Surface Detail

So she bored the noviciates with her stories instead. She was the Superior, so they had to listen. Or maybe young people these days were just very polite. Her voice had almost gone but still she would be carried to the chapel each day to listen, enraptured, eyes closed, to the beautiful, transcendent singing.

Eventually she lay on her death bed and an angel came for her.

Nineteen

The Jhlupian heavy cruiser Ucalegon – forty times as fast as any ship possessed by the Sichultian Enablement – delivered Veppers to Iobe Cavern City on Vebezua in less than two days. Vebezua was the furthest flung of the Enablement’s planets, lying in a small spiral of stars called the Chunzunzan Whirl, a sparse twist of old stars that also held the Tsung system.

“Of course I’m serious. Why can’t I just buy one?”

“They are not for sale.”

“Why not?”

“It is not policy.”

“So change the policy.”

“The policy is not to be changed.”

“Why is the policy not to be changed?”

“Because changing policies is not policy.”

“Now you’re just going round in circles.”

“I am merely following you.”

“No you’re not. I am being direct. You are being evasive.”

“Nevertheless.”

“… Is that it? ‘Nevertheless’ and we just leave things there?”

“Yes.”

Veppers, Jasken, Xingre, half a dozen others of Veppers’ retinue plus the Jhlupian’s principal aide and a medium-ranking officer from the Ucalegon were sharing a tethered flier making its way through one of the great karst caves that made up Iobe Cavern City. The cave averaged a kilometre or so across; a huge pipe whose floor held a small, winding river. The city’s buildings, terraces, promenades and boulevards rose up from the riverside, increasingly precipitously as they approached the mid-way point of the cave, where the buildings became sheer cliffs; a few went even beyond that, clinging to the overhanging curve of the cavern’s upper wall. The flier tether-rails were stationed further up still, cantilevered out from the cave’s roof on gantries like a sequence of giant cranes. A series of enormous oval holes punctured the roof’s summit, letting in great slanting slabs of withering Vebezuan sunlight.

Lying close to its slowly ever-brightening star, the planet was cursed with too much sunlight but blessed with entire continents made mostly of deeply eroded limestone, providing vast cave systems in which its inhabitants – native animals and Sichultian incomers – could hide. You had to travel to the very high and very low latitudes to find pleasantly balmy climates. The poles were havens of temperate freshness. Very occasionally the hills there even got snow.

“Xingre,” Veppers said with a sorrowful shake of his head, “you are my trusted business associate and even a friend in your own strange alien way, but I may have to go over your head here. Or carapace.”

“Carapace. Though in our language the expression is I may have to go beyond your reach.”

“So who would I have to ask?”

“About what?”

“About buying a ship.”

“No one. There is no one to ask because such things are not covered.”

“Not covered? Is that the same as being not policy?”

“Yes.”

“Lieutenant,” Veppers said, turning to the ship’s officer, who also floated, twelve limbs neatly folded on one of the shiny cushions that doubled as chairs and translators, “is this really true?”

“Is what true, sir?”

“That it’s not possible to buy one of your ships.”

“It is not possible to buy navy ships of our navy.”

“Why not?”

“It is not policy.”

Veppers sighed. “Yes, so I’ve been told,” he said, looking at Xingre.

“Navies rarely sell their vessels, not if they are of the best,” Xingre said.

“You’re already hiring it to me,” Veppers said.

“Not the same,” the officer told him. “We remain in control. Sold to you, you assume control.”

“It’d only be one ship,” Veppers insisted. “I don’t want your whole navy. Really, such a fuss. You people are positively purists.” Veppers had once asked ambassador Huen if it was possible to buy a Culture ship. She’d stared at him for a second, then burst out laughing.

The flier zoomed, rising to avoid a high bridge barring their way. The craft stayed flat rather than pointing its nose up, the winch bogey travelling the network of flier tether rails above reeling in the craft’s four invisibly fine mono-filament lines equally.

Iobe city had banned flying machines entirely for centuries, then allowed fliers to be used but suffered one or two accidents which had resulted in the destruction of several notable buildings and prized historic cross-cavern bridges, so had compromised by allowing fliers but only if they were tethered to tracks in the cavern roofs and controlled automatically.

“The best Jhlupian ships are of the Jhlupian navy,” the lieutenant said. “We prefer to keep it that way. For the benefit of not being outrun by civilian vessels. Embarrassment might ensue otherwise. Most governmental entities share this policy.”

“Do the Sichultians sell their best ships to their lessers?” Xingre asked.