Surface Detail

by Iain M. Banks

“Yes.”

  “Killed in the Real?”

  “Yes.”

  “And, what; revented each time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you come with a stack of blank bodies then? How can you—?

  “Of course not. It makes me new bodies.”

  “It? The Bulbitian? It makes you new bodies?”

  “Yes. I back up before every attempt to talk to it.”

  “And it kills you every time?”

  “Yes. But only so far.”

  Yime looked at him for a moment. “In that case silence might constitute a more prudent course.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  Yime sighed, put her drink down and sat back, fingers interlocked over her midriff. “And I’m sure I shall continue not to until you enlighten me. Or I can talk to somebody else on your team who is more …” She paused. “Plausible,” she said. The drone’s blueish aura field coloured a subtle shade of pink.

  Nopri appeared oblivious to the insult. He sat forward eagerly. “I am convinced that the Bulbitians are in touch with the Sublimed,” he told her.

  “You are,” Yime said. “Isn’t that a matter for our colleagues in Numina? Like Ms. Dvelner?”

  “Yes, and I’ve talked to them about it, but this Bulbitian only wants to talk to me, not to them.”

  Yime thought about this. “And the fact that it keeps killing you, every time you attempt to do so, hasn’t shaken your faith in this conviction?”

  “Please,” Nopri said. “It’s not faith. I can prove this. Or I will be able to. Soon.” He buried his face in the fumes rising from the drug bowl, sucked in deeply.

  Yime looked at the drone. “Ship, are you still listening here?”

  “I am, Ms. Nsokyi. Hanging fascinated on every word.”

  “Mr. Nopri. There are how many on your team here – eighteen?” Nopri nodded, holding his breath. “Do you have a ship here?” Nopri shook his head emphatically. “A Mind, then?”

  Nopri let his clouded breath out and started coughing.

  Yime turned to the drone again. “Does the team that Mr. Nopri belongs to have the benefit of a resident Mind or AI?”

  “No,” the drone replied. “And neither does the Numina team. The nearest Mind at the moment, aside from my own of course, is probably that belonging to the inbound ship journeying here from the Total Internal Reflection. There are no Minds or true AIs stationed here. No Minds or true AIs of anybody’s, in fact; not just the Culture’s.”

  “It isn’t keen on Minds or AIs,” Nopri agreed, wiping his eyes. He sucked from the drug bowl again. “Not that wild about drones, either, to be frank.” He looked at the ship’s drone, smiled.

  “Is there any news of the ship on its way from the Total Internal Reflection?” Yime asked.

  Nopri shook his head. “No. There’s never any news. They don’t tend to publish course schedules.” He breathed deep from the bowl again, but let it out quickly this time. “They just turn up without warning, or don’t show at all.”

  “You think it might not show?

  “No, it probably will. There’s just no guarantee.”

  Nopri showed her to her quarters, a bewilderingly large, multi level space set off a vast curving corridor. To have reached this by walking would have taken about half an hour from the Officers’ Club; instead, one of the wheeled drones just picked up their seats with them still sitting in them and rolled away through the dark, tall corridors towards her cabin. Yime gazed up at the tall inverted arch of the ceiling as they progressed through the bizarre upside-down architecture of the Bulbitian. It was like being at the bottom of a small valley. The smooth floor the drone ran along was narrow; only a metre or so across. The walls took on a ribbed appearance; now it was like travelling through the gutted carcass of some vast animal. The ribs above rose outwards to a broad flat ceiling ten metres wide and easily twenty metres above.

  “They did like their high ceilings, didn’t they?”

  “Hoppers tend to,” Nopri said.

  She tried to imagine the place full of the monopedal creatures who had built this place, all bouncing along on their single lower limbs. And upside down, of course; she’d be travelling along the ceiling and they’d be bouncing up towards her with each springing step, then sinking back to the wide floor. Back then the great structure would have spun to create the apparent gravity the species preferred, but now there was just the troubling tug that resulted from being balanced on the curve of the singularity’s gravity well.

  “Does this thing still spin at all?” she asked.

  “Very slowly,” the ship’s drone, floating alongside, said when Nopri didn’t reply. “Synched to the rotation of the galaxy itself.’

  She thought about this. “That is slow. I wonder why?”

  “So does everybody else,” Nopri said, nodding.

  *

  “Thank you,” she said as the door to her quarters hinged open like a valve behind her. The ship drone dipped a little and drifted in, carrying her overnight bag.

  Nopri looked over her shoulder into the shadowy space beyond. “Looks nice. Would you like me to stay?”

  “Too kind, but no,” she told him.

  “I don’t mean for sex,” he said. “I mean for company.”

  “As I say, it is kind of you to offer. But no.”

  “Okay.” He nodded behind her. “Mind your head.”

  She watched the little wheeled drone take him away into the shadows then turned to look into her cabin. The door must have been some sort of window once, at ceiling height. That was why it rotated about its horizontal axis, leaving the door itself as a thick obstruction straight across the three-metre-wide doorway. She ducked underneath. It hinged closed.

  The cabin looked complicated, with lots of different levels and bits where it just seemed to wander off into the shadows. Doubtless it had made more sense the other way up.

  The ship’s drone floated over to report it had found what it was fairly sure was some sort of bed of a fluid-based nature suitable for a human to sleep safely within.

  Bathroom location, on the other hand, was still ongoing.

  “You are a soldier?” the young doctor asked.

  Vatueil rolled his eyes. “Soldier, naval officer, marine, flying serviceman, submariner, space warrior, vacuum trooper, disembodied intellect investing military hardware, or software: all of the above. Does this come as news to you? There is a War Conduct Agreement, doc; I’m not supposed to be subject to any torture or unauthorised interference. You’re entitled to my code and anything it holds but you’re not entitled to run my consciousness at all, and certainly not for any punitive purpose.”

  “Do you feel you are being punished?”

  “Borderline,” he told her. “It depends how long this goes on.”

  “How long do you think it will go on?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not in control here.”

  “Who do you think is in control?”

  “Your side. Maybe you, depending on what you are, or represent. Who do you represent?”

  “Who do you think I represent?”

  He sighed. “Do you ever get tired having to answer questions with questions all the time?”

  “Do you think I should get tired?”

  He gave a small laugh. “Yes, I think you should.”

  He couldn’t work out why he was here. They had his code, they knew everything he’d come here with. There was nothing that he had come here knowing that they didn’t also know by now. That wasn’t what was meant to happen – a sub-routine should have wiped his personality and memories with the rest of the information carried in the code cell as soon as it realised that he – in the shape of the dark spearhead – wasn’t going to survive the attack; if you were totally destroyed it didn‘t matter anyway but if there was going to be something left then you tried to make sure as little as possible fell into enemy hands.

  But sometimes the sub-routines didn’t work in time. They couldn’t be too hair-tr
igger or they might launch prematurely. So mistakes got made. He was here because of a mistake.

  It shouldn’t matter anyway; he’d had a good rummage round his own memories since he’d found himself sitting here in the bland room with the young doctor and he hadn’t found anything that shouldn’t be there. He knew who he was – he was Major Vatueil – and he knew he had spent decades running as code within the giant war sim which was supposed to take the place of a real war between the pro- and anti-Hell sides, but he could recall only very hazy memories of those earlier missions, and nothing at all of any existence beyond those missions.

  That was the way it was meant to be. His core personality – the one that was safe somewhere else entirely, held within one or more of the secure substrates that were the safest citadels of the anti-Hell side – changed with the lessons learned from each recorded mission, and it was a distillation of that personality which was downloaded into each of his sequential iterations, but nothing that could compromise him or his side should be present. Each personality – whether seemingly human in form, completely machine-like or running as pure software taking on whatever simulated appearance worked best – would be checked before it was allowed to get anywhere near a combat zone, scoured for anything that might be of value to the enemy if it fell into hostile hands.

  So he shouldn’t have anything useful, and he didn’t seem to. So, why was he here? What were they doing?

  “What is your name?” he said to the young doctor. He sat upright, head back, frowning at her, imagining her as some meek, hopelessly sloppy recruit he was choosing to pick on in the parade ground, putting all the authority he could into his voice. “I demand to know your name or identification; I know my rights.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said levelly, “I’m not obliged to give you my name.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “Do you think knowing my name will be of help to you?”

  “Still answering questions with your own questions?”

  “Is that what you think I’m doing?”

  He glared at her. He imagined getting up and slapping her, or punching her, or dangling her out of the window, or strangling her with the electric cord that powered the ancient television. How far would he get, trying any of that? Would the sim just end, would she fight back, impossibly stronger than he was? Would brutish guards burst in and overpower him? Maybe he’d be allowed to carry out whatever he tried, and then deal with whatever simulated consequences arose. Could all be a test. You weren’t supposed to attack medics, or non-combatants at all for that matter. It would be a first for him, certainly.

  Vatueil let out a breath. He waited a moment. “Please,” he said politely, “may I know your name?”

  She smiled, and tapped her pen on the side of the clipboard. “I am Doctor Miejeyar,” she said. She made another note.

  Vatueil hadn’t really been listening when she’d told him her name. He’d just realised something. “Oh fuck,” he said, grinning suddenly.

  “Excuse me?” the young doctor said, blinking.

  “You’re really not obliged to tell me your name, are you?” He was still grinning.

  “We have established that,” she agreed.

  “And I could be legally punished, even tortured, according to the articles I’ve signed when I joined up. Maybe not serious torture, but the sort of mistreatment your average civilian would kick up shit about.”

  “Does that seem—?”

  “And the …” He gestured at the blank face of the television. “The footage, the screen images, they were poor quality for a good reason, weren’t they?”

  “Were they?”

  “And not shot from below,” he said, and laughed. He slapped his hands on his thighs. “Damn, I should have picked up on that. I mean I noticed, but I didn’t … that drone, that camera, whatever it was; it was with us!”

  “Was it?”

  He sat back, narrowed his eyes. “So, how come I’m here?” Why can’t I remember anything more than I’d remember if I had just been captured in combat?”

  “What do you think the answer might be?”

  “I think the answer might be that I’m under suspicion for some reason.” He shrugged. “Or maybe this is some sort of commitment check-up that we never hear about until it happens to us personally. Or maybe this happens regularly but we’re made to forget about it each time, so it always comes as a surprise.”

  “Do you think you should be under suspicion?”

  “No, I don’t,” he told her calmly. “My loyalty should be unquestioned. I’ve served this cause faithfully to the best of my ability, fully committed, for over thirty years. I believe in what we are doing and the cause that we fight for. Whatever questions you might have for me, ask them and I’ll answer them honestly and fully; whatever suspicions you might hold, reveal them and I’ll prove them to be unfounded.” He stood up. “Otherwise, I think you ought to let me go.” He looked at the door and then back to her.

  “Do you think you should be allowed to go?” she asked.

  “Yes, of course I do.” He walked over to the door, feeling the floor move very slightly under him as he went; part of that gentle, long-period up-and-down movement. He put his hand on the handle. “I’m assuming this is some sort of test,” he told her, “and I’ve passed it by realising you’re not on the enemy side, you’re on my own side, so now I get to open the door and go.”

  “What do you think will be on the other side of the door?”

  “I’ve no idea. But there is one very obvious way to find out.” He tried the handle. Still locked.

  “Please, Dr. Miejeyar,” he said, nodding to her, “if you would.”

  She looked at him expressionlessly for a few moments, then reached into a pocket of her white coat, pulled out a key and threw it to him. He caught it, unlocked the door and opened it.

  Dr. Miejeyar came up and stood beside him as he looked out to the open air. A breeze entered the room around them, ruffling the material of his fatigues and mussing his hair.

  He was looking out across a broad expanse of mossy green. It curved, falling gently away towards a cloudscape of white on blue. The green carpet of moss lay on the level bough of a vast, impossibly big tree. All around, the boughs, branches, twigs and leaves proliferated. Where level, the boughs supported substantial multi storey buildings and broad roads for small wheeled vehicles; where the boughs curved upwards the roads wound their way round them like the slides on helter-skelters, and smaller buildings the size of houses clung to the pitted, ridged and gnarled wood. The branches held paths, more houses, platforms, balconies and terraces. The twigs were big and strong enough to hold paths and spiralling steps and smaller buildings like gazebos and pavilions. The leaves were green going golden and the size of the sails on great sailing ships. The small cars, people walking and the slow great rustle of the sail-sized leaves filled the view with movement.

  The gentle up-and-down and side-to-side motion was revealed as the effect of the strong, steady wind on both the tree as a whole and this particular bough.

  Dr. Miejeyar now wore some sort of wingsuit; dark, webbed, voluminous. He felt something change and looked down; he was wearing something similar.

  She smiled at him. “Well done, Major Vatueil. Now time for a little R&R, yes?”

  He nodded slowly, turning to look back into the room, which had changed into an appropriately rustic chamber full of bulbously uneven, richly coloured wooden furniture. The window was roughly oval and looked out into a shrub-filled courtyard.

  “Care to fly?” Dr. Miejeyar asked, and set off at a run across the broad thoroughfare of moss-covered bark. A passing car – tall-wheeled, open, like something from history – honked at her as she sprinted across the road. Then she was over, starting to disappear as the bough’s surface curved downwards. He set off after her. He lost sight of her for a few moments, then she reappeared, in mid-air, curving up through the wind, zooming as the wingsuit filled and bore her upwards, lofted like a kite.


  There was a long platform like an extended diving board which she must have leapt from. He remembered how you did this now. He had been here many times before. The impossible tree; the ability to fly. Many times.

  He ran along the platform and threw himself into the air, spreading his arms, making a V with his legs, and felt the warm air pushing him gently upwards.

  The ground – fields, winding rivers – was a kilometre below; the crown of the tree about the same distance higher.

  Dr. Miejeyar was a dark shape, curving upwards. He adjusted his wingsuit, banked and zoomed after her.

  As soon as Yime woke she knew she was still asleep. She got up. She was not entirely sure if she willed this or if she was somehow lifted, brought out of the bed. It was hard to tell.

  There were fine dark lines reaching upwards from her hands. Also, she noticed, from her feet, protruding from the hem of her night-dress. And there were strings rising from her shoulders, too, and her head. She reached up with one hand and felt the strings rising out of her head; they pulled and slackened appropriately to let her tip her head back. She had become a marionette, it seemed. Which was odd; she had never dreamt that before.

  Still looking up, she saw that where you might have expected to see a hand holding the cruciform structure controlling the strings, the ship’s drone was there instead. Leaning out to one side – again, the strings went slack or tight, accordingly – she could see that the strings rose beyond the drone as well, so that it too was controlled by somebody else. She wondered if this was some sort of deeply buried image she’d always held about how the Culture arranged its big not-really-hierarchical-at-all self.

  Above the drone the strings rose towards the ceiling (which was really a floor, of course). There was another drone up there, then another and another; they got smaller as they went up, and not just because they were further away. She realised she was looking through the ceiling by now. High above rose a succession of ships, getting bigger until they disappeared in a haze of floors, ribs and other structures. The biggest ship she could see looked like a medium-sized GSV, though it might just have been a cloud.

  She moved/was moved along the floor/ceiling. It felt like she was willing the movement but at the same time the strings – they were more like wires, really – appeared to be doing all the work. The floaty feeling came from the strings, she realised, not the fractional gravity. That made sense.