The Algebraist (7 page)

*

A fragrance bud popped somewhere in the darkened room, and - after a few moments - he smelled Orchidia Noctisia, a Madebloom scent he would always associate with the Autumn House. There was little air movement in the quiet chamber so the bud must have been floating nearby. He lifted his head gently and saw a tiny shape like a slim, translucent flower falling chiffon-soft through the air between the bed and the trolley which had brought their supper. He lowered his head to Jaal’s shoulder again.

‘Mmm?’ she said drowsily.

‘Meet any friends in town?’ Fassin asked, winding a long golden coil of Jaal Tonderon’s hair around one finger, then bringing his nose forward to nuzzle the nape of her brown-red neck, breathing in the smell of her. She shifted against him, moving her hips in a sort of stirring motion. He had slipped out of her some time ago, but it was still a good feeling.

‘Ree and Grey and Sa,’ she said, her voice starting out a little sleepy. ‘Shopping was accomplished. Then we met up with Djen and Sohn. And Dayd, Dayd Eslaus. Oh, and Yoaz. You remember Yoaz Irmin, don’t you?’

He nipped her neck and was rewarded with a flinch and a yelp. ‘That was a long time ago,’ he told her.

She reached one hand behind her and stroked his exposed flank, then patted his behind. ‘I’m sure the memory is still vivid for her, dear.’

‘Ha!’ he said. ‘So am I.’ This drew a slap. Then they settled in against each other once more; she did that thing with her hips again and he wondered if there would be time for more sex before he had to go.

She turned to face him. Jaal Tonderon’s face was round and wide and only just very beautiful. For two thousand years or so, rHuman faces had looked pretty much how the owners wanted them to look, displaying either satisfaction with or indifference to whatever womb-grown comeliness they had been born with, or the particular, amended look their owners had subsequently specified. The only ugly people were those making a statement.

In an age when everyone could be beautiful, and\or look like famous historical figures (there were now laws about looking too much like famous contemporary figures), the truly interesting faces and bodies were those which sailed as close to the wind of being plain or even unattractive as possible, and yet just got away with it. People talked about faces that looked good in the flesh but not in images, or good in lifelike paintings but not on a screen, or faces that looked unattractive in repose but quite stunning when animated, or merely plain until the person smiled.

Jaal had been born with a face that looked - she said herself - committee design: unharmonious, stuck together, nothing quite matching. Yet to almost everybody who had ever met her, she seemed outrageously attractive, thanks to some alchemy of physiognomy, personality and expression. Fassin’s private estimation was that Jaal’s was a face still waiting to be grown into, and that she would be more beautiful when she was middle-aged than she was now. It was one reason he had asked her to marry him.

They could look forward, Fassin had every reason to believe, to a long life together, and just as it had been sensible to marry within his profession -- and to make a match that would meet with the enthusiastic approval of their respective Septs, strengthening the bonds between two of the most important Seer houses - so it had been only prudent to take that likely longevity into account.

Of course, as Slow Seers Fassin and Jaal’s shared future would be absolutely if not relatively longer than that of most of their contemporaries, and radically different; in the slow-time of a long delve, Seers aged very slowly indeed, and Uncle Slovius’s fourteen centuries, while short of the record and not yet (thankfully, naturally) his limit, should not be difficult to surpass. Seer spouses and loved ones had to schedule their slow-time and normal life carefully so as not to get too out of synch with each other, lest the protagonists lose touch emotionally. The life of Tchayan Olmey, Fassin’s old mentor and tutor, had hinged on just such an unforeseen discontinuity, leaving her stranded from an old love.

‘Anything wrong?’ Jaal asked him.

‘Just this, ah, interview thing.’ He glanced at the antique clock across the room.

‘Who’s it with?’

‘Can’t say,’ he told her. He’d mentioned having an appointment for an interview later when he’d first met Jaal off her suborb shuttle at the house port in the valley below, but she’d been too busy telling him about the latest gossip from the capital and the scandal regarding her Aunt Feem and the Sept Khustrial boy to question him any further on the matter. Her shower, their supper and then more urgent matters had taken precedence thereafter.

‘You can’t say?’ she said, frowning, turning further round towards him, lifting and repositioning one dark breast on his light brown chest as she did so. There was something, he thought, not for the first time, about an aureola more pale than its surroundings… ‘Oh, Fass,’ Jaal said, sounding annoyed, ‘it’s not a girl, is it? Not a
servant
girl? Fucking forfend, not
before
we’re married, surely?’

She was smiling. He grinned back. ‘Nuisance, but has to be done. Sorry.’

‘You really can’t say?’ She shifted her head, and blonde hair spilled over his shoulder. It felt even better than it looked.

‘Really,’ he said.

Jaal was staring intently at his mouth. ‘Really?’ she asked.

‘Well.’ He licked his teeth. ‘I can say it’s not a girl.’ She was still staring intently at his mouth. ‘Look, Jaal, have I got some sort of foreign matter lodged in there?’

She pushed her mouth slowly up towards his. ‘Not,’ she said, ‘yet.’

*

‘You are Fassin Taak, of the Seer Sept Bantrabal, ‘glantine moon, Nasqueron gas-giant planet, Ulubis star and system?’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘You are physically present here and not any sort of projection or other kind of representation?’

‘Correct.’

‘You are still an active Slow Seer, domiciled in the seasonal houses of Sept Bantrabal and working from the satellite-moon Third Fury?’

‘Yes, yes and yes.’

‘Good. Fassin Taak, everything that will pass between you and this construct is in strictest confidence. You will respect that confidence and communicate to others no more of what we shall talk about than is absolutely necessary to facilitate such conduct as will be required of you in furtherance of whatever actions you will be asked to perform and whatever goals you will be asked to pursue. Do you do understand that and agree?’

Fassin thought about this. Just for an instant as the projection had started talking it had suddenly occurred to him that the glowing orb looked a lot like a Plasmatic being (not that he’d ever met one, but he’d seen images), and that moment of distraction had been sufficient for him to miss the full meaning of what had been said. ‘Actually, no. Sorry, I’m not trying to be –’

‘To repeat…’

Fassin was in the main audience chamber at the top of the Autumn House, a large circular space with views in every horizontal direction and a dramatic transparent roof, all blanked out. For now its contents consisted of a single seat for him and a stubby, metallic-looking cylinder supporting a globe of glowing gas hovering above its centre. A fat cable ran from the squat cylinder to a floor flap in the middle of the chamber.

The gas sphere repeated what it had just said. It spoke more slowly this time, though happily with no trace of irritation or condescension. Its voice was flat, unaccented, and yet still seemed to contain the hint of a personality, as though the voice of a particular individual had been sampled and used as a template, from which most but not all expression had been removed.

Fassin heard it out, then said, ‘Okay, yes, I understand and agree.’

‘Good. This construct is an emissarial projection of the Mercatorial Administrata, sub-Ministerial level, with superior-rank authority courtesy of the Ascendancy, Engineer division, Senior Engineer level, Eship
Est-taun Zhiffir,
portal-carrying. It is qualified to appear sentient while not in fact being so. Do you understand this?’

Fassin thought about this too and decided that he did, just. ‘Yep,’ he said, then wondered if the projection would understand colloquial affirmatives. Apparently it did.

‘Good. Seer Fassin Taak, you are hereby seconded to the Shrievalty Ocula. You will have the honorary rank--’

‘Hold on!’ Fassin nearly jumped out of his seat. ‘The
what?’

‘
The honorary rank of--’

‘No, I mean I’m
seconded
to the what?’

‘The Shrievalty Ocula. You will have the honorary--’

‘The
Shrievalty?’
Fassin said, trying to control his voice. ‘The
Ocula?’

‘
Correct.’

The baroque, intentionally labyrinthine power structures of the latest, Culmina-inspired Age, incorporating the aspirations of and enforced limitations on at least eight major subject species and whole vast subcategories of additional Faring races as well as (by its own claim) ‘contextualising’ various lesser civilisations of widely varying scope and ambitions and, peripherally at least, influencing entire alien spectra of Others, held many organisations and institutions whose names the utterance of which people - or at least people who knew of such things - tended to greet with a degree of respect shading into fear.

The Shrievalty was probably the least extreme example; people might respect it - many would even find its purpose rather boring - but few would fear it. It was the paramilitary Order\discipline\faculty of technicians and theorists in charge of what had once been called Information Technology, and so it was also, though less exclusively, concerned with the acceptably restricted remnants of Artificial Intelligence technologies still extant in the post-War epoch.

The Machine War had wiped the vast majority of AIs out of existence throughout the galaxy over seven thousand years ago, and the Culmina-inspired - and - enforced - peace which followed had stabilised around a regime which both forbade research into AI tech and demanded the active help of all citizens in hunting down and destroying what few scattered vestiges of AI might still exist. Organised on military lines with a bracing infrastructure of religious dogma, the Shrievalty was charged with the running, administration and maintenance of those IT systems which were anywhere near being sufficiently complex to be in danger of becoming sentient, either through accident or design, but which were considered too vital to the running of their various dependent societies to be shut down and dismantled.

Another Order, a rather more fear-inspiring one, the Lustrals of the Cessoria, had been formed to hunt down and destroy both AIs themselves and anybody who attempted to create new ones or protect, shelter or otherwise aid existing examples. But that had not prevented the formation within the Shrievalty of an Intelligence section - the Shrievalty Ocula - whose duties, methods and even philosophy significantly overlapped with those of the Lustrals. It was the Ocula, this somewhat shadowy, slightly grim-sounding unit which Fassin was being ordered to become part of, for no reason that he could immediately fathom.

‘The Ocula?’ Fassin said. ‘Me? Are you absolutely sure?’

‘Absolutely.’

Technically, he had no choice. To be allowed to do what they did, the Seers had to be an officially recognised profession within the Miscellariat, the catch-all term for those useful to the Mercatoria who did not fit inside the more standard subdivisional categories, and as such all Seers were subject to full Mercatorial discipline and control, committed to obeying any order issued by anybody properly authorised and of a sufficiently superior rank.

Yet this virtually never happened. Fassin couldn’t remember anyone from Sept Bantrabal ever being seconded by order in peacetime, not in nearly two thousand years of Sept history. Why now? Why him?

‘May this briefing continue?’ the glowing orb asked. ‘It is important.’

‘Well, yes, all right, but I do have questions.’

‘All relevant questions will be answered where possible and prudent,’ the orb told him.

Fassin was thinking, wondering. Did he really have to accept this? What were the punishments for disobeying? Demotion? Forced resignation? Banishment? Outlaw status? Death?

‘To resume, then,’ the gas globe said. ‘Seer Fassin Taak, you are hereby seconded to the Shrievalty Ocula. You will have the honorary rank of provisional acting captain for security clearance purposes, with exceptions made as required by authorised superiors, the principal honorary rank of major for seniority and disciplinary purposes, the honorary rank of general for reward purposes and the honorary rank of field marshal for travel-priority purposes. This construct is unable to negotiate regarding the aforesaid. Do you find the foregoing acceptable?’

‘What if I say no?’

‘Punitive actions will be taken. Certainly against you, probably against Sept Bantrabal and possibly against the ‘glantine Slow Seers as a whole. Do you find the above mentioned secondment details acceptable?’

Fassin had to shut his mouth. This floating bladder of glowing gas had just threatened not only him, not only his Sept and entire extended family and all their servants and dependants, but the major focus of uniquely important work being done on the entire planet-moon, one of the three or four most important centres for Dweller Studies in the entire galaxy! It was so outrageous, so surely disproportionate, it almost had to be a joke.