Look to Windward (10 page)

~ No, sir. The war ended in a compromise following the Culture's intervention.

~
I know that, but a compromise which involves having no
servants?

~ No, sir. People still have servants. Officers still employ squires and equerries. However I am of an order which eschews such personal help.

~ Visquile mentioned you were some sort of monk. I didn't realize you'd be quite so self-denying.

~ There is another reason for traveling alone, sir. If I might remind you, the Chelgrian we are being sent to meet is a Denier.

~
Oh, yeah, this Ziller guy. Some spoiled, fur-rending liberal brat who thinks it's his God-given duty to do the whining for those who can't be bothered whining for themselves. Best thing you can do with these people is kick them out. These shits don't understand the first thing about responsibility or duty. You can't renounce your caste anymore than you can renounce your species. And we're
indulging
this arse-leaf?

~ He is a great composer, sir. And we didn't chuck him out; Ziller left Chel to go into self-exile in the Culture. He renounced his Given status and took—

~ Oh, let me guess. He declared himself an Invisible.

~ Yes, sir.

~ Pity he didn't go the whole way and make himself a Spayed.

~ At any rate, he is not well disposed to Chelgrian
society. The idea was that by going without an entourage I might make myself less intimidating and more acceptable to him.

~
We should not be the ones having to make ourselves acceptable to
him,
Major
.

~ We are in a position where we have no choice, sir. It has been decided at cabinet level that we must try to persuade him to return. I have accepted that mission, as indeed you have yourself. We cannot force him to return, so we must appeal to him.

~ Is he likely to listen?

~ I really have no idea, sir. I knew him when we were both children, I have followed his career and I have enjoyed his music. I have even studied it. However that is all I have to offer. I imagine people closer to him by family or conviction might have been asked to do what I am doing, but it would seem that none of them were prepared to take on the task. I have to accept that while I may not be the ideal candidate, I must be the best of those available for the job, and just get on with it.

~ This all sounds a little forlorn, Major. I worry about your morale.

~ My spirits are at something of a low ebb, sir, for personal reasons; however my morale and sense of purpose are more robust and, when all's said and done, orders are orders.

~ Yes, aren't they just, Major?

•   •   •   

The
Nuisance Value
carried a human crew of twenty and a handful of small drones. Two of the humans greeted Quilan in the cramped shuttle hangar and showed him to his quarters, which comprised a single cabin with a
low ceiling. His meager baggage and belongings were already there, transferred from the Navy frigate that had taken him to the hulk of the
Winter Storm
.

Something like a Navy officer's cabin had been created for him. One of the drones had been assigned to him; it explained that the cabin's interior could deform to create something closer to his desires. He told the drone he was content with the present arrangements and was happy to unpack and remove the rest of his vacuum suit by himself.

~ Was that drone trying to be our servant?

~ I doubt it, sir. It may do as we ask if we do so nicely.

~ Huh!

~ So far they all seem quite diffident and determined to be helpful, sir.

~ Right. Suspicious as hell.

•   •   •   

Quilan was attended to by the drone, which to his surprise did indeed act as an almost silent and very efficient servant, cleaning his clothes, sorting his kit and advising him on the minimal—almost nonexistent—etiquette that applied on board the Culture vessel.

There was what passed for a formal dinner on the first evening.

~
They
still
don't have uniforms? This is a whole society run by fucking dissidents. No wonder I hate it
.

The crew treated Quilan with fastidious civility. He learned almost nothing from them or about them. They seemed to spend a great deal of time in simulations and had little time for him. He wondered if they just wanted to avoid him, but didn't care if they did.
He was happy to have the time to himself. He studied their archives through the ship's own library.

Hadesh Huyler did his own studying, finally absorbing the historical and briefing files that had been loaded along with his own personality into the Soul-keeper device within Quilan's skull.

They agreed a schedule that would allow Quilan some privacy; if nothing important was taking place then for the hour before sleep and the hour after waking, Huyler would detach from Quilan's senses.

Huyler's reactions to the detailed history of the Caste War, which against Quilan's advice he turned to first, went through amazement, incredulity, outrage, anger and finally—when the Culture's part became clear—sudden fury followed by icy calm. Quilan experienced these varying emotions from the other being inside his head over the course of an afternoon. It was surprisingly wearing.

Only afterwards did the old soldier go back to the beginning and study in chronological sequence all the things that had happened since his body-death and personality storage.

Like all revived constructs, Huyler's personality still needed to sleep and dream to remain stable, though this coma-like state could be achieved in a sort of fast-forward time which meant that instead of sleeping all night Huyler could get by on less than an hour's rest. The first night he slept in the same real-time as Quilan; the second night he studied rather than slept and partook of just that brief period of unconsciousness. The following morning, when Quilan re-established contact after his hour's grace, the voice in his head said, ~
Major
.

~ Sir.

~ You lost your wife. I'm sorry. I didn't know.

~ It's not something I talk about much, sir.

~ Was that the other soul you were looking for on the ship where you found me?

~ Yes, sir.

~ She was Army too.

~ Yes, sir. Also a major. We joined up together, before the war.

~ She must have loved you a lot to follow you into the Army.

~ Actually it was more me following her, sir; enlisting was her idea. Trying to rescue the souls stored in the Military Institute on Aorme before the rebels got there was her idea too.

~ She sounds like quite a female.

~ She was, sir.

~ I'm really sorry, Major Quilan. I was never married myself, but I know what it is to love and to lose. I just want you to know I feel for you, that's all.

~ Thank you. I appreciate that.

~ I think maybe you and I need to study a bit less and talk a bit more. For two people in such intimate contact we haven't really told each other that much about ourselves. What do you say, Major?

~ I think that might be a good idea, sir.

~ Let's start by dropping the “sir,” shall we? Doing my homework, I did notice the bit of legalese attached to the standard wake-up briefing which basically says that my admiral-generalship lapsed with my body-death. My status is Reserve Honorary Officer and you're the ranking grade on this mission. If anyone's going to get called sir around here it
should be you. Anyway, just call me Huyler, if you're happy with that; that's how people usually knew me.

~ As you say, ah, Huyler, given our intimacy, perhaps rank isn't entirely relevant. Please call me Quil.

~ Done deal, Quil.

•   •   •   

The few days passed without incident; they traveled at absurd speed, leaving Chelgrian space far, far behind. The ROU
Nuisance Value
passed them via its little shuttle craft to a thing called a Superlifter, another big, chunky ship, though with a less extemporized look to it than the war craft. The vessel, called the
Vulgarian,
greeted them by voice only. It had no human crew; Quilan sat in what looked like a little used open area where pleasantly bland music played.

~ Never married, Huyler?

~ An accursed weakness for smart, proud and insufficiently patriotic females, Quil. They could always tell my first love was the Army, not them, and not one of those heartless bitches was prepared to put her male and her people before her own selfish interests. If I'd only had the basic common sense to have been taken with airheads I'd have been happily married with—and probably even more happily survived by—a doting wife and several grown-up children by now.

~ Sounds like a narrow escape.

~ I notice you're not specifying who for.

•   •   •   

The General Systems Vehicle
Sanctioned Parts List
appeared on the screen in the Superlifter's lounge as another point of light in the starfield. It became a silver dot and grew quickly to fill the screen, though there was no sign of detail on the shining surface.

~ That'll be it.

~ I suppose so.

~ We've probably passed near several escort craft, though they wouldn't be making their presence so obvious. What the Navy calls a High Value Unit; you never send them out alone.

~ I thought it might look a little more grand.

~ They always look pretty unimposing from the outside.

The Superlifter plunged into the center of the silver surface. Within it was like looking from an aircraft inside a cloud, then there was the impression of plunging through another surface, then another, then dozens more in quick succession, flicking past like thumbed paper pages in an antique book.

They burst from the last membrane into a great hazy space lit by a yellow-white line burning high above, beyond layers of wispy cloud. They were above and aft of the craft's stern. The ship was twenty-five kilometers long and ten wide. The top surface was parkland; wooded hills and ridges separated by and studded with rivers and lakes.

Bracketed by colossal ribbed and buttressed outriggers chevroned in red and blue, the GSV's sheer sides were a golden, tawny color, scattered with a motley confusion of foliage-covered platforms and balconies and punctured by a bewildering variety of brightly lit openings, like a glowing vertical city set into sandstone cliffs three kilometers high. The air swarmed with thousands of craft of every type Quilan had ever seen or heard of, and more besides. Some were tiny, some were the size of the Superlifter. Still smaller dots were individual people, floating in the air.

Two other giant vessels, each barely an eighth of the size of the
Sanctioned Parts List,
shared the envelope of the GSV's surrounding field enclosure. Riding a few kilometers off each side, plainer and more dense-looking, they were surrounded with their own concentrations of smaller flying craft.

~ It is a little more impressive on the inside, isn't it?

Hadesh Huyler remained silent.

•   •   •   

He was made welcome by an avatar of the ship and a handful of humans. His quarters were generous to the point of extravagance; he had a swimming pool to himself and the side of one cabin looked out into the chasm of air whose far wall, a kilometer distant, was the GSV's starboard outrigger. Another self-effacing drone played the part of servant.

He was invited to so many meals, parties, ceremonies, festivals, openings, celebrations and other events and gatherings that the suite's engagement-managing ware filled two screens just listing the variety of different ways of sorting all his invitations. He accepted a few, mostly those featuring live music. People were polite. He was polite back. Some expressed regret about the war. He was dignified, placatory. Huyler fumed in his mind, spitting invective.

He walked and traveled through the vast ship, attracting glances everywhere—in a ship of thirty million people, not all of them human or drone, he was the only Chelgrian—but was only rarely forced into conversation.

The avatar had warned him that some of the people who would want to talk to him would be, in effect,
journalists, and might broadcast his comments on the ship's news services. Huyler's indignation and sarcasm were an advantage in such circumstances. Quilan would have carefully measured his words before speaking them anyway, but he would also listen to Huyler's comments at such moments, seemingly lost in thought, and was quietly amused to see that he gained a reputation for inscrutability as a result.

One morning, before Huyler had made contact again after the hour of grace, he rose from his bed and went to the window which gave out onto the external view, and—when he ordered the surface transparent—was not surprised to see the Phelen Plains outside, scorched and cratered and stretching into the smoke-filled distance beneath an ashen sky. They were traversed by the punctured ribbon of the ruined road on which the blackened, crippled truck moved like a winter-slowed insect, and he realized that he had not awakened or risen at all, and was dreaming.

•   •   •   

The land destroyer jerked and shook beneath him, sending waves of pain through his body. He heard himself groan. The ground must be shaking. He was supposed to be beneath the thing, trapped by it, not inside it. How had this happened? Such pain. Was he dying? He must be dying. He could not see, and breathing was difficult.

Every few moments he imagined that Worosei had just wiped his face, or had just sat him up to make him comfortable, or had just spoken to him, quietly encouraging, gently funny, but each time it was as though he had somehow—unforgivably—fallen asleep
when she had done these things, and only woken up after she had slipped away from him again. He tried to open his eyes but could not. He tried to talk to her, to shout out to her and bring her back, but he could not. Then a few more moments would elapse, and he would jerk awake again, and feel certain once more that he had just missed her touch, her scent, her voice.