Iain Banks - The Hydrogen Sonata

Warib shook her head and said quietly, resignedly, “Oh, do as you please, Vyr; you always do, always have. Come as you wish; embarrass me all you like. Why break the habit of a—”

Cossont didn’t catch the last word; she was already out the door.

Miraculously, thinking back to all this domestic nonsense of just a few days earlier, with her eyes closed and her mind half wandering, Vyr got right through the central, especially demanding section of the second-last movement without — for the first time — making any mistakes. She’d done it! The tangling blizzard of notes had been successfully tackled. She was on what always felt like the easy downhill gliding bit now where the notes were fewer and further apart and easier to bridge; another minute or so of nothing-too-demanding and she’d have the damn thing licked.

She felt a smile on her lips and a breeze on her face. There was even a pleasant thrumming noise coming from behind her, courtesy of the elevenstring’s external resonating strings and the breeze she’d been hoping for; she could feel it through her spine and the seat of her pants. My, for once even the elements seemed to want to wish her well in this ridiculous enterprise.

She was thinking about opening her eyes when a sudden gust of wind from the other side briefly silenced the resonating strings, rocked her in the seat and nearly toppled the instrument and her together; she was forced to abandon the stop-pedals and plant both feet firmly flat on the ground to steady both herself and it; her trews flapped against her calves and she felt her hair come loose again as she was forced to stop playing, unbalanced and unsettled. The external resonating strings made a noise partway between a fart and a groan.

The notes faded away and the gust of wind died too, but a new noise of what sounded like an engine winding down replaced the elevenstring’s music, and she felt a sort of multiple-thud from the terrace come up through her feet and the supporting spar under her backside.

She still didn’t open her eyes. She withdrew both bows in good order from the strings and sat up straight within the O of the hollow instrument, then — with a single accusatory stare at her flier, which was only now switching its lights on again — she turned to where all this new commotion seemed to be coming from.

An eight-seat military flier, still the colour of the near-black sky above, was settling onto its quartet of squat legs fifteen metres away, its bulbous bulk unlit until a waist door flicked down and somebody emerged so senior that, even as a nominal civilian in the regimental reserve, Vyr had no real choice about standing and saluting.

She sighed and stepped out of the elevenstring, clicking down the side-stand at the same time, so it could support itself. The elevenstring made a very faint creaking noise.

Vyr hooked her slippers off, pulled her boots on, then stood at attention, managing to ear-waggle her comms unit awake. “Etalde, Yueweag, commissar-colonel, Regimental Intelligence; precise current attachment unknown,” the earbud whispered curtly as the officer advanced at a trot. He took his cap off and stuck it under his arm, then smiled and waggled one hand as he approached. Vyr stood at ease. She glanced at her own flier, narrowing her eyes a fraction.

“Contacted Pyan,” the aircraft told her through her earbud. “It whines, but is on its way. Fifteen minutes.”

“Mm-hmm,” Cossont said quietly.

A pair of fully armed and armoured troopers swung out from the regimental flier and stood, weapons ready, one on either side of the door, which flicked closed again. Vyr allowed her face to register some surprise at this development.

“… stay informal, shall we?” Commissar-Colonel Etalde was saying, nodding as he arrived in front of her. He was short, plump and appeared to be perspiring slightly. Like a lot of people these days, he wore a time-to; a watch dedicated to displaying how long was left to Instigation; the very moment — assuming that everything went according to plan — of the Subliming event. His was a dainty digital thing which sat on the chest of his uniform jacket and contrived to look a lot like a medal ribbon. Vyr had one too but she’d left it somewhere. Even as she noticed the commissar-colonel’s example, the time-to’s display clicked over to count one day less; it must be midnight on home planet Zyse.

Commissar-Colonel Etalde looked at Vyr, taking in her extra arms. He nodded. “Yes, I was…” He looked past her at the elevenstring. His eyes bulged. “What the hell is that?”

“A bodily acoustic Antagonistic Undecagonstring, sir,” she told him. She was staring over his head, as etiquette demanded. Happily this took no great effort.

“Don’t say,” Etalde said. He looked back to her. “It yours?”

“Yes, sir.”

He made a clicking noise with his mouth. “Suppose we’d better take it with us.”

“Sir?” Vyr said, frowning.

“Does it have a case or something?” he asked.

“Yes, sir. It’s over there.” She swivelled, indicated the dark case lying on the black tiles of the terrace a few metres away, almost invisible.

The commissar-colonel glanced back towards the two troopers. The nearest was already moving in the direction of the case, carbine shouldering itself as he or she jogged across the black tiles of the terrace.

“That us?” Etalde asked. “We fit?”

“Sir?” Cossont repeated, still frowning.

Etalde appeared briefly confused, then snapped his fingers. “Oh! Yes! Better…” He cleared his throat then said, “Lieutenant Commander Cossont, you are hereby re-commissioned with immediate effect for the duration of the current emergency.”

Vyr’s frown deepened. “There’s an emergency?”

“Sort of a secret one, but yes.”

Cossont felt her expression contort despite herself as she looked down at the commissar-colonel. “ Now? ” she said, then adjusted her expression and gaze and said, “I mean; now, sir? So soon before the—?”

“Yes, now, Lieutenant Commander,” Etalde told her sharply. She heard him sigh and saw him put his cap back on. “Thing about emergencies,” he said, sounding weary. “Rarely occur when they’d be convenient.”

“May I ask what—?”

“What the hell’s going on?” Etalde suggested, suddenly breezy again. “Ask away. Won’t do you any good. No idea myself.”

The trooper appeared with the elevenstring’s case, opened. It took all three of them to wrestle it in.

Etalde, breathless, nodded towards the military flier. “Commsint AI’s saying you’ve got a pet or something coming in, that right?”

“Yes, sir,” she told him. “Few minutes out still.” She went to lift the elevenstring’s case but the trooper did it for her, hefting it onto one shoulder, carbine swinging round from the other.

“We’re tracking it,” Etalde said as the trooper stepped towards their aircraft. Cossont stood where she was. The commissar-colonel stopped and looked back at her. “Well, come on ,” he told her. “We’ll rendezvous with the creature in the air.” He smiled. “Faster.”

“And my flier, sir?” she asked.

Etalde shrugged. “Tell it to go home or wherever it has to go to, Lieutenant Commander; you’re coming with us.” He shrugged. “Orders.”

“Never heard of it.”

“More commonly known as the Hydrogen Sonata.”

“Still never heard of it.”

“No great surprise, sir. It’s a bit obscure.”

“Renowned?”

“The piece?”

“Yes.”

“Only as being almost impossible to play.”

“Not, like…?”

“Pleasant to listen to? No. Sir.”

“Really?”

Vyr frowned, thinking. “An eminent and respected academic provided perhaps the definitive critical comment many thousands of years ago, sir. His opinion was: ‘As a challenge, without peer. As music, without merit.’”