The Nuisance Value carried a human crew of twenty and a handful of small drones. Two of the humans greeted Quilan in the cramped shuttle hangar and showed him to his quarters, which comprised a single cabin with a low ceiling. His meagre baggage and belongings were already there, transferred from the Navy frigate that had taken him to the hulk of the Winter Storm.
Something like a Navy officer’s cabin had been created for him. One of the drones had been assigned to him; it explained that the cabin’s interior could deform to create something closer to his desires. He told the drone he was content with the present arrangements and was happy to unpack and remove the rest of his vacuum suit by himself.
Was that drone trying to be our servant?
-~ I doubt it, sir. It may do as we ask if we do so nicely.
—Huh!
So far they all seem quite diffident and determined to be helpful, sir.
Right. Suspicious as hell.
Quilan was attended to by the drone, which to his surprise did indeed act as an almost silent and very efficient servant, cleaning his clothes, sorting his kit and advising him on the minimal — almost nonexistent — etiquette that applied on board the Culture vessel.
There was what passed for a formal dinner on the first evening.
They still don’t have uniforms? This is a whole society run by fucking dissidents. No wonder I hate it.
The crew treated Quilan with fastidious civility. He learned almost nothing from them or about them. They seemed to spend a great deal of time in simulations and had little time for him. He wondered if they just wanted to avoid him, but didn’t care if they did. He was happy to have the time to himself. He studied their archives through the ship’s own library.
Hadesh Huyler did his own studying, finally absorbing the historical and briefing files that had been loaded along with his own personality into the Soulkeeper device within Quilan’s skull.
They agreed a schedule that would allow Quilan some privacy; if nothing important was taking place then for the hour before sleep and the hour after waking, Huyler would detach from Quilan’s senses.
Huyler’s reactions to the detailed history of the Caste War, which against Quilan’s advice he turned to first, went through amazement, incredulity, outrage, anger and finally — when the Culture’s part became clear — sudden fury followed by icy calm. Quilan experienced these varying emotions from the other being inside his head over the course of an afternoon. It was surprisingly wearing.
Only afterwards did the old soldier go back to the beginning and study in chronological sequence all the things that had happened since his body-death and personality storage.
Like all revived constructs, Huyler’s personality still needed to sleep and dream to remain stable, though this coma-like state could be achieved in a sort of fast-forward time which meant that instead of sleeping all night Huyler could get by on less than an hour’s rest. The first night he slept in the same real-time as Quilan; the second night he studied rather than slept and partook of just that brief period of unconsciousness. The following morning, when Quilan re-established contact after his hour’s grace, the voice in his head said, —~ Major.
Sir.
You lost your wife. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.
It’s not something I talk about much, sir.
Was that the other soul you were looking for on the ship where you found me?
Yes, sir.
She was Army too.
Yes, sir. Also a major. We joined up together, before the war.
She must have loved you a lot to follow you into the Army.
Actually it was more me following her, sir; enlisting was her idea. Trying to rescue the souls stored in the Military Institute on Aorme before the rebels got there was her idea too.
She sounds like quite a female. She was, sir.
I’m really sorry. Major Quilan. I was never married myself. but I know what it is to love and to lose. I just want you to know I feel for you, that’s all. Thank you. I appreciate that.
I think maybe you and I need to study a bit less and talk a bit more. For two people in such intimate contact we haven’t really told each other that much about ourselves. What do you say, Major?
I think that might be a good idea, sir.
Let’s start by dropping the ‘sir’, shall we? Doing my homework, I did notice the bit of legalese attached to the standard wake-up briefing which basically says that my admiral- generalship lapsed with my body-death. My status is Reserve Honorary Officer and you’re the ranking grade on this mission. If anyone’s going to get called sir around here it should be you. Anyway, just call me Huyler, if you’re happy with that; that’s how people usually knew me.
As you say, ah, Huyler, given our intimacy, perhaps rank isn entirely relevant. Please call me Quil.
Done deal, Quil.
The few days passed without incident; they travelled at absurd speed, leaving Chelgrian space far, far behind. The ROU Nuisance Value passed them via its little shuttle craft to a thing called a Superlifter, another big, chunky ship, though with a less extemporised look to it than the war craft. The vessel, called the Vulgarian, greeted them by voice only. It had no human crew; Quilan sat in what looked like a little used open area where pleasantly bland music played.
Never married, Huyler?
An accursed weakness for smart, proud and insufficiently patriotic females, QuiL They could always tell my first love was the Army, not them, and not one of those heartless bitches was prepared to put her male and her people before her own selfish interests. If I’d only had the basic common sense to have been taken with airheads I’d have been happily married with — and probably even more happily survived by — a doting wife and several grown-up children by now.
Sounds like a narrow escape.
I notice you’re not specifying who for.
The General Systems Vehicle Sanctioned Parts List appeared on the screen in the Superlifter’s lounge as another point of light in the starfield. It became a silver dot and grew quickly to fill the screen, though there was no sign of detail on the shining surface. That’ll be it.
I suppose so.
We’ve probably passed near several escort craft, though they wouldn’t be making their presence so obvious. What the Navy calls a High Value Unit; you never send them out alone.
I thought it might look a little more grand.
They always look pretty unimposing from the outside.
The Superlifter plunged into the centre of the silver surface. Within it was like looking from an aircraft inside a cloud, then there was the impression of plunging through another surface, then another, then dozens more in quick succession, flicking past like thumbed paper pages in an antique book.
They burst from the last membrane into a great hazy space lit by a yellow-white line burning high above, beyond layers of wispy cloud. They were above and aft of the craft’s stern. The ship was twenty-five kilometres long and ten wide. The top surface was parkland; wooded hills and ridges separated by and studded with rivers and lakes.
Bracketed by colossal ribbed and buttressed outriggers chev- roned in red and blue, the GSV’s sheer sides were a golden, tawny colour, scattered with a motley confusion of foliage-covered platforms and balconies and punctured by a bewildering variety of brightly lit openings, like a glowing vertical city set into sandstone cliffs three kilometres high. The air swarmed with thousands of craft of every type Quilan had ever seen or heard of, and more besides. Some were tiny, some were the size of the Superlifter. Still smaller dots were individual people, floating in the air.
Two other giant vessels, each barely an eighth of the size of the Sanctioned Parts List, shared the envelope of the GSV’s surrounding field enclosure. Riding a few kilometres off each side, plainer and more dense-looking, they were surrounded with their own concentrations of smaller flying craft.
It is a little more impressive on the inside, isn’t it? Hadesh Huyler remained silent.
He was made welcome by an avatar of the ship and a handful of humans. His quarters were generous to the point of extrava- gance; he had a swimming pool to himself and the side of one cabin looked out into the chasm of air whose far wall, a kilometre distant, was the GSV’s starboard outrigger. Another self-effacing drone played the part of servant.
He was invited to so many meals, parties, ceremonies, festivals, openings, celebrations and other events and gatherings that the suite’s engagement-managing ware filled two screens just listing the variety of different ways of sorting all his invitations. He accepted a few, mostly those featuring live music. People were polite. He was polite back. Some expressed regret about the war. He was dignified, placatory. Huyler fumed in his mind, spitting invective.