She smiled. "That sounds like no great hardship. Does that mean I can stay here longer?"

"Not here; the tower and everything else will have gone; it will mean living inside. Inside the GSV."

Dajeil shrugged. "All right. I suppose I can suffer that. When will that have to happen?"

"In a day or two," Amorphia said. Then the avatar looked concerned, and sat forward on the seat. "There… it's possible… it's possible there… might be a slightly increased risk to you, staying aboard until then. The ship will do all it can to minimise that, of course, but the possibility exists. And it might be…" Amorphia's head shook suddenly. "I — the ship, would like you to remain on board, if possible, until then. It might be… important. Good." The avatar looked as though it had startled itself. Dajeil suddenly recalled having held a tiny baby when it had farted loudly; the look of utter, blinking surprise on its face was not dissimilar to that on Amorphia's face now. Dajeil choked back an urge to laugh, and it disappeared anyway when, as though prompted by the thought, her child kicked within her. She clamped a hand to her belly. "Yes," Amorphia said, nodding vigorously. "It would be good if you stayed on board… Good might come of it altogether." It sat staring at her, panting as though from exertion.

"Then I had better stay, hadn't I?" Dajeil said, again keeping her voice steady and calm.

"Yes," said the avatar. "Yes; I'd appreciate that. Thank you." It stood up suddenly from the seat, as though released by a spring within. Dajeil was startled; she almost jumped. "I must go now," Amorphia said.

Dajeil swung her legs out and stood too, more slowly. "Very well," she said as the avatar made its way to the staircase set onto the wall of the tower. "I hope you'll tell me more later."

"Of course," the avatar mumbled, then it turned and bowed quickly and was gone, bootsteps clattering down the stairs.

The door slammed some moments later.

Dajeil Gelian climbed the steps to the parapet of the tower. A breeze caught her robe's hood and spilled her heavy, still-wet hair out and down. The sun-line had set, throwing highlights of gold and ruby light across the sky and turning the starboard horizon into a fuzzy violet border. The wind stiffened. It felt cold.

Amorphia was not walking back this evening; after the creature had hurried up the narrow path through the tower's walled garden and out of the land-gate, it just rose up into the air, without any obvious AG pack or flying suit, and then accelerated through the air in a dark, thin blur, curving through the air to disappear a few seconds later over the edge of the cliff beyond.

Dajeil looked up. There were tears in her eyes, which annoyed her. She sniffed them back angrily and wiped her cheeks. A few blinks, and the view of the sky was steady and unobscured again.

It had indeed already begun.

A flight of the dirigible creatures were dropping down from the red-speckled clouds above her, heading for the cliffs. Looking closely, she could see the accompanying drones that were their herders. Doubtless the same scene was being repeated at this moment both beneath the grey surface of the sea on the far side of the tower as well as above, in the region of furious heat and crushing pressure that was the gas-giant environment.

The dirigible creatures hesitated in the skies above; in front of them, a whole area of the cliff, perhaps a kilometre across and half that in height, simply folded in on itself in four parcel-neat sections and disappeared backwards into four huge, long glowing halls. The reassured dirigible creatures were shepherded towards one of the opened bays. Elsewhere, other parts of the cliffs were performing similar tricks; lights sparkled in the spaces revealed. The entire swathe of grey-brown scree — easily twenty kilometres across and a hundred metres in both depth and height — was folding and tipping in eight gigantic Vs and channelling several billion tonnes of real-enough rock into eight presumably reinforced ship bays, doubtless to undergo whatever transformational process was in store for the sea and the gas-giant atmosphere.

A titanic, bone-resounding tremor shook the ground and rumbled over the tower while huge clouds of dust leapt billowing into the chilly air as the rock disappeared. Dajeil shook her head — her wet hair flapping on the sodden shoulders of her robe — then walked towards the doorway which led to the rest of the tower, intending to retreat there before the clouds of stone dust arrived.

The black bird Gravious made to settle on her shoulder; she shooed it off and it landed flapping uproariously on the edge of the opened trap door.

"My tree!" it screamed, hopping from leg to leg. "My tree! They've — I - my — it's gone!"

"Too bad," she said. The sound of another great tumble of falling rock split the skies. "Stay wherever it puts me," she told the bird. "If it'll let you. Now get out of my way."

"But my food for the winter! It's gone!"

'Winter has gone, you stupid bird," she told it. The black bird stopped moving and just perched there, head thrown forward and to one side, right eye staring at her, as though trying to catch some more meaningful echo of what she had just told it. "Oh, don't worry," she said. "I'm sure you'll be accommodated." She waved it off its perch and it flapped noisily away.

A last earthquake of sound rolled under and over the tower. The woman Dajeil Gelian looked round at the twilight-lit rolling grey dust clouds to see the light from opened bays beyond shine through, as the pretence at natural form was dispensed with and the overall shape of the craft's fabric began to reveal itself.

The Culture General Systems Vehicle Sleeper Service. No longer just her gallant protector and a grossly over-specified mobile game reserve… It seemed that the great ship had finally found something to become involved with which was more in keeping with the extent of its powers. She wished it well, though with trepidation.

The sea like stone, she thought. She turned and stepped down into the warmth of the tower, patting the bulge that was her sleeping, undreaming child. A stern winter indeed; harder than any of us had anticipated.

VI

Leffid Ispanteli was trying desperately to remember the name of the lass he was with. Geltry? Usper? Stemli?

"Oh, yes, yes, ffffuck! Gods, yes! More, more; now, yes! There! There! Yes! That's oohhh…!"

Soli? Getrin? Ayscoe?

"Oh, fuck! There! More! Harder! Right… right… now! …Aah!"

Selas? Serayer? (Grief; how ungallant of him!)

"Oh, sweet providence! Oh FUCK!"

No wonder he couldn't think of her name; the girl was kicking up such a racket he was surprised he could think at all. Still, a chap shouldn't grumble, he supposed; always nice to be appreciated. Even if it was the yacht that was doing most of the work.

The diminutive hire yacht continued to shudder and buck beneath them, spiralling and curving through space a few hundred kilometres away from the huge stepped world that was Tier.

Leffid had used these little yachts for this sort of thing before; if you fed a nicely jagged course into their computers they'd do most of the bumping and grinding for you while leaving just enough apparent gravity to brace oneself without leaving one feeling terribly heavy. Programming in the odd power-off interval gave moments of delicious free-fall, and drew the small craft further away from the great world, so that gradually the view beyond the viewing ports increased in majesty as more and more of the conical habitat was revealed, turning slowly and glittering in the light of the system's sun. Altogether a wonderful way of having sex, really, providing one found a suitable and willing partner.