Surface Detail

On the other hand it could have been worse. And arguably one way of making it worse would be to admit just how badly things had actually gone.

Bettlescroy-Bisspe-Blispin III was duly promoted to Prime Legislator-Grand-Admiral-of-the-Combined-Fleets and presented with several terribly impressive medals. He was put in charge of finding new ways to impress, reassure and – ultimately – imitate the Culture.

Chayeleze Hifornsdaughter, saved from Hell and torment after many subjective decades and the best part of two lifetimes, found herself rescued from the dormant remains of one of the Hells that had existed beneath the trackways of the Espersium estate on Sichult and placed into a Temporary Recuperative Afterlife in a substrate on her home planet of Pavul. She met Prin twice thereafter: the first time when he came to see her during her convalescence, and once much later.

She had discovered that she had no desire to come back to the Real. She had become whatever the Virtual equivalent of institutionalised was, and there could be no returning. Another Chay already lived in the Real who had never been through all that she had, and in many ways that person was the real Chay; she herself had become something entirely different. She still felt something for Prin, and wished him well, but she had no need to be part of his life. Prin eventually established a happy, lasting relationship with Representative Filhyn and Chay was glad that he was content.

By then she’d found her new role. She would remain a creature of ending and release in the Virtual; the angel of death who came for people who lived in happy, congenial Afterlives and who – tired even of their many lifetimes lived after biological death – were ready to dissolve themselves into the generality of consciousness that underlay Heaven, or who were ready simply to cease to be altogether.

That was when she met Prin for the second time, subjective centuries later.

They barely recognised one another.

Surprisingly quickly, given the bizarre and volatile variety of peoples, beings and endemic moralities involved, the culture of Hells – already irredeemably reduced following the events on Sichult and the testimony of people like Prin – became something of an anathema pretty much throughout the civilised galaxy, and indeed within a single average bio-generation their very absence became accepted almost without question as part of what constituted being civilised in the first place.

This made the Culture very happy.

Lededje Y’breq – Quyn-Sichultsa Lededje Samwaf Y’breq d’Espersium, to give her the Full Name she assumed on becoming a properly established Culture citizen – took up residence first on the GSV Sense Amid Madness, Wit Amidst Folly, on what was in effect an extended cruise to see the galaxy, then, twenty years later, settled on the Orbital called Hursklip where, in her middle-to-old age, she built, largely by hand, a full-size replica of the battleship grounds that she had known as the water maze, complete with working miniature battleships. They could be human-powered, but each incorporated a well-armoured survival pod which kept their occupant safe no matter what. The feature became an enduring tourist attraction.

She never did return to Sichult, or meet Jasken again, though he tried to get in touch.

She had five children by as many different fathers and ended up with over thirty great-great-great-grandchildren, which by Culture standards was almost disgraceful.

Epilogue

Vatueil, revented once more and back to using what he liked to think of as his original name – even though it wasn’t – sipped his aperitif on the restaurant terrace. He watched the sun set across the dark lake and listened to the crick and chirp of insects hidden in the bushes and vines nearby.

He checked the time. She was late, as usual. What was it about poets?

What a long, terrible war that had been, he thought, idly.

He really had been a traitor, of course. He’d been planted in the anti-Hell side long ago by those who wished to see the Hells continue for ever, a cause he’d supported at the time partly out of sheer contrarianism and partly out of that despair he felt some-times, periodically – during this long, long life – at the sheer self-hurtful idiocy and destructiveness of so many types of sentient life, especially the meta-type known as pan-human, to which he had always had the dubious honour of belonging. You want suffering, pain and horror? I’ll give you suffering, pain and horror…

But then, over time, fighting away, again and again, yet again, he’d changed his mind. Cruelty and the urge to dominate and oppress started to seem childish and pathetic once more, the way he’d accepted they were, long ago, but had somehow turned away from in the meantime.