Gradually the Culture implemented its shift to full-scale war production; the Idirans – already slowed by the commitments they’d had to make to control the colossal volumes of their newly conquered territories – found the pace of their advance faltering in places, initially through their own inability to bring the requisite combat apparatus to bear but increasingly due to the growing ability of the Culture to push back, as whole fleets of new warships were produced and dispatched by the Culture’s Orbital manufacturies, far away from the war.
New evidence of the destruction of the GSV Lasting Damage and the Idiran war vessels it had taken with it – came in from a neutral ship of another Involved species which had passed near the battle site. The stored personality of the Lasting Damage was duly resurrected from the Mind it had been stored with and emplaced into another craft of the same class. It joined – rejoined – the encompassing struggle, thrown into battle after battle, never knowing which might be its last, and holding within itself all the memories of its earlier incarnation, intact right up until the instant it had cast off its fields and set its looping, trajectorial course for Idiran space, a full year earlier.
There was just one complication.
The Lasting Damage, the original ship Mind, had not been destroyed. As a GSV it had struggled to the end and fought to the last, dutifully, determinedly and without thought for its own safety, but finally, as an individual Mind, it had escaped in one of its slaved weapon pods.
Having suffered its due portion of the profoundly focused attentions of not one but several Idiran war fleets, the not-quite- warship was by then little more than a wreck; a not-quite-not- quite-warship.
Thrown from the erupting energies of the self-destructing GSV, flung out of the main body of the galaxy with barely sufficient energy to maintain its own fabric, it flew above and away from the plane of the galaxy more like a gigantic piece of shrapnel than any sort of ship, largely disarmed, mostly blind, entirely dumb and not daring to use its all-too-rough and barely ready engines for fear of detection until, at length, it had no choice. Even then it turned them on for only the minimum amount of time necessary to stop itself colliding with the energy grid between the universes.
If the Idirans had had more time, they would have searched for any surviving fragments of the GSV, and probably they would have found the castaway. As it was, there had been more pressing matters to attend to. By the time anybody thought to double-check that the GSV’s destruction had been as complete as it had first appeared, the half-ruined vessel, now millennia distant from the upper limit of the great disc of stars that was the galaxy, was just about far enough away to escape detection.
Gradually it had started to repair itself. Hundreds of days passed. Eventually it risked using its much worked-upon engines to start tugging it towards the regions of space where it hoped the Culture still held sway. Uncertain who was where, it abstained from signalling until, at last, it arrived back in the galaxy proper in a region which it was reasonably confident must still be outside Idiran control.
The signal announcing its arrival caused some confusion at first, but a GSV rendezvoused with it and took it aboard. It was informed it had a twin.
It was the first but not the last time something like this would happen during the war, despite all the care the Culture took to confirm the deaths of its Minds. The original Mind was re-emplaced in another newly built GSV and took the name Lasting Damage I. The successor ship renamed itself Lasting Damage II.
They became part of the same battle fleet following their mutual request and fought together through another four dec- ades of war. Near the end they were both present when the Battle of the Twin Novae took place, in the region of space known as Arm One-Six.
One survived, the other perished.
They had swapped mind-states before the battle began. The survivor incorporated the soul of the destroyed ship into its own personality, as they had agreed. It too was almost annihilated in the fighting, and again had to take to a smaller craft to save both itself and the salvaged soul of its twin.
‘Which one died,’ Ziller asked, ‘I or II?’
The avatar gave a small, diffident smile. ‘We were close together at the time when it happened, and it was all very confused. I was able to conceal who died and who survived for a good many years, until somebody did the relevant detective work. It was II who was killed, I who lived.’ The creature shrugged. ‘It didn’t matter. It was only the fabric of the craft housing the substrate which was destroyed, and the body of the surviving ship met the same fate. The result was the same as it would have been the other way round. Both Minds became the one Mind, became me.’ The avatar seemed to hesitate, then gave a dainty little bow.
Ziller watched the Orbital race by overhead. Car lines whipped past, almost too fast to follow. Only the vaguest impressions of actual cars, even in long trains, were visible unless they were moving in the same direction as the module appeared to be. Then they seemed to move more slowly for a while, before drawing away, pulling ahead, falling behind or curving away to either side.
‘I imagine the situation must have been confused indeed if you were able to hide who’d died,’ Ziller said.
‘It was pretty bad,’ the avatar agreed lightly. It was watching the Orbital under-surface whiz by with a vague smile on its face.
‘The way war tends to be.’
‘What was it made you want to become a Hub Mind?’
‘You mean beyond the urge to settle down and do something constructive after all those decades spent hurtling across the galaxy destroying things?’
‘Yes.’
The avatar turned to face him. ‘I’d have to assume you’ve done your research here, Cr Ziller.’
‘I do know a little of what happened. Just think of me as old-fashioned enough, or primitive enough, to like hearing things straight from the person who was there.’
‘I had to destroy an Orbital, Ziller. In fact I had to blitz thfee in a single day.’
‘Well, war is hell.’
The avatar looked at him, as though trying to decide whether the Chelgrian was trying too hard to make light of the situation. ‘As I said, the events are all entirely a matter of public record.’
‘I take it there was no real choice?’
‘Indeed. That was the judgement I had to act upon.
‘Your own?’
‘Partially. I was part of the decision-making process, though even if I’d disagreed I might still have acted as I did. That’s what strategic planning is there for.’
‘It must be a burden, not even being able to say you were just obeying orders.’
‘Well, that is always a lie, or a sign you are fighting for an unworthy cause, or still have a very long way to develop civilisationally.’
‘A terrible waste, three Orbitals. A responsibility.’
The avatar shrugged. ‘An Orbital is just unconscious matter, even if it does represent a lot of effort and expended energy. Their Minds were already safe, long gone. The human deaths were what I found affecting.’
‘Did many people die?’
‘Three thousand four hundred and ninety-two.~
‘Out of how many?’
‘Three hundred and ten million.’
‘A small proportion.’
‘It’s always one hundred per cent for the individual concerned.’
‘Still.’
‘No, no Still,’ the avatar said, shaking its head. Light slid across its silver skin.
‘How did the few hundred million survive?’
‘Shipped out, mostly. About twenty per cent were evacuated in underground cars; they work as lifeboats. There are lots of ways to survive: you can move whole Orbitals if you have the time, or you can ship people out, or – short-term – use underground cars or other transport systems, or just suits. On a very few occasions entire Orbitals have been evacuated by storage/transmission; the human bodies were left inert after their mind-states were zapped away. Though that doesn’t always save you, if the storing substrate’s slagged too before it can transmit onwards.’
‘And the ones who didn’t get away?’
‘All knew the choice they were making. Some had lost loved ones, some were, I suppose, mad, but nobody was sure enough to deny them their choice, some were old and/or tired of life, and some left it too late to escape either corporeally or by zapping after watching the fun, or something went wrong with their transport or mind-state record or transmission. Some held beliefs that caused them to stay.’ The avatar fixed its gaze on Ziller’s. ‘Save for the ones who experienced equipment malfunctions, I recorded every one of those deaths, Ziller. I didn’t want them to be faceless, I didn’t want to be able to forget.’