~ You are overly cautious, cousin, sent the Sober Counsel. ~ We are the Zetetic Elench. We have ways of dealing with such matters. Our experience is not without benefit, especially once we are fore-warned.
~ And I am of the Culture, and I hate to see such risks being taken. Are you sure you have the full agreement of your human crews concerning such a foolhardy attempt at contact?
~ You know we have; your avatar sat in on the discussions, sent the Appeal To Reason.
~ That was two days ago, the Fate Amenable To Change pointed out. ~ You have just given a two-second launch notice; at least hold off long enough to carry out a poll of your humans and sentient drones and so ensure that they still agree with your proposed course of action now that the business is coming to a head. After all, another few minutes or so is not going to make much difference, is it? Think; I beg you. You know humans as well as I do; things can take a while to sink in with them. Perhaps some have only now finished thinking about the matter and have altered their position on it. Please, as a favour, hold back a few minutes.
~ Very well. Reluctantly, but very well.
The Appeal To Reason stopped the drone’s launch countdown before a hundredth of a second had elapsed. The Fate Amenable To Change stood down its Displacer and left its avatar aboard.
It all made little difference. The Fate Amenable To Change had secretly been upgrading its effectors over the past couple of days and had intended attempting to carry out its own subtle jeopardising of any drones dispatched towards the Excession, but it was not to have the chance. Even while the hurriedly called vote was taking place on board the Appeal To Reason, the Fate received a message from another craft.
xExplorer Ship Break Even (Zetetic Elench, Stargazer, 5th)
oGCU Fate Amenable To Change (Culture)
Greetings. Please be advised I and my sister craft the Within Reason and Long View are also in attendance, just out of your primary scanner range. We have reconfigured to an Extreme Offence back-up form and shall soon be joined by the two remaining ships of our fleet, similarly recast. We would hope that you do not intend any interference with the plan our sister craft Appeal To Reason intends to effect.
Two other, confirmatory signals came in from divergent angles compared to that first message, purporting to be from the Within Reason and the Long View.
Shit, thought the GCU. It had been reasonably confident it could either fool the two nearby Elench craft or just plain overpower their efforts to contact the Excession, but faced with five ships, three of them on a war footing, it knew it would never be able to prevail.
It replied, saying that of course it intended no mischief, and glumly watched events unfold.
The vote aboard the Appeal To Reason went the same way as before, though a few more humans did vote against the idea of sending the drone in than had the last time. Two requested an immediate transfer to the Sober Counsel, then changed their minds; they would stay aboard. The Fate took its avatars off both the Elencher ships. It had used its heavy-duty displacer for the task, attenuating it to make it look as though it had utilised one of the lesser systems. It left the unit running at full readiness.
The Appeal To Reason’s drone was duly launched; a small, fragile-looking, gaily adorned thing, its extremities sporting ribbons, flowers and little ornaments and its casing covered with drawings, cartoons and well-wishing messages scrawled by the crew. It puttered hesitantly towards the Excession, chirpily beaming signals of innocent goodwill.
If the Fate Amenable To Change had been a human, at this point it would have looked down, put one hand over its eyes, and shake.n its head.
The small machine took minutes to creep up to the seemingly unnoticing Excession’s dull skein-surface; an insect crawling up to a behemoth. It activated a short-range, one time hyperspace unit and disappeared from the skein as though passing through a mirror of dark fluid.
In Infraspace, it… disappeared too, for an instant.
The Fate Amenable To Change was watching the drone from a hundred different angles via its remotes. They all saw it just disappear. An instant later it reappeared. It looped back through its little quantum burrow, returning to the skein of real space to start back, no less hesitantly, towards the Appeal To Reason.
The Fate Amenable To Change crash-ramped its plasma chambers then isolated and readied a clutch of fusion warheads. At the same moment, it signalled urgently.
~ Was the drone meant to disappear that way?
~ Hmm, sent the Appeal To Reason. ~ Well…
~ Destroy it, the Fate urged. ~ Destroy it, now!
~ It has communicated, slim-text only, as per instructions, the Appeal To Reason replied, sounding thoughtful, if wary. ~ It has gathered vast quantities of data on the entity. There was a pause, then, excitedly; ~ It has located the mind-state of the Peace Makes Plenty!
~ Destroy it! Destroy it!
~ No! sent the Sober Counsel.
~ How can I? the Appeal To Reason protested.
~ I’m sorry, the Fate Amenable To Change signalled to both the nearby craft, an instant after initiating a Displace sequence which flicked compressed spheres of plasma and a spray of fusion bombs down their own instantaneous wormholes towards the returning drone.
XIV
Ulver Seich tossed her damply tangled black hair over her shoulder and plonked her chin on Genar-Hofoen’s chest. She traced gentle circles round his left nipple with one finger; he put a sweaty arm round her slim back, drew her other hand to his mouth and delicately kissed her fingers, one by one. She smiled.
Dinner, talk, drink, shared smoke-bowl, agreeing fuzzy heads might be cleared by a dip in the Grey Area’s pool, splashing, fooling around… and fooling around. Ulver had been holding back a little for part of the evening until she’d been certain the man didn’t just expect anything to happen, then when she’d convinced herself that he wasn’t taking her for granted, that he liked her and that – after that awful time in the module – they did get on, that was when she’d suggested the swim.
She raised her chin off his chest a little and flicked her finger back and forth over his tinily erect nipple. ‘You were serious?’ she asked him. ‘An Affronter?’
He shrugged. ‘Seemed like a good idea at the time,’ he said. ‘I just wanted to know what it was like to be one of them.’
‘So now would you have to declare war on yourself?’ she asked, pressing down on his nipple and watching it rise back up, her brows creased with concentration.
He laughed. ‘I suppose so.’
She looked into his eyes. ‘What about women? You ever wonder the same? You took the change once, didn’t you?’ She settled her chin back on his chest.
He breathed in deeply, raising her head as though on an ocean swell. He put one arm behind his head and stared up at the roof of her cabin. ‘Yes, I did it once,’ he said quietly.
She smoothed her palm over his chest for a while, watching his skin intently. ‘Was it just for her?’
He craned his head up. They looked at each other.
‘How much do you know about me?’ he asked her. He’d tried quizzing her over dinner on what she knew and why she’d been sent to Tier to intercept him, but she’d played mysterious (and, to be fair, he wasn’t able to tell her exactly why he was on his way to the Sleeper Service).
‘Oh, I know all about you,’ she said softly, seriously. Then she looked down. ‘Well, I know the facts. I suppose that’s not everything.’
He lowered his head to the pillow again. ‘Yes, it was just for her.’
‘Mm-hmm,’ she said. She continued to stroke his chest. ‘You must have loved her a lot.’
After a moment, he said, ‘I suppose I must have.’
She thought he sounded sad. There was a pause, then he sighed again and, in a more cheerful voice, he said; ‘What about you? Ever a guy?’
‘No,’ she said, with a laugh that might have held a trace of scorn. ‘Maybe one day.’ She shifted a little and circled his nipple with the tip of her tongue for a moment. ‘I’m having too much fun being a girl.’
He reached down and pulled her up to kiss her.
Then in the silence, a tiny chime sounded in the room.
She broke off. ‘Yes?’ she said, breathing hard and scowling.
‘I’m very sorry to intrude,’ said the ship, making no great effort to sound sincere. ‘May I speak to Mr Genar-Hofoen?’
Ulver made an exasperated noise and rolled off the man.