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own craft, or on a faster vessel from one of the older Involved civilisations,
possibly one belonging to the Culture.'
'Does the mission involve the Culture, Estodien?'
'It does. You are being sent to the Culture world Masaq', an Orbital.'
'That is where Mahrai Ziller lives.'
'Correct.'
'Am I to kill him?'
'That is not your mission. Your covering story is that you are going there to
try to convince him to return to Chel.'
'And my real mission?'
'We will come to that in due course. And therein lies a precedent.'
'A precedent, Estodien?'
'Your true mission will not be clear to you when you start it. You will know
the covering story and you will almost certainly have a feeling that there is
more to your task than that, but you will not know what it is.'
'So am I to be given something like sealed orders, Estodien?'
'Something like that. But those orders will be locked inside your own mind.
Your memory of this time - probably from some time just after the war to the
end of your training here - will only gradually come back to you as you near
the completion of your mission. By the time you recall this conversation - at
the end of which you will know what your mission really is, though not yet
exactly how you will accomplish it - you should be quite close, though not in
exactly the correct position.'
'Can memory be drip-fed so accurately, Estodien?'
'It can, though the experience may be a little disorienting, and that is the most
important reason for giving you your co-pilot. The reason we are doing this is
specifically because the mission involves the Culture. We are told that they
never read people's minds, that the inside of your head is the one place they
regard as sacrosanct. You have heard this?'
'Yes.'
'We believe that this is probably true, but your mission is of sufficient
importance for us to take precautions in case it is not. We imagine that if they
do read minds, the most likely time this will happen will be when the subject
concerned boards one of their ships, especially one of their warships. If we
are able to arrange that you are taken to Masaq' on such a vessel, and it does
look inside your head, all it will find, even at quite a deep level, is your
innocent covering story.'
'We believe, and have verified through experiments, that such a scanning
process could be carried out without your knowledge. To go any deeper, to
discover the memories we will initially hide even from you, this scanning
process will have to reveal itself; you will be aware that it is taking place, or at
the very least you will know that it has taken place. If that should happen,
Major, your mission will end early. You will die.'
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Quilan nodded, thinking. 'Estodien, has any sort of experiment been carried
out on me yet? I mean, have I already lost any memories, whether I agreed to
such a thing or not?'
'No. The experiments I mentioned were carried out on others. We are very
confident that we know what we are doing, Major.'
'So the deeper I go into my mission the more I'll know about it?'
'Correct.'
'And the personality, the co-pilot, will it know everything from the start?'
'It will.'
'And it cannot be read by a Culture scan?'
'It can, but it would require a deeper and more detailed reading than that
required for a biological brain. Your Soulkeeper will be like your citadel,
Quilan; your own brain is the curtain wall. If the citadel has fallen, the walls
are either long since stormed, or irrelevant.
'Now. As I said, there is more to tell about your Soulkeeper. It contains, or
will contain, a small payload and what is commonly known as a matter
transmitter. Apparently it does not really transmit matter, but it has the same
effect. I freely confess the importance of the distinction escapes me.'
'And this is in something the size of a Soulkeeper?'
'Yes.'
'Is this our own technology, Estodien?'
'That is not something that you need to know, Major. All that matters is
whether it works or not.' Visquile hesitated, then said, 'Our own scientists
and technologists make and apply astonishing new discoveries all the time, as
I'm sure you are aware.' [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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