Consider Phlebas (48 page)

‘See this, Xoxarle?’ He held the drone up. It glinted in the lights of his suit.

Xoxarle nodded slowly. ‘It is a small piece of damaged equipment.’ The deep, heavy voice betrayed signs of strain, and Horza could see a trickle of dark purple blood on the floor of the ramp Xoxarle lay squashed upon.

‘It’s what you two proud warriors had when you thought you’d captured the Mind. This is all there was. A remote drone casting a weak soligram. If you’d taken this back to the fleet they’d have thrown you into the nearest black hole and wiped your name from the records. You’re damn lucky I came along when I did.’

The Idiran looked thoughtfully at the wrecked drone for a short while.

‘You,’ Xoxarle said slowly, ‘are lower than vermin, human. Your pathetic tricks and lies would make a yearling laugh. There must be more fat inside your thick skull than there is even on your skinny bones. You aren’t fit to be thrown up.’

Horza stepped onto the ramp which had fallen on top of the Idiran. He heard the being’s breath suck in harshly through taut lips as he walked slowly over to where Xoxarle’s face stuck out beneath the wreckage. ‘And you, you goddamn fanatic, aren’t fit to wear that uniform. I’m going to find the Mind you thought you had, and then I’m going to take you back to the fleet, where if they’ve any sense they’ll let the Inquisitor try you for gross stupidity.’

‘Fuck . . . ‘ the Idiran gasped painfully, ‘ . . . your animal soul.’

Horza used the neural stunner on Xoxarle. Then he and Yalson and the drone Unaha-Closp levered the ramp off the Idiran’s body and sent it crashing down to the station floor. They cut the armour from the giant’s body, then hobbled his legs with wire and tied down his arms to his sides. Xoxarle had no broken limbs, but the keratin on one side of his body was cracked and oozed blood, while another wound, between his collar scale and right shoulder plate, had closed up once the pressure was taken off him. He was big, even for an Idiran; over three and a half metres, and not thin. Horza was glad the tall male - a section leader according to the insignia on the armour he had been wearing - was probably injured internally and going to be in pain. It would make him less of a problem to guard once he had woken up; he was too big for the restrainer harness.

Yalson sat, eating a rationfood bar, her gun balanced on one knee and pointing straight at the unconscious Idiran, while Horza sat at the bottom of the ramp and tried to repair his helmet. Unaha-Closp watched over Neisin, as powerless as the rest of them to do anything to help the wounded man.

Wubslin sat on the pallet making some adjustments to the mass sensor. He had already taken a look round the Command System train, but what he really wanted was to see a working one, in better light and without radiation stopping him looking through the reactor car.

Aviger stood by Dorolow’s body for a while. Then he went to the far access ramp, where the body of the other Idiran, the one Xoxarle had called Quayanorl, lay, holed and battered, limbs missing. Aviger looked around and thought nobody was watching, but both Horza, looking up from the wrecked helmet, and Balveda, walking round and stamping and shaking her feet in an attempt to keep warm, saw the old man swing his foot at the still body lying on the ramp, kicking the helmed head as hard as he could. The helmet fell off; Aviger kicked the naked head. Balveda looked at Horza, shook her head, then went on pacing up and down.

‘You’re sure we’ve accounted for all the Idirans?’ Unaha-Closp asked Horza. It had floated about the station and through the train, accompanying Wubslin. Now it was facing the Changer.

‘That’s the lot,’ Horza said, looking not at the drone but at the mess of fractured optic fibres lying bloated and fused together inside the outer skin of his helmet. ‘You saw the tracks.’

‘Hmm,’ the machine said.

‘We’ve won, drone,’ Horza said, still not looking at it. ‘We’ll get the power on in station seven and then it won’t take us long to track the Mind down.’

‘Your “Mr Adequate” seems remarkably unconcerned about the liberties we’re taking with his train-set,’ the drone observed.

Horza looked round at the wreckage and debris scattered near the train, then shrugged and went back to tinkering with the helmet. ‘Maybe he’s indifferent,’ he said.

‘Of could it be he’s enjoying all this?’ Unaha-Closp said. Horza looked at it. The drone went on, ‘This place is a monument to death, after all. A sacred place. Perhaps it is as much an altar as a monument, and we are merely carrying out a service of sacrifice for the gods.’

Horza shook his head. ‘I think they left the fuse out of your imagination circuits, machine,’ he said, and looked back at the helmet.

Unaha-Closp made a hissing noise and went to watch Wubslin, poking around inside the mass sensor.

‘What have you got against machines, Horza?’ Balveda said, interrupting her pacing to come and stand near by. She rubbed her hands on her nose and ears now and again. Horza sighed and put down the helmet.

‘Nothing, Balveda, as long as they stay in their place.’

Balveda made a snorting noise at that, then went on pacing. Yalson spoke from further up the ramp:

‘Did you say something funny?’

‘I said machines ought to stay in their place. Not the sort of remark that goes down well with the Culture.’

‘Yeah,’ Yalson said, still watching the Idiran. Then she looked down, at the scarred area on the front of her suit where it had been hit by a plasma bolt. ‘Horza?’ she said. ‘Can we talk somewhere? Not here.’

Horza looked up at her. ‘Of course,’ he said, puzzled. Wubslin replaced Yalson on the ramp. Yalson walked to where Unaha-Closp floated over Neisin, its lights dim; it held an injector in one hazy field extension.

‘How is he?’ she asked the machine. It turned its lights up.

‘How does he look?’ it said. Yalson and Horza said nothing. The drone let its lights fade again. ‘He might last a few more hours.’

Yalson shook her head and headed for the tunnel entrance which led to the transit tube, followed by Horza. She stopped inside, just out of sight of the others, and turned to face the Changer. She seemed to search for words but could not find them; she shook her head again and took off her helmet, leaning back against the curved tunnel wall.

‘What’s the problem, Yalson?’ he asked her. He tried to take her hand, but she crossed her arms. ‘You having second thoughts about going on with this?’

She shook her head. ‘No; I’m going on. I want to see this goddamned super-brain. I don’t care who gets it, or if it gets blown up, but I want to find it.’

‘I didn’t think you regarded it as that important.’

‘It’s become important.’ She looked away, then back again, smiling uncertainly. ‘Hell, I’d come along anyway - just to try and keep you out of trouble.’

‘I thought maybe you’d gone off me a little lately,’ he said.

‘Yeah,’ Yalson said. ‘Well, I haven’t been . . . ah . . . ‘ she sighed heavily. ‘What the hell.’

‘What?’ Horza said. He saw her shrug. The small, shaved head dropped again, silhouetted against the distant light.

She shook her head. ‘Oh, Horza,’ she said, and gave a small, grunting laugh. ‘You’re not going to believe this.’

‘Believe what?’

‘I don’t know that I should tell.’

‘Tell me,’ he said.

‘I don’t expect you to believe me; and if you do, I don’t expect you to like it. Not all of it. I’m serious. Maybe I just shouldn’t . . . ‘ She sounded genuinely troubled. He laughed lightly.

‘Come on, Yalson,’ he said. ‘You’ve said too much to stop now; you just said you weren’t one for turning back. What is it?’

‘I’m pregnant.’

He thought he’d misheard at first, and was going to make a joke about what he thought he’d just heard, but some part of his brain played the sounds her voice had made back, double-checking, and he knew that that was exactly what she’d said. She was right. He didn’t believe it. He couldn’t.

‘Don’t ask me if I’m sure,’ Yalson said. She was looking down again, fiddling with her fingers and staring at them or the floor beyond in the darkness, her ungloved hands protruding nakedly from the suit arms and pressing against each other. ‘I’m sure.’ She looked at him, though he couldn’t see her eyes, and she wouldn’t be able to see his. ‘I was right, wasn’t I? You don’t believe me, do you? I mean, it is by you. That’s why I’m telling you. I wouldn’t say anything if it . . . if you weren’t . . . if I just happened to be.’ She shrugged. ‘ . . . I thought maybe you’d guess when I asked about how much radiation we’d all absorbed . . . But now you’re wondering how, aren’t you?’

‘Well,’ Horza said, clearing his throat and shaking his head, ‘it certainly shouldn’t be possible. We’re both . . . but we’re from different species; it ought not to be possible.’

‘Well, there is an explanation,’ Yalson sighed, still looking at her fingers as they picked and kneaded at each other, ‘but I don’t think you’ll like that, either.’

‘Try me.’

‘It’s . . . it’s like this. My mother . . . my mother lived on a Rock. A travelling Rock, just one of the many, you know. One of the oldest; it had been . . . just tramping around the galaxy for maybe eight or nine thousand years, and - ‘

‘Wait a minute,’ Horza said, ‘one of whose oldest?’

‘ . . . My dad was some . . . some man from a place, a planet the Rock stopped off at one time. My mother said she’d be back some time, but she never did go back. I told her I’d go back some time just to see him, if he’s still alive . . . Pure sentimentalism, I guess, but I said I would and I will some time; if I live through this lot.’ She gave that same small half-laugh, half-grunt, and turned away from her picking fingers for a second to glance round the dark spaces of the station. Then her face again turned to the Changer, and her voice was suddenly urgent, almost pleading. ‘I’m only half Culture, by birth, Horza. I left the Rock soon as I was old enough to aim a gun properly; I knew the Culture wasn’t the place for me. That’s how I inherited the genofixing for trans-species mating. I never thought about it before. It’s supposed to be deliberate, or at least you’ve got to stop thinking yourself into not getting pregnant, but it didn’t work this time. Maybe I let my guard slip somehow. It wasn’t deliberate, Horza, it really wasn’t; it never occurred to me. It just happened. I - ‘

‘How long have you known?’ Horza asked quietly.

‘Since on the CAT. We were still a few days out from this place. I can’t remember exactly. I didn’t believe it at first. I know it’s true, though. Look’ - she leaned closer to him, and the note of pleading was in her voice again - ‘I can abort it. Just by thinking about it I can get rid of it, if you want. Maybe I’d have done that already, but I know you’ve told me about not having any family, nobody to carry on your name, and I thought . . . well, I don’t care about my name . . . I just thought you - ‘ She broke off and suddenly put her head back and ran her fingers through her short hair.

‘It’s a nice thought, Yalson,’ he said. Yalson nodded silently and went back to picking her fingers again.

‘Well, I’m giving you the choice, Horza,’ she said without looking at him. ‘I can keep it. I can let it grow. I can keep it at the stage it’s at now . . . It’s up to you. Maybe I just don’t want to have to make the decision; I mean, maybe I’m not being all noble and self-sacrificing, but there it is. You decide. Fuck knows what sort of weird cross-breed I might have inside me, but I thought you ought to know. Because I like you, and . . . because . . . I don’t know - because it was about time I did something for somebody else for a change.’ She shook her head again, and her voice was confused, apologetic, resigned, all at once. ‘Or maybe because I want to do something to please myself, as usual. Oh . . . ‘

He had started to put his arms out to her and edge closer. She suddenly came towards him, wrapping her arms tight round him. Their suits made the embrace cumbersome, and his back felt tight and strained, but he held her to him, and rocked her gently backwards and forwards.

‘It would only be a quarter Culture, Horza, if you want. I’m sorry to leave it to you. But if you don’t want to know, OK; I’ll think again and make my own decision. It’s still part of me, so maybe I don’t have any right to ask you. I don’t really want to . . . ‘ She sighed mightily. ‘Oh God, I don’t know, Horza, I really don’t.’

‘Yalson,’ he said, having thought about what he was going to say, ‘I don’t give a damn your mother was from the Culture. I don’t give a damn why what has happened has happened. If you want to go through with it, that’s fine by me. I don’t give a damn about any cross-breeding either.’ He pushed her away slightly and looked into the darkness that was her face. ‘I’m flattered, Yalson, and I’m grateful, too. It’s a good idea; like you would say: what the hell?’

He laughed then, and she laughed with him, and they hugged each other tightly. He felt tears in his eyes, though he wanted to laugh at the incongruity of it ail. Yalson’s face was on the hard surface of his suit shoulder, near a laser burn. Her body shook gently inside her own suit.

Behind them, in the station, the dying man stirred slightly and moaned in the cold and darkness, without an echo.

He held her for a little while. Then she pushed away, to look into his eyes again. ‘Don’t tell the others.’

‘Of course not, if that’s what you want.’

‘Please,’ she said. In the dimmed glow of their suit lights, the down on her face and the hair on her head seemed to shine, like a hazy atmosphere round a planet seen from space. He hugged her again, unsure what to say. Surprise, partly, no doubt . . . but in addition there was the fact that this revelation made whatever existed between them that much more important, and so he was more anxious than ever not to say the wrong thing, not to make a mistake. He could not let it mean too much, not yet. She had paid him perhaps the greatest compliment he had ever had, but the very value of it frightened him, distracted him. He felt that whatever continuity of his name or clan the woman was offering him, he could not yet build his hopes upon it; the glimmer of that potential succession seemed too weak, and somehow also too temptingly defenceless, to face the continuous frozen midnight of the tunnels.