“I’m—” she began, then was interrupted by the young man standing at her side.
“My lovely Led,” he said, “I’m sorry I can’t wave you farewell properly, but I must go. Let me…” He took her hand, kissed it, then, after a shake of his head and a wide smile, he held her head in both hands and kissed her face in a variety of places.
He was called Shokas, and while he had proved an attentive and sensitive lover, he had been impossible to shake off come the morning. He’d said he had other things he had to do that day but had insisted on accompanying her here, despite protests.
“Mmm,” she said, noncommittally, as he kissed her. She prised his hands from her face. “A pleasure, Shokas,” she told him. “I don’t suppose we shall ever meet again.”
“Shh!” he said, placing a finger to her lips and his other hand on his chest as he half closed his eyes and shook his head. “However, I must go,” he said, backing off but keeping hold of her hand until the last moment. “You wonderful girl.” He looked round the others, winked. “Wonderful girl,” he told them, then sighed deeply, turned and walked quickly for the traveltube doors.
Well, that was one less. She hadn’t expected so many people. Jolicci was there too, standing smiling at her.
She was in a Mediumbay of the GSV, on a wide gantry fifty metres up a side wall from the deck, the view in front of her filled by the pink-hulled bulk of the Fast Picket The Usual But Etymologically Unsatisfactory; near three hundred relatively slim metres of ancient warship now turned to more peaceful duties, such as ferrying people about the galaxy when they were heading for points not covered by the Culture’s more routine transportation arrangements.
The ship was supposed to be fifteen hundred years old but appeared brand spanking new and — to her — still looked like a round, windowless skyscraper laid on its side. Its rear three-fifths was a single great cylinder, its pale pinkness chevroned with brown. This was its engine, seemingly. Another substantial section held various mostly sensory systems and the roughly conical section at the front would have held weapons when it had been a Psychopath-class Rapid Offensive Unit. The crew section, a thick band on the central spindle squeezed in between the engine and the systems section, looked small for the thirty or so people who would once have formed its crew, but generous for one. It had produced a single solid-looking plug of doorway twenty metres long, which had moved smoothly out towards them then dropped gently down to the gantry’s floor level to provide a sort of gang-plank affording access to the vessel. The ship’s own avatar was another drone, a little bigger, boxy and more thrown-together-looking than Kallier-Falpise.
“Shall we?” she said to it.
“Certainly.” The drone floated to one side and picked up the two small cases of clothes, assorted toiletries and so on which Sensia had given her.
“Farewell, Lededje,” Sensia said.
Lededje smiled at her, thanked her, accepted a hug, then bade a slightly more formal goodbye to Jolicci. She turned towards the ship.
“Just in time. Let me be the last to wish you bon voyage,” a voice said behind her.
She turned to find Demeisen strolling from the traveltube entrance, smiling thinly. He looked a little less haggard and dishevelled than when Lededje had seen him the evening before. The red jewel at his neck glittered under the lights.
Sensia glared at him. “I thought you left earlier.”
“I did leave earlier, my gracious hostess. I am currently some eighty years or so distant on an acutely divergent course, and travelling only slightly more rapidly than your good self, though still just about within real-time control range, at least for something as intrinsically slow-reacting as a human host. All of which I would hope you’re well aware of.”
“You’re abandoning your puppet here then?” Jolicci said.
“I am,” Demeisen agreed. “I thought now would be as appropriate an occasion as any other to return the fucker to the wild.”
“I have heard some disturbing reports regarding your treatment of this human you’re using, ship,” Sensia said. Lededje looked at the GSV’s avatar. For a small, frail-looking lady with frizzy blonde hair she seemed suddenly invested with a steeliness Lededje found herself glad was not directed at her.
Demeisen turned to Sensia. “All above board, dear thing. I have the relevant releases signed by his own fair hand. In blood, admittedly, but signed. What was I to use — engine oil?” He looked puzzled and turned to Jolicci. “Do we even have engine oil? I don’t think we do, do we?”
“Enough,” Jolicci said.
“Say goodbye and release your hold now before I do it for you,” Sensia said levelly.
“That would be impolite,” Demeisen said, pretending shock.
“I’ll suffer the injury to my reputation,” the GSV’s avatar said coolly.
The cadaverous humanoid rolled his eyes before turning to Lededje and smiling broadly. “My every best wish for your journey, Ms. Y’breq,” he said. “I hope I did not alarm you unduly with my little display last night. I get into character sometimes, find it hard to know when I’m causing distress. My apologies, if any are required. If not, then please accept them in any event, on account, to be banked against any future transgressions. So. Perhaps we shall meet again. Until then, farewell.”
He bowed deeply. When he came upright he looked quite changed; his face was set differently and his body language had altered subtly too. He blinked, looked around, then stared blankly at Lededje and then at the others. “Is that it?” he said. He stared at the ship in front of him. “Where is this? Is that the ship there?”
“Demeisen?” Jolicci said, moving closer to the man, who was looking down at himself and feeling his neck under his chin.
“I’ve lost weight…” he muttered. Then he looked at Jolicci. “What?” He looked at Sensia and Lededje. “Has it happened yet? Have I been the avatar?”
Sensia smiled reassuringly and took him by the arm. “Yes, sir, I believe you have.” She began to lead him towards the traveltube and made a begging-your-leave gesture to Jolicci and Lededje before turning away.
“But I can’t remember anything…”
“Really? Oh dear. However, that may be a blessing.”
“But I wanted memories! Something to remember!”
“Well…” Lededje heard Sensia say, before the doors of the traveltube capsule closed.
Lededje nodded to an unsmiling Jolicci and walked along the level, granite-solid gangplank towards the ship, followed by the ship’s drone and the creamy presence of her slap-drone.
The Fast Picket The Usual But Etymologically Unsatisfactory slipped away from the GSV Sense Amid Madness, Wit Amidst Folly, slung out in a great elongated nest of fields that decelerated it to speeds the Fast Picket’s engines could cope with. To Lededje, who was used to fighter planes being faster than passenger jets and powerboats overtaking liners, this seemed wrong somehow.
“Scale,” the boxy-looking ship-drone told her as she stood — and it and Kallier-Falpise floated — in the main lounge, watching a wall screen showing the silvery dot that was the GSV disappearing into the distance. The dot, and the swirl of stars shown beyond it, started to track across the screen as the The Usual But Etymologically Unsatisfactory began its long turn to head for Arm One-one Near-tip and the Ruprine Cluster. “With ship engines, there are advantages that come with scale.”
“Bigger is better,” confirmed Kallier-Falpise. The silvery dot and the whole great sweep of stars moved faster and faster across the screen, apparent motion accelerating as the Fast Picket wheeled about, heading three-quarters of the way back in the direction the GSV had come from.