He remembered days of jogging and walking, climbing steps and ramps, descending steps and ramps, in filtered daylight and lamplight and ghostly sat-light and no light, the airship filling his view ahead or a presence at his back or a steady shape at one side or the other or above him or through gratings beneath him as he paced. Sometimes fireworks, lasers and holographic images burst from, lanced out, or enveloped/preceded/trailed the airship, especially at night, and sometimes loud music could be heard playing. Floodlights and running lights lit it every night. Sometimes when he ran behind and above it he could smell food and fumes and detect the spoor of bio-drugs.
He recalled the feeling of being swaddled and protected, within the 7*Uagren, and remembered talking to the avatar of the Culture ship, and thinking that he had the creature and Vyr Cossont where he wanted them, at his mercy… then hurtling broken and screaming down the lift shaft, like a burned insect falling flaming down a tall chimney. He remembered lying broken and burned and taken apart within the ship again, then beginning to be made whole again, while he contemplated how close to death he had come and how the prospect of oblivion within the Subliming had started to seem less terrifying.
Two sets of memories had been formed at the same time, but this made no difference either.
The ground liaison craft carried little weaponry and was only able to equip him with a kin-ex side-arm, but that would not matter for too long. The android body had what was effectively a laser carbine embedded in each forearm, the beams exiting through a skin-disguised muzzle in the heel of each hand.
He jumped easily, seemingly lightly, from the lowered door of the stealth-black craft, then — as it closed itself, flipped over and powered off down the fifty-metre-diameter tunnel — he turned and jogged down a broad, cross-corridor of soaring lattice girders and overarching pipes that led directly to the giant basket-weave of tunnel where the Equatorial 353 moved. There was an area of open balcony deck ahead. The airship would be just about to pass it by the time he got there.
The 8*Churkun established contact.
~Colonel Agansu.
~In translation, yes.
~I am captain of the 8*Churkun. The marshal sends regards.
~Please thank the marshal.
~We have completed the scour of Culture devices from the immediate volume and beyond, though a vessel — I would guess the Culture ship that you encountered at Ospin — is approaching. It was slowing but is now re-accelerating. We are going to attempt to intercept or disrupt any attempt it makes to disloc materiel or personnel into or near the Girdlecity; however, we cannot be certain of success.
~It would help to know the intended location of any such attempted disloc, to help confirm the nature of enemy intentions, Agansu sent, approaching the great open balcony that gave out onto the tunnel which held the approaching airship.
~That is entirely compatible with our own intentions. We’ll let you know where any disloc was targeted, whether successful or not.
~Thank you.
There were people ahead. The spaces around the airship Equatorial 353 had been becoming more populated over the days he had been keeping pace with it. Ground vehicles rumbled slowly past ahead on a broad roadway; they were gaudy, booming with music. Across the gulf of the tunnel he could see a train, trundling, keeping pace, searchlights on it pointing back at the airship, flicking slowly off and on again as they passed behind supporting struts. A smaller airship, like a tiny white cloud made solid, appeared from a side tunnel and drew slowly ahead of the Equatorial 353, scattering clouds of sparkling, coloured dust which a rear-facing laser lit up in gyrating abstract patterns.
The skin of the Equatorial 353 exhibited a series of large moving images, as though projected onto its smooth curvature. There appeared to be seven or eight of these distorted displays covering the airship’s surface at any one time. Some of the photographs were stills, most moved, and they sometimes fused together to provide larger images. Some appeared only to make any sort of sense considering the airship as a whole, in other words imagining the form of the display on the other side of the craft. The most common themes appeared to be records of earlier art installations aboard the craft over the last few years, nature in the form of plants and animals, historical and presently existing forms of transport, and pornography.
~We carry four sixty-four-unit platoons of marine combat arbites, the 8*Churkun’s captain told him. ~They are at your disposal, Colonel. Shall I have my tactical engagements officer ready some or all of them for deployment?
~Please do.
He had to push through a small parade of people — dressed in motley, many dancing as they moved, some singing, some chanting — to get to the edge of the space where the balcony gave out onto the open tunnel of curving ribs and spiralling pipes. There he found the Equatorial 353, filling the monstrous tube like a comically slow shell in the biggest, least efficient gun ever made.
Then Colonel Agansu had a sudden, literal flash of memory, and remembered the magnified shadow of his own suited form being thrown out across the elevator shaft within the Incast facility on Bokri as the combat arbite Uhtryn, behind him, was dissolved in a pointillist spray of tiny, fierce anti-matter explosions, blasting a blindingly intense sleet of radiation past him, through him.
~How many of the combat arbites do you need, Colonel?
A chorus of beeps, trills, clangs and musical phrases — followed by some cheers and the start of a fireworks display from the top of the giant airship — announced that it was midnight on Zyse, and the Instigation was only two days away.
~All of them.
Twenty-one
(S -2)
“Because you’re liable to get killed.”
“That doesn’t seem to be stopping you.”
“Of course not. I’m an avatar. ‘Killed’ doesn’t even mean the same thing for me. You’re a bio; I’ve seen how you guys die and it’s messy.”
“I meant as the ship. The Mistake Not… You’re liable to get killed. Aren’t you?”
“A slightly more weighty consideration, I accept, but even then; I’ve already transmitted my mind-state to my home GSV and switched to full combat readiness, so I’m kind of ready for death. And anyway, not dead yet.”
“This is my fight, though, isn’t it? More than yours?”
Berdle sighed. “This is about the Gzilt, but the Culture appears to be all mixed up in it, through QiRia, so it’s our problem to sort out.”
“It’s still basically about us. You can’t do everything. You’re not our… parent.”
“You’re not even backed-up, Cossont. If you die, you die.”
“Can’t you back me up?”
“No.”
She had a sudden thought. “Did you back-up QiRia, his mind-state from the grey cube?”
“Yes. Also transmitted, with a note it’s private and to be wiped if the original survives.”
She frowned. “Why can’t you back me up?”
“You’ve no neural lace; even starting right now it would take far too long. We’re already out of time.” Berdle waved his hands, as though exasperated. “Why are you so keen to risk your life anyway? You’re a military reservist civilian facing Subliming in a couple of days; why the rush to die? And, I’m telling you: having you present will make my job harder, not easier. You won’t be contributing, you’ll be jeopardising.”