The Hydrogen Sonata

“Why the fuck are we — why am I — back on Xown?” She strode through to what proved to be a flight deck or something and threw herself down in the seat beside Berdle’s. She glared at him as hard as she could but the avatar appeared impervious.

The wrap-screen showed the Girdlecity as a black mass filling most of the view. Spread across the huge, near-vertical cliff confronting them there were hints and slivers of something lighter than its pitch-black surface where patches of dark-blue sky were visible through its filigree of open-work sections.

“We are here,” Berdle told her, “because while you were asleep, more information came in, as information is prone to do, and one particular detail passed on by another ship involved happened to be the Culture full name of your friend Mr QiRia. Which would be Tursensa Ngaroe Hgan QiRia dam Yutton.”

“But I didn’t—!” Cossont started to say, then stopped herself.

Berdle nodded. “No, you didn’t say who the Culture person was you were talking about earlier, but we’d already kind of worked that out.”

“Oh, had you now?” Cossont said, trying to sound defiant, but feeling herself sink a little further into the seat.

“First thing I did with the full name was plug it into all the data I’ve been soaking up since I’ve been here; Gzilt stuff,” Berdle said. “All the Gzilt stuff; everything not officially private, anyway. And in amongst the passenger manifests for people making a trip to Xown five years ago a name popped out; Yutten Turse. Claimed to be Peace Faction Culture and to have come all the way from somewhere called Neressi, which, on closer inspection, is somewhere that doesn’t exist, or is perhaps a colloquial name for a place nobody’s catalogued properly.” Berdle glanced at her, grinning. “Tut, tut.”

The Girdlecity really did fill the screen now. Cossont had to crane her neck to see anything that wasn’t the vast, dark mass of it. Right at the top she could see the sky, speckled with stars and orbiting sats, but it was just a thin band above the striated black curtain of the structure. Below, there were waves; the Girdlecity was crossing sea. She knew it did, in two places. Here, its colossal architecture was even more mind-boggling than anywhere else on its circuit of the planet. It extended undersea, still growing in girth, descending an extra kilometre beneath the waves if this was the Hzu Sea, an extra two and half thousand metres if this was Ocean.

“Doesn’t that count as an amateur mistake if he’s trying to keep off everybody’s sensors?” Cossont asked.

Berdle shrugged. “I suppose, but in the end he’s just an old guy trying to stay out of the limelight, not some SC super-agent on a mission. Not the end of the world for him if he is discovered, anyway; not like he’s going to get slung into prison or have his memories wiped. He’d become the object of some unwanted media attention for a while and there’d be a bunch of Minds who’d love to talk to him, but he’d be able to disappear again fairly quickly with the cooperation of a Mind and ship or two.” Berdle paused, looked quizzically at her. “You’ve met him; maybe he’d like to get caught briefly, just to get to feel important, like he’s not been forgotten.”

“Maybe.” Cossont crossed all four of her arms, forming a cage across her chest. “Are you saying he really is the age he says he is?”

Berdle nodded. “Looks like it.”

“And you think this is going to be him. Have been him. This Yutten Turse guy?”

“Ran all this past a few stats packages,” Berdle said, “and, even allowing for appropriate fuzzinesses of intra-species spelling, phonetics and pronunciation, the match chances are better than seventy per cent.” The avatar nodded at a sub-screen set into the haptic band set across the centre of the encompassing main screen. “Got some screen of him.” A holo leapt out, miniaturised. The first item was a still image of a man in late middle age, wearing a big silly grin, a loud shirt and a grass hat.

“Is that supposed to be him?” Cossont asked. She was still feeling cross.

Berdle nodded. “That is Mr Yutten Turse, of who-knows-whereville.”

“Looks nothing like him,” she snorted. Though, zooming in on the face, there might have been something familiar about his eyes.

“Hmm,” Berdle said, obviously unconcerned. “Still, he was coming here, to the Girdlecity.”

Cossont snorted again. “You might be surprised how little that narrows things down, spaceship.”

Berdle smiled but didn’t look at her. “I am aware of the structure’s dimensions.”

On the sub-screen, some moving footage followed: the man seemed to get slightly lost in the transit lounge, apparently unsure which way to go, until he left, led by a modest amount of luggage on a helpful float-trolley. Maybe he did walk a little like QiRia. Maybe. He disappeared. A still of his face came back, then was replaced by another set of screen images which seemed to show him leaving again, dressed similarly but wearing big dark glasses. If anything, he looked even less sure where he was going on the way back. The images faded away and the sub-screen went dark.

Ahead, the view was all Girdlecity; even sitting forwards, craning her neck, there was no sign of sky or sea. A few tiny, dim lights were only now starting to prick the obsidian surface of the structure. Berdle must have thought an instruction to the shuttle, because the screen extended smoothly, silently backwards, so that the view now took in directly overhead and a little further back. Looking straight up, she could see the sky again. She nearly said thank you, but didn’t.

“Hello, that looks familiar,” Pyan said, flapping and hopping through to sit on her lap. “Girdlecity?”

“Huh,” Cossont said.

“Oh,” Pyan said. “Hzu coast. That’ll be pretty.”

How fucking dare QiRia come back to where she lived — not just the civilisation but the system, the planet where she lived — and not look her up? What sort of friend was that?

“So, do we think he was looking for somebody?” she asked.

“According to his subsequent movements, happily documented by your fearsomely watchful Aliens Bureau, it seems he was looking for a particular person or for a particular artefact/location,” Berdle said. “Which he seems to have found.”

“Where in the Girdlecity?” Cossont asked. This wasn’t the bit she knew; this was about a third of the way round the planet from Kwaalon and the great plains.

“He was going to Launch Falls,” Berdle said.

“That’s nowhere near here,” she told him.

“I know. The artefact/location concerned has moved.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes. It’s an airship.”

“One of the internals?”

“Only one still moving, apparently.”

“I’ve heard of it,” she told the avatar.

“Apparently it’s famous,” Berdle confirmed. “Well, notorious.”

“Hope you’re ready for a party,” she told the avatar, one eyebrow hoisted even though it wasn’t looking at her.

The avatar’s head tipped briefly. “Ready for anything.”

Cossont was silent for a moment as the Girdlecity drifted closer and more detail began to show on the dark textures of its surface. “It really didn’t look all that much like him,” she said.

“What has that got to do with anything?” The avatar glanced at her. “Seventy per cent represents a good chance.”

Cossont frowned suddenly. “Where did you say he claimed to have come from?”

“Neressi.”

“Spell that?” The avatar spelled it for her. “In Marain?” she asked, frown deepening. She listened again, nodded. Ahead, whole constellations of lights were brightening into existence against the surface of the Girdlecity as they continued to draw closer. They were still fifteen or twenty kilometres out. She sighed. “It’s probably better than seventy per cent,” she told the avatar. “When he was on Perytch IV he was… you know… transplanted, had his consciousness transferred into this gigantic sea creature. He took the name… Isseren.”

Berdle nodded. “Ah-ha,” the avatar said, softly.

“Oh!” Pyan said, after a moment. “Backwards!”

“Yes,” Cossont said sourly. “Fucking backwards.”