Consider Phlebas (58 page)

Xoxarle slipped on the terrace, and for one second Balveda thought they would both skid off its surface, over the guard rails and down to the jumble of machinery and equipment on the cold, hard floor below. But the Idiran steadied himself, turned and pounded along the broad walkway towards the metal catwalk which crossed the breadth of the cavern and led over the far edge of the terrace into another tunnel - the tunnel which led to the transit tubes.

She heard the Idiran breathe. Her ringing ears caught the crackle of flames, the hiss of foam and the laboured wheeze of Xoxarle’s breath. He held her easily, as though she weighed nothing. She cried out in frustration, heaved her body with all her strength, trying to break his grip or even just get an arm free, struggling weakly.

They came to the suspended catwalk, and again the Idiran almost slipped, then again caught himself in time and steadied. He started along the narrow gantry, his limping, unsteady tread shaking it, making it sound like a metal drum. Her back hurt as she strained; Xoxarle’s grip stayed firm.

Then he skidded to a halt, brought her round in front of his huge, saddle-face. He held her by both shoulders for a moment, then took her right arm by the elbow with one hand, keeping hold of her right shoulder with the other fist.

He brought one knee out, holding his thigh level with the cavern floor, thirty metres below. Held by elbow and shoulder, her weight taken by that one arm, her back aching, her head hardly clear, she suddenly realised what he was going to do.

She screamed.

Xoxarle brought the woman’s upper arm down across his thigh, snapping it like a twig. Her cry broke like ice.

He took her by the wrist of her good arm and swung her out over the side of the catwalk, sweeping her down beneath him and positioning her hand on a thin metal stanchion, then he left her. It was done in a second or two; she swung like a pendulum under the metal bridge. Xoxarle ran off, limping. Each step, shaking the suspended gantry, vibrated through the stanchion to Balveda’s hand, loosening her grip. She hung there. Her broken arm dangled uselessly at her side. Her hand gripped the cold, smooth, foam-smeared surface of the thin stanchion. Her head spun; waves of pain she tried to but could not shut off crashed through her. The cavern lights blinked out, then came back on again. Another explosion shook the wrecked carriages. Xoxarle crossed the catwalk and ran hobbling over the terrace on the other side of the great cave, into the tunnel. Her hand started to slip, going numb; her whole arm was going cold.

Perosteck Balveda twisted in the air, put her head back, and howled.

The drone stopped. Now the noises were from behind. It had taken the wrong direction. It was still fuddled; Xoxarle hadn’t doubled back after all. I’m a fool! I shouldn’t be allowed out by myself!

It turned its body over in the air of the tunnel leading away from the control room and the long dormitories, slowed and stopped, then powered back down the way it had come. It could hear laser fire.

Horza was in the control room; it was clear of water and foam, though smoke was coming from a large hole in one console. He hesitated, then heard another scream - the sound of a human, a woman - and ran through the doors leading to the dormitories.

She tried to swing herself, make a pendulum of her body and so hook a leg onto the gantry, but the already injured muscles in her lower back could not do it; the muscle fibres tore; pain swamped her. She hung. She couldn’t feel her hand. Foam settled on her upturned face and stung her eyes. A series of explosions wracked the mangled heap of carriages, making the air around her quiver, shaking her. She felt herself slip; she dropped fractionally, her grip moving down the stanchion a millimetre or two. She tried to hold on tighter, but could feel nothing.

Noise came from the terrace. She tried to look round and in a moment she saw Horza, racing along the terrace for the catwalk, holding the gun. He skidded on the foam and had to reach out with his free hand to steady himself.

‘Horza . . . ‘ she tried to shout, but all that came out was a croak. Horza ran along the catwalk above her, staring ahead. His steps shook her band; it had started to slip again. ‘Horza . . . ‘ she said again, as loud as she could.

The Changer ran on past her, his face set, the rifle raised, his boots hammering the metal deck above her. Balveda looked down, her head dropping. Her eyes closed.

Horza . . . Kraiklyn . . . that geriatric Outworld minister on Sorpen . . . no piece or image of the Changer, nothing and nobody the man had ever been could have any desire to rescue her. Xoxarle seemed to have hoped some pan-human compassion would make Horza stop and save her, and so give the Idiran a few precious extra moments to make his escape; but the Idiran had made the same mistake about Horza that his whole species had made about the Culture. They were not that soft after all; humans could be just as hard and determined and merciless as any Idiran, given the right encouragement . . .

I’m going to die, she thought, and was almost more surprised than terrified. Here, now. After all that’s happened, all I’ve done. Die. Just like that!

Her numb hand loosened slowly around the stanchion.

The footsteps above her stopped, returned; she looked up.

Horza’s face was above her, staring down at her.

She hung there, twisting in the air, for an instant, while the man looked into her eyes, the gun near his face. Horza glanced round, over the catwalk, where Xoxarle had gone.

‘ . . . help . . . ‘ she croaked.

He knelt and, taking her hand, pulled her up. ‘Arm’s broken . . . ‘ she choked, as he caught her by the neck of her jacket and pulled her onto the surface of the suspended gantry. She rolled over as he stood up. Foam drifted down through the wavering light and dark of the huge, echoing cavern, and flames cast momentary shadows when the lights guttered.

‘Thanks,’ she coughed.

‘That way?’ Horza looked round, the way he had been heading, the way Xoxarle had gone. She did her best to nod.

‘Horza,’ she said, ‘let him go.’

Horza was already backing off. He shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, then turned and ran. Balveda curled up, her numbed arm going to the broken one; towards it, but not touching it. She coughed and put her hand to her mouth, feeling inside, spluttering. She spat out a tooth.

Horza crossed the catwalk. He felt calm now. Xoxarle could delay him if he liked; he could even let the Idiran get to the transit tube, then he would just step into the tubeway and fire at the retreating end of the transit capsule, or blast the power off properly and trap the Idiran: it didn’t matter.

He crossed the terrace and ran into the tunnel.

It led straight into the distance for over a kilometre. The way to the transit tubes was off to the right somewhere, but there were other doors and entrances, places where Xoxarle could hide.

It was bright and dry in the tunnel. The lights flickered only slightly, and the sprinkler system had remained off.

He thought of looking at the floor only just in time.

He saw the drips of water and foam while he ran towards a pair of doors which faced each other on either side of the tunnel. The line of drips stopped there.

He was running too fast to stop; he ducked instead.

Xoxarle’s fist flicked through the air, out from the left-hand doorway, over the Changer’s head. Horza turned and brought the gun to bear; Xoxarle stepped from the doorway and kicked out. His foot caught the gun, sending its barrel up into the Changer’s face, slamming into Horza’s mouth and nose while the gun sprayed laser fire over the man’s head into the ceiling, bringing a hail of rock dust and splinters down over the Idiran and the human. Xoxarle reached out while the stunned man was staggering back. He took the gun, tearing it from Horza’s hands. He turned it round and pointed it at Horza as the man steadied himself against the wall with one hand, his mouth and nose bleeding. Xoxarle tore the trigger guard from the gun.

Unaha-Closp raced through the control room, banked in the air, flashed through the smoke and past the smashed doors, then darted down the short corridor. It flew down the length of the dormitory, between the swaying nets, through another short tunnel and out onto the terrace.

There was wreckage everywhere. It saw Balveda on the catwalk, sitting up, holding one shoulder with the other hand, then putting her hand down to the floor of the gantry. Unaha-Closp tore through the air towards her, but just before it got to her, as her head was coming up to look at it, the noise of laser fire came from the tunnel on the far side of the cavern. The drone banked again and accelerated.

Xoxarle pressed the trigger just as Unaha-Closp hit him from behind; the gun hadn’t even started to fire as Xoxarle was thrown forward, down to the floor of the tunnel. He rolled over as he fell, but the gun’s muzzle staved into the rock, taking all the Idiran’s weight for a moment; the barrel snapped cleanly in two. The drone stopped just short of Horza. The man was lunging forward for the Idiran, who was already recovering his balance and rearing up in front of them. Unaha-Closp rushed forward again, diving then zooming, attempting an uppercut like the one that had caught the Idiran out once before. Xoxarle fended off the machine with one swiping arm. Unaha-Closp bounced off the wall like a rubber ball, and the Idiran swatted it once more, sending the drone spinning back, dented and crippled, along the corridor towards the cavern.

Horza dived forward. Xoxarle brought his fist down on the human’s head as he lunged. The Changer swerved, but not fast enough; the glancing blow he received hit the side of his head, and he crashed onto the floor, scraping along the side of the wall and coming to rest in a doorway across the tunnel.

Sprinklers spat from the ceiling near where Horza’s gun had fired into it. Xoxarle rounded on the fallen human, who was trying to get to his feet, his legs wobbly and unsure, arms scrambling for purchase over the smooth rock walls. The Idiran brought up his leg to stamp his foot into Horza’s face, then sighed and put his leg down again as the drone Unaha-Closp, riding unevenly in the air, its casing dented, leaking smoke, wobbling as it advanced, came slowly back up the tunnel towards the Idiran. ‘ . . . You animal . . . ‘ Unaha-Closp croaked, its small voice broken and harsh.

Xoxarle reached out, grabbed the machine’s front, raised it easily in both hands over his head, over Horza’s head - the man looked up, eyes unfocused - then brought it down, scything towards the man’s skull.

Horza rolled, almost tiredly, to one side, and Xoxarle felt the whimpering machine connect with Horza’s head and shoulder. The man fell, sprawling on the tunnel floor.

He was still alive; one hand moved feebly to try to protect his naked, bleeding head. Xoxarle turned, raised the helpless drone high over the man’s head once more. ‘And, so . . . ‘ he said quietly as he tensed his arms to bring the machine down.

‘Xoxarle!’

He looked up, between his upraised arms, while the drone struggled weakly in his hands and the man at his feet moved one hand slowly over his blood-matted hair. Xoxarle grinned.

The woman Perosteck Balveda stood at the end of the tunnel, on the terrace over the cavern. She was stooped, and her face looked limp and worn. Her right arm dangled awkwardly at her side, the hand hanging by her thigh turned outwards. In her other hand her fist seemed closed around something small which she was pointing at the Idiran. Xoxarle had to look carefully to see what it was. It resembled a gun: a gun made mostly of air; a gun of lines, thin wires, hardly solid at all, more like a framework, like a pencil outline somehow lifted from a page and filled out just enough to grip. Xoxarle laughed and brought the drone swooping down.

Balveda fired the gun; it sparkled briefly at the end of its spindly barrel, like a small jewel caught in sunlight, and made the faintest of coughing noises.

Before Unaha-Closp had been moved more than a half-metre through the air towards Horza’s head, Xoxarle’s midriff lit up like the sun. The Idiran’s lower torso was blown apart, blasted from his hips by a hundred tiny explosions. His chest, arms and head were blown up and back, hitting the tunnel roof then tumbling down again through the air, the arms slackening, the hands opening. His belly, keratin plates ripped open, flooded entrails onto the water-spattered floor of the tunnel as his whole upper body bounced into the shallow puddles forming under the artificial rain. What was left of his trunk section, the heavy hips and the three body-thick legs, stayed standing for a few seconds by themselves, while Unaha-Closp floated quietly to the ceiling, and Horza lay still under the falling water, now colouring in the puddles with purple and red as it washed his own and the Idiran’s blood away.

Xoxarle’s torso lay motionless where it fell, two metres behind where his legs still stood. Then the knees buckled slowly, as though only reluctantly giving in to the pull of gravity, and the heavy hips settled over the splayed feet. Water splashed into the gory bowl of Xoxarle’s sliced open pelvis.

‘Bala bala bala,’ Unaha-Closp mumbled, stuck to the ceiling, dripping water. ‘Bala labalabalabla . . . ha ha.’

Balveda kept the gun pointing at Xoxarle’s broken body. She walked slowly up the corridor, splashing through the dark red water.

She stopped near Horza’s feet and looked dispassionately at Xoxarle’s head and upper torso, lying still on the tunnel floor, blood and internal organs spilling from the fallen giant’s chest. She sighted the gun and fired at the warrior’s massive head, blowing it from his shoulders and blasting shattered pieces of keratin twenty metres up the tunnel. The blast rocked her; the echoes sang in her ears. Finally, she seemed to relax, shoulders drooping. She looked up at the drone, floating against the roof.

‘Here am are, downly upfloat, falling ceilingwards bala bala ha ha . . . ‘ Unaha-Closp said, and moved uncertainly. ‘So there. Look, I am finished, I’m just . . . What’s my name? What’s the time? Bala bala, hey the ho. Water lots of. Downly upmost. Ha ha and so on.’

Balveda knelt down by the fallen man. She put the gun in a pocket and felt Horza’s neck; he was still alive. His face was in the water. She heaved and pushed, trying to roll him over. His scalp oozed blood.