It didn't matter that base reality was petty and grey and mean and demeaning and quite empty of meaning compared to the glorious majesty of the multi-hued life you'd been living through metamathics; it didn't matter that base reality was of no consequence aesthetically, hedonistically, metamathically, intellectually and philosophically; if that was the single foundation-stone that all your higher-level comfort and joy rested upon, and it was kicked away from underneath you, you fell, and your limitless pleasure realms fell with you.
It was just like some ancient electricity-powered computer; it didn't matter how fast, error-free and tireless it was, it didn't matter how great a labour-saving boon it was, it didn't matter what it could do or how many different ways it could amaze; if you pulled its plug out, or just hit the Off button, all it became was a lump of matter; all its programs became just settings, dead instructions, and all its computations vanished as quickly as they'd moved.
It was, also, like the dependency of the human-basic brain on the human-basic body; no matter how intelligent, perceptive and gifted you were, no matter how entirely you lived for the ascetic rewards of the intellect and eschewed the material world and the ignobility of the flesh, if your heart just gave out…
That was the Dependency Principle; that you could never forget where your Off switches were located, even if it was somewhere tiresome. It was the problem that Subliming dispensed with, of course, and it was one of the (usually more minor) reasons that civilisations chose Elderhood; if your course was set in that direction in the first place then eventually that reliance on the material universe came to seem vestigial, untidy, pointless, and even embarrassing.
It wasn't the course the Culture had fully embarked upon, at least not yet, but as a society it was well aware of both the difficulties presented by remaining in base reality and the attractions of the Sublime. In the meantime, it compromised, busying itself in the macrocosmic clumsiness and petty, messy profanity of the real galaxy while at the same time exploring the transcendental possibilities of the sacred Irreal.
It is absolutely the-
A single signal flicked the great ship's attention entirely back to base reality:
xRock End In Tears
oGSV Sleeper Service.
Done.
The ship contemplated the one-word message for what was, for it, a very long time, and wondered at the mixture of emotions it felt. It set its newly manufactured drone-fleet to work in the external environments and re-checked the evacuation schedule.
Then it located Amorphia — the avatar was wandering bemused through kilometres of tableaux exhibition space that had once been accommodation sections — and instructed it to re-visit the woman Dajeil Gelian.
IV
Genar-Hofoen was distinctly unimpressed with his quarters aboard the Battle-Cruiser Kiss The Blade. For one thing, they smelled.
— What is that? he asked, his nose wrinkling. ~ Methane?
— Methane is odourless, Genar-Hofoen, the suit said. ~ I believe the smell you find objectionable may be a mixture of methanal and methylamine.
— Fucking horrible smell, whatever it is.
— I'm sure your mucous membrane receptors will cease to react to it before long.
— I certainly hope so.
He was standing in what was supposed to be his bedroom. It was cold. It was very big; a ten-metre square — plenty of headroom — but it was cold; he could see his breath. He still wore most of the gelfield suit but he'd detached all but the nape-part of the neck and let the head of the suit flop down over his back so that he could get a fresher impression of his quarters, which consisted of a vestibule, a lounge, a frighteningly industrial-looking kitchen-diner, an equally intimidatingly mechanical bathroom and this so-called bedroom. He was starting to wish he hadn't bothered. The walls, floor and ceiling of the room were some sort of white plastic; the floor bulged up to create a sort of platform on which a huge white thing lay spread, like a cloud made solid. ~ What, he asked, pointing at the bed, ~ is that?
— I think it is your bed.
— I'd guessed. But what is that… thing lying on it?
— Quilt? Duvet? Bed-covering.
— What do you want to cover it for? he asked, genuinely confused.
— Well, it's more to cover you, I think, when you're asleep, the suit said, sounding uncertain.
The man dropped his hold-all onto the shiny plastic floor and went forward to heft the white cloudy thing. It felt quite light. Possibly a little damp, unless the suit's tactiles were getting confused. He pulled a glove-section back and touched the bed-cover thing with his bare skin. Cold. Maybe damp. ~ Module? Genar-Hofoen said. He'd get its opinion on all this.
— You can't talk to Scopell-Afranqui directly, remember? the suit said politely.
— Shit, Genar-Hofoen said. He rubbed the material of the bedcover between his fingers. ~ This feel damp to you, suit?
— A little. Do you want me to ask the ship to patch you through to the module?
— Eh? Oh, no; don't bother. We moving yet?
— No.
The man shook his head. ~ Horrible smell, he said. He prodded the bed-cover thing again. He wished now he'd insisted that the module be accommodated on board the ship so that he could live inside it, but the Affronters had said this wasn't possible; hangar space was at a premium on all three ships. The module had protested, and he'd made supportive noises, but he had been rather entertained by the idea that Scopell-Afranqui would have to stay here while he went zapping off to far-off parts of the galaxy on an important mission. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Now he wasn't so sure.
There was a distant growling noise and a tremor underfoot; then there came a jerk that almost threw the human off his feet. He staggered to one side and had to sit down on the bed.
It made a squelching sound. He stared at it, aghast.
— Now we're moving, said the suit.
V
Singing softly to himself, the man tended the little fire he had started on the floor of the hall, beneath and between the stored ships, arrayed in the blackness like the trunks of enormous trees in a silent, petrified forest. Gestra Ishmethit was surveying his charges in the deep-buried darkness that was Pittance.
Pittance was a huge irregular lump of matter, two hundred kilometres across at its narrowest point and ninety-eight per cent iron by volume. It was the remnant of a catastrophe which had occurred over four billion years earlier, when the planet of whose core it had been part had been struck by another large body. Expelled from its own solar system by that cataclysm, it had wandered between the stars for a quarter of the life of the universe, uncaptured by any other gravity well but subtly affected by all it passed anywhere near. It had been discovered drifting in deep space a millennium ago by a GCU taking an eccentrically trajectorial course between two stellar systems, it had been given the brief examination its simple and homogeneous composition deserved and then had been left to glide, noted, effectively tagged, untouched, but given the name Pittance.
When the time came, five hundred years later, to dismantle the colossal war machine the Culture had created in order to destroy that of the Idirans, Pittance had suddenly been found a role.
Most of the Culture's warships had been decommissioned and dismantled. A few were retained, demilitarised, to act as express delivery systems for small packages of matter — humans, for example — on the rare occasions when the transmission of information alone was not sufficient to deal with a problem, and an even smaller number were kept intact and operational; two hundred years after the war ended, the number of fully active warcraft was actually smaller than it had been before the conflict began (though, as the Culture's critics never tired of pointing out, the average — and avowedly completely peaceful — General Contact Unit was more than a match for the vast majority of alien craft it was likely to bump into over the course of its career).