single, pure, narrow frequency. It flickered. Very quickly.
Something approaching…
What approaching? Where had that thought come from? What was going on here?
She sat back again, blinking fast and frowning deeply, running her systems check again. Still nothing untoward. She sat forward once more. Ah. She was starting to guess what was going on.
The flickering red spark came back and she realised he was indeed signalling her. A section of his retina must be a laser, capable of sending a beam of coherent light through his eye and into hers. The signal was expressed in nonary Marain, the nine-part binary base of the Culture’s language. She’d heard of this ability in SC training, though purely as an aside. It was a multi-millennia-ancient, now almost never-used amendment, long made redundant by the technology behind the neural lace. It was even something she could have made herself capable of, with a few days’ notice, before she’d had her claws pulled. She concentrated.
PTA?
He was signalling a Permission To Approach burst. It was a ship signal, originally. It had been adopted as a sort of acronymic shorthand by Culture people wanting to get in closer contact with other people they weren’t sure would welcome them.
PTA?
She nodded very slightly.
Djan Seriy, the signal said. I think you are receiving me, but please scratch your right cheek with your left hand if you are understanding all of this. Scratch once if this is too slow a rate of transmission, twice for acceptable and three times for too fast.
The information was coming in faster than it could have been spoken intelligibly, but not ungraspably quick. She gently scratched her right cheek with her left hand, twice.
Wonderful! Allow me to introduce myself properly. The LP you asked about earlier stands for ‘Liveware Problem’. I am not a properly normal human being. I am an avatoid of the Liveware Problem, a Stream-class Superlifter; a modified Delta-class GCU, a Wanderer of the ship kind and technically Absconded.
Ah, she thought. An avatoid. A ship’s avatar of such exquisite bio-mimicry it could pass for fully human. A ship Wanderer. And an Absconder. Absconders were ships that had chosen to throw off the weight of Cultural discipline and go off on their own.
Even so, a proportion were known, or at least strongly suspected, to be using this state of self-imposed exile purely as a disguise, and were still fully committed to the Culture, allegedly adopting Absconder status as cover for being able to carry out actions the main part of the Culture might shrink from. The granddaddy, the exemplary hero figure, the very God of such vessels, was the GSV Sleeper Service, which had selflessly impersonated such eccentric indifference to the Culture for four decades and then, some twenty-plus years ago now, suddenly revealed itself as utterly mainstream-Culture-loyal and — handily — harbouring a secretly manufactured, instantly available war fleet just when the Culture most needed it, before disappearing again.
She allowed her eyes to narrow a little. She was fully aware this was her own signature signal; suspicion, distrust.
Sorry about all the subterfuge. The air in here is kept scrubbed to remove the possibility of nanoscale devices watching in on such eye-to-eye communication and the room’s coverings are themselves wrapped in film for the same reason. Even the smoke I inhaled at the bar contains an additive which clears my lungs of any such possible contamination. I was only able to get close enough to contact you after you’d arrived on board the Inspiral, Coalescence, Ringdown, and of course everybody is being so wary of upsetting the Morthanveld. I thought it best to adopt the trappings of ultra-caution! I’m aware, of course, that you can’t reply in kind to me, so let me just tell you why I’m here and why I’m contacting you in this way.
She raised her brows a fraction.
I am, as I say, an Absconder, though only technically; I spent three and a half thousand years faithfully tugging smaller ships around Systems Vehicles throughout the greater galaxy and saw active service during the Idiran War — serving, if I may say so, with some distinction, especially in the first few desperate years. After all that I decided I was due a protracted holiday — probably a retirement, to be quite honest, though I reserve the right to change my mind!
I have wandered the galaxy for the last eight hundred years, seeing all I could of other civilisations and peoples. There is always more to see, of course; the galaxy renews and re-forms itself faster than one can make one’s way round it. Anyway, I am, truly, fascinated by Shellworlds and have a particular interest in Sursamen, not the smallest part of which concerns your level, the Eighth. When I heard rumours regarding your father’s death — and please accept my condolences in that regard — and the events surrounding this sad occasion, including the death of your brother Ferbin, I immediately thought to make myself available to help the Sarl, and the children of the late king in particular.
I’d assumed you’d be going back home with many of your powers removed or reduced. I know that you return with no ship or drone or other aid about you, and so I’d like to offer my own services. Not as a day- to-day servant or courier or anything like that — our Morthanveld hosts would not tolerate such a thing — but as a last resort, if you will. Certainly as a friend in case of need. Sursamen, and especially the Eighth, seems like a dangerous place these days, and a person travelling alone, no matter how able, may need all the friends they can muster.
I — that is, the ship — am currently some distance off but keeping pace with the Inspiral, Coalescence, Ringdown, to stay in reasonable proximity to this avatoid and facilitate its speedy retrieval should I need to do so. However, it is my intention, shortly, to make my way to Sursamen directly and this avatoid, or another — for I have several — will be there. It and myself are ready to afford you such assistance as you may require.
You need not respond now; please think about this at your leisure and make your mind up in your own time. When you meet my avatoid on Sursamen you can let me know what you think then, through it. I shall completely understand if you want nothing to do with me. That is entirely your right. However, please be assured of my continuing respect and know that I am, dear lady, entirely at your service.
I shall end this signal shortly; please decide whether you wish to pretend I have in any way read your mind, just on the off-chance we are somehow being observed.
Signal ends at implied zero: four, three, two, one…
Djan Seriy stared into the eyes of the young man sitting opposite her. She was thinking, Dear shafted WorldGod, all my potential bedfellows are machines. How depressing.
Only about half a minute had passed since they’d started staring into each other’s eyes. She sat back slowly, smiling and shaking her head. “I think your trick does not work on me, sir.”
Quike smiled. “Well, it doesn’t work with everybody,” he said. He raised his goblet. It emitted a high, pleasant, ringing tone. “Perhaps I might be permitted to try again some other time?”
“Perhaps.” They clinked bell-goblets; the twin sound was surprisingly mellifluous. She had dismissed the idea of taking seriously the offer he’d just made before the glasses had stopped ringing.
She engaged him in conversation for some time after that, listening to him recount tales of various explorations and adventures during his many travels. It was not unpleasant, she did not have to pretend interest and it was amusing to try to work out in his stories which parts were probably true and had been experienced by the ship concerned directly (assuming there really was a ship involved), which parts had been lived by the avatoid while the ship had looked on and which might have been entirely made up to try to fool anybody listening that all this related to a real human, not a ship-plus-avatar-in-human-form.
In exchange, she related something of her life on Sursamen as a child and adolescent and answered most of the eagerly asked questions Quike had, though she steered clear of certain areas and tried not to give any indication of how she would eventually react to his offer.
But of course she would reject his help, the ship’s help. If the Liveware Problem was working completely alone then it was probably either hopelessly naive or quietly insane; neither inspired confidence. If not then it presumably represented a part of SC or something even more rarefied and it was just pretending to be hopelessly naive or quietly insane, which was even more worrying. And
