Surface Detail

by Iain M. Banks

He reached up, switched the laser rifle off and sat back. No, he didn’t want to hunt, or fuck, or get stoned or anything else.

  Really, he supposed, he just wanted to be back at the house. Well, he could do something about that.

  He clicked a seat control.

  “Sir?” the pilot said.

  “Never mind terrain-hugging,” he told her. “Just get us there as fast as you can.”

  “Sir.”

  The aircraft started to rise immediately, pulling up from the trackway beneath. He felt heavy again for a moment, but then the ride started to smooth out.

  The flash came first. He saw it light up the landscape underneath the aircraft, and wondered momentarily if some coincidence of a gap in the clouds and a gap in the ridge to the east was letting a single strong beam of sunlight through to shine so brightly on the trees and low hills beneath. The light seemed to blink, then get brighter and brighter, all in less than a second.

  “Radiation aler—” a synthesised voice started to say.

  Radiation? What was—?

  The aircraft bucked like a dinghy thrown by a tsunami. Veppers was crushed down into his seat so hard he felt and heard himself make a sort of involuntary grunting, groaning noise as the air was forced out of his compressing lungs. The view – wildly, insanely bright – started to spin like emptied buckets of fluorescent paint swirling round a plug hole. A titanic bang resounded, seeming to come from somewhere inside his head. He glimpsed clouded sky, the clouds’ under-surfaces garishly lit from below, then distant, too-brightly shining hills and forests, then – just for an instant – a vast boiling cloud of fire and smoke, rising on a thick dark stem above a mass of darkness shot through with flame.

  He heard what might have been screams, and tearing, cracking, buckling noises. The view through the ultraclear glass suddenly hazed all at once, as though a thin-veined white mesh had been hurled across the material. He felt weightless again and then seemed to be about to be thrown against the ceiling, or into the crazed ultraclear, but the seat seemed to hold onto him.

  A roaring noise threw a deep red haze across his eyes and he blacked out.

  Yime Nsokyi took her first few unaided steps. Even dressed in loose-fitting fatigues, she felt oddly naked without the supporting net of foam she’d been swaddled in for the last couple of days.

  The bones in her legs felt delicate and a little achey. It hurt to take a deep breath and her spine felt oddly inflexible. Only her arms felt pretty much like normal, though the muscles were weak. She’d instructed her body to hold back on all the pain-cancelling mechanisms, to feel how bad things really were. Not too bad, was the answer. She should be able to get through without any more anti-pain secretions.

  Walking at her side as she padded up and down the gently lit lounge inside the Me, I’m Counting, one arm extended to cup one of her elbows, was Himerance, the ship’s avatar, a tall, thin crea-ture with a very deep voice and a quite hairless head.

  “You don’t have to do this,” she told him.

  “I disagree,” he said. “I feel I do. This is at least partly my responsibility. I’ll do what I can to make amends.”

  The Me, I’m Counting had been the nearest ship to the Bodhisattva when it had been attacked by the Unfallen Bulbitian, coasting in towards the entity for the semi-regular pick-up and set-down of those going to and coming from the Forgotten GSV Total Internal Reflection. It had been coincidence that it, rather than one of the other ships associated with the GSV, had been allocated the role of shuttle bus this time; three other craft shared the rota. On this occasion, with nobody to drop off, the ship had been coming in only to pick up. When the distress call and Plume event had signalled there was a vessel in distress nearby, it had diverted to investigate and offer help.

  “Do you still have the image of Lededje Y’breq?” Yime had asked the ship as soon as she’d been able to. The ship had replaced the pebble-smooth drone with Himerance, a humanoid avatar it had been storing, unused, for over a decade. She’d half expected dust to float from Himerance’s head when he’d nodded.

  “Yes,” he’d told her. “In image form only.”

  “May I see it?”

  The avatar had frowned. “I did promise not to share her full image with anybody else without her express permission,” he’d told her. “I’d prefer to keep to that promise unless there is some circumstance that is so … operationally urgent I felt compelled to break it. Do you especially need to see it? There are plenty of high-quality images of Ms. Y’breq available from Sichultian media and other easily accessible sources. Would you like to see some of them?”

  She’d smiled. “No need. I’ve seen them. I was just curious. I appreciate that you want to keep your word.”

  “Why are you interested in her?” the ship had asked.

  Yime had stared at it. But of course, it would have known nothing of what had happened to Lededje. Servant – acolyte – to a dedicatedly hermit-like GSV, one of the Forgotten, naturally it would be out of any loop that would include detailed knowledge of events in Sichult.

  “The Bodhisattva hasn’t briefed you?”

  “Immediately after I rescued it, it asked me to make all speed towards the Sichultian Enablement, which I am doing, though with reservations given the situation that appears to be developing there. The Bodhisattva then said that you might provide the reason for all this alacrity.” The avatar had smiled. “I seem to have such a reputation for eccentricity the ship thinks I am more likely to accede to a request from a human than I am to one emanating from a fellow ship. I have no idea why.”

  She’d explained that Lededje had been murdered by Joiler Veppers and then revented aboard the Sense Amid Madness, Wit Amidst Folly before being spirited away by the Abominator-class ship Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints. It was assumed she was making her way back to Sichult, quite possibly with thoughts of revenge and murder.

  “It was you who put the lace inside her, wasn’t it?” Yime had asked. Himerance had been looking bemused.

  “Yes,” the avatar had said. “Yes, that was me.” He’d shrugged. “She said to surprise her, and I couldn’t think of anything else that would materially improve her life that was within my gift. I had no idea it would lead to events of such moment. I assume Mr. Veppers still holds the position of great power he did before.”

  “Even greater power.” She’d explained about the Tsungarial Disk and the coming culmination of the confliction over the Hells.

  Now, stricken with a feeling of responsibility for all this, the Me, I’m Counting had decided to complete the mission Yime and the Bodhisattva had undertaken. It would take her wherever she wanted to go in pursuit of Lededje Y’breq. The Mind of the Bodhisattva would come too, as a part of the Me, I’m Counting. Rather than waste time trying to rendezvous with another ship the two Minds had determined to salvage all they could from the wreck of the Bodhisattva and junk the rest. The boxy ship-drone from the Bodhisattva floated by Yime’s other elbow, ready to help if she wobbled in its direction.

  “In the circumstances, and at the moment,” the drone said, “it is anyway preferable to be contemplating an incursion into the Sichultian Enablement within a warship rather than a humble General Contact Unit.” It came forward a little and dipped, as though peeking round Yime to the humanoid avatar. “Our friend here will have the undying gratitude of the Quietus Section for its action.”

  “Don’t exalt me overmuch,” the avatar rumbled. “I am still a warship after a fashion, but an old and avowedly eccentric one. Compared to the thing Ms. Y’breq seemingly finds herself on, I am small beer indeed.”

  “Ah, yes, the picket ship,” Yime said. “It must be nearly there by now.”

  “Very nearly,” Himerance told her. “Hours out from Enablement space, and the Tsungarial Disk, if that’s where it’s headed.”

  “Just in time for the smatter outbreak,” the ship’s drone said. “That is almost too convenient. I do hope we had nothing to do with that.”

  “�
��We’ being the Culture, Restoria, or SC?” Yime asked, wobbling a little as she reached the limit of the lounge area and turned. Avatar and drone both helped steady her.

  “Good question,” the drone said. It seemed content to judge the question without hazarding an answer.

  “And what about the Bulbitian?” she asked.

  The drone said nothing. After a moment, the avatar said, “A Fast Picket, the No One Knows What The Dead Think, paid a call on the Bulbitian some eight hours ago, respectfully asking for an explanation for what happened to the Bodhisattva and your-self. The Bulbitian denied all knowledge not only of any attack on you, but also of your visit. Worryingly, it also denies that there ever was a Culture Restoria or Numina mission aboard it. In fact it claims to have been completely without any alien visitors for as long as it can remember.

  “The Fast Picket begged to differ and requested leave to contact the Culture personnel it knew had been on the Bulbitian as recently as a couple of days earlier. When that was refused it asked to be allowed to send a representative aboard to check. That too was rejected. No signals had emanated from the Bulbitian since very shortly after the attack on the Bodhisattva and no signals from the Fast Picket elicited any response at all.”

  They’re all going to be dead; Yime thought. I know it. I brought death to them.

  “The No One Knows What The Dead Think then departed the Bulbitian’s atmospheric envelope,” Himerance continued, “but left behind a small high-stealth drone-ship which attempted to access the Bulbitian directly without permission, using smaller drones, knife and scout missiles, eDust and so on. All were destroyed. An attempt by the Fast Picket to Displace sensory apparatus directly into the Bulbitian met with no more success and resulted in an attack on the Fast Picket by the Bulbitian.

  “Forewarned, and – having been a warship, the GOU Obliterating Angel, in its earlier incarnation – more martially capable than the Bodhisattva, the Fast Picket was undamaged by the Bulbitian’s attack and retired to a safe distance to keep watch on the entity and await the arrival of the Equator-class GSV Pelagian, which is five days away. A Continent class with SC links is also strongly believed to be en route, though it’s keeping its arrival time quiet.

  “Other species/civs who had personnel aboard the Bulbitian also report no contact or sign of their people and, like us, suspect that the entity has killed them.”

  Yime stopped, looked at Himerance, then at the skeletal assembly of components which was the Bodhisattva’s drone, and – with the vessel’s Mind – one of the few bits of the ship it had been worthwhile salvaging from the near-total wreck. “So they’re all dead?” she asked, her voice hollow. She thought of the elegantly elderly Ms. Fal Dvelner and the terribly earnest, multiply-reincarnated Mr. Nopri.

  “Very likely,” the drone told her. “I’m sorry.”

  “Was that us?” Yime asked, starting to walk again, going hesi-tantly forward. “Did we cause that?” She stopped. “Did I cause that?” She shook her head. “There was something,” she said, “some issue, some … I antagonised it somehow. Something I said or did …” She knocked one set of knuckles on her temple, gently. “What the hell was it?”

  “Possibly we bear some collective technical responsibility,” the drone said. “Though frankly, triggering an act of homicidal insta-bility in a Bulbitian is hardly proof by itself of any culpability. Still, we are certainly attracting the blame from those already-mentioned other species and civs who had people on the Bulbitian. That the entity itself is entirely to blame for an unprovoked attack and that we were its first victims – and, very nearly, its first fatal-ities – seems to matter little compared to the ease with which we may be blamed.”

  “Oh, grief,” Yime said, sighing. “There’s going to be an Inquiry, isn’t there?”

  “Many, probably,” the drone said, sounding resigned.

  “Before we start thinking ahead to the aftermath,” Himerance said, after clearing his throat, “we might do well to contemplate our immediate course.”

  “Ms. Y’breq is still our focus,” the Bodhisattva’s drone said. “The point may rapidly be approaching when the input or deci-sions of one person stops making much difference, but for the moment we might hope to influence events through her, if we can find her.”

  “And of course,” Himerance said, “Mr. Veppers’ inputs and decisions almost certainly do matter, considerably.”

  “So do Ms. Y’breq’s,” Yime said, turning at the far end of the lounge to head back the way she had come. There was no unsteadiness this time. “If she gets near him with a clear shot, or whatever.”

  “The latest we have from Sichult places Veppers in a place called Iobe Cavern City, on the planet Vebezua, in the Chunzunzan Whirl,” the drone said.

  “There, then,” Himerance said, then hesitated. An expression of surprise crossed his face. “The Culture Restoria mission dealing with the smatter outbreak just discovered more ships being built within the Tsungarial Disk,” he said.

  “How many more?” Yime asked.

  It was the Bodhisattva’s drone which answered. “One in every fabricaria they’ve looked in so far,” it told her.

  Yime stopped. “How many have they looked in?” she asked, looking from the drone to the avatar.

  “About seventy, so far,” Himerance said.

  “As highly spread as they could manage, too,” the drone said. “Good representative sample.”

  “Doesn’t that mean—?” Yime began.

  “Could be all of them are making ships,” the drone said.

  “All of them?” Yime felt her eyes widening.

  “Certainly a very high proportion of the three hundred million fabricaria,” the drone said.

  “In the name of grief,” Yime cried, “what do you do with three hundred million ships?”

  “You could certainly start a war,” the drone said.

  “With that many ships,” Himerance said, “you might end it, too.”

  “Nevertheless,” the drone said, “we had best get there.”

  “Time to hit sprint,” Himerance said. Then he nodded at the wall screen at the far end of the lounge as it lit up, showing the battered-looking remains of the Bodhisattva floating within the Me, I’m Counting’s field envelope. The crippled, wrecked ship didn’t look that badly damaged, from where they were looking. A little scratched, grazed, crumpled and dented, perhaps. The most serious damage was internal. “Last drone team’s ready to clear,” Himerance announced. “Suggest we forget about that anterior remote stressor.”

  “Agreed,” said the drone. The little machine hung very still and steady in the air, giving every impression of staring at the wreck of its ship on the screen.

  “Well, I think you should give the command,” Himerance said.

  “Of course,” the little drone said.

  The hazily shining wall of the field enclosure approached the stricken ship, moved smoothly over it and left it outside, exposed to the distant stars. The view switched to beyond the field enclo-sure, to where the lifeless body of the Bodhisattva floated naked, without any fields or shields about it at all. It was drawing slowly away, falling behind.

  “Oh well,” the drone said.

  The Bodhisattva convulsed, almost as though shaking itself awake after a long asleep, then started to come slowly apart as though it was an exploded diagram made real. A spherical mirror field appeared all about it for an instant, then, when it dropped, the ship was ablaze, light flaring from every part of it, burning brighter and brighter as they watched; flameless, orderly, still non-explosive but searing in its intensity, the pure fires raged until gradually they started to fade and go out, and when they had entirely gone, there was nothing left of the ship at all, save light-slow radiation, flowing out in every direction towards the distant suns.

  “There,” the Bodhisattva’s drone said, turning to Yime and the avatar. “Full speed ahead, I think.”

  Himerance nodded. The stars on the screen started to drift away. “Fields
at naked-hull minimum,” he said. “Going to a velocity which will be traction-injurious within about forty hours.”

  “When do we get there?” Yime asked.

  “Eighteen hours,” Himerance said. The avatar stared at the screen. The view had swung to dead ahead. “I’d better check my Manual files, see if I remember how to work as a functioning warship. Probably all sorts of stuff I need to do. Prepping shields, calibrating Effectors, manufacturing warheads; that sort of thing.”

  “Anything I can—?” Yime began to say, then realised how absurd this would sound to a ship. “Sorry. Never mind,” she said, flapping one hand, which hurt a little.

  The avatar just smiled at her.

  He woke to a sort of busy quietness. There was a ringing noise somewhere, and some distinctly annoying beeping, and something else he couldn’t immediately identify, but it all felt terribly muffled, like it was happening somewhere down the other end of a very long tunnel and he really needn’t be concerned about it. He kept his eyes open and looked around, but nothing made sense. He closed his eyes again. Then thought that was probably a bad idea. Something bad had happened and it might not have stopped happening yet; he needed to keep alert, keep his eyes open, keep focused.

  He felt heavy in a strange way, as though his weight was being taken by his head and neck and shoulders. He turned his head to one side, then the other.

  Fuck; he knew where he was. He was in the back of the flier. All this dark, tipped chaos around him was the remains of the aircraft. What the fuck had happened?

  He was lying in the seat he’d been in when whatever had happened … had happened. He wanted to shake his head to clear it but wasn’t sure that was a good idea. He brought one hand up to his face, wiping. Sticky. He looked at his hand. That was blood. He was breathing heavily.

  His feet were up in the air, pointing towards the sky, which he could see through the contorted remains of the flier’s rear deck. Where the ultraclear glass should be, there appeared to be nothing. Stuff was falling out of the cloud-dark sky and landing on him, landing all about him. Black and grey. Soot and ash.