Waking in this real body had been similar to waking up within the fake body imagined in the great ship’s substrate. She had experienced a slow, pleasant coming-to, the warm fuzziness of what had felt like deep, satisfying sleep changing slowly to the clarity and sharpness of a wakefulness informed by the knowledge that something had profoundly changed.
She had opened her eyes and found herself in a bed of what looked like snowflakes, felt like feathers and behaved like particularly obedient and well-disposed insects. White as snow but nearly as warm as her skin, the material had seemed unconstrained by any enveloping cover, and yet the apparently free-floating individual elements had refused to get in her eyes, up her nose or to leave the confines of the bed and the few centimetres around both it and her pyjama-clad body.
Beyond the bed had been a modest, sparsely furnished room three or four metres to a side with one window-wall looking out onto a brightly lit balcony where she could see Sensia sitting in one of two chairs. The avatar had gazed out at the view for a few more moments before turning to her and smiling.
“Welcome to the land of the living!” she’d said, waving one hand. “Get dressed; we’ll have some lunch and then we’ll go exploring.”
So now here they sat, with Lededje trying to take in what she was seeing.
She looked back at her arm again. She had chosen pale purple blouson pants, cuffed tight at the ankle, and a filmy but opaque long-sleeved top of the same colour, sleeves rolled back to the elbows. She looked pretty good, all-in-all, she thought. The average Culture human, from what she could gather having seen a few hundred of them now in passing — and disregarding the outlandish outliers, as it were — was hardly taller than a well-fed Sichultian, but ill-proportioned: legs too short, back too long, and emaciated-looking; bellies and behinds uncomfortably flat, shoulders and upper back looking almost broken. She supposed to them she looked hump- backed, pot-bellied and big-bottomed, but no matter; to her she looked exactly, almost perfectly right. And a beauty, which was what she had always been and had always been destined to be, with or without the cell-level markings that had invested her body, down to the bone and beyond.
She had no more false modesty, she realised, than Sensia, than the ship itself.
Lededje looked up from her arm. “I think I’d like some form of tat,” she told Sensia.
“Tattooing?” the avatar said. “Easily done. Though we can definitely do better than just permanently marking your skin, unless that’s what you specifically want.”
“What, for example?”
“Take a look.” Sensia waved one arm and in front of them, and, hanging over the thousand-metre drop, a series of images appeared of Culture humans displaying tattoos even more fabulous than her own had been, at least at skin level. Here were tattoos that genuinely shone rather than just glowed a little, or could reflect; tattoos that moved, that lased, that could loop out to create real or hologramatic structures beyond the surface of the skin itself, tattoos that were not just works of art but ongoing performances. “Have a think,” Sensia said.
Lededje nodded. “Thank you. I shall.” She looked out at the view again. Behind them, on the path on the far side of the low wall, a small group of people passed. They were talking the Culture’s own language, Marain, which Lededje too could now speak and understand, though not without a certain deliberation; Sichultian Formal was still what came naturally to her and was what she and Sensia were speaking now. “You know that I need to get back to Sichult,” she said.
“Business to conclude,” Sensia said, nodding.
“When would I be able to leave?”
“How about tomorrow?”
She looked at the avatar’s brazen skin. It looked false, as though she was made of metal, not genuine flesh and bone. Lededje supposed that was the idea. Her own skin was not so different in tone — from a distance she and Sensia might have looked quite similar in colour — but from close up hers would appear natural, both to a Sichultian and even, she was sure, this motley assortment of strange-looking people.
“That would be possible?”
“Well, you could make a start. You’re some distance away. It’ll take a while.”
“How long?”
Sensia shrugged. “Depends on a lot of things. Many tens of days, I’d guess. Less than a hundred though, I’d hope.” She made a gesture with her hands Lededje guessed was meant to signal regret or apology. “Can’t take you myself; way off my course schedule. In fact, at the moment, we’re heading sort of tangentially away from the Enablement space.”
“Oh.” Lededje hadn’t realised this. “Then the sooner I get started the better.”
“I’ll put the word out to the ships, see who’s interested,” Sensia said. “However. There is a condition.”
“A condition?” She wondered if there was, after all, some form of payment expected.
“Let me be honest with you, Lededje,” Sensia said, with a quick smile.
“Please,” she said.
“We — I — strongly suspect that you may be returning to Sichult with murder in your heart.”
Lededje said nothing for as long as it took for her to realise that the longer she left it to respond, the more like agreement that silence seemed. “Why do you think that?” she asked, trying to imitate Sensia’s level, friendly, matter-of-fact tone.
“Oh, come now, Lededje,” the avatar chided. “I’ve done a little research. The man murdered you.” She waved one hand casually. “Perhaps not in cold blood, but certainly when you were completely helpless. This is a man who has had complete control over you since before you were born, who forced your family into servitude and had you marked for ever as a chattel, engraved like a high-denomination bank-note made out specifically to him. You were his slave; you tried to run, he hunted you like an animal, caught you and, when you resisted, he killed you. Now you are free of him, and free of the marks that identified you as his but with a free pass back to where he — probably imagining that you are entirely dead — still is, quite unsuspecting.” Sensia turned to Lededje at this point, swivelling not just her head but her shoulders and upper body, so that the younger woman could not pretend not to have noticed. Lededje turned too, less gracefully, as Sensia — still smiling — lowered and slowed her voice ever so slightly and said, “My child, you would not be human, pan-human, Sichultian or anything else if you didn’t positively ache for revenge.”
Lededje heard all this, but did not immediately react.
Sensia shrugged. “We have these things called slap-drones.”
“Oh yes?” She had vaguely heard of drones; they were the Culture’s equivalent of robots, though they looked more like items of luggage than anything else. Some of the tinier things floating in the great hazy view in front of them were probably drones. She already didn’t like the idea of a variety with the word “slap” in its title.
“They’re things that stop people doing something they probably ought not to do,” Sensia told her. “They… just accompany you.” She shrugged. “Sort of an escort. If it thinks you’re about to do something objectionable, like hit somebody or try to kill them or something, it’ll stop you.”
“Stop… how?”
Sensia laughed. “Well, just shout at you at first, probably. But if you persist, it’ll physically get in the way; deflect a blow or push aside a gun barrel or whatever. Ultimately, though, they’re entirely entitled to zap you; drop you unconscious if need be. No pain or damage, of course, but—”
“Who decides on this? What court?” Lededje asked. She felt suddenly hot, and was acutely aware that on her new, paler skin, a flush might show as a visible blush.
“The court of me, Lededje,” Sensia said quietly, with a small smile Lededje glanced at then looked away from.
“Really? On whose authority?”
She could hear the smile in the avatar’s voice. “On the authority of me being part of the Culture and my judgement on such matters being accepted by other parts, specifically other Minds, of the Culture. Immediately,
