Excession

Sleeper Service, gradually drawing further away. Another couple of screens showed an approaching wall of gridded grey. She guessed the two minutes the drone had mentioned earlier had passed.

Dajeil cried for a little while. After a few minutes, she asked, 'Do you think he still loves me? At all?'

Ulver looked pained for a moment; only the ship's sensors registered the expression. She took a deep breath. 'At all?' she said. 'Yes, definitely.'

Dajeil sniffed hard and looked up for the first time. She gave a sort of half-despairing laugh as she wiped some tears from her cheeks with her fingers. Ulver reached for a clean napkin and completed the job.

'It doesn't really mean much to him any more,' Dajeil said to the younger woman, 'does it?'

Ulver folded the tear-darkened napkin carefully. 'It matters to him a lot now, because he's here. Because the ship brought him here just for this, hoping the two of you would talk.'

'But the rest of the time,' Dajeil said, sitting upright again and throwing her head and hair back. 'The rest of the time, it doesn't really bother him, does it?'

Ulver took an almost exaggeratedly deep breath, looked as though she was about to vehemently deny this, then sank down on her haunches and said, 'Look; I hardly know the man.' She gestured with her hands. 'I learned a lot about him before we met, but I only met him a few days ago. In very odd circumstances.' She shook her head, looking serious. 'I don't know who he really is.'

Dajeil rocked back and forward in her seat for a moment, staring at the meal on the table. 'Well enough,' she said, sniffing. 'You know him well enough.' She smoothed her ruffled hair as best she could. She stared up at the translucent dome for a moment. 'All I knew,' she said, 'was the person he became when he was with me.' She looked at Ulver. 'I forgot what he was like all the rest of the time.' She took Ulver's hand in hers. 'You're seeing what he's really like.'

Ulver gave a long slow shrug. 'Then…' she said, looking troubled, her tone measured. 'He's all right. I think.'

The screens on the far side of the circular room showed fuzzy grids expanding, swallowing, disappearing. The last field approached, was pierced to reveal a black wash of space, and then — with a smear of rushing stars and the same barely perceptible feeling of dislocation Ulver and Genar-Hofoen had experienced two days earlier when they had arrived on board the Sleeper Service — the Jaundiced Outlook was free of the GSV and peeling away on a diverging course within its own concentric collection of fields.

'And what does that make me?' Dajeil whispered.

Ulver shrugged. She looked down at Dajeil's belly. 'Still pregnant?' she suggested.

Dajeil stared at her. Then she gave a small laugh. Her head went down again.

Ulver patted her hand. 'Tell me about it if you want.'

Dajeil sniffed, dabbing at her nose with the folded napkin. 'Yes, I'm sure you really care.'

'Oh, believe me,' Ulver told her, 'other people's problems have always held a profound fascination for me.'

Dajeil sighed. 'Other people's are always the best problems to be involved with,' she said ruefully.

'My thoughts exactly.'

'I suppose you think I ought to talk to him too,' Dajeil said.

Ulver glanced up at the screens again. 'I don't know. But if you have even the least thought of it, I'd take advantage of the opportunity now, before it's too late.'

Dajeil looked round at the screens. 'Oh, we've gone,' she said in a small voice. She looked back at the other woman. 'Do you think he wants to see me?' Ulver thought there was a tone of hopefulness in her voice. Her troubled gaze flitted from one of Ulver's eyes to the other.

'Well, if he doesn't he's a fool,' Ulver said, wondering why she was being so diplomatic.

'Ha,' Dajeil said. She wiped her cheeks with her fingers once more and dragged her fingers through her hair. She reached into her dress and pulled out a comb. She offered it to Ulver. 'Would you…?'

Ulver stood. 'Only if you say you'll see him,' she said, smiling.

Dajeil shrugged. 'I suppose so.'

Ulver stood behind Dajeil, and began to comb her long dark hair.

— Ship?

— Ms Seich. The Jaundiced Outlook here.

— I take it you've been listening. Want to contact the GSV?

— I was listening. I have already contacted the Sleeper Service. Mr Genar-Hofoen and the avatar Amorphia are aboard and on their way here.

— Fast work, Ulver told it, and continued to gently comb Dajeil's hair. 'They're on their way,' she told her. 'Byr and the avatar.'

Dajeil said nothing.

A couple of decks further down in the accommodation section, Amorphia turned to Genar-Hofoen as they walked down a corridor. 'And it might be best not to mention that we were Displaced aboard at the same time as Ulver,' it told the man.

'I'll try not to let it slip,' he said sourly. 'Let's just get this over with, shall we?'

'Definitely the right attitude,' muttered the avatar, stepping into a lift. They ascended to the impersonation of the tower.

XV

Snug, encapsulated in a cobbled-together nest-capsule deep inside the accommodation section of the ex- Culture ship Heavy Messing, Captain Greydawn Latesetting X of the Farsight tribe watched the blip which represented the crippled hulk of the Attitude Adjuster fall astern on the holo display, the screams of his uncle Risingmoon and the other Affronters on the stricken vessel still ringing in his mind. A hazy cloud hung around the blip of the tumbling wreck, indicating where the ship's sensors estimated the Culture warship — which the Heavy Messing still thought was a Deluger vessel — now was.

With his uncle dead, the fleet was now under Greydawn's command. The urge to swing the whole assemblage about and bear down on the single Culture ship was almost irresistible. But there would be no point; it was faster than any of their craft; the Heavy Messing's Mind thought that the Culture ship might have damaged its engines during its run-in to the attack, but even so it could probably still outstrip any of the ships in the fleet, and so all such a course would accomplish would be to draw them away from their intended destination, without even the realistic prospect of revenge. They had to continue. Greydawn signalled to the six other craft which were crewed.

— Fellow warriors. No one feels the loss of our comrades more than I. However, our mission remains the same. Let our victory be our first revenge. The power we gain for our kind as a result of it will purchase the ability to punish all such crimes against us a million-fold!

— The attacker's duplication of a Culture vessel's emission signature spectrum and field was astonishingly authentic, the Heavy Messing wrote on one of the screens in front of Greydawn.

— Their abilities have grown while you were asleep, ally, Greydawn told the ship. He felt his gas sac tense and contract as he spoke-wrote the words, ever conscious that anything he said might help give away the huge trick being played on the Culture ships. ~ You see the severity of the threat they now present.

— Indeed, the ship replied. ~ I find it hateful that the Deluger craft killed the Attitude Adjuster the way it appeared to.

— They will be chastised when we are in control of the entity at Esperi, never fear!