I wish you well and hope that my decision might help precipitate a reconciliation I devoutly wish will happen.
[stuttered tight point, M32, tra. @n4.28.883.6723]
xLSV Serious Callers Only
oEccentric Shoot Them Later
Meat. Take a look at the enclosed bullshit from the AOANL'sA (signal enclosed). I almost hope it's been taken over. If this is the way it really feels, I'd feel slightly worse.
oo
[stuttered tight point, M32, tra. @4.28.883.6920]
xEccentric Shoot Them Later
oLSV Serious Callers Only
Oh dear. Now we're both really under threat. I'm heading into the Homomdan Fleet Base at Ara. I suggest you seek sanctuary as well. As a precaution, I am distributing locked copies of all our signals, researches and suspicions to a variety of trustworthy Minds with instructions that they only be opened on the event of mV demise. This I also urge you to do. Our only alternative is to go public, and I am not convinced we have sufficient evidence of a non-circumstantial nature.
oo
This is despicable. To be on the run from our own kind, our own peer Minds. Meat, am I miffed. Personally I'm running for a nice sunny Orbital (DiaGlyph enclosed). I too have deposited all the facts on this matter with friends, Minds specialising in archiving and the more reliable news services (I agree we cannot yet bruit our suspicions abroad; there probably never was a proper moment for that, but if there was, the war has negated its relevance), as well as the Sleeper Service, in what has become my daily attempt to contact it. Who knows? Another opportunity may present itself once the dust has cleared from around the Excession — if it ever does; if there is anyone left to witness it.
Oh well; it's out of our fields now.
Best of luck, like they say.
VIII
The avatar Amorphia moved one of its catapults forward an octagon, in front of the woman's leading tower; the noise of solid wooden wheels rumbling and squeaking along on equally solid axles, and of lashed-together wooden spars and planks flexing and creaking, filled the room. A curious smell which might have been wood rose gently from the board-cube.
Dajeil Gelian sat forward in her fabulously sculpted chair, one hand absently tapping her belly gently, the other at her mouth. She sucked at one finger, her brows creased in concentration. She and Amorphia sat in the main room of her new accommodation aboard the GCU Jaundiced Outlook, which had been restructured to mimic precisely the lay-out of the tower she had lived in for nearly forty years. The big, round room, capped by its transparent dome, resounded — between the sound effects produced by the game-cube — to the noise of rain. The surrounding screens showed recordings of the creatures Dajeil had studied, swum and floated with during most of those four decades. All around, the woman's collected curios and mementoes were placed and set just where thev had been in the tower by its lonely sea. In the broad grate, a log fire crackled exuberantly.
Dajeil thought for a while, then took a cavalarian and shifted it across the board to the noise of thundering hooves and the smell of sweat. It came to a halt by a baggage train undefended save for some irregulars.
Amorphia, sat blackly folded on a small stool on the other side of the board, went very still. Then it moved an Invisible.
Dajeil looked round the board, trying to work out what all the avatar's recent Invisible moves were leading up to. She shrugged; the cavalry piece took the irregulars almost without loss, to the sound of iron clashing on iron and screams, and the smell of blood.
Amorphia made another Invisible move.
Nothing happened for a moment. Then there was an almost subsonic rumbling sound. Dajeil's tower collapsed, sinking through the octagon in the board in a convincing-looking cloud of dust and the floor-shaking sound of grinding, crunching rocks. And more screams. A lot of the important moves seemed to be accompanied by those. A smell of turned-over earth and stone-dust filled the air.
Amorphia looked up almost guiltily. "Sappers," it said, and shrugged.
Dajeil cocked one eyebrow. "Hmm," she said. She surveyed the new situation. With the tower gone, the way lay open to her heartland. It didn't look good. "Think I should sue for peace?" she asked.
"Shall I ask the ship?" the avatar asked.
Dajeil sighed. "I suppose so," she sighed.
The avatar glanced down at the board again. It looked up. "Seven-eighths chance it would go to me," the avatar told the woman.
She sat back in the great chair. "It's yours, then," she said. She leant forward briefly and picked up another tower. She studied it. The avatar sat back, looking moderately pleased with itself. "Are you happy here, Dajeil?" it asked.
"Thank you, yes," she replied. She returned her attention to the miniature tower-piece held in her fingers. She was silent for a while, then said, "So. What is going to happen, Amorphia? Can you tell me yet?"
The avatar gazed steadily at the woman. "We are heading very quickly towards the war zone," it said in a strange, almost childish voice. Then it sat forward, inspecting her closely. "War zone?" Dajeil said, glancing at the board. "There is a war," the avatar confirmed, nodding. It assumed a grim expression.
"Why? Where? Between whom?"
"Because of a thing called an excession. Around the place where we are heading. Between the Culture and the Affront." It went on to explain a little of the background.
Dajeil turned the little tower-model over and over in her hands, frowning at it. Eventually she asked, "Is this Excession thing really as important as everybody seems to think?"
The avatar looked thoughtful for just a moment, then it spread its arms and shrugged. "Does it really matter?" it said.
The woman frowned again, not understanding. "Doesn't it matter more than anything?"
It shook its head. "Some things mean too much to matter," it said. It stood up and stretched. "Remember, Dajeil," it told her, "you can leave at any point. This ship will do as you wish."
"I'll stick around for now," she told it. She looked briefly up at it. "When-?"
"A couple of days," it told her. "All being well." It stood looking down at her for a while, watching her turn the small tower over and over in her fingers. Then it nodded and turned and quietly walked out of the room.
She hardly noticed it go. She leant forward and placed the small tower on an octagon towards the rear margin of the board, on a region of shore bordering the hem of blue that was supposed to represent the sea, near where, a few moves earlier, a ship-piece of Amorphia's had landed a small force which had established a bridge-head. She had never placed a tower in such a position, in all their games. The board interpreted the move with the sound of screams once more, but this time the screams were the plaintive, plangent calls of sea birds calling out over the sound of heavy, pounding surf. A sharply briny odour filled the air above the board cube and she was back there, back then, with the sound of the sea birds and the smell of the dashing wild sea tangled in her hair, and the growing child continually heavy and sporadically lively, almost violent with its sudden, startling kicks, in her belly.
She sat cross-legged on the pebble shore, the tower at her back, the sun a great round red shield of fire plunging into the darkly unruly sea and throwing a blood-coloured curtain across the line of the cliffs a couple of kilometres inland. She gathered her shawl about her and ran a hand through her long black hair as best she could. It stuck, held up by knots. She didn't try to pull them out; she'd rather look forward to the long, slow process of having them combed and cajoled and carefully teased out, later in the evening, by Byr.