~Fascinating. You obviously have your fields full. I’ll leave you to it. Do let’s keep in touch.
“The Me, I’m Counting? The ship with Himerance?” Lededje asked. Suddenly she was back in her room in the town house, ten years earlier, listening in the darkness to the tall, stooped, bald old man as he talked softly about taking an image of her that was faithful and precise down to the individual atom.
“The very same,” Demeisen said. Element twelve of the picket ship Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints was bearing down on the inner system of the Quyn system, heading straight for a region of space a few hundred kilometres above where the city of Ubruater on the planet Sichult would be in just a few minutes. The ship element was braking hard and negotiating even more strenuously with the relevant authorities on and around the planet. “It still has the image of you that it took when you were younger.”
“What’s it doing here?” Lededje asked. In a suspicious tone, Demeisen thought. They were stepped-back from full foamed-up ultra-alert, sitting in their seats on the module, Lededje’s helmet visor lying opened so that she and the avatar could look at each other.
“I suspect it’s carrying a person from Quietus called Yime Nsokyi,” Demeisen told her. “Didn’t mention her by name but a little research makes it highly likely it’s her.”
“And what’s she doing here?”
“Quietus might be interested in you. As a revented little icicle they may feel that somehow you’re their responsibility.”
She looked at the avatar for a moment. “Are they always this … keen?”
Demeisen shook his head emphatically. “No. There’s probably some other reason.”
“Care to take a guess?”
“Who can say, doll? They may have some interest in the relationship between you and Mr. Veppers, especially as it might manifest itself in the near to medium future. They may not feel that your intentions towards him are entirely peaceful, and wish to forestall some untoward diplomatic incident.”
“What about you; would you act to forestall this untoward diplomatic incident?”
“Might do. Depends on the likely consequences. You have my sympathies, goes without saying, but even I at least have to look like I’m taking account of the bigger picture. Consequences are everything.” The avatar nodded at the screen. “Oh, look; we’re here.”
Sichult filled the screen; a fat hazy crescent of white cloud, grey-green land and streaks of glinting blue seas lay tipped and swollen across the screen. They were close enough for Lededje to see depth in the clear, thin wrapping of atmosphere and make out the shadows of individual storm cells throwing their dark, elongated shapes across the flat white plains of cloud levels extending beneath them.
“Home at last,” Lededje breathed. She did not, the avatar thought, sound all that pleased about it. He’d thought she would have shown more interest in the image of her held by the other Culture ship, too. He’d never understand humans.
“Ah, found him,” Demeisen said, smiling.
Lededje stared at him. “Veppers?”
Demeisen nodded. “Veppers.”
“Where?” she asked.
“Hmm, interesting,” the avatar said. He looked at her. “You should dress for the occasion. Let’s get you out of those cumbersome suits.”
She frowned. “I like these suits. And they’re not cumbersome.”
Demeisen looked apologetic. “You won’t need them where we’re going. And they do constitute Culture tech. Sorry.”
The seat around Lededje gently released her from its grip. Behind her, the module’s bathroom had reformed.
Yime Nsokyi stood on the rim-rock of the shallow, jagged canyon carved into the karst. Above, the stars wheeled slowly. Some long, ragged lengths of clouds obscured patches of the sky, and in one place the cloud was lit up as though by an enormous searchlight, light spilling from an aperture above one of the outlying tributary tunnels of Iobe Cavern City. The resulting blob of uncannily glowing light, seemingly hovering just a couple of kilometres above the still-cooling desert, looked unsettlingly like a ship.
“There were people in that tower,” Himerance said quietly at Yime’s side. The avatar was monitoring signals from all over the planet while trying to establish contact with the Me, I’m Counting.
“There were?” Yime asked. She closed her eyes, shook her head.
They had commandeered five more vehicles on their way out of the city to this point, where finally the avatar felt they were safe. Himerance had commandeered them, anyway, using what-ever Effector tech was built into the human-seeming body of a ship avatar; she felt like nothing more than his baggage, hauled along from place to place.