Bascule, you might as well use the facilities you've been given, Mr Zoliparia says.
O yes, I says. I forgot. I made a show of closing my eyes. Having done this for a while, I said. Let's see; I yes, hospice — a place where you go to die, basically.
Yes, Mr Zoliparia said, looking annoyed. Now you've made me go and forget; I've lost the flow.
You was saying the castle was like a hospice.
I remember that, he says.
Well I'm very sorry, I says.
No matter. The burden of my argument, Mr Zoliparia says, is that to set itself up like this in such a defeatingly vast and intimidatingly inhuman structure is merely to announce the coming to rest of one's progress, and without that we are lost.
(Mr Zoliparia is big on progress though from what I can gather it's a pretty old fashioned idea these days.)
So there definitely weren't never no giants then? I says.
Bascule, Mr Zoliparia says, sighing, what is this obsession with the idea of giants? He fills his glass with more wine; it steams in the cold air. I watch Ergates for a bit while he does this, zooming in to look at her face; I can see her eyes and feelers and watch her mouth-parts needing and tearing at the gummy-looking bread. Pull back as Mr Zoliparia sets the wine jug back down on the table.
The thing is, he says, and sighs again, there were once giants. Not giants in the sense that they were physically bigger than us, but bigger in their powers and abilities and ambitions; bigger than us in their moral courage. They made this place, they built it from rock and materials we've lost the art of making and working. They built it for a purpose in a sense, but it's ludicrously over-designed for its supposed function. They built it the way they did for fun. Just because it amused them to do so. But they've moved on, and we are all that's left and now the place teems with life but then so does a maggoty corpse; there is much movement but no quickness in us; that's all gone.
What about the fast-tower? I says. That sounds pretty quickish to me.
O Bascule, he says and looks up at the ski. Fast as in hold-fast or stuck-fast. How many more times must I tell you?
O yes, I says. So all these quick types left for the stars did they, Mr Zoliparia?
Yes, they did, he says, and why shouldn't they? But what puzzles me is why they should abandon us so completely, and that why we should have given up the ability even to keep in touch with them.
Isn't that in none of your books and stuff, Mr Zoliparia? I asks him. Isn't that nowhere?
Doesn't seem to be, Bascule, he says; doesn't seem to be. Some of us have been looking for the answers to those questions for longer than we've been able to record, and we seem to be no closer now than when we started. We've looked in books and films and files and fiches and discs and chips and bios and holos and foams and cores and every form of storage known to humanity. He drinks his wine. And it's all from before, Bascule, he says, sounding sad. All from before. There's nothing from the time we want to know about. He shrugs. Nothing.
I don't know what to say when Mr Zoliparia sounds all sad and sorry like this. People like him have been trying to work this sort of thing out for generations, some through the old stuff like books and so on and others by using the crypt, where supposedly everything is but you just can't find it. Or if you find it you can't get back with it.
I once said to Mr Zoliparia it sounded a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack and he said, More like looking for a particular water molecule in an ocean and even that's probably underestimating the task by several orders of magnitude.
I've thought about being the one to dive into the crypt proper — really deeply — and bring back the secrets Mr Zoliparia wants, but apart from the fact that means serious implant work and I want to show Mr Zoliparia I only use my implants for telling and nothing else as a rule, it's also been attempted and proved pointless.
It's chaos in there, you see.
The crypt (or cryptosphere or data corpus — it's all the same thing) is where everything really happens here, and the deeper you go the less likely you are to come out; it's like it's an ocean and consciousness is soluble, like diving into acid, beyond a certain depth. It scars you for life if you go too deep, you come back as something shrivelled and dying if you go deeper still, and you just don't come back at all if you go really really deep; you just disintegrate totally as a distinct personality and that's that.
Of course you personally are still alive and kicking, back in physical reality and none the worse for wear (usually; unless you have a bad trip like they say and get feedbacks and deadbacks and flashbacks and flashforwards and nightmares and daymares and trauma and stuff), but the crypt-copy you sent in there, that's just gone forever you can kiss its ass bye-bye, and that's factual.
Ergates is playing with her food; she's molding the bready-bits into funny shapes with her mouth-parts and front legs and not bothering to eat it at all no more. Right now she's making a tiny bust of Mr Zoliparia and I wonder if he can see her doing that or if he's so dead against implants and improvements in general that he has ordinary old-type eyes and can't zoom in on details like I can.
Do you think it's a good likeness, Bascule? she asks me.
Mr Zoliparia is looking thoughtful and staring into space, or into the atmosphere anyway; bunch of birds circling way in the distance over a bartizan — maybe he's looking at them.
Anyway I decide to risk whispering to Ergates: Very good. Now you want to get back in your box?
What's that Bascule? Mr Zoliparia says.
Nothing, Mr Zoliparia, I says. I was just clearing my throat.
No you weren't; you said something about getting back in your box.
Did I? I says, stalling.
You weren't referring to me I trust, he says, frowning.
O absolutely not Mr Zoliparia, I tell him. I was actually addressing Ergates here, I says, deciding to make a clean breast of it. I look at her sternly and wag my finger at her and say Get back in your box now, you naughty ant. Sorry about this, Mr Zoliparia, I tell him, while Ergates quickly changes the bust she's working on to one of me with an enormous nose.
Does she ever talk back? Mr Zoliparia asks, smiling.
O yes, I says. It's quite a talkative little critter actually and very intelligent.
Does it really talk though, Bascule?
Of course, Mr Zoliparia; it's not a figment of my imagination or an invisible friend type of thing, honest. I had a invisible friend but he left when Ergates came on the scene last week, I tell him, feeling a bit embarrassed now and probably blushing.
Mr Zoliparia laughs. Where did you get your little pal? he asks.
She crawled out the woodwork, I says, and he laughs again and I'm even more embarrassed and getting quite sweaty now. That damn ant! making a fool of me and making my face all big and bloated in that bust she's working on now and still not going back in her box either.
She did! Mr Zoliparia I says. Crawled out of the woodwork in the refectory at supper time last Kingsday. She came here with me the next day to see you, but hid in my jacket that time on account of being shy and a bit awkward with strangers. But she really talks and she hears what I say and she uses words I don't know sometimes, honest.
Mr Zoliparia nods, and looks with new respect upon Ergates the ant. Then she's probably a micro-construct, Bascule, he tells me; they crop up now and again, though they don't usually talk, least not intelligibly. I think the law says you're supposed to take such things to the authorities.
I know that Mr Zoliparia but she's my friend and she don't do no one no harm, I says, getting hotter still because I don't want to lose Ergates and I'm wishing I hadn't said nothing to brother Scalopin now because I didn't think people bothered with such finicky rules but here's Mr Zoliparia saying they do and what am I to do? I look at her but she's still working on that infernal bust and giving me big buck teeth now, ungrateful wretch.