Consider Phlebas

by Iain M. Banks

  It was so bright. His sight cleared and he looked, without moving, at the station roof.

  He could feel himself dying slowly; an internal knowledge which, again, they might not have had. He could feel the slow leak of his blood inside his body, sense the pressure build-up in his torso, and the faint oozing through cracks in his keratin. The remains of the suit would help him but not save him. He could feel his internal organs slowly shutting down: too many holes from one system to another. His stomach would never digest his last meal, and his anterior lung-sack, which normally held a reserve of hyperoxygenated blood for use when his body needed its last reserves of strength, was emptying, its precious fuel being squandered in the losing battle his body fought against the falling pressure of his blood.

  Dying . . . I am dying. . . . What difference whether it is in darkness or in light?

  Great One, fallen comrades, children and mate . . . can you see me any better in this deeply buried, alien glare?

  My name is Quayanorl, Great One, and—

  The idea was brighter than the pain when he’d tried to move his shattered leg, brighter than the station’s silent, staring glow.

  They had said they were going to station seven.

  It was the last thing he remembered, apart from the sight of one of them floating through the air towards him. That one must have shot him in the face; he couldn’t remember it happening, but it made sense . . . Sent to make sure he was dead. But he was alive, and he had just had an idea. It was a long shot, even if he could get it to work, even if he could shift himself, even if it all worked . . . a long shot, in every sense . . . But it would be doing something; it would be a suitable end for a warrior, whatever happened. The pain would be worth it.

  He moved quickly, before he could change his mind, knowing that there might be little time (if he wasn’t already too late . . .). The pain seared through him like a sword.

  From his broken, bloody mouth, a shout came.

  Nobody heard. His shout echoed in the bright station. Then there was silence. His body throbbed with the aftershock of pain, but he could feel that he was free; the blood-weld was broken. He could move; in the light he could move.

  Xoxarle, if you are still alive, I may soon have a little surprise for our friends . . .

  ‘Drone?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Horza wants to know what you’re doing.’ Yalson spoke into her helmet communicator, looking at the Changer.

  ‘I’m searching this train; the one in the repair section. I would have said if I’d found anything, you know. Have you got that suit sensor working yet?’

  Horza made a face at the helmet Yalson held on her knees; he reached over and switched off the communicator.

  ‘It’s right, though, isn’t it?’ Aviger said, sitting on the pallet. ‘That one in your suit isn’t working, is it?’

  ‘There’s some interference from the train’s reactor,’ Horza told the old man. ‘That’s all. We can deal with it.’ Aviger didn’t look convinced.

  Horza opened a drink canister. He felt tired, drained. There was a sense of anti-climax now, having got the power on but not found the Mind. He cursed the broken mass sensor, and Xoxarle, and the Mind. He didn’t know where the damn thing was, but he’d find it. Right now, though, he just wanted to sit and relax. He needed to give his thoughts time to collect. He rubbed his head where it had been bruised in the fire-fight in station six; it hurt, distantly, naggingly, inside. Nothing serious, but it would have been distracting if he hadn’t been able to shut the pain off.

  ‘Don’t you think we should search this train now?’ Wubslin said, gazing up hungrily at the shining curved bulk of it in front of them.

  Horza smiled at the engineer’s rapt expression. ‘Yes, why not?’ he said. ‘On you go; take a look.’ He nodded at the grinning Wubslin, who swallowed a last mouthful of food and grabbed his helmet.

  ‘Right. Yeah. Might as well start now,’ he said, and walked off quickly, past the motionless figure of Xoxarle, up the access ramp and into the train.

  Balveda was standing with her back against the wall, her hands in her pockets. She smiled at Wubslin’s retreating back as he disappeared into the train’s interior.

  ‘Are you going to let him drive that thing, Horza?’ she asked.

  ‘Somebody may have to,’ Horza said. ‘We’ll need some sort of transport to take us round if we’re going to look for the Mind.’

  ‘What fun,’ Balveda said. ‘We could all just go riding round in circles for ever and ever.’

  ‘Not me,’ Aviger said, turning from Horza to look at the Culture agent. ‘I’m going back to the CAT. I’m not going round looking for this damn computer.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Yalson said, looking at the old man. ‘We could make you a sort of prisoner detail; send you back with Xoxarle; just the two of you.’

  ‘I’ll go alone,’ Aviger said in a low voice, avoiding Yalson’s gaze. ‘I’m not afraid.’

  Xoxarle listened to them talk. Such squeaky, scratchy voices. He tested his bonds again. The wire had cut a couple of millimetres into his keratin, on his shoulders, thighs and wrists. It hurt a little, but it would be worthwhile, maybe. He was quietly cutting himself on the wire, rubbing with all the force he could muster against the places where the wire held him tightest; chafing the nail-like cover of his body deliberately. He had taken a deep breath and flexed all the muscles he could when he was tied up, and that had given him just enough room to move, but he would need a little more if he was to have any chance of working his way loose.

  He had no plan, no time scale; he had no idea when he might have an opportunity, but what else could he do? Stand there like a stuffed dummy, like a good boy? While these squirming, soft-bodied worms scratched their pulpy skin and tried to work out where the Mind was? A warrior could do no such thing; he had come too far, seen too many die . . .

  ‘Hey!’ Wubslin opened a small window on the top storey of the train and leaned out, shouting to the others. ‘These elevators work! I just came up in one! Everything works!’

  ‘Yeah!’ Yalson waved. ‘Great, Wubslin.’

  The engineer ducked back inside. He moved through the train, testing and touching, inspecting controls and machinery.

  ‘Quite impressive, though, isn’t it?’ Balveda said to the others. ‘For its time.’

  Horza nodded, gazing slowly from one end of the train to the other. He finished the drink in the container and put it down on the pallet as he stood up. ‘Yes, it is. But much good it did them.’

  Quayanorl dragged himself up the ramp.

  A pall of smoke hung in the station air, hardly shifting in the slow circulation of air. Fans were working in the train, though, and what movement there was in the grey-blue cloud came mostly from the places where open doors and windows blew the acrid mist out from the carriages, replacing it with air scrubbed by the train’s conditioning and filter system.

  He dragged himself through wreckage – bits and pieces of wall and train, even scraps and shards from his own suit. It was very hard and slow, and he was already afraid he would die before he even got to the train.

  His legs were useless. He would probably be doing better if the other two had been blown off as well.

  He crawled with his one good arm, grasping the edge of the ramp and pulling with all his might.

  The effort was agonisingly painful. Every time he pulled he thought it would grow less, but it didn’t; it was as though for each of the too-long seconds he hauled at that ramp edge, and his broken, bleeding body scraped further up the littered surface, his blood vessels ran with acid. He shook his head and mumbled to himself. He felt blood run from the cracks in his body, which had healed while he lay still and now were being ripped open again. He felt tears run from his one good eye; he sensed the slow weep of healing fluid welling where his other eye had been torn from his face.

  The door ahead of him shone through the bright mist, a faint air current coming from it making curls in the smoke. His
feet scraped behind him, and his suit chest ploughed a small bow wave of wreckage from the surface of the ramp as he moved. He gripped the ramp’s edge again and pulled.

  He tried not to call out, not because he thought there was anyone to hear and be warned, but because all his life, from when he had first got to his feet by himself, he had been taught to suffer in silence. He did try; he could remember his nest-Querl and his mother-parent teaching him not to cry out, and it was shaming to disobey them, but sometimes it got too much. Sometimes the pain squeezed the noise from him.

  On the station roof, some of the lights were out, hit by stray shots. He could see the holes and punctures in the train’s shining hull, and he had no idea what damage might have been done to it, but he couldn’t stop now. He had to go on.

  He could hear the train. He could listen to it like a hunter listening to a wild animal. The train was alive; injured – some of its whirring motors sounded damaged – but it was alive. He was dying, but he would do his best to capture the beast.

  ‘What do you think?’ Horza asked Wubslin. He had tracked the engineer down under one of the Command System train carriages, hanging upside down looking at the wheel motors. Horza had asked Wubslin to take a look at the small device on his suit chest which was the main body of the mass sensor.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Wubslin said, shaking his head. He had his helmet on and visor down, using the screen to magnify the view of the sensor. ‘It’s so small. I’d need to take it back to the CAT to have a proper look at it. I didn’t bring all my tools with me.’ He made a tutting noise. ‘It looks all right; I can’t see any obvious damage. Maybe the reactors are putting it off.’

  ‘Damn. We’ll have to search, then,’ Horza said. He let Wubslin close the small inspection panel on the suit front.

  The engineer leant back and shoved his visor up. ‘Only trouble is,’ he said glumly, ‘if the reactors are interfering, there isn’t much point in taking the train to look for the Mind. We’ll have to use the transit tube.’

  ‘We’ll search the station first,’ Horza said. He stood up. Through the window, across the station platform, he could see Yalson standing watching Balveda as the Culture woman paced slowly up and down the smooth rock floor. Aviger still sat on the pallet. Xoxarle stood strapped to the girders of the access ways.

  ‘OK if I go up to the control deck?’ Wubslin said. Horza looked into the engineer’s broad, open face.

  ‘Yeah, why not? Don’t try to get it to move just yet, though.’

  ‘OK,’ Wubslin said, looking happy.

  ‘Changer?’ said Xoxarle, as Horza walked down the access ramp.

  ‘What?’

  ‘These wires: they are too tight. They are cutting into me.’

  Horza looked carefully at the wires round the Idiran’s arms. ‘Too bad,’ he said.

  ‘They cut into my shoulders, my legs and my wrists. If the pressure goes on they will cut through to my blood vessels; I should hate to die in such an inelegant manner. By all means blow my head off, but this slow slicing is undignified. I only tell you because I am starting to believe you do intend to take me back to the fleet.’

  Horza went behind the Idiran to look at where the wires crossed over Xoxarle’s wrists. He was telling the truth; the wires had cut into him like fence wire into tree bark. The Changer frowned. ‘I’ve never seen that happen,’ he said to the motionless rear of the Idiran’s head. ‘What are you up to? Your skin’s harder than that.’

  ‘I am up to nothing, human,’ Xoxarle said wearily, sighing heavily. ‘My body is injured; it tries to rebuild itself. Of necessity it becomes more pliable, less hardy, as it tries to rebuild the damaged parts. Oh, if you don’t believe me, never mind. But don’t forget that I did warn you.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ Horza said. ‘If it gets too bad, shout out.’ He stepped out through the girders back onto the station floor, and walked towards the others.

  ‘I shall have to think about that,’ Xoxarle said quietly. ‘Warriors are not given to “shouting out” because they are in pain.’

  ‘So,’ Yalson said to the Changer, ‘is Wubslin happy?’

  ‘Worried he won’t get to drive the train,’ Horza told her. ‘What’s the drone doing?’

  ‘Taking its time looking through the other train.’

  ‘Well, we’ll leave it there,’ Horza said. ‘You and I can search the station. Aviger?’ He looked at the old man, who was using a small piece of plastic to prise bits of food from between his teeth.

  ‘What?’ Aviger said, looking up suspiciously at the Changer.

  ‘Watch the Idiran. We’re going to take a look around the station.’

  Aviger shrugged. ‘All right. I suppose so. Not too many places I can go for the moment.’ He inspected the end of the piece of plastic.

  He reached out, took hold of the end of the ramp, and pulled. He moved forward on a wave of pain. He gripped the edge of the train door, and hauled again. He slid and scraped from the ramp and onto the interior floor of the train itself.

  When he was fully inside, he rested.

  Blood made a steady roar inside his head.

  His hand was becoming tired now and sore. It was not the aching, grinding pain from his wounds, but it worried him more. He was afraid that his hand would soon seize up, that it would grow too weak to grip, and he would be unable to haul himself along.

  At least now the way was level. He had a carriage and a half to drag himself, but there was no slope. He tried to look back, behind and down to the place he had lain, but could manage only a brief glimpse before he had to let his head fall back. There was a scraped and bloody trail on the ramp, as though a broom laced with purple paint had been dragged through the dust and debris of the metal surface.

  There was no point in looking back. His only way was forward; he had only a little while left. In a half hour or less he would be dead. He would have had longer just lying on the ramp, but moving had shortened his life, quickened the sapping forces steadily draining him of strength and vitality.

  He hauled himself towards the longitudinal corridor.

  His two useless, shattered legs slithered after him, on a thin slick of blood.

  ‘Changer!’

  Horza frowned. He and Yalson were setting out to look over the station. The Idiran called Horza when he was only a few steps away from the pallet where Aviger now sat, looking fed up and pointing his gun in roughly the same direction as Balveda while the Culture agent continued pacing up and down.

  ‘Yes, Xoxarle?’ Horza said.

  ‘These wires. They will slice me up soon. I only mention it because you have so studiously avoided destroying me so far; it would be a pity to die accidentally, due to an oversight. Please – go on your way if you cannot be bothered.’

  ‘You want the wires loosened?’

  ‘The merest fraction. They have no give in them, you see, and it would be nice to breathe without dissecting myself.’

  ‘If you try anything this time,’ Horza told the Idiran, coming close to him, gun pointed at his face, ‘I’ll blow both your arms and all three legs off and slide you home on the pallet.’

  ‘Your threatened cruelty has convinced me, human. You obviously know the shame we attach to prosthetics, even if they are the result of battle wounds. I shall behave. Just loosen the wires a little, like a good ally.’

  Horza loosened the wires slightly where they were cutting into Xoxarle’s body. The section leader flexed and made a loud sighing sound with his mouth.

  ‘Much better, little one. Much better. Now I shall live to face whatever retribution you may imagine is mine.’

  ‘Depend on it,’ Horza said. ‘If he breathes belligerently,’ he told Aviger, ‘shoot his legs off.’

  ‘Oh yes, sir,’ Aviger said, saluting.

  ‘Hoping to trip over the Mind, Horza?’ Balveda asked him. She had stopped pacing and stood facing him and Yalson, her hands in her pockets.

  ‘One never knows, Balveda,’ Horza said.


  ‘Tomb robber,’ Balveda said through a lazy smile.

  Horza turned to Yalson. ‘Tell Wubslin we’re leaving. Ask him to keep an eye on the platform; make sure Aviger doesn’t fall asleep.’

  Yalson raised Wubslin on the communicator.

  ‘You’d better come with us,’ Horza told Balveda. ‘I don’t like leaving you here with all this equipment switched on.’

  ‘Oh, Horza,’ Balveda smiled, ‘don’t you trust me?’

  ‘Just walk in front and shut up,’ Horza said in a tired voice, and pointed to indicate the direction he wanted to go in. Balveda shrugged and started walking.

  ‘Does she have to come?’ Yalson said as she fell into step beside Horza.

  ‘We could always lock her up,’ Horza said. He looked at Yalson, who shrugged.

  ‘Oh, what the hell,’ she said.

  Unaha-Closp floated through the train. Outside, it could see the repair and maintenance cavern, all its machinery – lathes and forges, welding rigs, articulated arms, spare units, huge hanging cradles, a single suspended gantry like a narrow bridge – glinting in the bright overhead lights.

  The train was interesting enough; the old technology provided things to look at and bits and pieces to touch and investigate, but Unaha-Closp was mostly just glad to be by itself for a while. It had found the company of the humans wearing after a few days, and the Changer’s attitude distressed it most of all. The man was a speciesist! Me, just a machine, thought Unaha-Closp, how dare he!

  It had felt good when it had been able to react first in the tunnels, perhaps saving some of the others – perhaps even saving that ungrateful Changer – by knocking Xoxarle out. Much as it disliked admitting it, the drone had felt proud when Horza had thanked it. But it hadn’t really altered the man’s view; he would probably forget what had happened, or try to tell himself it was just a momentary aberration by a confused machine: a freak. Only Unaha-Closp knew what it felt, only it knew why it had risked injury to protect the humans. Or it should know, it told itself ruefully. Maybe it shouldn’t have bothered; maybe it should just have let the Idiran shoot them. It just hadn’t seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Mug, Unaha-Closp told itself.