Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks
‘That’s OK. Keep it.’ Horza jumped off the guard’s shoulders. The giant shrugged as Horza ran, swerving and ducking to get past people, towards where he had seen Kraiklyn.
He had his terminal fastened to his left cuff; the time was minus two and a half hours. Horza squeezed and shoved and excused and apologised his way through the crowd, and on his way saw many people squinting at watches, terminals and screens, heard many little synthesised voices squawk the hour, and nervous humans repeat it.
There was the queue. It looked surprisingly orderly, Horza thought, then he noticed that it was being supervised by the same security guards who had been inside the arena. Kraiklyn was near the front of the queue now, and a bus had almost finished filling up. Road cars and hovers waited behind it. Kraiklyn pointed at one of them as a security guard with a notescreen talked to him.
Horza looked at the row of waiting people and guessed there must be several hundreds of them in it. If he were to join it he would lose Kraiklyn. He looked around quickly, wondering what other way there might be of following.
Somebody crashed into him from behind, and Horza turned round to the noise of shouting and voices and a press of brightly dressed people. A masked woman in a tight silver dress was shouting and screaming at a small, puzzled-looking man with long hair, clad only in intricate loops of dark green string. The woman shouted incoherently at the small man and struck out at him with her open hands; he backed off, shaking his head. People watched. Horza checked that he hadn’t had anything stolen when he was bumped into, then looked round again for some transport, or a taxi tout.
An aircraft flew overhead noisily and dropped leaflets written in a language Horza didn’t understand.
‘. . . Sarble,’ a transparent-skinned man said to a companion as they both squeezed out of the nearby crowd and went past Horza. The man was trying to look at a small terminal screen as he walked. Horza caught a glimpse of something which puzzled him. He turned his own terminal onto the appropriate channel.
He was watching what looked like the same incident he had seen for real in the auditorium a few hours earlier: the disturbance on the terrace above his own when he’d heard that Sarble the Eye had been caught by the security guards. Horza frowned and brought the screen on his cuff closer.
It was that same place, it was that incident, seen from almost exactly the same angle and apparent distance he’d watched it from. He grimaced at the screen, trying to imagine where the picture he was watching now could have been taken from. The scene ended and was replaced by candid shots of various eccentric-looking beings enjoying themselves in the auditorium, as the Damage game went on somewhere in the background.
. . . If I’d stood up, Horza thought, and moved over just a—
It was the woman.
The woman with the white hair he’d seen early on, standing in the highest pan of the arena, fiddling with a tiara: she’d been on that same terrace, been standing by his lounger when the incident on the terrace above took place. She was Sarble the Eye. Probably the tiara was the camera and the person on the higher terrace was a decoy, a plant.
Horza snapped off the screen. He smiled, then shook his head as though to dislodge the small, useless revelation from the centre of his attention. He had to find some transport.
He started walking quickly through the crowd, threading his way through people in groups and lines and queues, looking for a free vehicle, an open door, a tout’s eyes. He caught a glimpse of the queue Kraiklyn was in. The CAT’s commander was at the open door of a red road car, apparently arguing with its driver and two other people in the queue.
Horza felt sick. He started to sweat; he wanted to kick out, to throw all the people crowding around him out of his path, away from him. He doubled back. He would have to risk trying to bribe his way into Kraiklyn’s queue at the front. He was five metres away from the queue when Kraiklyn and the two other people stopped arguing and got into the taxi, which drove off. As he turned his head to watch it go past, his stomach sinking, his fists clenching, Horza saw the white-haired woman again. She wore a hooded blue cloak, but the hood fell back as she squeezed out of the crowd to the edge of the road, where a tall man put his arm round her shoulders and waved into the plaza. She pulled the hood up again.
Horza put his hand into his pocket and onto the gun, then went forward towards the couple – just as a sleek, matt-black hover hissed out of the darkness and stopped beside them. Horza stepped forward quickly as the hover’s side door winged open and the woman who was Sarble the Eye stooped to enter.
Horza reached out and tapped the woman on the shoulder. She whirled round to face him. The tall man started towards him, and Horza shoved his hand forward and up in his pocket, so that the gun pressed out. The man stopped, looking down, uncertain; the woman froze, one foot on the door’s sill.
‘I think you’re going my way,’ Horza said quickly. ‘I know who you are.’ He nodded at the woman. ‘I know about that thing you had on your head. All I want is a lift to the port. That’s all. No fuss.’ He gestured with his head in the direction of the security guards at the head of the main queue.
The woman looked at the tall man, then at Horza. She stepped back slowly. ‘OK. After you.’
‘No, you first.’ Horza motioned with the hand in his pocket. The woman smiled, shrugged and got in, followed by the tall man and Horza.
‘What’s he—?’ began the driver, a fierce-looking bald woman.
‘A guest,’ Sarble told her. ‘Just drive.’
The hover rose. ‘Straight ahead,’ Horza said. ‘Fast as you like. I’m looking for a red-coloured wheeled car.’ He took the gun out of his pocket and pivoted round so that he faced Sarble the Eye and the tall man. The hover accelerated.
‘I told you they put that ’cast out too soon,’ the tall man hissed in a hoarse high voice. Sarble shrugged. Horza smiled, glancing occasionally out of the window at the traffic around the cab, but watching the other two people from the corner of his eye.
‘Just bad luck,’ Sarble said. ‘I kept bumping into this guy inside the place, too.’
‘You really are Sarble, then?’ Horza said to the woman. She didn’t look round and didn’t reply.
‘Look,’ the man said, turning to Horza, ‘we’ll take you to the port, if that’s where this red car’s going, but just don’t try anything. We’ll fight if we have to. I’m not afraid to die.’ The tall man sounded frightened and angry at the same time; his yellow-white face looked like a child’s, about to cry.
‘You’ve convinced me.’ Horza grinned. ‘Now, why not watch out for the red car? Three wheels, four doors, driver, three people in the back. Can’t miss it.’
The tall man bit his lip. Horza motioned him to look forward, with a small movement of the gun.
‘That it?’ the bald-headed driver said. Horza saw the car she meant. It looked right.
‘Yes. Follow it; not too close.’ The hover dropped back a little.
They entered the port area. Cranes and gantries were lit in the distance; parked road vehicles, hovers and even light shuttles lay scattered on either side of the road. The car was just ahead now, following a couple of struggling hover buses up a shallow ramp. Their own hover’s engine laboured as they climbed.
The red car branched off the main route and followed a long curve of roadway, water glittering darkly on either side.
‘Are you really Sarble?’ Horza asked the white-haired woman, who still didn’t turn to him. ‘Was that you earlier, outside the hall? Or not? Is Sarble really lots of people?’
The people in the car said nothing. Horza just smiled, watching them carefully, but nodding and smiling to himself. There was silence in the hover, only the wind roaring.
The car left the roadway and angled down a fenced boulevard past huge gantries and the lit masses of towering machinery, then sped along a road lined on both sides with dark warehouses. It started to slow by the side of a small dock.
‘Pull back,’ Horza said. The bald-headed woman s
The red car drew up by a brightly lit building. A pattern of lights revolving round the top of the construction spelt out ‘SUB-BASE ACCESS 54’ in several languages.
‘Fine. Stop,’ Horza said. The hover stopped, sinking on its skirts. ‘Thanks.’ Horza got out, still facing the man and the white-haired woman.
‘You’re just lucky you didn’t try anything,’ the man said angrily, nodding sharply, his eyes glistening.
‘I know,’ Horza said. ‘Bye now,’ he winked at the white-haired woman. She turned and made what he suspected was an obscene gesture with one finger. The hover rose, blasted forward, then skidded round and roared off the way it had come. Horza looked back at the sub-plate shaft entrance, where the three people who had got out of the car stood silhouetted against the light inside. One of them might have looked back down the dock towards Horza; he wasn’t sure they did, but he shrank back into the shadows of the crane above him.
Two of the people at the access tube went into the building and disappeared. The third person, who might have been Kraiklyn, walked off towards the side of the dock.
Horza pocketed the gun again and hurried on, underneath another crane.
A roaring noise like the one that Sarble’s hover had made when it drew away from him – but much louder and deeper – came from inside the dock.
Lights and spray filled the sea-end of the dock as a huge air-cushion vehicle, similar in principle to but vastly bigger than the hover Horza had commandeered, swept in from the expanse of black ocean. Lit by starlight, by the glow of the Orbital’s daylight side arcing overhead and by the craft’s own lights, the billows of spray kicked up into the air with a milky luminescence. The big machine lumbered between the walls of the dock, its engines shrieking. Beyond it, out to sea, Horza could see another couple of clouds, also lit from inside by flashing lights. Fireworks burst from the leading craft as it came slowly up the dock. Horza could make out an expanse of windows, and what appeared to be people dancing inside. He looked back down the dockside; the man he was following was mounting the steps to a footbridge which crossed high over the dock. Horza ran quietly, ducking behind the legs of cranes and leaping over lengths of thick hawsers. The lights of the hover flashed on the dark superstructure of the cranes; the scream of the jets and impellers echoed between concrete walls.
As though pointing out the comparative crudity of the scene, a small craft – dark, and silent but for the tearing noise its passage made through the atmosphere – rushed overhead, zooming and disappearing into the night sky, specking once against the loop of the Orbital’s daytime surface. Horza gave it a glance, then watched the figure on the small bridge, lit by the flashing lights of the hover still making its lumbering way up the dock underneath. The second craft was just swinging into position outside the dock to follow it.
Horza came to the steps leading to the walkway of the narrow suspension bridge. The man, who walked like Kraiklyn and wore a grey cloak, was about halfway across. Horza couldn’t see much of what the terrain was like on the other side of the dock, but guessed he stood a good chance of losing his quarry if he let him get to the other side before he started after him. Probably the man – Kraiklyn, if it was him – had worked this out; Horza guessed he knew he was being followed. He set off across the bridge. It swayed slightly underneath him. The noise and lights of the giant hovercraft were almost underneath; the air filled with swirling dark spray, kicked up from the shallow water in the dock. The man didn’t look round at Horza, though he must have felt Horza’s footsteps swinging the bridge with his own.
The figure left the bridge at the far end. Horza lost sight of him and started running, the gun out in front of him, the air-cushion vehicle beneath blasting gusts of spray-soaked air about him, soaking him. Loud music blared from the craft, audible even through the scream of the engines. Horza skidded along the bridge at its end and ran quickly down the spiral steps to the dockside.
Something sailed out of the darkness under the spiral of steps and crashed into his face. Immediately afterwards something slammed into his back and the rear of his skull. He lay on something hard, groggily wondering what had happened, while lights swept over him, the air in his ears roared and roared, and music played somewhere. A bright light shone straight into his eyes, and the hood over his face was thrown back.
He heard a gasp: the gasp of a man tearing a hood away from a face only to see his own face staring back at him. (Who are you?) If that was what it was, then that man was vulnerable now, shocked for just a few seconds (Who am I?) . . . He had enough strength to kick up hard with one leg, forcing his arms up at the same time and grabbing some material, his shin connecting with a groin. The man started to go over Horza’s shoulders, heading for the dock; then Horza felt his own shoulders grasped, and as the man he held thumped to the ground to one side and behind him, he was pulled over—
Over the side of the dock; the man had landed right on the edge and had gone over, taking Horza with him. They were falling.
He was aware of lights, than shadow, the grip he had on the man’s cloak or suit and one hand still on his shoulder. Falling: how deep was the dock? The noise of wind. Listen for the sound of—
It was a double impact. He hit water, then something harder, in a crumpling collision of fluid and body. It was cold, and his neck ached. He was thrashing about, unsure which way was up, and groggy from the blows to his head; then something pulled at him. He punched out, hit something soft, then pulled upright and found himself standing in a little over a metre of water, staggering forward. It was bedlam – light and sound and spray everywhere, and somebody hanging onto him.
Horza flailed out again. Spray cleared momentarily, and he saw the wall of the dock a couple of metres to his right and, directly in front of him, the rear of the giant hovercraft, receding slowly five or six metres ahead. A powerful gust of oily, fiery air knocked him over, splashing into the water again. The spray closed over him. The hand let go, and he fell back through the water once more, going under.
Horza struggled upright in time to see his adversary heading off through the spray, following the slowly moving hovercraft up the dock. He tried to run, but the water was too deep; he had to force his legs forward in a slow-motion, nightmarish version of a run, angling his torso so that his weight carried him forward. With exaggerated twistings of his body from side to side he strode after the man in the grey cloak, using his hands like paddles in an attempt to gain speed. His head was reeling; his back, face and neck all hurt terribly, and his vision was blurred, but at least he was still chasing. The man in front seemed more anxious to get away than to stay and fight.
The blattering exhaust of the still-moving hover blew another hole in the spray towards the two men, revealing the slab of stern rising above the bulbous wall of the machine’s skirt, bowing out from fully three metres above the surface of the water in the dock. First the man in front of him, and then Horza, was blown back by the pulse of hot, choking fumes. The water was getting shallower. Horza found that he could bring his legs out of the water far enough to wade faster. The noise and spray swept over them again, and for a moment Horza lost sight of his quarry; then the view ahead was clear, and he could see the big air-cushion vehicle on a dry area of concrete. The walls of the dock extended high on either side, but the water and the clouds of spray were almost gone. The man in front staggered to the brief ramp leading from the now only ankle-deep water onto the concrete, staggered and almost fell, then started running weakly after the hovercraft, now powering faster along the level concrete down the canyon of the dock.
Horza finally splashed out of the water and ran after the man, following the wetly flapping grey cloak.
The man stumbled, fell and rolled. As he started to rise Horza slammed into him, bowling them both over. He lashed out at the man’s face, shadowed in the light coming from behind him, but missed. The man kicked out at Horza, then tried to get
A black mass blowing spray rushed towards him; lights blazed high above. A siren sounded, then the crushing black bulk was over him, hitting him, knocking him flat, pounding at his eardrums with noise and pressure, pressing, pressing, pressing . . . Horza heard a gurgling sound; he was being rammed into Kraiklyn’s chest; they were both being rubbed into the concrete as though by an immense thumb.
Another hovercraft; the second one in the line he’d seen.
Abruptly, with a single sweeping stroke of pain bruising him from feet to head, as if a giant was trying to sweep him up off the floor with a huge hard brush, the weight was lifted off. In its place was utter darkness, noise fit to burst skulls, and violent, turbulent, crushing air pressure.
They were under the skirts of the big vehicle. It was right above them, moving slowly forward or maybe – it was too dark to see anything – stationary over the concrete apron, perhaps about to settle on the concrete, crushing them.
As though it was just another part of the maelstrom of battering pain, a blow thudded into Horza’s ear, knocking him sideways in the darkness. He rolled on the rough concrete, pivoting on one elbow as soon as he could and bracing one leg while he struck out with the other in the direction the punch had come from; he felt his foot hit something yielding.
He got to his feet, ducking as he thought of whirling impeller blades just overhead. The eddies and vortices of hot oil-filled air rocked him like a small boat bobbing in a chopping sea. He felt like a puppet controlled by a drunk. He staggered forward, his arms out, and hit Kraiklyn. They started to fall again, and Horza let go, punching with all his might at the place he guessed the man’s head was. His fist crashed into bone, but he didn’t know where. He skipped back, in case there was a retaliatory kick or punch on its way. His ears were popping; his head felt tight. He could feel his eyes vibrating in their sockets; he thought he was deaf but he could feel a thudding in his chest and throat, making him breathless, making him choke and gasp. He could make out just a hint of a border of light all around them, as though they were under the middle of the hovercraft. He saw something, just an area of darkness, on that border, and lunged at it, swinging his foot from low down. Again he connected, and the dark part of the border disappeared.