The Hydrogen Sonata

“We still going in?”

“Even less choice now.”

“We couldn’t just… call Ximenyr?” Cossont said. “Could we? You know; just say, Hi, we need them eyes you’ve got?”

Berdle smiled briefly. “I have been trying to contact the gentleman. I asked Mr QiRia’s mind-state if it would cooperate and it said it would, but Ximenyr’s been impossible to contact. A direct appeal to him, from Mr QiRia, ought to be our first course of action when we do gain access to him.”

“Oh. You might have told me.”

“I might.” Berdle agreed, looking unconcerned. “I would have, had we been successful.”

“Huh. Okay. So: this ship the same one as at Bokri?”

“No,” the avatar said. “Can’t be. Registering all different anyway. Battleship rather than battle-cruiser; I can outrun it, but that’s not much use when we both want to be in the same place at the same time.” Berdle shook his head. “Shit in a slather. Pretty much everything’s gone or going. I’m losing all my senses down there.”

“Think they’ll be putting their surveillance in, instead?”

“I suppose. Though, being Gzilt navy rather than special forces or anything, I bet their stuff isn’t as sneaky as my stuff.”

“What was the last you heard through all this sneaky stuff?”

“Ximenyr was still there on the airship, getting prepared for the latest bout of ceremonial partying. Apparently; that’s all according to the airship’s own channels. I don’t have direct access to him, and he hasn’t been heard of for at least seven days. I have — had — stuff inside the airship but nothing in the guy’s own quarters after he found that scout missile. Pretty sure he’s still there, but not certain. I’ve found some incidental recording of him still wearing the container round his neck, from the day after we visited him, so — at least initially — we didn’t spook him. Also, the whole layout of the airship’s been changing, since a couple of days after we were here before; they’ve created a big new space inside. And they’ve been bringing in a lot of extra tech, including new field projectors. And water; that thing must weigh a lot more than it used to, but they seem to have balanced it all out with extra AG. None of which would matter if we could see inside it properly, but we can’t. Plus now we’ve got competition, and they know where our attention’s been focused, if they didn’t before. Not to mention,” he said, turning to her, “there’s been a guy, walking or jogging ahead of the airship, since we left.”

“I thought there were various people doing that?”

“Oh, it’s collected lots of people keeping pace with it recently, in air-cars, travel-tube carriages, special trains and ground vehicles, plus there are people keeping pace with it on foot for half a day or so at a time, but there was only one guy who just kept it up all the way through. I had an insectile watching him the whole time and he just never stopped; he hardly even varied his pace. All he did was switch what level and which side he was on, and keep level with different parts of the airship, I suppose so he wasn’t too conspicuous. He’s got some sort of camo or adaptive clothing on that changes every day, but that didn’t throw the bug off; it was still the same guy, walking or jogging day and night.”

“Probably not human then.”

“Probably not human,” Berdle agreed. “Though of course you never know; there are some very odd humans.” He frowned at the screen and the giant red-brown, green and blue ball of Xown, as though the planet itself had been responsible for this upset. “Trouble is, he’s disappeared now, too.”

He awoke.

He was in a military medical facility aboard a regimental fleet ground liaison craft, flying within a subsidiary tunnel space of the Girdlecity of Xown. It was late afternoon on this part of Xown; five minutes off midnight, back on Zyse.

He was lying on a couch, blinking at the ceiling light panels. He was a customised bio-plausible android, waking after having had the latest version of his guest implanted.

He was Colonel Agansu, translated and transplanted into this fresh, tireless, highly capable and perfectly unharmed new body.

It made no difference.

He knew that he had been worried about having his consciousness duplicated in this way, but he had been a fool to torment himself with such concerns. Of course the original of him, lying being put back together and regrown in the bowels of the Uagren, would always think of itself as the “real” him — he accepted this without emotion — but he knew who he was, within this body, here, now, and that there was work to be done.

Knowing that there was another iteration of himself elsewhere was mildly comforting, like having another layer of protection wrapped around him, but made little real difference.

A screen on a flex-arm swung over to inspect him. A woman’s face looked at him from somewhere remote. The doctor’s gaze flicked to one side then the other, doubtless studying read-outs. Then she said, “Well, whoever you are, whatever it is they want you to do, you’re as ready as you’ll ever be to do it. Good luck and good Subliming, brother.”

Agansu swung out of the couch. The screen seemed to flinch, withdrawing towards the ceiling as he did so.

“Thank you,” he said.

He felt the aircraft settle on a solid surface; interfaced with the craft’s systems, he knew he would be three hundred and ten metres ahead, two hundred and twenty metres away laterally and zero metres vertically from the nose of the airship when he exited. He checked his camouflage clothing, got it to impersonate something civilian and nondescript.

He remembered days of jogging and walking, climbing steps and ramps, descending steps and ramps, in filtered daylight and lamplight and ghostly sat-light and no light, the airship filling his view ahead or a presence at his back or a steady shape at one side or the other or above him or through gratings beneath him as he paced. Sometimes fireworks, lasers and holographic images burst from, lanced out, or enveloped/preceded/trailed the airship, especially at night, and sometimes loud music could be heard playing. Floodlights and running lights lit it every night. Sometimes when he ran behind and above it he could smell food and fumes and detect the spoor of bio-drugs.

He recalled the feeling of being swaddled and protected, within the 7*Uagren, and remembered talking to the avatar of the Culture ship, and thinking that he had the creature and Vyr Cossont where he wanted them, at his mercy… then hurtling broken and screaming down the lift shaft, like a burned insect falling flaming down a tall chimney. He remembered lying broken and burned and taken apart within the ship again, then beginning to be made whole again, while he contemplated how close to death he had come and how the prospect of oblivion within the Subliming had started to seem less terrifying.

Two sets of memories had been formed at the same time, but this made no difference either.

The ground liaison craft carried little weaponry and was only able to equip him with a kin-ex side-arm, but that would not matter for too long. The android body had what was effectively a laser carbine embedded in each forearm, the beams exiting through a skin-disguised muzzle in the heel of each hand.

He jumped easily, seemingly lightly, from the lowered door of the stealth-black craft, then — as it closed itself, flipped over and powered off down the fifty-metre-diameter tunnel — he turned and jogged down a broad, cross-corridor of soaring lattice girders and overarching pipes that led directly to the giant basket-weave of tunnel where the Equatorial 353 moved. There was an area of open balcony deck ahead. The airship would be just about to pass it by the time he got there.

The 8*Churkun established contact.

~Colonel Agansu.

~In translation, yes.

~I am captain of the 8*Churkun. The marshal sends regards.

~Please thank the marshal.

~We have completed the scour of Culture devices from the immediate volume and beyond, though a vessel — I would guess the Culture ship that you encountered at Ospin — is approaching. It was slowing but is now re- accelerating. We are going to attempt to intercept or disrupt any attempt it makes to disloc materiel or personnel into or near the Girdlecity; however, we cannot be certain of success.