“You may guess my view on the matter, ma’am. I would have thought that the brutal and disgraceful murder of an honourable man — a king to whom all in his realm save a few jealous, treacherous, murderous wretches paid grateful, loving homage — would seize at the heart of any creature, no matter how many layers and levels distant from such humble beings as ourselves they might be. We are all united, I would hope, in our love of justice and the desire to see evil punished and good rewarded.”
“It is as you say, of course,” Shoum said smoothly. “It is simply that, from a further perspective, one cannot but recognise that these very rules I allude to are set out so with precisely such an idea of justice at their core. We seek to be just to the peoples in our charge and those that we mentor by, usually, declining the always obvious option of facile intervention. One might intervene and interfere at every available opportunity and at every single instant when things did not turn out as any decent and reasonable creature would like. However, with every intervention, every interference — no matter how individually well-meant and seemingly right and proper judged purely on its own immediate merits — one would, subtly, incrementally but most certainly remove all freedom and dignity from the very people one sought only to help.”
“Justice is justice, ma’am. Foulness and treachery remain what they are. You may pull so far away you lose sight of them, but only draw back in and as soon as you see them at all you see their corruption, by the very colour and shape of them. When a common man is murdered it means the end for him and a catastrophe for his family; beyond that, and our sentimentality, it affects only as far as his own importance reaches. When a king is murdered and the whole direction of a country’s fate is diverted from its rightful course, it is another thing entirely; how such a crime is reacted to speaks loud for the worth of all who know of it and have the means to punish those responsible or, by tolerating, seem to authorise. Such a reaction beacons out its lesson for every subject, forming a large part of their life’s moral template. It affects the fate of nations, of whole philosophies, ma’am, and may not be dismissed as a passing commotion in the kennels.”
The director general made a dry, spindly noise, like a sigh. “Perhaps it is different for humans, dear prince,” she said, sounding sad, “but we have found that the underdisciplined child will bump up against life eventually and learn their lessons that way — albeit all the harder for their parents’ earlier lack of courage and concern. The overdisciplined child lives all its life in a self-made cage, or bursts from it so wild and profligate with untutored energy they harm all about them, and always themselves. We prefer to underdiscipline, reckoning it better in the long drift, though it may seem harsher at the time.”
“To do nothing is always easy.” Ferbin did not try to keep the bitterness out of his voice.
“To do nothing when you are so tempted to do something, and entirely have the means to do so, is harder. It grows easier only when you know you do nothing for the active betterment of others.”
Ferbin took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. He looked down through the nearest transparent circle in the floor. It showed another Crater sliding by beneath them like a lividly shining yellow-brown bruise of life on Sursamen’s darkly barren Surface. It was gradually disappearing as they travelled over it, leaving only that dark absence of Sursamen’s unadorned face implied below them.
“If you will not help me in getting a message to my brother warning him he is in mortal danger, ma’am, can you help me otherwise?”
“Assuredly. We can direct you to the ex-Culture human and ex-Special Circumstances agent Xide Hyrlis, and facilitate your conveyance towards him.”
“So it is true; Xide Hyrlis is now ex-Culture?”
“We believe he is. With SC, sometimes it is hard to be sure.”
“Is he still in a position to help us?”
“Possibly. I do not know. All I can solve with any certainty is your first problem, which is finding him; this would be a problem otherwise because the Nariscene guard him jealously. He works, in effect, for them now. Even when Hyrlis was here on Sursamen his purpose was moot; his presence was requested by the Nariscene and disapproved of by ourselves, though we drew the line at requesting his removal. A Nariscene experiment, perhaps, possibly at the behest of the Oct, testing the rules regarding the transfer of technology to less-developed peoples; he gave you a great deal, prince, though he was careful to do so only in the form of ideas and advice, never anything material. Your second problem will be persuading Hyrlis to talk to you; that you must do yourselves. Your third problem, obviously, is securing his services. Yours again, I’m afraid.”
“Well,” Ferbin said, “my good fortune arrives in small change these days, ma’am. Nevertheless, I hope I count my gratitude in larger coin. Even if that is all you can offer me, I am beholden. We have recently come to expect that every hand will be turned against us; to find mere indifference caused us joy. Any active help, however circumscribed, now seems like far more than we deserve.”
“I wish you well in your quest, prince.”
“Thank you.”
“Ah; an open Tower end, do you see?”
Ferbin looked down to see a small black spot on the dark brown expanse of the Surface. It only showed because the rest of the view was so dark; situated anywhere near a shining Crater, the dark dot would have been invisible beneath the wash of light. “That dark spot?”
“Yes. Do you know of those? It is the end of a Tower which leads all the way down to the Machine Core, where your god resides.”
“It is?” Ferbin had never heard of such a thing. The spot looked too small, for one thing. The Towers were known to taper, but they were still one and a half kilometres across when they reached the Surface. On the other hand, they were quite high up, here in the director general’s spacecraft.
“They are rare,” she told him. “No more than six out of a million Towers on any Shellworld are fashioned so.”
“That I did not know,” Ferbin said. He watched the tiny dot of darkness slide beneath them.
“Of course, there are defence mechanisms on the Surface and all the way down — no freak piece of random space debris or maliciously directed ordnance would make it far down there, and various doors and lock systems exist at the level of the Core itself — however, essentially, when you stare straight down that shaft, you are looking across twenty-one thousand kilometres of vacuum to the lair of the Xinthian itself.”
“The WorldGod,” Ferbin said. Even as one who had never been especially religious, it felt strange to hear its existence confirmed by an alien of the Optimae, even if she did use its common, dismissive name.
“Anyway. I think now we’ll return you to your quarters. There is a ship leaving in half a day that will take you in the direction of Xide Hyrlis. I shall arrange your passage.”
Ferbin lost sight of the tiny black dot. He returned his attention to the Morthanveld. “You are kind, ma’am.”
The view from the craft tipped all around them as it flipped over, banking steeply. Holse closed his eyes and swayed, even though he was seated. Beside Ferbin, the surface of the wine in his glass barely trembled.
“Your sibling,” the director general said as Ferbin watched the whole world tilt about them.
“My sibling,” Ferbin said.
“She is Seriy Anaplian.”
“That sounds like the name.”
“She, too, is of Special Circumstances, dear prince.”
“Apparently. What of it, ma’am?”
“That is a great deal of good connection for one family, let alone one person.”
“I shan’t refuse any portion, if good it is.”
“Hmm. It does occur to me that, no matter how distant, she may have heard about your father and the other recent events from your home level, which of course includes the news of your supposed death.”
“May she?”
“As I say, news osmoses. And where news is concerned, the Culture is of a very low pressure.”
“I fail to understand you, ma’am.”
“They tend to hear everything.”
The Nariscene ship
