This was a much less boring task than strolling along at a few per cent of its own highest velocity while the Ronte squadron made full speed — for them — to Gzilt.
Scoaliera Tefwe woke slowly, as she had woken slowly a few dozen times, over the intervening centuries.
Only it wasn’t really waking slowly; she was being woken.
All dark at first. Stillness and silence too, and yet the sensation that things were happening nearby, and inside her head and body; organs and systems and faculties being woken, revived, checked, primed, readied.
It was at once reassuring and somehow disappointing. Here we go again, she thought. She opened her eyes.
The word SIMULATION, which was what she expected to see first, albeit briefly, wasn’t there. She blinked, looked around.
She was floating in some sort of suspensor field, in air, in a human or humanoid body dressed in some clingy but lightly puffed cover-all which left only her feet, hands and head exposed. She was at forty-five degrees to the floor, looking down. A tiny, sleek ship drone — so tiny and sleek it might have passed for a knife missile — was at eye-level, looking at her. The room around her appeared to be medical unit standard.
“Ms Tefwe?” the drone said. She was being tipped slowly backwards to an upright position, and lowered towards the deck.
She cleared her throat. “Reporting,” she said, remembering the earlier simulated conversation with the You Call This Clean? Where she was now would be under the control of either a cooperative Hub Mind or a Special Circumstances ex-Psychopath-class Very Fast Picket. From the look of the drone, she was guessing the latter.
“Welcome aboard the VFP Outstanding Contribution To The Historical Process,” the drone said, confirming her guess just as her feet met the deck. She felt her weight transfer to the soles of her feet, through the gently squashed flesh to her bones, her body. Whatever field had been supporting her ebbed away and she felt planted, properly re-embodied.
“Reverser field, please,” she said. One sprang up in front of her, between her and the drone. She looked like her old self; precisely so. “Thank you.” The field vanished.
The little drone said, “We are entering the outskirts of the Angemar’s Prime system, en route for Dibaldipen Orbital. Would you care to specify a particular plate on the Orbital?”
“Honn plate,” she told it.
“Honn. Course adjusted. Is there anything else you require?”
“Breakfast.”
“Being prepared; your specified waking default.”
“Thank you. Please call ahead to Xunpum Livery, Chyan’tya, Honn, and reserve a mount. An aphore, for an open-ended, minimum four-day hire. Assure them I am suitably experienced with such animals but kindly do not reveal my identity.”
The little drone suddenly developed an aura field, turning a crisp blue-grey. “A mount? An animal?” it said. “Four days? I had rather envisaged Displacing you at sub-millimetre accuracy, precisely where you want to go.”
Tefwe rose and fell on the balls of her feet, flexed her hands into fists and relaxed again. “I’m sure,” she said. “However the person I’m going to see is something of a stickler in such matters. Certain standards have to be maintained, designated procedures adhered to. I am far from being guaranteed an audience at all; if I don’t turn up looking like I’ve been travelling for a while I am almost certain to be ignored.”
The little drone was silent for a moment, then said, “Couldn’t you just pretend?”
“No. And I’ll be honest; could be five days. Maybe more. Four days is just the travelling time.”
“I was under the impression that the whole point of this exercise was to expedite matters as swiftly as possible.”
“It is. What would be the journey time from the present location of the Blue-class LSV You Call This Clean? to Dibaldipen Orbital by the fastest Very Fast Picket?”
“Approximately one hundred and thirty-two days.”
“Well, there you are then.”
“But once you’ve seen the person, you could come straight back with the information you require, or simply transmit it to be passed on to any subsequent re-embodiment. In any event, there would be no need to return slowly.”
“In theory. In practice the person concerned might check up on the manner of my return, become upset and refuse to see me on any subsequent occasion.”
“Would any subsequent occasion on which you might wish to visit this person plausibly carry the same moral weight or general significance as the present one, in which it has been judged worth effectively putting the entire Fast Picket fleet at your disposal, other commitments allowing?”
“Probably not. Though who can say?”
“Please consider carefully the wisdom of transmitting to me any novel/germane information immediately upon receipt, and returning as rapidly as possible.”
“I will. I take the point that my future relations with the person concerned are of relatively little consequence.”
“The person concerned sounds — to be polite — eccentric.”
“That would be polite to the point of over-generosity,” Tefwe said. “Awkward, tetchy and unreasonable might be closer to the truth.”
“Would the person concerned be an exceptionally old human?”
“No,” Tefwe said, “the person concerned is an exceptionally old drone.”
The ship drone’s aura flashed amused red then disappeared. “I’ll see how that breakfast’s coming along.”
“Followed?”
“Maybe.”
“How maybe?”
“About fourteen per cent maybe, averaged.”
“Averaged from what? What does that even mean?”
“Averaged from different scenarios. In ambient peacetime the likelihood would be less than five per cent. In all-out wartime, closer to forty per cent.”
“How does that average out at fourteen?”
“There are other scenarios to be taken into account,” the avatar told her. “Then there’s weighting.”
Cossont opened her mouth to query that as well, then decided it wasn’t worth it.
“You generally start to react to anything over fifteen per cent,” Berdle said, apparently trying to be helpful.
Pyan made a throat-clearing noise. “Are we in any danger?” it asked.
“A little,” the avatar admitted.
“Then, do you carry lifeboats?”
Berdle looked at Cossont. “Is it being serious?”
“About as serious as it knows how to seem.”
“I was being serious!”
“Be quiet.”
“This is my life too!”
“Shut up!” Cossont looked at Berdle. “Does this change anything?” They were still in the module, sitting on comfortable but ordinary-looking couches. The avatar lounged elegantly.
“It may be best to lose them before we visit Ospin,” Berdle said, “or employ some method to obscure your exact destination, which, of course, I have yet to learn.”
“I’ll tell you when we get there,” Cossont said, feeling oddly guilty. “Shit. When do we get there?” She’d just remembered, alarmingly, that when she’d taken a clipper to get out to Ospin, on the occasion she’d gone there to deposit the glittering grey cube holding QiRia’s mind-state, the voyage had lasted weeks. If it took that long this time the Subliming would already have happened by the time they got there.
“In about eighty-five hours. Less if we hurry.”
“Why don’t we hurry?”
“Because to do so will damage my engines. They are still repairing themselves after my dash to Izenion.”