“I confess,” Setstyin said, “I have no idea what form of words one ought to use on such occasions, Seer Taak. Do you?”
“Amongst some aHumans there is a saying that we come from and go to nothing, a lack like shadow that throws the sum of life into bright relief. And with the rHumans, something about dust to ashes.”
“Do you think she would have minded being treated as a Dweller?” Setstyin asked.
“No,” Fassin said. “I don’t think she would have minded. I think she would have felt honoured.”
“Here, here,” Y’sul muttered.
Valseir gave a small formal bow.
“Well, Colonel Hatherence,” Setstyin said, with what sounded like a sigh as he looked down at the body lying in the coffin. “You ascended to the age and rank of Mercatorial Colonel, which is a very considerable achievement for your kind. We think you lived well and we know you died well. You died with many others but in the end we all die alone. You died more alone than others, amongst people like you but alien to you, and far from your home and family. You fell and were found and now we send you down again, further into those Depths, to join all the revered dead on the surface of rock around the core.” He looked at Fassin. “Seer Taak, would you like to say anything?”
Fassin tried to think of something. In the end he just said, “I believe Colonel Hatherence was a good person. She was certainly a brave one. I only knew her for less than a hundred days and she was always my military superior, but I came to like her and think of her as a friend. She died trying to protect me. I’ll always honour her memory.”
He signalled that he could think of nothing else. Setstyin roll-nodded and indicated the open coffin lid.
Fassin went forward and used a manipulator to close the casket’s iron hatch, then he lowered a little more and together he and Setstyin took one edge of the bier that the coffin lay on. They raised it, letting the heavy container slide silently off, over the edge of the balcony and down into the next bruise-dark layer of clouds, far below.
They all floated over the edge and waited until the coffin disappeared, a tiny black speck vanishing into the darkly purple wastes.
“Great-cousin of mine, diving deep, got hit by one of those once,” Y’sul said thoughtfully. “Never knew what hit him. Stone dead.”
The others were looking at him.
He shrugged. “Well? It’s true.”
Valseir found Fassin in a gallery, looking out at the deep night stream of gas, rushing quietly in infrared as the Isaut powered its way to who knew where.
“Fassin.”
“Valseir. Are we free to leave yet?”
“Not that I’ve heard. Not yet.”
They watched the night flow round them together for a while. Fassin had spent time earlier looking at reports on the storm battle, from both sides. The Dwellers had high-selectivity visuals which made it look like the Dreadnoughts had won the day, not the Isaut. The little he’d got from the Mercatoria’s nets just gave dark hints that an entire fleet was missing, and included no visuals at all. Unseen was pretty much unheard-of. It appeared that everybody had instantly assumed there was some vast cover-up going on. Both sides were downplaying like crazy, implying that some terrible misunderstanding had taken place and they’d both suffered appallingly heavy losses, which was, when Fassin thought about it, somewhere between half and three-quarters true, and hence closer to reality than might have been expected in the circumstances.
“So what did happen to this folder?” Fassin asked. “If there was a folder.”
“There was and is a folder, Fassin,” Valseir told him. “Iheld on to it for a long time but eventually, twenty-one, twenty-three years ago, I gave it to my colleague and good friend Leisicrofe. He was departing on a research trip.”
“Has he returned?”
“No.”
“When will he?”
“Should he return, he won’t have the data.”
“Where will it be?”
“Wherever he left it. I don’t know.”
“How do I find your friend Leisicrofe?”
“You’ll have to follow him. That will not be so easy. You will need help.”
“I have Y’sul. He’s always arranged—”
“You will need rather more than he can provide.”
Fassin looked at the old Dweller. “Off-planet? Is that what you mean?”
“Somewhat,” Valseir said, not looking at him, gazing out at the onward surge of night.
“Then who should I approach for this help?”
“I’ve already taken the liberty.”
“You have? That’s very kind.”
Valseir was silent for a while, then said, “None of this is about kindness, Fassin.” He turned to look directly at the arrowhead. “Nobody in their right mind would ever want to be involved with something as momentous as this. If the slightest part of what you’re looking for has any basis in reality, it could change everything for all of us. I am Dweller. My species has made a good, long — if selfish — life for itself, spread everywhere, amongst the stars. We do not appreciate change on the scale we are here talking about. I’m not sure that any species would. Some of us will do anything to avoid such change, to keep things just as they are.
“You have to realise, Fassin; we are not a monoculture, we are not at all perfectly homogenised. We are differentiated in ways that even now, after all your exposure to us, you can scarcely begin to comprehend. There are things within our own worlds almost entirely hidden from most of us, and there are deep and profound differences of opinion between factions amongst us, just as there are between the Quick.”
Factions, thought Fassin.
Valseir went on, “Not all of us are quite so studiedly indifferent to events taking place within the greater galaxy as we generally contrive to appear. There are those of us who, without ever wanting to know the full details of your mission, in fact knowing that they’d be unable to square knowledge of its substance with their species loyalty, would help you nevertheless. Others… others would kill you instantly if they even began to guess what it was you’re looking for.” The old Dweller floated over, came close to a kiss-whisper as he said, — And believe it or not, Fassin Taak, Drunisine is of the former camp, while your friend Setstyin is of the latter.
Fassin pulled away to look at the old Dweller, who added, -Truly.
After a few more moments, Fassin asked, “When will I be able to follow your friend Leisicrofe?”
“I think you’ll know one way or the other before the night is out. And if we both don’t at least begin to follow Leisicrofe, we may both follow your Colonel Hatherence.”
Fassin thought this sounded a little melodramatic. “Truly?” he asked, signalling amusement.
“Oh, truly, Fassin,” Valseir said, signalling nothing. “Let me repeat: none of this is about kindness.”
* * *
Saluus Kehar was not happy. He had his own people in certain places, his own ways of finding things out, his own secure and reliable channels of intelligence quite independent of the media and the official agencies — you didn’t become and stay a major military supplier unless you did — and he knew about as well as anybody did what had happened during the disastrous Nasqueron raid, and it was simply unjust to blame him or his firm.
For one thing, they’d been betrayed, or their intelligence or signals had been compromised, or at the very least they’d been out-thought (by Dwellers!). And because of that failing — which was unquestionably nothing to do with him — they’d been ambushed and out-outnumbered. Dozens of those heretofore un-fucking-heard-of super-Dreadnought ships had turned up when the incursionary force had been expecting no more than a handful — at most — of the standard ones, the models without the reactive mirror armour, the plasma engines and the wideband lasers. Plus the Dwellers had simply done a very good job of lying over the years — years? Aeons — presenting themselves as hopeless bumblers and technological incompetents when in fact — even if they couldn’t build anything very impressive from scratch any more — they still had access to weaponry of serious lethality.