BooksBarbecue
Back Excession
Chapters (108)
  1. About the Author
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Dedication
  5. 1 - Outside Context Problem
  6. I
  7. II
  8. III
  9. IV
  10. V
  11. VI
  12. 2 - Not Invented Here
  13. I
  14. II
  15. III
  16. 3 - Uninvited Guests
  17. I
  18. II
  19. III
  20. IV
  21. 4 - Dependency Principle
  22. I
  23. II
  24. III
  25. IV
  26. V
  27. 5 - Kiss The Blade
  28. I
  29. II
  30. III
  31. IV
  32. V
  33. VI
  34. 6 - Pittance
  35. I
  36. II
  37. III
  38. IV
  39. V
  40. VI
  41. 7 - Tier
  42. I
  43. II
  44. III
  45. IV
  46. 8 - Killing Time
  47. I
  48. II
  49. III
  50. IV
  51. V
  52. VI
  53. VII
  54. VIII
  55. 9 - Unacceptable Behaviour
  56. I
  57. II
  58. III
  59. IV
  60. V
  61. VI
  62. VII
  63. VIII
  64. IX
  65. X
  66. XI
  67. XII
  68. XIII
  69. XIV
  70. 10 - Heavy Messing
  71. I
  72. II
  73. III
  74. IV
  75. V
  76. VI
  77. VII
  78. VIII
  79. IX
  80. X
  81. XI
  82. XII
  83. XIII
  84. XIV
  85. XV
  86. 11 - Regarding Gravious
  87. I
  88. II
  89. III
  90. IV
  91. V
  92. VI
  93. VII
  94. VIII
  95. IX
  96. X
  97. XI
  98. XII
  99. XIII
  100. XIV
  101. 12 - Faring Well
  102. I
  103. II
  104. III
  105. IV
  106. V
  107. VI
  108. Epilogue

‘Really,’ it said laconically. ‘And the answer to your next three questions, I’d guess, are: because I was very well hidden and that’s actually quite easy in a conglomeration of matter the size of Phage; getting on for five hundred years; and there are another fifteen like me back home. I trust you are reassured rather than shocked and that we may rely on your discretion in the future.’

‘Oh, golly, absolutely,’ she said, nodding, and felt half inclined to click her heels and salute.

V

V

Dajeil had been spending a lot more time with the beasts. She swam with the great fish and the sea-evolved mammals and reptiles, she donned a flyer suit and cruised high above the sea with her wide wings extended alongside the dirigible creatures in the calm currents of air and the cloud layers, and she donned a full gelfield suit with a secondary AG unit and carved her way amongst the poison gases, the acid clouds and the storm bands of the upper atmosphere, surrounded by noxiousness and the ferocious beauty of the ecosystem there.

She even spent some time walking in the ship’s top-side parks, the nature reserves which the Sleeper Service had possessed even when it had been a regular, well-behaved GSV and diligent member of the Contact section; the parks - complete landscapes with hills, forests, plains, river and lake systems and the remains of small resort villages and hotels - covered all the great ship’s flat top surfaces and together measured over eight hundred square kilometres. With the humans gone from the ship there were fairly large populations of land animals in the park lands, including grazers, predators and scavengers.

She’d never really paid any of them much attention - her interests had always been with the larger, buoyant animals of the fluid environments - but now that they were all likely to suffer the same exile or unconsciousness as the rest, she had started to take a belated, almost guilty interest in them (as though, she thought ruefully, her attention bestowed some special significance on the behaviour she witnessed, or meant anything at all to the creatures concerned).

Amorphia did not come for its regular visit; another couple of days passed.

When the avatar came to her again, she had been swimming with the purple-winged triangular rays in the shallow part of the sea extending beyond the sheer, three-kilometre cliff which was the rear of the craft. Returning, she had taken the flyer which the ship habitually put at her disposal, but asked it to drop her at the top of the scree slope beneath the cliff facing the tower.

It was a bright, cold day and the air tasted sharp; this part of the ship’s environment was cycling towards winter; all the trees save for a few everblues had lost their leaves, and soon the snows would come.