“I know,” Reikl told her, leaning back a little from her. “You donated it to one of the Centralised Dataversities on the Bokri microrbital, Ospin.”
Cossont nodded. “The Incast facility. They specialise—”
“—specialise in that sort of thing,” Reikl said, nodding. “Yes, I’ve read your journal.”
Cossont frowned. “But that was in the private—”
“Don’t be naive,” Reikl said, shaking her head. “We’re your regiment. The point is, would you be prepared to go there and get it back?”
“To Ospin?”
“We’re practically en route,” the general said, her gaze wandering all over Cossont now, as though inspecting her in some military parade, taking in her overall appearance, her clothes, everything. Cossont felt oddly helpless, transfixed. In a parade the inspecting officer traditionally looked for the slightest thing out of place or badly done; perhaps Reikl was looking for anything on her that had any military merit whatsoever. “It would be very helpful,” Reikl was saying, still inspecting her. “You could even be doing something Gzilt as a whole would be most grateful for. Obviously we all respect life-tasks but this could be rather more important than playing a piece of music all the way through, however difficult it might be. Really, promotion and medals and awards and such nonsenses mean nothing if we’re all about to step into the big bright and shining light, Vyr, but there is just a chance that we’d be doing so under false pretences, and it would be good to know the truth, don’t you think? Just in case we wanted to rethink, and stay in the Real and accomplish more here first, and leave Subliming for another time. That ought to be a choice, don’t you agree?”
“I—”
“Shouldn’t even be too dangerous. And much better than us going piling in. The regiment, I mean, mob- handed, fully tooled. That could be awkward. There might be ructions. In fact, ructions would be pretty much guaranteed, given that Ospin and the Dataversities fall under the protection of the Home Systems Regiment, and it was one of their ships, we think, that wasted the Zihdren vessel. Powf! Like that.” She snapped her fingers gently in front of Cossont’s face. “You, however, have a plausible motive for inspecting something you donated, so we’d like to send you to see if the shade of Mr QiRia will talk to you and shed any light. Do you think you could do that? Would you be prepared? I’m very much hoping it’s not too much to ask. Is it, Vyr? Is it too much to ask?” The general was suddenly quite close to her again.
Cossont shook her head; she felt she’d been half hypnotised. “No, ma’am. I’ll… I’ll go. I’ll… it’ll be my…” Cossont shook her head, cleared her throat, pulled herself upright. “I will do what you ask.”
The general leaned back again, smiled — sincerely, this time, or so it appeared. “Thank you,” she said, with a little side-nod of the head. “Now, let’s find your android bodyguard, shall we?” She turned and walked smartly along the awkwardly curved floor of the corridor; the door ahead rolled open. Cossont followed.
The mind-state thing.
It had been a final present she’d received from the
She’d been bade farewell by the ship’s golden-skinned avatar and had started to turn — one foot still on the floor of the ship’s hangar, her other foot on the rear ramp of the Gzilt transfer shuttle — when the avatar had said, “Oh, and there’s this,” and, when she’d turned, handed her a little dark-grey, subtly glittering cube which lay heavy in her palm.
“From our old friend on Perytch IV,” the avatar had told her. “That’s him, in there, in a sense. For you alone; to be ignored, consulted, insulted, thrown aside, as you wish, he told me to say.” The creature had held up its gleaming golden hand. “Goodbye.”
Outside the corridor end, in a wider cross-chamber, there was sudden noise and a line of men and women in a mixture of uniform and fancy dress, dancing past, roaring with laughter. Almost all sobered instantly the moment they saw the general, and stood to attention, breathless, grinning. One or two stood at ease, or even hunched over, hands on knees, getting their breath back or still laughing.
“At ease, all of you,” Reikl said, then put some volume and steel into her voice and repeated, “
Behind them, the hilarity quickly resumed.
A travel capsule was waiting, door open for them, a few metres away. The doors closed. Reikl muttered something Cossont didn’t catch — the general might even have been sub-vocalising badly.
The only thing indicating they were moving was a holo display showing the capsule travelling through the asteroid moon from near the centre towards the stern where the hangar complex lay. Cossont watched this with Reikl next to her. The general was gnawing at a finger pad, a brooding look on her face.
They exited into a large room like a cross between a laboratory and a small manufacturing plant, crossing to the only apparent activity, where three people in tech uniforms, one a commander, fussed round a raised seat where a figure reclined, bottom half in standard fatigues, top half naked, the back of his head enclosed by some sort of bulky helmet. A series of giant holo screens, all displaying graphics of colourfully complex incomprehensibility, arced around the group.
The man opened his eyes as they approached, looked about, eyes swivelling, gaze fixing briefly on each of the faces around him. His expression looked uncertain, fearful. Cossont noticed that he was restrained in the semi- reclined seat, held at ankles and wrists, a thin metallic band round his waist.
“So, Gaed,” Reikl said to the tech commander, “is this… are we ready yet?” The man in the seat stared at her as she spoke, as though he’d never heard anybody make such a noise before. He was tall, muscled, with a lean face. If this was the android Reikl had spoken about, Cossont thought, he was quite convincingly human-looking, apart from the rather immature, bewildered expression on his face.
“Another few hours, I think, ma’am,” the tech commander said. He held a small control pad, like his two assistants, both of whom — a young man and a young woman — saluted Reikl, ignored Cossont completely and then, after a nod from the general, got on with what they’d been doing, which was mostly staring at the giant screens, muttering into thin air and to each other, and consulting their control units, manipulating holo displays hovering above the screens like the ghostly projected images of wildly complicated plumbing systems. The man in the chair twitched, looked surprised, most times they did this.
“What’s the delay?” Reikl asked impatiently.
“It’s, ah, software, ma’am,” the tech commander said, glancing at Cossont for the first time. He returned his attention to the general. “Not expecting a re-emplacement, not of something at this level. Taken us a bit by surprise. It’ll all happen, ma’am, depend on it, but…” His voice trailed off as one of his assistants twisted something within the holo display above his hand-held screen, and the man in the chair relaxed suddenly, slumping into what looked like unconsciousness, head lolling to one side, mouth slack. He jerked awake a moment later, stared straight up and in a deep but controlled voice said, “Unit Y988, Parinherm, Eglyle, systems checked, all enabled. Sim status ready, engaged, chron scale subjective one-to-one.”
“Default status assumptions keep kicking in,” the tech commander said with a sigh. “Safety thing.” He looked at Reikl, possibly for support or sympathy.
“Is it ready to roll or not?” she asked.
“Not as he is, ma’am; still thinks he’s in simulation mode.”
“That’s unhelpful, Commander,” Reikl said frostily. “Get it ready. As a matter of extreme urgency.”
“Ma’am,” the commander said.
Reikl turned to Cossont, opened her mouth, then frowned, looked away. She held up one hand, turning to pace off a couple of steps. “
“Unit Y988, Parinherm, Eglyle,” the deep male voice said behind Cossont. “Systems checked, all enabled. Sim status ready, engaged, chrawww…” The voice slurred into silence as she watched Reikl stiffen.
“—thing in its
