The Hydrogen Sonata

‘self-powered general storage device, alien, vouched, sophisticated, capacity unknown’ is mentioned as forming part of her luggage on the way there but not on the way back.”

“We’ve started trying to get some answers out of the Incast order on this,” the IO said. “Nothing so far; there are confidentiality issues. Also, they’re just under-staffed.” The image of the intelligence officer looked at the captain and the colonel. “With cooperative assets in place we could just hack them but as we’re on our own with this there won’t be much we can do until we physically get there.”

“This is, anyway, all conjecture,” the colonel pointed out.

“It is,” the captain agreed.

“But it’s the best conjecture we’ve got,” the IO officer said. “Nothing else is flagging connections.”

“The Culture ship is already running us about as fast as we can go, Colonel,” the captain said. “If it starts bouncing around inside the Ospin system there’s every chance it can either lose us, put somebody or something down anywhere it wants to without us being able to spot it happening, or both. I think the concatenation of this Cossont person and the Bokri habitat represents a serious lead and that it’s worth following. I propose we try to follow the ship round Ospin if it does start dodging, but rather than lose it while we try to find out what it’s been doing where, we assume it’s heading for Ospin, and act accordingly.”

Colonel Agansu thought about this. As ever, he was painfully aware that, even speeded up to the max, he was thinking so terribly slowly compared to the captain, the intelligence officer and the rest of the 7*Uagren’s virtual crew. He was also aware that he would probably have to leave the easeful security of the ship, this vast, potent swaddling all around him, and become a walking-around figure once more; a soldier again. A soldier in a battle-worthy combat suit, so still encased in layers of power and protection, but still, just a soldier, toting a gun, even if the combat arbite was at his side to back him up. In a way the prospect filled him with longing, just at the thought of fulfilling his duty, but in a way it filled him with a dread he could never admit to anyone.

Eventually he said, “Very well. I agree, Captain. Please commit to that. Let Marshal Chekwri know about Lieutenant Commander Cossont—”

“We’ve already copied to her,” the captain said.

“Good,” Agansu said. “I think it obvious that all possible avenues of research and confirmation related to this should be pursued urgently, including somebody trusted, if available, interviewing Madame Warib Cossont.”

The thing looked like a very delicate, golden version of a lace condom; a jewellised version of something from ancient history made pointless by its openness.

Orpe stared at it lying there in its luxuriously cushioned case, nestled amongst lip-like folds of purple-stained gold-cloth like something illicit; half obscene, half sumptuously beautiful. She held her hands up near her face, away from the opened case, as though nervous, even as her mouth opened and her large eyes drank in the look of it.

“Oh, I don’t… It looks so… I’m not sure…”

“Let’s just try it, shall we?”

“What does it… do? What is it for?”

“I wear something similar; very similar. They both sink very slightly into our flesh, half a hair’s breadth. And only we know that they are there. When we make love, when we couple, and they touch, they add to the pleasure. It’s as simple as that.”

“Can they… are they, might they cause… harm?”

“No no no. They are for pleasure, purely. They are better than surgically sterile, and have no effect except when paired with their twin, the other half of their matched pair, when they create a more intense ecstasy.” Banstegeyn smiled, ran his fingers down amongst some of the ringlets in her hair, touched her cheek. “There are many similar paths to the same effect, my love, just through drugs, implants, augmentations… but the beauty of these is that they are made for each other, and have no other effect, even if,” he smiled regretfully, “one has other lovers. They can’t be felt, they can barely be seen, even if you look for them, and everything else that would ever normally happen, there, can still happen — people have happily given birth, even, though I understand that is not advised — yet the wearer knows they are there, and the wearer of the other half knows that it’s there. It is about… commitment, you might say, and I would say a kind of tying, a bonding, between us.”

She looked at him shyly. They were alone in the dark cabin of a quietly purring skiff on a perfumed lake in a private pleasure garden on the outskirts of M’yon, at a party being thrown by a family long grown rich on government contracts. They had both worn masks and plain cloaks, like everybody else at the party. “And is there one for you, then?” she asked.

He smiled, opened the case further, revealing another level, where a slightly slimmer version of the piece lay, also glittering like a narrow pocket of lace made of liquid gold salted with tiny jewels. “There!” he said, as he smiled and she smiled. “One each.”

She touched the one that was his, stroking it with one finger. “They are not… permanent, are they? They can be taken… out, off…?”

“Yes. Most easily, by touching the cloth of the case to any part of them. You may keep the case. I’ll wear mine for ever, I swear.”

She made a delicate, laugh-like noise through her nose. “How do we… put them…?” she asked.

He laughed, almost silently. “How do you think. Shall I put mine on, first? Perhaps you might like to do that?”

“Mmm, perhaps,” she said, smiling, lifting the male piece of the two from its ruched nest. It hung from her fingers, golden in the subdued light, perfectly draped. “How… limp it is,” she said, and pressed herself against him, beginning to undo his clothes. “That will not do, now, will it?”

“Not at all,” he agreed, and lay back, exhaling, allowingly.

The tramway led tilted into the sky for a long, long time.

She’d been put down as close to her destination as the ship had dared, but it had still meant a hike through thick fields of chin-tall bronze-coloured grass to a dusty dirt road and then a longer tramp to a deserted tram stop in the middle of the plain.

From the platform, while she waited, she looked in the direction of the mountains, but they were too far away. A smudge of orange-white, high in the sky to the east, might have been clouds above the mountains, but the range itself was submerged in the atmospheric haze.

She was on her way to Ahen’tayawa, a hearkenry on the slopes of Mount Jamanathrus in the Querechui range, Cethyd.

Another traveller came along the road from the opposite direction in a ramshackle three-wheeled vehicle that bounced over the tracks in a cloud of dust. The single passenger got out, lifted a bag, then the contraption drove itself away again, heading back the way it had come. The traveller stopped suddenly on seeing Tefwe, then bow- nodded, chose a sitting area of the platform at the other end from where Tefwe stood, and folded itself compactly into a resting configuration, the rhombus of its patterned head-part lowered over the complex of creased planes it used as upper limbs.

The Uwanui were mattiform. Most people, most of the time, would have called them folds, though this term could be insulting, depending on the language the term was expressed in and the species it was being used to describe; they looked like tall, dark, angular, multiply poled tents, complexly folded. Their rhomboid head-parts, patterned with eye bands and ear spots, cut by a slit that was their mouth, looked like oddly tilted flags above the tents of their bodies. Origami creatures; beings of the crease.

The tram arrived, rattling. It was three carriages long with an open upper deck perched above the middle carriage. She and the dark fold got on.

The tram was mostly empty. It climbed steadily up a slope of tilted plain, stopping to pick up or drop off a few travellers. Those that saw Tefwe all stopped and stared at her for a few moments, then ignored her. Nobody chose to sit close to her.

The sound built very slowly; it would have been hard to know when it first started to become distinct from the noises of the rattling, swaying tram and the wind moving over the surrounding fields of tall, bronze-coloured grasses and occasional thick-trunked coppery trees. She became aware of the sound when she realised that she’d