“— away with it? Well, maybe not. But the thing is, if I don’t get away with it, I don’t care. I’m no worse off. I’m still going to try.” It paused, physically shook itself free of water, then produced a spherical field about itself, clearing the moisture from its casing, leaving it spotless and clean, and sheltering it from the rain.
“Can’t you understand what they’ve done to me, man? Better I had never been brought into being than forced to wander the Culture for ever, knowing what I’ve lost. They call it compassion to draw my talons and remove my eyes and cast me adrift in a paradise made for others; I call it torture. It’s obscene, Gurgeh, it’s barbaric, diabolic; recognise that old word? I see you do. Well, try to imagine how I might feel, and what I might do… Think about it, Gurgeh. Think about what you can do for me, and what I can do to you.”
The machine drew away from him again, retreating through the pouring rain. The cold drops splashed on top of its invisible globe of fields, and little rivulets of water ran round the transparent surface of that sphere to dribble underneath, falling in a steady stream into the grass. “I’ll be in touch. Goodbye, Gurgeh,” Mawhrin-Skel said.
The drone flicked away, tearing over the grass and into the sky in a grey cone of slipstream. Gurgeh lost sight of it within seconds.
He stood for a while, brushing sand and bits of grass from his sodden clothes, then turned to walk back in the direction he’d come from, through the falling rain and the beating wind.
He looked back, once, to gaze again upon the house where he’d grown up, but the squall, billowing round the low summits of the rolling dunes, had all but obscured the rambling chaotic structure.
“But Gurgeh, what is the problem?”
“I can’t tell you!” He walked up to the rear wall of the main room of Chamlis’s apartment, turned and paced back again, before going to stand by the window. He looked out over the square.
People walked, or sat at tables under the awnings and archways of the pale, green-stone galleries which lined the village’s main square. Fountains played, birds flew from tree to tree, and on the tiled roof of the square’s central bandstand/stage/holoscreen housing, a jet black tzile, almost the size of a full-grown human, lay sprawled, one leg hanging over the edge of the tiles. Its trunk, tail and ears all twitched as it dreamed; its rings and bracelets and earrings glinted in the sunlight. Even as Gurgeh watched, the creature’s thin trunk articulated lazily, stretching back over its head to scratch indolently at the back of its neck, near its terminal collar. Then the black proboscis fell back as though exhausted, to swing to and fro for a few seconds. Laughter drifted up through the warm air from some nearby tables. A red-coloured dirigible floated over distant hills, like a vast blob of blood in the blue sky.
He turned back into the room again. Something about the square, the whole village, disgusted and angered him. Yay was right; it was all too safe and twee and ordinary. They might as well be on a planet. He walked over to where Chamlis floated, near the long fish-tank. Chamlis’s aura was tinged with grey frustration. The old drone gave an exasperated shudder and picked up a little container of fish-food; the tank lid lifted and Chamlis sprinkled some of the food grains on to the top of the water; the glittering mirrorfish moved silkily up to the surface, mouths working rhythmically.
“Gurgeh,” Chamlis said reasonably, “how can I help you if you won’t tell me what’s wrong?”
“Just tell me; is there any way you can find out more about what Contact wanted to talk about? Can I get in touch with them again? Without everybody else knowing? Or…” He shook his head, put his hands to his head. “No; I suppose people will know, but it doesn’t matter…” He stopped at the wall, stood looking at the warm sandstone blocks between the paintings. The apartments had been built in an old-fashioned style; the pointing between the sandstone blocks was dark, inlaid with little white pearls. He gazed at the richly beaded lines and tried to think, tried to know what it was he could ask and what there was he could do.
“I can get in touch with the two ships I know,” Chamlis said. “The ones I contacted originally, I can ask them; they might know what Contact was going to suggest.” Chamlis watched the silvery fish silently feeding. “I’ll do that now, if you like.”
“Please. Yes,” he said, and turned away from the manufactured sandstone and the cultivated pearls. His shoes clacked across the patterned tiles of the room. The sunlit square again. The tzile, still sleeping. He could see its jaws moving, and wondered what alien words the creature was mouthing in its sleep.
“It’ll be a few hours before I hear anything,” Chamlis said. The fish-tank lid closed; the drone put the fish-food container into a drawer in a tiny, delicate table near the tank. “Both ships are fairly distant.” Chamlis tapped the side of the tank with a silvered field; the mirrorfish floated over to investigate. “But why?” the drone said, looking at him. “What’s changed? What sort of trouble are you… can you be in? Gurgeh; please tell me. I want to help.”
The machine floated closer to the tall human, who was standing staring down to the square, his hands clasped and unconsciously kneading each other. The old drone had never seen the man so distressed.
“Nothing,” Gurgeh said hopelessly, shaking his head, not looking at the drone. “Nothing’s changed. There’s no trouble. I just need to know a few things.”
He had gone straight back to Ikroh the day before. He’d stood in the main room, where the house had lit the fire a couple of hours earlier after hearing the weather forecast, and he’d taken off the wet, dirty clothes and thrown them all on to the fire. He’d had a hot bath and a steam bath, sweating and panting and trying to feel clean. The plunge bath had been so cold there had been a thin covering of ice on it; he’d dived in, half expecting his heart to stop with the shock. He’d sat in the main room, watching the logs burn. He’d tried to pull himself together, and once he’d felt capable of thinking clearly he’d raised Chiark Hub.
“Gurgeh; Makil Stra-bey again, at your service. How’s tricks? Not another visitation from Contact, surely?”
“No. But I have a feeling they left something behind when they were here; something to watch me.”
“What… you mean a bug or a microsystem or something?”
“Yes,” he said, sitting back in the broad couch. He wore a simple robe. His skin felt scrubbed and shiny clean after his bathe. Somehow, the friendly, understanding voice of Hub made him feel better; it would be all right, he’d work something out. He was probably frightened over nothing; Mawhrin-Skel was just a demented, insane machine with delusions of power and grandeur. It wouldn’t be able to prove anything, and nobody would believe it if it simply made unsubstantiated claims.
“What makes you think you’re being bugged?”
“I can’t tell you,” Gurgeh said. “Sorry. But I have seen some evidence. Can you send something — drones or whatever — to Ikroh, to sweep the place? Would you be able to find something if they did leave anything?”
“If it’s ordinary tech stuff, yes. But it depends on the soph level. A warship can passive-bug using its electro-magnetic effector; they can watch you under a hundred klicks of rock-cover from the next stellar system and tell you what your last meal was. Hyper-space tech; there are defences against it, but no way of detecting it’s going on.”
“Nothing that complicated; just a bug or a camera or something.”
“Should be possible. We’ll displace a drone team to you in a minute or so. Want us to harden this comm channel? Can’t make it totally eavesdrop-proof, but we can make it difficult.”