‘Ziller,’ the avatar’s voice said from the Chelgrian’s pen termi- nal. ‘Please come over. Ibm Dobince would like to meet you.’
‘Eh? Oh. Yes, of course,’ he said. He felt quite acutely awkward.
‘Cr Ziller, I am privileged to meet you.’ The old man shook the Chelgrian’s hand. In fact he did not look that old, though his voice sounded weak. His skin was less lined and spotted than that of some humans ziller had seen, and his head hair had not fallen out, though it had lost its pigment and so appeared white. His handshake was not strong, but ziller had certainly felt limper ones.
‘Ah. Thank you. I’m flattered you wanted to, ah, take up some of your, ah, time with meeting an alien note dabbler.’
The white-haired man in the bed looked regretful, even pained. ‘Oh, Cr Ziller,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. You’re a little uncomfortable with this, aren’t you? I’m being very selfish. It didn’t occur to me my dying might-’
‘No, no, I, I . . . Well, yes.’ ziller felt his nose colour. He glanced round the other people nearest the bed. They looked sympathetic, understanding. He hated them. ‘It just seems strange. That’s all.’
‘May I, Composer?’ the man said. He stretched out one hand and ziller allowed one of his to be grasped again. The grip was lighter this time. ‘Our ways must seem odd to you.’
‘No odder than ours to you, I’m sure.’
‘I am very ready to die, Cr ziller.’ Ibm Dolince smiled. ‘I’ve lived four hundred and fifteen years, sir. I’ve seen the Chebalyths of Eyske in their Skydark migration, watched field liners sculpt solar flares in the High Nudrun, I’ve held my own newborn in my hands, flown the caverns of Sart and dived the tube-arches of Lirouthale. I’ve seen so much, done so much, that even with my neural lace trying to tie my elsewhere memories as seamlessly as it can into what’s in my head, I can tell I’ve lost a lot from in here.’ He tapped one temple. ‘Not from my memory, but from my personality. And so it’s time to change or move on or just stop. I’ve put a version of me into a group mind in case anybody wants to ask me anything at any time, but really I can’t be bothered living any more. At least, not once I’ve seen Ossuliera City, which I’ve been saving for this moment.’ He smiled at the avatar. ‘Maybe I’ll come back when the end of the universe happens.~
‘You also said you wanted to be revived into an especially nubile cheerleader if Notromg Town ever won the Orbital Cup,’ the avatar said solemnly. It nodded and took a breath in through its teeth. ‘I’d go with the universe-ending thing, if I were you.’
‘So you see, sir?’ Ibm Dolince said, his eyes glittering. ‘I’m stopping.’ One thin hand patted ziller’s. ‘I’m only sorry I won’t be here to listen to your new work, maestro. I was very tempted to stay, but.. . Well, there is always something to keep us, if we are not determined, isn’t there?’
‘I dare say.
‘I hope you’re not offended, sir. Little else would have made me even think of delaying. You’re not offended, are you?’
‘Would it make any difference if I was, Mr Dolince?’ ziller asked.
‘It would, sir. If I thought you were especially hurt, I could still delay, though I might be straining the patience of these good people,’ Dolince said, looking round those gathered by his bedside. There was a low chorus of friendly-sounding dissent.
‘You see, Cr ziller? I have made my peace. I don’t think I have ever been so well thought of.’
‘Then I’d be honoured to be included in that regard.’ He patted the human’s hand.
‘Is it a great work, Cr ziller? I hope it is.’
‘I can’t say, Mr Dolince,’ ziller told him. ‘I’m pleased with it.’ He sighed. ‘Experience would indicate that provides no guide whatsoever either to its initial reception or eventual reputation.
The man in the bed smiled widely. ‘I hope it goes wonderfully well, Cr ziller.’
‘So do I, sir.’
Ibm Dolince closed his eyes for a moment or two. When they flickered open his grip gradually loosened. ‘An honour, Cr ziller,’ he whispered.
ziller let the human’s hand go and stepped gratefully away as others flowed in around him.
Ossuliera City emerged from the shadows round a corner of the gorge. It was partly carved from the fawn-coloured cliffs of the chasm itself, and partly from stones brought in from other areas of the world, and beyond. The River Jhree was tamed here, running straight and deep and calm in a single great channel from which smaller canals and docks diverged, arched over by delicate bridges of foametal and wood both living and dead.
The quaysides on either bank were great flat platforms of golden sandstone running into the blue-hazed distance, speckled with people and animals, shadeplant and pavilions, leaping foun- tains and tall twisted columns of extravagantly latticed metals and glittering minerals.
Tall and stately barges sat moored by steps where troupes of chaurgresiles sat grooming each other with solemn intensity. The mirror sails of smaller craft caught fitful, swirling breezes to slide angled shadows along the quiet waters behind and cast flitting, shimmering reflections along the bustling quays to either side.
Above, the stepped city rose in set-back terrace after set-back terrace from these vast and busy shelves of stone; awnings and umbreltrees dotted the galleries and piazzas, canals disappeared into vaulted tunnels cut into the chiselled cliffs, perfume fires sent thin coils of violet and orange smoke rolling up towards the pale blue sky, where flocks of pure white lucent pboughtails wheeled on outstretched wings inscribing silent spirals in the air, and arcing overhead a layered succession of higher and longer and more tenuously poised bridges bowed like rainbows made solid in the misty air, their intricately carved and dazzlingly inlaid surfaces brimming with flowers and strung with leaf chain, storeycreep and veilmoss.
Music played, echoing amongst the canyons, decks and bridges of the city. The barge’s sudden appearance caused a volley of excited trumpeting from a shambling pack of cumbrosaurs arranged on a flight of steps descending to the river.
ziller, at the deck rail, turned from the tumult of the view to look back to the bed where Ibm Dolince lay. A few people seemed to be crying. The avatar was holding a hand over the man’s forehead. It smoothed its silver fingers down over his eyes.
The Chelgrian watched the beautiful city glide past for a while. When he looked back again a long grey Displacement drone was hovering over the bed. The people gathered round stood back a little, forming a rough circle. A silvery field shimmered in the air where the man’s body was, then shrank to a point and vanished. The bedclothes settled back softly over the place where the body had been.
‘People always look up to the sun at such moments,’ he remembered Kabe pointing out once. What he was witnessing was the conventional method of disposing of the dead both here and throughout most of the rest of the Culture. The body had been Displaced into the core of the local star. And, as Kabe had pointed out, if they could see it, the people present always looked up to that sun, even though it would usually be a million years or more before the photons formed from the dispatched corpse would shine down upon wherever it was they stood.
A million years. Would this artificial, carefully maintained world still be here after all that time? He doubted it. The Culture itself would probably be gone by then. Chel certainly would. Perhaps people looked up now because they knew there would be nobody around to look up then.
There was another ceremony to be carried out on the barge before it left Ossuliera City. A woman called Nisil Tchasole was to be reborn. Stored in mind-state only eight hundred years earlier, she had been a combatant in the Idiran War. She’d wanted to be reawakened in time to see the light from the second of the Twin Novae shine down upon Masaq’. A clone of her original body had been grown for her and her personality was to be quickened inside it within the hour, so she would have the next five or so days to re-acclimatise herself to life before the second nova burst upon the local skies.
The pairing of this rebirth with Ibm Dolince’s death was supposed to take some of the sadness out of the man’s departure, but ziller found the very neatness of the pairing trite and contrived. He didn’t wait to see this overly neat revival; he jumped ship when it docked, walked around for a while and then took the underground back to Aquime.
‘Yes, I was a twin, once. The story is well known, I think, and very much on record. There are any number of tellings and interpretations of it. There are even some fictive and musical pieces based on it, some more accurate than others. I can recommend-’