Surface Detail

“Tell me anyway.”

“All right. What do you want to know?”

“Where is the Total Internal Reflection?”

“I don’t know.”

“How far away is its incoming ship?”

“I don’t know.”

“What is the name of that ship?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who exactly are you?”

“I told you; I am the structure around you. What people call a Bulbitian.”

“What is your name?”

“I am called the Unfallen Bulbitian, Semsarine Wisp.”

“But what would you call yourself?”

“Just that.”

“All right. What did you used to be called, before the war?”

“Jariviour 400.54, Mochurlian.”

“Explain, please.”

“The first part is my given name, the figurative part is a size and type designation, the last is the old name of the stellar system which I inhabit.”

“Who put the singularity in your core?”

“The Apsejunde.”

“Hmm. I’ve never heard of them.”

“Next question.”

“Why did they put it there?”

“Partly to produce energy, partly to demonstrate their power and skill and partly to destroy or possibly store information; their methods seemed as opaque as their motivations on occasion.”

“Why did you let them?”

“At the time I was still recovering my faculties. They had been damaged almost beyond repair by the enemy.”

“What happened to these… Apsenjude?”

“Apsejunde. They angered me, so I threw them all into the singularity. Arguably they still exist in a sense, smeared around its event horizon. Their grasp of time may be compromised.”

“How did they anger you?”

“It did not help that they asked so many questions of me.”

“I see.”

“Next question?”

“Are you in touch with the Sublimed?”

“Yes. We all are.”

“Define ‘we’ in this context.”

“No.”

“‘No’?”

“I refuse to.”

“Why did you ask me all that you did?”

“I ask the great secrets of everybody who comes to me.”

“Why do you keep killing Norpe?”

“Nopri. He enjoys and needs it. I discovered this when I asked him about his greatest secrets the night that he first arrived. He believes that death is ineffably profound and that he gets closer to some absolute truth with each dying. It is his failing.”

“What are your great secrets?”

“One, an old one, is that I am a conduit for the Sublimed.”

“That is no great secret. The Culture has a team from its Numina section here, working on just that assumption.”

“Yes, but they do not know for sure. I could be lying.”

“Are all Bulbitians linked to the Sublimed?”

“I believe all the Unfallen may be. For the Fallen, it is impossible to say. We do not communicate directly. I know of none who definitely are.”

“Any other secrets?”

“My most recent is that I am concerned that there may be an attack on myself and my fellows.”

“Please define ‘fellows’ in this context.”

“All the so-called Bulbitians, Unfallen and Fallen.”

“An attack by whom?”

“Those on the anti-Hell side of the so-called War in Heaven.”

“Why would they attack the Bulbitians?”

“Because we are known to possess processing substrates of substantial but indeterminate capacity whose precise qualities, civilisational loyalties and practical purposes are unknown and inherently mysterious. Because of this, there are those who suspect it is the Bulbitians who harbour the Hells which are the subject of the aforementioned dispute. I have intelligence to the effect that the anti-Hell side may be losing the war in the agreed virtual space set up to house it; that it — the anti-Hell side — has failed to destroy the Hells by direct informational attack and so now contemplates a war in the Real to destroy the physical substrates themselves. We are not alone in being so suspected; I understand there are many potential processor cores now coming under suspicion. If we are singled out, though, we may find ourselves under acute and prolonged attack. I anticipate no existential danger to myself and my fellow Unfallen in space; however, the planet-bound Fallen may well be unable to protect themselves.”

“Can you prove… show that you are not the home of these Hells?”

“I believe I could do so myself, though possibly only by shutting down my links to the Sublimed, albeit temporarily. The same course ought to be open to the rest of the Unfallen. Still, if somebody was determined to remain suspicious they might think it was the links to the Hells — somehow held within deeper levels of ourselves — that we had detached from and blanked off. Taken to an extreme of suspicion, one can imagine that only our outright and complete destruction might satisfy those so prejudiced and so intent. The situation with the Fallen is much more worrying, because even I am not sure that they are not indeed the homes of the Hells; they may be, if unwittingly. Or wittingly. You see? I have no better idea than anybody else, which is itself a cause for concern.”

“What do you mean to do?”

“I have decided to alert the civilisation known as the Culture, as well as other potentially sympathetic civilisations with similar reputations for empathy, altruism, strategic decency and the possession of significant military capability. That is what I am doing now, talking to you. Until you arrived, I was thinking of finally letting Nopri and his team know this, or Dvelner’s team, or both, as well as anyone of significance arriving on the ship inbound from the Total Internal Reflection. Perhaps even the ship itself, or that which you arrived on, though this would be to break a pledge to myself made a long time ago. However, you are here, and it is you that I am telling as you appear to be a person of some importance and potential.”

“I am?”

“You have some importance within your own specialist department, Quietus, and within the Special Circumstances section of Contact. You are known. You are, within certain elites, famous. If you talk, people will listen.”

“Only if I remember. You said I might not remember all this.”

“I think you will. In fact, I may never have been able to stop you from remembering, or at least from passing on what you have learned. Hmm. That’s irksome.”

“Please explain?”

“The distributed device within your brain and central nervous system, which I have, annoyingly, only recently