Surface Detail

“Lots of abandoned alien factories no one’s allowed to use… mostly,” the avatar said, nodding. “Anyway, the smatter got into the Disk sometime in the dim and distant and one of our infuriatingly well-meaning Can-we-help? teams has been in there sitting on top of it for probably longer than’s really been necessary – you know; one of those jobs you make sure you never quite finish because you like being where you are? – except now it does rather seem to have blown up in their faces and all of a sudden our chums have a properly serious runaway Event on their hands.” Demeisen paused and got that far-away look avatars sometimes did when the vastly powerful thing they represented was watching something utterly fascinating going on in mysterious high-definition realms inaccessible to mere mortal biologicals. The avatar shook his head. “Hilarious.”

“So you’re going to go and help?” Lededje asked.

“Good grief, no!” Demeisen said. “Pest Control problem. They took the decision to spin this out; they can fucking deal with it.” He shrugged. “Though having said that, I may have to pretend to go and help, I suppose, or whoever’s following us might see through my magic cloak of plausibility. We are heading straight for the Tsung system; it’s just I hadn’t intended to stop.” The avatar clicked his fingernails on the console beneath the screen. “Annoying.” He sighed. “Also, interestingly, this is – maybe – not the first odd thing to happen in this neck of the woods, either. There was an ablationary plume nine days ago not a million klicks away from that rendezvous they were trying to get you to make in the Semsarine Wisp.”

She shook her head. “You’d make a great teenage boy,” she told the avatar.

“Beg your pardon?”

“You still think girls get moist when they hear arcane nomen-clature. It’s sweet, I suppose.”

“What; you mean an ablationary plume?”

“Yes. What the fuck is that, now?”

“Oh, come on; this is just the stuff I have to deal with, an emergence from the weird-shit space I happen to pass my days in.” If Lededje hadn’t known better she might have thought the avatar was hurt. “An ablationary plume,” he said, sighing. “It’s what happens when a ship tries to hit the ground running and fails, in e-Grid terms; its field engines are unable to connect efficiently with the Grid and – rather than blowing up or being flung out, wrecked, to coast for ever – its engines ablate a part of themselves to cushion the energy blow. Slows the ship, though at great cost. Immediate total engine refit required. The point is that the resulting plume’s visible from way far away in e-Grid terms, so it can work as a sort of emergency distress signal. Embarrassing enough during peacetime and likely fatal in a war.” The avatar fell silent, seemingly contemplating this odd turn of events.

“… E-Grid?” Lededje asked tentatively.

“Oh come on!” Demeisen said, sounding exasperated. “Do they teach you nothing at school?”

Somebody was calling her name. Everything was a bit fuzzy, even including her sense of who she was. Her name, for example. There it was again. Somebody saying it.

Well, they were saying something. Her first thought was that they were saying her name but now she thought about it she wasn’t so sure.

It was as though the sounds meant something but she wasn’t sure what, or maybe she knew what they meant but couldn’t be sure what the sounds actually were. No, that wasn’t what she meant. Fuzzy.

Yime. That was her name, wasn’t it?

She wasn’t entirely sure. It sounded like it was supposed to mean something pretty important and it wasn’t an ordinary word that she knew which meant something. It sounded like a name. She was pretty sure it was a name. Chances were it was her name.

Yime?

She needed to get her eyes open. She wanted to get her eyes open. She wasn’t used to having to think about opening her eyes; usually it was something that just happened.

Still, if she was going to have to think about-

Yime? Can you hear me?

– it, she’d just have to think about it. There it was again, just there, while she’d been thinking about getting her eyes open; that… feeling that somebody or something had said her name.

“Yime?” said a tiny, high-pitched voice. It was a silly voice. A pretend, made-up voice, or one belonging to a child who’d just sucked on a helium balloon.

“Yime? Hello, Yime?” the squeaky voice said. It was hard to hear at all; it was almost drowned out by the roaring sound of a big waterfall, or something like a big waterfall; a high wind in tall trees, maybe.

“Yime? Can you hear me?”

It really did sound like a doll.

She got one eye open and saw a doll.

Well, that fitted, she supposed. The doll was standing looking at her, quite close to her. It was standing on the floor. She realised that she must be lying on the floor.