Looking ahead, Uagen could see light again. He groaned, then saw that it was blue-white, not yellow this time.
‘We approach the outside,’ 974 Praf gasped.
They dropped from the belly of the dying behemothaur, falling not much faster than what was left of the vast creature itself as it burned and disintegrated and collapsed and descended all at once. Uagen held 974 Praf to him, smothering the flames eating at her wings, then used his ankle motors and balloon cape to halt their fall, and after an eternity of falling amongst flaming, fluttering wreckage and injured animals, brought the two of them round from underneath the massive, V-shaped ruin that was the dying behemothaur, into clear air space where the remains of the Yoleus’ expeditionary force of raptor scouts found them moments before an ogrine disseisor could swoop in to swallow them whole.
The dazed, silent Interpreter shivered in his arms, the smell of her burned flesh filling his nose as they rose slowly with the raptor scout troupe back to the dirigible behemothaur Yoleus.
‘Go?’
‘Yes; away. Go. Depart. Leave.’
‘You wish to go away, dep.art, leave, now?’
‘As soon as possible. When’s the next ship? Of anybody’s?
Well, not, umm. Chelgrian. Yes; not Chelgrian.’
Uagen had never imagined that Yoleus’ interrogatory chamber would seem remotely homely, but it did now. He felt bizarrely safe here. It was just a pity he had to leave.
Yoleus was talking to him via a connecting cable and an Interpreter called 46 Zhun. The bulkier body of the nominally male 46 Zhun was perched on a ledge beside 974 Praf, who was stuck to the chamber wall looking singed and limp and dead but apparently beginning her reconstitution and recovery. 46 Zhun closed his eyes. Uagen was left standing there on the soft warm floor of the chamber. He could still smell the odour of burning coming off his clothes. He shivered.
46 Zhun opened his eyes again. ‘The next departing object is due to leave from the Second Tropic of Inclination Secessionary Portal in the Yonder lobe in five days,’ the Interpreter said.
‘I’ll take it. Wait; is it Chelgrian?’
‘No. It is a Jhuvuonian Trader.’
‘I’ll take it.’
‘There is not from now sufficient time for you to journey to and arrive at the said Tropic of Inclination Secessionary Portal.’
‘What?’
‘There is not from now sufficient time for you to-’
‘Well, how long would it take?’
The Interpreter closed its eyes again for a few moments, then opened them and said, ‘Twenty-three days would be the minimum time of requirement for a being such as you to journey to and arrive at the Second Tropic of Inclination Secessionary Portal from this point.’
Uagen could feel a terrible gnawing in his guts; it was a sensation he hadn’t felt since he was a very young child. He tried to remain calm. ‘When is the next ship after that?’
‘That is not known,’ the Interpreter replied immediately.
Uagen fought back the urge to cry. ‘Is it possible to signal from Oskendari?’ he asked.
‘Of course.
‘At beyond-light speed?’
‘No.’
‘Could you signal for a ship? Is there any way for me to get off in the near future?’
‘The definition of near future. This would be what?’
Uagen suppressed a moan. ‘In the next hundred days?’
‘There are no objects known to be arriving or departing within that time period.’
Uagen put his hands into his head-hair and pulled at it. roared out of frustration, then stopped, blinking. He’d never done that. Never done either. Pulled at his hair or roared with frustration. He stared up at the blackened, crippled-looking body of 974 Praf, then dropped his head and stared at the chamber floor beneath his feet. His little ankle motors gleamed mockingly back up at him.
He raised his head. What had he been thinking of?
He checked what he knew about Jhuvuonian Traders. Only semi-Contacted. Fairly peaceful, quite trustworthy. Still in the age of scarcity. Ships capable of a few hundred lights. Slow by Culture standards, but sufficient. ‘Yoleus,’ he said calmly. ‘Can you signal the Second Secessionary Tropic of Inclinatory Portal or whatever it’s called?’
‘Yes.’
‘How long would that take?’
The creature closed its eyes and opened them. ‘One day plus one quarter of a day would be required for the outward signal and a similar amount of time would be required for a replying signal.’
‘Good. Where is the nearest Portal to where we are now and how long would it take for me to get there?’
Another pause. ‘The nearest Portal to where we are now is the Ninth Tropic of Inclination Secessionary Portal, Present lobe. It is two days plus one three-fifths of a day’s flying time from here by raptor scout.’
Uagen took a deep breath. I’m Culture, he thought to himself. This is what you’re meant to do in such a situation, this is what it’s all supposed to be about.
‘Please signal the Jhuvuonian Trader vessel,’ he said, ‘and tell them they will be paid an amount of money equivalent to the worth of their vessel if they will pick me up at the Ninth Tropic of Inclination Secessionary Portal, Present lobe, in four days’ time and take me to a destination I will disclose to them when they meet me there. Also mention that their discretion would be appreciated.’
He considered leaving it at that, but this ship sounded like his only chance and he couldn’t afford to risk its masters dismissing him as a crank. And if they were committed to that departure date then there wasn’t time to indulge in a conversation by signal to convince them, either. He took another deep breath and added, ‘You may inform them that I am a citizen of the Culture.’
He never did get a chance to say goodbye properly to 974 Praf. The Decider foliage-gleaner turned Interpreter was still uncon- scious and attached to the wall of the Interrogatory Chamber when he left, a day later.
He packed his bags, made sure that a record of his research notes, glyphs and all that had happened in the last couple of days was left in safe keeping with Yoleus, and made a particular point of finally preparing and drinking a glass of ihagel tea. It didn’t taste very good.
A flight of raptor scouts escorted him to the Ninth Tropic of Inclination Secessionary Portal. His last glimpse of the dirigible behemothaur Yoleus was looking back over his shoulder watch- ing the giant creature fading away into the greeny-blue distance above the shadow of a cloud complex, still faithfully following below and beneath the bulk of its desired mate, Muetenive. He wondered if they would yet make their dash for the predicted upwelling still building somewhere through the haze horizon ahead, to claim their free ride upwards to the manifold splen- dours of the gigalithine globular entity Buthulne.
He felt a sort of sweet sadness that he would not be there to share either that ride or arrival with them, and experienced a pang of guilt at feeling even the hint of a wish that the Jhuvuonian Trader craft would reject his offer and not show up, so leaving him no real choice but to attempt to return to Yoleus.
The two behemothaurs disappeared in the airily cavernous shadows above the cloud system. He turned back to face for- ward again. His ankle motors whirred, the cloak adjusted itself minutely to accommodate his altered orientation, still tensed to make a wing. The wings of the raptor scouts beat the air around him in a syncopated rhythm of stuttering sound, creating a curiously restful effect. He looked over at 46 Zhun, clasped to the neck and back of the raptor scout troupe leader, but the creature appeared to be asleep.
The Ninth Tropic of Inclination Secessionary Portal proved a little short of facilities. It was just a patch about ten metres in diameter on the side of the airsphere’s fabric where the layers of containment material met and fused to produce a clear window into space. Around this circular area was clustered a handful of what looked like the mega fruit husks which grew on the behemothaurs and in one of which, until a day earlier, he had made his home. They provided a place for the raptor scouts to perch and get their strength back and for him to sit and wait. There was some food, some water, but that was all.
He passed the time by looking out at the stars – the Portal patches were the only truly clear areas on the airsphere’s surface; the rest was only translucent in comparison – and composing a poeglyph trying to describe the sensation of terror he’d felt just the day before, trapped inside the dying body of the behemothaur Sansemin.
It was a frustrating process. He kept on putting down the stylo – the same damn stylo that had led to him being here now waiting on an alien spaceship that might never come – and tried to work out what had happened to Sansemin, why the Culture agent – if that was truly what he or she had been – had been here in the first place, whether there really was a plot of the sort that had been described to him, and what he ought to do if it transpired that the whole thing was some sort of joke, hallucination or figment of a mad and tormented creature’s mind.