“Why ought one to leap to the idea of a one-to-one correspondence?” the Estodien asked, with a cold smile. “Perhaps one death would be all that might be required. One important death.” He looked away again.
Quilan was silent for a while, and motionless. When Visquile did not look back to him from the window and the view, he said, “One death?”
The Estodien fixed him with his gaze again. “One important death. Much might result from that.” He looked away, humming a tune. Quilan recognised the melody; it was by Mahrai Ziller.
Absence of Gravitas
“The point is: what happens in heaven?”
“Unknowable wonderfulness?”
“Nonsense. The answer is nothing. Nothing can happen because if something happens, in fact if something
“Have you always thought that?”
“If you disable change, if you effectively stop time, if you prevent the possibility of the alteration of an individual’s circumstances—and that must include at least the possibility that they alter for the worse—then you don’t have life after death; you just have death.”
“There are those who believe that after death the soul is recreated into another being.”
“That is conservative and a little stupid, certainly, but not actually idiotic.”
“And there are those who believe that, upon death, the soul is allowed to create its own universe.”
“Monomaniacal and laughable as well as provably wrong.”
“Then there are those who believe that the soul—”
“Well, there are all sorts of different beliefs. However, the ones that interest me are those concerning the idea of heaven. That’s the idiocy it annoys me that others cannot see.”
“Of course, you could just be wrong.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“In any case, even if heaven did not exist originally, people have created it. It does exist. In fact, lots of different heavens exist.”
“Pa! Technology. These so-called heavens will not last. There will be war in them, or between them.”
“And the Sublimed?”
“At last; something beyond heaven. And unfortunately therefore useless. But a start. Or rather an end. Or a start, again, of another sort of life, so proving my point.”
“You’ve lost me.”
“We’re all lost. We are found dead.”
“…Are you really a professor of divinity?”
“Of course I am! You mean it isn’t obvious?”
“Cr Ziller! You met the other Chelgrian yet?”
“I’m sorry, have we met?”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m asking.”
“No, I meant have you and I met?”
“Trelsen Scofford. We met at the Gidhoutan’s.”
“Did we?”
“You said what I said about your stuff was ‘singular’ and ‘uniquely viewpointed’.”
“I think I hear myself in there somewhere.”
“Great! So, you met this guy yet?”
“No.”
“No? But he’s been here twenty days! Someone said he only lives—”
“Are you really as ignorant as you appear, Trelsen, or is this some sort of bizarre act, perhaps even meant to be amusing?”
“Sorry?”
“You should be. If you paid more than the most passing—”
“I just heard there was another Chelgrian—”
“—attention to what’s going on you’d know that the ‘other Chelgrian’ is a feudal tough, a professional bully come to attempt to persuade me to go back with him to a society I despise. I have no intention of meeting the wretch.”
“Oh. I didn’t realise.”
“Then you’re simply ignorant rather than malevolent. Congratulations.”
“So you’re not going to meet him at all?”
“That’s right; not at all. My plan is that after keeping him waiting for a few years he’ll either get fed up and slope home to be ritually chastised or he’ll gradually become seduced by Masaq’ and its many attractions in particular and by the Culture and all its wonderful manifestations in general, and become a citizen. Then I might meet him. Brilliant strategy, don’t you think?”
“You serious?”
“I’m always serious, never more so than when I’m being flippant.”
“Think it’ll work?”
“I neither know nor care. It’s just amusing to contemplate, that’s all.”
“So why do they want you to go back?”
“Apparently I’m the true Emperor. I was a foundling swapped at birth by a jealous godmother for my long- lost evil twin, Fimmit.”
“What? Really?”
“No, of course not really. He’s here to deliver a summons for a minor traffic violation.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Drat, you guessed. No, the thing is I have this secretion that comes from my anterior glands; every Chelgrian clan has one or two males in each generation who produce this substance. Without it the males of my clan can’t pass solids. If they don’t lick the appropriate spot at least once per tidal month they start to experience terrible wind. Unfortunately my cousin Kehenahanaha Junior the Third recently suffered a bizarre grooming accident which left him unable to produce the vital secretion, so they need me back there before all the males in my family explode from compressed shit. There is a surgical alternative, of course, but sadly the medical patent rights are held by a clan we haven’t acknowledged for three centuries. Dispute over a mistimed bid caused by an involuntary eructation during a bride-bidding auction, apparently. We don’t like to discuss it.”
“You… you’re not serious?”
“I really can’t get a thing past you, can I? No, it’s really about an unreturned library book.”
“You really are just kidding me now, aren’t you?”
“Yet again you’ve seen right through me. It’s almost as though I needn’t be here.”
“So you really don’t know why they want you back?”
“Well, what reason could there possibly be?”
“Don’t ask me!”
“That’s just what I was thinking!”
“Hey; why not just ask?”
“Better still, as it’s you who seems to care, why don’t you ask the one you charmingly call the Other Chelgrian to tell you why they want me back?”
“No, I meant ask Hub.”
“Well, it does know everything, after all. Look, there’s its avatar over there!”
“Hey, right! Let’s… Oh. Ah, see you, then, ah… Oh, hi. You must be the Homomdan.”
“Well spotted.”
