Surface Detail

“And that really is possible?” Veppers asked, looking at all three of them in turn. “I mean, total, full… transferring of a real person’s consciousness? This isn’t just a cosy myth or alien propaganda.”

Jasken and Sulbazghi looked at the alien, which sat floating silently for a short while, then – suddenly fixing them with the gaze from one eye each – seemed to realise it was the one they all expected to answer. “Yes,” it blurted. “Positively. A full affirmation.”

“And bringing them back to life; they can do that too?” Veppers asked.

Xingre was quicker this time. After a moment, when nobody else answered, it said, “Yes. Also most possible, availability of appropriate and compatible processing and physique substrate shell being assumed.”

Veppers sat for a moment. “I see,” he said. He put the neural lace down on the glass top of a nearby table, letting it drop from a half-metre up to see what noise it made.

It seemed to fall slightly too slowly, and landed silently.

“Bad luck, Veppers!” Sapultride told him when he got back to the naval battle. “Both your ships got sunk!”

Twelve

“Lededje Y’breq,” the avatar Sensia said, “may I introduce Chanchen Kallier-Falpise Barchen-dra dren-Skoyne.”

“Kallier-Falpise for short,” the drone itself said, dipping in the air in what she guessed was the equivalent of a bow or nod. “Though I’ll happily answer to Kall, or even just KP.”

The machine floated in the air in front of her. It was about big enough to sit comfortably on two outspread hands; a cream-casinged, mostly smooth device that looked like something you’d find on the work surface of an intimidatingly well-equipped kitchen and wonder what its function was. It was surrounded by a vague, misty halo that appeared to be various mixtures of yellow, green and blue according to the angle. This would be its aura field – the drone equivalent of facial expression and body language, there to convey emotions.

She nodded. “Pleased to meet you,” she told it. “So you’re my slap-drone.”

Kallier-Falpise rocked back in the air as though hit. “Please. That’s a little pejorative, if I may say so, Ms. Y’breq. I’ll be accompanying you principally for your own convenience and protection.”

“I’m-” she began, then was interrupted by the young man standing at her side.

“My lovely Led,” he said, “I’m sorry I can’t wave you farewell properly, but I must go. Let me…” He took her hand, kissed it, then, after a shake of his head and a wide smile, he held her head in both hands and kissed her face in a variety of places.

He was called Shokas, and while he had proved an attentive and sensitive lover, he had been impossible to shake off come the morning. He’d said he had other things he had to do that day but had insisted on accompanying her here, despite protests.

“Mmm,” she said, noncommittally, as he kissed her. She prised his hands from her face. “A pleasure, Shokas,” she told him. “I don’t suppose we shall ever meet again.”

“Shh!” he said, placing a finger to her lips and his other hand on his chest as he half closed his eyes and shook his head. “However, I must go,” he said, backing off but keeping hold of her hand until the last moment. “You wonderful girl.” He looked round the others, winked. “Wonderful girl,” he told them, then sighed deeply, turned and walked quickly for the traveltube doors.

Well, that was one less. She hadn’t expected so many people. Jolicci was there too, standing smiling at her.

She was in a Mediumbay of the GSV, on a wide gantry fifty metres up a side wall from the deck, the view in front of her filled by the pink-hulled bulk of the Fast Picket The Usual But Etymologically Unsatisfactory; near three hundred relatively slim metres of ancient warship now turned to more peaceful duties, such as ferrying people about the galaxy when they were heading for points not covered by the Culture’s more routine transportation arrangements.

The ship was supposed to be fifteen hundred years old but appeared brand spanking new and – to her – still looked like a round, windowless skyscraper laid on its side. Its rear three-fifths was a single great cylinder, its pale pinkness chevroned with brown. This was its engine, seemingly. Another substantial section held various mostly sensory systems and the roughly conical section at the front would have held weapons when it had been a Psychopath-class Rapid Offensive Unit. The crew section, a thick band on the central spindle squeezed in between the engine and the systems section, looked small for the thirty or so people who would once have formed its crew, but generous for one. It had produced a single solid-looking plug of doorway twenty metres long, which had moved smoothly out towards them then dropped gently down to the gantry’s floor level to provide a sort of gang-plank affording access to the vessel. The ship’s own avatar was another drone, a little bigger, boxy and more thrown-together-looking than Kallier-Falpise.

“Shall we?” she said to it.