Look to Windward by Iain M. Banks Read Free Book Online Page B

the hull of the ship they were floating alongside, the privateer cruiser
Winter Storm
.
    He had been aboard the wreck once so far, while they were still trying to locate and extract Huyler’s soul from the thousand or so others stored within the rescued substrate, which they’d located in the wreck with a specially adapted Navy drone. He had been promised that later, if there was time, he would be allowed to go back to the wreck with that drone and attempt to discover any other souls the original sweeps had missed.
    Time was running out, though. It had taken time to get permission for what he wanted to do, and it was taking time for the Navy technical people to adjust the machine. Meanwhile they’d been told that the Culture warship was on its way, just a few days out. At the moment the techs were pessimistic that they’d get the drone finished in time.
    The image of the wrecked ship’s scooped-out hull seemed fixed in his brain.
    ~ Major Quilan?
    ~ Sir?
    ~ Reporting for duty, Major. Permission to come aboard.
    ~ Just so, sir. Sister technician? Transfer Hadesh Huyler into the substrate within my body.
    ~ Directly, the female said. ~ Proceeding.
    He had wondered if he’d feel anything. He did: a tingling, then a warmth in a small area on the nape of his neck. The sister technician kept him informed; the transfer went well and took about two minutes. Checking it had gone perfectly took twice that time.
    What bizarre fates our technologies dream up for us, he thought as he lay there. Here I am, a male, becoming pregnant with the ghost of an old dead soldier, to travel beyond the bounds of light older than our civilization and carry out some task I have spent the best part of a year training for but of which I presently have no real knowledge whatsoever.
    The spot on his neck was cooling. He thought his head felt very slightly warmer than it had before. He might have been imagining it.
    You lose your love, your heart, your very soul, he thought, and gain—“a land destroyer!” he heard her say, so falsely, bravely cheerful in his mind, while the rain-filled sky flashed above her and the vast weight pinned him utterly. Some memory of that pain and despair squeezed tears from his eyes.
    ~ Complete.
    ~
Testing, testing,
said the dry, laconic voice of Hadesh Huyler.
    ~ Hello, sir.
    ~ You okay, son?
    ~ I’m fine, sir.
    ~ Did that hurt you there, Major? You seem a little … distressed.
    ~ No, sir. Just an old memory. How do you feel?
    ~
Pretty damn strange. I dare say I’ll get used to it. Looks like everything checks out. Shit, that female techie doesn’t look any better through a male’s eyes than she does through a camera
. Of course; what he could see, Huyler could see. Before he could reply, Huyler added,
You sure you’re okay?
    ~ Positive, sir. I’m fine.
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â 
    He stood within the hulk of the
Winter Storm
. The Navy drone went back and forth across the strange, almost flat floor of the wreck, searching in a grid pattern. It passed the hole in the floor where the substrate from Aorme had been wrenched out.
    In the two days since they’d found the substrate, Quilan had persuaded the techs that it was worth recalibrating the drone to look for substrates much smaller than the one Huyler had been in, substrates the size of a Soulkeeper, in fact. They had already performed a standard search, but he got them at least to try and look more closely. The Mendicant Sisters on the temple ship had helped with the persuading; any chance to rescue a soul had to be pursued to the utmost.
    By the time the drone was ready, though, the Culture ship which would take him on the first leg of his journey was already starting to decelerate. The Navydrone would have time for one sweep and one sweep only.
    He watched it make its passes, following its own unseen grid across the flat floor. He looked up and around the gaping shell of the