Then the Excession seemed to swell, bulging as though under an enormous lens, reaching out towards the Culture ship with a vast enclosing scoop of presence.
Well, here we go, the ship thought. Should be interesting…
VI
‘No.’
‘Please,’ the avatar said.
The woman shook her head. ‘I’ve thought about it. I don’t want to see him.’
The avatar stared at Dajeil. ‘But I brought him all this way!’ it cried. ‘Just for you! If you knew…’ Its voice trailed off. It brought its feet up onto the front of the seat, and put its arms round its legs, hugging them.
They were in Dajeil’s quarters, inside another version of the tower’s interior housed within the GCU Jaundiced Outlook. The avatar had come straight here after leaving Genar-Hofoen in the Mainbay where the original copy of the tower – the one Dajeil Gelian had spent forty years living in – had been moved to when the ship had converted all its external spare mass to engine. It had thought she would be pleased that the tower had not had to be destroyed, and that Genar-Hofoen had finally been persuaded to return to her.
Dajeil continued watching the screen. It was a replay of one of her dives amongst the triangular rays in the shallow sea that was now no more, as seen from a drone which had accompanied her. She watched herself move amongst the gracefully undulating wings of the great, gentle creatures. Swollen, awkward, she was the only graceless thing in the picture.
The avatar didn’t know what to say next.
The Sleeper Service decided to take over. ‘Dajeil?’ it said quietly, through its representative. The woman looked round, recognising the new tone in Amorphia’s voice.
‘What?’
‘Why don’t you want to see him now?’
‘I…’ she paused. ‘It’s just been too long,’ she said. ‘I think… I suppose for the first few years I did want to see him again; to… to-‘ she looked down, picking at her fingernails. ‘-I don’t know. Oh, to try and make things all right… grief, that sounds so lame.’ She sniffed and looked upwards at the translucent dqme above her. ‘I felt there were things we needed to have said that we never did say to each other, and that if we did get together, even for a little while, we could… work things out. Draw a line under all that happened. Tie up loose ends; that… that sort of thing. You know?’ she said, looking bright-eyed at the avatar.
Oh, Dajeil, thought the ship. How wounded about the eyes. ‘I know,’ it said. ‘But now you feel that too much time has passed?’
The woman smoothed her hand over her belly. She nodded slowly, looking at the floor. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s all too long ago. I’m sure he’s forgotten all about me.’ She glanced up at the avatar.
‘And yet he is here,’ it said.
‘Did he come to see me?’ she asked it, already sounding bitter.
‘No, and yes,’ the ship said. ‘He had another motive. But it is because of you he is here.’
She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No; too much time…’
The avatar unfolded itself from the seat and crossed to where Dajeil sat; it knelt down before her, and hesitantly extended one hand towards her abdomen. Looking into her eyes, it gently placed its palm on Dajeil’s belly. Dajeil felt dizzy. She could not recall Amorphia ever having touched her before, either under its own control or under the Sleeper Service’s. She put her own hand on top of the avatar’s. The creature’s hand was steady, soft and cool. ‘And yet,’ it said, ‘in some ways, no time has passed.’ Dajeil gave a bitter laugh. ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘I’ve been here, doing nothing except growing older. But what about him?’ she asked and suddenly there was something fierce about her voice. ‘How much has he lived in forty years? How many loves has he had?’
‘I don’t believe that signifies, Dajeil,’ the ship told her quietly. ‘The point is that he is here. You can talk to him. The two of you can talk. Some resolution might be achieved.’ It pressed very lightly on her belly. ‘I believe it can be achieved.’
She sighed heavily. She looked down at her hand. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know. I need to think. I can’t… I need to think.’
‘Dajeil,’ the ship said, and the avatar took her hand in both of its. ‘Were it possible, I would give you as long as you could desire, but I am not able to. There is some urgency in this. I have what might be termed an urgent appointment near a star called Esperi. I cannot delay my arrival and I would not want to take you with me there; it is too dangerous. I would like you to leave in this ship as soon as possible.’
She looked hurt, the Sleeper thought.
‘I won’t be forced into this,’ she told it.
‘Of course not,’ it said. It attempted a smile and patted her hand. ‘Why not sleep on it? Tomorrow will be soon enough.’
VII
The Attitude Adjuster watched the attacking craft fall amongst the founding shield of ships; they had no time to move more an fractionally from their original positions. Their weaponry did their moving for them, focusing on the incoming target it plunged into their midst. A scatter of brightly flaring missiles preceded the Killing Time, a hail of plasma bubbles accompanied it and CAM, AM and nanohole warheads cluster munitions burst everywhere around it like a gigantic firework, producing a giant orb of scintillations. Many of the individual motes themselves detonated in a clustering hyperspherical storm of lethal sparks, followed sequentially by another and another echelon of explosions erupting amongst the wave of ships in a layered hierarchy of destruction.
The Attitude Adjuster scanned the real-time reports coming back from its war flock. One was caught by a nanohole, vanishing inside a vast burst of annihilation; another was damaged beyond immediate repair by an AM munition and dropped behind, engines crippled. Fortuitously, neither were crewed by Affronters. Most of the rest of the warheads were dealt with; the fleet’s own replies were fended, detonated or avoided by the attacker. No sign of the craft using its effectors to do more than cause interference; flittingly interrogating and probing amongst the collected mass of ships. The focus of its attention had begun near the centre of the third wave of craft and was spirally erratically outwards, occasionally flicking further out towards the other waves.
The Attitude Adjuster was puzzled. The Killing Time was a Torturer class Rapid Offensive Unit. It could be – it ought to be – devastating the fleet for these instants as it tore through it; it was capable of –
Then it realised. Of course. It was a grudge.
The Attitude Adjuster experienced a tingle of fear, merged with a kind of contempt. The Killing Time’s effector focus was a few ships away now, spiralling out towards the Attitude Adjuster. It signalled hurriedly to the five Rapid Offensive Units immediately around it. Each listened, understood and obeyed. The Killing Time’s effector focus flicked from craft to craft, still coming closer.
You fool, the Attitude Adjuster thought, almost angry at the attacking ship. It was behaving stupidly, irresponsibly. A Culture craft should not be so prideful. It had thought the venom directed at itself by the Killing Time in its signal to it back at Pittance had been bluster; cheap bravado. But it had been worse; it had been sincere. Wounded self-esteem. Upset that it personally had been subject to a ruse designed to destroy it. As though its enemies cared an iota who it was.
The Attitude Adjuster doubted this was an attack sanctioned by the Killing Time’s peers. This wasn’t war, this was peevishness; this was taking it personally when, if there was anything war could be characterised as being, it was impersonal. Idiot. It deserved to perish. It did not merit the honour it doubtless thought would accrue to it for this reckless and selfish act.
The surrounding warships completed their changes. Just in time. When the attacking ship’s effector targeted the first of those craft, the focus did not flit onto the next as it had with all the rest; instead it stayed, latching on, concentrating and strengthening. The ROU caved in alarmingly quickly; the Attitude Adjuster guessed that it was made to reconfigure its engine fields to focus them inside its Mind – there was a sort of signalled shriek an instant before communication was lost – but the exact nature of its downfall was hidden in an accompanying shower of CAM warheads which obliterated it instantaneously. A mercy; it would have been a grisly way for a ship to die.
But too quick, thought the Attitude Adjuster; it was sure the attacker would have let the ROU – which the Killing Time had mistaken for the Attitude Adjuster – tear its intellect apart with its engines for longer if it had been totally fooled; the CAM dusting had been either a coup de grâce or a howl of frustration, perhaps both.