Ziller looked ruefully at his sodden pipe and then at the silver-skinned creature. ‘And that,’ he said, ‘is another one.’
A small drone carrying a very large, neatly folded white towel of extreme fluffiness banked round a corner and sped along the passage towards them, coming to a sudden stop at their side. The avatar took the towel and nodded to the other machine, which dipped and raced away again.
‘Here,’ the avatar said, handing the Chelgrian the towel.
‘Thank you.’.
They turned to walk down the passageway, passing saloons where small groups of People were watching the tumbling waters and roiling mists of spray outside.
‘Where’s our Major Quilan today?’ Ziller asked, rubbing his face in the towel.
‘Visiting Neremety, with Kabe, to see some sworl islands. It’s the first day of the local school’s Tempt Season.’
Ziller had seen this spectacle himself on another Plate six or seven years earlier. Tempt Season was when the adult islands released the algal blooms they’d been storing to paint fabulous swirling patterns across the craterine bays of their shallow sea. Allegedly the display persuaded the sea-floor-dwelling calves of the year before to surface and blossom into new versions of themselves.
‘Neremety?’ he asked. ‘Where’s that?’
‘Half a million klicks away if it’s a stride. You’re safe for now.
‘How very reassuring. Aren’t you running out of places to distract our little message-boy with? Last I heard you were showing him round a factory.’ Ziller pronounced the last word through a snorting laugh.
The avatar looked hurt. ‘A starship factory, if you please,’ it said, ‘but yes, a factory nevertheless. Only because he asked, I might add. And I’ve no shortage of places to show him, Ziller. There are places on Masaq’ you haven’t even heard of you’d love to visit if only you knew about them.’
‘There are?’ Ziller stopped and stared at the avatar.
It halted too, grinning. ‘Of course.’ It spread its arms. ‘I wouldn’t want you to know all my secrets at once, would I?’
Ziller walked on, drying his fur and looking askance at the silver-skinned creature stepping lightly at his side. ‘You are more female than male, you know that, don’t you?’ he said.
The avatar raised its brows. ‘You really think so?’
‘Definitely.’
The avatar looked amused. ‘He wants to see Hub next,’ it told him.
Ziller frowned. ‘Come to think of it, I’ve never been there myself. Is there much to see?’
‘There’s a viewing gallery. Good outlook on the whole surface, obviously, but no better than most people get when they arrive, unless they’re in a terrible hurry and fly straight up to the under- surface.’ It shrugged. ‘Apart from that, not much to see.
‘I take it all your fabulous machinery is just as boring to look at as I imagine it to be.’
‘If not more so.
‘Well, that ought to distract him for a good couple of minutes.’ Ziller towelled under his arms and – rising to walk, stooped, on his hind legs alone – around his midlimb. ‘Have you mentioned to the wretch that I may well not appear at the first performance of my own symphony?’
‘Not yet. I believe Kabe might be raising the subject today.’
‘Think he’ll do the honourable thing and stay away?’
‘I really have no idea. If the suspicions we share are correct, E. H. Tersono will probably try and talk him into going.’ The avatar flashed Ziller a wide smile. ‘It will employ some sort of argument based on the idea of not giving in to what it will probably characterise as your childish blackmail, I imagine.’
‘Yes, something as shallow as that.’
‘How fares Expiring Light?’ the avatar asked. ‘Are the primer pieces ready yet? We’re only five days away and that’s close to the minimum time people are used to.’
‘Yes, they’re ready. I just want to sleep on a couple of them one more night, but I’ll release them tomorrow. ‘The 2 Chelgrian glanced at the avatar. ‘You’re quite sure this is the way to do it?’
‘What, using primer pieces?’
‘Yes. Won’t people lose out on the freshness of the first performance? Whether I conduct it or not.’
‘Not at all. They’ll have heard the rough tunes, the outlines of the themes, that’s all. So they’ll find the basic ideas recognisable, although not familiar. That’ll let them appreciate the full work all the more.’ The avatar slapped the Chelgrian across the shoulders, raising a fine spray from his waistcoat. Ziller winced; the slight-looking creature was stronger than it appeared. ‘Ziller, trust us; this way works. Oh, and having listened to the draft you’ve sent, it is quite magnificent. My congratulations.’
‘Thank you.’ Ziller continued drying his flanks with the towel, then looked at the avatar.
‘Yes?’ it said.
‘I was wondering.’
‘What?’
‘Something I’ve wondered about ever since I came here, something I’ve never asked you, first of all because I was worried what the answer would be, later because I suspected I already knew the answer.
‘Goodness. What can it be?’ the avatar asked, blinking.
‘If you tried, if any Mind tried, could you impersonate my style?’ the Chelgrian asked. ‘Could you write a piece – a symphony, say – that would appear, to the critical appraiser, to be by me, and which, when I heard it, I’d imagine being proud to have written?’
The avatar frowned as it walked. It clasped its hands behind its back. It took a few more steps. ‘Yes, I imagine that would be possible.’
‘Would it be easy?’
‘No. No more easy than any complicated task.’
‘But you could do it much more quickly than I could?’
‘I’d have to suppose so.
‘Hmm.’ Ziller paused. The avatar turned to face him. Behind Ziller, the rocks and veil trees of the deepening gorge moved swiftly past. The barge rocked gently beneath their feet. ‘So what,’ the Chelgrian asked, ‘is the point of me or anybody else writing a symphony, or anything else?’
The avatar raised its brows in surprise. ‘Well, for one thing, if you do it, it’s you who gets the feeling of achievement.’
‘Ignoring the subjective. What would be the point for those listening to it?’
‘They’d know it was one of their own species, not a Mind, who created it.’
‘Ignoring that, too; suppose they weren’t told it was by an Al, or didn’t care.
‘If they hadn’t been told then the comparison isn’t complete; information is being concealed. If they don’t care, then they’re unlike any group of humans I’ve ever encountered.’
‘But if you can-
‘Ziller, are you concerned that Minds – AIs, if you like can create, or even just appear to create, original works of art?’
‘Frankly, when they’re the sort of original works of art that I create, yes.’
‘Ziller, it doesn’t matter. You have to think like a mountain climber.’
‘Oh, do I?’
‘Yes. Some people take days, sweat buckets, endure pain and cold and risk injury and – in some cases – permanent death to achieve the summit of a mountain only to discover there a party of their peers freshly arrived by aircraft and enjoying a light picnic.’
‘If I was one of those climbers I’d be pretty damned annoyed.’
‘Well, it is considered rather impolite to land an aircraft on a summit which people are at that moment struggling up to the hard way, but it can and does happen. Good manners indicate that the picnic ought to be shared and that those who arrived by aircraft express awe and respect for the accomplishment of the climbers.
‘The point, of course, is that the people who spent days and sweated buckets could also have taken an aircraft to the summit if all they’d wanted was to absorb the view. It is the struggle that they crave. The sense of achievement is produced by the route to and from the peak, not by the peak itself. It is just the fold between the pages.’ The avatar hesitated. It put its head a little to one side and narrowed its eyes. ‘How far do I have to take this analogy, Cr Ziller?’
‘You’ve made your point, but this mountain climber still wonders if he ought to re-educate his soul to the joys of flight and stepping out onto someone else’s summit.’
‘Better to create your own. Come on; I’ve a dying man to see on his way.’
Ilm Dolince lay on his death bed, surrounded by friends and family. The awnings which had covered the aft upper deck of the barge while it had descended the falls had been withdrawn, leaving the bed open to the air. Ibm Dolince sat up, half submerged in floating pillows and lying on a puff mattress that looked, ziller thought, appropriately like a cumulus cloud.
The Chelgrian hung back, at the rear of the crescent of sixty or so people arranged standing or sitting round the bed. The avatar went to stand near the old man and took his hand, bending to talk to him. It nodded then beckoned over to ziller, who pretended not to see, and made a show of being distracted by a gaudy bird flying low over the milky white waters of the river.