Even then they could still get about, as a rule. Their motive force came from a system of vanes extending from the inner and outer surfaces of their two main discs. These extended to beat — sometimes twisting to add extra impetus or to steer -and lay flat on the backstroke, so that a moving Dweller seemed to roll through the atmosphere. This was called roting. Very old Dwellers often lost the use of — or just lost — the vanes on the outside of their discs, but usually retained those on the inside so that no matter how decrepit they might get, they could still wheel themselves around.
“It boils down,” Y’sul said at the end, “to the fact that you are looking for the choal Valseir, to resume subject-specific studies in a library within his control.”
“Pretty much,” Fassin agreed.
“I see.”
“Y’sul, you have always been a great help to me. Can you help me in this?”
“Problem,” Y’sul said.
“Problem?” Fassin asked.
“Valseir is dead and his library has been consigned to the depths, or split up, possibly at random, amongst his peers, allies, families, co-specialists, enemies or passers-by. Probably all of the above.”
“Dead?” Fassin said. He let horror show on the signalling carapace of the gascraft; a quite specific whorl pattern which indicated being intellectually and emotionally appalled at the demise of a Dweller friend\acquaintance not least because they had died in the course of pursuing a line of inquiry that one was oneself deeply fascinated by. “But he was only a choal! He was billions of years from dying!”
Valseir had been about a million and a half years old and on the brink of passing from the Cuspian level to that of Sage. Choal was the last phase of being a Cuspian. The average age of progressing from Cuspian-choal to Sage-child was over two million years but Valseir had been judged by his elders and allegedly betters as being ready even at such a modest count of time. He was, or had been, a one-and-a-half-million-year-old prodigy. He had also, last time Fassin had seen him, seemed strong, vigorous and full of life. Agreed, he spent most of his life with his rotary snout stuck in a library and didn’t get out much, but still Fassin could not believe he was dead. The Dwellers didn’t even have any diseases he could have died of. How could he be dead?
“Yachting accident, if I recall,” Y’sul said. “Do I?” Fassin sensed the Dweller radioing an inforequest to the patch-walls of the library room. “Yes, I do! Yes, a yachting accident. His StormJammer got caught in a particularly vicious eddy and it came apart on him. Skewered with a main beam or a yard arm or something. On a brighter note, they salvaged most of the yacht before it descended to the Depths. He was a very keen sailor. Terribly competitive.” .
“When?” Fassin asked. “I heard nothing.”
“Not long ago,” Y’sul said. “Couple of centuries at the most.”
“There was nothing on the news nets.”
“Really? Ah! Wait.” (Another radioed inforequest.) “Yes. I understand he left instructions that in the event of his death it was to be regarded as a private matter.” Y’sul flexed his hub-mounted spindle-arms on either side. All of them. Right out. “Quite understand! Done the same myself.”
“Is there any record of what happened to his library?” Fassin asked.
Y’sul rocked back again, a pair of giant conical wheels rotating slowly away, then pitching forward once more. He hung in mid-gas and said, “D’you know what?”
“What?”
“No, there isn’t! Is that not strange?”
“We… I would really like to look into this matter further, Y’sul. Can you help us in this?”
“I most certainly… ah, talking about news nets, there is something about an unauthorised fusion explosion not far from the point you accessed the CloudTunnel from. Anything to do with you?”
Oh, shit, Fassin thought, again. “Yes. It would appear that somebody is trying to kill me. Or possibly the colonel here.” He waved at Hatherence’s esuit, still floating next to him. She had been silent for some time. Fassin was not certain this was a good sign.
“I see,” Y’sul said. “And talking about the good colonel, I am struggling to discover her authorisation. For being here at all, I mean.”
“Well,” Fassin said, “we were forced to take refuge in Nasqueron, some time before we imagined it would be necessary, due to unprovoked hostile action. The colonel’s permissions were being sought some time before we left but had not yet come through when we had to make our emergency entry. The colonel is, technically, here without explicit permission, and therefore throws herself upon your mercy as a shipwreckee, a wartime asylumee and a fellow gas-giant dweller in need of shelter.” Fassin turned and looked at the colonel, who shifted about her vertical axis to return his gascraft-directed gaze. “She claims sanctuary,” he finished.
“Provisionally given, of course,” Y’sul said. “Though the precise meaning of ‘unprovoked’ might be challenged in a wider context, and the exact definition of ‘shipwreckee’, equally, could well be open to dispute if one wished to be picky. That aside, though, do I understand there is some sort of dispute in progress, out amongst you people?”
“You understand correctly,” Fassin told the Dweller.
“Oh, not another one of your wars, please!” Y’sul protested, with a rolling-back of his whole body which was actually relatively easy for a human to interpret, correctly, as an equivalent of rolling one’s eyes. (Though, to be fair, there was quite a lot of Dweller gestures with this translation.)
“Well, pretty much, yes,” Fassin told him.
“Your passion for doing each other harm never ceases to amaze, delight and horrify!”
“I’m told there is to be a Formal War between Zone 2 and Belt C,” Fassin said.
“I too am told that!” Y’sul said brightly. “Do you really think it will happen? I’m not optimistic, frankly. Some appallingly good negotiators have been drafted in, I understand… Ah. Your hull carapace, doing the job of standing in, feebly, for the body you so sadly lack, bears marks upon it which I take to mean you were being sarcastic earlier.”
“Never mind, Y’sul.”
“Right then, shan’t. Now then: Valseir. There is a point of congruency”
“There is?”
“Yes!”
“With what? Between what and what?”
“His demise and this war we’ve been promised!”
“Really?”
“Yes! His old study — it is in the current zone of disputation, I believe.”
“But if it’s already been broken up—” Fassin began.
“Oh, there are bound to be back-ups, and I’m not even sure the old fellow has been finally put to rest.”
“After two hundred years?”
“Come now, Fassin, there were matters of probate.”
“And it’s in the war zone?”
“Very likely, yes! Isn’t it exciting? I think we ought to go there immediately!” Y’sul waved all his limbs at once. “Let’s form an expedition! We shall go together.” He looked at Hatherence. “You can even bring your little friend.”
— I have been considering whether to attempt to communicate with your Shared Facility, via your satellites or directly, the colonel told him.
· I wouldn’t, Fassin sent. — But if you decide you must, tell me before you try. I want to be well out of the volume.
· You think the same sort of attack directed against us following your “ping’ might be directed against us here?
· Probably not here, in a Dweller city. But then, why risk it? We don’t know that whoever’s been shooting at us quite understands what they’d be letting themselves in for, so they might just waste us and have to deal with the consequences later.
We won’t be around to jeer.
— We need to find out what is going on, Major Taak, Hatherence informed him.
— I know, and I’m going to send a request for information up to a sat from a remote site as soon as I’ve checked out what’s been going on via the local nets.