“Have you taken any actions like this on such a scale before?” Vatueil asked.
Bettlescroy blushed, looked down. “Absolutely not. This is a significantly greater interference than any we have attempted before. However, we remain extremely confident that it will succeed.”
Vatueil looked unconvinced, Veppers thought. Maybe; always hard to tell with aliens.
“If the Culture decides it’s been tricked, used, manipulated,” the space-marshal said, slowly and deliberately, with the air of a man imparting a great and serious certitude, “it will move Afterlives to get to the truth, and it will not stop until it thinks it’s got to the bottom of it, no matter what. And,” he said, looking round them all, “there will always be forces within the Culture who will exact revenge. Again, no matter what.” Vatueil paused, looked grim. “I think we all know the saying: ‘Don’t fuck with the Culture.’”
Bettlescroy smiled, blushing once again. “Sir,” it said, “some of the incidents to which I suspect you are referring, the ones which have reinforced that famous saying which I shall not repeat…?”
“Yes?” Vatueil said, realising it was expected.
Bettlescroy paused, as though wondering to say what it was about to say or not. Eventually the little alien said, “Those were us, not them.”
Vatueil definitely looked dubious now. “Really?”
Bettlescroy looked down modestly again. “Really,” it said, extremely quietly.
Vatueil frowned. “Then… Do you ever wonder who might be using who?”
The little alien smiled, sighed. “We give it some consideration, sir.” It looked round the other GFCFians gathered round the table. They looked happy as zealots who’d just found a heathen to burn, Veppers thought. That was a little worrying.
Bettlescroy made a flowing, resigned gesture with its arms. “We are happy with our current situational analysis and pattern of behaviour.”
“And you’re happy you can keep the Flekke and the NR in the dark?” Veppers asked. “I’m pinned by my balls at the business end of a firing range if you don’t.”
“The NR are less concerned than you think,” Bettlescroy said reassuringly. “They approach their own Sublimation, more immediately than is known by all but us. The Flekke are an irrelevance; a legacy concern. They are our old mentors — as they are still yours, Mr. Veppers — their diverse and great achievements now in many ways eclipsed by those of the GFCF, even if as a species they remain theoretically our betters.” Bettlescroy paused for a little laugh. “At least according to the inflexible and quite arguably outmoded definitions of the Galactic Council’s currently accepted Recognised Civilisationary Levels framework!” The little alien paused again, and was rewarded with what was by GFCF standards a positive storm of rowdy agreement: deep nods, loud muttering and a lot of meaningful eye-contact. Veppers would have sworn some of them even thought about slapping their manicured little hands on the table. Glowing, Bettlescroy went on: “The Flekke will be quietly proud of anything we achieve, and the same vicarious sense of accomplishment will most doubtlessly be applied to the Sichultian Enablement in turn.” He beamed at Veppers. “In sum: in both cases, leave them to us.”
Veppers exchanged looks with Vatueil. Of course, you never entirely knew what an exchanged look really meant to an alien, pan-human or not, but it felt like somebody had to exercise a little realism here. Maybe even a little healthy cynicism.
On the other hand, they were pretty much agreed. There was little enough left to iron out. They were going to go ahead with this, doubts or not. The rewards were too great not to.
Veppers just smiled. “Your confidence is reassuring,” he told Bettlescroy.
“Thank you! So, we are all agreed, yes?” Bettlescroy said, looking around the table. The alien might as well, Veppers thought, have been asking whether they wanted to order out for sandwiches or dips for lunch. It was almost impressive.
Everybody looked at everybody else. No one raised any objections. Bettlescroy just kept on smiling.
“When do we begin?” Vatueil asked eventually.
“Directly,” Bettlescroy said. “Our little pretend-smatter squib will go off within the next half a day, a little more than an hour after we deliver Mr. Veppers back to Vebezua. We start the fabricaria running immediately we see that the Culture forces are fully engaged with the outbreak.” Bettlescroy sat back, looking very satisfied. “All we need then, of course,” it said thoughtfully, “is the location of the substrates to be targeted. We can’t do anything without that information.” It turned smoothly to Veppers. “Can we, Veppers, old friend?”
They were all looking at him now. Space-Marshal Vatueil was positively staring. For the first time in the meeting Veppers felt he was finally getting the attention and respect he normally took for granted. He smiled slowly. “Let’s get the ships built first, shall we? Then we’ll be ready to target them.”
“Some of us,” Bettlescroy said, glancing around the table before focusing intently on Veppers, “are still a little sceptical about how easy it will be to get to a significant number of Hell-containing substrates in the limited amount of time that will be available.”
Veppers made his face expressionless. “You may be surprised, Bettlescroy,” he said. “Even amused.”
The little alien sat forward, perfectly proportioned arms on the table surface. It looked steadily into Veppers’ eyes for some time. “We are all… very much depending on you here, Joiler,” it said quietly.
Assuming it was a threat, it was rather well delivered, Veppers thought. He’d have been proud of it himself. Despite the apocalyptic nature of everything they’d been discussing, it was the first time — maybe since they’d met — that Veppers thought he might have caught a glimpse of the hardened steel hiding underneath all the alien velouté.
He sat forward too, towards Bettlescroy. “Why, I would have it no other way,” he said smoothly.
She flew above the Hell. It smelled — stank — just as it had. The view, from this high up — just under the dark brown boiling overcast — was of a rolling, sometimes jagged landscape of ash grey and shit brown, splattered with shadowy near-blacks, acidic yellows and bilious greens. Red mostly meant pits of fire. The distant screams, groans and wails sounded no different.
The place she had woken in really had looked like a giant piece of fruit: a bloated purple shape hanging unsupported in the choking air as though dangling from the bruised looking mass of cloud. At least in the immediate area, it appeared to be unique; she could see no other similar giant bulbs hanging from the clouds.
She tried flying up through the clouds, just to see. The clouds were acidic, choking her, making her eyes water. She flew back down, took some clearer air, waited for her eyes to clear, then tried again with lungs full, holding her breath as she beat upwards on her great dark wings. Eventually, just before her lungs felt they might be about to burst, she collided painfully with something hard and rough, slightly granular. She had the air knocked out of her, jarred her head and scraped the ends of both wings. She fell out of the clouds in a small rain of rusting flakes of iron.
She breathed, collected herself, flew on.
In the distance she saw the line of fire that was the very edge of the war within Hell; a crackling stitch of tiny red, orange and yellow bursts of light. Something that was part curiosity and part the strange hunger she had felt earlier made her fly towards it.
She wheeled overhead, watching waves and little rivulets of men make their slow breaking surges across the multiply broken, seared and blasted landscape below. They fought with every edged weapon ever known, and primitive guns and explosives. Some stopped and looked up at her, she thought, though she did not want to approach too closely.