Consider Phlebas (6 page)

‘Welcome aboard the Clear Air Turbulence.’ Kraiklyn sighed and stepped over Zallin’s body. He walked to the middle of one bulkhead, opened a door and went out, his boots clattering on some steps. Most of the others followed him.

‘Well done.’ Horza, still kneeling, turned at the words. It was the woman with the nice voice again, Yalson. She offered him her hand once more, this time to help him up. He took it gratefully and got to his feet.

‘I didn’t enjoy it,’ he told her. He wiped some sweat from his brow with his forearm and looked into the woman’s eyes. ‘You said your name was Yalson, right?’

She nodded. ‘And you’re Horza.’

‘Hello, Yalson.’

‘Hello, Horza.’ She smiled a little. Horza liked her smile. He looked at the corpse on the deck. Blood had stopped flowing from the wound in one leg.

‘What about that poor bastard?’ he asked.

‘Might as well dump him,’ Yalson said. She looked over at the only other people left in the hangar, three thickly furred and identical heavy-set males in shorts. They stood in a group near the door the others had left by, looking at him curiously. All three had heavy boots on, as though they had just started to suit up and had been interrupted at the same moment. Horza wanted to laugh. Instead he smiled and waved.

‘Hello.’

‘Ah, those are the Bratsilakins,’ Yalson said, as the three furry bodies waved dark grey hands at him, not quite in synch. ‘One, Two and Three,’ she continued, nodding at each one in turn. ‘We must be the only Free Company with a clone group that’s paranoid.’

Horza looked at her to see if she was serious, just as the three furry humans came over to him.

‘Don’t listen to a word she says,’ one of them said, in a soft voice Horza found surprising. ‘She’s never liked us. We just hope that you’re on our side.’ Six eyes looked anxiously at Horza. He did his best to smile.

‘You can depend on it,’ he told them. They smiled back and looked from one to another, nodding.

‘Let’s get Zallin into a vactube. Probably dump him later,’ Yalson said to the other three. She went over to the body. Two of the Bratsilakins followed her, and between the three of them they got the limp corpse to an area of the hangar deck where they lifted some metal planks up, opened a curved hatch, stuffed Zallin’s body into a narrow space, then closed both hatch and deck again. The third Bratsilakin took a cloth from a wall panel and mopped up the blood on the deck. Then the hairy clone group headed for the door and the stairs. Yalson came up to Horza. She made a sideways gesture with her head. ‘Come on. I’ll show you where you can clean up.’

He followed her over the hangar deck towards the doorway. She turned round as they went. ‘The rest have gone to eat. I’ll see you in the mess if you’re ready in time. Just follow your nose. Anyway, I have to collect my winnings.’

‘Your winnings?’ Horza said as they got to the doorway, where Yalson put her hand on what Horza assumed were lighting switches. She turned to him, looking into his eyes.

‘Sure,’ she said, and pressed one of the switches covered by her hand. The lights didn’t change, but under his feet Horza could feel a vibration. He heard a hiss and what sounded like a pump running. ‘I bet on you,’ Yalson said, then turned and bounded up the steps beyond the door, two at a time.

Horza looked round at the hangar once and then followed her.

Just before the Clear Air Turbulence went back into warp and its crew sat down at table, the ship expelled the limp corpse of Zallin. Where it had found a live man in a suit, it left a dead youth in shorts and a tattered shirt, tumbling and freezing while a thin shell of air molecules expanded around the body, like an image of departing life.

Temple of Light

The Clear Air Turbulence swung through the shadow of a moon, past a barren, cratered surface - its track dimpling as it skirted the top edge of a gravity well - and then down towards a cloudy, blue-green planet. Almost as soon as it passed the moon its course started to curve, gradually pointing the craft’s nose away from the planet and back into space. Halfway through that curve the CAT released its shuttle, slinging it towards one hazy horizon of the globe, at the trailing edge of the darkness which swept over the planet surface like a black cloak. Horza sat in the shuttle with most of the rest of the CAT’s motley crew. They were suited up, sitting on narrow benches in the cramped shuttle’s passenger compartment in a variety of spacesuits; even the three Bratsilakins had slightly different models on. The only really modern example was the one Kraiklyn wore, the Rairch suit he had taken from Horza.

They were all armed, and their weapons were as various as their suits. Mostly they were lasers, or to be more exact what the Culture called CREWS - Coherent Radiation Emission Weapon Systems. The better ones operated on wavelengths invisible to the human eye. Some people had plasma cannons or heavy pistols, and one had an efficient-looking Microhowitzer, but only Horza had a projective rifle, and an old, crude, slow-firing one at that. He checked it over for the tenth or eleventh time and cursed it. He cursed the leaky old suit he’d been given, too; the visor was starting to mist up. This whole thing was hopeless.

The shuttle started to lurch and vibrate as it hit the atmosphere of the planet Marjoin, where they were going to attack and rob something called the Temple of Light.

It had taken the Clear Air Turbulence fifteen days to crawl across the twenty-one or so standard light-years that lay between the Sorpen system and that of Marjoin. Kraiklyn boasted that his ship could hit nearly twelve hundred lights, but that sort of speed, he said, was for emergencies only. Horza had taken a look at the old craft and doubted it would even get into four figures without its outboard warping engines pancaking the ship and everything in it all over the skies.

The Clear Air Turbulence was a venerable Hronish armoured-assault ship from one of the declining, later dynasties, and was built more for ruggedness and reliability than for performance and sophistication. Given the level of technical expertise possessed by its crew, Horza thought this was just as well. The ship was about a hundred metres long, twenty across the beam and fifteen high, plus - on top of the rear hull - a ten-metre-high tail. On either side of the hull the warp units bulged, like small versions of the hull itself, and connected to it by stubby wings in the middle and thin flying pylons swept back from just behind the craft’s nose. The CAT was streamlined, and fitted with sprinter fusion motors in the tail, as well as a small lift engine in the nose, for working in atmospheres and gravity wells. Horza thought its accommodation left a lot to be desired.

He had been given Zallin’s old bunk, sharing a two-metre cube - euphemistically termed a cabin - with Wubslin, who was the mechanic on the ship. He called himself the engineer; but after a few minutes’ talk trying to pump him for technical stuff on the CAT, Horza realised that the thickset white-skinned man knew little about the craft’s more complex systems. He wasn’t unpleasant, didn’t smell, and slept silently most of the time, so Horza supposed things could have been worse.

There were eighteen people on the ship, in nine cabins. The Man, of course, had one to himself, and the Bratsilakins shared one rather pungent one; they liked to leave the door to it open; everybody else liked to close the door as they went past. Horza was disappointed to find that there were only four women aboard. Two of them hardly ever showed themselves outside their cabin and communicated with the others mostly by signs and gestures. The third was a religious fanatic who, when not trying to convert him to something called the Circle of Flame, spent her time wired up in the cabin she shared with Yalson, spooling fantasy head-tapes. Yalson seemed to be the only normal female on board, but Horza found it difficult to think of her as a woman at all. It was she, however, who took on the job of introducing him to the others and telling him the things about the ship and its crew which he would need to know.

He had cleaned up in one of the ship’s coffin-like wash-points, then followed his nose as Yalson had suggested to the mess, where he was more or less ignored, but some food was shoved in his direction. Kraiklyn looked at him once as he sat down, between Wubslin and a Bratsilakin, then didn’t look at him again and continued talking about weapons and armour and tactics. After the meal Wubslin had shown Horza to their cabin, then left. Horza cleared a space on Zallin’s bunk, hauled some torn sheets over his tired, aching, old-looking frame, and fell into a deep sleep.

When he woke he bundled up Zallin’s few possessions. It was pathetic; the dead youth had a few T-shirts, shorts, a couple of little kilts, a rusty sword, a collection of cheap daggers in frayed sheaths and some large plastic micropage books with moving pictures, repeating and repeating scenes from ancient wars for as long as they were held open. That was about all. Horza kept the youth’s leaky suit, though it was far too big and non-adjustable, and the badly maintained and ancient projectile rifle.

He carried the rest, wrapped in one of the more tatty bed sheets, down to the hangar. It was as it had been when he’d left it. Nobody had bothered to roll the shuttle back. Yalson was there, stripped to the waist, exercising. Horza stood in the doorway at the bottom of the steps, watching the woman work out. She spun and leapt, did backflips and somersaults, kicked her feet out and jabbed punches at the air, making small grunting noises with each sharp movement. She stopped when she saw Horza.

‘Welcome back.’ She stooped and picked up a towel from the deck, then started to rub it over her chest and arms, where sweat glistened in the golden down. ‘Thought you’d croaked.’

‘Have I been asleep long?’ Horza asked. He didn’t know what sort of time system they used on the ship.

‘Two days standard.’ Yalson towelled her spiky hair and draped the damp towel over her lightly furred shoulders. ‘You look better for it, though.’

‘I feel better,’ Horza said. He hadn’t had a look in a mirror or a reverser yet, but knew that his body was starting to come back to normal, losing the geriatric look.

‘That Zallin’s stuff?’ Yalson nodded at the package in his hands.

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll show you how to work the vactubes. We’ll probably sling it when we next come out of warp.’

Yalson opened the deck and the tube hatch beneath, then Horza dropped Zallin’s gear into the cylinder and Yalson closed it again. The Changer liked the way Yalson smelled when he caught the scent of her warm, perspiring body, but somehow there was nothing in her attitude towards him to make him think they would ever become more than friends. He’d settle for a friend on this ship, though. He certainly needed one.

They went to the mess after that, to have something to eat. Horza was ravenous; his body demanded food to rebuild itself and put more bulk onto the thin shape it had assumed to impersonate the Gerontocracy of Sorpen’s outworld minister.

At least, thought Horza, the autogalley works all right and the AG field seems smooth. The idea of cramped cabins, rotten food and a lumpy or erratic gravity field filled the Changer with horror.

‘ . . . Zallin didn’t have any real friends,’ Yalson said, shaking her head as she stuffed some food into her mouth. They were sitting in the mess together. Horza wanted to know if there was anybody on the ship who might want to avenge the youth he had killed.

‘Poor bastard,’ Horza said again. He put his spoon down and stared across the cluttered space of the low-ceilinged mess room for a second, feeling again that quick, decisive bone-snap through his hands, seeing in his mind’s eye the spinal column sever, windpipe crumple, arteries compress - turning off the youth’s life as though rotating a switch. He shook his head. ‘Where did he come from?’

‘Who knows?’ Yalson shrugged. She saw the expression on Horza’s face and added, between chews, ‘Look, he’d have killed you. He’s dead. Forget about him. Sure it’s tough, but . . . anyway, he was pretty boring.’ She are some more.

‘I just wondered if there was anybody I ought to send anything to. Friends or relations or - ‘

‘Look, Horza,’ Yalson said, turning to him, ‘when you come on board this ship you don’t have a past. It’s considered very bad manners to ask anybody where they came from or what they’ve done in their lives before they joined. Maybe we’ve all got some secrets, or we just don’t want to talk or think about some of the things we’ve done, or some of the things we’ve had done to us. But either way, don’t try to find out. Between your ears is the only place on this crate you’ll ever get any privacy, so make the most of it. If you live long enough, maybe somebody will want to tell you all about themselves eventually, probably when they’re drunk . . . but by that time you may not want them to. Whatever; my advice is just to leave it for the moment.’

Horza opened his mouth to say something, but Yalson went on, ‘I’ll tell you all I know now, just to save you asking.’ She put her spoon down and wiped her lips with one finger, then turned in her seat to face him. She held up one hand. The tiny hairs of the light fur on her forearms and the back of her hands gave a golden outline to her dark skin. She stretched one finger out. ‘One - the ship: Hronish; been around hundreds of years. At least a dozen not very careful owners. Currently without its bow laser since we blew it up trying to alter its wavelength pattern. Two - ‘ She extended another finger. ‘Kraiklyn: he’s had this craft since any of us have known him. He says he won it in a game of Damage somewhere, just before the war. I know he plays the game but I don’t know how good he is. Anyway, that’s his business. Officially we’re called the KFC, Kraiklyn’s Free Company, and he’s the boss. He’s a pretty good leader and he isn’t afraid to slug it out with the rest of the troops when it comes to the crunch. He leads from the front, and that makes him OK in my book. His gimmick is he never sleeps. He has a . . . ah . . . ‘ Yalson frowned, obviously looking for the right words. ‘ . . . an enhanced hemispherical task-division in his brain. One third of the time one half sleeps and he’s a bit dreamy and vague; the other third of the time the other half sleeps and he’s all logic and numbers and he doesn’t communicate too well. The other third of the time, like when he’s in action or whenever there’s an emergency, both sides are awake and functioning. Makes it pretty hard to sneak up on him in his bunk.’

‘Paranoid clones and a Man with a shift system in his skull,’ Horza shook his head. ‘OK. Go on.’

‘Three - ‘ Yalson said, ‘we’re not mercenaries. We’re a Free Company. Actually we’re just pirates, but if that’s what Kraiklyn wants to call us, that’s what we are. In theory anybody can join so long as they eat the food and breathe the air, but in practice he’s a bit more selective than that, and he’d like to be even more so, I’ll bet. Anyway. We’ve carried out a few contracts, mostly protection, a couple of escort duties for third-level places who’ve found themselves caught up in the war, but most of the time we just attack and steal wherever we think the confusion caused by the war makes us likely to get away with it. That’s what we’re on our way to do at the moment. Kraiklyn heard about this place called the Temple of Light on a just-about-level three planet in this neck of the woods and he reckons it’ll be easy in, easy out - to use one of his favourite expressions. According to him it’s full of priests and treasure; we shoot the former and grab the latter. Then we head for the Vavatch Orbital before the Culture blows it away and we buy something to replace our bow laser. I guess the prices should be pretty good. If we hang on long enough people will probably be trying to give the stuff away.’

‘What’s happening to Vavatch?’ Horza asked. This wasn’t something he’d heard about. He knew the big Orbital was in this part of the war zone, but he’d thought its condominium-style ownership would keep it out of the firing line.

‘Didn’t your Idiran friends tell you?’ Yalson said. She dropped the hand with the outstretched fingers. ‘Well,’ she said, when Horza just shrugged, ‘as you probably do know, the Idirans are advancing through the whole inward flank of the Gulf - the Glittercliff. The Culture seems to be putting up a bit of a fight for a change, or at least preparing to. It looked like they were going to come to one of their usual understandings and leave Vavatch as neutral territory. This religious thing the Idirans have about planets means they weren’t really interested in the O as long as the Culture didn’t try to use it as a base, and they promised they wouldn’t. Shit, with these big fucking GSVs they’re building these days they don’t need bases on Os or Rings, or planets or anything else . . . Well, all the various types and weirdos on Vavatch thought they were going to be just fine, thank you, and probably do very well out of the galactic fire-fight going on around them . . . Then the Idirans announced they were going to take Vavatch over after all, though only nominally; no military presence. The Culture said they weren’t having this, both sides refused to abandon their precious principles, and the Culture said, “OK, if you won’t back down we’re going to blow the place away before you get there.” And that’s what’s happening. Before the Idiran battle fleets arrive the Culture’s going to evacuate the whole damn O and then blast it.’

‘They’re going to evacuate an Orbital?’ Horza said. This really was the first he’d heard of any of this. The Idirans had mentioned nothing about Vavatch Orbital in the briefings they had given him, and even once he was actually impersonating the outworld minister Egratin, most of what had been coming in from outside had been rumour. Any idiot could see that the whole volume around the Sullen Gulf was going to become a battle space hundreds of light-years across, hundreds tall and decades deep at least, but exactly what was going on he hadn’t been able to find out. The war was shifting up a gear indeed. Still, only a lunatic would think of trying to move everybody off an Orbital.