Against a Dark Background

by Iain M. Banks

  “You’ve always liked a clutter, haven’t you, Geis?”

  “Sharrow, please,” Geis said. “You’re making a terrible mistake here.”

  She turned and frowned at him. “Good grief,” she said. “Do people actually say that? Well, well.”

  She opened the case of the Universal Principles. The Crownstar Addendum lay inside, draped over what looked like a piece of cut glass the size and approximate shape of a crown.

  “What’s this?” she said, hauling the heavy, thickly glittering ring out. There was some sort of writing engraved round the rim; she didn’t recognize the alphabet.

  “That,” Geis said, “is the Crownstar.”

  “This lump of glass?” She didn’t try to disguise the disappointment in her voice. The so-called Crownstar’s prongs were cut off-set, like a series of sharp, canted escarpments.

  “It’s not glass,” Geis said, sighing. “It’s diamond. A single, pure flawless diamond. Be careful with it.”

  “ Uh-huh,” she said skeptically. “Feril?”

  The android looked at the torus in her hands.

  “It is a diamond,” it said.

  “See?” Geis said to her, smiling. “The Crownstar.”

  “Well,” Feril said with a hint of apology in its voice, “it might be that, too, but originally it was part of a triple-filament deep-crust drill-bit.”

  “What?” Geis said, looking at the android as though it was mad.

  “Fourth millennium,” Feril said. “They lost one drill at ninety kilometers under the Blaist mountains and the replacement was never used. That must be part of the back-up head.”

  “What about the inscription?” Geis protested. “The runes?”

  “Serial numbers,” Feril said.

  “Rubbish!” Geis said. He looked furious, but didn’t take the argument any further. Molgarin/Chrolleser groaned in the seat alongside. Geis glared at him. “Oh, shut up!”

  Sharrow put the Crownstar back in the casing with the Addendum and closed the cover.

  She paced on round the table. She drew an ornamented, jewel-studded sword from an equally impractical-looking scabbard. The sword’s edges were thick and flat. She shook her head and slid the sword back into its sheath.

  “What exactly is this place, Geis?” she asked as she continued to look around. “Some sort of den?”

  “Breyguhn found it,” Geis said with a tired air, “when she came in here looking for the Universal Principles. After the Sad Brothers refused to ransom her, I meant to use this place to provide apartments for her, even though they insisted she still had to be chained. Later they went back even on that concession, but by that time I was looking for somewhere secure and I came to an arrangement with the Sad Brothers.”

  “And where is Brey?” Sharrow asked.

  Geis glanced over at the screens on the wall. “Now? Probably having to listen to Tidesong; then they let her eat with the other prisoners.”

  Sharrow looked around the tall, shadowy spaces of the chamber. “And you were going to give all this to Brey, were you?”

  “Yes,” Geis said. “Because she’s family, Sharrow. The way you’re family.”

  “Right. And of course you’d never dream of doing anything horrid to me, would you?”

  “Sharrow,” Geis said. “I’ve been trying to help you from the beginning; I have been helping you from the beginning. I tried to rescue you from this…monster, at his Keep.” Geis nodded at the man tied to the other seat. “It wasn’t my fault the Huhsz attacked at the same time. I’d no idea they were there.” Geis sounded bitter. “Some of my forces did get in and found this material here; they managed to retrieve it and bring it to me. Brave men died to rescue this collection, Sharrow. You shouldn’t make fun of it.”

  “Geis,” she said, not looking at him, “you’ve had minutes to think up a better excuse than that. I’m disappointed.”

  Geis closed his eyes for a moment. “You, whatever your name is,” he said wearily to Feril. “You must be capable of reason. Please try to talk some sense into my cousin.”

  “I am afraid that as far as I understand them, I believe Lady Sharrow’s suspicions may well be justified, Count Geis,” Feril said regretfully.

  “You fucking piece of junk,” Geis roared, shaking the chair he was tied to. “Untie me!”

  Geis was breathing hard and looked flushed. He had been wearing trous and a slim-fitting tunic-top over a white shirt; Sharrow had torn the shirt into strips to tie him and Molgarin/Chrolleser up with. She hadn’t bothered to put his tunic-top back on and he looked pathetic and vulnerable, stripped to the waist. She frowned at his midriff.

  “Geis,” she said. “Is that the start of a paunch?”

  “Sharrow!” Geis shouted, sucking his belly in. “Stop this nonsense! Let me go!”

  “Maybe,” she said. “Once you’ve given me the key to the Lazy Gun.”

  “I don’t have the key,” he said. “I do have clinics…which could perhaps help rid you of that awful thing in your skull which—”

  “You don’t have the key,” Sharrow said, “but you do have clinics where they might be able to crack the lock’s genetic code and manufacture a key, yes, Geis?” she said, smiling. “Except you’re not supposed to know what sort of key is on the lock. Though, actually you might; old Molgarin here might have told you it was a gene-lock. There was no need to cover up there, but you did.” She shook her head. “You’re slipping badly, Geis.” She looked disapproving. “I have to say I think you’re letting the whole family down here.”

  “ Sharrow—” Geis said evenly.

  “Oh, Geis, just admit it. You’ve been following in old Gorko’s footsteps, collecting all the things he tried to collect, trying to complete his work and somehow—I don’t know what your absurd scheme actually is—at least weaken the World Court, even if you can’t actually destroy it.” She looked at the bank of screens which filled one alcoved wall of the chamber. “Oh; how is our latest war going?” she asked. “Does it fit in with your plans, or not?”

  “Sharrow,” Geis said again, struggling to control his voice. “I know you’ve been through a tough time recently—”

  (She grimaced and shook her head and made a well-not-really motion with one hand.)

  “—but you really are being quite thoroughly paranoid!”

  “What a wonderful idea it must have seemed,” she said, ignoring him and crossing her arms as she sat up on the big stone table. “Doing that old Mind Bomb trick again. You know; the one old Ethce Lebmellin did for you, where one signal turns everybody’s guns off. But this time doing it with an entire fortress, and it meant your boys—well, not your boys, because you couldn’t risk your own people being caught, but the people you could use who nobody knew were yours; the Sad Brothers—they could come in like knights of old; with bandamyions! And swords! And flowing capes!”

  She clapped her hands. “You’d get it all, wouldn’t you, Geis? Miz dead; taunted and played with for months using all that nonsense about the sial races in Tile so everybody thought he was being paranoid, and then finally killing him off with the paranoia made real! My, you must have been creaming your pants when you thought that one up. And you’d have all the things we looked for, all the things you wanted but couldn’t be seen to go for yourself, and you set up this dummy—” she nodded at Molgarin/Chrolleser, “—to be fall-guy, so you could blame it all on him. No doubt you told him he’d get away, but would he? Would he always be out there so you had something to keep me safe from, or were you going to run him through with your mighty broadsword, just for me?”

  Geis stared at her, appalled.

  “And I was supposed to feel so fucking grateful, wasn’t I, Geis?” she said, shaking her head. “I was meant to fall into your arms. Or am I flattering myself?” She looked puzzled. “Was that part of the deal or not?”

  “I loved you, Sharrow,” Geis said, sounding more sad than anything else. “I still love you. Just let me out of this and I’ll prove it all. I do love yo
u, and I do love this family and our race—Oh, smile your cynical smile if you want, Sharrow, but I mean it. Everything I’ve had to do has been done for love.”

  Feril turned to her then and said, “I think somebody is coming.” It nodded at the low door set underneath the two giant diamond leaf ikons.

  Sharrow turned to face the door and pointed the gun at it. She heard the chink-chink noise of a chain and guessed who it might be.

  The door opened and Breyguhn entered. She was dressed as Sharrow remembered, in a plain, gray shift, though the gown was dirtier than it had been. Her eyes looked wild; when she gazed at Sharrow, then at the android, then at Geis, it was with a strange blankness. She carried a pile of books awkwardly in her arms. Her right hand was still joined to the track in the wall via a manacle and chain, but it was steel now rather than iron.

  Sharrow let her gun down. “Hello again,” she said. “Feril; this is my half-sister, Breyguhn.”

  Feril turned and bowed slightly.

  Breyguhn dropped the books at the same moment, revealing a pistol. She fired it at Sharrow’s head as Geis half-stood and whirled round, whacking the back legs of the chair he was tied to into the legs of the android.

  Sharrow felt something smack into the side of her head and spin her round. She slumped against the table, trying to bring the laser up to bear on Breyguhn, then fell to the flagstones, the gun bouncing out of her limp fingers.

  She lay there. Her head was sore. As though through a fine mist she saw Feril staggering from the blow Geis had dealt it with the chair. Breyguhn fired at the android; Feril’s right leg blew off at the thigh. The android hopped round on one leg, trying to stay upright. Another shot cracked across its chest, raising sparks. It kept on hopping. It still held the laser rifle but it didn’t seem to want to use it. She tried to shout at it to shoot all the dirty bastards, but her mouth wouldn’t move. Feril kept on hopping and hopping, banging into the stone table and stumbling, the rifle still clutched in its hand.

  Then Geis shouted something, and fell over on the floor still tied to the chair. Breyguhn came over and kept the gun on the hopping android while she pulled at the strips of shirt restraining Geis.

  As soon as he was released Geis stood up, pulled the blunt-bladed sword from its scabbard on the table, flicked one of its jewels so that its blade edges flickered with pink fire, and swung it at the hopping android.

  It wasn’t a powerful stroke, but it separated Feril’s head from its trunk as though its neck had been made of paper. Feril had raised one arm over its head while trying to balance, and that was sliced off in the same blow. The head fell to the floor and rolled under the table; the arm fell onto it. The android’s headless body tottered on its single leg for a second. Geis raised the sword over his head and brought it scything down. Feril’s body parted down the middle and fell apart in halves, like something from a cartoon.

  Sharrow made a last attempt to raise her hand, then gave up. She closed her eyes.

  Are you all right?…Hello? I said, Are you all right?

  . . . You…You again…Now what?

  This isn’t really going as we hoped, is it?

  . . . No.

  Well?

  Fate…Who cares?

  Nobody, if you don’t. It’s your life.

  . . . Exactly. Oh, I’m tired. Fuck it, just let me die.

  No, I don’t really feel we’ve destroyed enough yet. One of us has to. We are each other, after all. We are the last of the eight.

  Oh, fuck, yes, sure…We’ll see what we can do…

  That’s right. Now wake up.

  I don’t want to wake up.

  I said, Wake up.

  No, won’t.

  Wake up!

  No, wo—

  Now!

  No.

  N—

  People were arguing. Her head hurt and people were arguing. She hated it when people argued. She screamed at them, told them to shut up; it was bad enough the Gun wouldn’t give her any peace. Screaming just made her head hurt worse. They didn’t seem to hear, anyway.

  “You have to kill her.”

  “No! There’s no need; I almost had her convinced before you came in.”

  “Oh, it’s my fault now, is it? I save your skin and—”

  “I didn’t say that! That’s not what I meant.”

  “Kill her. Kill her now. If you can’t, I will.”

  “How can you say that! You’re her sister!”

  Half-sister, Sharrow thought.

  “Because I know what she’s like, that’s why!”

  Shut up, shut up! she screamed at them.

  “She’s coming round. I heard her say something.”

  “No she isn’t. Look at her; lucky you didn’t blow her brains out.”

  “I was trying to.”

  “Well, I’m not going to let you.”

  She was tied. Tied sitting to a seat, much like Geis had been. Hands and feet tied; no, taped. Tape over mouth, too. Head hanging forward. Sore. She wanted to tell them to shut up again, but didn’t. She raised her head and looked at them.

  They stood in front of the table, arguing. Breyguhn was still joined by her chain to the wall. Sharrow didn’t understand the chain; Brey must have some sort of special place she could change over from the main system to some private line. At least they had given her a chain of steel rather than iron. Probably a really generous concession for the Sea House…

  She had to let her head drop again. They didn’t seem to have noticed, anyway. Everything went gray again. Still had sound, though.

  “Kill her, Geis. Please keep your personal feelings out of this; this is for—”

  “Keep my personal feelings out of it? Well, that’s rich, coming from you!”

  “I stayed here for you! My Fate; I came in here for you! Who was it found you this place? And I could have left; but I stayed for you, for you and the family. I won’t let her ruin everything. You know she will, Geis; you know what she’s like. She won’t forgive; she can’t forgive! Geis, please, kill her. For me. Please. Please…”

  “I didn’t ask you to stay; you wanted to.”

  “I know, but please, for me…Oh, Geis…”

  “Get off me! You stayed because you wanted to, not because of me or the family. You’re more attached to that chain than me!”

  She thought she heard a sharp intake of breath. She wanted to laugh but she couldn’t put her head back. Oh, Geis, she thought, you were always too literal.

  “How dare you! You’re frightened! All right, I’ll show you how it’s done!”

  “Brey! No! Put that—!”

  The sounds of a struggle. A shot was fired; she heard a ricochet nearby. The crack of a slap. Silence, then a cry, then lots of weeping, and some sobbed words she couldn’t make out.

  “Brey…”

  “Have her, then!” Breyguhn cried. “It was always her you wanted, anyway. Well, do what you want!”

  Then the sound of her chain rattling, followed by a door slamming. A door in the place where there were not supposed to be any. But she had seen lots of doors here today. Lots and lots of doors…It all drifted away from her again.

  Suddenly there was something under her nose and she was sniffing a sharp, noxious vapor and her head seemed to clear and there was an odd ringing noise somewhere.

  Geis squatted in front of her.

  “Sharrow?” he said.

  She lifted her head and flexed her eyebrows.

  “Sharrow,” Geis said, “I just want you to know that I always loved you, always wanted you to be happy and to be a proper part of the family. You belong with me, not that criminal Kuma, not with any of the others. They don’t matter; none of them mattered. I forgive you for all of them. I understand. But you’ve got to understand, too. The things that were done, they weren’t all done by me; there were people who thought they were doing what I wanted them to do, but they didn’t know. Sometimes I didn’t know what was happening. People can be too loyal, you know, Sharrow? That’s the w
ay it was, I swear.”

  Geis glanced at the man still tied to the seat next to hers, the man whose name she’d forgotten but who wasn’t Molgarin. He looked dead.

  “These people did that,” Geis said. “They overstepped the mark, I’m not denying that. But they meant well. Like the crystal virus; that was put in on Nachtel’s Ghost, but I didn’t know how it would later be used. I didn’t know Molgarin would start trying to build his own power base and use you to do it. I didn’t know you’d been tortured.” Geis looked agonized. He’d put his tunic-top back on, she noticed. “At least I knew it was safe, though,” he said with an attempt at a brave smile. “I have one of those implanted in my own head; did you know that?”

  She shook her head. Of course she didn’t know that.

  “Yes,” Geis said, nodding. “A fail-safe; a way of taking everything with me until I choose to disable the system.” Geis tapped the side of his head. “If I die, the crystal virus lattice senses my death and sends a coded signal; everything I own destructs. All of it, it’s all wired to go: asteroids, ships, mines, buildings, vehicles, even pens in certain politicians’ and Corp execs’ pockets; they blow up. You see? Even if they get me, even if the Court gets me, they might start a war. The insurance claims and the commercial disruption alone could wreck everything. You see how important one person can become? Do you understand now?”

  She made a little whimpering noise behind the tape. He reached up and gently unstuck the tape from her mouth. It still hurt.

  “I understand,” she said, her voice sounding mushy. He looked pleased. “I understand,” she said, “that you’re as fucking mad as Breyguhn, cuz.”

  She sighed and looked away, expecting to be slapped or punched. Her gaze fell on the table. The Lazy Gun lay there. It looked different. The lock had been taken off. Geis had had the key. Of course he had.

  Something moved on the table a meter from the gun. She started to frown, then her chin was held in one hand while with his other Geis stuck the tape back over her mouth.