Against a Dark Background

by Iain M. Banks

  “She’s lying in this water,” Zefla said. “Let’s get her to the trees.”

  They took her into the forest and laid her down. Feril ran its fingers over the taut left glove again. “There appears to be something wrong with her hand,” it said.

  The others looked at the glove. “She did cut her hand a couple of days ago,” Zefla said. Dloan tried to undo the glove.

  They had to cut it eventually. Her hand was bloated and discolored; the original wound oozed from beneath a small, sopping plaster. Miz made a face.

  Zefla drew her breath in. “Oh, oh,” she said. “Oh, you silly thing…” She touched the swollen skin. Sharrow moaned.

  Dloan drew his laser, opened the grip and adjusted the controls.

  “What’s that for?” Miz asked, staring at the weapon.

  Dloan closed the grip again, turned and fired the gun into the needle litter at his feet; a tiny, continuous red ember burned. Dloan seemed satisfied and clicked the beam off.

  “Poison,” Dloan said, gently taking Sharrow’s wounded hand and laying it as flat as possible on the ground. “Antiseptic? Dressing?” he said.

  Zefla was rummaging in Sharrow’s satchel. “Here,” she said.

  “Might wake her up,” Dloan said, kneeling so that he could hold Sharrow’s hand securely. “Want to hold her down?”

  “Shit,” Miz said, and took her feet. Feril held her other hand and pinned her shoulders; Zefla smoothed her hand over Sharrow’s forehead.

  Dloan pointed the laser pistol at Sharrow’s wounded hand and pressed the trigger. The flesh spotted, blackened and split, parting like the skin of rotten fruit. Sharrow moaned and stirred as the liquid inside spilled out, sputtering and steaming under the laser’s power. Miz looked away.

  Zefla rocked back and forth, stroking Sharrow’s forehead and cheeks; Dloan grimaced and screwed his eyes up as the fumes bubbling from the wound reached him, but kept the laser pointed at her hand, lengthening the incision. The android looked on, fascinated, while the moaning woman moved weakly beneath him.

  They built a fire. Zefla had a last lump of foodslab left she’d been saving; they warmed it with the laser and tried to get Sharrow to eat it. They used a laser to heat some water in the hollow of a stone, soaked a bandana in it and got her to suck at it. Her face seemed to grow less puffy, and her breathing became slower and deeper. She passed from unconsciousness to something more like sleep. The smell of antiseptic spread around the hollow.

  They had traveled only ten kilometers from their last camp; they still had thirty left to travel to the tower at the head of the fjord. Feril thought that given the state of the ground on the far side of the fjord the Solipsists might be significantly delayed; but it would be a close-run thing, and while it could carry Sharrow until the next camp it would have to leave soon after darkness if it was to get back to the mouth of the fjord in time to attempt to make contact with the submarine.

  “We don’t really have much choice, I guess,” Miz said. He still felt ill after watching what they’d done to Sharrow’s infected hand. His feet ached and his stomach felt like it was eating itself; he was light-headed and shivery with hunger. He couldn’t stop thinking about food. But at least the pain of walking helped take his mind off his empty belly.

  “You’re sure you can carry her safely?” Zefla asked Feril.

  “Yes.”

  “I could spell you,” Dloan said.

  The android paused. “Thank you,” it said.

  “Okay,” Zefla said. She lifted the satchel. “Let’s go.”

  The small group of people walked along the cold, gray shore under a dark, lowering sky. The tall leading figure walked lightly, even gracefully, but the one following looked too slight to carry the burden in its arms as easily as it appeared to, and the last two in the group were limping.

  Above them, a sky the color of gun-metal shook free the first few tiny flakes of snow.

  Elson Roa watched from the top of a bluff through a pair of high-power binoculars. He saw the leading figure of the group on the far side of the fjord take an object from a satchel and stop briefly while they examined it. Then they replaced the object in the bag.

  Roa switched the field-glasses’ stabilizers off and listened to their slowly dying whine as the air above the waters of the fjord began to fill with snow, wiping the view out in a swirling gray turmoil of silence. The sniper at his side checked the range read-out on her rifle again and shook her head, tutting.

  Roa looked behind him to where his comrades stood, healthy and alert and waiting. A little snow drifted out of the dull expanse of cloud hanging between the mountains and settled gently on their dirtied but still gaudy uniforms.

  They moved through a limited world; the falling snow obliterated everything save for a circle perhaps ten meters in diameter consisting of forest-edge, rocky shore and flat water. The patch of the fjord’s black surface they could see specked continually with white flakes that vanished the instant they touched that darkness. No waves beat. Where the snowflakes touched the ground, they sat amongst the rocks and pebbles for a brief moment, then melted. The sky was gone, brought down to an indeterminate low ceiling where the mass of gray-white flakes became a single cloud of chaotic, cluttering movement.

  Feril followed Zefla Franck, putting its feet where hers had gone. Sharrow was a slight burden in its arms; her extra weight meant that it had to lean back a little as it walked to keep its center of balance vertical, but it could continue like this indefinitely if it had to. It kept looking around even though there was little enough to see. It maintained its audio sweep, listening for anything unusual.

  They had pulled the hood of Sharrow’s jacket up over her face when they’d set off; when Feril looked down at one point it saw that the hood had fallen back, and flakes of snow were falling onto her sleeping face. The soft white scraps touched her cheeks and became tiny patches of moistness. Where they fell on her eyelashes, they lasted long enough for the android to be able to see the shape of the individual crystals, before each unique shape was dissolved by the heat of her body and flowed into the skin around her eyes like tears.

  Feril watched for a moment and then pulled the hood back up, sheltering her.

  Zefla Franck was leaving footprints now; the snow swarming from the closed and heavy sky was beginning to lie, collecting flake by tiny flake on the rocks and pebbles and the rough-surfaced trunks of the trees at the forest’s hem and building small bridges of softness over crevices and rivulets, which had begun to freeze.

  The shore became too steep and the snow too heavy; they returned to the forest, walking among the trees in a scarcened filter of flakes, enlivened every now and again as a clump of snow fell suddenly from the canopy above through the branches to the forest floor.

  Zefla cut through the tangles and fallen branches they encountered with her laser, leaving the charred smell of burned wood curling behind on a cloud of smoke and steam.

  Sharrow made occasional small, whimpering noises and moved in Feril’s arms.

  They walked on until it became too dark to see, then stopped to rest. Sharrow slept on, Zefla sat still, Miz complained about his feet and Dloan offered to take Sharrow. Feril said there was no need. Then they walked on, all but Dloan equipped with nightsights. He followed just behind Miz. The falling snow thinned, then thickened again.

  Feril could see Zefla Franck’s previously well-balanced gait becoming ragged and clumsy, and hear Miz Gattse Kuma’s wheezing, labored breathing behind. Dloan slipped and fell twice. They were only about nine kilometers from the head of the fjord, but the ground ahead was rough and much of it was uphill. It suggested they stop and make camp.

  They sat, exhausted, on a fallen trunk. Sharrow lay across their laps, her head cradled in Zefla’s arms. Feril found wood and used a laser to light the fire. It erected the tent for them, too. They put Sharrow inside; Zefla wrapped her in the blanket. Miz and Dloan sat at the fire.

  “I could go on the last nine thousand meters with Lad
y Sharrow,” it told them, once they had gathered round the fire. “Even if she does not wake up, her palm, applied to one of the tower’s stone square’s posts, might well open the tower up.”

  None of them seemed to have the strength to reply; they just stared at the flames of the fire. Snowflakes fell toward it, then were caught in the updraft and whirled away. The snow seemed to be thinning again.

  “Alternatively,” Feril told them, “I could return to the coast and signal the submarine. Though I’d have to leave now.”

  “Or you could stay here on guard,” Zefla said from the tent, putting Sharrow’s satchel under her head as a pillow.

  “Or he could head for the tower again,” Dloan said. “With a gun, he might be able to hold off the Solipsists for a while.”

  “I still think we should get word to outside,” Miz said. “Get the sub to call up some air support. Hell, the Security Franchise people didn’t bother about Roa’s fucking great flying boat, and one lousy fighter-bomber would be all we’d need.”

  “Nobody sane would take it on,” Zefla said, after satisfying herself that Sharrow was comfortable. She hunkered down on the other side of the fire, her voice sounding faraway, distorted by the column of heated air rising between them. “So, we need to get word to outside, we need a guard tonight, and we need to guard the tower, too, to prevent Roa getting to it first.”

  “All these things are possible,” Feril said. “What would you like me to do?”

  They all looked at each other; and they each glanced at Sharrow, a bundled shape in the tent.

  “Vote,” Zefla said. “I say…oh, guard the tower.”

  Dloan nodded. “Me too.”

  Miz made a tutting noise and looked away.

  “Feril?” Zefla said.

  “Yes?” It looked at her.

  “What about you?”

  “ What—? Oh, I abstain.”

  Zefla glanced back at the tent. “Guard the tower it is.”

  They gave the android a laser pistol; the snow had stopped and the sky was clearing.

  The fjord was pure black. A clear blue light came down from Maidservant, gibbous in the sky above; it coated the mountains and the dozens of small, snow-covered islands with a ghostly silver. Junklight sparkled in the northern skies, toward the equator. There were no fires on the far side of the water.

  The android flitted away into the trees, silent and quick.

  22

  The Silent Tower

  Zefla awoke in the middle of the night, her bladder full. She had tried to stave off the hunger pangs by drinking quantities of water made from snow they’d melted. Miz had talked about doing some night-fishing through a hole in a frozen stream, but then fallen asleep.

  Snuggled down between the warmth of Dloan and Sharrow, she didn’t want to get out of the tent but knew she’d have to. She checked on Sharrow, who seemed to be breathing peacefully, then got up as carefully as she could, extricating herself from the others and wriggling her way out through the tent door. Somebody—probably Miz, lying cradling the machine gun—murmured behind her, and she whispered, “Sorry!”

  The fire was still glowing. It was light enough for her to see without a nightsight. She walked downhill through the quiet carpet of snow and squatted amongst the trees near the shore. The night was still and cold and clear. She heard a couple of muffled crumping noises in the distance, and guessed it was snow falling off trees.

  She got up, fastening her fatigues. Steam filmed up from beneath her, just visible in the moonlight. Maidservant stood big and silver above the mountains on the other side of the fjord; it would be disappearing soon. She looked at it all for a few moments, thinking how beautiful this place was, and wishing the ache in her muscles and the hunger and the steady gnawing fear in her guts would vanish and let her enjoy it.

  She turned and made her way back toward the camp.

  The two figures were about twenty meters from the tent. They wore matt-black suits which covered their faces, and they each held small hand guns. They were creeping slowly closer to the tent, coming from the direction of the fjord head down a small ridge.

  Her mind raced. Her gun was in the tent. The two figures hadn’t fired yet though they were well within range and must have realized there was no guard posted. They didn’t seem to have seen her. If she simply shouted, rousing Miz and Dloan, the two figures might shoot straight into the tent.

  She shrank back and ducked, then ran downhill and curved round to get behind them. She tried to go as quietly as she could, slipping twice on buried roots but not making any appreciable noise. She found the rear of the ridge and ran up it, crouching.

  The two black figures were right in front of her, still creeping toward the tent. She stayed where she was for a moment, getting her breath back, keeping her mouth wide so that her breathing didn’t make a noise.

  The two figures were separating; one stayed where he was, crouched on one knee, gun pointed at the tent, while the other started to circle.

  Zefla drew both her gloves off, placed them on the snow and crept down toward the kneeling figure, her hands out in front of her. There was a tickling feeling in her throat, probably because she’d been breathing hard. Fate, girl, she told herself, this is no time to cough, or sneeze, or get the hiccups…She got within five meters of the crouching figure, then something in the fire collapsed with a snap and a cloud of orange sparks swirled into the air.

  She froze. So did the person circling round to the front of the tent. If they turned to look at the kneeling figure in front of her, they’d be bound to see her. She wasn’t close enough to make a dive for the kneeling figure. She watched the one near the tent, her heart thudding.

  The circling figure kept its gaze on the tent, then moved slowly closer. Zefla relaxed fractionally and crept on toward the kneeling figure, her breath silent. The tickle in her throat wasn’t so bad now. Four meters; she would get to the kneeling figure with the gun before the other one got to the tent; three meters.

  The snow fell from a tree immediately behind her without any warning.

  She heard it, started to straighten as she thought there might have been another attacker behind her, then—realizing, but knowing it was too late—pounced, shouting, at the man in front of her as he whirled round, bringing the gun up and firing as he rolled.

  Miz had woken from a dream. He had been aware of somebody getting out of the tent. He felt stiff and sore and incredibly hungry. He still had the machine gun in his arms. He started to ease his arms and shoulders into a different position, then heard a whooshing, thumping noise, followed immediately by a scream and two shots. He tore the tent entrance open to see a black-suited figure right in front of him looking to one side, then turning to point a gun at him.

  He had gone to sleep dreaming about this; his thumb flicked the safety an instant before his finger pressed the trigger. The gun shuddered and roared in his arms, trying to burrow back down past him and blowing the figure outside backward, gun firing up into the trees.

  Miz threw himself out of the tent. He felt Dloan follow.

  There was a body lying in the snow, and an impression of movement downslope. Miz ran after the fleeing figure. The black-suited figure dropped the hand gun it had been carrying, dived into the water, swam for a few seconds then dived, disappearing in a black swirl of moonlit water.

  Miz raised the machine gun and sighted at where the black suit had disappeared, then raised the gun a fraction. After a few moments there was a hint of turbulence to one side of where he was aiming; he corrected and fired, moving the gun around as though stirring the distant, fountaining water. The magazine ran out and the gun fell silent.

  He remembered the nightsight and clipped it on. The body in the water floated darkly, oozing warmth.

  Miz let the machine gun drop to the ground, then picked it up and started walking back up to the tent, shaking. He had just realized: the body on the snow had been wearing fatigues, and Zefla hadn’t been in the tent.

  A sickn
ess worse than any hunger grew in his belly as he walked, then ran, back up the slope to the tent.

  Sharrow had woken with the noise, still groggy; then she saw Zefla’s pale, slackly unconscious face, and the blood oozing from the wounds in her chest and head.

  Now their earlier roles were reversed and Sharrow knelt in the tent, tending to the shallow-breathing, trembling Zefla. Dloan looked on, his body shaking more than his sister’s. He held her hand, staring at her face, his eyes wide and terrified.

  “Call for help,” Sharrow told Miz.

  “What?” he said.

  “Of course,” Dloan said, his eyes shining. “The Franchisers. We can call the Franchisers.”

  “ But—” Miz began, then looked from Sharrow’s face down to Zefla’s. He shook his head. “Oh, Fate,” he said with a moan. He took his phone from a pocket and opened it. He tried pressing a few buttons, frowning. Dloan saw the expression and looked, wide-eyed, for his phone. Sharrow dug hers out from her satchel and found Zefla’s.

  None of them worked; it was as though they had been turned off from outside.

  There was little they could do for Zefla. The bullet in her chest had gone right through, puncturing a lung; the front wound bubbled with each shallow breath. The bullet that had struck her head had left a long gouged mark along her temple a centimeter deep; tiny shards of bone marked its edges. They couldn’t tell if the round had pierced her skull or grazed off. They sprayed antiseptic on her wounds and bandaged them.

  Feril arrived back twenty minutes later; it had heard the noise from its position near the tower. It tried broadcasting a distress message using its own comm unit, but didn’t hold out much hope of it being picked up unless somebody was deliberately looking with a targeted satellite.

  It put its hands gently to Zefla’s head, feeling carefully around, and told them there was a bullet lodged inside her skull near the back.