‘Some minor running-gear problem,’ Lellius said. ‘The Affronter ship.’ He was silent a moment longer. ‘The Elench may have had a problem,’ he said, nodding slowly. ‘A clan-fleet – eight ships – left here a hundred days ago to investigate the Swirl.’
‘I remember,’ Leffid said.
‘There have been,’ Lellius paused, ‘… indications – barely even rumours – that not all has been right with them.’
‘Well,’ Leffid said, placing his palms flat on the table and making to rise from his seat, ‘it may be nothing, but I just thought I’d mention it.’
‘Kind,’ Lellius wheezed, nodding. ‘Not sure what the Tendency can do with it; last ship we had coming here went Sabbatical on us, ungrateful cur, but we might be able to trade it to the Mainland.’
‘Yes, the dear old Mainland,’ Leffid said. It was the term the AhForgetlt Tendency usually employed to refer to the Culture proper. He smiled. ‘Whatever.’ He held his wings away from the seat-back as he stood.
‘Sure you won’t stay?’ Lellius said, blinking. ‘We could have a betting competition. Bet you’d win.’
‘No thanks; this evening I’m playing host to a lady who needs two place settings at a time and I have to go polish my cutlery and make sure my flight feathers are fettled for ruffling.’
‘Ah. Have armfuls of fun.’
‘I suspect I shall.’
‘Oh, damn,’ Lellius said sadly, as a great shout went up from below and to most sides; the race was over.
Lellius leant over and scratched out another couple of numbers on the wax tablet.
‘Never mind,’ Leffid said, patting the vice-consul on his ample shoulder as he headed for the swaying cable bridge that would take him back to the main trunk of the huge artificial tree.
‘Yes,’ Lellius sighed, looking at the smudge of ash on his hand. ‘I’m sure there’ll be another race starting in a while.’
III
The black bird Gravious flew slowly across the re-creation of the great sea battle of Octovelein, its shadow falling over the wreckage-dotted water, the sails and decks of the long wooden ships, the soldiers who stood massed on the decks of the larger vessels, the sailors who hauled at ropes and sheets, the rocketeers who struggled to rig and fire their charges, and the bodies floating in the water.
A brilliant, blue-white sun glared from a violet sky. The air was crisscrossed by the smoky trails of the primitive rockets and the sky seemed supported by the great columns of smoke rising from stricken warships and transports. The water was dark blue, ruffled with waves, spattered with the tall feathery plumes of crashing rockets, creased white at the stem of each ship, and covered in flames where oils had been poured between ships in desperate attempts to prevent boarding.
The bird flew over the edge of the sea scene, where the water ended like a still, liquid cliff and the unadorned floor of the general bay resumed, just five metres below, its surface also covered with what looked like wreckage – as though the tide had somehow gone out in this part of the bay but not the other – but which on closer inspection proved to be objects – parts of ships, parts of people – which had been in the process of construction. The incomplete sea battle filled less than half of the bay’s sixteen square kilometres. This would have been the Sleeper Service’s master-work, its definitive statement. Now it might never be finished.
The black bird flew on, passing a few of the ship’s drones on the surface of the bay, gathering the construction debris and loading it onto an insubstantial conveyor belt which appeared to consist of a thin line of shady air. It kept beating. Its goal lay on the far end of the doubled general bay, between this internal section and the bay that opened to the rear of the ship. Damn the woman for choosing to stay at the bows, nearest to where the tower had been. Bad luck the place it had to be was so close to the stern.
It had already flown through twenty-five kilometres of interior space, down the gigantic, dark internal corridor in the centre of the ship, between closed bay doors where a few dim lights glowed and utter silence reigned, a kilometre of air below its gently flapping wings, another above and one to each side.
The bird had looked about it, taking in the huge, gloomy volumes and supposing it ought to feel privileged; the ship had kept it out of these places for the last forty years, restricting it to the upper kilometre of its hull which housed the old accommodation areas and the majority of its Storees. Gravious had senses beyond those normally available to an ordinary animal, and it had employed a couple of them in an attempt to probe the bay doors and find out what lay behind them, if anything. As far as it could tell, the thousands of bays were empty.
That had only taken it as far as the general bay engineering space, the biggest single volume in the ship with the divisions down; nine thousand metres deep, nearly twice that across and filled with noise and flickering lights and blurringly fast motion as the ship created thousands of new machines to do… who-knew-what.
Most of the engineering space wasn’t even filled with air; the material, components and machines could move faster that way. Gravious was flying down a transparent traveltube set into the ceiling. Nine kilometres of that took it to a wall which led into the relative serenity – or at least, stillness – of the sea battle tableau. It was halfway across that now; just another four thousand metres to go. Its wing muscles ached.
It landed on the parapet of a balcony which looked out into the rear of this set of general bays. Beyond were thirty-two cubic kilometres of empty air; a perfectly empty general bay, the sort of place where a normal GSV of this size would be building a smaller GSV, playing host to one which was visiting, housing an alien environment like a gigantic guests’ room, turning over to some sports venue, or sub-dividing into smaller storage or manufacturing spaces.
Gravious looked back at the modest tableau on the balcony, which in its previous existence, before the GSV had decided to go Eccentric, had been part of a cafe with a fine view of the bay. Here were posed seven humans, all with their backs to the view of the empty bay and facing the hologram of a calm, empty swimming pool. The humans wore trunks; they sat in deck chairs around a couple of low tables full of drinks and snacks. They had been caught in the acts of laughing, talking, blinking, scratching their chin, drinking.
Some famous painting, apparently. It didn’t look very artistic to Gravious. It supposed you had to see it from the right angle.
It lifted one leg up from the parapet, and slipped, falling into the air of the general bay. It hit something between it and the bay and fell, bouncing off the bay’s rear wall, then off the invisible wall, then found its bearings, flapped close and parallel to the wall, twisted in the air when it got back to the level of the balcony, and returned to it.
Uh-huh, it thought. It risked using again the senses it was not supposed to have. Solidity in the bay. What it had hit was not glass, and not a field between it and the empty bay; the bay was not empty, and what it had hit was the field-edge of a projection. On the far side, for at least two kilometres, there was solid matter. Dense, solid matter. Partially exotic dense solid matter.
Well, there you were. The bird shook itself and preened a little, combing its feathers smooth with its beak. Then it looked around and half hopped, half flew over to one of the posed figures. It inspected each one briefly, staring into an eye here, seemingly looking for a juicy parasite in an ear here, peering at a stray hair here and carefully studying a nostril here.
It often did this, studying the next ones to go, the ones who would next be revived and taken away. As though there was something to be learned from their carefully artificial postures.
It pecked, in a desultory, barely interested sort of way at a stray hair in one man’s armpit, then hopped away, studying the group from a variety of nearby tables and angles, trying to find the correct perspective from which to view the scene. Soon to be gone, of course. In fact, they were all going. This lot with the rest, but this lot to re-awakening whereas most of them would just be Stored somewhere else. But this lot, when they were woken in a few hours, would be coming back to life, somewhere. Funny to think of it.