Consider Phlebas (17 page)

Horza felt heavy and hot inside his suit, as the heat from the bomb’s flash seeped through from the surfaces which had been exposed to the initial fireball. His right leg hurt badly, somewhere below the knee. He could smell burning.

As the shuttle steadied and its course straightened, Horza got up and limped forward to the door set in the bulkhead, where the outlines of the seats and Lenipobra’s slumped body - now spread-eagled near the rear doors - were burnt in frozen shadows onto the off-white surface of the wall. He opened the door and went through.

Mipp was in the pilot’s seat, hunched over the controls. The monitor screens were blank, but the view through the thick, polarised glass of the shuttle’s windscreen showed cloud, mist, some towers sliding underneath and open sea beyond, covered with yet more cloud. ‘Thought you . . . were dead . . . ‘ Mipp said thickly, half turning towards Horza. Mipp looked wounded, crouched in his seat, hunchbacked, eyelids drooped. Sweat glistened on his dark brow. There was smoke in the flight deck, acrid and sweet at once.

Horza took his helmet off and fell into the other seat. He looked down at his right leg. A neat, black-rimmed hole about a centimetre across had been punched through the back of the suit calf, matched by a larger and more ragged hole on the side. He flexed the leg and winced; just a muscle burn, already cauterised. He could see no blood.

He looked at Mipp. ‘You all right?’ he asked. He already knew the answer.

Mipp shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, in a soft voice. ‘That lunatic hit me. Leg, and my back somewhere.’

Horza looked at the back of Mipp’s suit, near where it rested against the seat. A hole in the bowl of the seat led to a long, dark scar on the suit surface. Horza looked down at the flight-deck floor. ‘Shit,’ he said. ‘This thing’s full of holes.’

The floor was pitted with craters. Two were directly under Mipp’s seat; one laser shot had caused that dark scar on the side of the suit, the other must have hit Mipp’s body.

‘Feels like that bastard shot me right up the ass, Horza,’ Mipp said, trying to smile. ‘He did have a nuke, didn’t he? That’s what went off. Blew all the electrics away . . . Only the optic controls still working. Useless damn shuttle . . . ‘

‘Mipp, let me take over,’ Horza said. They were in cloud now; only a vague coppery light showed through the crystal screen ahead. Mipp shook his head.

‘Can’t. You couldn’t fly this thing . . . with it in this shape.’

‘We’ve got to go back, Mipp. The others might have - ‘

‘Can’t. They’ll all be dead,’ Mipp said, shaking his head and gripping the controls tighter, staring through the screen. ‘God, this thing’s dying.’ He looked round the blank monitors, shaking his head slowly. ‘I can feel it.’

‘Shit!’ Horza said, feeling helpless. ‘What about radiation?’ he said suddenly. It was a truism that in any properly designed suit, if you survived the flash and blast, you’d survive the radiation; but Horza wasn’t sure that his was a properly designed suit. One of the many instruments it lacked was a radiation monitor, and that was a bad sign in itself. Mipp looked at a small screen on the console.

‘Radiation . . . ‘ He shook his head. ‘Nothing serious,’ he said. ‘Low on neutrons . . . ‘ he grimaced with pain. ‘Pretty clean bomb; probably not what that bastard wanted at all. He should take it back to the shop . . . ‘ Mipp gave a small, strangled, despairing laugh.

‘We have to go back, Mipp,’ Horza said. He tried to imagine Yalson, running away from the wreckage with a better start than he and Lamm had had. He told himself she’d have made it, that when the bomb had gone off, she’d have been far enough away not to be injured by it, and that the ship would finally stop, the metal glacier of wreckage slowing and halting. But how would she or any of the others get off the Megaship, if any of them had survived? He tried the shuttle’s communicator, but it was as dead as his suit’s.

‘You won’t raise them,’ Mipp said, shaking his head. ‘You can’t raise the dead. I heard them; they cut off, while they were running. I was trying to tell them - ‘

‘Mipp, they changed channels, that was all. Didn’t you hear Kraiklyn? They swapped channels because Lamm was shouting so much.’

Mipp crouched in his seat, shaking his head. ‘I didn’t hear that,’ he said after a moment. ‘That wasn’t what I heard. I was trying to tell them about the ice . . . the size of it; the height.’ He shook his head again. ‘They’re dead, Horza.’

‘They were well away from us, Mipp,’ Horza said quietly. ‘At least a kilometre. They probably survived. If they were in shadow, if they’d run when we did . . . They were further back. They’re probably alive, Mipp. We’ve got to go back and get them.’

Mipp shook his head. ‘Can’t, Horza. They must be dead. Even Neisin. Went off for a walk . . . after you had all gone. Had to leave without him. Couldn’t raise him. They must be dead. All of them.’

‘Mipp,’ Horza said, ‘it wasn’t a very big nuke.’

Mipp laughed, then groaned. He shook his head again. ‘So what? You didn’t see that ice, Horza; it was - ‘

Just then the shuttle lurched. Horza looked quickly to the screen, but there was only the glowing light of the cloud they were flying through, all around them. ‘Oh God,’ Mipp whispered, ‘we’re losing it.’

‘What’s wrong?’ Horza asked. Mipp shrugged painfully.

‘Everything. I think we’re dropping, but I’ve no altimeter, no airspeed indicator, communicator or nav gear: nothing . . . Running rough because of all these holes and the doors being open.’

‘We’re losing height?’ Horza asked, looking at Mipp.

Mipp nodded. ‘You want to start throwing things out?’ he said. ‘Well, throw things out. Might get us more height.’ The shuttle lurched again.

‘You’re serious,’ Horza said, starting to get out of the seat. Mipp nodded.

‘We’re dropping. I’m serious. Damn, even if we did go back we couldn’t take this thing over the Edgewall, not even with one or two of us just . . . ‘ Mipp’s voice trailed off.

Horza levered himself painfully out of his seat and through the door.

In the passenger compartment there was smoke, mist and noise. The hazy light streamed through the doors. He tried to tear the seats from the walls, but they wouldn’t move. He looked at Lenipobra’s broken body and burned face. The shuttle lurched; for a second Horza felt lighter inside his suit. He grabbed Lenipobra’s suit by the arm and hauled the dead youth to the ramp. He pushed the corpse over the ramp, and the limp husk fell, vanishing into the mist below. The shuttle banked one way, then the other, almost throwing Horza off his feet.

He found some other bits and pieces: a spare suit helmet, a length of thin rope, an AG harness and a heavy gun tripod. He threw them out. He found a small fire extinguisher. He looked round but there didn’t seem to be any flames and the smoke hadn’t got any worse. He held onto the extinguisher and went through to the flight deck. The smoke appeared to be clearing there, too.

‘How are we doing?’ he asked. Mipp shook his head.

‘Don’t know.’ He nodded at the seat Horza had been sitting in. ‘You can unlock that from the deck. Throw it out.’

Horza found the latches securing the seat to the deck. He undid them and dragged the seat through the door, to the ramp, and threw it out along with the extinguisher.

‘There are catches on the walls, near this bulkhead,’ Mipp called, then grunted with pain. He went on, ‘You can detach the wall seats.’

Horza found the catches, and pushed first one line of seats, then the other, complete with straps and webbing, along the rails fixed to the shuttle interior, until they rolled out, bouncing on the ramp edge and then spinning away into the glowing mist. He felt the shuttle bank again.

The door between the passenger compartment and the flight deck slammed shut. Horza went forward to it; it was locked.

‘Mipp!’ he shouted.

‘Sorry, Horza,’ Mipp’s voice came weakly from the other side of the door. ‘I can’t go back. Kraiklyn would kill me if he isn’t dead already. But I couldn’t find them. I just couldn’t. It was only luck I saw you.’

‘Mipp, don’t be crazy. Unlock the door.’ Horza shook it. It wasn’t strong; he could break his way through it if he had to.

‘Can’t, Horza . . . Don’t try to force the door; I’ll point her nose straight down; I swear it. We can’t be that high above the sea anyway . . . I can hardly keep her flying as it is . . . If you want, try closing the doors manually. There should be an access panel somewhere on the rear wall.’

‘Mipp, for God’s sake, where are you going? They’re going to blow the place up in a few days. We can’t fly for ever.’

‘Oh, we’ll ditch before that,’ Mipp’s voice came from behind the closed door. He sounded tired. ‘We’ll ditch before they blow the Orbital up, Horza, don’t you worry. This thing’s dying.’

‘But where are you going?’ Horza repeated, shouting at the door.

‘Don’t know, Horza. The far side maybe . . . Evanauth . . . I don’t know. Just away. I - ‘ There was a thump as though something had fallen to the floor, and Mipp cursed. The shuttle juddered, heeling over briefly.

‘What is it?’ Horza asked anxiously.

‘Nothing,’ Mipp said. ‘I dropped the medkit, that’s all.’

‘Shit,’ Horza said under his breath, and sat down, back against the bulkhead.

‘Don’t worry, Horza, I’ll . . . I’ll . . . do what I can.’

‘Yes, Mipp,’ Horza said. He got to his feet again, ignoring the ache of exhaustion in both legs and the stabbing pain in his right calf, and went to the rear of the shuttle. He looked for an access panel, found one and prised it open. It revealed another fire extinguisher; he threw it out, too. On the other wall the panelled to a hand crank. Horza twisted the grip. The doors started to close slowly, then jammed. He strained at the lever until it snapped; he swore and threw it out as well.

Just then the shuttle came clear of the mist. Horza looked down and saw the ruffled surface of a grey sea where slow waves rolled and broke. The bank of mist lay behind them, an indeterminate grey curtain beneath which the sea disappeared. The sunlight slanted across the layered mist, and hazy clouds filled the sky.

Horza watched the broken handle tumble down towards the sea, becoming smaller and smaller; it stroked a mark of white across the water, then it was gone. He reckoned they were about one hundred metres above the sea. The shuttle banked, forcing Horza to grab the side of the door; the craft turned to head almost parallel to the cloud bank.

Horza went to the bulkhead and banged on the door. ‘Mipp? I can’t get the doors closed.’

‘It’s all right,’ the other man replied faintly.

‘Mipp, open the door. Don’t be crazy.’

‘Leave me alone, Horza. Leave me alone, understand?’

‘God-damn,’ Horza said to himself. He went back to the open doors, buffeted by the wind curling back in from the slipstream. They seemed to be heading away from the Edgewall, judging by the angle of the sun. Behind them lay nothing but sea and clouds. There was no sign of the Olmedreca or any other craft or ship. The seemingly flat horizon to either side disappeared into a haze; the ocean gave no impression of being concave, only vast. Horza tried to stick his head round the corner of the shuttle’s open door to see where they were going. The rush of air forced his head back before he could take a proper look, and the craft lurched again slightly, but he had an impression of another horizon as flat and featureless as that on either side. He got further back into the shuttle and tried his communicator, but there was nothing from his helmet speakers; all the circuits were dead; everything seemed to have been knocked out by the electromagnetic pulse from the explosion on the Megaship.

Horza considered taking the suit off and throwing it out, too, but he was already cold, and if he took the suit off he’d be virtually naked. He would keep the device on unless they started losing height suddenly. He shivered, and his whole body ached.

He would sleep. There was nothing he could do for now, and his body needed rest. He considered Changing, but decided against it. He closed his eyes. He saw Yalson, as he had imagined her, running on the Megaship, and opened his eyes again. He told himself she was all right, just fine, then closed his eyes once more.

Maybe by the time he woke they would be out from under the layers of magnetised dust in the upper atmosphere, in the tropical or even just temperate zones, rather than the arctic region. But that would probably mean only that they would finally ditch in warm water, not cold. He couldn’t imagine Mipp or the shuttle holding together long enough to complete a journey right across the Orbital.

. . . assume it was thirty thousand kilometres across; they were making perhaps three hundred per hour . . .

His head full of changing figures, Horza slipped into sleep. His last coherent thought was that they just weren’t going fast enough, and probably couldn’t. They would still be flying over the Circlesea towards land when the Culture blew the whole Orbital into a fourteen million-kilometre halo of light and dust . . .

Horza woke rolling around inside the shuttle. In the first few blurred seconds of his waking he thought he had already tumbled out of the rear door of the shuttle and was falling through the air; then his head cleared and he found himself lying spread-eagled on the floor of the rear compartment, watching the blue sky outside tilt as the shuttle banked. The craft seemed to be travelling more slowly than he remembered. He could see nothing from the rear view out of the doors except blue sky, blue sea and a few puffy white clouds, so he stuck his head round the side of the door.

The buffeting wind was warm, and over in the direction the shuttle was banking lay a small island. Horza looked at it incredulously. It was tiny, surrounded by smaller atolls and reefs showing pale green through the shallow water, and it had a single small mountain sticking up from concentric circles of lush green vegetation and bright yellow sand.

The shuttle dipped and levelled, straightening on its course for the island. Horza brought his head back in, resting the muscles of his neck and shoulder after the exertion of holding his head out in the slipstream. The shuttle slowed yet more, dipping again. A slight juddering vibrated through the craft’s frame. Horza saw a torus of lime-coloured water appear in the sea behind the shuttle; he stuck his head round the side of the door again and saw the island just ahead and about fifty metres below. Small figures were running up the beach which the shuttle was approaching. A group of the humans were heading across the sand for the jungle, carrying what looked like a huge pyramid of golden sand on a sort of litter or stretcher, held on poles between them.