Excession

slept or sat cross-legged in one of her trances or fussed around in the nursery they had prepared for their children.

'Same here,' Aist said, crossing her arms beneath her breasts and leaning out over the parapet, her head and shoulders dangling over the drop. She spat slowly; the little fleck fell whitely through the moonlight and disappeared against the dark slope of the tower's bottom storey. She rocked back onto her feet and moved some of her medium-length brown hair off her eyes, while she studied Byr's face, a small frown just visible on her brow. She shook her head. 'You know,' she said, 'I never thought you'd be one to change sex, let alone have a kid.'

'Same here,' Byr said, leaning on the parapet and gazing out to sea. 'Still can't believe it, sometimes.'

Aist leant beside him. 'Still, it's okay, isn't it? I mean, you're happy, aren't you?'

Byr glanced at the other woman. 'Isn't it obvious?'

Aist was silent for a while. Eventually she said, 'Dajeil loves you very much. I've known her twenty years. She's changed completely too, you know; not just you. She was always really independent, never wanted to be a mother, never wanted to settle down with one person, not for a long time, anyway. Not until she was old. You've both changed each other so much. It's… it's really something. Almost scary, but, well, sort of impressive, you know?'

'Of course.'

There was silence for another while. 'When do you think you'll have your baby?' Aist asked. 'How long after she has… Ren, isn't it?'

'Yes; Ren. I don't know. We'll see.' Byr gave a small laugh, almost more of a cough. 'Maybe we'll wait until Ren is grown up enough to help us look after it.'

Aist made the same noise. She leant on the parapet again, lifting her feet off the flagstones and balancing, pivoting on her folded arms. 'How's it been here, being so far away from anybody else? Do you get many visitors?'

Byr shook her head. 'No. You're only the third lot of people we've seen.'

'Gets lonely, I suppose. I mean I know you've got each other, but…'

'The 'Ktik are fun,' Byr said. 'They're people, individuals. I've met thousands of them by now, I suppose. There are something like twenty or thirty million of them. Lots of new little chums to meet.'

Aist sniggered. 'Don't suppose you can get it off with them, can you?'

Byr glanced at her. 'Never tried. Doubt it.'

'Boy, you were some swordsman, Byr,' Aist said. 'I remember you on the Quietly, first time we met. I'd never met anyone so focused.' She laughed. 'On anything! You were like a natural force or something; an earthquake or a tidal wave.'

'Those are natural disasters,' Byr pointed out with feigned frostiness.

'Well, close enough then,' Aist said, laughing gently. She glanced slyly, slowly, at the other woman. 'I suppose I'd have found myself in the firing line if I'd stuck around longer.'

'I imagine you might,' Byr said in a tired, resigned voice.

'Yup, could all have turned out completely different,' Aist said.

Byr nodded. 'Or it could all have turned out exactly the same.'

'Well, don't sound so happy about it,' Aist said. 'I wouldn't have minded.' She leant over the parapet and spat delicately again, moving her head just so, flicking the spittle outward. This time it landed on the gravel path which skirted the tower's stone base. She made an approving noise and looked back at Byr, wiping her chin and grinning. She looked at Byr, studying his face again. 'It's not fair, Byr,' she said. 'You look good no matter what you are.' She put one hand out slowly towards Byr's cheek. Byr looked into her large dark eyes.

One moon started to disappear behind a ragged layer of high cloud and a small wind picked up, smelling of rain.

A test, for her friend, Byr thought, as the other woman's long fingers gently stroked her face, feather soft. But the fingers were trembling. Still a test; determined to do it but nervous about it. Byr put her hand up and held the woman's fingers lightly. She took it as a signal to kiss her.

After a little while, Byr said, 'Aist…' and started to pull away.

'Hey,' she said softly, 'this doesn't mean anything, all right? Just lust. Doesn't mean a thing.'

A little later still Byr said, 'Why are we doing this?'

'Why not?' Aist breathed.

Byr could think of several reasons, asleep in the stony darkness beneath them. How I have changed, she thought. But then again, not that much.

VII

Ulver Seich strolled through the accommodation section of the Grey Area. At least there was a bit more strolling to be done on the GCU; had she come here straight from the family house on Phage it would have seemed horribly cramped, but after the claustrophobic confines of the Frank Exchange of Views, it appeared almost spacious (she had spent so little time on Tier, and passed the small amount of time she had there in such a frenetic haste of preparation that it hardly counted. As for the nine-person module — ugh!).

The Grey Area's interior — built to house three hundred people in reasonable if slightly compact comfort, and now home only to her, Churt Lyne and Genar-Hofoen — was actually pretty interesting, which was an unexpected plus on this increasingly disillusioning expedition. The ship was like a museum to torture, death and genocide; it was filled with mementoes and souvenirs from hundreds of different planets, all testifying to the tendency towards institutionalised cruelty exhibited by so many forms of intelligent life. From thumbscrews and pilliwinks to death camps and planet-swallowing black holes, the Grey Area had examples of the devices and entities involved, or of their effects, or documentary recordings of their use.

Most of the ship's corridors were lined with weaponry, the larger pieces standing on the floor, others on tables; bigger items took up whole cabins, lounges or larger public spaces and the very biggest weapons were shown as scale models. There were thousands of instruments of torture, clubs, spears, knives, swords, strangle cords, catapults, bows, powder guns, shells, mines, gas canisters, bombs, syringes, mortars, howitzers, missiles, atomics, lasers, field arms, plasma guns, microwavers, effectors, thunderbolters, knife missiles, line guns, thudders, gravguns, monofilament warps, pancakers, AM projectors, grid-fire impulsers, ZPE flux-polarisers, trapdoor units, CAM spreaders and a host of other inventions designed for — or capable of being turned to the purpose of producing death, destruction and agony.

Some of the cabins and larger spaces had been fitted out to resemble torture chambers, slave holds, prison cells and death chambers (including the ship's swimming pool, though after she'd pointedly mentioned that she liked to start each day with a dip, this was now being converted back to its original purpose). Ulver supposed these… stage-sets… were a little like the famous tableaux the Sleeper Service was supposed to contain, except that the Grey Area's had no bodies in them (something of a relief, in the circumstances).

Like a lot of people, she had always wanted to see the real thing. She had asked if she and Churt Lyne might go aboard the GSV when Genar-Hofoen did, but her request had been turned down; they would have to stay on the Grey Area until the GCU could find somewhere both safe and unrestricted to deposit them. What made it all even more annoying in a way was that the Grey Area expected it would be keeping in close contact with the Sleeper Service; inside its field envelope, if it was allowed to. So near and yet so far and all that crap. Whatever; it looked like she wouldn't get to see even the remnants of the famous craft's tableaux vivants, and would have to make do with the Grey Area and its tableaux mortants.

She thought they might have been more effective if they had contained the victims or the victims and tormentors, but they didn't. Instead they contained just the rack, the iron maiden, the fires and the irons, the shackles and the beds and chairs, the buckets of water and acid and the electric cables and all the serried