Use of Weapons (16 page)
Authors: Iain M. Banks
Tags: #High Tech, #Space Warfare, #space opera, #Robots, #General, #Science Fiction, #Adventure, #Fiction
But
he didn't think he was dead. It hadn't been his funeral. He could remember the
flat-topped tower by the cliffs looking out over the sea, and helping to carry
some old warrior's body there. Yes, somebody had died and they were being
ceremonially disposed of.
Something
was nagging at him.
Suddenly
he clutched at the boat's rotten timbers and stared out over the heaving ocean.
There
was a ship. Every now and again he could see a ship, far in the distance.
Barely more than a dot, and mostly the waves were in the way, but it was a
ship. A hole seemed to open somewhere inside him; his guts fell through it.
He
thought he recognised the ship.
Then
the boat split apart, and he dropped through it, through the water underneath,
then splashed out of the underside of the water, into air again, and saw the
ocean beneath him, and a tiny speck of its surface, which he was falling
towards. It was another small boat; he crashed through it, through more water,
through more air, through the wreckage of a boat, through another layer of
water and another level of air...
Hey
- one part of his mind thought, as he fell - this is like how Sma described the
Reality... splashed through more waves, through the water, out into air,
heading for more waves...
This
wasn't going to stop. He remembered that the Reality Sma had described was
expanding all the time; you could fall through forever; really forever, not
until the end of the universe; literally forever.
That
won't do, he thought to himself. He'd have to face the ship.
He
landed in a little creaking, leaking boat.
The
ship was much closer now. The ship was huge and dark and bristled with guns and
it was heading straight for him, bow wave a huge white V of foam bisected by
its stem.
Shit,
he wasn't going to be able to get away from it. The cruel curves of the bows
raced slicing towards him. He closed his eyes.
Once
upon a time there was... a ship. A great ship. A ship for destroying things
with; other ships, people, cities... It was very big and it was designed to
kill people and to keep people inside it from being killed.
He
tried not to remember what the great ship was called. Instead he saw the ship
somehow installed near the middle of a city, and felt confused, and could not
work out how it got there. The ship started to look like a castle, for some
reason, and that did, and did not, make sense. He began to feel frightened.
The ship's name was like some huge sea creature, bumping into the hull of his
boat; like a battering-ram thudding into the walls of the castle keep. He tried
to block it out, knowing it was just a name but not wanting to hear it because
it always made him feel bad.
He
put his hands over his ears. That worked for a moment. But then the ship, set
in stone, near the centre of the battered city, fired its great guns, gouting
black and flashing yellow-white, and he knew what was coming, and tried to
scream to cover the noise, but when it arrived it was the name of the ship that
the guns had spoken, and it shattered the boat, demolished the castle, and resounded
through the bones and spaces of his skull, like the laughter of an insane god,
forever.
The
light went out then, and he sank gratefully away from the awful, accusing
sound.
Light.
Staberinde
said a calm voice from
somewhere inside.
Staberinde. It's only a
word.
The
Staberinde. The ship. He turned away from the light, back into the darkness.
Light.
Sounds, too; a voice. What was I thinking about, earlier? (He recalled
something about a name, but ignored that.) Funeral. Pains. And the ship. There
was a ship. Or there had been. Maybe still is, for all... but there was
something about a funeral. The funeral is why you are here. That was what
confused you before. You thought you were dead, in fact you were only living.
He remembered something about boats and oceans and castles and cities, but
could not actually see them any more.
Now,
from somewhere, comes touch, touch coming in from out there. Not pain but
touch. Two different things...
The
touch, again. It feels like the touch of a hand; a hand touching his face,
causing more pain, but still a touch, and distinguishably a hand. His face felt
terrible. He must look terrible.
Where
am I again? Crash. Funeral. Fohls.
Crash.
Of course; my name is...
Too
hard.
What
do I do, then?
That's
easier. You are a paid agent of the most advanced - well, certainly the most
energetic -
humanoid civilisation in
the... Reality? (No.) Universe? (No.) Galaxy? Yes, galaxy... and you were
representing them at a... a... funeral, and you were coming back on some stupid
aircraft
to be picked up and taken
away from all this, when something happened on board the aircraft and it
went... and he'd seen flames and... and there had been that old jungle floating
right... then nothing and pain, and nothing but pain. Then drifting and floating
in and out of it.
The
hand touched his face again. And this time there was something to see. He
thought it looked like a cloud, or like a moon through a cloud, itself unseen
but shining through.
Possibly
the two were connected, he thought. Yes; here it comes again, and yes, there we
are; sensation, feeling; the hand on the face again. Throat, swallowing, water
or some liquid. You are being given something to drink. From the way it goes
down there seems to be... yes, upright, we are upright, not on our back. The
hands, own hands, they are... an open feeling, feeling very open, very
vulnerable, naked.
Thinking
about his body was bringing the pain back again. He decided to give up on that.
Try something else.
Try
the crash again. Back from the funeral and the desert coming right up... no,
mountains. Or was it jungle? He couldn't remember. Where are we? Jungle, no...
desert, no... what then? Don't know.
Asleep,
he thought suddenly; you were asleep in the aircraft in the night, and had just
enough time to wake up in the darkness and see flames and begin to realise
before light detonated inside your head. After that, pain. But you didn't see
any sort of terrain floating/rushing up to meet you, because it was very dark.
The
next time he came round, everything had changed. He felt vulnerable and
exposed. As his eyes opened and he tried to remember how to see, he slowly made
out dusty streaks of light in a brown gloom, and saw earthenware pots near a
mud or earth wall, and a small fireplace in the centre of the room, and spears
leaning against a wall, and other blades. Straining his neck to bring his head
up, he could see something else; the rough wooden frame he was tied to.
The
wooden frame was in the shape of a square; two diagonals made an X inside the
square. He was naked, his hands and feet lashed, one to each corner of the
frame, which was propped against a wall at about forty-five degrees. A thick
hide strap secured his waist to the centre of the X, and all over his body were
markings of blood and paint.
He
relaxed his neck. 'Oh shit,' he heard himself croak. He didn't like the look of
this.
Where
the hell
was
the Culture? They ought
to be rescuing him; that was their job. He did their dirty work, they looked
after him. This was the deal. So where the hell were they?
The
pain came back, like an old friend by now, from almost everywhere. Straining
his neck like that had hurt. Sore head (maybe concussion); broken nose, cracked
or broken ribs, one broken arm, two broken legs. Maybe internal injuries; his
insides felt pretty sore too; the worst, in fact. He felt bloated and full of
decay.
Shit,
he thought, I might actually be dying.
He
shifted his head, grimacing, (pain poured in as if some protecting shell on his
skin had been cracked by the movement) and looked at the ropes lashing him to
the wooden frame. Traction was no way to treat a fracture, he told himself, and
laughed very briefly, because with the first contraction of his stomach muscles
his ribs pulsed suddenly, as though they were at red heat.
He
could hear things; distant noises of people shouting now and again, and
children yelling, and some sort of animal baying.
He
closed his eyes, but heard nothing more distinct. He opened them again. The
wall was earth, and he was probably underground, for there were thick sawn-off
roots sticking into the space around him. The light was composed of two nearly
vertical shafts, slightly angled beams of direct sunlight, so... near midday,
near the equator. Underground, he thought, and felt sick. Nice and hard to find.
He wondered if the plane had been on course when it crashed, and how far from
the crash site he'd been carried. No point in worrying about it.
What
else could he see? Crude benches. A coarse cushion, dented. It looked like
somebody had sat there, facing him. He assumed it was the owner of the hand he
had felt, if there had been one. There was no fire in a circle of stones set
underneath one of the holes in the roof. Spears leant against the wall, and
other weaponish things were strewn about the place. They were not
battle-weapons; ceremonial, or maybe torture. He caught a whiff of something
awful, just then, and knew it was gangrene, and knew it must be him.
He
began to slip over the edge again, uncertain whether he was falling asleep or
really going unconscious, but hoping for one or the other, willing either,
because all this was more than he could handle just now. Then the girl came in.
She had a jug in her hand, and set it down before looking at him. He tried to
speak, but couldn't. Maybe he hadn't really spoken earlier when he'd thought he
said, 'Shit.' He looked at the girl and attempted a smile.
She
went out again.
He
felt somehow heartened, seeing the girl. A man would have been bad news, he
thought. A girl meant things might not be so bad after all. Maybe.
The
girl came back, with a bowl of water. She washed him, rubbing away the the
blood and the paint. There was some pain. Predictably nothing happened when she
washed his genitals; he'd have liked to show signs of life, just for form's
sake.
He
tried to speak, but failed. The girl let him sip some water from a shallow
bowl, and he croaked at her, but nothing distinguishable. She left again.
The
next time she came back with some men. They wore many strange clothes, like
feathers and skins and bones and wooden tiles of armour laced with gut. They
were painted too, and they brought pots and small sticks with them, and used
them to paint him again.
They
finished and stood back. He wanted to tell them he didn't suit red, but nothing
came out. He felt himself falling away, out into the darkness.
When
he came to again, he was moving.
The
entire frame he was strapped to had be lifted and carted out of the gloom. He
faced the sky. Blinding light filled his eyes, dust filled his nose and mouth,
and shouts and screams filled his mind. He felt himself shiver like a fever
victim, tearing pain from each shattered limb. He tried to shout, and to raise
his head to see, but all there was was noise and dust. His insides felt worse;
skin taut over his belly.
Then
he was upright again, and the village was beneath him. It was small, there were
some tents, some wicker and clay dwellings and some holes into the ground.
Semi-arid; an indeterminate scrub - stamped down inside the perimeter of the
village - vanished quickly beyond it, into a yellow-glowing mist. The sun was
just visible, low down. He couldn't work out if it was dawn or dusk.
What
he really saw were the people. They were all in front of him; he was up on a
mound, the frame tied to two large stakes, and the people were beneath him, all
on their knees, heads bowed. There were tiny children, their heads forced down
by nearby adults, there were old people held up from collapsing completely by
those around them, and every age in between.
Then
in front of him walked three people, the girl and two of the men. The men, one
on either side of the girl, lowered their heads, knelt down quickly and arose
again, and made a sign. The girl did not move, and her gaze was fixed on a
point between his eyes. She was dressed in a bright red gown now; he could not
remember what she had worn before.
One
of the men held a large earthenware pot. The other had a long, curved,
broad-bladed sword.
'Hey,'
he croaked. He couldn't manage anything else. The pain was getting very bad
now; being upright didn't do his broken limbs any good at all.
The
chanting people seemed to swing about his head; the sunlight dipped and veered,
and the three people in front of him became many, multiplying and wavering,
unsteady in the waste of mist and dust before him.
Where
the hell was Culture?
There
was a terrible roaring noise in his head, and the diffuse glow in the midst
which was the sun was starting to pulse. The sword glittered to one side; the
earthenware pot gleamed on the other. The girl stood directly in front of him,
and put her hand into his hair, grasping it.