Iain Banks - The Algebraist

Fassin nearly laughed. Most of the officials on the main ceremonial platforms, led by the humans, registered shock, horror or outrage in some form. The Hierchon’s esuit rolled back half a metre, as though physically struck.

The image took its time to look around the chamber. “Yes, unflattering. My apologies. You will be happy to know that the gentleman who was the source of this memorable image is currently helping the Combined Forces Intelligence Inquisitariat with its inquiries.”

Fassin watched a few slightly forced expressions of satisfaction appear. They really didn’t know any of this before, he thought. He’d assumed the Hierchon and his chums would have been granted some sort of sneak preview earlier, but this seemed to be as new to them as it was to him.

“We also, of course, have the pre-invasion probing-sequence profile for the E-5 Discon’s attempted conquest of Ruanthril,” the hologram said, “plus those of several other systems attacked by the same force-mix. The musings of the invasion fleet’s commander provide credible reason to believe Ulubis is under significant threat. The comparison of the pre-attack probing-sequence profile for Ruanthril with the recent raids on and other hostile actions within Ulubis system leads to the conclusion that said threat is imminent, within the time-frame of a few months to less than a year and a half. There is a long-accepted, high-consistency Beyonder attack profile, and the aggressions Ulubis system has been experiencing over the last three years are anomalous to that.”

Fassin suspected that this was a subtle criticism of the system intelligence and strategy services, and especially the Navarchy’s. Fleet Admiral Brimiaice looked unnaturally still, as though trying not to draw any unnecessary attention to himself. The information also pointed to something of a cover-up. Like Verpych, Fassin had thought these “anomalous’ attacks had begun just over a year ago; this AI had been given access to information indicating that they had been going on for two years before that. Well, that would come as no surprise to anyone. Being spoon-fed rosy-hued misinformation by the authorities was no more than people had come to expect — and pre-emptively discount. They only got suspicious when presented with what looked like the plain unvarnished truth.

“I do have more to say,” the image above the cooking-pot device told the assembled listeners. “However, I sense that some of you are already anxious to ask questions, and so at this point I would like to invite queries regarding what you have heard so far. No need to introduce yourselves, by the way — I know who you all are.”

Everybody looked at the Hierchon, who obligingly boomed, “Machine, what percentage of likelihood pertains to this invasion?”

The hologram did not look particularly impressed with this first question. It might even have sighed.

Fassin only half listened to the answer and paid even less attention to the following questions and answers; none of them added anything significant to what he’d already heard and mostly the questions boiled down to the categories: Are you sure? Are you mad? Are you lying, abomination? And, I won’t get blamed for any of this, will I?

He used the tap-screen to get a better idea of the relevant galactic topography. He called up a usefully scaled hologram and flicked between the local civilisational state of play as it had been understood until today — effectively two and a half centuries out of date — and the updated version that the AI signal had brought with it, which was only seventeen years old. As he did so, whole vast volumes of stars changed from one false colour to another, indicating where this Cluster Epiphany Five Disconnect hegemony had spread its influence.

“ — Resist them with all our might!” Fleet Admiral Brimiaice roared.

“I’m sure you will,” the hologram said. “However, all the indications are that even if you devoted yourself to all-out, full-time emergency war-craft construction and a full war economy, you will still be outnumbered several times over.”

Fleet Admiral Brimiaice then blustered.

Fassin had a question of his own, but it was a question for inside his own head, not one that he wished to ask the AI. It was a question he had the unpleasant feeling would at some point shortly be answered, though he sincerely hoped it wouldn’t. It was: What the hell does all this have to do with me?

“May I continue?” the image said after the next few contributions showed unmistakable signs of heading in the direction of becoming not so much questions as attestations of innocence, pledges of heroic determination, position-protection statements and attacks on other functionaries present within a wide spectrum of subtlety, biased towards the low end. The hologram gave a small, thin, regretful smile. “I realise that all the foregoing has come as something of a shock, for all of you. However, it is, I am afraid to say, in effect just a preamble to the most significant part of this communication.”

The image of Admiral Quile paused to let that sink in, too. Then the hologram said, “Now then. There is a gentleman amongst you who has no doubt been wondering for some little time what exactly he is doing here.”

Oh, shit, Fassin had time to think, then the image looked at him. Was it really looking at him now? Could everybody see the hologram looking at him? Heads, or other parts as appropriate, turned in his direction. That probably meant yes.

“Seer Fassin Taak, would you make yourself known to the others?”

Fassin heard the blood roar in his ears as he stood and gave a slow, if shallow, bow towards the Hierchon. He was getting that flesh-shrinking thing again. The chamber looked to be tipping, and he was glad to sit down again. He tried to control the blush that he felt building under his throat.

“Seer Taak is a young man, though born centuries ago,” the image said. “He has spent a productive and dutiful career with the gas-giant Dwellers of the planet Nasqueron. I understand that many of you may have heard of him already. He has now been given the rank of major within the Shrievalty Ocula, for reasons which will become clear in due course.”

Fassin, still feeling very much looked-at, noticed that Colonel Somjomion, the human female who was acting chief of staff of the Shrievalty contingent in the Ulubis system, smiled cautiously at him from the podium across the chamber when the holo-gram said this. Unsure whether the Shrievalty saluted or not, Fassin rose fractionally in his seat, and nodded formally.

Oh, fuck , were his precise thoughts.

The image floating above the cooking-pot AI said, “The reason that Seer — Major — Taak is here today to hear what I have had to tell you all is that it was something which he discovered — stumbled over might be an equally accurate description, with no disrespect to Seer Taak — that has led to my being here in the first place.”

Oh, fucking hell. I always thought delving would be the death of me but I assumed it would be an equipment failure, not something like this. On the other hand, that smile from Colonel Somjomion had been restrained, even careful, not mean or mocking. Might live yet.

“Which brings us, of course, to the real, or at least the most pressing, reason for my appearance here, in this almost unprecedented form,” the hologram said, then made a show of taking a deep breath.

It looked around them all, slowly, before saying, “Ulubis, I’m sure we would all agree, is a pleasant and fairly favoured system.” It paused again.

Fassin was listening fairly hard at this point, and would have taken decent odds on the literal truth of the old you-could-have-heard-a-pin-drop saying. “And,” the projection said with a smile, radiantly confident that it now had their full attention, “as a centre of Dweller Studies, it is not without significance galactically, unquestionably from an antiquarian and intellectual standpoint.” Another pause. It occurred to Fassin that an AI controlling a hologram could put a quite literal twinkle in its eye. “However, one might think it reasonable to ask — again, with no disrespect intended, or, I hope, taken — why Ulubis has attracted the attention of our new-found adversaries from Cluster Epiphany Five. One might even — knowing the importance that the Mercatoria attaches to reconnecting all the many, many systems which have been without Arteria access all these millennia — wonder why the expedition from Zenerre to Ulubis with a new portal was dispatched with such alacrity, given the arguably still greater claims that more populous, more classically strategically important and more at-the-time obviously threatened systems might have had upon the resources and expertise of our esteemed colleagues in the Engineering faculty.