The Algebraist Page 3

  Fassin started to rise from his cross-legged position. 'Uncle, do you want me to—?'

  'No!' his uncle shouted in exasperation, still trying ineffec­tually to push himself further up the cradle. 'I would like people to stop fussing, that's all!' Slovius turned his head round as he said this, trying to look at Guime, but only succeeded in causing himself to slip further back into the liquid, so that he was even more horizontal than he had been before he started. He slapped at the pool surface, splashing. 'There! See what you've done? Interfering idiot!' He sighed mightily and lay back in the wallowing waves, apparently exhausted, staring straight ahead. 'You may adjust me, Guime, as you wish,' he said dully, sounding resigned.

  Guime knelt on the tiles behind him, put a hand under each of Slovius's armpits and hauled his master upwards onto the cradle until his head and shoulders were almost vertical. Slovius settled himself there, then nodded briskly. Guime retreated again to his position by the wall.

  'Now then, nephew,' Slovius said, crossing his flipper hands over the pink expanse of his hairless chest. He looked up at the transparent, summit of the dome.

  Fassin smiled. 'Yes, uncle?'

  Slovius seemed to hesitate. He let his gaze fall to his nephew. 'Your . . . your studies, Fassin. How do they progress?'

  'They progress satisfactorily, sir. In the matter of the Tranche Xonju it is still, of course, very early.'

  'Hmm. Early,' Uncle Slovius said. He looked thoughtful, staring into the distance again. Fassin sighed gently. This was obviously going to take some time.

  Fassin Taak was a Slow Seer at the court of the Nasqueron Dwellers. The Dwellers - Gas-Giant Dwellers, to give them a fuller designation ... Neutrally Buoyant First Order Ubiquitous Climax Clade Gas-Giant Dwellers, to grant them a still more painfully precise specification - were large creatures of immense age who lived within the deliriously complex and topologically vast civilisation of great antiquity which was distributed throughout the cloud layers wrapping the enormous gas-giant planet, a habitat that was as stupendous in scale as it was change­able in aerography.

  The Dwellers, at least in their mature form, thought slowly. They lived slowly, evolved slowly, travelled slowly and did almost everything they ever did, slowly. They could, it was alleged, fight quite quickly. Though, as far as anybody was able to determine, they had not had to do any fighting for a long time. The implication of this was that they could think quickly when it suited them, but most of the time it did not appear to suit them, and so - it was assumed - they thought slowly. It was unarguable that in their later years - later aeons - they conversed slowly. So slowly that a simple question asked before breakfast might not be answered until after supper. A rate of conversational exchange, it occurred to Fassin, that Uncle Slovius - floating in his now-quite-still pool with a trancelike expression on his tusked, puffy face - seemed determined to emulate.

  'The Tranche Xonju, it concerns . . . ?' Slovius said suddenly. 'Clutter poetry, Diasporic myths and various history tangles,'

  Fassin answered.

  'Histories of which epochs?'

  'The majority have still to be dated, uncle. Some may never be, and possibly belong with the myths. The only readily iden­tifiable strands are very recent and appear to relate to mostly local events during the Machine War.'

  Uncle Slovius nodded slowly, producing small waves. 'The Machine War. That is interesting.'

  'I was thinking of attending to those strands first.' 'Yes,' Slovius said. 'A good idea.' 'Thank you, uncle.'

  Slovius lapsed into silence again. A ground-quake rumbled distantly around them, producing tiny concentric rings in the liquid of Slovius's pool.

  The civilisation which comprised the Dwellers of Nasqueron, with all their attendant fellow flora and fauna, itself formed but one microscopic fragment of the Dweller Diaspora, the galaxy-spanning meta-civilisation (some would say post-civilisation) which, as far as anyone could tell, preceded all other empires, cultures, diasporas, civilisations, federations, consocia, fellow­ships, unities, leagues, confederacies, affilia and organisations of like or unlike beings in general.

  The Dwellers, in other words, had been around for most of the life of the galaxy. This made them at least unusual and possibly unique. It also made them, if they were approached with due deference and care, and treated with respect and patience, a precious resource. Because they had good memories and even better libraries. Or at least they had retentive memo­ries, and very large libraries.

  Dweller memories, and libraries, usually proved to be stuffed full of outright nonsense, bizarre myths, incomprehensible images, indecipherable symbols and meaningless equations, plus random assemblages of numbers, letters, pictograms, holophons, sonomemes, chemiglyphs, actinomes and sensata variegata, all of them trawled and thrown together unsorted - or in patterns too abstruse to be untangled - from a jumbled mix of millions upon millions of utterly different and categorically unrelated civilis­ations, the vast majority of which had long since disappeared and either crumbled into dust or evaporated into radiation.

  Nevertheless, in all that flux of chaos, propaganda, distor­tion, drivel and weirdness, there were nuggets of actuality, seams of facts, frozen rivers of long-forgotten history, whole volumes of exobiography and skeins and tissues of truth. It had been the life-work of people like Chief Seer Slovius, and was the life-work of people like Chief Seer-in-waiting Fassin Taak, to meet with and talk to the Dwellers, to adapt to their language, thoughts and metabolism, to - sometimes virtually, at a remove, sometimes literally - float and fly and dive and soar with them amongst the clouds of Nasqueron, and through their convers­ations, their studies, their notes and analyses, make what sense they could of what their ancient slow-living hosts told them and allowed them to access, and so enrich and enlighten the greater, quicker meta-civilisation which presently inhabited the galaxy.

  'And, ah, Jaal?' Slovius glanced at his nephew, who looked sufficiently surprised for the older male to add, 'The, oh, what's their name . . . ? Tonderon. Yes. The Tonderon girl. You two are still betrothed, aren't you?'

  Fassin smiled. 'We are indeed, uncle,' he said. 'She is returning from Pirrintipiti this evening. I'm hoping to meet her at the port.'

  'And you are . . . ?' Slovius gestured with one flipper hand. 'Still content?'

  'Content, uncle?' Fassin asked.

  'You are happy with her? With the prospect of her being your wife?'

  'Of course, uncle.'

  'And she with you?'

  'Well, I hope so, I believe so.'

  Slovius looked at his nephew, holding his gaze for a moment. 'Mm-hmm. I see. Of course. Well.' Slovius used one of his flipper hands to wave some of the blue glowing liquid over his upper chest, as though he was cold. 'You are to be wed when?'

  'The date is fixed for Allhallows, Jocund III,' Fassin said. 'Somewhat under half a year, body time,' he added helpfully.

  'I see,' Slovius said, frowning. He nodded slowly, and the action caused his body to rise and fall slightly in the pool, producing more waves. 'Well, it is good to know you might finally be settling down at last.'

  Fassin considered himself to be a dedicated, hard-working and productive Seer who spent well above the average amount of time at the sharp end of delving, actually with the Nasqueron Dwellers. However, due to the fact that he liked to complete each interlude of this real, useful life with what he called a 'proper holiday', the older generation of Sept Bantrabal, and especially Slovius, seemed to think he was some sort of hope­less wastrel. (Indeed, Uncle Slovius seemed reluctant to accept the term 'proper holiday' at all. He preferred to call them 'month-long blind-drunk stoned-out benders getting into trouble, fights and illicit orifices in the flesh pots of—' well, wherever; sometimes Pirrintipiti, the capital of 'glantine, some­times Borquille, capital of Sepekte, or one of Sepekte's other cities, sometimes one of the many pleasure habitats scattered throughout the system.)

  Fassin smiled tolerantly. 'Still, I shan't be hanging up my dancing shoes just yet, uncle.
'

  'The nature of your studies over your last, say, three or four delves, Fassin. Have they followed what one might term a consistent course?'

  'You confuse me, uncle,' Fassin admitted. 'Your last three or four delves, have they been in any way linked thematically, or by subject, or through the Dwellers you have conversed with?'

  Fassin sat back, surprised. Why ever would old Slovius be interested in this ? 'Let me think, sir,' he said. 'On this occasion I spoke almost exclusively with Xonju, who provided infor­mation seemingly at random and does not fully appear to under­stand the concept of an answer. Our first meeting and all very preparatory. He may be worth following up, if we can find him again. He may not. It might take all of the months between now and my next delve to work out—'

  'So this was a sampling expedition, an introduction?' 'Indeed.' 'Before that?'

  'A protracted conference, with Cheuhoras, Saraisme the younger, Akeurle Both-twins, traav Kanchangesja and a couple of minors from the Eglide adolescent pod.' 'Your subjects?'

  'Poetry, mostly. Ancient, modern, the use of image in the epic, the ethics of boasting and exaggeration.' 'And the delve before?'

  'With Cheuhoras alone; an extended lament for his departed parent, some hunting myths from the local near-past and a lengthy translation and disposition on an epic sequence concerning the adventures of ancient plasmatics voyaging within the hydrogen migration, perhaps a billion or so years ago, during the Second Chaos.'

  'Before that?'

  Fassin smiled. 'My extended one-to-one with Valseir, the delve which included my sojourn with the Raucous Rascals of Tribe Dimajrian.' He imagined he didn't need to remind his uncle of too many of the details of that particular excursion. This had been the protracted delve which had made his name as a gifted Seer, the six-year journey - by body-time; it had lasted nearly a century by outside reckoning - that had estab­lished his reputation both within Sept Bantrabal and the hier­archy of 'glantine Seers beyond. His exploits, and the value of the stories and histories he had returned with, had been largely responsible for his elevation to the post of Chief Seer-in-waiting in his Sept, and for the offer of marriage to the daughter of the Chief Seer of Sept Tonderon, the most senior of the twelve Septs.

  'This takes us back how many years, in real?'

  Fassin thought. 'About three hundred . . . Two hundred and eighty-seven, if I recall correctly.'

  Slovius nodded. 'There was much of that delve released during its course?'

  'Almost nothing, sir. The Raucous Rascals insisted. They are one of the more . . . unameliorated adolescent pods. I was allowed to report that I was alive once per year.'

  'The delve before that?'

  Fassin sighed and tapped the fingers of one hand on the fused glass at the side of the pool. What on old Earth could this be about? And could Slovius not simply look up the Sept records for such information? There was a big cantilevered arm thing stowed against the wall of the pool chamber with a screenpad on the end. Fassin had seen this device lowered into place in front of Slovius for him to peer at and prod the keys with his finger stumps. It was, patently, not a very rapid or efficient method of interrogating the house library, but it would answer all these questions. Or the old fellow could just ask. There were servants for this sort of thing.

  Fassin cleared his throat. 'Most of that was taken up with instructing Paggs Yurnvic, of Sept Reheo, on his first delve. We paid court to traav Hambrier, in one-to-one time with the Dwellers to allow for Yurnvic's inexperience. The delve lasted barely three months, body-time. Textbook introductory, sir.' 'You found no time to pursue any studies of your own?' 'Little, sir.' 'But some, yes?'

  'I was able to attend part of a symposium on deep poetics, with the university pod Marcal. To detail the other attendees I would have to inquire within the Sept records, sir.' 'What more? Of the symposium, I mean. Its subject?' 'If I recall, a comparison of Dweller hunting techniques with the actions of Machine War Inquisitories.' Fassin stroked his chin. 'The examples were Ulubis-system local, some regarding 'glantine.'

  Slovius nodded. He glanced at his nephew. 'Do you know what an emissarial projection is, Fassin?'

  Fassin looked up at the segment of gas-giant visible through the transparent roof panel. The night terminator was just starting to appear to one side, a line of increasing darkness creeping across the distant cloudscape. He looked back down at Slovius. 'I may have heard the term, sir. I would not care to offer a defi­nition.'

  'It's when they send a tuned suite of queries and responses to a physically remote location, by light beam. To play the part of an emissary.'

  '"They", sir?'

  'Engineers, the Administrata. Perhaps the Omnocracy.' Fassin sat back. 'Indeed?'

  'Indeed. If we are to believe what we are told, the object they send is something like a library, transmitted by signal laser. Suitably housed and emplaced within enabled equipment of sufficient capacity and complexity, this . . . entity, though it is simply a many-branched array of statements, questions and answers, with a set of rules governing the order in which they are expressed, is able to carry out what seems very like an intel­ligent conversation. It is as close as one is allowed to come to an artificial intelligence, post-War.' 'How singular.'

  Slovius wobbled in his pool. 'They are assuredly surpassing rare,' he agreed. 'One is being sent here.'

  Fassin blinked a few times. 'Sent here?'

  'To Sept Bantrabal. To this house. To us.'

  'To us.'

  'From the Administrata.'

  'The Administrata.' Fassin became aware that he was sounding simple-minded.

  'Via the Engineership Est-taun Zhiffir.'

  'My,' Fassin said. 'We are . . . privileged.'

  'Not we, Fassin; you. The projection is being sent to talk to you.'

  Fassin smiled weakly. 'To me? I see. When will—?'

  'It is currently being transmitted. It ought to be ready by late evening. You may wish to clear your schedule for this. Did you have much arranged?'

  'Ah ... a supper with Jaal. I'm sure—'

  'I would make it an early supper, and don't tarry.'

  'Well, yes. Of course,' Fassin said. 'Do you have any idea, sir, what I might have done to deserve such an honour?'

  Slovius was silent for a moment, then said, 'None whatso­ever.'

  Guime replaced an intercom set on its hook and left his place by the agate wall to kneel and whisper to Slovius, who nodded, then looked at Fassin. 'Major-Domo Verpych would like to talk to you, nephew.'

  'Verpych?' Fassin said, with a gulp. The household's major-domo, Sept Bantrabal's most senior servant, was supposed to rest dormant until the whole sept moved to its winter lodgings, over eighty days from now. It was unheard of for him to be roused out of sequence. 'I thought he was asleep!'

  'Well, he's been woken up.'

  *

  The ship had been dead for millennia. Nobody seemed to be sure quite how many, though the most plausible estimates put it at about six or seven. It was just one more foundered vessel from one or other of the great fleets which had contended the War of the New Quick (or perhaps the slightly later Machine War, or possibly the subsequent Scatter Wars, or maybe one of the brief, bitter, confused and untidy engagements implicit in the Strew), another forgotten, discarded piece from the great game of galactic power-mongering, civilisational compe­tition, pan-species manoeuvring and general grand-scale meta-politicking.

  The hulk had lain undiscovered on the surface of 'glantine for at least a thousand years because although 'glantine was a minor planet by human standards - slightly smaller than Mars - it was by the same measure sparsely populated, with fewer than a billion inhabitants, most of those concentrated in the tropics, and the area where the wreck had fallen - the North Waste Land - was a rarely visited and extensive tract of nothing much. That it had taken a long time for the local surveillance systems to return to anything like the sort of complexity or sophistication they'd exhibited before the commencement of hostilities also helpe
d the ruins avoid detection. Lastly, for all the vessel's hulking size, some portion of its auto-camouflage systems had survived the craft's partial destruction, the deaths of all the mortals aboard and its impact on the planet-moon's surface, and so had kept it disguised for all that time, seemingly just another fold of barren, rocky ejecta from the impact crater left by a smaller but much faster-travelling derelict which had crashed and vaporised in a deep crater ten kilometres away right at the start of the New Quick dispute.

  The ship's ruins had only been discovered because somebody in a flier had crashed, fatally, into one of its great curving ribs (perfectly holo-disguised at the time as sheer and shiningly inviting clear sky). Only then had the wreck been investigated, plundered for what little of its systems still worked (but which were not, under the new regime, proscribed. Which basically did not leave much.) and finally - the lifting of its hull and major substructures being prohibitively expensive to contem­plate, its cutting-up and carting away difficult, also not cheap and possibly dangerous, and its complete destruction only possible with the sort of serious gigatonnage weaponry people tended to object strongly to when used in peacetime in the atmospheres of a small planet-moon, even in a wilderness area - it had been cordoned off and a series of airborne loiter-drones posted on indefinite guard above, just in case.

  'No, this could be good, this could be positive,' Saluus Kehar told them, and swung the little flier low across the high desert towards the broken lands where the tattered-looking ribs of the great downed ship lay like folded shadow against the slowly darkening purple sky. Beyond the ruins, a vast, shimmering blue-green curtain of light flickered into existence, silently waving and rippling across the sky, then faded away again.

  'Yeah, you would fucking say that,' Taince said, fiddling with the controls of the comms unit. Static chopped and surfed from the speakers.

  'Should we be this close to the ground?' Ilen asked, forehead against the canopy, looking down. She glanced at the young man sharing the back seat of the little aircraft with her. 'Seriously, Fass, should we?'