Excession

tower. Oos and Aahs duly sounded round the crowded balcony.

The man snapped his fingers. 'I know,' he said. 'Send a mind-state abstract.'

The big drone hesitated, then said, 'Oh, one of those. Hmm. Well; still not really the same thing, I think. Anyway, I've never done one. Not sure I really approve. I mean, it's you but it's not you, you know?'

Tishlin nodded. 'Certainly do know. Can't say I think they're as, you know, benign as they're cracked up to be either; I mean, it's supposed to act sentient without being sentient, so isn't it actually sentient? What happens to it when it's just turned off? I'm not convinced there isn't some sort of iffy morality here, either. But I've done it myself. Talked into it. Reservations, like you say, but…' He looked round, then leant closer to the machine's dull brown casing. 'Bit of a Contact thing, actually.'

'Really?' the old machine said, tipping its whole body away from him for a moment, then tipping it back so that it leant towards him. It extended a field round the two of them; the exterior sounds faded. When it spoke again, it was with a slight echo that indicated the field was keeping whatever they said between the two of them. 'What was that… Well, wait a moment, if you aren't supposed to tell anybody…'

Tishlin weaved his hand. 'Well, not officially,' he said, brushing white hair over one ear, 'but you're a Contact veteran, and you know how SC always dramatises things.'

'SC!' the drone said its voice rising. 'You didn't say it was them! I'm not sure I want to hear this,' it said, through a chuckle.

'Well, they asked… a favour,' the man said, quietly pleased that he seemed finally to have impressed the old drone. 'Sort of a family thing. Had to record one of these damn things so it could go and convince a nephew of mine he should do his bit for the great and good cause. Last I heard the boy had done the decent thing and taken ship for some Eccentric GSV.' He watched the outskirts of the town slide underneath. A flower-garlanded terrace held groups of people pattern-dancing; he could imagine the whoops and wild, whirling music. The scent of roasting meat came curling over the balcony parapet and made it through the hushfield.

'They asked if I wanted it to be reincorporated after it had done its job,' he told the drone. 'They said it could be sent back and sort of put back inside my head, but I said no. Gave me a creepy feeling just thinking about it. What if it had changed a lot while it was away? Why, I might end up wanting to join some retreatist order or autoeuthenise or something!' He shook his head and drained his glass. 'No; I said no. Hope the damn thing never was really alive, but if it was, or is, then it's not getting back into my head, no thank you, I'm sorry.'

'Well, if what they told you was true, it's yours to do with as you wish, isn't it?'

'Exactly.'

'Well, I don't think I'll take the same step,' the drone said, sounding thoughtful. It swivelled as though to face him. The field around them collapsed. The sound of the fireworks returned. 'Tell you what,' the old drone said. 'I will get off here and see the guys, but I'll catch up with you in a couple of days, all right? We'll probably fall out in a day or two anyway; they're cantankerous old buggers, frankly. I'll take a flyer or try floating myself if I feel adventurous. Deal?' It extended a field.

'Deal,' Tishlin said, slapping the field with his hand.

The drone Gruda Aplam had already contacted its old friend the GCU It's Character Forming, currently housed in the GSV Zero Gravitas which was at that point docked under a distant plate of Seddun Orbital. The GCU communicated with the Orbital Hub Tsikiliepre, which in turn contacted the Ulterior Entity Highpoint, which signalled the LSV Misophist, which passed the message on to the University Mind at Oara, on Khasli plate in the Juboal system, which duly relayed the signal, along with an interesting series of rhyme-scheme glyphs, ordinary poems and word games all based on the original signal, to its favoured protege, the LSV Serious Callers Only…

[stuttered tight point, M32, tra. @n4.28. 866.2083]

xLSV Serious Callers Only

oEccentric Shoot Them Later

It is Genar-Hofoen. I am now convinced. I am not certain why he may be important to the conspiracy, but he surely is. I have drawn up a plan to intercept him, on Tier. The plan involves Phage Rock; will you back me up if I request its aid?

oo

[stuttered tight point, M32, tra. @n4.28.866.2568]

xEccentric Shoot Them Later

oLSV Serious Callers Only

My dear old friend, of course.

oo

Thank you. I shall make the request immediately. We shall be reduced to dealing with amateurs, I'm afraid. However, I hope to find a high-profile amateur; a degree of fame may protect where SC training is not available. What of our fellow counter-conspirator?

No word. Perhaps it's spending more time in The Land of IF.

oo

And the ship and Pittance?

oo

Arriving in eleven and a half days' time.

oo

Hmm. Four days after the time it will take for us to get somebody to Tier.

It is within the bounds of possibility this ship will be heading into a threatening situation. Is it able to take care of itself?

oo

Oh, I think it capable of giving a good account of itself. Just because I'm Eccentric doesn't mean I don't know some big hitters.

oo

Let us hope such throw-weight is not required.

oo

Absolutely.

II

A Plate class General Systems Vehicle was quite a simple thing, in at least one way. It was four kilometres thick; the lowest kilometre was almost all engine, the middle two klicks were ship space — an entire enclosed system of sophisticated dockyards and quays, in effect — and the topmost thousand metres was accommodation, most of it for humans. There was, of course, a great deal more to it than that, but this covered the essentials.

Using these broad-brush figures, it was a simple matter for anybody to work out the craft's approximate maximum speed from the cubic kilometrage of its engines, the number of ships of any given size it could contain according to the volume given over to the various sizes of bays and engineering space, and the total number of humans it could accommodate by simply adding up how many cubic kilometres were given over to their living- space.

The Sleeper Service had retained an almost pristine original specification internally, which was a rare thing in an Eccentric vessel; usually the first thing they did was drastically reconfigure their physical shape and internal lay-out according to the dictates of some private aesthetic, driving obsession or just plain whim, but the fact the Sleeper Service had stuck to its initial design and merely added its own private ocean and gas-giant environment on the outside made it relatively easy to measure its actual behaviour against what it ought to be capable of, and so ensure that it wasn't up to any extra mischief besides being Eccentric in the first place.