Feersum Endjinn (31 page)

Authors: Iain M. Banks

BOOK: Feersum Endjinn

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‘We haven’t tried what I’m suggesting,’ he pointed out. ‘We have tried what you suggested and it’s failed.’

The woman dismissed this with a wave of her hand. ‘Well, we’ll keep her in solitary for now and see if that gets any results.’

Lunce just took a deep breath and snorted.

‘Come on,’ the woman said. ‘Let’s get something to eat. I have to think what we’re going to tell Oncaterius.’

Asura was left in a cell. She thought of it as a mirror cell because when she lay down on the bed and put her head on the thin pillow there was a cell in there too; that was the only place they would let her go to in her sleep.

So she was in two cells. It was a little like being in the tower in the first of the dreams she could remember, but less interesting. There was a tap for water and another tap which dispensed a sort of soup. Between the two taps was a cup chained to the wall. Also in the cell was a toilet and a bed platform and a chair platform, all parts of the wall. There was no window and no view, though there was a locked, tight-fitting door.

She slept a great deal ignoring the pretend, dead-end cell they offered her. Instead, when she dreamt, she recalled what had happened to her so far.

She remembered the view of the great castle, the journey on the airship, the train and car journey before that, the dream in the night at the big house, the things that Pieter Velteseri had asked her about, her walk through the garden from the vault and the strange dreams she had had before she’d awoken.

And it was as though there was something beyond those dreams too, something she knew was there but knew nothing else about save that it existed. The knowledge tickled her mind when she thought back to the time - instant or aeon - in the Velteseri family vault. There was something there, she knew there was, but like a dim light just sensed with the corner of the eye which disappeared when looked at directly, she could not inspect it more closely; the very act of attempting to do so had the effect of extinguishing it completely for as long as she tried.

She reviewed all that had happened to her in the short life she could remember. She wondered if there had been a degree of choice in the fact she had awoken in the Velteseri vault; most of the clan had been away and Pieter might have been chosen as somebody likely to help. She thought she had been right to trust him, and thought that the dreams she had had during the night she had spent at the house had been genuine dreams; something that had put her here had contacted her and told her what her purpose was.

She supposed she had been kidnapped by somebody who was not really Cousin Ucubulaire. These people must have recognised her name, or found out about her in some other way, and not wanted her to do whatever it was she was supposed to do here (assuming she actually had been taken to the big castle she had seen). Perhaps travelling under the name Asura had been a mistake.

And yet as soon as she’d heard Pieter Velteseri utter the word she’d known that was her name. There had been no feeling of warning, no niggling sensation that she might be doing something dangerous; instead she had recognised her true title and claimed it.

She thought about this. She had the impression that somebody or something had gone to great trouble to get her here. How silly not to realise that her name itself might bring her into danger.

But she was here (again, assuming) and she did not feel she had anywhere else she had to go. She was where she wanted to be. So perhaps she had been meant to be found by Lunce and the lady who’d called herself Ucubulaire, or by people like them. That made a kind of sense. They had her, but they had not succeeded in finding out anything she didn’t want them to know . . .

She decided she would wait.

She waited.

Gadfium felt she was an insect crawling across the floor of a dank cellar. Everywhere she looked there was garbage, showing up grey and ghostly in the not-quite totally dark space around her.

The whole first-level room was one gigantic rubbish tip filled with the debris of millennia. From pipes, ducts and chutes high on the walls and ceiling a constant rain of refuse, tailings, junk and trash pattered down. She picked her way across a heap of what looked like doll-size plastic sanitary ware, her feet sinking and sliding through the mound of miniature baths and bidets in a slough of breaking and crackling.

—Are you sure this is going to throw people off our trail?

—Positive. Bear right here. Not too far. That’s it.

Gadfium walked on, avoiding a pile of rotting babil fruit husks. She heard a series of crunches and crashes somewhere to her left, where she would have been walking if her crypt self hadn’t told her to bear right. She looked around the hills of rubbish.

—I’m sure we could recycle more.

—I suppose it will be re-used, eventually. Or would have been, but for the Encroachment.

A bright stream of yellow fire burst silently from a distant wall and fell slowly in a livid arc towards the raised floor of the lumber room, its colour changing as it fell from yellow to orange to red. A sizzling sound came from that direction, and then a distant roaring noise as whatever it was hit the surface.

—That’s pretty.

—Furnace smelt-slag.

—Thought it might be something like that. How are your researches going? Have you discovered anything else interesting?

—Goscil was the Security agent.

—Really? I always assumed it was Rasfline. Gadfium shook her head. You just never knew. - What else? she asked.

—I still don’t know who betrayed the group, but they’ve all been taken into custody except Clispeir.

‘Clispeir?’
Gadfium said out loud, and stopped.

—Please don’t stop here, there’s a hopper full of reject cerametal vehicle parts due to land where you’re standing in about a minute.

Gadfium started walking again. — You don’t think it was Clispeir, do you?

—I don’t know. She is due for some leave in two days; perhaps they are waiting for her to come to them. The observatory at the Plain of Sliding Stones is still cut off from normal communication so she would not have been able to find out about the others.

—If it was her, could the message we received from the fast-tower have been a Security trick, simply made up?

—Possibly, though I doubt it.

Gadfium walked on for a while across the flat bed of some long-dried tailings. Whistling noises from above and behind terminated in distant thumps which shook the dusty surface.

—Some Palace gossip, her crypt self told her. Our lot and the Chapel may be about to come to some sort of agreement.

—This is sudden.

—Apparently the Army had some supposedly war-winning scheme that didn’t work. Now we have no choice but to reach terms . . . Ah.

—What?

—Security. They think they have the asura.

‘What?’ Gadfium said, and stopped again, feeling herself fill with despair.

—Keep going. They could be wrong.

—But . . . so soon! Is everything hopeless?

—. . . No. However, I may have a change of plan for us.

—What exactly is this plan, anyway? I’m grateful to you for getting me out of the Palace, but I would like to know where you’re taking me, apart from into outlaw territory.

—Well, onward and upward from there, but first, I think now, deeper.

‘Deeper?’

—Deeper.

The neatly folded uniform appeared to have been washed but not repaired. There were still a few rips and tears in it. On top of the pile of clothing lay a pair of Army-issue boots, a belt and some complicated webbing, a mask and forage cap. The collection was held easily in one huge white furred paw; black claws extended a little on either side, bracketing the pathetic heap of effects.

The chimeric polar bear sat at one end of the long table in the committee chamber. The Palace civil servant officially in charge of the meeting sat at the other end, on a seat in front of an empty throne. Adijine had decided to stay away when he’d discovered what had arrived earlier in the diplomatic bag. The Consistorians all seemed to have found urgent appointments elsewhere as well, though like the King most of them were probably watching the events through others’ eyes, as the Chapel representatives would know.

The head of the Engineers’ delegation set the pile of clothing down on the table top. Adijine, sulking alone in bed, stared through the civil servant’s eyes, then switched to an overhead camera.

Looking carefully, the King could see little round holes in the grey uniform material and matching craters on the well-worn boots where acid had eaten away. He tried to feel some shock of recognition on seeing the Army-issue gear, but he hadn’t been paying that much attention when he’d been in the head of - he had to search for the name — Private Uris Tenblen.

One of the boots toppled and fell over, lying on the polished surface.

‘Your plan,’ the ambassadorial emissary rumbled, setting the boot upright again with one massive paw, ‘fell through.’

He looked round the others in his team, receiving smiles and quiet chuckles. The Palace team sat silently, though some moved uncomfortably and a deal of close table-surface inspection ensued.

‘We have,’ the polar bear emissary said, obviously relishing each loudly spoken word, ‘taken other precautions as well, but we shall be keeping a very careful and continuous watch on the ceiling above Chapel City, and not only have powerful sensors trained on the relevant area, but various missiles as well . . .’

Adijine swore. He’d half hoped the Chapel traitors would misinterpret the body which had fallen into their midst — maybe, he’d thought, they would assume the man had fallen from a hang-glider, or some apparatus that could climb along under a ceiling. But it looked like they’d guessed correctly.

‘And I must say,’ the polar bear said, drawing itself up in its seat and sounding appropriately sententious, ‘even though we thought ourselves by now inured to the thoroughly reckless nature of our opponents, we have been profoundly shocked and disappointed to discover the completely irresponsible and utterly senseless depths - or should I say heights?’ - the ambassadorial emissary showed his teeth and glanced round his appropriately appreciative team - ‘to which our previously at least ostensibly esteemed adversaries have been prepared to stoop to in their understandably increasingly desperate attempts to secure victory in this outrageously prosecuted, thoroughly unfortunate and - on our part - wholly unprovoked dispute.’

Adijine cut out there. That hairy white bastard was going to milk the situation for all it was worth, and doubtless at inordinate length.

He checked the representation of his private secretary’s suite. There were calls waiting. He selected that of the Consistorian with special responsibility for Security.

Gadfium negotiated the lumber room. A flight of rungs set into the wall led her to a door and a lift shaft with spiral stairs running round it. The elevator appeared from above, stopped and opened its doors. Gadfium ducked under the stairs’ safety rail and into the lift. She’d been hoping her other self had been kidding about going deeper but when the lift moved it was downwards, dropping her below ground level, deeper into the earth beneath the fastness.

—I’d better warn you there might be unexpected things ahead here.

—Such as?

—Well, people whose presence I can’t warn you about.

—You mean outlaws.

—That’s a little pejorative.

—We’ll see.

—No, let’s hope we don’t see.

—You’re right. Let’s hope we don’t.

—I’m going to put the lights out.

—Oh? Gadfium said as the elevator went dark.

—Help your eyes adjust.

‘Oh, and I’ve always loved the dark,’ Gadfium whispered to herself.

—I know. Sorry.

The elevator slowed and stopped, the doors opened and Gadfium got out into a darkness that was only just short of absolute. She could hear running water in the distance. Her feet splashed when she walked cautiously forward, arms in front of her, into what looked like a broad tunnel.

—Should be left here. Whoa. Stop. Feel forward with your right foot.

—It’s a hole. Thanks.

—Look left? Yes; two steps left then walk on.

—Wait a minute; are there any cameras here?

—Not down here.

—So you’re looking through my eyes—

—And I’m running an image enhancement program on what you’re seeing. That’s why I can see better than you can out of your own eyes.

Gadfium shook her head. - Anything I can do to help, apart from not keep my eyes open?

—Just keep looking all about, especially at the floor. Ah; here’s a door. Turn right. Two steps. Right hand; feel?