‘We believe, and have verified through experiments, that such a scanning process could be carried out without your knowledge. To go any deeper, to discover the memories we will initially hide even from you, this scanning process will have to reveal itself; you will be aware that it is taking place, or at the very least you will know that it has taken place. If that should happen, Major, your mission will end early. You will die.’
Quilan nodded, thinking. ‘Estodien, has any sort of experi- ment been carried out on me yet? I mean, have I already lost any memories, whether I agreed to such a thing or not?’
‘No. The experiments I mentioned were carried out on others. We are very confident that we know what we are doing, Major.’
‘So the deeper I go into my mission the more I’ll know about it?’
‘Correct.’
‘And the personality, the co-pilot, will it know everything from the start?’
‘It will.’
‘And it cannot be read by a Culture scan?’
‘It can, but it would require a deeper and more detailed reading than that required for a biological brain. Your Soulkeeper will be like your citadel, Quilan; your own brain is the curtain wall. If the citadel has fallen, the walls are either long since stormed, or irrelevant.
‘Now. As I said, there is more to tell about your Soulkeeper. It contains, or will contain, a small payload and what is commonly known as a matter transmitter. Apparently it does not really transmit matter, but it has the same effect. I freely confess the importance of the distinction escapes me.
‘And this is in something the size of a Soulkeeper?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is this our own technology, Estodien?’
‘That is not something that you need to know, Major. All that matters is whether it works or not.’ Visquile hesitated, then said, ‘Our own scientists and technologists make and apply astonishing new discoveries all the time, as I’m sure you are aware.
‘Of course, Estodien. What would the payload you mentioned be?’
‘You may never know that, Major. At the moment, I myself do not know exactly what it is either, though I will be told in due course, before your mission properly begins. At the moment all I know is something of the effect it will have.’
‘And that would be what, Estodien?’
‘As you might imagine, a degree of damage, of destruction.’
Quilan was silent for a few moments. He was aware of the presence of the millions of gone-before personalities stored in the substrates around him. ‘Am I to understand that the payload will be transmitted into my Soulkeeper?’
‘No, it was put in place along with the Soulkeeper device.’
‘So it will be transmitted from the device?’
‘Yes. You will control the transmission of the payload.’
‘I will?’
‘That is what you are here to be trained for, Major. You will be instructed in the use of the device so that when the time comes you are able to transmit the payload into the desired location.’
Quilan blinked a few times. ‘I may have fallen a little behind with recent advances in technology, but-’
‘I would forget about that, Major. Previously existing technol- ogies are of little importance in this matter. This is new. There is no precedent that we know of for this sort of process; no book to refer to. You will be helping to write that book.’
‘I see.’
‘Let me tell you more about the Culture world Masaq’.’ The Estodien gathered his robes about him and settled himself further into the cramped curl-pad. ‘It is what they call an Orbital; a band of matter in the shape of a very thin bracelet, orbiting round a sun – in this case the star Lacelere – in the same zone one would expect to find an habitable planet.
‘Orbitals are on a different scale from our own space habitats; Masaq’, like most Culture Orbitals, has a diameter of approxi- mately three million kilometres and therefore a circumference of nearly ten million kilometres. Its width at the foot of its containing walls is about six thousand kilometres. Those walls are about a thousand kilometres high, and open at the top; the atmosphere is held in by the apparent gravity created by the world’s spin.
‘The size of the structure is not arbitrary; Culture Orbitals are built so that the same speed of revolution which produces one standard gravity also creates a day-night cycle of one of their standard days. Local night is produced when any given part of the Orbital’s interior is facing directly away from the sun. They are made from exotic materials and held together principally by force fields.
‘Floating in space in the centre of the Orbital, equidistant from all places on its rim, is the Hub. This is where the Al substrate that the Culture calls a Mind exists. The machine oversees all aspects of the Orbital’s running. There are thousands of subsidiary systems tasked with overseeing all but the most critical procedures, but the Hub can assume direct control of any and all of them at the same time.
‘The Hub has millions of human-form representative entities called avatars with which it deals on a one-to-one basis with its inhabitants. It is theoretically capable of running each of those and every other system on the Orbital directly while communi- cating individually with every human and drone present on the world, plus a number of other ships and Minds.
‘Each Orbital is different and each Hub has its own person- ality. Some Orbitals have only a few components of land; these are usually square parcels of ground and sea called Plates. On an Orbital as broad as Masaq’ these are normally synonymous with continents. Before an Orbital is finished, in the sense of forming a closed loop like Masaq’, they can be as small as two Plates, still three million kilometres apart but joined only by force fields. Such an Orbital might have a total population of just ten million humans. Masaq’ is towards the other end of the scale, with over fifty billion people.
‘Masaq’ is known for the high rate of back-up of its inhab- itants. This is sometimes held to be because a lot of them take part in dangerous sports, but really the practice dates from the world’s inception, when it was realised that Lacelere is not a perfectly stable star and that there is a chance that it could flare with sufficient violence to kill people exposed on the surface of the world.
‘Mahrai Ziller has lived there for the last seven years. He appears to be content to remain on the world. As I say, you will, seemingly, be going there to attempt to persuade him to renounce his exile and return to Chel.’
‘I see.’
‘Whereas your real mission is to facilitate the destruction of Masaq’ Hub and so cause the deaths of a significant proportion of its inhabitants.’
The avatar was going to show him round one of the manufacturies, beneath a Bulkhead Range. They were in an underground car, a comfortably fitted-out capsule which sped beneath the underside of the Orbital’s surface, in the vacuum of space. They had swung half a million kilometres round the world, with the stars shining through panels in the floor.
The underground car line spanned the gap beneath the gigantic A-shape of the Bulkhead Range on a monofil-supported sling- bridge two thousand kilometres long. Now the car was hurtling to a stop near the centre, to ascend vertically into the factory space, hundreds of kilometres above.
You all right, Major? Fine. You? The same. Mission target just come through? Yes. How am I doing?
You’re fine. No obvious physical signs. You sure you re all right? – Perfectly. -~ And we’re still Go status? Yes, we’re still Go.
The silver-skinned avatar turned to look at him. ‘You’re sure you won’t be bored seeing a factory, Major?’
‘Not one producing starships, not at all. Though you must be running out of places to distract me with,’ he said. ‘Well, it’s a big Orbital.’
‘There’s one place I would like to see.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Your place. The Hub.’
The avatar smiled. ‘Why, certainly.’ Flight
‘Are we nearly there yet?
‘Uncertain. That which the creature said. It meant?’
‘Never mind that! Are we there yet?’
‘This is hard to know with certitude. To return to that which the creature said. Is its meaning yet known to you?’
‘Yes! Well, sort of! Please, can we go any faster?’
‘Not really. We proceed as fast as is possible given the circumstances and therefore I thought our time might be employed by the telling of that which you understand from the creature’s sayings. What would you then say was the import of such?’
‘It doesn’t matter! Well, it does, but! Just. Oh. Hurry! Faster! Go faster!’
They were inside the dirigible behemothaur Sansemin, Uagen Zlepe, 974 Praf and three of the raptor scouts. They were squeezing their way down a sinuous, undulating tube whose warm, slime-slick walls pulsed alarmingly every few moments. The air moving past them from ahead stank of rotting meat. Uagen fought the urge to gag. They could not go back to the outside the way they had come; it had been blocked off by some sort of rupture which had trapped and suffocated two of the raptor scouts who’d gone ahead of them.