Look to Windward

augmented senses might well induce terror if you were of a sensitive nature. They’d found much of what they’d hoped to find; enough for his mission, sufficient to save a thousand or so other souls. Almost certainly not enough to fulfil his hopes. He looked about. It appeared they had removed all the sensory and monitoring equipment they’d been using to inspect the wreck of the privateer Winter Storm.

He felt a shudder through his boots. He glanced up to the side, as the sliced-off bow of the ship was put back in place. Enclosed, in this ship of the dead. At last.

~ Isolation established, it says, said a voice in his head. The machine in his backpack produced a faint vibration.

~ It says the proximity of the suit’s systems are interfering with its instruments. You’ll have to switch your com off. Now it’s saying, Please remove the pack from your back.

~ Will we still be able to talk?

~ You and I will be able to talk to each other, and it’ll be able to talk to me.

~ All right, he said, slipping the pack off. ~ The lights are all right? he asked.

~ They’re just lights, nothing else.

~ Where shall I put—he started to say, but then the pack went light in his hands and began to tug away from him.

~ It wants us to know it has its own motive power, the voice in his head informed him.

~ Oh, yes, of course. Ask it to work fast, would you? Tell it we’re pressed for time because there’s a Culture warship braking towards our position as we speak, coming to-

~ Think that’ll make any difference, Major?

~ I don’t know. Tell it to be thorough, too.

~ Quilan, I think it’ll just do what it has to do, but if you really want me to-

~ No. No, sorry. Sorry, don’t.

~ Look, I know this is hard on you, Quit. I’ll leave you alone for a bit, okay?

~ Yes, thanks.

Huyler’s voice went off-line. It was as though a hiss right on the boundary of hearing had suddenly been removed.

He watched the Navy drone for a moment. The machine was silvery grey and nondescript, like the pack from an ancient space suit. It floated silently across the near-flat floor, keeping about a metre off its surface, heading for the near, bow end of the ship to start its search pattern.

It would be too much to ask, he thought to himself. The chances are too remote. It was a small miracle we discovered anything at all in here, that we are able to rescue those souls from such destruction a second time. To ask for more… was probably pointless, but no more than natural.

What intelligent creature possessed of wit and feeling could do otherwise? We always want more, he thought, we always take our past successes for granted and assume they but point the way to future triumphs. But the universe does not have our own best interests at heart, and to assume for a moment that it does, ever did or ever might is to make the most calamitous and hubristic of mistakes.

To hope as he was hoping, hoping against likelihood, against statistical probability, in that sense against the universe itself, was only to be expected, but it was also almost certainly forlorn. The animal in him craved something that his higher brain knew was not going to happen. That was the point he was impaled upon, the front on which he suffered; that struggle of the lower brain’s almost chemical simplicities of yearning pitched against the withering realities revealed and comprehended by consciousness. Neither could give up, and neither could give way. The heat of their battle burned in his mind.

He wondered if, despite what he’d been told, Huyler could hear any hint of it.

~ All our tests confirm that the construct has been fully recovered. All error-checks have been completed. The construct is now available for interaction and downloading, the sister technician announced in his head. She seemed to be trying to sound more like a machine than machines ever did.

He opened his eyes and blinked into the light for a moment. The headset he wore was just visible from the corners of his eyes. The reclined couch he lay on felt firm but comfortable. He was in the medical facility of the Mendicant Sisters’ temple ship Piety. Across the racks of gleaming, spotless medical gear, near the side of a stained, battered-looking thing about the size of a domestic chill cabinet, the sister technician talking to him was a youngster with a severe expression, dark brown fur and a head which had been partially shaved.

~ I’ll download it now, she continued. ~ Do you wish to interact with it immediately?

~ Yes, I do.

~ A moment, please.

~ Wait, what will it—will he—experience?

~ Awareness. Sight, in the form of a human-compensated feed from this camera. She tapped a tiny wand protruding from the headset she wore. ~ Hearing, in the form of your voice. Continue?

~ Yes.

There was the very faintest impression of a hiss, and then a sleepy-sounding, deeply male voice saying:

~… seven, eight… nine… Hello? What? Where is this? What is this? Where-? What’s happened?

It was a voice that went from slurred sleepiness to suddenly fearful confusion and then on to a degree of control within just a few words. The voice sounded younger than he’d been expecting. He supposed there was no need for it to sound old.

~ Sholan Hadesh Huyler, he responded calmly. ~ Welcome back.

~ Who is that? I can’t move. There was still a trace of uncertainty and anxiety in the voice. ~ This isn’t… the beyond. Is it?

~ My name is Called-to-Arms-from-Given Major Quilan IV of Itirewein. I’m sorry you can’t move but please don’t worry; your personality construct is currently still inside the substrate you were originally stored within, in the Military Technology Institute, Cravinyr, on Aorme. At the moment the substrate you’re inside is aboard the temple ship Piety. It’s in orbit around a moon of the planet Reshref Four, in the constellation of the Bow, along with the hulk of the star cruiser Winter Storm.

~ There you are. Ah. You say you’re a major. I was an admiral-general. I outrank you.

The voice was perfectly under control now; still deep, but clipped and crisp. The voice of somebody used to giving orders.

~ Your rank when you died was greater than mine now, certainly, sir.

The sister technician adjusted something on the console in front of her.

~ Whose are those hands? They look female.

~ Those belong to the sister technician who is looking after us, sir. Your point of view is from a headset she’s wearing.

~ Can she hear me?

~ No, sir.

~ Ask her to take the headset off and show me what she looks like.

~ Sir, are you-?

~ Major, if you would.

Quilan felt himself sigh. ~ Sister technician, he thought. He asked her to do as Huyler had asked. She did, but looked annoyed about it.

~ Sour-looking, frankly. Wish I hadn’t bothered. So, what has been happening, Major? What am I doing here?

~ A great deal has been happening, sir. You’ll be given a full historical briefing in due course.

~ Date?

~ It is the ninth of spring, 3455.