The Hydrogen Sonata

“One way of putting it.”

“Did you ever want… did you ever think about us, you know, fucking?”

“Which answer would insult you less: yes or no?”

“Neither. Either. I wouldn’t be insulted.”

“Then the answer would be, not really.”

“Not really? So a bit, then. Ha!”

She was a little drunk. She was still going to leave the silver-grey cube with the Incast order — she was en route to the Ospin system now, in this fine clipper ship — but she’d thought she ought to at least turn the device on, make sure the old guy was in some sense still in there, and maybe ask his forgiveness. Maybe.

Too many cocktails in the bar. Thought she’d been doing extremely well with a handsomely chunky young fellow there — a serving captain in the Eighth — but then the girlfriend he’d neglected to mention had shown up — supposed to be a surprise for him; she’d got on at the last port a couple of hours ago, been waiting impatiently in his cabin since, wondering where he’d got to… Things had started to turn just a little ugly and so she’d made her excuses and left.

She had decided before she’d left home ten days earlier that one thing she definitely wasn’t going to do during the voyage was turn on the device with QiRia’s mind-state inside — she’d been adamant about that. He was an old fraud and even just giving the damn thing to her had probably been some sort of attempt to manipulate her; he was lucky she was paying him the compliment of physically taking the device to Ospin like some sort of warped pilgrimage or homage or something rather than just posting it to the Incast order. She’d brought her volupt with her; she would use the time constructively to practise.

But then, perhaps because of the cocktails, she’d changed her mind.

“The Gzilt never joined in the great genetic mash-up that the rest of the Culture proper thought appropriate to ensure everybody could breed with everybody else,” QiRia’s voice said. (In theory she could have seen him too, had his face look down on her from the cabin’s screen; she hadn’t chosen that option.) “As a result, the genes aren’t in either of us to make us appear attractive to or feel attracted towards the other, beyond a very basic pan- human interest sparked at a distance or when clothes conceal the disappointing truth. Trust me; it is rarely an encouraging sign when the more apparel is removed, the less attractive a prospective sexual partner becomes. I wasn’t keeping a tally, but if you’d been watching carefully I suspect you’d have noticed that I looked — glanced, more likely — at your chest more often when you wore a top than when you were naked from the waist up. The point is rather that we found each other interesting at all, sexual considerations removed. Again, you’ll have to trust me that the difference implicit in a ten-millennia age difference is far more important than a difference in both gender and/or species.”

“So you’ve never had sex with a Gzilt woman?”

“Ah. I didn’t say that.”

“So you have?” Cossont, lying on the bed, plumped up her pillow and made herself comfortable, staring at the screen. Maybe she should have put his face on the screen. Would he be blushing now? Did mind-states inside devices like this blush? Did QiRia blush? Had he? She couldn’t remember.

“Technically, yes,” the voice from the cube said, sounding unconcerned. “It was, again technically, unsatisfactory for both parties. The seemingly superficial physical differences become more… pronounced when one gets down to it, as it were. Sometimes, however, one indulges in that sort of behaviour as a sort of extension of friendship. Not with everyone; not all need such an expression. Most of the people I find interesting, and in that sense attractive, live more in the mind than in the body. Still, some seem to require such… confirmation. My impression has always been that the commitment to the act, its symbolism, is more important than the act itself, which, in its commission — or at least in the reflection upon it — tends to emphasise the differences between those involved rather than their similarities. I have done the same sort of thing with males of my own species type, despite not having sexual feelings specifically for them. Sometimes it feels only polite.”

Cossont lay on her back, looked up at the cabin ceiling, both hands clasped behind her head. “Anybody I’d know?”

“Who? My sexual partners amongst the Gzilt?”

“Yes.”

“No. Nor heard of. And besides, they’re all long dead. As of now, I believe all my ex-lovers, of all species, are dead. One or two might be in Storage.”

“That sounds so sad.”

“Well it isn’t. Feel free to feel sorry for me if you wish, for your own sentimental satisfaction, but not on my account. I have lived ten thousand years; I’m used to it. Lovers dying, civilisations dying… one develops a certain god-like indifference to it all, intellectually. Happily one retains the emotions that let one draw delight from life’s enduring basics, like love, friendship, sex, sheer sensory pleasure, discovery, understanding and erudition. Even when one knows that in the end it’s all… contingent.”

“Really thought you were going to say ‘meaningless’, there.”

“No. All things have meaning. Haven’t we already been through this?”

“It’s just that meaning doesn’t mean what we think it means.”

“Even your attempts at triteness cannot entirely hide the grain of truth in that particular assertion. We are all prone, in our ways. My own comforter at the moment, and perhaps for the next few centuries, appears to be homing in on the serenity offered by immersing oneself in an environment of all-pervading sound… for some reason. I really only meant to spend a year or so with the leviathids on Perytch IV, but then felt very… at home in that sonic environment; very content.” The voice from the cube paused. “In the end it palled… but only relatively, and still it left its own… echo. An echo of desire, of need.” Another pause. “I — the real me — may pursue that interest. For a time.”

Cossont was silent for a while.

“You really are old, aren’t you?” she said eventually.

“What makes you think that?”

“A young — younger — guy would have asked whether I ever felt attracted to you.”

“No; a less secure, less self-sufficient, less sure-of-himself person might have.”

She gave it a moment, then said, “So, what do you think?”

“About your feelings for me?”

“Yes.”

“As a person I’m sure you found me profoundly interesting though not actually attractive. As a potential sexual partner, I would prefer to hope the very thought would have been at least slightly unpleasant. Don’t feel you have to confirm or deny any of that. What other questions arising might you have?”

“How have you kept going, all this time?”

“Fortitude.”

“Seriously. If I’m to take you seriously, your claims seriously: how? Wouldn’t you want to kill yourself eventually, at some point, just at some really low point that you’d never have got to if you only lived for a century, like they did in the old days, or a few centuries, or whatever? Wouldn’t that happen?”

“Well, not to me, obviously.”

“But that’s what I’m asking. Why? Why not? How come?”

“I told you before: I take a perverse delight in watching species fuck up.”

“I remember. I’ve thought about that. I don’t believe that can be all there is. There must be something else.”

“Maybe I had something to live for.”

“Okay. But what?”

“Or, maybe I had something to not die for.”

“Hmm. Aren’t they…?”

“They are not quite the same thing. You may have to think about it. Anyway, my precise motivations needn’t concern you. That I am as old as I’ve claimed, that you believe me; that does concern me. Not a great deal, but I would like to think you do believe me.”

“Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t,” she confessed. “When I talk to you I do.”

“That will suffice. Anything else I can help you with?”

She smiled, though he couldn’t see. “So, do we get more secure as we get older?”