‘In what?’ Ziller bellowed.
‘In dreams,’ she shouted. ‘There are VR wing-flier purists who make a point of never doing the real thing!’
‘Do you despise them?’ Ziller yelled.
The woman looked mystified. She leant out from the rippling membrane, then detached one hand — this time she left the glove where it was, anchored in the thick filament membrane — dug in her belly pack and clipped something tiny to one nostril. Then she put her hand back into the glove and relaxed back. When she spoke again, it was in a normal speaking voice and relayed through Kabe’s own nose ring and whatever terminal set-up Ziller was using — it was as though she was sitting right beside each of them.
‘Despise them, did you say?’
‘Yes,’ said Ziller.
‘Why in the world would I despise them?’
‘They achieve with minimal effort and no risk what you have to gamble your life on.’
‘That’s their choice. I could do that too if I wanted. And anyway,’ she said, glancing up at the blimp above her, then taking a longer look at the skies around, ‘it’s not exactly the same thing you achieve, is it?’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘No. You know you’ve been in VR, not reality.’
‘You could fake that too.’
She appeared to sigh, then grimaced. ‘Look, sorry; it’s time to fly, and I prefer to be alone. No offence.’ She took her hand out of the glove again, put the nose-stud terminal in her belly pack and, after a struggle, got her hand back in the glove. Kabe thought she looked cold. They were over half a kilometre above the escarpment now and the air spilling over the aircraft’s fields felt chill on his carapace. Their rate of ascent had slowed appreciably, and Feli’s hair was blowing out to one side rather than whipping all about her head.
‘See you later!’ she yelled through the air. Then she let go.
She leant out, gloves coming free first, then boots; Kabe saw the shining claws flick back in, reflecting orange-yellow in the sunlight as she dropped away. Released, the blimp set off into the sky again.
Kabe and Ziller looked out over the same side of the aircraft; it pushed back, keeping level, then spun around so they could watch the woman as she swooped. She kicked her legs and threw out her arms; the wing slats deployed, turning her in a single flicker into a giant blue-green bird. Over the noise of the wind, Kabe heard her wild ya-hooing. She curved away, heading towards the sunrise, then kept on turning and disappeared momentarily behind the banner leaf. In the skies around them, Kabe could make out a handful of other fliers; tiny dots and shapes angling through the air beneath the tethered balloons of the risen blimp trees.
Feli was banking round, gaining height now, heading back on a rising curve that would take her underneath them. The aircraft swivelled slowly in the air, keeping her in view.
She passed twenty metres beneath them, performing a roll and yelling at them, a huge grin on her face. Then she swung back over to present her back to the sky and swooped again, pulling her wings in and tearing away and down. She seemed to be diving into the ground. ‘Oh!’ Kabe heard himself say.
Suppose she died? He had already started to compose in his head the next voice-piece he would send to the Homomdan Far-Flung Correspondents News Service. Kabe had been sending these illustrated letters back home every six days for nearly nine years now and had built up a small but devoted band of listeners. He had never had to describe an accidental death in one of his recordings and he did not relish the idea of doing so now.
Then the blue-green wings flicked out again and the woman rose once more, a kilometre away, before finally disappearing behind a fence of banner leaves.
‘Our angel is not immortal, is she?’ Ziller asked.
‘No,’ Kabe said. He was not sure what an angel was, but thought it would be rude to ask either Ziller or Hub for the information. ‘No, she’s not backed-up.’
Feli Vitrouv was one of about half of the wing-fliers for whom no recording of her mind-state existed to revive them if they dived into the ground and were killed. It gave Kabe an unpleasant feeling just thinking about it.
‘They call themselves the Disposables,’ he said.
Ziller was silent for a moment. ‘Strange that people are happy to adopt epithets they would fight to the death to throw off had they been imposed.’ A yellow-orange highlight reflected off part of the aircraft’s brightwork. ‘There is a Chelgrian caste called the Invisibles.’
‘I know.’
Ziller looked up. ‘Yes, how are your studies going?’
‘Oh, well enough. I’ve only had four days, and there were various pieces of my own I’ve had to finish. However, I’ve made a start.~
‘An unenviable task you’ve taken on, Kabe. I’d offer an apology on behalf of my species except I feel it would be superfluous as that is more or less what my entire body of work consists of.’
‘Oh, now,’ Kabe said, embarrassed. To feel such shame for one’s own was, well, shameful.
‘Whereas this lot,’ Ziller said, nodding over the side of the aircraft at the wheeling dots of the wing-fliers, ‘are just odd.’ He settled back in his seat and produced his pipe from a pocket. ‘Shall we stay here a while and admire the sunrise?’
‘Yes,’ Kabe said. ‘Let’s.’
From up here they could see for hundreds of kilometres across Frettle Plate. The system’s star, Lacelere, was still rising and slowly yellowing to full brightness, shining through the continents of air to anti-spinward, its radiance obliterating any detail on the lands still in shade. To spinward — beneath the fuzzily broad then sharp but slowly diminishing line of the Plates that had risen into full sunlight, hanging in the sky like a bright, beaded bracelet — the Tulier Mountains rose, capes of snow about their shoulders. Spin-right, the view just faded away across the savannas, disappearing into haze. Left, there was a hint of hills in the blue distance, one edge of a broad estuary where Masaq’ Great River decanted into Frettle Sea, and the waters beyond.
‘You don’t think I bait the humans too much, do you?’ Ziller asked. He sucked on his pipe, frowning at it.
‘I think they enjoy it,’ Kabe said.
‘Really? Oh.’ Ziller sounded disappointed.
‘We help to define them. They like that.’
‘Define them? Is that all?’
‘I don’t think that’s the only reason they like to have us here, certainly not in your case. But we give them an alien standard to calibrate themselves against.’
‘That sounds slightly better than being upper—caste pets.~
‘You are different, dear Ziller. They call you Composer Ziller, Cr Ziller; an address mode I’ve never heard of before. They are intensely proud you chose to come here. The Culture as a whole and Hub and the people of Masaq’ in particular, obviously.’
‘Obviously,’ Ziller murmured, pulling on his still stubbornly unlit pipe and staring across the plains.
‘You are a star amongst them.’
‘A trophy.’
‘Of a sort, but very respected.’
‘They have their own composers.’ Ziller frowned into the bowl of the pipe, tapping it and tutting. ‘Dregs, one of their machines, their Minds, could out-compose all of them put together.’
‘But that,’ Kabe said, ‘would be cheating.’
The Chelgrian’s shoulder shook and he made a sort of huhing noise that might have been a laugh.
‘They wouldn’t let me cheat to get away from this fucking emissary.’ He looked sharply at the Homomdan. ‘Any more news on that?’
Kabe already knew from Masaq’ Hub that Ziller had been diligently ignoring anything to do with the envoy being sent from his home. ‘They have dispatched a ship to bring him or her here,’ Kabe said. ‘Well, to start the process. There appeared to be a sudden change of plan at the Chelgrian end.’
‘Why?’
‘From what they tell me, they don’t know. A rendezvous was agreed, then changed by Chel.’ Kabe paused. ‘There was something about a wrecked ship.’
‘What wrecked ship?’
‘Ah … Hmm. We might have to ask Hub. Hello, Hub?’ he said, tapping his nose ring unnecessarily and feeling foolish.
‘Kabe, Hub here. What can I do for you?’
‘This wrecked ship that the Chelgrian envoy was being picked up from.’
‘Yes?’
‘Do you have any details?’
‘It was an Itirewein clan articled privateer of the Loyalist faction, lost in the closing stages of the Caste War. The hulk was discovered near the star Reshref a few weeks ago. It was called the Winter Storm.’
Kabe looked at Ziller, who was obviously being included in the conversation. The Chelgrian shrugged. ‘Never heard of it.’
‘Is there any more information on the identity of the emissary they’re sending?’ Kabe asked.
‘A little. We don’t have his name yet, but apparently he is or was a moderately senior military officer who later took religious orders.’