Feersum Endjinn (19 page)

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Authors: Iain M. Banks

BOOK: Feersum Endjinn
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‘There’s the town,’ Pieter said, nodding ahead to where a collection of white spires and towers were rising above the greenery. He glanced at his young passenger and shook his head. ‘Serehfa. Good grief. I hope I’m doing the right thing ...’
2
Chief Scientist Gadfium sat in the whirlbath with the High Sortileger Xemetrio; the pumps hummed, water frothed and bubbled, steam hissed from wall pipes and wrapped them in its hot, dense fog, and music played loudly.
They sat side by side facing each other, each whispering into the other’s ear.
‘They sound half mad, or
it
sounds half mad,’ Xemetrio said, snorting. ‘What is all this nonsense about “Love is god” and the “Hallowed centre”?’
‘It sounds formalised,’ Gadfium whispered. ‘I don’t think it really means anything.’
Xemetrio drew back a little in the swirling steam; it was so thick Gadfium could not see the walls of the bathroom. ‘My dear,’ Xemetrio whispered urbanely once his mouth was alongside her ear again. ‘I am the High Sortileger;
everything
means something.’
‘You see; that is your faith, even though you wouldn’t call it such; theirs is expressed in this quasi-religious—’
‘It isn’t
quasi
-religious, it’s
completely
religious.’
‘Even so.’
‘And Sortilegy boils down to a matter of statistics,’ Xemetrio said, sounding genuinely offended. ‘Anything less spiritual is difficult to—’
‘We’re moving off the point. If we ignore the religious trappings and concentrate on the information itself—’
‘Context matters,’ the Sortileger insisted.
‘Let us assume the rest of the signal is true.’
‘If you insist.’
‘Abstract: they confirm our fears concerning the cloud and the lack of any communication from the Diaspora, and they know of our attempt to construct rockets. They know about this idiotic war between Adijine and the Engineers and that it isn’t going to lead anywhere, and they seem concerned about some “workings” going on in the level-five south-western solar affecting the fabric - we assume they mean the fabric of the castle mega-structure itself.’ Gadfium wiped beads of moisture from her brow. ‘Do we know any more about what’s going on there?’
‘There’s a full Army unit there and they have a lot of heavy equipment, including something they dug out of the southern revetment last year,’ Xemetrio told her. ‘It’s all being kept very quiet.’ He leant back and adjusted a control by the side of the tub. ‘They built a new hydrovator into the Southern Volcano Room just to supply the garrison. That was where Sessine was heading when he was killed.’
‘Sessine was always reckoned one of those who might have been sympathetic to us; do you think—?’
‘Impossible to say. There was nothing to link us and him, though it is feasible he was assassinated for political reasons.’ Xemetrio shrugged. ‘Or personal ones.’
‘The signal spoke of “workings”,’ Gadfium said. ‘Mine workings, perhaps? What is beneath that room?’
‘The floor is unpierced; it cannot signify.’
‘But if the device found in the southern revetment ...’
‘
If
somebody had finally found a machine able to create new holes in the mega-structure and made it work and dragged it all the way up here, they’d be burrowing into the ceiling of the sacristy, in no-man’s land between the King’s forces and the Engineers of the Chapel.’
‘But the signal spoke of their concern over the fabric. If that is what they meant—’
‘Then,’ the Sortileger said, sounding exasperated, ‘there’s nothing we can do for now, unless we are to confess all to the King and his Security people. What else have you decided we can tell from your mysterious signal, assuming it’s not all some bizarre self-delusion on the part of the mad people who watch stones slide and call it science?’
‘I trust them.’
‘Like you trust the signal itself,’ Xemetrio said sourly. ‘We are conspirators, Gadfium; we cannot afford so much trust.’
‘We are not yet acting upon such trust and so risk nothing.’
‘Yet,’
scoffed the Sortileger, cupping water over his shoulders.
‘Whoever sent the signal,’ Gadfium went on, ‘believes the answer lies in the Cryptosphere.’
‘I’m sure the true answer does, along with every possible false answer and no way to distinguish between them.’
‘They appear to believe that, as we have always suspected, there is a conspiracy to thwart all efforts to avoid the catastrophe.’
‘Though why the King and his cronies should particularly want to die when the sun blows up is of course a trifle difficult to fathom. We’re back to speculating about ultra-secret survival projects or some bizarre fatalism.’
‘Neither of which is utterly unfeasible, but the act of the conspiracy is all that matters for now, not its origin. Lastly, the signal-senders confirm both that there is, or may be, an already designed-in method of escape—’
‘What, though? Switch on some galactic vacuum-cleaner? Move the planet?’
‘You’re the Sortileger, Xemetrio ...’
‘Huh. We daren’t run
that
question through the system, but if I had to guess, I’d stick with the obvious answer; there’s some part of Serehfa which conceals an escape device. That may be what the war with the Chapel is really about. Maybe the Engineers have access to it and Adijine doesn’t.’
‘Whatever. The signal also suggests that the data corpus itself may hold the solution and be attempting to access it.’
‘The mythical asura,’ the Sortileger said, shaking his head.
‘Such a method would make sense, given the chaotic nature of the crypt,’ Gadfium whispered. ‘The possibility of the data corpus’ corruption may have been foreseen—’
‘Amazing Sortilegy,’ Xemetrio muttered.
‘- just as was the possibility of a threat to the Earth that could not be dealt with by automatic space defence mechanisms. Physical separation of the information required to activate the escape device would ensure that no matter the delay it could never be corrupted by the crypt.’
‘Though it still has to be initiated,’ Xemetrio said. ‘But let’s not lose sight of the fact that all this supposition is built on the word of some historically, how shall I put it? ...
eccentric
observers of sliding stones, and that even if they are to be trusted, what we’ve actually got is an intellectually suspect, semi-garbled message originating from somewhere within the top ten kilometres of the fast-tower; we still have no idea who or what is up there and what their motives are.’
‘We also have little time to squander, Xemetrio. We have to decide what to do and how to reply. You’re sure you can get this signal and our appraisal to the others safely?’
‘Yes, yes,’ the High Sortileger snapped; Gadfium asked this question virtually every time they had information they had to spread around their network, and each time Xemetrio had to reassure that as High Sortileger he could move data within the data corpus without Security knowing all about it.
‘Good,’ Gadfium said, apparently relieved afresh. ‘Clispeir is going to heliograph an acknowledgment to the fast-tower’s signal and a request for more information, but we must make up our minds; do we act now, merely get ready to act, or go on as before, waiting?’
The High Sortileger looked sadly at the glistening mountains of foam bobbing around him. ‘I vote we wait for more information. Meantime, I’ll start a quiet search for your asura.’ He shook his head. ‘Besides, what could we do?’
‘We could find out what’s going on in the fifth-level south-western solar; that would be a start.’
‘I’ve tried that; most of the military don’t know.’
‘Perhaps the shade of Count Sessine could answer the question,’ Gadfium suggested.
Xemetrio looked sceptical. ‘I doubt it. And what if he remains loyal to the King? Quite possibly he is part of their big bad conspiracy and would report our little one to Security.’
‘A way might be found to talk to him without giving too much away.’
‘I suppose so,’ Xemetrio said, looking uncomfortable, ‘but I’m not doing it.’
‘I’ll do it,’ Gadfium told him.
 
Uris Tenblen raised his face to the cold, thin wind cutting across the frozen plain, blinked red-rimmed eyes, cocked his grey-skinned shaven head to one side and listened to the song in his skull.
It was different again today. It was different every day, if he remembered correctly. He wasn’t at all sure that he did remember everything correctly. He wasn’t sure he remembered anything correctly. But the song in his heart said that it didn’t matter.
The wind blew in through the vast windows two kilometres away across the plain. The windows were floor-to-ceiling, and broad; sometimes it seemed to Tenblen that it was better to think of three skinny pillars holding up that side of the next storey, not four broad windows in a wall. Above here there was only a broad piazza, open to the skies. Tenblen turned round and looked towards the other wall, where four similar apertures, also two kilometres away, let the wind straight back out again. Both sets of windows looked out onto a sea of white cloud.
He turned back; the wind brought hard powdery snow with it, probably not fresh but dislodged from part of the castle above here. The wind-blown granules stung the exposed skin of his face, neck, wrists and hands. He forced the visor and helmet over his head, fumbling raw-fingered with the straps. Chill weather, he told himself, but the song in his head kept him warm, or told him it did, which was just as good.
His dorm was at the edge of the camp; it was a shining aluminium box almost identical to the forty or so others which ringed the workings. This close, the workings themselves were just a huge sloped wall of rubble; from further away across the frozen marshes and low hills of the plain they appeared as a small, steep-sided crater.
From above they would just look like a hole; a dark pit, usually filled with yellow-grey mists, like a giant weeping wound.
Tenblen trudged through the rimed puddles on the rutted path leading towards the workings, fastening his tunic. His boots crunched through brittle white surfaces of ice into the hard brown hollows of the puddles.
The song in his head rose to a sweet crescendo just then and he gave a thin, grim smile, then made a small, involuntary ducking motion and looked nervously up at the ceiling a thousand metres above him.
He passed the bomb caissons, great closed iron cylinders coated with snow, their wheels sunk a little way into the cracked surface of frozen mud. Thus far, they had only two caissons, six small bombs and one large one. A new convoy was on its way, bringing fresh matériel. He saluted an officer who passed him on the path. He knew he ought to know the officer’s name, but he could not remember it. That didn’t matter; if he needed to talk to the officer or take him some message or order, the song in his head would remind him of his name. The officer nodded as he walked past, his gaze fastened straight ahead and his expression fixed in a broad and somehow desperate grin.
Tenblen climbed the steps by the side of the inclined plain. He ascended them in time to the song, and as he climbed he imagined that the King was looking through his eyes.
(Adijine, who was doing exactly that, experienced only very mild surprise at this point, and almost immediately felt oddly cheated that he hadn’t sustained some profound sense of alienation or momentary loss-of-identity.)
The King would look through his eyes and hear the song in his head; the song of loyalty, of obedience, of joy to have this part to play, and know that he was glad to be loyal, glad to be obedient and glad to be joyful. He could think of nothing more pleasant than to be transparent in exactly that manner, and to be seen to be the King’s loyal soldier. He got to the top of the crater-wall of rubble and started down the other side, towards the pit.
The fumes were already quite bad. The steam came drifting up the brecciated slope from the hole, wrapping itself around the scattered cisterns, pipes, valveheads, winches and gantries littering the incline. Sometimes the smell of the gases came with the steam, and you thought the cloud enveloping you would be pure fume and you almost panicked with only the song in your head telling you it was all right; other times the steam was far away when you picked up the stink and your eyes watered and your nose and the back of your throat felt rasped and burned.
He stopped at the quartermaster’s office. There was a ghost outside.
The ghost was dressed as some ancient judge or holy man. He tried to get in Tenblen’s way and shout something at him, but Uris just put his hand through the ghost and made as though to wave it out of the way as he stepped through it. The song in his head drowned out the ghost’s voice.
‘Bit nippy today,’ he shouted to the quartermaster. It helped to shout, over the noise of the song. The quartermaster was a large, red-faced man. He nodded as he issued Tenblen with his gloves, mask and respirator.
‘Wind’s shifted,’ he said loudly, coughing. ‘I’ve asked them to move me further up the slope but of course they haven’t done anything yet.’

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