Oramen took another glance towards the waters surging round their tower. “Gentlemen,” he said, “we’d best go.”
23. Liveware Problem
“Sister?” Ferbin said as the woman in the plain blue shift walked up to him. It was Djan Seriy. He hadn’t seen her for fifteen of their years but he knew it was her. So changed, though! A woman, not a girl, and a wise, utterly poised and collected woman at that. Ferbin knew enough about authority and charisma to recognise it when he saw it. No mere princess, little Djan Seriy; rather a very queen among them.
“Ferbin,” she said, stopping a stride away and smiling warmly. She nodded. “How good to see you again. Are you well? You look different.”
He shook his head. “Sister, I am well.” He could feel his throat closing up. “Sister!” he said, and threw himself at her, wrapping her in his arms and hooking his chin over her right shoulder. He felt her arms close over his back. It was like hugging a layer of soft leather over a figure made of hardwood; she felt astoundingly powerful; unshakeable. She patted his back with one hand, cupped the back of his head with the other. Her chin settled on his shoulder.
“Ferbin, Ferbin, Ferbin,” she whispered.
“Where exactly are we?” Ferbin asked.
“In the middle of the hub engine unit,” Hippinse told him. Since meeting with Djan Seriy, Hippinse’s manner had changed somewhat; he seemed much less manic and voluble, more composed and measured.
“Are we boarding a ship, then, sir?” Holse asked.
“No, this is a habitat,” Hippinse said. “All Culture habitats apart from planets have engines. Have had for nearly a millennium now. So we can move them. Just in case.”
They had come here straight after meeting, back up one of the tubes to the very centre of the little wheel-shaped habitat. They floated again — seemingly weightless — within the narrow but quiet, gently lit and pleasantly perfumed spaces of the habitat’s bulging centre.
Another corridor and some rolling, sliding doors had taken them to this place where there were no windows or screens and the circular wall looked odd, like oil spilled on water, colours ever shifting. It appeared soft somehow, but — when Ferbin touched the surface — felt hard as iron, though strangely warm. A small, floating cylindrical object had accompanied Djan Seriy. It looked rather like a plain-sword handle with no sword attached. It had produced five more little floating things no bigger than a single joint in one of Ferbin’s smallest fingers. These had started to glow as they’d entered the corridor and were now their only source of light.
The section of corridor they were floating in — he, Holse, Hippinse and Djan Seriy — was perhaps twenty metres long and blank at one end. Ferbin watched as the doorway they had entered by closed off and slid in towards them.
“Inside an engine?” Ferbin said, glancing at Djan Seriy. The massive plug of door continued to slide down the corridor towards them. A glittering silver sphere the size of a man’s head appeared at the far end of the ever-shortening tube. It started flickering.
Djan Seriy took his hand. “It is not an engine relying on any sort of compression,” she told him. She nodded at the still slowly advancing end of the corridor. “That is not a piston. It is part of the engine unit which slid out to allow us to enter here and is now sliding back in to provide us with privacy. That thing at the other end” — she indicated the pulsing silvery sphere — “is removing some of the air at the same time so that the pressure in here remains acceptable. All to the purpose of letting us speak without being overheard.” She squeezed his hand, glanced around. “It is hard to explain, but where we are now exists in a manner that makes it impossible for the Morthanveld to eavesdrop upon us.”
“The engine exists in four dimensions,” Hippinse told Ferbin. “Like a Shellworld. Closed, even to a ship.”
Ferbin and Holse exchanged looks.
“As I said,” Djan Seriy told them. “Hard to explain.” The wall had stopped moving towards them. They were now floating in a space perhaps two metres in diameter and five long. The silvery sphere had stopped pulsing.
“Ferbin, Mr Holse,” Djan Seriy said, sounding formal. “You’ve met Mr Hippinse. This object here is the drone Turminder Xuss.” She nodded at the floating sword handle.
“Pleased to meet you,” it said.
Holse stared at it. Well, he supposed this was no more strange than some of the Oct and Nariscene things they’d been treating as rational, talk-to-able persons since before they’d even left Sursamen. “Good-day,” he said. Ferbin made a throat-clearing grunt that might have been a similar greeting.
“Think of it as my familiar,” Djan Seriy said, catching the look on Ferbin’s face.
“You’re some sort of wizardess, then, ma’am?” Holse asked.
“You might say that, Mr Holse. Now.” Djan Seriy glanced at the silvery sphere and it disappeared. She looked at the floating sword handle. “We are thoroughly isolated and we are all free of any devices that might report anything that happens here. We are, for the moment, existing on the air we have around us, so let’s not waste words. Ferbin,” she said, looking at him. “Briefly, if you would, what brings you here?”
The silvery sphere came back before he was finished. Even keeping it as succinct as he could, Ferbin’s account had taken a while. Holse had filled in parts, too. The air had grown stuffy and very warm. Ferbin had had to loosen his clothing as he told his story, and Holse was sweating. Hippinse and Djan Seriy looked unbothered.
Djan Seriy held up her hand to stop Ferbin a moment before the sphere appeared. Ferbin had assumed she could summon it at will, though later he discovered that she was just very good at counting time in her head and knew when it would reappear. The air cooled and freshened, then the sphere disappeared again. His sister nodded and Ferbin completed his tale.
“Oramen still lived, last I heard,” she said, once he had finished. She looked stern, Ferbin thought; the wise, knowing smile that had played across her face was gone now, her jaw set in a tight line, lips compressed. Her reaction to the manner of their father’s death had been expressed at first not in words but in a brief widening of her eyes, then gaze narrowing. It was so little in a way, and yet Ferbin had the impression he had just set something unstoppable, implacable in motion. She had, he realised, become formidable. He remembered how solid and strong she had felt, and was glad she was on his side. “Tyl Loesp really did this?” she said suddenly, looking at him directly, almost fiercely.
Ferbin felt a terrible pressure from those clear, startlingly dark eyes. He felt himself gulp as he said, “Yes. On my life.”
She continued to study him for a moment longer, then relaxed a little, looking down and nodding. She glanced at the thing she had called a drone and frowned briefly, then looked down again. Djan Seriy sat cross-legged in her long blue shift, floating effortlessly, as did the black-clad Hippinse. Ferbin and Holse just floated feeling ungainly, limbs spread so that when they bumped into the sides they could fend themselves off again. Ferbin felt odd in the absence of gravity; puffed up, as though his face was flushed.
He studied his sister while — he guessed — she thought. There was an almost unnatural stillness about her, a sense of immovable solidity beyond the human.
Djan Seriy looked up. “Very well.” She nodded at Hippinse. “Mr Hippinse here represents a ship that should be able to get us back to Sursamen with some dispatch.” Ferbin and Holse looked at the other man.