Banks, Iain M - Consider Phlebas

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Iain M. Banks
Consider Phlebas
An Orbit Book
First published in Great Britain in 1987 by Macmillan London Limited
This edition published in 1988 by Futura Publications Reprinted 1988 (three times), 1989, 1990
Reprinted in Orbit 1991, 1992 (twice), 1993 (twice), 1994, 1995, 1996 (twice), 1997, 1998, 1999,
2000
Copyright (c) lain M. Banks 1987
The right of lain M. Banks to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All characters in this publication are fictitious
and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead,
is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in
any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be
otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and
without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
ISBN 1 85723 138 4
Printed in England by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc
Orbit
A Division of
Little, Brown and Company (UK)
Brettenham House
Lancaster Place
London WC2E 7EN
Idolatry is worse than carnage.
The Koran, 2: 190
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.
T. S. Eliot,
'The Waste Land', IV
to the memory of Bill Hunt
Prologue
1. Sorpen
2. The Hand of God 137
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3. Clean Air Turbulence
4. Temple of Light
State of play: one
5. Megaship
6. The Eaters
Interlude in darkness
7. A Game of Damage
8. The Ends of Invention
State of play: two
9. Schar's World
10. The Command System: Batholith
State of play: three
11. The Command System: Stations
12. The Command System: Engines
13. The Command System: Terminus
14. Consider Phlebas
Appendices: the Idiran-Culture war
Reasons: the Culture
Reasons: the Idirans
The war, briefly
Dramatis personae
Epilogue
Prologue
The ship didn't even have a name. It had no human crew because the factory craft which constructed
it had been evacuated long ago. It had no life-support or accommodation units for the same reason.
It had no class number or fleet designation because it was a mongrel made from bits and pieces of
different types of warcraft; and it didn't have a name because the factory craft had no time left
for such niceties.
The dockyard threw the ship together as best it could from its depleted stock of components,
even though most of the weapon, power and sensory systems were either faulty, superseded or due
for overhaul. The factory vessel knew that its own destruction was inevitable, but there was just
a chance that its last creation might have the speed and the luck to escape.
The one perfect, priceless component the factory craft did have was the vastly powerful -
though still raw and untrained - Mind around which it had constructed the rest of the ship. If it
could get the Mind to safety, the factory vessel thought it would have done well. Nevertheless,
there was another reason - the real reason - the dockyard mother didn't give its warship child a
name; it thought there was something else it lacked: hope.
The ship left the construction bay of the factory craft with most of its fitting-out still to
be done. Accelerating hard, its course a four-dimensional spiral through a blizzard of stars where
it knew that only danger waited, it powered into hyperspace on spent engines from an overhauled
craft of one class, watched its birthplace disappear astern with battle-damaged sensors from a
second, and tested outdated weapon units cannibalised from yet another. Inside its warship body,
in narrow, unlit, unheated, hard-vacuum spaces, constructor drones struggled to install or
complete sensors, displacers, field generators, shield disruptors, laserfields, plasma chambers,
warhead magazines, manoeuvring units, repair systems and the thousands of other major and minor
components required to make a functional warship. Gradually, as it swept through the vast open
reaches between the star systems, the vessel's internal structure changed, and it became less
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chaotic, more ordered, as the factory drones completed their tasks.
Several tens of hours out on its first journey, while it was testing its track scanner by
focusing back along the route it had taken, the ship registered a single massive annihilation
explosion deep behind it, where the factory craft had been. It watched the blossoming shell of
radiation expand for a while, then switched the scanner field to dead ahead and pushed yet more
power through its already overloaded engines.
The ship did all it could to avoid combat; it kept well away from the routes enemy craft would
probably use; it treated every hint of any craft as a confirmed hostile sighting. At the same
time, as it zigzagged and ducked and weaved and rose and fell, it was corkscrewing as fast as it
could, as directly as it dared, down and across the strand of the galactic arm in which it had
been born, heading for the edge of that great isthmus and the comparatively empty space beyond. On
the far side, on the edge of the next limb, it might find safety.
Just as it arrived at that first border, where the stars rose like a glittering cliff
alongside emptiness, it was caught.
A fleet of hostile craft, whose course by chance came close enough to that of the fleeing
ship, detected its ragged, noisy emission shell, and intercepted it. The ship ran straight into
their attack and was overwhelmed. Out-armed, slow, vulnerable, it knew almost instantly that it
had no chance even of inflicting any damage on the opposing fleet.
So it destroyed itself, detonating the stock of warheads it carried in a sudden release of
energy which for a second, in hyperspace alone, outshone the yellow dwarf star of a nearby system.
Scattered in a pattern around it, an instant before the ship itself was blown into plasma,
most of the thousands of exploding warheads formed an outrushing sphere of radiation through which
any escape seemed impossible. In the fraction of a second the entire engagement lasted, there were
at the end some millionths when the battle-computers of the enemy fleet briefly analysed the four-
dimensional maze of expanding radiation and saw that there was one bewilderingly complicated and
unlikely way out of the concentric shells of erupting energies now opening like the petals of some
immense flower between the star systems. It was not, however, a route the Mind of a small, archaic
warship could plan for, create and follow.
By the time it was noticed that the ship's Mind had taken exactly that path through its screen
of annihilation, it was too late to stop it from falling away through hyperspace towards the
small, cold planet fourth out from the single yellow sun of the nearby system.
It was also too late to do anything about the light from the ship's exploding warheads, which
had been arranged in a crude code, describing the vessel's fate and the escaped Mind's status and
position, and legible to anybody catching the unreal light as it sped through the galaxy. Perhaps
worst of all - and had their design permitted such a thing, those electronic brains would now have
felt dismay - the planet the Mind had made for through its shield of explosions was not one they
could simply attack, destroy or even land on; it was Schar's World, near the region of barren
space between two galactic strands called the Sullen Gulf, and it was one of the forbidden Planets
of the Dead.
1.
Sorpen
The level was at his top lip now. Even with his head pressed hard back against the stones of the
cell wall his Dose was only just above the surface. He wasn't going to get his hands free in time;
he was going to drown.
In the darkness of the cell, in its stink and warmth, while the sweat ran over his brows and
tightly closed eyes and his trance went on and on, one part of his mind tried to accustom him to
the idea of his own death. But, like an unseen insect buzzing in a quiet room, there was something
else, something that would not go away, was of no use, and only annoyed. It was a sentence,
irrelevant and pointless and so old he'd forgotten where he had heard or read it, and it went
round and round the inside of his head like a marble spun round the inside of a jug:
The Jinmoti of Bozlen Two kill the hereditary ritual assassins of the new Yearking's immediate
family by drowning them in the tears of the Continental Empathaur in its Sadness Season.
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At one point, shortly after his ordeal had begun and he was only part-way into his trance, he
had wondered what would happen if he threw up. It had been when the palace kitchens - about
fifteen or sixteen floors above, if his calculations were correct - had sent their waste down the
sinuous network of plumbing that led to the sewercell. The gurgling, watery mess had dislodged
some rotten food from the last time some poor wretch had drowned in filth and garbage, and that
was when he felt he might vomit. It had been almost comforting to work out that it would make no
difference to the time of his death.
Then he had wondered - in that state of nervous frivolity which sometimes afflicts those who
can do nothing but wait in a situation of mortal threat - whether crying would speed his death. In
theory it would, though in practical terms it was irrelevant; but that was when the sentence
started to roll round in his head.
The Jinmoti of Bozlen Two kill the hereditary ritual . . .
The liquid, which he could hear and feel and smell all too clearly - and could probably have
seen with his far from ordinary eyes had they been open - washed briefly up to touch the bottom of
his nose. He felt it block his nostrils, filling them with a stench that made his stomach heave.
But he shook his head, tried to force his skull even further back against the stones, and the foul
broth fell away. He blew down and could breathe again.
There wasn't long now. He checked his wrists again, but it was no good. It would take another
hour or more, and he had only minutes, if he was lucky.
The trance was breaking anyway. He was returning to almost total consciousness, as though his
brain wanted fully to appreciate his own death, its own extinction. He tried to think of something
profound, or to see his life flash in front of him, or suddenly to remember some old love, a long-
forgotten prophecy or premonition, but there was nothing, just an empty sentence, and the
sensations of drowning in other people's dirt and waste.
You old bastards, he thought. One of their few strokes of humour or originality had been
devising an elegant, ironic way of death. How fitting it must feel to them, dragging their
decrepit frames to the banquet-hall privies, literally to defecate all over their enemies, and
thereby kill them.
The air pressure built up, and a distant, groaning rumble of liquid signalled another flushing
from above. You old bastards. Well, I hope at least you kept your promise, Balveda.
The Jinmoti of Bozlen Two kill the hereditary ritual . . . thought one part of his brain, as
the pipes in the ceiling spluttered and the waste splashed into the warm mass of liquid which
almost filled the cell. The wave passed over his face, then fell back to leave his nose free for a
second and give him time to gulp a lungful of air. Then the liquid rose gently to touch the bottom
of his nose again, and stayed there.
He held his breath.
It had hurt at first, when they had hung him up. His hands, tied inside tight leather pouches,
were directly above his head, manacled inside thick loops of iron bolted to the cell walls, which
took all his weight. His feet were tied together and left to dangle inside an iron tube, also
attached to the wall, which stopped him from taking any weight on his feet and knees and at the
same time prevented him from moving his legs more than a hand's breadth out from the wall or to
either side. The tube ended just above his knees; above it there was only a thin and dirty
loincloth to hide his ancient and grubby nakedness.
He had shut off the pain from his wrists and shoulders even while the four burly guards, two
of them perched on ladders, had secured him in place. Even so he could feel that niggling
sensation at the back of his skull which told him that he ought to be hurting. That had lessened
gradually as the level of waste in the small sewercell had risen and buoyed up his body.
He had started to go into a trance then, as soon as the guards left, though he knew it was
probably hopeless. It hadn't lasted long; the cell door opened again within minutes, a metal
walkway was lowered by a guard onto the damp flagstones of the cell floor, and light from the
corridor washed into the darkness. He had stopped the Changing trance and craned his neck to see
who his visitor might be.
Into the cell, holding a short staff glowing cool blue, stepped the stooped, grizzled figure
of Amahain-Frolk, security minister for the Gerontocracy of Sorpen. The old man smiled at him and
nodded approvingly, then turned to the corridor and, with a thin, discoloured hand, beckoned
somebody standing outside the cell to step onto the short walkway and enter. He guessed it would
be the Culture agent Balveda, and it was. She came lightly onto the metal boarding, looked round
slowly, and fastened her gaze on him. He smiled and tried to nod in greeting, his ears rubbing on
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his naked arms.
'Balveda! I thought I might see you again. Come to see the host of the party?' He forced a
grin. Officially it was his banquet; he was the host. Another of the Gerontocracy's little jokes.
He hoped his voice had shown no signs of fear.
Perosteck Balveda, agent of the Culture, a full head taller than the old man by her side and
still strikingly handsome even in the pallid glow of the blue torch, shook her thin, finely made
head slowly. Her short, black hair lay like a shadow on her skull.
'No,' she said, 'I didn't want to see you, or say goodbye.'
'You put me here, Balveda,' he said quietly.
'Yes, and there you belong,' Amahain-Frolk said, stepping as far forward on the platform as he
could without overbalancing and having to step onto the damp floor. 'I wanted you tortured first,
but Miss Balveda here' - the minister's high, scratchy voice echoed in the cell as he turned his
head back to the woman - 'pleaded for you, though God knows why. But that's where you belong all
right; murderer.' He shook the staff at the almost naked man hanging on the dirty wall of the
cell.
Balveda looked at her feet, just visible under the hem of the long, plain grey gown she wore.
A circular pendant on a chain around her neck glinted in the light from the corridor outside.
Amahain-Frolk had stepped back beside her, holding the shining staff up and squinting at the
captive.
'You know, even now I could almost swear that was Egratin hanging there. I can . . . ' He
shook his gaunt, bony head. ' . . . I can hardly believe it isn't, not until he opens his mouth,
anyway. My God, these Changers are dangerous frightening things!' He turned to Balveda. She
smoothed her hair at the nape of her neck and looked down at the old man.
'They are also an ancient and proud people, Minister, and there are very few of them left. May
I ask you one more time? Please? Let him live. He might be - '
The Gerontocrat waved a thin and twisted hand at her, his face distorting in a grimace. 'No!
You would do well, Miss Balveda, not to keep asking for this . . . this assassin, this murderous,
treacherous . . . spy, to be spared. Do you think we take the cowardly murder and impersonation of
one of our Outworld ministers lightly? What damage this . . . thing could have caused! Why, when
we arrested it two of our guards died just from being scratched! Another is blind for life after
this monster spat in his eye! However,' Amahain-Frolk sneered at the man chained to the wall, 'we
took those teeth out. And his hands are tied so that he can't even scratch himself.' He turned to
Balveda again. 'You say they are few? I say good; there will soon be one less.' The old man
narrowed his eyes as he looked at the woman. 'We are grateful to you and your people for exposing
this fraud and murderer, but do not think that gives you the right to tell us what to do. There
are some in the Gerontocracy who want nothing to do with any outside influence, and their voices
grow in volume by the day as the war comes closer. You would do well not to antagonise those of us
who do support your cause.'
Balveda pursed her lips and looked down at her feet again, clasping her slender hands behind
her back. Amahain-Frolk had turned back to the man hanging on the wall, wagging the staff in his
direction as he spoke. 'You will soon be dead, impostor, and with you die your masters' plans for
the domination of our peaceful system! The same fate awaits them if they try to invade us. We and
the Culture are - '
He shook his head as best he could and roared back, 'Frolk, you're an idiot!' The old man
shrank away as though hit. The Changer went on, 'Can't you see you're going to be taken over
anyway? Probably by the Idirans, but if not by them then by the Culture. You don't control your
own destinies any more; the war's stopped all that. Soon this whole sector will be part of the
front, unless you make it part of the Idiran sphere. I was only sent in to tell you what you
should have known anyway - not to cheat you into something you'd regret later. For God's sake,
man, the Idirans won't eat you - '
'Ha! They look as though they could! Monsters with three feet; invaders, killers, infidels . .
. You want us to link with them? With three-strides tall-monsters? To be ground under their
hooves? To have to worship their false gods?'
'At least they have a God, Frolk. The Culture doesn't.' The ache in his arms was coming back
as he concentrated on talking. He shifted as best he could and looked down at the minister. 'They
at least think the same way you do. The Culture doesn't.'
'Oh no, my friend, oh no.' Amahain-Frolk held one hand up flat to him and shook his head. 'You
won't sow seeds of discord like that.'
'My God, you stupid old man,' he laughed. 'You want to know who the real representative of the
Culture is on this planet? It's not her,' he nodded at the woman, 'it's that powered flesh-slicer
she has following her everywhere, her knife missile. She might make the decisions, it might do
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what she tells it, but it's the real emissary. That's what the Culture's about: machines. You
think because Balveda's got two legs and soft skin you should be on her side, but it's the Idirans
who are on the side of life in this war - '
'Well, you will shortly be on the other side of that.' The Gerontocrat snorted and glanced at
Balveda, who was looking from under lowered brows at the man chained to the wall. 'Let us go, Miss
Balveda,' Amahain-Frolk said as he turned and took the woman's arm to guide her from the cell.
'This . . . thing's presence smells more than the cell.'
Balveda looked up at him then, ignoring the dwarfed minister as he tried to pull her to the
door. She gazed right at the prisoner with her clear, black-irised eyes and held her hands out
from her sides. 'I'm sorry,' she said to him.
'Believe it or not, that's rather how I feel,' he replied, nodding. 'Just promise me you'll
eat and drink very little tonight, Balveda. I'd like to think there was one person up there on my
side, and it might as well be my worst enemy.' He had meant it to be defiant and funny, but it
sounded only bitter; he looked away from the woman's face.
'I promise,' Balveda said. She let herself be led to the door, and the blue light waned in the
dank cell. She stopped right at the door. By sticking his head painfully far out he could just see
her. The knife missile was there, too, he noticed, just inside the room; probably there all the
time, but he hadn't noticed its sleek, sharp little body hovering there in the darkness. He looked
into Balveda's dark eyes as the knife missile moved.
For a second he thought Balveda had instructed the tiny machine to kill him now - quietly and
quickly while she blocked Amahain-Frolk's view - and his heart thudded. But the small device
simply floated past Balveda's face and out into the corridor. Balveda raised one hand in a gesture
of farewell.
'Bora Horza Gobuchul,' she said, 'goodbye.' She turned quickly, stepped from the platform and
out of the cell. The walkway was hoisted out and the door slammed, scraping rubber flanges over
the grimy floor and hissing once as the internal seals made it watertight. He hung there, looking
down at an invisible floor for a moment before going back into the trance that would Change his
wrists, thin them down so that he could escape. But something about the solemn, final way Balveda
had spoken his name had crushed him inside, and he knew then, if not before, that there was no
escape.
. . . by drowning them in the tears . . .
His lungs were bursting! His mouth quivered, his throat was gagging, the filth was in his ears
but he could hear a great roaring, see lights though it was black dark. His stomach muscles
started to go in and out, and he had to clamp his jaw to stop his mouth opening for air that
wasn't there. Now. No . . . now he had to give in. Not yet . . . surely now. Now, now, now, any
second; surrender to this awful black vacuum inside him . . . he had to breathe . . . now!
Before he had time to open his mouth he was smashed against the wall - punched against the
stones as though some immense iron fist had slammed into him. He blew out the stale air from his
lungs in one convulsive breath. His body was suddenly cold, and every pan of it next to the wall
throbbed with pain. Death, it seemed, was weight, pain, cold . . . and too much light . . .
He brought his head up. He moaned at the light. He tried to see, tried to hear. What was
happening? Why was he breathing? Why was he so damn heavy again? His body was tearing his arms
from their sockets; his wrists were cut almost to the bone. Who had done this to him?
Where the wall had been facing him there was a very large and ragged hole which extended
beneath the level of the cell floor. All the ordure and garbage had burst out of that. The last
few trickles hissed against the hot sides of the breach, producing steam which curled around the
figure standing blocking most of the brilliant light from outside, in the open air of Sorpen. The
figure was three metres tall and looked vaguely like a small armoured spaceship sitting on a
tripod of thick legs. Its helmet looked big enough to contain three human heads, side by side.
Held almost casually in one gigantic hand was a plasma cannon which Horza would have needed both
arms just to lift; the creature's other fist gripped a slightly larger gun. Behind it, nosing in
towards the hole, came an Idiran gun-platform, lit vividly by the light of explosions which Horza
could now feel through the iron and stones he was attached to. He raised his head to the giant
standing in the breach and tried to smile.
'Well,' he croaked, then spluttered and spat, 'you lot certainly took your time.'
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2.
The Hand of God 137
Outside the palace, in the sharp cold of a winter's afternoon, the clear sky was full of what
looked like glittering snow.
Horza paused on the warshuttle's ramp and looked up and around. The sheer walls and slim
towers of the prison-palace echoed and reflected with the booms and flashes of continuing fire-
fights, while Idiran gun-platforms cruised back and forth, firing occasionally. Around them on the
stiffening breeze blew great clouds of chaff from anti-laser mortars on the palace roof. A gust
sent some of the fluttering, flickering foil towards the stationary shuttle, and Horza found one
side of his wet and sticky body suddenly coated with reflecting plumage.
'Please. The battle is not over yet,' thundered the Idiran soldier behind him, in what was
probably meant to be a quiet whisper. Horza turned round to the armoured bulk and stared up at the
visor of the giant's helmet, where he could see his own, old man's face reflected. He breathed
deeply, then nodded, turned and walked, slightly shakily, into the shuttle. A flash of light threw
his shadow diagonally in front of him, and the craft bucked in the shock wave of a big explosion
somewhere inside the palace as the ramp closed.
By their names you could know them, Horza thought as he showered. The Culture's General Contact
Units, which until now had borne the brunt of the first four years of the war in space, had always
chosen jokey, facetious names. Even the new warships they were starting to produce, as their
factory craft completed gearing up their war production, favoured either jocular, sombre or
downright unpleasant names, as though the Culture could not take entirely seriously the vast
conflict in which it had embroiled itself.
The Idirans looked at things differently. To them a ship name ought to reflect the serious
nature of its purpose, duties and resolute use. In the huge Idiran navy there were hundreds of
craft named after the same heroes, planets, battles, religious concepts and impressive adjectives.
The light cruiser which had rescued Horza was the 137th vessel to be called The Hand of God, and
it existed concurrently with over a hundred other craft in the navy using the same title, so its
full name was The Hand of God 137.
Horza dried in the airstream with some difficulty. Like everything else in the spaceship it
was built on a monumental scale befitting the size of the Idirans, and the hurricane of air it
produced nearly blew him out of the shower cabinet.
The Querl Xoralundra, spy-father and warrior priest of the Four Souls tributory sect of Farn-Idir,
clasped two hands on the surface of the table. It looked to Horza rather like a pair of
continental plates colliding.
'So, Bora Horza,' boomed the old Idiran, 'you are recovered.'
'Just about,' nodded Horza, rubbing his wrists. He sat in Xoralundra's cabin in The Hand of
God 137, clothed in a bulky but comfortable space suit apparently brought along just for him.
Xoralundra, who was also suited up, had insisted the man wear it because the warship was still at
battle stations as it swept a fast and low-powered orbit around the planet of Sorpen. A Culture
GCU of the Mountain class had been confirmed in the system by Naval Intelligence; the Hand was in
on its own, and they couldn't find any trace of the Culture ship, so they had to be careful.
Xoralundra leaned towards Horza, casting a shadow over the table. His huge head, saddle-shaped
when seen from directly in front, with the two front eyes clear and unblinking near the edges,
loomed over the Changer. 'You were lucky, Horza. We did not come in to rescue you out of
compassion. Failure is its own reward.'
'Thank you, Xora. That's actually the nicest thing anybody's said to me all day.' Horza sat
back in his seat and put one of his old-looking hands through his thin, yellowing hair. It would
take a few days for the aged appearance he had assumed to disappear, though already he could feel
it starting to slip away from him. In a Changer's mind there was a self-image constantly held and
reviewed on a semi-subconscious level, keeping the body in the appearance willed. Horza's need to
look like a Gerontocrat was gone now, so the mental picture of the minister he had impersonated
for the Idirans was fragmenting and dissolving, and his body was going back to its normal, neutral
state.
Xoralundra's head went slowly from side to side between the edges of the suit collar. It was a
gesture Horza had never fully translated, although he had worked for the Idirans and known
Xoralundra well since before the war.
'Anyway. You are alive,' Xoralundra said. Horza nodded and drummed his fingers on the table to
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show he agreed. He wished the Idiran chair he was perched on didn't make him feel so much like a
child; his feet weren't even touching the deck.
'Just. Thanks, anyway. I'm sorry I dragged you all the way in here to rescue a failure.'
'Orders are orders. I personally am glad we were able to. Now I must tell you why we received
those orders.'
Horza smiled and looked away from the old Idiran, who had just given him something of a
compliment; a rare thing. He looked back and watched the other being's wide mouth - big enough,
thought Horza, to bite off both your hands at once - as it boomed out the precise, short words of
the Idiran language.
'You were once with a caretaker mission on Schar's World, one of the Dra'Azon Planets of the
Dead,' Xoralundra stated. Horza nodded. 'We need you to go back there.'
'Now?' Horza said to the broad, dark face of the Idiran. 'There are only Changers there. I've
told you I won't impersonate another Changer. I certainly won't kill one.'
'We are not asking you to do that. Listen while I explain.' Xoralundra leant on his back-rest
in a way almost any vertebrate - or even anything like a vertebrate - would have called tired.
'Four standard days ago,' the Idiran began - then his suit helmet, which was lying on the floor
near his feet, let out a piercing whine. He picked up the helmet and set it on the table. 'Yes?'
he said, and Horza knew enough about the Idiran voice to realise that whoever was bothering the
Querl had better have a good reason for doing so.
'We have the Culture female,' a voice said from the helmet.
'Ahh . . . ' Xoralundra said quietly, sitting back. The Idiran equivalent of a smile - mouth
pursing, eyes narrowing - passed over his features. 'Good, Captain. Is she aboard yet?'
'No, Querl. The shuttle is a couple of minutes out. I'm withdrawing the gun-platforms. We are
ready to leave the system as soon as they are all on board.'
Xoralundra bent closer to the helmet. Horza inspected the aged skin on the back of his hands.
'What of the Culture ship?' the Idiran asked.
'Still nothing, Querl. It cannot be anywhere in the system. Our computer suggests it is
outside, possibly between us and the fleet. Before long it must realise we are in here by
ourselves.'
'You will set off to rejoin the fleet the instant the female Culture agent is aboard, without
waiting for the platforms. Is that understood, Captain?' Xoralundra looked at Horza as the human
glanced at him. 'Is that understood, Captain?' the Querl repeated, still looking at the human.
'Yes, Querl,' came the answer. Horza could hear the icy tone, even through the small helmet
speaker.
'Good. Use your own initiative to decide the best route back to the fleet. In the meantime you
will destroy the cities of De'aychanbie, Vinch, Easna-Yowon, Izilere and Ylbar with fusion bombs,
as per the Admiralty's orders.'
'Yes, Qu - ' Xoralundra stabbed a switch in the helmet, and it fell silent.
'You got Balveda?' Horza asked, surprised.
'We have the Culture agent, yes. I regard her capture, or destruction, as of comparatively
little consequence. But only by our assuring the Admiralty we would attempt to take her would they
contemplate such a hazardous mission ahead of the main fleet to rescue you.'
'Hmm. Bet you didn't get Balveda's knife missile.' Horza snorted, looking again at the
wrinkles on his hands.
'It destructed while you were being put aboard the shuttle which brought you up to the ship.'
Xoralundra waved one hand, sending a draught of Idiran-scented air across the table. 'But enough
of that. I must explain why we risked a light cruiser to rescue you.'
'By all means,' Horza said, and turned to face the Idiran.
'Four standard days ago,' the Querl said, 'a group of our ships intercepted a single Culture
craft of conventional outward appearance but rather odd internal construction, judging by its
emission signature. The ship was destroyed easily enough, but its Mind escaped. There was a
planetary system near by. The Mind appears to have transcended real space to within the planetary
surface of the globe it chose, thus indicating a level of hyperspatial field management we had
thought - hoped - was still beyond the Culture. Certainly such spaciobatics are beyond us for the
moment. We have reason to believe, due to that and other indications, that the Mind involved is
one from a new class of General Systems Vehicles the Culture is developing. The Mind's capture
would be an intelligence coup of the first order.'
The Querl paused there. Horza took the opportunity to ask, 'Is this thing on Schar's World?'
'Yes. According to its last message it intended to shelter in the tunnels of the Command
System.'
'And you can't do anything about it?' Horza smiled.
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'We came to get you. That is doing something about it, Bora Horza.' The Querl paused. 'The
shape of your mouth tells me you see something amusing in this situation. What would that be?'
'I was just thinking . . . lots of things: that that Mind was either pretty smart or very
lucky; that you were very lucky you had me close by; also that the Culture isn't likely to sit
back and do nothing.'
'To deal with your points in order,' Xoralundra said sharply, 'the Culture Mind was both lucky
and smart; we were fortunate; the Culture can do little because they do not, as far as we know,
have any Changers in their employ, and certainly not one who has served on Schar's World. I would
also add, Bora Horza,' the Idiran said, putting both huge hands on the table and dipping his great
head towards the human, 'that you were more than a little lucky yourself.'
'Ah yes, but the difference is that I believe in it.' Horza grinned.
'Hmm. It does you little credit,' observed the Querl. Horza shrugged.
'So you want me to put down on Schar's World and get the Mind?'
'If possible. It may be damaged. It may be liable to destruct, but it is a prize worth
fighting for. We shall give you all the equipment you need, but your presence alone would give us
a toe-hold.'
'What about the people already there? The Changers on caretaker duty?'
'Nothing has been heard from them. They were probably unaware of the Mind's arrival. Their
next routine transmission is due in a few days, but, given the current disruption in
communications due to the war, they may not be able to send.'
'What . . . ' Horza said slowly, one finger describing a circular pattern on the table surface
which he was looking at, ' . . . do you know about the personnel in the base?'
'The two senior members have been replaced by younger Changers,' the Idiran said. 'The two
junior sentinels became seniors, remaining there.'
'They wouldn't be in any danger, would they?' Horza asked.
'On the contrary. Inside a Dra'Azon Quiet Barrier, on a Planet of the Dead, must rank as one
of the safest places to be during the current hostilities. Neither we nor the Culture can risk
causing the Dra'Azon any offence. That is why they cannot do anything, and we can only use you.'
'If,' Horza said carefully, sitting forward and dropping his voice slightly, 'I can get this
metaphysical computer for you - '
'Something in your voice tells me we approach the question of remuneration,' Xoralundra said.
'We do indeed. I've risked my neck for you lot long enough, Xoralundra. I want out. There's a
good friend of mine on that Schar's World base, and if she's agreeable I want to take her and me
out of the whole war. That's what I'm asking for.'
'I can promise nothing. I shall request this. Your long and devoted service will be taken into
account.'
Horza sat back and frowned. He wasn't sure if Xoralundra was being ironic or not. Six years
probably didn't seem like very long at all to a species that was virtually immortal; but the Querl
Xoralundra knew how often his frail human charge had risked all in the service of his alien
masters, without real reward, so perhaps he was being serious. Before Horza could continue with
the bargaining, the helmet shrilled once more. Horza winced. All the noises on the Idiran ship
seemed to be deafening. The voices were thunder; ordinary buzzers and bleepers left his ears
ringing long after they stopped; and announcements over the PA made him put both hands to his
head. Horza just hoped there wasn't a full-scale alarm while he was on board. The Idiran ship
alarm could cause damage to unprotected human ears.
'What is it?' Xoralundra asked the helmet.
'The female is on board. I shall need only eight more minutes to get the gun - '
'Have the cities been destroyed?'
' . . . They have, Querl.'
'Break out of orbit at once and make full speed for the fleet.'
'Querl, I must point out - ' said the small, steady voice from the helmet on the table.
'Captain,' Xoralundra said briskly, 'in this war there have to date been fourteen single-duel
engagements between Type 5 light cruisers and Mountain class General Contact Units. All have ended
in victory for the enemy. Have you ever seen what is left of a light cruiser after a GCU has
finished with it?'
'No, Querl.'
'Neither have I, and I have no intention of seeing it for the first time from the inside.
Proceed at once.' Xoralundra hit the helmet button again. He fastened his gaze on Horza. 'I shall
do what I can to secure your release from the service with sufficient funds, if you succeed. Now,
once we have made contact with the main body of the fleet you will go by fast picket to Schar's
World. You will be given a shuttle there, just beyond the Quiet Barrier. It will be unarmed,
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although it will have the equipment we think you may need, including some close-range hyperspace
spectographic analysers, should the Mind conduct a limited destruct.'
'How can you be certain it'll be "limited"?' Horza asked sceptically.
'The Mind weighs several thousand tonnes, despite its relatively small size. An annihilatory
destruct would rip the planet in half and so antagonise the Dra'Azon. No Culture Mind would risk
such a thing.'
'Your confidence overwhelms me,' Horza said dourly. Just then the note of background noise
around them altered. Xoralundra turned his helmet round and looked at one of its small internal
screens.
'Good. We are under way.' He looked at Horza again. 'There is something else I ought to tell
you. An attempt was made, by the group of ships which caught the Culture craft, to follow the
escaped Mind down to the planet.'
Horza frowned. 'Didn't they know better?'
'They did their best. With the battle group were several captured chuy-hirtsi warp animals
which had been deactivated for later use in a surprise attack on a Culture base. One of these was
quickly fitted out for a small-scale incursion on the planet surface and thrown at the Quiet
Barrier in a warp-cruise. The ruse did not succeed. On crossing the Barrier the animal was
attacked with something resembling gridfire and was heavily damaged. It came out of warp near the
planet on a course which would take it in on a burn-up angle. The equipment and ground force it
contained must be considered defunct.'
'Well, I suppose it was a good try, but a Dra'Azon must make even this wonderful Mind you're
after look like a valve computer. It's going to take more than that to fool it.'
'Do you think you will be able to?'
'I don't know. I don't think they can read minds, but who knows? I don't think the Dra'Azon
even know or care much about the war or what I've been doing since I left Schar's World. So they
probably won't be able to put one and one together - but again, who knows?' Horza gave another
shrug. 'It's worth a try.'
'Good. We shall have a fuller briefing when we rejoin the fleet. For now we must pray that our
return is without incident. You may want to speak to Perosteck Balveda before she is interrogated.
I have arranged with the Deputy Fleet Inquisitor that you may see her, if you wish.'
Horza smiled, 'Xora, nothing would give me greater pleasure.'
The Querl had other business on the ship as it powered its way out of the Sorpen system. Horza
stayed in Xoralundra's cabin to rest and eat before he called on Balveda.
The food was the cruiser autogalley's best impression of something suitable for a humanoid,
but it tasted awful. Horza ate what he could and drank some equally uninspiring distilled water.
It was all served by a medjel - a lizard-like creature about two metres long with a flat, long
head and six legs, on four of which it ran, using the front pair as hands. The medjel were the
companion species of the Idirans. It was a complicated sort of social symbiosis which had kept the
exosocio faculties of many a university in research funds over the millennia that the Idiran
civilisation had been part of the galactic community.
The Idirans themselves had evolved on their planet Idir as the top monster from a whole
planetful of monsters. The frenetic and savage ecology of Idir in its early days had long since
disappeared, and so had all the other homeworld monsters except those in zoos. But the Idirans had
retained the intelligence that made them winners, as well as the biological immortality which, due
to the viciousness of the fight for survival back then - not to mention Idir's high radiation
levels had been an evolutionary advantage rather than a recipe for stagnation.
Horza thanked the medjel as it brought him plates and took them away again, but it said
nothing. They were generally reckoned to be about two thirds as intelligent as the average
humanoid (whatever that was), which made them about two or three times dimmer than a normal
Idiran. Still, they were good if unimaginative soldiers, and there were plenty of them; something
like ten or twelve for each Idiran. Forty thousand years of breeding had made them loyal right
down to the chromosome level.
Horza didn't try to sleep, though he was tired. He told the medjel to take him to Balveda. The
medjel thought about it, asked permission via the cabin intercom, and flinched visibly under a
verbal slap from a distant Xoralundra who was on the bridge with the cruiser captain. 'Follow me,
sir,' the medjel said, opening the cabin door.
In the companionways of the warship the Idiran atmosphere became more obvious than it had been in
Xoralundra's cabin. The smell of Idiran was stronger and the view ahead hazed over - even seen
through Horza's eyes - after a few tens of metres. It was hot and humid, and the floor was soft.
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