The Hydrogen Sonata

to provide a greater contrast, when I return.”

“Well,” the Caconym observed, “that’s possibly the most unambiguous information on Subliming you’ve ever imparted. To me, at least. However, you haven’t answered the question I actually asked.”

“The point is that even such a reduced, enfeebled creature would still be in some sense its old self, even if it found it hard to express such a fact. And what was important to it before, if it had any real value then, will remain important to it now, for all the intervening change, elevation and reduction.”

“I shall take that as meaning I am not being too hopelessly foolish.”

“You may still be, but then so may I.”

“Yes, well, let’s not make a competition out of it.”

“I will see if there’s anything I can do, regarding this. If there is, I’ll be in touch. Thank you for coming to see me.”

“Always a frustration. I’ll let myself out.”

The Caconym’s avatoid vanished without any pretence of walking out or flying away.

The avatoid of the Zoologist hung looking at the tiny insect on the bench for a while longer, then shook its head and swung back to where the rack of test-tubes fumed quietly away.

Nine (S -19)

She became aware of light and sound again. Weak light, which her eyes were struggling to amplify, and only the sound of her own heart, beating, but at least some light, some sound. Must have drifted off to sleep. It was very cold now. Cossont took a moment to remember where she was.

Then she recalled: the downed shuttle, on the cold, airless surface of Eshri, after the attack. She shivered.

Across from her, the android Eglyle Parinherm was looking up, very intently, at the suited body of the dead trooper, hanging slackly in the up-ended seat.

The suit was twitching.

Cossont felt Pyan stiffen where the creature was draped over her shoulders. “Now that,” it whispered, “is not natural.”

Parinherm frowned, glanced at Cossont and the familiar, and put one finger to his lips before looking at the trembling suit of the dead trooper.

The android reached one hand slowly out towards it.

The Desert-class MSV Passing By And Thought I’d Drop In was drifting with the winds over the shallow seas, wide canals and spacious linear cities of Zyse’s tropical subcontinental belt; the ship looked like a giant pale pink box-kite three kilometres long, floating along with the clouds just a few kilometres up. It was here to represent the Culture, to make a kind of show of solidarity with the cousin species/civ the Gzilt, as they prepared to make the big leap into the everlasting wonderfulness of the Sublime. Wishing the relatives bon voyage, basically; saying, We’re thinking of you…

The Passing By… watched the shadows of the clouds — and its own giant shadow — drifting across the serried buildings and parks of the deserted cities, the wind-ruffled surfaces of the sinuous lakes and small inland seas, and the geometrically contained waters of the great canals. The canals were generally flat calm and dark, save where a few pleasure craft and even fewer barges still slid along them. Clumps of blue and green and yellow weed were building up along the margins of the waterways.

The world, the Passing By… thought, seemed empty and neglected. It felt like there was almost nobody left to look up and see it.

This was a little sad, but rather sweetly so.

No matter. The ship had reduced its external fields to a minimum both in number and power so it could keep them almost perfectly transparent, the better to be seen. It had also experimented with various colour schemes for its hull before settling on this pale pink. At night it made itself shine, as though caught in strong moonlight.

It could feel the wind as a cool, mostly constant, faintly gusting presence on its outermost bump-field, gently pressuring it from one side, sending it drifting across the land- and sea-scape below. It had adjusted its apparent inertia/momentum so that its motion matched that of the clouds it floated amongst, and only vectored its anti- gravity field component minutely, as seldom as possible, to nudge itself out of the way of any clouds that looked likely to impinge on its own patch of sky. It felt very content to appear so seemingly insubstantial and to have its movements so contingent on something as weak, erratic and profoundly natural as planetary breezes.

Meanwhile its avatar Ziborlun — silver-skinned amongst the palely interesting Gzilt and the various other species in flesh, avatar and suited-up guises — walked and talked, diplomatically, with the people of the court, a couple of thousand kilometres away to the north. The avatar was monitoring, listening and witnessing. It was only rarely offering any comment beyond the most banally polite and formal, and it was being kept on a tight rein back to the ship. A very tight rein, now, as matters began to get interesting.

Often avatars were allowed pretty much full autonomy, their personalities calibrated so precisely against that of the Mind they were representing that it was almost inconceivable they’d speak or act in a way the Mind would later disapprove of. The Passing By… was usually quite happy with that arrangement, but not now; it was with its avatar-at-court in real time now, constantly, controlling it.

And also meanwhile, its two escorting Fast Pickets, the Value Judgement and the Refreshingly Unconcerned With The Vulgar Exigencies Of Veracity, had just completed their bit of quiet refitting in a couple of off-limits Medium bays and were now gently nudging their way out of the main hull, surrounded by two small shoals of Lifter tugs, the field complexes of the two craft extending delicately, almost hesitantly outwards to mesh with its own, allowing for a dignified, reassuringly exact, micrometre-smooth exit.

Medium bay doors floated and slid back into place. The little Lifters pulled away from the pair of Thug-class vessels. The two ships — warships again now, even if in theory they were still Fast Pickets — swung slowly out among the layered fields of the larger ship, gradually creating giant bubbles of field encasement that bulged out from the main structure before separating entirely.

The ships — dark, rather uninspiring-looking pointed cylinders with flared rears — were on their own now, supported by their own wrapping of fields both visible and not. They drifted upward into the blue-green skies of Zyse, disturbing no clouds whatsoever, accelerating slowly through the various layers of the atmosphere — the planet’s own field complex, in a way, the Passing By… supposed — until they reached space, the medium they were, in one sense, designed for.

They raced away, disappearing from the Real almost simultan-eously, into the place they were genuinely most at home.

Every Totalling into hyperspace was a kind of tiny, trivial Subliming, the ship thought sadly.

It turned its full attention back to its avatar.

The android’s hand touched the trembling forearm of the dead trooper’s suit. Slender fingers slid up and along, to the shoulder, then to the rear of the neck as Parinherm leaned slowly closer.

Cossont felt Pyan tremble, as though whatever was making the dead trooper’s suit twitch was somehow transmissible. It came as a shock to realise it really might be. Her familiar could be under whatever malevolent communicative spell was doing this to the dead trooper’s suit. Or the trooper might not really be dead, she thought, though she found that hard to believe.

There was a faint buzzing noise, then the trooper’s suit went limp again, unmoving. Parinherm seemed to relax; his hand came away from the back of the suit’s neck.

It looked at Cossont. “We may talk now, quietly,” it said.

“What was that?” she asked, keeping her voice low.