Iain Banks - Feersum Endjinn

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Iain M. Banks - Feersum Endjinn v1

FEERSUM ENDJINN

Published in 1995. ISBN: 1857232739

Contents

[T] links to a translation of that chapter

ONE 1 2 3 4 [T]

TWO 1 2 3 4 [T]

THREE 1 2 3 4 [T]

FOUR 1 2 3 4 [T]

FIVE 1 2 3 4 [T]

SIX 1 2 3 4 [T]

SEVEN 1 2 3 4 [T]

EIGHT 1 2 3 4 [T]

NINE 1 2 3 4 [T]

TEN 1 2 3 4 5 [T] 6 [T]

Terminology

ONE

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Iain M. Banks - Feersum Endjinn v1

Then, it was as though everything was stripped away: sensation, memory, self,

even the notion of existence that underlies reality - all seemed to have vanished

utterly, their passing marked only by the realisation that they had disappeared,

before that too ceased to have any meaning, and for an indefinite, infinite instant,

there was only the awareness of something; something that possessed no mind, no

purpose and no thought, except the knowledge that it was.

After that came a rebuilding, a surfacing through layers of thought and

development, learning and shape-taking, until something that was an individual,

possessing a shape and capable of being named, woke.

Buzz. Buzzing noise. Lying on something soft. Dark. Try to open

eyes. Something sticking. Try again. Light flash shaped 00. Eyes feel open, un-

ark. Smells; at once vital and decadent, lush with death-life, stirring some

memory, recent and forever-far at the same time. Light comes; a small… searching

for the name of the colour… a small redness hanging in air. Move arm, hand

coming up; right arm; noise of skin on skin, feeling coming with it.

Arm, hand, finger: rising, positioning, eyes focusing. Red patch of soft light

disappears. Press on it. Arm shaking, feeling weak; falls back to side. Skin on

skin.

Click.

Noise of buzzing, something sliding again but not skin on skin; harder. Then light

from behind/above. The small red light has disappeared. Then movement;

darkness above/around sliding back, face neck shoulders chest/arms trunk/hands in

light now; eyes blinking in light. Light grey-pink, shining down; blue-brightness

through hole in curved cliff above/around.

Wait. Rest. Let eyes adjust. Songs around, wall around/above (not cliff; wall),

curving round, curving over (ceiling; roof). Hole in wall where the brightness is

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called a window.

Lie there, turning head to one side; another hole, glimpsed over shoulder; goes

down to ground, and called doorway. Daylight there beyond, and the green of trees

and grass. Floor beneath where lying; pressed earth, light brown with a few small

stones set in it. The song is birdsong.

Get up slowly, arms back, resting on elbows, looking down towards feet; woman,

naked, colour of the ground.

Ground is quite near; might as well stand up. Sit up further, swivel (dizzy for a

moment, then steady), then feet/legs over side of… of… tray thing that has

appeared out of hole in wall of building, tray thing lying on, and then… stand.

Hold onto tray, legs feeling funny, then stand properly, unaided, and

stretch. Stretch feels good. Tray slides back into wall; watch it go, and watch part

of wall slide down to cover hole that was there, hole came out of. Feel… sadness,

but feel… good, too. Deep breath.

Breath makes noise, then cough makes noise, and… voice is there. Clear throat,

then say:

'Speak.'

Slight startle. Voice makes a feeling in throat and face. Touch face, feel… smile.

'Smile.' Feel something building up inside. 'Face.' Still building. 'Face smile.' And

still. 'Face smile good alive hole red wall me look door doorway sun garden, ME!'

Then the laughter comes, bursting out, filling the little stone rotunda and spilling

out into the garden; a small bird hurtles into the air in a commotion of leaves and

flies away upon a wake of song.

Laughter stops. Sit on floor in the building. Feeling empty inside; hunger.

'Laughter. Hunger. Me hungry. I am hungry. I laugh; I was laughing, I am

hungry.' Get up. 'Up.' Giggle. 'Giggle. Get up and giggle, me. I learn. I go now.'

But turn and look at inside of building; the curved walls, stamped-earth floor, the

polished rectangular stones with let-tering on them which are set into the walls,

some of them with little cups/baskets/holders. Not sure which one was the one

with the tray and the little red light now; not sure which one came from,

now. Sadness, a little.

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Turn again and go to door and look out over shallow valley; trees and shrubs and

grass, a few flowers, stream in bottom of valley.

'Water. I thirst. I have thirst, I am thirsty; I will drink. Go for drink now. Good.'

Leave the birth-place vault.

'Sky. Blue. Clouds. Walk. Path. Trees. Bush. Path. Other path. Sky

again. Hills. Oh! Oh; shadow. Fright. Laugh! Bigger bush. Flat grass. Thirsty;

mouth dry; think stop talk now. Ha-ha!'

On the morning of the one hundred and forty-third day of the year which by the

new reckoning was called second-last, Hortis Gadfium III, the chief scientist to the

pan-alignment clan Accounts/Privileges, sat on a steel girder and looked up at the

almost-finished bulk of the new Great Hall oxygen plant number-two liquifier unit,

and shook her head.

She watched a crane swing a palleted load of steel-plate towards the workers

waiting on the summit of the structure, while above the crane's delicate web-work

the ponderous mass of a lufter drifted, engines droning, delivering a new batch of

supplies. She looked around at the swarm of human-scale toil that was the new

oxygen works, where engines laboured and variously puffed, grumbled and

hummed, where machines crawled, floated, rolled or just sat, where chimerics

sweated, strained, lifted and pulled, and where humans too laboured, shouted or

simply stood scratching their heads.

Gadfium drew one finger through the layer of dust on the girder beneath her, then

held the begrimed finger up to her face and wondered if in that smudge there lay a

nano-machine capable of creating within the day machines which would create

machines which would create machines that would give them all the oxygen they

would ever need, and by the end of the season, not by the end of next year. She

wiped her finger on her tunic and looked up again at the number-two liquifier unit,

worrying whether it would ever work properly, and, if it did, whether there would be

any workable rockets for it to supply.

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She gazed towards the Hall's three vast windows, where - beneath high, rainless

ceiling-cloud - sunlight shone slanting down in great broad bands of dust-struck

radiance, illuminating a swathe of landscape a few kilometres away and sparkling

on the towers and domes of Hall City, two thousand metres beneath the

pendulously extravagant architecture of the Lantern Palace.

It was bright outside, and on such days you could deceive yourself that all was still

well with the world, that there was no threat, no shadow on the face of the night,

no remorseless, system-wide, approaching catastrophe. On such days one might

persuade oneself that it was all a huge mistake or mass halluci-nation, and that the

view last night, when she had stood outside the observatory dome above the

darkened Palace, had been a figment of her imagination, a dream that had not

vanished or been properly sorted by her waking mind, and so which lived on, as

nightmare.

She stood up and walked back to where her junior aide and research assistant were

waiting, conversing quietly in the midst of the oxygen works' constructive chaos and

looking about occasionally with a kind of disparaging indulgence at the undignified

physical clamour such mere technology required. And, Gadfium didn't wonder,

probably amusing themselves discussing what the old girl was doing, not wanting to

linger any longer than absolutely necessary at this building site.

There probably had been no need for her to attend the site conference at all; the

science in this project had long been settled and the burden of effort passed to

Technology and Engineering; still, she was invited to such meetings out of

politeness (and her rank at court), and she attended when she could because she

worried that, in the rush to recreate technologies and processes which had been

obsolete for thousands of years, they might have missed something, forgotten some

simple fact, overlooked some obvious danger. Such an oversight might be quickly

dealt with, but they had anyway so little time that any interruption at all to the

programme might prove disastrous, and while in her lowest moments she

sometimes suspected such an interruption was almost inevitable, she was

determined to do all in her power to ensure that if it did befall them it would not be

for want of any diligence on her part.

Of course, it would all have been a lot simpler if they had not been at war with the

clan Engineers, headquartered (and besieged) in the Chapel, thirty kilometres away

on the far side of the fastness, and three kilometre-high floors higher than the

Great Hall. There were Engineers on their side - just as there were dissident

Cryptographers, Scientists and members of other clans on the other side - but too

few, and like so many Scientists Gadfium had had to shoulder the extra burden of

trying to think on an industrially practical scale.

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As for her desire simply to sit and look at the plant, that was probably a function of

her doubt that what they were doing here was going to make any difference to their

plight even if it went exactly according to plan; she suspected that subconsciously

she hoped the sheer presence and scale of this industrial enterprise - and the

physical energy of its creation - would somehow convince her there was a point to it

all.

If that had been her wish, it had not been granted, and no matter how much of the

oxygen works filled her field of vision, always lurking at the edge of her sight she

seemed to see that hazy spread of darkness, rising from the night's horizon like an

obscene inversion of dawn.

'Chief Scientist?'

'Hmm?' Gadfium turned to find her aide, Rasfline, standing a couple of metres

away. Rasfline - thin, ascetic, stiffly correct in his aide's uniform - nodded to her.

'Chief Scientist; a message from the Palace.'

'Yes?'

'There has been a development at the Plain of Sliding Stones.'

'A development?'

'An unusual one; I know no more. Your presence there has been requested and the

relevant travel arrangements made.'

Gadfium sighed. 'Very well. Let's go.'

The piker swept out of the oxygen works and headed for East Cliff along a dusty,

winding road filled with heavy traffic both machine and chimeric. The groomed,

carefully landscaped parkland that had graced this part of the Great Hall for a

thousand generations had been ripped up without a second thought when the

Encroachment's implications had - apparently - been driven home to the King and

his more sceptical advisers; normally any such industry would have been banished

to the inner depths of the fastness, where there was little natural light and

objectionably ugly or effluent processes could safely be housed without disturbing

either the view or the air, and where only the desperate or outlawed would ever

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choose to live.

Still - for all the outrage, and the suicides of a number of gardeners and foresters -

when the King had decided such a plant must be built, and must be built quickly,

and under the eye of the Palace, the earth-movers - themselves newly constructed

for the purpose - had been sent in, and woods, lakes and glades which had

delighted all castes and classes for millennia were levelled under their ploughs,

scrapes and tracks.

The chief scientist watched the oxygen works disappear behind a wooded hill, until

the construction site was marked only by a haze of smoke and dust hanging in the

air above the trees. It would reappear as they headed out across the plain to East

Cliff; the oxygen works was sited on a small plateau and so visible from almost

everywhere throughout the ten-kilometre length of the Great Hall. Gadfium

wondered again whether the real reason the King had had the works built here was

to impress upon his subjects the full gravity of their situation, and give them a

preparatory hint of the kind of sacrifices that would need to be made in the

future. Gadfium shook her head, tapped her fingers on the seat's wooden armrest

and opened a vent by the side of the window to let the warm air in. She looked at

the man and woman sitting opposite her.

Rasfline and Goscil had been with her since the start of the present emergency, ten

years ago, when science had started to matter again. Rasfline epitomised the

officer caste, and seemed to take pride in making himself as much like a machine as

possible; in all those ten years he had never called Gadfium anything other than

'Chief Scientist' or 'ma'am'.

Goscil - plump-faced, wild-haired, and whose tunic never seemed to quite fit

properly or ever be entirely free from stains - had seemed to grow more dishevelled

over the years, as though in response to Rasfline's severe tidiness. She had

uploaded some files from the oxygen works, and sat with her eyes closed now,

reviewing this information and occasionally making small involuntary noises;

tutting, hissing, snorting, humming. Rasfline set his jaw and looked away out the

window.

'Any more details from the Plain?' Gadfium asked him.

'None, ma'am.' Rasfline paused, making it obvious he was communicating, then

shook his head. 'As before; the observa-tory there has reported something unusual

and the Palace has granted their request that you attend.'

'Plain of Sliding Stones?' Goscil said, opening her eyes sud-denly. She blew hair

away from the side of her face, glancing at Rasfline. 'I heard some gossip on the

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science channel about the stones doing something weird.'

'Really,' Rasfline said drily.

'And how did this weirdness manifest itself?' Gadfium asked.

Goscil shrugged. 'Didn't say; there's just a filed report from some junior timed

about dawn that the stones were moving and something strange was

happening. Nothing since.' She glanced at Rasfline again. 'Probably been clamped

down.'

Gadfium nodded. 'Has there been much wind and precipita-tion up there lately?'

Both Rasfline and Goscil went still for a moment. Goscil answered first:

'Yes. Enough melt for them to move, and some wind. But…'

'Yes?' Gadfium said.

Goscil shrugged. 'The way that junior reported; said there was a… may I repeat it

verbatim?'

Gadfium nodded. 'Go on.'

Goscil closed her eyes. Rasfline looked away again. 'Umm,' Goscil said, '… Usual

identifiers; Plain of Stones Observatory, etc., then, quote: ' - her voice changed

here to something like a chant - 'something odd going on. Something very

odd. Oh shit. Let's see, right, general data first: wind blowing; north-west, force

four, precip; three mill yesterday, plain friction factor; six. Oh, look at them! Look

at that. They can't do that! They've never done that, have they? Wait till -

(unintelligible) - I'm calling the chief observer… filing this as is. Signing off.'

Goscil opened her eyes. 'Unquote. After that, nothing. People have been trying to

get in touch with the observatory since, but there's no reply.'

'When was the report timed?'

'Six-thirteen.'

Gadfium looked at Rasfline, who was smiling thinly. 'Has the Palace been in touch

with the observatory since?'

'I cannot say, Chief Scientist,' the aide replied, then, as though seeking to be

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helpful nevertheless, added: 'The message I received requesting your presence was

timed at ten forty-five.'

'Hmm,' Gadfium said. 'Kindly request that the Palace furnish us with more details,

and allow us to speak directly with the observatory.'

'Ma'am,' Rasfline said, and took on the glassy-eyed look of someone making it

politely obvious they were communicating.

Gadfium's status decreed that she was above the need for an implanted direct

status link, being one of those valued souls whose mind must be left free from the

distractions of constant inter-communication to concentrate on undiluted thought,

unless they chose to access the data corpus by some external means. She knew

she must accept this, but even so oscillated between a guilty pride in her privileged

position and an intermittent frustration that she so often had to rely on others to

furnish her with so many of the details her work required.

'We're to take a clifter up the East Face,' Goscil announced after a moment's pause.

'The King's own machine, just for us,' she told the chief scientist. 'They must want

us there very quickly.'

The caisson-train lumbered across the broken landscape of the collapsed Southern

Volcano Room; a line of huge, cylindrically rotund, multi-wheeled heavy carriers

interspersed with smaller vehicles and chimerics. Some of the larger chimerics, all

of them of the incarnosaur genus, carried troops; most of the other make-beasts

were considered at least semi-sentient, and were themselves soldiers, variously

armoured, impedimented and armed.

The other ground vehicles were all-drive holster-buggies, armoured scree-cars, one-

or two-gun landromonds and the huge multi-turreted tanks known as

bassinals. The struggling convoy accounted for a good sixth of the King's military

transport, and represented either a brilliant flanking manoeuvre to supply the

beleaguered garrison of troops guarding the workings in the fifth-floor south-

western solar, or a desperate and probably forlorn gamble to win a war that was not

only unwinnable but anyway pointless; Sessine had still to decide which.

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The Count Alandre Sessine VII, commander-in-chief of the second expeditionary

force, looked up and away from the slow-moving convoy of beasts and machines in

his charge to gaze at the gaping shell of ruined walls around them, and the revealed

topography of mega-architecture and cloud beyond.

Standing waist-high in the turret of the command scree-car, shaken this way and

that by the rough, trackless ground the convoy traversed, his body armour clunking

dully against the inside rim of the hatch, it took an effort to focus on the vast and

sullen grandeur of one's surroundings, and a further effort to dismiss the apparent

irrelevance of such scale to the more immediate task at hand (or rather at foot, and

paw, and wheel and track).

All the same, it pleased him to do so every now and again when the steam and

smoke-clouds cleared sufficiently, and he judged it no extravagance upon his

supposedly valuable attention; keener eyes and more extrapolated senses than his

would mind the progress of the convoy over such increments of time as he chose to

allow the wider view, and - after all - what was his silent, self-solitary mind left so

for (by the King's good grace) if not to attend to the greater world beyond the

vulgar intimacy of the immediate?

The collapsed Southern Volcano Room was really many rooms, and several levels of

them, too; the walls still standing formed a huge extra curtain of cliff in the shape

of a C between ten and thirteen kilometres in diameter and one and six kilometres

in height. The crumpled ground the convoy moved across with such exquisite

slowness was the wreckage of five or six floors, compressed by the cataclysm that

had befallen this section of the fastness to a height of less than two great storeys,

and was still shaken every year or so by smaller earthquakes. Steam and smoke

drifted from a hundred different cracks and fissures across the crazily tilted

geography of the room, and when dispersing winds did not whip whorling through

the vast cauldron, the air was filled with the smell of sulphur.

It was a moderately calm day now, and the clouds of yellow-tinged smoke and

brightly white steam that drifted over this tortured legacy of landscape provided

cover for the convoy's painstaking progress, even if they also sporadically

prevented one from witnessing the full majesty of the great castle beyond.

Sessine looked behind him, through the high hanging valley that was the breach in

the fortress structure created by the buried volcano. The curtain walls made a

wavy line on the landscape, blue with distance beyond the hazily glimpsed forests,

lakes and parkland of the outer bailey. Beyond was only the vaguest hint of the

hills and plains of the provinces that made up Xtremadur.

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IainM.Banks-FeersumEndjinnv1FEERSUMENDJINNPublishedin1995.ISBN:1857232739Contents[T]linkstoatranslationofthatchapterONE1234[T]TWO1234[T]THREE1234[T]FOUR1234[T]FIVE1234[T]SIX1234[T]SEVEN1234[T]EIGHT1234[T]NINE1234[T]TEN12345[T]6[T]TerminologyONEfile:///F|/rah/Iain%20Banks/Banks,%20Iain%20-%20Feersum%...

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