Ah, flowers…

The island was definitely volcanic—it could not have borne a more classically volcanic shape. And now, in the shallow seas surrounding it, Janer observed masses of lily pads bearing blowsy blue flowers. There were also things swimming amid those masses of vegetation, but it could not discern whether they were rhinoworms or medium-sized sea leeches.

‘Zephyr has a curious fascination with lilies,’ came a voice from behind, ‘but then he has a curious fascination with anything related to death.’

‘You walk very soft, Wade,’ said Janer, removing the intensifier from his eyes.

‘I’m no clunking robot, if that’s what you mean.’ Isis Wade stepped up beside him.

‘There’s a lot of things you are not. What I’d like to know is precisely what you are.’

‘Isn’t that something we’d all like to know?’

‘Don’t start waxing philosophical on me. You know what I mean.’

‘Explanations?’ asked Wade.

‘It’s about time, while this calm lasts.’ Janer gestured to a squad of Kladites marching along the deck below.

‘Yes…’ said Wade. ‘Very well, I do represent an ancient hive mind. I in fact do more than that. Have you ever wondered why there are separate distinct hive minds rather than just one mind encompassing the entire hornet species?’

‘I can’t say it’s been very high on my mental agenda.’

‘I suppose not, and really I cannot clearly answer that question. Perhaps, just like individuality in any species, and the reasons for sex, it is a survival strategy. Perhaps, back before even dinosaurs walked the Earth, there was just one mind. Who knows? What I do know is that now there are many minds, and the way more are created is by the division, the breaking apart, of larger, older minds as the masses of hives that carry them become… unwieldy.’

‘The mind I represented was young,’ Janer observed.

‘It was: just one fragment that survived of a mind that broke apart during an ice age. Hornets do not cope well with the cold, which is why none of the other fragments survived.’

‘No, really?’ said Janer.

Wade smiled and continued, ‘On Hive it is warm, and on Earth hives are better equipped against the cold, but ancient minds still face that threat of division—death to them individually, or maybe just death to their individuality. The mind I represent is so dividing and would have had to accept its lot, had it not been for human technology. But now there is the possibility of memcording. The mind has managed to hold itself together, in so much as it has so far only divided into two. One half is rational and prepared to memcord itself and accept that as life. The other half is… unbalanced. It will not accept death, believes death an entity to be fought. Nor can it accept memcording as life.’

‘Rather like our friends here, who don’t truly consider reification life, merely a kind of purgatory.’ Janer shrugged. ‘Well, something like that.’

‘I don’t just represent the mind,’ said Wade.

‘What do you represent?’

‘One half of the argument.’

‘What?’

‘The other half is Zephyr.’

Janer just stood there staring as he realized what he was being told. After a moment he asked, ‘Which half are you?’

‘The rational half, of course.’

‘So let me get this straight.’ Janer pointed above. ‘We’ve got the nuts half of an ancient hive mind up there in a Golem sail. It doesn’t accept memcording as life, yet it is a memcording itself. You are the sane half, if that’s possible.’

‘Yes, that’s about right.’

‘What do you hope to achieve here?’

‘I hope to persuade Zephyr to accept memcording as life—to accept rationality over the visceral or emotional. If it accepts that, a template of its understanding can be transmitted via hivelink back to Hive. This will enable the two halves of my other self to come together for memcording.’

‘And if you fail?’

‘Then this,’ Wade pressed his hand against his own chest, ‘is the best my other self might achieve, and it must therefore accept dissolution.’

‘So no sprine thefts, no attempts at planetary domination involved here, just a bit of literal psychoanalytical projection?’

‘There is a further complication, and it does concern sprine.’

‘Isn’t there always? Tell me about it.’

Wade then explained to him why Zephyr was here, and Janer felt himself grow cold. He looked off past the Golem, across the ship to the further horizon.

‘That’s bad,’ he said.

‘Yes, it is.’

After a moment Janer realized he could not actually see the horizon, and he also realized that the Sable Keech was heeling over and turning hard. He again raised his intensifier to his eyes.

‘And talking of bad.’

The cloud, laced with lightning, looked like a roller of wild bruised flesh. The wave, hammering towards them below it, was higher than their ship, and looked more solid still.

‘Keep us turning. I want us bows-on towards that mess. Zephyr, start reefing all sail right now,’ said Captain Ron. ‘Then get yourself and your friends to cover or in the air—whichever you prefer.’

‘Is that a good idea?’ asked John Styx who, without protest from Ron, had taken up position at the coms console. ‘It’ll slow our turn.’

The Sable Keech was turning slowly while that wave, and the storm riding it, was coming bloody fast. Sideways on, the ship would capsize, and it would probably then stay that way, despite the heavy machinery acting as ballast down in the bilge.

‘We’ll be able to make the turn under present momentum,’ Ron replied. ‘If we leave sail on, that might tear out the masts, holing the deck and possibly the hull. We really don’t want holes in this ship right now.’

Bows on, the Sable Keech might be able to stay on the surface, though Ron thought it likely the wave still would break its back. That way, however, at least the passengers and crew might survive the coming experience.

‘Everybody been warned?’ Ron asked generally.

‘I’ve been repeating the warning over the ship’s intercom, and putting it up on every cabin screen,’ said John Styx. ‘Others are spreading the word, where they can.’

‘Ah, good.’ Ron eyed the others on the bridge. Then, entertaining a suspicion, he turned his attention to Forlam. ‘You got that rudder hard over, Forlam?’

‘Certainly have.’ Forlam gazed at the approaching wave with his eyes glittering.

Ron reached out to grab the helm and tug at it a little, to make sure Forlam was not making any small but possibly fatal mistake, as was his tendency. He found the helm was hard over, however. Forlam gave him a hurt look, then returned his attention to the wave.

‘Nearly there. We’re gonna make it, boys,’ said Ron.

Others on the bridge, looking doubtful, kept clinging to the nearest handholds. Ron himself reached out and closed his hand around a nearby stanchion. Something big had hit: this looked like the wave thrown up by a seaborne atomic explosion, of which Ron had seen his fair share during the Prador war. It might have been seven or more centuries ago, but you tended not to forget stuff like that.

‘What do you reckon caused it?’ Ron asked, generally.

‘Dunno, Captain,’ came the general reply from the Hoopers.

It struck the Old Captain that his bridge crew was not overly gifted with imagination anyway, so he turned to Styx. ‘Any ideas?’

Styx studied the displays. ‘It was an orbital kinetic strike over the Lamarck Trench in Nort Sea.’

‘Right. And the source?’

‘Prador battleship. A big one.’

‘Well, that’s a bugger,’ said Ron, just as the massive wave hit.

The Sable Keech did not lie completely bows-on to the wave. Nevertheless it rose up and up on a sudden mountain of water only just visible through horizontal rain. Ron looked up at the boiling cliff of sea as it broke round and over the bows, and clung on tight as the floor turned up to forty-five degrees, then beyond that. He looked back, and wished he hadn’t when he saw the seven-hundred-metre drop down the length of the ship into the trough. The stern was now under, cleaving through the sea and throwing up a huge cowl of water that kept crashing against the deck. Ron tried to ignore the groanings and crackings he was hearing, then suddenly the bows were in clear air, and the angle of the ship returning to normal. But the vessel now turned on the wave’s peak… Then it was over, and sliding sideways down the lee of the wave. Ron found himself clinging to the stanchion with both hands, one foot braced on a console. Forlam was gripping the wheel, his feet wide spread. A screen popped out and a waterfall roared into the bridge as the ship bottomed in a trough.