‘And what am I supposed to do?’
‘Why, just talk to her!’ the avatar cried, holding its arms out (and, suddenly, Genar-Hofoen was reminded of Ulver).
‘What if I won’t play along?’ he asked.
‘Then you may get to share my fate,’ the ship’s representative told him breezily. ‘Whatever that may be. At any rate, I may keep you here until you do at least agree to talk to her, even if – for that meeting to take place – I have to ask her to return after I’ve sent her away to safety.’
‘And what is likely to be your fate?’
‘Oh, death, possibly,’ the avatar said, shrugging with apparent unconcern.
The man shook his head. ‘You haven’t got any right to threaten me like that,’ he said, with a sort of half-laugh in his voice he hoped didn’t sound as nervous as he felt.
‘Nevertheless, I am threatening you like that, Genar-Hofoen,’ the avatar said, bending at the waist to lean towards him for a moment. ‘I am not as Eccentric as I appear, but consider this: only a craft that was predisposed to a degree of eccentricity in the first place would have taken on the style of life I did, forty years ago.’ The creature drew itself upright again. ‘There is an Excession without precedent at Esperi which may lead to an infinitude of universes and a level of power orders of magnitude beyond what any known Involved currently possesses. You’ve experienced the way SC works, Genar-Hofoen; don’t be so naive as to imagine that Minds don’t employ strong-arm methods now and again, or that in a matter resounding with such importance any ship would think twice about sacrificing another consciousness for such a prize. My information is that several Minds have been forfeited already; if, in the exceptional conditions prevailing, intellects on that scale are considered fair game, think about how little a single human life is likely to matter.’
The man stared at the avatar. His jaw was clenched, his fists balled. ‘You’re doing this for a single human life,’ he said. ‘Two, if you count the fetus.’
‘No, Genar-Hofoen,’ the avatar said, shaking its head. ‘I’m doing this for myself, because it’s become an obsession. Because my pride will not now let me settle this any other way. Dajeil, in that sense, and for all her self-lacerating spite, has won. She forced you to her will forty-five years ago and she has bent me to hers for the last forty. Now more than ever, she has won. She has thrown away four decades of her life on a self-indulgent sulk, but she stands to gain by her own criteria. You have spent the last forty years enjoying and indulging yourself, Genar-Hofoen, so perhaps you could be said to have won by your criteria, and after all you did win the lady at the time, which was all you then wanted, remember? That was your obsession. Your folly. Well, the three of us are all paying for our mutual and intermingled mistakes. You did your part in creating the situation; all I’m asking is that you do your part in alleviating it.’
‘And all I have to do is talk to her?’ The man sounded sceptical.
The creature nodded. ‘Talk. Try to understand, try to see things from her perspective, try to forgive, or allow yourself to be forgiven. Be honest with her and with yourself. I’m not asking you to stay with her or be her partner again or form a family of three; I just want whatever it is that has prevented her from giving birth to be identified and ameliorated; removed if possible. I want her to resume living and her child to start. You will then be free to return to your own life.’
The man looked out to sea, then at his right hand. He looked surprised to see he was holding a stone in it. He threw it as hard and as far as he could into the waves; it didn’t travel half the distance to the distant, invisible wall.
‘What are you supposed to do?’ the man asked the creature. ‘What is your mission?’
‘Get to the Excession,’ Amorphia said. ‘Destroy it, if that’s deemed necessary, and if it’s possible. Perhaps just draw a response from it.’
‘And what about the Affront?’
‘Added complication,’ the avatar agreed, squatting once more and looking around the stones around its feet. ‘I might have to deal with them too.’ It shrugged, and lifted a stone, hefting it. It put the stone back and chose another.
‘Deal with them?’ Genar-Hofoen said. ‘I thought they had an entire war fleet heading there.’
‘Oh, they do,’ the avatar said from beach level. ‘Still, you have to try, don’t you?’ It stood again.
Genar-Hofoen looked at it, trying to see if it was being ironic or just disingenuous. No way of telling. ‘So when do we get into the thick of things?’ he asked, trying to skip a flat stone over the waves, without success.
‘Well,’ Amorphia said, ‘the thick of things probably starts about thirty light years out from the point of the Excession itself, these days.’ The avatar stretched, flexing its arm far back behind it. ‘We should be there this evening,’ it said. Its arm snapped forward. The stone whistled through the air and skipped elegantly over the tops of half a dozen waves before disappearing.
Genar-Hofoen turned and stared at the avatar. ‘This evening? he said.
‘Time is a httle tight,’ the avatar said with a pained expression, again peering into the distance. ‘It would be for the best for all of us lf you’d talk to Dajeil… soon.’ It smiled vacuously at him.
‘Well, how about right now?’ the man said, spreading his hands.
‘I’ll see,’ the creature said, and turned abruptly on its heel. Suddenly there was a reflecting ovoid, like a giant silver egg stood on its end, where the avatar had been. The Displacer field vanished almost before the man had time to register its existence, seeming to shrink and collapse almost instantly to a point and then disappearing altogether. The process produced a gentle pop.
XI
The Killing Time plunged intact through the third wave of ancient Culture ships; they rushed on, towards the Excession. It fended off a few more of the warheads and missiles which had been directed at it, turning a couple of the latter back upon their own ships for a few moments before they were detected and destructed. The hulk of the Attitude Adjuster fell astern behind the departing fleet, coasting and twisting and tumbling in hyperspace, still heading away from and outstripping the Killing Time as it braked and started to turn.
There was only a vestigial fourth wave; fourteen ships (they were targeting it now). Had it known there were so few in the final echelon, the Killing Time would have attacked the second wave of ships. Oh well; luck counted too. It watched the Attitude Adjuster a moment longer to ensure it really was tearing itself apart. It was.
It turned its attention to the remaining fourteen craft. On its suicide trajectory it could take them all on and stand a decent chance of destroying perhaps four of them before its luck ran out; maybe a half-dozen if it was really lucky. Or it could push away and complete its brake-turn-accelerate manoeuvre to make a second pass at the main fleet. Even if they’d be waiting for it this time, it could reckon on accounting for a good few of them. Again, in the four-to-eight range.
Or it could do this.
It pulled itself round the edge of the fourteen ships in the rump of the fleet as they reconfigured their formation to meet it. Bringing up the rear they had had more warning of its attack and so had had time to adopt a suitable pattern. The Killing Time ignored the obvious challenge and temptation of flying straight into their midst and flew past and round, targeting only the outer five craft nearest it.
They gave a decent account of themselves but it prevailed, dispatching two of them with engine field implosures. This was, it had always thought, a clean, decent and honourable way to die. The pair of wreckage-shells coasted onwards; the rest of the ships sped on unharmed, chasing the main fleet. Not one of the ships turned back to take it on.
The Killing Time continued to brake, oriented towards the fast vanishing war fleet and the region of the Excession. Its engine fields were gouging great livid tracks in the energy grid as it back-pedalled furiously.
It encountered the ROU which had dropped aft with engine damage, falling back towards it as the Killing Time slowed and the other craft coasted onward and struggled to repair its motive power units. The Killing Time attempted to communicate with the ROU, was fired upon, and tried to take the craft over with its effector. The ROU’s own independent automatics detected the ship’s Mind starting to give in. They tripped a destruct sequence and another hypersphere of radiation blossomed beneath the skein.