anyway, that these were people who were here to rendezvous with the ship which would arrive, sometime in the next two or three days, from the
“What ‘special circumstances’, Mr. Nopri?” she asked.
“I’ve been trying to talk to the Bulbitian,” Nopri told her.
“Talking to it involves dying?”
“Yes, all too often.”
“How often?”
“Twenty-three times so far.”
Yime was appalled. She took a drink before saying, “You’ve been killed by this thing
“No, really.”
“
“Yes.”
“Killed in the Real?”
“Yes.”
“And, what; revented each time?”
“Yes.”
“Did you come with a stack of blank bodies then? How can you—?”
“Of course not. It makes me new bodies.”
“It? The
“Yes. I back up before every attempt to talk to it.”
“And it kills you every time?”
“Yes. But only so far.”
Yime looked at him for a moment. “In that case silence might constitute a more prudent course.”
“You don’t understand.”
Yime sighed, put her drink down and sat back, fingers interlocked over her midriff. “And I’m sure I shall continue not to until you enlighten me. Or I can talk to somebody else on your team who is more…” She paused. “Plausible,” she said. The drone’s blueish aura field coloured a subtle shade of pink.
Nopri appeared oblivious to the insult. He sat forward eagerly. “I am convinced that the Bulbitians are in touch with the Sublimed,” he told her.
“You are,” Yime said. “Isn’t that a matter for our colleagues in Numina? Like Ms. Dvelner?”
“Yes, and I’ve talked to them about it, but this Bulbitian only wants to talk to
Yime thought about this. “And the fact that it keeps killing you, every time you attempt to do so, hasn’t shaken your faith in this conviction?”
“Please,” Nopri said. “It’s not faith. I can prove this. Or I will be able to. Soon.” He buried his face in the fumes rising from the drug bowl, sucked in deeply.
Yime looked at the drone. “Ship, are you still listening here?”
“I am, Ms. Nsokyi. Hanging fascinated on every word.”
“Mr. Nopri. There are how many on your team here — eighteen?” Nopri nodded, holding his breath. “Do you have a ship here?” Nopri shook his head emphatically. “A Mind, then?”
Nopri let his clouded breath out and started coughing.
Yime turned to the drone again. “Does the team that Mr. Nopri belongs to have the benefit of a resident Mind or AI?”
“No,” the drone replied. “And neither does the Numina team. The nearest Mind at the moment, aside from my own of course, is probably that belonging to the inbound ship journeying here from the
“It isn’t keen on Minds or AIs,” Nopri agreed, wiping his eyes. He sucked from the drug bowl again. “Not that wild about drones, either, to be frank.” He looked at the ship’s drone, smiled.
“Is there any news of the ship on its way from the
Nopri shook his head. “No. There’s never any news. They don’t tend to publish course schedules.” He breathed deep from the bowl again, but let it out quickly this time. “They just turn up without warning, or don’t show at all.”
“You think it might not show?”
“No, it probably will. There’s just no guarantee.”
Nopri showed her to her quarters, a bewilderingly large, multi level space set off a vast curving corridor. To have reached this by walking would have taken about half an hour from the Officers’ Club; instead, one of the wheeled drones just picked up their seats with them still sitting in them and rolled away through the dark, tall corridors towards her cabin. Yime gazed up at the tall inverted arch of the ceiling as they progressed through the bizarre upside-down architecture of the Bulbitian. It was like being at the bottom of a small valley. The smooth floor the drone ran along was narrow; only a metre or so across. The walls took on a ribbed appearance; now it was like travelling through the gutted carcass of some vast animal. The ribs above rose outwards to a broad flat ceiling ten metres wide and easily twenty metres above.
“They did like their high ceilings, didn’t they?”
“Hoppers tend to,” Nopri said.
She tried to imagine the place full of the monopedal creatures who had built this place, all bouncing along on their single lower limbs. And upside down, of course; she’d be travelling along the ceiling and they’d be bouncing up towards her with each springing step, then sinking back to the wide floor. Back then the great structure would have spun to create the apparent gravity the species preferred, but now there was just the troubling tug that resulted from being balanced on the curve of the singularity’s gravity well.
“Does this thing still spin at all?” she asked.
“Very slowly,” the ship’s drone, floating alongside, said when Nopri didn’t reply. “Synched to the rotation of the galaxy itself.”
She thought about this. “That is slow. I wonder why?”
“So does everybody else,” Nopri said, nodding.
“Thank you,” she said as the door to her quarters hinged open like a valve behind her. The ship drone dipped a little and drifted in, carrying her overnight bag.
Nopri looked over her shoulder into the shadowy space beyond. “Looks nice. Would you like me to stay?”
“Too kind, but no,” she told him.
“I don’t mean for sex,” he said. “I mean for company.”
“As I say, it is kind of you to offer. But no.”
“Okay.” He nodded behind her. “Mind your head.”
She watched the little wheeled drone take him away into the shadows then turned to look into her cabin. The door must have been some sort of window once, at ceiling height. That was why it rotated about its horizontal axis, leaving the door itself as a thick obstruction straight across the three-metre-wide doorway. She ducked underneath. It hinged closed.
The cabin looked complicated, with lots of different levels and bits where it just seemed to wander off into the shadows. Doubtless it had made more sense the other way up.
The ship’s drone floated over to report it had found what it was fairly sure was some sort of bed of a fluid- based nature suitable for a human to sleep safely within.
Bathroom location, on the other hand, was still ongoing.
“You are a soldier?” the young doctor asked.
