Matter by Iain M. Banks
“What? Why not?” Ferbin demanded.
“It is not our place,” the Acting Craterine Zamerin said.
“Why not?”
Alveyal Girgetioni stopped in the air again. “It is not within our remit.”
“I am not even sure I know what that means,” Ferbin said. “Is it not right to warn somebody they might be in mortal danger? For that is—”
“Mr Ferbin—”
“Prince, if you please.”
“Prince Ferbin,” the Nariscene said, reinstating its slow circling. “There are rules to be observed in such interactions. It is not the duty or the right of the Nariscene to interfere in the affairs of our developing mentorees. We are here to provide an overall framework within which a species like that to which you belong may mature and progress according to their own developmental timetable; we are not here to dictate that timetable or hasten or delay any such advancement taking place along that timeline. We merely maintain the superior integrity of the entity that is Sursamen. Your own fates are allowed to remain your own. They are, in a sense, within your own gift. Our gift is that already stated, of overarching care for the greater environment, that is to say the Shellworld Sursamen itself, and the protection of your good selves from undue and unwarranted interference, including – and this is the focus of my point – any undue and unwarranted interference we ourselves might be tempted to apply.”
“So you’ll not warn a young fellow he may be in mortal danger? Or tell a grieving mother her eldest son lives, when she is in mourning for a dead husband and a son as well?”
“Correct.”
“You do realise what that means?” Ferbin said. “I’m not being mistranslated, am I? My brother could die, and soon. He will die in any event before he is of an age to inherit the full title of king. That is guaranteed. He is a marked man.”
“All death is unfortunate,” the Acting Craterine Zamerin said.
“That, sir, is no comfort,” Ferbin said.
“Comforting was not my intention. My duty is to state facts.”
“Then the facts tell a sorry truth of cynicism and complacency in the face of outright evil.”
“That may seem so to you. The fact remains, I am not allowed to interfere.”
“Is there no one who might help us? If we are to accept that you will not, is there anybody here on the Surface or elsewhere who might?”
“I cannot say. I do not know of anyone.”
“I see.” Ferbin thought. “Am I – are we – free to leave?”
“Sursamen? Yes, fully free.”
“And we may pursue our aims, of contacting Xide Hyrlis and my sibling?”
“You may.”
“We have no money about us with which to pay our fare,” Ferbin said. “However, on my accession to—”
“What? Oh, I see. Monetary exchange is not required in such circumstances. You may travel without exchange.”
“I will pay our way,” Ferbin said firmly. “Only I cannot do so immediately. You have my word on this, however.”
“Yes. Yes, well. Perhaps a cultural donation, if you insist.”
“I would also point out,” Ferbin said, gesturing at himself and Holse, “that we have nothing else, either, save what we stand up in.”
“Systems and institutions exist to aid the needy traveller,” the Acting Craterine Zamerin said. “You will not go without. I shall authorise such provisions as you may require.”
“Thank you,” Ferbin said. “Again, generous payment will be forthcoming when I have taken charge of what is rightfully mine.”
“You are welcome,” Alveyal Girgetioni told them. “Now, if you will excuse me . . .”
The Baeng-yon Crater was of Sursamen’s most common type, supporting a water- and landscape filled with a gas mixture designed to be acceptable to the majority of oxygen breathers, including the Nariscene, most pan-humans and a wide spectrum of aquatic species. Like most of the world’s Craters it had an extensive network of wide, deep canals, large and small lakes and other bodies of water both open and enclosed providing ample living space and travel channels for seagoing creatures.
Ferbin looked out from a high window set in a great cliff of a building poised over an inlet of a broad lake. Steep-pitched hills and outbreaking cliffs and boulder fields were scattered everywhere amongst a landscape mostly covered in grass, trees and tall, oddly shaped buildings. Curious obelisks and pylons that might have been works of art were dotted about, and various lengths and loops of curved transparent tubing lay draped between and across nearly every feature. A giant sea creature, trailed by a shoal of smaller shapes each twice the length of a man, floated serenely along one of these conduits, passing between gaudily coloured buildings and over some form of steamless ground vehicle to dip into the broad bowl of a harbour and disappear beneath the waves amongst the hulls of bizarrely shaped boats.
All about, Nariscene moved through the air in their glittering harnesses. Overhead, an airship the shape of a sea monster and the size of a cloud moved slowly across a distant line betokening an immensely tall and steep-sided ridge, its barely curved top a serrated row of tiny, regular, jagged peaks. All lay under a startlingly bright sky of shining turquoise. He was looking towards the Crater Edgewall, apparently. An invisible shield held the air inside the vast bowl. It was so bright because a vast lens between the sun and the Crater concentrated the light like a magnifying glass. Much of what he looked at, Ferbin thought, he didn’t even start to understand. Much of it was so strange and alien he hardly knew how to frame the questions that might provide the answers which would help explain what he was looking at in the first place, and he suspected that even if he did know how to ask the questions, he wouldn’t understand the answers.
Holse came through from his room, knocking on the wall as he entered – the doors disappeared when they opened, petals of material folding away into the walls. “Decent quarters,” he said. “Eh, sir?”
“They will do,” Ferbin agreed.
They had been escorted to this place by one of the judicial machines. Ferbin had been tired and – finding what he took for a bed – slept for a while. When he woke a couple of hours later, Holse was inspecting a pile of supplies in the middle room of the five they had been assigned. Another machine had appeared with the loot while Ferbin had been asleep. Holse reported that the door to the outside corridor was not locked. They appeared to be free to go about their business if they so desired, not that Holse had been able to think, offhand, of any business to go about.
They had more clothes now, plus luggage. Holse had discovered a device in the main room that brought entertainments into it; as many different entertainments as there were pages in a book, and seemingly there in the room with them. Almost all were utterly incomprehensible. After he’d muttered as much under his breath the room itself had talked to him and asked if he wanted the entertainments translated. He had said no, and been studious in not talking to himself since.
He’d also discovered a sort of chilly wardrobe full of food. Ferbin found himself to be remarkably hungry, and they ate well of the foods they recognised.
“Sirs, a visitor would meet with you,” a pleasant voice from nowhere said in a well-bred Sarl accent.
“That’s the voice of the room,” Holse whispered to Ferbin.
“Who is this visitor?” Ferbin asked.
“A Morthanveld; Tertiary Hulian Spine Strategic Mission Director General Shoum, of Meast, of Zuevelous, of T’leish, of Gavantille Prime, Pliyr.”
“Morthanveld?” Ferbin said, latching on to almost the only word in all this that he actually understood.
“She is some ten minutes away and would like to know if you’d care to receive her,” the disembodied voice said.
“Who exactly is this person?” Ferbin asked.
“The director general is currently the highest-ranked all-species office-holder on Sursamen and most senior Morthanveld official within the local galactic region. She is charged with oversight of all Morthanv
“Is she any threat to us?” Holse asked.
“None whatsoever, I’d imagine.”
“Kindly tell the directing general we shall be happy to receive her,” Ferbin said.
Five minutes before the director general arrived, a pair of strange globular beings appeared at the door of their suite. The creatures were about a stride in diameter and shaped like a huge glistening drop of water with hundreds of spines inside. They announced that they were the pilot team for Director General Shoum and asked, in highly polite and almost unaccented Sarl, to be allowed in for a look round. Holse obliged them. Ferbin was staring thunderstruck at what appeared be an entertainment showing aliens having sex, or possibly wrestling, and hardly noticed the two real aliens.
The two Morthanveld floated in, wafted about for less than a minute and announced themselves satisfied that all was well. A formality, they explained in what sounded like cheerful tones.
Holse was well-educated enough to know that the Morthanveld were an aquatic species and he was still considering the etiquette of offering such beings a drink when the director general herself and her immediate entourage descended. Ferbin switched the alien pornography off and started paying attention. He and the director general were introduced, she and her half-dozen attendants spread out around the room, making admiring comments about the furnishings and pleasant view and then the director general herself – they had been informed she was a she, though there was no way to tell that Holse could see – suggested they take a ride in her barque.
Holse had to shrug when Ferbin looked at him.
“That would be our pleasure, ma’am,” Ferbin told her graciously.
Half a minute later an enormous pancake of an air vehicle with a skin that glittered like innumerable fish scales floated down from above and presented its curved, open rear to the windows, which hinged down to allow them access to the barque.
The transparent walls and clear circles on the floor showed them rising quickly into the air. Soon they could see the whole of the great straggled settlement they had just left, then the entirety of the circular sea on whose margins it lay, then other seas and circular patches of green and brown before – the view seemed to blink as they passed through some gauzy barrier – they were looking down on an entire enormous circle of blue and green and brown and white, with hints of what must be the dark, near-lifeless Surface of Sursamen itself at the edges. Circular patches in the craft’s ceiling showed tiny points of light. Holse supposed they must be the stars of empty space. He took a funny turn and had to sit down quickly on one of a variety of couch-shaped bumps on the floor, all of which were very slightly damp.
“Prince Ferbin,” the director general said, indicating with one of her spines a long, shallow seat near what Ferbin took to be the prow of the craft, some distance away from everybody else. He sat there while she rested on a bowl-shaped seat nearby. A tray floated down to Ferbin’s side. It held a small plate of delicacies and an opened jug of fine wine with one glass.
“Thank you,” Ferbin said, pouring himself some wine.
“You’re welcome. Then, if you please, tell me what brings you here.”
Ferbin told her the short version. Even at this distance in time, relating his father’s murder left him flushed and breathing hard, boiling with fury inside. He took a drink of wine, went on with the rest of his tale.
The director general was silent until the end, then said, “I see. Well then, prince, what are we to do with you?”
“Firstly, ma’am, I must get a message to my younger brother Oramen, to warn him of the danger he is in.”
“Indeed. What else?”
“I should be grateful if you would assist me in finding our old ally Xide Hyrlis, and, perhaps, my other sibling.”
“I should hope that I shall be able to assist with your onward travel,” the waterworlder replied.
This did not sound like an unequivocal yes to Ferbin. He cleared his throat. “I have made it clear to the Nariscene representative I encountered earlier that I will pay for my passage, though I am unable to do so at the moment.”
“Oh, payment is irrelevant, dear prince. Don’t worry yourself about that.”
“I was not worried, ma’am, I seek only to make it quite clear that I need accept no charity. I will pay my way. Depend on it.”
“Well,” Shoum said. There was a pause. “So, your father is dead; murdered by this tyl Loesp man.”
“Indeed, ma’am.”
“And you are the rightful king, by birthright?”
“I am.”
“How romantic!”
“I cannot tell you how gratified I am that you feel that way,” Ferbin said. He had obviously, he realised now, absorbed more courtier-speak than he’d given himself credit for. “However, my most pressing need is to warn my young brother that he is in danger of his life, if it is not already too late.”
“Ah,” the Morthanveld said. “I have what may be news unknown to you on such matters.”
“You do?” Ferbin sat forward.
“Your mother is well. Your brother Oramen lives and appears to prosper and mature most quickly at court. You are presumed dead, though of course tyl Loesp knows you are not. Your reputation has been traduced. Regent Mertis tyl Loesp and Field Marshal Werreber command an army which has been lowered to the level of the Deldeyn by the Oct and even now is on the brink of a decisive battle with the depleted remains of the Deldeyn forces which our modellers believe your people will be victorious in, with less than three per cent doubt.”
“You have spies there, ma’am?”
“No, but information osmoses.”
Ferbin leant forward. “Madam, I must get a message to my younger brother, but only if there is no chance of it being intercepted by tyl Loesp or his people. Might you be able to help?”
“That is not impossible. However, it would, arguably, be illegal.”
“How so?”
“We are not supposed to take such a close, and . . . dynamic interest in your affairs. Even the Nariscene are not supposed to, and they are technically in charge here.”
“And the Oct?”
“They are allowed limited influence, of course, given that they control so much of the access to Sursamen’s interior and were largely responsible for making it safe, though they have, arguably, overstepped their marked allowance by some margin already in co-operating with the Sarl to deceive and so – almost certainly – defeat the Deldeyn. The Aultridia have subsequently laid a charge before the Nariscene Mentoral Court against the Oct alleging just that. The underlying reasons causing the Oct to behave like this are still being investigated. Informed speculation on the matter is unusually diverse, indicating that no one really has a clue at all. However, I must make clear: my species is supposed to mentor those who mentor those who mentor your people. I am layers and levels away from being jurisdictionally allowed to have any direct influence.
“You find yourself the unintended victim of a system set up specifically to benefit people like the Sarl, prince; a system which has evolved over the centieons to ensure that peoples less technologically advanced than others are able to progress as naturally as possible within a generally controlled galactic environment, allowing societies at profoundly different civilisational stages to rub up against each other without this leading to the accidental destruction or demoralisation of the less developed participants. It is a system that has worked well for a long time; however, that does not mean that it never produces anomalies or seeming injustices. I am most sorry.”
The stage is small but the audience is great, as his father had always said, Ferbin thought as he listened to this. But the audience was just the audience, and so was forbidden from running up on to the stage and taking part, and – aside from a few jeers and calls and the occasional “Behind you!” – th
“These are rules that you cannot bend?” he asked.
“Oh, I can, prince. We are talking here, in one of my own craft, so that I can guarantee our privacy and we may speak freely. That is already bending one rule regarding legitimate interaction between what one might term our official selves. I can intervene, but ought I to? I do not mean, present me with further reason, I mean, would it be right for me to do so? These rules, regulations, terms and laws are not invoked arbitrarily; they exist for good reason. Would I be right in breaking them?”
“You may guess my view on the matter, ma’am. I would have thought that the brutal and disgraceful murder of an honourable man – a king to whom all in his realm save a few jealous, treacherous, murderous wretches paid grateful, loving homage – would seize at the heart of any creature, no matter how many layers and levels distant from such humble beings as ourselves they might be. We are all united, I would hope, in our love of justice and the desire to see evil punished and good rewarded.”
“It is as you say, of course,” Shoum said smoothly. “It is simply that, from a further perspective, one cannot but recognise that these very rules I allude to are set out so with precisely such an idea of justice at their core. We seek to be just to the peoples in our charge and those that we mentor by, usually, declining the always obvious option of facile intervention. One might intervene and interfere at every available opportunity and at every single instant when things did not turn out as any decent and reasonable creature would like. However, with every intervention, every interference – no matter how individually well-meant and seemingly right and proper judged purely on its own immediate merits – one would, subtly, incrementally but most certainly remove all freedom and dignity from the very people one sought only to help.”
“Justice is justice, ma’am. Foulness and treachery remain what they are. You may pull so far away you lose sight of them, but only draw back in and as soon as you see them at all you see their corruption, by the very colour and shape of them. When a common man is murdered it means the end for him and a catastrophe for his family; beyond that, and our sentimentality, it affects only as far as his own importance reaches. When a king is murdered and the whole direction of a country’s fate is diverted from its rightful course, it is another thing entirely; how such a crime is reacted to speaks loud for the worth of all who know of it and have the means to punish those responsible or, by tolerating, seem to authorise. Such a reaction beacons out its lesson for every subject, forming a large part of their life’s moral template. It affects the fate of nations, of whole philosophies, ma’am, and may not be dismissed as a passing commotion in the kennels.”