Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks
He could hear waves breaking on the beach, and when he looked up he could see people on it: thin dark people, dressed in rags, gathered round tents and fires or walking between them. Some were in the water ahead of him, carrying baskets, large open-work baskets which they held on their waists, gathering things from the sea as they waded through it, putting what they collected in their baskets.
They hadn’t seen him, so he swam on, making a slow, crawling motion with his arms and kicking feebly with his legs.
The people harvesting the sea didn’t appear to notice him; they kept on wading through the surf, stooping occasionally to pick from the sands underneath, their eyes sweeping and probing, scanning and searching, but too close in; not seeing him. His stroke slowed to a gasping, dying crawl. He could not lift his hands free of the water, and his legs stayed paralysed . . .
Then through the surf noise, like something from a dream, he heard several people shouting nearby, and splashes coming close. He was still swimming weakly when another wave lifted him, and he saw several of the skinny people clad in loincloths and tattered tunics, wading through the water towards him.
They helped Horza in through the breaking waves, over sun-streaked shallows and onto the golden sands. He lay there while the thin and haggard people crowded round. They talked quietly to each other in a language he hadn’t heard before. He tried to move but couldn’t. His muscles felt like lengths of limp rag.
‘Hello,’ he croaked. He tried it in all the languages he knew, but none seemed to work. He looked into the faces of the people around him. They were human, but that word covered so many different species throughout the galaxy it was a continuing subject for debate who was and who wasn’t human. As in all too many matters, the consensus of opinion was starting to resemble what the Culture had to say on the subject. The Culture would lay down the law (except, of course, that the Culture didn’t have any real laws) about what being human was, or how intelligent a particular species was (while at the same time making clear that pure intelligence didn’t really mean much on its own), or on how long people should live (though only as a rough guide, naturally), and people would accept these things without question, because everybody believed the Culture’s own propaganda, that it was fair, unbiased, disinterested, concerned only with absolute truth . . . and so on.
So were these people around him really human? They were about Horza’s height, they seemed to have roughly the same bone structure, bilateral symmetry and respiratory system; and their faces – though each was different – all had eyes, mouth, nose and ears.
But they all looked thinner than they ought to have been, and their skin, regardless of hue or shade, looked somehow diseased.
Horza lay still. He felt very heavy again, but at least he was on dry land. On the other hand, it didn’t look as though there was much food on the island, judging by the state of the bodies around him. He assumed that was why they were so thin. He raised his head weakly and tried to see through the clumps of thin legs towards the shuttlecraft he had seen earlier. He could just see the top of the machine, sticking up above one of the large canoes beached on the sands. Its rear doors were open.
A smell wafted under Horza’s nose and made him feel sick. He put his head down onto the sand again, exhausted.
The talking stopped and the people turned, their thin, tanned or anyway dark bodies shuffling round to face up the beach. A space opened in their ranks just above Horza’s head, and try as he might he couldn’t get up on one elbow or swivel his head to see what or who was coming. He lay and waited, then the people to his right all drew back and a line of eight men appeared on that side, holding a long pole together in their left hands, their other arms stuck out for balance. It was the litter he had seen being carried into the jungle the day before, when the shuttle had overflown the island. He watched to see what it held. Two lines of men turned the litter so that it faced Horza and set it down. Then all sixteen sat down, looking exhausted. Horza stared.
On the litter sat the most enormous, obscenely fat human Horza had ever seen.
He had mistaken the giant for a pyramid of golden sand the previous day, when he had seen the litter and its huge burden from the CAT’s shuttle. Now he could see that his first impression had been close in shape if not in substance. Whether the vast cone of human flesh belonged to a male or a female Horza couldn’t tell; great mammary-like folds of naked flesh spilled from the creature’s upper and middle chest, but they drooped over even more enormous waves of nude, hairless torso-fat, which lay partly cradled in the vast beefs of the giant’s akimboed legs and partly overflowing those to droop into the canvas surface of the litter. Horza could see no stitch of clothing on the monster, but no trace of genitals either; whatever they were, they were quite buried under rolls of golden-brown flesh.
Horza looked up to the head. Rising from a thick cone of neck, gazing out over concentric ramparts of chins, a bald dome of puffy flesh contained a limp and rambling length of pale lips, a small button nose, and slits where eyes must be. The head sat on its layers of neck, shoulder and chest fat like a great golden bell on top of a many-decked temple. The sweat-glistened giant suddenly moved its hands, rolling them round on the end of the bloated fat-bound balloons of its arms, until the merely chubby fingers met and clasped as tightly as their size would allow. As the mouth opened to speak, another one of the skinny humans, his rags slightly less tattered than those of the others, moved into Horza’s field of vision, just behind and to the side of the giant.
The bell of head moved a few centimetres to one side and swivelled round, saying something to the man behind that Horza couldn’t catch. Then the giant raised his or her arms with obvious effort and gazed round the skinny humans gathered around Horza. The voice sounded like congealing fat being poured into a jug; it was a drowning voice, Horza thought, like something from a nightmare. He listened, but couldn’t understand the language being used. He looked round to see what effect the giant’s words were having on the famished-looking crowd. His head spun for a moment, as though his brain had shifted while his skull stayed still; he was suddenly back in the hangar of the Clear Air Turbulence, when the Company had been looking at him, and he had felt as naked and vulnerable as he did now.
‘Oh, not again,’ he moaned in Marain.
‘Oh-hoo!’ said the golden rolls of flesh, the voice tumbling over the slopes of fat in a faltering series of tones. ‘Gracious! Our bounty from the sea speaks!’ The hairless dome of head turned further round to the man standing by its side. ‘Mr First, isn’t this wonderful?’ the giant burbled.
‘Fate is kind to us, Prophet,’ the man said gruffly.
‘Fate favours the beloved, yes, Mr First. It sends our enemies away and brings us bounty – bounty from the sea! Fate be praised!’ The great pyramid of flesh shook as the arms went higher, trailing folds of paler flesh as the turret-like head went back, the mouth opening to expose a dark space where only a few small fangs glinted like steel. When the bubbling voice spoke again it was in the language Horza couldn’t make out, but it was the same phrase repeated over and over again. The giant was quickly joined by the rest of the crowd, who shook their hands in the air and chanted hoarsely. Horza closed his eyes, trying to wake from what he knew was not a dream.
When he opened his eyes the skinny humans were still chanting, but they were crowded around him again, blocking out his view of the golden-brown monster. Their faces eager, their teeth bared, their hands stretched out like claws, the crowd of starving, chanting humans fell on him.
They stripped off his shorts. He tried to struggle, but they held him down. In his exhaustion he was probably no stronger than anyone of them, and they had no difficulty pinning him; they rolled him over, pulled his hands behind him and tied them there. Then they tied his feet together and pulled his legs back until his feet were almost touching his hands, and bound them to his wrists by a short length of rope. Naked, trussed like an animal ready for the slaughter, Horza was dragged across the hot sand, past a
The huge pile of flesh the man named Mr First had called ‘prophet’ was set down near the fire. Mr First stood at the obese human’s side, staring at Horza through deep-set eyes contained within a pale and grubby face. The golden giant on the litter clapped chubby hands together and said, ‘Stranger, gift of the sea, welcome. I . . . am the great prophet Fwi-Song.’
The vast creature spoke a crude form of Marain. Horza opened his mouth to tell them his name, but Fwi-Song continued. ‘You have been sent to us in our time of testing, a morsel of human flesh on the tide of nothingness, a harvest-thing plucked from the tasteless wash of life, a sweetmeat to share and be shared in our victory over the poisonous bile of disbelief! You are a sign from Fate, for which we give thanks!’ Fwi-Song’s huge arms lifted up; rolls of shoulder fat wobbled on either side of the turret-like head, nearly covering the ears. Fwi-Song shouted out in a language Horza didn’t know, and the crowd echoed the phrase, chanting it several times.
The fat-smothered arms were lowered again. ‘You are the salt of the sea, ocean-gift.’ Fwi-Song’s syrupy voice changed back into Marain once more. ‘You are a sign, a blessing from Fate; you are the one to become many, the single to be shared; yours will be the gaining gift, the blessed beauty of transubstantiation!’
Horza stared, horrified, at the golden giant, unable to think of anything to say. What could you say to people like this? Horza cleared his throat, still hoping to say something, but Fwi-Song went on.
‘Be told then, gift of the sea, that we are the Eaters; the Eaters of ashes, the Eaters of filth, the Eaters of sand and tree and grass; the most basic, the most loved, the most real. We have laboured to prepare ourselves for our day of testing, and now that day is gloriously near!’ The golden-skinned prophet’s voice grew shrill; folds of fat shook as Fwi-Song’s arms opened out. ‘Behold us then, as we await the time of our ascension from this mortal plane, with empty bellies and voided bowels and hungry minds!’ Fwi-Song’s pudgy hands met in a slap; the fingers interweaved like huge, fattened maggots.
‘If I can—’ croaked Horza, but the giant was talking to the crowd of grubby people again, the voice bubbling out over the golden sands and the cooking fires and the dull, malnourished people.
Horza shook his head a little and looked out over the expanse of beach to the open-doored shuttle in the distance. The more he looked at the craft, the more certain he became it was a Culture machine.
It was nothing he could pin down, but he grew more certain with every moment spent looking at the machine. He guessed it was a forty- or fifty-seater; just about big enough to take all the people he had seen on the island. It didn’t look particularly new or fast, and it didn’t look armed at all, but something about the whole way its simple, utilitarian form had been put together spoke of the Culture. If the Culture designed an animal-drawn cart or an automobile, they would still share something in common with the device at the far end of the beach, for all the gulf of time between the epochs each represented. It would have helped if the Culture had used some sort of emblem or logo; but, pointlessly unhelpful and unrealistic to the last, the Culture refused to place its trust in symbols. It maintained that it was what it was and had no need for such outward representation. The Culture was every single individual human and machine in it, not one thing. Just as it could not imprison itself with laws, impoverish itself with money or misguide itself with leaders, so it would not misrepresent itself with signs.
All the same, the Culture did have one set of symbols it was very proud of, and Horza didn’t doubt that if the machine he was looking at was a Culture craft, it would have some Marain writing on or in it somewhere.
Was it in some way connected with the mass of flesh still talking to the scrawny humans around the fire? Horza doubted it. Fwi-Song’s Marain was shaky and ill tutored. Horza’s own grasp of the language was far from perfect, but he knew enough about the tongue to realise Fwi-Song did it some violence when he or she used it. Anyway, the Culture was not in the habit of loaning out its vehicles to religious nutcases. Was it here to evacuate them, then? Lift them to safety when the Culture’s high-technology shit hit the rotating fan that was the Vavatch Orbital? With a sinking feeling, Horza realised this was probably the answer. So there was no escape. Either these crazies sacrificed him or did whatever it was they were set on doing to him, or it was a ride into captivity, courtesy of the Culture.
He told himself not to assume the worst. After all, he now looked like Kraiklyn, and it wasn’t that likely the Culture’s Minds had made all the correct connections between him, the CAT and Kraiklyn. Even the Culture didn’t think of everything. But . . . they probably did know he’d been on The Hand of God 137; they probably did know he’d escaped from it; they probably did know that the CAT was in that volume at the time. (He recalled the statistics Xoralundra had quoted to the Hand’s captain; yes, the GCU must have won the battle . . . He remembered the CAT’s rough-running warp motors; probably producing a wake any self-respecting GCU could track from centuries away) . . . Damn it; he wouldn’t put it past them. Maybe they were testing everybody they were picking up from Vavatch. They would know in seconds, from just a single sample cell; a skin flake, a hair; for all he knew he’d been sampled already, a micromissile sent from the nearby shuttle picking up some tiny piece of tissue . . . He dropped his head, his neck muscles aching with all the others in his battered, bruised, exhausted body.
Stop it, he told himself. Thinking like a failure. Too damn sorry for yourself. Get yourself out of this. Still got your teeth and your nails . . . and your brain. Just bide your time . . .
‘For lo,’ Fwi-Song warbled, ‘the godless ones, the most hated, the despised-by-the-despised, the Atheists, the Anathematics, have sent us this instrument of the Nothingness, the Vacuum, to us . . .’ As the giant said those words Horza looked up and saw Fwi-Song point along the beach to the shuttle. ‘But we shall not waver in our faith! We shall resist the lure of the Nothingness between the stars where the godless ones, the Anathematised of the Vacuum exist! We shall stay part of what is a part of us! We shall not treat with the great Blasphemy of the Material. We shall stand as the rocks and trees stand – firm, rooted, secure, staunch, unyielding!’ Fwi-Song’s arms went out again, and the voice bellowed out. The gruff-voiced man with the dirty pale skin shouted something at the seated crowd, and they shouted back. The prophet smiled at Horza from across the fire. Fwi-Song’s mouth was a dark hole, with four small fangs protruding when the lips formed a smile. They shone in the sunlight.
‘This the way you treat all your guests?’ Horza said, trying not to cough until the end of his sentence. He cleared his throat. Fwi-Song’s smile vanished.
‘Guest you are not, sea-wanton, salt-gift. Prize: ours to keep, mine to use. Bounty from the sea and the sun and the wind, brought to us by Fate. Hee-hee.’ Fwi-Song’s smile returned with a girlish giggle, and one of the huge hands went to cover the pale lips, ‘Fate recognises its prophet, sends him tasty treats! Just when some of my flock were having second thoughts, too! Eh, Mr First?’ The turret-head turned to the thin figure of the paler man, standing with arms folded, by the giant’s side. Mr First nodded:
‘Fate is our gardener, and our wolf. It weeds out the weak to honour the strong. So the prophet has spoken.’
‘And the word which dies in the mouth lives in the ear,’ Fwi-Song said, turning the huge head back to look at Horza. At least, Horza thought, now I know it’s a male. For whatever that’s worth.
‘Mighty Prophet,’ Mr First said. Fwi-Song smiled wider but continued looking at Horza. Mr First went on, ‘The sea-gift sh
‘Oh, yes!’ Fwi-Song clapped his huge hands together and a smile lit up his whole face. For a second Horza thought he saw small white eyes beyond the slits staring at him. ‘Oh let’s, yes! Bring the coward, let us do what must be done.’
Mr First spoke in ringing tones to the emaciated humans gathered around the fire. A few stood up and walked off behind Horza, towards the forest. The rest started singing and chanting.
After a few minutes Horza heard a scream, then a series of yells and screams, gradually coming closer. At last the people who had left came back, carrying a short, thick log, much like the one Horza was held by. Swinging on the pole was a young man, screaming, shouting in the language Horza didn’t understand, and struggling. Horza saw drops of sweat and saliva fall from the young man’s face and spot the sand. The log was sharpened at one end; that point was driven into the sand on the opposite side of the fire from Horza, so that the young man faced the Changer.
‘This, my libation from the seas,’ Fwi-Song said to Horza, pointing at the young man, who was quivering and moaning, his eyes rolling about in their sockets and his lips dribbling, ‘this is my naughty boy; called Twenty-seventh, since his rebirth. This was one of our respected, much loved sons, one of our anointed, one of our fellow morsels, one of our brotherly taste buds on the great tongue of life.’ Fwi-Song’s voice chortled with laughter as he spoke, as though he knew the absurdity of the part he was playing and couldn’t resist hamming it up. ‘This splinter from our tree, this grain from our beach, this reprobate dared to run towards the seven-times-cursed vehicle of the Vacuum. He spurned the gift of burden with which we honoured him; he chose to abandon us and flee across the sands when the alien enemy passed over us yesterday. He did not trust our salving grace, but turned instead to an instrument of darkness and nothingness, towards the soaking shade of the soulless ones, the Anathematics.’ Fwi-Song looked at the man, still shaking on the post across the fire from Horza. The prophet’s face went stern with reproach. ‘By the workings of Fate the traitor who ran from our side and put his prophet’s life at risk was caught – so that he might learn his sad mistake, and make good his terrible crime.’ Fwi-Song’s arm dropped. The vast head shook.