It fell upon the third wave of oncoming ships like a raptor upon a flock.
VI
Byr stood on the circular stone platform at the top of the tower, looking out to the ocean where two lines of moonlight traced narrow silver lines across the restless waters. Behind her, the tower’s crystal dome was dark. She had gone to bed at the same time as Dajeil, who tired more quickly these days. They had made their apologies and left the others to fend for themselves. Kran, Aist and Tulyi were all friends from the GCU Unacceptable Behaviour, another of the Quietly Confident’s daughter ships. They had known Dajeil for twenty years; the three had been aboard the Quietly Confident four years earlier and were some of the last people Byr and Dajeil had seen before they’d left for Telaturier.
The Unacceptable Behaviour was looping through this volume and they’d persuaded it to let them stop off here for a couple of days and see their old friend.
The moons glittered their stolen light across the fretful dance of waves, and Byr too reflected, glanding a little Diffuse and thinking that the moons’ V of light, forever converging on the observer, encouraged a kind of egocentricity, an overly romantic idea of one’s own centrality to things, an illusory belief in personal precedence. She remembered the first time she had stood here and thought something along these lines, when she had been a man and he and Dajeil had not long arrived here.
It had been the first night he and Dajeil had – finally, at last, after all that fuss – lain together. Then he had come up here in the middle of the night while she’d slept on, and gazed out over these waters. It had been almost calm, then, and the moons’ tracks (when they rose, and quite as though they rose and did not rise for him) lay shimmering slow and near unbroken on the untroubled face of the ocean’s slack waters.
He’d wondered then if he’d made a terrible mistake. One part of his mind was convinced he had, another part claimed the moral high ground of maturity and assured him it was the smartest move he’d ever made, that he was indeed finally growing up. He had decided that night that even if it was a mistake that was just too bad; it was a mistake that could only be dealt with by embracing it, by grasping it with both hands and accepting the results of his decision; his pride could only be preserved by laying it aside entirely for the duration. He would make this work, he would perform this task and be blameless in the self-sacrifice of his own interests to Dajeil’s. His reward was that she had never seemed happier, and that, almost for the first time, he felt responsible for another’s pleasure on a scale beyond the immediate.
When, months later, she had suggested that they have a child, and later still, while they were still mulling this over, that they Mutual – for they had the time, and the commitment – he had been extravagant in his enthusiasm, as though through such loud acclaim he could drown out the doubts he heard inside himself.
‘Byr?’ a soft voice said from the little cupola that gave access from the steps to the roof.
She turned round. ‘Hello?’
‘Hi. Couldn’t sleep either, eh?’ Aist said, joining Byr at the parapet. She was dressed in dark pyjamas; her naked feet slap-slapped on the flagstones.
‘No,’ Byr said. She didn’t need much sleep. Byr spent quite a lot of time by herself these days, while Dajeil slept or sat cross-legged in one of her trances or fussed around in the nursery they had prepared for their children.
‘Same here,’ Aist said, crossing her arms beneath her breasts and leaning out over the parapet, her head and shoulders dangling over the drop. She spat slowly; the little fleck fell whitely through the moonlight and disappeared against the dark slope of the tower’s bottom storey. She rocked back onto her feet and moved some of her medium-length brown hair off her eyes, while she studied Byr’s face, a small frown just visible on her brow. She shook her head. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I never thought you’d be one to change sex, let alone have a kid.’
‘Same here,’ Byr said, leaning on the parapet and gazing out to sea. ‘Still can’t believe it, sometimes.’
Aist leant beside him. ‘Still, it’s okay, isn’t it? I mean, you’re happy, aren’t you?’
Byr glanced at the other woman. ‘Isn’t it obvious?’
Aist was silent for a while. Eventually she said, ‘Dajeil loves you very much. I’ve known her twenty years. She’s changed completely too, you know; not just you. She was always really independent, never wanted to be a mother, never wanted to settle down with one person, not for a long time, anyway. Not until she was old. You’ve both changed each other so much. It’s… it’s really something. Almost scary, but, well, sort of impressive, you know?’
‘Of course.’
There was silence for another while. ‘When do you think you’ll have your baby?’ Aist asked. ‘How long after she has… Ren, isn’t it?’
‘Yes; Ren. I don’t know. We’ll see.’ Byr gave a small laugh, almost more of a cough. ‘Maybe we’ll wait until Ren is grown up enough to help us look after it.’
Aist made the same noise. She leant on the parapet again, lifting her feet off the flagstones and balancing, pivoting on her folded arms. ‘How’s it been here, being so far away from anybody else? Do you get many visitors?’
Byr shook her head. ‘No. You’re only the third lot of people we’ve seen.’
‘Gets lonely, I suppose. I mean I know you’ve got each other, but…’
‘The ‘Ktik are fun,’ Byr said. ‘They’re people, individuals. I’ve met thousands of them by now, I suppose. There are something like twenty or thirty million of them. Lots of new little chums to meet.’
Aist sniggered. ‘Don’t suppose you can get it off with them, can you?’
Byr glanced at her. ‘Never tried. Doubt it.’
‘Boy, you were some swordsman, Byr,’ Aist said. ‘I remember you on the Quietly, first time we met. I’d never met anyone so focused.’ She laughed. ‘On anything! You were like a natural force or something; an earthquake or a tidal wave.’
‘Those are natural disasters,’ Byr pointed out with feigned frostiness.
‘Well, close enough then,’ Aist said, laughing gently. She glanced slyly, slowly, at the other woman. ‘I suppose I’d have found myself in the firing line if I’d stuck around longer.’
‘I imagine you might,’ Byr said in a tired, resigned voice.
‘Yup, could all have turned out completely different,’ Aist said.
Byr nodded. ‘Or it could all have turned out exactly the same.’
‘Well, don’t sound so happy about it,’ Aist said. ‘I wouldn’t have minded.’ She leant over the parapet and spat delicately again, moving her head just so, flicking the spittle outward. This time it landed on the gravel path which skirted the tower’s stone base. She made an approving noise and looked back at Byr, wiping her chin and grinning. She looked at Byr, studying his face again. ‘It’s not fair, Byr,’ she said. ‘You look good no matter what you are.’ She put one hand out slowly towards Byr’s cheek. Byr looked into her large dark eyes.
One moon started to disappear behind a ragged layer of high cloud and a small wind picked up, smelling of rain.
A test, for her friend, Byr thought, as the other woman’s long fingers gently stroked her face, feather soft. But the fingers were trembling. Still a test; determined to do it but nervous about it. Byr put her hand up and held the woman’s fingers lightly. She took it as a signal to kiss her.
After a little while, Byr said, ‘Aist…’ and started to pull away.
‘Hey,’ she said softly, ‘this doesn’t mean anything, all right? Just lust. Doesn’t mean a thing.’
A little later still Byr said, ‘Why are we doing this?’
‘Why not?’ Aist breathed.
Byr could think of several reasons, asleep in the stony darkness beneath them. How I have changed, she thought. But then again, not that much.
VII
Ulver Seich strolled through the accommodation section of the Grey Area. At least there was a bit more strolling to be done on the GCU; had she come here straight from the family house on Phage it would have seemed horribly cramped, but after the claustrophobic confines of the Frank Exchange of Views, it appeared almost spacious (she had spent so little time on Tier, and passed the small amount of time she had there in such a frenetic haste of preparation that it hardly counted. As for the nine-person module – ugh!).
The Grey Area’s interior – built to house three hundred people in reasonable if slightly compact comfort, and now home only to her, Churt Lyne and Genar-Hofoen – was actually pretty interesting, which was an unexpected plus on this increasingly disillusioning expedition. The ship was like a museum to torture, death and genocide; it was filled with mementoes and souvenirs from hundreds of different planets, all testifying to the tendency towards institutionalised cruelty exhibited by so many forms of intelligent life. From thumbscrews and pilliwinks to death camps and planet-swallowing black holes, the Grey Area had examples of the devices and entities involved, or of their effects, or documentary recordings of their use.