Surface Detail

“It’s a neural lace,” the doctor said, sounding exhausted.

“A neural lace,” Veppers repeated.

He’d heard of these things. They were the sort of device that highly advanced aliens who’d started out squidgy and biochemical — as squidgy and biochemical as Sichultians, for example — and who had not wanted to upload themselves into nirvana or oblivion or wherever, used when they wanted to interface with machine minds or record their thoughts, or even when they wanted to save their souls, their mind-states.

Veppers looked at Sulbazghi. “Are you saying,” he said slowly, “that the girl had a neural lace in her head?”

That shouldn’t be possible. Neural laces were illegal for Sichultians. Great God, fucking drug glands were illegal for Sichultians.

“Kind of looks like it,” Sulbazghi said.

“And it never showed up?” Veppers asked. He stared at the doctor. “Sulbazghi, you must have scanned that girl a hundred times.”

“They don’t show up using the equipment we’ve got to look with,” Sulbazghi said. He stared down at the thing in his hand, gave a tiny, despairing laugh. “Minor miracle we can see it with the naked eye.”

“Who put it in her?” Veppers asked. “The clinicians?”

Sulbazghi shook his head. “Impossible.”

“Then who?”

“I’ve done a quick bit of investigating since the doctor told me about this,” Jasken said. “We need help here, sir: somebody who properly knows about this sort of thing—”

“Xingre,” Sulbazghi said. “He’ll know, or know better how to find out.”

“Xingre?” Veppers said, frowning. The Jhlupian trader and honorary consul was his principal contact with the alien civilisation the Enablement was closest to. Jasken had a sour look on his face that Veppers recognised; it meant he was having to agree with Sulbazghi. Both men knew this had to be kept as quiet as possible. Why were they suggesting bringing the alien into this?

“He, she or it might know,” Jasken said. “The point is it’ll be able to find out if this thing really is what it looks like.”

“And what the fuck does it look like?” Veppers asked.

Jasken took a deep breath. “Well, like a… a neural lace device, the sort of thing the so-called ‘Culture’ uses.” He grimaced. Veppers saw the man grind his teeth for a moment. “It’s hard to tell; it could be a fake. With our technology—”

“Why would anyone go to this trouble to fake it?” Sulbazghi said angrily. Veppers held up one hand to quiet him.

Jasken glared at the doctor but went on, “It isn’t possible to be sure, which is why we might need Xingre and the sort of analysis and diagnostic equipment he has access to, but it looks like this thing is one of their devices. A Culture device.”

Veppers looked at them both in turn.

“It’s a Culture device?” he asked. He held out his hand and let Sulbazghi tip the thing into his palm. The closer he looked, the more tiny, still finer filaments he could see, branching and re- branching off the main, already very thin wires. It felt amazingly soft. It weighed next to nothing.

“Looks very likely,” the doctor agreed.

Veppers bounced the thing up and down in his hand a couple of times; a handful of hair would have weighed more. “Okay,” he said. “But what does this mean? I mean, she wasn’t a Culture citizen or anything, was she?”

“No,” Sulbazghi said.

“And… she didn’t seem to be able to interface with any equipment…?” Veppers looked from the doctor to Jasken, who was now standing with his Oculenses dangling, the arm in the cast folded across his chest, his other arm resting on it, hand stroking the skin around his mouth repeatedly. He was still frowning.

“No,” Sulbazghi said again. “She might not even have known the thing was in there.”

“What?” Veppers said. “But how?”

“These things grow inside you,” Jasken said. “If it really is one then it’ll have started as a seed and grown all around and into her brain. Fully developed these things link with just about every brain cell, every synapse.”

“Why didn’t she have a head the size of a basket fruit?” Veppers asked. He grinned but neither man responded. That was very unusual. And not a good sign.

“These things add less than half a per cent to the bulk of the brain,” Jasken said. He nodded at the thing lying in Veppers’ palm. “Even what you see there is mostly hollow; in the brain it’d be filled with fluid or bits of the brain itself. The tiniest filaments are so thin they’re invisible to the naked eye and they’ll probably have been burned off in the furnace anyway.”

Veppers stared at the strange, insignificant-looking device. “But what was it in her brain to do?” he asked both men. “What was it for? Given that we’ve established it didn’t seem to give her any super powers or anything.”

“These things are used to record a person’s mind-state,” Jasken said.

“Their soul, for want of a better word,” Sulbazghi said.

“It’s so Culture people can be reincarnated if they die unexpectedly,” Jasken said.

“I know,” Veppers said patiently. “I’ve looked into the technology myself. Don’t think I’m not jealous.” He tried another smile. Still no response. This must be serious.

“Well,” Jasken said, “it’s not impossible that such information — her mind-state — was transmitted somewhere else at the point of death. It’s what these things are for, after all.”

“Transmitted?” Veppers said. “Where?”

“Not far—” Jasken began.

“I can’t see how.” Sulbazghi shook his head, glancing at Jasken. “I’ve done my own research. It takes time, and a full clinical setup. It’s a person’s entire personality we’re talking about here, their every memory; you don’t squirt that out in a beat or two like a fucking text message.”

“We are dealing with what the aliens call Level Eight technology,” Jasken said contemptuously. “You don’t know what it might be capable of. We’re like pre-wheel primitives looking at a screen and saying it can’t work because nobody can re-draw a cave-painting that quickly.”

“There are still limits,” Sulbazghi insisted.

“Doubtless,” Jasken said. “But we have no idea what they are.”

Sulbazghi drew breath to speak but Veppers just talked over the start of whatever he had been about to say. “Well, in any event; bad news, perhaps, gentlemen.” He reached out, let Sulbazghi take the device back. The doctor bagged it, put it in a pocket of his lab coat, sealed it.

“So…” Veppers said. “If this stored her mind-state, I suppose it would know…”

“Everything up to the moment of her death,” Sulbazghi said.

Veppers nodded. “Jasken,” he said, “ask Yarbethile what our relations are with the Culture, would you?”

“Sir,” Jasken said, turning away for a moment while he contacted Veppers’ Private Secretary, doubtless already at his desk in the Halo 7’s executive office pod. Jasken listened, muttered something, turned back. “Mr. Yarbethile characterises our relations with the Culture as ‘Nebulous’,” Jasken said drily. He shrugged. “I’m not sure if he’s trying to be funny or not.”

“Well,” Veppers said. “We don’t really have much to do with them, with the Culture, do we?” Veppers looked at the other two men. “Not really.”

Jasken shook his head. Sulbazghi clenched his jaw and looked away to one side.

All three experienced a momentarily disquieting lurch as the Halo 7, which had been quietly and suitably re-configuring itself for the last couple of minutes, left the land precisely as scheduled and crunched down a long, broad beach in two giant troughs of pebbles to meet the misty, torpid waters of the Oligyne Inland Sea, turning itself into a giant paddle wheel as it ploughed on through the banks of mist, its pace only slightly reduced.

“We need to look into this, obviously,” Veppers said. “Jasken, use any resources required. Keep me informed, daily.” Jasken nodded. Veppers stood up, nodded to Sulbazghi. “Thank you, doctor. I trust you’ll stay for