The Hydrogen Sonata

“You might persuade the president not to sign the order,” Solbli suggested, with a thin smile.

Banstegeyn didn’t even pretend to smile. The president was duty-bound to sign everything put in front of him or her, up to and including an order for his or her own execution, in theory. Not that that principle had been tested for eleven millennia.

Even then, even at death, a politician could just come back; being backed-up at the start of your term was part of the deal, and if you were killed during your time in office you got re-embodied. Wonderful disincentive for assassination; Banstegeyn had always appreciated it. There was some delay in between — forty days, was it? Or thirty? — to allow time for a clone of the deceased to be grown and implanted with their most recent back-up, and people got shuffled around to take your place in the meantime, but then you just resumed your post… or you could take part in a subsequent election if you’d been in the last year of your term; now he thought about it there was some sort of…

Then he had to look away from Jevan and Solbli, because he’d just had an idea, and the audacity of it, the sheer dagger-like simplicity and directness of it, had all but taken his breath away.

He yawned, spreading his arms, giving himself a chance to shiver, to tremble, without it looking suspicious, and said, smiling, “Well, there we are; some you lose.” He looked at his time-to, shrugged. “In fifteen days it won’t matter a damn anyway.”

Jevan and Solbli looked relieved, and a little surprised.

The representative of the Culture ship of the Scree class, the Beats Working, was warmly welcomed into the principal shared gallery space of the squadron and fleet flagship Interstitial/Exploratory Vessel Melancholia Enshrines All Triumph by Ossebri 17 Haldesib, Swarmprince and Sub- Swarm Divisional Head. Gifts were exchanged, and, although the Culture representative, one Jonsker Ap- Candrechenat, was unable to ingest a welcoming libation in the fullest sense, it nevertheless absorbed a portion into its chemical analysis unit and graciously accepted the remainder on board itself to be returned to the ship the Beats Working later, where it would be treated with all due respect.

Great respect had already been shown, it had been decided after consultation with the appropriate experts, expert systems and reference library resources aboard the Melancholia Enshrines All Triumph, in the act of sending a mechanical but fully sentient device to represent the Culture ship Beats Working, as the machine was able to exist within the Melancholia Enshrines All Triumph nakedly, without any sort of exo-suit. This would not have been possible had one of the tiny number of humans aboard the Culture vessel been allocated to represent it.

Drones were known, in theory, to be of at least equal intelligence to Culture humans and were generally adjudged, in practice, to be of somewhat greater intelligence by both Ronte Fleet Intelligence and by most leading academics in respectable universities and other respected institutions of higher learning within the Ronte Trans- Cooperative Domain, using models of intelligence that more fully expressed the true essence of what intelligence actually was, objectively.

That the drone Jonsker Ap-Candrechenat had been sent to talk with Ossebri 17 Haldesib, was, therefore, no insult and, indeed, to the contrary, was a mark of great respect, conferring as it did a greater implicit closeness to the Culture ship’s mother-queen Mind, which itself represented a tiny but true sliver of the great hive-mind that was the entire Culture.

The Swarmprince and Sub-Swarm Divisional Head accordingly met the drone personally and had ordered his principal next-three-in-line Officers of Seniority to accompany him in his progress through the ship to the meeting and to be present at the meeting itself, as well as making sure that his Intelligence and Translational Officers and their respective deputies were present and fully briefed, of course, as protocol demanded.

Initial formalities safely completed, continuing formalities satisfactorily under way (in the shape of correct poses, gestures, scents and manners of speaking), the business of the meeting might be allowed to begin.

“The ship Beats Working would beg to be permitted to assist the glorious squadron of the Ronte which it is its privilege to escort. To be so empowered would allow the Beats Working to begin to repay and reflect some of the great esteem which it has earned in being permitted to escort the exalted squadron.”

“This is indeed an honourable conception,” the Swarmprince replied after the briefest of consultations with his servant officers. “What form would this assistance take?” The Swarmprince was known for his almost shocking incisiveness and the brevity of his locution.

“This assistance would take the form of a series of long-range ship dances, performed serially between the Culture ship Beats Working and each of the squadron ships in turn, involving them together travelling at enhanced rates of velocity in the direction already so wisely chosen by the squadron, namely towards the planet of Zyse in the system of Gzilt. The Culture ship Beats Working would dance, if such a thing might be contemplated and then allowed, with each of the squadron ships in turn, to the outskirts of the system, or to near to that limit, and then return to the remainder of the fleet, to ship-dance with the next ship, and so on, until all twelve vessels have been danced with.”

There was consultation. “This dance, or series of dances,” the Swarmprince said. “It would honour the Ronte and the Culture equally?”

“It would.”

“And be performed for its own sake?”

“Indeed.”

“And it might also result in the squadron arriving at the Gzilt system some appreciable amount of time earlier, of course. That has been considered?”

“That has, though of course this would be of subsidiary importance.”

“How much earlier might our arrival be? Has this been computed?”

“It has. The re-formed squadron would arrive at the Gzilt system outskirts in nine days’ time, rather than, at our current rate of progress, nearly twenty.”

“This would cause our esteemed escort the Culture ship Beats Working no risk of damage?”

“It would not, Swarmprince. The field structure of the Culture ship Beats Working would be swelled to accommodate each Ronte ship in turn and the resulting squadron-of-two would make its way as an entity to the designated volume on the system approaches.”

There was consultation. “I must insist,” the Swarmprince said, “that you accept I am most serious and settled in my view that this is a most generous and thoughtful offer, but one that we could not possibly accept, out of our respect for the good Culture ship Beats Working. We could not possibly ask such an onerous and mighty task of it, and, therefore, with all gratitude, we must decline said kind and generous and thoughtful offer.”

The Culture ship Beats Working had done its homework on the Ronte and their customs and mores, and the results of that study had been presented to the drone Jonsker Ap-Candrechenat, which did not, as a result, just accept this apparently fairly final-sounding No. Instead it kept on arguing, knowing that — for a matter of such importance, involving the prickly issue of Ronte pride — anywhere between four and six cycles of offer, consultation and regretful rejection might have to be endured before the offer was finally accepted.

The offer was duly accepted on the sixth iteration, counting the initial one.

Later that day, the Beats Working started ferrying the Ronte squadron one by one to the outskirts of the Gzilt system — quite far out for the first one, the rest gradually closer and closer, so that by the time it had delivered the last one they would all be chugging along under their own power in pretty much their standard formation.

This was a much less boring task than strolling along at a few per cent of its own highest velocity while the Ronte squadron made full speed — for them — to Gzilt.

Scoaliera Tefwe woke slowly, as she had woken slowly a few dozen times, over the intervening centuries.

Only it wasn’t really waking slowly; she was being woken.

All dark at first. Stillness and silence too, and yet the sensation that things were happening nearby, and inside her head and body; organs and systems and faculties being woken, revived, checked, primed, readied.