“Oh,” she said, as Berdle lowered the hatch closed with his foot. Her voice sounded just as it had in the tank, which meant slightly odd. The suit’s helmet unit was still covering her face. This doubtless explained why she was being spared any smells she might not have cared for, and why she was still listening to her own voice as relayed through the suit’s earbuds.

Berdle nodded. “There you are; clean,” he said. “Happy now?” Though that was weird too, because his mouth didn’t move as she heard him say this.

“Ecstatic. Thanks.”

“Welcome. Suit-surface nanofields, Vyr,” the avatar said, turning and walking away from her towards a low doorway at the far end of the gantry, where it met a bulkhead. “Zero friction unsticky,” she heard him say. He shook his head. “Really.”

“Yeah,” Cossont said, following him. “Hey, I don’t want to disturb you but you were just starting to sound a bit dismissive there.”

Berdle was bent down, poking seemingly randomly at the area around the mechanical handle on the door, as though expecting to find a finger-sized keyhole. “Sorry.”

She joined him at the door. “Do you think there’s any field or area where I could make you feel small and a bit slow compared to me, Berdle? Ever?”

The avatar kept poking at the door with his finger. “Well, of course not,” he said patiently, his mouth still not moving. “I’m not a person, Vyr; I’m the walking, talking figurehead of a ship.” He squatted, staring at the door. “A Culture ship,” he added, sticking his finger out and poking again. “A Culture ship,” he muttered, “of some intellectual distinction and martial wherewithal … moreover.” His finger seemed to slip into the surface of the door as though it – or his finger – was a hologram.

Berdle withdrew his finger and stood up. Something clicked and the door swung open towards them. “Me first,” he said, conversationally. There was a pause. “Oh,” Berdle said. “They really have changed the place.”

“Well, we’ve changed the place a bit,” Ximenyr said, walking in front of the reporter arbite with its camera eyes. He was granting an exclusive interview, letting just one media representative in initially before the airship was opened up to everybody else. “The last eight days have been very busy with restructuring. Quite radical restructuring, involving pretty much everybody on board, which has been one reason for keeping people away, though mostly it’s just to make it a more exciting reveal.” He smiled at the arbite. Ximenyr was dressed in a plain white shift. Five of his fellow party-goers, similarly clad, accompanied him and the arbite along the dark, broad, gently downward-curving corridor. “Many of us have been doing our own personal restructuring too,” he said. Ximenyr waved one hand. “I had all sorts of weird shit going on with my body, but I’ve brought myself back to something much more standard, much more pure, even.”