Against a Dark Background

by Iain M. Banks

  The two emissaries halted; she stopped, too, and they let go of her arms.

  Ceiling spotlights blazed in front of her, shining down onto a black circular dais; steps were just visible, gradations of shade against shade. The dais was crowned by a tall, plain throne made from a gleaming black material that might have been glass, jet or even highly polished wood.

  The man sitting in the throne was dressed in a sumptuous robe of many colors, though purple and gold predominated. The thick robe hid his frame; he could have been anything between an average build and obese. His face looked plump but healthy; he was clean-shaven and his head, covered in short, black curls, was bare. There was at least one ring on each of his fingers, and he wore two sets of earrings and a pair of jeweled nostril studs. A brow-brooch glittered over his right eye.

  His fingers sparkled magnificently as he clasped his hands lightly together. He smiled.

  “Lady Sharrow,” he said. “My name is Molgarin. We met once long ago, but I don’t expect you remember; you were very young.”

  His voice was even and quiet; it sounded older than he looked.

  “No, I don’t remember,” she said. She thought her voice sounded flat. “Why did you kill Miz like that?”

  Molgarin waved one hand dismissively. “He cheated me out of something that was rightfully mine, many years ago. One of the skills one develops during the course of a long life is that of relishing one’s revenge, and both planning and executing acts worthy of that skill.” Molgarin smiled. “Finally, though, the truth is that I had him killed to distress you.” The smile faded. “Please, sit down.”

  The two young emissaries took her arms again and urged her forward; the three of them sat on the bottom step of the dais, their bodies twisted slightly so that they could still see Molgarin. He put his arms out to his sides slowly.

  “I felt that you insulted my young emissaries here,” Molgarin said. (The two young men both smiled smugly at her.) “And through them,” Molgarin said, “me.” He shrugged. “And so I punished you. I always make a point of punishing those who insult me.”

  “Yeah,” the emissary in front of her said. “You should see what we have planned for that cousin of yours.”

  Molgarin cleared his throat and the young man glanced up at him, then back at Sharrow with a conspiratorial leer. The spotlights reflected on his bald head.

  “Whatever,” Molgarin said, “the wretch is dead. But please don’t imagine that all that has happened has been done to upset you, or as revenge on Kuma. My purpose has rather more substance than that.”

  Molgarin settled back in his throne, clasping his hands again. “You have—as you have doubtless realized by now—been used, Lady Sharrow. But used for something infinitely more worthwhile than personal gain or individual glory. The interests I am pleased to represent, and I myself, have little enough concern with the trappings of power. Our concern is with the health of Golter and its system; with the good of our species.”

  “You’re not just another dick-head power-junkie?” she said matter-of-factly. “Oh, that’s all right, then.”

  Molgarin shook his head. “Oh dear,” he said. “Something worse than cynicism must be abroad if even our aristocracy cannot accept that the rich and powerful may be motivated by purposes beyond acquiring yet more money and increased influence.” He put his head to one side, as though genuinely puzzled. “Can’t you see, Lady Sharrow? Once one has a certain amount of both, one turns to hobbies, or good works or philosophy. Some people become patrons of the arts or charities. Others may—charitably—be said to raise their own lives to the state of art, living as the common herd imagine they would live if they had the chance. And some of us attempt not merely to understand our history, but to influence meaningfully the course of the future.

  “I grant that, in my case, because I am beyond the jurisdiction of the chancre we call the World Court, I have a greater personal interest in the future than most, because I expect to live to see it, but…” Molgarin hesitated, anticipating a reaction where she had given none. He went on. “Yes, I am what we choose to call immortal. I have been so for four centuries and expect to be so for considerably longer than that…But I can see you are not impressed. Probably you don’t believe me.” He waved one hand. “Never mind.”

  “He is, you know,” the emissary behind her whispered.

  “Romantic children like your cousin,” Molgarin continued, “would try to return us to a golden age that never existed, when people respected the aristocracy and power rested safely in the hands of a few individuals. My colleagues and I believe a more enterprising, more corporate style is required: one that releases the natural resourcefulness and entrepreneurial spirit of humanity; freeing them from the dead hand of the World Court and its miserable, gelding restrictions.

  “For this, we—like your cousin—thought it prudent to gather as many of the treasures and achievements bequeathed to us by earlier and more progressive eras as we could, especially given the decidedly feverish atmosphere beginning to be generated by the approach of the decamillennium. Though in our case this sudden burst of acquisitiveness was as much to prevent the artifacts concerned from falling into hands as rash as your cousin’s as to assist directly in our own plans, which do not need to rely on such vulnerably physical specifics.”

  Molgarin shrugged. “It’s a shame, really; we thought at one point that your cousin might be of a mind with us. We even invited him to join us, but he proved to have these silly, vainglorious ideas of his own. He has, frankly, been a considerable annoyance to us.” Molgarin shrugged. “No matter. Now that we possess all that you have so kindly provided us with, he can be dealt with at our leisure. These…gadgets will act as bait, if nothing else.” Molgarin smiled thinly. “Your friend Elson Roa learned what happens when somebody at first cooperates and then opposes us; your cousin will find the lesson equally hard, though I intend to draw the process out a little where he is concerned. Conversely, those who help us—like Seigneur Jalistre, whom I believe you know from the Sea House—find the rewards considerable. I think I might give him something from this selection as a present.”

  Molgarin looked to one side. More ceiling lights came on, revealing Feril standing ten meters away, a bulky collar round his neck. The Lazy Gun was nearby, resting on a thick column of clear glass beside the odd vehicle with the single slanting wheel she had seen underneath the tower, and a dozen or so other bits and pieces of what appeared to be suitably ancient and exotic technology, none of which she recognized.

  “Call me a sentimentalist,” Molgarin said. “But I thought it only right to rescue everything the tower and its undercroft contained, even though all the rest is baublery next to the Lazy Gun. See; we even brought your little android friend.” Molgarin raised his voice fractionally. “You may wave, machine.”

  Feril raised one hand stiffly and waved.

  “It is worried about the restrainer collar,” Molgarin explained to her, smiling. “Really, it is safe as long as it takes no more than a step or so from where it is now.”

  Molgarin got up from his throne and went over to the Lazy Gun. He was a little less plump and rather taller than Sharrow had guessed. He patted the Gun’s gleaming brushed-silver casing. She noticed that there was some sort of device fitted to it, too; a thick looped metal bar twisted round the right-hand grip, secured with a lock, prevented access to the trigger mechanism.

  “This will,” Molgarin said, “when the time is right, make life considerably easier for us.” He turned to smile at her. “Really your family has done so much for our cause, despite opposing us at practically every turn, that I feel almost mean that I have had to do what has been done.” He moved away from the Gun, though not toward his dais. “Not to mention what has to be done.”

  Another spotlight came on, and revealed a figure standing beside Molgarin. It was her.

  Sharrow looked at herself. Her image was blinking in the strong overhead light, looking with an expression somewhere between fear and bewildermen
t at Molgarin.

  This new Sharrow still had all her long, black, curled hair; she was dressed in a long, conservatively dark suit identical to that Sharrow had chosen earlier and now wore.

  Molgarin reached out a hand to the other Sharrow; the woman offered him her left hand. Molgarin curled it up in his.

  Sharrow felt the fingers in her own left hand start to ache. She tried to rise but the young man behind gripped her round her neck while the one in front grabbed her feet.

  Her image, hand crushed inside Molgarin’s, cried out just before she did.

  The pain disappeared, cutting off. She saw her image crying and touching her injured hand with the other.

  Molgarin shook his head and smiled broadly at the real Sharrow. “If you only knew the self-restraint I have had to exercise with this toy,” he said. He turned and stroked the woman’s cheek. She seemed not to notice. “Though of course I have enjoyed her,” Molgarin said. He looked back at Sharrow. “Quite empty,” he said, nodding at her image. “Her mind is quite empty.” His smile grew wider. “Just as it should be, really.”

  He drew something from his robe. It was a HandCannon. “Allow me to introduce your clone, Lady Sharrow,” he said. He pointed the gun at the woman’s face. “Sharrow’s clone,” he said softly. “This is Sharrow’s HandCannon.”

  The woman looked into the muzzle of the weapon, puzzled.

  Sharrow struggled. “You fuck!” she screamed.

  The clone glanced at her when she yelled, then looked away again. She gave no impression that she had recognized herself in Sharrow.

  “Oh, I’m afraid we never really bothered to teach her any languages, Lady Sharrow,” Molgarin said. “Never showed her a mirror, either,” he added absently. He moved the gun right up to the woman’s eye. She drew her head back just a little.

  “She’s sweet, isn’t she, my little day-fly?” Molgarin said, moving the gun from one of the woman’s eyes to the other. Her eyes crossed following the weapon’s movements.

  “I’ve had her for a couple of years now,” Molgarin said conversationally. “I’m only sorry we didn’t collect the necessary cells when you were in that mining hospital on Nachtel’s Ghost, when I had you implanted with the crystal virus. Still.”

  Molgarin continued to move the gun from side to side, then said, “Yes; I’ve enjoyed her company over the past two years or so. But I have the real thing now.”

  He fired into the woman’s right eye.

  Sharrow flinched, biting off a scream and feeling her eyes close on the image of the back of the woman’s head disappearing in a red cloud and the body being blown backward into the darkness. She kept her eyes shut, feeling herself tremble uncontrollably; she tried to stop it but could not.

  The young man behind her shook her. “Oops!” he whispered.

  She opened her eyes, still trembling, her chest heaving. She choked the sobs back and listened to her own breathing, gazing through tears at Molgarin coming toward her.

  “Oh, save your grief, Lady Sharrow,” he said, putting the gun back into his robe, a small frown joining the faint smile on his face. “She was a blank,” Molgarin said, spreading his hands. “A nothing; scarcely human.” He laughed lightly. “For whatever that’s worth.”

  He stood looking down at her for a moment, then swiveled and returned to his throne. He sat back with one leg crossed over the other.

  “What, Lady Sharrow?” he said after a pause. “No insults, no threats, no curses; no bravado?” He shook his head. “I warn you I shan’t be satisfied until you’ve called me something vile—doubtless involving that disagreeable word ‘fuck’—and come up with some unlikely and painful-sounding fate you may merely wish on me but which I have the means—and for all you know the intention—of inflicting upon you.” He contrived to look terribly amused with himself.

  She was still breathing hard, fighting back her terror, trying to find strength from somewhere, from anywhere. She stared at him, not knowing how to express anything she felt.

  Molgarin gazed at her with a look of tolerantly amused patience.

  Then his expression changed. He frowned and looked up at the slit-views of the desert displayed in a wide circle around the chamber.

  “What?” he said. He looked distracted. He peered at the screens, turning to stare at those behind him. “What?” he said again, and raised a hand to one of his earrings. “How?”

  She looked up. The slit-views of the desert were no longer static sections of a peaceful panorama. Dots danced in the skies above the mountains on three sides. What looked like a cavalry charge was taking place on two of the screens; Keep guards were running from the mounted troops, throwing their guns away.

  “Well, do it!” Molgarin said, still with his hand at his ear and looking away from her. “Now!” he shouted. “Anything!”

  She saw the emissary in front of her looking worriedly at the one holding her arms. The one at her feet let go and drew a small laser pistol out of his uniform jacket.

  There was sudden movement on several of the screens. A series of great gray explosions lifted slowly from the surface of the desert. They continued to expand and lift. They looked so immense she expected to hear them, no matter how deep they were, but then they started to fall back in silence.

  Molgarin turned back. He glanced at the two emissaries, then smiled shakily at her. “We seem to be—” he began.

  The floor trembled and a full third of the view-slits suddenly went dark. Feril was staring intently at the confused scenes portrayed in the ones that were left. Molgarin glanced at the dark screens. The emissary holding the laser pistol stared at them.

  “We seem to be under attack, Lady Sharrow,” Molgarin told her. “Possibly from that irritating cousin of yours.” He seemed to have difficulty swallowing. “I promise you this will be his last piece of romantic melodrama, lady. He’ll suffer for this, and you’ll watch him suffer.” Molgarin looked at the two emissaries. “Mind her,” he told them, then put his head back against the throne and gripped its arms tightly.

  The topmost step of the dais rushed upward, taking the throne with it on a great gust of air and a thunderous rumble from beneath the chamber; the throne vanished into the ceiling ten meters overhead, leaving a single solid black column in the center of the circular room.

  Before the two emissaries could react, the whole chamber shuddered, the remaining view-slits went black and every light in the place blinked out, leaving utter darkness.

  She hauled, twisted and ducked, bringing the yelping emissary holding her arms tumbling over her back. “No!” he screamed.

  There was a sudden snapping noise and brief stuttering blink of light, then, as she threw herself to one side and the emissary rolled away from her, a scream that became a sizzling, gurgling noise. She lay, silent, on the steps. A smell of roasted flesh wafted over her.

  “Twin?” said a tremulous, hesitant voice. It was answered by a bubbling noise. She started to move. “Twin?” the voice said again, an edge of panic in it now. Another bubbling, gurgling noise. She moved closer, correcting, anticipating. A tremor shook the bunker; there was a tremendous crack, and a crashing, tinkling noise off to one side. “Twin!” the voice screamed.

  That last anguished shriek was enough. She stood silently, closing her eyes and lashing out with her foot.

  “ Tw—oof!” The voice cut off.

  She stepped to one side; a blink of white laser light fired at where she had just been was enough to show her both of them, captured as though by a flash of lightning; the one who had held her, lying spread out on the floor at the foot of the steps leading to the black column, and the other one, crouched sideways on the floor in front of her, looking toward the steps, holding the laser in one hand and his lower chest with the other.

  She swung her left foot at his head. The heavy, sensible shoe connected with a crack that jarred her whole leg. She fell to the floor.

  The burbling sound came again from a few meters away, then a noise like a snore from nearby.
The bunker shook once more and she heard what sounded like debris falling somewhere.

  “Lady Sharrow?” said a distant voice. Feril.

  She said nothing. “Lady Sharrow,” Feril said calmly. “I can see you. The laser pistol which the man you just kicked was holding flew from his hand and is lying approximately seven meters to your right.” Feril paused. “I do not believe either of the young men will trouble you for the moment,” it said.

  She stood and walked quickly to her right, still silent.

  “Just two steps further,” Feril said. “Stop. The pistol is now a meter to your left.”

  “Got it,” she said, lifting the weapon.

  “I believe one of the young men you disabled has the chip key to the explosive restrainer collar I am wearing,” Feril said as another tremor shook the floor beneath them. “If you intend to remove it from me, that is,” it said. It sounded apologetic.

  She swiveled and started walking through the utter darkness. “Am I going the right way?”

  “Stop,” Feril said. “Yes; you are a step away from the young man you kicked.”

  She felt down. “So they weren’t androids,” she said.

  “No, I believe they are clones, but otherwise perfectly normal human beings,” Feril said. There was a pause. “Well…”

  The man was breathing shallowly; she kept the gun pointed at where the breathing was coming from, then felt in his uniform jacket. “This feels like a chip key.”

  The android directed her to it. “The slot is at the back,” it told her.

  The key snicked in, the collar buzzed alarmingly, then a small white light flashed and the collar clicked open. She removed it and put it on the floor, which trembled again as she set the collar down. More smashing, tinkling noises sounded in the distance.

  “Which direction to the Lazy Gun?” she asked.

  “Your hand?” Feril said. She shivered, gritting her teeth as she put her hand out into the darkness. Feril held her bandaged hand gently; they walked forward. “Here it is,” the android said.