The Algebraist (46 page)

- Yes. Though you will understand if I have to go off by myself at some point, I hope. Your presence might make Valseir, or whoever, nervous.

The Blimper picked up more speed, still heading towards the storm-inward side of the starting grid. The slipstream started to blow away balloons and trays not secured.

- Nervous? You think this is all that… serious?

- What do you think?

- I think Oazil is probably one or several of the things you thought he might be. However, we are here now and if he was telling the truth no doubt you will be contacted. Of course, the other possibility is that we might have been getting close to something of interest back at Valseir’s house and this was simply a method of getting us out of the way. What exactly did Oazil say to you?

Fassin had kept a record of the conversation he’d had with the wandering Dweller, deep beneath the house. He signalled it across to Hatherence.

The fleet of spectator craft passed by the starting grid like an unruly flock of fat birds. Another great cheer sounded. The GasClippers stayed on the starting plane, awaiting their own signal.

- Still, little enough to go on, major, Hatherence told him. - You should have shared this with me earlier and let me decide on the correct course of action. I may have been overly indulgent with you. Your loss is still something I appreciate, of course. However, I fear I might have been guilty of dereliction.

- I won’t report you if you don’t, Fassin sent, without humour.

The GasClippers - the larger, plural-crewed versions of the single-Dweller StormJammers - were sharp, angular-looking things, all jag-sails, keel-lode and high-gallants. Fifty metres long - fifty metres in most directions - bristling with glittering sails like enormous blades, they looked like the result of some monstrous permanent magnet being thrown into a hopper full of exotic edged weapons. Pennant sails carried identifying marks, little flowers of colour within the silvery blades, all bright beneath the glittering point of light that was Ulubis.

It was not possible to sail in a single medium. True sailing required a keel (or something like one) in one medium, and sails (or something like them) in another. In a single great stream of gas, you could not sail: you flew. On the edges of two streams, the boundary between a zone moving in one direction and a belt moving in the other, you could, in theory, sail, if you could build a ship big enough. The Dwellers had tried to build ships on that scale that would stay together. They had failed.

Instead, StormJammers and GasClippers exploited the titanic magnetic fields that most gas-giant planets possessed. Flux lines were their water, the place where their steadying keels lay. With a colossal magnetic field trying to move them along one course and the planet-girdling atmospheric bands of a Dweller-inhabited gas-giant expecting them to move along with everything else in a quite different direction, the possibility of sailing arose. And by sailing with sails dipped into the inside edges of giant storm systems, the sport could be made satisfactorily dangerous.

- We must hope that this was not a ruse to get us away from the house, the colonel told Fassin. - And we must hope that Valseir will indeed contact you. If he is alive. We were given no hint that such might be the case. She looked at him. - Were we?

- None.

Almost the entire fleet of spectator craft had passed the starting grid. The GasClippers shook as one, then - bewilderingly quickly, when one knew they had no proper engines - they swung away towards the massive wall of dark, tearing cloud that was the inner limit of the great storm, peeling and jostling, weaving and carving through the gas as they fought for position, using the light breezes and simple gaseous inertia of the medium to allow them to steer while they rode their lines of force towards the storm wall.

- They never did find a body, though. This is right? Hatherence asked.

- That’s right, Fassin told her. - Lost in a squall that could tear apart a StormJammer he wouldn’t have had much of a chance, but he might have lived.

- Yet there is no… water or the like? They cannot drown, and it is not too cold or hot. How do they die, just in a strong wind?

- Ripped apart, spun until they lose consciousness and then just whirled round too fast to hold together. Or left in a coma that means they do drop into the Depths. And they do need to breathe. If the pressure is too low, they can’t.

- Hmm.

The GasClippers swung at the storm’s inner surface, half disappearing as their extending blade-sails cut into the stream of gas. They accelerated hard. Even with their head start and their bellowing engines labouring, even taking a shorter, inner-curve route, the spectator craft began to lose ground to the small fleet of speeding GasClippers.

- It is possible that Valseir somehow arranged the accident? the Colonel asked.

- Possible. He might have arranged to have some friend, some accomplice nearby, to rescue him. It would make surviving likely rather than not.

- Do Dwellers often fake their own deaths?

- Almost never.

- So I thought.

The group of GasClippers was level with the centre of the greater fleet of spectator ships and the shouting and hollering in the spectator craft rose still further in pitch and volume as the whole mass of GasClippers and their accompanying squadrons of Blimpers and ancillary vessels seemed to move briefly as one, the dark storm wall a vertical sea, troubled and tattered, tearing past in front of them. A vast slanting band of shade rose up to meet them all as they moved into the shadow of the storm, the hazy point of Ulubis eclipsed by a roaring circlet of dementedly gyrating gas a hundred klicks high and ten thousand kilometres across.

‘Fassin. Made any bets yet?’ Y’sul said, settling into his dent-seat alongside. A pet-child in a waiter’s uniform floated with a tray at his side, held back until the older Dweller settled into his seat, then left the tray with its drug paraphernalia clipped to the seat and retreated.

‘No. I’d be relying on your kudos, wouldn’t I?’

‘Oh! I suppose you would,’ Y’sul agreed, apparently only now thinking this through. ‘Obviously I must trust you subconsciously. Most odd.’ He flipped to one side and started rummaging through the various drug works he’d brought back.

‘How was your friend?’ Hatherence asked him.

‘Oh, in very good spirits,’ Y’sul said, not looking at her. ‘Father died yesterday in action. Stands to inherit kudos points for bravery or something.’ He kept on rummaging. ‘Sworn I got some FeverBrain…’

‘Good to know he’s taking it so well,’ Fassin said.

‘Ah! Here we are,’ Y’sul said, holding up a large bright orange capsule to take a good look at it. ‘Oh yes, Fassin: bumped into some youngster who claimed to know you. Gave me this.’ Y’sul dug into a pocket in his forebritch and came out with a tiny image-leaf, passing it to Fassin.

The human held it in one of the gascraft’s fine-scale manipulators and looked at the photograph. It was of white clouds in a blue sky.

‘Yes, colour’s all wrong, obviously,’ Y’sul commented. ‘Couldn’t help noticing.’

Fassin was aware of the colonel looking at the image too. She sat back, silent.

‘Did this person who claimed to know me actually say anything?’ Fassin asked.

‘Eh?’ Y’sul said, still studying the finger-sized orange lozenge. ‘Oh, yes. Said to take good care of that thing, and that they’ll be in the stern viewing-gallery restaurant if you wanted to see them. Alone, they said. Bit rude, I thought. Very young, though. Almost expect that.’

‘Well, thanks,’ Fassin said.

‘Nothing,’ Y’sul said with a wave. He popped the giant pill.

- With your permission, colonel, Fassin sent to Hatherence.

- Granted. Take care.

‘Excuse me,’ Fassin said as he rose from his dent-seat. Y’sul didn’t hear; two of the leading GasClippers were having a private duel, swerving dangerously close, weaving in and out of each other’s course, trying to tangle field lines, steal wind and so eddy-wake the other into dropping behind or crashing out, and Y’sul was floating high up out of his seat, shouting and whooping with all the other spectators not yet in their own little narcotic world.

The Dweller - a youth by his simple clothing and certainly looking at least that young -- intercepted Fassin on the broad central corridor of the
Dzunda,
falling into pace with him as he made his way towards the rear of the ship. Fassin turned fractionally towards his sudden companion, kept on going.

‘Seer Taak?’ the youth said.

‘Yes.’

‘Would you come with me, please?’

Fassin followed the young Dweller not to the stern viewing restaurant but to a private box slung low beneath the Blimper. The captain of the
Dzunda
was there, talking to an old Dweller who looked to be at least early Sage in years. The captain turned when Fassin and the youth entered, then - with a small bow to Fassin - left with the youth, leaving Fassin alone in the round, diamond-bubble space with the aged Dweller. A few screens showed silent views of the race. A float tray to one side carried a large narcincenser, grey-blue smoke uncoiling from it, filling the cabin with haze and scent.

‘Is it you, old one?’

‘I am still me, young Taak,’ the familiar voice said.

The Dweller floated up to him. If it was Valseir, he was no more shrunken but rather more dark than the last time Fassin had seen him. He had lost all the life charms and decorations and was dressed now in severely formal, almost monastic yellow part-robes.

‘You have the token I sent?’

Fassin handed over the little image-leaf. The Dweller looked at it, rim mantle rippling in a smile. ‘Yes, you still wear us away, don’t you?’ He handed it back. ‘Take good care of that. And so, how was Oazil? I take it he found you at the house and you’re not here by coincidence.’

‘He was well. Eccentric, but well.’

The old Dweller’s smile grew, then faded. ‘And the house? My libraries?’

‘They are sinking into the Depths. What’s left.’

‘What’s left?’

‘A bit was missing.’

‘Ah. The study’

‘What happened to it?’

‘The CloudTunnel started to get too heavy to maintain. I had the house decoupled. I cleared the study first. The tunnel section fell into the Depths.’

‘And the contents?’

The old Dweller roted back a fraction, creating small roils of smoke in the haze. ‘You are still testing me, aren’t you, Fassin Taak? You are still not prepared to trust me that I am who you think I am.’

‘Who do I think you are?’

‘Your - I thought - old friend, Valseir, once choal, now acting like a Sage-child and hoping for the confirmation of my peers if I ever get to come out of hiding. Do you think I will ever get to come out of hiding, Seer Taak?’

‘That depends.’ Beyond the old Dweller, the GasClipper race continued, well ahead of the labouring Blimper. Screens relaying signals from camera jets showed the action in close-up. The sounds of distant cheers came through the open diamond-pane windows of the private box. ‘Why did you go into hiding?’

The Dweller switched to signal-whispering. - Because I thought to skim through what I’d traded you for the Expressionist paintings you had brought. I read a certain note at the end of a certain volume. Which reminds me that I must apologise. It was not my intention to seem to fob you off with three different translations of the same volume instead of all three parts of the one work. However, read that note I did, and came to the conclusion that what was being referred to was the sort of information that people die for, and most certainly will kill for. I decided to disappear. I became dead.

‘Sorry I doubted you, Valseir,’ Fassin said, moving forward and holding out two manipulators towards the old Dweller.

‘Suspicious to the last,’ sighed Valseir, ignoring the left manipulator and shaking the right with his own extended right hub-arm. ‘There; how humans greet. Are you satisfied
now,
Seer Taak?’

Fassin smiled. ‘Entirely. Good to see you again.’

- You must feel emotional pain, then. I feel sorry for you.

- I am trying not to feel too sorry for myself. Which is helped by getting on with what needs to be done.

Fassin had told Valseir about the attacks on Third Fury and Sept Bantrabal. Valseir had related his life since they had last met, a time dominated by the Dweller List in a way that even Fassin’s hadn’t been until recently. Most of that period he had spent in hiding, after arranging what looked like his own death with the help of Xessife, the Dweller captain whom Fassin had seen briefly earlier. He was an old StormSailor, a Jammerhand and Clipperine with a collection of trophies and medals that outweighed him. Retired now, pursuing a more contemplative course, content to take charge of a Blimper now and again just to stay part of the whole StormSailing scene.

- And what needs to be done, Seer Taak?

- I think we need to find that third volume. Do you still have it?

- I do not. However, it is not the third volume itself that is of consequence in this matter.

- Then what is?