Against a Dark Background

by Iain M. Banks

  “No, Sharrow,” Geis said. “No; not mad. Just long-sighted. I’ve been preparing all this for a long time now, prepared your eventual role in this from way, way back.” Geis paused. He was looking very serious now. She got the impression he was considering whether to tell her something important. She shook her head slowly, as though trying to clear it.

  There was something moving on the stone table behind Geis.

  He gripped her knees. “We are the past, Sharrow,” Geis said. “I know that. All this…” He looked round, and she thought he might see the movement on the table, but whatever was moving there stopped just as Geis turned his head. “All this might help what I’ve prepared, might serve as rallying points, battle standards, bribes, distractions…whatever. But only a new order can save poor Golter, only some new message can win people’s hearts and minds. All you see here, however precious it might be to us, might have to be sacrificed. Perhaps we need a new beginning; a clean slate. Perhaps that is our only hope.” He was talking quietly now. The ringing in her ears was fading and she was feeling a little stronger and less groggy. She was able to focus on what was moving on the stone table.

  Fucking Fate, it was the android’s hand!

  Its forearm, the one that had been chopped off by the same stroke that had beheaded it. The arm had fallen to the table and that was where it was now, crawling over the surface very slowly and quietly, using its fingers.

  She felt her eyes go wide, and turned the motion into what she hoped looked like another attempt to clear her head.

  Geis looked concerned, then said, gently, “Sharrow, this is all a lot for you to take in just now, but you must believe me that I’ve made sure your name will live forever.” He smiled mysteriously. “Not as you might have imagined, but—”

  Gods, the arm was heading for the Lazy Gun. She started at Geis and smiled inanely.

  “—well, but in a way you might be rather proud of, even if it was never a way you could have imagined.”

  She looked for Feril’s head. It wasn’t under the table where it had fallen. Its body wasn’t lying in separate pieces on the floor, either. Then she saw it: both halves of the body were propped against what looked like a giant electrical junction box in one corner, near the door Breyguhn had come through. The head…

  The head, Feril’s head, had been set on an end-post of the weapons rack from the fjord tower, in the middle of the great stone table. From where it was perched—and assuming the android’s head could still see—it had a perfectly good view of the Lazy Gun and the hand that was now less than half a meter from the Gun’s open trigger mechanism.

  Geis was still talking.

  “—hate me for what I’ve done, initially at first, but I know, I really do know that eventually, once all that’s going to happen has happened, you’ll know I did the right thing.”

  What was this idiot talking about? She tried to concentrate on her cousin’s face and ignore the android hand scraping its way across the surface of the stone table toward the matt-silver body of the Gun.

  What could the hand do when it got there? The trigger wasn’t supposed to be especially stiff, but what about aiming? Would the half-meter length of arm and hand have the strength to turn the Gun, even if Feril could aim it with its head three meters away? What had the sights been set at? How wide a field? Feril would need to point the Gun at Geis; at the moment it was pointing at…at the casing of the Universal Principles.

  She stared at Geis, not listening.

  Holy shit, she thought; even if Geis considered the casing of the Universal Principles disposable, he wouldn’t think the same about the Addendum and his ludicrous Crownstar.

  Fate, she might get out of this yet. She felt herself start to cry and was furious with herself. Hope could be more painful than despair.

  “Oh, Sharrow,” Geis said tenderly, “don’t cry.” He looked sympathetic. She thought he might be about to burst into tears himself. Revolting. At least this performance was keeping his attention on her and away from the table. “—this could end well yet,” he told her. “We’re together, don’t you see? That’s a start…”

  The arm and hand crawling along the table had almost made it to the trigger of the Gun. She was trying to watch it from the corner of her eye, staring wide-eyed at Geis and absurdly frightened that just by the intensity of her stare he might guess she wasn’t really listening to a word he said.

  “—and I’m glad you came here, glad you saw this place; no, really, I am. Because this is my most private place, my sanctum, the one place where I am the real me, not surrounded by flunkeys and yes-men and—”

  She found herself wondering where Feril’s brain was; if it was inside its head or some other part of its body. She assumed it was watching with the eyes in the head and telling its arm what to do by a comm link, but where from? Stop it, stop it, stop it, she told herself. It doesn’t matter.

  “—we’ll be happy again,” Geis said. “We’ll all be happy. We have it in our own hands to make it so, and you and I are going to make it happen. Even that criminal you thought so much of, even he’ll have something more than he deserved to commemorate him. Because we all have a criminal past, don’t we, Sharrow? That’s what poor old Golter’s had on its conscience all these ten thousand years, isn’t it? That first war, and the billions who died.

  “Year zero, after twenty thousand years of civilization. That’s what we’ve never really been able to forget, isn’t it? But our sentence is almost up, Sharrow. The decamillennium. It’ll be just another day like any other, we all know that. But these symbols matter, don’t they? That’s what all this has been about, from the beginning; symbols. Hasn’t it?” He looked upset. He put his hand out to her tape gag, then hesitated. “Oh, Sharrow,” he said. “Just say you understand, just say you don’t hate me utterly. Please? Will you?” He looked as though he wasn’t sure whether to trust her or not.

  She nudged her head forward in a series of little nods and made little whimpering noises.

  Geis’s eyes narrowed, then he reached up and took the tape off her mouth again.

  “Now,” she said, “take all the rest of the tape off me or the android wastes the Addendum, the Crownstar and the U.P. casing.”

  Geis looked at her, uncomprehending. He laughed.

  “Pardon?” he said.

  “You heard,” she said. “Turn round very slowly and take a look; the android’s hand is on the trigger of the Lazy Gun.” She smiled. “I’m serious, Geis.”

  He turned round slowly.

  One of the fingers on the android hand gripping the Lazy Gun’s trigger-guard peeled away for a moment and made a little waving motion. Geis went very still.

  “Count Geis,” a tiny voice whispered in the quietness of the chamber. It was Feril’s voice. “I am terribly sorry about this, but I am quite prepared to do as Lady Sharrow says.” The eerie, just audible voice from the head perched on the weapons rack sounded regretful.

  Geis was still squatting. He swiveled slowly on his haunches to look at Sharrow again. He swallowed.

  “Don’t talk, Geis,” she told him. “Just do it.”

  He reached slowly round behind her and started to strip the tape away from her arms. Sharrow looked at Feril’s head, high above the table on the weapons rack.

  “I had no idea you had quite such a degree of survivability built into you, Feril,” she said as one of her hands came free.

  “It was never relevant before,” Feril whispered, its voice almost drowned by the rip of tape being pulled away from Sharrow’s feet.

  Geis stopped. Sharrow had one hand and one leg free. She nudged him in the shoulder with her knee. “Keep going,” she said.

  Geis stood up, shaking his head. “No,” he said. “No.”

  He went round the back of the chair.

  “What?” she said, glancing at Feril’s head. “ Geis—”

  He stood behind her, a viblade knife in his hand; he grabbed the rear of the small chair with his other hand. “No, I don�
�t believe it’ll do it, but if it does…” He put his hand on her collar, the knife to her throat.

  “ Geis—” she said.

  “Breyguhn!” he roared. He started dragging Sharrow on her seat backward across the flagstones toward the door. She put her free hand to his arm holding the knife, but didn’t have the strength to tear it away. She could only hold on. “Breyguhn!” Geis shouted again.

  “ Geis—” Sharrow said. She thought she could hear Feril saying something as well, but there was too much noise to hear what it was.

  “Breyguhn! I know you’re out there! Stop sulking! Get in here! Brey!” Geis got to the door. Sharrow looked back at the table; Feril’s head couldn’t see them any more, but the hand and forearm holding the gun was jerking, dragging itself round in one direction, then whip-lashing itself back in the other like a skewered snake, gradually scraping the Lazy Gun round to point toward her and Geis. “Brey!” Geis roared.

  There was a clinking sound from the other side of the door. At the same time one half of Feril’s body, propped up in the corner near the door, spasmed suddenly rigid, bringing the remains tumbling past the electrical junction box and clattering down at Geis’s feet. He yelled with fright as Breyguhn came back through the door looking sulky. She still had the gun in her hand.

  Geis spun away, letting Sharrow’s seat drop sideways to the floor; he hacked at the twitching bits of android body with the viblade, then threw it away and lunged across the stone table, grabbing the sword he had used earlier. He swung it at the body parts moving on the floor.

  The hand holding the Lazy Gun clenched. The junction box behind Geis flashed and boomed. The lights in the chamber blazed then went out. Emergency lighting globes glowed feebly. Geis hacked at the half of the android body writhing on the floor with the great sword, chopping through the metal and plastic and gouging trenches into the flagstones beneath. Breyguhn was screaming. Sharrow used her free left arm and leg to push herself under the stone table, then tried to roll, tearing at the tape still securing her to the chair and looking for the viblade Geis had thrown away.

  She heard shots and more screams, then light blazed and there was a noise like a thunderclap and a sound like a million windows shattering.

  Breyguhn screamed, loud and shrill. “Stop it! Stop it!”

  “I’m trying to!” Geis bellowed.

  A great thump made the floor under Sharrow quiver as she finally got free of the last of the tape and scuttled out from under the table.

  Her feet splashed. She looked down, then up. Water was pouring into the dimly lit chamber from a half-meter wide hole in one wall. Geis was still hacking at the android’s body; Breyguhn was holding her gun with both hands and aiming at the android’s head; the hand clutching the Lazy Gun was jerking and clenching apparently at random, turning and firing the Gun every second or so. One of the diamond leaf ikons had shattered; it lay in a scree of glittering shards between the door and the sparking remains of the junction box. Molgarin/Chrolleser was dead, arched back in his seat with his eyes staring at the ceiling, a set of great, naked bone-jaws clamped round his neck like a man-trap, blood leaking from where the curved teeth had punctured. Even as Sharrow stared, the jaws disappeared again.

  The water gushing from the breach in the wall was up to Sharrow’s ankles. She grabbed the first weapon she saw lying on the stone table; the HandCannon.

  Breyguhn fired her pistol again; the shot spun Feril’s head round on the post. The Lazy Gun spun round too, as the arm holding it jammed against the casing of the Universal Principles. The Gun pointed straight at Sharrow; she ducked under the table, into the water. A titanic pulse of sound shook the air, followed by a vast crashing, tumbling noise. A cloud of dust rolled forward from the wall, followed by a wave of dirty water that pushed Sharrow toward the other side of the table. She was floating; her head bumped against the underside of the stonework. She pushed forward as the rumbling noise behind her eased. She looked beyond the lower edge of the table, trying to see Breyguhn’s legs on the far side of the flooding room, but the dark air was full of dust.

  There was a flash from the side and a painting covering one wall began to burn. The dust-filled chamber had shrunk. Half of it, including the door she and Feril had first come through and the balcony where they’d encountered Geis, was now a vast pile of rubble, fallen from layers and levels above, where the ceiling now stretched up into darkness; sparks and water fell out of the heights. The burning painting lit the dusty chamber with a yellow, flickering light. She still couldn’t see Breyguhn or Geis. The Lazy Gun was hidden by the piled treasure in the center of the table. The weapons rack Feril’s head had been on had disappeared.

  Something tumbled out of the darkness above; she dived to one side into the waist-deep water as a massive piece of stonework whistled down and smashed into the stone table, splitting it and hurling everything on it into the air. A wall of water came surging toward her; she was washed toward the small door under the remaining diamond leaf ikon.

  A terrible, thrumming vibration traveled through her legs as the waves slapped and hissed against the electrical junction box where Feril’s body had lain.

  She waded through the water, slipping on the bank of diamond debris under her feet, then hauled the door open against the sucking weight of water and stumbled splashing up a dark, inclined corridor beyond. She checked the HandCannon as she went, thinking it felt wrong, and cursing when she discovered there was no magazine in it. She stuffed it into a pocket.

  Another quaking burst of sound came from behind her and a great, dark fist of smoke pushed out from the chamber, pulsing along the surface of the ceiling above her.

  The corridor rose; the water around her legs became shallower. Cables hanging from the ceiling swung back and forth, making her fight her way through, crashing off walls and cable-runs and buzzing metal boxes. Smoke preceded her along the shadowy corridor as she finally waded up some steps and out of the water.

  She ducked under drooping, humming cables, through a haze of acrid smoke, a stink of burning insulation and a scrape of sparks as the broken end of a cable swung back and forth across the damp flagstones.

  She straightened on the far side to see Breyguhn standing five meters in front of her, right wrist chained to the wall, her right hand gripping a pistol. She was bleeding from a head wound. The thin yellow light made her look deathly pale.

  Breyguhn pointed the gun at Sharrow. “He’s gone, Sharrow,” she said sadly. “Taken his silly sword and gone.” She shrugged. “Frightened the Gun was going to do something irresponsible…” Breyguhn smiled bleakly.

  She took a step toward Sharrow, who retreated a step and then flinched as she backed into the hanging cables. The cable at her feet sparked and crackled.

  “Taken his silly sword and gone…” Breyguhn said in a girlish, singsong voice. She aimed the gun at Sharrow’s face. The chain squeaked.

  Sharrow ducked as the gun fired; she grabbed the live cable and jammed the exposed end into the chain-track on the wall.

  Breyguhn screamed. Her gun loosed off its remaining rounds into the wall as she shook, her wrist smoking.

  When the gun stopped firing, Sharrow hauled the cable out of the chain-track.

  Breyguhn collapsed like a heap of rags, only her still smouldering wrist held upright against the wall by the chain.

  Sharrow gagged on the smell of burned flesh as she stumbled forward. She turned Breyguhn’s face to the light and felt for a pulse. Her half-sister’s eyes stared up the tunnel, motionless. Sharrow shook her head and dropped the other woman’s arm.

  Another explosion from the chamber behind blew her off her feet and along the tunnel.

  She started running.

  There was another door where the chain-track disappeared; she ignored it and ran limping, head pounding, breath ragged, down the tunnel. It ended in a tall space lit from above—and from a downward slope in front—by gray daylight. It smelled rank and fetid and the stone floor was covered with straw. She saw l
arge stalls on either side; harnesses and bridles and tall saddles hung on the walls. There were no animals in any of the stalls. The gray light from the slope in front of her came from another short, high-ceilinged tunnel.

  She limped down it, under the barbed teeth of two enormous portcullises, out into the cold drizzle of the day.

  She was standing on a weed-smothered slope that led from the foot of the Sea House’s towering walls down to the sand and gravel floor of the bay. The sea was a line in the distance, light-gray against dark. A broad stone ramp sloped away to the sand pools and gravel banks the retreated tide had revealed. The gray water piled and hummocked in the distance, out to sea. There was no land visible.

  A large animal carrying a single rider was picking its way through the humped shoals of gravel beyond a stretch of sand dotted with shallow pools where the animal had left its hoof-prints. As the rider glanced back, the wind lifted his riding cape and blew it out to one side.

  She ran down the slope, skidding on the weed, and splashed into the first sandy pool. A sliver of sand-duned land was just visible in the distance round the side of the House’s dark walls.

  She ran on a way, then stopped.

  What was she doing? The bandamyion reared up and turned round, stepping delicately forward across the gravel shoal until it found the relative firmness of the sand again.

  You idiot, she told herself. You’ve got an empty gun in your pocket. What the hell are you going to do with that? Throw it at him? You should have run the other way, round the walls to the outfall; you could have got the monowheel and chased the asshole on his stupid animal in that.

  Geis brought the bandamyion trotting forward. He was about thirty meters away. He reined the beast in. It stood shaking its wide, tawny head. He leaned over the saddle, staring at her.

  “Satisfied, Sharrow?” he said. His voice sounded thin and reedy in the cold, salty wind. “Do you know what you’ve done?”

  She just stood there. She wondered what else there was to do. Cold water seeped into her shoes.