Feersum Endjinn (15 page)
Authors: Iain M. Banks
An Army scree-car had jolted them to where a hole let into one wall led to a tunnel and a restricted funicular; they exited to the sixth level on a broad shelf where subsistence farms made the most of the cold and still thin atmosphere and the light came from broad, full-length windows looking out onto a sea of air where little puffy clouds sat like white islands.
A hydrovator had lowered them to the floor and a piker swept them between machine-tended fields to the terminus of the clifter they had ascended in. The tethered balloon had vented gas and sunk quickly through the next three levels, their ears popping as they entered a sunny farm room, a shady suburb solar and then an artificially lit industrial chamber two concentrics in from the Great Hall. They had passed through dark, deserted, outlaw chambers beneath Engineer-controlled room-space in a fast armoured monorail and ascended to the Sortileger’s office - an old yamen housed within a piscina in the sunlit eastern chapel - by airship.
The Sortileger Xemetrio met them at the dock, alone. ‘Madam Chief Scientist,’ he said, taking her hands. ‘Thank you for coming.’
‘My pleasure,’ she murmured, smiling at him, then looking down and taking her hands from his. ‘I think you know my staff; secretary Rasfline, scientific aide Goscil.’
‘A delight, as ever,’ the Sortileger said, nodding. He was a tall barrel of a man, and another near-contemporary of the chief scientist. His face was much lined but still firm and his hair was a convincing jet-black.
Rasfline and Goscil returned the nod, Rasfline with a knowing smirk to Goscil which she did not acknowledge.
‘You seem to be much in demand, Chief Scientist,’ Xemetrio said as he led them to the doors.
‘Indeed.’
‘Yes, I understand you’ve been busy elsewhere today.’
‘That’s right,’ Gadfium said, nodding.
‘Ah.’ The Sortileger looked like he wanted to inquire further, but as they stepped through the doorway Gadfium asked:
‘And what may we do here? Have you another of your ... glitches, Sortileger?’
Xemetrio nodded. ‘It is the same problem, Chief Scientist, and my staff seem unable to divine the source. Security maintain it cannot be deliberate falsification by an operative, Cryptography insist everything is in order at their end, therefore the problem must lie here. Two days ago we predicted a cryptosauric event which did not happen and today we failed to foresee the assassination of a ... well, somebody important. If this goes on we’ll soon be unable to forecast the weather ...’
Goscil stood, her back stiff. She rubbed her eyes and stretched. ‘No. If there’s anything here, I can’t see it.’
Gadfium turned away from the wall display. She watched the other woman make circling motions with her arms. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘I think after this morning’s rather pathetic fainting fit I’ve regained a little self-respect, keeping you two youngsters up this late.’ She smiled, then she too yawned. ‘There,’ she laughed. ‘Time for us all to head bedwards.’ She looked at Rasfline and nodded at the wall screen, which switched off.
They were in the display room of the Sortileger’s office library, surrounded by records and accounts committed to almost every type of storage medium known to history.
‘I’m not really tired, ma’am,’ Rasfline said, sitting up sharply. ‘I could continue to—’
‘Well,
I’m
tired, Rasfline,’ she told him. ‘I think we’ll all benefit from some sleep. It’s been a long day. Perhaps in the morning when we’re refreshed we might spot something.’
I’m
tired, Rasfline,’ she told him. ‘I think we’ll all benefit from some sleep. It’s been a long day. Perhaps in the morning when we’re refreshed we might spot something.’
‘Perhaps, Chief Scientist,’ Rasfline said, reluctantly. He stood up, straightened his uniform and blinked rapidly, as though still trying to wake himself up.
Goscil rubbed absently at a stain on her tunic. ‘Do you think the Sortileger is telling us the whole truth?’ she asked, yawning. Rasfline shot her a look.
‘I think we have to assume that,’ Gadfium said reasonably, folding her note-file.
- The Sortileger, thought the King. He should be asleep by now.
Adijine left the chief scientist and her aides and shifted to Xemetrio’s bed chamber. The old fellow was indeed asleep, and his head lay on a pillow which contained a receptor net.
... flying above a blue sea, blue wings beating on a warm wind; a green isle beneath, naked women languorous on the black sand, standing and pointing and shading their eyes at him as he wheeled and turned back towards them—
- Lucid dreaming again. Adijine had been in the Sortileger’s sleeping mind before and always found the same thing: some erotic adventure, shallow, and ultimately more concealing than revealing.
He switched back to the others, and into Rasfline’s mind, in time to hear him saying, ‘Goodnight, ma’am,’ and catch a fleeting, caricatured image of two old bodies coupling against a wall. Rasfline smirked at Goscil as they went to their separate rooms and Gadfium walked to hers. This time, Goscil returned the glance.
The King, intrigued by those looks, followed Gadfium by using some of the static cameras located throughout the yamen.
The chief scientist went to her own room, disrobed, washed quickly, perfumed her stocky, grey-haired old body (good if obviously artificially maintained skin tone, the King noted, and breasts of such undeniable if assisted presence they were almost intimidating), slipped on a generously proportioned negligee, then checked the door monitor and slipped out of the room and along the darkened corridor.
Ah-
ha,
thought the King, following her to the Sortileger’s own chambers.
ha,
thought the King, following her to the Sortileger’s own chambers.
Gadfium sat on the bed of the Sortileger Xemetrio, who had woken at her gentle knock on his door. A soft light shone from above the bed. The Sortileger sat up, took the chief scientist tenderly in his arms and kissed her. He reached behind her and undid her hair. Then he pressed her back so that her head lay near the foot of the bed, her long grey hair like veins of silver on the sheets under the footboard and her feet resting on a pillow.
- Damn! thought Adijine, who’d had to shift to a ceiling camera the instant Xemetrio had sat up and his head had left the pillow with the receptor net.
The Sortileger smiled down at Gadfium, then pulled the sheet up and over, covering both of them. The light went out.
The King cut away again, disappointed. He could have watched in IR from a concealed chamber camera but all he’d have seen was lumps moving under a sheet. It was a lot less fun than being in somebody’s head.
Back in his own bed, Adijine looked down at his own hesitant tumescence, wondering if the Sortileger was simply making up the glitches in his forecasting department just to conduct these trysts with the chief scientist. Cause for concern. Perhaps dereliction of duty, especially in these straitened times. He’d let it pass this time but have Security keep an eye on the man. As for Gadfium, if anything she worked too hard and the King reckoned a little recreational fornication would do her no harm whatsoever.
He stroked his erection. He looked at the curvaceous shapes lying to either side of him.
Hmm; he was still a
little
tired.
little
tired.
Perhaps if he woke just one of the Luge twins ...
The pen left lines of coolly luminous ink on the tiny pad Xemetrio had hidden under the sheets.
Good to see you again. Sometime we must do this for real!
You always say that.
Always mean it. What IS that perfume?
Enough. To business.
Funny name for a ... No tickling!
There’s been a signal from the tower.
I guessed: why I called.
She pulled the tiny tube that was the copied message from the hem of her nightdress. She handed it to him; he unrolled the flimsy and stared at the glowing letters.
3
Sessine walked through the darkened town, uphill and away from the direction of the ocean tunnel. A few people passed him in the quiet streets, but all avoided his eye. He reached the walls of the cavern - not rock but small glazed white tiles with networks of crazed cracks in them like little burst blood-vessels of black - where he turned left and walked until he reached the spill-sluice. It was a huge tunnel sloped at forty-five degrees or so, and from it, cascading down a series of steeply banked terraces, tipped a dirty froth of water which disappeared under a bridge and then wound away in a culvert towards the centre of the town and the docks beyond.
The tunnel was shaped like an inverted U and was perhaps ten metres across; steps led up the near side, separated from the rushing water only by a thin iron rail supported by spindly, rusting rods. Weak yellow lamps lit the tunnel roof sporadically, disappearing into the distance with no hint of any further light.
He started up the slope, and soon lost count of the steps and the time. He passed one man coming down, crying, and another lying snoring on the steps.
He came to the smoking-tavern called the Half-way House. It was just a door in the wall of the tunnel and a sign. He opened the door and found a quiet place scarcely lighter than the tunnel outside. A few people sat in booths and at tables; some looked up at him as he came in, then looked away again. A steady murmuring filled the air.
The circular bar held open shelves stacked with miniature braziers, smoking funnels and ornamental narghiles. It was tended by a hopfgeist in the shape of a tall, thin woman dressed all in black, with black, tied-back hair and dark, hooded eyes.
He walked towards the woman. She watched him, then beckoned him round to the rear of the bar, where there was a hatch cut out of the circle.
‘Sir, I was told long ago you might stop by,’ she said quietly. Her voice was flat and weary. ‘Have you anything to say to me?’
‘Yes, I have,’ he said.
‘Nosce teipsum.’
‘Nosce teipsum.’
It was his most-secret code, the one he had thought of once, a long time ago, in his first ever life, in case he ever needed some already-remembered code quickly one day. It was one he had never committed to any other form of storage other than his own memory and never told to anybody else, except this woman, assuming his previous self had been telling the truth in the note he’d found in the hotel room in Oubliette.
The tall woman nodded. ‘That’s as it should be,’ she said, and sounded almost disappointed. She took a key from a chain round her neck and opened a small drawer set into the thickness of the bar counter. ‘Here.’ She handed him a small clay pipe, already charged. ‘I think this is what you desire.’ She put her hands on the counter, looking downwards.
‘Thank you,’ he told her. She nodded, not looking up.
He retreated to a dark, secluded booth lit by a small oil lamp set into the rock wall. He took a twisted paper spill from a nook to the side of the lamp and lit the pipe, drawing deeply on the thick, pungent smoke.
The bar faded slowly as though filling with smoke from the pipe. The murmuring rose to an ignorable roar; his head felt like a revolving planet, speeding up and shaking off its wrapping of atmosphere as if it was some excess piece of clothing, before disintegrating entirely and throwing him into space.
It was the day of the great curtain-wall road-race, held every year at the summer solstice. The race started from the western barbican, where the pits were housed and the majority of the great cars were garaged between race days. Banners and pennants flew from tents and caravans, temporary garage structures and anchored airships. A great crowd of people filled the network of scaffolded stands, bridges, stalls and viewing towers; cheers rang out across the marshalling areas and the smells of food drifted on the hot wind.
Sessine donned a light leather helmet and a pair of goggles and rolled down the sleeves of his shirt, fastening the cuffs to his sandskin gloves.
‘Best of luck, sir!’ the chief mechanic shouted, grinning. Sessine slapped her on the shoulder, then grasped the ladder and climbed, up through the damp smell of steam hissing from some venting valve, past the linking rods and the man-tall wheels, past the web of hydrogen pipes and hydraulic conduits webbing the main tank and on up to the curved top of the car. He waved down and the foot of the ladder was clipped up and secured.
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