How the fuck does it do that? the ship wondered. It started checking that time was still working properly, directing its sensors at distant quasars which had been used as time reference sources for millennia. It also started checking that it was not in the centre of some huge projection, extending its still-stopped engine fields like vast whiskers, feeling for the (as far as anybody knew) unfakeable reality that was the energy grid and minutely – and randomly – scrutinising sections of the view around it, searching for the equivalent of pixels or brush strokes. The Fate Amenable To Change was experiencing a sense of elation at having survived what it had feared might be a terminal encounter with the Excession. But it was still worried that it had missed something, that it had been interfered with somehow. The most obvious explanation was that it had been fooled, that it had been tricked into moving itself here under its own power or been moved to this position via another tractive force over time. The further implication was that the interval when it had been moving had somehow been expunged from its memory. That would be bad. The very idea that its Mind was not absolutely inviolate was anathema to a ship.
It tried to accustom itself to the idea that this was what had happened. It tried to steel itself to the prospect that – at the very least – it would have to have its mental processes investigated by other Minds to establish whether it had suffered any lasting damage or had had any unpleasant sub-routines (or even personalities) buried in its mind-state during the time it had been – effectively – unconscious (horrible, horrible thought).
The check-time results started coming in.
Relief and incredulity. If this was the real universe and not a projection, or – worse still – something it had been persuaded to. imagine for itself inside its Mind, then there had been no extra elapsed time. The universe thought it was exactly the same time as the Mind’s internal clock did.
The ship felt stunned. Even while another part of its intellect, an opt-in, semi-autonomous section, was restarting its engines and discovering they worked just fine, the ship was trying to come to terms with the fact it had been moved thirty light years in an instant. No Displacer could do that. Not with something the size it was, not that quickly, not over that sort of distance. Certainly not without even the merest hint that a wormhole had been involved.
Unbelievable. I’m in a fucking Outside Context situation, the ship thought, and suddenly felt as stupid and dumb-struck as any muddy savage confronted with explosives or electricity.
It sent a signal to the Not Invented Here. Then it tried contacting its remotes still – presumably – in station around the Excession. No reply. And no sign of the Elencher ships either. Anywhere.
The Excession was invisible too, but then it would be from this distance.
The Fate nudged itself tentatively towards the Excession. Almost immediately, its engines started to lose traction, their energies just seeming to disappear through the energy grid as though it wasn’t there. It was a progressive effect, worsening as it proceeded and with the implication that about a light minute or so further in towards the Excession it would lose grid adhesion altogether.
It had only progressed about ten light seconds in; it slowed while it still could and backed up until it was the same distance away from the Excession as it had been when it had found itself dumped here in the first place. Once it was there, its engines responded perfectly normally again.
It had made the initial attempt in Infraspace; it tried again in Ultraspace, with exactly the same result. It went astern once more and resumed its earlier position. It tried moving at a right angle to its earlier course; the engines worked as they always did. Weird. It hove to again.
Its avatars amongst the crew started yet another explanation regarding what was going on. It compiled a preparatory report and signalled it to the MSV Not Invented Here. The report crossed with the MSVs reply to the Fate’s earlier signal:
[stuttered tight point, M32, tra. @4.28. 882.8367 ]
xMSV Not Invented Here
oGCU Fate Amenable To Change
I don’t understand. What’s going on? How did you get to where you are?
oo
[stuttered tight point, M32, tra. @4.28.882.8379 ]
xGCU Fate Amenable To Change
oMSV Not Invented Here
Thereby hangs a tale. But in the meantime I’d slow down if I were you and tell everybody else coming this way to slacken off too and get ready to draw up at thirty years off the E. I think it’s trying to tell us something. Plus there is a record I wish to claim…
X
The rest of that day passed, and the following night. The black bird, which had said its name was Gravious, had flown off, saying it was tired of his questions.
The next morning, after checking that his terminal still did not work and the lift door in the cellar remained locked and unresponding, Genar-Hofoen walked as far along the shingle beach as he could in each direction; a few hundred steps in each case, before he encountered a gelatinously resilient field. The view beyond looked perfectly convincing, but must be a projection. He discovered a way through part of the salt marsh and found a similar force field wall a hundred steps into the hummocks and little creeks. He came back to the tower to wash his boots free of the authentically fine and clinging mud he’d had to negotiate on his way through the salt marsh. There was no sign of the black bird he’d talked to the day before.
The avatar Amorphia was waiting for him, sitting on the shelf of shingle beach sloping down to the restive sea, hugging its legs and staring out at the water.
He stopped when he saw it, then came on. He walked past it and into the tower, washed his boots and came back out. The creature was still there.
‘Yes?’ he said, standing looking down at it. The ship’s representative rose smoothly up, all angles and thin limbs. Close up, in that light, there was a sort of unmarked, artless quality about its thin, pale face; something near to innocence.
‘I want you to talk to Dajeil,’ the creature said. ‘Will you?’
He studied its empty-looking eyes. ‘Why am I being kept here?’
‘You are being kept because I would like you to talk to Dajeil. You are being kept here because I thought this… model would be conducive to putting you in the mood to talk to her about what passed between you forty years ago.’
He frowned. Amorphia had the impression the man had a lot more questions, all jostling each other to be the first one asked. Eventually he said, ‘Are there any mind-state Storees left on the Sleeper Service?
‘No,’ the avatar said, shaking its head. ‘Does this refer to the ruse that brought you here?’
The man’s eyes had closed briefly. They opened again. ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ he said. His shoulders seemed to have slumped, the avatar thought. ‘So,’ he asked, ‘did you make up the story about Zreyn Enhoff Tramow, or did they?’
The avatar looked thoughtful. ‘Gart-Kepilesa Zreyn Enhoff Tramow Afayaf dam Niskat,’ it said. ‘She was a mind-state Storee. There’s quite an interesting story associated with her, but not one I ever suggested be told to you.’
‘I see,’ he said, nodding. ‘So, why?’ he asked.
‘Why what?’ the creature said, looking puzzled.
‘Why the ruse? Why did you want me here?’
The avatar looked at him for a moment. ‘You’re my price, Genar-Hofoen,’ it told him.
‘Your price? he said.
The avatar smiled suddenly and put out one hand to touch one of his. Its touch was cool and firm. ‘Let’s throw stones,’ it said. And with that it walked down towards the waves breaking on the slope of shingle.
He shook his head and followed the creature.
They stood side by side. The avatar looked along the great sweep of shining, spray-glistened stones. ‘Every one a weapon,’ it muttered, then stooped to pick a large pebble from the beach and threw it quickly, artlessly out at the heaving waves. Genar-Hofoen selected a stone too.
‘I’ve been pretending to be Eccentric for forty years, Genar-Hofoen,’ the avatar said matter-of-factly, squatting again.
‘Pretending?’ the man asked, chucking the stone on a high arc. He wondered if it was possible to hit the far force wall. The stone fell, vanishing into the tumbling ‘scape of waves.
‘I have been a diligent and industrious component of the Special Circumstances section for all that time, just awaiting the call,’ the ship told him through the avatar. It glanced over at him as he bent, choosing another stone. ‘I am a weapon, Genar-Hofoen. A deniable weapon. My apparent Eccentricity allows the Culture proper to refuse any responsibility for my actions. In fact I am acting on the specific instructions of an SC committee which calls itself the Interesting Times Gang.’