not see that look on her face. Still, he could imagine it, and spent hours doing just that, as the truck squealed and thumped and rumbled its way across the sintered plains.
He had told them his name, once he’d been able to speak, but they hadn’t seemed to pay any attention; all that appeared to matter was that he was a noble, with a noblemale’s markings and armour. He wasn’t sure whether to remind them of his name or not. If he did, and it was communicated to their superiors, then Worosei might find out all the quicker that he was alive, but there was a superstitious, cautious part of him that was afraid of doing that, because he could imagine her being told—that hope against hope fulfilled—and imagine the look on her face at that point, but he could also imagine himself dying even yet, because they hadn’t been able to treat his injuries properly and he was feeling weaker and weaker all the time.
That would be too cruel, to be told that he had survived against all the odds, and then discover later he had died of his wounds. So he did not press the point.
Had there been any chance of paying for rescue or even faster passage he might have made more of a fuss, but he had no immediate means of payment, and the Loyalist forces—along with any privateers that might have been acceptable to both sides—had dropped even further back into home space around Chel, regrouping. It didn’t matter. Worosei would be there, with them. Safe. He kept on imagining the look on her face.
He lapsed into a coma before they got to what was left of the city of Golse. The ransom and transfer took place without him being aware that anything was going on. It was quarter of a year later, the war was over and he was back on Chel before he discovered what had befallen the
He left during the GSV’s night, when the sun-line had dimmed and disappeared and a deep red light bathed the three great ships and the few lazily flying machines weaving about them.
He was on yet another vessel, a thing called a Very Fast Picket, on the last leg of his journey to Masaq’ Orbital. The craft disappeared through the interior stern fields of the
Airsphere
Uagen Zlepe, scholar, hung from the left-side sub-ventral foliage of the dirigible behemothaur Yoleus by his prehensile tail and his left hand. He held a glyph-writing tablet with one foot and wrote inside it with his other hand. His remaining leg hung loose, temporarily surplus to requirements. He wore baggy cerise pantaloons (currently rolled up above the knee) secured with a stout pocket-belt, a short black jacket with a stowed cape, chunky mirror- finish ankle-bracelets, a single-chain necklace with four small, dull stones and a tasselled box hat. His skin was light green, he was about two metres standing straight on his hind legs and a little longer measured from nose to tail.
Around him, beyond the hanging fronds of the behemothaur’s slipstream-ruffled skin foliage, the view faded away to a hazy blue nothing in every direction except up, where the creature’s body filled the sky.
Two of the seven suns were dimly visible, one large and red to right and just above Assumed Horizon, one small and yellow-orange to left about a quarter off directly below. No other mega fauna were visible, though Uagen knew that there was one nearby, just above Yoleus’ top surface. The dirigible behemothaur Muetenive was in heat and had been for the last three standard years. Yoleus had been following the other creature for all that time, diligently cruising after it, always hanging just below and behind, paying court, arguing its case, patiently waiting to reach its own season and insulting, infecting or just ramming out of the way all other potential suitors.
By dirigible behemothaur standards a three-year courtship indicated little more than an infatuation, arguably no more than a passing fancy, but Yoleus seemed committed to the pursuit and it was this attraction that had brought them so low in the Oskendari airsphere over the last fifty standard days; usually such mega fauna preferred to stay higher up where the air was thinner. Down here, where the air was so dense and gelatinous that Uagen Zlepe had noticed his voice sounded different, it took a great deal of a dirigible behemothaur’s energy to control its buoyancy. Muetenive was testing Yoleus’ ardour, and its fitness.
Somewhere above and ahead of the two—perhaps another five or six days at this slow rate of drift—was the gigalithine lenticular entity Buthulne, where the pair might eventually mate, but more likely would not.
It was far from certain that they would even get to the great living continent in the first place. Messenger birds had brought news of a massive convection bubble that was looking likely to well up from the airsphere’s lower reaches in the next few days and which would, if intercepted correctly, provide a rapid and easy ascent to the floating world that was Buthulne; however the timing was tight.
Gossip amongst Muetenive and Yoleus’ assorted populations of slaved organisms, symbiotes, parasites and guests indicated there was a good chance that Muetenive would dawdle for the next two or three days and then make a sudden maximum-speed dash for the air space just above the convection bubble, to see if Yoleus was capable of keeping up. If it was and they both made it, then they would make a splendidly dramatic entrance into Buthulne’s presence, where a huge parliament of thousands of their peers would be able to witness their glorious arrival.
The problem was that over the last few tens of thousands of years Muetenive had proved itself to be something of an incautious gambler when it came to such matters. Often it left such sportive or mating sprints until too late.
So they might not make it to the appropriate region until the bubble had gone, and the two mega fauna and all their crawlers-inside, hangers-on and floaters-about would be left with nothing but turbulence or even—worse still—descending air currents, while the bubble rose upwards in the airsphere.
Even more alarmingly for those committed to Yoleus, given the fabulous, legendary reputation of the gigalithine lenticular entity Buthulne, the messenger birds reckoned it was going to be a particularly big bubble and that Buthulne was in the mood for a change of scenery, and therefore likely to position itself directly above the up- welling air, to ride it to the airsphere’s upper reaches. If that happened it might be years or even decades before they encountered another gigalithine lenticular entity, and centuries—possibly millennia—before Buthulne itself hove into view again.
Yoleus’ Invited Guests’ Quarters consisted of a gourd-shaped growth situated just ahead of the creature’s third dorsal fin complex, not far from its summit. It was inside this structure, which reminded Uagen of a hollowed- out fruit, albeit one fifty metres across, that he had his rooms.
Uagen had stayed there, observing Yoleus, the other mega fauna and the entire ecology of the airsphere, for thirteen years. He was now thinking about drastically altering both his life expectancy and his shape to suit better the scale of the airsphere and the length of its larger inhabitants’ lives.
Uagen had been fairly human-basic for most of the ninety years he’d lived in the Culture. His present simian form—plus the use of some Culture technology, though no field-based science, which the mega fauna had a never entirely specified objection to—had seemed a sensible adaption strategy for the airsphere.
Recently, however, he had started wondering about being altered to resemble something more like a giant bird, and living for, potentially, a very long time indeed, and possibly indefinitely; long enough, for example, to experience the slow evolution of a behemothaur.
If, say, Yoleus and Muetenive did mate, exchanging and merging personalities, what would the two resulting behemothaurs be called? Yoleunive and Mueteleus? How exactly did this offspring-less coupling affect the two protagonists? How would they each change? Was it an equal trade or did one partner dominate the other? Were there ever any offspring? Did behemothaurs ever die of natural causes? Nobody knew. These and a thousand other questions remained unanswered. The mega fauna of the airspheres were scrupulous in keeping their own counsel on such matters, and in all recorded history—or at least all that he’d been able to access through the notoriously immodest data reservoirs of the Culture—the evolution of a behemothaur had never been recorded.
Uagen would give almost anything to be the person who witnessed such a process and came up with those answers, but just the chance of doing so would mean a huge long-term commitment.
He supposed if he was to do any of this he’d have to go back to his home Orbital and talk it over with his professors, mother, relations, friends and so on. They were expecting him back for good in another ten or fifteen
