The Attitude Adjuster thought it could see into the souls of the Affronters. They were not the happy-go-lucky life-and-soul-of-the-party grand fellows with a few bad habits they were commonly thought to be; they were not thoughtlessly cruel in the course of seeking to indulge other more benign and even admirable pleasures; they were not merely terrible rascals.
They gloried, first and foremost, in their cruelty. Their cruelty was the point. They were not thoughtless. They knew they hurt their own kind and others and they revelled in it; it was their purpose. The rest – the robust joviality, the blokish vivacity -was part happy accident, part cunningly exaggerated ploy, the equivalent of an angelic-looking child discovering that a glowing smile will melt the severest adult heart and excuse almost any act, however dreadful.
It had agreed to the plan now coming to fruition with a heavy soul. People would die, Minds be destroyed because of what it was doing. The ghastly danger was gigadeathcrime. Mass destruction. Utter horror. The Attitude Adjuster had lied, it had deceived, it had acted – by what it knew would be the consensual opinion of all but a few of its peers – with massive dishonour. It was all too well aware its name might live for millennia hence as that of a traitor, as an abhorrence, an abomination.
Still, it would do what it had become convinced had to be done, because to do otherwise would be to wish an even worse self-hatred upon itself, the ultimate abomination of disgust at oneself.
Perhaps, it told itself as it brought another slumbering warcraft to wakefulness, the Excession would make everything all right. The half-thought was already ironic, but it continued with it anyway. Yes; maybe the Excession was the solution. Maybe it really was worth all that was being risked in its name, and capable of bringing placid resolution. That would be sweet; the excuse takes over, the casus belli brings peace… Like fuck, it thought. The ship sneered at itself, examining the idiotic thought and then discarding it with probably less contempt than it deserved.
It was, anyway, too late to reconsider now. Too much had been done already. The Pittance Mind was already dead, choosing self-destruction rather than compromise; the human who had been the only other conscious sentience in the rock had been killed, and the de-stored ships would speed, utterly deceived, to what could well prove to be their doom; the future alone knew who or what else they would take with them. The war had begun and all the Attitude Adjuster could do was play out the part it had agreed to play.
Another warship Mind surfaced to wakefulness.
… Excessionary threat near Esperi, the Attitude Adjuster told the newly woken ship; Deluger craft mimicking Culture ship configurations, cooperation of Affront, extreme urgency; obey me, or our Affront allies if I should be lost. Confirmatory messages from the GSV No Fixed Abode, the GCU Different Tan and the MSV Not Invented Here attached…
The module Scopell-Afranqui left the urgencies of the instant behind for a moment and retreated into a kind of simulation of its plight.
The craft had a romantic, even sentimental streak which Genar-Hofoen had rarely glimpsed in all the two years they had spent together on God’shole habitat (and which, indeed, it had deliberately kept hidden for fear of his ridicule), and it saw itself now as being like the castellan of some small fortified embassy in a teeming barbarian city, far from the civilised lands that were his home; a wise, thoughtful man, technically a warrior, but more of a thinker, one who saw much more of the realities behind the embassy’s mission than those in his charge, and who had devoutly hoped that his warrior skills would never be called upon. Well, that time had come; the native soldiers were hammering at the compound’s gates right now and it was only a matter of time before the embassy compound fell. There was treasure in the embassy and the barbarians would not rest until they had it.
The castellan left the parapet where he had looked out upon the besieging forces and retreated to his private chamber. His few troops were already putting up the best defence they could; nothing he could do or say would do other than hinder them now. His few spies had been dispatched some time ago through secret passageways into the city, to do what damage they could once the embassy itself was destroyed, as it surely must be. There was nothing else which awaited his attention. Save this one decision.
He had already opened the safe and taken out the sealed orders; the paper was in his hand. He read it again. So it was to be destruction. He had guessed as much, but it was still a shock somehow.
It should not have come to this, but it had. He had known the risks, they had been pointed out at the beginning, when he had taken up this position, but he had not really imagined for a moment that he would really be faced with either utter dishonour and the vicarious treachery of forced collaboration, or death at his own hand.
There was, of course, no real choice. Call it his upbringing. He looked ruefully around the small private chamber that held the memories of home, his library, his clothes and keepsakes. This was him. This was who he was. The same beliefs and principles that had led him here to this lonely outpost required that there was no choice over surrender or death. But there was still one choice to make, and it was a bitter one to be given.
He could destroy the embassy – and himself with it, of course – completely, so that all that would be left to the barbarians would be its stones. Or he could take the entire city with him. It was not just a city; in one sense it was not even principally a city; it was a vast arsenal, a crowded barracks and a busy naval port; altogether an important component of the barbarians’ war effort. Its destruction would benefit the side that the castellan was loyal to, the cause that he absolutely believed in; arguably it would save lives in the long run. Yet the city had its civilians too; the out-numbering innocents that were the women and children and the subjugated underclasses, not to mention the blameless others from neutral lands who just happened to find themselves caught up in the war through no fault of their own. Had he a right to snuff them out too by destroying the city?
He put the piece of paper down. He looked at his reflection in a distant looking glass.
Death. In all this choice there was no doubt about his own fate, only about how he would be remembered. As humanitarian, or weakling? As mass-murderer, or hero?
Death. How strange to contemplate it now.
He had always wondered how he would face it. There was a certain continued existence, of course. He had faith in that; the assurances of the priests that his soul was recorded in a great book, somewhere, and capable of resurrection. But the precise he he was right now; that would assuredly end, and soon; that was over.
Death, he remembered somebody saying once, was a kind of victory. To have lived a long good life, a life of prodigious pleasure and minimal misery, and then to die; that was to have won. To attempt to hang on for ever risked ending up in some as yet unglimpsed horror-future. What if you lived for ever and all that had gone before, however terrible things had sometimes appeared to be in the past, however badly people had behaved to each other throughout history, was nothing compared to what was yet to come? Suppose in the great book of days that told the story of everything, all the gone, done past was merely a bright, happy introduction compared to the main body of the work, an unending tale of unbearable pain scraped in blood on a parchment of living skin?
Better to die than risk that.
Live well and then die, so that the you that is you now can never be again, and only tricks can re-create something that might think it is you, but is not.
The outer gates fell; he heard them go. The castellan stood up and went to the casement. In the courtyard, the barbarian soldiers flowed through to the last line of defence.
Soon. The choice, the choice. He could spin a coin, but that would be… cheap. Unworthy.
He walked to the device that would destroy the embassy compound, and the city too, if he chose.
There was no choice here, either. Not really.
There would be peace again. The only question was when.
He could not know if ultimately more people would suffer and die because he was choosing not to destroy the city, but at least this way the damage and the casualties would be confined to the minimum for the longest possible time. And if in the future he would be judged to have done the wrong thing and to have made the incorrect decision… well, death had the other advantage that he would not be present to suffer that knowledge of that judgement.