Matter

“I wouldn’t get too excited,” she told him. “I have been demilitarised.”

He grinned again. Almost cheekily. “All the same.”

Djan Seriy would have sighed if she had felt able to. She had a feeling she was being set up here — Mr Quike was so handsome and attractive it was positively suspicious — she just wasn’t sure yet by whom.

* * *

They lett Puonvangi at the 303rd in the company of a riotous party of Binlisi conventioneers. The Birilisi were an avian species and much given to excessive narcoticism; they and Puonvangi were guaranteed to get on. There was much fluttering.

They suited up and went to a place Quike knew where the aquaticised gathered. These were humanoids fully converted to water-dwelling. The space was full of what looked like every kind of watergoing species — or at least those below a certain size. The warm, hazy water was full of skin scents, incomprehensible sounds of every appreciable frequency and curious, musical pulsations. They had to stay suited up and laughed bubbles as they tried drinking underwater, using smart cups and self-sealing straws. They talked via what was basically a pre-electricity speaking tube.

They got to the end of their drinks together.

She was looking away from him, watching two thin, flamboyantly colourful, fabulously frilled creatures three metres tall with great long, expressionless but somehow dignified heads and faces. They were floating a short distance away from her, poised facing each other just out of the touching range of their frills, which waved so fast they flickered. She wondered were they talking, arguing, flirting?

Quike touched her arm to attract her attention. “Shall we go?” he asked. “There’s something you’ve got to see.” She looked down, at his hand still resting on her arm.

* * *

They took a bubble car through the enclosed galaxy of the Great Ship’s main internal space to where his quarters were. They were still suited up, sat side by side in the speeding car, communicating by lace as the gaudily bewildering expanses of the ship’s interior swept around them.

You really must see this, he said, glancing at her.

No need to overstate, she told him. I am already here, going with you. She had never been very good at being romantic. Wooing and seduction, even played as a kind of game, seemed dishonest to her somehow. Again, she blamed her upbringing, though she wouldn’t have argued the point too determinedly if pressed on it; ultimately she was prepared to concede that maybe, at some level beyond even childhood indoctrination, it was just her.

His living space was a trio of four-metre spheres bunched in with thousands of others on a kilometres-long string of alien habs situated near the vast curved wall of the main space’s outer periphery. The room was entered by entirely the stickiest, slowest-working gel field lock she’d ever encountered. Inside it was rather small and brightly lit. The air tasted clean, almost sharp. Nothing in it looked personalised. Furniture or fittings of debatable utility lay scattered about the floor and wall. The general colour scheme was of green components over cerise backgrounds. Not, to Djan Seriy’s eye, a happy combination. There was a sort of glisteny look to a lot of the surfaces, as though a film or membrane had been shrink-wrapped around everything.

“Another drink?” he suggested.

“Oh, I suppose so,” she said.

“I have some Chapantlic spirit,” he said, digging in a small floor chest. He saw her run a finger along the edge of what appeared to be a sponge-covered seat, frowning as her skin encountered something slick and smooth coating it, and said, “Sorry. Everything is sort of sealed in; covered. All a bit antiseptic. I do apologise.” He looked embarrassed as he waved a couple of glittering goblets shaped like inverted bells and a small bottle. “I picked up some sort of weird allergy thing on my travels and they can only fix it back in the Culture. Wherever I live I need it to be pretty clean. I’ll get it dealt with, but for now, well…”

Djan Seriy was not at all convinced this was true. “Is it in any way infectious?” she asked. Her own immune system, still fully functioning and well into the comprehensive end of the spectrum of congenital Culture protection, had signalled nothing amiss. After a couple of hours in such close proximity to Mr Quike there would have been at least some hint of any untoward virus, spore or similar unpleasantness.

“No!” he said, motioning her to sit down. They sat on opposite sides of a narrow table. He poured some of the spirit; it was brown and highly viscous.

The seat Djan Seriy was sitting on felt slidey. A tiny new suspicion had entered her head. Had the fellow thought to bring her here for something other than sex? She found the shrink-wrapped nature of the fittings in the man’s quarters disturbing. What was really going on here? Ought she to be worried? It was almost beyond imagining that any civilian in their right mind might think to offer some sort of mischief or mistreatment to an SC agent, even a de-fanged one, but then people were nothing if not varied and strange; who knew what strangenesses went on their heads?

Just to be on the safe side, she monitored the Great Ship’s available systems with her neural lace. The living space was partially shielded, but that was normal enough. She could see where she was in the ship, and the ship knew where she was. A relief, she supposed.

The young-looking Mr Quike offered her a crystal bell-goblet. It rang faintly the instant she touched it. “They’re meant to do that,” he explained. “The vibrations are supposed to make it taste better.”

She took the little goblet and leant forward. “LP Quike,” she said, “what exactly are your intentions?” She could smell the spirit, albeit faintly.

He looked almost flustered. “First a toast,” he said, holding up his bell-goblet.

“No,” she said, lowering her head a little and narrowing her eyes. “First the truth.” Her nose was reporting nothing unexpected in the fumes rising from the goblet of spirit in her hand but she wanted to be sure, giving bits of her brain time to do a proper processing job on the chemicals her nasal membranes were picking up. “Tell me what it was you wanted to show me here.”

Quike sighed and put down his bell-goblet. He fastened her with his gaze. “I picked up an ability to read minds on my travels,” he said quickly, possibly a little annoyed. “I just wanted to show off, I suppose.”

“Read minds?” Djan Seriy said sceptically. Ship Minds could read human minds, though they were not supposed to; specialist equipment could read human minds and she imagined you could make some kind of android machine embodying the same technology that could do so too, but an ordinary human being? That seemed unlikely.

This was depressing. If Klatsli Quike was a fantasist or just mad then she was certainly not going to have sex with him.

“It’s true!” he told her. He sat forward. Their noses were now a few centimetres apart. “Just look into my eyes.”

“You are serious?” Djan Seriy asked. Oh dear, this was not turning out as she’d wished at all.

“I am perfectly serious, Djan Seriy,” he said quietly, and something in his voice persuaded her to humour him just a little longer. She sighed again and put the bell-goblet of spirit down on the narrow table. By now, it was clear the drink was highly alcoholic though otherwise harmless.

She looked into his eyes.

After a few moments, there was the hint of something there. A tiny red spark. She sat back, blinking. The man in front of her, smiling faintly — looking quite serious and not at all pleased with himself — put his finger to his lips.

What was going on? She ran what was basically an internal systems check, to reassure herself that she hadn’t been unconscious even for a moment, or that she hadn’t performed some movement or function she hadn’t been aware of, or that less time had elapsed than she assumed. Nothing out of kilter, nothing wrong. She seemed to be okay.

Djan Seriy frowned, leant forward again.

The red spark was still there in his eyes, almost vanishingly faint. It was, she realised, coherent light; one