Excession

It should not have made the difference that it did, and yet it did. Their three visitors stayed for two nights, going swimming with the 'Ktik during the second day. Byr met Aist again that night. The following day the visitors left, climbing into the module which the Unacceptable Behaviour sent down for them. The ship was heading off to loop round a proto-nova a few thousand years distant. It would be back in two weeks to drop off any further supplies they might need. Dajeil's baby would be born a couple of weeks after that. The next ship due to visit would be another year away, when they might have doubled the human population of the planet. They stood together on the beach. Dajeil held Byr's hand as the module climbed into the slate-coloured clouds.

Later that evening Byr found Dajeil watching the recording in the tower's top room, where the screens were. Tears ran down her face.

There were no monitor systems on the tower itself. It must have been one of the independent camera drones. This one must have landed on the tower that night, found two large mammals there, and started recording.

Dajeil turned to look at Byr, her face streaked with the tears. Byr felt a sudden welling of anger. On the screen, she watched the two people embracing, caressing on the tower's moonlit roof, and heard the soft gasps and whisperings.

'Yes,' Byr said, smiling ironically as she pulled off the wet suit. 'Old Aist, eh? Quite a lass. You shouldn't cry, you know. Upsets the body's fluid balance for baby.'

Dajeil threw a glass at her. It smashed behind Byr on the winding stair. A little servitor drone scurried past Byr's feet and windmilled down the carpeted steps on its little limbs, to start cleaning up the mess. Byr looked into her lover's face. Dajeil's swollen breasts rose and fell within her shirt and her face was flushed. Byr continued to peel off bits of the wet suit.

'It was a bit of light relief, for grief's sake,' she said, keeping her voice even. 'Just a friendly fuck. A loose end sort of thing. It-'

'How could you do this to us?' Dajeil screamed.

'Do what?' Byr protested, still trying to keep her voice from rising. 'What have I done?'

'Screwing my best friend, here! Now! After everything!'

Byr kept calm. 'Does it count as screwing, technically, when neither of you has a penis?' She assumed a pained, puzzled expression.

'You shit! Don't laugh about it!' Dajeil screamed. Her voice was hoarse, unlike anything Byr had heard from her before. 'Don't you fucking laugh about it!' Dajeil was suddenly up out of her seat and dashing towards her, arms raised.

Byr caught her wrists.

'Dajeil!' she said, as the other woman struggled and sobbed and tried to shake her hands free. 'You're being ridiculous! I always fucked other people; you were fucking other people when you were giving me all this shit about being my 'still point'; we both knew, it wasn't like we were juveniles or in some dumb monogamy cult or something. Shit; so I stuck my fingers in your pal's cunt; so fucking what? She's gone. I'm still here; you're still here, the fucking kid's still in your belly; yours is in mine. Isn't that what you said is all that matters?'

'You bastard, you bastard!' Dajeil cried, and collapsed. Byr had to support her as she crumpled to the floor, sobbing uncontrollably.

'Oh, Dajeil, come on; this isn't anything that matters. We never swore to be faithful, did we? It was just a friendly… it was politeness, for fuck's sake. I didn't even think it was worth mentioning… Come on, I know this is a tough time for you and there's all these hormones and shit in your body, but this is crazy; you're reacting… crazily…'

'Fuck off! Fuck off and leave me alone!' Dajeil spat, her voice reduced to a croak. 'Leave me alone!'

'Dajeil,' Byr said, kneeling down beside her. 'Please… Look, I'm sorry. I really am. I've never apologised for fucking anybody in my life before; I swore I never would, but I'm doing it now. I can't undo it, but I didn't realise it would affect you like this. If I had I wouldn't have done it. I swear. I'd never have done it; it was she who kissed me first. I didn't set out to seduce her or anything, but I'd have said No, I'd have said No, really I would. It wasn't my idea, it wasn't my fault. I'm sorry. What more can I say? What can I do…?'

It did no good. Dajeil wouldn't talk after that. She wouldn't be carried to her bed. She didn't want to be touched or be brought anything to eat or drink. Byr sat at the screen controls while Dajeil whimpered on the floor.

Byr found the recording the camera drone had taken and wiped it.

IX

The Grey Area did something to his eyes. It happened in his sleep, the first night he was aboard. He woke up in the morning to the sound of song birds trilling over distant waterfalls and the faint smell of tree resin; one wall of his cabin impersonated a window high up in a forest-swathed mountain range. There was a memory of some strangeness, a buried recollection of some sort; half real, half not, but it slipped slowly away as he came fully to. The view was blurry for a moment, then slowly came clear as he recalled the ship asking him last night if it could implant the nanotechs while he slept. His eyes tingled a little and he wiped away some tears, but then everything seemed to settle back to normal.

'Ship?' he said.

'Yes?' replied the cabin.

'Is that it?' he asked. 'With the implants?'

'Yes. There's a modified neural lace in place in your skull; it'll take a day or so to bed in properly. I hurried up a little repair-work your own systems were taking their time with near your visual cortex. You have hit your head recently?'

'Yeah. Fell out of a carriage.'

'How are your eyes?'

'Bit blurred and smarted a little. Okay now.'

'Later today we'll go through a simulation of what happens when you've interfaced with the Sleeper Service's Storage vault system. All right?'

'Fine. How's our rendezvous with the Sleeper looking?'

'All is in hand. I expect to transfer you in four days.'

'Great. And what's happening with the war?'

'Nothing much. Why?'

'I just wanted to know,' Genar-Hofoen said. 'Have there been any major actions yet? Any more cruise ships been taken hostage?'

'I am not a news service, Genar-Hofoen. You have a terminal, I believe. I suggest you use it.'

'Well, thank you for your help,' muttered the man, swinging out of bed. He had never met so unhelpful a ship. He went for breakfast; at least it ought to be able to provide that.

He was sitting alone in the ship's main mess watching his favourite Culture news service via a holo projected by his ter minal. After the first flurry of Affront Orbital and cruise ship takeovers with no obvious Culture military reply but talk of a mobilisation taking place (frustratingly, almost entirely beyond the news services' perceptions), the war seemed to have entered a period of relative quiescence. Right now the news service was running a semi- serious feature on how to ingratiate yourself with an Affronter if you happened to bump into one — when the dream he had had last night — the thing he had half remembered just after the point of waking — suddenly returned to him.

X