∞
xUe Mistake Not…
oGSV Contents May Differ
Right. What?… Oh; the stuff from the You Call This Clean?… Okay. The memories were in his eyes and they’ve been removed. How severe with himself. Just as well we successfully retrieved Mr Q’s mind-state, then. At no small risk to life and limb, I might add.
∞
Congratulations. With what result?
∞
Just about to find out…
Cossont felt sleepy, sore, elated, all at once. Her pain-management systems were telling her to move gently, slowly, with no sudden movements. She would be bathing rather than showering, she had already decided, but first, the ship had insisted, they needed to talk to the stored mind-state inside the silvery grey cube.
The Mistake Not… was powering away from the Ospin system on a wildly erratic course, having decided — after its jinking, ducking and diving, field-to-field tussle with the Gzilt ship — that it was the faster. So far at least, the Gzilt vessel had shown no sign of following.
Cossont sat down in the lounge area of the shuttle that had become her home over the last few days, clad only in the eSuit with its hands and feet components retracted to cuffs again and the helmet collapsed back into its necklace form. Pyan had gone ooh and ah over her and wrapped itself round her neck, rubbing gently at her bruised skin. Berdle, back to looking like a handsome Gzilt male again, entirely gave the impression he’d just strolled out of a grooming parlour; not a hint of tiredness or a hair out of place.
“You have been in the wars, you poor thing,” Pyan told Cossont, wrapping itself tighter.
“Yes. No need to throttle me.”
“Apologies. There. And where is that silly android?”
“We had to leave him behind,” Cossont said, glancing at Berdle as she extracted the silver-grey cube from the battered shoulder bag. “Under a wrecked elevator car at the bottom of a lift shaft.”
“The Gzilt ship disloc’d him aboard itself,” Berdle said. “It took Colonel Agansu too.”
“Were they both still alive?” Cossont asked.
“I think Agansu was,” the avatar said.
“Not Parinherm?”
“No.” Berdle shook his head, held Cossont’s gaze until she looked away.
She put the silvery cube on the low table in front of her, then reached out, touched it on.
“Ngaroe?” she asked.
“Ms Cossont,” QiRia’s voice said immediately.
Cossont realised she had been tense, hunched over the table. She relaxed a little. “Good to speak to you again,” she said, smiling.
“How long has it been? Oh. Quite a few years, I see. And are we on… a Culture ship?”
Cossont wasn’t sure what to say. She glanced at Berdle, who shrugged, unhelpfully.
“Yes,” she said. “Umm… I didn’t realise you could…”
“I’m not completely without senses in here,” QiRia’s voice said. “I may only be switched on for fractions of an hour at a time, but I can tell roughly what my circumstances are, how much time has elapsed since I was last activated, and I have sufficient appreciation of the radiative and general sensory ambience of my surroundings to tell when I am, for example, on a ship.”
“We were on a ship the last time we spoke,” Cossont said.
“I know. So what? Hardly remarkable. But this is a Culture ship; a GCU or a warship or something similar. That is remarkable. So I remarked upon it. That it? We done? You going to shut me off for another sixteen years?”
“No, no,” Cossont said quickly. “Sorry. Very sorry. But… look. We need to ask you something.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“Hello, Mr QiRia,” Berdle said pleasantly. “My name is Berdle. I’m the avatar of the ship you’re on, the Mistake Not… Pleased to meet you.”
“Yes. Delighted. You sound stressed, by the way, Cossont.”
“Do I? Well, it’s been—”
“Yes. That’s why I said it,” the voice said, with only a touch of acid. “Berdle, I’d like to interface. May I see through your eyes, or some other visual sensor immediately hereabouts?”
“Be my guest,” Berdle said, and looked first at Cossont, then in a steady sweep round the rest of the lounge.
“Cossont! You have four arms,” QiRia’s voice said.
“To play the elevenstring,” she said.
“Ah. You weren’t put off playing it by the Warm, Considering after all. Good for you. So; what is it you want to know?”
She took a deep breath. “Ngaroe, we need to ask you something about… long ago. Going right back. It is… it’s very important. It might affect how the Subliming goes. Our Subliming. The Gzilt Subliming.” She took another deep breath. “There was a message, a signal from the Zihdren, saying that the Book of Truth might all be a lie, and you were mentioned as—”
“Wait, wait, wait,” QiRia’s voice said. Cossont fell silent. “How far back? Are you asking me to remember things from—”
“The time of the conference that set up the Culture, sir,” Berdle said.
“Ah,” QiRia’s voice said. “That far back. Can’t help you.”
“What?” Cossont said. She and the avatar exchanged looks.
“I said,” the voice from the cube told them, slowly, “that I cannot help you. My memories only go back to… about seventy years standard after that time. The memories in here begin at midnight on the 44th of Pereid, 8023, Koweyn calendar. Before that, I’ve nothing.”
“Seriously?” Cossont said. She could hear her own voice start to rise in tone and volume. “You’re missing—?”
“Must ask you to check, sir,” Berdle said, in a pained voice.
“Check for yourself. You’re a ship; you’ll have the ability. I’m giving you permission. I’m not a biological, not in here, so take a look for yourself. Scan all the data in this cube. Go on; feel free.”
“You’re sure?” the avatar said. He looked at Cossont, who found it was her turn to shrug.
“Yes!” QiRia’s voice said sharply.
Berdle sighed. He smiled at Cossont. “This might take a moment,” the avatar told her.
She sat back slumped in the seat, rubbed her face with two of her hands. She sighed heavily. “Take all the—”
“Ah,” Berdle said, sounding resigned. He looked at Cossont. “I’m afraid it’s just as Mr QiRia’s mind-state has claimed.”
“Told you,” the voice from the cube said.
“The memories aren’t there?” Cossont felt suddenly tired, full of aches, and depressed.
“I’m afraid not,” Berdle told her. “And even the memories of the times when Mr QiRia thought back to those times, before the source memories were edited out, have been expunged, too.” Berdle looked at the cube. “That’s quite a thorough job, Mr QiRia.”
“Sounds like it,” the voice agreed.
Berdle smiled faintly, shook his head as he said, “Would you have any idea why you—?”
“No. None at all. Guess I must have thought I had something to hide. If so, glad I’ve done a good job of it, or made sure somebody else did.”
Cossont was sitting, looking deflated, eyes closed, shaking her head gently. “They can’t just have gone,” she said, as though to herself. “They can’t just have gone.” She looked at Berdle. “What now? Can we look for… the real QiRia, for the old guy himself? He might… he should still know.” She shook her head again. “Shouldn’t he?”
“We’ve already tried that,” the avatar told her. “They found him, but he’d had the memories encoded site-specific in his body, and then had those sites removed.”