speculate they’re there because the individual Xinthians concerned are simply fascinated by Shellworlds. Another guess has it that each seeks somehow to defend its chosen Shellworld, though against what nobody knows, and the truth is that Tensile Aeronathaurs are not in themselves especially powerful creatures, and seem to scorn the kind of high-level weaponry that might compensate for that lack. All in all, not much of a God, prince.”
“We claim it as our God, sir,” Ferbin said frostily. “Not as some mythical Universal Creator.” He glanced at Holse, looking for support, or at least acknowledgement.
Holse wasn’t about to get involved in any theological arguments. He looked serious and nodded, hoping this would do.
Hyrlis just smiled.
“So you are saying we have no privacy?” Ferbin said, feeling angry and dismayed.
“Oh, you may have.” Hyrlis shrugged. “Perhaps nobody watches you, including your god. But if others do, and you can persuade them to share that recording, then you will have a weapon to use against tyl Loesp.”
“But sir,” Holse said, “given such fantastical apparatus, might not anything and everything be faked?”
“It might, but people can be quite good at spotting what has been faked. And the effect on people who do
“And how might we discover whether such a recording exists?” Ferbin asked. It still all sounded absurdly far-fetched to him, even in this entire hierarchical realm of far-fetched world beyond far-fetched world.
“It may be as simple as just asking the right people,” Hyrlis said. He was still standing beside the down- sloped windows. Something flashed white far away on the dark plain below, briefly illuminating one side of his face. Some part of the initial illumination remained, fading slowly to yellow. “Find someone sympathetic in the Culture and ask them. Your sister, prince, would seem an obvious choice, and, being in Special Circumstances, she would stand a good chance of being able to find out the truth, even if it is hidden, and even if it is not the Culture itself that is doing the observing. Look to your sister, prince. She may hold your answer.”
“Given your own refusal to help, I have little choice, sir.”
Hyrlis shrugged. “Well, family should stick together,” he said casually. Another flash lit up his face, and — away in the distance — a great rolling, rising glowing cloud of yellow surged with an unstoppable slowness into the night air. The orange-ruddy light from the huge climbing cloud lit up distant hills and mountains, rubbing them blood-coloured.
“You might have imparted this information in your own quarters,” Ferbin told the man. “Why bring us here, amongst these wretches and above this savagery, to tell us something you might have told over dinner?”
“So that we might, appropriately, observe, prince,” Hyrlis said. He nodded at the landscape below. “We look down upon all this, and perhaps are looked down on in turn. It is entirely possible that everything we see here is only taking place at all so that it may be observed.”
“Meaning what, sir?” Holse asked, when Ferbin didn’t. Also, their host looked as though he had no mind to add any more; he just gazed languidly out through the slanted windows over the red, under-lit clouds and the spark-infested darkness of the cratered landscape beneath.
Hyrlis turned to Holse. “Meaning that this whole conflict, this entire war here is manufactured. It is prosecuted for the viewing benefit of the Nariscene, who have always regarded waging war as one of the highest and most noble arts. Their place among the Involveds of the galactic community sadly precludes them from taking part in meaningful conflicts themselves any more, but they have the licence, the means and the will to cause other, mentored, client civilisations to war amongst themselves at their behest. The conflict we observe here, in which I am proud to play a part, is one such artificial dispute, instigated and maintained for and by the Nariscene for no other reason than that they might observe the proceedings and draw vicarious satisfaction from them.”
Ferbin made a snorting noise.
Holse looked sceptical. “That really true, sir?” he asked. “I mean, as acknowledged by all concerned?”
Hyrlis smiled. A great distant, rumbling, roaring sound seemed to make the airship shiver on the wind. “Oh, you will find many a superficially convincing excuse and
“And you are proud to take part in what you effectively describe as a travesty, a show-war, a dishonourable and cruel charade for decadent and unfeeling alien powers?” Ferbin said, trying to sound — and, to some degree, succeeding in sounding — contemptuous.
“Yes, prince,” Hyrlis said reasonably. “I do what I can to make this war as humane in its inhumanity as I can, and in any case, I always know that however bad it may be, its sheer unnecessary awfulness at least helps guarantee that we are profoundly not in some designed and overseen universe and so have escaped the demeaning and demoralising fate of existing solely within some simulation.”
Ferbin looked at him for a few moments. “That is absurd,” he said.
“Nevertheless,” Hyrlis said casually, then stretched his arms out and rolled his head as though tired. “Let’s go back, shall we?”
The Nariscene ship
They had to share one small cabin extemporised for human occupation from some storage space, but were uncomplaining, being mostly just thankful to be away from the oppressive gravity of Bulthmaas and the unsettling presence of Xide Hyrlis.
They had stayed only two more days and nights — as far as such terms meant anything in the warren of deeply buried caverns and tunnels where they’d been kept. Hyrlis had appeared casually unbothered when they professed a desire to be away as soon as possible after he’d told Ferbin he was unable to help.
The morning after he’d taken them to the great airship full of the wounded, Hyrlis summoned them to a hemispherical chamber perhaps twenty metres in diameter where an enormous map of what looked like nearly half of the planet was displayed, showing what appeared to be a single vast continent punctuated by a dozen or so small seas fed by short rivers running from jagged mountain ranges. The map bulged towards the unseen ceiling like a vast balloon lit from inside by hundreds of colours and tens of thousands of tiny glittering symbols, some gathered together in groups large and small, others strung out in speckled lines and yet more scattered individually.
Hyrlis looked down on this vast display from a wide balcony halfway up the wall, talking quietly with a dozen or so uniformed human figures who responded in even more hushed tones. As they murmured away, the map itself changed, rotating and tipping to bring different parts of the landscape to the fore and moving various collections of the glittering symbols about, often developing quite different patterns and then halting while Hyrlis and the other men huddled and conferred, before returning to its earlier configuration.
“There’s a Nariscene vessel scheduled to call in a couple of days’ time,” he told Ferbin and Holse, though his gaze was still directed at the great bulge of the dully glowing display, where various numbers of the glittering symbols, which Ferbin assumed represented military units, were moving about. It was clear now that some of the units, coloured grey-blue and shown fuzzily and in less detail than the rest, must represent the enemy. “It’ll take you to Syaung-un,” Hyrlis said. “That’s a Morthanveld Nestworld, one of the main transfer ports between the Morthanveld and the Culture.” His gaze roamed the huge globe, never resting. “Should find a ship there’ll take you to the Culture.”
“I am grateful,” Ferbin said stiffly. He found it difficult to be anything other than formally polite with Hyrlis after being rejected by him, though Hyrlis himself seemed barely to notice or care.
