The Algebraist (22 page)

And that was just the start. He scratched his head. Too many long words. And this wasn’t even an adult pedia. Maybe he should have found the not-so-big kids’ site.

They were landing. Wow! He hadn’t even noticed they were near the ground. The desert was covered with fliers of different sizes and there were lots in the air too and lots of people.

They got out and walked across the sand though a lot of people stayed in their fliers. He got to go on Uncle Slovius’s shoulders again.

Away in the distance in the centre of a big circle was a tower with a big blob on top and that was where the bad machine was which had been found hiding in a cave in the mountains and caught by the Cessoria. (The Cessoria and the Lustrals caught bad machines. He’d tried watching
Lustral Patrol
a few times but it was too much for old people with talk and kissing.)

The bad machine in the blob on top of the big tower was allowed to make a speech but it was too full of long words. He was getting bored and it was very hot. No toys! Uncle Slovius said ‘Shush’ at him, twice. He sort of tried to pretend-strangle Uncle Slovius with his thighs and knees to get back at him for going ‘Shush’ twice, but Uncle Slovius didn’t seem to notice. Mum and Dad were still talking quietly, rolling their eyes and shaking their heads at each other as usual. Great-uncle Fimender and the two old-lady girlfriends had stayed in the flier.

Then Lustrals in a flier - humans and a whule like a big grey bat - said things, then at last it was time and the bad machine was killed but even that wasn’t very good, the blob on top of the tower just went red and made lots of smoke and then there was a big bright flash but not that big or bright and then there was a bang and bits fell down, with smoke, and some people cheered but mostly there was silence, just the bang being an echo round the mountains.

When they got back to the flier Great-uncle Fimender had very red eyes and said in his opinion they had just seen a terrible crime committed.

*

‘Ah, young Taak. Now then, what is this nonsense about not being able to delve properly, by which of course one means remotely?’

Braam Ganscerel, Chief Seer of Sept Tonderon and therefore the most senior Seer of all - and Fassin’s future paterfamilias-in-law - was tall and thin and maned in white hair. He looked younger than he was, but then he was nearly seventeen hundred years old by the most obvious way of reckoning such matters. He had a sharp, angular face with a large nose, his skin was pale, waxy and translucent and his fingers and hands were long and fragile-seeming. He habitually walked and stood with his head back and chest out, as though he had long ago vowed not to appear stooped as he grew into great old age and had gone too far in the other direction. This curious stance meant that his head was angled so far back on his neck that he had no choice but to look down his splendidly monumental nose at those he talked with, to or at. He held two long shining black staffs as though just returned from - or about to set off for - some particularly fashionable ski slopes.

With his long, bunned white hair, pale complexion and simple but elegantly cut Seer robes - black puttees, pantaloons and long jacket - he contrived to look appealingly frail, sweetly elderly, breathtakingly distinguished and only a little less authoritative than a supreme deity.

He swept into the senior officers’ mess of the heavy cruiser
Pyralis
in a clatter of clicks from his twin staffs and boot heels, attended by a pale train of half a dozen junior Seers - half of them men, half of them women, all of them greyly deferential - and, bringing up the rear, the gangly, smiling form of Paggs Yurnvic, a Seer whom Fassin had helped teach but who, having spent less time subsequently in the slowness of actual delving than Fassin had, was now older in both adjusted time and appearance.

‘Chief Seer,’ Fassin said, standing and executing a formal nod that just avoided being a bow. The heavy cruiser was taking their party to Third Fury, the close-orbit moon of Nasqueron from which they would delve - either all remotely, or, if Fassin had his way, through a combination of remote and direct presences.

Braam Ganscerel had insisted that his years and frailty made a high-gee journey to the moon out of the question - esuits, life-pods and shock-gel notwithstanding - and so the ship was making a gentle standard one gee, creating what felt like about twice ‘glantine’s gravity and a fraction less than Sepekte’s. Even this standard gee, Braam Ganscerel let it be known, necessitated that he use both his staffs to support himself. This was, however, in the current grave circumstances, a sacrifice he felt it was only right and proper and indeed required that he make. Fassin thought it made him look like a stilter, like a whule.

‘Well?’ the Chief Seer demanded, stopping in front of Fassin. ‘Why can’t you remote delve, Fassin? What’s wrong with you?’

‘Fear, sir,’ Fassin told him.

‘Fear?’ Braam Ganscerel seemed to experiment with putting his head even further back than it already was, found it was possible, and left it there.

‘Fear of being shown up by you, sir, as a merely competent Slow Seer.’

Braam Ganscerel half-closed one eye. He looked at Fassin for a while. ‘You’re mocking me, Fassin.’

Fassin smiled. ‘I delve better direct, Braam. You know that.’

‘I do,’ Ganscerel said. He turned with a sort of staccato grace and let himself flop into the couch where Fassin had been sitting, watching screen news. Fassin sat too. Paggs perched on one arm of the next-nearest couch and the rest of Braam Ganscerel’s retinue sited themselves nearby according to some arcane pecking order.

Fassin nodded at Paggs. ‘Seer Yurnvic,’ he said with a smile and a formality he hoped Paggs wouldn’t take seriously.

Paggs grinned. ‘Good to see you, Fass.’ That was all right, then.

‘However, we must do this together, I believe,’ Braam Ganscerel said, looking ahead at the wall screen, where the news went silently on. The funerals were taking place of some more of the Navarchy people who’d died in the attack on the dock-habitat at Sepekte’s trailing Lagrange. Ganscerel had let one of his twin staffs rest on the couch beside him, but still held the other. He waved it at the screen and it obligingly went back to being a bulkhead again. The heavy cruiser’s senior officers’ mess was a large space, but much broken up by vertical columns and diagonal reinforcing struts. Like the rest of the vessel it was quite comfortable by human standards, though Colonel Hatherence had had to be content with a cabin that was extremely cramped for an oerileithe. She had been offered passage on an escorting cruiser with more suitable accommodation but had declined.

‘We can be together,’ Fassin said. ‘You and Paggs remotely, the Colonel and I directly. That way we’re backed up so if anything happens to either group--’

‘Ah,’ Ganscerel said. ‘You see, young Taak, this is the point. If we are all on Third Fury, with this fine vessel and its escort craft to protect us, we shall all be safe. You wish to take a tiny gascraft into the unending violence of the planet’s atmosphere. A dangerous enterprise at the best of times. In wartime, positively foolhardy.’

‘Braam, the old portal was protected by an entire fleet and it still got blasted. Third Fury might move, but it moves very predictably. If somebody did want to attack it they could accelerate a small rock to just under light speed and send it on an intercept course. If that happens, the only way a heavy cruiser is going to help is if by some million-to-one chance it happens to be in the way at the time and takes the hit itself. As nobody’s going to surround the entire moon with a shell of ships, I think it’s unwise to rely on a few war craft to protect us from something there’s almost no defence against.’

‘Why would anybody target a moonlet like Third Fury?’ Paggs asked.

‘Indeed,’ Ganscerel said, as though he had been just about to ask that very question.

‘No good reason,’ Fassin said. ‘But then a lot of places there’s been no good reason to hit have been getting attacked recently.’

‘This might well include Nasqueron itself,’ Ganscerel pointed out.

‘Which can absorb a lot more punishment than Third Fury.’

‘You might still be targeted.’

‘If I’m in there in a gascraft, even with Colonel Hatherence riding shotgun, I should be effectively untraceable,’ Fassin told them.

‘Unless,’ Paggs said, ‘she’s supposed to be in constant touch with her superiors.’

‘And that might be the real reason we are all expected to stay together on Third Fury, delving remotely,’ Ganscerel said, sighing. He looked at Fassin. ‘Control. Or at least the illusion of it. Our masters are fully aware how important this mission is, even if they think themselves for the moment above explaining its precise nature to all who need to know. They are naturally terrified that if it goes wrong some of the blame will stick to them. Really, it is all up to us: a bunch of academics they’ve never particularly cared about or for, even though - ’ Ganscerel looked round the assembled junior Seers ‘- being a centre of Dweller Studies represents the only thing which makes Ulubis in any way remarkable.’ He directed his gaze on Fassin again. ‘There is very little they can do, therefore they will attend with extreme diligence to what trivial matters they are able to affect. With us all apparently safe on Third Fury protected by a small fleet of warships, they will feel they are doing all they can to assist us. If they let you go down into Nasqueron, and something does go wrong, they will be blamed. In that they are right.’

‘It won’t work, Braam.’

‘I think we have to try,’ the older man said. ‘Look.’ He patted Fassin’s arm. Fassin was dressed in his Shrievalty major’s uniform and feeling awkward amidst fellow Seers. ‘Have you tried remote delving recently?’

‘Not for a long time,’ Fassin admitted.

‘It’s changed,’ Paggs said, nodding. ‘It’s much more lifelike, if you know what I mean; more convincing.’ Paggs smiled. ‘There have been a lot of improvements over the last couple of centuries. Largely thanks to the Real Delving movement, frankly.’

Oh, Paggs, flattery?
Fassin thought.

Ganscerel patted his arm again. ‘Just try it, will you, Fassin? Will you do that for me?’

Fassin didn’t want to say yes immediately.
This is all beside the point,
he thought.
Even if I didn’t know there was a potential threat to Third Fury, the argument that matters is that the Dwellers we need to talk to just won’t take us seriously if we turn up in remotes. It’s about respect, about us taking risks, sharing their world with them, really being there.
But he mustn’t seem intransigent. Keep some arguments back; always have reserves. After a moment he nodded slowly. ‘Very well. I’ll do that. But only as a trial delve. A day or two. That’ll be enough to feel any difference. Then we have to make a final decision.’ Ganscerel smiled. They all did.

They had a very pleasant dinner with the senior officers of the small fleet taking them to Third Fury.

Fassin got Ganscerel alone at one point. ‘Chief Seer,’ he said. ‘I will do this remote delve, but if I feel it’s not good enough I’m going to have to insist on going direct.’ He gave Ganscerel space to say something, but the old man just looked him in the eye, head thrown back. ‘I do have authority,’ Fassin continued. ‘From the briefing, from Admiral Quile and the Complector Council. I realise it’s been compromised by people in-system coming to their own conclusions about the best way to tackle this problem, but if I think I need to, I’ll go as high and wide as I can to get my way.’

Ganscerel thought for a while, then smiled. ‘Do you think this delve - or delves, this mission - will be successful?’

‘No, Chief Seer.’

‘Neither do I. However, we must make the attempt and do all we can to make it successful, even so, and even though failure is probably guaranteed. We must be seen to do what we can, attempt not to offend those above us, and aim to protect the good name and the future prospects of the Slow Seers in general. These things we can definitely do. You agree?’

‘So far, yes.’

‘If you genuinely believe that you must delve directly, I shall not stand in your way. I shall not back you, either, because to do that in my position would be to tie myself too directly to a course of action I still regard as fundamentally foolhardy. In any other set of circumstances I would simply order you to do as your most senior Chief Seer tells you to do. However, you have been instructed from on high - from extremely on high - Fassin Taak, and that does alter things somewhat. However. Try this remote delve. You might be surprised. Then make your own mind up. I won’t stand in your way. The responsibility will be entirely yours. You have my full support in that.’ With a wink, Ganscerel turned away to talk to the heavy cruiser’s captain.

Fassin reflected that being given full support had never felt so much like being hung out to dry.

The
Pyralis
blazed with its own trailed aurora as it entered the protective magnetombra of Third Fury, a little twenty-kilometre-wide ball of rock and metal orbiting just 120,000 kilometres above Nasqueron’s livid cloud tops. The gas-giant filled the sky, so close that its rotund bulk took on the appearance of a vast wall, its belts and zones of tearing, swirling, ever-eddying clouds looking like colossal contra-rotating, planet-wide streams of madly coloured liquid caught whirling past each other under perfectly transparent ice.