Against a Dark Background

by Iain M. Banks

  The android paused, then turned to her again. “I beg your pardon nevertheless, Lady Sharrow,” it said. “We were, and I was, made in the image of humanity, and in the enthusiasm of the moment I exhibited what was at least a lack of thought, and could have been construed as cruelty. We have always regarded it as our duty to reflect what is best in humankind, given that we are the work of your intellects rather than the processes of blind evolution, however purposeful in that blindness nature may be, and however noble and sophisticated its results. I am guilty of falling beneath both the standards we set ourselves and those humanity has the right to expect of us, and I apologize.”

  She looked up at the machine, poised with perfect stillness on top of the ladder, its body spotted with lumps of plaster. There was a small smile on her face. She might have shaken her head just a fraction.

  “Contrition so elegant,” she said after a pause, “needs not the parent of hurt to merit its existence, and what was intended to soothe harm just as fitly pleases contentment.”

  The android looked at her for a moment. “Vitrelian,” it said. “The Trials Of A Patient Man; Act Five, Scene Three. Lady Sharrow; I have admired the excitements of your life and even envied you in a way, but now I find you are learned, too.” It made a show of shaking its head. “I am lost in admiration.”

  She laughed. “Feril,” she said. “It’s just as well you’re not a man; you would break a thousand hearts, if you had the mind to.”

  Feril waved its hand expressively as it turned back to its work. “I believe there are various glands and other appendages which would have to be involved too; the coordination required would baffle my humble personality.”

  “Dissembler,” she said, and laughed. The noise, echoing in the bare room, sounded strange. She felt a pang of guilt at having so forgotten Cenuij’s death, however briefly.

  She stood up and stretched, watching her shadow move about the room, limbs lengthened and magnified. “I think,” she said, “I shall go for a walk.”

  “Please take care,” the android said, glancing at her again.

  “Don’t worry about me,” she said, patting the pocket of her jacket where the HandCannon was.

  She walked through the dark city for an hour or more, along towpaths and through tunnels, past dark ruins and lit buildings, along deserted roads and boulevards and across tall bridges and aqueducts. She met very few androids and no humans at all. One team of androids was cleaning the face of a tall, stone building in the darkness; another group was lifting an old barge from a canal, using a creaking iron and hawser boat-lift, all lit by floodlights.

  She walked, hardly seeing the city. In her mind she replayed the destruction of the Lesson Learned and the events following it, trying to remember everything but sure that she was failing, that there was something in there which was very important and she had missed it.

  She had not deliberately recalled the Land Car attack since it had happened; it had been enough to know that each time she slept she would replay those last seconds in the rear door of the old hovercraft, feeling Cenuij slip and fall past her, trying to grab him, calling on Miz, seeing Cenuij’s body lying there in the flickering orange light, and then—even while she knew it was a dream—living it again and again, with Miz falling past her, shot and dying, or Miz and Cenuij somehow changing places as one fell past the other, and looking out from the door to see that although it had been Cenuij who’d fallen past her, it was Miz lying there on the grass. A few times—sufficient to wake her up without fail, brow damp, pulse racing—the body lying by the little waterfall had been hers, and she had looked from the retreating ACV at her own blank face, staring blind and dead into the fiery darkness of the sky.

  Vembyr’s galleries and arcades echoed to her footsteps like the entrances to dark mines in the city’s mountainous geo graphy.

  She used a small flashlight to light her way in places, and all the time tried to work out what it was that was nagging at her; some detail, some tiny observed incident or throwaway remark that had meant nothing at the time, but which was shouting now from the depths of her memory, insistent and important.

  But she could not remember, and returned no wiser than she had left, to a message from Breyguhn which a plaster-spotted Feril handed her without comment.

  It was ink-printed on perforated paper.

  From the House of the Sad Brothers of the Kept Weight.

  YOU KILLED HIM. I AM STAYING HERE.

  BREYGUHN

  For the girl’s fifteenth birthday, Breyguhn’s father had a traveling circus come to the parklands of the family’s old Summer Palace in the Zault hills, where the wealthier Dascens and their guests tended to spend the hot season, if they happened to be in Golter’s northern hemisphere at the time.

  Breyguhn had just finished junior college and in the autumn would be going—assuming her father could afford it—to finishing school. Sharrow had narrowed the choice of institution somewhat by being thrown out of the three best, all of which were in Claäv, and all of which had expelled her in circumstances of such apparent (but mysterious) turpitude that the schools concerned refused even to countenance accepting another girl from the same family, even if she shared only one parent.

  This, which Breyguhn saw as a grievous, shaming and even maliciously intended limitation on her freedom and prospects, had done nothing to endear Sharrow to her; however the two had been sworn at least to attempt to get along with each other by their father, one tearful night a few weeks earlier after he had lost the last of Sharrow’s late mother’s jewels in a bones game.

  On his return from this disaster he had been handed two envelopes by the hotel receptionist: one containing a final demand from the hotel management, the other a message from Breyguhn’s mother—from whom he had been separated for five years—intimating that she had fallen in love again and wanted a divorce.

  He had brandished a loaded pistol, and wept, and talked of suicide, and thus suitably terrified both girls and ensured their acquiescence to his demands for a peace agreement.

  The visit to the Summer Palace would be the first long-term test of this pact.

  Their father had been lucky in the casinos earlier that month, and although the gesture of chartering the circus for a few days used up most of his funds and left his many debts still unpaid, he had convinced himself that his fortunes had changed in some strategic manner with that series of wins, and that lavishing money on his younger daughter was so far from being an extravagance as to be an investment; it would ensure that fate would continue to smile upon him. Like a sacrifice, in a way.

  Sharrow, who too well remembered the straitened circumstances of her own fifteenth birthday when, rather than being showered with presents, she had received nothing but apologies and a request that she give her father the jeweled, platinum-cloth gown which was the last unhocked or unsold possession her mother had left her so that he could pay off an urgent gambling debt, had not been conspicuously enthusiastic in conveying birthday good wishes to her half-sister.

  Sharrow found solace in the fact that Breyguhn obviously thought the hired circus would have been a suitable gift for a younger child, not the woman she was so proud of having become (though she was equally obviously determined to enjoy the gift to the utmost). She was also happy not to have to stay very long at the Summer Palace after enduring Breyguhn’s birthday celebrations; she had been invited to go skiing in Throsse with the family of a young man she had met during an open day at her last finishing school.

  He was the brother of one of the other girls, the son of a commercial army owner, and Sharrow thought he was quite wonderfully fine. She had almost lain with him that first day; only their discovery in the cupboard by a couple of other girls had prevented them requiting their tryst. It would probably have meant another expulsion if she hadn’t successfully bribed the two girls later. Since then she had written to him and he to her, and she had been just consumed with bliss when she’d received the invitation to join his family at their chalet.<
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  Skiing was not something she really enjoyed, though she had—grimly determined—set about becoming proficient at it while in Claäv; but to be with this particular young man she would gladly have undertaken any trial, undergone any torment. Her father had linked his approval of the skiing trip to her attendance at Breyguhn’s birthday, but suffering her half-sister for a couple of days was a small price to pay for the expected ecstasy awaiting her in Throsse. (Compared to that, even her feelings of victorious joy at having been granted a scholarship to go to Yadayeypon University for the coming semester shrank into insignificance.)

  “If you’re so utterly wonderful with computers, Shar, why don’t you hack into a bank and make Daddy rich again?”

  “Because they’re practically impregnable unless you work in one, that’s why,” she replied scornfully. “Any idiot knows that.”

  “Well, you do, anyway.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry; was that supposed to be funny?”

  “I don’t believe you could hack into a…a calculator.”

  “Oh, don’t you? How interesting.”

  The sunlit rolling hills of the estate blued away to the horizon, softly ruffled green and yellow waves of fragrant vegetation under a cloudless blue sky. Lakes glinted in the distance.

  They sat together in a gently swaying carousel circling round a giant fairground wheel. A number of the children and adults resident at the house for the summer sat in other carousels. What with them and the servants and their children—happily invited to share in the fun by Breyguhn’s father, though Brey herself had been silently chagrined at the idea—the temporary fairground on the grass-ball lawn was almost busy.

  “Girls? Hello, girls?”

  They both turned round with smiles fixed on their faces to look back and up at their father, who was in the carousel behind. His android butler, Skave, sat at his side, incongruous in the formal servant’s suit their father liked it to wear. A round black butler’s hat sat on its naked metal head.

  Skave stared into the distance, its metal hands gripping the safety barrier. The tubular metal barrier looked slightly dented under Skave’s hands, though this probably indicated a minor malfunction rather than some android analog of fear; the machine was elderly, dating from the first Golterian era which had thought fit—and had the ability—to create androids. Their father’s debts meant it hadn’t been properly maintained for the last few years, and recently its coordination and movements had become erratic.

  “What, Daddy?”

  “Having fun?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Having fun?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Oh, incredible fun; unbelievable.”

  “Jolly good! They’re having fun; isn’t that excellent, Skave?”

  “Indeed, sir.”

  “Do you remember that old merry-go-round in the ballroom? Sharrow?”

  Breyguhn dug her in the ribs. Sharrow sighed exasperatedly and turned round to look back at her father, shaking her head as she tapped one ear. “Can’t hear you,” she shouted.

  When the ride finished, the big wheel reversed to let the people off; their father and Skave were first out of their carousel and onto the boardwalk, then it was their turn to step down. Father took Breyguhn’s hand; Skave took Sharrow’s.

  Sharrow screamed as the android’s metal fingers crushed hers.

  The old machine let go immediately and wobbled as though it was about to fall over, its head shaking in its collar. Sharrow bent double over her aching fingers. “You stupid machine!” she wailed. “You’ve broken my fingers!”

  “Mistress, mistress, mistress…” the android said plaintively, still shaking. It looked at its own hand, as if confused.

  Breyguhn took a step back, watching it all.

  Her father held Sharrow by the shoulders then gently took her hand and kissed it, teasing her fingers out. “There,” he said. “They’re not broken, my love. They’re all right; see? They’re fine, they’re perfect, beautiful fingers. Mmm. Just made to kiss. Mmm. What fingers. There, how kissable. You see? Silly old Skave. I must oil him, or whatever one does. Look at him; he’s quivering, silly old sap. Skave, say sorry.”

  “Mistress,” the old android said, its voice quivering. “I am most terribly sorry. Terribly, terribly sorry.”

  Blinking through her tears, she looked at the machine, conscious of Breyguhn watching her. She tried not to sob. “You idiot!” she told it.

  The android vibrated again, hands shaking.

  “Oh, my love, my little love; why, silly old Skave didn’t mean it. Here; another kiss…”

  “Right,” Sharrow said, swinging into Breyguhn’s room while she was combing her long, brown hair before the mirror. Breyguhn watched as Sharrow plumped herself down on the bed and unrolled a simple stick-on computer. She flicked her hair back and woke the machine up with a couple of keystrokes. “You wanted to see some hacking; I’ll show you some hacking.”

  Breyguhn finished doing her hair and tied it up, then joined the older girl on the bed. She looked at the screen. It was all figures and letters.

  “Very exciting, I’m sure. What exactly are you trying to do, Shar?”

  Sharrow used her right hand to click across the worn-looking surface of the keyboard. Her left hand still hurt but she used it for the occasional shift stroke.

  “Hacking into Skave’s homeboard. I’m going to give the incompetent old wreck a nightmare.”

  “Really?” Breyguhn said, rolling over on the bed, her nightgown wrapping itself around her. The screen was still boring.

  “Yes,” Sharrow said. “Skave is so ancient they programmed something like sleep into it so it can assimilate what happened during the day and amend its own programs. It’s so old and hidebound it doesn’t really need to do it anymore, but it’s become a habit. I’m going to shift its snoozing arse into a Nightmare game.” Her fingers performed a ballet across the board.

  “What?” Breyguhn said, looking interested as she sidled closer across the bedclothes. “One of those things people dream into, to see how long they can last?”

  “That’s the idea,” Sharrow said, watching a complexly folded holo of a deepframe database’s architecture spring up like a polychromatic mountain range from the stick-on’s screen. She touched it, sliding her fingers into the image, shifting parts of that landscape and tutting to herself as her still sore left hand manipulated the wrong bits and had to correct. Finally she was satisfied and Entered the holo-glyph code.

  The folded shape disappeared to be replaced immediately by an infinite corridor that disappeared into the screen. She smiled and reached in with one hand while her other thumb kept Exponential Shift depressed.

  “We’re going to give old Skave a night to remember,” she said, selecting a section in the forward-scrolling corridor and stopping there. “Only for him it’ll last for a thousand nights, and he can’t wake up out of it.”

  “A thousand nights?” Breyguhn said, trying to see further into the image.

  Sharrow rolled her eyes. “That’s how much faster than us they think, you doughball,” she said. She keyed Auto Load; she already had the estate’s smart but non-sentient system well mapped and primed. Glyphs surged and sank, figure-screens race-scrolled and flickered.

  “There,” she said after the screen went still.

  “Is that it?” Breyguhn said, looking disappointed.

  Sharrow looked at her. “Girlie, what I just did was interrupt the system of a ’droid that’s been around for seven thousand years.” She snapped the stick-on shut. “Watch for it at breakfast tomorrow morning, and don’t order anything hot unless you enjoy eating off your lap.”

  She put her hand into Breyguhn’s hair and ruffled it vigorously, shaking the other girl’s head.

  Breyguhn put her hand up and forced Sharrow’s away.

  Their father was distraught. “Skave!” he said. “Skave!” He still had his napkin tucked in his shirt as he paced round the breakfast room, kneading his hands. “After
all these years! I can’t forgive myself. I should have kept him in better repair. It’s all my fault!”

  He went to the window again. Outside, two bulkily powerful androids and a man in tech overalls were just closing the doors of the secure van that would take the inert body of Skave away.

  The android had been discovered still locked into its download collar in the house’s Mechanicals cellar, its eyes wide and staring, its head vibrating from side to side. A diagnostic scan revealed that its personality had effectively been wiped out, along with much of its intrinsicized programming and even some of its supposedly hardwired functions-suite.

  The android/AI management and leasing company that had been called in to help had advised that only some bizarre and—especially after all these millennia—unlikely nano-physical fault could have caused the fugue, or (rather more likely in their experience) somebody had hacked into the android’s home database and deliberately fried its geriatric brains.

  Sharrow sat looking upset but feeling determinedly smug while her father wrung his hands and paced up and down the room, refusing to be comforted by his relations. She felt the buddings of guilt when she thought about what had happened to Skave, but squashed them with the sheer totality of her success in having proved her hacking skills to Breyguhn—that ought to put the fear of Fate into her—and with the harshly comforting idea that Skave had been old and becoming useless, and hence long overdue for retirement, or whatever happened to outmoded robots.

  She put her hands beneath the table and squeezed her left hand in her right, to take her mind off what she had done, and to remind herself of part of the reason why she had thought of it in the first place. She watched her father knead his hands as he paced, and felt the stabs of pain go up her own arms. She squeezed harder, keeping her face straight, until her eyes threatened to water, then she stopped.