‘All that matters, Major,’ Visquile said, ‘is that the technology appears to work.’
They had conducted ten successful trials with the supply of dummy warheads loaded inside the Soulkeeper. There had been an hour or so of failed attempts to repeat his initial success, then he’d managed to perform two Displacements in succession.
After that the cup had been moved to different parts of the Soulhaven; Quilan had only two unsuccessful attempts before he became able to Displace the specks wherever he was asked. On the third day he attempted and conducted only two Displacements, to either end of the ship. This, the fourth day, was the first time Quilan would attempt a Displacement outside the Soulhaven.
‘Are we going to that moon, Estodien?’ he asked as the giant satellite grew to fill the view ahead.
‘Nearby,’ Visquile said. He pointed. ‘You see that?’ A tiny fleck of grey floated away to one side of the sun-moon, just visible in the wash of light pouring from the crater. ‘That is where we are going.’
It was something between a ship and a station. It looked like it could have been either, and as though it might have been designed by any one of thousands of early-stage Involved civilisations. It was a collection of grey-black ovoids, spheres and cylinders linked by thick struts, revolving slowly in an orbit round the sun-moon configured so that it would never fly over the vast light beam issuing from the side facing the airsphere.
‘We have no idea who built it,’ Visquile said. ‘It has been here for the last few tens of thousands of years and has been much modified by successive species who have thought to use it to study the airsphere and the moons. Parts of it are currently equipped to provide reasonable conditions for ourselves.’
The little runabout slid inside a hangar pod stuck to the side of the largest of the spherical units. It settled to the floor and they waited while the pod’s exterior doors revolved shut and air rushed in.
The canopy unsucked itself from the little craft’s fuselage; they stepped out into cold air that smelled of something acrid.
The two big double-cone–shaped drones whirred from another airlock, coming to hover on either side of them.
There was no voice idside his head this time, just a deep humming from one of them which modulated to say, ‘Estodien, Major. Follow.’
And they followed, down a passageway and through a couple of thick, mirror-finish doors to what appeared to be a sort of broad gallery with a single long window facing them and curving back behind where they had come in. It might have been the viewing cupola of an ocean liner, or a stellar cruise ship. They walked forward and Quilanrealised that the window – or screen – was taller and deeper than he had at first assumed.
The impression of a band of glass or screen fell away as he understood that he ~was looking at the single great ribbon that was the slowly revolving surface of an immense world. Stars shone faintly, above and below it; a couple of brighter bodies which were, just, more than mere points of light must be planets in the same system. The star providing the sunlight had to be almost directly behind the place he was looking from.
The world looked flat, spread out like the peel from some colossal fruit and thrown across the background stars. Edged top and bottom in the glinting grey-blue translucency of enormous containing walls, the surface was separated into long strips by numerous, regularly positioned verticals of grey-brown, white and – in the centre – stark grey-black. These enormous mountain ranges stretched from wall to wall across the world, parcelling it up into what must have been a few dozen separate divisions.
Between them there lay about equal amounts of land and ocean, the land partly in the form of island continents, partly in smaller but appreciably large islands – set in seas of various hues of blue and green – and partly in great swathes of green, fawn, brown and red which extended from one retaining wall to the other, sometimes dotted with seas, sometimes not, but always traversed by a single darkly winding thread or a collection of barely visible filaments, green and blue tendrils laid across on the ochres, tans and tawns of the land.
Clouds swirled, speckled, waved, dotted, arced and hazed in a chaos of patterns, near-patterns and patches, brush strokes strewn across the canvas of terrain and water below.
‘This is what you will see,’ one of the drones hummed.
The Estodien Visquile patted Quilan on the shoulder. ‘Welcome to Masaq’ Orbital,’ he said.
Five billion of them, Huyler. Males, females, their young. This is a terrible thing we’re being asked to do.
It is, but we wouldn’t be doing it if these people hadn’t done something just as terrible to us.
-~These people, Huyler? These people right here, on Masaq’? Yes, these people, QuiL You’ve seen them. You’ve talked to them. When they discover where you’re from they tone it down for fear of insulting you, but they’re so obviously proud of the extent and depth of their democracy. They’re so damned smug that they’re so fully involved, they’re so proud of their ability to have a say and of their right to opt-out and leave if they disagree profoundly enough with a course of action.
So, yes, these people. They share collective responsibility for the actions of their Minds, including the Minds of Contact and Special Circumstances. That’s the way they’ve set it up. that’s the way they want it to be. There are no ignorants here~ Quil, no exploited, no Invisibles or trodden-upon working class condemned forever to do the bidding of their masters. They are all masters, every one. They can all have a say on everything. So by their own precious rules, yes, it was these people who let what happened to Chel happen, even if few actually knew anything about the details at the time.
Do only I think that this is … harsh?
Quil, have you heard even one of them suggest that they might disband Contact? Or reign-in SC? Have we heard any of them even suggesting thinking about that? Well, have we?
No.
No, not one. Oh, they tell us of their regret in such pretty language, Quilan, they say they’re so fucking sorry in so many beautifully expressed and elegantly couched and delivered ways; it’s like it’s a game for them. It’s like they’re competing to see who can be most convincingly contrite! But are they prepared to really do anything apart from tell us how sorry they are?
They have their own blindnesses. It is the machines we have our real argument with.
It is a machine you are going to destroy.
And with it five billion people.
They brought it upon themselves, Major. They could vote to disband Contact today, and any one or any group of them could leave tomorrow for their Ulterior or for anywhere else, if they decided they no longer agreed with their damned policy of Interference.
It is still a terrible thing we’re asked to do, Huyler.
-~ I agree. But we must do it. Quil, I’ve avoided putting it in these terms because it sounds so portentous and I’m sure it’s something you’ve thought about yourself anyway, but I do have to remind you; four and a half billion Chelgrian souls depend on you, Major. You really are their only hope.
So I’m told. And if the Culture retaliates?
-~ Why should they retaliate against us because one of their machines goes mad and destroys itself?
Because they will not be fooled. Because they are not so stupid as we would like them to be, just careless sometimes.
-~ Even if they do suspect anything, they will still not be certain it was our doing. If everything goes according to plan it will look like the Hub did it itself, and even if they were certain we were responsible, our planners think that they will accept that we brought about an honest revenge.
You know what they say, Huyler. Don’t fuck with the Culture. We are about to.
I don’t buy the idea that this is some piece of wisdom the other Involveds have arrived at thoughtfully after millennia of contact with these people. I think it’s something the Culture came up with itself It’s propaganda, Quil.
Even so, a lot of the Involveds seem to think it’s true. Be even slightly nice to the Culture and it will fall over itself to be still nicer back. Treat them badly and they-
-And they act all hurt. It’s contrived. You have to come on really evil to get them to drop the ultra-civilised performance.
Slaughtering five billion of them, at least, will not constitute what they’d regard as an act of evil?
They cost us that; we cost them that. They recognise that sort of revenge, that sort of trade, like any other civilisation. A life for a life. They won’t retaliate, QuiL Better minds than ours have thought this through. The way the Culture will see it, they’ll con- firm their own moral superiority over us by not retaliating. They’ll accept what we’re going to do to them as the due payment for what they did to us, without provocation. They’ll draw a line under it there. It’ll be treated as a tragedy; the other half of a d6b’Qcle that began when they tried to interfere with our devel- opment. A tragedy, not an outrage.