This environmental diversity and the civilisational co-dependence it implied and intermingling it encouraged had been Tier’s raison d’être, the very foundation of its purpose and fame for the seven thousand years it had existed. Its original builders were, perhaps, unknown; they were believed to have Sublimed shortly after building it, leaving behind a species – or model, depending how you defined these things – of biomechanical sintricate which ran and maintained the place, were individually dull but collectively highly intelligent, took the shape of a small sphere covered with long articulated spines, were between half a metre and two metres in size and had seemed to have an intense suspicion of anything possessing less of a biological basis than they did themselves. Drones and other AIs were tolerated on Tier but very closely watched, followed everywhere and their every communication and even thought monitored. Minds were immune to this sort of treatment of course, but their avatars tended to attract a degree of intense physical observation which bordered on harassment, and so they rarely bothered entering the world itself, sticking to the outer docks where they were made perfectly welcome and afforded every hospitality. Tier, after all, was a statement, a treasure, a symbol, and as such any small discriminatory foibles it chose to display were considered perfectly tolerable.
The ysner-mistretl race track was one level up from the tier where the Homomdan mission was housed and three levels down from Leffid’s home circumference.
‘Leffid,’ the vice consul said. He was a rotund, massy male of apparently indeterminate species, vaguely human in shape but with a triangular head and an eye at each corner. His skin was bright red; the flowing robes he wore were a vivid but gradually shifting shade of blue. He turned his head slightly so that two of his eyes regarded Leffid while the third continued to watch the race. ‘Did I see you at the Homomdan do last night? I can’t remember.’
‘Briefly,’ Leffid said. ‘I waved Hello but you were busy with the Ashpartzi delegate.’
Vice-consul Lellius wheezed with laughter. ‘Trying to hold the blighter down. It was having buoyancy problems inside its new suit; automatics weren’t really up to the job with the AI removed. Terrible thing when one of these gas-giant floater beasties suffers from flatulence, you know.’
Leffid recalled that Lellius had rather looked as though he’d been wrestling with the bow-rope for what appeared to be a small airship at the Homomdan ambassador’s party. ‘Not as terrible as it must be for the inhabitant of the suit, I’d guess.’
‘Ha, indeed,’ Lellius chuckled, nodding and wheezing. ‘May I order you some refreshment?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘Good; I have given up emoter-keyed foods and drinks for the duration of the Festival and would only be jealous.’ He shook his head. ‘I thought primitives were supposed to have more fun, but everything I could think of changing the better to partake in the Festival’s spirit seemed to make life less fun,’ he said, then made a tutting noise at something on the race course.
Leffid looked to see one of the ysner-mistretl pairs failing to make a jump, hitting the ramp just behind and falling down to another level. They picked themselves up and ran on, but they’d need to be very lucky to win now. Lellius shook his head and used the flat end of a stylo to smooth a number off the wood-bordered wax tablet he held in his broad red hand.
‘You winning?’ Leffid asked him.
Lellius shook his head and looked sad.
Leffid smiled, then made a show of inspecting the race track and the contending ysner-mistretl pairs. ‘They don’t look very festive to me,’ he said. ‘I expected something more… well, festive,’ he concluded, lamely.
‘I believe the race authorities regard the Festival with the same misanthropic dubiety as I,’ Lellius said. ‘The festival is – what? -two days old?’
Leffid nodded.
‘And already I am tired of it,’ Lellius said, scratching behind one of his three ears with the wax tablet stylo. ‘I thought of taking a holiday while it was occurring, but I am expected to be here, of course. A month of challenging, ground-breaking art and ruthlessly enforced fun.’ Lellius shook his head heavily. ‘What a prospect.’
Leffid put his chin in his cupped hand. ‘You’ve never really been a natural for the AhForgetlt Tendency, have you, Lellius?’
‘I joined hoping it would make me more…’ Lellius looked up contemplatively at the broad spread of the tree sculpture hanging above them. ‘… cavort-prone,’ he said, and nodded. ‘I wished to be more prone to cavorting and so I joined the Tendency hoping that the natural hedonism of people like your good self would somehow infect my own more deliberate, phlegmatic soul.’ He sighed. ‘I still live in hope.’
Leffid laughed lightly, then looked slowly around. ‘You here alone, Lellius?’
Lellius looked thoughtful. ‘My incomparably efficient Clerical Assistant Number Three visits the latrines, I believe,’ he wheezed. ‘My wastrel son is probably trying to invent new ways of embarrassing me, my mate is half a galaxy away – very nearly enough – and my current darling stays at home, indisposed. Or rather, disposed not to come to what she terms a boring bird-and-monkey race.’ He nodded slowly. ‘I could reasonably be said to be alone, I suppose. Why do you ask?’
Leffid sat a little closer, arms on the carousel’s small table. ‘Saw something strange last night,’ he said.
‘That young thing with the four arms?’ Lellius asked, at least one eye twinkling. ‘I did wonder if any other of her anatomical features were also doubled-up.’
‘Your prurience flatters me,’ Leffid said. ‘Ask her nicely and she will probably furnish you with a copy of a recording which proves both our relevant bits were quite singular.’
Lellius chuckled and drank from a strawed flask. ‘Not that, then. What?’
‘Are we alone?’ Leffid asked quietly.
Lellius stared blankly at him for a moment. ‘Yes; my lace is now turned off. There is nothing else I know of watching or listening. What is this thing you saw?’
‘I’ll show you.’ Leffid took a napkin from the table’s slot and from a pocket in his shirt extracted the terminal he was using instead of the neural lace. He looked at the markings on the instrument as though trying to remember something, then shrugged and said, ‘Umm, terminal; become a pen, please.’
Leffid wrote on the napkin, producing a sequence of seven pendant rhombi each composed of eight dots or tiny circles. When he’d finished he turned the napkin towards Lellius, who looked carefully down at it and then equally deliberately up at Leffid.
‘Very pretty,’ he wheezed. ‘What is it?’
Leffid smiled. He tapped the rightmost symbol. ‘First, it’s an Elench signal because it’s base eight and arranged in that pattern. This first symbol is an emergency distress mark. The other six are probably – almost certainly, by convention – a location.’
‘Really?’ Lellius did not sound especially impressed. ‘And the location of this location?’
‘About seventy-three years into the Upper Swirl from here.’
‘Oh,’ Lellius said with a sort of rumbling noise that probably meant he was surprised. ‘Just six digits to define such a precise point?’
‘Base two-five-six; easy,’ Leffid said, shrugging his wings. ‘But what’s interesting is where I saw this signal.’
‘Mm-hmm?’ Lellius said, momentarily distracted by something happening on the race track. He took another drink then returned his attention to the other man.
‘It was on an Affronter light cruiser,’ Leffid said quietly. ‘Burned into its scar-hull. Very lightly, very shallowly; at an angle across the blades-‘
‘Blades?’ Lellius asked.
Leffid waved one hand. ‘Decoration. But it was there. If I hadn’t been very close to the ship – in a yacht – as it was approaching Tier I’d never have seen it. And the intriguing possibility exists, of course, that the ship doesn’t know it bears this message.’
Lellius stared at the napkin for a moment. He sat back. ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘Mind if I turn on my lace?’
‘Not at all,’ Leffid said. ‘I already know the ship’s called the Furious Purpose and it’s back here unscheduled, in Dock 807b. If it’s a mechanical problem it’s got, I can’t imagine it’s anything to do directly with the scarring. As for the location in the signal; it’s about half way between the stars Cromphalet I/II and Esperi… slightly closer to Esperi. And there’s nothing there. Nothing that anybody knows about, anyway.’
Leffid tapped at the pocket terminal and after some experimentation got the beam to brighten until it ignited the napkin he’d written on. He let it burn and was about to sweep the ashes into the table’s disposal slot when Lellius – who was slumped back in the seat, looking blank – reached out one red hand and absently ground the ashes under his palm before scattering them to the breeze; they fell floating away from the carousel in an insubstantial cloud, towards the seats and private boxes stacked below.