Excession

V

The Fate Amenable To Change let its engine fields race for a moment, running a series of tests and evaluation processes. It was as if its traction fields were just sinking through the energy grid, as if it wasn't there. It tried signalling, telling the outside universe of its plight, but the signals just seemed to loop back and it found itself receiving its own signal a picosecond after it had sent it. It tried to create a warp but the skein just seemed to slide out of its fields. It attempted Displacing a drone but the wormhole collapsed before it was properly formed. It tried a few more tricks, finessing its field structures and reconfiguring its senses in an attempt at least to understand what was going on, but nothing worked.

It thought. It felt curiously composed, considering.

It shut everything down and let itself drift, floating gradually back through the four-dimensional hypervolume towards the skein of real space, propelled by nothing more than the faint pressure of radiations expelled from the energy grid. Its avatars were already starting to explain the change in the situation to its human crew. The ship hoped the people would take it calmly.

Then the Excession seemed to swell, bulging as though under an enormous lens, reaching out towards the Culture ship with a vast enclosing scoop of presence.

Well, here we go, the ship thought. Should be interesting…

VI

'No.'

'Please,' the avatar said.

The woman shook her head. 'I've thought about it. I don't want to see him.'

The avatar stared at Dajeil. 'But I brought him all this way!' it cried. 'Just for you! If you knew…' Its voice trailed off. It brought its feet up onto the front of the seat, and put its arms round its legs, hugging them.

They were in Dajeil's quarters, inside another version of the tower's interior housed within the GCU Jaundiced Outlook. The avatar had come straight here after leaving Genar-Hofoen in the Mainbay where the original copy of the tower — the one Dajeil Gelian had spent forty years living in — had been moved to when the ship had converted all its external spare mass to engine. It had thought she would be pleased that the tower had not had to be destroyed, and that Genar-Hofoen had finally been persuaded to return to her.

Dajeil continued watching the screen. It was a replay of one of her dives amongst the triangular rays in the shallow sea that was now no more, as seen from a drone which had accompanied her. She watched herself move amongst the gracefully undulating wings of the great, gentle creatures. Swollen, awkward, she was the only graceless thing in the picture.

The avatar didn't know what to say next.

The Sleeper Service decided to take over. 'Dajeil?' it said quietly, through its representative. The woman looked round, recognising the new tone in Amorphia's voice.

'What?'

'Why don't you want to see him now?'

'I…' she paused. 'It's just been too long,' she said. 'I think… I suppose for the first few years I did want to see him again; to… to-' she looked down, picking at her fingernails. '-I don't know. Oh, to try and make things all right… grief, that sounds so lame.' She sniffed and looked upwards at the translucent dqme above her. 'I felt there were things we needed to have said that we never did say to each other, and that if we did get together, even for a little while, we could… work things out. Draw a line under all that happened. Tie up loose ends; that… that sort of thing. You know?' she said, looking bright-eyed at the avatar.

Oh, Dajeil, thought the ship. How wounded about the eyes. 'I know,' it said. 'But now you feel that too much time has passed?'

The woman smoothed her hand over her belly. She nodded slowly, looking at the floor. 'Yes,' she said. 'It's all too long ago. I'm sure he's forgotten all about me.' She glanced up at the avatar.

'And yet he is here,' it said.

'Did he come to see me?' she asked it, already sounding bitter.

'No, and yes,' the ship said. 'He had another motive. But it is because of you he is here.'

She shook her head. 'No,' she said. 'No; too much time…'

The avatar unfolded itself from the seat and crossed to where Dajeil sat; it knelt down before her, and hesitantly extended one hand towards her abdomen. Looking into her eyes, it gently placed its palm on Dajeil's belly. Dajeil felt dizzy. She could not recall Amorphia ever having touched her before, either under its own control or under the Sleeper Service's. She put her own hand on top of the avatar's. The creature's hand was steady, soft and cool. 'And yet,' it said, 'in some ways, no time has passed.' Dajeil gave a bitter laugh. 'Oh yes,' she said. 'I've been here, doing nothing except growing older. But what about him?' she asked and suddenly there was something fierce about her voice. 'How much has he lived in forty years? How many loves has he had?'

'I don't believe that signifies, Dajeil,' the ship told her quietly. 'The point is that he is here. You can talk to him. The two of you can talk. Some resolution might be achieved.' It pressed very lightly on her belly. 'I believe it can be achieved.'

She sighed heavily. She looked down at her hand. 'I don't know,' she said. 'I don't know. I need to think. I can't… I need to think.'

'Dajeil,' the ship said, and the avatar took her hand in both of its. 'Were it possible, I would give you as long as you could desire, but I am not able to. There is some urgency in this. I have what might be termed an urgent appointment near a star called Esperi. I cannot delay my arrival and I would not want to take you with me there; it is too dangerous. I would like you to leave in this ship as soon as possible.'

She looked hurt, the Sleeper thought.

'I won't be forced into this,' she told it.

'Of course not,' it said. It attempted a smile and patted her hand. 'Why not sleep on it? Tomorrow will be soon enough.'

VII

The Attitude Adjuster watched the attacking craft fall amongst the founding shield of ships; they had no time to move more an fractionally from their original positions. Their weaponry did their moving for them, focusing on the incoming target it plunged into their midst. A scatter of brightly flaring missiles preceded the Killing Time, a hail of plasma bubbles accompanied it and CAM, AM and nanohole warheads cluster munitions burst everywhere around it like a gigantic firework, producing a giant orb of scintillations. Many of the individual motes themselves detonated in a clustering hyperspherical storm of lethal sparks, followed sequentially by another and another echelon of explosions erupting amongst the wave of ships in a layered hierarchy of destruction.

The Attitude Adjuster scanned the real-time reports coming back from its war flock. One was caught by a nanohole, vanishing inside a vast burst of annihilation; another was damaged beyond immediate repair by an AM munition and dropped behind, engines crippled. Fortuitously, neither were crewed by Affronters. Most of the rest of the warheads were dealt with; the fleet's own replies were fended, detonated or avoided by the attacker. No sign of the craft using its effectors to do more than cause interference; flittingly interrogating and probing amongst the collected mass of ships. The focus of its attention had begun near the centre of the third wave of craft and was spirally erratically outwards, occasionally flicking further out towards the other waves.