The Hydrogen Sonata

component down. “Think that’ll work?” she asked.

“Doubt it,” the avatar admitted. “Assuming the battleship’s been talking to the battle-cruiser, it’ll know I’ve already been moving faster than it can, but it might factor in too much main traction stress degradation after all the dashing about I’ve been doing lately and think it has a chance. Assuming its engines aren’t slightly fucked too, of course. Worth a try.”

Pyan, sprawled loosely on a couch all this time, came flapping over and stood on a seat-back, facing her like a small, stiff flag. “Well done you!” it said. “I think you’re being terribly brave but I’m sure it’ll all work out splendidly! And just remember: I’ve always loved you!”

Cossont was about to say something like, Okay, now I’m worried… when her eyes narrowed and she looked at Berdle. “Did you put it up to that?”

Berdle shrugged. “Also worth a try.”

“But I do!” Pyan exclaimed, twisting to face Berdle, then back to Cossont. “But I do!”

“Yeah,” Cossont said.

“Twenty seconds.”

The ship sent a tiny update of its mind-state to its home GSV, mostly just so there would be a record of Cossont insisting on going with its avatar and other on-planet forces into the Girdlecity.

The ship was a constrained shell of force hurtling across the system now, re-accelerating hard, packaged within its wrapping of concentric fields like something cocooned, engines howling in frequencies no biological living thing would ever sense, a kilometre-long projectile submerged beneath the skein of real space, components of three outer fields lasing in hyperspace to direct the signal to its distant ship-mother, then clicking off again after a nanosecond, while other configurations of fields slid and flicked, stacked and snicked, readying for a series of multiple high-speed, high-accuracy Displaces to a complex-topography target deep in a gravity well; probably opposed.

This was, the ship knew, going to be challenging.

Most serious Culture ships, and all with any pretensions to being warships, possessed burst units: specialised engine components like motive power capacitors capable of providing sudden, brief flares of energy and movement. The Mistake Not…’s were more powerful and capable than most craft its size, which was kind of a game-giving-away liability if you actually had to use them in the presence of somebody able to spot such shenanigans, but — on the other hand — this was exactly the situation where they might help save the day, so…

The ship was already heading dangerously close to Xown’s gravity well, having to adjust its course in hyperspace to avoid crashing into the downward curve of skein. It jinked closer still at the last moment, using up all its burst unit energies both to swerve and slow, then focused in on the relatively tiny part of itself that held the module where its avatar and the humanoid were, snapping the two human-shaped forms and the woman’s pet away and then the module separately. It loosed the module first, targeting the Displace at a spot just outside the Girdlecity twelve hundred metres above local ground level and ten kilometres back from the current location of the airship Equatorial 353.

It was, given the relative velocities involved, one of the most accurate and precisely located Flying Displaces it had ever heard of, snapping the module into the air within an elegantly aligned pocket of vacuum that collapsed at just the right rate to allow the craft to continue on its way — under its own power, now — so smoothly that the ship doubted somebody standing inside the module — had there been anybody — would even have wobbled as the transition was completed.

That the whole craft was almost immediately snatched away again by an almost equally heavy-duty disloc facility — with a most inelegant bang like a sonic boom, caused by the caisson-field collapsing uncontrolled — was, happily, quite beside the point. While the Gzilt ship was busy doing this the Mistake Not… was merrily zapping all its real payloads — its avatar and Cossont included — into the places it had wanted to in the first place.

That done, within the same millisecond, it was off again, spiralling down under even fiercer acceleration as though intent on diving right under the planet’s depression in the skein and aiming for the energy grid far beneath. It steadied, zoomed, sped off, tracked but not targeted by the Gzilt war-craft, which remained stationary, hugging close to the planet.

Pyan was dumped into the ship’s last remaining human habitable space, a six-person shuttle.

~Where’s this? the creature said.

~New home, the ship sent.

~It’s small and boring!

~So are you.

~What! How dare you!

~Would you rather be on the planet?

~Which is safer?

The Mistake Not… watched the Gzilt ship staying — annoyingly, frustratingly — exactly where it was, singularly failing to pursue it, even though the Mistake Not… had pretended to be less quick than it really was, just to make it think it had a chance.

~Probably the planet, now, it admitted.

~The planet, then… Well? Hurry up!

~Too far. Next pass/approach.

~You’re going back?

~Of course I’m going back.

~I protest at this behaviour towards me! Why wasn’t I—?

~Best you go to sleep now, the ship said.

Pyan flopped inert to the floor of the little shuttle and was tidied, neatly folded, into a slim locker by a small ship drone, which then checked that everything else in the tiny craft was stowed and strapped in case there was any wild manoeuvring. Then it, too, stowed itself securely in another locker.

xGSV Empiricist

oLOU Caconym

oGSV Contents May Differ

oGCU Displacement Activity

oGSV Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life’s Rich Tapestry

oUe Mistake Not…

oMSV Passing By And Thought I’d Drop In

oMSV Pressure Drop

oLSV You Call This Clean?

Open question, specifically to the Mistake Not…: Are you sure you are doing the right thing? It is plausible that the Gzilt craft is an 8*; possibly the ship responsible for what happened at Ablate. It is certainly powerful and may be unconstrained by conscience.

?

xUe Mistake Not…

No, not sure at all. But committed, so let’s see what happens.

?

xGSV Contents May Differ

I am equally worried re the Beats Working. It just transmitted its mind- state.

?

xLOU Caconym

Suggestion? Tell it whatever it’s thinking of doing, don’t.

?

xGSV Contents May Differ

I have been trying to contact it after the mind-state signal arrived. Nothing. To pass the time while I wait for a reply, I have been trawling the banks for evidence that this is anything other than a bad sign, coming