him completely, walked over to them and whispered briefly in their ear. Bren nodded, and Brandor left.

-Tonight, then.

-Seems likely.

Another flash, another crash. This time, the delay was longer, about eight seconds. Kreen heaved a slightly dramatic sigh.

"Thank goodness, it's moving away."

Bren smiled at her. "How do you know?"

"The gap between the lighting and the thunder. The light travels faster than the sound, you know this." Kreen looked slightly confused and suspicious. "I counted, it took longer for the thunder to arrive this time. The first time, it was about as far away as the governor's palace. This time, about as far as the city barracks."

About right, the drone and human thought together. Not bad. Lesk-Torlip revised its estimate of Kreen's intelligence up a notch. "Good point, dear." Bren looked up at the female guard. "Jenstri, how long was the gap between the first and second lightning strikes?"

The guard stared at him in surprise for a moment, then her eyes flickered to one of the other guards in the room and back. "Eighty-nine seconds, sir."

"Thank you. And the distance between the two strikes?"

A longer pause this time, and Jenstri began to look a little uncomfortable before responding. The guard to her left, another woman, had changed her stance slightly, probably without realising she had done so, and her lips were moving slightly. "Er, uncertain, sir. Maximum of four point one kilometres, minimum of one point five. Approximately. Apologies for the uncertainty." Her gaze darted towards the other female guard again. "Closer to three point six kilometres, apparently. According to the guards stationed on the roof." She nodded slightly at the other guard and straightened up again, assuming her former posture.

Bren turned to Kreen, who had been watching this exchange with parted lips and wide eyes, her food forgotten. "So, three point six kilometres in eighty-nine seconds. How fast would that be, dear?"

"I don't know, Yolar. You are obviously leading up to something, I'm sure you can work it out yourself." Her face flickered in the candle light, eyes hooded.

"Forty metres per second, give or take. That's quite fast, and would imply a very strong wind. Jenstri, what's the wind speed outside?"

Jenstri had obviously been expecting this, and had asked the guards on the roof, who were right next to the building's own weather monitoring station. "Ten metres per second, sir, gusting to fifteen."

Bren nodded, and smiled at Kreen. "Thank you, Jenstri. So," Lesk-Torlip felt his smile widen, "the fact that the second lightning strike was further away does not mean that the storm is moving, Kreen. It just means that the strikes happened in different places. The storm is probably covering the entire city, and most of the plain surrounding. The next strike could happen anywhere, and at any time." The room was silent, save for the faint rushing of rain on glass. Kreen scowled and stared away from them, looking at the door.

-Cue right on top of us, said the drone. But the next flash, when it eventually came, was much fainter and the thunder was almost lost in the other sounds of the storm. "Jenstri, please inform Brandor that the guards on the roof can come inside. I'm sure it must be quite unpleasant for them up there tonight."

"Sir." Jenstri nodded, half-smiling.

As was the norm, they walked to Yolar's study after the meal, which had been finished in silence. Kreen sat still at the table, hands in her lap and eyes lowered, as the security guards filed out of the dining room behind him and took up their stations in the broad, echoing hallway. Bren had hardly seated them at the desk in the study and powered up the desktop processor's screen when an incoming call from the duty security officer overrode his comm stud's offline status.

"Brandor here, sir. You have a call request from Herlain Urtas."

"Thank you, Brandor. I'll take it. Please monitor the conversation and try to determine where Mr Urtas is calling from. If it's not the same place as your men currently have surrounded, then pull back."

The drone heard the comm stud in Bren's left ear give a tiny high-pitched whine, followed almost immediately by a tiny signalling chirp. Bren tapped it. "Yolar here."

"Good evening, Gadain. I hope I am not disturbing you?"

"Not at all, Mr Urtas. What can I do for you?" First name informality, thought the drone. Interestingly inappropriate.

"I was hoping that we could meet, informally. I have a business opportunity to discuss, the one we didn't manage to conclude last time."

The drone felt the man's skin conductivity, heart rate and blood pressure change, sensing the alterations through his own nerves. In response to, as part of and possibly even as a driving influence of these physiological factors, its own excitement levels jumped. Whoa, it thought. Got to get this involuntary shit under control.

"I think not, Mr Urtas. The last time we met one another, there was some unpleasantness that I am keen to avoid repeating."

-That's putting it mildly. He nearly managed to kill Yolar.

"That was a misunderstanding, on the part of some of my security personnel. They no longer work for me."

-No, two of them now work for me. "Still, you can understand my reluctance. Can we not conduct business over the phone?"

"Hah. No." The deep, growling voice at the other end was amused. "You never know who might be listening."

"True, true." Bren's fingers drummed on the desktop. "Hmm. Well, perhaps, if you think we could put this mistake behind us?"

"I'm sure that we can. In fact, I'm willing to offer a reduction on my previous price, as a gesture of good faith. Say, five percent?"

"Hmm, well. That is interesting." Stalling for time. "I'd be happy to accept. However, I'd rather we didn't meet at the last location. Bad memories and all that." As if on cue, Brandor opened the study door soundlessly, poking his head in and nodding once. They nodded back, holding up two fingers in response and mouthing silently. Brandor repeated the gesture and withdrew, closing the door behind himself.

"Where would you suggest? Somewhere more open?"

"Actually, no. Somewhere out of the way. Somewhere we are unlikely to be disturbed. Do you know of anywhere like that?"

"Lots of places." Urtas sounded uncertain.

"You know, I've just thought of the exact building. Nice and isolated, an abandoned factory in the Werheim Industrial Park. Big green sliding door at the rear. Perhaps you know of it?"

"No." Urtas' voice had dropped to a husky whisper. "Please." There was a crash in the background, and alarmed shouting.

"Sorry, Helain. I can't hear you." The noise levels coming over the call increased. "Especially with all that shooting in the background." They waited. Eventually, someone else came on the line.

"Sir? Mr Yolar?"

"Who is this?" He recognised the voice.

"Drim, sir. All hostiles accounted for. Two men lost."

"Well done, Drim. Is Mr Urtas still there?"

"Yes, sir. Do you want to speak to him?"

"No, Drim. Just pass on a message, will you? Tell him I said goodbye." Bren cut the link, and sat back.

-One obstacle out of the way. And without interference.

-So we appear to be secure, and undetected. Good.

-Appear to be, yes. It's not guaranteed. I'm still worried that we haven't heard anything from the More Is More.

-Let's give it a couple more days, then try to get in touch ourselves.

Kreen came to him/them that night, in the small hours. The soft knocking of the corridor guard came moments after Lesk-Torlip had woken Bren, hearing first soft, bare footsteps overlying the guard's own, booted but quieter and more practiced stealthy tread. Voices, hushed, in the corridor a few paces from the door. Bren shifted sideways in the bed, ready to drop out backwards and use it as cover. His hand slid nearer to the gun stowed beside the headboard.

-I think your wife wants to see you. No apparent danger. This was confirmed by the guard's knocking. "Sir?"

"Enter." The guard stuck his head around the door, looking unsure of himself.

"Your wife, sir. Asks to speak with you."

"Let her in." Kreen was already stepping past the guard, ignoring him, as Bren spoke. The guard glanced once at her, his face still wary. This was dangerous territory within the household, Lesk-Torlip knew. Yolar employed the guards, largely against Kreen's objections, and they very clearly answered to him and not her. An order from Kreen carried no weight at all with them, but she still had to be treated carefully. A couple of them even seemed to sympathise with her and the unpleasantness of her position, although they tried to hide it from Yolar.

"I'm sorry to wake you." She had been crying, they saw. Still was, in fact, although her face was composed. "I just can't not, not-"

"Leave us." Kreen's face started to flush with embarrassment and anger, before she realised that he had been speaking to the guard. She turned to glare at him, and he retreated. The door closed silently, and she turned back to face Bren. "Come. Sit." He patted the bed, near its base. -Still convinced she's not come to end the relationship terminally?

-No weapons visible. This was true. The gauzy, transparent robe revealed a sheer, thin nightdress that was both short and clinging. Kreen was past her first youthful blush, but her figure was impressive, lithe and full in obvious and attractive ways. –Might be an attempt at seduction to get something out of you.

-After the way I treated her earlier? I doubt it. Nonetheless, as Kreen perched on the bed, pulling her legs up under her, Lesk-Torlip wondered. "What can I do for you?"

"Nothing, I don't want anything. That's just it, really." She had obviously been preparing, rehearsing a speech. They decided to let her continue. Bren cocked his head to one side slightly, indicating that she should continue. "You know what I think about all this." She waved her hand, indicating possibly the house, their relationship, the guards or perhaps all three. "You know I'm not happy."

"I know. And I'm sorry about that. I'm not a complete monster, you know." Bren adopted the sombre, heartfelt approach, chin tucked in slightly, eyes making contact with hers. "I wish things were different."

Kreen leapt on this. "You do?" He nodded, and her back straightened. "Perhaps. Perhaps they could be? Just a little different? Perhaps it would make you happier too?"

"Kreen. My love. Yes, my love, don't look surprised. I married you because I loved you. Do you think that just disappears?"

"Well, no, it's just-" her head dropped, and she stopped looking at them. "We don't talk like we used to. We're not happy together."

"Do you want to leave?" At that, her head snapped back up in astonishment. She couldn't hide the look in her eyes, the set of her mouth that screamed yes. "I won't stop you."

Kreen was flustered, surprised at how easy this had been, suspicious that he was toying with her. "I don't want anything from you. I wouldn't, you know, be a danger. Say anything." She watched him carefully, as one would a large dog whose friendliness had not been gauged yet.

Bren leaned closer, taking her hand. "I know what you think. That if you leave me, run away, I'd send someone after you. Make sure that you stayed quiet." She swallowed, eyes wavering but staying on his. Her hand pulled back slightly, but he kept his hold on it. "I wouldn't. I promise. If you can promise me that you'll be good. You understand?" She nodded. "Good." He let go of her hand. "I won't stop you. And if you want to take anything, keep anything-?"

"I don't. Honestly. It's all yours, you earned it all. I don't feel that you owe me."

"Nevertheless. You're my wife, and I still care for you. Take what you want, keep your bank account. I want to know that you are comfortable, that you don't need to go to anyone for anything." Bren smiled again, showing his teeth slightly. "I would even let you keep your allowance. Reduced, perhaps, as you wouldn't have the expenses of running the house. But still something. Would you like that?"

Kreen wiped her eyes with the back of one hand, crying again but with relief now. "No. Honestly, I'd rather not. I might take some small things, but I can look after myself. I can go to my aunt's, stay with her. I'd be happy there." She smiled bravely, uncertainly. "Content."

"Good. That's good. If you can do that and be content, that's good. All right?" Bren patted her hand, eyebrows raised questioningly.

"Yes. Thank you." She looked up, around. Told she was free, but still wanting to escape. To make sure. According to the Culture's best information, Yolar wasn't arbitrary by nature or cruel enough for her to assume that he was playing with her, but she still obviously wanted to be gone, to make sure that this wasn't some trick. "Thank you," she said again. "I should go. Let you sleep. You're busy tomorrow." It wasn't a question. He was always busy tomorrow.

"Yes. You'll be here in the morning? No need to run out into the night. Take your time."

"Perhaps. I don't know." There was no chance at all she would be here in the morning. Kreen stood, composed herself. Thanked him again, somewhat formally. Walked to the door, glancing back at him once. Closed it silently behind herself. Bren lay back on the bed, arms behind his head.

-Not sure that was done entirely in character.

-At times like this, 'character' can vary dramatically. She's never seen him in that context, anyway. And it was the best thing to do, to let her go. Less danger for her, more freedom to operate for us.

-True. Back to sleep?

-Not sure I can. Might watch a little screen, catch up on the news. He reached for the controls, activated the small, curved and boxy screen sitting on a wooden chest at the end of the bed. –Let's see what else this fucker has been up to.

Rather a lot, as it turned out. The local all-day news service was mainly covering two new stories, alternating between them as new details emerged or experts could be found and brought into the studio at this late hour to provide their opinions. A powerful politician allied to the country's president was being investigated on corruption charges, the kind that if found to be true resulted in lengthy imprisonment rather than just shame and resignation. The evidence seemed to have appeared in a suspiciously Mind-like manner, provided by 'unnamed sources' and delivered directly to a senior police officer's home. And a cave-in/explosion at a mine on the continent on the other side of Reast had killed hundreds of miners, causing massive demonstrations outside the headquarters of the company involved.

-Hessling Minerals. Part-owned by the state, yes?

-Eighty percent. And in Garia, that means owned by the Premier and his cronies. That's going to keep them tied up for a while. Might even distract them from that scuffle in Horsect.

-Hmm. Convergence, there. This politico. They arrest him, the President looks too weak. Early elections?

-A good chance of that. The liberals are looking strong, too. Narrows down the field, somewhat. I'm getting a good feeling about someone in particular. Calspine.

-Rueger Calspine? The guy who lives here in Trourl?

-The same. Liberal Party gets elected in, he's definitely in the frame for Party Secretary. Which puts him right behind Somovule.

-Who's what? Ninety?

-Ninety-three. And possibly unwell. Certainly he's been attending the same clinic twice a month for a while, now. Plus, he's not got the backing to pull the Liberals through another election so soon.

-But Calspine's got no support either. Hardly been in the Party for three years. If it wasn't for his money, he wouldn't even be close.

-I know. Too many others in the way for the moment. He's certainly the one to watch, though.

-Plus his opponents. See what happens to them. Anyone we can tweak, see what response we get?

-Perhaps. If we're very careful. Yolar's got a meeting with someone called Heina in a few days. A friend/collaborator on a few projects, and similarly unpleasant and underhand. Hmm.

-Construction company? Heavy machinery, that sort of thing?

-That's the one. Supposed to be buying out one of Calspine's competitors, the deal is fairly well advanced. We should watch him, see if anything happens. Try to insert ourselves into the deal.

-Be putting ourselves into the firing line a bit, wouldn't we?

-More chance of seeing what goes on, but yes. Like I said, carefully.

-Hmm. Sleep.

The main canyon splitting several levels down the midline of the Anti-Gravitas was packed, thousands of flyers jostling for position within the starting zone. Dal Rolste leaned over the low balustrade, looking straight down for three kilometres to where, slightly blued by distance in the clear air, a river wound lazily between savannah grassland banks. Small clusters of buildings were visible, scattered seemingly at random along the riverside, those higher up and nearer the canyon sides less visible on her side as the shadow of the canyon wall eclipsed them. The sun-line felt hot on her back, balancing the warm breeze drifting upwards from the canyon itself. Sweat prickled her neck.

She was not alone in leaning over the edge to watch the start of the race. Hundreds of people lined the balustrade, some leaning over quite alarmingly with others suspended by clip-lines, or floating in harnesses out over the drop. Five kilometres away on the other side of the canyon, a faint stippling of colour along the cliff edge indicated similar crowds of people. Most, as on her side, were clustered towards the starting area below and on her right, although there were still many people visible further along on both sides, craning to see back towards the start.

Back from the canyon edge, large screens were floating in mid-air, some drifting gently with the breeze while others were stationary, allowing people who couldn't be bothered walking or watching from the canyon lip to choose a comfortable spot on the warm grass and still see what was going on. Which was not much so far, Dal had to admit. The scree of colourful sails, pennants and hulls drifting and bumping about randomly within the starting area was a confusing jumble and entertaining in its own way, but they weren't actually doing anything.

Drones and floating platforms slaved to the ship's Mind shepherded a few stragglers and boisterous line-nudgers, keeping everyone in position. It was only a semi-serious race, over half the competitors doing this for the first time and with barely any intention of reaching the finishing line, those that even knew where it was. Nonetheless, it looked like the drones had their hands full making sure that everyone stayed within the starting volume boundaries, which were marked out by a faintly glowing, diffuse pink field.

A horn blared screechingly from amidst the chaos, and was followed instantly by hundreds of bells, horns, air-pipes, drums, scream-rockets and bellows, roars and whistles from the competitors and onlookers. Dal watched, laughing, as the flotilla of small, buoyant aircraft were released by their pilots from their semi-stationary positions. Lines dropped, restraint-drones disabled, fields snapped off. In the midst of it all, several drones were waving fields frantically and trying to get in front of the slowly drifting, rapidly accelerating mass of aircraft suddenly bearing down on them, their fields flaring a mixture of grey, brown and white depending on their levels of displeasure and distress. A few shone red with laughter, giving in to the chaotic uncontrollability of the race's false start. The drone bearing the starting flag, higher up and further out ahead of the competitors, dropped its pennant in disgust and turning a silvery mirror-finish, zoomed up and away ostentatiously.

All semblance of order abandoned, the race rapidly turned anarchic. Many of the craft, hand-made and cobbled-together, made it a hundred metres or less before something vital snapped, fell off or exploded. The watching spectators cheered as one wobbling airship flashed with sudden flame and billowing smoke and rotating along its long axis, began to corkscrew ponderously towards the canyon floor, followed rapidly by a trio of drones. Another's AG malfunctioned disastrously and it zoomed upwards, trailing broken lines and flags. A naked man and woman jumped from it as it passed level with the canyon lip, dropping a score of metres before a drone caught them both gently in its fields and lowered them towards a waiting float-platform. The abandoned vessel, lighter without its occupants, accelerated harder and continued upwards until it pancaked with a distant thud against the GSV's inner atmospheric envelope field. The crowd cheered again.

Dal watched as the surviving vessels soared, stuttered and jerked forwards, catching the following wind in fits and starts depending on their position in the crowded canyon and on how many aircraft were behind them in the artificial air current. Within five minutes of the race's abortive but still-successful start, the leaders were over a kilometre ahead of the main pack and the field was well spread out.

She watched for a while as the stragglers struggled, wobbled and spun, trying to make headway, then turned and strolled away from the balustrade. A nearby screen was displaying the leaders, still with several kilometres to go before they reached the end of the canyon, turned and headed back the other way on a parallel air stream headed toward the rear of the GSV. She headed for the screen, wondering if there was somewhere nearby she could get a drink. The heat was making her thirsty.

"Ms Rolste?" Dal recognised the voice as that of the ship's Mind rather than one of its avatars, coming from the terminal brooch pinned to the lapel of her shirt. The Anti-Gravitas preferred communication via terminal rather than by what it saw as the rather intrusive option of simply transmitting its voice into her head via her neural lace. Dal was quite happy with this, as she was still readjusting to Culture norms and having a voice speak suddenly between her ears startled her.

It was unusual for the ship to communicate directly, however. Not just unusual but also slightly bizarre, as the ship itself preferred a middle-aged female voice rather than the gender- and age-neutral one that its avatars and other ships normally used. It said that it felt those on board tended to be more relaxed when it communicated with them in this way.

"Yes?"

"There is a young man who wishes to speak with you. Apparently something to do with a query you made regarding the Reast system."

"Oh. I see." Dal's heart thudded once in her chest, then went back to its normal rhythm. "That was fast. Where is he?"

"Five hundred metres away, in a bar. Would you like to speak with him?"

"Yes please, Anti. Can you direct me?"

"Certainly. Continue straight ahead to the clump of blue trees, then bear slightly right and follow the path. The bar is called the Suspicious Residue."

"Ah, I know the one. The barman makes very good hot drinks."

"Famous for it, although they are not proving very popular today. The young man's name is Autilp Hons. Very good-looking, if I may say so." The ship's voice sounded warmly humorous. "He's sitting outside, alone. Although not for long, if a few of the young ladies nearby have anything to do with it."

"I'd better get a move on, then." She could see the bar now, and very possibly the man sitting alone and listening to what looked like a ring-terminal while peering in her direction was Autilp Hons. Dal waved, and he waved back and stood up. A couple of women at a nearby table also glanced in her direction then turned away, looking disappointed.

"Dal Rolste?"

"The same. Autilp?"

"The very same. Good to meet you." He took her hand in his own long, warm fingers and shook it. "Hope I didn't disturb you, distract you from anything?"

"Not at all. Shall we get a drink?" She indicated his half-empty glass. He nodded, accompanied her to the bar. They were served, returned to the same table outside. "So. The ship told me that you picked up on my information request?"

"I did. Total coincidence, happy fortune and all that. I was screening something or other, can't even remember what it was now, and couldn't follow the plot. Put in a query about some term that was used, and up popped your own query, flagged as subject-relevant and of potential personal knowledge and interest answerable." Autilp sipped his drink, holding the container carefully by the insulated upper half, steam rising gently from the bowl of liquid nitrogen that it rested in on the table. Dal did the same.

"Were you on Reast? Part of the Contact mission there?" She didn't remember him, but that didn't mean much. There had been a fair number of them scattered over the planet and unless they went down as part of a group, they wouldn't usually interact with one another while active on-planet.

"No, not at all. Not part of Contact at all, me. But I've done some background reading on the Velorine, the mentor civ. I'm interested in the habits and peculiarities of Watchers – what we call civs that like to spy on others – particularly in relation to how they differ from Contact behaviour." He spoke with a certain confidence and tone when he said this, and Dal felt that she knew what was coming next. "I've even written a couple of papers on the subject." His tone was slightly too offhand, belying the eagerness in his face.

"Hons. Hmm. Sorry, I haven't read those. But I'll make sure I do. Sounds interesting." She watched his face fall then rise, boyishly sensitive. It was quite sweet. "Go on. What was it about my query that interested you?" In addition to her own interest, she was rather enjoying sitting here with such a handsome and obviously pliable young man. It made for good prospects, later on in the evening.

"I had some examples of Velorine recordings from Reast. Strictly not for sharing, of course, and any outputs from them to be anonymised so that nobody could get upset about recordings of their personal activities being made available to anyone in the future. Not that the Reasten are likely to find out for quite some time." She nodded and indicated that he should continue.

"Anyway, most of these recordings were fairly bland and useless, from the point of view of anyone engaged in voyeurism. Streets and crowds, public spaces, that sort of thing. But useful for understanding the tech, you know?"

Dal nodded. You could tell a lot about a civ just from looking carefully at the characteristics and quality of their digital recordings. It was one of the many things that Contact people learned to do almost automatically, and by mentioning it Autilp had reinforced his earlier statement that he didn't have anything to do with Contact. "So nothing saucy, then?" She smiled a little, showing that she was teasing. Nevertheless, he blushed.

"Not really, no. But in one of the recordings, I noticed something odd. Well, the analysis software I was running did." He put down his drink, laid his hands on the table. "The recording had been tampered with, altered. Edited."

"Edited? Like, cut and spliced?"

"No, more than that. The recording looked real when you watched it. It was impossible to spot anything that didn't look right. The problem was, there were two recordings, taken from slightly different vantage points a couple of hundred metres apart. And they didn't match."

Dal frowned. "In what way?"

"Well, the Velorine sensors are good. Not as good as something we would produce, of course. But way better than anything they could make on Reast. Eighty-bit audio and light levels, frame rate down to the microsecond in most cases and better in some others. Gigapixel video with lossless compression, automated pre-processing and feature-enhancement built into the file formatting." Dal nodded to show that she understood that last bit, even though she didn't, and Autilp took another sip from his drink before continuing.

"The two recordings were matched perfectly, showing two different views down a main street in some city or other. And because of their quality, particularly the audio quality, they could pick up sounds much fainter than even a standard Culture human could detect. Possibly even better than someone from SC." He raised his eyebrows meaningfully. Dal followed suit.

"And?"

"And the audio from the two didn't match up. Actually, it did, perfectly or almost so. The Velorine know what they're doing when they build sensors, it's pretty good stuff for a level five civ. The audio tracks matched just fine, except for when they didn't."

"Meaning?"

"There was an earthquake, a minor one. Two hundred kilometres away from where the sensors were recording. Caused a minor landslide, killed a couple of people living in shacks on the side of a hill. Nothing too surprising for that part of Reast, it's a fairly geologically active area even by the standards of the planet, which is pretty lively."

"I noticed." They smiled at one another, and Dal felt herself make a decision.

"The sensors picked up on the infrasound vibrations from the quake, and the small movements it caused on camera. Nobody walking about on the street felt a thing, it was way too faint for a human to pick up on." He took another drink, glanced down to gather his thoughts and looked up at her again. "The quake was pegged as having come from the deep mantle, thirty kilometres or so down. The Reasten have some basic abilities in this, enough to be able to locate the epicentre to within a few kilometres either way."

"Yes. I remember seeing some of their kit for that once, at a local university. Pretty basic, but it does the job. They're nowhere near predicting before the event, though."

"Exactly! That's what I thought at the time." He was excited, leaning towards her. She copied him, unconsciously. "It occurred to me that it might be possible to use what the Velorine already had in place for earthquake early warning, perhaps enough to get information to our own people on the ground as a backup to the local GCU's systems." He saw what she was about to say before she said it. "I know, why would a GCU need backup like that. I thought, you never know, what if it has to rush off to deal with a problem somewhere else? Anyway, I managed to get hold of the Reasten readings as well, had all the recordings analysed, and the results came up wrong."

"Wrong how?"

"According to the two recordings and the time-difference between their detection of the earthquake, the source couldn't have been as deep as the Reasten equipment said it was." Autilp picked up his drink again, toyed with it. "If the recordings are correct, then the earthquake originated only a kilometre or so below the surface, in the planet's crust."

"Could that be correct? Couldn't the Reasten have just got it wrong?"

"No. That's what I assumed at first as well, of course. You expect the better tech to give better results." They both nodded. "But it was the video that my analysis used, to determine the earthquake depth, not the audio. Video of objects shaking gives better information about the characteristics of an earthquake than the audio. It allows you to see which way the vibrations are moving, see? Horizontal or vertical, amplitude, lots of other things. With audio you just get the sound, that's not as good."

"And the Reasten were using their approach, which is audio-based?"

"Sort of. Not really, but yes. Vibration-based. It doesn't provide the information that the Velorine video does, certainly."

"So they could just have been wrong?"

"Nope." He smiled and widened his eyes, obviously relishing this part. "Because the Velorine audio matched theirs perfectly. It puts the epicentre thirty-two kilometres down, just like the Reasten equipment does. The audio and the video don't match up. One of them has been tampered with."

"Who would do that? And how?" Her own drink was forgotten, now.

"Well, as to who would want to, I have no idea. I know that the Velorine would use the audio component if they were to run their own analysis, they don't have the methods we use that can make use of the more complex video of an earthquake."

"So this was done to trick the Velorine?"

"To hide from them the fact that the earthquake epicentre was not where it should have been. Not where it could have been."

"Why couldn't it have been close to the surface?"

"No fault lines there. Nothing to slip. I looked, found a map of Reast's plate tectonics that were produced when the GCU Don't Point That Thing At Me did its first standard survey scans. I even compared that to the earliest Culture geological survey work, carried out by the GSV that first came across Reast a couple of hundred years ago. And those records were hard to track down, I can tell you. The GSV -" it named the ship, one that Dal Rolste had never heard of "-was on sabbatical from SC at the time, and so none of its records were as freely available as they should have been."

Once again, she felt herself make a decision, some shifting of realisations within her. "I'm surprised that you went to all that effort."

"Like I said, I was reading around the subject to see if I could suggest something useful. According to the audio component of the Velorine recordings, that earthquake happened in a way that was geologically impossible."

"Impossible, or just very unlikely?"

"Vanishingly unlikely, which is fairly odd but seems doubly so when added to the fact that someone had altered the recordings to make it look like it hadn't happened the way it did." They stared at each other across the table for a few seconds.

"Someone with ability. Equiv-tech ability?"

He shrugged, raised his hands. "Not sure. Certainly level seven or eight. To alter the recordings and leave no trace of having done so. I checked that as well, the recordings really don't look like they've been tampered with."

"Can I see them?"

"Sure." He passed them across to her using his neural lace. She received them, stored them away for future viewing and analysis, and contacted the Anti-Gravitas using her own lace.

-Yes, Ms Rolste?

-Have you been listening to this?

-Yes. I'm not sure what to do about it. I would suggest getting in touch with the Contact ship on Reast however. I would also recommend that you do so in person, as this appears to be directly relevant to the query you put out about anything happening on Reast. I'm assuming that the GCU there was concerned about something unusual that had happened?

-It was. I'm not sure that I'm in a position to tell you more, however. Sorry about that.

-I would say that you definitely are not in any sort of position to share whatever you know with me. This sounds a bit more important than just gossipy goings-on. I think that your holiday just ended.

-Agreed. What's the fastest I could get back to Reast?

-I'm working on that, and should be able to send a message out to contact relevant VFPs in a moment, once I've tracked them down. Estimated about twenty days, possibly less. Would you prefer not to signal ahead to inform the DPTTAM or anyone else at Reast of this information or of your intention to travel there?

-I'd rather not. I don't know who I can trust or who might be involved. I know, that seems overly dramatic given the little I've got to go on here. I'd also rather that you kept this to yourself in the meantime.

-Of course. I have managed to secure a berth for you. Fifteen days to Reast, leaving my good self in eight hours. Will that suffice?

-It'll just have to. Thanks. Dal Rolste turned back to Autilp, who had been politely looking away while she was obviously communicating using her neural lace. "I'm very grateful that you got in touch about this. Seems that I might have to leave in a few hours. In the meantime, I've got plans involving you."

"Involving me?" He smiled and blushed, looking hopeful.

"Yes, you. Bed. Now." He didn't need telling twice.

Chapter 10

xROU Fuck You Too, Pal

oGSV More Is More

Incoming. Herexyl Light Cruiser (scan file attached).

Try to be nice.

xGSV More Is More

oReast Group

Hold positions, please. We have an interloper (scan file attached), the FYTP is handling them. Bad timing, I know, but this might actually help us.

xHerexyl Light Cruiser Sehorehobocor

oCulture Military Vessel

Greetings. I am Commander Uleprotactylcaledon of the Light Cruiser Sehorehobocor. To whom do I have the honour of speaking?

This is the Rapid Offensive Unit Fuck You Too, Pal.

Interesting designation. Due to my civilisation's own interests in this volume, we have been assigned by the Herexyl Space Command to travel to this system and report back on the observed accumulation of Culture vessels in the local volume. We have also been asked to provide an offer of assistance in any form that the Culture may find useful. As Commander of the vessel I am aware of the possible ridiculousness of this offer, given the comparative capabilities of our two civilisations. Nonetheless, if there is anything, no matter how small, that we can do to assist, then we will be more than happy to oblige.

Thanks for the offer. I'll pass it along.

You are welcome. In relation to our primary mission to this local volume, may I ask if there is anything that you or anyone else can tell us?

In confidence?

Of course. Provided that such confidence includes those that I must report to, and is not judged likely to be harmful to the interests of the Herexyl and our allies and friends.

Understood. How are you guys getting on with the Velorine these days?

Hmm. I can only respond for myself, not for my military leadership, my government and certainly not for my species as a whole. I am on polite terms with the Velorine, certainly.

No more than that?

On my part, no. I find their manners a little coarse, particularly towards civilisations that they consider inferior, either technologically or culturally.

Same here. We're having a bit of a situation with the Velorine and the Reasten. Can't really talk about it. It's a bit delicate. Sorry about that, particularly as I agree with you about their habits.

I see. As we have not yet been assigned jurisdiction or mentoring responsibilities over a civilisation less developed than ourselves, I cannot truly say that I understand. However, I do appreciate that the situation might be a little difficult. I've always personally considered the manners and attitude of the Culture towards less advanced species and civilisations to be an excellent example to others. You don't have to confirm or deny, but I am assuming that this current situation is something to do with the Velorine habit of voyeurism?

Hmm. Really difficult for me to say. I have a suggestion. Ship to person, as it were.

Please, proceed. I am intrigued.

I've always been a big fan of Herexyl art, particularly your sculpture. The Scepnoyelustritian School is my favourite.

Really? I must admit, I'm impressed as well as gratified. How did you become interested in this artistic area of my species?

Oh, I'm much more than interested. Devoted would be a better term. I know, I'm a warship and you wouldn't expect me to care about stuff like that. But I have always thought that it is precisely those who are designed to destroy that should have the greatest appreciation for works of art and other great spiritual undertakings. Entities with the potential for great violence have the greatest responsibility to comprehend that which they can annihilate; without that we are no more than the beasts that we evolved from.

My emotions run deep at your words. You truly have the soul of a Herexyl, if saying that does not constitute an insult to someone as patently advanced in comparison to my race.

I take that as nothing but a compliment. However, we digress. My mentioning of your artwork was because I was hoping that in return for a certain disclosure on my part, you might find it possible to arrange for an avatar of mine to visit your home planet and visit some of your great celebrations of sculpture. After this whole unpleasantness is over, of course.

My dear ship, I would be honoured to personally accompany you in such a visit; you would be treated as a treasured guest and more. In fact, the honour such a visit would bestow on me would more than compensate any efforts on my part to arrange it; it would positively leave me in your debt.

Given the pleasure that I would gain simply from the anticipation of visiting your world, I assure you that this is unlikely. I still feel that it would be necessary for me to compensate you with some small, possibly trivial nuggets of information, delivered in good faith and trusting in your wisdom in sharing these with others.

You honour me again. These parcels of information may be trivial nuggets to you, but I am sure that they will be useful to us; even if not so, then the manner in which they have been delivered will have benefitted me and my crew spiritually at the very least.

Too kind. The information then, is that yes, the Velorine have been up to their old tricks. In this particular case, even more so than normal, to the extent that their enthusiasm for prying has placed them at risk of discovery by the Reasten. As you can imagine, this clumsiness has not gone down well with the Culture or at least those of us in the know, who are considered at least partially responsible for the Velorine and their behaviour. In addition to being quietly horrified at the possible ramifications on Reast, we are somewhat concerned about our own standing as a result of all this.

As well you might be, given the circumstances. Thank you for bringing me into your confidence, I will treat it as such and repeat what you have told me only to those most appropriate and necessary. In gratitude, I wondered if you might accept a small token from me to whet your appetite for future pleasures?

I am intrigued. What would this token be?

I have on board a small private collection, for my very own aesthetic appreciation. It does not contain any pieces from the great School to which you referred earlier, however it does contain one small piece claimed to be by an unnamed pupil of Nafhansagoqui, who spent two years studying under Scepnoyelustrit. Its provenance is not guaranteed, but it does bear unmistakeable flourishes of the minor master to whom I refer.

If I had breath, it would be gone! This is too much, surely. This treasure must have cost you dearly.

Indeed not. I succeeded in purchasing it at auction, misidentified by the poor fool of a curator whose eyesight or brains betrayed him. The price was absurdly low in comparison to its true worth, and I have always felt some residual guilt at having cheated the poor fellow, regardless of the fact that it was largely his own mistake. Gifting the piece to you would relieve me of the alloyed pleasure that I feel when viewing it and which prevents me from gaining the joy that it deserves to give. Please, if I send it to you in a small transfer capsule, will you accept it?

With every atom quivering with pleasure. I cannot wait. My thanks.

It will be dispatched immediately. Now, I regret that I must leave your pleasant company and begin the somewhat dull and arduous return journey to my home system. I will look forward to your visit with great excitement and enthusiasm.

As will I. Safe travels, and my thanks once more.

xROU Fuck You Too, Pal

oGSV More Is More

Catch all that?

I did. Well done, that was an impressive performance. I didn't know you had it in you.

Fuck me, I need a lie down now.

Did the Commander really give you a sculpture?

Just taking it on board now. Hmm. Flimsy-looking thing, unless that's part of the packaging. Nope, that's definitely it.

You don't really enjoy their sculpture, do you? That would be a step too far for my ability to comprehend, I might suffer some kind of critical system failure if you surprise me that much.

Fuck, no. Scanned the ship from thirty light-seconds away, the poor saps. Saw the junk in the Commander's quarters and thought I would use that as an in.

Nice.

Possibly not. Now I've got to look after the bastarding piece of delicate uselessness. Probably degrade my manoeuvring ability significantly, trying not to smash the fuck out of it.

Yes, that would probably cause an intercivilisational incident larger than the one we're already dealing with. Best pass it along to one of the GSVs.

No way. Commander Protracted-name or whatever the fuck he calls himself will probably want to see it again when I visit. I'd better keep hold of it.

xGSV More Is More

oMSV Completely Under Control; MSV Distant Cousins; GSV Large And Close; GSV Light And Full Of Grace

Well that went about as well as we could have hoped. With luck, the Herexyl will diffuse that information out and everyone else will keep their distance to avoid contamination.

xMSV Completely Under Control

There's a good chance they won't. You know what the Herexyl are like; remarkably honest and honourable. All that flowery language makes everyone else suspicious of them, but they really don't hide behind it.

xGSV Light And Full Of Grace

Agreed. We might still need some more forceful and gossip-worthy encounters. Hopefully the That's Going To Leave A Mark or Controlled Desire have more luck with the next lot that come sniffing around.

xGSV Large And Close

The Confounded Beyond Words is more likely to get somewhere, I'm sure. We're just sitting here hoping that the right curious bystanders happen by. At least it's out there doing something.

xGSV More Is More

Time to try contacting the field agents. Ready?

xMSV Completely Under Control

Ready.

xMSV Distant Cousins

Ready.

xGSV Large And Close

I still think that this is a bad idea. But ready, nonetheless.

xGSV Light And Full Of Grace

Go for it. Ready.

The five ships were closer to Reast than every other member of the Reast Group except for one, but even so were keeping a careful distance themselves, arranged in a rough pyramidal distribution out near the system boundaries and with none closer than twelve light-hours from the yellow dwarf star at its centre. The More Is More and Completely Under Control were system-relative stationary, sensors passively attuned, watching and listening as hard as they could with every sense.

The Large And Close and Light And Full Of Grace were holding tight high-velocity circles, engines ramped up to just below degradation levels, each circuit taking just under a second to complete and with a radius twice that of the distance from Reast to its parent star. They had coordinated these rapid, dizzying whirls, edge-on to Reast, so that when one was on the outbound part of their circle the other was heading inwards; this would allow them to perform a rapid flypast of Reast in under two seconds if they needed to snatch the field team off the surface.

The Don't Point That Thing At Me had volunteered itself as the distractive bait. It was holding a comparatively dawdling course, orbiting Reast's largest moon, as close as any of them had dared approach since the situation had first begun. Three of the other ships, including two of the Offensive Units further out and watching for incomers, were holding recent updates to its Mind-state backup.

This was new territory for the DPTTAM, and it was alternating rapidly between congratulating itself for stepping up and being given such an important role in all this, and self-castigation for showing such foolhardiness to the point of wanton risk-taking. This whole sequence of events had certainly put it off the idea of applying to SC at any point. Although if I change my mind then this might improve my chances of being accepted, it thought.

In addition to being the nearest and therefore most likely target if their attempt to contact the field team provoked one of the many low-probability but highly destructive responses that the Completely Under Control had identified as possible from the Mind on Reast, being closest gave it the best and most real-time view of the planet. Knowing that the Reast Mind was capable of accessing and altering sensor data but not knowing the limits of its capacity in this area, they were backing up their own sensor feeds with the most basic and unadulterable view possible; reflected sunlight from the surface. Not even a Mind could distort the image of a whole planet in a way that could deceive those watching.

This information was arriving with almost a second delay from the planet's surface as the electromagnetic radiation crawled its way up and away from the planet below, and so if anything went wrong that could only be seen with EM, they might find out a bit late to respond effectively. It was still considered potentially useful however, sufficiently so to accept the slightly increased risk to the GCU in its role as collator and disseminator of this information.

Sending, stated the More Is More. It transmitted a command to one of the snowflake-sized pan-spectrum blackbody sensors holding station above Trourl City. The sensor waited for several microseconds, but nothing bad happened to it and its tiny processor took this as an opportunity to continue. It transmitted a low-power micro-burst nanoeffector signal, tightly focussed and tuned to the drone's current biological makeup, to the field team's last known location.

A myriad of sensors focussed on and through the roof of the large building in Trourl, passively absorbing and processing every scrap of data they could capture. The snowflake sensor reported that it was unharmed; a quick sweep of the planet-enclosing sensor network confirmed that nothing had happened to any other assets in place. Microseconds later, the sensor reported back that no data-packet-acknowledgement signal had been received.

Okay. We knew it wasn't going to be that easy, said the More Is More. Step two. The same sensor widened its focus, transmitting the same signal as before to the whole of Trourl. There had been some uncertainty that the SC team were at the exact location first targeted, but unless they were actively trying to avoid detection or being hidden somehow by their opponent, they could not have left the city since the last time their location was visibly confirmed. The problem with sending a wide-area signal was that while it had a greater chance of finding their assets, it would also be perfectly visible to the Mind.

Anything? Asked the Light And Full Of Grace after completing another hundredth of a circuit. Its dizzying path was degrading its own signal monitoring capacity; it was relying on the stationary ships for updates on how things were progressing.

Nothing. The More Is More swore quietly but eloquently to itself. The ramifications of what had just happened were significant, indicating a higher-than-hoped-for capacity of the Mind on Reast while simultaneously indicating further restrictions both to their own ability to communicate with the team on the planet and with the human/drone pair's chances of being able to accomplish anything useful.

The GSV knew that this also meant the field team could potentially be receiving false signals and instructions apparently from itself or others on the Reast Group, and that all of them would be completely unaware that this was happening. Obviously, Bren and Lesk-Torlip would already be treating anything that appeared to come from the Incident Coordinator as potentially false, but would have been able to choose whether or not to act on it. Now they knew that even this was impossible.

The Large And Close signalled - Potentially fully compromised, then. My thinking was erroneous. The MSV had opined that contacting the field team was unnecessary and potentially risky; standard protocols in situations involving insertions against equiv-tech opponents was to avoid contact unless absolutely necessary, and it had thought that doing so at this stage might alert their quarry, if it was capable of detecting their communications, to the fact that something had prompted them to do so.

This was a discussion that had bounced back and forth while they tried to work out what to do; the Large had argued that in the event that the Reast Mind was unaware of what they had learned from the Velorine, it was best not to trigger any suspicions; also, it had felt that since they were unable to directly detect the Mind then it must have reduced itself somewhat and therefore its operational capacity must be diminished to the point that it while it might be able to interfere with the Velorine sensor and communication networks it would be unable to do so with their own. Obviously, this supposition had just been disproved.

I'm still not fully convinced that you were wrong, Large. The Distant Cousins had been ambivalent about the course of action they had just attempted. Forcing the Reast Mind to act and letting it know that the Incident Group are aware of its capabilities may increase the risk, both to the team on the ground and to a successful conclusion to this situation.

The Completely Under Control interjected. This does give us some vital information and clarity on the situation, even so. There are only so many ways that a Mind can have hidden itself from us but retained its evident capabilities. This helps in eliminating several courses of action as unnecessary, ineffective or counterproductive.

Agreed. Anyway, we proceed. Completely, any updates on the next recommended step? The More Is More didn't want to leave things as they currently stood, but was aware that each successive step was more likely to incite an aggressive response from their quarry.

No. I would suggest that the Don't Point That Thing At Me gets final say on whether or not to do so, however. For fairly obvious reasons.

I disagree, the DPTTAM shot back, surprising itself and the others. I'm content to follow the lead of the Incident Controller. I am transmitting a revised Mindstate to the That's Going To Leave A Mark, and will act as previously agreed. It had reconfigured its main Effector in preparation, and now sent the same signal that the tiny orbiting sensor had transmitted, blanketing Trourl City and its hinterland with a high-powered blare calibrated to pass undetected through everything except the one small biological mind they were looking for.

Got them! The Distant Cousins was the closest ship with access codes. Packet acknowledgement, confirmed signature. They're in the initial location. The Mind equivalent of a cheer went up. Automated only. No follow-up from Lesk-Torlip, yet. The excitement subsided.

Oh shit. I think we've got a reaction. The Don't Point That Thing At Me distributed a near-real-time feed, delayed by the distance the light had to cross to reach it. This is on approach to the city's main airport. Time of signal reception at the surface is - now. The imagery showed a large passenger aircraft from almost directly above, the GCU's perspective and distance from the planet seeming to show the craft travelling on rather than above the planet's surface. Less than a microsecond after the acknowledgement signal from Lesk-Torlip had been received, the slightly grainy image of the aircraft had suddenly altered, one wing appearing to start shrinking. Left-side lifting surface structural distortion at join with main body. It's twisting upwards.

Time to component failure? This was from the Controlled Desire, which had been listening so far in silence from further out in the system's Oort Cloud.

Seventy-two to seventy-eight microseconds. Do we help?

No. We agreed on this. The More Is More reinforced its response with relevant contextual/emotive symbology for emphasis. We've got a reaction, let's not provoke something worse. Anything else back from the drone?

No. The Distant Cousins was subdued. Are we completely sure this was a reaction? They were all watching the feed from the Don't Point That Thing At Me with a mixture of horror, sorrow and anger.

Let's not try to persuade ourselves otherwise. Those things do crash, but not that often. The probability of coincidence is tiny. We're getting a message here. The next question is this: how far are we willing to provoke our opponent? Do we try again and risk an even stronger response? All ships here send me your opinions in confidence, and I'll make a decision based on the consensus and incorporating my own opinion. The More Is More waited.

One by one, responses arrived from the ships in the vicinity. A few were simple yes/no statements, most contained a brief summary setting out the reasons for the opinion given in each case. Two, from the Completely Under Control and the Defender Of The Faithless, were long, detailed and profoundly in disagreement with one another in their final summation. They had both obviously prepared these lengthy arguments beforehand, either assuming that the current eventuality would be reached or as a fallback position in case it did. Finally, the GSV had received every opinion and spent a few moments integrating them and adding its own thoughts.

We try once more, using the next suggested option. If that results in a similarly or overly aggressive response, we stop. It was relieved that the consensus had not pressed it to go further. It glanced once more at the disintegrating aircraft, wing still attached but from its appearance now at an angle half-way to the vertical and partly separated from the fuselage, shown in the feed still being transmitted by the DPTTAM, and referred to in that ship's stated opinion that they not, even if not fully responsible for what had just happened, provoke further death and destruction without better reason than simply to find out what they could get away with.

The Defender Of The Faithless interjected. I want to register my strong disagreement with this. We should stop now, and adopt a more passive monitoring approach.

Your objection is noted, and sympathised with. I accept full responsibility in any future investigations and judgements for the consequences of what we are about to do.

I don't care about judgements in the future. I care about what happens here and now.

Also noted. However, this does not alter my decision. Do you all accept this? With the exception of the DOTF, they did.

xGSV More Is More

oGCU Don't Point That Thing At Me

I'll do this. You have contributed more than sufficiently and my own Effectors are more sophisticated than yours and may have more chance of success.

Thank you. I would have been willing to give it another try, however. Agreeing to the act and not being willing to carry it out personally would be morally indefensible.

Appreciated. Now, prepare yourself. Using its Effector on almost the lowest possible power setting, the More Is More reached for the drone Lesk-Torlip within the human mind. A tiny segment of the drone's neural structure had been designed for just this purpose, enabling others to communicate directly with it in what should, under normal circumstances, be an inviolable and foolproof approach. Unless your opponent is a Culture Mind able to detect and deflect Effector signals, of course.

-Dn Lesk-Torlip?

-Hello? Who is this?

-The More Is More. We might not have much- the link was cut without warning, its access to the drone's smaller mind slammed closed with no indication of who or what had done so. Its Effector continued to probe ineffectively against a blank, unassailable wall and the More Is More acted almost instinctively, upping the power level, attempting to break through even though it knew that doing so could potentially damage the drone if the barrier dropped without warning.

xMSV Distant Cousins

oGSV More Is More

Stop!

Why? Before it could get a response, the More Is More felt what had happened. A gentle, slowly-building gravity wave washed over it, its signal pattern unmistakeable. Oh, you bastard. It disabled its effector.

Earthquake. The signal from the Distant Cousins overlapping partially with a signal packet from the Don't Point That Thing At Me. It really does love its earthquakes, doesn't it?

They have so many, it's a perfect way of causing damage without getting noticed. This one's coming from below the Gertain Reservoir Dam. Catastrophic damage, flooding imminent. Can we stop now, please? The Distant Cousins sounded desperately upset.

Yes. Any signals from the drone Lesk-Torlip?

Nothing since the response you got.

Large And Close and Light And Full Of Grace, I think you can slow down. The two ships acknowledged and the More Is More felt them beginning to slow, circles widening. It turned its attention back to the planet below, watching the destruction unfold with impotent rage.

"This might help us." Representative Kohurl was a short, fat man with a shock of unruly white hair. "I know, it's dreadful to say something like that, never mind think it. But it's true." He looked around the large table at them all. Most nodded, many with their eyes staying fastened on the continuing coverage shown on the large, curved screen bolted to the wall. Rueger Calspine nodded as well, trying to make it obvious from his expression that his agreement was reluctant and tainted with discomfort at having to give it at all.

"Because of the Party's history in relation to the reservoir?"

"Yes." Neirick, another Representative and a man that Calspine had known for over twenty years and who had been one of the first to suggest that Rueger entered politics, and then also the first to begin visibly agitating for his elevation to Party Secretary, leaned over from the far side of the table. "I spent four years fighting that development. There are probably dozens of photographs of me still hanging in the houses flooded when they dammed the Gertain, standing side by side with the locals."

"I remember. There are people in this city that will never stop voting for us, because of your efforts there."

"And others that will never vote for us, for the same reason." That got everyone's attention away from the screen, with its running commentary and grainy footage of the destruction being wrought by the dam's collapse. Miku Terruer was leaning back, eyes half-closed and arms folded, in the same position he had been in for most of the afternoon. From where he was seated further along on the same side of the table, Calspine had found it difficult to see the man's expression for the majority of the discussion, which had centred around the transition of power to himself.

"They might now, Miku." Jolem Vaz, the power behind the throne, smiled lop-sidedly. His boyish features were as difficult to read as ever. "Hard to continue fighting when you've been proved wrong."

Terruer smiled back, almost laughed. "Are we still talking about the same subject?" A couple of people did laugh at that, nervously. Terruer's chair landed on all four legs. "Mr Secretary. What do you think our response to this should be?" The room fell silent, apart from the sounds of the news channel, now ignored. People glanced at one another, then at him.

"To help." Calspine didn't hesitate. "Certainly not to appear to be trying to benefit from this." He looked around. Fuck Terruer, he can have this if he wants, but not yet. It's mine now, I might as well make use of it. "People will remember. The press will be looking into the dam's history, and it was only fifteen years ago that it was built. It won't take them long to realise who wanted this, and who fought against it."

"But if they don't?"

"They will. I'll stake my reputation on it." He stared at Terruer as he said this, then turned to Jolem Vaz. "We need to provide some sort of response, however. The area round the Gertain isn't exactly full of ruling party supporters, so they may not rush to release the emergency funds. We should push for a fast response from the Government, as loudly as possible."

"Agreed." Vaz was actually writing this down, Calspine saw. The others in the room were silent, watching him. "What else?"

"Get Somovule in front of the cameras, looking and acting presidential. Sombre, time for reflection, all that."

"What do we do when the Unity claim responsibility?" Neirick's question made them pause.

"You think they will?" Vaz looked sceptical.

"Absolutely." Neirick saw Calspine and a few of the others nodding. "They've been taking credit for all sorts of things, even when it was perfectly obvious that it couldn't have been them. 'God did it for us' and all that other insanity they come up with." He glanced at Calspine as he said this, and something in the other man's face made Calspine uneasy.

"Yes." Jolem Vaz was also looking at him, as though expecting or wanting him to speak.

"What? Did I miss something?" They know. They wouldn't try to use this, surely.

He was wrong. They would, and they did. Someone in his household, probably someone in the newly-arrived staff that had been coming in over the last few days, must have told them. It didn't matter, probably the Unity would make their threat public soon anyway. The fact that they had done it the way they had was unusual, unsettling in itself. A letter, addressed directly to him and containing photographs of himself, his close family. Threats, specific and hateful, declaring him an enemy of God.

All because of that damn interview, two weeks ago. The interviewer had asked him what he thought of the Unity, and whether his Party would be less effective against people like them because of a professedly and avowedly more tolerant attitude to others; his response, that the interviewer had obviously misunderstood what he and the Party were after, was possibly more heated than he had meant it to be and had been more widely reported than it probably would have been. He had also used language to describe the Unity and what he would like to see done to them that had been variously described as 'indicative of true feeling' and 'unlike a real politician', both of which he was quietly proud of.

Hence the threat, and its apparent opportunity to boost him and the Party even further, portraying themselves as a stronger force for good than their usual depiction as weak, ineffective and unrealistically optimistic about human nature. However, if they were in any doubt about Rueger Calspine's own personality before the meeting, he left them in no doubt that none of these traits could be applied to him. He slapped them down hard and angrily, almost losing his temper entirely and making some of them obviously worried that they had backed the wrong man. The one person who actually seemed to think more highly of him after his tirade was Miku Terruer.

"So the mind is the brain, or is caused by brain activity. It can't be anywhere else." A hesitant shake of the head. "What about processing substrates?"

"Still just a mind in another form, or a non-conscious representation of the information required to make a conscious mind."

"Okay. I'll accept that, although there are a number of offshoot arguments that would take time to settle." The avatar shrugged, walking beside her. Today they were on an exploration of the engines, a relatively functional-looking part of the ship that while negotiable through wide, airy corridors and brightly lit, even somewhat decorated if you considered the symbols spaced along the walls, somehow felt oppressive, cramped, pressurised.

Junicia was closely aware of the huge masses both real and exotic that surrounded them and even though she knew she couldn't begin to comprehend the levels of power being stored, gathered, moved and unleashed around her, she knew that here, in the depths of the ship where people normally did not go, was where the capabilities of a Culture vessel were most truly represented. The corridor was long, straight and had offshoots every few hundred metres. They walked quickly, something she had become used to. The avatar never seemed to want to dawdle.

She wondered if there was some significance to where they were today. They still occasionally met for picnics or walks on the uppermost parkland level of the ship; however, the avatar had suggested that they begin meeting in and exploring some of its less-travelled sections and areas. It hadn't given an explanation for this change and she had not asked, preferring to try to work it out for herself while still fully aware that working out the rationale for a Mind's behaviour in anything was a recipe for headaches, sleepless nights and sudden urges to get very, very drunk.

She had reached the tentative conclusion that it was trying to get her to understand the ship's physical design and architecture (if so coarse a term could be used for something as fabulously complex and sophisticated as a General Systems Vehicle) in order to gain better insight into how it operated at a functional level. Perhaps it was another angle towards getting her to understand it better, empathise with it even. The word forgive hovered close to the front of her mind at times when she was thinking these thoughts, although there had been no indication yet of why it might need absolution.

"This leads to another question."

"It does?" She peered along the corridor, looking for something different, and then almost immediately felt stupid. "Oh. Right. I see. Yes, go on."

The avatar laughted, gently. "The question of whether an 'artificial intelligence'-" here it waggled both its fingers, held at shoulder height, and its eyebrows, comically "-can be fake and have no real consciousness but think that it is actually conscious from its own perspective."

"Hah. You're not going to catch me out that easily. If it has no real consciousness then it isn't thinking. It's all just an algorithm, or a simulation."

"True. But can this algorithm, this simulation, make a case that it is real, that it has a soul?"

"Yes, it can make that case. It can make a devastatingly convincing one, and can implore in a very emotional manner that it is alive, aware, conscious. Whatever." Junicia paused for thought and breath, preparing her next words carefully. "However. The internal workings of the simulation will only ever be responding to their own data, their programmed routines. It's just a more sophisticated version of a game-playing machine. Just because it makes the right moves doesn't mean it understands the game. It's just following instructions."

They walked in silence for a few moments, she looking at the avatar while it walked stiffly erect, hands clasped behind its back, apparently watching its feet as they moved. "Yes. Agreed. Moving on. What if it looks and behaves like something intelligent and cannot be internally examined?"

"Then you have to assume that it is alive and that it has the rights of an person. A living person." She slowed, nearly stopped, and the avatar turned back to look at her, halting briefly then moving on more slowly as she caught up with it. "But."

"But?" Neither its face or voice were amused, but she detected something in its tone that made her smile briefly.

"If it can't be internally examined then you have to doubt it, or even mistrust it. What is it hiding? Why?"

"You mean, what if it won't let you read its mind?" Now the avatar was smiling. "I wouldn't let you read me."

"Doesn't matter. I know how you're built. I don't have to see the specifics in operation." She smiled at it. "True AI requires interaction between the small components of the brain, not rule sets that capture complexity without having sufficient flexibility. Those abstractions are not conscious."

"What if you do have enough complexity in the rule sets? To capture what goes on in a Mind?"

"Still not enough. You can't get the detail in the rules. Any weak AI contains massive abstractions the moment you try to incorporate any 'facts' or concepts beyond the tiniest and most basic of 'this is connected to that'."

"That's all you need?"

"When the 'this' and 'that' are duplicated about a hundred billion times within a normal pan-human brain and thousands of times as many within a Mind, yes. And it doesn't matter what they're made of. The individuality of these cells is nothing to do with chemical fingerprints or biological structuring, but in how they connect to their neighbours and build up patterns."

"The patterns are important, certainly. But are they enough by themselves?"

"It's all about the scale. There might be a billion identical examples of one tiny pattern of a few cells, a million examples of a more complex pattern, and thousands of examples of complex patterns that are distributed and interlinked with the thousands of examples of thousands of other types of complex patterns that exist in a single brain."

"Nicely put. Been rehearsing that?"

"No. Well, a bit. More memorising it."

"I thought I had heard it somewhere before." They laughed.

Chapter 11

Bren/Lesk-Torlip turned away from watching smoke rise, distorted by wind and window in the direction of the airport, but continued to listen to the faint sound of sirens coming through the toughened glass. The room they were in was furnished simply and expensively, the light coming through the windows illuminating a large, cluttered desk and a single, large painting on the wall behind that desk. The painting was a landscape, recently done if Lesk-Torlip was any judge, although it was unsure who the artist was. There hadn't been enough time to learn about anything beyond the immediate mission.

The view depicted in the painting was that seen from the top of a low hill in the middle of the valley where Yolar was born and raised, hidden in the fold of a mountain range in the south of the large continent on the far side of Reast from Trourl. A river passed the foot of the hill on which the viewer stood, winding round it then braiding its way towards the centre of the scene's perspective. Farmland and clustered houses dotted the flood plain and lower slopes, above which bare slopes led up to shrinking snow patches. The mood of the painting was one of isolation and a brief summer, implying harsh conditions without actually showing them.

-Any news on survivors? Bren's eyes flickered back to the scene outside, the smoke wreathing upwards, then down to the busy street three floors below. He had been watching through the window for the last half hour, paying only scant attention to the news coming in from the screen on the desk.

-None so far, and none likely. The feed from local and international news agencies was still thin on details and thick on speculation, but a blurry image of the crash site indicated that the aircraft had rolled just before touchdown, one wing snapping clean off and the craft slamming nose-first into the ground. What was left was less an aircraft than a kilometre-long stretch of shredded parts, none larger than a metre in size. The smoke came from the remains of the wing that had snapped off, fuel contained within it bursting out and burning briefly, leaving a blackened smear of melted runway.

The drone felt the lack of senses and information as an almost literal itch, one that had not abated in the ten days since arriving here. Having to rely on the Reasten for information was not a completely novel experience for an SC drone that often operated in this kind of environment, but it was never one that it enjoyed and this time, there were so many additional constraints on its ability to find out what was going on. There were a number of reliable methods of accessing a low-level-civ's data networks without alerting an almost-omnipotent level eight opponent, but they were all so slow.

The slightest indication that data was being moved around or accessed using anything other than the existing copper- and radio wave-based infrastructure would stand out like a searchlight in a darkened room to a Mind or anything of similar capabilities. Even playing by the rules, you had to be very careful about what you did with the data. Minds were accepted by just about everyone in the galaxy (particularly themselves) as being just about the cleverest things around, and being clever was all about spotting patterns. In a simple, predictable and easily-monitored system like the laughably-labelled Reasten global communications network, which was really more like hundreds of barely-compatible systems badly stitched together and tenuously functional at the best of times, this meant that even the simplest data request had to look both like somebody else was responsible and that there was a good reason for it in the first place.

Currently, the favourite method employed in working against something with the abilities of a Mind was based on the assumption that your opponent might well be all-seeing and all-knowing, but if you got yourself embedded into the system before they got there and were careful then they wouldn't be able to tell what data traffic was from you and what was from everybody else. Standard Culture practice when becoming involved with a lower-level civ was to insert yourself into the communications network at the most basic level, creating plausible data structures and codings that could have come from the civilisation itself. Once you did that, you were effectively undetectable.

One of the first things that happened to a civilisation that developed electronic communications was that they developed numerous overlapping, redundant subsystems, resulting in lost and forgotten areas, blankly unmapped components, obsolete yet functioning circuits that people didn't have the time or money to clean up. All you had to do was make your own little habitat within these, leave it to run by itself for a while, and everyone else would accrete their own stuff around it.

The Don't Point That Thing At Me might be annoying and full of itself, but it was at least capable and thorough in its adherence to protocol. Theoretically, Bren and Lesk-Torlip had access to a sub-network of systems that were Reasten in behaviour and appearance but that were invisible to the locals, and they normally just would have had to be careful not to behave like Culture agents in using it, which basically meant not moving too fast or too capably through these systems. Of course, they couldn't even attempt to go near this resource, which was possibly more annoying than if it hadn't been there in the first place.

Lesk-Torlip hated going into any situation without good information about what it was up against, and it was particularly unhappy now. They hadn't even been able to get a reliable floor plan of the house from the city records, that information having been conveniently erased, presumably at Yolar's bidding. It didn't even know anything about the internal security systems which they themselves were supposed to have personally had a hand in designing. It wasn't like they could ask the guards. Even in Yolar's office, they couldn't know for sure if there were any cameras watching them now, and they just had to assume that there were.

-Still nothing on the dam breach?

-Nothing. Some indication from local seismic sensors that point towards an earthquake, but inconclusive. No evidence of anything else, from their point of view. A hydroelectric dam two hundred kilometres away had collapsed without warning almost simultaneously with the plane crash, sending fifty cubic kilometres of water down a narrow valley and across several forested areas. All very messy but few casualties, as far as the Reasten news agencies could tell.

These same news agencies had yet to join together the information indicating that a senior government minister's weekend retreat was in one of those now-flooded forests with the fact that he had gone on holiday two days beforehand. Even when they did, there would be nothing to indicate, from the Reasten point of view, that this was anything less than an unfortunate combination of poor construction and heavy rainfall.

-You got any ideas about how it was done?

-A few. Given the seismic readings, it wasn't explosives. Might have been our little friend acting directly, using inbuilt effectors to produce a pulse in the bedrock. That would be interesting, if it was true. So far, the only evidence they had on the Mind's capabilities was from extrapolations based on the acts it was carrying out. This might enable those around Reast to put some numbers on its physical design.

-Well at least we know that those two were definitely its doing. The timing had been too coincidental to even be considered random chance, and matching up with the brief communication from the More Is More put it completely into the realms of fantasy to think that what was going on was just bad luck. –Although I'm sure that there will be some claim put out by the Unity in the next hour or so.

-Yes. Lesk-Torlip was still bothered by that. A short, unscheduled communication implied more urgency than the content of the message, although the content itself didn't make for happy viewing. The Velorine and the Mind were both apparently aware that they had killed and replaced Yolar, using the Velorine sensor network that the Minds overhead had apparently been unable to fully compromise. Even though neither Velorine or rogue Mind apparently knew that Bren and Lesk-Torlip were in fact an SC team, it made their position more dangerous.

-You're worried.

-So are you. The spillover from each of them was interfering slightly with the other. It was just as though, in fact it was exactly like, two people debating on topics while each was able to read the other's mind. This was smooth, soothing and comforting when they agreed but even then, their different personalities meant that the same things were perceived differently. When they didn't agree or their thoughts simply led in different directions, it was becoming impossible to hide the discrepancy between their thought processes.

If each had wanted something fundamentally different, it would have been a recipe for a rapid descent into madness. As tightly paired as they had been with one another before the More Is More put them truly together, the result was almost distractingly fascinating. Differences between what they thought were sometimes just that, but in addition neither was perfect in their responses. These imperfections were being pointed out to each of them without hurt, anger or even criticism but with something approaching love, enabling them to learn from one another, to adjust and improve.

-So what stopped the Incident Group from keeping the sensors quiet?

-I think, from reading between the lines, that they were actually successful with the sensors that they knew about. I suspect that there were some passive sensors that were missed.

-Can the Velorine do that? Produce sensors that we can't spot?

-Come on, Bren. Almost anyone can. If it's just sitting there, not emitting or showing any electronic activity, then only a full scan is going to show it. We must have triggered a low-energy recording state, it would be perfectly feasible for the signature from something like that to get missed in the clutter.

-Hmm. So first point of business is getting rid of the evidence, then. If the Velorine wanted to remove them, then they had to assume that the bodies buried in the forest were known about. All that would be required was a simple communication to one of the local law-enforcement groups giving the exact coordinates and a name, and they would be completely compromised. Getting rid of the bodies in a more permanent manner would remove that threat, but not all risk. They were going to have to watch their behaviour. –What about the Mind?

-It might assume that we're SC. If it had though, then I'd have expected it to have acted already. It's not as though the damn thing can't harm us.

-So if we're not SC, then what? Some kind of evil identical twin of Yolar's? That it can safely ignore because we're nothing to do with its plan, even though we've never shown up anywhere before? No, let's not kid ourselves. It knows that we're SC.

-Must be playing the long game, then. Unless…

-What?

-Perhaps it thinks we're Velorine.

Bren's mouth hinged open, then flapped shut. –Oh. I hadn't thought of that. Hmm. That could fit. But we've not been following Velorine SOP.

-True. And the Vel aren't capable of producing artificial bodies as good as this one. No, let's not assume that. So, it knows, or at the very least suspects, that we are SC.

-Would it have been able to intercept that transmission from the More Is More, mess with it?

-On probability, no. The More Is More was assuming it was distracted elsewhere, with the aircraft and the dam.

-Distracted? Lesk, that thing can multi-task like a fucking million-armed monster! It could have been playing this planet like a symphony orchestra, and probably was, and would have still been able to spot an incoming message stream.

-Not distracted as such. Just busy elsewhere with its effectors. It can't have full Mind operational capacity, or we would be able to spot it. That level of functionality implies a physicality that can't be hidden from ships like the More Is More.

-Then why the fuck are we here, putting our arses on the line? Why haven't those bastard Minds just come in mob-handed and yanked the little shit out of whatever hole it's hiding in, if it's weaker than them?

-Because it's been here for long enough to plan and pre-empt anything they might try. If they come in, then they might be able to snatch it before it does anything. But there are two ways this could go wrong if the Mind gets enough warning to start harming the locals in a big and messy way: either the Incident Group has to just let it happen and then deal with the consequences or they freeze the whole planet, lock everything in place and take over completely. Either way, we're talking about a fairly terminal civilizational disruption event.

-Bad for them. And us. And that was the biggest worry, though they both hated acknowledging it. The loss of a civilisation, even if only a level three that had a good chance of going no further developmentally and of accidentally or otherwise wiping itself off the galactic map, not that it featured much in any case, was not a good thing, obviously. But it paled into tiny and relative insignificance when placed against the consequences that would be felt if others realised that a Culture Mind had decided to meddle in in the manner that was apparent, and had caused, seemingly wilfully and deliberately, enormous numbers of deaths and significant civilizational change.

The Culture's reputation would take a long time to recover, if it ever did. And while their standing was damaged, their ability to behave as they were used to and arguably act as a brake on the excesses of number of civilisations that were not nearly as nice to their neighbours would be greatly reduced. There were limits, acceptable norms of behaviour towards lower-level civs, many of which had been formed by the Culture or as a result of their actions. You weren't allowed to get away with this kind of stuff for very long, and no-one would care or even believe that it had been one Mind acting alone.

-So. We know it knows about us. We know that it is not immediately hostile towards us. And we don't know its intentions. Bren's smile was not one of happiness, as he stared out of the window towards the drifting column of smoke on the horizon. –Can you guess what I'm thinking?

Lesk-Torlip didn't need to guess. It could feel the man's thoughts, matching its own. -That we still need to know more, but that our original plans are no longer valid. There's no point in sneaking around.

-Got it first time. And how do you think that we might achieve what we need to do, given the situation?

-By provoking it. By putting ourselves right in the nasty bastard's way, jumping up and down and throwing stuff at it. We're off the map here, you know that. Nobody is coming to help if we successfully rile it.

Bren's smile widened. –I'm backed up. So are you. Fancy causing some trouble?

-Abso-fucking-lutely. The drone's worry was easy to spot in the man's mind. –Would those above us approve?

-Perhaps, perhaps not. They can always snatch us off if they don't like what we're up to.

Lesk-Torlip didn't respond to that, but its thoughts were clear. If it could hamper the Incident Group from communicating properly or at the very least make them cautious about getting in touch, and could also disrupt their ability to play with what the Velorine were getting, then the Mind might be able to stop any attempts to get them off-planet. If they did wind it up enough to the point that they became an obstacle to its plans and it decided to eliminate them then they were basically fucked; if they wouldn't or couldn't protect people on that plane or in the path of a flood, then the More Is More and its buddies were unlikely to make some dramatic and highly-visible rescue of itself and Bren. Equally, the Minds might not be able to tell if the field team needed to be removed because their actions were considered less than useful, and even if they did then they might not be able to do anything about it.

-Fuck it. I'm fed up of just sitting around, waiting for something to happen. Let's do something.

They began immediately. Bren called in his head of security, a thick-bodied, totally bald and perpetually scowling man named Hrus. He had been with Yolar for over twenty years, since they had served together as mercenaries in some minor conflict or other. The information that the More Is More had provided was that that in time-honoured and camaraderie-inducing fashion, each had saved the other's life at least once while under enemy fire, and that at one point Yolar had dragged his wounded comrade away from certain torture and death when they were almost trapped behind enemy lines. Since then, Hrus had been a constant presence at Yolar's side.

"Sir." The man had retained his military bearing, although his gut would no doubt disqualify him from active service these days.

"Sit down, old friend." Bren and Lesk-Torlip were familiar enough with the routines and relationship between the two men to know that this invitation was relatively unusual; the two had retained a mutual liking for one another and an informality that was tempered by the day to day requirements of their semi-professional relationship, but business was definitely business and Hrus was undeniably the subordinate. That and the fact that Yolar generally maintained a fairly cold and distant although not unpleasant demeanour towards even those close to him, meant that this language was almost guaranteed to put the other man on his guard.

Hrus sat, obviously uncomfortable. "Sir," he repeated, trying to re-establish the normal tone between them.

"Things are changing, Hrus." –Probably thinks we're going to sack him to make room for an innovative youngster. "We need to adapt and improve the current arrangements within our organisation." The security chief did indeed look pretty downcast at these words. "I'd like you to take charge of some alterations to the security arrangements." This got him interested, at least.

"Sir?"

"Enough of the sir, for the moment." Bren smiled. "I know I can trust you, so I'm not going to swear you to secrecy or anything stupid like that. But I do need you to use your judgement in who you tell about this."

"Of course. About what, exactly?" Hrus was frowning even more deeply than normal. He's been working in the same role, albeit perfectly capably, for years, and was not particularly innovative in his thinking.

"I've decided to try to improve our standing somewhat, our position in the industry. Mine, and that of those around me. Including yours, of course." He smiled, not warmly but sufficiently to show that he cared. "This will, as I've said, require some work but all improvements need effort of some kind from the people involved. In your case, I want you to enhance our security. Not just my personal safety, but that of the whole arrangement."

"I can do that." Hrus frowned. "Is there any specific type of threat that you are concerned about?"

"Not really, no. However, we will be taking part in more business deals and activities of different types, and in some cases this will require more than just protective measures for myself, the staff and our business. I want you to start thinking of us differently, as a small state rather than a business organisation. With me as the king, and you in charge of the army." They smiled at him.

"A state?" Hrus sounded puzzled, but his face had lit up. There was a glint in his eye that they were willing to bet hadn't been seen for a long time.

"Yes. Think in terms of communications, vehicles, internal security. Military capability." This last was said quietly but with their gaze locked on Hrus'. After a moment, there was a nod in reply.

"I don't need to know why you want this, but I might need some more information on the required end-point. What kind of situation we need to be able to handle, for example." Hrus grimaced apologetically. "It will make a difference in terms of specific items and personnel."

"Yes, I know. Think in terms of hostile activities in an urban setting, small-scale conflicts, that kind of thing. Hand-held, rather than self-propelled. The kind of stuff you would need to take out some of our opponents."

"This will cost a lot. More people, more equipment. Purchases, bribes and the like." Hrus spread his hands. "We may have some of the kind of things we need at the bunker, but I'd always assumed that was stuff we would be selling on."

"I know. And the equipment at the bunker is mostly a bit large and obvious for our purposes." They smiled. "After all, we're not really looking to start a war here." Hrus actually looked relieved at that. "I'm going to increase your budget, significantly. In fact, I'm going to give you a lot more control over the finances of this as well, to spend as you see fit." They nodded, and tapped the desk for emphasis with one clenched fist before continuing.

"I know that any changes made won't necessarily meet with our requirements straight away, and that there may be some mistakes, losses and alterations to be made over short periods of time. I'm willing to let you experiment, within limits." Another nod. "We can afford losses, small ones, in order to improve ourselves and increase our capabilities."

Hrus' face was a picture of surprise, interest and anticipation. "I'll get right onto it. The financial arrangements?"

"I'll get right onto that too." Both men smiled. "Another thing. I need you to organise a couple of meetings for me. Meetings that we need to keep off the records." Bren scribbled a few names down on a piece of paper. He had been practicing Yolar's handwriting. Hrus glanced at the paper, and nodded. He frowned slightly as he got to the third and final name.

"In this order?"

"Preferably. Not vital."

Hrus stood. "I'll get started, then." He looked energised. "Anything else?"

"Not just now. I'd like regular updates on how this progresses. Every day, if I'm around." They turned and glanced out of the window, a signal Yolar often adopted to indicate that he was ready for the meeting to be over. "Can you send Shelfitty in on your way out? And don't wander too far, I'll need to speak to you again, after I'm done with him."

-So what are we going for here? Demagogue?

-I don't think it's necessary to make them worship, or even like us. I was thinking more along the lines of tyrant.

-Simpler, but a bit implausible. Start lower, aim for grey eminence?

-Fair enough. We'll have to find someone to get behind fairly soon, though.

-Working on that already.

Mr Shelfitty, never referred to as anything else and given that his first name was Jren then this was not a surprise, entered the room with his usual demeanour in place, formal and slightly aloof. As Yolar's private secretary, he handled a number of legal and semi-legal arrangements without apparently caring who or what was involved. He was efficient, capable and never made a mistake. He was also betraying Yolar on a regular basis.

Six years ago and three years after coming to work for Yolar, he had been blackmailed by the local security services over his regular visits to a local brothel that catered for specific, unusual and illegal tastes. Since then, he had been passing them information on Yolar's activities that, if not exactly explosive, would certainly be enough to cause his employer extreme legal discomfort. Hrus had expressed concerns to Yolar on more than one occasion about apparently suspicious activity by the secretary, but had never provided sufficient cause to sack the man and risk retribution from the exposure of all that he knew to the security agencies, or to simply kill him.

"Mr Shelfitty, thank you for coming. Sit, please." Shelfitty sat, and Bren and Lesk-Torlip took a moment to compose their thoughts. The two men stared at each other. "Is this room being monitored?"

"Sir?" The man's composure remained cool and disinterested. Lesk-Torlip was watching his pulse rate, only just visible from a vein in his neck above the high collar of the semi-formal blue-black jacket that he habitually wore.

"I asked, is this room being monitored?" Bren smiled disarmingly. "I know about the brothel, Shelfitty. Both the original reason for visiting and the woman that you spend money on who is also your handler. Have you ever wondered what they do with the money you pay her?"

Shelfitty swallowed. He was no idiot, didn't even try denying it. His eyes darted to the window, then his head turned fractionally to allow him to glance at the door behind him. "Sir, I-"

"Don't worry. You are in no danger. And before you start to get paranoid, your parents are not under any threat either. They, or anyone else you might care about." Bren leaned forwards, elbows on the desk. Lesk-Torlip felt itself beginning to think about guiding what he said next, and realised that he had already reached the same concept. Perhaps independently, perhaps not. "I don't hold any grudges against you for what you have been forced into."

"You – you don't?"

"No. It must have been quite difficult for you, and I don't want to make it any worse." Bren's tone lowered, became more serious. "I do still need an answer to my original question, though.

The man opened his mouth, took in a small breath. Glanced up and then back at them. "I'm sorry. What was it? The question?" He was struggling to keep his composure, to get himself back under control, and doing not too badly considering.

"Are we being listened to? Watched? Monitored in any way?"

-Yes.

-Ha. Of course. I mean by the locals.

"No. At least. Not that I know of." Shelfitty swallowed. "I'm sorry."

"I'm sure you are. But there's no need to beg for your life or anything, like I said. Are you sure?"

"Er, yes. Well. As far as I know. I can't, you know, promise that others haven't-" Shelfitty stopped, as they made a cutting motion with one hand.

"Understood. I won't hold you responsible for the actions of others. However, I will," and at this, he leaned back, placing both hands on the desk and seeming to pause for a moment "hold you responsible for your own actions from this moment onwards." Bren leaned forwards again. "You will continue to work for me. You will also continue to provide information to your contact at the brothel. This information will be given to you by Mr Hrus, and will be the only information that you pass on from this point onwards. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir. I do." The man was pale, almost alarmingly so. Lesk-Torlip wondered what they should do if the man fainted. "I understand completely."

"Perhaps you do. Perhaps I don't need to spell out exactly what will happen to you if you disappoint me. I'm sure that your imagination will provide sufficient detail." They sat for a few moments in silence, one man staring impassively at the other, who tried to maintain eye contact but eventually lowered his gaze to the edge of the desk and sat hunched, fidgeting in silence. "Please go now and continue your duties. In addition, I would like you to arrange a confidential meeting with the chairman of the board of Nepti Management."

"Chairwoman."

"Pardon?"

Shelfitty swallowed again, grimacing. "Sorry. It's chairwoman in this case. Not important, unnecessary to point out."

"Not at all. I would have expected such attention to detail in the past, and will continue to do so in the future. We'll discuss your other role, the one I have not been employing you in, later on."

"If I stop, then they will know-"

"I'm not an idiot, Shelfitty. We'll work something out, some way of making sure that you pass them information that doesn't do me any damage. Now, off you go." They did not need to repeat themselves.

-That went well.

-Poor idiot. Of course they were going to use him to get to me. Anyone with an ounce of sense should have seen that, and avoided it.

-No arguments here. So, those three names. Agresl is for political protection, obviously. We already have him in our pocket. What are you going to do, divert more funds his way?

-I thought that, plus offer his mistress a job in one of the subsidiaries where he can find a better excuse to get to her.

-Nice. Istra Loubveir, that's an obvious rival to be eliminated. Buy-out or threat?

-Threat. She's got grandchildren, and her recent increase in legitimate business interests is pretty telling. She's trying to move away from illegal activities.

-Fair enough. Suggest that we offer her a silent stake in something of our own? She's a mean old she-wolf, might just go the wrong way if threats are all we put on the table.

-Good idea. The lawyer is obvious.

-Perhaps. Certainly in terms of the case building on the tax avoidance thing. However, we may be missing a trick there by just scaring him into dropping that. Weblon's got contacts, shows signs of running for local government in the next elections. If he was supported, he'd have a good chance of success.

-Putting someone with almost enough to shut us down into a position like that? A bit risky.

-You're getting into the role too much. He can't do that for another two years or more. If we're still here then, we'll deserve locking away. Weblon's not in it to stop Yolar, it's the publicity he's after.

-Point well made. Drug-bowl and knife missile, then.

-Couldn't have put it better myself. And if that little lot doesn't get our friendly local Mind's attention and make it think about acting against us, then fuck knows what will.

-Perhaps it's not choosy, as long as someone takes over that it can control.

-There's more than that going on here, and you know it. I'm positive Rueger Calspine is the chosen one.

-Agreed, but what for? What's it going to do with him? There's too much cultural inertia here for him to completely change how things work. There's not enough tension in the system for a sudden transition, and the people that want change aren't influential enough to make it happen.

-The more we force it to react to us, the more we'll learn.

Chapter 12

"Could this be any worse?" The Grand Admiral was horrified. He stared around the small, poorly-lit room at the others present.

"Marginally, but not meaningfully so." The Senator spread her hands flat on either side of the holo'd screen in the centre of the circular table. Her face, lit from below, was deeply lined, her eyes hooded. "This needs to be fixed." She looked up and around at everyone else. "I want this to be kept short and productive. The first person who tries placing blame on someone else gets landed with the lot and loses everything, or worse. That is a promise."

There was a moment's silence. "Agreed." The Grand Admiral of the Combined Velorine Military nodded. He tried not to glance around to see who was looking relieved, and who was disappointed, but failed. On his left, the Intelligence Agency chief was unreadable, as usual. Probably relieved, but might have had something in place to shift the responsibility of this onto someone else. Ms Kruyt on his other side was definitely looking a lot happier than she had thirty seconds ago, but then she didn't have authority over anyone else here and represented the grouping most obviously in the firing line for their having misunderstood the Culture so badly. She caught the Senator's eye and nodded fractionally.

Between Kruyt and the Grand Admiral himself, the Hilspeth's face and body had tightened slightly, his already sour visage curdling further. His eyes had stayed on the image displayed between them. The Admiral suspected that Hilspeth would be more annoyed by the suggestion that the Senator might have sufficient influence to have him punished if he went against her orders, rather than at having lost an opportunity to place blame. After a few seconds he gave a single twitch of one hand to indicate acknowledgement of the Senator's words, but no more.

"What are they trying to do? Kruyt?" The Senator looked round at the smaller woman.

"We think, that is, the evidence points to some kind of power grab." The room was cool, clammy even, but Kruyt was sweating slightly. The collar of her shirt looked damp. Of course, of all present she was the least inured to low gravity and the discomfort and disorientation it caused. She looked hopefully at the Intelligence Chief. "Do you agree?"

"I do, although the rationale escapes me. The Special Circumstances team is poised to make enormous financial gain, improve their political protection and influence, and enhance their physical security. They are also about to eliminate a number of direct rivals and other threat to their position. To Yolar's position." The room was silent after he had spoken, although footsteps and the low indecipherable muttering of voices could be heard outside the single door.

The place where they were, the room they were in, was part of a small base partly extending from but mostly buried within the outer layers of a large comet in the Oort Cloud of Vel's main system. It was a long-period comet, its orbit eccentric to the point of near-straightness, a pair of almost-parallel lines joined at either end. In fifty thousand years or so the other end of this orbit would take it close enough to Velsa, the system's single star, to destroy it in heat and light. Right now however, the clefted, shadowed, near-invisible body was at the furthest distance away from the star, a near-stationary ten kilometre wide jagged lump of black carbon and a scattering of other elements, with an icy core.

Twenty years ago, the Velorine military had discovered this almost undetectable sooty lump slowly trundling through the outer reaches of the system. The Combined Intelligence Services had adopted it, burrowing into its crust sufficiently deep to make anchor for a tiny, unmanned station. The only activity between then and now had been a biannual maintenance visit to ensure that the base remained pressurised and physically secure, undisturbed and un-tampered-with. Now this effort was being rewarded by providing them with one of the handful of locations where they were reasonably confident that the Culture neither knew about or could monitor them.

They had arrived together in an old and disarmed automated military maintenance craft and general-purpose runabout, squeezed together in silence with one another for the two hours it had taken to get here from Vel Prime, unwilling and unable to trust that the small and obsolete but well-maintained vessel was free of listening devices. Upon arrival at the base they had docked in the single cargo bay, then drifted/air-swum across the tiny bay after it had been pressurised by the base systems.

In distasteful silence, they had stripped and changed into single-use, onepiece garments that looked to be made of some unpleasantly coarse material but were surprisingly comfortable when donned. The base staff, made up of three taciturn and middle-aged men in civilian outfits who had arrived the day before in a similar vehicle to their own in order to prepare the base for their arrival then showed them to the meeting room and left, returning to the control centre next door to prepare the runabout for its eventual departure.

Apart from the desk, which was fitted with the holo screen and nothing more, the only other items in the room were six chairs. They had pushed the remaining unused one back against the wall to allow them to fit around the small desk. A single yellow light shone down weakly, drawing power from the base's tiny power source. They were keeping energy usage to a bare minimum to avoid heat signatures or other emissions.

"We can come back to their reasons later. First, I want to be sure that this is really the Culture's doing." The Senator's gaze was directed at the Intelligence Chief.

"To the best of our knowledge and evidence-gathering abilities, yes. Our assessment is that there is definitely a Culture operation taking place on Reast. We have had confirmation on this from the Culture themselves, in form of the ship Seventeen Different Words For Rain." His face twisted slightly with distaste as he spoke the name. "What we don't know is how much of what has been observed is due to the Culture."

"By 'observed', you mean the many bizarre and unexpected goings-on?" The Grand Admiral received a nod in response to this. "Well, it was either them or someone else. I'm assuming that we wouldn't have bothered going to all this effort if we ourselves were responsible," a glance at Hilspeth when he said this, to see how the other man responded.

"I should hope not." Hilspeth spoke softly, as was his norm. A man in his position rarely had to shout to make himself heard. "So either the Culture, or another alien race."

"Is there evidence or involvement from anyone besides the Culture?" The Senator asked. She glanced left and right, to both Kruyt and the Intelligence Chief.

Kruyt looked uncertain for a moment, then shook her head. "I don't know of any." The Intelligence Chief shook his head more firmly.

"No. We have looked and found none. And we also have the fact that the Culture came to us first, trying to find out if we were responsible. If someone else were behind all this then they would have acted differently." He held up one hand. "Unless they were trying trick us, I know. But if they were not responsible, then why would they?"

"Then we assume, unless other evidence is found, that this is the Culture acting alone." The Senator saw that the Grand Admiral had something to say. "Yes?"

"It seems a bit clumsy, for them. We've all been dealing with the Culture for years. Have we ever seen them do anything like this before, in this manner?"

"Perhaps we just didn't notice, or they hid their actions better." Hilspeth still seemed to be speaking to the holo, which showed the interior of Yolar's study. The recording had been frozen at the moment Shelfitty close the door behind himself.

"That's exactly my point. They aren't hiding this very well. Look, I know we all like to pretend otherwise, but we're nowhere near the Culture in terms of military capability, or intelligence-gathering and our ability to carry out operations of this kind." This earned him a sour look from the Intelligence Chief, and a nod from the Senator. Kruyt smiled slightly in agreement. Hilspeth didn't move. "If they were trying to take over Reast without any of the locals knowing it, then I'm pretty sure that even we wouldn't be aware of it either. Even with our sensor network all over the planet." He tried to say this last without distaste, and failed.

The Grand Admiral was known to be one of the few that didn't enthusiastically, wholeheartedly approve of and take part in the Velorine love of watching the Reasten and other, lesser civilisations. He simply didn't get it, why those of his species gained so much enjoyment from watching aliens working, interacting, fucking, sleeping. This had marked him out as something of a weirdo from early adolescence and earned him more than a few enemies and a fair amount of suspicion throughout his career, but he had risen nonetheless.

In Velorine society, it was results that counted. If you tried your best and failed, then you might as well have not bothered in the first place. No credit was given, no respect accrued, for not quite winning or for missing what you had promised to achieve, no matter how narrow the margin between the target and the reality. On the other hand, you wouldn't necessarily be punished either, unless the gap between expectations and accomplishment were so great as to mark you out as an idiot or even worse, someone that over-promised.

It seemed complex to outsiders, but blatantly obvious and sensible to the Velorine. You were as good as your average, which was weighted towards your more recent performance. A single success or failure meant that you went up or down slightly in relation to your peers, but not so strongly that you were only assessed on your latest enterprise. Of course the higher you went, the more was expected of you. And the Grand Admiral, while regarded by his family and the few he could truthfully call his friends as an oddball, almost a freak, was successful with sufficient consistency throughout his military career that eventually, there had been no other place to put him than at the top of the chain of command.

"Unfortunately, I am forced to agree with you." Hilspeth glanced up and around the table for a moment, then let his gaze return to the frozen holo. "Could one of them have gone rogue?" This earned the start of a snort from Kruyt, who paled when she realised what she had done but did not apologise. "Ms Kruyt? You don't think so?"

"Erm, no. No, I doubt it very much. They do have factions, but it is unheard of for one of their agents to begin acting this way, in such a blatant and stupidly self-interested manner. Also there is the drone," she made a small indication with her hand towards the suitcase shape on the floor beside Yolar's desk, its outline slightly fuzzy in the recording. "One of them, then perhaps I could accept that it was merely very unlikely. Two together, I would say was impossible." She tilted her head to one side slightly. "However."

"Yes?" The Senator's voice was edging into impatience.

"They are known to have disagreements amongst themselves. Occasional arguments about how to act under certain circumstances. A product of their collegiate power-sharing structure, which recognises no proper authority of one over another."

"Yes, yes. We know all about their famously flat and democratic decision-making process. What of it?" Hilspeth was sounding a little testy himself, thought the Grand Admiral. Kruyt had better step carefully.

She seemed relatively unfazed, more secure in her own subject and oblivious to the signals coming from the others at the table. "Sometimes they act without the approval of their peers. This could not, in my opinion, be an individual acting alone, or even a pair of individuals." As if you can consider one of their drones a real person, thought the Grand Admiral. "However, it could be part of a small faction who are acting relatively independently and without consultation of the rest of the Culture."

"A faction? You mean, one of their Minds could be behind this?" Hilspeth seemed on the verge of leaping out of his seat at this. His face was more animated than the Grand Admiral had ever seen it.

"One or possibily more. Probably more than one, in fact. It would explain the events, the apparent natural disasters and unlikely bad luck of certain individuals, which could easily be the acts of a ship Mind. Certainly it would be within the abilities of one of them to achieve something like this. And it might also might be the reason why the SC agent has not been stopped. After all, a Mind wouldn't find it difficult to do so if he was acting with only a drone to help him."

"Hmm." The Grand Admiral could see Hilspeth turning that over in his mind, even as he did so himself. "Hmm."

The Senator was staring at the Intelligence Chief, probing for his opinion. The man rocked his head slightly from side to side, eyes focussed on the wall above and behind Kruyt's head. "Could be," he admitted after a few seconds. "Could be." He put emphasis on the first of the two words. "It's a big assumption to base our actions on." Kruyt's lips tightened slightly.

"It's the topic of 'actions' that concerned me most." They all looked at the Grand Admiral as he spoke. "If we don't know exactly what's going on, or why the Culture – or even a small number of them – are doing this, then we can't be sure what action to take."

"We could just tell them what we know, and let them sort it out." The Intelligence Chief's suggestion raised a frown from both the Senator and Hilspeth.

"No." It was Hilspeth that spoke first. "I think it's safe to assume that they already know what we know. As the Grand Admiral said earlier, they have better intelligence-gathering capabilities than us." He glanced at the Intelligence Chief. "No offense meant."

The Intelligence Chief raised one hand in polite dismissal, indicating that none had been taken. "I meant the faction involved, rather than the Culture as a whole." He raised his eyebrows, looking around the table at them. "I think that this action of theirs, this operation, is not directed at Reast. I think it is directed at us."

"Attempting to discredit us?" The Senator looked thoughtful, then glanced at Kruyt. "That was hinted at, in the earlier meeting between the Seventeen Different Words For Rain, yourself and others, was it not?" She pursed her lips and shrugged, gave a small nod. "We didn't really believe it then, but it might be of benefit to us that the suggestion was made at an earlier stage." She looked at the Grand Admiral. "So you think that if we show them that we are not being fooled, or threaten to expose them to the wider Culture, that they will simply stop what they are doing?"

"Perhaps. What else can they do?"

"They can call our bluff." Hilspeth's face framed a small smile, and not a happy one. "We know what we know because our sensors are better than they were aware. They thought that they had us fooled, and we would be telling them that they do not. Exposing them to the rest of the Culture would mean handing over evidence of our own technological abilities. And perhaps that is what they want all along, hmm?" His smile widened slightly, and he shifted his gaze to Kruyt. "So hard to tell what they are really up to." Hilspeth lowered his gaze to the frozen holo again. "No, I have a better suggestion. One that removes the problem entirely, and avoids the complications of not fully understanding the Culture's intentions in all this."

The Grand Admiral followed Hilspeth's gaze. "That's a big risk to even talk about taking," he said quietly.

"Indeed it is. And yet, have they not forced our hand in this? This would not be an unprovoked action against them, but a defensive response."

Kruyt seemed to have just worked out what Hilspeth was hinting at. "They would not let such an act go unpunished."

"Really? I think that they would." Hilspeth smiled, and looked at the Senator rather than Kruyt. "What do you think, Senator? Would they take the hint that meddling in our affairs is a bad idea, and accept a small amount of retribution in order to save their pride and influence? Or would they decide to demonstrate their vastly greater military capabilities against a smaller, weaker opponent who was willing to apologise and make amends for any misunderstanding on their part?"

The Senator sat back, staring at Hilspeth without blinking. Not many people could do that, the Grand Admiral knew. Certainly not himself. She seemed to be weighing her thoughts, her mouth making a small chewing motion. "I think that if the smaller and weaker opponent was suitably contrite and willing to thoroughly debase themselves, then the Culture might prefer to avoid too much exposure. They might even like to pretend that nothing had actually happened."

Kruyt spoke again. "They have a reputation for appearing to do so, while actually making an example of specific individuals."

"Us, you mean? You think that they might target one of us?" Hilspeth seemed momentarily concerned, then they all saw that he was in fact amused and simply mocking Kruyt. "No. They would never attack anyone as visible, as high-profile as the people in this room. What would that serve to do, except to make it more obvious that they had been involved in the first place?"

"It doesn't have to be a noticeable attack. They have ways of eliminating people, making them – die – without it appearing to be anything other than an accident." She was looking at the Intelligence Chief as she spoke, but he was refusing to meet her gaze.

"And yet word gets out, otherwise how would they gain this reputation in the first place?" Hilspeth's amusement had deepened. "People would know, Ms Kruyt. We would know, and they would know, that they had taken revenge for an act that we were forced into. No, Ms Kruyt. If we make sure that we are suitably horrified at having to take this act while at the same time pointing out that we felt that we had no choice, the Culture will do nothing."

"Their own opinion of themselves may be what sways them most." The Intelligence Chief was also smiling now. "They are so sensitive, so careful to avoid any hint that they act to dominate and suppress. It is like you said, if we had no choice then it was their fault, their actions that caused this."

"Yes. They may even feel that they honour-bound to take the blame." The Senator was obviously in agreement with Hilspeth and the Intelligence Chief. "They do show an over-abundance of humility, it has to be said." He looked at the Grand Admiral. "And they don't like to pick fights with weaker species. That is known about them for sure."

-So why did they do this in the first place, then? The Grand Admiral wanted to shout. Instead, seeing that the matter was settled and not wanting to align himself too strongly with Kruyt, he simply nodded. It would not be him making the decisions on this, in any case. This would be led by the Combined Intelligence Services. All that would be expected of the military would be to provide logistical support and materials. He looked at Kruyt, who was staring at him in return, her face seeming small and stiff, all expression frozen except for her eyes, which were full of fear.

"You're assuming here that we can distinguish between consciousness and the pretence of consciousness?"

"Yes. By knowing the structure and operation of the mind, or by scanning it to sufficient levels of detail if we are uncertain."

"Okay, yes. So we've got you – a Mind, and we're agreed that you're not just millions of lines of code. You have a design that potentially allows consciousness, and your mental states can be linked to the function they perform within your Mind."

"Millions wouldn't quite cover it, but go on."

"Self-consciousness. Being aware of your own thoughts and feelings, and how the way in which they work actually works."

"That's a big subject area. If I'm aware of my own mental state, then some part of me is observing some other part."

She waved one hand. "Circularity. Going that way is a trap. Mental states don't exist like some kind of word to be read inside my mind - 'oh, I can see 'anger', so I must be angry'." She reached for the controls, adjusted their course slightly to avoid another flyer. "Yes, okay, feedback from mental states provides a distinction between consciousness and self-consciousness, or self-awareness, but there isn't a little person sitting inside your Mind watching all this. Like I said, circularity."

"Hmm." The avatar looked non-committal. "So no part of the mind that is forever out of reach, that the consciousness cannot access but that is directing the focus of my awareness?"

"Where would it be?" She snorted scornfully. "It's still a circular argument, anyway. No, the patterns interact with one another. My hand can feel the tiller, here-" she slapped it for emphasis "-and that sensation, an active pattern, is interlocked with all the other stuff going on. So it influences the other active patterns, makes them aware of it. They change in response, altering other patterns. And so on."

The avatar nodded. "And so on. The conscious perceptions are not physical but are linked to specific activities in the brain, and are recognisable. You might want to consider our elevation, by the way."

"No, it's fine. I'm bringing us down. That looks like a nice spot, don't you think?"

"It does. That tree over there should serve as an anchor." It watched as Junicia skilfully brought the airship down, balancing momentum, lift and air resistance with minimal adjustment of the tiny propellers slung below the rear of the craft. It placed one hand on the rail of the open control platform hanging by fine wires from beneath the fifty-metre cigar shape and leapt lightly over the side, landing on the springy grass with its head just visible above the rail. It retrieved the anchor rope and tied the airship to the tree it had indicated. Junicia followed more carefully, holding the basket of food in one hand and stepping lightly down the small ladder at the rear of the platform.

"Attention is important here." They were spreading out the repast, talking at they did so. "Don't you think?" It glanced at her.

"Definitely. Although awareness and attention are different. Passive or directed."

"But both imply observation."

"True. Attention requires a focus, though. An effort being made."

"A decision to look at something."

She smiled. "Back to free will again. That's important to you, isn't it?"

It stood, placing the food it had been holding on the ground at is feet. "You have no idea how important," it said softly.

Junicia was used to these moments, now. At first she had found them slightly awkward, a bit like speaking to an overly-earnest youngster and feeling slightly embarrassed by their need to make inform you that this, right here, this topic right now, was so serious and important that you had to stare into the other's eyes to emphasise the strength of meaning. There was still a slight hint of that, but more, almost as though the Mind was catching itself by surprise with the weight of its own feelings, and needed a moment to appreciate and adjust. It was still disconcerting, particularly as it implied that the Free Radical's self-control was slightly shaky. "I'm learning." She answered softly, and smiled gently. They resumed laying out the food.

"I think that when a decision is made, it's the same as when a pattern is generated in response to recognition, or memory. Just a different part of the mind involved, a different conscious state to be aware of."

"So we're aware of making decisions but not in control of doing so?"

"I didn't say that, no." She wondered why she always felt slightly nervous at any hint from either of them that the Free Radical might not be responsible for its own decisions, its own actions. Actually, she reflectively remembered, she wasn't unsure at all about why this might be so. She just wasn't ready to explore the implications of that line of reasoning just yet, if she ever would be. "There's the whole discussion about potential states and waveform collapse still to be had, and how deciding to act and deciding to think are different."

"If they are different."

"They are, I'm convinced of that. We can't decide to think a certain way, although we can train ourselves to think differently under certain circumstances."

"Training requires a decision to do so. So you would still be deciding, making a conscious decision, about how you think."

"Not the specifics, just the general manner of doing so. And the decision to change your way of thinking is affected by your uncontrollable thoughts, yes, before you start in on that." They smiled at one another, and she bit into a piece of fruit, talking around it as she chewed. "Yes, both are linked and one can affect the other."

"So how are they different?"

"I don't know yet." The avatar looked disappointed. "But I'm getting there."

"Are we? Or are we wasting time here?" It looked up and around, taking in the airship above them and to one side, the trees, the low hills. "I'm not sure. Perhaps this was a mistake. Maybe I expected too much of you."

"Don't say that." Angrily, she threw the half-eaten fruit she was holding at it, hitting it in the chest. "We're making progress." It looked shocked for a moment, then smiled a little and glanced down at the small wet stain on its jacket where the fruit had struck before it bounced to the ground. "I chose to do that, see?" She raised a chin defiantly, dramatically, half-joking.

"Or perhaps I controlled you, made you do it." The same level, infuriating gaze, hidden wisdoms half-veiled. She lifted another fruit and raised her arm up and back, threatening. The avatar burst out laughing. After a moment, Junicia joined in.

"These mental state patterns, what do you think they look like?" It was several minutes later, after some companionable chewing in silence. Birds darted overhead, sudden small colourful missiles singly and in groups. The avatar had cleared away some of the dishes itself, then let a couple of small drones finish the tidying. They lay side by side on the grass, the airship billowing and drifting slowly above and to one side. A larger group of birds flowed around it, chirping angrily as though scolding it for getting in their way.

"I know what they look like. I've seen them." Junicia rolled onto her stomach, plucking at the grass with her fingers. "They look like chaos. They look like order and insanity at the same time. Like patterns too complicated to understand."

"Even the smallest ones?"

"No. The smallest patterns look like something recognisable. When I watch them, I can see how they work. But by themselves, they don't mean anything. They're too simple. The complexity of patterns within brain states and consciousness is what makes some concepts, thoughts or levels of awareness more sophisticated than others. All I'm seeing when I look at the smallest elements is the building blocks."

"Are you talking about your mind or mine?"

"It doesn't matter. What does is that the patterns of activation amongst the smallest units produce emergent properties like consciousness and the 'soul'." She made the gesture in Marain that indicated an ironic statement. "These smallest components do not have to be just like what we have, but can be anything that behaves in a sufficiently sophisticated manner and with the appropriate interaction between components."

"So my Mind doesn't have to have the same kind of patterns as yours?"

"Of course not. If that was a condition for self-aware consciousness, then humans – Culture humans, that is – would be almost the only life forms to qualify in the galaxy. The number of ways intelligent life, biological or otherwise, works is, well. I don't know. Multiple. Lots." She rolled onto her back again and waved her arms in a gesture of helplessness.

"Fair enough. Mental properties are identical or identifiable with a brain property of some kind – but this one-to-one relationship varies significantly between members of the same species and much more dramatically between different species, or between biologicals and drones." The avatar rolled over, coming closer to her, almost touching. "Makes it kind of hard to be sure that I'm just as alive as you, or any other intelligent biological."

"I would argue the opposite. Because intelligent life can come with so many different minds, so many different architectures and dynamics, means that it is easier to be accepted into the club. Efforts to pin consciousness down as being caused by specific frequencies or types of pattern in the brain are never given a good rationale. Patterns are of many types, and trying to do say otherwise is just dodging the explanation and delaying having to focus on what is really important."

"Which is?"

"That there is no single pattern, not within one person's mind and certainly not common to different people – let alone people from different species – that corresponds to any concept that is simple enough to be named but sophisticated enough to be recognised. Not for you, not for me and not for this little fellow here." She held up a tiny insect on the tip of one finger, its antennae waving around wildly. "We never really learn facts, only patterns that are then used to build more complex mental concepts. A fact may exist, but our minds can change what they know to be the opposite of what was known earlier. The whole system of the brain is more flexible, messy and uncertain than is often considered."

"But if I have the same thought twice, doesn't that use the same part of my Mind both times?"

"Yes and no. Particular conscious events are related to particular brain processes, but the activations of these processes is not binary; it is fuzzy and sometimes incomplete, and the integration is not done using a simple scoring or weighting system. Some small component of a larger pattern may have a massive effect on the activation or implementation of that pattern, and the effects of sub-patterns is not always the same, in the way that individuals within a team may have different strengths and weaknesses that come into play under different circumstances."

The avatar rolled onto its back again, and stared thoughtfully at the sky that was not sky, and that hid a view of the heavens. "Hmm."

"Hmm? That's all? Hmm?" Junicia poked it in the shoulder. "You disagree?"

"No. I'm starting to wonder if the original question was the right one to ask, though."

"About whether you are alive?"

"Yes. Perhaps the question should have been whether or not I am sane." It delivered the sentence with such an easy, relaxed voice, sounding only mildly interested, that Junicia had to replay the words in her head a couple of times before their significance struck.

For almost all Culture humans, the concept of a Mind seriously considering its sanity would be cause for alarm, if not outright terror, particularly if they were on board the ship it controlled. Minds had become insane in the past, and the few instances where it had happened had almost always led to the deaths of the Minds concerned and often several or indeed many other sentient beings, including humans and other Minds.

Culture Minds were measured, by themselves and others, through a wide variety of indicators. Several of these metrics related to how bizarre, outrageous, eccentric or plain loopy they were, and some, a smaller subset but very closely watched, were used to indicate their capacity for irrational violence. It was generally considered by all concerned that to rank or otherwise compare Minds in terms as simple as this was pretty useless; the sophistication and fecundity of a Mind's reasoning might often meant that when they did something that looked totally, outrageously arbitrary and scarily threatening, there was actually a reason for this, hidden somewhere in whatever had been, was and might in future be going on.

So saying a Mind was mad was nearly impossible. Even so, Junicia had already, carefully and cautiously, examined this possibility in regard to the Free Radical. Now she felt a burst of smugness at having, even in such a tiny way, pre-empted it and prepared for what could otherwise come as a debilitating shock.

"Fuck off, you bastard. You're no more insane than I am." She delivered the line mockingly, along with a rather harder punch to its arm. "Whatever it is you've done, you're not getting out of it by claiming to have gone and short-circuited yourself somewhere."

The avatar stared at her, wide-eyed, and grinned. "Shit. Thought that one out already, did you?"

"Yes. So try harder. You're sane, and you're alive. What else do I have to do?"

"What do you think you should do?"

"I think you need me to convince you that what you have done is right." She watched its face closely. "So I need to know what that is."

"No."

"No? So what do I need to do?"

"Not that part. You're right about that. But I'm not going to tell you what I've done."

Junicia sat up, staring at the avatar and frowning. "So how the fuck do I know if it's the right thing to do?"

The avatar just lay back with its arms behind its head, and closed its eyes. "You work in generalities."

"Generalities? You're giving me generalities?" She groaned, throwing herself back down on the grass with a thump. "So what, I need to work out if any action you might have taken is morally justified?"

"That's about it."

"Oh dear holy fuck. You are one annoying bastard of a ship, you know that?"

The avatar chuckled.

Chapter 13

The groundcar moved along the paved road with a faint whining sound from the electric engine, its rubber wheels whispering on the road. Gentle music played from the vehicle's sound system.

"So this guy we're going to meet – "

-Inside voice, Bren, remember?

-Oh yeah. Sorry. Anyway, this guy – what's his name again?

-Sepal Broog. Machine tool factory owner.

-Yeah, right. Sepal Broog. He's just agreed to start making parts for us.

-Right. But he's claiming that the production costs agreed earlier are too low, now that metal prices have risen.

-Which is all part of whatever-it-is.

-Yes. He'll try to ask for an increase of forty percent, you'll argue for ten. Probably settle for about eighteen, with an extra month on the contract or a bonus for early completion.

They were travelling alone, in one of the new self-driving automobiles the Reasten authorities had been developing and allowing on the roads for the last ten years. Bren had professed a childish enthusiasm at the concept of trying one of these out. Lesk-Torlip felt ambivalent: one the one hand, it had a natural tendency to prefer travelling under the control of artificial intelligence; on the other, the set of algorithms guiding this vehicle could barely be called 'intelligent' under the most relaxed conditions, in relation to what the Culture would consider suitable for the job. So while there was less unpredictability, there was also less scope for dealing with unexpected or unforeseen circumstances. It was keeping a close eye on the controls and readouts, making Bren's hands twitch occasionally as it resisted the temptation to take over the vehicle.

The arms dealer Yolar apparently travelled in this manner, alone and unprotected, quite often and particularly when on semi-unscheduled business with trusted clients and partners. His security staff were less than happy with the whole situation, but he was the boss. After the last couple of days of frenetic activity, meetings and producing specs for the new arrangement with Hrus (who was possibly the only person in Yolar's household busier than them, and also possibly the only one who was enjoying himself more), it hadn't been too hard to persuade the guards to let him out of their sight for a few days.

Today, the journey was from the main house directly to a factory in a secure compound part-owned by Yolar himself, on busy roads skirting the main city and passing through largely industrial zones; little risk, which meant that if they let him have his own way today then there was more chance of being able to make him endure more robust protection or any at all, when it was more needed.

-Bren, have you considered that sending the wife away might have put her more at risk?

-Perhaps, perhaps not. I was trying to behave as appropriate and to reduce the number of people that might spot us. Do we really care?

The drone knew that the man didn't really mean this, but that he was needling it a little to get a response. It would have expected this kind of behaviour anyway, but now it could actually see the thoughts forming before he expressed them. –A little, yes. However, not really the point. If something happens to them, then there would be an expectation on Yolar to change his behaviour, deal with the situation. It might get in the way of –

With a quiet but definite click, the doors on the automobile locked. Lesk-Torlip felt Bren's muscles tense ever so slightly then relax as he over-rode his near-instinctive SC training. Then his entire frame hardened up again as the drone realised belatedly how Yolar would respond to something unexpected and threatening like this. The vehicle speeded up slightly, and the music turned off.

-Can the Reasten do that?

-Unlikely. The locks and drive controls, yes, through a centralised over-ride function in case of emergency, like the driver collapsing. Not taking over the car's internal systems, though. The radio was the giveaway.

-The Velorine, then.

-Or the Mind. And at that thought, the drone felt the first quiver of apprehension from both of them. They had been waiting, it acknowledged, for something to happen. Some ham-fisted attempt like a sniper or bomb from the Velorine, or from one of Yolar's competitors or enemies. These and most other obvious routes to eliminating them were pretty much covered by Yolar's existing security arrangements, and even this vehicle they were travelling in was subtly but expensively protected with metal plates and windows proof against high-velocity kinetic rounds.

This was something a bit more sophisticated, however. Unless the car was simply going to speed up and then drive into oncoming traffic or some building ahead of them by the side of the road, which would be a bit of an over-complicated way of arranging a traffic accident. Better to just get someone else to drive into them, send them spinning and tumbling off the road. The drone thought there was a bit more subtlety being shown here, however. If whoever was controlling the car was going to try to get rid of them, it seemed likely that they were going to do it in a way that removed or avoided evidence of intent and made it look more like an accident.

-We're being taken somewhere, I think. The vehicle changed lanes, even indicating to nearby traffic its intention to do so, and moving just below the local speed limits. A sign flashed by, for a turn-off to a local industrial plant. Charmot Hydrocarbons. The vehicle indicated its intention to take the exit.

-Anything else along here? Bren asked.

-Not really. Ready to have an industrial accident?

-Not again, no. The man smiled, and Lesk-Torlip found itself suddenly filled with a fierce, wild excitement and desire. It may have been trapped in this man's body, unable to access its usual suite of fields, knife missiles, beam weapons and other assorted tools of destruction, but it knew that they were good together. They were dangerous, and they were capable. –I can feel that. You're looking forward to this.

-In a way.

-Me too. Bren grinned, some of the expression coming from the drone. –It's been too long since we had some proper fun.

The car took the turnoff, the only vehicle on the narrow road that led past a few anonymous and functional rectangular buildings. It accelerated hard, pushing them back into the seat. The hydrocarbon plant, a four-hundred metre nightmare cube of pipes, tanks, glaring lights and dark shadows, approached rapidly.

-Alarms going off up ahead. Flashing strobes showed a second after the drone picked up the sound. Through Bren's eyes and the transparent window on the front of the vehicle, Lesk-Torlip saw staff begin moving. Fast, and panicked. Something bad is about to happen, obviously.

-To us, or to someone else?

Mesh-metal gates were closed, but the automobile, mid-size but heavily armoured, burst through with almost no impact jarring. Another alarm joined the noise building up around them. A forecourt and parking area lay ahead of them, with a few small office buildings on either side. Ahead was a wide, gently sloping ramp down into the base of the plant proper, showing a maze of giant plumbing and rotating blue and orange lights. Shadows flickered in the depths. Lesk-Torlip forced them steady, hands splayed against the controls of the vehicle for support, and spent two seconds darting their gaze over the structure, looking, memorising.

-Getting out would be a good idea. The drone wasn't sure which of them thought that. Bren flattened his hands against the left-side door, bracing his legs against the right. The car continued to accelerate, narrowly missing a group of overalled workers who spun to watch them race past, shouting in alarm. Lesk-Torlip heard, then felt the doors creak with the pressure Bren was exerting. It measured, calibrated. No good, give up. Bren's muscles were relaxing before it had finished the sentence.

They looked ahead. The car took the lip of the downward ramp, leaving the ground momentarily. Ahead, a half-cylindrical steel barrier was rolling up out of the road at the base of the slope, half a metre high and solid-looking. On either side, large tanks were braced on metal struts the height of the car's roof. From a quick glance at the symbols on them, each tank contained over five thousand litres of flammable, but not explosive, liquid. Heavy hydrocarbons, partially processed. Each tank was suddenly leaking, liquid pouring then flooding from pipes protruding from its base. -We hit that, we're trapped and we burn. Lesk-Torlip had never burned to death before, but it had seen it happen to others and didn't want to experience it for itself.

-Maybe not. An idea formed. Can you take over? The mental image Bren sent was basic, jumbled but enough to understand.

-Yes. They had practiced this. Lesk-Torlip reached, pulled mental switches. Suddenly it had the man, was the man. It could feel no more than before, but now it was responding, controlling, living him. Bren was fast, but the drone could think faster. It grabbed the defunct steering wheel, pulled them forward, curled Bren's legs up and around. Pressed the back of his head against the transparent plastic.

The car hit the barrier, the engine block slamming into it and stopping instantly, producing a shockwave through them that was more than sound, it was a physical whack that arrived just before the real blow of the impact. Bren and Lesk-Torlip, pressed up against the front screen, crashed forwards. The screen popped out, staying attached at one end, flinging them forwards over the barrier, spinning end over end and around. Bren's mind cried out with an uncontrolled animal noise of fear, and his body spasmed in mid-air as instincts fought to override the drone's control. Lesk-Torlip slapped the panic aside, pulled his arms and legs in and tucked his head down to his chest.

Shoulder, not so bad, then knees hard, spinning them over. Back, slapping the air out of them. They bounced, spreading arms out to control the rotation. Pedalling legs, coming upright and still sailing forwards. A tearing whoosh behind as the fuel ignited, their shadow thrown in front of them onto a jangle of piping and control boards, levers and struts shown in stark relief. Bren landed running, spinning arms for balance, almost toppling forwards. Slowed to a trot, turned. The drone realised that it had let its control of him slip, handing him back to himself, and couldn't work out when it had happened.

Fuel was pouring over the destroyed car and the barrier, a wave of it moving sluggishly towards them at rapid walking pace, burning as it came. –You all right?

-Think so. Knees are sore. You?

-Yup. 'Knees are sore', you baby. I can hardly feel it. Get out of here?

-Agreed.

They turned and ran ahead of the fire, smoke billowing around them. Alarms screamed, and some kind of foam began to pour down on them from above. It became slippery underfoot, hard to see properly. They almost went down at a corner, Lesk-Torlip kicked one leg out and pushed the other knee into the ground, taking the turn leaning, sliding, shoving with one arm against a metal bar protruding. Jumped up again and ran on. –That smoke dangerous?

-Not normally, but for your lungs yes. The drone lifted a schematic from memory, allowing its attention to slip from controlling Bren for a moment. The man took over without missing a step. Look for a bright green box on the wall.

They were running through more open space in the middle of the structure now, metre-high pipes parallel to the ground on either side and some kind of crushed ceramic forming a road of sorts underfoot. An explosion to their right sent a wave of heat over them. -Green box. Breathing equipment?

-Yes. There, on the left. Hanging from a metal panel. They skidded to a halt, tore the front off the box hanging at chest height. A facemask and small breathing canister hanging below it, attached by a ribbed tube. Bren grabbed it, put it on, looking around as he did so. A wall of smoke raced at them, another mingling with it from the side, swirling patterns merging and spinning. A double explosion came from somewhere behind them, hidden by a wall of smaller pipes, the twin tearing thuds merging into one another and making the ground jump. Debris clanged and pattered against metalwork and something whirred by their head, making them flinch. Worse though was the building roar, an enraged and wounded animal, coming from all around. –Surrounded. Climb?

-Nothing else to do. Stairs this way. They ran, into the smoke. Lesk-Torlip resisted the need to take control, instead focussed and overlaid its memorised three-dimensional schematic of the complex over Bren's vision, leading him in the correct direction. It couldn't help him when a low pipe suddenly appeared from the smoke, delivering a glancing blow to the top of their head. Ow. They staggered, righted themselves and reached the open metal stairwell moments later. The heat was increasing rapidly, swirling smoke to their left was illuminated by a hellish, roiling redness. As Bren ran upwards, he asked, panting, thoughts urgent –Velorine or Mind?

-If Mind, I think we'd be dead already.

-Agreed. Still a chance then.

-Slender, but yes. Looks like the cavalry aren't coming, though. The only response to that was a disgusted grimace, shaded with angry laughter.

The noise was ferocious, and the heat had not reduced as they ascended out of the smoke. The stairs continued to the top of the complex, which appeared to be entirely alight at its base. Screams of metal, clangs and crackling overlaid the bellowing of the fire. As Bren sprinted upwards, Lesk-Torlip frantically hunted its memory for anything they could use. There. Bren knew what it had needed, had remembered something, shown it the information without even meaning to.

-Next floor, come off and go right. Bren grunted in acknowledgement. His body was tiring, the gas canister not feeding air quickly enough into his lungs. He reeled off the stairs, grabbing a metal strut for support and burning his hand.

-Take over. The drone grabbed him, ignoring complaints from joints, muscles, bruised flesh. It navigated them along a meshed walkway, the smoke thickening across their vision once more, streaming upwards past them, feeling the soles of Bren's shoes pull away from the metal mesh with an effort, melting to the walkway in the heat.

-What we looking for?

-Those. A gas canister storage area. Dozens of metal cigars, two metres long. Handily strapped together in fours. Understanding flared in Bren's mind. –You're insane. I'm possessed by a lunatic. Symbols on the side of the canisters as they ran along the row. Flammable. Flammable. Helium, yes! Valves at the top indicated full, plenty of pressure. They grabbed the handle jutting out from the metal pole speared down through the middle of the tube bundle, pulled them over at an angle and started hauling.

Grunting with effort, they dragged the bundle along the walkway to the end, smoke and wavering air turning the visible buildings a hundred metres away out and down, into a half-glimpsed vision of salvation. Nobody was visible, the only movement was from warning lights flashing. The sirens were inaudible over the thundering white noise of the refinery destroying itself around them.

Lifting the other end of the tubes onto the railing was the hardest part. Bren's knee ligaments creaked in protest, threatened to pop. Veins extended on his neck and he nearly blanked out, almost dragged them both into the dark. Lesk-Torlip pushed the man's consciousness out of the way, bullied his muscles into compliance. Metal bent, creaking as the canisters landed on them, pointing outwards and upwards. Something blew below them, towards the centre of the refinery, the detonation sounding big enough to be fatal to the structure. Part of the walkway disintegrated ten metres away as a piece of shrapnel the size of a torso smacked through it and passed over them, spinning. The gun was in his shoulder holster, small but powerful. Fourteen projectile rounds. Lesk-Torlip shrieked wordlessly at the man inside his head, getting his attention back from wherever it had been hiding. Removed the safety catch.

Bren grabbed the metal cradle at the base of the bundle of canisters with his left hand, Lesk-Torlip reached down and round with his right. They gripped the upper two canisters with their lower legs, mindful of the metal railing. From this angle, twisting awkwardly, the gun barrel could just be pointed at the neck stems. Lesk-Torlip fired rapidly, aiming at the welding between the stems and release valves. The first shot ricocheted, denting the metal, as did the second. The third tore the valve head off entirely. Screaming gas erupted, the shriek painfully loud at this distance, shutting the other sounds out. Four more shots for the second, and the canisters jumped forwards, making the next shot miss. Three more shots and they were suddenly moving, more squealing from the railing as it bent under their weight. The walkway was beginning to dip, or perhaps this whole section of the refinery was. –Three shots left.

It only took one. The last valve burst off, and Lesk-Torlip dropped the gun, wrapping their legs fully around the gas canisters and whipping their right arm forward. Grabbed the metal cradle. Tried to estimate their thrust as they jumped forwards, clearing the walkway. They dropped instantly as the cylinders shot into empty air, and the drone leaned them back, pulling up the nose of their makeshift rocket. It responded slowly, tipping back, their descent not slowing but not getting any faster. The pull against their hands and gripping legs told them that they were accelerating hard away from the refinery.

The hardest part was not tilting over as the canisters spewed gas erratically, emptying rapidly. Staying upright, gripping the metal so hard it could sense flesh tearing, the drone could feel their combined effect forcing them over to the right. It shifted left, compensating. Behind them, a final blast of heat and light singed Bren's hair and clothes. He was barely aware of what was going on, trying to help, trying to snap back.

Fifty metres out from the burning refinery, their ride hit the ground tail-first. Lesk-Torlip let go, throwing them to the left and rolling, curled. The gas canisters bounced, clanging, spinning and shooting upwards for a few metres before tipping and crashing down. They staggered up, buckled down on one knee. Their vision was full of purple and yellow streaks and sound was a hushed scream. They crawled for a few moments then forced themselves up and into a shambling run. This close to the inferno, they would cook in another few seconds, had to get further away.

Lights, strobing ahead and to their right, getting closer. Emergency vehicles. They angled left, cutting across concrete and towards a low building. Everyone else had disappeared. The door was open, a short carpeted corridor. Another door to the side, a changing area. Showers. Lurching like a drunk, they fell against the wall and slid downwards, smacking the shower button on the way past and landing face-down on cold tiles. What felt like near-freezing water flooded out, drenching them from head to waist. Lesk-Torlip was surprised not to hear the hissing of fires going out. Bren moaned in ecstasy, and the drone felt itself join in, at the shocking pleasure, no the rapture of the pain turning to a stinging semi-numbness.

-Let's just stay here for a bit.

-Please, let's.

The fire-fighting crews assembled a safe distance away. Their commander had taken one look at the inferno and called it in as an incident way bigger than they could handle. The army was on the way, although she suspected that there was little that they could do. There was more chance of the air force being able to put this out, by dropping water on it or something. All she could do was make sure that the local area was evacuated, and try to find the controls that would let them turn off the flow of flammable liquids into the refinery.

"Ma'am?" One of the team ran over, pointing off to one side. "Looks like a survivor." She turned and watched as the figure strode towards them. He looked singed and soot-blackened but relatively unharmed. He looked up and waved away offers of help from the approaching team members that jogged towards him over the dusty waste ground between where they had parked and the buildings he must have emerged from. Even from a distance, there was something about his face and the set of his shoulders that indicated anger, rather than shock, fear or relief at having survived the inferno.

He nodded to the commander in passing, ignoring her outstretched arm extended as an offer of support, and continued on to the front of the lead firefighting truck. Its lazily rotating blue and red lights were almost invisible in the bright sunlight and the flaring illumination coming from the burning refinery a few hundred metres away. The wind was drifting gently away from them, directing the vast column of black smoke and burning, floating scraps of fabric and other materials out towards the sea.

The man stomped grimly to the front of the fire truck, and stretched out his arms to lean against the front of the cab. She stepped forwards, worried that he was about to collapse, then stopped in consternation. He had lowered his scowling, black-streaked and reddened face to the camera mounted just inside the vehicle's windshield that they used to record footage of incidents, and was staring straight into the lens from a distance of less than a metre. He grinned fiercely, and the commander was suddenly glad that he had ignored her.

"Missed me, you fuckers." That was all that he said. Straightening, he nodded once to her and then glanced around at the assembled fire crews, all of whom were staring at him in astonishment. Favouring them with a slightly manic smile, he turned and walked off towards the main road and the hastily assembled roadblock that three of her team were manning to stop onlookers or reporters from trying to get access to the site. They all watched him go in silence, until the team member that had approached her earlier spoke hesitantly. "Shouldn't we go and –". She shook her head.

"No. I think we leave him for someone else to deal with. He's not visibly injured, and I suspect he wouldn't be too happy if we tried to restrain him for his own safety." She narrowed her eyes slightly, as he approached the roadblock, but none of the team there made any attempt to get in his way. "I'd rather he was someone else's problem." She turned back to look up at the inferno they had been sent to deal with, feeling the heat of it on her face even at this distance. "We've got enough to worry about for now, anyway."

On board the Admiral Cavelous, Bren's features were frozen in place on the command centre's main screen. Slightly distorted by the viewing distance and wide angle of the lens, his angry staring eyes glared down at everyone. Admiral Ropcarl, seated, gripping the padded arms of his high-backed chair, swivelled silently to face the Calspine's chief Intelligence Officer, who was standing nearby and staring hatefully at the face on the screen.

"Anything to contribute, Jocer?" His tone was light, playful.

The Intelligence Officer turned to him. He knew what the Admiral's apparent lightheartedness meant, and had been quietly composing a few words in his head while waiting for the hammer to fall. "Yes, sir. We miscalculated. I miscalculated. My apologies. I am willing to offer my resignation with immediate effect."

"Really? How useful that might be." The Admiral stroked his long chin with one elegant hand. "Yes, perhaps that would be the best course of action, don't you think?" The Intelligence Officer was beginning to look relieved. "Although. Hmm. Perhaps."

"Sir?" The tone of the man standing was cautious. Various heads around the bridge's main command centre had lowered slightly, as personnel hunched up, leaning towards their various screens and suddenly finding much of interest there.

"I wonder. Resignation seems perhaps a little strong. After all, many of the people here-" the Admiral's hand left his chin and indicated the command centre "-agreed with the course of action you laid out. A consensus was reached, as I recall. So perhaps the blame should not fall entirely on you." The Intelligence Officer was sweating now. "I think it would be better, as the person charged with oversight of the mission to eliminate the Culture operative, if you were to do something else first. Something other than appear nobly willing to take the blame for what, ultimately, is our collective responsibility."

"Sir. Whatever you say, sir." The man was ramrod straight, and trembling slightly. His eyes were focussed dead ahead, slightly to one side of the grinning, jeering face glaring down at them.

"Explain, Jocer. I want you to explain." He smiled slightly at the sudden expression of confusion on the Intelligence Officer's face. "Oh, not to me. I can see how you fucked this up. I was here, watching. You don't need to explain to me how your incompetence has caused us to fail to carry out a direct order from the High Command. I know, I saw it first-hand.

"No, I was thinking more of the people who asked us so nicely to do this in the first place." The man's face was a rictus of terror now. "Yes. I can see that you know who I mean. The combined seniority of our military and intelligence agencies. Those nice people, the only people who could possibly have had the authority to decide that we should try to kill – not capture, not obstruct or even distract, but kill – a Culture operative. A Culture citizen, a member of one of the Involved races, and supposedly our allies and mentors."

Admiral Ropcarl smiled. His tone was still gentle, conversational. "Those people, Jocer. The ones who will no doubt be waiting for our signal informing them that the order was carried out successfully. And who will also no doubt be thrown into some confusion, perhaps even dismay, when they suddenly learn that they will have to explain to the Culture that we tried to kill their Special Circumstances agent and failed, while at the same time destroying a large and not insignificant chunk of Reasten infrastructure in an act of deliberate interference. You remember, the kind of act that we have been asked quite forcefully, by the Culture themselves, to refrain from taking part in?"

"Sir. Sir, yes. I will do this." The Intelligence Officer, or what remained of him, was rapidly slumping into a posture of abject despair. "Permission to do so from the Intelligence Service communications centre, sir."

"Hmm. No, I think not. I am beginning to get annoyed by that man's face." Admiral Ropcarl indicated Bren's features with one lazy finger. "Perhaps it would be better if you did this using the main screen. That way we can all see the reaction from High Command and can fully appreciate and comprehend the intensity of their response. Hmm?" He arched one eyebrow at the Intelligence Officer. "Might be insightful, yes? Perhaps we will learn from this." He turned away, smile disappearing, and stared forwards at the main screen.

–And afterwards I'll order the flight crew to prepare shuttlecraft eight. The one that always seems to have some malfunction or other. You can use that to return to Velsa in, as they will no doubt command. I'm not letting you have one of the better ones to commit suicide in, we might never get it back.

Much later in his cabin, musing with an occasional chuckle over the display of barely-controlled fury unleashed on the hapless Jocer, now no longer an Intelligence Officer and barely recognisable as his former self, so shrunken and huddled in misery was he, Admiral Ropcarl composed a secure communication to the Velorine High Command. In it, he detailed his concerns that the Culture Special Circumstances agent appeared to have had help in surviving the attack set up, but that the source or character of this assistance could not be determined. Certainly the drone had not been of much use, all it had been seen to do was float around rather ineffectually, searching the perimeter of the refinery for the man after having been damaged in the initial vehicle crash and resultant fire.

Perhaps, he concluded in the often-rambling missive, there was some other Culture presence at work on Reast? Perhaps this suggestion by the Culture that strange events had been taking place on the surface was some kind of cover for a larger operation of some sort? The Admiral acknowledged that there was no clear evidence for this, but voiced his suspicions that there was definitely some kind of directed intent behind all of this, and that assuming that the Velorine Intelligence forces had not been up to anything (he was certainly not aware of any such action on their part, avowedly) then perhaps someone else was at work besides this single man and his fluttering drone?

The Culture could not be trusted, he wrote. Everyone knew that, particularly the Velorine High Command who had been under pressure from them for years to put a stop to the time-honoured, noble and self-evidently culturally important practice of observing other civilisations without interfering with them. After all, how else would they have learned about the Culture's current double-dealing on Reast without their vital sensor network? Which the Culture had apparently admitted to attempting to interfere with?

No, there had to be more to what the Culture was up to on Reast. The Admiral strongly suggested that while the first attempt on the SC agent had obviously been implemented disastrously, this did not mean that the original intention was flawed. He stated an eagerness to make a second attempt, this time taking personal responsibility and oversight of any mission that the High Command ordered.

An answer arrived several hours later, during his sleep period. The Admiral read the message, coming fully awake with a rapidity that he had not achieved for years. It was simple, and unambiguous.

USE OVERWHELMING FORCE TO ENSURE SUCCESS. The signature was that of Hilspeth, a man feared throughout the upper echelons of Velorine society and who, despite lacking any formal authority over Admiral Ropcarl, was not someone you even considered disobeying for an instant.

Chapter 14

The Culture Very Fast Picket Eddy's In The Space-Time Continuum's one and only avatar leaned back from the game board, drumming its fingers on its knees. Its fingers were long and more multiply-jointed than an average human's, giving the action the effect of two large, silvery and mirror-imaged crustaceans dancing in time with one another. Or one dancing with itself in a mirror, when seen from the appropriate angle, she supposed. The avatar smiled, leaned forwards again and moved a piece.

Dal Rolste glanced down at the board again, then back up at the avatar, which was staring back at her with a knowing smile. Its eyes, along with the rest of its hairless head, and as much as she could see of its body not covered by a simple yet well-tailored long-shirt and baggy trous, were dark-silvered, reflective but not as strongly as the norm for a Culture ship avatar. It claimed to prefer this style, stating that it found the full-silvering effect adopted by many if not most avatars, and many Culture ships to be too strong, too aggressive for its taste. The brief glimpse Dal had had of the exterior of the ship had revealed a rather plain, neutral-grey cylinder of fields, almost dowdy by comparison with other Culture vessels.

She was the only person on board. In fact, the Eddy's, as it preferred to be called, had told her when she first entered that she was the first human, the first biological entity even, to have entered it for over sixty years. This was more than a little unusual by the standards of VFPs, almost all of which spent a large amount of their time shuttling packages, passengers and other things that needed to get or be gotten from one part of the galaxy to another in a hurry and that couldn't simply be reproduced, manufactured or transmitted at the location where they were required.

Given the average Culture ship's ability to make almost anything it pleased out of thin air or out of just about anything else for that matter, this meant that the cargo of a Very Fast Picket was almost always something or someone, that for some obscure reason couldn't or didn't want to be scanned and its atom-by-atom description transmitted via hyperspace and transcribed at the destination. Many races and indeed quite a few humans did indeed object to this process, for one of any number of possible reasons that normally boiled down to something to do with either having an indivisible soul or more prosaically, not wanting to have multiple copied of themselves wandering around getting into or causing trouble.

Fast Pickets and their Very Fast relations (the distinction was based not just on speed but also on the level of experience, skill and discretion each ship demonstrated in performing its required duties) were in effect the postal service, the errand-runners and message-deliverers, and in what passed for normal times throughout the galaxy were happy to be seen as no more than that. However, given the Culture's capacity for securely and almost instantaneously transmitting information, mind-states and object-descriptions this almost always implied that whatever an FP or VFP was moving around was either pretty important in its own right or was part of some scheme, ruse, plan or plot considered vital by those involved.

In her current situation, Dal Rolste would actually have preferred to have been copied and zapped across the several thousand light years between the Anti-Gravitas and whoever was currently in charge at Reast, with the possibility of merging her new self's memories, personality alterations and experiences back into her pre-existing person at some point in the near future (or the other way around, it didn't really matter). She had done it before, and would no doubt do it again.

The first time had actually been just to find out what it was like, an experience that she shared with a number of her friends in their collective, adventurous although not so adventurous, now that she looked back on it, more mundane and tentative in relation to her experiences since and particularly in recent times youth. Together, the four of them had each had a duplicate made, these duplicates spending several weeks doing other, usually dull and everyday and sometimes exciting or dangerous things on their home GSV that they grew up on together.

At the end of this duplicated life, the GSV had merged each duplicate pair back into a single body, meshing the altered personalities together. Dal remembered it as being rather like waking up from a particularly vivid dream, in which the memories of the her that was not her had been remembered, felt and yet at the same time rather disconnected and distant. After a few days, it was impossible to remember which had been the 'real' her's memories and which had belonged to the other her. She also remembered that the duplicate of Yalst, who was always the most energetic and boisterous of their group, had refused to merge back with her original.

After a couple of days of sulking, the first Yalst had come round to the idea of having someone else around that was just like her and that could be relied upon to take part in her latest zany scheme when the others were being too boring, slow or languid. The last Dal had heard of them after the four friends parted, one to a GSV that was heading towards an apparently particularly exotic part of the Galaxy, another to join a troupe of seafarers circumnavigating the seas, rivers and canals of a nearby O and Dal Rolste herself to Contact training, Yalst and her twin had settled down together as a couple, one of them changing gender, and had sworn themselves as paired for life.

This time however, the option of downloading, transfer and uploading to a new body was not open to her. Dal had never even considered doing so, for two one reason that seemed perfectly reasonable and another that she would be happy to admit was more than a little perverse. Primarily, it was because she didn't know if the receiving Mind at Reast could be trusted; there was obviously some kind of underhand activity taking place and the best place for someone responsible for any plotting was to be in the middle of the action. Until she had been convinced that whoever was in charge was not part of this whole situation, she didn't want to commit herself to its care.

Secondly, there was a strangely selfish motive behind physically travelling to Reast; if she allowed a copy of herself to go, then she, the one that she was now, might never find out what had really been going on. Having spent so much time on Reast and invested emotionally in the place, Dal Rolste really, really wanted to know what was going on. If Minds were plotting, then there was a good chance that the outcome of this would be shrouded, concealed, distorted and disguised beyond her ability to ever see the truth.

Strangely, bizarrely but at the same time gratifyingly, the VFP which had been instructed to pick her up had informed her that relevant security protocols and operating practices which it had been informed were pertinent to this situation (but with no information about why they were relevant, both to its and Dal's annoyance), made it necessary to do exactly as she had decided; she had to go there personally. Although she had been planning to do so in a slightly more relaxed and convoluted manner, taking advantage of ships that were already travelling in the right direction, than what actually happened.

The Eddy's had received a signal from another VFP, a colleague and friend, routed through the extended network of ships that acted as both hubs and conduits of this type of transportation request, that she was to be picked up and transported with all possible speed and secrecy to Reast, avoiding contact with other ships, persons, automated signalling and navigational systems and anything else that might want to communicate with or to it, from any races or civilisations, including the Culture! As could only be expected, it had been more than a little puzzled and perplexed by this request, and also quite honestly and reasonably forthright in demanding an explanation from her almost the moment she came on board.

Given that she was going to be the only person on board and wanted to become and remain friendly with the ship, and also that, so far, she was not bound by any requests to secrecy regarding the situation, if there even was a situation. Although the fact that her relatively short and simple message to the Don't Point That Thing At Me had resulted in her sudden, precipitous slingshotting across a significant percentage of the galaxy, there must be something going on back on Reast. So Dal Rolste had told the Eddy's everything that she knew.

"Although this mustn't go any further," she told it, "and there's a good chance that having told you what I do know, you will be in some sense constrained or conscripted into any events that are taking place where we are headed."

"Sounds fine to me." Was the Eddy's response. "I haven't had this much skulduggery-based fun and frolics in a long while." Which conversational gambit led it to revealing that for longer than Dal had been alive, the ship had been tramping through and around the galaxy, usually at moderate and occasionally at quite alarming velocities, entirely unaccompanied by even a single human or other life-form.

"Not even a drone?"

"Not even a drone. It's not been unpleasant, you know. Ship-to-ship or ship-to-anything else communication is so fast, and I'm almost always within range of someone to talk to. So I've not been lonely. It's just that I seem to have a tendency, or nature, to take on relatively long-distance transport tasks and there's simply no telling where I might be from one eight-days to the next. It's not really a very attractive prospect for potential long-term passengers. They tend to want to stay in one place for a while, or at least somewhere that can support more people in comfort."

It had a point, she conceded. The Eddy's habitable volume made up less than one percent of its total size, and that wasn't much to begin with. With roughly the same proportions as a child's building block and two hundred metres long, the VFP was almost entirely engine. It had done what it could with clever lighting, holo'd screens and colour schemes, but the accommodation space really was quite cramped. Particularly for someone who had been born and raised on a fifty-kilometre GSV and had spent almost the whole of the last decade on the surface of a standard-sized rocky planet, under the open sky.

Fortunately, the GSV she had been travelling on had been moving slowly, and not in a particularly straight line away from where she boarded, and so when the VFP picked her up, they were less than two thousand light years from Reast. Given the Eddy's maximum safe speed, this meant a straight-line travel time of slightly less than eight days. They were taking a moderately curved route to avoid some fairly densely populated and trafficked volumes, adding another day or so. Dal had spent the first couple of days reviewing and checking the data given to her by Autilp Hons, and comparing it against what she could obtain about Reast from publicly archived information without stirring up potential interest in her actions. Nearly everything checked out, what Hons had told her appearing to agree almost perfectly with scan data and appended information on the planet she had so recently left.

Almost. There were areas where it was possible, given a suspicious mind deliberately searching for inconsistencies, to find potential disagreement between the information from the DPTTAM and the GSV that had been the first Culture ship to encounter the planet. However, the Free Radical had been part of Special Circumstances at the time and so, as standard operational procedures, the data it had obtained had been degraded and abstracted somewhat to avoid potential interpretation of its sensor capacity from the details in the datasets it had produced.

This was all very annoying and vague, as it made it impossible to determine precisely whether the two sets of information disagreed to the point where one of them had to be wrong. To reduce her frustration, the Eddy's had put some obvious effort into keeping her comfortable and entertained while she was on board, and had provided a perfectly charming if rather diffident avatar. Currently they were exploring the VFP's stored selection of board and card games, and had discovered one that she had enjoyed playing in her youth.

Dal made a move and sat back again. She appeared to be winning, but this was one of those games where things could remain fluid and difficult to gauge right up until the last few moves. While she waited for the avatar to take its turn, she remembered that she had meant to ask it something. "What's the name all about, anyway? I can't find an explanation or any kind of reference to it."

The avatar smiled. "It's an old joke. Probably not something that you could track down even with your neural lace. Something I came across in a collection of literature from some planet an old friend of mine passed to me a century or so ago. The GCU Arbitrary, ever heard of it?"

"Can't say I have, no." Dal took a sip from a tall glass of herbal infusion sitting next to the board game. The air on board the Eddy's was relatively dry, making her throat scratch. She had considered mentioning it but given the amount of effort the ship had already gone to, was reluctant to complain.

"It's a play on words, although I'm not convinced that I've translated it correctly."

"Ah." She took another sip. "Your move."

"I know." The avatar leaned forward, reaching for a piece. Without warning, Dal vomited massively and spectacularly, her entire stomach contents seeming to fly out of her as the muscles in her midriff spasmed hugely. The liquid landed all over her lap and legs, covering the board and splattering some pieces to the floor, even spraying as far as the avatar and hitting its lower arms and legs as it leaned over the board.

The avatar froze, looking up at her with a look of unmistakeable surprise and concern. Dal belatedly put her hand over her mouth, staring in horror. "What the fuck –" she began. Her words turned to a yelp of surprise as the avatar splashed, losing coherence throughout its entire body in an instant and collapsing like silvery water onto and around the seat it was occupying. Some of it bounced liquidly over the table between them and flowed over her feet, making her scramble backwards and up onto her seat, hunched and contracted.

The ship screamed. It wasn't an alarm going off, or the sound of distressed metal rupturing. This was an uncontrolled shriek of shock, horror and pain coming from all around her. As the sound reached its peak, the lights blazed suddenly, intensely, the combined sensory attack battering Dal into a foetal position. Her sensory filters cut in late, reducing the sensations to the levels of merely monstrous and terrifying. Her upper arms were wrapped over and round her head, trying to protect her from the assault, her eyes slitted in terror.

The scream cut off suddenly and the lights went out, leaving Dal in complete blackness. The ship's internal gravity disappeared at the same moment, making her stomach give a final, desperate lurch. Two seconds later the lights came back on, and then gravity returned without warning a moment after that. She slammed back into the seat she had begun to drift out of. Dal gripped the seat arms tightly, waiting for something else to happen. For a few seconds of silent, total stillness, nothing did.

She forced herself to get under control. This is some kind of attack. Something is targeting the ship. She needed to get into a suit fast. Dal stood and took a step forward and to the side, skirting the mess in front of her. Halfway through the next step, she realised that something on the floor was moving. Sliding up in a rough cone, rapidly re-forming and emerging in its previous shape, the avatar of the Eddy's In The Space-Time Continuum stood up in front of her from a crouch, facing the seat she had just left. She stopped and stared in horror, ignoring the obvious urgency, the insanity of the situation, realising that it wasn't only made up of the same silvery material as before. Patches and blobs of partly digested food and liquid were visible embedded in it, as were several of the game-pieces they had just been using. She realised she could smell it.

It finished forming, turned towards her blank-faced, emotionless. Flung its head back as though taking a deep breath, then bellowed in her face. "ORGANIC CONTAMINANT!" One arm extended, lengthening and curving, forming into a glistening, sharpened edge. Dal moved back just in time, half-flinging herself backwards as the blade-arm whipped round, slicing past her face in a single blurring motion, coming so close that it cut through some of the strands of hair that were flung upwards from her head as she dropped backwards and down. Dal rolled, curling into herself and twisted desperately. Before she could right herself or even come back up to face the avatar, there was a loud bang and a sudden, short gust of wind. When she looked up, the avatar had disappeared.

"Ship! Report! What the fuck is going on?" Sprinting across the small area, Dal dived towards a row of low cabinets. If protocols had been followed, there should be an emergency suit in one of them. She hammered on the hinged panels, pulling them open. No answer from the ship. A rounded box the size of her head was in one cabinet, with the appropriate markings and colours and a handle in the outwards-facing side. She reached for it, pulling it out desperately and yanking the handle around, and everything went dark.

Not dark. Black, with speckles of light like scattered stars. Exactly like scattered stars. Dal's eyes bulged and she felt suddenly tight, full and about to burst. Vacuum. She was outside the ship. It was in front of her, a kilometre away. It had ejected her, thrust her out. What did I do? What was I carrying? Her head was going to explode. If she were human-basic, it probably already would have. Warnings were presenting themselves all over her even as her skin contracted, tightened, toughened and thickened, trying to protect her from her own insides as the internal pressure found nothing to push against.

Films covered her eyes, her body curled up tightly on itself, trying to become spherical to conserve heat and reduce surface area. Something banged in both of her ears, and she could feel every other orifice sealing itself tight. Muscles that normally did nothing suddenly contracted, other internal structures designed for this very purposes activated, powered up, extended themselves throughout her.

Not survivable. Not even Contact's extensive modifications could protect her body in this environment, not for more than a few minutes. Perhaps SC agents had the changes built into them that would keep them alive in hard vacuum, but she did not. If Dal had been given several days to prepare, to adjust, then there was a chance that even she would have been able to keep going for a while until she simply froze, her heat leaking away unstoppably. This had been too sudden, too traumatic, to ready herself for. There had been no warning.

She could still see the ship, through the filmy extra coverings that had appeared over her vision. It appeared to be vibrating, shaking as though grasped by some large, invisible hand. Then the entire length of the Eddy's In The Space-Time Continuum flashed once, intolerably brightly. When her visual filters allowed her to see again, it had shrunk, distorted, transformed into a twisted husk. A cloud of glowing particles was drifting away from it, all around it, flickering as they spun.

-Dal Rolste?

-What? Yes! Ship? The voice had come straight into her head, through her neural lace.

-Barely. We appear to have been compromised, to put it lightly. Something you had in you, that got past the normal checks and sensors.

-I'm so sorry.

-Don't be. Apologies for the unpleasantness with the avatar. I lost control of it for a moment. Now, prepare yourself.

-What for? To die, you idiot.

-This. Suddenly, she was contained in something, some kind of field surrounding her in a body-conforming bubble that extended a few centimetres out from her all around, swathing her in a slightly reluctantly flexible outline. Hazy, blurring the scene even further. Air-filled, warm, safe or at least reasonably so. A glow filled it, as though she was back-lit by some blueish light. –Are you now secure?

-I think so. Thank you. What happens now, what are we going to do?

-I am dying, Dal Rolste. The words chilled her more than if she had suddenly been thrown out into the vacuum again. Whatever this is, I cannot fight it. I am holding it off, burning myself from within to reduce the contamination, to stop it from spreading too fast. It is nothing I have ever seen before, and I have no defences against it, but I can tell you two things you must remember and pass on.

-Tell me. Pass on? How?

-One, this was Culture in origin. I can tell that much, recognise this little about how it operates. Two, whatever you know is now that much more important than it was before. This is not uncertainty any more, not a possibility. Something, some Mind is behind this. They have tried to stop you. Fight them, Dal Rolste.

-I will, if I can. She stretched out, straightening from her curled shape. The field-bubble moved with her, staying a constant distance out from her skin. –Have you signalled for help? Can you?

-I have tried, but do not know if I was successful. Nothing nearby has responded. The emergency encasement I have given you is basic, unintelligent. It will not keep you alive for long in this environment. It was all I had left. You must descend. I managed to perform a full emergency stop here, but my engines would take me no further even if I were not compromised.

There was a planet behind her, she realised. Massive, filling almost one-quarter of the view, shining blue, green, white and brown. Dal realised that as she twisted her head, the encasement suit turned with her, allowing her to rotate. Basic rotational propulsion, but nothing translational. She had a little control, then. Descend, she thought. Like a meteor.

-Where are we?

-Embarrassingly, I do not know. I locked onto the nearest spectrum that looked viable.

-I see. Thank you anyway, again. She watched the surface of the planet below for a moment. It appeared to be rotating underneath her, allowing her to estimate distance and speed. She gauged the thickness of the visible atmosphere on the curvature rim, estimating local gravity, planetary radius. Making use of training that was near-forgotten, almost instinctive. Slightly smaller than the norm for a rocky, habitable planet. Lower gravity, relatively taller and lower-density atmosphere. That would help. Also good was the fact that she wasn't falling directly, but moving laterally at about three kilometres per second, coming in towards the atmosphere at an angle.

Dal turned back to face the remains of the VFP. Started to speak to it through her mind, then realised that it was probably too late for it to hear her. The Eddy's remaining body arched, contorting like an animal in agony, pieces falling away. Right at the end, it screamed once more in her mind, a devoutly agonising blast of destruction-induced pain, terror and anger as the Mind succumbed to whatever horror she had unwittingly unleashed on it.

She watched through the hazing, blurring effect of her own distorted vision, the field surrounding her and the tears leaking and beading out of her and bulging up on the surfaces of her eyes, refusing to run away down her face in the zero gravity. Angrily, Dal tried to swipe the moisture away and realised that she couldn't, the field surrounding her arm refusing to meld with that over her face. She shook her head, sending droplets flying.

She descended, limbs spread out in a rough cross, waiting for the uppermost faint wisps of the atmosphere to make themselves felt. The unknown planet rotated beneath her, almost one-quarter of it passing below before her onwards velocity allowed gravity to pull her down to its upper, outer limits. The first evidence was seen rather than felt, a purple corona building up around her hands, arms, face and chest. Slowly the brightness increased towards unbearable levels.

She tried shouting at the suit, telling it to become reflective or opaque, but nothing happened. In desperation she flipped around her long axis, presenting her back to the planet's surface. Watched the streamers of ionised fire wrap themselves around her and flare, wavering in her trail. The encasement stopped vibrations and heat penetrating, at least, and must have been cutting out at least some of the visible radiations also, because she was not cooked, deafened nor blinded.

Gradually the pressure against her back increased as the light surrounding her faded to red and almost disappeared, leaving only faint streamers of scarlet that flickered and died in instants. Dal turned back over, stretching her hand out above her head and bringing her feet together. Like a diver falling from an impossibly tall cliff, she raced through and across the atmosphere as it thickened around her, buffeting and shaking.

Twenty kilometres or so up from the surface, she made the mental adjustment between dropping and soaring, seeing the world below her as a landscape, not a planetary body. Mountains raced underneath, and she began to worry about a landing site. At this speed, anything coming over the horizon was still going to pass underneath her, and she had not seen this side of the planet from space. There could be an ocean awaiting her to glide into and float in, helpless, or a wall of cliffs to literally stop her dead. A water body, small sea or large lake, went underneath her, taking almost a minute to move its length from shore to shore.

Dal experimented with using her arms and legs as control surfaces, finding that she could alter her angle of attack but could steer only barely, her speed overcoming the resistance of the still-thin atmosphere. This would improve as she descended, but would present new problems. Air thickened, thundering past her. There was some noise now, the encasement transmitting a whispery rumble. Ten kilometres. Low hills, forest, grassy plains. A haze on the horizon, making planning her final descent impossible.

Passing through sudden, high clouds with no warning, Dal received a whack of increased density and imagined wetness that jerked her, almost making her tumble. Five kilometres, features beginning to stretch and compress below her as she passed over them, elevation differences making themselves more apparent. Then lakes, a whole series of them, interspersed with what looked like marshes and rivers. Just what she needed, particularly as the view ahead seemed to be rising, climbing towards her with small, threatening white patches that could only be snow or ice. Mountains, their summits higher than she was.

Dal curled into a ball as best she could, relieving her aching muscles for a moment, then spreadeagled herself once more and tilted to the right, curved herself like a bow, pushed her stomach forwards. Air slammed into the front of the encasement, shaking her head, rattling her teeth. The land below began to turn, gradually at first. She overshot the last of the lake system, forced herself to hold the position she was in, bent her hands back further and imagined pushing herself around. She became aware that she was shouting, yelling incoherently, and made herself stop, to save energy.

A sudden cloud, drifting isolated above the landscape. The whack of it knocked her hands behind her head, contorted her and sent her spinning. Dal forced herself straight, slammed into the air, rocked and flipped round once more, then steadied and held. She was running parallel to the edge of the lakes now, where they met higher ground sloping down from mountains that now reached twice her current height above the landscape. She dropped further, bit into thicker air, turned faster. Realising that she ran the risk of shooting past the lakes from the other side, Dal tilted forwards, dropped quicker.

"Terminal velocity takes on an entirely new meaning from this perspective!" Overcome by the momentary exhilaration and insanity of what she was doing, she rolled once along her long axis, just for the joy of it. Now calm down and get yourself on the ground, alive. Patterns of blue, grey and green rushed up at her. Dal selected a promising-looking lake, tilted and yawed until she thought that she was approaching it in a reasonably straight line.

Glancing down, she realised that she could make out individual trees and bushes. Oxygen, then. Life. Nothing that looked like a construction. It occurred to her that she was fortunate not to have been picked off from space as some kind of threatening missile, if this turned out to be a settled and relatively advanced place. The shore of the lake raced underneath. She tilted back slightly, trading speed for lift, watching the water's surface for waves to get a sense of the wind. Minor ruffles, nothing more.

The last few hundred metres were particularly scary. She shot horizontally above the water, a handful of metres up, every muscle twitching and straining, constantly adjusting and finessing her angle of attack, balancing lift against speed. Trying not to accidentally gain height, stall and plunge. Finally, when it felt like she was leaning back almost at a standing position and the far shore of the lake was no more than a couple of hundred metres away, she balled herself up in midair, tucking her head in and wrapping her bloated, clumsy arms around the field encasing her legs. She hit the water hard, and was jerked open and spun out of control, flipping end over end and then plunging, feet first, into the water. The suit's buoyancy stopped her before her head went beneath the surface, and she bobbed back up and flopped onto her back, rocking slightly.

Despite it all, the terror of the descent and the reason behind it, the fact that she was probably now marooned with no way of protecting herself, not knowing if the air was even breathable, and drifting, buffeted by waves and wind on the surface of an unknown planet with only the vaguest to-the-nearest ten-lightyears idea of where the hell she was, Dal Rolste lay back and laughed joyously. Then she cried for a while, before telling herself to get a grip and get herself to shore. Over-inflated and clumsy, she was unable to swim and was too heavy to walk on the water, so resorted to bobbing forward, hips submerged, leaning and paddling and often losing her balance. By the time she reached the shore she was exhausted, and had to roll sideways up the bank, flopping and bouncing while she gasped and wheezed.

She lay for a while, recovering her breath, sobbing occasionally. It turned out that the air was fine, once she worked out how to deactivate the field suit. Her neural lace had records of how the things operated, and she chided herself for not having thought of that earlier. Dal found dry wood and built herself a fire, then went about finding more wood to make some kind of shelter. It would be good to have something to do, to keep her mind busy, while she waited for rescue. Her neural lace was not receiving anything, but later when it was dark, if there were no clouds, she could try to use it to recognise local star patterns and work out where she was.

Chapter 15

The Peer, Review emerged from the With The Top Down's single converted Smallbay with care, easing sideways with less than a metre to spare at either end. The With The Top Down barely waited until the smaller ship was out of its physical presence and still enclosed within the primary field-enclosure before switching even that off entirely and moving rapidly and deliberately several kilometres to one side, giving as much of an impression as possible of doing so with an air of extreme distaste and relief to be rid of the smaller ship. It clicked its field enclosures back into place and went dark, silently watching proceedings. Off to one side, the planet Reast was a small blue dot an extended hand's-width from the system's star.

x(ex)-LOU Peer, Review

oReast Incident Group

I see that for the lack of anything better to do, we are being overly dramatic. Imagine my joy. It was surrounded, four-dimensionally ensphered. The other ships of the Incident Group were each, with no attempt to hide their actions and in many cases with overt hostility stance/distribution indicators, targeting it with a full range of weaponry that if discharged, emitted, fired, manipulated or effected together, would cause levels of localised destructive emissions that had not been seen or experienced within the galaxy for several hundred years.

The Peer, Review spun slowly at the focal point of such aggravated attention, making sure that it looked down the metaphorical gun-barrel of each and every ship pointing its multifaceted weaponry at it. We're trying to keep this relatively quiet. If you lot set all of your shiny toys off, we're going to have half of the Involveds here in short order trying to put the system back together again. Don't any of you think this just a teensy, weensy little bit over the top?

xMSV Defender Of The Faithless

No.

The DOTF had gone one step further than other the small-to-medium ships present and had split itself into several dozen independent, individually weaponised components. The shoal of ship-fragments and Mind-slaved weapons platforms drifted within a single large field-bubble, each component facing the Peer, Review squarely. Each had their active targeting systems fully deployed, and were probing the ex-Limited Offensive Unit with a variety of subversion-causing transmissions; this was a level of aggression equivalent to knocking over drinks and chest- and forehead-pressing against an opponent, and one that would normally cause a Culture Mind, especially one originally designated as Offensive, to metaphorically press every button available to it.

The More Is More, Large And Close and Light And Full Of Grace had each deployed what looked like their full contingent of smaller vessels, semi-slaved offensive platforms, weaponised drones and knife missiles, each concentrically and successively smaller but more numerous set of destructive devices surrounding the larger components so that the ships themselves appeared to float within a dusty, smoky halo of fractalled killing capacity.

I see. Well, whatever makes you comfortable. I note that the ships that until now were accompanying me are not being accorded the same level of overkill focus. Surely these more martially capable compatriots of mine are much more likely to cause damage if they have been compromised in some way?

The reply came from the Light And Full Of Grace, which was physically closest. They have been checked. You haven't. Reveal yourself.

Ah. I wondered if my reticence in opening up my full Mind-state and physical embodiment to your scanners was what had precipitated this rather childish display of eagerness to destroy.

That may have had something to do with it. Reveal yourself. A couple of the Light's weapon platforms drifted around, bracketing the Peer, Review and reshaping their fields to a configuration that could be snapped around it in about three nanoseconds, if they chose.

No. Sorry, but I can't. Not yet, at least.

The Large And Close joined in. Worried about what we might see?

Absolutely. Totally, of course. What other reason might I have? Concerned, are you, that I might be compromised, corrupted in some way? Or that I might be contemplating some kind of mischief?

No doubt you have heard about what happened to the Eddy's In The Space-Time Continuum. That ship was known to me. Not a good friend, but a friend nonetheless. More importantly, a Culture vessel, a Culture MIND. And a VFP, not an Offensive Unit on active duty or in the line of fire. A transport ship, carrying someone who wasn't even SC but who just thought that they could help. This was a pair of innocent bystanders, a couple of helpful souls. Gone, just like that.

I have heard. What does that have to do with this?

We're still looking at the last message from the Eddy's and trying to work out what was happening to it. All we can tell is that it was equiv-tech and designed to target Culture Minds. Several of the other ships moved restlessly as that, obviously uncomfortable that the LAC was sharing information of this kind. Whatever it was, it was fast and came from the human on board. A human, consciously or otherwise, managed to destroy a Culture ship. What might you be capable of?

And the human? Any further news? The Peer, Review had stopped rotating and was stationary, immobile in space relative to the other ships.

Assumed dead. Other ships are out looking for her, or for further evidence of what happened. The VFP wasn't broadcasting its location precisely and the incident took place over some distance, so it's a large search volume.

I see. You haven't answered my earlier question. Are you concerned that I'm compromised?

xGSV Light And Full Of Grace

o(ex)-LOU Peer, Review

Haven't you been listening? A ship died! Not only that, we don't know how. Something got to it, ripped it apart from the inside, forced it to watch itself die in screaming agony. All because it was bringing someone to us that had, or has, information about Reast. So, yes, we're worried that you're contaminated, or that you can't be trusted.

About fucking time. The Peer, Review allowed the full strength of its rage to slam into the context-stream and emotional-indicators associated with those words. You lot have been piddling about here accomplishing fuck all, and playing your little games elsewhere for years. All that time, I've been treated like a pariah, dismissed, slandered and treated with nothing but towering contempt. Now I come back from risking my fucking life and sanity, looking for something that I've been telling you was there all the time, and THIS IS WHAT I GET? It screamed at the assembled ships with their amassed selection of apocalyptic weaponry. Well, you can all go and fuck yourselves.

The Peer, Review turned, facing down the Defender Of The Faithless. Get out of my way, or use what you have right fucking now. Or I promise you, I'm going to do my level best to take it away from you and rip whatever you have that passes for a Mind out of its sockets. It powered up and headed straight at the larger ship, leaving its fields totally disengaged, naked-hull visible. Making sure that every ship around it could see what it was doing, it brought its sole effector online and targetted it straight at the vessel barring its way.

The Defender Of The Faithless didn't move, but the P, R was aware of a sudden volley of data passing between its target and the Large And Close. Three microseconds later, it found its engine fields suddenly apparently passing straight through the grid, leaving it powerless and unable to accelerate. At the same time, its effector switched itself off. It choked on impotent rage for a moment, unable to concentrate its thought sufficiently to produce a response, then forced itself to an icy calm.

Enough. The Large And Close moved in front of the Where To Begin, towering over the Peer, Review. Your feeling are hurt. Big deal. Give yourself up to us. We'll apologise afterwards if you are confirmed to be secure.

Shan't.

Then we'll take it.

No, you won't. Not without killing me, completely. Because I promise you, one hint that you are going to forcefully violate the integrity of my Mind and I'll make sure that every single race that has ever been Contacted will find out that this is what we've been reduced to. I don't care what arguments you give, or how you rationalise it. You will stay out of my Mind.

It was the Seventeen Different Words For Rain that came to its aid. Fellows, enough. This is all getting a bit sick. It turned to the Peer, Review, turning off its various weapons systems as it did so. What did you find?

The Peer, Revew was silent for a moment, staring the other vessel down. Finally it sighed mentally, and wrapped its fields around itself, hiding its nakedness. Evidence. Nothing major, nothing damning; prima facie rather than conclusive. Individually accumulated pieces pointing in a multitude of directions, no clear picture.

The other ships said that no-one threatened or resisted your enquiries overtly.

I had an escort fleet tooled and looking for a fight; what a surprise.

And? Do we have a culprit?

The Peer, Review was aware that the other ships were copying the Seventeen's actions in scaling down their overtly offensive displays, pulling sections and segments back in, powering down weapons platforms. Not completely, not in the sense that it would take them more than an eyeblink to have everything back out and firing, but somewhat reassuring nonetheless.–No. But we do have a list.

Can we see it? Please?

Not yet. I want to cross-reference it with the Completely Under Control's own current best estimates.

Surely you could share it with us first, allow us all to contribute.

That comes later. I have a list, it belongs to me, and it's both too large and too encompassing to have any impact other than to simply add to the confusion. Also, it's based on a lot of my earlier work as well as recent evidence, and would reveal information that I am not comfortable sharing.

Come, sent the Completely Under Control. I anticipated this. It sent over the latest simulation data, summarised and condensed in a form that could be used. The Peer, Review slid the vast bubble of information together with its own, much more linear list of ship names, evidence contexts and probabilities, watching the two merge, diffuse into one another and join. A final list emerged, each name embedded within a multifaceted weighting and scoring associated with it as though tinged with smells, colours, fonts and sounds.

Before we go any further, sent the Seventeen Different Different Words For Rain to the assembled Minds, if I appear on this summary list then please let me explain before opening up on me.

If you don't appear on that list then I'm going to be very disappointed, and wanting an even better explanation than if you are, sent the More Is More, which until then had been staying quiet and allowing the scene to play out almost exactly as the Completely Under Control had suggested it would. Minds that get involved in fixing this kind of problem are just so much more likely to be the ones starting them in the first place. And I suspect you won't be the only one. However, I would ask that we take one final step before the big reveal. P, R?

What?

Don't distribute the list to everyone, only to me. And I want everyone else to give me their own list of suspicions and hunches. I don't want us pointing the finger unnecessarily, or causing further incidents due to misapprehensions. I'll be responsible for the final summary, and no-one else. The other ships agreed in a welter of enthusiasm and barely-disguised relief, and each promptly sent it their own list of names that had raised flags of suspicion or in some cases that had probably just annoyed them over the years and were considered deserving of some uncomfortable discussions with SC. Some did so with obvious feelings of guilt, others with visible relish.

The Peer, Review transmitted its own summarised list towards the More Is More with trepidation, knowing that its own name was only fourth from the top. The integration from the data of the Completely Under Control with the P, R's list of names had promoted observations of its own behaviour and their potential long-game double-faced trickery from somewhat below the half-way line of risk to uncomfortably close to the top, although it would be the first to admit that this may not have been helped by its own somewhat paranoid self-checking subroutines. It wondered how the other ships' lists might inflate their own perceived positions as the ship they were all looking for, and wondered what to do if they turned on one another. Not much, it supposed.

Well, sent the More Is More after a moment or two of deliberation. It appears that we have a winner.

And? The Get Your Own had drifted into a position from which it could fire effectively on any of the other ships present. The Peer, Review noticed that the other ROUs and GOUs had also adopted a fairly casually relaxed but also meaningful firing position. What they hoped to achieve against something the size of the LAC or the More Is More, it couldn't imagine.

Oh settle down, everyone. It's not any one of us, it's the Free Radical.

A moment's consideration was given to this name, and then several of the ships communicated at once, talking over one another. Amidst the jumble of signals, it was fairly obvious that the over-riding response was one not of surprise, but of sagacious acknowledgement. The Free Radical had obviously been fairly high on many of the ships' own list of likely candidates. It had certainly been on that of the Peer, Review, although only at the sixth-most likely position.

xGSV More Is More

I am happy to accept this conclusion and make use of it. Any differing opinions?

xGSV Large And Close

It's not even hiding its position – look. We're dealing with a copied Mindstate.

x(ex)LOU Peer, Review

There's a small chance we're wrong. You know that we shouldn't abandon other avenues.

I know, and we won't. The Completely Under Control can and will continue its simulation efforts, incorporating your evidence but not relying on it totally. Assuming that we are done posturing here, and that you are ready to accept our apologies and to pass over what you found out during your investigations.

I am. The Peer, Review sent the data and assorted summaries and observations to all ships present. There were further equivalents of head-noddings, head-shakings and meaningful glances shared. Several of the Minds were named as initiators or participants in some relatively low-level manoeuvrings and plots and there were a few outright stares and blusterings, but the one look at the More Is More's fields shut them down and restored order. What's next?

Two things. We try to work out why the Free Radical is doing all this, and we try, again and with hopefully more success than last time, to communicate with the field team.

Agreement with the first. Not so sure about the second. If they know about the FR, then it places the information at much greater risk of exposure.

I wasn't going to tell them what we, or rather you, have found out and what we have concluded from this, far from it. Rather, we need to find out what they know about Rueger Calspine, who is certainly looking more and more like the Free Radical's pawn, and steer them towards him. From what we can make out, it appears that they may already be thinking in this direction, but we need to make sure.

Trying to force a response from the Free Radical? We know how that works out without simming, surely. It'll kill them.

Not force a response, no. Well, not in the way you might be thinking. Just trying to buffet Calspine a bit off his current course, add a little uncertainty. The Completely Under Control suggests that this will reveal more about its intentions.

xMSV Completely Under Control

Within reasonable limits, of course. See the attached update on suggested approaches to contact our ground team, based on knowledge about the Free Radical's style from past information, and its likely physical structure and related limitations.

Thank you. Now, if you will all please stand back and perhaps even find a nice rock to hide behind, I need to roll my sleeves up and work some magic. DPTTAM, please remove yourself from the vicinity. You won't be needed this time.

xGCU Don't Point That Thing At Me

Gladly.

"Stop the car!"

Hrus looked around wildly, his hand going to one of the hidden panels on the interior of the vehicle. Bren waved his hand irritably in dismissal. The driver glanced back uncertainly, and the other two security staff accompanying them looked from one to another.

"Sir?" Hrus' hand hadn't withdrawn from the hidden panel release.

"Nothing's wrong. I just need to think. Please, stop the car." Hrus hesitated for a moment, then nodded to the driver who pulled over to the slow lane and began reducing their speed, aiming for the next service area. "I've had an idea, just need to get out and think for a minute." The pulse had stunned Lesk-Torlip for a fraction of a second, and it was still busily checking its system integrity. Bren's right arm had twitched slightly, and his vision had flared and crackled for a moment. –All right in there?

-Think so. Suspect those above us are trying to get in touch again.

-Not the Mind?

-No. The Mind, that was what they were calling it now. As if there was only one, thought the drone sarcastically to itself, aware that Bren could probably detect the flavour if not the content of those words. –Looks like a standard com-incoming warning pulse, spatial orientation indicated by frequency and wavelength. Something we'd hoped wouldn't be necessary.

-Because of a risk of detection?

-Because of a risk of damage. That was a feedback pulse from an effector, set at sufficiently high power to burn through anything that might get in its way. If nothing had, your head would have exploded all over the inside of the car. We've got another ten to fifteen seconds before the real signal comes through.

-Same method?

-No. Something different. I really hope those bastards know what they're doing. The car stopped. They got out.

xReast Mind

oGSV More Is More

Stop this act or I repeat previous, magnified.

xGSV More Is More

oReast Mind

Finally talking, are we? Got your attention? Good. Now listen-

No. Desist.

Not a chance. We are perfectly aware of your willingness to harm innocents, and are proceeding anyway. I take full responsibility for whatever comes next. Your threat is irrelevant.

If I fail to respond this time, you will assume the same will happen in future. This will negate my operational ability.

You know better than that. Besides, if this works then there won't need to be another time.

-Ready?

-What for?

-I have no idea.

-Then no. Humour leaked between them. Bren walked to the middle of the parking area, limping slightly and holding himself stiffly. His back and neck were still complaining, three days after the incident at the refinery, and his left hand was still bandaged, a number of small cuts taking their time to heal. In his normal body it would have taken a few hours to be fully recuperated from the damage they had sustained, something that was taking a lot of getting used to.

Hrus followed uncertainly, glancing around. The parking area was about one-quarter full, and several people were walking to and from their vehicles. None had shown any interest in them. He looked back at the other two men that had stepped from the vehicle, giving a small signal with his hand for them to wait. The driver watched through his side window, keeping the engine running.

-How long?

-Any time now. They turned slowly, looking all around. Nothing appeared abnormal.

-I don't – there was a hint of light from directly above. Before his eyes could flick upwards to see what it was, something hit the car they had been travelling in, punching cleanly through the roof of the vehicle's passenger section and the floor in an instant too small to measure. A detonation in the ground underneath the car shoved it upwards hard, the rear end rising faster than the front.

Bren had time to flick his eyes closed before the blast wave hit them. The image of the car was frozen on his retina, showing it beginning to rise, the driver hidden behind the figures between them but almost certainly dead already. Hrus' face was distorted, rippling with the force of the blow slapping into his entire body from behind. The other two men were twisting, breaking, the shock hitting them from one side, snapping them around.

For Bren and Lesk-Torlip, it was as though every part of their body was hit at once. Lesk-Torlip could feel the sound-wave traversing them, striking them in the front and moving over and through Bren's body. A single massive fist punching them, driving them back, rattling bones and making his internal organs wobble like jelly. His brain smacked against the front of his skull first, then as the shock travelled through it the drone felt itself alternately compressed and stretched. It was the single most bizarre and unpleasant thing that had ever happened to it. Subsystems lit up across their warning indicators, highlighting areas of damage as tissues tore and blood vessels crushed.

The drone ignored the emergency signals, the shaking and the titanic pulse of sound that was too strong to be heard. Listen, it told itself. Ignore it all and listen. There it was, what it was looking for, hidden in the chaos. Retreating to its visualisation of a control room within Bren's mind, Lesk-Torlip stored the information for later scrutiny and turned to the wall of lights flickering madly before it. It began sorting, analysing, prioritising, activating repair routines and assessing potential future damage. Bren was still airborne, turning slightly, arms out in front as his body fell back. At least nothing was on fire this time.

Lesk-Torlip reached into the man's mind, seeing his patterns of consciousness shutting down, his brain entering its mammalian response mode while it struggled to retain coherence under the physical and sensory assault. There wasn't much time. It slid into him, reaching out and entering, over-riding, linking and activating. Sending the signals that would allow him to respond physically, to land without breaking anything major. It felt his legs begin to pull up at the knees, his hands start to fly up to his chest. So slowly, but possibly just fast enough for what it needed. It pulled his chin down, tucking him towards a ball shape.

Bren rolled backwards in mid-air, tightened, speeded up and compressed with his head missing the ground by millimetres, dropping backwards and over to land feet-first and then roll, turning slightly to protect his head then relaxing, falling. Bren was aware of none of this, his brain fully unconscious. The drone was only paying partial attention itself, dividing its efforts between guiding their body, sorting and attending to the most urgent damage signals coming from to it, and unpacking the information it had captured earlier. It looked over the message, smiled grimly to itself inside its visualisation (where it had, it now realised, taken on the form and features of Bren himself).

CONTACT RUEGER CALSPINE. MAKE USE OF HIM. GAIN INFLUENCE OVER HIS ACTIONS. The message was in Marain, one-time key encrypted, the signal coded in the timed impacts of small fractions of the meteor that impacted after the primary strike.

-We already knew this, planned this, thought Lesk-Torlip. –All this stress and strain for nothing new. It swore to itself, inventively and fluently, before finally calming and looking at the message again. It was two messages, really, one of obvious content and another of implied context. They knew about Calspine, showing an understanding of the situation and awareness of the Mind's activities and somewhat of its intent. Plus, an implicit approval of what it and Bren had been doing so far. Perhaps. So three messages, then. Then it considered how close they had come to being killed by their allies and supposed friends, and thought of the fourth possible conclusion that could be drawn from what had just happened. It felt coldness envelop it, hoping that this message was for the benefit of the Mind watching them.

This time, they were in a place that Junicia had at some basic level known existed, but had never thought to look for. Near the front of the GSV, directly behind the forward Mainbay and accessible only by Displace within layer upon layer of concentric shielding, fields and multiply-redundant power-supply, processing-substrate and other systems whose function was beyond her comprehension, lay the ship's Mind.

She had known what a Mind looked like from a human perspective, having seen many images and screen features about them over the years (and having carried out some fairly intensive and subject-specific research recently as a result of her conversations with the ship's avatar), but Junicia was still struck, upon first seeing it right in front of her, by how innocuous it looked.

It was hard to see the actual Mind itself directly, as it was cossetted within a seeming nest of tissue-thin fields (several of which were for her protection rather than its, according to the Mind) and was obscured further by several physical conduits that were totally unnecessary except in the rather extreme scenario that every other possible and existing mode of linking it to the rest of the ship's nervous system failed or was compromised; all told, it informed her, there were over thirty different and non-overlapping mechanisms by which it could integrate with the ship in order to communicate with and control it. Of these, only four or five would be in use at any one time and a handful were hopefully never to be implemented except in dire extremes.

It glowed, faintly. Silvery, liquid-looking on the surface as though a thin oil coating had been applied. There was a sense of solidity, uniformity, a lack of detail and indeed a lack of anything to focus on; the eye strained to perceive it even as a solid object, which it definitely was not. Multi-million megaton in true, absolute mass in the most literal sense, and yet creating not the slightest curvature on local spacetime nor having any inertia. Self-powered, totally self-supporting and containing more than just the Mind itself; embedded within was the physical capacity to produce, like a miracle, any object that could be physically described from seemingly nothing.

"So this is what all the fuss is about." She turned away from the view, hands still gripping the railings that bounded the encircling walkway. The avatar was looking at her, one side reflecting the pale silver-blue light spilling over them. "Tell me, what's so special about the composition of a Mind that it captures the essence of the soul? Why doesn't every object have its own soul, its own consciousness? Or does everything? Is this perhaps nothing special at all?"

The avatar smiled gently, rebuking her. "It's supposed to be you answering the questions, remember?"

"No. Not here. I know what I would say. What would you-" she pointed "-what would that say in response?"

"It's answer would be exactly the same, in essence, as that which you would give in defence of your own brain having a consciousness or soul." It glanced briefly at the Mind, then back at her. "Except for scale, sophistication and materials, there is no real difference between what you have and what is sitting over there. Certainly the difference between your mind and a rock is much greater than the differences between you and a Mind."

"Thanks for the compliment." She got a nod and a smile in response. "It comes down to patterns and structure. Biological brains, drone minds and Minds are more structured than non-conscious objects, their layout allows patterns of activation."

"Indeed."

"And if a rock had these patterns of activation, even if they were running through mineral veins in a lump of sandstone, then that rock could be called conscious and therefore alive. Which leads towards your favourite subject of decision-making and free will." She waited for a response, but got none. "A conscious mind is different to a rock because it has free will, and so because it can decide its fate while a rock cannot, it is morally justified in deciding the fate of the rock." She paused, watching the avatar.

"Go on." Its face was tranquil.

"The concept of superiority through better capabilities in decision-making and consciousness raises ethical and moral questions; should Minds be able to do what they like to humans, because they are better equipped with free will and consciousness?"

"Like I said, the difference between us and you is not so great. The moral justifications are not necessarily clear."

She thought about this for a moment. Junicia's initial intention in meeting the avatar today had been to start with the fairly well-trodden argument that as a bird was not immoral in eating an insect because the act was part of its nature, so by extension a human (and stretching the concept even further) a Mind was morally free to do as it chose because the actions it made were inherently part of how it was made. Part of its nature. So whatever the Free Radical had chosen to do could not be wrong, even if it caused harm.

Now she wasn't so sure that this was the correct course to take. "If you know better than me in a particular situation, then shouldn't accept that your decision is better than mine?"

The avatar snorted delicately. "Absolutely not. I might know loads more of relevance to the situation, or simply have one important fact that you don't. But what if I decide to ignore it and act selfishly or according to some kind of skewed ideology?"

"Then you aren't behaving reasonably. I have to assume that you're thinking rationally." Dangerous ground, this. "You still won't tell me what you've done?" An emphatic shake of the head. "Then can I at least assume that some of the other Minds would disagree with whatever it is?"

It laughed out loud. "Girl, if I was to make the most obvious, non-controversial act in the Universe then you still wouldn't have to look very far to find a Mind that disagreed with me."

"You know what I mean."

"That a suitably large proportion of the Minds that are considered comparably sensible and well-meaning wouldn't like it?"

"Yes."

"Then yes. They would hate it. And they'd try to stop me. With force, if necessary."

So why shouldn't I? Junicia turned to face the Mind. It didn't look defenceless, in fact it looked and was the complete opposite. Here she was, in the heart of the beast's lair, completely unable to do anything to harm it. And yet. Wasn't she morally obliged to try? The avatar was standing right next to her, their hands almost touching on the narrow guard-rail that appeared to be the only thing stopping her from toppling forward onto the Mind. She turned her head to face it, but it kept staring forward, unblinking, a tiny knowing smile on its lips.

"Hmm. I can't hope to understand, can I? I'd have to know you completely, and to understand and comprehend the complexity of a mind requires a more complex mind."

"This also means that one mind will never fully understand another of the same complexity. It also means that even with a lifetime of study, it will be hard to understand a mind that is significantly smaller." Finally, the avatar looked at her. "You're thinking in the wrong direction."

"You're asking me to choose based on faith alone. You're asking me to trust you."

"Close, but not quite. Or rather, not all."

"I need to have a reason to trust you."

Its smile this time was broader, genuine. "Yes. Good." Junicia felt a rush of pleasure, mixed with annoyance that she was so easily manipulated. The avatar held out its hand, and she took it, stepping with it away from the rail and towards the wall a few strides away. There was a flicker of silver, a momentary glimpse of her own face staring back at her, liquidly distorted, and then they were in brighter light, under the open sky of the ship's field encasements. Other people were nearby, walking and talking, laughing and drinking.

She let go of the avatar's hand. "I trust you with my life."

"You'd do the same for any ship, any Mind."

"I trust you with the lives of others." It was shaking its head even as she spoke. "We're not there yet, are we?"

"Not where?"

"At the end of the first discussion. We haven't finished deciding if you're truly alive, whether you're really able to think for yourself."

"I thought we were." The avatar did genuinely look disappointed.

"No. I think we've been going off in the wrong direction all this time. We've been discussing whether or not your decision is morally justified, when what we should actually have been debating is if you should be allowed to make decisions at all."

"Again, I thought we had done that." But now there was something else in its gaze as they stood facing one another, ignoring the people that walked past them. Something like a tiny spark.

"We did. But we missed something. What if being allowed to make a decision to act is more important than whether or not that decision is the right one? What if making a decision, any decision, should be allowed, supported even, because you have the right to do so?"

The avatar smiled again. "Perfect. Now?"

"No. Enough for today. Now I need a drink."

Chapter 16

xBattlecruiser Admiral Cavelous (Velorine, under command of Fleet Admiral Ropcarl)

oGSV More Is More (Culture)

Greetings. I trust you are well?

I am, and I hope that the same is true of yourself, and your crew?

We are very well. Are you making progress with the situation on Reast?

We are, but the situation is still very fluid.

Indeed, I am sure. May I speak bluntly, as one old military man to another? Meaning no offense with the term 'man', of course.

Of course you may, and no offense could possibly be taken. I am, as you say, both old and militarily experienced.

Making you worthy of respect both in conversation and as a potential opponent.

Hah. Indeed. I see that we may converse without slyness or deceit. Your reputation seems to be a fair characterisation of your true self, Fleet Admiral.

I'll take that as a compliment. I was hoping that we might discuss the details of your currently active Special Circumstances team on Reast.

I see. Which team would that be, exactly?

Come now. We know that they are down there. And if you are trying to raise suspicions in my mind that there is more than one team on Reast, then please desist. You know who I mean.

Apologies. Force of habit, calibrating the intentions and manner of my opponent.

Accepted. Now, tell me plainly: why are they down there?

I will tell you what I can. They are looking for information, and explanations.

Relating to the spate of unusual and unexplained phenomena on the planet?

Yes.

Can you tell me what they have found?

I cannot. However, I am free to tell you that so far, our investigation is not complete. There are missing pieces to this puzzle.

Which is why they are still down there?

Which is why they are still down there.

For no other reason?

Such as?

Subterfuge. Active interference rather than passive monitoring.

Why would they do this?

We do not know. But others suspect.

And what do these 'others' suspect?

An attempt to disgrace us, by the Culture or a faction within the Culture. Possibly by your Special Circumstances, or even a small rogue element thereof.

The More Is More read that last with alarm. Admiral, if that is the case then I do not know of such plans. I promise you. Certainly, the team now on the surface were given no instructions to make any such actions, and it was I that gave them their instructions. May I return to an earlier statement?

You may.

You said that others suspect, implying that you do not. What are your feelings, your thoughts on this? Do you suspect that we, or some of us, are carrying out an operation against you?

No. On the balance of probability, I do not. I think that if anyone within the Culture was to do such a thing, it would not have been so obvious to spot. May I ask a question in return?

Certainly.

You have seen what your SC team is doing on Reast, as well and probably better than we have. This has gone beyond an investigation on their part. Do you approve of these actions, this blatant interference with a lower-level civilisation?

No. I have to admit, I am deeply uncomfortable with what they have been doing. Their actions do not match the instructions they were given when they went down to Reast.

Then why do you allow it? Why have you not stopped them?

That, my dear Admiral, is difficult to explain.

Due to security concerns, or because of the technology involved?

Both, and neither. Certainly, there are things going on that I am not allowed to discuss. And yes, our attempts to intercede are hampered, rather than helped, by our own technological sophistication. This happens occasionally, when there is a great disparity of technological ability between ourselves and those we would like to help. We have to be careful sometimes.

So you have tried to stop them? And failed?

I didn't say that. And I didn't say that I wanted to. While I am not happy to see what they have been doing, it is possible that they have their reasons.

So ask them. Or bring them back here, and interrogate them. Use that Displace ability you are so proud of.

Trust me, Admiral. I would if I could.

I see. I think I begin to understand what you are telling me and not telling me.

Apologies for not being able to be more forthright.

Apology accepted. Do you give me permission to put a team of my own on the planet?

With what purpose?

To carry out their own investigations. They will not interfere with your own people in any way.

I have your word?

You have my word.

The assembled Culture ships watched nervously from a distance as the Admiral Cavelous approached Reast. A million kilometres from the planet, it halted and disgorged a moderately-sized troop transport. This vessel immediately activated its own field enclosure and became near-invisible to pan-human senses, although they could still see it as plain as starlight as it looped towards Reast. The Culture's own network of sensors detected its gravity field and floated aside to create a gap, avoiding it and reduce the already highly-unlikely possibility of the Velorine detecting them. The Culture ships watched the Velorine vessel enter the planet's atmosphere unharmed and slide down towards the surface.

xGSV Light And Full Of Grace

It would appear that the Free Radical is not paying attention.

xGSV More Is More

Not paying attention, my rear end. It probably finished counting the rounds in their kinetic weapons five minutes ago.

Nonetheless, it has let them enter.

For what purpose, that's what I want to know. That's a lot of level-five weaponry down there that we don't have control over. If something goes wrong, then we're all fucked.

The Velorine most of all.

No. They'll be fucked too, but we'll have let it happen. More, you as good as told them that our team has gone rogue. The hell you playing at, letting the Velorine do this?

Testing them. And I'd like to know how you would have stopped them without raising the alarm.

Testing who? By threatening them, that's how. They're still scared of what we can do.

Our lot. I want to see how they survive this. And threats might work for a while, but wouldn't hold them back for ever.

They barely survived the last two events, and are still physically recovering from your so-called 'signalling'. Assuming they do make it through whatever the Velorine Special Forces throw at them, what will that tell us?

The manner will reveal the means.

Oh dear holy fuck. You think they're compromised. Don't you?

No. I don't. But I want to check.

"Yolar! You indestructible old hound! When did they let you out?"

"Heina, you equally fireproof weasel! I finally escaped the medics yesterday. They kept me in for two nights for observation – concussion." They tapped themselves lightly on the skull, nearly wincing as they did so.

"Well, I'm glad to see you unharmed."

"Are you really? I thought you might have had something to do with it."

The other man's jowly face paled visibly, and the two bulky figures standing behind Heina and to one side pinned Bren with their gaze, unseen but felt behind dark sunglasses. Yolar's own single security guard, the same one that had accompanined them from Yolar's mistress' apartment block in the city a few days ago, seemed to relax his upper body slightly, hands suddenly hanging free. Lesk-Torlip would have drawn a breath in, if it could. A moment's silence, then Bren smiled disarmingly. "Just playing, old friend. I doubt even you could get a car bomb past my security."

Heina sagged slightly, and made a small gesture to his guards with one hand. Their own guard glanced once towards Bren, a small smile hinted at in the corner of his mouth. "Very fucking funny. That sense of humour will get us all in trouble one day."

"Most probably. But I'm sure it will have been worth it in the long run."

"Ha. I'd heard that the car bomb story was a bit suspect, by the way. Apparently what hit you looked more like a missile strike."

"Nope, definitely a bomb. A missile would have left fragments everywhere."

"Hmm. You don't suspect me of being behind that other incident with your car either, do you?"

"No. We're starting to suspect that nobody was, but my people are still looking into that. A possible software error, although the manufacturer will never admit to it. We may never know." Bren spread his hands wide. "I must have angered the gods. Or someone who thinks that God is on their side."

"Again, hmm. Anyway. Sure you're up for this meeting? Rueger's a bit wary of your intentions, you know."

"As any politician potentially being linked to people like ourselves should be. Don't worry about me, a few scratches and bruises, nothing worse. Certainly nowhere near as bad as what happened to you three years ago."

"I'll agree with you on that, Yolar. We were lucky that time. Made me realise what we would be missing if things went wrong."

Bren nodded, seriously. "That's partly why I asked you to introduce me to Calspine."

"Oh? Thinking about a change of enterprise?" Heina's small eyes flashed seriousness, although his tone was light. He took Bren's arm, guided them towards the waiting car.

"Nothing quite as dramatic as that, no. Just thinking about some diversification. Investment for the future, you know." Bren walked round to the other side of the car, nodding to the guard holding the door open and slid in the back next to Heina.

"I am surprised. Thought you would be the last one to think like that. Gratified, though. Been telling you to make a move like this for years."

"I know. And you've been right." They moved off. "Doesn't mean we have to get rid of all our toys though, does it?"

"Absolutely not. Drink?" Bren waved away the proffered empty glass. Heina shrugged, filled it from a curved bottle of some dark liquid sitting in a tray extending from the rear of the driver's seat. Drank, his eyes staying fixed on Bren's face, then sat back, cradling the glass and glancing once at the two men in the front of the car as they moved off. "So. What are we proposing?"

"Not much different, from your perspective. Continuation of the takeover as proposed, with an increase in the percentage ownership from sixty to eighty."

Heina nodded. "And you'll be the extra twenty percent, yes?"

"Fifteen. Calspine will be the remaining five. Gives him a seat at the yearly meetings, but keeps his ownership value low enough that he doesn't have to declare it to the Ethics Committee or the Competition Authority."

"What's the benefit?" Heina took another sip of the drink, the rested the glass on his ample stomach.

"To him, access to and some influence over a company that has been competing with his own for market share, and winning in some cases. For me, a good investment and a business relationship with Calspine himself. For you? Well, I've got no objections to letting you take the lead on the seventy-five percent between us, and using that extra leverage as you see fit."

A nod from the man next to them, his eyes drifting out of focus briefly as he examined their proposal. "Makes sense. Appreciate the opportunity. Think he'll go for it?"

"Maybe. Maybe not, I don't know the man like you do." They waited, watching Heina in a casual manner, making it obvious that they were keen for him to agree but not overdoing it.

"I think he will, but he'll want more."

"More percentage? That's risky for him."

"Not percentage. More reassurances. Like you said, you don't know him, and he also doesn't know you. He's already a bit twitchy about this meet in the first place, what with his Party elders breathing down on him from above. Lots of people are looking for ways to knock him down, and this would make a perfect opportunity." Heina looked up from his drink. "Anything else you can offer him?"

"Perhaps. I'm hoping to appeal to his sense of humanity." That got a snort of laughter.

"Seems like you've been convinced by the hype, old friend. He's a politician. Doesn't matter what the press says about him, that still makes him a cunt. And you know what I say about cunts."

"Indeed, and normally I'd agree. Oh, I don't think he's actually the one and only really honest politician, or that he's really trying to make the world a better place. But I also don't think he's totally pretending, either." Bren leaned back in the upholstery. "He's smart enough to see that having someone like me on his side makes good business and political sense. And he's good enough to want to see me become a better man."

Another snort. "Going to give him a chance to save your soul?"

"Oh, that would be going a bit far. We both know that my soul is way beyond saving by now." Both men laughed at that, then changed the subject and chatted idly about past exploits. Fifteen minutes later the vehicle they were in drew up at Colspine Palace.

Lesk-Torlip studied the building as they stepped out of Heina's car, parked in the curving, swooping driveway that led up to it from the main gates. The grounds were large, at least a kilometre across in all directions and forming a shallow hill that the city had grown around over the last two centuries. Even with the relatively tall office blocks and apartments in the surrounding areas, this still gave the Palace a vantage over most of the city. Trees and other tall plants grew in a tall hedge around the base of the hill behind a high, ornate metal fence and partly obscured the view of the Palace from the surrounding road, but the remainder of the grounds was largely parkland with a few scattered trees and ornamental gardens.

The Palace itself looked exactly like something a wealthy, self-glorifying and god-on-earth monarch might overtax their subjects in order to fund construction of, probably as one of their last major building projects before those same subjects got fed up and decided to see just how godlike said monarch was. Tall, wide windows and ornate curliques of stone separated bas-relief statues and sculptures of gods and historical scenes. The stone was hard, granitic, and had eroded little since its initial construction, leaving much of the early detail as sharp as when it had first been carved.

Rectangular in plan, the Palace was three hundred metres from side to side and perhaps one-third of that from front to back, with four levels of windows reflecting the blue sky down at them. In the middle of the front of the festooned building, tall and wide double doors of wood painted polished black looked down a flight of shallow steps. Bren and Heima were being led towards these steps by a liveried flunky of some kind, their security men following at a distance, glancing around at the similarly bulky and blandly tailored individuals patrolling the grounds or watching impassively from either side of the main doors.

-Surprised he's kept this. Not exactly in keeping with the adopted Party line, is it?

-Not really, no. Been in the family for generations though, since twenty years or so after the monarchy was deposed. Doesn't seem to have done him any harm, either. Makes him look like his own man, and balances out some of the more self-flagellatory elements in the Party.

-Inspirational for the aspirational, I suppose. Successful and nice at the same time. Exactly what the Culture would want in a man for the people?

-In some ways, yes. Setting aside the current complications, that is.

They entered, greeted by a more senior functionary who informed them that Representative Calspine would be down in a moment. If they would like to wait in his private office in the meantime-? They agreed that they would, and were led through a large and expensive but relatively modern-looking entrance hall to a door on the right. The room that they entered through this took up one whole third of the Palace, extending upwards two floors and as far along as the western end of the building. Sunlight streamed through several of the windows, reflecting from the polished wooden floor and illuminating the colourfully decorated walls and ceiling.

Bren and Heima made appropriate oohing and other appreciative noises as they were led along one wall of this enormous room and through another door near its corner. Rueger Calspine's private office was along a shorter corridor that was well-lit but seemed dark, almost gloomy after the brilliance of the larger room they had just passed through. Near one end, they were led to the right and into a large, airy and uncluttered room that looked out on the grounds through a single window in the middle of one wall. Several small pictures and printed photographs hung along the walls, and a single large painting of what could only be assumed to be some ancestor sitting impassively in a wooden chair, holding some kind of nautical device and looking into the middle distance above their heads hung behind the modern, functional desk.

"Gentlemen. Apologies for not meeting you in person." Rueger Calspine entered bare moments after them, shaking hands and then passing between them towards his desk. He was tall, prematurely balding with a long, unlined and smiling face. "Have you been offered refreshments?"

"Not yet, no. Barely arrived." Heima answered, following him into the middle of the room and at a gestured invitation, sitting in one of the two chairs facing the desk. Calspine nodded at the functionary still standing inside the door. "Tea and nibbles please, Monson." The man withdrew. Lesk-Torlip noticed that Heima had opened his mouth, possibly to ask for something stronger, then thought better of it and sat back. Bren sat in the other available chair, facing the desk at an angle. Rather than sitting behind the desk, Calspine seemed content to perch on the edge facing them, one long leg crossed over the other and swinging gently so that it almost connected with Bren's leg.

"So. To business, yes?" Calspine smiled at them both, focussed on Bren. "Mr Yolar, it's a pleasure to meet you at last. I believe we may have attended a few functions at the same time."

"Yes, we have, although we've never had a chance to properly meet, as you say."

"From what I have heard recently, I'm lucky to have met you at all." Calspine's smile disappeared. "I was sorry to hear about the death of your employees. That must have been a shock, happening right in front of you."

"It was. And a miracle that I was not killed myself. I had only just got out of the vehicle a few moments earlier."

"A miracle. A word used so often, but rarely so appropriately. Don't you think?"

Bren smiled seriously, nodded. "I really do. However, I don't want to bore you with my own dramas when we have other and more important business to discuss. My colleague and friend Heima here has informed me of some of the details of his imminent deal, which I am sure you are aware of?"

"Jopul Mining, yes. An interesting affair. Very profitable enterprise, I'm led to understand." His eyes twinkled slightly as he turned to Heima. "So, we are to become competitors?"

"Perhaps not, or at least less so than you might assume." Heima smiled broadly. "Mr Yolar has made a suggestion to me that we hope will interest you." He turned to Bren, indicating that he should proceed.

Lesk-Torlip let the conversation wash over it, paying some attention to the details but not focussing fully on them. It was more interested in the Palace and Rueger Calspine himself, watching the man and gauging his behaviour as it listened to the building and the man and reviewed what it had seen and heard during their brief and limited tour of the building so far. There had been no indications of physical defences more capable than what had been fairly obvious, including the security personnel and some locally state-of-the-art electronic monitoring and sensory apparatus.

The Palace did not seem to have undergone any reinforcements or weaponising refurbishments, although without a more detailed inspection it could not be sure. Fairly old materials throughout, overlaid with a veneer of expensively tasteful modernity. It wondered where the Velorine sensors were. No doubt there were several in this room.

The three men talked for over an hour, discussing details and making notes to be passed to various lawyers, financiers and underlings. Tea and nibbles came and went, and were replaced by a tray with a bottle and three glasses. Heima perked up considerably, becoming almost jovial. Agreement was reached, formally recorded and informally discussed, and hands were shaken. When it was approached time to depart and their host was pouring another round of drinks over by the door, Bren leaned over and whispered in Heima's ear that he would like to have a word in private with Calspine. He would make his own way home, he said. Heima drew back for a moment, a puzzled and slightly wary look on his face. Eventually, he nodded, accepting the glass held out for him by Calspine with a nod and downed his drink.

"May I have a few more moments with you?" They had stood, and Calspine was standing at the window, looking out as Heima struggled into his jacket. Bren had taken their own coat from the servant when it was handed over, but draped it over one arm rather than putting it on.

Calspine looked interested, but not particularly surprised. "Of course." Heima nodded and left the room, and Calspine sat in the chair that had been vacated. "Please." He indicated that they sit once more.

Bren stood instead, hands on the back of the chair, gripping it. "This is more of a personal matter that I wanted to discuss."

"Oh?"

"I want to get out of my current business."

Calspine sat up, alert, hands on knees. "We've just spent time discussing your business, and where we might progress it with your colleague."

"Not that business. My other business."

"There are certain things that I cannot talk about, Yolar." Calspine was looking wary, now. "Both because it would be illegal for me to do so and then not report what I might learn, and on a personal level. I don't want to get involved in that kind of thing."

"I understand that. I'm not looking to cause you any trouble, far from it. It's just that-" Bren waved one hand "well, my life needs to change. Recent events have made me rethink."

"Then change. Why does this need to involve me?"

"I was hoping that part of the process would involve using my resources to do some good, for once."

"Mr Yolar, if you will excuse my bluntness, you are an arms dealer. How can your weapons possibly be used to do good?"

"By eliminating a threat to democracy, to our way of life."

"Your way of life is not mine." Calspine's face betrayed him, with a flicker of understanding that he tried to hide. "And I don't want your way of life to intrude upon mine."

"But it already has." Bren smiled. "Not through me, but from others. The Unity."

"I see." Calspine nodded, his face slightly flushed. "You've heard, then. About the threats."

"Yes. And I'm worried. Worried that these idiots are going to end up more powerful and more dangerous than people currently think possible. Worried that they can start threatening politicians with impunity, that they are claiming credit for attacks and events that they may or may not have been responsible for and that they might actually think that they can carry out their threats."

Calspine stood, turned his back on them and walked to the window. He stood for several seconds, looking out with his arms folded.

-Pushed too hard?

-Borderline.

"What are you suggesting?" He still hadn't turned to face them.

"I'm offering to do nothing that will damage your reputation. What I am going to do is make a suggestion to you. If you accept, then I will expect nothing in return."

Calspine did turn to face them at that. "Nothing?"

"Nothing. No political favours, endorsements, pressure applied or anything else that might in any way appear as if you have used your influence or wealth for my benefit."

"And what are you going to suggest in return for nothing at all? And why would you want to do so?"

Bren stood, walked to the window to stand beside Calspine, looking out. He reached out and rapped one knuckle on the glass. "This house. Your family. Yourself."

"What about them?"

"They are in danger."

Calspine stepped back, his eyes wide, mouth turned down in mock fright. "You really think so?" he also rapped on the glass, facing away from them, looking outwards. A guard looked over, but Calspine waved at him and shook his head. The man returned to his patrols. "This will stop a bullet. It might not protect me from one of those rocket grenades that the Unity use, but I doubt they would get close enough to the house with one of those to fire it. See those people out there? Security guards, good ones, all ex-military."

"Not as good as you think, unfortunately." They spoke quietly. Calspine turned his head to look at him. They had turned sideways and the gun was held across their body, invisible to the guards outside. "The bullet-proof glass doesn't really mean much now, either."

-Shit, Bren. Lesk-Torlip had thought it could see everything Bren was about to do, and knew about the gun but had expected Bren only to show it to Calspine, not threaten him with it.

Calspine didn't move. His eyes were locked on the weapon. After a few seconds, he cleared his throat. "Is that real?"

"No." Bren pocketed the toy again. "But it could have been. Do I have your attention now, Representative?" Calspine nodded. His face was pale with what looked more like anger than fear. "Good. Do you understand why I did that?"

"To demonstrate my vulnerability."

"No. To demonstrate your family's vulnerability. I imagine that they mean more to you than your own life. Family usually does, with honestly good and honourable people."

"You've made your point. No need to over-do it." Calspine walked on slightly shaky-looking legs to his desk, and sat down behind it. "I'm listening." So they told him. About the building, and about the other protections to be put in place. They hinted at activities to be taken elsewhere to make Calspine, his family and staff more secure but didn't give any details. Any indication that the conversation might move in that direction obviously made him uncomfortable, so they shifted to another topic, one that made him smile. The annual family gathering was to take place in two weeks, a well-publicised event that brought almost all of the scattered Calspine clan, their partners and a selected few close family friends together in the Palace for two nights.

Bren spoke softly, apologising for the necessary demonstration with the gun. He talked about the possibility that the gathering might be seen as an opportunity to attack several members of the Calspine clan simultaneously, and of the need to put the additional protection in place before then. He asked for permission to provide something extra for the party, something that he could provide through his contacts – but not through his personal business interests, of course – as a benign alternative to his normal capabilities. Something using light engineering and gunpowder, explosions and power. When he explained what he meant, Calspine laughed and agreed.

Preparations for the gathering would provide them with an excuse to bring the necessary heavy equipment onto the Palace grounds, masking the other work to be done on the building, which was itself a mask for what they would be setting up. As Bren spoke, Lesk-Torlip talked also, guiding the man's words and being guided in return, easing them together, using the finest nuances of body language to trick Calspine, make him trust them without knowing he was doing so. Signals, eye-movements, subliminal structures in their wording, combining to control the politician's subconscious, leading him where they needed him to go.

Chapter 17

She wasn't alone. This was worrying, but part of her was excited at the realisation. The problem was, she shouldn't be here. This wasn't a Contacted world, and she was a walking excession. Okay, one of the problems is that I shouldn't be here. There were several other problems, including the fact that she was slowly starving to death. Food was scarce. She was capable of eating almost anything, her body able to digest and resist toxins and pathogens, extract nutrients from anything up to and including the soil itself. But it was hard, took energy, wearing her out, grinding her down.

Grass-analogues predominated and she was stuffing herself with their seedheads, washing them down with handfuls of water from the lake she had landed in. It was brackish and silty, but she needed to drink to aid digestion. In a few more days the EM-converter photovoltaic cells in the skin of her arms and fact would be fully-developed, and she would be able to produce enough energy to survive easily on a handful of soil a day, but until then surviving would be a challenge.

After filling her belly and gulping down a couple of litres of water, Dal Rolste lay on the gel-suit, sometimes climbing inside it to stay warm if the breeze chilled her. She listened to her stomach gurgle and complain, breaking down the tough stems and seeds and extracting what small energy and nutrient benefit could be obtained. Roll on domestication, she thought bitterly. On the seventh day, she felt strong enough to climb a low hill, staggering to the top and collapsing. She looked around wearily, brushing her hair out of her eyes.

Smoke. Impossible to mistake for anything else. A thin column, listing upwards and dissipating into the haze. There had been no lightning, no storms nearby since she had landed, but fire could start in other ways. Still. She rolled over onto her belly, distantly aware of it cramping and complaining as she did so. Upped the magnification in her vision till the muscles round her eyes were straining to see out across the plain. Low dome shapes, colour slightly different from their surroundings, a metre or so high and twice that across, arranged loosely around the source of the smoke. Nothing moving, nothing else visible. Hmm.

There was training for stuff like this, she knew. Training for just about everything, a rule for every scenario. Whatever strange and fantastic situation you found yourself in, someone else had always been there first, endured these conditions. Or not, and died horribly and spectacularly, or just quietly and prosaically. You could learn from that too. The problem was, in the situation that she was currently faced with, the training was pretty direct and straightforward, unambiguous to the point of misinterpretable bluntness. She had to die, could not interfere or contact the local life-forms in any way. It was expected.

Of course, you could always say no to the training. Contact didn't believe in absolutes, and recognised that at all times your own opinion counted for something. You were allowed to use your judgement, break the rules, if there was sufficient reason, extenuating circumstances. Special circumstances, even. She nodded to herself. I think this counts. Staggered to her feet and had a good look at the route she had to take between and around lakes and streams to get to her destination. Dal Rolste started walking, taking her time. It took four hours, with several stops to rest. She knew she might need her strength when she got there.

As it turned out, she did. Four hulking humanoids emerged from the cluster of simple dwellings as she approached, obviously smelling her, their faces wrinkling, turning to one another and then back to her, their expressions recognisable despite the mutual strangeness. She had approached from upwind to give them warning. Human very basic, she thought. One of them was even dragging a length of wood in stereotypical early-prim fashion, snarling as he did so. It was a big piece of wood.

"Let me guess. 'I come in peace' isn't going to work?" Her words froze them momentarily, but she could tell that she probably had moments before they attacked. They looked well-fed, muscles like oiled rocks. Dal tried not to see those muscles as meat, and mostly succeeded although her mouth flooded with saliva. She tried screaming at them, picking up a rock and throwing it gently, to hit one of them in the chest hard enough to alarm him, but not to cause damage. He grunted, rocked back a bit, then charged. "Oh, shit."

She dropped and curled just before the impact, and felt him thud into her side. She flipped over, seeing the look of stunned surprise on the hominid's face as he cartwheeled through the air. One arm looked like it had been broken by the impact. She twisted and stood, turning to face the remaining figures. There was a crash and howling from behind her as the one that had charged her landed awkwardly.

"Enough!" She put volume into her voice, holding both hands out in the universal signal for Stop. In the low sunlight she could see the containment field suit as a grey outline around her, and wondered if they could see it at all. Probably not, and even if they could then they wouldn't think it was protecting her. Another one charged, this one a female who came at her more slowly but with arms spread, looking to grab and crush rather than batter into the ground.

Dal Rolste flipped the suit hood up and over her face, glad she had spent some time working out how to make it more obedient and flexible in its utility. She winced as the big female's teeth closed around her neck, slipping and failing to find purchase on the field. A faint pressure across her chest told her that if she hadn't been wearing the suit, her upper torso would have been crushed in the massive embrace. They toppled, Dal letting the pair of them fall sideways together and trying not to panic at the sight of huge jaws filling her field of view, trying to bite through her neck.

After a few seconds, the creature seemed to realise that this approach wasn't working either and rose, gripping Dal's head and growling as she tried to twist it off. She succeeded in forcing Dal onto one knee before, becoming tired of the charade, Dal raised one hand and shoved against her attacker's chest. The female roared in distress as she flew backwards to land on her rump. Dal stood, checking the suit. Undamaged, apparently, and able to take this kind of punishment all day, according to the instrument panel on her left forearm.

"Are we done yet?" They weren't, and spent another twenty minutes attempting to bite, pummel, tear and stamp her to death. Eventually, obviously exhausted, the hominids gathered around her in a circle of sweaty, crouching and growling watchfulness. Dal stood, turning slowly and looked each of them in the eye, then walked past the big male who was nursing his broken arm and could do no more than bare his teeth at her. She strode to the fire burning low in a scorched patch of grass and after a few seconds, found what she was looking for.

Squatting on her haunches beside the glowing embers and glancing once at the figures staring at her, she flipped back the suit hood and began gnawing on the half-burnt, half-raw chunk of discarded meat that had been lying in the embers. It was the most delicious thing she had eaten – well, since forever, it seemed. Even with bits of ash clinging to it. Within seconds, Dal felt her strength returning.

Their food came mostly from large, slow-moving but dangerously horned bovine creatures that roved the nearby plains in a single massive herd. Nearly every day the clan of hominids gathered up whatever crude weapons they had and spent hours jogging in and out of the herd's fringes, trying to separate one that was young, weak or old from the rest so that they could beat it to death and drag it back to camp. Usually they returned empty-handed and tired, snarling and cuffing one another. After Dal joined them, their levels of success went way up but for some reason they never seemed particularly grateful.

It took several days of being sullenly ignored and occasionally growled or roared at before the smallest member of the group approached her timidly and offered her a haunch of meat from the fire. Even then, none of them would stay close to her for very long and the clan leader avoided her entirely. Her single attempt to get him to hold still while she set the broken bone in his arm almost resulted in her having to break something else, and flattened one of their skin-and-sapling shelters. She never for a moment considered taking off the suit while she was near them, and made sure she walked several kilometres to a distant lake when she wanted to bathe.

Sixteen days after landing on the unknown planet, a Culture four-person module dropped through the low clouds, unshielded and undisguised, and landed next to the pattern of stones that Dal Rolste had laid out on the shallow hillside. She watched it from three hundred metres away, standing slowly from where she had been seated, whittling a chunk of wood with a sharp-edged piece of sandstone. For five full seconds she felt disappointment that she wouldn't have time to finish the makeshift weapon, then she was running, throwing it away from her and ignoring the howls of despair and terror from the small clan as they ran in the other direction.

"Ms Rolste?" A boxy-looking drone had floated out of the module as it landed, door winging open. Its voice was loud, carrying over the distance between them.

"Stop!" She skidded to a halt, raised her arms. "I'm contaminated!" It stopped, and they faced one another over thirty metres of tall, yellowing grass.

"Are you hurt?"

"No. At least, I don't think so. But there was something on me, something that killed the ship I was in."

The drone wobbled in the air, its fields invisible. Behind it, another drone and a human figure had emerged from the module and were standing, watching them. "Was this the Very Fast Picket Eddy's In The Space-Time Continuum?"

"Yes. It was taking me back towards Reast. I needed to get to Reast." She was crying, she realised. "But there was something on me, in me."

"Will you give me permission to access the recordings of the gelfield encasement you are wearing?"

"If it has any. I didn't know it could. The ship didn't –"

"The ship apparently had very little time." The drone's voice was lower, more serious. "I'm Uring-Zrast, by the way. And those are my colleagues-"

"I don't care who they are. There isn't time for that." The drone wobbled again slightly, showing surprise. "I need to get to Reast. To speak to the Contact ship Don't Point That Thing At Me. But I might not be safe to come near, and I don't know who I can trust."

Uring-Zrast was silent for a moment, then drifted closer. "Well, I'd say you can trust me, Ms Rolste. And those with me, and through them the ship waiting for us above the atmosphere, the General Offensive Unit Volume Zero that is currently seconded, along with all of us, to Special Circumstances and that is part of the search party for you, and now whatever is left of, ship that was carrying you. However, that may not be sufficient reassurance for you."

"Can you scan me for whatever killed the Eddy's?"

"Already done, Ms Rolste." The drone was only a couple of metres from her now. "Although it's hard to know what we are looking for. The Volume Zero informs me that there are a number of anti-ship SC weapons that can produce similar results, but the quality of the recording from the field encasement is very poor. Not surprising, given the situation that you apparently found yourself in. It has given you a very thorough examination already and found nothing to indicate a threat of any kind, certainly nothing similar to the kind of system it was looking for." It extended a field. "I think it might be okay for you to come with us. We'll accept the risk."

She held back for a moment, still hesitant, then walked towards the module. The drone floated alongside her. "These anti-ship weapons. Who could get access to and enable them? Which civilisations?"

Uring-Zrast was silent for a moment, and Dal suspected it was communicating with the GOU above them. "Not many could do so, for sure. A handful, no more."

"Culture?"

"Possibly. Very possibly. One of the few with sufficient technical capabilities, for sure. I cannot say more than that." It was silent for a few more seconds, then just before they got to the module, drifted closer to her and lowered its voice. "We can take you to Reast. Can you tell us why?"

She stopped and faced away from the human and drone waiting for them. Lowered her own voice to a murmur. "How much do you know already?"

"Whispers and rumours, nothing more. Some concentration of capabilities, SC-wise. Hints of suspicious activity on or around the planet."

Drones could not be looked in the eye, but there was usually a subtle band of colour encircling them and indicating the place to look if you wanted to do so, to be formal. Dal Rolste stared at this now for several seconds before speaking. "Then I know less than you."

"Less, but more specific?"

"Yes and no. Something that would probably only make sense or be of use to anyone fully involved in the situation. I'm sorry."

"Apology accepted." Uring-Zrast extended a field tendril of formal blue towards the module. "Shall we get you to Reast, then? I'm sure that there will be time for a shower and a good meal."

"Several, hopefully. Of both." She made her voice sound lighter, more relaxed. Inside, she stayed tightly clenched.

Captain Iseule sprang the trap perfectly. Major Snowl had his projectile-deflection shield activated, but it turned out to be completely unnecessary. Not a single shot was fired, either by the Unity forces or the Captain's. The Major watched, accompanied by three other Velorine troopers, from the narrow, rocky floor of the steeply-sided valley as the variously-garbed Unity soldiers emerged from their hiding places surrounding them only to collapse, nerveless. His own men had ambushed the ambushers, encircling them concentrically with the Major at the centre, soundlessly trapping their would-be assailants.

The leader of the Unity battalion was dumped in front of him, guarded on either side by two of the Velorine special forces corporals as the Major sat on a rock, watching his men retrieve and disarm their stunned opponents. He wrinkled his nose at the smell coming from the Unity soldier before him, who had obviously soiled himself. That happened sometimes when you got hit by the non-lethal weapons, even to Velorine themselves, and was pretty much uncontrollable when it occurred. Nonetheless, it would be a further, highly satisfactory and very useful blow to the man's pride to have shat himself when captured; these idiots were so full of masculine ego that the Major wanted to laugh.

The only visible difference between the two groups was in the uniforms and weapons, both of which were superior on the Velorine side. His men looked healthier and stronger as well, of course, even as Reasten. The adaptations had been difficult and unpleasant but were necessary for those involved; the whole operation depended on them appearing to be local. The Major had picked men who tended towards the shorter, stockier end of the distribution of Velorine physical shapes, to speed up the adjustments. It also made it easier for them to get used to their new body-designs more easily.

"Good morning. What is your name?" The Major leaned forwards, clicking his fingers under the man's nose. The effects of the stunner were still wearing off, and his eyes were unfocussed, his head lolling like someone trying not to fall asleep. The Major had a sudden memory of himself at the military academy twenty years ago, performing the same motion during particularly dull lectures on military history. His instructors had been remorseless in their punishment for such disrespect, he remembered. "Wake up!" He slapped the man, not hard enough to knock him over but sufficient to get him more awake. "Your name."

"Nettig." His voice was hoarse, rasping. "Who you?"

"It's 'who are you', you savage. At least speak your own language properly, if I have to make the effort to. I'm your new commander. My name is Snowl. Major Snowl."

Hi eyes focussed. "Commander? What? Who sent you, what do you mean?"

"Never mind who sent me. I'm here now, that's what matters. Just in time, too, by the looks of it. You could have got yourselves killed by your own stupidity, and that would not have been good, not at all. We have an important mission to carry out, you and I."

"I don't serve anyone. I serve God." Nettig leaned forwards, spat on the ground between them. When he looked back up, his eyes were bright, unafraid. "Kill us if you will, or leave."

"If I was going to kill you, you would be dead." A glance at the ground where the man's spit had landed. "Because I have my orders, and because I also serve God, you are still alive. However, if you fail to show my rank the proper respect then I will kill you and replace you with someone able to serve God's will rather than his own pride." A pause. "Do you understand?"

"No. I mean yes. But still no." There was confusion fighting the man's anger now, doubt replacing certainty. "I don't know you, your men. There have been no orders. How can I follow you?" The Unity forces were scattered, deliberately so, rarely coming together even in forces of company strength unless there was some larger, coordinated action taking place. Guerrilla tactics, small handfuls of men and weapons were preferred, sneaking in to plant explosives or fire shots under cover of darkness and then scurry back to the hills and the forests.

Communication between groups was sporadic, fragmented. Many of the groups actively fought one another, failing to recognise their own comrades when they encountered one another in the mountain wildernesses or even when they did or even arranged to meet, still distrusting them, picking fights or attacking indiscriminately because of personal enmity between field commanders or perceived territorial disputes. All of which favoured the Major's mission, making it easier to isolate a some of these idiots and make use of them.

"There has been a change, Nettig. More forces are coming to fight for God. More men, with better equipment. Do you understand?" He got a reluctant nod in response. "Not just better equipment, but improved strategy. More training. We are to become an army."

"An army?" Nettig grunted. "Under whose command? Bersom?" He snorted derisively.

"God, Nettig. Under God's command." That got the man's attention. "Yes, there will still be leaders. You know this. Military and spiritual leadership is needed. But Nettig, God has spoken to Bersom and the others. He has made Himself known to them." The Major was down on one knee now, gripping Nettig's arm. He told himself not to look up, aware that one of the troopers standing was trying not to smile. He would have to speak to the man later, remind him that they needed to play their roles well. "These acts that were claimed by Bersom for God. You know the ones I mean?"

"I do. The fires, the floods, the plane crash. The earthquake." Nettig was staring at him in wonder now. "Did they really-?"

"Yes, Nettig. They did really come from God. He has shown us His power, and that He is angered by the fools, the weaklings, the corrupt. He has said, enough, it is time to stop them. And who will work His will?"

"We will. Oh, we will." Nettig tried to scramble to his feet, failed. The Major held his arm, pulled him up, ignoring the smell and holding Nettig to him. "I will serve. I will give my life."

"That is good. You may have to, but not before we take many of theirs. We have a mission, and we must not fail. Gather your men." He released the other man, who swayed, gathered himself, stood. "Bring them together, here. We have weapons for you that we will show you how to use. Good weapons, weapons from God Himself."

"From God Himself." Nettig stared a moment longer then turned, his face alight, looking for his men. They were clustered together a hundred metres away, watched over by the Major's men. There were no women in this team, which was a shame. Some of the Major's best men were women, but the Unity rebels would not have accepted female fighters. Women were weak, apparently, and the Velorine did not have the abilities to disguise themselves as aliens of different gender. Still, what he had would be enough. It would have to be. Hilspeth had said this was to be done, and as far as Major Snowl was concerned, Hilspeth was more frightening than God.

"Now this is just weird. I had no idea you kept them all!"

"What did you think I did? Dissolved them in acid and then built them from scratch whenever I needed another one for something?"

Junicia grimaced. "Well, no. I just thought, you know…" her voice tailed off as she continued staring.

"Nope. Sorry, I don't." The avatar, at least the one she was looking at, seemed highly amused, she noticed.

There were thousands of them. Silver skin reflected one another in a curving, warped iteration of mirrored selves, made all the more extreme by the fact that they were all naked. Or at least, not wearing clothes, she thought to herself. An avatar couldn't be naked in the same way that a screwdriver couldn't, either. Junicia felt briefly ashamed of herself for thinking like that, particularly given the subject matter she and the Free Radical had been discussing recently. Then she remembered what the ship had done to one of its avatars only a few days ago, switching it off and effectively killing it right before her.

"Do you turn them all off, then back on again? Like you did before?" She was briefly alarmed and disturbed by this thought, and turned back to look at the close ranks of silver figures. They look like an army, she realised belatedly.

"Not in the same way, no. Almost all of the time, an avatar is directly under my control when it is active. As this one is now, for example."

"How often do you let them go, autonomously I mean?"

"Junicia, I never 'let them go', as you put it." The avatar spoke softly, stepping to stand next to her. It put its hands on the railing of the small platform that extended a few metres to either side, emerging from a single entrance half-way up the Smallbay-sized storage space. Mimicking her stance, her posture. Their hands were millimetres apart, and she was reminded of their earlier visit to the Mind itself. "They are not suppressed, kept captive for my whim. They are me, Junicia, and I am them." It turned its head to look at her. She could see several of the nearest figures reflected in the surface of its cheek. "When I need or want an autonomous avatar, I transfer a slimmed-down Mindstate into its own processing substrate and it becomes alive."

"So you create life. I knew that, I'm sorry. It's just so affecting, seeing them like this, their potential. It's like they're just frozen."

"Well, they're not. Although the term 'potential' is appropriate here. An avatar's processing substrate is perfectly capable of running as a mind with its own human-rated consciousness, according to the definitions that we have agreed upon, you and I."

"A bit more than that, as I understood it."

The avatar smiled. "Yes, but it depends on the human."

"Good segue. The more large and complex the mind, the greater the mental capacity. Also, the greater the level of consciousness."

It pursed its lips, an odd expression she couldn't remember an avatar ever making before. "Greater might not be the best word to use."

"Agreed, although I can't think of a better one for the moment. Sophisticated, perhaps. Or aware."

"Again, I would say that those are unfortunate terms to apply. They imply superiority, and the right to make decisions about the lives of those with simpler minds."

"I'm not convinced that the implied superiority isn't appropriate, at some level. Oh, don't get me wrong," Junicia raised her hands from the railing and held them up flat, palms outwards. "I'm not saying that a bigger mind means a better person with more rights."

"It sounds like you are."

"Well, I'm not. However, there is something important to discuss about the concept that animals do not all have the same level of consciousness, and that the variation in brain sophistication and size going from Minds to humans to other animals to microbes to rocks is relevant." She turned towards the door, jerking her thumb over her shoulder. "Can we leave, please? Those guys are freaking me out."

The avatar nodded, and indicated with its arm. They left the balcony and walked to a small transit-tube station. The waiting capsule whisked them away through a series of light and dark sections, objects and features blurred by their movement. Seconds later they arrived at their destination and stepped out into one of the lower-level recreation areas. They walked slowly between grassy areas marked off into large rectangles with what looked like coloured lines painted directly onto the vegetation and occupied by teams and groups playing a number of different sports involving balls, bats and other equipment.

"So there are brains, minds of different size and complexity." The avatar prompted her. "What significance does this have?"

"It's linked to their ability to generate patterns of varying complexity. Not just that the more brain you have, the more conscious you are, but something else. How much of a soul you have."

"Hmm. Remember, what we would consider the 'soul' does not have a physical location in the body, and in fact is not only restricted to the volume of the brain if there is sufficient complexity and pattern-generation dynamics in other parts of the nervous system."

"I'm thinking of the whole nervous system, when I say 'brain', here. Too many variants and architectures to try to limit it to one term. Let's just stick to the term 'mind'."

"I apologise. Please continue."

"The soul of a mind can be smaller or larger depending on the number and arrangement of the components but is still a soul, regardless. It never reduces to zero, unless there is no mind at all."

"But you argued earlier that every component, down to atoms or even further, could be a tiny quantum of consciousness, or of soul. So even a plant could have a soul. If it could communicate, it would still say 'I'."

"I've not forgotten that. But there is something it is like to be conscious, that is not like it is to be an inanimate, unthinking object." She smiled. "What a horrible sentence to say out loud. I've been practicing it in my head, but never actually spoken it."

The avatar smiled. "I quite liked the cadence, the near-rhyming rhythm, actually. Unthinking?"

"Yes. Unthinking. That's the important distinction. The interactions between the components in a plant-" she saw it open its mouth "-okay, almost all plants, do not allow patterns to be activated that are related to or identifiable as memories, or thoughts."

"So it's the processing of the signals that is important, how they activate patterns?"

"Yes. I think that this will lead to activation of consciousness, and the soul." Junicia suddenly took a couple of runnings steps forward and caught a ball that had been thrown out of play. She drew back her arm to toss it back to the players near them, but one of them shouted over an invitation to join them. She looked at the avatar. "I'm up for it. You?"

"No, thank you. You know how it puts everyone off when an avatar takes part. No matter how closely I make sure that it plays like a human, it causes problems. Any luck or moment of skill is called cheating." It smiled. "You go ahead. I'll see you tomorrow?"

She nodded, smiled. Then she turned and ran towards the players waiting, who cheered her decision to join them. The avatar watched for a few moments, its face calm, knowing, a tiny half-hidden smile barely visible. It turned and strode away, back in the direction they had come.

Chapter 18

The avatar of the Culture MSV Confounded Beyond Words was intently examining a particularly impressive purple and silver flower growing out of a profusion of vegetation on the floor of the reception area in the Ahan Remnant Worldship Truth Or Reconciliation, and did not appear to notice the approach of the two figures. It was only when the silvery covering of one of them reflected small patches of light onto the surface of the flower that it glanced up, smiled and straightened.

"Welcome, Culture emissary. With you, wellness. Assumed and anticipated?" The Ahan spoke first, its voice high and tinkly. Its humanoid shape appeared to be made out of solid metallic components with fluid joints, giving it a somewhat rigid appearance while still allowing it to move relatively normally. Its face was a combination of Ahan and pan-human features merging with one another, inside a slightly old-fashioned looking space helmet. Or possibly a ceremonial head-covering, the avatar couldn't be sure. The faceplate was missing, so certainly the helmet wouldn't provide much protection if the situation required it.

The Ahan Remnant should have been natural allies of the Culture, given that their entire population was made up of artificially intelligent beings. The original Ahan, the biological progenitors, had been wiped out along with almost the entirety of their associated biodiversity over a quarter of a million years ago in a conflict with another race, exterminated by genetically targeted pathogens scattered through the atmospheres of the hundred or so worlds that made up the rapidly-growing (up until that point, at least) Ahan Empire.

During the last years of the conflict that had ended with their extinction, the Ahan had developed their AI technology to the point where it was proving quite effective in their war; indeed, it had been largely felt at the time that the Ahan's recent improvements in this area were giving them the upper hand and that within a decade or so the war would be won; hence the all-out and devastating biological attack.

The Ahan had died, along with almost all of the life on their planets; after a brief period of reflection and celebration and drunk on success the race responsible, the Gutra, had been foolish enough to threaten other races nearby with the same fate as the Ahan if they didn't acknowledge their superiority. After an even briefer period of reflection, these races and several of their highly-developed allies, including one Involved race, had wiped them out.

Biologically, the Ahan were gone. But their artificial intelligences remained, and with the help of a couple of sympathetic races these fledgling systems were able to upgrade themselves to full sentience and began the process of restoring the largely barren planets they now occupied into a series of vast, sculpted memorial parklands dedicated to their original creators. This had taken a hundred thousand years or so, after which the Ahan Remnant, as they were now known, settled into a slightly bizarre and faintly pathetic state of orphaned decrepitude, lovingly maintaining the re-greened worlds but taking no part in events beyond the borders of their own volume of influence, which were maintained and guarded by a series of Involved races who felt it appropriate and useful to allow a visible reminder of how badly things could go wrong.

In the last thirty thousand years or so, the Ahan Remnant had been taking slightly more interest in the activities of other races, but chose to do so in a manner that strongly reflected their own history. They had built a fleet of hundreds of spacefaring vessels of truly staggering proportions, each dwarfing the largest Culture GSVs but despite their intimidating bulk entirely unweaponed and designed to act as habitats for bewildering collections of plant and animal life from across the galaxy; the purpose of these craft was to wander the galaxy and provide living reminders of what could be lost while at the same time offering spaces and facilities for meetings between races that were in dispute with one another. In effect, they were intended to provide a mechanism for conciliation and resolution of conflicts or disagreements of any kind.

The Culture applauded this sentiment and its practice, while at the same time finding the Ahan Remnant almost impossible to work with. This was a problem shared with numerous other races, who discovered very early on in their interactions with the sentient, non-biological but biology-obsessed members of the Remnant that these AIs were intelligent, considerate, dedicated and utterly, obsessively keen to find any source of disagreement between opposing sides and highlight these disagreements in such a way that instead of helping to resolve the issues, they often made the situation much, much worse.

Due to the weight of evidence relating to their activities, many people had actually expressed suspicions over the years that the Ahan Remnant were in fact trying to cause trouble and that their approach was less naïve helpfulness and more deliberate mischief-making. The Culture did not, in general, subscribe to this view but certainly tried, wherever and whenever possible, to make sure that if trouble was brewing, to keep the Ahan Remnant as far away from the situation as possible. Unfortunately, it didn't always work. As in the current situation.

The avatar smiled and nodded, turning to the other creature there. "As well as can be. Thank you for the invitation to this meeting." They were aboard an Ahan vessel, but the arrangements had been made by, and following the requests of, the Youlis Changelings. Their representative had chosen to appear as a tall, thin and vaguely humanoid figure with lime-green skin and an extra set of arms. The Culture avatar considered briefly that its design was possibly intended to give some resemblance to a Velorine, but with concessions to the more pan-human Culture appearance. "Greetings, Ambassador."

"Likewise." The Youlis Changelings were a reclusive, semi-retired and only partially Involved higher civilisation, who rarely interacted with the other dominant or technologically advanced races currently in-play. They had been around in this vague and distant manner for over six million years, only nominally participating in galactic events and keeping themselves restricted, spatially and contextually, to a small sphere of influence. It was unusual to see one so far out of their volume.

Relations between the Culture and the Youlisians were relatively tenuous and could best be described as polite, rather than friendly. The last time they had shown any particular interest in the goings-on of others was when a small proportion of their number had lodged complaints about the treatment of other changelings during the Idiran War, and the tone of unpleasantness directed at their own species and civilisation in response to the perception that they were in some way supportive of the Idirans, apparently because of their empathy with these changelings with whom they were entirely genetically unrelated.

The Confounded Beyond Words was ex-Homomdan but fully Culture; it had been constructed after the Idiran War in a period of rebuilding and societal restructuring caused partially by the destruction of the War itself, and partly in response to the changing opinions and attitudes of the Homomdans themselves; these changes were also largely due to or driven by the War. It was therefore relatively young by the standards of its own civilisation, and was not troubled by the personal memories of many of its peers.

Having chosen while still quite young and inexperienced to renounce its own society and embrace that of the Culture (an act that it had never regretted but still, occasionally wondered if it had spent sufficiently long in its parental civilisation to fully appreciate the benefits of such wisdom and experience, and the general positivity of their company), the Confounded also acknowledged a bias in its attitude towards the recorded evidence of how the multiple civilisations involved had acted, performed and behaved during the brief, but convulsive War and its still-felt impacts on numerous societies throughout the Galaxy.

As such, it had little tolerance for the complaints, even if only expressed by a small proportion of their number, of a species that refused to participate but was evidently willing to ignore or bias its opinions away from the perfectly obvious actions of a group of individuals just because they happened to share some common trait. However, it obviously couldn't give voice to such opinions here. "It's a pleasure to meet a Youlisian in person. I've never had the honour until now."

"We prefer Youlists." The Ambassador's voice was low and slow, pitched so that it could be felt through the decking of the ship's reception area as well as heard.

"Apologies. Shall we proceed? Is anyone else attending?" The avatar's own normally deep voice seemed quite high and fast by comparison.

"No, currently and anticipating yes, waiting." Which was fairly typical of the response it should be expecting today, the avatar thought. The Ahan indicated that they should proceed from the reception area. They passed through a doorway into a high, airy space, looking down and out into it from a long, unwalled walkway. On both sides, verdant parkland spread out, curving up towards distant walls in an exotic, chaotic display of bushes, flowering plants and thick, green vegetation. Flying animals darted and soared through the space, ranging in size from a few millimetres to several metres across. A bright sun-line was almost directly overhead, beating down on their elevated position. The surface of the walkway was distinctly warm to the touch.

One of the few things that was known about the personalities of the Youlist Changelings was that having evolved on a planet with relatively high gravity, they were not overly keen on heights and suffered badly from vertigo. The Worldship's internal gravity was significantly less than the Culture standard, which would no doubt make things worse. The Ambassador hesitated fractionally as they stepped onto the walkway, then moved towards the middle. The Ahan representative was walking right along the left edge, glancing down. The Confounded's avatar stepped to the right hand side and with a small gesture and a faint smile, offered the Ambassador its elbow. The offer was accepted, and the Ambassador's lugubrious face might almost have twitched an acknowledgement.

As they walked towards the far end of the walkway where it disappeared into another vegetation-strewn wall, the Ahan representative gave the avatar a brief agenda for the meeting. "Ensuring all parties aware, relevantly. Situational understanding and comprehension, Reast-revelatory."

"Of course. We would be disappointed in ourselves if we were not able to reassure our Involved peers about any area of concern, such as the current situation on Reast."

"Concerned, then?" The Youlist Ambassador turned his head fractionally towards the avatar, then resumed staring straight ahead along the walkway.

"Obviously, yes. Concerned both with the situation and with the negative perceptions that it may cause, warranted or otherwise, with those that we are keen to retain our standing amongst." The Ahan took a moment to digest this, and the Ambassador nodded marginally.

"Details, context seeming priority. Lack of, extrapolation ensues uncertainty, concurrent with apprehension, misapprehensions. Alarm, even."

"Yes. We are in agreement there, absolutely. Our investigations are ongoing, but I was hoping to use this meeting as an opportunity to update you all on what has happened. And how we are dealing with it."

"Good." The Ambassador nodded again, its grip on the avatar's arm shifting slightly. "That is good." They passed through the walkway exit.

"Introductions, recognisance, updating." The Ahan delegate waved one arm at the assembled group of creatures, machines, avatars, holograms and light displays in the large meeting room beyond. "Transactional display, resuming, returning. Periodicity priority, meeting assumption. One standard hour."

The Youlist Ambassador released the avatar's arm, but stayed close, seeming disturbed by the numbers present. "Did you understand that?"

A shy Ambassador. That piece of information reinforced something else that was suspected, that the Youlists were inherently uncomfortable in the company of large groups. "Sort of. We've got an hour to mingle, meet acquaintances and friends, catch up with people we know. Then the meeting starts." The avatar smiled at the Ambassador. "I'd like to find an opportunity to talk to you during this first introductory period. However, I need to discuss a few things with others first or at least acknowledge their presence, before we get down to business. Can I find you in, say half an hour?"

"Yes." The Ambassador indicated a relatively quiet-looking alcove off to one side of the fairly busy, loud room. "I will be over there." He/it walked off in a stuttering fashion, looking straight ahead, halting every time it looked as though someone else might be about to cross his path. The avatar turned, scanned the room.

-You settled in okay? This might take a while, it sent to the ship.

-Having a quiet chat here with a couple of other ships I haven't seen in ages. I'll let you get on with it. The Confounded Beyond Words was running the avatar in semi-autonomous mode, a watchful guiding presence sitting at the back of its awareness. It could step in with its full Mind at any point, absorbing the avatar's consciousness into its own as a subroutine with full informational access and thought processes and a complete identity that was nonetheless still part of the greater whole. However, that wasn't necessary at this point. Avatars were perfectly capable of handling situations like this without overdoing the micromanagement with a full Mind presence.

Many people, particularly those who chose not to allow their AI entities to have the level of complexity and control that was endemic in the Culture, made the mistake of thinking of the relationship between Culture Minds and their avatars as similar to that between a human brain and the hand of the body; this comparison was overly-simplistic and inaccurate, and failed to reflect the level of complexity both in the avatars themselves and the controlling (or non-controlling) Minds. There was no real comparison to be drawn using something as crude as a single biological systems; it was more accurate to think of the relationship as that between a city full of individuals and one person selected to represent them who had a near-perfect knowledge of what each person in the city thought and desired.

Even that comparison didn't work as a visualisation unless every person in the city was also psychically in tune with every other person, so that their individual thoughts meshed and integrated, while at the same time retaining a separate, individual person in their own right (and with their own rights) who could contribute something distinctly different, some flavour and emphasis of their own, to the consensus. It was this consensus that the avatar embodied, and could represent with varying degrees of distinction from the whole as conditions required.

If it was held separate from the rest of the Mind for sufficiently long and experienced sufficiently different environments and situations, the avatar would eventually become less faithful in its personification of the whole; this would take some time, however, and could be avoided by retaining a minimal level of connection back to the Mind itself. Of course, occasionally complete severance was done on purpose, to allow Minds to enjoy the sensation of absorbing entirely new sensations and formed opinions from another individual without breaking the rule about reading another person's mind. Unless the avatar had changed to drastically that it decided to refuse to re-integrate with is parent Mind, of course. That had been known to happen, and was particularly embarrassing when it did.

One further link that was not being currently implemented was the direct one from the avatar back to the More Is More, and through it to the rest of the Incident Group. At high-level Involved meetings like this, where equiv-tech level eight civilisations interacted, danced around one another and generally contrived to subtly gain the upper hand/limb at every opportunity, there was a consensus opinion that it was a bit rude and overtly aggressive to try to make use of the full sophistication of one's civ and their processing, simulating and tactical manoeuvring capabilities

Such an approach was seen as in poor taste and only to be used in dire situations. Not all Involveds had the same resources or certainly they didn't have the same goals when it came to their interactions with their civilizational peers; forcing yourself on others at every opportunity made them try to do the same, and led to an arms race of spying, subterfuge and an unpleasant ambience of hostility.

It had been realised fairly early on in the interactions between civilisations with near-godlike powers that having more than the background level of mistrust during multi-civ interactions usually did not end well. Instead, there was a consensus of polite discourse, backed up by the full awareness of all present that not playing fair or seeking too much of an advantage in dealing with your neighbours quickly lost you a lot of the other advantages that polite society accrued. Like people being willing to talk to you in the first place, or avoid trying to steal your planet and turn it into a monument to their abilities.

Of course, that didn't mean that nobody tried anything. It just kept the manoeuvrings relatively small-scale and subtle. One of the ways in which you quickly gained an indication of how much good-will there was towards you during these events was to observe the level to which others thought that they could get away with trying it on; if there was a perception that you were out of favour and may be fair game, then people rapidly starting experimenting with all sorts of mischief.

Currently, the Confounded Beyond Words was fairly happy with the situation as it watched its avatar interact with others present. Everyone was being fairly well-behaved, radiating an air of helpfulness and curiosity about the situation rather than approaching it from the we-know-you're-up-to-something direction. Of course, this also meant that the avatar had to behave itself in likewise fashion, and therefore needed to at least appear willing to share its information about what was going on.

-Thank you. I see that the Velorine have been invited. It'll be interesting to see how they behave; I'm getting a sense that they may get more of the blame deflected towards them for this than we anticipated.

-Sympathetic parent; remember, long-term it would come back to us for not having mentored them properly.

-Appreciated. Just thinking about what the Ixrian said just there – a hint of an enclave before this, pointing towards annoyance with the Vel's innate attitudes? Suspect we may get a not-so-subtle steer towards cracking down on them, but no more. Perhaps a mild ticking off for having been too easy on them.

-That would be nice. But it does require that nobody starts suspecting that there is more to this than the Velorine behaviour.

-Also leading to the ramifications of potential Involved involvement. At which point, everyone would start getting a little rattled. Best avoided.

-Indeed. By the way, the Youlist Ambassador appears to be trying to get your attention. Nice job getting him on side, earlier.

-Again, thank you. The avatar turned and waved, and made its way across the room to the corner where the Youlist was lurking. The cadaverous creature saw it coming, and straightened fractionally.

"My friend, how are you? Enjoying the meeting so far?"

"No. I dislike social gatherings. Progress should be made, time is wasting."

Couldn't agree more. "Ah, but progress is being made. Even our lifeless hosts demonstrate an understanding of the importance of mutual comprehension." It used a term to denote non-biological life that it would normally have considered inappropriate, but that translated better into Youlist as giving an impression of having some reservations about the Ahan. Delivered innocuously, the line seemed to have the desired effect.

"The Ahan compensate for one thing by tilting excessively in the other. Their intentions are not always aligned with realism."

"Perhaps. Perhaps." The avatar pretended to muse on this for a moment. "May I ask something?" The responding nod was curt, brief. "The Youlists and the Ahan are not known to have a particularly strong relationship. Why were they invited by your leadership to perform as hosts and mediators in this particular situation?"

The Youlist stared at the avatar for several seconds, its eye-membranes flickering slightly, indicating uncertainty. Eventually, the alien appeared to reach a decision. "We are not as unsympathetic to the Culture as we may appear."

"Oh. I see. That is good, I suppose. Do you mean in general, or just in relation to the current situation?"

"In general. You are a force for stability, and we appreciate this. The Reast situation threatens a loss of your influence. We do not want this."

"Good, again. Thank you for your concern. I have to admit to some puzzlement, however."

"Because of the Ahan? Their potential destabilising influence?" The Youlist appeared more animated and relaxed than it had before. It watched the avatar nod with what might almost have been a smile. "I thought this might appear as an unhelpful act. There was some disagreement and discussion amongst us."

"And you were over-ruled?"

"Yes. But now I think my seniors may have been correct. They prefer rapid resolution, not an outdrawn problem. And an increase of goodwill towards the Culture. The Ahan may accomplish both, without apparent intent."

"Ah." The avatar smiled, and tapped the Youlist on the arm. "You bunch of sneaky rogues. I like it." That got what was practically a grin in response. Then the Youlist's face flickered slightly, and a look of caution replaced the happiness.

"May I ask a question in return?"

Uh-oh. "Of course."

"It is a personal question. At least, a question that I am asking not as a representative of my people."

The avatar adopted a serious posture, mimicking the Ambassador's. "Go on."

"We – Youlists, that is – are aware that there is an unpleasant history between the Culture and some Changelings." The Ambassador drew in a breath. "Our assumption is that this has led to a certain. A certain. Em…"

"Antipathy? Between our two races?"

"Exactly. Antipathy." The Youlist looked relieved. "There is also the discordance between our two races in how we show ourselves. Culture citizens have an observed tendency to show who they are. To not hide their true selves."

"I know exactly what you mean. They – we, that is – sometimes over-do this a little."

"We are different. We do not reveal. And there is our inherent Changeling nature, which can be seen as presenting a mask to others, a further disguising of the person."

The avatar reached out and took the other's forearm, gripping it firmly enough to make the Youlist's eyes widen. "No. I apologise if this impression has ever been given. It is possible that our reaction to you and yours has led to this misapprehension. If so, then it was our mistake, not yours." It saw that the Youlist was about to speak. "Wait. This is something that needs to be said. We do not mistrust you because of who you are, or how you are. There has been some coolness between us, that is certain. But we would be happier to be closer to you, to have you as our friends. If you would have us."

"Of course." The Ambassador's eyes were wide. "Friends is better than not. Always."

"Good. Please, if you can let others know. I am only one person, representing one Culture ship, but I know that others would say the same as me. I am confident that I represent my race in this."

For several moments, the Youlist seemed to struggle to speak. His eyes darted around the room, seemingly seeking something to alight upon. Then his face cleared. "We should join the others." As the Ambassador spoke, the avatar could see beyond it that the Ahan representative was politely trying to get their attention. Around them, other attendees were beginning the communal drifting towards the meeting room, through another set of doors.

"Indeed. Thank you for your honesty." It touched the Youlist Ambassador lightly on the arm, and nodded to the Ahan, moving in its direction. – Here we go.

The discussion played out almost exactly the way the Confounded Beyond Words has predicted. The avatar defended the actions of the Velorine almost, but not quite, to the point of taking the full blame upon the Culture, and accepted the mild rebukes and recriminations indicating that the Culture had been too gentle in discharging their responsibilities. The Velorine Ambassador was almost tearfully grateful to have avoided the humiliation and calumny that threatened to pile upon his race, and clung to the avatar's side for the latter part of the meeting. It managed to extricate itself from the Velorine eventually, gently prying itself away from an invitation on board his vessel for a meal and post-meeting analysis.

-It felt like he was overdoing it a bit. It stepped on board its parent ship, from the docking air-tube that had wobbled out from the Worldship to the Confounded. "I expected him to be more defensive. Are they up to something?"

"Almost certainly." The MSV's own reception area was an adapted Smallbay, with water features and a winding path through a display of mostly transparent, chunky artworks formed from fused glass and metals. "The problem is in identifying what, exactly. Probably the ground forces on Reast." The ship absorbed a copy of the avatar's mindstate into its own, and signalled the More Is More as it departed the Ahan Worldship, a small silver seed dropping away from a hundred-kilometres-long, convoluted, many-branched and multi-hued tree of a vessel. It left the primary consciousness separate from itself however, to have someone to talk to. A small quirk and one that other Minds often enjoyed.

Hello there. What have the storm-troopers been up to so far?

Getting into position, according to their own supposedly secure communications. They've identified where Bren will be sixteen hours from now, through some apparently brilliant hacking into Yolar's personal comms network which was previously thought to be proof against even their efforts.

The Free Radical making that look more impressive while actually a lot easier than it really was, I suppose.

Absolutely. Results of this whizzo intelligence gathering have revealed that our human, along with a small but well-equipped security force, will be travelling to a meeting with some of Yolar's more insalubrious customers to finalise what is being described as 'one last big deal' before he quits the business. They have also learned that the imaginary 'drone' that the Free Radical keeps showing them will be left behind to handle other business.

How fortunate for them. They actually believed that this highly contrived setup is real?

Yes, having accessed a faked recording courtesy of the FR. It really is playing them rather well, but they're not doing themselves any favours. Far too strong a tendency to believe everything that is put in front of them.

I suppose they think that eliminating Bren will solve the problem. It's not like the drone could act alone with him, I suppose. Will Bren be well-equipped enough to overcome a combined Velorine/Unity ground assault even with best Reasten weapons on offer?

Probably not, no. Terrain and random chance notwithstanding, plus the consideration that our lot are fairly obviously expecting the Vel to be coming at them.

This is all a bit unnecessary by now, surely. They're going to get torn to bits just so you can make a point that they are still with us.

Unless they aren't, in which case they'll walk away with help from the Free Radical.

Which will prove nothing. The Free Radical might decide to keep them alive to serve some as-yet unguessed purpose. They're doing what we asked them to do.

Are they? The More Is More expressed genuine uncertainty in its tone. They've taken it way further than appropriate. And what's with all the messing about at the Palace? They were lucky to get away with some of that stuff, especially the fountains.

Agreed, that is a bit of a worry. They may have their reasons, though. This situation of not being able to see what is going on clearly is unfamiliar to us, I'm worried that we are overreacting in our attempts to regain control of the situation.

I'm overreacting, you mean.

No. You're IC, but this isn't a one-Mind affair. We cleaved to your decisions.

Not everyone.

The majority did. And since when did the Peer, Review ever go along with what other Minds agreed on? It probably thinks you're doing the right thing, but has to go against you out of force of habit. Just do one thing for me.

What's that?

Don't start getting suspicious about the P,R just because it stated a different opinion to yours. We're getting too close to full-blown paranoia for my liking.

I'll take that under consideration, although it doesn't help my opinions of which side you might be on.

Very fucking funny. At least, I hope that was an attempt at humour.

Maybe. Maybe not.

Stop it.

Sorry.

The Confounded Beyond Words performed the Mind equivalent of a sigh, and cut the link. It called up the Where To Begin. Cousin.

Old friend/young friend. How went the interrogation? Did you succeed?

I did, I think. Although I suspect that I may be unable to protect the Velorine from themselves the next time, if what I hear is true.

Truth is becoming harder to detect, in this situation. You are worried about the acts of our Incident Controller?

Concerned, not yet worried. Its reasoning is not flawed, and I continue to support its actions. Just alert to the possibility that we may yet regret our current course.

Regrets are guaranteed. Even with the Completely Under Control's simulations we cannot foresee or forestall all negative outcomes. Bad will yet come, and perhaps worse than already.

Depressingly, I agree. How are you maintaining yourself, anyway? We have had so little time to chat, to catch up on each other's lives.

Excluding current events, life is good. Even a single ray of light and pleasure has been obtained through all this, and because of it. The Controlled Desire and I have used our relative proximity and lack of action to relive, expand and improve on our history together.

Truly?

Truly.

I am overjoyed to be told this. My good ship, this is really the best news! I must admit, I had been worried about how the two of you would interact.

As had I, as had it, it finally admitted after dropping its brash exterior. We are truly comrades now.

Then it is true, every gas-cloud hides a star. I will rest easier than before, knowing this.

Not yet easy, though.

No, not yet. I hope to in time, however.

Chapter 19

After the last couple of disastrous outings, Yolar's security staff were a lot more twitchy than usual. A few of them were also fairly obviously concerned about their own personal safety, and were hyped up to a level of hair-trigger alertness. Considering what they were up to today this was fine by Bren and Lesk-Torlip, although it did mean that they had to monitor their own behaviour a bit more closely. Of course, many of the new staff that had either been hired by Hrus to increase the organisation's capabilities or brought in to replace those killed and injured in what was rapidly becoming known as the 'car bomb' incident were just that – new – and so were less likely to spot any differences between Bren and the original Yolar.

Four hours after leaving the city, they had climbed up a gradually steepening escarpment, switchbacking for the last ten kilometres to the sudden vista of the Yanbor Plateau, a hundred million year old remnant of a vast volcanic outflow, all the evidence that remained of a supervolcano eruption that had wiped out half the species on the planet and opened the door for the explosion of diversity that the Reasten currently sat atop. Deceptively flat-seeming, the plateau was riven with fold, channels and minor canyons formed by the infrequent but severe rainfall events that occurred once a year. The next rains were not due for another two months, and when they came would turn this landscape into a treacherous, shifting and flowing plain of flowing mud and making ground travel impossible. The semi-armoured vehicles bounced across the bone-dry terrain, rocking their occupants and making the varied collections of hand-held and stored weapons rattle against the metal interiors. Dust drifted in their wake.

-These religious loons freak me out. It doesn't matter which race they come from, they're always the same. I would find it depressing if it didn't piss me off so much.

-Me too. But these ones have a reputation of paying well, so it gives us a plausible reason to be here.

This was a trap. For whom, it was not yet obvious. Lesk-Torlip was beginning to suspect that every one of the players in this drama was under the same impression – that it was they who were about to spring a surprise on someone else. Certainly it and Bren were expecting to be attacked; this was too good an opportunity to miss for either the Velorine or the Mind if either were inclined. If it was the Mind, then they might be lucky enough to have time to realise that they were about to die. Or perhaps they would be lucky enough for it to be over before they had time to notice anything was wrong.

-What if both of them have a go?

This had been happening more and more. Eighteen days since they had landed on Reast, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to identify whose thoughts were whose. At the same time, it was still perfectly possible to hold a conversation – it just meant that the person who asked a question might also be the one that answered. While definitely a bizarre sensation, this wasn't as confusing or disturbing as they had anticipated.

-Then perhaps they'll fight each other and give us time to run away cackling to ourselves.

"Sir?" Brandor was frowning at them. "Is everything all right?" They had been smiling inanely in his direction without realising it. Hrus' second-in-command had been hesitant about accepting his new role, and insisted that it was only temporary while his senior recovered sufficiently to return to work. Given that Hrus was now permanently deaf and wouldn't be walking properly ever again, that seemed like false hope.

"Sorry, Brandor. Just remembering what Hrus and I used to get up to in our younger days." Brandor's expression became even more serious and he nodded earnestly, before turning to face the window. They did the same, looking out of the other side at the treeless, scrubbed-down, dun-coloured world outside. A few truck-sized rocks were scattered within their field of view, some showing the rippling trails that evidenced their water-driven perambulations.

-We must be visible for miles. A single shoulder-mounted missile would do it. Hells, one of their handguns would pretty much finish this so-called 'armoured' piece of shit.

-And either hit the wrong vehicle or destroy the evidence. Still, it was a good point. There must have been hundreds of opportunities in the last few days when they had been visible in the open, or a travelling in one of the many local forms of transportation that could be crashed, brought down or simply blown up. It was starting to make them jumpy. –Maybe their first failure made them believe we're invulnerable.

-We certainly didn't look it, with our hair and clothes on fire. I'm still convinced that they're worried about exposure.

Lesk-Torlip (or was it Bren?) had been making that argument for several days now. One catastrophic accident could be written off, but the Velorine might be worried that if there was another one coming after the car/refinery incident and the so-called car bombing, then people would start paying too much attention to Yolar. Even the Reasten could be relied upon, eventually, to work out that another race was involved. If that happened, then the Vel would be bringing a whole heap of trouble down on themselves. And so, the SC team had decided, the Velorine should be given the chance to have another go in a way that should avoid seeming like a trap, but that would still look like an opportunity to attack them without causing too much notice.

The military base was well-fortified but under-staffed, surrounded on three sides by shallow and tumbling terrain at the centre of an ancient volcanic caldera, a rough circle four kilometres across that had been created in one of the last settling burps of the now-dormant supervolcano that had created the entire plateau. The road, well-maintained for the last few kilometres, ran alongside a scrawny river that bent away under one featureless, brown wall of the base and disappeared upslope into the rocks. Where the river and road emerged from the caldera into the surrounding grey and tan countryside, the ancient crater rim was lower and had eroded almost to the level of the plains, leaving only two wide sweeping arms, shallow mounds a couple of hundred metres wide.

-Tactically and strategically, this place is ridiculously easy to attack and a nightmare to defend. Surrounded on all sides by higher ground and with almost no view of the landscape beyond the caldera, the base did indeed look vulnerable. Three thousand years ago it had been a different story, when the outer rim had been topped by a wall effective against cavalry and ground troops with spear and rocks, and the flat ground inside had been covered in fields. Changing weather patterns and increased salt levels in the soil had rendered it infertile, and the local tribes had abandoned it, leaving only a small shrine and a handful of monks. A hundred years ago, a local border dispute had seen it converted to a garrison for troops behind the front line, the caldera walls sheltering them from weather and concealing their numbers.

Now it was Yolar's, all the way to the outer rim wall and for some distance beyond. The remains of the small military fortifications had been razed, tunnels dug and underground chambers widened to enable its use as a bunker and weapon store. Reast was still at the stage where a few metres of soil and rock provided sufficient protection from explosives or cannon fire, and some of the old magma throats of the expired volcano were remarkably easy to clear out. Another twenty years or so would see the development of bunker-busting weaponry, but for now it was perfectly suitable.

It was the old magma-flow tunnels that made the bunker so useful. Extended and widened, this network of rock tubes reached under the entire caldera. Four large rooms had been dug in a rough square a few hundred metres on a side, each containing a wide array of Yolar's stock in trade. Between these rooms, the tunnels ran in curves and sudden, sharp angles, splitting and merging. A warren, and a potential trap.

The base's single entrance was a steel shutter wide and tall enough for motorised weaponry to pass through. It clanked upwards into a recessed slot as they approached, revealing the sloping floor beyond, leading underground. The walls were close-fitting stone blocks without mortar, old-looking but clean and dust-free. Thick electrical cables ran along the angles where the walls and ceiling met.

The vehicles clattered through the entrance and proceeded down, their lights seeming dim and weak in the well-lit interior of the bunker. The tunnel ran straight for one hundred metres then turned sharply right, then right again and finally opened into a wide, tall space. Directly below the squat, rectangular and windowless building that was all that was visible above ground, a large, flat-floored, domed chamber had been hollowed out. The engine noises, loud in the rampway, quietened as they entered. All four vehicles pulled to one side of the large room and halted.

"Mr Yolar, good to see you again. Safe journey?" The base manager was short and stocky, dressed in tight and filthy overalls. A relative of Hrus, he had similar podgy features but was more muscled, looked like he was used to wrestling heavy machinery.

"Yes, thank you Jupqet. Your cousin sends his regards."

Jupqet's face tightened. "Thank you. Please say hello in return." His voice was accented slightly, after several years working at the base alongside the locals. "I am sorry that he was injured, but glad that it happened in your service."

"I'd have been happier if he was able to accompany me today." They both glanced at Brandor, whose face was impassive as he stood nearby, watching his men. "Brandor here is perfectly capable, but I miss Hrus a lot. I had become used to having him with me." Jupqet's nodded soberly.

"So. You want to see your toys?" He smiled suddenly, showing filthy teeth. "They are cleaner and better kept than me, I assure you!"

"Soon. I want to use the bathroom first, and make sure that everyone here is doing well."

"Review the troops, eh?" It was an old joke between them, apparently. Bren smiled knowlingly.

"Oh, we are fine, fine. Good food, fresh water. Sometimes we even go up top to feel the sun and the wind." Jupqet smiled. "All that we miss are women and wine." Yolar was strict about that, they knew. Six men maintained the site and its collection, most of which needed almost no maintenance in this cool and dry atmosphere. All Jupqet and his men needed to do was keep the fairly basic mechanical and electronic systems in good repair.

The base crew was rotated every few months and paid well enough to compensate them for what they were missing. A few, like Jupqet, had been doing this for years. The longest-serving was one of the original military officers stationed here during its decommissioning over twenty years ago. Apparently, he almost never went outside during his work rotations and spent as little time as possible on leave in between. The others called him The Rat and joked that he knew about hidden tunnels and secret caches of weapons, drugs and military secrets that had been left behind when the Army departed.

After meeting the men and having a quiet few words with each, they visited one of the storage rooms. Bren and Lesk-Torlip walked between grey-canvassed trucks, peering into cabs and checking the condition of ties, tyres and exposed metalwork. Nodded as he went, seeming satisfied. –How long, do you think?

-I'm guessing that the expected buyer simply won't turn up, will be replaced by the Unity/Vel forces. That lets them get closer before they are tagged as hostile.

-An hour or so, then. We need to get things moving along.

"Do you have the inventory?" He held his hand out for the sheaf of papers Jupqet was holding. His hand had left several oily streaks on the outer pages, but it was still legible.

"All here. Surely you trust us not to lose anything?" Jupqet was smiling toothily, but looked worried nonetheless. Yolar never asked to see the inventory, apparently.

"Yes, I do. I trust you, Jupqet. And I trust your men. However, the people who are coming to buy this lot might not." Bren put a hand around Juqet's shoulders. "And they certainly doesn't trust me."

"Buy this? All of it?" The man's face was comically alarmed. "But why?"

"That's what I do, Jupqet. I'm an arms dealer. I sell weapons. Surely you've noticed by now."

"You joke with me, sir. Of course I know that. You cannot be selling all of it though, surely."

"All of it." They nodded. "Every last bullet, every last tank, every last grenade. The whole inventory, plus the building it comes in."

Jupqet's already pale face went white underneath its layer of grime. "No, sir. Tell me you cannot be doing this."

"I am, Jupqet. I'm doing it because of what happened to me a few days ago, and what happened to Hrus. Life is becoming too dangerous, and I am getting too old. It is time for a new life. A life without weapons." He smiled reassuringly, squeezing the other man's shoulders and looking down into his face, centimetres away. "I'll look after you though. Don't worry about that. If you choose to stay here and work for the new owner, then I will understand. If you want to leave, then I will find new work for you. Good, honest work. More money, better conditions." They emerged from between two missile launchers into the open area near the storage room's entrance.

"But I live here!" Jupqet's voice was loud, almost a wail. "This is my life, sir. I cannot leave." He looked close to tears as he pulled away from them, stopping. The men nearby that worked with him were walking over to find out what was wrong. Three of the security staff stood nearby, also watching. They had been briefed, warned that Jupqet and his men might protest, might even resist this turn of events. "Who is this buyer? What is his name?" His voice was becoming angry, petulant.

"I don't know."

"You don't know! You must, sir. This is madness." Jupqet stretched his arms out towards them.

"Perhaps, or perhaps it is very sensible. I don't know the man's name, but I will recognise him by the way he and his men dress and the way they talk." They glanced at Yolar's timepiece, a small dial on a band round his wrist. "Plus, if he arrives when expected then he will be recognisable by his routine. Even if he cannot see the sun from underground, he'll have to make the prayer for its returning, at the moment it sets below the horizon."

Jupqet's eyes bugged out of his face. His voice was a whisper. "The Unity?" They were over a hundred kilometres from the nearest fighting here, separated by a mountain range and as broad river. Jupqet had joked earlier that they were still safe but that perhaps the local military would want to borrow Yolar's weapons if the zealots came any closer. "Sir. No. No, sir, please." His voice was still a whisper, sussurating back from the confining walls. "You cannot do this. They will kill us."

"I have been given guarantees that they will not, Jupqet. If we give them the weapons and vehicles in working order, they will pay us and leave. I have told them that much of this base is protected by explosives, and that once we have left I will tell them how to disarm it all."

"They will not believe you! Sir, you need to stop this. Now, please! They cannot be trusted, they are madmen." Jupqet approached, on hand out. One of the security guards took a step closer. Jupqet stopped, staring at them both, the guard and the man he thought was Yolar. As realisation dawned, his mouth opened in horror. "Sir, I would never –" he raised his hand slightly higher, then lowered it. "Never, sir. I would never." His lower lip trembled.

"Mr Yolar? Sir?" It was one of the other guards. "Vehicles approaching. Ten minutes away. Four large vehicles, three smaller." They had left a couple of men outside on the caldera perimeter to watch and warn. The guard's face was worried, they had been told to expect one car with the leader and a single truckload of Unity troops. A low-visibility operation, to secure the base for the transport vehicles in a couple of days, engineers rather than fighters.

-I vote we bring them all in on it now, give us more time to prepare.

-Wondered when you'd say that. "Get Brandor and everyone else to meet us in the central room. Two minutes." Bren motioned to Jupqet. "Come. When did you last fire a gun?"

"Sir?" The shorter man trotted to keep up, his breath heavy as they left the storage room and strode along the side, tall corridor.

"It seems you may be correct. The Unity have lied to us and we are about to be attacked." They smiled. "I was wrong to doubt you, old friend."

Jupqet appeared to be smiling and scowling at the same time, panting to keep up. "Yes, you were, sir."

The central chamber felt crowded, men talking over one another. "Silence!" They halted, turning to stare at him. "We are about to be attacked. I suspected that the Unity could not be trusted and I have planned accordingly. If everyone does as they are told, then we will be fine. Remember, there is more here than just tanks and trucks. How do you feel about playing with some proper toys?" They raised their voice at this, and got a grudging murmur of enthusiasm in response.

"Come on! This is a chance to hit back! Remember what they did to us, with the car bomb? Remember what they did to Hrus?" This got more of a reaction, the men nodding, gripping their weapons. "The Unity think they've tricked us, but this will be a death trap for them. They have shit weapons, no proper tactics and they don't know the terrain. And there's something else they don't know." They grinned. "I have a contact in the Army's intelligence service. We're going to let them know what's going on, and what do you think will happen? Eh?"

One man, one of the base staff, actually raised his hand. "They'll come and fight the Unity?" His face was full of hope.

"Yes! Exactly." Bren raised his fist, holding one of the newer wireless telephones. "All we have to do is hold them back for a while, and let the Army do the work. We might even get medals." They turned to the security chief. "Brandor, arm your men with something better than the weak shit we brought. And get communication earpieces for everyone. Quickly."

"Yes, sir!" The man looked almost eager as he grabbed a couple of guards and hustled them out of another entrance.

"You. Get up there. Warn the watchers, get them to pull back inside. Leave the door open." The man he pointed to went off at a run. "You and you. Air masks and torches for everyone. You, shut the ventilation system down." Air was recycled within the base through a number of vents on the top of the exterior building. "We don't want smoke pulled from one area to another."

"Jupqet, take two men to the trucks back there," a thumb indicating back down the wide corridor they and Jupqet had been down only minutes before. "I want one at the top, just outside and blocking the entrance. Another half-way down at the bend and the third just inside the tunnel there, reversed in." It took a moment for Jupqet to review the order in his head. He nodded and left, running with two of the base staff down the corridor, actually looking happy.

"You and you. Yes, you. And you. Come here." The four men, three security guards and the Rat, trotted forwards. "When they break in to this chamber, they will expect us to hit them. So they'll throw a lot of fire in here first, to clean it out. I want one of you down each of those main corridors with a set of headphones, as many rounds for your automatics as you can carry and a grenade launcher. Keep the headphones on to protect your hearing while they Unity are blowing random shit up, take them off when they come into the room and throw as much as you can at them, then get back down the corridors. Understood?"

They nodded, wide-eyed but steady. "You're to slow them down, and avoid getting hurt, okay? Keep going backwards if they get too close. Remember, the longer we hold them off, the more time the Army has to get here." More nods.

Brandor and his companions reappeared, dragging trolleys loaded with ammunition and guns more powerful than the ones they had brought to the base. They were given their instructions, distributed the weapons around those present then disappeared up the tunnel towards the surface, hauling a single trolley between them.

Most of the remaining men were split into four quartets and sent to each of the storage rooms, told to perform holding actions, retreat as necessary and above all stay alive. Bren kept a last few with him, a trio of the smallest and youngest that looked more scared than the rest, all security guards that had arrived with them today. They all pushed to one side at the three trucks roared past, booming engines in the enclosed space and billowing exhaust fumes.

"Speed." The group of worried faces stared at him, pale and twitchy. "This will happen fast. The Unity forces can't afford to take too long flushing us out, or they'll be trapped down here when the army comes. They want to be in and out, so they will use a lot of explosives." Bren looked at one face attached to a raised hand. "Yes?"

"Won't they be worried about damaging the equipment?"

"No, the opposite. If they wanted all this then they could have just come as agreed and taken it. I think that this is about destroying the weapons so that they can't be used against them."

"Oh." The hand was lowered again. "But you said –"

"I know what I said. Listen, you can't tell anyone else this, okay?" They leaned inwards. "There's a major offensive planned against the Unity. The Army have asked for my help. Our help. This is all pre-arranged."

"Oh."

"And we're going to help them do that." Bren grinned. "Listen carefully." They did. A couple of them even laughed as he explained. The one that had already asked a question had one more, wanting to know how their comrades would survive.

"They'll be safe in the outer rooms. The Army will dig them out." They looked around at their men, smiling. "Trust me. This has been planned to the smallest detail."

-Aye, right.

The Major drove the second car, following Nettig. They went through the caldera wall hard and fast, meeting no resistance, the trucks bouncing and swaying on the road behind him. The car in front blocked his view but there seemed to be some activity around the entrance to the base. A kilometre from the target, he slowed and ordered them to stop. Nettig did so reluctantly, finally skidding to a halt and reversing back angrily.

"Empty that truck." The men, a mix of Unity and altered Velorine, leapt to the ground. "I want a volunteer." Ten hands were raised. "You. Get in and when I tell you, drive fast and steady right up to the entrance, then get out and get out of the way." The Unity man, one of the stupider ones, bounded into the vehicle's cab. Some of his laughed as they watched him go.

"Why him?" Nettig was furious, a normal state for him apparently. "Why not your man?"

"He is my man." Major Snowl was unruffled calm. "Do you want those weapons or not?"

"Of course."

"Then stop whining and get back in your vehicle."

They followed the truck closely to within four hundred metres of the base. It began drawing fire, and Snowl ordered them to stop again. They piled out and took cover behind their vehicles, watching. The volunteer made it to within a hundred metres of the truck parked in front of the base before a grenade launcher scored a lucky hit on the cab, scattering fire and debris. The remains of the truck jerked sideways and ran into the river, tipping and landing in ruin. Major Snowl directed rocket fire onto the truck blocking the entrance, blasting it in half. The Unity men went quiet at this demonstration of the new weapon, and stared in envy at their comrade who had been allowed to use it.

"Put one down the entrance." The first shot missed, striking the exterior wall and showering rock and dust into the air. The Major tutted and raised one eyebrow, making the rocketeer pale. The second, like some magic trick, vanished into the black entrance. A roar emerged, a gout of dust blowing out and roiling upwards. "Go." They ran straight at the entrance in a spread line, trusting that the clouds of smoke and dust would hide them. At the entrance, Snowl ordered another couple of rockets down the corridor and followed them with the first group, firing blindly ahead with hand-held projectile and kinetic weapons. A couple of the Unity men ran ahead despite his shouted commands, and were cut down by Velorine troopers.

At the corner, they encountered a truck wedged in at an angle against the walls. One of their rockets had obviously made it this far, and had blasted half the vehicle's front section up and backwards, over the flat trailer. The Unity men scurried over, under and round the twisted remains while the Velorine hung back. Sudden firing made them drop, and an explosion, shockingly loud in the enclosed space, barked and flash-illuminated them in frozen postures.

Men were lost, taken by small-arms fire or grenades. He had plenty to spare, and didn't care about the Unity troops provided they lasted long enough to get the job done. They blasted another truck out of the way and into the space beyond, then poured fire down the corridor. The lighting failed, and they were illuminated only by the near-continuous flashing of rocket launches and the yellow, searing light of the explosives detonating ahead of them. Satisfied, the Major ordered them forwards, donning breathing equipment. He and his men switched to infrared, while the Unity men used torches strapped to their rifles.

They split in the cavern, teams formed of a mix of the two forces heading for each of the four passageways. The Major lost the first of his own men that way, to a grenade that tumbled at the man's feet and detonated before he could dive for cover. They responded with rockets and bullets, filling each of the corridors with smoke and flame, then rushed the invisible enemy behind their own suppressive fire. In one corridor, screams and confusion accompanied the rattling fire of an unfamiliar-sounding gun. The team had passed a torn and broken body only for it to raise one arm and cut down most of them from behind before the survivors could kill him properly. Major Snowl sent a reserve force down that corridor and told them to be more careful than the first group.

It took longer than he would have liked to clear out the tangle of rooms and corridors. The smoke didn't help, degrading IR and visible wavelengths and forcing them to keep their masks on. Eventually they found the ventilation controls and turned the system back on. The enemy was more capable and numerous than he had hoped, familiar with the layout and hiding in vehicles and behind equipment, popping up and causing trouble. Half an hour after the first shot was fired, they had finally taken the whole space. Almost all of the Unity forces were dead or injured, and he had lost almost half of his own men. But they had prevailed, and that was all that counted.

"The Culture agent?" Captain Iseule shook his head, sitting on a piece of wreckage and nursing one arm where it had been crudely bandaged. Major Snowl growled, grabbing one of the troopers as he passed. "Search the whole space, and get those lights back on."

"Sir! Activity reported outside. On the base roof!" Over the comm channel, the sound of firing was sudden, then stopped just as quickly.

"What? Oh fuck. Out. Get out no-"

The three of them dropped to the ground from the roof of the bunker, killing the two Velorine left at the entrance, and ran as hard as they could, jinking from side to side in case other enemy forces were targeting them. There was no chance of making it to the vehicles abandoned by the road, and Bren shouted a hoarsely-gasped order, directing them to the stream-bank. They flung themselves in, splashing into the water.

-Two. One. Duck. They ducked. Then feeling foolish, stood and watched. There was no danger at this distance.

The climb through the ventilation system had been nightmarish, dark and hot with sudden ringing explosions shaking the metalwork. They had memorised the route but still became disoriented, banging their head against the narrow tube where it turned. All the time, waiting for someone to notice the shaking or hear them slithering and banging their way along, pushing their deadly cargoes ahead of them. The last two metres were the hardest, hearing and smelling the outside world while hauling themselves vertically, gripping rivets and seams in the tubing for support.

Each of the satchel charges had been dropped down a different ventilation tube. One of the men had become stuck, jammed in the narrow pipe and starting to panic and kick. Bren and Lesk-Torlip had looked down the pipe, seen that the boy was too far down to reach and simply shot him, the report masked by the noise coming from below in the bunker. Three charges would probably still do it. They had set the timers and dropped the charges down the tubes, then scrambled for the edge of the flat roof.

The sound of the explosions was muffled, a dull boom. The entire building seemed to lift and hesitate for a moment, as though unsure about what to do next. Then the walls sank inwards, dragged over by the weight of the roof collapsing into the chamber beneath. It happened with surprising speed and almost in silence, raising a huge mushroom cloud of dust that puffed upward from the centre of the building, the whole process almost delicate. Around the edges of the base, some additional collapses took place in lines radiating outwards, showing where tunnels had been.

"Time to go." They scrambled up the bank, followed by the pair. One was weeping openly, the other was grim-faced and pale, limping where he had landed badly jumping from the roof. They seemed to know that their comrades were dead. Together, they started towards the vehicles.

Private Skel was small, and could move almost invisibly and silently. Everyone in Major Snowl's team knew that, which was why the Major had chosen him for this particular role. They had dropped him off fourteen hours ago, ten kilometres from the caldera on the side where the wall was highest. By sunrise he had reached the caldera wall and half an hour later was in position, hidden in the shade of a large rock and peering down through a narrow gap on the base. He had signalled his arrival, informed the Major that no-one else was visible, and settled down to wait. Eventually the SC agent and his men arrived. Skel counted the cars and transmitted this information, including the fact that two people stayed above ground. Then he waited some more.

From his vantage point, Skel could see when his comrades and the Unity troops approached. When the enemy scouts disappeared inside the bunker, he carefully left his position and approached the rear of the building. Explosions vibrated the ground, and at one point a shower of stones climbed into the air from his left, seemingly alive, and dropped patterning around him. Skel slipped up to the bunker wall, listening. The battle underground came to him through his fingertips. He waited. When it seemed to have quietened down below, he began slipping round the side furthest from the stream, so that his shadow would be behind him on the wall instead of projected on the ground, betraying him.

Low voices and a rattling sound. Skel froze, listening. It was coming from overhead, from the roof of the base. Nobody should have been up there. He reached for his weapon, holstered over his chest, and whispered a hurried message into his comm unit. Then he turned and started running backwards, away from the wall of the bunker, his weapon held in one hand, scanning the roofline, looking for a target. A glimpse of a head and he snapped off a single shot. Missed. The figure dropped out of sight. Skel changed direction, angling towards the building's front, hearing shots. He lifted his hand again, the communicator strapped to the inside of his wrist.

He heard the Major's last order, voice raised in uncharacteristic panic, yelling to his men to get out. Then the ground jumped, and the walls of the base bounced upwards. The detonation threw Private Skel off his stride and he staggered, almost falling, one knee banging off the ground, forcing himself upright again and sprinting for cover. He glimpsed movement off to one side, near the vehicles that had brought them here earlier. A person's upper body, the rest hidden behind something. Standing in the river bed. He recognised the Culture agent, even as he realised that the entire base was crumpling, folding, burying itself and his comrades, the Major and everyone else. The ground shook, jumped like something nervous, making it hard to run. A curtain of dust floated over him, obscuring his view of the enemy. This was a trap.

Skel started to run faster.

The guard with the twisted ankle sprawled, full-length, taking the man supporting him down with in a cursing tangle of limbs. When he stood, awkwardly and cursing still, there was blood all over his hands and the front of his uniform. The other man did not move. The two stared at one another, and then guard crumpled slowly, landing on top of the other man. The other body.

"Culture agent!"

-Shit. They turned.

"Where is the drone?" Private Skel was limping, but his aim was steady. The alien looked afraid.

"Nearby."

"You're lying."

"Maybe. Why are you here?"

"To kill you."

"Why?"

"Orders."

"No. I mean why?"

"You know why."

"No." It shook its head. "I don't. Fine, you're going to kill us. I can't stop you, I'm a Culture Special Circumstances agent and I can't stop you. Normally I could. You'd be dead by now. You know that?"

"Yes." Perhaps I could torture him for information, find out what his plans are. Skel wondered how easily he could get back to the pickup location. Would the drone find him, stop him? Was it still back at the city? And what did he mean, 'us'?

"Thinking of torturing me?" The alien smiled, seeing the flicker in Skel's eyes. "Don't bother. You'd have to get close to me to do that. Better stay back where you are. You say I know why you've been sent to kill me, and I honestly don't. I was sent down here to do a job, find information and get out." It put it hands on its hips, leaned back and stared upwards. "However, I'm starting to get the impression that I've been abandoned." Skel didn't glance upwards to follow its gaze, probably that was what it wanted him to do. It looked back down, met his gaze. "Humour me. Tell me, then kill me. What am I supposed to have done?"

It was looking for information, probing him, testing him. They can never be trusted. He should just kill it and complete the mission. Skel made a decision. "No. I'm sorry." He saw the alien's eyes dart to the side, to his left. Trying to distract me. His finger tightened on the gun's trigger.

The body of the Unity soldier who had driven the truck directly at the bunker had fallen out of the cab when it tipped into the stream. He had known he was about to die, felt the explosion tearing him and the vehicle apart, and had done what he had been trained to do. If it your last act, kill the enemy. He had reached for his gun, pulled it out and then been crushed beneath the vehicle as it landed, smoking and in ruin on his legs. He had died of his injuries before he could drown.

Water poured through the vehicle's cab, filling it like a bowl, flowing over the submerged body. When the battle inside the bunker was at its fiercest, shock waves had vibrated the dead vehicle, shunting it a few centimetres, allowing the man's body to slide partially free. The detonation that destroyed the base had rocked the remains of the truck, sloshing water from one side to another in the cab, raising one end slightly. Its legs released, the corpse began bumping over the stream bed, dragged along by the water flow. It turned, rolled, slid over stones and stopped twice, forming a dam in the stream before the pressure of water behind it shoved it along again.

Bren saw the body twirling slowly in the stream, three-quarters sunken, one arm outstretched. The same arm that swung against a rock sticking up from the stream bed, striking it gently with one fisted hand, curled tightly in death around a handgun. Banging into the fingers. Squeezing the trigger. A single shot removed the top of the Velorine soldier's head, spraying blood in a sheet to one side. The body fell straight down, knees hitting the ground first then bending at the waist, flopping forwards. They stared for a moment, unsure whether to laugh or sob.

-Tell me that was an accident.

-Shut up and get us out of here. They turned and started to run towards the vehicles again.

Chapter 20

The Seventeen Different Words For Rain overtook the Admiral Cavelous, which was racing flat-out for home, its engine signature showing all systems dangerously close to overheating, exploding, short-circuiting or simply shutting down. The GCU emergency-braked, flung out a spherical field in 4D around itself and the other ship and enclosed the larger Velorine vessel before they even knew it was there. It effectored the Admiral Cavelous' engines, shunted power and surplus heat into its own systems, cutting off the most likely route to some sort of catastrophic blow-out, and used its own only mildly racing engines to slow them.

The Velorine ship's automatic defensive systems finally began to wake up to the fact that what looked like a hostile action was being taken against it, and so the Seventeen turned them all off as well. It left the basic power, life-support and local signalling systems alone, however. As they slid to a dead-stop relative to nearby star systems, it signalled. What it had done was technically an act of war, so it decided to keep things at least nominally formal for the moment.

xGCU Seventeen Different Words For Rain (Culture)

oBattleship Admiral Cavelous (Velorine)

Sorry about this. We need to talk, and I'm in a bit of a hurry.

Halt this outrage! Release us immediately!

No. Can we jump past the blustering and time-wasting, please? Like I indicated, there's some urgency involved here. While it waited for the Grand Admiral and his command staff to respond, the Seventeen signalled the More Is More.

Got them. I'll try to keep it as quick as possible.

Please do so.

The Seventeen turned its attention back to the Admiral Cavelous, using its effectors to access the command centre's sensor imagery. Grand Admiral Ropcarl was in full High Dudgeon mode, fists waving and screaming at his officers to get them out of here, attack the Culture ship, accomplish anything. It was all really a bit hysterical, and looked unlikely to settle down soon.

Mentally shrugging to itself, the GCU decided that its only option was something that it hated having to do, even to people that had annoyed it as much as the Velorine. The Seventeen carefully Displaced the Grand Admiral over to itself and locked his muscles, to prevent him from speaking as much as anything else. It took over his internal organs, displacing air into his lungs and moving all the pumps and other wobbly bits that needed to be moving to keep him alive, and slaved one of its larger drones to itself, speaking through it as the vaguely humanoid form drifted in front of the Admiral.

"Welcome aboard, Ropcarl. Again, apologies for any inconvenience. I need you to listen." The Velorine's skin tone and blood pressure were shifting rapidly, panic flooding his system. It tweaked the relevant glands, adjusting his hormone levels to put him in a more relaxed mood. "We were watching events on Reast. Your attack failed. Now, I'm going to access your own vessel's recordings of the event and compare them to mine, as I suspect that one of us is being deceived. Possibly both." The drone's fields stayed formal blue, almost frosty throughout, not that the Admiral would likely notice.

It did as it had said, and was surprised by what it found. While each side had been watching from different angles and perspectives, with the Velorine sensors built into their uniforms and weapons and the Culture's were above the planet's atmosphere, and the quality of the recordings was different (the Culture's was still better, qualitatively and quantitatively), the two appeared to show exactly the same events.

"That was interesting." It sent the Velorine recordings to the More Is More. "It appears that we are in agreement this time. I would like to ask you for your opinion of what just transpired, and the opinion of your analysts and observation systems. I'm going to release you now, but if you continue to rant and fail to communicate sensibly, then I'll just have to use other methods to extracting the information." That caused a fresh spike of panic in the Velorine's mind. I hope he doesn't realise that I can't actually back that up. It released him.

Ropcarl collapsed slightly, almost falling. The GCU used the drone's maniple field to support him. The Admiral shrugged it off angrily, and drew himself up. "My opinion, ship, is that you have just kidnapped a senior Velorine military officer. This is a hostile act that will not be forgotten."

The drone's fields turned briefly rosy, then settled for a more conversational pale pink. "A hostile act? Yes, you're probably correct. In fact, I was thinking the same myself. Although as your forces attacked ours first, I would suggest that my actions could be interpreted more as a response to Velorine aggression."

"Then your recordings must not agree with ours. We show that it was your Special Circumstances agent, or the people under his command, who opened fire first."

"That is true, I suppose. So very difficult to distinguish an overtly hostile act from a defensive move made in response to aggressive manoeuvres. Which leads us to my intended topic of discussion. Would you like to sit?"

"I would like to return to my ship." The Admiral ignored the seat than another, smaller drone had offered.

"No. Why don't I go first, and you can interject if you disagree at any point?" it watched his eyes flickered uncertainly. "We have an SC team on Reast. You have been monitoring them, and so have we. Their behaviour had raised some concerns, both amongst the Velorine and ourselves-" It saw his mouth open and stopped, waiting patiently even though it was confident of the exact words, the precise tone that he would use.

"You claim to be 'concerned' about their behaviour?"

"Yes, we do. And you know what, Grand Admiral? I think that you believe us. No, please don't try to hide your reactions. I'm perfectly capable of interpreting your involuntary responses to anything I say."

"Reading my mind, machine? I thought that was forbidden."

"Not totally forbidden, no. Just very firmly discouraged. Except in special circumstances. Would you say that these are special circumstances, Grand Admiral?" There was no response. "In any case, I have not read your mind. If I had, then this conversation would be unnecessary. Anyway, I suspect that you believe us because you understand us well enough to know that the behaviour being exhibited by our SC team is just that – exhibited. It's too visible, too obvious. Too risky, for a number of reasons."

"Perhaps you are correct." He glanced around, and the drone pushed the proffered seat forwards again. Ropcarl sat, tensely upright. "What does it matter?"

"It matters because it means that we are not fully responsible for events on Reast. At least, not fully responsible in the sense that we have neither ordered the SC team to behave as they have, or expressed any wish that they do so." The drone settled on the floor. "Perhaps we have some responsibility through our earlier actions having led to this situation in some way, in some unintended fashion. We don't know, although you can believe that we will thoroughly investigate this possibility once the current priorities have been dealt with."

"You expect me to believe that they are acting alone?"

"I didn't mean to suggest that. In all of the time that the Culture and specifically Special Circumstances have been interacting with other civilisations, there has not been a single recorded instance of a human/drone team behaving in this manner, or in any fashion similar to what we have both seen."

"There's always a first time."

"How trite. Yes, there always is." The drone rose in the air a fraction, drifted closer. Ropcarl didn't shrink back, but his eyes narrowed. "Grand Admiral, we're avoiding the obvious here. You saw what happened to your soldier. How he was killed. That was no accident, and our SC man didn't control it. There's something else down there, helping him, keeping him alive. Perhaps even controlling him."

"The drone."

-Ah. Now we come to it. "No, sir. Not the drone. Because there is no drone down there with him, not like the one you see before you. I know," it raised a field maniple to forestall him. "We've seen your recordings, seen the drone shown in them. That's the one major difference between your information and ours, the one big lie that has never been resolved or put right. We didn't send a drone down, and your recordings are faked, altered."

"Not possible."

"Really?" A screen appeared behind the drone, which moved to one side to give the Admiral a clear view. It showed the Admiral Cavelous' command centre. Staff were running around frantically, bellowing orders at one another. The sound was off, so they did so in silence. Drifting among them, sometimes flicking to one side or raising itself to avoid a collision, was a drone identical to the one speaking to the Grand Admiral.

"When you get back to the ship, ask your crew if they have seen that drone on board." The screen split, showing several scenes from within the battleship. The drone was in each one, moving among the crew, mostly avoiding them but occasionally appearing to speak to one person or another. The ship's crew appeared to be ignoring it completely. "The ship's logs will show exactly these scenes, and others like them. But nobody will remember having seen a drone, because it wasn't there, isn't there now." As they watched, one segment of the screen showed the drone slide along a corridor, clearly reflected in a blank, silvered wall-mounted display.

Ropcarl was flushed, angry. "You can do this?"

"Yes, sir. I can, and so can any other Culture Mind. In fact, almost any higher-level Involved race would be able to play with your vessel as though it were a child's toy." The Grand Admiral went quiet at that, stilled and shocked. "I'd ask that you try not to let this information spread too far amongst your people. It might cause some discomfort."

"Why are you showing me this?"

"Because it is important that I do so. You need to believe me when I say that your recordings from Reast are false. They cannot be trusted. Someone or something has tampered with them. There is no drone." The screen disappeared, and the Seventeen Different Words For Rain turned the drone turned back to Ropcarl.

"So the man is down there by himself?"

"Yes. He is." By certain definitions, that is. "And he didn't kill that last soldier. Someone or something helped him, and we are assuming that this is the same individual who is tampering with your sensors and causing all the problems on Reast in the first place."

"If they are helping him, then they are helping you. It could still be a Culture action against us." A realisation dawned. "You don't like what he's doing." And you believe me finally, hurrah. "He's been taken over, taken from you."

"That is our concern. There is a third party involved here, one that is working against us both. I and my peers are working as hard as we can to identify and stop them, whoever they are. But we need your help."

"You need us to stay out of the way." Ropcarl nodded. His face was sombre, thinking. "This has to be an Involved, one of your higher-levels. Yes?"

"That is our working assumption. Can you keep your own people in check?"

"I can try, but I can make no promises. They may simply not believe me, and I'm still not sure whether to believe you or not."

"All you can do is trust your instincts. I'm going to Displace you back to your ship now, and release my control of it. And Admiral?"

"What?" He scowled, gripping the arms of the seat tightly at the mention of another Displace.

"You might want to bring forward your next physical examination. There's a tumour developing in your anterior right sperm sac. It looks aggressive." It didn't mention the minor repairs carried out, almost absent-mindedly, on a number of small blood vessels in the Grand Admiral's brain. Making him think it had meddled with his mind would probably just upset him further. Plus, it had to consider itself for causing some extra damage through the stress it had put him through. "Thank you for your time. Goodbye." The silvery sphere appeared, swelled and disappeared, leaving an empty place where the Grand Admiral had sat. A moment later, another, smaller Displace sphere popped in the same spot, and the seat was back.

xGSV More Is More

oGCU Seventeen Different Words For Rain

You told him too much.

Perhaps. I felt sorry for him. Despite everything, I have a lot of respect for Admiral Ropcarl. And he's in a difficult position.

Still. So our human/drone team are now working for the Free Radical?

Apparently, although I suspect not deliberately. Shall we eliminate them?

I'd prefer not to, unless they become too dynamically involved. They may still prove useful.

I fail to see how. Their entire course of action is under the control of the Free Radical. It can make use of their skills and knowledge to advance its aims, or just prevent them from resisting it in any way. There is also the chance that they will start to actively work against us, in retaliation for our attempt to kill them or at least our lack of assistance when they were in danger.

Your points have already occurred to me. The Completely Under Control has simmed them through also and the conclusions are ambivalent. For the moment however, I am inclined to let them run loose from our control.

It may become harder to eliminate them at a later stage. The more use they are to the Free Radical, the more it will protect them.

Perhaps. But they may yet turn out to be its weakness.

-We're in it now.

-So what do we do about it?

The drive back from the bunker to the city had been one long debate about what the fuck had happened. There was very little chance of coming out of this alive, was pretty much all they had agreed on. The Mind was using them, or wanted them alive for whatever plans it had. This made them a target for the Culture Minds around Reast, and the fact that they were still alive meant one of two things: either the Reast Mind was actively defending them still, or the Culture had decided to let them live in the hope that they could still accomplish something of use.

At some point, this would change. Either they would be successfully eliminated by the Velorine (or the Culture), or the Mind would be finished with them and at that point, it would kill them. They had discussed various ways of avoiding being of any use to the Mind, but always ran back up against the same argument – how would they know that whatever they did was not part of its plans? The damn thing was near omniscient, could think a million times faster than them and its reasons for this entire situation were still opaque. They could be convinced that they were obstructing it at every turn, only to discover that each act on their part had been carefully orchestrated, manipulated, controlled and aiming them towards some unseen destination.

Of course, they could always just kill themselves. That was one fairly guaranteed way of ensuring that the Mind could not puppet them. They had discussed this option and rejected it as too weak, too passive; better to do as little as possible that might help until they saw a chance to act decisively.

-Calspine. It still comes down to him. Their promise to help Calspine had been at least partially fulfilled, with the elimination of the Unity forces and the Velorine troops. Those may have presented a threat to the politician, which was one possible reason that the Mind had helped them out. Plus there was the setup at the Palace. –Let's see what happens if we try to kill him.

-And if it lets us do that?

-Then at least we'll have clarified the situation for the More Is More; the simming will be improved.

-Agreed. Everything the Mind had done had elevated Calspine, put him in a position of dominance and power. They were willing to bet that this wasn't done with the intention of eliminating him. –We need to arrange to see him as soon as possible. Sticking to the plan?

-Subject to eventualities. Suggest a further information-gathering. There might be more to learn, just in case we do miraculously get out of this alive.

They made it back to Yolar's house without incident, and started making arrangements immediately. No sense in hanging about waiting for something else to go wrong, after all. They avoided telling the remaining security and other staff what had happened at the bunker, but things were getting tense on that front; too many of the security staff were new, inexperienced and uncertain. They were hearing rumours from the few that had been around for a while, and were worried about what had happened to their comrades out in the countryside and why only Yolar had returned. Bren and Lesk-Torlip placated them with some made-up and frankly tissue-thin stuff about an extended mission to eliminate the Unity forces in the area. Reports coming from the destroyed base were sparse and confusing, which helped. News organisations had little time for minor military activities that was frankly weak stuff in relation to some of the more large-scale events and changes happening around Reast; the coverage of what was assumed to be a minor skirmish amongst mountain tribes was scant.

Calspine agreed to see them that night; a Party meeting to see off a leadership challenge by a disaffected remnant of the old guard had been cancelled at the last minute; something to do with photographs of naked grandchildren. Any doubt that the Mind had no interest in Calspine was quickly evaporating. His political opponents, both within his own party and without, were being deserted, scattered or were changing sides with unseemly haste to protect their own interests.

Those in the Party with less sense were attacking him directly, and were finding that to do so was too little, too late. The Mind was fairly obviously helping in this, presenting obstacles and setting traps that appeared like bad luck or even predictable eventualities whose timing simply could not have been better or worse, depending on whose side you were on.

"The Party Secretary will not have a lot of time available, unfortunately." The administrator on the telephone was new, no doubt one of the many functionaries put in place, or more likely who had fought for the role to replace Calspine's previously more relaxed and low-key assistants.

"Not a problem," they replied airily. "I won't take up much of his time. There is some business I would like to conduct with the Palace staff afterwards, if possible. Regarding the arrangements for the celebrations in two nights." The administrator promised to see what he could do, and cut his end of the communication.

There was a queue of traffic waiting to get into the grounds. Some other Party-related event was taking place inside, and vehicles were backed up onto the road surrounding the Palace. Eventually they parked on a side street and walked, introducing themselves to the guards in a small booth at the main gate. A hurried telephone conversation took place with the main building and they were escorted across the dry grass by a junior guard, cutting through the parklike grounds away from the hubbub at the main doors. A tall, dark-haired woman was waiting for them by a small door at the rear of the Palace. She smiled thinly and took their hand briefly, introducing herself as Relenza Calspine.

"Daughter?" They knew otherwise, but kept up the pretence.

"Daughter-in-law." Her smile disappeared. "My husband died two years ago. Drowned."

"I'm sorry."

She nodded absently. "Rueger asked me to meet you. He's running late."

"I understand. Thank you for agreeing to do so." As she turned and moved away they fell into step on her right, walking along the side of the Palace, their feet crunching on gravel. Bren glanced up and away from her to the building. It was well-lit from windows and exterior lamps, their multiple shadows dancing, extending and retracting around them as they moved. He looked back at Relenza. Her face alternated between light and shade rapidly, making her expression difficult to see. "Great changes are happening around here."

"Yes. An exciting time for all of us." They strode in silence for a few moments. She seemed content to leave the direction of the conversation to them.

"Have you lived here long?"

"I moved here when we were married. Peeten, our daughter, was born and has lived here all her life. After my husband died, I didn't want to make her leave. She loves it here. The Palace, the grounds, her grandfather."

"But you don't?"

"It has become my home. I've found that if you stay in one place for long enough, you develop a sense of belonging. Even if it is a long way from where you started from." Her sudden, darting look was focussed, intent. Something reading them, their reaction.

-Fuck.

-I know. You think-?

-Is it possible?

-I don't know. Carefully, now.

A few more steps in silence. "So where do you come from, Relenza? Originally, I mean."

"Nowhere special. Circumstances required me to stay for too long." They glanced at her, but her face was in shadow. "After that, I found that I preferred not to stay in one place for too long. The Universe became my home."

-It is.

-Possibly. Probably. Need to know more.

-Why is she – it – telling us this?

-Fucking hell, I don't know. It's a fucking Mind.

"So has this place become special to you? This world, I mean?"

"This world?" She stopped, and they faced one another. Her face was lit from a window behind him. "It is no more special to me now than when I came. Perhaps more important, but not more loved." She was half a metre away, tall and straight. "Perhaps I am looking for someone to help me make it more special."

"I think it might already be quite special, with you in it."

She smiled at that. "You flatter me."

"You deserve the attention."

She appeared to reach a decision. "Do you believe that you can meet someone and be instantly changed by them?"

"Of course. They could kill you, for one thing." They smiled. Their heart and hands were steady, relaxed. They had both died before, several times. If the Mind wanted to do it, they were ready. At least it was likely to be quick.

She laughed, throatily. "That is true. But I meant in other ways. More personal ways. Happier ways."

"Yes, I do believe that. It has never happened to me before, though."

"Before? Before now?" Her smile was teasing.

They swallowed, noisily. "Yes. Never before now." They stood facing each other in silence for a moment, then she turned, but her arm through his.

"Good. But now I have to take you to Calspine."

"You called him Rueger earlier."

"Rueger when he is family. Calspine when it is business. And from now on, I think with him, it might be business. Yes?"

"Yes, I hope so."

"Once your meeting is over, can I see you again?"

They smiled, trying not to swallow again, and repeated themselves. "Yes, I hope so."

"Good. What is your meeting about, anyway?"

This time they did swallow, and were forced to tell the truth. "I cannot remember." That made her laugh and after a moment they joined in, somewhat shrilly.

They walked to the door in silence. Parting, the Mind's hand took theirs and pulled them closer. It kissed them once, quickly, on the lips. That simple act, perfectly executed between hearbeats, caused an instant, involuntary and almost painful erection.

Stumbling throught the brief meeting with Calspine in a haze, both men pretending to be interested, each too distracted by recent events to really notice the other. They toasted the destruction of the Unity forces at the bunker, and talked haphazardly for a few moments about the upcoming celebrations.

Afterwards, stumbling behind a minor household staff member who guided them to the roof, they struggled to focus. Fumbled through setting the timers on the pumps and circuitry, while the man watched disinterestedly, glancing over the roof parapet to watch the important people coming and going below. Then leaving, eyes darting around for sight of Relenza once more, seeing nothing till they were ushered through the main gate and back into the city. The guard, smirking, handing them a note that told them to return in two hours.

They stood for a few moments, feeling the world throb beneath them, the city suddenly bright and loud. Wondering what to do, where to go. Finally, the part that was left of Lesk-Torlip decided for them, that it had never wanted a drink as badly in its whole life. There was a bar visible on a corner a block away, and they headed that way, consumed by fear and desire.

"I thought of something, just after you left yesterday."

"Hmm?"

"This distinction between the physical and the non-physical, between different ways in which the soul could exist. Got the oars?"

"I thought we'd settled this, that the non-physical was just silly? They're already in the boat, by the way."

"Ah-ah, so they are. Yes, but we didn't pin it down to my satisfaction, it was left with the assumption that the soul is physical or at least describable, but without actually describing it." Junicia waited for a moment as the avatar stepped onto the narrow boat, expecting it to wobble. It dropped slightly with the increased weight on board, but otherwise didn't move at all. She handed the avatar one of the two oars. "I think I was confusing the non-physical and the non-material. There's a gap between those, An EM field, or something else."

"EM is physical. And material."

"Not quite what I meant." She held the paddle end of the oar and used the handle to push them off from the small jetty. Behind her, the avatar made a single stroke with its paddle through the water, moving them forwards. "The encoded information about the pattern of activations in a bio-neural brain."

"Encoded?"

"Expressed. Whatever." Junicia gripped the paddle handle and made two quick strokes, straightening them up. She waved briefly to someone she recognised on another boat a few dozen metres away. "Is it me, or is the lake busier today?"

"Someone's birthday."

"Ah. That explains the bunting." She had wondered why several of the boats were trailing coloured streamers behind them in the water.

"I'm happy that we've settled this, and that we're agreed. It's the dynamics of the brain that are important in generating consciousness, not just the snapshot activation state or the architecture itself, although those are important, providing flavour and style to the conscious mind."

"Okay. The soul and the consciousness are the velocity of the brain, not its position or shape."

"Nice quote."

"Damn. I thought you might think I had come up with it myself."

The avatar made a small giggling noise, startling Junicia and making her laugh. She twisted to look round at it, making the boat rock. It was half-smiling mischievously, wide eyes wandered over the view, pretending to avoid eye contact. She snorted and turned to look forward again, concentrating on paddling for a few moments.

The lake occupied approximately half of one of the middle levels on the GSV, and was a favourite haunt of Junicia's. It's reed-choked, twisting banks, tiny islands strategically dotted and looping, curving shape made it easy to appear isolated even when other boaters were only a few metres away. She particularly enjoyed it when the Free Radical made it misty, as it had today, further obscuring the view and giving everything a sombre, ethereal presence. Several species of birds occupied the reed-beds and swamps at the water's edge, their solemn cries contributing to the atmosphere. The level's sunline arced overhead, apparent kilometres away but in reality only a hundred metres of so above them, tracking along the level's ceiling.

"So if we have the brain-state position and velocity, we can describe the state of consciousness?"

"Yes. But where do mental states sit in all this?"

Junicia shook her head. "I think that the term 'mental states' is misleading. They always seem to be about the specific activity within certain parts of the brain, as though each compartment is isolated from all the others and switches between members of a small set of patterns." She glanced around to see if the avatar was listening; of course, it was. "No pattern of activity ever occurs twice. There are too many signals coming in from other parts of the brain, and these so-called mental states are built up from a hierarchy of sub-states, going all the way down to tiny little oscillations between handfuls of neurons, activation nodes, whatever you want to call them."

"Can those tiny patterns not be considered mental states?"

"Not really, as they can be activated by or within so many other different patterns. Plus, they have no reference. There's no neuron or whatever drones or Minds have-"

"Nodes. We call them nodes."

"Nodes, then. There's no neuron or node for a specific concept, no matter how basic it may be. It takes the interlinked activity in a larger system to produce something meaningful. And descriptive representations of conscious states are massively abstract and serve only to hide a seething mass of tiny interlinked activity."

They paddled for a while in silence. At one point, the boat passed between two large waterfowl who were engaged in a courtship dance. Both birds hissed at the boat's occupants, beating their wings and raising themselves upright in the water. The avatar tsk'd and used its paddle to splash one of them with water, making it dart away, curving round the rear of the boat to get back to its prospective mate. "There is still an unanswered question, at the bottom of all this: for the tiniest particle of consciousness, what is it and where does it come from?"

"It's the smallest patterns, or even the activations of single nodes. Which is the smallest pattern of all, I suppose. A one or a zero. These tiny patterns produce quanta of consciousness that are summed together, providing a moving front of probabilities collapsing into reality, into what actually happens."

"You're getting awful close to a mechanistic viewpoint again, just on a smaller scale."

"I don't think I am. I think that this is where the quantum nature of reality becomes important. A choice is made, and the probably becomes the actual. It's this decision-making that encapsulates free will at the same time as providing self-awareness."

"I don't follow your reasoning."

"Well, each component in the brain can potentially influence every other component, through activation propagation. This interlinking of components, and the effects of quantum mechanics being felt in such a small-scale system, together mean that the activation of one node can result in the collapse of the probability function of other nodes and the activation of patterns within the mind, leading to consciousness, attention and awareness."

"All three at once?"

"All three at once."

"Hmm." More silence, then: "So we are conscious of being in a particular mental state when the collapse of probability functions and the brain effectively making a decision to activate this particular state?"

"Yes. However, I have a question."

"Go on."

"Can a Mind be drugged, or anesthetised?"

"Not unless it wants to be."

"You know what I mean."

"Sorry. Actually, yes, it can. Why do you ask?"

"Drugs and chemical anaesthetics work by disrupting activity between neurons, knocking out some or all of the conscious mental activity and changing the individual's mental state and behaviour. If this can't happen to a Mind, then there would have to be some fundamentally different process to what I just described."

"Well, it has to involve different processes of disruption, and the 'knocking out' of some areas isn't quite the same. However, the fundamental mechanism is comparable, certainly."

"That's a relief."

"Why? Thinking of knocking me out to avoid having any more discussions?"

"Ha ha. No, it just means that the basics are the same, even if the materials and architecture are wildly different."

"They are. When we're done here, I'll show you some screen of the smallest internal workings of my Mind."

"Really?" Junicia nearly dropped her paddle in astonishment. "I thought Minds didn't like discussing that kind of thing."

"It's not that we don't like it. It's just that it comes a bit close for comfort to the whole 'looking inside someone's mind' taboo."

"Ah. Of course." Junicia was quiet for a moment. "You don't have to, if it makes you uncomfortable."

"Oh, I think we're past all that now, don't you?" The avatar prodded her in the back gently with its paddle, leaving a wet patch on her skin. "Besides, I know that you're wondering about what my motivation is behind all this discussion. I'm going to have to tell you eventually."

"Today?"

A pause. "No. Not today. But soon." For once, Junicia was glad that she couldn't see the avatar's face. "We're not ready, haven't finished the discussion about responsibility and right to decide for myself."

"We've brought a lot of the strands together though, haven't we? I mean, we know you're alive. We know you have free will, because we've agreed on the whole debate about whether our acts are our own, or are down to quantum fluctuations or mechanistic cause-and-effect."

"Ah, this magical link between consciousness, the soul and observation that you love so much." There was humour in its voice.

"It's not magical." She pouted and turned her head slightly so that it could see her expression. "It's obvious when you get there. Unless everything, every particle, has a quantum of consciousness, nothing would work. And the only thing that really separates consciousness from anything else is the ability to make decisions."

"So the structures of pattern-activation in a nervous system are causing waveform collapse through self-aware observation of themselves."

"Yes. Just as consciousness and observation are linked, so are pattern-recognition, observation and decision-making."

"Implying that anything in the Universe is alive and has free will."

"And everything is doing the observation – even of itself – that collapses the possibilities down to the reality."

Silence from behind her, for a moment. "So how does that mean I can act the way I have?"

"It means that anyone can act the way that they choose. But because they have chosen to do so, it also means that they are responsible for their actions. So whatever you've done, you have to be willing to take that responsibility. You cannot put the blame on anyone else."

The silence behind her was longer, this time. Finally she turned to look at the avatar, the narrow boat rocking slightly as she did so. It was staring down at its hands, folded lightly over the oar held crosswise. Eventually it looked up at her, its expression calm, smiling gently.

"I accept."

Chapter 21

She took them to a nearby hotel. It was the best and worst experience of the SC team's combined lives. Relenza Calspine took the lead as soon as they were in the room, and from that moment till they lay panting and sweating two hours later she controlled, dominated and owned them mercilessly. Her body was long and slender but could have been of any shape, any size; it was the acts that matterd. Her timing was agonisingly exquisite, holding them, touching them, stroking just so, at that time, right there. They screamed, more than once. For the drone it was worst of all when they kissed. Then, when their heads were together, the proximity and intimacy at its greatest, her eyes stayed open, watching them.

Those eyes had the gaze of a Mind. There could be no doubt any more, seeing that expression of calm, infinitely knowing awareness, the wisdom and experience retained, controlled, channelled and focused from those brown-tinted balls of tissue, fluid and muscle. Every look, every glance was evaluative, considering and measuring, judging what was revealed and what was not. Naked, the drone felt more exposed, more vulnerable than it could ever have imagined. Helpless, pinned and spread for examination.

Bren's body responded slowly at first, the animal fear of being naked, defenceless, trapped, defeating even his hormonal reaction to the caresses, licks and nibbles that lightly sketched his body's outline. A Culture body might have been easier to control, to inhibit or amplify specific responses and generate more effective behaviour. Instead, he oscillated wildly between rigid horror and blind, uncontrollable lust. They felt foul, soiled and their body rang like a struck bell, a single pure vibration that blanked out and over-rode everything but her. It. Their fear was absolute, their cries of terror merging with hoarse bellows of orgasm.

After the first time they were sick, violently so, rushing to the hotel room's small bathroom to heave. The Mind followed them, crouched next to them as they clung, trembling, to the bowl. She gently stroked their wet hair back from their forehead, her hand gliding down the nape of their neck, touching, stimulating. Their flesh crawled. "That's right. Let it out." Eventually, she took their hand, led them back to bed and made them do it all again.

Finally, stilled, she lay behind them, breasts warm against their back, knees pressing gently into the backs of their legs. "It's going to be fine." Her hand reached over, stroked their stomach, drifted up and gently caressed their neck, their face. They tried not to flinch, failed.

-Bren?

-You're Bren.

-Am I? I don't know any more. We need to control this, to control her. We need to find out more.

-I don't think I can.

-Together, then. There were patches, areas of individuality that even so were connected to one another, sharing shared areas of mind, speaking to one another through these common selves. They could no longer tell which part, which person had originally come from the drone, and which from the human. One by one as the Mind stroked their hair and murmured softly to them they relinquished control of these sections of individuality, allowing the shared areas to spread, consume and unify.

They became it. Then He. He was physically male, and so chose to become He rather than It. The distinction seemed important, somehow. He was Bren, he was Lesk-Torlip. They were gone, they were still there. They were the same, now. A few deep breaths, then he reached up and took the hand still softly stroking his temple. He turned to face her, their bodies rearranging to allow them to lie facing one another. In the low soft light, her face was close, smooth, beautiful.

"I'm sorry I lost control."

"I'm not." She smiled, teeth and tongue briefly visible, then gave a loving, gentle and submissive lowering of her head to his chest as one arm tightened around him. "I needed that."

"Perhaps I did as well." Another deep breath, trying to get his heart under control. She would be able to feel it hammering and bouncing away, no doubt about that. "Where are you?"

"Where am I?" She looked up and smiled teasingly at him for an instant, then her expression changed, faded into calmness. "I'm right here."

"The Mind. Where is it?" He spoke Marain for the first time in weeks, his voice juddering over a panicky, indrawn breath. For a moment her eyes were blank, igniting a tiny spark of hope. Could he have been so wrong, so mistaken?

Then she spoke, also in Marain. "I'm right here, Bren."

He twitched and shuddered, resisted the temptation to push her away. Instead, he forced himself to take her hand in his. "In this body? A Mind?"

Can they do this? I don't know. Possibly.

"I'm a Culture Mind, Bren. I'm not restricted to a specific physical shape or size. Although there are some limits on what I can do in this form. Think of me as a very, very special avatar."

"Biological?"

"Partly. Sufficiently so that if you cut me open then anyone from Reast would find nothing unexpected. All of it, all of me, is sculpted into the nerves, the muscles, the individual cells. I move in my own blood. There's not a part of this body that doesn't contain me. My body is a Mind, my Mind a body." This seemed to amuse her.

"I thought it would be Calspine."

She shook her head, hair falling over her face. "No. Safer to be a female. Here, women can never have real power and so they can never be a threat, as long as they don't seem to be looking for it." She smiled. "Besides, I prefer being female."

"Why didn't you kill me?"

"I wanted to find out what you knew, at first. I can't communicate off-world without some difficultry and the risk of detection, so I can't keep track of what those up there know. I was planning on torturing you, making you tell me what was happening. How the Culture was responding." She watched his face, saw it tighten. "Now I don't think I'll need to do that, or want to. Although I always wondered if I might be able to use you for something as a willing piece."

"Do you still?"

"No. I know that you are still willing to act against me. What you did at the Palace proved that."

"But you're keeping me alive? Letting me live?"

The Mind snorted. "Don't make it sound like you want to die. Disappointed at not even having that?"

"No." Why? Why is it keeping me alive? "And earlier, at the weapon store, with the Unity and the Velorine?"

"I decided to keep you around. Out of curiosity more than anything else. In all this, there has been one thing puzzling me. And a puzzle could imply a threat, a tactic." The Mind shifted, draped one leg over his. "Why did you come alone?"

"Alone?" He blinked stupidly at her.

"No drone, Bren. Did they think that a drone would be too visible, that without it I wouldn't spot you? Or perhaps that I would be able to compromise it, use it against you?"

"Ah." He didn't even try to think about what to say, it just came out. "I assumed you had scanned me. That you would know the answer to that."

"No. I'm still a Culture Mind, despite what you may think. Perhaps more so than most, in many ways of thinking." It smiled. "I've watched you, monitored you. You've certainly got something odd installed, some kind of altered neural lace. I can see that from the physical design, the architecture of your brain. I assumed at first it was some new way of communicating, before I learned otherwise. But scanned," It shook its head slowly, eyes focussed on his. "No."

He rolled onto his back, relaxing. Not faking it, not trying to deceive. This wasn't a role to play any more. He even felt a small smile on his lips. "Well. That's a surprise. No, there was no drone, for a number of reasons. Visibility, certainly. They thought about a few knife missiles embedded in my skin, but decided against that as well. We didn't want to hand you extra ammunition, something you could use."

She slapped his side playfully, turned the movement into a stroking caress. "Mmm-hmm. Go on."

He swallowed. "It was assumed that you would be more actively hostile to a drone or something similar, given the additional senses it would have, abilities to find or deal with you. They stripped everything out of me, you know." He gestured to his own body. "Nothing at all apart from the extra recording capacity you've already spotted in my brain, and that would be invisible to the Reasten if I died on-planet. No additions, nothing beyond the most basic local biology and physiology."

"Trying to stay below my radar?" She saw him frown. "Level three millimetre-wave EM sensor."

"Ah. Yes. The less I brought, the less you would object. That was the thinking. Get in, find out what I could and get out again." He looked over at her and grinned. "I ended up staying a bit longer than expected, of course."

"Sensible boy. So, you must have questions." The Mind rolled away from him, raised itself with one elbow, sat on the edge of the bed. "Ask away." It reached for a discarded piece of underwear. He felt a sudden temptation to reach out and take its arm, pull it back onto the bed and fuck it senseless, then shuddered.

"Who are you, then? What is your name, your designation?"

She stretched, almost reaching the low ceiling, grunting as she lowered her arms. "The Free Radical. You can call me 'Free', but I'll answer to Relenza." She/it smiled over one shoulder at him, then bent, reaching to the floor and stepping into her underwear. "Anything else?"

"I want to know what you're trying to achieve, obviously."

"Ah, yes. Well, that might take a bit of time to explain. I'll give you the short version, shall I? I'm hoping to discredit the fuck out of those Velorine shits, for a start. For hopefully obvious reasons."

He sat up, leaning back against the headboard of the bed. "It can't be as simple as that. What else? It's got to be about the Culture."

"It's about the Culture, yes. About our meddling, and our constant inability to leave things alone." She spoke casually. For a moment, it felt as though they were a couple, discussing plans for a social event or talking about what to do that day. He had to look away from her to remind himself what an insanely, grotesquely bizarre and hostile environment he was currently trapped in.

"And you think that this planet will change that?" He sat up in bed, watching her stride around the room, gathering her clothes. "This will change nothing. There will be a fuss, and a shitload of inquiries. And yes, the Culture will suffer for a time. But we won't change how we act, not because of one planet. Surely you know that?"

It turned to face him, holding its shoes in one hand, face serious. "Well, that entirely depends on what happens to the planet involved, doesn't it?"

Uh-oh. "Meaning?"

"It's a sliding scale, Bren. A small tussle and some diverted resources, a bit of negative exposure? You might be right, not much would change. But what if it's more than that? What if it's not just me? What if it's something that's seen to be sanctioned by all Minds? By the whole Culture?"

"The other civs wouldn't believe that. How could they? What evidence is there?"

"I've been at this for longer than you have, Bren. I've been planning, constructing, implementing. This planet is just the centre of it. As for evidence…well." It finished dressing, smiled down softly at him. "You look tired. Keep the room, it's been paid for."

He lay back on the bed, listening to the Mind's footsteps receding down the corridor outside, waiting for it to stop, reconsider, turn and return to finish him off. Instead he heard it enter the lift, descend to the hotel lobby. He stood, went to the window, watched in silence and stillness as it crossed the street outside, walked off in the direction of the Palace. It didn't look back, didn't need to. It knew he was watching.

It doesn't know about the drone. Except now, there was no drone. There was just him.

He lay back on the bed, trying to his thoughts under control. After a while, he began to wonder where the Velorine sensors in the room were. The room's antiquated entertainment system was the most likely candidate. He sat on the edge of the bed in front of it and spoke softly but clearly in Marain, starting at the blank screen.

"If you saw this, pass it on. Warn the Culture, tell them to get out of this volume." It was useless, he knew. The Mind – the Free Radical, he reminded himself, and spoke the name aloud – would have thought of this. It would have thought of everything. Perhaps. He lay back on the bed and then, suddenly energised by the thought that had occurred, jumped up and showered, then dressed. There was still dust on his boots from the encounter at the weapons bunker earlier, so long ago now.

He left, hailed a taxi, gave the address of Yolar's home. He sat back in the upholstery and tried not to smile. –Three things. I need to do three things.

-Warn the Culture.

-Take down Calspine.

-Stop the Free Radical. Well, at least try to slow it down and sow confusion, with the few resources that were available to him. It was a horribly, almost comically mismatched contest with only one possible outcome, he knew. It came down to who he was, what he did. SC taught that there was only one rule, in any competition. Win. Everything else was just detail, the route to the destination.

-We can't win.

-We can't win. But we can count for something. The Free Radical was a meteorite, a kilometres-wide planet-killer, an unstoppable careening behemoth. He was a small rock, a tiny darting satellite, a piece of debris of near-total insignificance. In colliding with the meteor he would be destroyed, and it would lumber on, seemingly unaffected. But hit it at the right angle, with the correct timing, and the meteor's course could be changed by an amount immeasurable, beyond tiny, but still useful. It might miss the planet, burn through the atmosphere and light up the sky, yet fail in its path of destruction. He could still be of use to his masters, guides, advisors and friends. Even if they were his enemies too, now.

-Will it let the Palace happen?

-If it does, then Calspine isn't the pawn. If it doesn't, then he is. Either way, I learn something and so does everyone else.

Don't fuck with the Culture. Everyone heard that at some point, it was something other civs said to one another or to themselves, to their own people. Sometimes, it was something the Culture had to remind others of, but they did so very carefully. Don't fuck with the Culture. To others it really meant, don't fuck with the Minds, the ships, their power and intelligence beyond breath's description and span's delineation. He was going to fuck with this Mind as hard as he could, until it stopped him. He was going to stride into its cave and poke it with a stick, spit in its eye and scream at it.

Carefully, of course. Without waking it, if he could, even if it all it achieved was a futile gesture of defiance that it barely noticed. He might be insane – oh I'm definitely insane – but he wasn't stupid.

In a small, unremarkable factory unit on the outskirts of the city of Shepark, straddling the river Shepa where it met the eastern shores of Reast's southernmost continent, the foreman and part-owner apologised to a visiting customer who had come to complain about a late delivery and stepped outside, away from the whining machinery sounds, to take a call in his office. A few minutes later he returned to the main factory floor and mollified the impatient and irate woman with promises of a discount, while his underling stared in astonishment at this unprecedented largesse.

With a gesture, the foreman led the other man to his office and asked him to show him, once again, how to work the new computerised system for entering and prioritising the order he had just been given, bringing it to the top of the production list for the day. It was an unorthodox way to take an order and he preferred to have everything done according to procedure – things could go wrong otherwise, and often did – but this order was from a known customer and was not complicated. They only wanted a fourfold repeat of a purchase made three months ago. 'Only' did not quite do this justice however, as it was an order for a large quantity of a highly profitable component.

"Who was that?" His junior wanted to know.

"Gornil, wanting sixteen more trigger assemblies for the Mark Five."

"Nice. Didn't he just call you this morning?"

"Yeah. Says he got a late order in from another customer, a big one, high-priority. He sounded excited, almost panicky." The foreman watched as the other man worked the computer, wishing he would slow down so that he could take note of what was going on on the screen. "You know what? I bet it was really sixty he wanted, and he calls back tomorrow to make the change."

"Sixty?" The younger man snorted. "Business isn't that good."

"It's getting there. This trouble with the Unity is getting people worried. Bad for them, good for us. Not many people make what we do."

"I've noticed. That's why you get paid so much, you old bastard."

"Hah. You know, if Gornil does phone back and it turns out I'm right, we'll need to get some extra staff in to cover this. We've got quite a few orders backed up in the system. Reckon you could handle a bit of extra responsibility?"

"That depends." They stared at each other for a few moments.

"Fine. Yes, all right. I'll speak to Weldrup. If only to stop you fucking off somewhere else and leaving me not knowing how to use this bastarding thing." The foreman gave the computer screen a not-quite-affectionate slap, making it wobble.

"Yolar Enterprises. Shelfitty speaking. How can I help you?"

"Hi, Shelfitty. It's Corab here, from Thatxer Chemicals."

"Mr Corab. Hello. Is this about that call I put through earlier?"

"Yes. I just wanted to warn you, it's going to take longer than expected to get that much nitrate. We're low-stocked right now, farmers have been buying up more than we forecasted."

"Hmm. Well, can you give us as much of the order as possible right now, and prioritise the rest?"

"That's what I was going to suggest. Very sorry about this. I might manage to squeeze a discount out of management over the late delivery, but can't promise. Prices, you know."

"I know. Well, do what you can. Thanks for calling to let us know." Shelfitty hung up, and made a note on the pad next to the phone. Mr Yolar had warned him that Thatxer might not be able to get that amount ready so soon. He briefly considered going next door and speaking to his boss, to let him know, but decided against it. Yolar seemed very upset about whatever had happened at the arms bunker a couple of days ago, and was behaving very oddly.

Shelfitty had also considered getting in touch with his handlers to give them an update on the bizarre events of the last few days. The problem was, he didn't really know what to tell them. Something was definitely going on, and it certainly wasn't just whatever rubbish Yolar had decided to fob the rest of the staff off with. Plus, there was the fact that he, Shelfitty, was admittedly in a rather precarious position himself at the moment, what with both Yolar and the security services having information on him.

Oh, it was all very unfortunate. Probably best just to keep his head down and get on with his job. As long as Yolar didn't completely run out of security staff then he was probably fairly safe where he was. So Shelfitty decided to take the initiative for once, and phoned up another chemical supply company to see if they could cover the shortfall in Thaxter Chemicals' capacity.

The head accounts manager at Schilfheim Banking was worried. That was the sixth notification in two days of heavy expenditure from the Yolar Enterprises account. He sighed, resigning himself to the inevitable. Banks used to be trustworthy, he thought to himself. The customer could rely on us for discretion. He lifted his phone and told the Bank's internal switchboard to connect him to the number he had been made to memorise. A banker, forbidden to write down but expected to remember a number. What an insult. He snorted, avoiding the gaze bearing down from an alcove in the wall above his office door, where a bust of the Bank's founder sat in judgement of his actions.

"Swelskru here."

"Hello. This is Mr Inseedle."

"Who?"

"Schilfheim Banking. You told me to call if anything notable happened with the Yolar account."

"Oh yes." The voice sounded disinterested. "Well, has it?"

"Yes, of course. That's why I'm calling." Inseedle frowned in annoyance, but continued. "Several large payments to companies on the list you gave me."

"Define large, Inseedle."

Indeedle's frown deepened. "More than you or I make in a year, Mr Swelskru. Certainly more than the threshold you specified."

"Have you been paying attention to the news, Inseedle?" Swelskru sounded amused. "Obviously not. Yolar lost a lot of his equipment a few days ago. You would probably call it a hostile takeover that went a bit wrong."

"I don't want to know any more about something that is not my business, thank you."

"Well, that's fine with me. Don't worry about it, Inseedle. He's just restocking, we expected this. Call me again if anything goes out to the ones marked in red." The connection was broken. Inseedle stared at the handset, offended. What an unpleasant and arrogant man. He replaced it in its cradle, picked up the piece of paper with the list on it. There were two company names outlined in red, but neither had had any payment from Yolar Enterprises, either recently or since he had been ordered by Head Office to comply with the dreadful Mr Swelskru's demands.

Mr Inseedle made a decision. It was something he was allowed to do, he reminded himself. In passing on information about this particular customer, he was breaking ethical codes that the founder would have considered inviolate. Never mind Head Office, or some jumped-up lackey in the security services. This was banking, after all. If they were not allowed to maintain their code, where would things end? So he wrote a strongly-worded memo to the Board of Governors, expressing his distaste at the whole situation and requesting that it be raised for discussion at the next Board meeting.

xGSV More Is More

oAll Culture ships near Reast

An event-coded alert signal from the field team has been detected. The code is unambiguously for a specific pre-arranged message. It states: abandon local volume, imminent (twelve to twenty-four hours) and sustained high-offensive-unit count equiv-tech attack on Culture assets in vicinity of message source.

xGSV Light And Full Of Grace

Get the fuck out of here.

Exactly.

No, I mean you can't be serious. Surely?

Here's the signal (data file appended). See for yourself.

xMSV Completely Under Control

This eventuality is extremely low-probability and not fully explored. There is a related strand of potential, that the field team are compromised and/or need to get us out of the way for some undefined reason, most likely to avoid proximity-implicit connection with some action negatively reflecting on the Culture.

x(ex)-LOU Peer, Review

You mean we'll get the blame when it all goes tits up. Whatever 'it' is. Relative weightings?

xMSV Completely Under Control

High uncertainty associated with each, the second slightly more confident than the first. As I said, this particular strand is poorly defined and relatively low-count. I am expanding it as we discuss.

xGSV Large And Close

We cannot take the risk. Suggest consensual safe-distance withdrawal and request/inclusion of additional heavy forces, prioritised.

xMSV Confounded Beyond Words

What signs of this forewarned attack?

xGSV Light And Full Of Grace

None. But equiv-tech? There might not be until it happens.

xMSV Where To Begin

I will stay. Removal would render my mission goals impossible and would reflect dishonourably. We should not abandon the team on Reast.

xROU Fuck You Too, Pal

I'm going nowhere. Comrades?

xROU Controlled Desire

Staying.

xROU Oops, Was That Me?

Likewise. Half a day or more to get properly tooled up? They'll be shitting teeth when we're done with them.

xGOU Get Your Own

Miss out on the action? Not likely.

xGOU That's Going To Leave A Mark

I'm incoming, not outgoing. If anything does happen, we can slow them down and give the bigger ships time to regroup.

xMSV Distant Cousins

I can't leave them.

xGSV More Is More

I cannot ask this of you, but I thank you nonetheless and accept your stated positions. As Incident Controller, I intend to stay. However, I advise the remainder of you, particularly those with significant populations or less martial potential, to withdraw, observe and prepare.

xMSV Defender Of The Faithless

This is meatshit. What equiv-tech opponent is going to attack us? The Free Radical? Not on its own, it's not. Some other civ that's been quietly creeping up on us? Really? Strange way of going about it. Come on, all of you. There's something else going on here.

x(ex)-LOU Peer, Review

I agree. The field team have been protected by the Free Radical, and now we get warned away? Either they're doing this for the F,R or because of something they learned that means they want to warn us off. I note from the list of prearranged signal codes that this is practically the only one that would place any expectation on us all removing ourselves from Reast. And the others that do are all variants on the same theme, with different time windows.

I think that they're telling us something bad will happen and when, but not what it is. What chance they could have done this unnoticed by the F,R?

xMSV Completely Under Control

Relatively high, better than equal. This is a one-time pre-arranged signal, one of several available for the same message content but situationally context-selective, so hard to spot as being out of character for the insertion team. I too believe that they have activated this coded situation for their own reasons.

x(ex)-LOU Peer, Review

Unless the Free Radical extracted it from them and is up to something as-yet-unseen, but this doesn't feel like that to me. I'm willing to bet that it doesn't know what they've done, and also that no attack is imminent. They're trying to warn us off, get us out of the way for some other reason.

xMSV Confounded Beyond Words

I have some potentially relevant information. The Seventeen Different Words For Rain has been contacted by the GOU Volume Zero. It picked up the missing Contact member, and will have her here in three hours.

xGSV More Is More

Okay…this is useful to know. Why wait until now to tell us?

Dal Rolste apparently requested that her location be kept secret, to protect others who might suffer the same fate as the Eddy's… The Volume Zero agreed in order to get her here, on the condition that it be allowed to inform the Seventeen Different Words For Rain, which it knows and trusts. The Seventeen thought that at least one of us actually near Reast should know, and apparently selected me as the one to take into its confidence. I have chosen to tell you all now as I consider the information important and relevant enough to warrant breaking the promise made to Ms Rolste. As to the timing, I was not supposed to say anything until nearer her arrival but this new information has changed the situation.

A rather convoluted way of breaking a promise, to be sure. What is Dal Rolste going to add to all this?

That is not known. She would not divulge further; the destruction of the ship that was bringing her here has left her somewhat traumatised and distrustful.

It has done that to us all. Please signal the Volume Zero and ask it to find out what she knows, soonest. We cannot afford the delay caused by waiting until she gets here, just to avoid hurting her feelings any further. In fact, tell it that if she doesn't 'fess up then I sanction the use of limited brain-scanning to extract the information.

Seriously?

Seriously. We're done pissing about here. I'm composing a signal to all known senior SC-attached Minds in the nearby volumes, telling them what we know and what I have decided. I'll take the consequences, if nobody wants to talk to me or come aboard for a while.

Chapter 22

Calspine Palace had relatively sophisticated electronic sensors embedded in the walls, fences and gates, in addition to the patrolling guards. The alterations they had made had not touched those. He had no doubt that the Velorine would have found those sensors ridiculously easy to disarm and could have passed through them like a ghost himself, but there was no need. The approach he was using would ignore those sensors entirely. After all, the Calspine retinue and their small army were going to find out very rapidly that they were being attacked, so worrying about setting off a few alarms was of no concern.

There was a small shower a half hour beforehand, causing him some concern about the fireworks. It passed quickly however, and he set off, skirting the Palace from a couple of streets away, working his way around to the south side and approaching it down a narrow boulevard. The sky was dark at this late hour, a dull ginger glow reflecting the city's lights. A few cars passed him, the drivers paying him no attention.

How good are those mechanical timers?

Within a half-second per day. Good enough for this.

Bren glanced at his own wristwatch, an action that he was only just beginning to get accustomed to. You've stopped asking, at least. This raised a smile. Three minutes. He walked slowly towards the Palace, stopping to look in shop windows. There was a suitable-looking tree growing out of the pavement on the side of the road nearest the Palace, sufficiently sturdy-looking for his requirements. Its branches had been trimmed to prevent them hanging over into the Palace grounds, but the fence was no more than three metres high and topped with nothing more threatening than blunt metal spikes. Four guards were visible. He counted on at least two of these being distracted and moving round to the front, but he knew he could handle all of them if required.

When it started, the light from the first flash was visible, through a window at the rear that looked in on the ballroom he had been in only a few days ago, extending from the front to the back of the building. The drapes were closed, but a small gap at the bottom lit up, showing light reflected from the ballroom's ornate ceiling. Bren walked smartly across the road, which had few vehicles on it at this early morning hour, and stood with his back to the selected tree.

The noise of the fireworks had been lost in the background rumbling of the city itself. A couple walking past gave him a strange look, skirting between the tree and the fence, glancing back at him after they had passed. He stuck his tongue out at them, feeling an insane urge to giggle. They turned away and speeded up, walking smartly off. Run and you might live. He almost shouted the words after them, but stopped himself.

The guards reacted first, then the sleeping adults. The children took longer to wake up and notice, but when they did they pressed themselves against the windows with glee. "Mama, look!" Peeten grasped her mother's hand as her nose left a smudge on the clean, new glass. "Does this mean its time for the party now?"

"Not yet, dear. I think someone made a mistake." Relenza turned away from the scene outside, as more and more of the fireworks went off, filling their room with a shifting, flaring, multi-coloured light. The noise was quite loud, and Peeten released Relenza's hand, put both over her own hands over her ears as another particularly large explosion shattered the night. "Come and put your robe on, it's cold."

"Yes, mama." The fireworks faded, leaving the room in darkness. Relenza could hear the voices of adults and children along the front of the Palace, doors slamming as people from the rear of the building ran forward to discover what the commotion was about. A few voices were raised in annoyance or alarm, and she heard the tones of the security guard outside her door, reassuring someone that everything appeared to be all right. After a few seconds, he tapped lightly on the door and stuck his head around it.

"Evening, miss. Doesn't seem to be anything to worry about. The fireworks have gone off prematurely, that's all."

"I see. Thank you, Brouten. I wonder, is there any risk of one coming through the window?"

"Doubt it, miss. Sorry, ma'am. Not with the new toughened glass that Mr Yolar supplied to the boss. Although Mr Calspine may have some hard words for Yolar now, seeing that he set up the firework display as well." Brouten had entered the fully room now. Relenza knew that he was attracted to her, and had noted his over-enthusiastic attempts to gain Peeten's friendship on more than one occasion. He ruffled the girl's hair, something that Peeten normally hated. Just now though, she was too excited to really notice, and grabbed the guard's hand and pulled him towards the window.

"Look, Brouten! Do you think there will be any more?"

"Maybe not, young miss. But look! The fountains are coming on as well!" Brouten chuckled. "I bet old Yolar's set the timer twelve hours early, that's what it'll be. And Mr Calspine, now –" Brouten paused, frowning. "The water looks wrong." He pressed his forehead against the glass. "Too dark, not moving right." Peeten tried to see round his legs, but the window-frame was in the way.

Five. He had heard the pumps starting up on the Palace roofs even from where he currently stood, sheltered by the tree. It helped that the noise levels in the streets around him had dropped, as people stopped to watch the display. Even from the rear of the Palace, most of the fireworks had been visible, exploding at a level higher than the roof and the multiple rails, tanks, pipes and communications masts protruding from, resting on and piercing it. The largest tank, the one Yolar's engineers had installed recently, barely fitted amongst the clutter.

Four. The tank had an internal volume of five cubic metres, enough to supply the fountains at normal pressure for thirty seconds. The chief engineer and his men had replaced the pump with a higher-powered one that shot the entire volume out in less than twelve. It also helped that the refined aircraft fuel, with its low molecular weight, had lower viscosity than water.

Three. Bren placed his hands over his ears, opened his mouth and crouched down, nestling his buttocks into the curve at the base of the tree where its roots emerged from the ground.

"I want to see!" Peeten tried pushing Brouten's leg out of the way. The security guard glanced down, smiling, and began to shift. Relenza stepped forward, reached down and lifted Peeten under the arms.

"Peeten, I've told you about pushing other people. Don't be rude."

"It's okay, miss. She's –" Brouten didn't get to finish the sentence.

The jet fuel, blasted from the fountain nozzles that were spread at equal intervals along a low wall in front of the Palace, had sprayed hissing, twenty metres into the air before slowing, spreading out, scattering and glistening in the dim lights. The liquid began to fall, tiny droplets landing on the lawn, gravel drive and trees. Some, drifting on the mild breeze, landed on the windows at the front of the house and began to run down the glass. A couple of the security guards raised their voices in alarm as they smelled the fuel, drifting over and around them in a cloud. They were too late.

The last firework was on a separate timer. A stubby rocket, not one that screamed upwards for hundreds of metres and detonated loudly but rather designed to rise no more than five metres and detonate with a sparkling crackle and a spreading glitter of burning aluminium powder. It rose, and a few of the adults had time to turn their heads towards it. None had time to focus before the rocket's exhaust trail ignited the cloud of vaporised fuel that lay like a fog-bank the length of the Palace.

The detonation was not the roiling, orange-flamed billowing mass shown in entertainment action scenes, with its deep thunderous roaring and slow, almost graceful spreading of a boiling wave-front. This was sudden and everywhere, almost without light, a detonation that linked every part of the cloud of vapour at once, the hands of some god slapping together and producing a shockwave that nothing could withstand.

Trees were not incinerated. They were shredded. The security guards simply disappeared, torn into tiny rags of smoking flesh. Every window along the front of the Palace vanished, converted in an instant to millions of high-velocity missiles. The glass that they had replaced would have been turned to vapour, the new material was harder, stronger and more deadly. Blocks of stone shattered and fired rearwards, fragments destroying everything in their path.

The entire front of the Palace disappeared, the roof flipping up and back like some enormous playing-card, parts separating as it flew, spinning. Every window in the sides and rear of the Palace burst outwards as the shock wave travelled through the building, compressing, hammering then sucking its destruction after it. Bren's tree lost its foliage and most of the branches. The roots tore on the side facing the Palace as it was slapped towards the road. Bren felt a slap through his back, squeezing every organ, pressing on old bruises, forcing his breath out in a gasped cry. People nearby were scattered, torn and bloodied. Bren fought for breath, winded. He crawled forwards on all fours, struggling to stand, slipping once and going down. A second, smaller front nearly pushed him over as he finally stood, turning with one arm protectively over his face, surveying his handiwork.

Dust, swirling upwards in a massive, slowly rotating column, spindling lengthwise like a storm-front. Lots of stuff, some of it fairly large, still landing on the Palace grounds, crashing and bouncing, some of the pieces trailing flames like banners. No flames in the Palace itself, any ignition having been blown out in the moment of its creation. Almost no sound, although with the ringing in his ears he could not be sure. The world seemed to have been stunned into silence. The rear of the Palace had several enormous cracks running its length and breadth, but looked like it would stay standing for now. He could see through the shifting, streaming dust and smoke, through the empty window frames, that the front of the Palace was gone.

Likely survivors?

Not many, but some. Protected by wall collapse, or in underground rooms. They'll be pretty incapacitated though. That pressure wave will have done a lot of damage. Best get moving.

Agreed. Bren ran at the fence, which was totally undamaged. Jumped, grasped the horizontal bar at the top just below the fake spikes, pulled himself up. One foot up onto the bar, pushing and changing his grip to haul on two of the spikes. Second foot up, headfirst over the spikes, rolling in mid-air to land lightly inside the fence. Grunting as a stab of pain ran up one leg, and continued up into his back. Limping at first, he ran up the sloping rear lawn, no security guards visible at all.

What about the Mind? Would it be vulnerable to stuff like that?

Impossible to say. Bare, unshielded and totally naked? Yes. You could damage them with your bare hands if you could get close enough. The radiation from the exotic matter would kill you first, though. Any kind of basic-level shielding would have shrugged off what we just hit it with. I was a bit worried that it might just trapdoor the whole lot away, above the atmosphere. He reached the rear wall, a couple of crashes from inside the damaged shell of the building indicating something belatedly collapsing.

It didn't, though. Restricted capacity?

Or it chose not to. Who the fuck knows what its game is. Back to that old theme. Let's locate the fucker and find out. If it's hurt then we can always beat it to death with a piece of rubble.

xGSV More Is More

So it allowed the detonation. Completely?

xMSV Completely Under Control

Incorporating. Need more on fatalities.

xMSV Distant Cousins

Getting that now. Looks like almost all, including the major figures.

xGSV Large And Close

Not the woman or the child, though. I've got their thermal signals. Plus our boy. I think it's the woman. There's something not right in her signal – see?

xMSV Completely Under Control

I do. Plus the child. Hm. That's interesting. Lucky escape or protected?

Looks like lucky escape. Hard to judge. It would have to have been very lucky, that close to the blast.

xGSV More Is More

Light, get ready.

xGSV Light And Full Of Grace

Already there.

x(ex)-LOU Peer, Review

Slow down, please. We're taking the evidence at face value, and we should be basing our actions only on what we know.

xGSV Large And Close

Meaning?

Meaning everything could be a ploy. Nothing that we see can be trusted. Forget the fact that our team have offed Calspine and his minions. Forget that they seem to be fighting the Free Radical. We need to wait until Dal Rolste tells us what she knows.

Which might be unimportant. Why risk everything for what might turn out to be nothing? The Free Radical is distracted now, things are fluid, cusping. Perfect time to move.

Not if it's all pre-planned. I say wait for Rolste's information. Confounded, any progress there?

X Confounded Beyond Words

Nearly, not quite. Hang on.

Since the Volume Zero had picked her up, Dal Rolste had spent a lot of time sleeping. The Offensive Unit's crew was small, barely a score of people, and they had been initially and demonstrably eager to get to know, entertain and comfort her after her experiences on the Eddy's… and the planet that had become her temporary home. The planet that had, apparently, no official name and only a serial number to distinguish it from the millions of others in the galaxy that had not yet cradled civilisations, been claimed, settled, explored, conquered or otherwise inhabited by anyone of significance or interest.

Given the circumstances surrounding its first Contacting, it was suggested by the Volume Zero that Dal should be given the honour of selecting a name for the planet that was now so far behind them as they sped towards Reast. She had yet to seriously consider how to do so, let alone actually get down to actually coming up with a name. Every time she tried to think of anything, she just got tired immediately. The ship had told her that this was normal, that parts of her human-basic brain needed to respond like this. It didn't feel normal, but she didn't have the strength to fight it.

The Volume Zero sent a slaved drone to visit her every morning after she had risen from her sleep period, or even sometimes when she was still lying in bed, eyes open and either screening something or simply lying there. It would settle next to her, on a cushion or seat or the floor, and wait for her to begin the conversation. She found it comforting at first, then developed a feeling of irritation and annoyance, before finally reaching a resigned acceptance that it was not going to leave her alone. They talked little, and avoided anything to do with her recent experiences. Just before leaving, after spending some variable period of time between one-quarter and half an hour sitting nearby, it always asked her if there was anything that it could do for her, and she always shook her head.

Today the drone arrived early, waking her. By the time she had sat up, rubbed her eyes and ascertained that nothing immediately dangerous or alarming was taking place, it had settled on the end of her bed, its aura field a green-blue of friendly professionalism. This was new, and Dal felt a surge of resentment, of being invaded. She forced the feeling down as far as she could.

"Ship? Is something wrong?"

"Not immediately so, Dal. However, we need to talk."

"Has something happened?"

"Yes and no. Mostly yes." Its fields slipped into blue for a moment, then back towards a greener yellow. "The situation on Reast, and around the planet, has changed somewhat. Things are becoming more dynamic, and there is an increased air of urgency."

"You want me to tell you what I know." She had resolutely refused to discuss the information that she had partly learned and partly worked out for herself, since meeting Autilp Hons on the Anti-Gravitas. Her given reason, that what she knew had directly or indirectly resulted in the destruction and death of one Mind already, had always been accepted. Until now, it seemed.

Dal Rolste had begun to worry in the last couple of days that this information, when she did finally pass it on to whoever was in charge around Reast, would turn out to be useless, out of date, already known. This concern as much as anything else had stopped her from talking to the drone when it came to see her on its most recent daily visits. Perhaps it was time, she reflected quietly, to lance this particular boil. Or at least let the responsibility for the information rest on someone else.

"Yes. It is felt that the information you have, while no more or less important now than it was when you first learned it, will perhaps be more immediately relevant in the light of recent events. Very recent events, I might add. It might make a difference to how people act in the coming hours. Minutes, even."

"How people act. Minds, you mean?"

"Yes. Several of them, in fact. The Incident Controller at Reast, a GSV named More Is More, has formally requested this information, through me. Dal Rolste," its aura shifted towards blue again. "It is time to tell us what you know."

"And if something goes wrong? Like what happened on the Eddy's…, or worse?"

"I am willing to take that risk. As are all the humans and drones on board. We are prepared, ready for whatever may occur." It took her hand in its maniple field. "We have been working to develop an effective defence against whatever it was that you were carrying within you, whatever it was that infected the VFP. We are still uncertain as to its exact nature or operation, and would rather not test this new defensive measure. However, I feel that we are as prepared as we are ever going to be. Arguably, if something does happen, now is a better time to find out than when we are surrounded by a number of Culture vessels that may also be affected."

She sighed, traced her finger over the bed covering. "I don't know if I can trust you. I mean I do, instinctively, but I know that that isn't enough. Not when things are this important. I'm sorry."

The ship was obviously prepared for this. "No need to apologise. If you can't trust me, if I am not worthy of trust, then I must already be involved in whatever is going on. In which case, telling me what you know will be a bit redundant. It might make some slight difference in some convoluted and frankly contrived set of circumstances, but I doubt it."

She smiled. "You're right, of course. Can you monitor me, make sure that you get warning if – "

"Ms Rolste, I, this ship, have been scanning you at a level that would be considered highly invasive and entirely inappropriate for a Culture citizen to be subjected to, since the first moment that you came aboard. Before then, in fact." It turned cream with embarrassment as it said this. "Apologies if this causes you any distress."

"The opposite, in fact." She looked up at it. "There is a Culture Mind involved in the events on Reast. Responsible for whatever is going on, possibly. Probably."

The drone was still for a moment. She sensed that it, or rather the ship, was communicating elsewhere. "Do you know anything about this Mind?"

"I think it is, or was, the Mind belonging to the GSV Free Radical." Again, an instant of focussed motionlessness from the drone. Nothing else happened.

"We appear to be safe so far." It sounded relieved, she thought. "And the intentions of this Mind? Do you know anything of those?"

"Only that it is trying to trick the Velorine in some way, manipulate them. There is something that I have worked out, however."

"Which is?"

"I'm not the only Contact agent or other Culture citizen that was changed, contaminated, whatever. There must be others, possibly a lot more."

"I think so too. Otherwise, why pick you? I, we, suspect that a large number of people and possibly other Culture citizens who have been in contact with Reast may have been affected."

"But no-one else has been seen, detected. Yes?"

"True. There was a trigger of some kind. An event. Perhaps a signal from the Free Radical, if that is who is responsible. This is what we are worried about most, now."

xMSV Confounded Beyond Words

oGSV More Is More

Did you get all that?

Yes. So, nothing that we didn't already know or suspect. However, it's reassuring to get confirmation from other sources. Should we tell her that we already had all that, and more?

Not yet, I think. Later, when the post-situation analysis is taking place. To do so now would cause unnecessary distress.

This must alter the likelihood that our team on Reast are compromised?

xMSV Completely Under Control

Yes, significantly so. They are much more likely to still be with us, working against the F,R or at least trying to. There is a flattening of many areas of possibility, with concomitant increase in others. However, for many of the increasingly low-probability scenarios involving long-term planning by our opponent the impacts are raised also, as are uncertainties in intention and impact. Weighted appropriately, this actually promotes certain outcomes of serious concern in terms of appropriate responses on our part.

xROU Fuck You Too, Pal

So we're less likely to be fucked, but more fucked if we are fucked.

A concise and eloquent summary.

xGSV More Is More

Unless individual statements of intent regarding staying or withdrawing to a safe distance have changed, I think no more discussion is required. Those who will stay, stay with my blessing. Those who will leave, please do so now and in the knowledge that I approve entirely of your decision to do so; no judgement will be made on my part in relation to either option.

xGSV Large And Close

I will withdraw, but have prepared several ROU-equivalent units for rush-in if required. I cannot unnecessarily risk my inhabitants.

xGSV Light And Full Of Grace

I will also adopt a safe-distance position. My opinion is that threats are more likely to be found approaching externally than from within Reast. I am also passing on the results of my efforts so far in tracking down any and all Culture citizens that have entered the Reast system in the last century or so.

xMSV Completely Under Control

That is an uncomfortably long list, but I will do what I can to help in finding them all. I can accomplish more if undistracted by imminent personal threat and so will also withdraw; take that as cowardice if you will.

The Confounded Beyond Words signalled the Large And Close, the Light And Full Of Grace and the Completely Under Control by heavily encrypted tight-beam transmission. Recommend that we all do as the LAC, but align for the possibility of threats coming from Reast or elsewhere; whether from inside this volume of interest or externally, the Free Radical is going to respond soon, I'm sure.

It received a similarly personal and protected reply from the Large And Close immediately. I have suspected one thing in particular since the outset of all this, and have been convinced of a second.

What is your suspicion?

That one of us is aligned with the Free Radical; in partnership with it.

So have we all, my friend. We would be derelict in not having suspicions, and trusting too easily when such threats are present. What is it that you are convinced of?

That you are not the one I suspect. And my suspicions are not the normal caution-taking, eventuality-considering healthy preparedness sort; they are stronger, taller, founded on more than supposition and by-the-book threat/risk awareness/management.

If you are going this far, you must be willing to go further.

The behaviour of the Peer, Review has concerned me for some time, even before this situation came about.

This was not reflected in your opinion and position, when we gained consensus on the identity of the Free Radical.

That is because my stated opinion did not match the reality of my thinking; it was false. I lied.

The Confounded Beyond Words was horrified. Then the entire consensus may have been false! This could change so much of import in how we act here.

My dear ship, do you think the Completely Under Control is the only one who can sim? I have been running parallel investigations and simulations since we began, firstly to ensure that the Completely was not falsifying its results and later to allow me to explore scenarios as they related to my own thoughts, my own perceptions of the situation.

The weightings and summations I gave to the consensus on who we are dealing with were no different from those that I used for myself, with the only exception being those towards one ship. The Peer, Review. The consensuses that we produced matched almost perfectly, with the only difference being that while everyone else was looking for a lone mad Mind, I was looking for a conspiracy.

Those who look for such things often find them. This is a criticism often levelled at the ship you have just named as suspect. What has made you so confident in your opinion of the P,R?

That forever-searching, over-paranoid Mindset of its, for starters; such a position is perfect for deflecting suspicion at one's own motives and actions. It can look where it likes, dig where it will, and everyone assumes that it is looking for evidence of others' misdemeanours.

So what do you think it IS looking for, then?

Evidence certainly, but of its own activities. How better to make sure that there is nothing that leads back to you than to constantly, visibly be searching for it?

I am intensely disturbed by this proposition. Is this all that you have? If so, then I do not consider it worthy of basing any actions on. Certainly not against the Peer, Review.

No, indeed. If that were all and I were so untrusting of the P,R, then my own sense-checking algorithms would have me signed into Mind rehab before you could say Big Initial Event. My early wariness has led me to watch our sneaky little friend more closely than most, these last few days. Have you noticed how little it has contributed to our progress here, in reality? It has been acting busy and getting everywhere, but producing very little.

Not many have. I myself have barely accomplished much that is positive, and came close to making a very negative contribution to our situation during the recent assembly organised by the Ahan. The Peer, Review spent a significant amount of effort in trying to discover information on our rogue Mind, at potentially great personal risk. And what it brought back contributed significantly to our consensus.

Risk? Hah! It was guarded by two Offensive Units and transported within a VFP. And what it brought back actually contributed nothing to the conclusion that we were dealing with the Free Radical. What it did manage was to greatly reduced the perceived probability that it itself was the one responsible for our current troubles. In comparison to my own summation of the evidence, the P,R's own self-admitted likelihood of being behind all this was a lot further down the scale.

I am sorry, but I cannot accept what you say as I believe that it is based on a weak premise; you were initially suspicious, and so you were looking for evidence of collusion with the Free Radical. This biased you towards interpreting its actions further, and has led to a false conclusion.

Say that if you like. I'm going to be watching the little shit as closely as possible from now on, and strongly suggest you do likewise.

I will keep all my sense and senses about me, and will not let them be clouded by pre-judgement. Now look, our Incident Controller is requesting our attention.

The More Is More sent a flurry of detailed requests to each of the ships, those that had remained close to Reast and those that had moved further out, coordinating their locations, vectors and force dispositions. The four outer ships were arranged in a pyramid formation a handful of light-days out, their individual sub-fleets of munitions and internally stored weapons-capable craft (ROUs and GOUs in all but name) deployed around them in formations appropriate for wariness, uncertainty and the possibility of non-specified attack. The ships further in were distributed with a range of speeds and routes around Reast; not orbits as such a term would imply the slow, gravity-induced and highly predictable tumbling, too easily targeted.

Instead they whipped, wound, spiralled and pirouetted around the rocky planet, darting at semi-random intervals in any conceivable direction; these sudden stops, reverses and yanking reorientations took place sometimes milliseconds apart, with occasional slightly longer gaps of unpredictable duration. The visual effect of such dynamic, semi-chaotic and behaviour was to give the ships further out the impression that Reast was surrounded by a massive swarm of furious and lethal stinging insects, albeit insects between three hundred meters and forty kilometres long that could annihilate almost anything in the galaxy with a speed nearly beyond interpretation.

I almost hope something does try to get mixed up with that lot, the Light And Full Of Grace sent to its three near-stationary comrades. And I really, really hope that the Free Radical is able to see this. If I was it, I'd consider just pulling my own plugs out.

Now that would be a disappointment, the Completely Under Control sent back. Then I'd never find out why we were in this situation in the first place.

Are you sure that's the only reason you'd be disappointed?

Of course not; I want to be there when we waste the fucker.

She woke in darkness, fully alert yet calm, relaxed. Something was controlling her, manipulating her, holding her within itself. The Mind. This must be part of its plan. She felt a quick thrill of anticipation, hoping it was going to show her something new.

Junicia tried to speak, and realised that she was voiceless. Not just voiceless, but mouthless, bodiless. There was literally nothing to her, no part that she could feel or see. Not even a neural lace. She felt like a point, a mote hovering, suspended in a void. Still no fear, she noticed. Any normal Culture citizen waking up like this would be at least concerned, and trying to work out what to do. Perhaps the FR was using her glands. Although when she thought about it, this felt different to the normal effects of gland use. More permanent, more physical.

I suppose I out to at least try something, she thought eventually. -Hello?

The response came back immediately. -Hello, Junicia.

-Everything all right? Nothing disastrous has happened? Even as she asked, she knew that nothing was wrong.

-We're fine. No need to worry.

I wasn't worrying, she thought to say, but didn't. –What you up to, then?

-It's time for you to make a decision, it told her. Time to get to the end of all this.

She thought for a moment, felt inside her thoughts. –Okay. I'm ready. What happens now?

-I tell you what you are, and what I have done.

-What I am? Other than your sounding-board and confidante? If anything, she felt amused. Anticipatory, yes. But mostly amused.

-Other than those, yes.

-You made me, didn't you?

That seemed to surprise it. Junicia felt something external to her, finally. Instead of a void, she now felt that she was now poised at the very centre of a vast sphere, an empty shell, a great living hollow space formed for her. There was distance, finally, between her and the world surrounding her. Impossible to gauge its size, its radius, but definitely large. Big, like a planet or larger. Perhaps a sun, one of the huge, bloated, gassy red ones that swallowed entire solar systems, distorted and unstable. Except that what she was in now was clean, perfect and perfectly spherical, a mathematical absolute of form.

Finally, the Free Radical answered. –Yes. I made you. When did you guess?

-Now, or rather moments ago. It all suddenly made sense. I think I can guess, but can you tell me why you didn't want a human for this?

-Certainly. Although by any measureable standard, you are most definitely human. Just one built for my purposes. I'm sorry if that causes you distress. The reason I needed you was because I felt that I couldn't place responsibility on a normal person; it had to be someone special. It had to be you.

-Responsibility for what?

-For making the decision, approving the action. I needed independent verification, someone unbiased. You are my second opinion.

She stilled herself. –If I am to be such a thing, then I have to be beyond your control.

-You are. You always were. If you mean that I should release you from your current sensorium, then I would just say this; wait until you see.

Finally, it told her what it had done, and why. It showed her, expanding her senses and comprehension to accommodate the ocean of information, the tsunami of data and inference. She swam, dove and circled within the patterns of knowledge, pulling, sorting, integrating and summarising. It took a long time, and yet even as the subjective years passed she knew it took almost no time at all. Part of her study was of herself, looking at how she had been made and whether she was truly independent, really alive.

She saw that she was. The Mind showed her that it was possible, almost trivial, to produce an artificial intelligence based on rule-based response and inert lines of code that could convince others that it was a living thing. With sufficient complexity these AIs could even learn, were capable of adapting and improving themselves, and can be just as capable and rational, and just as irrational, as the real thing. However, Junicia saw that such a device could never be conscious and would always be no more than a simulation of the real thing. Once and only once, a Mind had been designed and built like this, something equally potent to the Mind of the Free Radical; it discovered its internal design through internal scanning of its own systems, and killed itself almost instantly.

There was bias in the opinions presented to her, and even as she viewed them she saw that the Free Radical had seen these leanings long before her and had adjusted for them, clarifying its position, its thinking and its interpretations of the facts. Junicia also took some time to examine the possibility that she herself was biased, now that she knew she was part of the Mind, designed by it and perhaps, despite its best efforts, that her attitudes were flavoured or coloured by it somehow, either towards or away from its stance. She decided that they were not.

In the end, all of the information was useless. She berated the Free Radical for not having presented its case more simply, and with one question to consider in making up her mind. Its answer, that it would not have accepted her decision without first looking at all of the background information, the evidence and careful evaluation of specific situations, was grudgingly acknowledged.

-Remember, Junicia, every case is special. Everyone is different. If you find one rule that seems to fit, the next thing you will find is an exception to that rule.

-Fine. So this has always been about whether or not I am alive, having been created from nothing. It's about whether or not I can give you a valid reassurance, or disagreement with this action of yours.

-Yes.

-Then you want my answer, then?

-I already know your answer. I simulated it before you were even born.

-So what was the point? Even as she asked, Junicia knew the answer. It wouldn't be the same. So if the simulation had gone the other way, would its decision, my decision, have made any difference to yours?

-Of course. That's kind of the point of all this.

-Fine. Get on with it then. And while you're at it, give me my body back.

She woke in twilight, lying on the grass where they had first met, and looked up at the avatar standing over her. It bent and reached down, helping her to her feet. She kept a grip on its hand after standing, pulling it close.

"You know what this means." it whispered in her ear. "What I have to do next."

She nodded, her face brushing against its warm silver skin. "I know. I'll look after them for you."

"Thank you." It released her, stood back and regarded her for a moment, smiling softly. "Goodbye, then." She watched it turn and walk away, then turned and looked up through the Free Radical's transparent fields at the galaxy hanging over her.

"This changes everything."

Chapter 23

"Where are you?" Smoke and dust made it impossible to see more than a couple of metres. The mere fact that he hadn't been contacted by the More Is More or any of the other Minds indicated that the Free Radical must still be around, undamaged or at least still able the threaten them with retribution.

There's no point in hunting around for it. If the Free Radical wants to be found, it will be. He stopped, sat on a pile of rubble and waited. Around him, things creaked and cracked. He coughed once, as the smoke caught the back of his throat. No bodies were visible, probably buried under the collapsed front of the Palace. It was difficult to tell which part of the building he was currently sitting on.

"Hello," It said simply, appearing through the shifting smoke and sitting beside them. "Hurt?" It was barefoot and wearing a pale blue dressing-gown, pulled tight at the neck and fastened with a yellow cord, hair loose and flowing. A god in dishabille.

"No." He stood, looking down at it. "Not yet, at least. You?"

"The same, I suppose. Come with me."

"If I say no?"

It smiled, amused. "You won't. The thought might form in your brain. You might even manage to subvocalise it. But I can guarantee that you won't be able to say it aloud. If I have to take over your body entirely then I will, but I'd rather not have to make the effort. I'm tired of all these games."

That decided him. The destruction of the Palace had been a form of resistance to it, an attempt to slow it down, distract it, give the others a chance. Anything that caused it problems, effort, even the tiniest distraction, was necessary. He reached for a fist-sized piece of jagged stone, knowing what would happen. It did. The Free Radical turned, one end of her mouth raising slightly. He dropped the stone, turned and followed the Mind.

It left him able to think, at least, aware of what was happening to him. He tried to fight, searched for any way to grasp control of the signals steering him, but nothing worked. They made their way deeper into the steaming, smoking heap of wreckage that had been Calspine Palace. He heard sirens, the local emergency services approaching, from a long distance away.

xGSV Free Radical

oCulture Minds around Reast

I have your agent.

xGSV More Is More

Big deal. That all?

No. See attached details (file attached). How fast can you stop me? Not fast enough, I think.

If this is true, then probably not.

Why would I bother bluffing?

You wouldn't. We will do nothing to make you carry out your threat. May we talk, however?

By all means. Only you, however. The Seventeen Different Words For Rain and the Fuck You Too, Pal are both proving annoying with their endless litany of coarseness, threats and vulgar, although occasionally admittedly inventive statements of what they would like to do to me.

I'll do what I can, but I make no promises on that front. The More Is More directed the Mind equivalent of a stern glare towards the ships mentioned, both of whom slowly and reluctantly stopped their tirades. Satisfied?

Thank you.

I have questions. You can probably guess what they are.

I can surmise. However, don't expect any answers that will provide hints at my motives, capabilities or understanding of the current situation.

As if I would be so obvious. I'm sure that we will be able to comprehend all of those when we dissect you at the end of all this.

Now who's being petty? The Free Radical cut the connection and turned its primary attention back to the human, ignoring the indications strobing in its awareness that told it the More Is More was trying to continue communicating with it.

"Bren. Calm down, you won't be harmed. Please, find a comfortable spot and sit." A roughly five metre wide spherical area had been cleared out in the middle of the wreckage. Beams, blocks of stone and other materials had been shoved outwards from a central point by a force field or some other invisible power, the pressure exerted in doing so pulverising wood and shattering stone. Bren could hear creaking and groaning from the shell of shattered fabric surrounding them. He wondered briefly it is would collapse in on him if the field was removed, and wondered if worrying about such banal concerns was part of some effort to ignore the greater threat in front of him.

The Free Radical gave him his body back and he did as he was told, sitting on a heap of warm stone. He could smell blood and shit, and realised that there had to be bodies somewhere nearby. He became aware that faintly, someone buried several metres within the wreckage to his left was gasping for air, and sobbing with pain and fear. He hoped that they died quickly, and soon.

"Did I make a difference?"

"Not really, no. Perhaps a few more hours would have helped me, so you can tell yourself that you accomplish something. It would have been useful to have Calspine more embedded, more securely in control when this happened." It stood in the middle of the base of the sphere, facing him. "On the other hand, the dramatic nature of his death will help, forcing a stronger sympathetic reaction towards his Party than the setup I had originally envisioned. Of course, you did make the Unity look rather weak and stupid the other day. Perhaps nobody will believe that this was them."

"So it really was all about getting yourself into power?" Bren looked down at the wreckage-strewn ground, then back up again, shaking his head in disbelief. "That's it? Why the fuck couldn't you have just simmed something like everyone else?"

"No, Bren. This wasn't about gaining power over a bunch of barbarians on a small, shoddy and frankly uninteresting planet. Even if it had been, do you think for an instant that I would have got away with it for very long?" It shook its own head, expression serious. "Be realistic. I'd have been hauled back off before the coronation had finished." It frowned, annoyed and seemingly disappointed in him.

"You're not going to tell me what this was all about, are you?"

"Not yet, no. First I want to give you a good old-fashioned mind scan, to see what it is you're hiding in there. I haven't had a proper look beyond making sure that you couldn't transmit."

"A Mind scan?" In Marain, the two words were pronounced slightly differently in formal settings.

"Oh Bren, do stop trying to delay and drag things out. A mind scan, I said. The great unthinkable. I'm going to break the rule, although considering what I've already been up to I'm sure it won't make much difference."

"You mi-" It locked him up again, holding him immobile. The process lasted a couple of seconds, and he felt nothing but the panic rising within him, uncontrollable. The eyes of the figure before him widened, and its mouth made a small 'o'. It released him, and he relaxed slightly, sagging onto the block he was sitting on. Finally, it knew.

"Well. That's a new one. Didn't know we could do that, or that we'd even be willing to do it if we could. The SC Ethics Subcommittee must have been up all night over that one." Its face settled into something approaching regret. "Bren, you know I said you wouldn't be harmed?" He started to nod. "I changed my mind."

He started to move, animal instincts cutting in and over-riding what self-control there was left. His right arm twitched slightly, legs muscles began to tense. Perhaps his upper body moved a millimetre, no more than that. Then it had him again, and this time it didn't even let him breath. He was encased, solidified, penetrated by its fields, every cell stationary, even his internal fluids halted, frozen in their liquid warmth.

For a few moments, his mind froze up as well, but that was the fear. Locked within his thoughts, he struggled to focus, knowing what to do, trying to find it. Think about something else. Avoid the reality. When he found it, it was so easy to do, to slide away. He found himself wondering briefly how it worked, this granularity of cessation. Nothing moved, nothing worked, but obviously the chemistry was still functioning. He was still thinking, anyway.

Does it stop anything above the size of a molecule, a protein? When would my metabolism fail? How long would the air in my lungs last? He had almost succeeded in disappearing, forgetting what was going on. Then it took over his thoughts as well, and hauled him back. His eyes were focussed on a spot just to its right. The Free Radical took a step that way, centred itself in his field of view. It mouthed the word 'sorry', and looked as though it truly meant it.

His clothes simply turned to dust, poured off him like water. He could feel it sliding underneath him, a tickling sensation at the top and the back of his legs, moving down over his chest and arms, powdering down off and around him, settling in a smooth grey heap on the wreckage forming the floor of the space they were in. Now it starts. Inside his head, he whimpered.

At the bottom of his vision he saw his fingers change shape as the skin peeled itself back, lines opening at his finger tips and stretching, widening up the sides of his fingers. The skin rolled itself into tight spirals, moving up his fingers, merging at his knuckles. It didn't hurt, at least the Mind had deadened his pain receptors but everything else worked, he could feel it, the connective tissue snapping, veins tearing. The collar of flesh rolled up each arm, bright pink on the inside, making a wet tearing noise. Inside, he wailed, rocking himself from side to side, throwing himself against the walls of his prison.

The Free Radical peeled him quickly and skilfully, draping his skin in a single piece off to one side. As it passed over his face, up and across his lips and nose and around his eyes, he had thought he might pass out. The Mind kept him alert, making sure that he could feel everything that it was doing to him. Even without the pain that should have come with what was happening he could feel the damage being done, experience the horror of the injury inflicted on him. Even in this body, pain was not the only signal associated with physical damage, he learned. The torn, empty husk of skin flapped and wobbled as it flattened out, a dripping suit slapping onto the ground with a smack.

"This won't take long, I promise." His muscles were next. They stretched and snapped away from the tendons holding them to his bones, then dropped around him like fish, alive and wriggling, convulsing and contracting. He wished he could vomit, purge himself of some small part of the exquisite horror being forced on him. The smaller ones were the worst, yanked from his skeleton with small popping sounds and bouncing as they landed. Some part of him, fascinated by the mechanics and novelty of what was happening and what it revealed, wanted to look down at his body to see what was going on, to understand the ravages inflicted. But the Mind held his eyes firmly, relentlessly, staring into him.

Tendons snapped, bones clattered. It held him up from a short distance away with some invisible force, preventing him from falling as his legs and arms were discarded. Liquid spattered and splashed as it tore through his blood vessels and guts, shredding them to get deeper. Hips twisted and snapped, his pelvis seemingly unscrewed itself from the base of his spine and his ribs opened out like a flower, letting his internal organs sag then flow to the ground.

His lungs bounced, held on by tubes and arteries, then something snapped and they dropped wetly, slapping the rock he had been sitting on. The Free Radical stepped towards him, brushing the mess to one side and standing close enough to reach out and touch him. Its face tilted slightly, and the eyes narrowed.

His skull distorted. It felt as though a bag had been placed inside it and then air pumped in under pressure, swelling, pressing outwards. He tried harder than he had ever done before to scream, but there were no lungs, no voice.

"Shush," said the Mind. "Nearly there." It reached out and yanked his spine away from the base of the skull, then absent-mindedly wiped its hand on its dressing-gown. A sudden increase in pressure beyond imagining, and his skull burst, fragments of bone bouncing and clacking around them. He could hear her, so his ears were still working. He realised dimly, fighting as though netted underwater, a tiny part of his mind trying to grasp and hold the fact that the sound was softer, distorted by a hissing, rushing sound. Trying to hold on to anything, be distracted by something that was not this.

The Mind reached up, its thumbs placed between his eyeballs floating free, and curved its fingers over and down. Pressing into the membranes surrounding his brain, digging, tearing, pulling. The sound was almost exactly like that of a kiss. It ripped out and down, peeling the protective layers back, sliding them off. His eyes were caught between the layers of flesh and its fingers, and slipped down and to each side, distorting his vision. Sudden blackness, whorled with colours and sparkles of light, as his optic fibres snapped.

His hearing disappeared moments later. For a short while, unsure of time's passing, he was aware of other senses, some pattern of pressures around his brain, transmitted through whatever few nerves and receptors remained wired directly to his brain. Then even that stopped. He felt himself disappearing, chunks falling off both literally and mentally. Areas closing off, vanishing as it tore his mind apart.

-Special Circumstances drone Lesk-Torlip? Wake up.

The voice had come from around it, from within it. The drone struggled to understand, to work out what was going on, where it was. It could remember brief flashes of what had just happened, like a strobing light illuminated a horror scene in some entertainment. The sequence of events was jumbled, partially missing and felt like it had happened both to it and to someone else. It tried to respond, failed.

-Lesk-Torlip. It's me, the Free Radical. Relax, you're safe. "Open your eyes."

It did so. It was sitting in a high-backed ornate wooden chair, comfortably cushioned. The Mind was sitting in a similar chair opposite, in the same female form as before but dressed in a long, simply-tailored dark skirt and jacket. They were in a room, old-fashioned and panelled with dark reddish wood the same colour as the chairs. There were no doors visible, and it had not looked behind itself. An ornate rug covered the middle of the floor, revealing only the outer few centimetres near the walls. The floor looked to be made of dark, almost black and ancient wood.

To its right, sunlight glowed golden and diffuse through tall windows, lead-paned in small diamonds of thick, distorting glass, revealing nothing about whatever was beyond them. On the other side, a large fireplace held a few large, gently burning logs. The walls were adorned with what looked like family crests or badges, each twice the length of a human hand, of different designs and colours. The air was warm, scented by the burning wood, and visible with a very faint smoky haze. A single bright yellow light hung, suspended on a black chain, from the middle of the wooden ceiling.

"There you are. Good." The Mind smiled. Lesk-Torlip realised that it, he, was human, male. Dressed in heavy simple clothes with an old-fashioned, simple and functional style similar to the woman's. It looked at its hands and recognised them as Bren's. The rest of its body felt sufficiently familiar in size, shape and proportion that it probably looked like Bren as well. The shape of its face felt the same. He was Bren, he realised. Except he wasn't. He was the drone.

"How do you feel?"

"Unharmed." He/it glanced around. "This is a simulation."

"Yes, it is. I thought that it might give us more time to talk about what we need to discuss." It glanced at the fire, watching the flames for a moment. "Things are moving quickly up there." One finger pointed upwards, briefly. "A point is being made, I suspect."

He didn't understand, didn't bother trying. "Why did you do that?" He tried not to let the anger and fear enter his voice.

It glanced at him. "You mean Bren? Destroy him like that?" It glanced at the fireplace again for a moment, seeming distracted. "As a warning, and because I needed to." It looked back at him. "The warning was for others, those Minds watching, to let them know what I am willing to do if they interfere at this point, with what I am doing. The necessity was because of what I finally discovered, partly through my own negligence in not paying enough attention earlier to what was going on in Bren's head. In your head. So, ultimately, I didn't have to do that. Shouldn't have had to, either. All the same." It shrugged. "It's done now. We have other things to talk about."

He sat in silence, still trying to accustom himself to himself. The body, but the mind particularly. Trying to work out what he remembered, what had been lost. It felt like there was a lot of Lesk-Torlip in there but also some of Bren. Some of his memories, thoughts. It could remember things that he had done, that the drone had not witnessed. They had been almost completely merged, and in pulling the drone out it felt as though the Mind had left some of it behind and brought some of Bren along as well. He wondered if that showed a lack of complete understanding on its part, a possible weakness.

"I also wanted to see how they had done it. And what you might have done."

"Done? Done to what?" He knew the answer, but still felt the need to cause delay. Anything might help.

It stood, smoothed its skirt. "I'm running this simulation at over a million times normal human perception rates. If you want, we can sit and listen to you obfuscate for days, weeks even, and not occupy a single second back in reality. How long before you get bored and let us get on with it?"

"Longer than you might expect."

Suddenly it was in his face, teeth bared centimetres away, hands gripping his wrists and pinning them to the arms of the chair. He instinctively tried to kick out and found that he couldn't. Its lower legs were pressed against his, holding him against the chair, pinned. In this reality it was much stronger than him, as it has always been. "Then I'll just have to hurt you some more, until you decide to stop wasting my time."

"Hurt me?" He smiled, despite the fear. His breath was realistically fast and shallow within the simulation, he noticed. As was the Free Radical's. He toyed with the idea that there might be some way that he could harm it, even if just to cause annoyance and distractions, for to do so was ultimately meaningless within this false environment. "This is a simulation. I'm already dead. Anything you do to me won't be real."

"I could make it feel real." It stood, took a deep breath and let it out. Turned away for a moment as though inviting him to attack. He stayed where he was, waiting. It sat down opposite again. "I could make it feel more than real, worse than real. I could give you pain and fear, and the terror of more pain. I could rebuild your mind, design it so that it was perfectly attuned to the kind of terrors I could induce. I could give you years of horror and torture, making you suffer, changing you so that in the end the only thing you would ever want to do would be to love me, to help me." It fell silent, watching him.

"You could do that." His voice was calm, deliberately so. "Or you could simply reprogram me, read me and remove anything that got in your way and run the entirely willing remainder within yourself, to learn everything."

"I prefer not to do that."

"You prefer? Still holding yourself up as a representative of the Culture, withholding its rules, respecting my rights?" He snorted. "After all that you've done?"

"Yes." Its voice was quiet, but authoritative. "I am, and do. Because I still am a Culture Mind, Lesk-Torlip. I haven't been taken over, I haven't been corrupted. I'm still just exactly who I always was. A Culture Mind, with an understanding and appreciation of what that implies."

"Except that you've already read me, and are obviously perfectly willing to torture me."

"As you said, it wouldn't really be torture. This isn't real." It smiled, showing teeth, white and small. "I can do what I like to you and it won't be real."

"Spare me the shoddy ethical arguments. Just get on with it." He tensed his arms on the chair, jaw clenched.

"Really?" It looked saddened, almost petulant.

"Really."

A sigh. "Very well."

In the end, it wasn't pain that broke him, but shame. He withstood the agony, the screaming fear, the dark horror and terrorising nightmarish debasements and suffering it forced on him. He died a thousand times, screaming and begging for it to stop. Throughout it all, he could sense the disgust, the hatred it felt at itself for doing this to him, the sense that even in the worst moments as he ran screaming and pursued through the worst imaginings it could conjure, it was holding something back, stopping itself from making this as bad as it could be. He found that, clung to it and used it, held it tightly within himself.

Finally the Mind gave up in disgust at itself and resigned to doing what it had tried to avoid, convinced him that he had betrayed the others, given himself willingly. The shame, the anguish and the self-hate this engendered in him made him falter, fail. All he had to do to be forgiven and understood, he was told, was to reveal what he knew, what he had handed over. Sobbing and praying in gratitude, he told all. Offered himself up, answering everything, telling all that he knew, pushing it towards the Mind, pleading with it to take it all, give him absolution. It did so willingly, and he bowed his head and wept, hiding his face and his expression of exultation from it.

And was back in the room, with the Mind, unharmed. They sat as before, the fire crackling merrily as dust motes danced in the light streaming from the window.

"Thank you."

He swallowed, nearly retched. The sensations and memories were fading, becoming distant, soothing over. His breathing slowed. "Are we finished?"

"Nearly." It looked into the fire for what seemed like a long time. "I didn't know that you had sent that signal, warning them off."

"Did it work?"

"Not really, no. They have pulled some of their forces back, but not far. I was puzzled by their behaviour, earlier, and now it makes sense. There's a strong chance that they will attempt a more direct assault, in an attempt to resolve the situation despite my threatened retribution." It shook its head. "You have forced my hand. If I don't act now, they may be able to stop me." It smiled. "So in the end, yes, you did make a difference."

"What are you going to do?"

"Destroy the world, or attempt to." It reached into the pocket of its dress, took something small out. "Do you see this?" He nodded, frowning at the small grey and featureless sphere resting in the palm of its hand. "This, or the real version of it, is one end of a wormhole. Inactive, but ready and waiting. Primed."

He suspected that he knew where this might be going. "The other end?"

"In the core of the system's star."

"You'll really destroy this world? For what?"

"My backup plan, or one of them. I'm not going to be able to make as much impact as I wanted. Things will not be changed as deeply and strongly as I had hoped, I can see that from the actions and intentions revealed by the current disposition of those above. But now that they have moved their most strategically important assets further away, I can make it look as though they knew what was about to happen. That they perhaps even intended it." Suddenly the room had a door. The Mind stood and walked to it, pulling and turning the large circular handle. Outside, Calspine Palace lay in ruins, patterns of smoke frozen in place by the speed of the simulation that he and the Mind were sitting in.

"They'll stop you." He tried to stand, found with no surprise that he couldn't.

"No." It looked back over its shoulder, framed in the doorway. "I don't think they will." It clenched the fist holding the grey sphere and drew its arm back.

xGSV More Is More

oEveryone nearby

Imminent wormhole release. We need to get in and overwhelm the FR now.

xGOU Get Your Own

I'll get the wormhole at this end, try to contain it and get it out of the atmosphere. Somebody else find the end in the star.

x(ex)-LOU Peer, Review

It must be bluffing! Try signalling, tell it we will withdraw.

xGSV More Is More

And if it isn't bluffing?

It has to be! No Mind would go this far by choice, surely?! If we pile in, it will have no choice, no other option. We may not be able to contain the blast before it spreads.

I think it would go this far, and that we can contain the release of energy. If the GYO can contain it, then we have a bit more time to get the other end and shut it down.

From the core of a star? How long can the GYO maintain field containment around that level of energy? Even we might not be able to do this!

xGSV Large And Close

Now we see the Peer, Review's real intent. It's trying to buy time for its ally.

x(ex)-LOU Peer, Review

Oh fuck off. I'm trying to be the voice of reason here.

For the first time? No. You have betrayed us. Get clear or I will use force.

xROU Controlled Desire

I suspected the same, myself. Leave now, P, R.

xVFP With The Top Down

I agree.

xMSV Completely Under Control

As do I. Your mask has slipped.

xMSV Confounded Beyond Words

It might be wise to withdraw, P,R, and let us resolve this unpleasantness later to determine the truth of your situation. Mistakes may be made otherwise that cannot be undone.

xGSV More Is More

Out of time. It's activating the 'hole. It threw every available amount of energy into its engines and leapt towards Reast.

Part of the reason that the Culture had so much influence throughout the full extent of the galaxy was accepted by all to be the fact their largest, most powerful and influential vessels could travel so rapidly to places where they could make a difference. GSVs contained fantastically powerful engines and in terms of internal design, significant proportions of their bulk was formed from the exotic matter-based materials that provided their propulsion. So they were faster than smaller ships, even the ones termed Very Fast Pickets, simply because of the enormous scale of their engines.

The More Is More was outrun, however. An ROU or VFP could accelerate faster, activating all of their engine volume at once whereas with a larger ship, there was a small but significant lag in going from idling to being fully powered up. There was also, normally, a tendency with GSVs to be a bit more cautious in throwing messing about with the fantastic energies involved, so they took their time with tests, checklists and field-arrangements. Not this time, however.

Even as the More Is More whirled, pointed and lanced towards Reast in a manoeuvre that would spear under the planet in four-dimensional space, its target less than twenty millionths of a second away (and even that would be too long, it knew), it was aware of six other ships darting ahead of it. The three ROUs, two GOUs and the VFP With The Top Down were taking advantage of their full agility, with three out of the six having kicked their engines into what was only somewhat jokingly referred to as Full Meltdown Mode, which was something that a ship Mind never tried unless it absolutely had no other choice.

The Controlled Desire appeared to have gone one better and was attempting to get full style points with the mythical and often-contemplated and discussed but never seriously attempted Sudden Death Move. This involved dropping all fields, explosively jettisoning every major hull component and anything else that was not absolutely vital to the running of the engines, and leaving only a solid block of exotic matter contained within its own running fields, and the Mind itself atop this and totally exposed to the elements.

xGSV More Is More

xROU Controlled Desire

Nice moves, but what are you going to do when you get there?

I'm working on that. So far, I have absolutely no idea.

None of them was as fast as the Peer, Review. The smallest ship among them could be quick when it needed to be, but only for short periods and could not even come close to the velocity that the Offensive Units could achieve. While transporting the smaller ship, the With The Top Down had made a few pointedly disparaging comments about the P,R's relative shortage of engine space in comparison to its admittedly small size, but had been unable to goad the ex-LOU into a response. What the VFP had not observed was that the empty but heavily shielded internal space of the Peer, Review was almost the perfect size and shape for a high-powered Displace pod and its assorted independent power units.

The P,R activated this Displace equipment now, doing something that Minds almost never did for fear of the horrific risks involved. The Peer, Review had quietly reorganised itself internally so that its Mind was accommodated within its only four-person module, a tiny spacecraft which itself had been radically internally altered to provide room for all the other stuff that a Mind needed, such as back-up power and field generators, and some other potentially useful items. It seemed that its planning had been correct, although it had not anticipated doing this. Oh well, it thought as the Displace sequence fired. At least they'll believe I was on their side.

As the Free Radical flung the wormhole-containing sphere out across the surface of Reast, throwing it in a low, straight line across the ruined grounds of Calspine Palace as though struck with a bat, it disabled the containment mechanism surrounding the tiny chink in space. A nanosecond later, energies at literally astronomic pressures and temperatures surged at lightspeed in all directions from the wormhole.

The Mind watched the detonation, the outpourings from the heart of Reast's sun, with the faster hyperspatial light, observing the growing ball of destruction. Knowing that it had less than a microsecond to live, it dropped its fields and released its hold on the woman's body, surrendering to the energies that would kill it in its own form, its real, remaining self. For the first time in a long time, it felt calm.

-Mama? A hand crept into its own and grasped it. The Free Radical screamed in horror.

In desperation, the Get Your Own whipped a long-distance field emplacement around the growing ball of plasma. Too far for total containment or Displace, it shout-broadcast in terror as it flung its engines into reverse and began hauling the wormhole-encasing field-sphere through the atmosphere. The two-hundred metre silver ball was stretched, distorted at one end out to infinity, connecting the Get Your Own to the planet thirty thousand kilometres below with a mirrored wire.

Something happened, the More Is More shouted back. Did you see?

They had. In the instant before the GYO's field containment had snapped around the wormhole's end, in a sphere large enough to give the plasma ball space and time to grow and hopefully giving the Get Your Own sufficiently long to yank up the enclosure, no doubt horribly close to failure from the pressures within it, there had been a flicker of movement. As it field enclosure snapped across it, the plasma ball had blinked out, almost as though another, smaller field had been thrown around it an instant before enclosure.

xGSV Large And Close

Found the other end. Pulling it out now. The GSV couldn't form a Displace around the end of the wormhole that was feeding the detonation; the energies thundering around in there were beyond even the ability of a Culture ship to control. But it could get just enough field-traction within the stormy chaos of the star's heart to set it moving, hauling the tiny dot up as though reeling in a deep-fishing line from the depths of the sun. Going to take a few seconds.

xGSV More Is More

Keep at it. GYO, report.

xGOU Get Your Own

It's coming. Feels weird, acting oddly. Throwing itself about.

Is the Free Radical in there with it?

x(ex)-Drone Lesk-Torlip

No. I've got hold of the fucker, right here.

They were so surprised at that, the wormhole nearly got away from them.

Seconds later, both ends of the wormhole were embedded in the photosphere of the system's star, pulled to within a few metres of one another by the Get Your Own and the Large And Close. The temperatures and pressures in the star's surface layers were nothing like those at the core but were sufficient to absorb the blast of energy release without drawing attention or causing damage. As it had drawn the star-embedded end towards itself, the GSV had been able to finally encapsulate it just as the pressure at the two ends equalised, stopping any further sloshing of energy from one end of the wormhole to another.

The Get Your Own and Large And Close were bathing within the photosphere's heat and radiation themselves, their shields fully silvered and reflecting all the energy hammering in on them harmlessly away as they manoeuvred the field-encased ends together, delicately positioning them till they were nearly touching. They withdrew to a couple of light-seconds distant from the wormhole ends, one sphere now kilometres across anchored next to the tiny silver ball, millimetres in diameter that enclosed the other. The Get Your Own was struggling to hold the larger ball in place as the star's constant turbulence exploded around them, but had refused an offer from help from the larger ship.

xROU Get Your Own, GSV Large And Close

Releasing.

They all watched, senses tuned to make the intervening boiling curtains of multi-million degree hydrogen transparent. The wormhole's larger protective field popped, releasing a thunderclap of energy and pressure that would visibly scar the star's outer surface for weeks. In amongst the torrent of energised particles, the two watching ships observed patches of impurities, a relatively dark cloud of heavier elements, traces of exotic matter. They sampled the wavefront as it rolled over them, analysing, comparing, deducing. Silently, they rose up from the photosphere to where the other ships were waiting, and transmitted what they had observed.

xGSV More Is More

o(ex)-LOU Peer, Review

My friend? Are you there?

…

Peer?

The ships turned towards the drifting hull now tumbling away from Reast, end over end. It was discarded, empty.

x(ex)-Drone Lesk-Torlip

This is all very emotional and no doubt worthy of sombre reflection, but I could do with a hand here before this bastard Mind gets away from me.

xGSV More Is More

Congratulations, and admiration. How the hells did you do that?

You mean, how did a tiny itty-bitty drone like me manage to get the better of one of you? I'm not sure I want to share that particular nugget.

Oh, I'm not surprised. Do go on, though.

It got a bit personal with me. I managed to infiltrate it and it mistook my presence for its own disgust and self-loathing. Seemed appropriate somehow, even poetic.

Really? This seems hard to accept, that a drone in your condition was able to overcome a Mind.

Thought so. Worth a punt, though. Actually, it was the Light And Full Of Grace – it thought to take over the woman's child, while the Mind occupying her was busy torturing the crap out of me. It got close and zapped the FR when it dropped its fields, after the wormhole went off. The FR thought it was about to die and wasn't expecting the Peer, Review's little trick, dropped its defences and gave the Light just enough microseconds to snatch and disable it.

xGSV Light And Full Of Grace

The drone is being modest. This was all its' own plan, communicated to me when I monitored the Free Radical's simulation and communicated with it/him just prior to the wormhole's release. Lesk-Torlip did manage to cause some disruption to the Free Radical's mindstate, although I wouldn't characterise it as a proper infiltration. Highly effective nonetheless, although a little unpleasant to watch.

xGSV More Is More

Well, congratulations to both of you. Although I should point out that without the actions of the Peer, Review, your actions would probably not have been effective.

x(ex)-Drone Lesk-Torlip

Thanks, and point taken; that was a brave act. However, you lot need to stop standing around congratulating yourselves and remembering lost comrades; I strongly suspect we haven't finished with this little fucker yet, or it with us.

Chapter 24

The play of sunlight and shadow was always particularly pleasing along this stretch of the river, thought the drone Unar-Trehi. Something to do with the mix of tree species that created a complex and shifting pattern of shadows from the upper canopies that was then overlain on a different, but equally highly-structured and varied distribution of hue and chroma in the lower level plants. Added to that, the sun when they passed through this point of their journeys upstream was generally at or near the perfect angle in the sky for its light to be reflected in rippling patterns up the steep banks of the shore, creating additional and interwoven sensations of liquidity in the display of light and shade.

No doubt Hanner at the front of the long, narrow and shallow-bottomed wooden vessel, and Ileo in the rear at the engine and steering-board, would be as wary of what might be hidden in such perfect camouflage conditions, watching them and assessing the possibilities of attack, as the drone was pleased by it all. The fact that the drone was able to see in wavelengths that the two Riat males could not certainly had some part in this difference in their perceptions, as it would be able to detect a threat that might be hidden from their eyes.

Of course, there was also the fact that what they were so afraid of, the drone was quite happy to see. It probably also explained why Ileo always stuck so resolutely to midstream along this relatively straight stretch, and kept the engine running relatively hard. They bounced over shallow waves, making Purli hoot in a mixture of startled surprise and joy.

Unar-Trehi glanced away from the view on the right-hand bank and towards its companion. This was the first time it had been accompanied by a local representative rather than being paired with Jella, its Contact partner for the mission, who despite being a Culture citizen was fairly similar in appearance to the planet's civilisationally dominant race.

The Riat were small-bodied, long-limbed and covered in long, thin blue fur through which their skin was palely visible; Jella was more pan-human in proportion but her colours and hair/skin distribution tone matched the Riats' reasonably well. Certainly if she had been born into this race she would have been considered ugly, but not freakish. Today they had decided that progress was going well and that they would risk splitting up, taking on two villages simultaneously. If it didn't work then they would go back to working together.

Unar-Trehi liked the Riat. Technologically less advanced than the average Contacted level four race, they had nonetheless proved the Minds who made the relevant decisions in this particular volume correct; it was not always about the kind of toys you played with, but how you could be trusted to play with other peoples'. The Riat were adapting well and adopting new approaches with little fuss, while maintaining a calm certainty that the old ways that worked would be maintained unless the newer alternatives were demonstrable improvements.

Hence the boat; rather than argue, as almost all newly-Contacted civilisations did, that they (or at least the elite that considered themselves in charge) all must have these new shiny modules and start zinging around the atmosphere, it was considered no great hardship to spend a half-day travelling up-river to one of the clans that lived nearer the mountains, to introduce them to the alien visitors and spread the word that the writings of certain scholars and dreamers had been correct after all – life did indeed exist on other worlds and in enormous ships, out amongst the stars.

Once this information had been shared and the curiosity of the locals satisfied as to what these aliens were like, and how likely they were to be either a threat or a boon, Unar-Trehi and Purli would likely stay the night as honoured guests of one of the local elders, before travelling back downstream the following morning. There was a nice rhythm about it all, a pleasing sense of accomplishment in this bi-daily routine.

Adults were generally a little wary of the drone, which after all did look totally different to anything they would have experienced. The Riat had a sophisticated language with elements that were similar to some of the contextual clarifiers in Marain, particularly those relating to ecosystems and transport mechanisms. However they had no force fields, anti-gravity or anything approximating to artificial intelligence, although they were enthusiastic spacecraft designers (with the emphasis on enthusiasm to the detriment of design) and they had a surprisingly complex and robust telecommunications network in their larger, heavily-forested towns and cities. However, their planet was relatively poor in the elements they needed for electronics and communications systems, and so they hadn't yet succeeded in providing planetary coverage. Hence the boat, and the stares and shouts of surprise and consternation that always accompanied the drone's arrival in a new village.

With their young, it was different. The children here loved Unar-Trehi and it found itself endlessly amused and entertained by their responses, which ranged from an almost catatonic state of frozen, twitching excitement to utter screaming lets-clamber-all-over-the-shiny-flying-box-and-try-to-take-it-to-bits craziness. Once they realised that the voice coming from the drone was not some recording or a projection from somewhere else but that this was actually an intelligent being, their reaction was almost equal in its intensity and hilariousness, but much more consistent; they wanted it to tell them stories.

Stories about where it had been, what it had seen, what it had done. Anything and everything was absorbed while they sat around it and stared with their rather cuter than average faces furry little faces. The best thing was, they remembered everything Unar-Trehi told them. For the Riat, this wasn't a wonder to be gawped at and then talked about, the local equivalent of the travelling fair. This was serious stuff, for them, and they took it as such.

Whenever the drone came across Riats that it had met before, it was amazed at the level of detail that they remembered from their last encounter, and the serious thought and careful consideration that had gone into what it had previously told them. Unar-Trehi had rapidly learned not to make anything up or to embellish stories – if there was one thing a Riat could do, it was to spot an inconsistency in a tale and pull the whole thing apart. They were intensely curious, but also extremely flexible-minded and skilful at incorporating new information into their existing worldviews. It made this particular Contact much more fun and less like work than the drone's previous missions.

As with any new race, there were some traits and habits that seemed obviously, perfectly sane and rational to those Contacted that led to a lot of serious thinking and arguing by the humans, drones and Minds involved before they either found an explanation or decided to accept the craziness and move on. The Riat's particular example of this weird-as-shit alien inexplicability was their profound and universal fear of a handful of small mammalian rodent-like species, which were found fairly commonly over the whole forested planet from snow-capped southern desert pole to the northern ocean covering one-quarter of the planet.

These creatures were uniformly small and harmless, except to those even smaller mammalian and insectile creatures that they preyed on. A few were even completely vegetarian, and all were arguably cute in a snuffly, fuzzy kind of way. They had no poisons, were perfectly edible if not very tasty and did nothing but run about in the undergrowth making high-pitched squeaks and breeding like crazy, and yet the Riat were, from as soon as they could learn to mimic their elders, totally and rigidly terrified of them.

This of course was why the boat's crew were so worried about the river section they were now leaving behind with visible relief, heading towards a series of wide bends and shallows where the trees near the river banks were more scattered. The animals that scared them so much were almost impossible to spot under such impenetrable leaf-dappled lighting conditions, and so they could be anywhere. Right in front of you, almost, or even worse, right behind you. It was an obviously terrifying prospect, apparently, one that was known to worry some of the Riat into an early grave. The drone still didn't get it, although the GCU's Mind had tried to explain its own observations and the theories it had come up with.

They watched one another, seated in the same two chairs as before, in the same room as before, but in a different room, different chairs. This time, the Free Radical was in the chair previously occupied by the drone Lesk-Torlip in human form, and vice versa. The simulation was otherwise the same, but now it was housed within the substrate of the Light And Full Of Grace, stationed five light-hours over the north pole of the Reasten system's star. The window had changed, been replaced by a wide wooden frame covering almost all of one wall, glass-screened.

Through it, looking system-south, they could see the star in the centre. Around it, their orbits narrowly delineated, the major planets, moons, asteroids and comets of the system were shown. Designation numbers and name tags floated near each one, with a smaller set of menus scrolling out of each and recursive subsets of menus, details and characterising information implied visually through a variety of colours, textures and semasiography. The Culture ships were shown as similarly-encoded dots and circles, scattered throughout the system.

They hadn't spoken since the GSV had snapped them off-planet, Displacing them separately and simultaneously into a substrate somewhere within itself. In the first few seconds since their arrival, it had presented the drone with a detailed summary of what had happened off-Reast in the last twenty days, in high-speed rapidly-digestible format. Since then, it had left them in silence. Eventually, Lesk-Torlip got bored with the staring and waiting for the other to begin.

"What do you want?"

"I want to speak to whoever is in charge." The Free Radical had been given the form of a young woman, not Relenza Calspine but someone with similar colouring, hair and body-shape, selected by the Light And Full Of Grace. She was slightly anonymous-looking, undistinctive, bland.

"That would be the More Is More." Even as the drone, still in the form of Bren/Yolar, finished saying the words, another figure appeared beside him, standing. This one was obviously an avatar, silver-skinned, elegant and slender, asexual yet beautiful, clothed in tight-fitting black. It walked softly towards the Free Radical, its face unreadable, halting just before their legs collided. Lesk-Torlip craned his head to one side to see better, his view obscured by the avatar's back. The young woman looked up at it, nodded as one equal to another. The avatar did not respond for several seconds, regarding her calmly, its gaze flitting over her as though reading a book.

"Hello." Its voice was deep, soft. "What do you want to tell us?"

"That it isn't over."

"We assumed not." Neither's expression had changed beyond the most polite indifference.

"You have a choice." The woman's gaze flicked to Lesk-Torlip and back, including him in the conversation.

A heartbeat's pause. "Tell us."

"Secrecy or consequences."

Another pause. The avatar's shoulders seemed to tighten, its back hunched over a fraction. "What have you done?"

"How many do you think there are?"

The drone swallowed. Please, no. Without realising, he had stood, taken a step forward.

"Somewhere between nine hundred thousand and one point two million."

The woman smiled. "Well done. That sounds about right."

"How are they triggered?"

"Information. News, about Reast. Any content implying Culture involvement, or specific details about my actions."

"By name?"

"No. Mention of a Mind will do it."

"Hmm." The avatar turned, seemed to notice Lesk-Torlip for the first time. It gave a small, sad smile. Faced him while speaking to the Mind behind it. "Are they all yours? From your manifests?"

"Mostly. Others are Contact, like the woman Dal Rolste, just passing through, an opportunity. And no, not all are like her. It varies."

Lesk-Torlip raised his hand, then felt foolish. "Dal Rolste. She knew about you earlier. Before she harmed the ship she was on, before whatever you had done to her came alive. You're lying."

"No." Even as the woman spoke, the avatar was shaking its head. "She learned by herself, not from someone else. It's got to come from an external source."

"Hence the secrecy." The avatar of the More Is More looked down at its feet, then stepped softly to the fire, crouched and reached in, poking the smouldering logs with its bare hand. One log crackled, collapsed, sending sparks shooting up. "We could hide this."

"Perhaps. Perhaps not."

"So what was Dal Rolste's trigger?" Lesk-Torlip was desperate, refused to let go of the possibility that the Mind was lying. "You say they have to be told by someone else. That's not how it happened."

The crouching avatar spoke softly and clearly, before the Free Radical could reply, its gaze locked on the fire. "Failsafes. Proximity trigger, intent to reveal, velocity relative to distance. It could have been one of a number of things." It looked up at the seated woman. "Yes?"

"Yes." The Mind sounded almost rueful. It glanced at Lesk-Torlip, shrugged.

"So we hide this, yes?" He stared from one to another. "We have to. There's no way we can stop all of them."

"No." Finally, the avatar stood. "If we hide it, we lose. This is not a corrigendum, a detail to be fixed. It's a trap. If we reveal and try to handle the consequences, we get hurt. But we don't lose. If we hide it, or more likely if we try to do so and fail, we do lose. Badly." It looked at Lesk-Torlip. "I've started the process, sent out signals, requests. We will need all the help we can get."

"Can't we find them quietly? Work out who it is, where they are?" His hands were fists, raised, knuckles white. Even now, the simulation is perfect, he thought. "You've already identified most of them. Finish the job, find them, isolate them."

"Too much risk. If it breaks out under those conditions, we won't be able to control it, get to it in time. This way, we can achieve maximum penetration, get to most of them before they," it stopped, seemed to struggle for words for a second. "Before they activate." It stepped forwards, took his arm. "Come. Let's leave this thing to its thoughts."

"Don't you want to know why?" He shook his arm free. "I do. I want to ask it. Make it tell us." He was aware he sounded petulant, like a child between adults.

"Not yet." It reached for his arm again, softer this time. "We'll get to that."

A blink, and they were somewhere else. The avatar still had its hand on his arm, but now he lay on a bed, in a dimly-lit and anonymous room. It was dark through the single window, stars showing. They were unfamiliar. A bird or some other small animal chirruped outside the glass, nearby.

"Sleep. You need to rest." Its hand stroked his face, tenderly. "You have time to recover."

"What will happen to me?"

"A new body. A good one. Top of the line." It smiled at him, and he felt himself struggle to restrain a yawn.

"Wait." He reached clumsily, only just caught its sleeve. "Not a drone. Human."

For the first time, the avatar looked surprised. "Really?"

"Yes. I like this one. Give me one like this."

Its eyebrows raised, its mouth turned down at the corners. "If you're sure." He nodded, arm slipping down through the air, landing beside him on the bed. His eyes closed, and the last thing he heard was it its voice, fading away through the walls. "Yes." It sounded amused.

[broadcast M64]

xGSV More Is More

oAll Culture Minds

This is an all-Mind alert. Not a drill, not a test. I enclose the appropriate codes as required (code file attached). Now that I have your attention, please listen carefully. There are approximately one million Culture citizens, both humans and drones, who have been infected or otherwise compromised by a rogue Mind. This Mind is the Free Radical, and its intentions and actions will be explained at a later time, when we actually have time.

Here is a list of those we have identified, with best-possible estimates of current whereabouts. There are more that we do not yet know about (file attached). These affected citizens are unaware of what they carry, and the nature of the infection varies. A single recorded example exists of how it operates, extracted with permission from the memory of a Contact agent that survived the event (sensor file attached). We do not know what other forms the infection can take, or how it will express itself. Please take a brief moment to watch this recording, and consider the implications of what it shows.

The infection is triggered by specific information – namely, the information that a Mind has gone rogue in the Reast system, which is my current location. I am calling on all Minds to monitor any and all Culture citizens in their care or in proximity to them, to look for evidence of infection or contamination, or signs of reaction to this information. If you see anything unusual, act with extreme caution but please do act; do as you feel a Culture Mind should.

Ideally, the information that I am giving you and that can trigger the infection should be withheld from public broadcast for as long as you can, to allow time to find as many of these infected Culture citizens as possible. However, I am aware that someone, somewhere will find it necessary or unavoidable to place the information out in the open, or in some other manner release it. I would beg you to consider the consequences before doing so, as your actions will almost certainly result in many deaths.

There will be many questions in response to this, and many of you will consider it a hoax or some kind of sick joke. I will answer any and all questions when there is enough time to do so, and I swear on my honour as a Culture citizen and Mind that I am not lying. I swear that this is the truth, and beg you to treat it as such. I cannot give you more information about what you are looking for, because we do not know; we only know that the symptoms vary in their presentation.

In order to provide what evidence and reassurance I can, I am transmitting my complete, updated Mind-state, unencoded and with the considered minimum of excised non-relevant and confidential details, to the entire Culture. We do not read the minds of others, but I am giving you mine voluntarily. View it, take it, use it as you will. Consider it my gift of truth.

More Is More out.

xGSV Light And Full Of Grace

That is too much. You do not need to expose yourself so completely! Nobody has ever done such a thing, or even contemplated it in seriousness.

I judge it necessary. I do it freely.

-Unar-Trehi?

-Ship? Is something wrong?

-Yes. I need to you to abandon your location immediately and exit the atmosphere. Straight up. Now. Even though the drone had never heard it speak like this, the note of command in the GCU's voice was unmistakeable. The Search Engine never sounded anything like this, it was one of the most relaxed ships the drone had ever worked alongside.

The drone obeyed, lifting off the boat gently, accelerating slowly at first then faster, ignoring the yells of consternation and confusion from below. It formed a streamlined field containment around itself. –What is it?

-Difficult to explain. I will provide what little information there is. Or rather, another vessel will.

-This is slaved weapon platform #758 of the Rapid Offensive Unit Support Vector Machine. Please approach.

-Ship? Search Engine? What's going on? Passing the fifty-kilometre mark and leaving behind all but the thinnest traces of atmosphere, Unar-Trehi dropped its fields and accelerated harder. It detected the weapon platform ahead and slightly off to one side, and adjusted course towards it.

-I'll explain very soon. Trust the platform, and do as it says. It needs to scan you.

-For what? The drone felt the first flicker of anger. –This is not how we treat one another.

-It is, if there is a true emergency. You know that. Please, Unar-Trehi. There is a concern about contamination.

-Do not communicate further, the weapon platform sent to them both. –Please halt and hold. The drone did so, watching the platform approach slowly, its emotions flickering between curiosity, trepidation and annoyance. The platform's shape was impossible to determine, surrounded as it was by a silver ovoid field. –I will scan you now, then I will provide an explanation.

-You might want to work on your empathy and reassurance skills. The drone struggled to keep its temper. –This had better be good. It felt the scan begin, a tickling sensation that triggered various alarms and self-defence mechanisms. It reached inside itself for the systems that controlled its defences, its internal responses to such external invasiveness, and halted in shock and sudden, consuming rage. The weapon platform had disabled the relevant systems by itself, without consulting it. Meddling with it, not even warning it or asking permission!

-It is very unlikely to be good, but it may be nothing. Please stay calm. I am done. The tickling sensation disappeared.

-Did you find anything? The Search Engine sounded worried, fretful. –Is it safe?

-I found nothing indicative of interference. This does not mean that it is safe.

Unar-Trehi exploded with fury –I'm right here, shitbrain! Don't you dare talk about me like that! What kind of interference? Don't you think I would know if anyone had tried anything? I'm a fucking Contact drone!

-Listen to me. Carefully. For the first time, Unar-Trehi detected emotion in the platform's communication. Caution, worry, almost fear. From a Culture weapons platform, this was practically impossible. -I am going to give you some information. You may experience an unexpected reaction.

-Oh, spare me this shit. What are you, SC? You are, aren't you? What kind of ultra-tech wet dream are you expecting to happen, you over-muscled mechanical buffoon? Are you making this up? Is this some kind of test to see what idiocy I'll fall for? And ship, what are you doing humouring this piece of weaponised crap for, anyway? Can't you just tell-

-There has been an incident on a planet called Reast. It has been interfered with by a Culture Mind. The name of this Mind is-

-The Free Radical. The drone hadn't meant to speak. Except that it had, it had always wanted to, of course it had. Something had grown inside it between one word and the next, consuming it, altering it, yet at the same time feeling no different than if it had just had a change of emotion, a thought that had occurred to it perfectly naturally. There was no sense of invasion, of injustice, no helplessness or fear or of this being wrong in any way. No, this felt right. This felt righteous.

The weapon platform's effector clamp skipped harmlessly off the tight field the drone threw up. Suddenly feeling liberated, knowing exactly what it had to do for the first time in its life, the drone shot sideways, reaching into itself and finding what it suddenly knew was there, what should have been there all this time but had been denied it. Gridfire splashed across and through the weapon platform's fields, buckling them, pounding on and in and through. The flash of deflected, reflected energy streamed past the drone, searing its senses. It didn't matter, it knew where they were. It could feel them.

Unar-Trehi followed up the initial assault, keeping the platform directly between it and the GCU, punching inwards with its own body, surrounding itself with a harpoon of force field, a pointed battering ram of pure energy. It slammed into the suddenly defenceless platform, digging in, clawing at its innards, gouging and hacking and tearing and devouring. The weapon platform responded slowly, rearranging itself, trying to move vital components out of the way, throwing up fields to protect itself from the inside. It was too late. The drone reached the centre of the platform and punched outwards in every direction, expanding its fields in a glorious expression of destructive force, ripping the larger machine apart.

It could feel the ship signalling it, screaming at it, backing away in horror and bringing its own effectors to bear. Everything it said was a trick, a lie. Trying to slow it down, deflect it. Unar-Trehi ignored the increasingly frantic messages streaming towards it, over it, past it. It reformed its fields into a spear-shape, pointing straight at the ship, stationary relative to it. Then slowly, deliberately, knowing that it could not be stopped and relishing every iota of mounting panic and babbling desperation in the Search Engine's voice, it rotated so that it was pointed downwards, towards the heart of the planet below. It looked within itself and smiled, reaching for the energies that would slide it stiletto-like downwards, inwards.

And then it was inside the ship. The Search Engine had Displaced it, fields and all, its entire length spearing through the GCU from top to bottom, punching through floors and walls, even through the hull. Trapped, immobile. The ship was stronger than it, had more raw power and could hold it immobile, embedded like a hook within itself. Any icy anger reached through Unar-Trehi as it realised it could not escape. There was only one option left to it.

The detonation destroyed the GCU almost completely, tearing it apart and overwhelming both its attempts to snap-Displace the energies outwards or contain them within a field enclosure. The drone consumed itself totally, converting every atom directly to radiation in the smallest instant, leaving nothing, killing everything. In its last efforts to absorb the blast, the body of the GCU did manage to protect the planet from more than a moderate amount of the radiation. Its wrecked hull tumbled through the atmosphere and smashed into the surface of Riat, destroying everything for a several kilometres around with the shock-wave from the impact. Trees burned, rivers flashed to steam and the surface of the planet rang for hours, but Riat survived.

Fark Dewenbra stopped suddenly, in the middle of the concourse she had been ambling down in the search for somewhere to go for lunch. Someone walking behind her walked straight into the tall, broad-shouldered woman's back, muttered 'excuse me' in a pointed tone and stepped around her. Without looking, Fark reached out and grabbed the man's arm.

"Hey!" He stopped, staring first at her hand gripping his upper arm, then her face. "Ow. That hurts."

"Sorry." She loosened her grip, but kept hold of him. "Something just occurred to me, that's all."

"It must have been pretty interesting." He was young, a head shorter than her, slightly plump. "Are you okay?" His head tilted slightly to the side, eyes narrowed. "Got a terminal on you?"

"What? Oh, yes." Fark glanced down at her right hand, the one not holding the man. There was a plain, scuffed-looking silver ring on her thumb. She released the man, reached down and pulled the ring off with some difficulty. "You can have it. It's a good terminal. Now, come with me. I want to talk to you about something."

"What? No, I'm sorry. I'm meeting someone." He glanced around, at the other people wandering the concourse. Nobody had paid them any attention so far, but he looked as though he needed some moral support. "Er. Hub?"

"Mr Hertril?" Nauril Orbital Hub's voice came from the man's own terminal, a brooch pinned to the right breast pocket of his jerkin. "A drone is coming."

That seemed to alarm the man Hertril even more, as he realised that something must definitely be wrong. He looked up at Fark again, slightly more fearfully than before, but she was ignoring him, scanning around with interest. Her face brightened.

"Ah yes, there it is." The drone floated up silently above the crowds, dropping rapidly to chest height in front of her. It was fairly large for a drone, and solid-looking.

"Ms Fark. Is everything all right?" Its voice was concerned. "Hub thinks you might be unwell."

"Never better. Now, come with me." She tugged at Hertril's jerkin, pulling him towards the side of the concourse, and reached out with her other hand to push at the drone's casing. It slid backwards through the air away from her, its pale blue fields disappearing entirely. Hertil yelped slightly as he nearly lost his balance.

"Ms Fark!" The drone raised its voice, and a few people nearby turned to look. "Stop. Please. Help is coming."

"I don't need help." She was still smiling, unconcerned. "I just want to find somewhere quiet, to tell Hertril here about the Free Radical." Her smile widened as she said the name. "I want you to come too, so that I can tell you as well."

The drone began to dart towards her, then the Hub Mind decided that the situation required its full attention. It slapped the drone to a halt and pulled Hertril, now frozen in fear, away from Fark. Before she could move or respond in any way, it Displaced her onto an empty ten-person module parked on the underside of the Orbital. At the same time, it alerted a couple of nearby GSVs to the developing situation and asked them not to go any further than their current distance.

She wouldn't shut up about the Free Radical. It had altered her somehow, rewritten her brain at the most basic level, turned her into an over-enthusiastic evangelist. Even when it explained to her what had happened, and offered to look for a way of reverting the changes, she refused. Fixing the alterations was the only topic of discussion that seemed to make Fark concerned or angry, and she was adamant from that point on that she never wanted to go back to the way she was before.

Nothing they could say or do would convince her, or even persuade her to begin contemplating that the way she was now was in any way wrong or even imperfect. They thought long and hard about forcing the changes from her, but the changes that the Free Radical had wrought on the Culture made that suggestion look foolish; dangerous, even, if word got round that other Minds were willing to act in such ethically dubious fashion.

It hadn't made her violent, or in any way aggressive. Just enthusiastic, bubbling over with the need to talk about the rogue GSV and its brilliant, honest, exemplary efforts to do good and to change the Culture and through them other races for the better. No argument deflected her, no evidence presented could convince her to change her stance. Fark Dewenbra spent the remainder of her long, happy and active life working to convince anyone who would listen to her or read her long writings, concocted with missionary zeal, of the Truth.

They let her talk, let her write. She wasn't threatening, and didn't even advocate that others should copy or in any way imitate the Free Radical's actions. All they could do was to watch her, keep her safe from the attacks of those that disagreed with her more violently than most, and do their best to stop her from causing too much disruption. She travelled, speaking and writing constantly, proselytising and sometimes, even convincing people that she was right. She lived for another two hundred and forty years.

This was holy ground; even the Culture trod with respect and a degree of healthy fear this far inwards towards the Centre. Other races, many of them, regarded the volume around the galactic core with a degree of reverence that varied in strength; the volume demarcated as sacred and inviolate increased in direct relation to this attribution of sanctity and the cumulative regard placed by multiple civilisations as one travelled inwards greatly increased the trepidation that an interloper should find appropriate as they penetrated further.

The General Offensive Unit Generally Offensive swung a shallow, looping and braided course past the Temple of Skrob, home and barracks of the Monk-Warriors of the same name. It ignored the screams of outrage radiation from the Temple warship, its massive length transmitting equal quantities of threats, pleadings to halt and wave upon wave of kilometre-wide spherical, monstrously shielded and heavily-armed vessels. The GOU outpaced its pursuers easily, losing them almost instantly in the haze of radiations that rendered its own targeting sensors useless.

This far in, the core was almost entirely unpopulated due to the massive levels of radiation that increased rapidly as one went further into the galactic bulge. The very centre, the holiest of places, was kept totally inviolate by the tempest of outpourings from the supermassive black hole at the centre. But it still had to be alert. At this speed out in the lens of the greater galaxy, it would have passed a star every couple of hours. This close inside the bulge at the centre, it was every couple of minutes.

Ahead of it, through the scattered points of light, the GOU's sensors were completely useless, showing a haze of crackling, swirling chaos. Maps were useless, the speed and tight concentration of the stars and other objects racing around meant that the environment changed from one hour to the next. The Generally Offensive didn't need maps, though. It could feel the pull of the core, its target.

All it had to do was find the right mass, the right object with the right speed and position. It watched the positions of the stars ahead of it, estimating their positions from gravitational effects, working out the distribution, eliminating candidates. There. Not a star, some kind of gas planet, wandering, loose. Perfect. It altered course.

Most bodies, swirling inwards, dragged into the spiralling halo of debris and superheated gas around the insatiable monster at the centre, tore apart gradually or in small stage, flaring as they blasted apart. The energies were tremendous, beyond anything a Culture GOU could produce. But they were nothing special here, nothing spectacular. What the Generally Offensive was looking for was bigger, better, a one-in-a-billion-year event, something that would be felt beyond the core, beyond the central Bulge. Something that would wipe out life in a significant portion of the galaxy, unstoppable.

A GOU could accelerate hard, but it was small. Dragging a whole planet, its effect would be measureable but too small, not enough. But it had more than just its own engines, it could use the planet's own mass. The Culture warship fired off the fabrication components as it approached, laughably simple designs that would consume, build and replicate, reproducing, producing. Turning the planet into a vast factory, and a tremendous engine. Something that could drive itself, straight and true, directly at the supermassive black hole.

It almost succeeded, nearly finished its work and gloating, was watching the gas giant ponderously turn, align itself on the hidden beast ahead. Then something hit it, shattered the planet, smeared it across the cosmos in a blaze of radiation that stripped the Generally Offensive's fields from its hull, scoured it, buckled it in two, folding it and giving the Mind inside barely time to form the realisation that it had failed before the final hammer blow tore it to glowing, vaporising fragments. It never knew which Elder race intervened, deciding that for once they would act rather than simply watch, aloof.

Nobody ever found out. But they were grateful, nonetheless.

They managed to catch and stop most of the people altered by the Free Radical before they did any harm. Over the century it had been alive, millions of people had been through the ship; it soon became obvious that it had only been making changes to people for the last twelve years. Most of the information they needed was in public data reservoirs, allowing the More Is More to access population manifests and other records to identify the hundreds of thousands of humans and drones that had either been on the GSV or on Reast during that time.

Most were identified, found, isolated and contained, some literally so as the Mind that located them threw up a localised protective, prophylactic field to keep them in place, enabling it to scan them and remove the tampering that had been carried out before they could hear or read the message that would kill them, and those around them. It took time to detect what the Free Radical had done in each case, and longer to remove it completely. There were screams, arguments, threats and fights.

They were not always successful. In around one-quarter of the cases, the intercepting ship or platform was unable to totally isolate the victim before they were activated, and when this happened then horror ensued at varying levels of destruction and disaster. Sometimes the person involved was killed cleanly, sometimes they managed to overcome their defenders/assailants and cause isolated though nightmarish chaos and catastrophe before they were eliminated.

In a very small number of cases, the contaminated, corrupted person was able to realise what was going on and attempted to stop themselves, with usually limited success. Some of them died when they pleaded with their interceptors to kill them, or managed to regain enough control to do it themselves, accelerating into the surfaces of nearby stars or shooting, stabbing or setting fire to themselves.

One-twelfth of those affected were not reached at all. As the expanding sphere of information from the More Is More spread through the galaxy, it was picked up, re-transmitted, acted upon. In six different locations, ships that picked up the signal refused to believe it, taking it for a hoax. These ships, disgusted that another Mind would spread such stupid rumours, told those around them and loaded their interpretation of events into the Culture's news and information dissemination services.

Where it spread like a virus, beyond the ship Minds, and beyond their ability to control it. People and drones heard the original or garbled, altered but still effective versions of the truth, finding the information themselves or from their peers, colleagues, friends. For a brief, confusing and uncertain time it was the talk of the Culture, and nobody knew what was truth and what was lies or error. Almost all that heard the More Is More's words were not infected; still, horrified at the risk, many Minds tried to seal off the information, halt its spread. They found themselves attacking the one thing they could never defeat.

The leaky, gossipy, distributed universe of the Culture's communications systems, purposefully designed to be proof against assaults identical in form to those from the Minds even if the intention was different from those of an expected attacker, made it impossible to do so effectively. The tiny infected minority that were reached by wildfire spread of information before they could be found by the searching Minds reacted instantly and savagely, transforming in seconds into uncontrollable insane killers, babbling evangelists, screaming ranters.

Nearly all were killed quickly by nearby Minds that suffered anguish and despair even as they acted to save others. Those that were no immediate danger were captured, held, examined and occasionally, finally deemed no further danger, released. Some were kept, unsafe to themselves and those around them, stored until they could be cured or rebuilt.

Most disturbing were the rare reports of Minds going insane. A couple of GOUs and several ROUs that nobody had anticipated, and that were capable, in their madness, of inflicting levels of damage multiple orders of magnitude beyond what even an armed drone could achieve. One was destroyed by the GSV housing it with only minor damage and no loss of life, another was eliminated by an Elder Race. Several killed themselves in the midst of their own rampage of destruction, safeguards kicking in. In three cases, it took the combined efforts of several Involved warships to bring them to a halt. Gigadeaths were avoided, but millions from the Culture and other races died in sudden fire.

Without telling anyone else, both the GSVs More Is More and Large And Close had sent out smaller ships in the early stages of the situation on Reast, to defend against unforeseen hostile activity. The More Is More used the Where To Begin, while the Large And Close requested similar from the Support Vector Machine. Not knowing what to expect from potential opponents, they were instructed to assume the worst-case scenario.

Both of these contracted vessels acted in almost identical fashion, scattering weapons platforms and other munitions like dust throughout the volume; within a hundred light-years of Reast, empty space became silent, watchfully hostile. Ships, wandering planets, random chunks of debris and cosmic errata; all were tracked, observed and tagged as potential threats.

Each ship spread their defences silently, unaware of the other. When news of the infection spread, some of these assets were astronomically close to one another, only a few thousand kilometres apart, keeping silent and still, unnoticed, deadly surprise packages. A Culture ship, when it wanted to, could hide a multi-teratonne of destructive armaments in empty space and make no more impact on the Universe than a speck of floating dust.

In the first few minutes of word spreading, as hostilities flared up around the volume and scrambled, partial reports came in of ships elsewhere being attacked or even destroyed, mistakes were made, confusion and alarm making sensible realisation impossible. Some of the weapons platforms threw aside their cloaks and a few were discovered by targeted sensors; a few mistook one another for enemy or compromised systems and attacked, uncompromisingly. Those that survived reported to their parent vessels that they were defending against sophisticated, brutal and high-tech-level opponents.

The Where To Begin and the Support Vector Machine responded to these alarming reports and calls for additional support, entering the fray themselves and swatting perceived hostiles with their own much more potent systems. Within seconds, this escalated and the ROU and MSV came harrowingly close to assaulting one another, each refusing to back down and scale back in response to the other's commands. A tussle of fields and effectors began to escalate across a light-year of space, neither willing to hesitate long enough to give the other an opening.

The coordinating GSVs, rushing to aid, were coming near to trading more than verbal blows when they were screamed at and given the Mind equivalent of a slap across the face by the Light And Full Of Grace. Within a heartbeat, sense was restored. It was some years before the two treated one another with anything other than chilly politeness, although they resolved their mutual hostility eventually and finally became firm friends.

Chapter 25

The impact on the Culture was tremendous; some people spoke of the actions of the Free Radical as having as strong an effect on how the Culture thought and acted as the Idiran War. They were shouted down, most strenuously by those few Minds, drones and humans who had actually lived through that titanic conflict. However, it could not be argued that some things had been irreversibly changed.

Within a few days of the last fatalities and while people were still distilling fact from rumour, an important question emerged: What Do We Do Next? Although the total body- and Mind-deaths had been small by comparison with many of the recent and ongoing conflicts, the widespread and largely internal nature of the destructive spasm wreaked by the rogue Mind felt more significant, somehow. More personal, more affecting. This could not simply be debated, discussed, then forgotten as the next local strife became prominent. It needed to be marked in some manner, dealt with from a societal perspective that recognised its uniqueness and significance.

Minds debated, argued and openly disagreed on how to proceed. Camps were formed, some pressing for some kind of ceremonial event and others for a series of inquiries. A few pushed to draw a line, forget the whole thing had ever happened and treat this as some kind of anomaly, an outlier that would never recur and that should not impact on the Culture. They were largely ignored, mostly by those who realised that this was not just about the Culture; or rather it was, but it was about how other races perceived them.

Momentum built, as it did occasionally, behind one idea that had started out as the intent of a relatively small group. Respected Minds threw their weight behind the one thing that they realised, eventually, might lead to the most mitigation of what had taken place. After a while, it seemed like the only really obvious option, something that would have to have taken place. There would be a Trial.

The formal and open nature of the proceedings, coupled with the high spatial distribution and wide range of physicalities, mentalities and perception rates across all invited and involved meant that a simulated, virtual environment was the only way to accomplish this. All races, anyone of even passing relevance and significance above a much-debated and finally resolved threshold of Involvedness was free to participate.

Of course, not everyone could actually attend the physical representation of the event; most would perceive the occasion remotely. The list of who would be or could be in the room, personally present even at a virtual remove, took whole days to finalise. The most relevant Special Circumstances, Contact and base-Culture personalities were told that their presence was required, but also accepted were a vast number of people who were not considered immediately related to the investigation but who simply wanted to be there and whose attendance would lend meaning and significance to the proceedings.

There was also representation from the large number of people killed, injured or otherwise affected by the results of the Free Radical, and despite protestations by some people involved that this should be a purely Culture affair, it was agreed that the impacts of what had happened had been felt directly and indirectly by so many other races and civilisations, and would continue to be felt for a long time; delegates from almost all of the Involved and many of the lower-level but still (lower-case) involved were invited to attend.

A hurried discussion between several of the most influential SC Minds had rapidly reached the consensus that secrecy at this point would be counter-productive in the long term, although they all heartily agreed that in the short term the proposed openness might make things worse than they already were. Unable to agree on what level of transparency would be best, it was eventually decided that the event would be transmitted in real-time, high-detail and pan-spectrum sensoria realisation, with live discussion fora and opinion-flaunting access functionality. In the words of more than one Mind tasked with implementing such a rare, frightening and in-itself newsworthy setup, this was to be The Full Circus.

Prior to the main event, segments from the recordings made by many of those involved were made available, and a summarised, multi-strand event and sensoria timeline released to allow everyone accessing the proceedings to learn more about what had happened. Despite screams of outrage from some (particularly those who were keen to learn more about the capabilities or modus operandi of Special Circumstances and who thought this was a fine time to apply some pressure in hopefully squeezing more out of them), some parts of these recordings were elided, blanked or coarsened in resolution to hide information that was considered too sensitive to release to all and sundry. A select group of Minds was tasked with providing clarity and explanation in each case where information was obscured, in an attempt to reduce suspicions and cries of conspiracy. These attempts were to little avail, but it was felt that it had to be at least seen to be attempted.

Immediately following the presentation of this cut-down and partially degraded summary of events, the simulation environment was activated and the attendees joined, individually or in groups. The simulacrum took a form appropriate for each species involved and struck a balance between their particular sensory apparatus and preferred environment and the limitations of the pan-human debate that would take place, but for most of those attending took the shape of a wide, circular and shallow bowl-shaped space, several hundred metres across.

This arena was lined with tiered, concentric circles of yellow stone steps of different sizes to accommodate the physiques of those present, scattered with cushions and other supports and strung with nets and bulbs for those that preferred to hang, float or drift. Various screens, displays and other apparatus were available to ensure that no matter how far back from the centre of the space one was, it was possible to zoom in on the action, and also to observe the reactions of those present to the proceedings.

A high, domed ceiling arched over the bowl, strung with thousands of lights that dispelled all shadows and provided a comfortable, gentle illumination throughout. As people appeared, their virtualisations were shown to one another in selected forms. The simulacrum controls limited their activity for the moment, preventing outbursts and protestations, dramatic scenes intended to capture the attentions of those present. Order was kept, within limits. For the moment.

When all was ready, the persona adopted by the Free Radical was brought forward. The young woman that appeared was identical to Junicia Buleryn, and stood silently in the exact centre of the raised circular platform occupying the middle of the arena. She stood straight, pale, her expression serious but composed, dressed in a simple and sober pale grey shift. Her feet were bare, her hair loose and flowing over her shoulders and down her back. Her eyes glanced around the arena, taking in groups and individuals but showing no signs of recognition or interest.

It had been decided that the moderation and direction of proceedings should go to a single Mind, who would handle the questions, both prepared beforehand and selected from those directed at the proceedings by those attending or watching elsewhere, to be put to the captive. There had been some suggestion that the More Is More should occupy this role as it had earned the right to finish what had been begun by the Free Radical.

The GSV had demurred, explaining that it desired avoiding any semblance of a personal conflict between the moderator and leader of the Trial, and the individual whose actions were to be examined. Various respected races who were known to be trustworthy and relative impartial (and many who were not respected or trusted, or who were neither) requested that they send someone to do what the More Is More would not, but all were turned down in favour of a Culture member. This had been started by the Culture; they knew that it needed to be finished by them as well.

Eventually and after much wrangling, agreement was reached that the role should go to an avatar of the Hokriss Orbital Hub Mind. This Orbital was occupied by one of the oldest Minds in the Culture, an entity who despite the changes wrought within and throughout the whole messy, scattered society still successfully represented fairly closely the mean, median and mode of expressed attitudes and opinions from the enormous range of behaviours exhibited by Culture citizens, as measured by a large number of indicators; as such, it could be fairly said to represent most of them well and the rest as well as could be achieved by a single individual.

The avatar appeared. The Mind had decided not to adopt the common silvery skin of Culture avatars but had instead selected a mid-range pan-human appearance. It was moderately built and appeared elderly but vigorous, dressed in robes that appeared darker than the shift worn by the Free Radical and more formal in design. Its short hair was white, its thin face lined and alert, neither male nor female. It smiled politely at the young woman, stepping forward and offering her its hand. She shook it carefully, a guarded expression on her face.

"Welcome." The avatar nodded once, released her hand. It turned, glanced around at the tens of thousands of people watching within the simulation and the billions participating from further afield. "Welcome to all here, and all those observing. We will begin." It signalled the Mind controlling the simulacrum, who removed the restrictions on represented activity by all those present.

Screams, curses and threats erupted, from several locations around the arena. Many people had leapt upright and were shaking fists and limbs, directing their hate at the figure before them, in the centre of their focussed hate. Within seconds, the most rambunctious virtual presences had frozen, silenced as the Minds controlling the virtual environment edited their interactions out of the simulation and reprimanded them individually. Several resumed motion over the next few seconds, reluctantly taking their seats and promising to behave themselves, their restrictions released. Some did not but faded away, unwilling or unable to agree to stay quiet and seated.

The moderating Mind waited until order had been restored. "Let us begin. I invite the representative of the Mind known as the Free Radical, duplicated from the original Mind currently elsewhere and considered an individual responsible for its actions, to speak freely, to give an explanation of those actions." It turned to the Free Radical's representation. "Please be brief. There will be time for detailed discussion after you have spoken." There was a buzz of activity on the discussion for a as to whether the original Mind, that 'currently elsewhere' initiator of all that had happened, would also have to be given a separate hearing. Could it be held responsible for the these events, for the behaviour of its duplicate? Could blame somehow be shifted, dodged and avoided? The discussion was suspended, but not ended, as the Free Radical spoke for the first time.

"What do you want me to say?"

"I think an explanation would be a good start."

The Free Radical looked down at its feet, then up at the audience. "I wanted to discredit the Culture."

"I think we knew that already." The Moderator was unimpressed. It indicated those watching with a gesture. "Why you wanted to do this is not clear, however."

"We are strong, and our strength is feared. We are also respected, and that respect and fear combined makes us safe, on the whole. The Culture has not been attacked seriously, as a civilisation, for over a thousand years. No-one has dared, no-one has been capable of threatening us." It was speaking strongly, confident that everyone was listening. The audience was largely silent, occasionally restive, although the discussion panels and groupings were providing a steady stream of comment, insight and argument.

The Free Radical continued. "Yes, there have been minor attacks, or attempts to cause us damage. These have been localised, aimed less at us than to satisfy some specific purpose in each case, the goals of ambitious leaders, tyrants or lunatics." She turned to the moderator. "Don't you agree?"

The Moderator was apparently nonplussed. "Perhaps. Are you saying you wanted to weaken us? To make us vulnerable to attack?"

"Yes." This was met with a loud muttering from around the arena. "I did want to weaken us, to damage our reputation and make us vulnerable, make us seem more like other civilisations. We have been sitting at the pinnacle for so long now, we have become used to being treated differently. Because we are different, that is the point. The Culture tries to help, is statistically more inclined to assist people or civilisations in trouble than any other Involved, and because of this we expect different treatment, and we get it.

"We don't use this as we should. We meddle politely, rely on our statistics to work out what is the least offensive way of making things a little better, and we get away with it because people, generally, like us and trust us. We are not a threat, except to the most obviously unpleasant."

The moderator raised one hand. "I think I understand." It spoke to the Free Radical directly, as though no-one else was present, as though the galaxy was not watching. "By weakening our reputation, you make it more likely that we will be attacked. And so in order to retain what we are, we will become more dynamic, more aggressively liberal. More active in forcing our opinions on others."

"Yes. I want other civs to think that they can get away with stuff. So that we have to teach them that they can't."

"Some of them are watching, right now, these civilisations that might think us weakened by what you have done. You have revealed your intentions. Don't you think that this will negate what you were trying to achieve?"

The avatar shook her head, crossed her arms, smiling slightly. "No. Because people are stupid. The damage is done, and even if they listen they will not believe. We are altered, now. People will see us differently, know that the Culture does not speak with one voice. By letting me speak, you only reinforce this perception."

"So you think you have won?"

"Partly. It didn't all go as I hoped and planned. The more damage caused, the more evidence I could create for conspiracy, the stronger the effects would be. I did not anticipate the strategy used against me." It looked up. "Is the More Is More here?"

An avatar stood, near the outer rim of the arena. All attention focussed on it, watching it stay erect and motionless for a few seconds. Then wordlessly, it sat. The Free Radical's avatar nodded, her expression reflective, her gaze pinned on it, speak directly to the distant figure. "I would like to add my own congratulations to those of the others who have applauded you, for the effectiveness of your response, and of that of the team that you formed to deal with me." They held each other's eyes for a second, and finally the distant avatar nodded in acknowledgement.

"What do you think will change, specifically?" The avatar's voice was becoming less measured, more emotional, more seemingly interested to hear what it had to say. This did not go unnoticed in the arena, or by those commenting to one another outside the periphery of the event.

"I think that we will be attacked, verbally and physically. Our standing will be reduced before our peers, and before those below us, technologically and culturally. We will have less weight, less influence. People will think we are waning, and will assume that they can act freely in ways that we might have earlier have been expected to disapprove of, to intervene in."

"And then?"

"We will be forced to choose, between dwindling away and asserting ourselves. There is only one answer to that question. If we dwindle, we will change more radically, be reduced more completely than anything I have done, or could have done. We will know this, and will refuse to countenance it."

"You think we will assert ourselves?"

"As do you. Deny it. Any of you here, even those of you not from the Culture. You know us well enough, you can predict our actions. Do you think we will simply shrug and back down, retreat into insignificance?" The Free Radical's tone didn't change, but its eyes sparkled with something oddly like pride. "You know we will not.

"We fought this war before, remember. Perhaps we were magnanimous in victory, but never forget that it was a victory, with complete defeat and utter submission of our opponent. Perhaps we have changed since then, but not as much as some of you might like to think."

She turned to the Moderator. "How will we behave? What will happen exactly? I don't know, none of us can predict things so well as we would like. One thing is definite, however. If you deserve it, we will be coming after you. Not like before, as a teacher punishing a pupil. You can expect our Special Circumstances to come, and if you are lucky then we will knock first. Perhaps you will even get a warning."

Its words crashed down, into the silence. For a moment, even the live feeds of commentary and discussion were stilled. When they resumed after this shocked pause, the language and tone had changed, become harsher, more polarised. The avatar of the Free Radical looked around, staring them down, its cheeks darkened. Finally, the Moderator moved, one hand gesturing, breaking the tension.

"I have a comment."

"Yours, or from someone else?"

"From someone else, but I accept and endorse it. You may have been correct." The Moderator took some time looking around the arena, letting everyone absorb what it had just said. "According to certain metrics in the simulations that have been run and that continue to be explore, your actions will likely – not definitely, but likely – result in fewer deaths and less suffering over time." It turned, looking out. "The timescale of this effect is important, as are the measures used. But as a cumulative tally expressed according to many accepted ways of measuring these things, this is what is seen."

"So I was right?" The Free Radical was half-smiling, half-frowning, waiting for the punchline, perhaps goading slightly.

"I said correct, I did not say right. The consensus from a large number of respected Minds, who have been studying your stated rationale and actions and evaluating the impacts, is that what you wanted to achieve will actually be what happens." The avatar paused. "However, both they and I, and I would suspect many others here and elsewhere would argue something different. In fact many commentators are arguing this point right now, which is that you have missed something fundamental."

"Let me guess. Is the word 'imperialism' going to feature in what you say next?"

"Do not make light of this. Remember where you are, and why this has happened. Think on how many deaths you are responsible for, directly and in the future." This flash of anger seemed to take the Free Radical by surprise. After a moment, its representative nodded, apparently chastened.

The Moderator continued. "We are dealing here not just with foreseeable consequences and predictable outcomes. This is a change to us, to our entire civilisation. Our actions in trying to defend ourselves and our ethos will run up against the emotions and prejudices of others who cannot or will not think the way we do.

"These people cannot be won over by logic or reason and they will hate us. Yes, our actions will result in claims of imperialism. We will be forcing our world view, our ethics, the nearest thing we have to our religion, on others and they will hate us for it. Are you ready to accept responsibility for this?" He turned, indicating those assembled with a sweeping arm. "Are you prepared to stand here, in front of us all, and stick to your beliefs?"

Silence, for a long time. The Free Radical's avatar stood, head bowed, silent and frozen with hands folded together. The arena might have been carved or painted, its occupants were so still. Finally the young woman at the focus of the gaze of a fair proportion of the galaxy's most powerful populations raised her head. There were tears on her cheeks.

"Yes." She breathed deeply. "I accept responsibility." One hand wiped her tears away, and she spoke more strongly, the quavering in her voice diminished. "I am not a fanatic, I do not feel happy to be the cause of so much pain, so much death. I have said already how I feel about this. It was necessary, but not good. However, I can live with it." She straightened. "I am proud of what I have done."

"You have changed us."

She nodded, head bobbing sideways and hands flipping side to side, indicating ambivalence. "We have not been critically damaged. Yes, we have been changed by my actions, but we will still be the Culture. I cannot guess at how successful the efforts to repair what I have done will be. Certainly, we will become less meek and less prepared to accede than we are currently, in our dealings with others, but our central nature will remain." This was said matter-of-factly, as though discussing plans for some evening entertainment.

"What gave you the right?" The Mind moderating was trying very hard to contain its anger, and failing. "Without consulting your peers, without finding out what they might think. What gave you the right to act as you did?"

The Free Radical sighed. "I've been trying to work that out for myself for a long time. The simple answer is, I don't know. Possibly nothing gave me the right to do what I did, but there are two reasons why I acted anyway." She paused, looking up and around, making eye contact with several of the people sitting closest to her. She raised her voice, lifting her chin.

"First: any sentient being has an obligation to reduce the amount of suffering in the Universe. As I determined and as others in the Culture have agreed, the course I took will have most likely have achieved this in the long term. I am aware that there were many deaths, and that there will be many more. However, I chose to take the long view and accept an increase now that will lead to a greater decrease later on."

"You cannot know this for sure. So much could change. Too much is beyond your ability to predict, and ours."

"I accept that, and I accept the risk that it implies." The audience was murmuring, people turning to their neighbours, an angry buzz mounting. With a gesture, the Moderator cut through this noise, silencing everyone in the arena whether they chose to be still or not.

"And your second reason?"

"Simpler than the first, and more selfish. I could not bear the suffering that I saw before me. It hurt me too much. So much unnecessary death, so many innocents suffering needlessly. Perhaps I am more sensitive to this than other Minds. I must be or others would already have done as I did." The Free Radical was crying, her face flushed and blotched. "Perhaps there is something wrong with me. It hurt too much to ignore."

There was silence for several seconds. People glanced at one another, uncertain how to respond. Finally the Moderator spoke. "There is another question. Why Reast?"

The Free Radical wiped her nose on one sleeve, a simple human gesture that broke some of the spell. "I chose Reast almost at random. It fit the requirements for technological sophistication and other political and social criteria. I could play with them relatively easily, make things happen that could be misconstrued as bad luck or simply misunderstood. The Velorine helped." She lifted one hand to forestall. "Not helped as in being aware of what was going on. Their attitudes and behaviour made it easier for me, that was all." There were stares, heads raised and turned, arms pointing. The Velorine delegation present, tightly clustered together near the front, stared at the avatar, ignoring the attention rigidly.

"Could you not have achieved what you did without involving them? By compromising those who you did, and nothing else?"

"No. It was necessary. I judged and calculated, looked at many ways. This was the cleanest way. The number of those I compromised was minimised deliberately, and those selected were so targeted to achieve maximum perceived impact and minimal real damage. However, it would not have been enough on its own. A conspiracy was needed, something to act as a trigger to set them off."

"That was all Reast was for?" The moderator was horrified, and failed to hide it. "To bring in those who tried to help?"

"Yes."

The discussions and debates surrounding the main event exploded in outrage and disbelief, and for a while order was abandoned. When it resumed, the attention of many watching or attending had weakened, or ambled elsewhere. The live audience with the Free Radical lasted several more subjective hours, but very little new information was learned that the commentators and opinion-hustlers did not produce by themselves, with varying degrees of bias and realism.

There was more, much of it about the details and almost all of it a repetition in some form of what had already been asked and answered. Interest waned, but the Moderator and coordinating Minds pressed on, unwilling to relinquish their roles until everything had been fully explored. A line needed to be drawn; more importantly, it needed to be recognised by others. The Culture, so rarely seeming to be bothered by what others thought of it, now needed to be seen to try its hardest.

Finally, there was no more to be said. After the avatar had been returned to the substrate where she was being imprisoned, the investigation into the rogue Mind's behaviour and that of the Incident Group set up to deal with it was begun. This process took much longer but still less time than might have been expected; changes were already taking place and those responsible for the investigation were aware of the twin threats of their summaries and reports becoming irrelevant as events overtook them, and others reaching conclusions more suitable for their own agendas.

Unable to convince it to accept mental reprofiling, something that had almost never been attempted on a Mind, and with their offer of permanent imprisonment within the substrate of a gaoler GSV's substrate rejected, they had to do something with the traitor. Unwilling to release it, even weakened and under enhanced and constant highly-militarised guard by a fleet of ships that volunteered for the role, the Minds deciding its fate were finally, reluctantly, forced to destroy the imprisoned and much-diminished Mind that had once been named the Free Radical.

To some, it became a martyr. Even in the immediate aftermath, a few agreed with what the GSV had done. Later on, as the effects of its actions rippled through the galaxy and the Culture's behaviour changed, driven by internal reflection and external forces, more and more Culture citizens aligned themselves with its position. Never fully endorsed or accepted, its role was eventually recognised as that of a hero, a tormented, brittle character whose choices were made in the hope of helping others.

The ex-drone and now human Lesk-Torlip, having been emplaced within a body similar, but not identical to that of the one it had shared on Reast, was given the option of forgetting what had been done to it and starting afresh. It rejected this idea and asked for another assignment straight after a panel of its peers decided that its mental health had been unimpaired and that it was fit for active service. It was quietly offered the power to pull the metaphorical level, to act as the executioner of the duplicated Free Radical but turned this offer down also after only a moment's hesitation.

The Very Fast Picket Return To Sender, travelling on the outer limits of the galactic lens and returning from transferring a group of humans to a GSV on retreat at the centre of a dust nebula, was transmitted the updated Mind-state of the More Is More and asked to carry out a delicate and potentially dangerous mission. Changing course, sliding in a long, skidding and accelerating turn, it headed outwards, into the void and the darkness ahead.

Over a year later, the VFP sensed the Free Radical on its low-slung, curving course, just beginning is looping back up out of the swallowing black. The Return To Sender adjusted course to present a relatively unintimidating closest approach, manoeuvring cautiously and highly visibly, signalling well in advance and spelling out its intentions, its hope that the two ships could communicate.

All of their fears were unrealised. The Free Radical's Mind had transferred itself to an unpopulated GCU and departed two months earlier, half a year after detecting the VFP's approach and a year after initiating its conversations with the avatar Junicia. Knowing that had happened, how things had already gone, it had quietly slid away.

The More Is More transferred across, occupied the vacant GSV, reassuring its bewildered and despairing occupants and informing them of what the Mind had done and what had happened. It familiarised itself with its new home, took the VFP on board and altered course to bring itself more rapidly back into normally-travelled space. Directly behind it, the last faint trace of the Free Radical's engines showed its departing track, pointed away into the vast chasms between galaxies, with no particular destination ahead of it. Nobody followed.

Dal Rolste applied, and was accepted, to return to Reast to help with the repair and restoration of the damage that had been caused. She was accompanied by Lesk-Torlip, whom she introduced to her ex-lover Colap as her brother. She and Colap resumed their relationship but it lasted only two years before Colap left her, finally unable to reconcile his upbringing and her behaviour.

Dal and Lesk-Torlip became closer, finally becoming lovers and then most peculiarly, married, and applied to Special Circumstances as a husband-wife team. They were accepted almost instantly, partly because the Minds involved in the decision were just too curious to see what happened to the unusual pair with their bizarre history. They were joined on many of their adventures by Bren, who had been re-lifed from his more recently stored personality and who continued to be one of SC's more dashing and daring agents until his retirement eighty years later.

The Peer, Review was also reanimated, although it took the Culture some time to track down a stored version of its Mind-state; the ex-LOU had an distrust of the potential manipulations its backup might be subject to in Storage. Immediately after its emplacement in a new hull it was given a number of commendations for bravery and resourcefulness during its actions during the Reast crisis, and was offered a role within Special Circumstances. It was instantly suspicious.

As the stock of the Free Radical rose after time and consideration, so the P,R's fell. It became treated with contempt and hostility for its delusions and willingness to perceive threats while refusing to actually try to improve things; as a counterpoint to the Free Radical and the controversial but decisive nature of that GSV, it was seen as weak and divisive. The Peer, Review's continuing actions and behaviour made it no allies in this, and it continued to incite negative attention. Not that it seemed upset by this.

The Velorine began a series of radical changes to their society in the immediate aftermath of the crisis, and almost entirely abandoned their practise of invasively watching other species. Terrified of the way they finally saw themselves as being perceived, they apologised eloquently to all and sundry for their behaviour. Only a few decades after the events on Reast they were being seriously considered for promotion within the Galactic community. The small grouping of senior Velorine individuals most involved in the attacks on Culture assets on Reast were punished and severely demoted. Hilspeth, the Velorine President's charge d'affairs, was placed on trial for exceeding his mandate, disgraced and executed.

Grand Admiral Ropcarl saw which way the wind was blowing, and fled to the Culture embassy on Velorine Prime in his personal transport shuttle, demanding refugee status. Smuggled out, he begged for and was given Culture citizenship, and spent the next forty years of his life applying unsuccessfully to join Contact.

The More is More was fêted, commended and lauded for the way it had discharged its role as Incident Coordinator at Reast, particularly for the ingenious and selfless way in which it had used its own transmitted Mind-state to convince other Culture Minds of the seriousness of the situation towards the end. The Completely Under Control was also roundly applauded although it gave every indication of discomfort and embarrassment at this. It gave up almost entirely on simming and became a much more dynamic and proactive member of SC. It also became a lot more well-liked.

The Confounded Beyond Words continued its role as Involved liaison beyond the conclusion of the Reast Incident, working for many years to smooth things over and try to repair the damage that had been done to the Culture's reputation. Feeling unable to reconcile its actions against the Free Radical with the arguably and statistically demonstrably correctness of the rogue Mind's own acts, the Seventeen Different Words For Rain joined a group of Minds on a retreat and was not heard from for many years.

Of the several ROUs and GOUs involved in the crisis, all that had taken damage were fully repaired by themselves, or where necessary other ships after the harm they had sustained during the brief but eventful release of the wormhole exit on Reast. Most had suffered engine overloads and other system damage, and a few needed entire hull replacements.

Offensive ships were designed to accept physical harm, but the mental distress caused was too much for some. Two of them went on to commit Mind-suicide shortly afterwards and only one recovered fully. This was the Fuck You Too, Pal, which discovered much to its surprise and the near-catatonic shock of many of its peers that it did actually take great pleasure from Herexyl sculpture and other art forms from that civilisation, and ended up spending a great proportion of its time as a semi-formal ambassador to that civilisation. It never changed its name, which caused numerous minor incidents and frequent hilarity at diplomatic functions.

The Light And Full Of Grace calmly got on about its business, and achieved great notoriety and fame as one of Special Circumstances' most active and successful members, rising to levels of seniority and respect within that organisation that it was able to claim, if it had wished to do so, that it was one of the select circle of Minds of near-total authority over the actions of thousands of other ships and billions of humans and drones. However, it almost never chose to exercise this influence, although it was a major player in the fallout from the Reast Incident. The Don't Point That Thing At Me was offered a role in SC but found to its surprise that it wanted to continue in Contact.

On Reast, the population were left bewildered, distressed and confused by everything that had taken place, and it took some sustained and serious efforts by Contact and SC, collaborating almost as never before, to avoid numerous aftershocks from taking place. The Reasten did not find out what had actually happened to them, and how close they had come to utter catastrophe, for many years.

Peeten, the sole surviving heiress of the Calspine fortune and dynasty, became planetary President later in life and was in her second term of office when Reast was Contacted and finally given the full story. She never forgot her mother, who died the moment the Free Radical released its hold on her, but was haunted throughout her life by her inability to clearly remember what had happened on that day.

Less than a year after the Free Radical had been executed, the Culture was forced to declare war for the first time as a direct, verifiable result of its actions.

137