“And your servant, injured. How terrible.”
“I know. War is. Other than that, elsewhere in the hostilities, barely a spineful of deaths so far. Couple of Dreadnoughts crippled on each side. Far too early to tell who’s winning. I’ll keep a fringe cocked, let you know what’s happening.”
“Thank you.”
“Not at all.”
· You’re right, Hatherence had signal-whispered to Fassin as this exchange was taking place. — Let’s just let him go.
· You can signal the ship from your esuit while still in slowdown?
— Yes.
— Okay.
“You will stay nearby?” Fassin had asked Y’sul. “You won’t let the Poaflias venture too far out?”
“Of course! I swear! And I shall ask our two fine fellows here to extend you every courtesy on my behalf!”
They were to be seen at once. Nuern had shown them into one of the outer library pods. The library had a roof of diamond leaf looking directly upwards into the vermilion-dark sky. Jundriance was settled into a dent-desk near the centre of the near-spherical room, facing a read-screen. Around him, the walls were lined with shelves, some so widely spaced that they might have doubled as bunk space for humans, others so small that a child’s finger might have struggled to fit. Mostly these held books, of some sort. Spindle-secured carousels tensioned between the walls and between the floor and a network of struts above held hundreds of other types of storage devices and systems: swave crystals, holoshard, picospool and a dozen more obscure.
They’d joined Jundriance at his desk, floating through the thick atmosphere to his side. Nuern had swung dent-seats into place and they’d both clamped onto one, Hatherence positioning herself with Fassin between her and the Sage. Jundriance, of course, gave no sign of having noticed them.
They’d slowed. It had been much easier for Fassin than for Hatherence. He’d been doing this for centuries; she’d been trained in the technique but had never attempted it for real. The experience would be a jerky, shaky journey for her, at least until they smoothed out at the Sage’s pace.
The day darkened quickly, then the night seemed to last less than an hour. Fassin concentrated on his own smooth slowdown, but was aware of the colonel seeming to wriggle and shift in her dent-seat. The Sage Jundriance appeared to stir. By the next quick morning, something actually changed on his reading screen; another page. That day passed quickly, then the next night went quicker still. The process continued until they were down to a factor of about one-in-sixty-four, which was what they had been told Jundriance had come up to meet them at -he’d been even slower until their arrival.
They were about halfway there when a signal-whisper had pinged into the little gascraft. — You receiving this all right, major?
· Yes. Why?
· I just interrogated the screen reader. It was working in realtime until the Poaflias arrived.
· You sure?
· Perfectly.
· Interesting.
Finally they were there, synchronised to the same life-pace as the Sage. The short days became a slow, slow flicker above them, the orange-purple sky beyond the diamond leaf alternately lightening and dimming. Even at this pace, the great tall veils of gas seemed to hang above them in the sky, unmoving. Fassin had experienced the feeling he always got when he first went into slowdown during a delve, the disquieting sensation that he was a lost soul, the feeling of being in a strange sort of prison, trapped in time inside while life went on at a quicker pace outside, above, beyond.
Jundriance had turned off his read-screen and greeted them. Fassin had asked about Valseir but somehow they’d got onto the subject of life-pace itself.
“One feels sorry for the Quick, I suppose,” the Sage said. “They seem ill-suited to the universe, in a way. The distances between the stars, the time it takes to travel from one to another… Even more so, of course, if one is thinking of travelling between galaxies.”
A hole in the conversation. “Of course.” Fassin said, to fill it. Are you fishing for something, old one? he thought.
“The machines. They were much worse, of course. How unbearable, to live so quickly.”
“Well, they mostly don’t live at all now, Sage,” Fassin told him.
“That is as well, perhaps.”
“Sage, can you tell us any more about Valseir’s death?”
“I was not there. I know no more than you.”
“You were… quite close to him?” Fassin asked.
“Close? No. No, I would not say so. We had corresponded on matters of textual verification and provenance, and debated at a remove on various questions of scholarship and interpretation, though not regularly. We never met. I would not say that that constituted closeness, would you?”
“I suppose not. I just wondered what drew you here, that’s all.”
“Oh, the chance to look through his library. To take what I might for myself. That is what drew me. His servants took some material before they left, others — mostly scholars or those who chose to call themselves such — came and took what they wanted, but there is still much here, and while the most obvious treasures are gone, much of value may remain. It would be derelict to ignore.”
“I see. And what of Valseir’s libraries? I understand you are continuing to catalogue them?”
A pause. “Continuing. Yes.” The old, dark-carapaced Sage seemed to stare at the dark read-screen. “Hmm,” he said. He turned fractionally to look at Fassin. “Let me see. Your use of the word ‘continuing’ there.”
“I understood that Valseir had been cataloguing his libraries Wasn’t he?”
“He was always so secretive. Was he not?”
· I’m getting light-comms leakage here, Hatherence sent.
· Tell me if there’s a burst after this:
“And dilatory. Hapuerele always said that Valseir was more likely to win the All-Storms Yachting Cup than ever finish cataloguing his libraries.”
Another pause. “Quite so, quite so. Hapuerele, yes.”
· Leakage. Hapuerele does not exist?
· Exists, but he had to ask elsewhere just there. Shouldn’t have.
“I would like to take a look round some of the libraries myself. I hope you don’t mind. I shan’t disturb you.”
“Ah. I see. Well, if you think you can be discreet. Are you seeking anything in particular, Mr Taak?”
“Yes. And you?”
“Only enlightenment. And what would it be that you are looking for, if I may ask?”
“Exactly the same.”
The old dweller was silent for a while. In real-time, most of an hour passed. “I may have something for you,” he said eventually. “Would you care to slow down a little more? No doubt this, our present pace, seems surpassing slow to you; however, I find it something of a strain.”
“Of course,” Fassin told Jundriance.
· I’ll have to leave you here, major.
· Lucky you. I’ll try to keep this short.
· Good luck, Hatherence sent.
“However, I shall leave you at this point, sir,” the colonel said to the Sage.
“Pleasant to have met you, Reverend Colonel,” Jundriance told her. “Now then,” he said to Fassin. “Let me see. Half this pace, I think, Seer Taak, would suit me better. A quarter would suit me better still.”
“Shall we try half, then, initially?”
He was back in just three days. Hatherence was inspecting the contents of another library when he found her. The room was almost perfectly spherical, with no windows, just a circle of dim light shining from the ceiling’s centre and further luminescence provided by bio strips inlaid on each shelf, glowing ghostly green. Further stacks of shelves like enormous inward-pointing vanes made the place feel oddly organic, as though these were ribs, and they were inside some vast creature. The colonel was floating near one set of close-stacked shelves near the library’s centre, strips of green light ribbing her esuit.
“So soon, major?” Hatherence said, replacing a slim holocrystal on a shelf half full of them. At the same time as she spoke, she sent: — Our friend had nothing of interest?