The Algebraist

by Iain M. Banks

Quercer & Janath's shiny suit rustled as the truetwin turned to look at Fassin and Y'sul while tapping some controls. Images of the Velpin appeared in holo displays, showing hatches and doors flashing in outline.

  'The Voehn have turned pirates,' Quercer & Janath told them calmly.

  'How fucking dare they!' Y'sul roared.

  'They didn't follow us through the wormhole, did they?' Fassin asked.

  'Ha! No.' The truetwin seemed purely amused. 'No, they were waiting in this system.'

  'Assume we'll see why shortly.'

  'The fucking scumbag bastards will pay grievously for this outrage!' Y'sul yelled, shaking with fury.

  A shudder rang through the Velpin and alarms started blaring. Quercer & Janath roted closer to a brightly flashing display. 'Look at that.'

  'Penetrated amidships with a cut-through.'

  Cameras briefly showed a thick tube extending from the middle of the Voehn ship into a neat circular hole in the hull of the Velpin. Then the images crazed and faded. Other displays started to disappear. The alarms warbled down to a croak, then shut off. Fassin thought he could smell burning.

  'And us cooperatively opening all our orifices.' 'Fucking typical.'

  'Here they come. Thundering through.'

  Another display showed an abstract of large beings pouring through the breach and spreading through the ship, bouncing off surfaces in the zero-gee. The largest force was coming straight towards the control space. Then that display shut down too. All the lights went out. The background noises of the ship, hardly noticed until they ceased, just faded away.

  A ragged pulse of what sounded like heavy steps came pounding from the closed door leading to the Velpin's central corridor.

  'Probably going to zap us soon as they—' Quercer & Janath began. Then the door punctured with a coughing noise and something small flew into the middle of the control space and exploded into a million barbs like dust.

  Ah-ha.

  Though what got us was a fucking EMP cannon. Aimed at the ship's vulnerables.

  Indeed. So there we are. And here. Indeed. See what happens?

  See what happens. . . . Better ship, anyway.

  Fassin was being carried within a sort of transparent, braced sack by two big creatures like giant eight-legged dogs in mirror-armour, one at either end. He was still in the Velpin. The cut-through tube was a great pipe with a slanted hole, like the end of a massive syringe plunged into the guts of the ship. The two Voehn commandos flicked him and themselves up the tube and into the Voehn ship with near-effortless ease. Fassin, confused, senses ringing, unable to move, peered through the transparent material of the prison-stretcher and caught a glimpse of another two Voehn behind him carrying Y'sul, similarly wrapped.

  They went through a rotate-lock. The Voehn ship was dark inside, faintly red-lit. It was in hard vacuum, like the Sepulcraft. The wrapping round the little gascraft ballooned taut.

  Fassin, Y'sul and the truetwin were taken through another lock and into a pressurised, slightly heated circular chamber. The wrappings around them collapsed again. They were settled into something like dent-seats and clamped there with thickly shining restraints. They were half-unwrapped from their trans­parent covers, sufficient for them to be able to hear and see and speak. The warriors tested their bonds and then left.

  Fassin looked around as best he could. Y'sul and the travel-captain appeared still to be unconscious, Y'sul's ruff-mantles waving limply in the free fall and Quercer & Janath, still in the shiny coveralls, floating seemingly lifeless in the dent-seat. The chamber was plain, just a flattened ovoid, filled with a gas-giant atmosphere entirely breathable by a Dweller but that didn't smell quite right. Light came dimly from every surface. A hint of gravity built up, producing about a quarter standard.

  A door appeared and irised open, closing behind a trio of Voehn: two of the mirror-armoured commandos and another wearing just a torso-uniform decorated with various insignia and a holstered side arm. He stood and looked at the three pris­oners, the great grey snout-face and fist-sized multiple-lidded eyes turning fractionally as he directed his attention from one to another. He arched his long body and flexed his back spines, raising all ten with what looked like a sensual motion. Blizzardskin on the Voehn's spines scintillated like a minutely shattered mirror.

  Fassin, trying hard not to lose consciousness again, thought dreamily of the screen series he'd watched as a child - Attack Squad Voehn. Had that been its name? - and struggled to recall what the uniforms and insignia might indicate, remembering only slowly. The Voehn in the uniform was a Prime Commander. A multi-talent. Top guy here, certainly. Significantly over-ranked for a ship this size, unless it was on a special mission. (Oh-oh.)

  One of the mirror-armour soldiers waved a hand-held instru­ment at them, watching a display. He barely glanced at the results from Fassin and Y'sul, then did a double take when the device was aimed at Quercer & Janath. He altered a few controls, swept the machine over the truetwin's still lifeless-looking body again and said something to the Voehn commander, who moved over, looked at the display and made a small swaying motion with his head. He clicked the machine off and came over to the pris­oners, saying something as though to one of his decorations.

  The restraints holding the gascraft and the two Dweller bodies slid back into the floor. The Voehn commander took off a glove and ran one leathery-looking hand over the surface of the little gascraft, then Y'sul's carapace, then felt the shiny membrane covering Quercer & Janath. He looked for and found a catch and opened the coverall up so that it hung down over the trans­parent material the prisoners had all been trussed in. The commander looked very closely at Quercer & Janath's signal skin, and seemed to sniff it.

  He looked at Fassin. 'You're awake already.' His voice was quiet, with a deep, gurgling quality. 'Reply.'

  'I'm awake,' Fassin acknowledged. He tried moving his left manipulator. More errordamage messages. He moved his right manipulator and shifted fractionally in the dent-seat. Aside from the partial constriction of the transparent material covering the gascraft's rear, he was actually fairly free to move; even the pris­oner-wrap felt like it would shuck off without too much diffi­culty.

  The Voehn reached for something in his uniform pocket and waved it at Y'sul, who jerked once and then shook for a few moments, fringe mantles stiffening and limbs quivering. 'Warrgh,' he said.

  The commander went to point the device at Quercer & Janath, who said quite cheerfully, 'Already awake actually, thanks all the same.'

  The Voehn looked through slitted eyes at the truetwin for a moment, then pocketed the device again and moved back to take in the view of all three prisoners. The two mirror-armoured guards stood on either side of where the door had appeared.

  The commander sat back a fraction, resting on his rear legs and tail, crossing his forearms.

  'To the point. I am Commander Inialcah of the Summed Fleet Special Forces Division Ultra-Ship Protreptic. You are, in every sense, mine. We know what you have been looking for. We have been waiting for somebody to come here. We are combing your ship for data, hidden or otherwise, but we don't expect to find anything germane. We have authority covering all eventualities. That means we can do anything we want with or to you. That latitude will not need to be exploited if you cooperate fully and answer any questions honestly and completely. Now. You are the Dwellers known as Y'sul and Quercer & Janath, and the human Fassin Taak, correct?'

  Y'sul grunted.

  'Hi,' the travelcaptain replied.

  'Correct,' Fassin said. He could see Y'sul moving, working his body as though to get rid of the prison-wrap. Oh, no, don't do this, he thought. He was about to say it when—

  'Who the fuck do you fucking think you are, you piratical pipsqueak?' Y'sul bellowed. The Dweller wriggled free from the transparent material and floated above the dent-seat.

  The two guards by the doorway didn't even start to move.

  The commander, arms still crossed, watched as the Dweller roted up to him, towerin
g over him. 'How fucking dare you start attacking a ship and taking people hostage! Do you know who I am?'

  'Go back to your seat,' the commander said, voice level. 'That's probably quite good ad—' the truetwin began.

  'Go back to your fucking own planet!’ Y'sul roared, and stretched out a hub-limb to push the Voehn.

  The Voehn commander seemed to disappear in a blur of movement, as though all along he'd been a hologram and was now dissolving into individual pixels, rearranging into a grey cloud shot through with rainbow shards. Y'sul shuddered once and was sent sailing serenely back, colliding with the wall behind the dent-seat and the discarded prison-wrap. He hung there, then revolved backwards and fell slowly to the floor, spinning gradually downward along his rim like a coin on a table.

  The Voehn commander was sitting where and how he had been, unruffled. 'That was not cooperating fully,' he said, voice soft.

  'Urgh,' Y'sul said thickly. His carapace held two dents, one on each discus rim. There was another large, broken-looking bruise on his inner hub. That was serious damage for a Dweller, the equivalent of a broken limb or two and perhaps a compressed skull fracture for a human. Fassin hadn't even seen quite how the Voehn commander had hit Y'sul. He'd have gone back for a replay but the little gascraft's systems seemed to have been zapped and they weren't providing any recording ability. Oh fuck, he thought. We're all going to die and the only one they can torture properly is me. He saw himself peeled, prised out of the gascraft like a snail from its shell.

  Y'sul drew himself very slowly upright again, shaking slightly. He was mumbling something unintelligible.

  Quercer & Janath turned very slowly, looked at the Dweller and then turned back to the commander. 'With your permis­sion, sir?'

  'What?' the Voehn asked. 'Like to aid our fellow.'

  'Go ahead.'

  The travelcaptain let the prison-wrap fall to the floor, then moved over to Y'sul and guided the injured Dweller back to his dent-seat. Y'sul continued to talk; nonsense somewhere beneath the level of clear comprehension.

  With a noise like a sigh, the truetwin settled into its own housing, sparing one more look for Y'sul, still trembling and mumbling to himself.

  'We are not here to play games, we are here to discover truth,' the Voehn commander told them. 'The complete truth may save you. Anything else will surely be your ruin. The Protreptic is a Lustral Order special forces ship, generally charged with the hunting down and extermination of anathematics, that is, the obscenities commonly called AIs. We have unbounded authority on this mission as on all our missions. You are entirely within our control and will cooperate without question or reserve, or will suffer accordingly. I hereby deem you to have understood fully everything I have told you thus far.'

  'Ah, well,' Quercer & Janath said. The truetwin sounded mildly peeved, as though it hadn't been listening to the commander at all and had just heard something moderately discomfiting over an internal radio link.

  The instrument one of the guards had pointed at the three prisoners, now slung on a strap across his back, glowed through red to yellow and spat tiny sparks. The soldier moved almost as quickly as the commander, turning and twisting and pulling the device off his back to throw it to the floor. It skidded and thudded against the curve of the wall, smoking.

  The commander looked at it for a moment, then turned calmly back to look at the prisoners again. 'Neat trick,' he said, sounding amused. 'Who's the show-off?' He looked at Fassin. The two guards had levelled their guns at them, one pointing directly at Fassin, the other between Y'sul and the truetwin.

  'Ah, guilty, commander,' said Quercer & Janath breezily. 'But, heck, that's nothing.' 'Watch this.'

  The dim grey glow that came from every surface suddenly brightened wildly, leaving them all - the two Dwellers, the three Voehn and Fassin himself - seeming to float in the midst of an insanely bright flare of nova-bright light. It was as though they'd all been instantly dropped into the surface of a sun. Fassin heard himself yelp and felt automatics in the gascraft's senses snap their burn-out defences down.

  Very heavy again, and very suddenly.

  Fassin could see the light, he could swear. It was coming through the hull of the gascraft, hitting his closed, human eyes.

  Three great thumps sounded, shaking the air, echoing round the chamber. Somewhere in the middle of this he opened his visuals enough to see them all hanging, black blobs in light, and tiny bright crimson lines of still greater brilliance joining the Voehn to Quercer & Janath. Stupidly, for a moment he waited to see the travelcaptain explode or get thrown back, but the great circular shape roted back barely at all; it was the Voehn who were getting thrown all over the place.

  Sudden silence, sudden darkness. Blind again. Fassin let the gascraft open up the equivalent of one eye until it was at normal exposure. There had been some damage but he could still see. There was a surprising amount of infrared radiation. He looked at where it was coming from. It was coming from the Voehn. They glowed. One of the guards lay spread, opened, against the curved wall by the doorway. The other was face down, two forelimbs blown off, halfway between the door and the place where the commander had been. The commander was making his way, jerkily, towards the tall figure of Quercer & Janath. The commander's head had been half blown off, a side of skull hanging, twitching as he walked, held on only by connective tissue. He raised his arms and took a few more awkward steps towards the travelcaptain, then collapsed to the floor, loosening completely, like some­thing thawing.

  'Not fooling anyone,' a voice that might have been Quercer & Janath's said. The restraints slid up around Fassin and the still-shaking Y'sul. 'Hey-hey,' the travelcaptain said.

  The apparent gravity went crazy, shifting in an instant from one vector to another, ahead to astern in an instant. This had the effect of batting the Voehn commander from the floor to the ceiling and back again half a dozen times or so. Then he blurred into action. A half-headless grey whirlwind darted towards Quercer & Janath, almost quicker than the eye could follow.

  In an instant, all movement ceased.

  A tableau: the Voehn commander was held by the neck, strug­gling weakly, in the grip of one of Quercer & Janath's outstretched hub-arms.

  'Oh, how ever did we let it come to this?' the truetwin said, positively sultry. It snapped the commander's neck, then two thin blue beams cut through the gaseous atmosphere from near the travelcaptain's outer discus fringes, dicing the struggling, flicking, spasming body of the commander until there was almost nothing left to hold. The truetwin let the remains drop to the floor. There was, Fassin noted, a grisly kind of wetness involved in this action.

  'This is the ship's autonomous loyalty system!' shouted a voice from the gas. 'Integrity infraction! Integrity infraction! Self-destruct in—'

  'Oh,' said Quercer & Janath, sounding tired, 'really.'

  The voice from nowhere came back. 'This is the ship's autonomou—'

  Silence.

  'And ... so much for that.'

  'The fu's goin on?' Y'sul mumbled.

  'Ditto that,' Fassin said.

  'Ah, good,' Quercer & Janath said. 'Still with us.' 'A relief.'

  'Yeah, it's ours,' one half said cheerfully.

  The restraints slid back into the floor again.

  'Ah, where to start?'

  'The Voehn will be annoyed.'

  'The Mercatoria will be annoyed.' 'Not our fault.'

  'Didn't start it.'

  Quercer & Janath moved away from the dent-seat, over the body parts of the Voehn commander and the two guards, flicking the soldiers' weapons away from their bodies as it went. The truetwin hovered by the door.

  'Seriously,' Fassin said. 'What is happening?' He looked at what was left of the three Voehn who'd been in the chamber with them. 'How did you do that?'

  Quercer & Janath were still studying the doorway, which remained closed. 'We are not a Dweller,' the travelcaptain said, not turning back to look at Fassin. One of its limbs went out and prodded at the wall around
where the door ought to be.

  'Purely mechanical. Very annoying.'

  'Mr Taak, would you look after Mr Y'sul? Please?'

  Fassin floated out of his dent-seat, towards Y'sul. He put his right manipulator out.

  'Kin look after self,' Y'sul said, trying to shrug Fassin's arm off. He sighed.

  'So what are you?' Fassin asked.

  'An AI, Mr Taak,' the creature said, still tapping round the door, not obviously looking back at him.

  What? he thought. 'Two AIs.'

  An AI? Two fucking AIs? We're dead, Fassin thought.

  'Indeed, two AIs.'

  'Keeps one from going mad.'

  'Well, more.' 'For yourself.'

  'Hmm, as may be.'

  Y'sul moaned, then shook spastically. His sensory mantle ruffled. He looked about. 'Fuck, we still here?' Y'sul turned his attention to the dead Voehn. 'Fuck,' he said. The Dweller made a show of turning towards Fassin. 'You seeing this too?'

  'Oh yes,' Fassin told him. He looked at the creature feeling its way round the doorway. 'You're an AI? Two AIs?' he asked carefully. He could feel his skin crawl inside the shock-gel. He couldn't help it. He'd been raised since birth to believe that AIs were the single greatest, most terrible enemy humanity and all biological, living things had ever faced. To be told, however preposterously, that he was trapped in a small space with one - let alone two - was to have one small, deep, vulnerable part of himself feel absolutely convinced that he was about to be ripped to bloody tatters at any moment.

  'That's right,' Quercer & Janath said absently. 'And we've just taken over this ship.'

  'Except we can't get out of this damn room.'

  'Cabin. We can't get out of this damn cabin.' 'Whatever the.'

  'Most annoying. Purely—'

  '—Mechanical. You said.'

  'Ah. Here we go.' The travelcaptain struck a smart blow at a patch of wall. Then another. The door appeared and irised open, revealing a short corridor and another door.

  Quercer & Janath turned to look at the Dweller and the human in his arrowhead esuit. 'Gentlemen. We must leave you for a while.'

  'Fuck that, action hero,' Y'sul said. 'You go, we go.' Y'sul paused. 'Well, unless there's an ambush out there. Obviously.'