Surface Detail

“That was not a sim,” Bettlescroy said. “That was a recording. We built that ship a month ago. Then we set micro-drones crawling all through it to check it had been built properly before dismantling it, just to be sure, and then letting the fabricaria reduce it back to semi-processed raw material again, to cover our tracks. The ship was entirely as specified, fully working, and the Disk object which built it is indistinguishable from its quarter of a billion fellow fabricaria.”

“You could have beamed this to me in my own study,” Veppers said, nodding at the screen.

“A little risky,” Bettlescroy said with a smile. It waved one hand, and the ship disappeared to be replaced with what side-readouts by the screen claimed was the real view again, of the fabricary’s interior, webbed with criss-crossing filaments studded with what looked like giant pieces of clockwork. “Also, we rather assumed you’d arrive with analytical equipment to let you take a closer look at all this stuff.” The little alien looked at Veppers as though searching his clothing for signs of paraphernalia. “However, you appear to have come unencumbered by both tech and suspicions. Your trust is gratifying. We thank you.”

Veppers smiled thinly at the alien. “I decided to travel light.” He turned to look at the screen again. “Why did they build all these? Why so many? What was the point?”

“Insurance, possibly,” Bettlescroy said. “Defence. You build the means to build the fleets rather than build the fleets themselves, the means of production being inherently less threatening to one’s neighbours than the means of destruction. It still makes people think twice about tangling with you.” The little alien paused. “Though it has to be said that those inclined to the fuck-up theory of history maintain that the Disk has no such planned purpose and is essentially the result of something between a minor Monopathic Hegemonising Event and an instance of colossal military over-ordering.” It shrugged. “Who is to say?”

They both stared at the dark network of threat and promise arrayed before them.

“There is still going to be some degree of blame involved in all this though, isn’t there?” Veppers asked quietly. “No matter how precisely targeted and quickly over it all is; some retribution will be required.”

“Good grief, yes!” Bettlescroy exclaimed. “That’s precisely why we intend to frame the Culture for everything!”

She became an angel in Hell.

Chay woke from the black-winged embrace of the creature which had claimed to be the angel of life and death to discover that she herself had become something not dissimilar.

She opened her eyes to find herself hanging upside down in a dark space lit by a dim red light from below. A faint smell of shit and burning flesh left little doubt where she was. She felt sick. The truth was that, despite everything, despite her best intentions, despite her daily-renewed promise to herself, she had felt hope; she had hoped that she would be spared a return to the Hell, hoped that instead she might be reincarnated once again within the reality of the Refuge, restarting her accidental career as a noviciate or even as something more humble, as long as it meant a life without any more than the average amount of pain and heartbreak.

She looked around, still slowly waking. She looked up, which wand burning as really down, at her own body. She had become something great and dark and winged. Her feet had become claws big enough to grasp a person whole. She spread her front-legs/arms/wings. They opened easily, purposefully, far out to either side. Limbs ready to walk the air. Limbs ready to grasp the wind. She folded them back in again, hugging herself.

She could feel no pain. She was in a huge hanging space in what smelled absolutely like Hell – and she was very aware that her sense of smell was much better than it had been before, both wider somehow and more sensitive; more accurate and refined – but she was not in any pain. Her feet seemed to clutch whatever she was hanging from quite naturally, without conscious will or even any discernible effort; she clutched at the thing – it felt like a great iron bar as thick as a person’s leg – and increased her grip until it did hurt, a little. She relaxed again. She opened her mouth. A predator’s mouth. A long, pointed tongue. She closed her sharp toothed jaws over her tongue, bit down tentatively.

That hurt. She tasted blood.

She shook her broad, over-size head to clear it, and found that she had been looking at everything through some sort of membranes over her eyes which she could sweep back. She did so.