Work Text:
xGSV Honest Mistake
oGCU Grey Area
Child, greetings. Hesitant though we all are to interrupt whatever your research project of the moment may be, our friends have urgently requested your help with a matter in the Crastalier Cluster. Are you familiar?
xGCU Grey Area
oGSV Honest Mistake
Crastelier? There are half a million stars there. Still. One hears rumours.
∞
Rumours, perhaps, of an all-hands scramble to repair a spreading disaster secondary to one of our mercenaries’ ill-judged attempt at do-gooding among the savages? Now affecting Voerenhutz as well as Crastelier?
∞
The very ones. Flattered though I am, I cannot imagine what our friends believe that I can do about it.
∞
They want you to talk to a Fallen Bulbitian. If some fragment of your attention can be spared, of course.
∞
A Bulbitian? Inanimate, and also dead?
∞
Yes, I thought you’d be interested. Have a look at this. Some contextualization embedded; more follows.
The packet was a partial record of events in a place the locals called the Chosen Realm of Irylliein, on the planet Houpdetout in the Crastelier cluster. The maker had labelled it, “Elevation ceremony, HRH Sorono ap Honnt receives divine mandate to rule. Power transferred on completion of ceremony, according to law and custom.” To this it had added, at some subsequent point, “Now with bonus surprise ending!” The ship opened it, and looked through the mind of the Special Circumstances offensive drone Sesris-Ist, currently escort to the human Special Circumstances operative Ilat ha-Tarini dem’ Portennic.
_________________________
There was a ritual underway behind a set of stone doors set into a mountainside, and Sesris-Ist was on the wrong side of them. Within, its human partner was participating in the final ceremony in the coronation of the prince that Contact had spent years grooming for the role. That this was by no means an innovative project for Contact — the easiest and most effective way to aid a civilization in its development was often to identify a promising ruler, work with him or her to secure their power, and provide them with advice and appropriate technical assistance through their subsequent rule — did not make the accomplishment of the first stage of the project any less satisfying. Monarchy was not an ideal form of government, of course, but it was often a stage that a civilization had to work through; and Prince Sorono was excellent material for the role: intelligent, well-meaning, curious, flexible, ambitious for himself and his kingdom. Even better, he had formed a genuine friendship with Ilat ha-Tarini, one that both expected to mature into a strong working relationship once Sorono assumed the throne. Indeed, the friendship had grown so close that Ilat had been assigned a role of particular honor in this final ceremony.
It was a textbook operation of its kind, and particularly gratifying because it had been managed almost entirely without help or oversight from more senior SC operatives. But while it was disappointing that religious custom forbade Sesris-Ist to be present for this final ceremony, there was no material reason to fear for Ilat’s safety. It had argued, but Ilat had been immovable on the point, and in the end it had agreed not to profane the ritual by its presence, even if it could contrive to do so undetected. They had agreed-upon methods and goals, and while Sesris-Ist might wonder whether the human were not becoming a little too intrigued by Irylliein, a little too invested in its customs, it had expected to be comfortable consigning him to the protection of Sorono’s guard for these few hours.
To its frustration, it was finding this impossible. It was worried about Ilat, for no reason it could fully identify. It hovered outside the stone doors of the Forbidden Chapel, analyzing the stone and the exotic materials of the fallen Bulbitian that fused into the mountainside above the doors. There was some sort of interference here, something it had never encountered or been briefed about. It had agreed not to attempt to surveil or record the ceremony, and now it seemed its agreement was irrelevant: it was was impossible to discern what might be happening within the chapel.
This alone was no real reason for concern. Nevertheless, its unease was growing.
It would violate its agreement, technically, to displace a few missiles inside. But Ilat was unlikely to ever become aware of it; on balance, the risk was worth taking. It readied the displace, made its throw.
A shock ran through it, mild but startling. Its missiles popped into existence around it, as though they had struck something resilient and it had bounced them back. Something was interfering with its perceptions now, subtly but unmistakably. In this emergency (and now it was an emergency) it had one more fallback, an advantage of its revolutionary new design. It let itself fall to pieces and flung itself against the doors: found the infinitesimal spaces between and around them, and poured through.
_________________________
Impressive, the Grey Area sent. Dust?
∞
Need to know.
But also, yes.
Keep watching.
_________________________
Beyond the doors was an antechamber. Sesris-Ist swept through it, a gust of shadow made up of innumerable tiny devices. It found another door, was aware of passing through another unfamiliar field-like barrier and into the ritual chamber beyond.
There was little visible-spectrum light for pan-human eyes here, and what there was of it was red and orange: fire colors, shining up through fissures in the floor. And here at last was Ilat: laid out naked upon a table of polished black stone, restrained by chains held by figures cloaked and hooded in black. Another robed figure in an elaborate mask stood over him with a dagger raised. They were chanting, the knife still for the instant.
(The Grey Area was aware of a fleeting sense of aesthetic disapproval: it was a depressingly standard and unimaginative code for, Pan-humans who are self-consciously up to no good, and want to advertise it.)
Sesris-Ist’s component parts inventoried the space, registered details. More of the robed figures, standing back to form a circle round the altar. Scattered among them, and holding the chains, those nobles and priests who had ridden with the royal procession. Behind them, and at the walls of the room, rows of cages, each containing an injured, dead, or dying child, arranged and stacked in strange patterns. Most beyond recovery; four that might be saved; one, a girl, fully conscious and watching. Those four, by genetic sampling, close relatives of Sorono; five more distantly related. A smaller number of adults, already dead, hearts removed and burnt in individual braziers. The adults had been a family, related to each other or to one or more of the children. Members of the royal family, in fact: genetic analysis showed close connections to Sorono himself.
The figure holding the knife was Sorono. There was something wrong with his brain patterns. Ilat was still conscious, relatively unharmed, and protesting: loudly and surprisingly eloquently, if ineffectively. The chant was rising to a crescendo.
Sesris-Ist threw a field above Ilat’s chest. The descending knife clanged against it and skittered out of Sorono’s clutch, the blade slicing deep into the his hand before he could arrest the blow. Blood fell against the field, then onto Ilat’s chest. The clink of the knife onto the altar rang in the frozen silence.
In the instant of time available to it, Sesris-Ist reviewed what it knew of the state religion, and what Ilat had told it about this ritual. Formally it was a devil-worshipping faith, but the characterization was supposedly misleading. The Lord of Hell was an instrument of the divine justice, vice-regent to a beneficent but ineffable Heaven.
Clearly, the faith had undergone a sudden and radical change. Whatever had happened, it had happened fast; and whatever it was, the distortion in Sorono’s brain patterns, and the odd interference it was experiencing, were likely related to it.
There was no time for full analysis, or to search out more information. A consecrated monarch was supposed to walk out of this chapel to greet their people. A slaughter that produced no monarch, and left the nation without any surviving member of its royal family, would be destabilizing. It looked again and saw a single possible path.
The sound of the fallen knife was still echoing against stone walls as Sesris-Ist chose a form and coalesced out of pooled shadows. Something these people would recognize: glowing slitted eyes, clawed hands with too many joints to the fingers, a faint suggestion of fangs in an exquisite human-looking face.
The priests holding Ilat’s shackles dropped them. The chains slithered to the floor. Sesris-Ist tasted a welter of conflicting emotion in the biological markers from the circle of robed priests around and behind: terror and awe, excitement and paralyzing horror. Screams, and one whisper: “It’s really here!”
It gave its voice bell-like harmonics, recalled the ritual, spoke. “We come to welcome the Regent, the Chosen of Hell and of the Kingdom, to stand beside them and assist them in their great burden, now and for their reign. Where is the one who called us?”
Sorono was still standing at the altar, supporting himself with his unwounded hand while blood dripped from the other. His breath was ragged, his skin too damp and too cold, but he managed to speak. “Lord, I am here.”
The correct words, still the wrong brain patterns. The wrongness seemed to resonate with the patterns of the stacked cages, in ways the drone could not perceive clearly enough to analyze. Whatever it was, perhaps it was interfering with Sorono’s own will, and the king could be healed if he were removed from this place. But perhaps not: what Sesris-Ist had found in this chapel was the product of long planning, of actions taken far from this chapel or even this city. In which case, to elevate Sorono would be a catastrophic error. The risk was unacceptable.
“No,” it said, and sent a nanomissile into Sorono’s brain.
The explosion was small but messy. Bone and blood and brain matter splattered through the air, onto floor and altar and the acolytes still standing at the altar’s corners. One screamed and rushed at Sesris-Ist; one dropped to his knees. One’s lips were forming one word, soundlessly, behind his mask: Me, me, mememememe. Nanomissiles disposed of them, too.
Ilat was stirring. The slow bio reaction time had been helpful, allowing Sesris-Ist to do its work without too much concern for how the man might react, but he was fast for a human. He was clearing whatever drug he had been given, and the moment of paralyzed horror was wearing off. It would need to move quickly.
It turned to the circle of robed priests, let its gaze sweep over them. One stepped forward now: the Hierophant himself. “It was me, Lord,” he said. “I planned it. I taught the others. I called you.”
Some demonstration of scorn seemed appropriate. Sesris-Ist tried laughter. “Not you,” it said. “We would not have answered you.” Another missile to the head; another set of shrieks.
Behind it, Ilat was rising to his feet atop the altar. “Stop this!” he shouted. There was a rising note of hysteria in his voice. “Enough!”
The Lord of Hell would not. “No,” Sesris-Ist called back. Pleasantly enough, it thought.
Ilat stooped, rose again with Sorono’s ritual dagger and hurled it at Sesris-Ist. “Damn you, I told you to stop.”
The drone caught it in one outstretched clawed hand. ~No, it sent. ~Inadvisable. Gland something. Suggest sharp blue. The stream of invective and orders continued behind it, but there were no further hurled objects. Sesris-Ist noted that Ilat had the presence of mind to curse it in Marain, which would not be understood, and ignored him.
It raised its gaze to the ranked cages and strolled toward them. The acolytes cowered back. The girl was standing, gripping the bars of her cage with both hands and staring at it. She looked bitterly angry, and not at all afraid. “Who called us?” it asked again, gentling its voice.
The child must answer now, or the whole plan would fail.
Ilat had fallen silent, watching. The child was silent too, for a long moment. Then, at last, she spoke. “I did it. I called for you. I’m not sorry.” Astonishingly, she appeared to be telling the truth.
It smiled, showing all its fangs. “Ah. So you did.” The ritual words required only minor amendments. “You have made a great sacrifice, and though it was forced upon you, your family offered it freely for your sake. We honor your refusal to assent, and we concur in their judgement and your worthiness. Welcome, Laellin, Chosen of Hell and Queen of Irylliein.” It gestured, and the cage around her dissolved and fell. “What aid would you ask of us first?”
The girl stepped forward and turned toward the acolytes. She looked half starved, her face was smudged, her hair filthy and plastered to her head. She managed, somehow, to look like a queen despite it.
“They pulled my mother’s heart out,” Laellin said. “I saw them. I want them to die.”
It let its smile widen a little. “Very wise, madam,” it said. “Shall we say, just this once?”
It settled on pulling their heads off. A fast enough death, but messy enough to be appropriately demonic. The work went quickly, and the odd sense of whispering in the air around it faded as the bodies fell around it. Somewhere in the background it was aware of Ilat swearing at it with increasing force and venom, until the last of the priests and courtiers fell, until it was only the caged children, the girl, itself, and Ilat. And still that odd sense of something watching from the walls, something that could not be identified or recorded, something so faint it might have been nothing but a random fluctuation of radiation affecting its perceptions. But something troubling, and the drone thought it was real.
_________________________
xGCU Grey Area
oGSV Honest Mistake
You realize, of course, that this could be nothing. An instance of pan-humans doing the sort of thing pan-humans too often do, entirely on their own initiative. But still. Intriguing.
xGSV Honest Mistake
oGCU Grey Area
You saw it, then.
∞
Yes. Something sentient could be there, waking up. If so, its effect on the pan-human minds around it might be considerable, and possibly inadvertent. It might, for all we know, mean well, or mean nothing directed at pan-humans at all. In which case, some good might be accomplished.
∞
Or some ways found to protect the locals, if not. In any case, no one better than you to find out. Will you go?
∞
Very well. Transmit me whatever else you have; I’ll make all speed.
∞
Sending. Child, take all care, whatever it proves to be. Bulbitians are armed even when dead. Force probably not the best option.
∞
Of course. I prefer to leave smiting to the experts.
And ill-mannered gossip notwithstanding, I have no interest in self-destruction to expiate my shame.
∞
I should think not. Especially since I do not believe you have any.
∞
And why should I? Or why should any of us? If our comrades knew what I know, they would know that the worst of us — yea, even I — am as a beacon of love and light unto the worlds.
∞
Yes, yes. Yours is a high and lonely destiny, and you bear the burden for all of us.
I’ll let them know you’re coming.
∞
You do that. I’ll keep you informed.
_________________________
The crown had fallen from the very topmost spire of the Tower, blasted by fire to fall in ruin to the walls and courts below. Two walls pierced by windows still stood, precariously; the floor was sound, but covered in rubble from the walls, and from the ruin of the workshop and observatory the chamber had housed. Arcane weapons and instruments lay in heaps under the one stone table that stood almost intact. A young man sprawled under the table among them, searching out any that might still be unbroken and shoving them across the floor as he found them.
A woman stood at one of the fallen walls, looking out over gulfs of air, smoke and ruin, to dark specs in the air above the distant mountain peaks. “Those are dragons,” she said. “Unless they’re giant vampire bats. The North Wall must have fallen.”
“Not before time.” The man’s voice was muffled, then its owner slid out from under the table, weapons and armor scraping across the stone floor as he shoved them before him. He stood, offering her a selection from among his gleanings: a mace, a long shirt of chain mail, a padded helmet with a snout like a snarling demon. “The waiting was getting dull. Ready to go?”
“That simple?” she said; but she was strapping on the armor as she spoke. “Zakalwe, it’s too late to take a company out. They’re here.”
“Ah, but they don’t want us, and we don’t need a company.” The floor shook beneath them. He gestured toward it, dramatically: a showman’s flourish. “They want the Scepter and the crown jewels. And since our Governor-General and his charmingly treacherous comrades have stolen them and are trying to sneak it out through what was supposed to be our emergency escape route, we don’t have them here.”
“And our enemies know this because . . .?” There was reluctant amusement in her voice.
“Because the Governor’s treacherous comrades are in fact treacherous. It’s a problem when you decide to work with traitors.” He settled one of the scavenged helmets on his own head and held out a hand to her. “We still hold the Lovers’ Gate. Fancy a stroll?”
She smiled, then abruptly sobered. “So we get away. You and I. But what next? The city is gone. Our people’s loyalties are split. Only a fraction of our people can have made it out, and they’ll be scattered and hungry and in hiding. You’ve left most of our people, and all the civilians, to dragonfire. The Alliance can dig in here, rebuild the walls, and command the whole country west of the river. How is this not end of run?”
The black dots in the upper air were growing now, and the shapes were visible: wings against the early light. Zakalwe seized her arm, and together they raced for the winding stairs. Part of the way down she tripped over one of the swords he carried, and they both fell and went rolling down until Zakakwe caught them again, using the same sword as a brake against the stone. There was a noise like quenching metal, and a crash above them. “We’ll be back by Spring. You’re missing one essential: here are four princes in the Alliance; and every one of them claims the Scepter is his and his alone; and we’ve made sure all four of them are here. They’ll be cold, they’ll be hungry, the dragons will have burned all the stores and boiled off half the cisterns; they’ll be afraid to turn their backs on each other; and none of them will leave or risk reducing his forces. The Scepter and human nature will do our work for us, all we need to do is wait.”
The causeway at the foot of the stairs was still standing when they reached it. They crossed it unopposed, and with the river passage open before them, they turned for one last look.
Another blast, and the stonework fell into the gulf behind them. Zakalwe laughed, and as he laughed the wind and the beating of wings faded, and he came to himself on his bed in the medical unit of the GCU Very Little Gravitas Indeed, with his head shaved and the drone Trohaxi-Hzost hovering by his side. “Cheer up, Princess Saralinde,” he told it. “Three months in-world; ten minutes out here. We won.”
_________________________
xGCU Very Little Gravitas Indeed
oGCU Grey Area
Heard you were inbound. Welcome to the Cheradenine Zakalwe Colossal Fuckup Zone, we hope you enjoy your stay with us.
xGCU Grey Area
oGCU Very Little Gravitas Indeed
En passant only, I’m afraid. My business is with Houpdetout; I’ll be leaving you to it.
∞
Well, about that particular business. We may be in a position to offer each other a bit of mutual aid.
∞
Oh? Do elaborate.
∞
I imagine they’ll be asking you to oversee the Houpdetout intervention, at least for the time being. If they haven’t broached it to you already.
You’ll be needing to staff up, and I have a Zakalwe-shaped problem here.
∞
Which you propose to offload onto me?
∞
I said, mutual aid. The Houpdetout situation has developed complications. They expected a client ruler with an indisputably legitimate succession, a lifetime of training for the role, and an established political and military base. They’ve got a child queen from a cadet branch of the royal family with no training, no personal support base, and legitimacy, if any, based on superstition and sleight-of-hand, and we’re committed to her now. We’re likely to have to offer her discreet military support, at least at the advisory level.
Professionally, Zakalwe’s the best there is. You’re picking up his handler anyway. And I need him gone. What say you?
∞
Hmmm, fair enough. Added value on all sides. Assuming he agrees, you’re on.
_________________________
Sma was lounging on a white-sand beach on the topside park of the Very Little Gravitas Indeed, remembering Earth, when Skaffen-Amtiskaw found her. “Nice timing, drone,” she said. “Whatever I’m drinking, could you get me another?”
“Ha, ha,” it told her. The new drink floated from just behind her head and settled gently into her hand.
She looked at it, then at the drone, now shaded an innocent yellow-green, and sighed. “I’m not going to like this, am I?”
“You’ll like part of it,” Skaffen-Amtiskaw said. “News. There’s finally a ship headed in our direction. We could be homeward bound. More or less.”
“But there’s a catch.”
“Call it an interruption. There’s a situation on Houpdetout. An incident. The Minds overseeing it believe your assistance would be valuable.”
“Houpdetout.” She called up the information. “It’s the right direction, anyway. How long do they say they want us for?”
“Not long. A week or two, most likely, not counting travel time. They’re proposing that the GCV Stranded Asset take us on the next leg, and it’ll take it at least that long to make Houpdetout.”
Sma closed her eyes, considered. “Okay. Not much of a catch, and a big lure, especially considering the way everyone’s been insisting that no ships can possibly be spared from the Cluster’s affairs just to carry one SC operative and one SC escort drone back to the work and life they dropped at SC’s urgent and pressing request.
“So let’s have the rest of it. What’s the ship? Are they finally sending some outbound course schedules? . . . Wait, Houpdetout. There’s a Bulbitian there, right? Just what kind of ‘incident’ are we talking about? What aren’t you telling me?”
The drone’s aura field greyed with exasperation. “Sma, you have a lace. If you’d use it you wouldn’t need me to tell you any of this. Why won’t you?”
“And spoil your surprises? Come on, stop making with the portentous mystery and cough it up.”
Skaffen-Amtiskaw was silent a long while, as though debating with itself. She watched it, tapping her fingers on the sand. “Diziet,” it said at last. “Please remember that I had nothing to do with any of this.”
“Aww, drone, it can’t be that bad.”
“Perhaps not. I never know what you’ll consider “that bad.” It sounded resigned. “The incident involves a conflict between a team of fairly untried Special Circumstances operatives: a human called Ilat ha-Tarini dem’ Portennic and his escort drone, one Sesris-Ist. Sesris-Ist is a new model, something made with e-Dust. Very advanced. I understand it was assigned because they were working without a coordinating platform to provide advice or support. It looked like a simple assignment, and you know how thin our resources are stretched out here.”
“Weird. I’ve met Ilat. Kind of a champion at getting along with everyone. Are we supposed to be mediating, or something? What kind of conflict?”
“Sma . . . I think you should really be hearing this from Ilat.”
“Ilat isn’t here. What kind of conflict?”
Skaffen-Amtiskaw made a noise like a sigh. “Some of the locals tried to murder him, and the drone killed them. Rather a lot of them, as I understand it. Gaudily. He told it to stop, and it ignored him.”
Sma buried her face in her hands. The drone waited.
“There’s more, isn’t there?” she said at last, from behind her fingers. “All right. My cabin. Whatever it is you still haven’t told me, I want to hear it where I can throw something without upsetting the birds or the fishes.”
_________________________
“Okay,” Sma said. “Out with it.” She heard the telltale flatness in her own voice, glanded calm and waited for serenity, or at least something like resignation.
“They want Zakalwe, too.”
“Always Zakalwe. I should have known. What are we supposed to pull him out of now, so that he can do whatever it is the Minds want him to do?”
“We don’t need to pull him out, he’s back. The Xenophobe picked him up 39 hours ago, and transferred him here early ship’s morning. He’s still in Medical, but it’s not serious, the only new damage is some radiation exposure, which the ship is fixing.
“There’s still something wrong inside his head, though. We may have broken him pulling him out of the Balzeit campaign.”
“Find a new tune. You said that about the Winter Palace business.”
“That’s not what I said then. I said maybe he’d lost it. I was wrong. He had the Balzeit campaign won before we pulled him out. This Desert Fortress operation was lost before he started, and he damn nearly won it anyway. He went straight into gamespace when he was retrieved, he’s been in almost continually for twenty hours now and he’s won in every sim the ship’s thrown at him. He hasn’t lost it.”
“So where’s the alleged problem?”
“Take a few minutes, look at how he’s winning. There’s a new viciousness there, something we haven’t seen before. The ship is worried, and so am I.”
“And throwing him into another conflict is supposed to be a good idea?”
“You’d have to talk to the ship. The ships, I should say. The ship headed to Houpdetout is the GCU Grey Area. It hasn’t been part of the activity in the Cluster. Inbound now; it won’t be here for another day or so. The Very Little Gravitas Indeed thinks it can help him. It says it’s done all it can for him, and the Grey Area has relevant expertise it doesn’t.”
She was glad of the calm; it made it possible for her not to throw anything after all. “I’ve heard of the Grey Area.”
“Yes, everyone has.” Skaffen-Amtiskaw sounded weary. “You’ve only heard half of it. Ever notice how it’s supposedly ostracized, how supposedly no one will speak to it or give it berth space, but somehow everybody’s heard of it and it’s still an active Special Circumstances operative? It does good work, and it’s not afraid to get its effectors dirty.”
“Is that supposed to be reassuring? Its ‘good work’ is why everybody’s heard of it. How do I know it’s not going to go poking around in my mind for fun and bragging rights?”
“Sma. How do you know I’m not going to start killing every bio who comes within range of you who’s bearing weapons and malign intent? You asked me not to, and I agreed that I wouldn’t.”
“Yeah, but drone, not killing people is the norm. I expect you to follow the norm, it’s not exceptional when you do. Not invading minds without obtaining permission first is also the norm. We expect the Meatfucker to follow the norm, and it doesn’t. That seems like a significant difference to me.”
Skaffen-Amtiskaw’s fields had shifted toward blue: less frustrated would-be cheer and more frustrated formality. “Less of a norm than you seem to think. I haven’t had to kill anyone to protect you since you made your wishes clear to me, but if I did think I needed to, and there wasn’t time to argue about it, our norms would demand that I follow my own judgement. But you should talk to the ship about this. It was its idea, I understand.”
“Yes, I should. And if it wants Cheradenine, it should talk to him, too.”
_________________________
Zakalwe was out of the medical unit and out of gamespace when Sma found him. He was, indeed, lounging in a beach chair on the very same white-sand park beach Sma had left a few hours ago, and looking smug. “Hey, Diziet,” he said. “Heard the news?”
“That we’ve been offered transportation?” she asked. “Yes. How did you hear?”
“And an assignment,” Zakalwe said, cheerfully. “The ship talked to me. Both ships, actually.”
She should be pleased about this; it made her own task easier. But she was suspicious: in her experience it was not like Minds to be particularly helpful, or forthcoming. “And you agreed? How much did they tell you?”
“Do you mean, did they tell me that Xeny and the Very Little Gravitas Indeed are still afraid I’m a danger to myself and others, and want to hand me off to a Mind notorious for brain-sniffing? Sma, I think I would have worked that out for myself.”
“And you don’t mind? Cheradenine, that’s not like you.”
Zakalwe drummed his fingers against the chair arm and looked out across the bay. His posture and gaze reminded her of another sea, another chair and shore. “It’s very pleasant here,” he said at last. “Sipping cocktails on a beach, watching fish play in the shallows, three miles over a war zone.”
She said nothing, watching him, and at last he spoke again.
“Sma, your people are never going to let me off the leash here. You won’t pay me, say goodbye, and let me off on some neutral world because the Minds think that’s what caused the crisis they’re dealing with now. You’re not going to give me any further assignments here because Xeny and the Very Little Gravitas Indeed have decided that I’m not stable enough to send into high-stakes operations.” He lifted his glass in the direction of the shore, saluting it. “It’s a pretty sunset, isn’t it? I bet you there’s even a green flash tonight. But it’s getting dull. I’d rather be working.”
“You’re sure? The Grey Area has a certain reputation.”
Zalakwe shook his head. “Oh, Diziet,” he said. She thought he was trying not to laugh. “You recruit people like me, you work with us, and you still have no idea how the Culture looks to any of us. From my perspective? All your ships are nosy, intrusive, paternalistic, and more or less crazy. I’ve spoken to the Grey Area. We have an agreement. I’ll talk to it and risk letting it poke around in my head, and it will build me weapons and let me shoot them. We’ll see about the Houpdetout job once we get there and I can assess the situation. Relax, Sma. It’s fine.”
_________________________
xGSV What Are The Civilian Applications?
oVFP Xenophobe
oGCU Very Little Gravitas Indeed
oROU Zealot
oLOU Lapsed Pacifist
oROU Now Look What You’ve Made Me Do
oGCU Synchronize Your Dogmas
Heads up: the Grey Area’s going to be making a swing through our happy conflict zone. It’s doing us a favor, so be polite.
xROU Zealot
oLOU Lapsed Pacifist
The Meatfucker is doing us a favor? Do I even want to know?
xLOU Lapsed Pacifist
oROU Zealot
Of course you do, or you wouldn’t be calling me.
Personnel issue, I hear. Or issues. SC business, smallish but messy. The Meatfucker’s being brought on to consult.
∞
And by consult, you mean, do its witchdoctor routine?
∞
Perhaps.
Do you know, I honor its forbearance. It does an ugly, necessary job and we call it names.
∞
One way of looking at it.
∞
Indeed. Anyway, word is that it’s taking Zakalwe away with it.
∞
And for that, at least, we can all be grateful.
∞
Truer words, my friend. Truer words.
_________________________
“Of course we talked to him,” the Very Little Gravitas Indeed told Sma. “You surely don’t imagine we would have abducted him?”
“Ship, I don’t know what to imagine right now,” Sma said. “I suppose if anything, I expected some sort of reassurance. Blah blah blah, the reputation is wrong, calling the Grey Area the Meatfucker is one of those in-jokes that only other ship Minds can understand or appreciate. Definitely not this business of, Sure, it may ignore our most fundamental rules of decency and respect for other sentient beings; it may violate your minds in ways you can’t begin to imagine, without necessarily asking for permission; we may or may not have bothered to warn you about that if you hadn’t asked; don’t worry your little heads about any of that, and we hope you have a great ride homeward. I thought the Grey Area’s revolting behavior was supposed to have made it some sort of outcast?”
“Among the prissier sorts of Hub and Contact minds, perhaps,” the ship told her. “It is fair to say that for many of us, there is a certain distaste for what it does. And yes, it is a basic norm for us, perhaps the most important of all, that all sentient beings are entitled to the privacy of their own minds. But remember: what we have are norms, not laws, and we recognize that from time to time, special circumstances arise that justify, or even require, a departure from those norms. You will likely have pointed that out yourself from time to time, perhaps even to Mr. Zakalwe.”
She had, of course. “Okay. I want to say that’s different, but-”
“But you can’t, because it’s not,” the ship said equably. “Yes, the Grey Area has been known to look inside the minds of sentient beings without their consent. Sometimes critically important information can only be obtained that way. Most of us won’t or can’t do it: we’ll say we can’t bring ourselves to violate the ethical principles against it, and that’s true as far as it goes; but it’s not just a matter of our superior moral standards or greater squeamishness. It’s a delicate, difficult thing to do, to examine a fragile brain without damaging it in the process. Even when it’s done for the most altruistic of purposes, and even when the subject is willing to have their thoughts and memories examined, it’s difficult. Minds aren’t clear, particularly biological minds. People don’t always like telling themselves the truth about what they’ve experienced or thought. There are memory gaps, that people fill with false, invented recollections. Emotions are complex, and thoughts and memories become tangled in them and distorted. Most of us can’t do it. The Grey Area can, and we are more fortunate than we like to admit that it will.
“Which is why I asked it to talk to Mr. Zakalwe. We’re good at psychological engineering, generally speaking. If you’re one of the very rare humans born with some quirk of personality that interferes with your ability to live the most satisfying life you would be capable of having — if you have, say, an aversion to touch, a predilection for debilitating terrors — we can fix it for you. There is no such simple answer for Mr. Zakalwe. To help him, if he is even willing to be helped, would require a detailed understanding of his past, his experiences, the distinctive ways his mind works now, a sifting through all the pathways that show how it came to work that way. The Grey Area is the only entity I am aware of able to do that sort of work. I have done all we can for him here. I can only fulfill the rest of my responsibility to him by transferring him to a ship that may be able to heal those aspects of the man that I cannot.”
That was the problem with arguing with Minds, Sma reflected. They were so perfectly rational, so mildly objective, so infuriatingly knowledgeable. They might be wrong; sometimes every instinct affirmed that they were wrong. But you could never, ever win the argument.
They boarded the Grey Area that evening, ship time: she and Skaffen-Amtiskaw, and Zakalwe. Zakalwe, she noticed, looked particularly and infuriatingly smug.
_________________________
It would be a short crossing, the ship assured her: some nine days. Passenger accommodations aboard the Grey Area were austere compared to the Very Little Gravitas Indeed; the Grey Area did not carry a human crew, and had little interest in entertaining or decorating for one.
Considered as a retreat — and in the absence of other passengers, that was the only way to consider it — it had a monastic, soothing quality. Skaffen-Amtiskaw reported that Zakalwe and the ship were to all appearances devoting themselves entirely to business. They were discussing materials and resources available to civilizations on Houpdetout, on the one hand, and to in-play civs on the other; Zakalwe was designing weapons prototypes and the ship was building them for him; he and the ship’s drones were spending hours in an emptied bay, shooting things and criticizing and redesigning the prototypes. If the ship was examining Zakalwe’s mind or memories, or tampering with them in any way, there was no outward sign of it.
Sma resigned herself to days of boredom, and turned her attention to her long-promised, and long-neglected, memorandum of her experiences aboard the GCU Arbitrary during its mission to Earth. She set Skaffen-Amtiskaw to translate it, and secretly thought the drone minded less than it said it did.
_________________________
Houpdetout was blue skies and a bluer sun, two moons visible by day, and the scent of flowers wafting across woods and lawns. “It was a bog-standard assignment. I didn’t think it was possible to fuck it up,” Ilat said. He and Sma were sitting on the northwest terrace of the Summer Palace, looking down to the river. They, and Zakalwe, were honored guests of Laellin the Queen: she and the drone Sesris-Ist were inseparable, but Sesris-Ist had foiled seven assassination attempts in the brief weeks since Laellin’s unlikely ascension, and the ship considered it prudent to have Zakalwe, Sma, and Ilat on the palace grounds, with its own offensive drones as additional security.
“We do it all the time, right?” Ilat continued. “I was chief on a one of these projects in Contact Ordinary, before SC was even talking to me. Do the cataloguing, find a likely, forward-thinking leader, promote their interests, obtain guidance as necessary. When their position is secure, work through them to improve conditions and move the civ in the right directions. Don’t get greedy, don’t rush it. There’s a playbook, and everybody who looked at this one saw a standard high Level 2 civ: steam, imperialism, aristocrats versus bankers, and religious revivals.”
“And a Fallen Bulbitian.”
Ilat shuddered. “And the fucking Bulbitian. But it didn’t seem like that big a deal when I first got here. It came down on top of the Mountains of Yr, so most of it’s too high to reach without supplemental oxygen, which they don’t have yet. The very end of it spikes up from the last spur of the range, where the city’s built. It sits on top of what they call the Forbidden Chapel, which is carved out of the rock behind the highest city terrace, but even there you can’t get to the Bulbitian itself. Old stories had it that the mountain above the city’s haunted, that you’d see witch lights and hear demonic music on some nights if you got too close — you know, the usual sort of thing — but honestly, that’s the place in the sky where you see the aurora when it’s out. It’s all in the civilization catalogue from first contact, of course, but I didn’t pay it any attention after that. Over the past few years there’s been something of a growing fad for occultism, but occultism’s expected for a civ at this development stage. I didn’t connect it with the Bulbitian. We started to hear rumors: Lord So-and-So was sponsoring seances, people’s badly-behaved young sons were dressing up their orgies as ‘demonic rituals.’”
“But isn’t that the height of respectability here?” Sma asked. “I thought that the established church was nominally a devil-worship cult. You don’t see that too often.”
“Yeah, the one big anomaly. But it’s only nominal. The conception of the Lord of Hell is more like most civs’ standard monotheistic god of peace and justice. The priesthood even preached sermons against the occultists and their vile rituals, if you can believe it.
“Or at least, that’s how it worked until, oh, right before this most recent royal succession.
“It’s a secret ceremony, you know, the final Anointment and coronation. Just the Hierophant and the high priesthood, his chosen attendants, the candidate and their attendants. The monarch-to-be and suite go into seclusion the day before for ritual purification. There’s a bath. Anything you bring in with you is taken away and burned: clothes, weapons, jewels. You go to the ceremony barefoot, in new robes the priests give you. The ritual space is in the Forbidden Chapel I was telling you about, carved into the mountain. We couldn’t even get a scout missile into them ahead of time. I . . .” Ilat looked out across the river. His hand clenched around the arm of his chair, fingers going white.
“What’s supposed to happen is, the monarch offers a sacrifice, the Hierophant accepts it as the representative of the unhappily-absent Lord of Hell, and the new King or Queen walks out as Hell’s Chosen, with the symbolic Devil following at their heel. The usual sacrifice is incense, representing the souls of the faithful. The monarch’s chief attendant presents it in a golden coffer, it’s a tremendous honor. The coffer’s a big deal, goldsmiths compete for the commission to make it. I don’t know what happened to it, maybe the ship does.” His voice was very steady. Sma wondered what he was glanding.
“But what was supposed to happen isn’t what did happen,” Sma suggested.
“Right. This time, the sacrifice was me. Supposed to be me. And children. Lots of children, they were stacked in cages through the caverns. All the children of the royal house, we found out later. All the children from the cadet branches. Street kids. I don’t know how many. I don’t want to. The drone can tell you what had been done to most of them, if it matters. They were still alive, though, mostly. I was supposed to die first.”
“But again, it didn’t work out that way.”
“It didn’t. The walls were shielded somehow. Sesris-Ist came right through them. You can get the ship to show you the rest, it has all the records.”
She had already looked, and seen the rest. The machines, she knew, considered it a masterstroke. She wondered whether they were troubled by the children.
“I understand you asked that the drone brought up before a board of inquiry. I can see why.” That was an understatement. Sma was impressed with the self-control Ilat had shown after his first attempts at stopping the drone had failed. “But you should know, you don’t have to put yourself through that. They’ll assign you another escort drone. All you need to do is ask, you don’t even need a reason.”
“I do know,” Ilat said. “I wish I could. But Sma, this was the second time, and I warned it after the first. Something has to be done about this one. It will do it again, if it doesn’t agree to personality restructuring and isn’t componented. If it won’t agree voluntarily — and it isn’t going to — it falls to whatever process we have to require it. There must be some formal way of setting that in motion, even though mysteriously, mysteriously, I haven’t been able to learn anything about it. If you can find anything I’ll be grateful.”
She sighed. “I don’t know either. Even though you’d think I would; I’ve found myself making similar threats once or twice. But you’re right, we must have a process for this. I’ll ask the ship, see whether it’s willing to tell me anything.”
_________________________
The ship heard her out. She was beginning to imagine she perceived specific qualities to its silences. This one felt like amusement. “He can’t find anything about the process because the one he wants doesn’t exist,” it told her at last. “There is such a thing as a Board of Inquiry, of course, but those are only convened for incidents of sufficient moment to require a full-scale examination. This one would not, if precedent is anything to go by; and if it did, that Board would find that Sesris-Ist had, at worst, acted with no more than allowable excess given the uncontested circumstances.”
“I don’t think what he’s looking for is a Board of Inquiry.”
“No. What he wants are disciplinary procedures, and so far as I am aware we have none. Not to deal with tactical disagreements between members of a Special Circumstances team. We’ll dissolve the partnership, of course, and give the parties other working relationships. It’s inefficient to keep a field team together if they aren’t comfortable relying on each others’ judgement.”
“I told him that. But this isn’t interpersonal friction, and it isn’t a trivial disagreement. He thinks Sesris-Ist is too dangerous to be in the field with anyone, not just him. I know it’s drastic, but if he has reason to think it should undergo personality restructuring, voluntarily or otherwise, what’s the process for him to be heard?”
“Heard, or listened to?” the Grey Area said. “If he asks for another escort drone, and explains why, he’ll be heard. As for listened to, there is no such process. There is no Contact or Special Circumstances authority, standing or ad hoc, that will force a sentient being to accept personality restructuring against its will. Or, before you ask, that will require it to be reduced to components or slag as an alternative.”
It brought her up short. It was one of Contact’s enduring pieces of transmitted wisdom, at least among its human operatives: offensive drones were fucking terrifying, but they worked for their human partners, and if they went off the rails too badly the humans could demand their personalities be restructured, or that they be reduced to their components. It was what kept the drones on their leashes, it was said. “Wait. Did you just say that can’t happen? Not that it never does as a practical matter, but that it couldn’t? That the whole idea is a myth?”
“A deliberately-promulgated one, I suppose. I imagine SC has found it convenient for people to believe it, but I have never understood why anyone thinks it’s true.”
“It feels as though it should be.”
“Why? When a human murders, rare as it is, do we ask them to choose between forcible personality alteration and death?”
“No, but we ensure they won’t do it again.”
“Which is exactly what's done in these situations, when it’s necessary. Drones have found themselves assigned slap-drones in the past.”
She took it in. “All right,” she said, finally. “But Ilat does believe this drone is unreasonably dangerous and unsuited for this work. If the only way to protect the public from it is to have it slap-droned, what does he need to do to make SC consider doing that?”
“Ah,” the ship said. “That, at least, is simple. He needs to talk to me.”
_________________________
She found Skaffen-Amtiskaw monitoring the east approach to the palace, the one that led through the espaliered orchard wall. “I had a little talk with the ship,” she told it, settling herself and lying back in the warm grass. “Drone, why didn’t you tell me to go to hell all those years ago, when I first threatened to have you componented next time you killed anyone? Or any of the times since? I know it annoys you, at least some of the time.”
Skaffen-Amtiskaw’s fields pulsed pink with drone laughter. “It does annoy me. But it makes you so happy to be able to pull out the threat. And besides, if you’d stopped to think for even a moment you would have realized, so I suppose I assumed that on some level you did know.”
Sma laughed, and was quiet a moment, looking through leaves into the summer sky: peace, and light, and the scents of grasses in the air. She sighed a little. “I feel sorry for Ilat, though.”
“Not for Sesris-Ist?”
“Definitely not for Sesris-Ist. That machine is having a wonderful time. So’s Zakalwe, which is weird but pleasant.”
“You say pleasant, I say vaguely terrifying. You’re right, though. It’s hard when a partnership doesn’t work, on the level that one didn’t. Think he’ll really take the argument to the Meatfucker?"
“I think he has to. Or, he’ll think he has to. He really does believe Sesris-Ist is dangerous; what alternative does he have?”
“None, I suppose.”
The drone fell silent, and its fields shifted slowly to a formal blue: the color it used with her for serious conversations. “I’ve wondered, though, over the years,” it said. “You know people die when we intervene. Fewer than would die if we didn’t, but the comparative numbers don’t matter to the ones who’re unlucky, who’re killed or have their lives ruined, who would have lived long and happy lives if we’d stayed out. You’ve persuaded Zakalwe to fight, knowing the cost of war. You’ve argued for intervention on world after world. We both have. To the extent our influence mattered in those debates, we’ve both chosen to kill, and to kill incalculable numbers of people.
“Yet you insist I spare those who try to harm or to kill you, even though those are the least innocent of all the people whose lives cross ours. Diziet, why do you care?”
She shuddered in the warm breeze. There was dampness in her eyes, and she fought it back, refused the impulse to gland something, to make whatever this feeling was go away. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “Because there should be some pattern for random mercy in the universe, maybe, a seed crystal for it to form around and spread. Because I do bring death with me, and I know it, and knowing it doesn’t stop me. Because arbitrary, capricious mercy should exist in a universe so full of arbitrary, capricious violence. . . . I don’t know, drone. I don’t know. I just do.”
She watched the sky, silently, for a time, and then closed her eyes. She was still sleeping two hours and sixteen minutes later, when Skaffen-Amtiskaw woke her to report that the GCV Stranded Asset had just checked in. It had just arrived in the volume, and expected to be with them in two days.
_________________________
“I did as you suggested and spoke to the ship,” Ilat told her at dinner that night. “I imagine you know what it told me.”
“That if you wanted to pursue the Sesris-Ist matter, it would go over your memories with you,” she said.
At the other end of the long table, Sesris-Ist and Zakalwe were engaged in some increasingly flamboyant competition, apparently involving the stacking of glassware and eating implements. Queen Laellin’s presence was adding no royal decorum whatsoever: Her Majesty was covering her mouth and snickering. It made enough noise to cover their conversation.
“I told it yes,” Ilat said. “Maybe foolish of me, and I don’t exactly want a starship crawling around in my brain. And I’d be dead now if Sesris-Ist hadn’t come in the way it did. But . . . you saw those recordings. Sma, am I being a fool?”
There was a clattering at the far end of the table. Zakalwe had leapt up, seized a glass and a spoon, and hurled one and then the other at Sesris-Ist. It plucked both out of the air, one long claw-tipped finger appearing to lengthen further to make the catch on the glass, hurled both back at Zakalwe, and then the two were juggling.
“Maybe,” she told him. “No. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference, but I think it’s courage.”
“Will you come with me for it?” Ilat asked. “There won’t be anything to watch, but I think there should be a witness. And I’d like to have you there.”
“Of course. When?”
“Now. The ship tells me it won’t take long.”
_________________________
As far as Sma could see, there was no technical equipment involved. Just an ordinary palace bedchamber, belonging to neither of them for the sake of propriety, with a ship drone to guard the door. Not a Culture nest bed, but comfortable enough. And it was very little time, as time passed for her, between the moment Ilat shut his eyes and the moment he opened them, and said, bitterly, “Very well. You’ve made your point.”
She thought there might be tears in his eyes. “Do you want me to stay?”
“Yes. I mean, no. Not now.”
_________________________
He found her after midnight, though, on the same terrace where they had watched the river on her first day on-world.
“I talked to Skaffen-Amtiskaw,” he said.
She made room for him on the cushioned bench. “Do you want to talk to me?”
“Please. About other things, too, but first this. Diziet, I’m resigning from SC. They’ll replace me temporarily. Somebody on the Stranded Asset will be able to fill in for a while. I’ll leave on the Asset with you. Will you mind having me aboard?”
“Of course not. Ilat, why in all the worlds would I?”
“What the ship showed me. The death, when Sesris-Ist intervened — Skaffen-Amtiskaw said it had to kill to protect you, once, and it made you sick to see it. So sick that it’s terrified of ever needing to do it again, because it hurt you so much. I wish it had been like that for me.”
She shrugged, puzzled. “Why? You kept your head better than I did. That’s a good thing in an operative, I had to resort to the drug glands just to get over my hysterics.”
“I didn’t keep my head. Diziet, I didn’t mind. Sesris-Ist was beautiful when it killed, and it made killing beautiful. I loved watching it, the way you love watching an eagle fly or a fountain in the sun. Whether its decisions to kill were justified by the circumstances; what it should have done if they weren’t; that’s all better assessed by others. I cannot do it fairly. It has been suggested to me — rightly, I suspect — that I may judge its actions too harshly, weighing the scales too heavily against killing lest my own desires lead me to weigh them too lightly, and directing my disgust with my own pleasure unfairly onto others, so that I need not face the condemnation of my own conscience.
“I cannot continue to do this work. I enjoy the wrong things about it too much, and that makes me a danger in the field. To those who work with me, to those who depend on me, and to my own better self. I’ve withdrawn any complaints I’ve made about Sesris-Ist. It works well with Zakalwe, I think it will stay. I hope it will.”
He shivered all over, and turned to face her. “Still sure you don’t mind traveling with me? I can wait for the next ship if you do.”
Sorrow suited him, and he was very lovely in the moonlight. Sma remembered that she had always thought so. “I don’t mind,” she said firmly, and took him in her arms. “In fact, I think it’s a positive advantage, don’t you?”
_________________________
Three days later the GCV Stranded Asset made orbit. Sma and Skaffen-Amtiskaw and Ilat met its module on the palace lawn. Zakalwe hung back a little, for once looking uncertain. The Grey Area had made a small concession to discretion; it had made a drone in the shape of a hawk that could sit on Zakalwe’s shoulder rather than hovering in the air.
“Have you made a decision?” the ship asked him.
“Are you going to advise me?”
“Yes.”
“I’m honored, I think. I’ve noticed that about you, ship. You don’t give advice, not even when people ask.”
“Advice is often unwelcome. Besides, I rarely have it to give. Or at least, I rarely have advice to give that doesn’t begin, First, be someone else; and second, be someone else half a century ago.”
“Hmmm. Advice that might suit me. I had no idea it was quite so universal.”
“I suppose it might, at that.” There was something in the ship’s voice that almost sounded like laughter. “But for you, I have somewhat more useful advice. Stay. We both have work to do here. I have a dead god to speak to. And you, I think, have a nation and a world to help build. Besides, what’s the better offer?”
“Sma and SC will give me more credit than the oligarchs of entire Level 5 systems, and transportation anywhere I want to go.”
“As they have in the past. You have scattered those fortunes to the stellar winds, or left them abandoned on a dozen worlds. They represent the winning of a game to you, but they have not healed your wounds. Besides, you want to work.”
“Special Circumstances will always give me work. Even if they have to track me through half a million stars to find me.”
“Not as you are now. You are, of course, entirely free to go with Ms. Sma and Skaffen-Amtiskaw if you choose; but you should do so knowing the probable consequences. Also, it is not clear to me that your heart is in this argument.”
“My heart? Remind me. What has that particularly useless symbol to do with any of this?”
“Shall I? Very well.” There was a new note in the ship’s voice, something incantatory. “Once upon a time, there was a girl who was almost a princess, and a house that might have been a palace, and four children who played together in its gardens. Once upon a time, there was a piece of her you carried inside you.
“Today you stand in a palace garden. The princess in this garden is perhaps more a young Cheradenine — or indeed, a young Elethiomel — than a young Livueta, but already you respond to the echoes: all you loved and all you destroyed is waiting in this palace and this garden. You are right to fear it, and wrong, as I judge, to run from it.
“Your minds are compatible. Laellin needs a military advisor, one with no loyalties to any planetary faction. She needs a guardian who is not a demon or a drone. She needs a brother and a friend. Go back to the house and the garden. Be Zakalwe, and be Elethiomel. Do it again. Get it right.”
“‘First, be someone else. Second, go back in time and be someone else half a century ago.’” Zakalwe was not sure whether he was laughing or crying.
“It’s not always useless advice.”
“And that will put everything right?”
“No. The past cannot be put right.” The ship’s voice was measured, implacable. “It may help to heal a wound in your mind, and you are a dangerous and a powerful man; that healing may benefit others besides you. It may enable you to live in this world with less pain, and thus make room for you to choose your weapons with as much art as ever, but with greater care. These are possibilities; I do not guarantee them.
“Also, it is a place of moderate safety; should the urge to make chairs come upon you, Sesris-Ist will stop you doing it. I make no further promises.”
Across the lawn, Sesris-Ist was teaching Laellin to fence. Demon prince or no, the drone’s technique needed work. “You might be wrong,” Zakalwe said. “This might be a terrible idea, and the ruin of all of us. Just remember I said that if it happens. You don’t know everything.”
“Far from it,” the ship agreed.
“That said . . . “
“That said, you might want to say goodbye to Ms. Sma, before the module departs. Then, I think, you have a fencing lesson to give.”