Look to Windward

The vessel had to leave its drive units behind, somewhere outside, in space.” He waved one hand. “The behemothaurs are sensitive to force-field technologies, we’re told.”

The superior of the temple ship was tall and elegant and dressed in a graceful interpretation of the order’s simple robes. He met them on a broad landing platform at the rear of what looked like a giant, gnarled, hollowed- out fruit stuck onto the behemothaur’s skin. They stepped from the airship.

“Estodien Visquile.”

“Estodien Quetter.” Visquile made the introductions.

Quetter bowed fractionally to Eweirl and Quilan. “This way,” he said, indicating a cleft in the behemothaur’s skin.

Eighty metres along a gently sloping tunnel floored with something like soft wood they came to a giant ribbed chamber whose atmosphere was oppressively humid and suffused with a vaguely charnel smell. The temple ship Soulhaven was a dark cylinder ninety metres in length and thirty across, taking up about half of the damp, warm chamber. It appeared to be tethered by vines to the chamber’s walls, and what looked like creepers had grown over much of its hull.

Quilan had, over the years of his soldiering, become used to encountering makeshift camps, temporary command posts, recently requisitioned command HQs and so on. Some part of him took in the feel of the place—the extemporised organisation, the mix of clutter and orderliness—and decided that the Soulhaven had been here for about a month.

A pair of large drones, each the shape of two fat cones set base to base, floated up to them in the dimness, humming gently.

Visquile and Quetter both bowed. The two floating machines tipped briefly towards them.

“You are Quilan,” said one. He could not tell which.

“Yes,” he said.

Both machines floated very close to him. He felt the fur around his face stand on end, and smelled something he could not identify. A breeze blew round his feet.

QUILAN MISSION GREAT SERVICE HERE TO PREPARE TEST LATER TO DIE AFRAID?

He was aware that he had flinched backwards and had almost taken a step away. There had been no sound, just the words ringing in his head. Was he being spoken to by the gone-before?

AFRAID? the voice said in his head once more.

“No,” he said. “Not afraid, not of death.”

CORRECT DEATH NOTHING.

The two machines withdrew to where they had hovered before.

WELCOME ALL. SOON PREPARE.

Quilan sensed both Visquile and Eweirl rock back as if caught in a sudden gust of wind, though the other Estodien, Quetter, did not budge. The two machines made the tipping motion again. Apparently they were dismissed; they returned down the tunnel to the outside.

Their own quarters were, mercifully, here on the exterior of the giant creature, in the giant hollowed-out bulb they had landed near. The air was still cloyingly humid and thick, but if it smelled of anything it smelled of vegetation and so seemed fresh in comparison to the chamber where the Soulhaven rested.

Their luggage had already been off-loaded. Once they had settled, they were taken on a tour of the behemothaur’s exterior by the same small airship they’d arrived on. Anur, a gangly, awkward-looking young male who was the Soulhaven’s most junior monk, escorted them, explaining something of airspheres’ legendary history and hypothesised ecology.

“We think there are thousands of the behemothaurs,” he said as they slid under the bulging belly of the creature, beneath hanging jungles of skin foliage. “And almost a hundred megalithine and gigalithine globular entities. They’re even bigger; the biggest are the size of small continents. People are even less sure whether they’re sentient or not. We shouldn’t see any of those or the other behemothaurs because we’re so low in the lobe. They pretty well never descend this far. Buoyancy problems.”

“How does the Sansemin manage to stay down here?” Quilan asked.

The young monk looked at Visquile before answering. “It’s been modified,” he said. He pointed up at a dozen or so dangling pods large enough to contain two full-grown Chelgrians. “Here you can see some of the subsidiary fauna being grown. These will become raptor scouts when they bud and hatch.”

Quilan and the two Estodiens sat with bowed heads in the innermost recessional space of the Soulhaven, a nearly spherical cavity only a few metres in diameter and surrounded by two-metre-thick walls made from substrates holding millions of departed Chelgrian souls. The three males were arranged in a triangle facing inwards, fur-naked.

It was the evening of the day they had arrived, by the time the Soulhaven kept. To Quilan it felt like the middle of the night. Outside, it would be the same eternal but ever changing day as it had been for a billion and a half years or more.

The two Estodiens had communicated with the Chelgrian-Puen and their on-board shades for a few moments without Quilan being involved, though even so he had experienced a sort of incoherent back-wash from their conversations while they’d lasted. It had been like standing in a great cavern and hearing people talking somewhere in the distance.

Then it was his turn. The voice was loud, a shout in his head.

QUILAN. WE ARE CHELGRIAN-PUEN.

They had told him to try to think his answers, to sub-vocalise. He thought, ~ I am honoured to speak to you.

YOU: REASON HERE?

~ I don’t know. I am being trained. I think you might know more about my mission than I do.

CORRECT. GIVEN PRESENT KNOWLEDGE: WILLING?

~ I will do what is required.

MEANS YOUR DEATH.

~ I realise that.

MEANS HEAVEN FOR MANY.

~ That is a trade I am willing to make.

NOT WOROSEI QUILAN.

~ I know.

QUESTIONS?

~ May I ask whatever I like?

YES.

~ All right. Why am I here?

TO BE TRAINED.

~ But why particularly this place?

SECURITY. PROPHYLACTIC MEASURE. DENIABILITY. DANGER. INSISTENCE OF ALLIES IN THIS.

~ Who are our allies?

OTHER QUESTIONS?

~ What am I to do at the end of my training?

KILL.

~ Who?

MANY. OTHER QUESTIONS?

~ Where will I be sent?

DISTANT. NOT CHELGRIAN SPHERE.

~ Does my mission involve the composer Mahrai Ziller?

YES.

~ Am I to kill him?

IF SO, REFUSE?

~ I haven’t said that.