“Same problem. From outside I can Displace down into open Tower-ends. Line-of-sight within a level is possible too, if I can get inside somehow, but that’d be all. And of course once inside I couldn’t Displace back to outside.”
“But you can Displace items short distance?”
“Yes.”
Anaplian frowned. “What would happen if you did try to Displace into 4D matter?”
“Something a lot like an AM explosion.”
“Really?”
“Good as. Not recommended. Wouldn’t want to break a Shellworld.”
“They are not easily broken.”
“Not with all that 4D structure. What are in effect a Shellworld’s operating instructions say you can let off thermonuclear weapons inside them without voiding the warranty as long as you steer clear of Secondary structure, and anyway the internal stars are basically thermonukes and a bundle of exotic matter the most elderly of which have been trying to burn their way through the ceiling of their shell for deciaeons. All the same; anti-matter weaponry is banned inside and a misplaced Displace would have a highly similar profile. If and when I do have to do any Displacing, it’ll be very, very carefully.”
“Is anti-matter banned entirely?” Anaplian asked, sounding worried. “Most of the high-end gear I work with uses AM reactors and batteries.” She scratched the back of her neck, grimacing. “I even have one inside my head.”
“In theory as long as it’s not weaponry it’s allowed,” the ship told her. “In practice… I wouldn’t mention it.”
“Very well,” Anaplian said, sighing. “Your fields; will they work?”
“Yes. Running on internal power. So limited.”
“And you can go in if you have to.”
“I can go in,” the ship confirmed through Hippinse, sounding unhappy. “I’m preparing to reconfigure engine and other matter to reaction mass.”
“Reaction mass?” Djan Seriy said, looking sceptical.
“To be used in a deeply retro fusion drive I’m also putting together,” Hippinse said with an embarrassed-sounding sigh. He was himself looking reconfigured, becoming taller and less rotund with every passing day.
“Oh dear,” Anaplian said, thinking it seemed called for.
“Yes,” the ship’s avatoid said with evident distaste. “I am preparing to turn myself into a rocket.”
“They’re saying some terrible things about you, sir, where they mention you at all any more.”
“Thank you, Holse. However, I am scarcely concerned with the degree to which my own reputation has been defamed by that tyrant-in-waiting tyl Loesp,” Ferbin said, lying. “The state of our home and the fate of my brother is all that matters to me.”
“Just as well, sir,” Holse said, staring at the display hovering in mid-air in front of him. Ferbin sat nearby, inspecting another holo-screen. Holse shook his head. “They’ve painted you as a proper rapscallion.” He whistled at something on the screen. “Now I know you’ve never done that.”
“Holse!” Ferbin said sharply. “My brother lives, tyl Loesp goes unpunished and disports himself round the Ninth. The Deldeyn are entirely defeated, the army is partially disbanded, the Nameless City is more than half revealed and — we’re told — the Oct gather round Sursamen. These things are of far greater import, would you not agree?”
“Course I do, sir,” Holse agreed.
“Then to those things attend, not gossip germed by my enemies.”
“Just as you say, sir.”
They were reading material about Sursamen and the Eighth (and, now, the Ninth) from news services run by the Oct, the Nariscene and the Morthanveld, as commented upon by people, artificial minds and what appeared to be non-official but somehow still respected organisations from within the Culture, all of it expressed in commendably succinct and clear Sarlian. Ferbin hadn’t known whether to be flattered that they drew so much attention or insulted that they were so spied upon. He had searched in vain — or at least he had asked the ship to search for, unsuccessfully — any sort of verbatim recordings of the sort Xide Hyrlis had suggested might exist of what had happened to his father, but had found none. Djan Seriy had already told him such records did not appear to exist but he had wanted to check.
“All highly interesting,” Ferbin agreed, sitting back in his almost excessively accommodating seat. They were in the ship’s other small lounge area, one short sleep and a half-day into their journey. “I wonder what the latest information is regarding the Oct ships…?” Ferbin’s voice trailed off as he inadvertently read another vicious exaggeration regarding his own past behaviour.
“What do you want to know?” the ship’s voice asked, making Holse jump.
Ferbin collected himself. “The Oct ships,” he said. “Are they really there, around Sursamen?”
“We don’t know,” the ship admitted.
“Have the Morthanveld been told the Oct might be gathering there?” Ferbin asked.
“It has been decided that they’ll be told very shortly after we arrive,” the ship said.
“I see.” Ferbin nodded wisely.
“How very shortly afterwards?” Holse asked.
The ship hesitated, as though thinking. “Very very shortly afterwards,” it said.
“Would that be a coincidence?” Holse enquired.
“Not exactly.”
“He died in his armour; in that sense he died well.”
Ferbin shook his head. “He died on a table like a spayed cur, Djan Seriy,” he told her. “Like some traitor of old, broken and cruelled, made most filthy sport of. He would not have wished upon himself what I saw happen to him, believe me.”
His sister lowered her head for a few moments.
They had been left alone after their first substantial meal aboard the Liveware Problem, sitting in the smaller lounge on a conversation seat shaped like a sine wave. She looked up again and said, “And it was tyl Loesp himself? I mean at the very—”
“It was his hand, sister.” Ferbin looked deep into Djan Seriy’s eyes. “He twisted the life from our father’s heart and made all possible anguish in his mind too, in case that in his breast was somehow insufficient. He told him he would order massacre in his name, both that day on the battlefield around the Xiliskine and later when the army invaded the Deldeyn level. He would claim that Father had demanded such against tyl Loesp’s advice, all to blacken his name. He scorned him in those last moments, sister; told him the game was always greater than he’d known, as though my father was not ever the one to see furthest.”
Djan Seriy frowned momentarily. “What do you think he meant by that?” she asked. “The game was always greater than he’d known?”
Ferbin tutted in exasperation. “I think he meant to taunt our father, grasping anything to hand to hurt him with.”
“Hmm,” Djan Seriy said.
Ferbin sat closer to his sister. “He would want us to revenge him, of that I’m sure, Djan Seriy.”
“I’m sure he would.”
“I am not illusioned in this, sister. I know it is you who holds the power between us. But can you? Will you?”
“What? Kill Mertis tyl Loesp?”
Ferbin clutched at her hand. “Yes!”
“No.” She shook her head, took her hand away. “I can find him, take him, deliver him, but this is not a matter for summary justice, Ferbin. He should suffer the ignominy of a trial and the contempt of those he once commanded; then you can imprison him for ever or kill him if that’s still how we do these things, but it’s not my place to murder him. This is an affair of state and I’ll be present, on that level, in a purely personal capacity. The orders I have now have nothing to do with him.” She reached out, squeezed her brother’s hand. “Hausk was a king before he was a father, Ferbin. He was not intentionally cruel to us and he loved us in his own way, I’m sure, but we were never his priority. He would not thank you for putting your personal animosity and thirst for revenge above the needs of the state he made great and expected his sons to make greater.”