“Count down that time, would you, Uhtryn?” he asked the arbite. “What do we have from the Girdlecity?”
“Eight seconds. Screen just coming in.” As the combat arbite spoke the words, a virtual screen appeared in front of Agansu, showing, from above, an elegant piazza with a small Culture craft sitting on it and two people walking away from it. “Two people: male unidentified, female… Cossont, Vyr. Lieutenant Commander reserve, the Fourteenth. Seven. Additionaclass="underline" mattiform familiar or pet present, wrapped round the female’s neck.”
“Where did they go?”
“As projected, the airship Equatorial 353. It has shielding making it impossible to surveille from outside. They spent twenty-two minutes inside. Six. Additionaclass="underline" male figure negative bio. Likely avatar, type unclear. Probing resistant without sensorial aggression.”
Colonel Agansu watched the tiny Culture ship rise towards space, seemingly almost straight at him. Of course, he was not really exposed to the void; he was floating instead within his virtual environment, deep inside the 7*Uagren. He spent most of his time here now, revved up to maximum speed, absorbed by the utterly fascinating view of space ahead and around, as enhanced by the ship’s sensor arrays. The full radiation spectrum was signified by textures implicit in the spread of colours, information in every form leapt out when you inspected something, and vectors and relative speeds were displayed around every object.
When not gazing out, fascinated, at this, the colonel dived deeper into the data reservoirs, trying to find and match up any details of relevance to the mission. This contributed relatively little in absolute terms to the efforts the ship’s own subsidiary AIs and virtual-crew data-mining specialists and their sub-routines were making, but it was still worthwhile additional work, and had the effect of continually reinforcing his own understanding.
He spent little time genuinely in his own body now, conscious of lying on the couch beside the combat arbite, buried deep in the ship. He was still aware that his physical body resided there and was being looked after — fed, evacuated, made to twitch so that his muscles did not start to atrophy — but he really lived in this virtual environment now; he felt cleaner and more pure in here, somehow, and quicker (though still so much slower than the ship crew!). The combat arbite Uhtryn had begun to help him.
“Colonel,” the captain of the Uagren communicated, “that Culture ship’s getting ready to head off. We need to decide whether we’re going to keep on following or not.”
“Who might be—?”
“Five,” Uhtryn said.
“—on the airship?”
“It is the location for a long-term celebration,” the arbite told him. “No known participants known to be known to the female.”
“Spool up, Captain,” Agansu said. “Make us ready to go.”
“Spooling up.”
“Everything on the female?”
“Musician,” Uhtryn said. “Classed resident of Girdlecity, Xown, Section Kwaalon Greater Without 3004/396. Absent from residence for the past six nights. Four. Girdlecity systems unable to provide more data on recent whereabouts. Female’s mother is Warib—”
“Any sign they picked anything up from the airship?”
“No. Additionaclass="underline" data from Girdlecity interior accessed. Screen, audio.” The same couple were visible from some distance away, standing on a long balcony set into the side of a messily accoutred and barely moving red airship. They were talking to somebody with an odd-looking face and wearing a strange combination of semi-military clothing. A hissy, slightly phased version of a woman’s voice said, “We’d… to talk to The Master of… Revels…” There was another word a little later, but it was too faint to catch. “Three.”
“Improve on that final word she says?”
“Already fully processed; unable to improve. Data AIs indicate hypothesised title ‘The Master of the Revels’ probably refers to one Ximenyr, artist, nominal spokesperson for ‘The Last Party’ as long-term celebration known.”
Agansu had to decide what to do: follow the Culture ship or investigate where the avatar and the female had gone and who they might have seen. In theory both could be accomplished, but only if he entrusted one of the tasks to somebody else, and he was loath to do this. He might go down to the planet himself and investigate this Master of the Revels fellow while the combat arbite stayed with the Uagren, or he might stay with the ship as it continued to follow the Culture vessel and delegate the on-planet job to some other entity from the ship — as well as the various different types of combat and other arbites, it held androids capable of passing for bio, all fully programmable.
He wanted to do both at once. He wanted to be in two places at once. In theory this was possible, in a way, using mind-state recording and transcription technology and one of the more specialised androids at the ship’s disposal; he could replicate himself, putting his consciousness into the machine… but he didn’t like the idea — never had — and felt that it constituted a security risk as well; with every copying event, more than one person — one entity, at least — suddenly knew what only he was supposed to know.
Or he could leave a copy of himself on board the ship, perhaps even one living and thinking at the same speed as the virtual crew, while he — this physical body — removed itself from its haven, its little kernel-space in the heart of the ship, and took a small craft down to the surface of the world below.
“Two,” said the combat arbite.
The Culture ship had appeared to be heading somewhere quite different when it had suddenly veered off-course and crash-stopped here at Xown. It had been impossible to tell exactly where it had been heading — ships rarely just flew straight for their destination, choosing to introduce long, random curves into their courses, just to frustrate anybody trying to work out where they were going. It meant they travelled a few per cent further than they would have done taking a perfectly direct route, but it was usually judged to be worth the time penalty.
The Uagren too had had to make an unexpected crash-stop, the very violence of which might have betrayed its presence to the Culture ship. The crew thought they had got away with it, but there was no way to be sure yet.
“One.”
“Captain, you have my mind-state mapped?”
“Yes.”
“Implant it into one of the bio-plausible androids forthwith and send it down to the planet. Have it walk a little way ahead of the airship, ready to board it on our future signal. Leave a liaise instruction with the local authorities and keep the android updated with—”
“Ze—”
“Stand down. There will be no need to attack or disable the Culture craft.”
“It has left the—” the arbite started to say, then paused. “It is gone; it has been Displaced.”
“Woh,” the disloc officer said. “Look at those distances. Heavy duty.”
“Ship moving off, fast,” the navigation officer said.
“As I was saying; leave a liaise instruction with the local authorities and keep the android updated with all relevant information.”
“Faster than it was.” The captain sounded worried. “Can we stay with that?”
“Marginal,” the drives officer said.
“Random spiralling,” the targeting officer said. “Maybe it did see us.”
“The android mind-state imprinting is not instant,” the external-tech officer told Agansu. “Eighty seconds required from now to disloc for imprint and ready-body.”