“But you have to be there!”
“No I don’t.”
“But who’ll conduct it?”
“Nobody. These things don’t really need conducting. Composers conduct to feed their own ego and to feel part of the performance rather than just the preparation.”
“That’s not what you said before. You said there were nuances that could not be programmed, decisions that a conductor could make at the time on the night in response to the audience’s on-going reactions which required a single individual to collate, analyse and react to, functioning as a focal point for the distributed—”
“I was bullshitting you.”
“You seemed as sincere then as you do now.”
“It’s a gift. The point is, I won’t conduct if this mercenary whoreboy is there. I won’t be anywhere near the place. I’ll be at home, or somewhere else.”
“That would be very embarrassing for all concerned.”
“So keep him away if you want me there.”
“How could I possibly do that?”
“You are a Hub Mind, as you’ve recently explained in exhausting detail. Your resources are almost infinite.”
“Why can’t we just keep the two of you apart on the night?”
“Because it won’t happen. An excuse will be found to bring us together. An encounter will be manufactured.”
“What if I give you my word that I will make sure that Quilan and you are never brought face to face? He will be there, but I’ll ensure that you are kept apart.”
“With one avatar?… Have you put a sound field round us?”
“Just round our heads, yes. This avatar’s lips will no longer move and its voice will alter slightly as a result; don’t be alarmed.”
“I’ll try to hold my terror in check. Go on.”
“If I really have to I can make sure there are several avatars there at the concert. They don’t always have to have silver skin, you know. And I’ll have drones present, too.”
“Big bulky drones?”
“Better; small, mean ones.”
“No good. No deal.”
“And knife missiles.”
“Still no.”
“Why not? I do hope you are not going to say that you don’t trust me. My word is my word. I never break it.”
“I do trust you. The reason that it’s no deal is because of the people who would want this meeting to happen.”
“Go on.”
“Tersono. Contact. Grief, Special fucking Circumstances, for all I know.”
“Hmm.”
“If they want the two of us to meet—I mean really, determinedly want—could you definitely, certainly stop it from happening, Hub?”
“Your question could apply to any moment since Quilan’s arrival.”
“Yes, but until now a seemingly chance meeting would have been too artificial, too obviously contrived. They’d have expected me to react badly, and they’d have been absolutely right. Our meeting must look like fate, like it was inevitable, as though my music, my talent, my personality and very being have made it pre-ordained.”
“You could always go and if you’re forced to meet still react badly.”
“No. I don’t see why I should. I don’t want to meet him; simple as that.”
“I give you my word I will do everything I can to make sure that you do not meet.”
“Answer the question: if SC were determined to force a meeting, could you stop them?”
“No.”
“As I thought.”
“I’m not doing very well here, am I?”
“No. However there is one thing that might change my mind.”
“Ah. What’s that?”
“Look into the bastard’s mind.”
“I can’t do that, Ziller.”
“Why not?”
“It is one of the very few more-or-less unbreakable rules of the Culture. Nearly a law. If we had laws, it would be one of the first on the statute book.”
“Only more-or-less unbreakable?”
“It is done very, very rarely, and the result tends to be ostracism. There was a ship called the
“All it is is looking inside an animal brain.”
“That’s just it. It is so easy, and it would mean so little, really. That is why the not-doing of it is probably the most profound manner in which we honour our biological progenitors. This prohibition is a mark of our respect. And so I cannot do it.”
“You mean you won’t do it.”
“They are almost the same thing.”
“You have the ability.”
“Of course.”
“Then do it.”
“Why?”
“Because I won’t attend the concert otherwise.”
“I know that. I mean what would I be looking for?”
“The real reason he’s here.”
“You really imagine he might be here to harm you?”
“It’s a possibility.”
“What would stop me saying I would do this thing and then only pretending to do it? I could tell you I had looked and found nothing.”
“I’d ask you to give your word you would really do it.”
“Have you not heard of the idea that a promise made under duress does not count?”
“Yes. You know you could have said nothing there.”
“I wouldn’t want to deceive you, Ziller. That too would be dishonourable.”
“Then it sounds like I’m not going to that concert.”
“I will still hope that you might, and work towards it.”
“Never mind. You could always hold another competition; the winner gets to conduct.”
“Let me think about this. I’ll release the sound field. Let’s watch the dune riders.”
The avatar and the Chelgrian turned from facing each other to stand with the others by the parapet of the trundling feast hall’s viewing platform. It was night, and cloudy. Knowing the weather would be so, people had come to the dune slides of Efilziveiz-Regneant to watch the biolume boarding.
The dunes were not normal dunes; they were titanic spills of sand forming a three-kilometre-high slope from one Plate to another, marking where the sands from one of the Great River’s sandbank spurnings were blown across towards the Plate’s spinward edge to slip down to the desert regions of the sunken continent below.
