Fassin had told Hatherence he needed time to let his human brain and body sleep, and his arrowcraft self-repair and recharge itself. He’d retreated to the long spoke room he’d been allocated in Y’sul’s house. This was a dark and dusty gallery littered with piles of discarded clothes, lined with ancient wardrobes and floored with out-of-favour paintings and crumpled wall hangings. There was a double-dent Dweller bed in there too and a treefoam-lined cubby by one wall, so it kind of constituted a bedroom, not that Fassin or his gascraft really needed such a thing.
Fassin had secured the door, used the little arrowcraft’s sonic senses to locate a removable ceiling panel and exited through the double skin roof into a breezy and relatively dark night.
Like all Dweller cities, Hauskip was situated in a historically calm patch within its atmospheric volume, but cities still had weather. They experienced pressure differentials, squalls, fog, rain, snow, crosswinds, upwellings, down draughts, lateral force and spin, all depending on the state of the gas stream around them. Moderately buffeted, half-hidden by the shreds of thicker gas scudding across the lamplit night, Fassin had made his way up and out across the sheen of rooftops.
Sky traffic had been relatively light — most travel would be within the spindles and spokes linking the city’s main components — but there had been a few Dwellers roting about in the distance, and enough small craft — packet-delivery machines, mostly — for Fassin to hope he was going unremarked.
Distant lightning had flickered deep below.
Fassin had come to a dangling wave-guide cable a few centimetres thick, followed it up to a deserted public plaza like a vast, empty bowl circled with dim, attenuated lights, and found a public screen booth.
Setstyin was also in the equatorial band, though on the other side of the planet. Fassin might therefore have hoped to find him awake at such a time, but Setstyin had been sleeping off the effects of an especially good party he’d hosted the night before. Dwellers could go for tens of their days without sleep but when they did sleep they tended to do so on a prodigious scale. Fassin had begged and pleaded with Setstyin’s servant to have him woken and even then it had taken a while. Setstyin looked and sounded groggy, but it appeared that his mind was fully awake inside there somewhere.
“And you would like me to do what?” Setstyin asked. He scratched at his gill fringe with one spindle arm. He was wearing a light sleep collar round his mid-hub, which was regarded as a polite minimum when addressing someone other than a close friend or family member over the phone. Dwellers were hardly self-conscious about showing their inner-hub mouth parts and pleasure organs, but there was a degree of decorum in such matters, especially when confronted with an alien. “What shall I say, Fassin, and to whom?”
A gust of wind made the arrowcraft’s vanes purr to hold it in place as Fassin looked into the camerascreen. “Convince whoever you can, preferably as high as you can reach, preferably discreetly, that there really is a threat. Give them time to decide what they’re going to do if there is a raid. It may be best just to let it happen. What you don’t want to do is have an unthinking hostile reaction that leads to some maniac Quick nuking a city or two to try to teach you a lesson.”
Setstyin looked confused. “How would that benefit anybody?”
“Please, just trust me — it’s the sort of thing Quick species do.”
“You want me to talk to politicians and military people, then, yes?”
“Yes.” Politicians and military people in Dweller society were as much amateurs and dilettantes as gifted tailors or devout party-throwers like Setstyin — possibly a little less dedicated -but you had, Fassin reflected, to work with what you were presented with.
Setstyin looked thoughtful. “They’re not going to go with an invasion.”
This was true, Fassin supposed. In the full sense of the word an invasion was impossible. The Ulubis forces were hopelessly inadequate for the task of occupying a volume as great as Nasqueron or any other gas-giant, even if it had been inhabited by a congenitally peaceful, naturally subservient and easily cowed species rather than, well, Dwellers. Attempting to control the place with Dwellers around would be like peeing into a star. The danger was that, in carrying out a raid to secure a given volume for long enough to hunt down the information they were looking for, the Mercatoria would cause the Dwellers to react as though they were undergoing a full-scale invasion. It seemed to be part of Dweller psychology that if something was worth reacting to, it was even more worth overreacting to, and Fassin dreaded to think what that might imply for all sides.
“Stress an extended raid and temporary site occupation with aggressive patrols that might be mistaken for an invasion.”
“Whereabouts?” Setstyin asked. “Or are you really going to tell me you have no idea?”
“I understand we’re going to be looking in or very near the new Formal War zone.”
Setstyin let his hub arms droop down at his side. This was something like a human rolling their eyes. “Well, of course, where else?”
“I don’t suppose there’s the slightest possibility that the war might be cancelled or postponed?”
“There is always a chance, but it certainly won’t have anything to do with a mere party animal like myself having a word in even the highest-placed ear. Think: there might be the possibility of genuine hostile action against us, an act of alien aggression within the winds of Nasqueron itself and the suggestion is we call off a Formal War? More likely we’ll start a few more to show how jolly fierce we are and get some practice in.”
“Just thought I’d ask.”
“When do you set off for the war zone?”
“Tomorrow morning, Hauskip local time.”
“There you are. In plenty of time for the war’s opening ceremony”
“I may have other things on my mind.”
“Hmm. You realise that me having a word on high may well result in you being tracked, watched by interested parties?”
“Whereas that would never happen normally? But yes, I realise that.”
“Well, I wish you well, Fassin Taak.”
“Thanks.”
Setstyin peered at the camerascreen, looking at Fassin’s surroundings. “Y’sul out of kudos with the phone operators?”
“I have an additional Guard-mentor in the shape of an oerileithe Mercatoria military colonel. She might not understand my concern. I sneaked out to make the call.”
“Very cloak, very dagger. Good luck with your quest, Fassin. Do keep in touch.”
* * *
“If you’re watching this, Sal, then I’m dead. Obviously I don’t know what the circumstances of that death may have been. Like to think I died bravely and honourably in combat. Kind of don’t think you’ll be watching this because my clogs were popped peacefully in my sleep because I don’t mean for that to happen, at least not until something’s happened that involves you. Dying peacefully… actually, hopefully, that would mean you’re already dead.
“The thing that involves you sort of involves Fass, too, though not in the same way. Involves you and me and Fass and Ilen. Poor dead Ilen. Ilen Deste, Sal. You remember her? Maybe you don’t. It’s been so long, for all of us, for all these strange different reasons that end up being just the same. You with your treatments, Fass with his slowtime, me all Einsteined out with too much time near light speed. Time hasn’t ever caught up with any of us, has it, Sal?