Look to Windward

“And found themselves to be mad. Does that count as a positive result?”

“They feel they have tested themselves against nature—”

“What’s natural around here?” Ziller protested. “The nearest ‘natural’ thing to here is ten light minutes away. It’s the fucking sun.” He snorted. “And I wouldn’t put it past them to have meddled with that.”

“I don’t believe they have. In fact it was a potential instability in Lacelere that produced the high back-up rate on Masaq’ Orbital in the first place, before it became famous for excessive fun.” Kabe put the cushion down.

Ziller was staring at him. “Are you saying the sun could explode?”

“Well, sort of, in theory. It’s a very—”

“You’re not serious!”

“Of course I am. The chances are—”

“They never told me that!”

“Actually, it wouldn’t really blow up as such, but it might flare—”

“It does flare! I’ve seen its flares!”

“Yes. Pretty, aren’t they? But there is a chance—no more than one in several million during the time the star spends on the main-sequence—that it might produce a flare sequence that Hub and the Orbital’s defences would be unable to deflect or shelter everyone from.”

“And they built this thing here?”

“I understand it was a very attractive system otherwise. And besides, I believe that over time they’ve added extra protection under-Plate which could stand up to anything short of a supernova, though of course any technology can go wrong and, sensibly, the culture of backing-up as a matter of course is still common.”

Ziller was shaking his head. “They could have mentioned this to me.”

“Perhaps the risk is deemed so tiny they have given up bothering.”

Ziller smoothed his scalp fur. He’d let his pipe go out. “I don’t believe these people.”

“The chances of disaster are very remote indeed, especially for any given year, or even sentient lifetime.” Kabe rose and lumbered over to a sideboard. He picked up a bowl of fruits. “Fruit?”

“No, thank you.”

Kabe selected a ripe sunbread. He had had his intestinal flora altered to enable him to eat common Culture foods. More unusually, he had had his oral and nasal senses modified so that he could taste food as a standard Culture human would. He turned away from Ziller as he popped the sunbread into his mouth, chewed the fruit a couple of times and swallowed. The action of averting his face from others when eating had become habitual; members of Kabe’s species had very big mouths and some humans found the sight of him eating alarming.

“But to return to my point,” he said, dabbing at his mouth with a napkin. “Let’s not use the word ‘nature’ then; let us say they feel they have gained something from having pitted themselves against forces much greater than themselves.”

“And this is somehow not a sign of madness.” Ziller shook his head. “Kabe, you may have been here too long.”

The Homomdan crossed to the balcony, gazing out at the view. “I would say that these people are demonstrably not mad. They live lives that seem quite sane otherwise.”

“What? Glacier-caving?”

“That is not all they do.”

“Indeed. They do lots of other insane things; naked blade-fencing, mountain free-climbing, wing-flying —”

“Very few do nothing but take part in these extreme pastimes. Most have otherwise fairly normal lives.”

Ziller relit his pipe. “By Culture standards.”

“Well, yes, and why not? They socialise, they have work-hobbies, they play in more gentle forms, they read or watch screen, they go to entertainments. They sit around grinning in one of their glanded drug states, they study, they spend time travelling—”

“Ah-hah!”

“—apparently just for the sake of it or they simply… potter. And of course many of them indulge in arts and crafts.” Kabe made a smile and spread his three hands. “A few even compose music.”

“They spend time. That’s just it. They spend time travelling. The time weighs heavily on them because they lack any context, any valid framework for their lives. They persist in hoping that something they think they’ll find in the place they’re heading for will somehow provide them with a fulfilment they feel certain they deserve and yet have never come close to experiencing.”

Ziller frowned and tapped at his pipe bowl. “Some travel forever in hope and are serially disappointed. Others, slightly less self-deceiving, come to accept that the process of travelling itself offers, if not fulfilment, then relief from the feeling that they should be feeling fulfilled.”

Kabe watched a springleg bounce from branch to branch through the trees outside, its ruddy fur and long tail dappled with leaf shadows. He could hear the shrill voices of human children, playing and splashing in the pool at the side of the house. “Oh, come, Ziller. Arguably any intelligent species feels that to some extent.”

“Really? Does yours?”

Kabe fingered the soft folds of the drapes at the side of the balcony window. “We are much older than the humans, but I think we probably did, once.” He looked back at the Chelgrian, crouched on the wide seat as though ready to pounce. “All naturally evolved sentient life is restless. At some scale or stage.”

Ziller appeared to consider this, then shook his head. Kabe was not yet sure if this gesture meant that he had said something too preposterous to be worth dignifying with an answer, perpetrated an appalling cliche, or made a point that the Chelgrian could not find an adequate reply to.

“The point is,” Ziller said, “that having carefully constructed their paradise from first principles to remove all credible motives for conflict amongst themselves and all natural threats—” He paused and glanced sourly at the sunlight flaring off the gilt border of his seat.’—Well, almost all natural threats, these people then find their lives are so hollow they have to recreate false versions of just the sort of terrors untold generations of their ancestors spent their existences attempting to conquer.”

“I think that is a little like criticising somebody for owning both an umbrella and a shower,” Kabe said. “It is the choice that is important.” He rearranged the curtains more symmetrically. “These people control their terrors. They can choose to sample them, repeat them or avoid them. That is not the same as living beneath the volcano when you’ve just invented the wheel, or wondering whether your levee will break and drown your entire village. Again, this applies to all societies which have matured beyond the age of barbarism. There is no great mystery here.”

“But the Culture is so insistent in its utopianism,” Ziller said, sounding, Kabe thought, almost bitter. “They are like an infant with a toy, demanding it only to throw it away.”

Kabe watched Ziller puff at his pipe for a while, then walked through the cloud of smoke and sat trefoil on the finger-deep carpet near the other male’s couch.

“I think it is only natural, and a sign that one has succeeded as a species, that what used to have to be suffered as a necessity becomes enjoyed as sport. Even fear can be recreational.”

Ziller looked into the Homomdan’s eyes. “And despair?”

Kabe shrugged. “Despair? Well, only in the short term, as when one despairs of completing a task, or winning at some game or sport, and yet later does. The earlier despair makes the victory all the sweeter.”

“That is not despair,” Ziller said quietly. “That is temporary annoyance, the passing irritation of foreseen disappointment. I meant nothing so trivial. I meant the sort of despair that eats your soul, that contaminates your senses so that every experience, however pleasant, becomes saturated with bile. The sort of despair that drives you to thoughts of suicide.”

Kabe rocked back. “No,” he said. “No. They might hope to have put that behind them.”

“Yes. They leave it in their wake for others.”

“Ah.” Kabe nodded. “I think we touch upon what happened to your own people. Well, some of them feel remorse close to despair about that.”

“It was mostly our own doing.” Ziller crumbled some smoke block into his pipe, tamping it down with a small silver instrument and producing further clouds of smoke. “We would doubtless have contrived a war without the Culture’s help.”

“Not necessarily.”