– Sufficient to provide the image which is seen here.
– It is the case that a more complete image of the creature, even to the order of recreated biological corporeality, might further refine and focus the knowledge of the creature’s species’ place in the greater world of all life.
– This might be accomplished with equal honour and ability by the Hiarankebine or by that to which these remarks are respectfully addressed.
– The task is one we are happy to assume. It is noted that the creature is still clothed and has about its neck a piece, or the remains of a piece, of jewellery. Is it the case that an analysis of any depth regarding these extraneous objects has been carried out?
– It is not, mighty Yoleusenive.
– The deep search of our stored and non-volatile and off- system recall functions which it was intimated was earlier begun has now concluded. The creature that is before us was of the name Uagen Zlepe, a scholar who came to study the embodiment of the self to which you speak from the civilisation which was once known as the Culture.
– These names are not known to us.
– No matter. The body of this creature must have drifted in the without for a little over the period accounted for by one com- plete world-cycle, waiting here with that close-to-imperceptible fore-directed drift which was earlier mentioned, until the world fulfilled another revolution about the galaxy and sailed again into this region of space. This is good to know. This piece of information ramificates and completes. It adds considerably to the sum of knowledge, as will be explained in a report to be prepared for the Hiarankebine. Is it possible for that to whom these remarks are addressed to attend the finalisation of said report, the more expeditiously to convey it to the Hiarankebine?
It is.
– Good. It may then be worthwhile carrying out further investigations, which that to whom you have addressed your remarks would be glad to undertake. It is to be hoped that the Hiarankebine will share the pleasure that is both experienced and anticipated by the Yoleusenive. A series of events which before had no conclusion now may have. This is satisfying to ourselves.
His eyes flicked open. He stared straight ahead. Where there should have been the awful white-furred face above him, jaws hinging open, or the cold stars spinning slowly as he tumbled, there was instead a familiar figure, hanging upside down from a branch inside a large, brightly lit circular space.
He was sitting up in a sort of cross between a bed and a giant nest. He blinked, ungumming his eyes. It did not feel as though it had been blood keeping them shut.
He squinted at the creature hanging a few metres in front of him. It blinked and turned its head a little.
‘Praf?’ he said, coughing. His throat felt sore, but at least it was properly connected to his head again.
The small, dark creature shook its leathery wings.
‘Uagen Zlepe,’ it said, ‘I am charged with welcoming you. I am 8827 Praf, female. I share the bulk of the memories associated with the fifth-order Decider of the 11th Foliage Gleaner Troupe of the dirigible behemothaur Yoleus which was known to you as 974 Praf, including, it is believed, all those regarding yourself’
Uagen coughed up some fluid. He nodded and looked around. This looked like the interior of Yoleus’ Invited Guests’ Quarters, with the sub-divisions removed.
‘Am I back on Yoleus?’ he asked.
‘You are aboard the dirigible behemothaur Yoleusenive.’
Uagen stared at the hanging creature in front of him. It took him a moment or two to work out the implications of what he’d just heard. He felt his mouth go dry. He swallowed. ‘The Yoleus has… evolved?’ he croaked.
‘That is the case.’
He put his hand up to his throat, feeling the tender but whole flesh. He looked slowly up and around. ‘How was I,’ he began, then had to stop and swallow and start again. ‘How was I brought back? How was I rescued?’
‘You were found in the without. You wore apiece of equipment which stored your personality. The Yoleusenive has repaired and reconstructed your body and quickened your mind-life within said body.
‘But I wasn’t wearing any…’ Uagen began, then his voice trailed off as he looked down to where his fingers were stroking the skin around his neck where, once, there had been a neck- lace.
‘The piece of equipment that stored your personality was where your fingers are now,’ 8827 Praf confirmed, and clacked her beak once.
Aunt Silder’s necklace. He remembered the tiny sting at the back of his neck. Uagen felt tears well in his eyes. ‘How much time has passed?’ he whispered.
Prafs head tipped to one side again and her eyelids flickered.
Uagen cleared his throat and said, ‘Since I left the Yoleus; how much time has passed?’
‘Nearly one Grand Cycle.’
Uagen found he could not speak for a little while. Eventually he said, ‘One.., one, ah, galactic, umm Grand Cycle?’
8827 Prafs beak clacked a couple of times. She shook herself adjusting her dark wings as though they were a cloak. ‘That is what a Grand Cycle is,’ she said as though explaining something obvious to someone just hatched. ‘Galactic.’
Uagen swallowed on a dry, dry throat. It was as though it was still ripped out and open to the vacuum. ‘I see,’ he said.
Closure
She went bounding across the grass towards the cliff, nostrils flared to the wind and the tang of ozone, her face-fur flattened in the breeze. She came to the great double bowl where the land had long ago been vaporised and blown away. The grass fell curving beneath her. Beyond lay the ocean. In front, the seastacks rose like the trunks of immense fossilised trees, their bases awash with creamy foam. She leapt.
A small drone had been sent to investigate the running figure. Its weapons were armed and ready to fire. Just as it was about to intercept the female and shout a challenge, she came to the grassy edge of the crater and jumped. What happened next was unexpected. The drone’s camera showed the leaping figure disintegrate and turn into a flock of birds. They flew past the drone, flowing around its casing like water about a stone. The machine twitched this way and that, then turned and followed.
The order came to attack the flock of birds. The drone instigated a prey-rich-environment targeting regime, but then another order countermanded the first and told it to attack a group of three more defence drones which had just risen from the nearest seastack. It curved away, zooming to gain height.
Lasers flickered from cupolas high on two of the seastacks, but the flock of birds had become a swarm of insects; the weapon light found few of them and those it did simply reflected it. Then the two laser towers began to fire at each other, and both exploded in balls of flame.
The first drone attacked the other three as they spread out and accelerated towards the swarm of insects. It shot down one before it was itself destroyed. Then the other two drones attacked each other, swooping in and ramming at high speed in a flash and a single sharp detonation of sound; much of the resulting wreck- age was composed of pieces small enough to drift in the wind.
Several small- and medium-sized explosions shook each of the seastacks, and smoke began to drift across the blue sky.
The insect swarm collected on a broad balcony and resumed the form of a Chelgrian female. She knocked the balcony doors down and stepped into the room. Alarms warbled. She frowned and they fell silent. The only sensory or command system not fully under her control was a tiny passive camera in one corner of the room. She was to leave the complex’s security monitoring system uncorrupted, so that what was done was seen to be done, and recorded. She listened carefully.
She strode into the bathroom and found him in the emer- gency one-person lift which had been disguised as a shower cabinet. The lift had jammed in the shaft. She flowed over the hole, formed a partial vacuum and sucked the capsule back up. She pulled open the door and reached in for the naked, cowering male.
Estodien Visquile opened his mouth to scream for mercy. She became insects – they represented something of a phobia to the Estodien – and poured into his throat, choking him open the route to his lungs and to his stomach. The insects packed each tiny air-sac in his lungs tight; others bulked out the Estodien’s stomach to the point of bursting and beyond, then invaded his body cavity, while others rammed down into the rest of his digestive system, forcing an explosion of faecal matter from his anus.