Surface Detail

by Iain M. Banks

  “And what is it you might want?” one of the mill demons said to Prin, as the other nodded to a pair of demons from the flier. These two released their hold on the Pavuleans they were clutching. The two male Pavuleans landed on all fours and scuttled soundlessly down the ramp, vanishing into the blue mist of the doorway.

  The other mill demon said, “One.”

  “No, no, no!” one of the two remaining Pavuleans wailed, struggling in the grasp of the demon who held him.

  “Shush now,” the demon holding him said, shaking him. “Might not be you who’s staying.”

  “Brother?” the mill demon who’d spoken to Prin took a step towards him.

  Prin felt a tiny, sharp barb penetrate the skin at his neck. The contraband code was about to run out. Four pulses warning; that’s what he’d been told. Four pulses and then he’d be back to his earlier self, just another coded Pavulean, as helpless and hopeless as Chay here, held tight and trembling against his chest. Another barb. So that was four, three …

  He didn’t even try to roar again; waste of breath. He just charged, leaping forward at the group of demons and Pavuleans. He thudded into the approaching mill demon while surprise was still registering on its face and it was just starting to raise its trunks to fend him off. He half-headed it, half-shouldered it out of the way, sending it crashing to the floor.

  It was all happening very slowly. He wondered if this really was the speed that such moments of action seemed to happen at for predators in the Real – one reason they were so good at bringing down their prey, perhaps – or if this was an extra effect introduced just for the demons in Hell, to allow them an even greater advantage over their victims, or just to let them savour the moment all the more fully.

  The four demons from the flier were all facing him now. The two holding Pavuleans did not worry him so much, he realised – he was thinking like a predator, like one of these bastards! – because they didn’t want to let go of their charges, at least not yet. By the time they thought the better of this, he knew, it would all be over one way or the other.

  One of the remaining demons was faster to react than the other, opening its mouth into a snarl and starting to rise up on its hind legs while it brought its forelegs up towards him.

  He was aware of being slightly encumbered by the small, hard weight he was carrying against his great furred chest. Chay. Could he just throw her through the doorway from here? Probably not. He’d have to stop, take aim, lob her. It would take too long and the way the angles worked one of the demons would only need to raise one forelimb to catch her or knock her off course. By the time that happened he’d have lost all his temporary power and be no more strong than she was now; no match at all for even a single demon.

  He could use his slight lopsidedness to his advantage, he realised, as he took his next swinging, galloping step. The demon facing him, ready to tackle him, was allowing for how he was moving off-kilter, unconsciously preparing to intercept Prin a couple of metres ahead according to the already set rhythm evident in the way he was moving.

  Prin threw Chay from one forelimb to the other and pressed her hard into the other side of his chest. The gesture cost him a small amount of momentum, but gave him the greater advantage of throwing off the reckoning of the demon preparing to bring him down.

  Prin opened his jaws as the third barb made itself felt in his neck. One pulse left. The fourth barb would signal his instant return to the small, broken body he’d been trapped within for the last few months.

  The demon didn’t even have time to look surprised. Prin crunched his jaws closed on the smaller demon. He felt his fangs penetrate furred skin, flesh, sinew and tendon and then bite into the giving hardness of bone. He was already turning his head, an instinctive reaction giving his jaws time to fully close. The demon was starting to turn too now, pulled round by his attacker’s greater weight. Prin went with the motion, keeping his jaws tight, feeling bone snap and crumple inside his mouth. He pivoted with the demon, using their combined mass to swivel even as he kept on charging forward, bringing the body of the bitten demon swinging round, legs flailing, to connect with the body of the second pouncing demon, knocking it aside in a snarling ball. Prin let his jaws open; the first demon was flung from them and went slithering along the floor, already bleeding, narrowly missing the legs of one of the other two demons still holding the Pavuleans.

  He was almost at the start of the slope to the blue glowing door. He made one last bound, launching himself through the air.

  As he did so, he knew he had made it, that they would get through the doorway. It floated up towards him as he rose in the air, still propelled by the last great thrust of his hind legs.

  One, he thought.

  The way the mill demon had said “One,” after the last two Pavuleans had gone through.

  And, just as he’d burst into the mill, a voice – the same voice, he realised now – had said “Three.”

  Three: then the two little Pavuleans had gone skittering through the blue glowing gate. One.

  He’d been counting down.

  Of course; the gate could count. The gate, or people operating it at this side – or more likely the other side, in the Real – knew how many to expect, how many they were allowed to let through.

  Just one more person would be allowed to make the transition from the Hell to the Real.

  He reached the top of his last, pouncing leap. The doorway spread before him, a glowing bank of blue mist filled with shadows. He wondered if the fact that he and Chay were so close together would allow them both to make it through, if the gateway would be somehow fooled by this. Or perhaps the fact she was catatonic, semi-conscious at best, would mean that she could make it through as well as him.

  He was starting to fall through the air, the gateway only a bodylength away now. He brought Chay out from the side of his chest, moving her to a more central position, grasping her with both forelimbs as he pushed her in front of him. If there was really only one more person, one more coded consciousness allowed through, let it be her. He would have to take his chances here, accept whatever extra punishment these fiends could devise.

  She might be in no state to tell what had befallen them, of course; she might forget or deny all they had experienced. She might not believe it had happened at all. She had denied the existence of the Real while she was here, surrendering all too easily to the grinding actuality of the horror around her; why would she not likewise deny the unbelievable gruesomeness of Hell once she was safely back in the Real, if she was even able to remember it properly?

  What if she remained catatonic on the other side? What if she really had gone mad and no return to reality would change that?

  Was he to be gallant to the point of stupidity, or hard-headed to the point of selfishness, just wanting to save his own skin?

  He tucked himself in, balling up and tumbling, somersaulting through the air as the blue-glowing doorway rushed towards him. He would go through first, holding Chay out behind him.

  He would never abandon her. She might abandon him.

  At that point the contraband code’s run-time reached its end. He changed back immediately, an instant before the two little Pavulean bodies flew into the blue glowing mist.

  Seven

  The Halo 7 rolled magisterially across the misty plain, its stately progress marked by little lofted tufts and wisps of vapour which seemed to cling longingly to its tubes and spars as though reluctant to let go. The giant Wheel left a temporarily cleared track through the mist behind it like a wake, affording glimpses of the land beneath before the silent grey presence flowed slowly back in.

  Veppers floated in the pool, looking out over the misted landscape to where some high, rounded hills rose out of the grey, maybe twenty or more kilometres away. The water around him trembled and pulsed as the pool car’s shock absorbers struggled to iron out the Halo 7’s trundling progress across the mist-swaddled terrain.

  The Halo 7 was a Wheel, a vehicle built to navigate
the great plains, rolling hills and shallow inland seas of Obrech, Sichult’s principal continent. One hundred and fifty metres in diameter by twenty across, the Halo 7 looked entirely like a giant fairground wheel which had broken free from its supports and gone rolling across the land.

  The Veprine Corporation’s Planetary Heavy Industries Division (Sichult) constructed several standard sizes and types of Wheel. Most were mobile hotels, taking the rich on cruises across the continent; the Halo 7, Veppers’ own privately owned vehicle, was the grandest and most impressive of the largest spokeless class, being no greater in diameter than the rest but possessing thirty-three rather than thirty-two gondolas.

  The Halo 7’s separate cars held sumptuous bedroom suites, banqueting halls, reception rooms, two separate pool and bath complexes, gyms, flower-filled terraces, kitchens, kitchen gardens, a command and communication pod, power and services units, garages for ground vehicles, hangars for fliers, boat-houses for speedboats, sailboats and minisubs, and quarters for crew and servants. Much more than a mode of transport, the Halo 7 was a mobile mansion.

  Rather than being fixed to the Wheel’s rims, the thirty-three cars could alter position, either at Veppers’ whim or according to the dictates of the landscape beneath; negotiating – and especially traversing – a steep slope, where there was no ready-made Wheel road, all the heavier pods could be brought down close to the ground, preventing the device from becoming dangerously top-heavy and so allowing it take on angles of lean that looked both unlikely and alarming. Perched at the top in a gimballed observation gondola during such a manoeuvre, Veppers had been known to take great delight in terrifying guests with that trick. Getting from one pod to another could mean as little as a single step if the cars had been brought up against each other, or a ride in one of several circumferential elevator units that moved round a smaller-diameter ring fixed inside the Wheel’s principal structure.

  Veppers gazed out at the distant blue hills, trying to remember if he owned them or not.

  “Are we still within the estate?” he asked.

  Jasken was standing at the pool-side, keeping politely out of his master’s view. Jasken was scanning the misty landscape, the Enhancing Oculenses covering his eyes zooming in on details, revealing the ground’s mostly chilly heat signature and showing him any radio sources. “I’ll ask,” he said, and muttered something, putting a finger to the comms bud attached to his ear as he listened. “Yes, sir,” he told Veppers. “Captain Bousser informs us we are about thirty kilometres inside the estate’s boundaries.” Jasken used a small keypad on the back of the cast covering his left arm to call up the requisite overlay on the view the Oculenses were presenting. Thirty klicks was about right.

  The Halo 7’s commander, Captain Bousser, was female. Jasken suspected she had been hired for her pleasing looks rather than on merit, so, where possible, he checked any assertions she made, waiting, so far unsuccessfully, for a mistake he could use to convince Veppers of her unfitness for the post.

  “Hmm,” Veppers said. Now he thought about it, he didn’t really care whether he owned the hills or not. His right hand went to his face without him thinking about it, his fingers very gently tracing the prosthetic covering that had replaced the tip of his nose while the flesh and cartilage re-grew beneath. It was a pretty good fake, especially with a bit of makeup on top, but he was still self-conscious about it. He’d cancelled a few engagements and postponed many more in the days since the debacle in the opera house.

  What a mess that had been. They hadn’t been able to keep it completely quiet, of course, especially as he’d had to cancel that evening’s engagement at such short notice. Dr. Sulbazghi had come up with their cover story, which was that Jasken had accidentally sliced the tip of his master’s nose off while they were fencing.

  “That’ll have to do,” Veppers agreed as he lay on the treatment couch in the clinic suite deep within the Ubruater town house, less than an hour after the girl had attacked him. He was painfully aware that his voice sounded strange, strangled and nasal. Sulbazghi was bandaging his nose and prepping it with coagulant, antiseptic and a stabilising preparatory gel; a specialist plastic surgeon had been summoned and was on his way. The girl’s body had already been bagged and placed in a mortuary freezer. Dr. Sulbazghi would see to its disposal later.

  Veppers was still shaking a little, despite whatever Sulbazghi had given him for the shock. He lay there, thinking, as the doctor fussed about him. He was waiting for Jasken to return; he was on his way back from the opera house having made sure everything had been squared away and everybody had their stories straight.

  He shouldn’t have killed the girl. It had been stupid, impetuous. On the rare occasion that sort of thing was necessary, you just never got involved directly; that was what delegation was for, what people like Jasken – and whoever he employed specifically for such tasks – was for. Always keep it deniable, always at a remove, always have a true alibi.

  But, he’d been too excited by the chase, by the knowledge that the runaway was still so close, and so trapped within the opera house, practically waiting to be caught. Of course he’d wanted to be part of the hunt, the capture!

  Still, he shouldn’t have killed her. It wasn’t just how much she’d been worth, how much wasted effort and money she represented, it was the embarrassment of having lost her. People would notice her continued absence. The cover story after she’d run off from the couturier’s had been that she was ill – the PR people had hinted at some rare ailment that only the intagliated suffered from.

  Now they would either have to claim she’d died of it – meaning problems with the Surgeon’s Guild, the insurance people and possibly lawyers for the clinic that had overseen her intagliation in the first place – or go with the even more humiliating though partially true narrative that she’d run away. He’d already entertained the idea that they might claim she’d been kidnapped, or allowed to join a nunnery or whatever, but both would lead to too many complications.

  At least he’d got the knives back. They were still tucked into the waistband of his trews. He touched their hilts again, reassuring himself they were still there. Jasken had wanted to dispose of them, the idiot. No need to dispose of the murder weapon when you were going to dispose of the body properly. Stealing the knives; the sheer fucking effrontery of it! In the end she’d been nothing more than an ungrateful little thief. And: biting him! Maybe even trying to bite his throat out and kill him! How dare the little bitch do that? How dare she put him in this situation!

  He was glad he’d killed her. And it was a first for him, he realised; directly taking a life was one of the few things he’d never done. When this had all calmed down, when his nose had re-grown and things had gone back to normal, he’d still have that, he supposed.

  He remembered that until he’d first taken her against her will, maybe ten years or so ago, he’d never raped anybody before either

  – there had been no need – so he’d got two firsts from her. If he was being generous, he would reluctantly concede that that was some sort of compensation for all the pain and inconvenience she was putting him through.

  Quite a thing, though, doing something like that, actually plunging a knife into somebody and feeling them die. It shook you, no matter how strong you were. He could still see the look in the girl’s eyes as she’d died.

  Jasken came in then, removing his Oculenses and nodding to the two Zei guarding the clinic suite’s door.

  “You’ll have to be injured too, Jasken,” Veppers told him immediately, glaring at his chief of security as though it really had all been his fault. Which, now he thought about it, was true, as it had ultimately been Jasken’s responsibility to keep an eye on the scribble-child and make sure she didn’t go running off anywhere. “We’re going to say you took my nose off while we were fencing, but we can’t have people thinking you actually bested me. You’ll have to have an eye out.”

  Jasken’s face, already pale, went paler. “Ah, but, sir …” />
  “Or a broken arm; something serious.”

  Dr. Sulbazghi nodded. “I think the broken arm.” He looked at Jasken’s forearms, perhaps choosing on Veppers’ behalf.

  Jasken glared at Sulbazghi. “Sir, please—” he said to Veppers.

  “You could make it a clean break, couldn’t you Sulbazghi?”

  Veppers asked. “Quick to heal?”

  “Easily,” Sulbazghi said, smiling at Jasken.

  “Sir,” Jasken said, drawing himself up. “Such an action would compromise my ability to protect you, in the event that our other layers of security were disabled and I was all that stood between you and an assailant.”

  “Hmm, I suppose so,” Veppers said. “Still, we need something.” He frowned, thinking. “How would you like a duelling scar? On the cheek, where everybody would see it.”

  “It would have to be a very big, very deep scar,” Dr. Sulbazghi said reasonably. “Probably permanent.” He shrugged as Jasken glared at him again. “To be proportionate,” he protested.

  “Might I suggest a fake cast, for a couple of weeks?” Jasken said, tapping his left arm. “The broken-arm story would still hold but I would not be truly disabled.” He smiled thinly at the doctor. “I might even conceal additional weaponry within the cast, for any emergency.”

  Veppers liked that. “Good idea.” He nodded. “Let’s go with that.”

  Now, floating in the pool at the summit of the Halo 7, his fingers feeling tentatively around the strange, warm surface of the prosthetic, Veppers smiled at the memory. Jasken’s compromise had been sensible, but seeing the look on his face when he’d thought they were going to put out one of his eyes or actually break his arm had been one of the few truly bright spots in a dreadful evening.

  He gazed out at the mountains again. He’d ordered the gondola containing the pool to be kept at the summit of the great vehicle while he had his early morning swim. He turned round and struck out for the other side of the pool, where one of his Harem Troupe had fallen asleep wrapped in a thick robe and lying on a sun-bed.