Against a Dark Background

by Iain M. Banks

  “Do you?” Geis shouted.

  She looked back at the Sea House. It was its usual massive self. If the Lazy Gun was still causing havoc somewhere inside it, at least it hadn’t yet decided to destroy the whole thing.

  She looked back at Geis and shrugged.

  “And I once thought I loved you,” Geis said, shaking his head. He said it so softly she hardly heard him.

  Geis drew the jewel-encrusted sword from its saddle-sheath and switched it on; its edges were suddenly lined with pink fire. “I’m going to make you the mother of God, Sharrow,” Geis said, urging the bandamyion forward a pace or two.

  She wasn’t sure she’d heard him right.

  “Girmeyn,” Geis said. “Girmeyn, on Nachtel’s Ghost. He will be the Messiah; a new voice for the new age, a line written under all we’ve done in the last ten thousand years and a new hope for the next ten thousand.

  “He’s mine. I had him raised; I held his life, all he was, contained in my hand,” Geis said, holding up the hand gripping the bandamyion’s reins. “I had him brought up, trained, educated. All that you destroyed in there today,” Geis said, nodding at the House behind her, “all that was to be his birthright, my final gift to him. But you took it away from him. He’s on a Foundation asteroid now; one of mine. That’s where Girmeyn is, Sharrow, and he’s your son.”

  Son? she thought.

  The bandamyion trotted forward.

  “Your son,” he shouted. “Yours and your thief friend! Taken out after you crashed on the Ghost; stored while my clinicians found a way to save it, then grown like a clone; only actually born ten years ago, but aged in the tank and fed the wisdom of ten millennia and a set of perfect, optimized stimuli by an AI devoted to the purpose; and all to my design. So he’s mine, perhaps more than he’s anybody’s. But biologically he’s yours, Sharrow. Have no doubt.”

  Son? she thought. Girmeyn?

  Geis was edging the bandamyion slowly closer, its heavy hooves splashing in the pools of water.

  “But you’d ruin that, too, wouldn’t you, Sharrow?” Geis said, still advancing. “You’d wreck that plan like you’ve wrecked everything else, wouldn’t you?”

  Who, me? she thought.

  She could see the facets in the bandamyion’s dark eyes now, dull glisters in the gray light. She took a step back, then another. She really ought to have gone for the monowheel.

  “I would make you the mother of the Messiah, the mother of God, and you’d spit on it, wouldn’t you, Sharrow?” Geis kicked the bandamyion’s sides. The spur terminals buzzed and the animal trotted, rolling its great head. She stepped back.

  The sword hanging in Geis’s hand made a humming noise; drizzle spat and hissed when it hit the pink projected edges, producing little wisps of steam. More vapor smoked from the nostrils of the bandamyion as it vented its warmth to the cold air.

  “We’re on the brink, Sharrow,” Geis said, raising his voice a little. “Can’t you tell?” He made a show of sniffing the breeze. “Can’t you smell it? We’re right on the cusp of something better, something new and fresh and everything I’ve done has been to prepare for it and make its birth easier. But you’d spoil that too, wouldn’t you, Sharrow? You’d let your vanity, your pride, your own small-minded need for revenge get in the way of a new future for everybody, wouldn’t you?”

  Yes, she thought, yes. I’ve been selfish; that’s all I’ve ever been. And what if the fool is right, and there is a new world waiting? Fate knows it’s an old refrain; we always think there’s something better just round the corner and we’re always disappointed, but we have to be right eventually, don’t we?

  “That can’t happen,” Geis said quietly, now that he was so close. He nodded slowly. “You’re not armed,” he said. “I suppose I should be thankful. I’m not sure even knowing he was your son and that he’d die with all the rest would stop you, would it?”

  She looked from the huge heavy face of the bandamyion up to his eyes. Oh yes, the crystal virus he claimed he’d had implanted in himself for that pre-prepared act of final petulance. She didn’t know if Geis was telling the truth about that or not, but it sounded psychotic enough to be part of his repertoire.

  And Girmeyn. Girmeyn now in one of Geis’s space habitats. Even if he wasn’t her son, how could she kill him?

  Easily, she thought, standing there with her feet sinking into the watery sand and the stinking breeze blowing about her. All of them, all of it; easily.

  How many tyrants had begun by being charming, beguiling, attractive? Still, they all ended up the same.

  We are a race prone to monsters, she thought, and when we produce one we worship it. What kind of world, what translation of good could come from all that’s happened here?

  She saw them all die again: Miz crumpled in the snow, speared through; Zefla, pale and dying in the pathetic little tent; Dloan falling on the cold hillside; Cenuij tumbling past her into the night (and Feril, hacked, blasted, destroyed, even if a week-younger copy would be revived in the future…and Breyguhn too, sacrificed to Geis’s plans, and all of them; Keteo and Lebmellin, Tard and Roa, Chrolleser and Bencil Dornay, Fate alone knew how many other Solipsists, Huhsz monks and nameless spear carriers; everybody who’d suffered and died since she’d stood on the glass shore of Issier with Geis).

  And her mother, she thought, as something within her gave way under the pressure of so much remembered death, and she was five years old again, standing in the wrecked cable car surrounded by smoke and blood and broken glass, crying and screaming, bewildered and terrified while her mother raised herself up, body broken and butchered and put her hand out—to touch, to comfort, to caress, she’d thought, she’d been sure—and pushed her out of the door into that cold gulf of gray.

  She remembered the faceless woman in the wheelchair, from her dream, and the little station in the snow and the waiting train that had gone huff, huff, each vertical jettisoning of smoke and steam like breath, like an explosion.

  Gunfire. It was the first thing she really remembered; that scarifying, punishing noise as the cable car rocked and blew apart and the bodyguard’s head burst open. It felt like her life began then; it always had. There had been something vague about a mother and warmth and safety from before, but that all happened to somebody else; the person she was had been born watching people die, watching her mother ripped open by a high-velocity bullet and then reach out to push her away and out, a second before the grenade exploded.

  All I’ve ever been was made by weaponry and death.

  Not armed, she thought. Not armed. I am the Lazy Gun, the last of the eight, and I’m not fucking armed, just got this one stupid, empty gun…

  She put her hand in her pocket. Her fingers closed around the HandCannon, feeling the gun’s odd lightness and the wide empty slot in the grip where the magazine should be.

  Of course, there might be a round in the breech.

  A round in the breech, she thought.

  She couldn’t remember if she’d cocked the gun earlier or not. She’d taken the magazine out of the HandCannon when she’d made Molgarin/Chrolleser take the gun, and she’d put it back in when Geis had come along the balcony toward them, but had she cocked the gun then? Had she sent a round into the breech?

  She had no idea. Even if she had, she still didn’t know whether whoever had taken the clip back out again had removed a round from the chamber as well.

  What if I can kill him? Suppose there is a round in the gun? How many more people die if he’s telling the truth?

  “I’m sorry, Sharrow,” Geis said, and shook his head. The spur terminals crackled again; the bandamyion trotted forward.

  Sorry? Of course he was sorry. People were always sorry. Sorry they had done what they had done, sorry they were doing what they were doing, sorry they were going to do what they were going to do; but they still did whatever it was. The sorrow never stopped them; it just made them feel better. And so the sorrow never stopped. Fate, I’m sick of it all.

  Geis ki
cked once more at the bandamyion’s flanks and the animal cantered toward her. Geis raised the sword, swinging it out and back.

  Sorrow be damned, and all your plans. Fuck the faithful, fuck the committed, the dedicated, the true believers; fuck all the sure and certain people prepared to maim and kill whoever got in their way; fuck every cause that ended in murder and a child screaming.

  She turned and ran.

  In her pocket, her hand fitted round the grip of the gun.

  The round might be there. How could she not take the chance?

  When she heard the bandamyion’s hoofbeats right behind her, she dodged to the side and went down on one knee.

  She pulled out the HandCannon, aimed and pulled the trigger.

  The bandamyion was turning toward her. In the imperative physicality of that instant she had no idea what she had aimed at, only that she’d knelt and pulled the trigger. The gun fired, spasming once in her hands and then she was diving to the side, throwing the gun away in the same moment, falling and turning, eyes closing as she dropped and curled up.

  There was a quick, keen slicing noise.

  Something whacked into her side. The pain burst entirely through her body, making her cry out. She splashed into a shallow pool.

  The water was cold. One side of her face and body had gone numb. She raised her head and tried to sit up.

  The pain flicked on, making her gasp. She crouched, swiveling in the sandy pool so that she was hunched over; the pain faded.

  She had at least one broken rib; she recognized the pain from injuries in childhood and adolescence.

  She sat up carefully, shivering, and looked toward the Sea House. The bandamyion was hunkered down near the entrance to the underground stables, licking at some blood on one shank. Its saddle hung half-off, askew over its haunches.

  She looked around and saw Geis, lying a few meters away in the direction the beast had been charging. She got up, shouting as the pain came back. She held her arm across her chest, waited for her head to clear, then limped toward the man.

  The sword lay nearby on the sand. It was dull, the pink fire that had edged its blades extinguished. From the marks on the sand, it looked like the bandamyion had taken a tumble. She inspected her jacket over the place where her side hurt. There was no cut; the sword-stroke must have missed and she’d been hit by a bandamyion hoof. Her side ached; it felt like more than one burst rib. She supposed she had been lucky, even so.

  She limped on, over spots of blood.

  Geis lay face down in a shallow pool, his cloak stuck wetly to him over his shoulders and head. She pulled the cloak back; the water in the pool was filling with red. The GP round had taken most of Geis’s neck away.

  His face was underwater. She pulled at him, turning him over. Blood poured from the fist-sized hole in his neck. His head hung slackly; his eyes were half-closed and pink water dribbled from his mouth. She pulled him out of the water onto the sand and laid him on his back by the side of the red-stained pool.

  There was a muffled explosion from the Sea House. She turned; the bandamyion was jumping and bucking near the entrance to the stables, something at its rear end burning. One final kick sent the animal’s saddle smoking into the rocks. The bandamyion turned its head and licked at a patch of scorched hide.

  Another explosion sounded from the House, then another and another. She saw debris rise and fall amongst some distant towers after one blast, and smoke started to rise from the vast building in a dozen different places.

  She looked back at Geis’s slack, dead face.

  A tremor shook the sand under her feet. The bandamyion, just starting to hunker down again, jerked upright and looked from side to side, grunting in distress.

  She closed her eyes and waited for the Lazy Gun’s own thermonuclear farewell.

  There was an almost inaudible rumbling for a few seconds, something close to infra-sound felt in the bones and the water and the ventricles of the heart and brain.

  Then nothing.

  She opened her eyes. The Sea House was still there. A few dark wisps of smoke rose from it. A gray-brown cloud flowed out of the stables entrance and drifted on the breeze. The bandamyion had hunkered down again, and looked annoyed at having to get up and move away from the smoke. It trotted along the weeded slope under the high granite walls, shaking its head and snorting.

  She sat there for a while, beside the dead man on the cold sands in the foul wind and the soaking drizzle.

  Eventually she rose slowly, favoring her injured side.

  She looked around. The bandamyion was a still-moving tawny dot halfway round the side of the Sea House. A few small twists of smoke rose amongst the building’s undisturbed topography of towers. In the distance, the waves of the new tide creased gray across the horizon.

  Nothing else moved that she could see.

  She hobbled to the sword lying on the sand. She tried switching it on, but its flat edges remained dull. She let it fall back to the sand.

  She lifted her face to the drizzle and the evening grayness, staring into the flat expanse of dull sky, as though listening for something.

  She lowered her head and stood for some moments. She gazed from the sand at her feet, across the pools to the gravel banks and on up to the seaweed and the spray-froth beyond, and over that to the gray streaks of gravel and the weed-choked sands that rose into the tall dunes.

  She shook her head and limped across the sands to where the HandCannon lay. She picked the gun up, turned it over in her good hand, blew sand off it and stuffed it into her jacket pocket.

  Then she started back, retracing her steps toward the impassive granite walls of the Sea House.

  She shook a handkerchief free from her breast pocket as she walked and started tying it round her nose and mouth, using only one hand; her muttered curses accompanying this undertaking were snatched and flung away by the stiffening breeze.

  A little later the monowheel vehicle spun backward out of the sewer outfall, pirouetted vertically like a saluting mount, swung down across the greasy slope of stones at the base of the House’s walls, dodged uncoordinated gunfire from a nearby tower and accelerated quickly away across the tide-flooding sands.

  extras

  meet the author

  John Foley

  Iain M. Banks came to controversial public notice with the publication of his first novel, The Wasp Factory, in 1984. Consider Phlebas, his first science fiction novel, was published under the name Iain M. Banks in 1987. He is now widely acclaimed as one of the most powerful, innovative, and exciting writers of his generation. He lives in Edinburgh, Scotland. Find out more about Iain M. Banks at www.iainbanks.net.

  introducing

  If you enjoyed

  AGAINST A DARK BACKGROUND

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  USE OF WEAPONS

  by Iain M. Banks

  Diziet Sma sat on the grass with her legs drawn up to her chin, and looked out across the straits and their arching suspension bridges to the subcontinent on the far shore.

  “Anything else?” the drone asked.

  “Yeah; take my name off the judging panel for the Academy show…and send a stalling letter to that Petrain guy.” She frowned in the sunlight, shading her eyes. “Can’t think of anything else.”

  The drone moved in front of her, teasing a small flower from the grass in front of her and playing with it. “Xenophobe’s just entered the system,” it told her.

  “Well, happy day,” Sma said sourly. She wetted one finger and rubbed a little speck of dirt from the toe of one boot.

  “And that young man in your bed just surfaced; asking Maikril where you’ve got to.”

  Sma said nothing, though her shoulders shook once and she smiled. She lay back on the grass, one arm behind her.

  The sky was aquamarine, stroked with clouds. She could smell the grass and taste the scent of small, crushed flowers. She looked back up over her forehead at the gray-black wall towering behind her, and wondered if the castle had ever been a
ttacked on days like this. Did the sky seem so limitless, the waters of the straits so fresh and clean, the flowers so bright and fragrant, when men fought and screamed, hacked and staggered and fell and watched their blood mat the grass?

  Mists and dusk, rain and lowering cloud seemed the better background; clothes to cover the shame of battle.

  She stretched, suddenly tired, and shivered with a little flashback of the night’s exertions. And, like somebody holding something precious, and it slipping from their fingers, but then having the speed and the skill to catch it again before it hit the floor, she was able—somewhere inside herself—to dip down and retrieve the vanishing memory as it slipped back into the clutter and noise of her mind, and glanding recall she held it, savored it, re-experienced it, until she felt herself shiver again in the sunlight, and came close to making a little moaning noise.

  She let the memory escape, and coughed and sat up, glancing to see if the drone had noticed. It was nearby, collecting tiny flowers.

  A party of what she guessed were schoolchildren came chattering and squealing up the path from the metro station, heading toward the postern. Heading and tailing the noisy column were adults, possessed of that air of calmly tired wariness she’d seen before in teachers and mothers with many children. Some of the kids pointed at the floating drone as they passed, wide-eyed and giggling and asking questions, before they were ushered through the narrow gate, voices disappearing.

  It was, she’d noticed, always the children who made a fuss like that. Adults just assumed that there was some trick behind the apparently unsupported body of the machine, but children wanted to know how it worked. One or two scientists and engineers had looked startled, too, but she guessed a stereotype of unworldiness meant nobody believed them that there must be something odd going on. Antigravity was what was going on, and the drone in this society was like a flashlight in the stone age, but—to her surprise—it was almost disappointingly easy just to brazen it out.