Matter by Iain M. Banks

Author:Iain M. Banks
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3, pdf
Tags: Science Fiction - Adventure, Science Fiction - Space Opera, Fiction - Science Fiction, Murder, Brothers and sisters, Government investigators, Space Opera, Fiction, Science Fiction, Adventure, Life on other planets, Space colonies, General, Science Fiction And Fantasy
ISBN: 9780316005364
Publisher: Culture
Published: 2008-02-25T08:00:00+00:00

Before she left the Seed Drill she researched what was known about recent events on the Eighth, Sursamen. She did some of the investigating herself and sent agents – crude, temporary personality constructs – into the dataverse to search for more.

She was looking for detailed news but also for any hint that the Sarl might be more closely observed. Too many sophisticated civilisations seemed to believe that the very primitiveness of less developed cultures – and the high levels of violence usually associated with such societies – somehow automatically gave them the right to spy on them. Even for societies some way down the civilisational tech-order, cascade-production of machines to make machines that made other machines meant it was effectively a materially cost-free decision. The resulting cloud of devices could each be as small as a grain of dust and yet together they could, with the back-up of a few larger units in space, blanket-surveille an entire planet and transmit in excruciating detail almost anything that went on almost anywhere.

There were treaties and agreements to limit this sort of behaviour, but these usually only covered the galaxy’s more mature and settled societies, as well as those directly under their control or in their thrall; the relevant tech was like a new toy for those recently arrived at the great Involved table of the galactic meta-civilisation and tended to get used with enthusiasm for a while.

Societies which had only recently renounced the chronic use of force and resort to war – often reluctantly – were usually the most keen to watch those for whom such behaviour was still routine. One of the last-resort methods of dealing with those displaying such voyeurism was to turn their own devices against them, scooping the surveillance machines up from wherever they had been scattered, fiddling with their software and then infesting the worlds of their creators with them, concentrating on the homes and favoured recreational facilities of the powerful. This usually did the trick.

The peoples living within Sursamen, especially those like the Sarl, who would have been both unsuspecting of and defenceless against such conceited oversight, were amongst those supposedly protected against its depredations. But just because something wasn’t public didn’t mean it wasn’t happening. The Culture had one of the most open and inclusive dataverse structures in the galaxy but even it didn’t see or know everything. There were still plenty of private, hidden things going on. As a rule you got to hear of them eventually, but by then the damage had usually been done.

From the Eighth, though, so far; nothing. Either nobody was spying, or if they were they were keeping very quiet about it. The Morthanveld were easily capable, but too proud, law-abiding and anyway disdainful (much like the Culture, then); the Nariscene probably thought themselves above such behaviour too, and the Oct, well, the Oct didn’t really seem to care about anything other than pushing their claim to be the true Inheritors of the Veil legacy.

Even routine accessing of the

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