Left to themselves, Dweller bodies degassed and gained density, and abandoned to the atmosphere would eventually disappear completely into the Depths. The respectful convention, however, was either to keep a dead relative in a special ceremonial chamber at home and let them decay until their density would ensure a swift passage into the liquid hydrogen far beneath, or — if time was pressing — to weight the body and consign it to the Depths that way.
Hatherence had no family here. There was not even anybody of her own species in all Nasqueron, and so — as, at least, a fellow alien — Fassin had been declared responsible for her remains. He’d agreed a swift dispatch to the Depths was preferable to keeping her body and handing it back to the Shrievalty or any family she might still have in Ulubis system. He wasn’t even sure why he felt that way, but he did. There was no particular veneration of the remains of the dead in the way of the Truth, and, as far as he knew, no special meaning amongst oerileithe in having their dead returned from afar, but even if there had been, he’d have wanted something like this. For the Dwellers, it was probably just administrative convenience, even tidiness to dispose of her now, like this. For him, it was something more.
Fassin looked down at the alien body — thin and dark, something between a manta and a giant starfish — lying in its coffin of meteorite iron. Iron had always been and, sentimentally, ceremonially, still was a semi-precious metal for Dwellers. That they were burying Hatherence like this was something of an honour, he supposed. In the fading light, her ragged remains, dark anyway, then burned by the beam which had killed her, looked like scraps of shadow.
Fassin felt tears in his real eyes, inside the shock-gel inside the little gascraft that was his own tiny life-coffin, and knew that some deep, near-animal part of him was mourning not so much the fallen Oculan colonel as all the people he knew whom he’d lost recently, lost without seeing them one last time, even in death, lost without fully being able to believe that he really had lost them because it had all happened so far away with so much in between them and him to stop him returning to pay any sort of respects to them, lost in his intellect but not his emotions, because even now, some part of him refused to believe he would never see all those lost ones again.
“I confess,” Setstyin said, “I have no idea what form of words one ought to use on such occasions, Seer Taak. Do you?”
“Amongst some aHumans there is a saying that we come from and go to nothing, a lack like shadow that throws the sum of life into bright relief. And with the rHumans, something about dust to ashes.”
“Do you think she would have minded being treated as a Dweller?” Setstyin asked.
“No,” Fassin said. “I don’t think she would have minded. I think she would have felt honoured.”
“Here, here,” Y’sul muttered.
Valseir gave a small formal bow.
“Well, Colonel Hatherence,” Setstyin said, with what sounded like a sigh as he looked down at the body lying in the coffin. “You ascended to the age and rank of Mercatorial Colonel, which is a very considerable achievement for your kind. We think you lived well and we know you died well. You died with many others but in the end we all die alone. You died more alone than others, amongst people like you but alien to you, and far from your home and family. You fell and were found and now we send you down again, further into those Depths, to join all the revered dead on the surface of rock around the core.” He looked at Fassin. “Seer Taak, would you like to say anything?”
Fassin tried to think of something. In the end he just said, “I believe Colonel Hatherence was a good person. She was certainly a brave one. I only knew her for less than a hundred days and she was always my military superior, but I came to like her and think of her as a friend. She died trying to protect me. I’ll always honour her memory.”
He signalled that he could think of nothing else. Setstyin roll-nodded and indicated the open coffin lid.
Fassin went forward and used a manipulator to close the casket’s iron hatch, then he lowered a little more and together he and Setstyin took one edge of the bier that the coffin lay on. They raised it, letting the heavy container slide silently off, over the edge of the balcony and down into the next bruise-dark layer of clouds, far below.
They all floated over the edge and waited until the coffin disappeared, a tiny black speck vanishing into the darkly purple wastes.
“Great-cousin of mine, diving deep, got hit by one of those once,” Y’sul said thoughtfully. “Never knew what hit him. Stone dead.”
The others were looking at him.
He shrugged. “Well? It’s true.”
Valseir found Fassin in a gallery, looking out at the deep night stream of gas, rushing quietly in infrared as the Isaut powered its way to who knew where.
“Fassin.”
“Valseir. Are we free to leave yet?”
“Not that I’ve heard. Not yet.”
They watched the night flow round them together for a while. Fassin had spent time earlier looking at reports on the storm battle, from both sides. The Dwellers had high-selectivity visuals which made it look like the Dreadnoughts had won the day, not the Isaut. The little he’d got from the Mercatoria’s nets just gave dark hints that an entire fleet was missing, and included no visuals at all. Unseen was pretty much unheard-of. It appeared that everybody had instantly assumed there was some vast cover-up going on. Both sides were downplaying like crazy, implying that some terrible misunderstanding had taken place and they’d both suffered appallingly heavy losses, which was, when Fassin thought about it, somewhere between half and three-quarters true, and hence closer to reality than might have been expected in the circumstances.
“So what did happen to this folder?” Fassin asked. “If there was a folder.”
“There was and is a folder, Fassin,” Valseir told him. “Iheld on to it for a long time but eventually, twenty-one, twenty-three years ago, I gave it to my colleague and good friend Leisicrofe. He was departing on a research trip.”
“Has he returned?”
“No.”
“When will he?”
“Should he return, he won’t have the data.”
“Where will it be?”
“Wherever he left it. I don’t know.”
“How do I find your friend Leisicrofe?”
“You’ll have to follow him. That will not be so easy. You will need help.”
“I have Y’sul. He’s always arranged—”
“You will need rather more than he can provide.”
Fassin looked at the old Dweller. “Off-planet? Is that what you mean?”
“Somewhat,” Valseir said, not looking at him, gazing out at the onward surge of night.
“Then who should I approach for this help?”
“I’ve already taken the liberty.”
“You have? That’s very kind.”
Valseir was silent for a while, then said, “None of this is about kindness, Fassin.” He turned to look directly at the arrowhead. “Nobody in their right mind would ever want to be involved with something as momentous as this. If the slightest part of what you’re looking for has any basis in reality, it could change everything for all of us. I am Dweller. My species has made a good, long — if selfish — life for itself, spread everywhere, amongst the stars. We do not appreciate change on the scale we are here talking about. I’m not sure that any species would. Some of us will do anything to avoid such change, to keep things just as they are.
“You have to realise, Fassin; we are not a monoculture, we are not at all perfectly homogenised. We are differentiated in ways that even now, after all your exposure to us, you can scarcely begin to comprehend. There are things within our own worlds almost entirely hidden from most of us, and there are deep and profound differences of opinion between factions amongst us, just as there are between the Quick.”