Iain Banks - The Algebraist

Sinking down just a few kilometres through the cloud tops, the ex-Voehn ship Protreptic had come to rest in a slightly too-big cradle in an enormous, echoing cavern of a hangar here in the lower regions of the nearly deserted polar city of Quaibrai. The City Administrator and a crowd of several hundred Dwellers had met them, hooting and throwing streamers and scent grenades.

A delegation comprising individuals from several different alien-ship enthusiast clubs had become particularly excited when they’d seen the Voehn craft and had bobbed up and down with impatience as Y’sul had been carefully offloaded and given into the care of a hospital squad. As soon as Y’sul, Fassin and the truetwin Quercer Janath had exited, the chirping, sizzling mass of enthusiasts rushed aboard, jostling for position as they’d tried to fit down the corridors and access ways. The truetwin had, thoughtfully, expanded the ship from its needle-ship portal-piercing formation to a fatter and hence more commodious configuration, but it still looked like a tight squeeze.

Y’sul, already looking half mended, though still shaking off the grogginess of his semi-coma, had twisted a fraction in his scoop-stretcher to look at Fassin as the hospital squad brought their ambulance skiff down to him. “See?” he’d croaked. “Got you back safely, didn’t I?”

Fassin had agreed that he had. He’d tried to pat Y’sul but used the wrong manipulator and instead just jerked in mid-gas. He’d swivelled and used the gascraft’s other arm, clutching the wounded Dweller’s hub-hand.

“You off home now?” Y’sul had asked.

“However much of it is left. I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.”

“Well, if you do go, come back soon.” Y’sul had paused and shaken himself, as though trying to wake up more fully. “I should be ready to receive visitors again in a couple of dozen days or so and I anticipate a very full social calendar indeed thereafter. I fully intend to exploit my recent injuries and experiences without compunction and exaggerate outrageously my part in the taking of the Voehn ship, not to mention embellish my fight with the Voehn commander to the point of what will probably seem like complete unrecognisability, the first time you hear it. I’d appreciate your corroboration, providing you are able to enter into the spirit of the thing and not insist on being overly encumbered by the vulgar exigencies of objective truth, whatever version of it you may think you recall. What do you say?”

“My memory’s kind of hazy,” Fassin had told the Dweller. “I’ll probably back up anything you say.”

“Splendid!”

“If I can come back, I shall.”

Privately, he didn’t even know if he could get away in the first place. He didn’t know what sort of infrastructure remained to get him off the planet, get the gascraft repaired and return him — if whoever was in charge would let him return — nor whether the Dwellers would allow him to return.

During the last part of the six-hour journey from the worm-hole, when Quercer Janath had allowed him to see where they were and let him access the local data-carrying spectra, he’d tapped into the Nasqueron news services to see what had been going on during his absence.

The Dweller news was all about the war. The Formal War between Zone 2 and Belt C. Apparently it had become deeply exciting and enthralling and was already being talked of in respected critical circles as a classic of the genre, even though it was probably barely halfway through yet and still, with any luck at all, had a great deal to offer.

Fassin had to search out a specialist alien-watcher service to find out that, starting about thirty-plus days earlier, the Ulubis system had been invaded and taken over by the Epiphany-5 Discon or Starveling Cult forces under the leadership of the Archimandrite Luseferous. The last significant, organised Ulubine Mercatorial resistance had ended just a dozen or so days ago following the formal surrender by the Hierchon Ormilla after the destruction of a city on Sepekte and a habitat in orbit around it. A counter-attack by several squadrons of the Summed Fleet was expected to commence within the next few dozen days or so. The latest was that a peace and cooperation conference was taking place about now in the Starveling ship Luseferous VII, in orbit about Nasqueron.

Fassin had sent a message which would at least attempt to find Valseir. He would wait a bit and see if that raised a reply. He’d thought of contacting Setstyin, but then he remembered, vaguely, that somebody had said something to him that had made him uneasy about the Dweller. No, wait, it had been the other way round, hadn’t it? Setstyin had always been a charming and helpful friend. Setstyin had warned him against the old Dweller who’d been in charge of the great spherical… thing that had risen out of the clouds and demolished the Mercatoria’s raiding force at the GasClipper regatta. Yes, that made more sense. He wondered why he couldn’t remember in more detail. It was strange. He’d always had a really good memory.

Quercer Janath seemed to be surrounded by well-wishers wanting to know more about the Voehn craft. The truetwin Dweller had seen Fassin looking at them through the crowd, and waved. Fassin had waved back.

He’d watched Y’sul being placed into the ambulance skiff and tried to work out what he knew and didn’t know, what he could and could not remember. He could have gone with Y’sul in the ambulance, he supposed, but he felt a need to get away for a while, to be alone for a time.

He’d come up here to see the stars, and wait, and think, and maybe do a bit of mathematical analysis.

He took the little image-leaf out of its locker in the gascraft’s flank. He looked at it. Since whatever had happened aboard the Protreptic, the little gascraft couldn’t see as well as it used to, but its close-up detail vision was good enough on one side for the image of blue sky and white clouds to be perfectly clear. He zoomed in, rechecking the image he had stored in the… The image wasn’t there in the craft’s memories.

That was strange. He had the feeling that he had recorded the image and already half-deciphered something that was hidden inside it. He was sure he had. It had seemed really important at the time, too, he was certain.

Fassin tried really hard to think back to what had occurred after they were attacked by the Voehn ship. He knew they’d been captured and interrogated and the Voehn had messed around with his brain and with the gascraft’s biomind and memories. Then a ship that the Ythyn had sent to rescue them had attacked the Voehn ship and — somehow — he and Y’sul and the truetwin had overpowered the surviving Voehn crew. They’d overpowered Voehn?

How had that happened? The Ythyn ship had been able to distract the Voehn, and the Velpin had played a part too, some sort of anti-piracy automatics kicking in and helping to take on the Voehn. Quercer Janath had been distinctly cagey about what sort of techniques their old ship had used against the Voehn. Fassin had no idea. Maybe it had happened the way they said, maybe not. Maybe the Velpin had had an AI aboard and that had wasted the Voehn, only Quercer Janath didn’t want people to know about it. They could have told him practically anything and he’d have believed them, the Voehn had messed with his memories so badly.

He remembered sitting on the steps of a temple looking out over a wide, slow-moving river, talking to an old… man? An old Dweller? This was quite a vivid image, rather than a linear strand of memory. That had to have happened in some form of VR, didn’t it? Maybe that old man had been the representation of the Velpin’s AI. Perhaps that was who or what he had been talking to, or at least met.