Look to Windward by Iain M. Banks
“No.”
“No? But he’s been here twenty days! Someone said he only lives—”.
“Are you really as ignorant as you appear, Trelsen, or is this some sort of bizarre act, perhaps even meant to be amusing?”.
“Sorry?”.
“You should be. If you paid more than the most passing—”.
“I just heard there was another Chelgrian—”.
“—attention to what’s going on you’d know that the ‘other Chelgrian’ is a feudal tough, a professional bully come to attempt to persuade me to go back with him to a society I despise. I have no intention of meeting the wretch.”
“Oh. I didn’t realize.”
“Then you’re simply ignorant rather than malevolent. Congratulations.”
“So you’re not going to meet him at all?”.
“That’s right; not at all. My plan is that after keeping him waiting for a few years he’ll either get fed up and slope home to be ritually chastised or he’ll gradually become seduced by Masaq’ and its many attractions in particular and by the Culture and all its wonderful manifestations in general, and become a citizen. Then I might meet him. Brilliant strategy, don’t you think?”
“You serious?”.
“I’m always serious, never more so than when I’m being flippant.”
“Think it’ll work?”.
“I neither know nor care. It’s just amusing to contemplate, that’s all.”
“So why do they want you to go back?”.
“Apparently I’m the true Emperor. I was a foundling swapped at birth by a jealous godmother for my long-lost evil twin, Fimmit.”
“What? Really?”.
“No, of course not really. He’s here to deliver a summons for a minor traffic violation.”
“You’re kidding!”.
“Drat, you guessed. No, the thing is I have this secretion that comes from my anterior glands; every Chelgrian clan has one or two males in each generation who produce this substance. Without it the males of my clan can’t pass solids. If they don’t lick the appropriate spot at least once per tidal month they start to experience terrible wind. Unfortunately my cousin Kehenahanaha Junior the Third recently suffered a bizarre grooming accident which left him unable to produce the vital secretion, so they need me back there before all the males in my family explode from compressed shit. There is a surgical alternative, of course, but sadly the medical patent rights are held by a clan we haven’t acknowledged for three centuries. Dispute over a mistimed bid caused by an involuntary eructation during a bride-bidding auction, apparently. We don’t like to discuss it.”
“You … you’re not serious?”
“I really can’t get a thing past you, can I? No, it’s really about an unreturned library book.”
“You really are just kidding me now, aren’t you?”.
“Yet again you’ve seen right through me. It’s almost as though I needn’t be here.”
“So you really don’t know why they want you back?”.
“Well, what reason could there possibly be?”.
“Don’t ask me!”.
“That’s just what I was thinking!”.
“Hey; why not just ask?”.
“Better still, as it’s you who seems to care, why don’t you ask the one you charmingly call the Other Chelgrian to tell you why they want me back?”.
“No, I meant ask Hub.”
“Well, it does know everything, after all. Look, there’s its avatar over there!”.
“Hey, right! Let’s … Oh. Ah, see you, then, ah … Oh, hi. You must be the Homomdan.”
“Well spotted.”
• • •
“So, what does this woman actually do?”.
“She listens to me.”
“She listens? Is that it?”.
“Yes. I talk and she listens to what I say.”
“Well? So? I mean, I’m listening to you now. What does this woman do that’s so special?”.
“Well, she listens without asking the sort of question you’ve just asked, frankly.”
“What do you mean? I was just asking—”.
“Yes, but don’t you see? You’re already being aggressive, you’ve made up your mind that somebody just listening to somebody else is—”
“But is that all she does?”.
“More or less, yes. But it’s very helpful.”
“Haven’t you got friends?”.
“Of course I have friends.”
“Well, isn’t that what they’re for?”.
“No, not always, not for everything I want to talk about.”
“Your house?”.
“I used to talk about things with my house, but then I realized I was just talking to a machine that not even the other machines pretend to think is sentient.”
“What about your family?”.
“I especially do not want to share everything with my family. They figure largely in what I need to talk about.”
“Really? That’s terrible. You poor thing. Hub, then. It’s a good listener.”
“Well, I understand, but there are those of us who think that it only seems to care.”
“What? It’s designed to care.”
“No, it’s designed to seem to care. With a person you feel that you’re communicating on an animal level.”
“An animal level?”.
“Yes.”
“And that’s supposed to be a good thing?”.
“Yes. It’s sort of instinct to instinct.”
“So you don’t think Hub cares?”.
“It’s just a machine.”
“So are you.”
“Only in the widest sense. I feel better talking to another human. Some of us feel that Hub controls our lives too much.”
“Does it? I thought if you wanted to have nothing to do with it, you could.”
“Yes, but you still live on the O, don’t you?”.
“So?”.
“Well, it runs the Orbital, that’s what I mean.”
“Yeah, well, somebody’s got to run it.”
“Yes, but planets don’t need anybody to run them. They’re just sort of … there.”
“So you want to live on a planet?”.
“No. I think I’d find them a bit small and weird.”
“Aren’t they dangerous? don’t they get hit by stuff?”.
“No, planets have defense systems.”
“So those need running.”
“Yes, but you’re missing the point—”.
“I mean, you wouldn’t want a person in charge of stuff like that, would you? That’d be scary. That would be like the old days, like barbarism or something.”
“No, but the point is, wherever you live you can accept that something has to be minding the infrastructure, but it shouldn’t run your life as well. That’s why we feel we need to talk amongst ourselves more, not to our houses or to Hub or drones or anything like that.”
“That’s deeply weird. Are there a lot of people like you?”.
“Well, no, not many, but I know a few.”
“Do you have a group? Do you hold meetings? Have you got a name yet?”.
“Well, yes and no. There have been a lot of ideas for names. There was a suggestion we call ourselves the fastidians, or the cellists, or the carboniphiles, or the rejectionists or the spokists, or the rimmers or the planetists or the wellians or the circumferlocuans or circumlocuferans, but I don’t think we should adopt any of those.”
“Why not?”.
“Hub suggested them.”
“… Sorry.”
“… Who was that?”.
“The Homomdan ambassador.”
“Bit monstrous, don’t you think? … What? What?”
“They have very good hearing.”
• • •
“Hey! Mr. Ziller! I forgot to ask. How’s the piece?”.
“… Trelsen, isn’t it?”.
“Yeah, of course.”
“What piece?”.
&n
“Music. Oh yes. Yes, I’ve written quite a lot of that.”
“Oh, stop joshing. So, how’s it coming along?”.
“Do you mean generally, or did you have a particular work in mind?”.
“The new one, of course!”.
“Ah yes, of course.”
“So?”.
“You mean at what stage of preparation is the symphony?”.
“Yes, how’s it coming along?”.
“Fine.”
“Fine?”.
“Yes. It’s coming along fine.”
“Oh. Great! Well done. Look forward to hearing it. Great. Right.”
“… Yes, fuck off through the crowd, you cretin.
Hope I didn’t use too many technical terms … Oh, hello, Kabe, You still here? How are you, anyway?”.
“I am well. And yourself?”.
“Beset by idiots. Good job I’m used to it.”
“Present company excepted, I hope.”
“Kabe, if I suffered only one fool gladly, I assure you it would be you.”
“Hmm. Well, I shall take that as I hope you meant it rather than as I suspect; hope is a more pleasing emotion to the spirit than suspicion.”
“Your reservoir of graciousness astonishes me, Kabe. How was the emissary?”.
“Quilan?”.
“I believe that’s what he answers to.”
“He is resigned to a long wait.”
“I heard you took him walking.”
“Along the coastal path at Vilster.”
“Yes. All those kilometers of path and not a single slip. Almost beggars belief, doesn’t it?”.
“He was a pleasant walking companion and seems a decent sort of person. A little dour, perhaps.”
“Dour?”.
“Reserved and quiet, quite serious, with a sort of stillness in him.”
“Stillness.”
“The sort of stillness there is in the center of the third movement of ‘Tempest Night,’ when the steel-winds fall silent and the basses hold those long, descending notes.”
“Oh, a symphonic stillness. And is this mooted affinity with one of my works supposed to endear him to me?”
“That was the entirety of my purpose.”
“You are a quite shameless procurer, aren’t you, Kabe?”.
“Am I?”.
“Don’t you feel even the slightest shame at doing their bidding like this?”.
“Whose bidding?”.
“Hub’s, the Contact Section, the Culture as a whole, not to mention my own enchanting society and splendid government.”
“I don’t think your government is bidding me do anything.”
“Kabe, you don’t know what sort of help they asked for or demanded from Contact.”
“Well, I—”.
“Oh, grief.”
“Did I hear our name mentioned? Ah, Cr. Ziller. Ar Ischloear. Dear friends, so good to see you.”
“Tersono. You look positively polished.”
“Thank you!”.
“And a very pleasant crowd you’ve gathered, as ever.”
“Kabe, you are one of my most important weather-vanes, if I may elevate and reduce you at the same time. I rely utterly on you to tell me whether something is genuinely going well or whether people are just being polite, so I’m so glad that you feel that way.”
“And Kabe is glad that you are glad. I was asking him about our Chelgrian chum.”
“Ah, yes, poor Quilan.”
“Poor?”.
“Yes, you know; his wife.”
“No, I don’t know. What? Is she particularly ugly?”.
“No! She’s dead.”
“A condition that rarely attends an improvement in looks.”
“Ziller! Really! The poor fellow lost his wife in the Caste War. Didn’t you know?”.
“No.”
“I think Ziller has been as assiduous in avoiding all knowledge of Major Quilan as I have been in accumulating it.”
“And you haven’t shared that knowledge with Ziller, Kabe? For shame!”.
“My shame seems an especially popular subject this evening. But no, I have not. I might have been about to just before you arrived.”
“Yes, it was all terribly tragic. They hadn’t been married long.”
“At least they can look forward to a reunion in the absurd blasphemy of our manufactured heaven.”
“Apparently not. Her implant was not able to save her personality. She is gone forever.”
“How very careless. And what of the Major’s implants?”.
“What of them, dear Ziller?”.
“What are they? Have you checked him for any unusual ones? The sort of things that special agents, spies, assassins tend to have. Well? Have you checked him over for that sort of thing?”.
“… It’s gone quiet. Do you think it’s broken?”.
“I think it’s communicating elsewhere.”
“Is that what those colors mean?”.
“I don’t think so.”
“That’s just gray, isn’t it?”.
“I think technically it’s gunmetal.”
“And is that magenta?”.
“More violet. Though of course your eyes are different from mine.”
“Ahem.”
“Oh, you’re back.”
“Indeed. The answer is that Emissary Quilan was scanned several times on the way here. Ships don’t let people aboard without inspecting them for anything that might be dangerous.”
“You’re certain?”.
“My dear Ziller, he’s been transported by what are in effect three Culture warships. Do you have any idea how nanoscopically fanatical those things can be about potential-harm hygiene?”.
“What about his Soulkeeper?”.
“Not scanned directly; that would imply reading his mind, which is terribly impolite.”
“Ah-ha!”.
“Ah-ha what?”.
“Ziller is worried that the Major might be here to kidnap or murder him.”
“That would be preposterous.”
“Nevertheless.”
“Ziller, my dear friend, please, if that is what is preying on your mind, have no fears. Kidnap is … I can’t tell you how unlikely. Murder … No. Major Quilan has brought nothing with him more harmful than a ceremonial dagger.”
“Ah! So I might be put to death ceremonially. That’s different. Let’s meet up tomorrow. We could go camping. Share a tent. Is he gay? We could fuck. I’m not but it’s been a while, aside from Hub’s dream-houris.”
“Kabe, stop laughing; you ought not to encourage him. Ziller, the dagger is a dagger, no more.”
“Not a knife missile, then?”.
“Not a knife missile, not even in disguise or memoryform. It is simple, solid steel and silver. It’s little better than a letter-opener really. I’m sure if we asked him to leave it—”.
“Forget the stupid dagger! Maybe it’s a virus; a disease or something.”
“Hmm.”
“What do you mean, ‘Hmm’?”.
“Well, our medicine effectively became perfect about eight thousand years ago, and we’ve had all that time to get used to evaluating other species rapidly to develop a full understanding of their physiology, so any ordinary disease, even a new one, is unable to establish a foothold thanks to the body’s own defenses and will certainly be utterly helpless against external medical resources. However, somebody did once develop a genetic signature-keyed brain-rotting virus which worked so quickly it proved effective on more than one occasion. Five minutes after the assassin had sneezed in the same room as the intended victim their brains—and only theirs—were turning to soup.”
“And?”.
“So we look for that sort of thing. And Quilan is clean.”
“So, there’s nothing here but the pure, cellular him?”.
“Apart from his Soulkeeper.”
“Well, what about this Soulkeeper?”
“I
“A similar outward appearance. As far as you can tell?”
“Yes, it’s—”.
“And these people, my Homomdan friend, have established a reputation for thoroughness throughout the galaxy. Incredible.”
“Was it thoroughness? I thought it was eccentricity. Well, there you are.”
“Ziller, let me tell you a story.”
“Oh, must you?”.
“It appears I must. Somebody once thought of a way they might outwit the security of Contact.”
“Serial numbers instead of ridiculous ship names?”.
“No, they thought they could smuggle a bomb aboard a GCU.”
“I’ve met one or two Contact ships. I confess the idea has occurred to me, too.”
“The way they did it was to create a humanoid who appeared to have a form of bodily defect called hydrocephaly. Have you heard of such a condition?”.
“Water on the brain?”.
“Fluid fills the fetus’ head and the brain grows smeared in a thin layer around the inside of the adult’s skull. Not something you see in a developed society, but they had a plausible excuse for this individual having it.”
“A milliner’s mascot?”.
“A prophet-savant.”
“I was close.”
“The point was that this individual carried a small anti-matter bomb in the center of his skull.”
“Oh. Wouldn’t you hear it bumping around when he shook his head?”.
“Its containment vessel was tethered by atomic monofil.”
“And?”.
“Don’t you see? They thought that by hiding it inside his skull, surrounded by his brain, it would be safe from any Culture scan, because we famously do not look inside people’s heads.”
“So they were right, it worked, it blew the ship to smithereens and I’m supposed to feel reassured?”.
“No.”
“I didn’t really think so.”
“They were wrong, the device was spotted and the ship sailed serenely on.”
“What happened? It came loose, he sneezed and out it embarrassingly popped?”.
“A standard Mind scan looks at something from hyperspace, from the fourth dimension. An impenetrable sphere looks like a circle. Locked rooms are fully accessible. You or I would look flat to them.”
“Flat? Hmm. I have experienced certain critics who must have had access to hyperspace. Obviously I owe numerous apologies. Damn.”
“The ship did not read the unfortunate creature’s brains—it had no need to scan at such detail—but it was as obvious that he was carrying a bomb as if he’d balanced it on the top of his head.”