The airship touched down. Eweirl stepped out. The white- furred male smiled broadly and bowed minutely when he saw Quilan. He bowed more deeply when he faced the Estodien, who patted him on the shoulder. ‘You see, Quilan? Eweirl is here to take care of things. Go back, Major. Prepare for your mission. You will have your co-pilot before too long. Good luck.’
‘Thank you, Estodien.’ Quilan glanced at the grinning Eweirl, then bowed to the older male. ‘I hope everything goes well here.’
Visquile let his hand rest on Eweirl’s shoulder. ‘I’m sure it will. Goodbye, Major. It’s been a pleasure. Again, good luck, and do your duty. I’m sure you will make us all proud.’
Quilan stepped aboard the little airship. He looked out through one of the gauzy windows as the craft lifted away from the plat- form. Visquile and Eweirl were already deep in conversation.
The rest of the journey was a mirror-image of the route he had taken on the way out except that when he got to Chel he was taken from Equator Launch City in a sealed shuttle straight to Ubrent, and then by car, at night, directly to the gates of the monastery at Cadracet.
He stood on the ancient path. The night air smelled fragrant with sigh tree resin, and seemed thin like water after the soup- thick atmosphere of the airsphere.
He had returned only to be called away. As far as the official records were concerned, he had never left, never been taken away by the strange lady in her dark cloak all those months ago, never descended with her to the road that led back to the world and was spotted with fresh blood.
Tomorrow he would be summoned to Chelise itself, to be asked to undertake a mission to the Culture world called Masaq’, to attempt to persuade the renegade and dissident Mahrai Ziller, composer, to return to his home-place and be the very symbol of the renaissance of Chel and the Chelgrian domain.
Tonight, while he slept – if all went according to plan and the temporary microstructures, chemicals and nano-glandular processes which had been imparted into his brain had the desired effect – he would forget all that had happened since Colonel Ghejaline had appeared out of the snow in the courtyard of the monastery those hundred and more days ago.
He would remember what he needed to remember, no more, bit by bit. His most available memories would be kept safe from intrusion and comprehension by all but the most obvious and damaging procedures. He thought he could feel the process of forgetting starting to happen even as he recalled the fact that it would take place.
Summer rain fell gently around him. The engine sound and the lights of the car that had brought him here had disappeared into the clouds below. He raised his hand to the little door set within the gates.
The postern opened quickly and silently and he was beckoned to come in.
Yes. Well done.
It had crossed his mind that now he had done what he was supposed to do, now that the mission was over, he might start
or try to start – telling the drone Tersono, or the Hub avatar itself, or the Homomdan Kabe, or all three, what he had just done, so that Huyler would have no choice but to disable him, hopefully kill him, but he did not.
Huyler might not kill him, after all, just disable him, and besides, he would be partially jeopardising the mission. It was better for Chel, better for the mission, to make everything appear as normal, until the light from the second nova poured through the system and across the Orbital.
‘Well, that completes the tour,’ the avatar said.
‘So. My friends; shall we go?’ the drone E. H. Tersono said chirpily. Its ceramic casing was surrounded by a healthy pink glow.
‘Yes,’ Quilan heard himself say. ‘Let’s go.’
15
A Certain Loss of Control
He woke slowly, a little fuzzy-headed. It was very dark. He stretched lazily and could feel Woroset at his side. She moved sleepily towards him, curling into his body to fit. He put one arm around her and she snuggled closer.
Just as he was waking more completely and deciding that he wanted her, she turned her head to his, smiling, her lips opening.
She slid on top of him, and it was one of those times when the sex is so strong and balanced and exalted that it is almost beyond separate genders; it is as though it doesn’t matter who is male and who is female, and which part belongs to which person, when the genitalia seem somehow at once shared and separate, both belonging to each and to neither; his sex was a magical entity that penetrated both of them equally as she moved over him, while hers became like some fabulous, enchanted cloak that had spread and flowed to cover both their bodies, turning every part of them into a single sexually sensual surface.
It brightened very gradually as they made love, and then, after they had each finished and their pelts were matted with saliva and sweat and they were both panting heavily, they lay side by side, staring into each other’s eyes.
He was grinning. He couldn’t help it. He looked around. He still wasn’t entirely sure where he was. The room looked anonymous and yet extremely high-ceilinged and very bright. He had the odd feeling it ought to be making his eyes hurt, and yet it wasn’t.
He looked at her again. She had her head propped up on one fist and was looking at him. When he saw that face, took in that expression, he felt a strange shock, and then an exquisite, perfectly intense terror. Worosei had never looked at him like this; not just at him but around him, through him.
There was an utter coldness and a ferocious, infinite intelli- gence in those dark eyes. Something without mercy or illusion was staring straight into his soul and finding it not so much wanting, as absent.
Worosei’s fur turned perfectly silver and smoothed into her skin. She was a naked silver mirror and he could see himself in her long, lithe frame, perversely distorted like something being melted and pulled apart. He opened his mouth and tried to speak. His tongue was too big and his throat had gone quite dry.
It was she who spoke, not him:
‘Don’t think I’ve been fooled for a moment, Quilan.’
It was not Worosei’s voice.
She pushed down on her elbow and rose from the bed with a powerful, fluid grace. He watched her go, and then became aware that behind him, on the other side of the curl- pad, there was an old male, also naked and staring at him, blinking.
The old fellow didn’t say a thing. He looked confused. He was at once utterly familiar and a complete stranger. Quilan woke, panting. He stared wildly around.
He was in the broad curl-pad in the apartment in Aquime City. It looked to be about dawn and there was a swirl of snow beyond the dome of the skylight.
He gasped, ‘Lights,’ and looked around the huge room as it brightened.
Nothing appeared to be out of place. He was alone.
It was the day that would end with the concert in the Stullien Bowl, which would climax with the first performance of Mahrai Ziller’s new symphony Expiring Light, which itself would end when the light from the nova induced upon the star Junce eight hundred years ago finally arrived at the Lacelere system and Masaq’ Orbital. With an ignoble and tearing feeling of nausea he remembered that he had done his duty and the matter was out of his hands, out of his head, now. What would happen would happen. He could do no more about it than anybody else here. Less, in fact. Nobody else here had another mind aboard, listening to their every thought- Of course; since last night, if not before, he no longer had his hour of grace at the end and beginning of each day. Huyler?
-~Here. Have you had dreams like that before?
You experienced it too?
-~ I’m watching and listening for any sign you might give which would warn them what’s going to happen this evening. I’m not invading your dreams. But I do have to monitor your body, so I know that was one hell of a hot dream that seemed to suddenly turn pretty frightening. Want to tell me about it?
Quilan hesitated. He waved the lights off and lay back in the darkness. ‘No,’ he said.
He became aware that he had spoken rather than thought the word at the same time as he realised that he couldn’t say the next word he’d thought he was going to say. It would have been ‘No’ again, but it just never made it to his lips.