Back The Hydrogen Sonata Save as PDF
Chapters (29)
  1. By Iain M. Banks
  2. Dedication
  3. Dedication
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Sixteen
  20. Seventeen
  21. Eighteen
  22. Nineteen
  23. Twenty
  24. Twenty-one
  25. Twenty-two
  26. Twenty-three
  27. Twenty-four
  28. Twenty-five
  29. About the Author

oGSV Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life’s Rich Tapestry

oUe Mistake Not …

oMSV Passing By And Thought I’d Drop In

oMSV Pressure Drop

oGSV Contents May Differ

Hello. Bad news. Mr QiRia has been tracked down but would appear no longer to have the information we seek. See attached report.

∞

xGSV Contents May Differ

Ms Tefwe seems to have been unable to take any steps which might have confirmed whether he was telling the truth or not. Are we simply going to take his word for this? I had gathered that the gentleman was/is notoriously unreliable.

∞

xLSV You Call This Clean?

Correct. However, determining whether he was telling the truth or not would have meant kidnapping Mr QiRia. That would have been difficult and wrong. And it is hard to see what his motivation might be in lying about this. He certainly had the ability to compartmentalise his memories in the way described, and his eyes were genuinely missing. As the report’s appendices make clear, Ms Tefwe carried analytical capacity which independently verified both that this was the real person and that his eyes had been surgically excised. Short of removing him entirely from the hearkenry to carry out a full body scan, it is not easy to see what more could be done. I think we have to take this as it appears.

∞

xGSV Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life’s Rich Tapestry

And it appears that the problem recedes over the horizon once again, its solution still out of our reach. Are we really determined to pursue this chimera regardless of cost?

∞

xGSV Contents May Differ

I suspect the consensus remains much as it was. Has anyone changed their opinion since the last vote? … No? All right, then; we are as we were.

∞

xGSV Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life’s Rich Tapestry

Thinking, I hope, of what we do if and when we discover whatever there is to discover. Personally, I would vote for not telling the Gzilt, no matter what we find, and I suspect I am not alone in feeling that way. Which is why I question the point of looking so insistently in the first place. I don’t want to appear presumptuous, but perhaps we might all think a little along these lines?

∞

xLOU Caconym

Gee, thinking ahead. Whom’d a thunk a that?

∞

xGSV Contents May Differ

Mistake Not …, it would appear to be up to you and Lieutenant Commander Cossont.

∞

xUe Mistake Not …

Yup. Little busy.