The creature closed its eyes and opened them. “One day plus one quarter of a day would be required for the outward signal and a similar amount of time would be required for a replying signal.”
“Good. Where is the nearest Portal to where we are now and how long would it take for me to get there?”
Another pause. “The nearest Portal to where we are now is the Ninth Tropic of Inclination Secessionary Portal, Present lobe. It is two days plus one three-fifths of a day’s flying time from here by raptor scout.”
Uagen took a deep breath. I’m Culture, he thought to himself. This is what you’re meant to do in such a situation, this is what it’s all supposed to be about.
“Please signal the Jhuvuonian Trader vessel,” he said, “and tell them they will be paid an amount of money equivalent to the worth of their vessel if they will pick me up at the Ninth Tropic of Inclination Secessionary Portal, Present lobe, in four days’ time and take me to a destination I will disclose to them when they meet me there. Also mention that their discretion would be appreciated.”
He considered leaving it at that, but this ship sounded like his only chance and he couldn’t afford to risk its masters dismissing him as a crank. And if they were committed to that departure date then there wasn’t time to indulge in a conversation by signal to convince them, either. He took another deep breath and added, “You may inform them that I am a citizen of the Culture.”
He never did get a chance to say goodbye properly to 974 Praf. The Decider foliage-gleaner turned Interpreter was still unconscious and attached to the wall of the Interrogatory Chamber when he left, a day later.
He packed his bags, made sure that a record of his research notes, glyphs and all that had happened in the last couple of days was left in safe keeping with Yoleus, and made a particular point of finally preparing and drinking a glass of jhagel tea. It didn’t taste very good.
A flight of raptor scouts escorted him to the Ninth Tropic of Inclination Secessionary Portal. His last glimpse of the dirigible behemothaur Yoleus was looking back over his shoulder watching the giant creature fading away into the greeny-blue distance above the shadow of a cloud complex, still faithfully following below and beneath the bulk of its desired mate, Muetenive. He wondered if they would yet make their dash for the predicted upwelling still building somewhere through the haze horizon ahead, to claim their free ride upwards to the manifold splendours of the gigalithine globular entity Buthulne.
He felt a sort of sweet sadness that he would not be there to share either that ride or arrival with them, and experienced a pang of guilt at feeling even the hint of a wish that the Jhuvuonian Trader craft would reject his offer and not show up, so leaving him no real choice but to attempt to return to Yoleus.
The two behemothaurs disappeared in the airily cavernous shadows above the cloud system. He turned back to face forward again. His ankle motors whirred, the cloak adjusted itself minutely to accommodate his altered orientation, still tensed to make a wing. The wings of the raptor scouts beat the air around him in a syncopated rhythm of stuttering sound, creating a curiously restful effect. He looked over at 46 Zhun, clasped to the neck and back of the raptor scout troupe leader, but the creature appeared to be asleep.
The Ninth Tropic of Inclination Secessionary Portal proved a little short of facilities. It was just a patch about ten metres in diameter on the side of the airsphere’s fabric where the layers of containment material met and fused to produce a clear window into space. Around this circular area was clustered a handful of what looked like the mega fruit husks which grew on the behemothaurs and in one of which, until a day earlier, he had made his home. They provided a place for the raptor scouts to perch and get their strength back and for him to sit and wait. There was some food, some water, but that was all.
He passed the time by looking out at the stars—the Portal patches were the only truly clear areas on the airsphere’s surface; the rest was only translucent in comparison—and composing a poeglyph trying to describe the sensation of terror he’d felt just the day before, trapped inside the dying body of the behemothaur Sansemin.
It was a frustrating process. He kept on putting down the stylo—the same damn stylo that had led to him being here now waiting on an alien spaceship that might never come—and tried to work out what had happened to Sansemin, why the Culture agent—if that was truly what he or she had been—had been here in the first place, whether there really was a plot of the sort that had been described to him, and what he ought to do if it transpired that the whole thing was some sort of joke, hallucination or figment of a mad and tormented creature’s mind.
He had napped twice, scrubbed six attempts at the poeglyph and (having come to the tentative conclusion that it was marginally more likely that he had gone mad than that the events of the last few days had been real) was debating with himself the relative merits of suicide, Storage, transcorporation into a group entity or a request to return to Yoleus and resume his studies—suitably physically altered and with the elongated lifespan he’d been considering earlier—when the Jhuvuonian Trader ship, an unlikely arrangement of tubes and spars, hove to on the far side of the Portal.
Jhuvuonian Traders were not at all what he imagined. For some reason he had expected squat, rough-looking hairy humanoids wearing skins and furs, when in fact they resembled collections of very large red feathers. One of them floated through the Portal, encased within a mostly transparent bubble itself held inside a finger-like intrusion of air forming a tunnel reaching back to the Portal and the tubular vessel outside. He met it on a terrace of the mega fruit husk. 46 Zhun grasped the parapet at his side, watching the encased alien approach with the air of a creature sizing up potential nest-building material.
“You are the Culture person?” the creature in the bubble said, once it was hovering level with him. The voice was faint, the Marain accent tolerable.
“Yes. How do you do?”
“You will pay the worth of our ship to be taken to your destination?”
“Yes.”
“It is a very fine ship.”
“So I see.”
“We would have another identical.”
“You shall.”
The alien made a series of clacking noises, talking to the Interpreter at Uagen’s side. 46 Zhun clacked back.
“What is your destination?” the alien said.
“I need to send a signal to the Culture. Just get me in range to do that, initially, then take me to wherever I might meet with a Culture ship.”
It had crossed Uagen’s mind that the ship might be able to do this from here, without having to take him anywhere, though he doubted he would be so lucky. Still, in the next few moments he experienced a frisson of hope and nervousness until the creature said, “We could travel next to the Beidite entity Critoletli, where such communication and congregation might both be accomplished.”
“How long would that take?”
“Seventy-seven standard Culture days.”
“There is nowhere closer?”
“There is not.”
“Could we signal ahead to the entity on our approach?”
“We could.”
“How soon would we be in range to do that?”
“In about fifty standard Culture days.”
“Very well. I’d like to set off immediately.”
“Satisfactory. Payment to us?”
“From the Culture upon my safe delivery. Oh. I should have mentioned.”
“What?” the alien said, its assemblage of red filaments fluttering inside the bubble.
“There may be an additional reward involved, beyond the payment we have already agreed.”
The creature’s feathery body rearranged itself again. “Satisfactory,” it repeated.
The bubble floated up to the parapet. There was a second bubble forming beside the one enclosing the alien. It was, Uagen reflected, just like watching a cell divide. “Atmosphere and temperature are adjusted for Culture standard,” the alien told him. “Gravity within ship will be less. This is acceptable to you?”
“Yes.”
