Matter

again, tearing silently up the light-strewn tube of darkness and flickering tubework.

They stretched their legs. Ferbin exercised the shoulder where he’d been shot; it was no more than slightly stiff. Holse asked a patch of screen on the wall if it could hear him and was rewarded with an informative speech in an eccentric version of the Sarl language which he only realised was recorded when he tried to ask it questions. They were now passing the third level, which was dark. No land, all just Bare, just Prime, and no water or atmosphere or even interior stars at all. The next level up was also vacuum, but it did have stars and there were things called Baskers that lived there and apparently just lay about, absorbing sunlight like trees. The last level before the Surface was vacuum again, and was a Seedsail nursery, whatever that was or they were.

The scendship slowed for the final time. They watched the last few lights disappear around the side of the craft. Thumps, squelches and sighing noises announced some sort of conclusion, and the door rolled open to the side. They passed down one broad, tall but very plain corridor and negotiated a round lift at the far end which ascended with multiple hesitations, then they walked through another great corridor of what looked like very thin- cut sandstone, lit from within. Whole sets of massive doors opened in front of them and closed behind them as they went. “They like their doors, don’t they, sir?” Holse observed.

A single Oct in a glistening membrane was waiting between two of the sets of doors.

“Greetings,” it said. It extended one limb holding a small device, which beeped. It extended another limb. “Documents, if pleased. Authority of Vaw-yei Towermaster Tagratark.”

Ferbin drew himself up. “We would see the Nariscene Grand Zamerin.”

“Oct documents remain Oct. To surrendering on arrival Surface.”

“Is this the Surface?” Ferbin asked, looking around. “It doesn’t look like it.”

“Is Surface!” the Oct exclaimed.

“Show us,” Ferbin said, “on our way to the Grand Zamerin.” He tapped the pocket holding the envelopes. “Then you shall have your documents.”

The Oct seemed to think about this. “To follow,” it said, turning abruptly and heading for the doors beyond, which were now opening.

They revealed a broad chamber on the far side of which large elliptical windows gave out on to a view of extensive gardens, broad lakes and distant, rocky, and fabulously steep mountains. Creatures, machines and things which might have been either moved about the vast concourse in a confusing melee of colour and sound.

“See? Is Surface,” the Oct said. It turned to them, “Documents. Pleased.”

“The Grand Zamerin, if you please,” Ferbin said.

“Others await. They cause confluence of you/Grand Zamerin, possibility. Or authorised in place of. Additional, explanatory. Grand Zamerin not present. Gone off. Distantly. Documents.”

“What do you mean, gone off?” Ferbin asked.

“What do you mean, others await?” Holse said, looking around, hand going to his knife.

13. Don’t Try This At Home

Djan Seriy Anaplian had been doing her homework, reacquainting herself with Sursamen and Shellworlds and studying the various species involved. She had discovered a Morthanveld image she liked: “When in shallows we look up and see the sun, it seems to centre upon us, its soft rays spreading out around us like embracing arms” (/tentacles, the translation noted), “straight and true with celestial strength, all shifting and pulsing together with the movement of each surface wave and making of the observer an unarguable focus, persuading the more easily influenced that they alone are subject to, and merit, such solitary attention. And yet all other individuals, near and far, so long as they too can see the sun, will experience precisely the same effect, and therefore, likewise, might be as justly convinced that the sun shines most particularly and splendidly upon them alone.”

She sat aboard the Medium Systems Vehicle Don’t Try This At Home, playing a game of bataos with one of the ship’s officers. The Delinquent-class Fast Picket and ex-General Offensive Unit Eight Rounds Rapid had rendezvoused with the Steppe-class MSV the day before and dropped her off before heading on its inscrutable way. So far, nothing had been said about the stowaway knife missile with the drone-quality brain in it which had made itself part of her luggage. She could think of several explanations for this but was choosing to believe the simplest and most benign, which was that nobody had spotted it.

It was possible, however, that this game of bataos might be the excuse for it being mentioned. Humli Ghasartravhara, a member of the ship’s governing board and on the rota of passenger liaison officers, had befriended her over breakfast and suggested the game. They had agreed to play unhelped, trusting the other not to seek advice elsewhere through implants or any other addenda, and not to gland any drugs that might help either.

They sat on tree stumps in a leafy glade of tropel trees by a small stream on the vessel’s topside park. A black-backed borm lay on the far side of the small clearing like a discarded cloak with legs, patiently stalking each errant patch of sunlight as the vessel’s sun line arced slowly overhead. The borm was snoring. Overhead, children in float harnesses or suspended under balloons squealed and shrieked. Anaplian felt something on her head, patted her short dark hair with one hand, then held her palm out flat and looked up, trying to see the floating children from beneath the intervening canopy.

“They’re not peeing on us, are they?” she asked.

Humli Ghasartravhara looked up too, briefly. “Water pistols,” he said, then returned his attention to the game, which he was losing. He was an elderly-looking fellow, pretty much human-basic, with long white hair held in a neat ponytail. His face and upper torso — revealed by some very high-waisted pantaloons of a particularly eye- watering shade of green — were covered in exquisitely detailed and intensely swirly abstract tattoos. The yellow- white lines glowed bright on his dark brown skin like veins of sunlight reflected from water.

“Interesting image,” Ghasartravhara said. Anaplian had told him about the Morthanveld idea of sunlight seen from under water. “The aquatic environment.” He nodded. “Quite different, but the same concerns. Surfacing.” He smiled. “That we are and are not the focus of all reality. All solipsists.”

“Arguably,” Anaplian agreed.

“You are interested in the Morthanveld?” Ghasartravhara made a clicking noise with his mouth as the bataos board indicated it would move a piece for him if he didn’t move one himself soon. He folded a piece, moved it, set it down. It unfolded itself as it settled and clicked down a few leaves of nearby pieces, subtly altering the balance of the game. But then, Anaplian thought, every move did that.

“I am going amongst them,” Djan Seriy said, studying the board. “I thought I’d do a little research.”

“My. Privileged. The Morthanveld are reluctant hosts.”

“I have connections.”

“You go to the Morthanveld themselves?”

“No, to a Shellworld within their influence. Sursamen. My homeworld.”

“Sursamen? A Shellworld? Really?”

“Really.” Anaplian moved a piece. The piece’s leaves clicked down, producing a small cascade of further leaf-falls.

“Hmm,” the man said. He studied the board for a while, and sighed. “Fascinating places, Shellworlds.”

“Aren’t they?”

“Might I ask? What takes you back there?”

“A death in the family.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

Anaplian smiled thinly.

* * *

One of Djan Seriy’s earliest memories from when she had been a little girl was of a funeral. She had been just a couple of long-years old, maybe less, when they’d buried her father’s brother, the Duke Wudyen. She was with the other children of the court, being looked after by nurses back at the palace while the adults were off doing