Feersum Endjinn

by Iain M. Banks

  She walked along until she stood in the very centre of the vast aperture, looking out through a central pane of some substance she knew was more hard and clear and strong than glass. Far below, there was a landscape of luminous grey; a circular depression of shallow, undulating hills surrounded by cliffs and mountains, lit from one side and full of deep, black shadows. The clock still ticked. She stood for a while, admiring the stars, and thinking that the circle of the great window mirrored the shape of the circular plain it overlooked.

  Then the clock-sound speeded up, ticking faster and faster until it was a ripping, buzzing noise in her ears; the shadows swung across the landscape and the bright orb of the sun tore across the sky, then abruptly the sun vanished and the noise of the clock changed, took on a kind of rhythm until the noise speeded up again and became the buzz it had been before. She could barely see the landscape below. The stars blazed.

  Then the stars started to disappear. They went out slowly at first, in a single region of the sky off to her right and near the dark horizon, then more quickly, until the stain of darkness was eating up a quarter of the sky, rising like a vast curtain thrown up from the ghostly grey mountains. Now a third of the sky was utterly dark, the stars going out one by one or in groups; shining, then dimming, then flickering and disappearing altogether as the darkness consumed half the sky, then two thirds.

  She stared, open-mouthed, choosing brighter stars in the path of the blackness and watching them as they vanished.

  Finally almost the whole sky was black; just a few stars shone steadily above the distant mountains to her right, while to her left the darkness had touched the horizon, where the sun had shone earlier.

  Abruptly the clock was back to normal, and the sun blazed again - from a different angle now, but still just within the region of the darkness - sending a cold, steady light across the crater floor to the grey cliffs and crags of the rim-wall.

  Earth. Cradle. Very old. There are many ages. Age within age. Age of nothingness comes first, then age/instant of infinitesimal/ infinite explosion, then age of shining, then age of heaviness, of different air/fluids, then the tiny but long ages of stone/fluid and fire, then the age of life, smaller still, and living with and in all the other ages, then the age/moment of thought-life: here we are, and all goes very quickly and at the same time all other types/sizes of ages go on but then there is next age/moment of the new life that the old life makes, and that is much faster again, and that is where we are now too. And yet.

  The old ape-man looked sad. He had grey hair and grey sagging skin on a skinny frame and he was dressed in a strange costume of yellow and red diamonds topped by a pointed hat with a bell on the end. His soft shoes were pointed too, and also had bells at their tips. The only noise he could produce was a chattering laugh; he was the size of a child but his eyes looked wise and sad. He sat on the steps that led up to a big chair; the large room was empty except for her and the ape-man and one wall of the room was window, double-skinned and curved and ribbed with a fine tracery of dark lines, though much smaller than the circular window she had seen earlier. This window too looked out onto a landscape of shining grey.

  The beautiful globe hanging in the black sky above the shining grey hills was Earth, the ape-man had told her. He talked by sign, using his arms and fingers. She found that she could understand him but not reply, though just by nodding, frowning or raising her eyebrows it was possible to express herself well enough, it seemed.

  Eyebrows? she signalled.

  And yet, the ape-man sighed, expression still downcast. Ages are in conflict, he told her. Each move, own pace, not often come together, fight. But now: happens. Age of air/fluids and age of life fight. Two ages of life, too. For all who feel sadness sometimes, there comes sadness now. For all those who die sometimes, there comes death now, perhaps.

  She frowned. She was standing, still dressed in her night-blue gown, in front of the wide window. Every now and again, during pauses in the ape-man’s signing, she glanced at the Earth and the steady stars hanging visible beyond its brightness. Her gown was the colour of the barren, ghostly landscape outside.

  She shrugged.

  People/humans made much; big things on Earth. Biggest thing, smallest thing too. Everywhere. Then inside this thing, fight. Then peace but not peace; peace for a while, short now. Now the age of air/fluids comes, threat to all. All must act. Most danger if biggest/smallest thing not act. Biggest/smallest thing fight with self, cannot talk to all of self; bad. Other ways of talking; good. Most special good if self talk to self.

  The ape-man looked almost happy for a moment, and she smiled to show she understood.

  You.

  She pointed at herself. Me?

  You.

  She shook her head, then shrugged, spreading her arms.

  Yes, you. I tell you now. You forget in future, but you also know still, too. Is good. Perhaps all safe.

  She smiled uncertainly.

  ‘Ah, there you are,’ Pieter Velteseri said, appearing from the steps leading to the gondola’s lower decks. He parted the tails of his coat and sat beside Asura, planting his silver-topped cane between his feet. He looked at her.

  She blinked rapidly for a few seconds and then shook her head, as though just waking up.

  Pieter glanced at the woman standing speaking in the middle of the gondola’s floor. He smiled. ‘Ah; our Resiler has found her voice, has she? I didn’t think she would stay silent for long.’ He placed his hands on top of the cane and rested his chin on top of his hands.

  ‘She is ... Resisla?’ Asura said, glancing at Pieter and frowning as she tried to pick up the thread of the woman’s speech again.

  ‘She is a Resiler; one who resiles, or recoils,’ he said in a low voice. ‘In a sense we all are, or our ancestors were, I suppose, but she is of a sect who believes we need to resile further.’

  ‘No one else listens,’ Asura whispered. She looked around the others on the gondola’s open deck. They were all talking among themselves, or watching the view, or sitting or lying with their eyes closed, either snoozing or experientially elsewhere.

  ‘They will have heard all this before,’ Pieter said quietly. ‘Not word for word, but ...’

  ‘We are guilty,’ said the Resiler. ‘We have treasured our comfort and our vanity by giving shelter to the beasts of chaos which infest the crypt so that humanity’s part of it now is barely one part in a hundredth, and that wasted, that turned over to the worship of self and vanity and dreams of sovereignty over what we claim to have renounced ...’

  ‘Is all she says true?’ Asura whispered.

  ‘Ah,’ Pieter said, smiling. ‘Now, that is a question. Let’s say it is all based on truth, but the facts are open to different interpretations from the one she supplies.’

  ‘... The King is no King and all know this; well and good, but neither is what appears to be our good work good, but only a disguise for the face of our foolish ignorance and ill-fitness.’

  ‘The King?’ Asura said, looking puzzled.

  ‘Our ruler,’ Pieter supplied. ‘I’ve always thought Dalai Llama would have been a better description, though the King has more power and less ... holiness. In any event, the royal term is preferred. It’s complicated.’

  ‘Why is she in irons?’ Asura asked.

  ‘It’s a symbol,’ Pieter said, a teasing, mischievous look on his face. Asura nodded, her expression serious, and Pieter smiled again.

  ‘She seems very sincere,’ Asura told Pieter.

  ‘A word with oddly positive connotations,’ Pieter said, nodding. ‘In my experience those who are most sincere are also the most morally suspect, as well as being incapable of producing or appreciating wit.’

  ‘What happens happens,’ continued the Resiler, ‘and cannot be made to unhappen. We are the equation; we cannot deny the algebra of the universe or the result it brings us. Die peacefully or in hysterics, with grace or with despair; it matters not. Prepare or ignore; it matters not. Very little matters
very much and almost nothing matters greatly. Shanti.’

  ‘I find myself half drawn to that last statement,’ Pieter told Asura as the Resiler sat down. Nearby there was a group of people who had been laughing and joking among themselves during the course of her speech; a highly dressed woman rose from among them and went over and placed some sweetmeats in the plain wooden bowl at the Resiler’s side. The Resiler thanked her and ate with awkward grace. She smiled thinly at Asura as the other woman sashayed back to her friends, laughing.

  ‘Come, my dear,’ Pieter said pleasantly, rising and taking the girl’s elbow. ‘We’ll take the air on the lower viewing deck, shall we?’ They rose. ‘Ma’am,’ he said, nodding to the Resiler as they passed.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Asura said to the Resiler as Pieter led her to the stairs. ‘It’s going to be all right.’ She winked at her.

  The woman looked briefly baffled, then shook her head and continued to eat, her movements made strange by the iron rod linking her wrists.

  Asura’s smooth brow furrowed into a frown as she and Pieter descended to the main lounge. ‘She eats,’ she said, glancing back up. ‘How does she clean herself after toilet?’

  Pieter laughed lightly. ‘You know, I never thought of that. The alternatives are all unpleasant, aren’t they?’

  Below, from the promenade deck, they saw the forested hills stretching out around them and, from the tiers of seats facing the lower section of the round transparent nose, the first hazy hints of the towers and battlements of Serehfa.

  Asura clapped her hands.

  That morning, over breakfast, she had told them something of her dreams and Pieter had looked at first alarmed and then resigned. She had not told them all the details; just that she had seen the tunnel of light and been in an enchanted carriage journeying across the dusty plain towards the great castle beyond the hills.

  ‘Lucky you,’ Lucia Chimbers had told her. ‘Most of us have to concentrate quite hard to have dreams that interesting.’

  ‘Sounds like she might have implants after all,’ Gil said, helping himself to more ortanique juice.

  Pieter shook his head. ‘I think not.’ He frowned. ‘And I do wish people would stop calling them implants; they’re not, if you’re born with them and they’re part of your genetic inheritance, reversible or not.’

  Gil and Lucia smiled at him with practised indulgence.

  Pieter dabbed a napkin at his lips and sat back, surveying their young guest, who sat very upright with her hands in her lap and her eyes sparkling.

  ‘Do I take it then that you wish to leave, young lady?’

  ‘Please call me Asura,’ she said. She nodded vigorously. ‘I think I go to castle.’

  ‘Bit touristy, going so soon,’ Lucia said. Pieter glanced wearily at her.

  ‘Everyone should see Serehfa,’ Gil said, drinking noisily.

  ‘Do you wish to go today?’ Pieter asked.

  ‘As soon as possible, please,’ the girl said.

  ‘Well,’ Pieter said, ‘I suppose one of us ought to go with you, really.’

  ‘Don’t look at me—’ Lucia began.

  ‘I merely wondered if we might prevail upon you to lend the young lady—’

  ‘Asura!’ she said, happily.

  ‘—to lend Asura,’ Pieter said with a sigh, ‘your clothes on a rather longer term—’

  ‘Take them.’ Lucia waved one hand, then took Gil’s in hers.

  ‘I shall want to be back in time for the others returning,’ Pieter told Asura. ‘I may have to dump you at the gates, even assuming we can find a flight in time.’

  ‘As soon as possible, please,’ Asura repeated.

  ‘Book her into a sisters’ hostel in the place or something,’ Gil said. ‘Or get a clan member to look after her.’

  ‘I may do both,’ Pieter said, then sat back and closed his eyes. ‘Excuse me,’ he murmured.

  Lucia Chimbers and Gil poured each other coffee. Asura looked intently at the older man, who presently opened his eyes again and said, ‘Yes, we’re booked on a flight from SF del Apure, leaving at noon. I can be back on the return service a little after midnight. The jalop claims to be charged up, so I’ll drive us to the rail station. I’ve left a message for Cousin Ucubulaire in Serehfa. I dare say you two will manage to keep yourselves occupied without me?’ he said to Gil and Lucia, who both smiled.

  ‘Between you and me, my dear,’ Pieter shouted an hour later as he drove the whirring battery car along the dusty road from the house to Cazoria, the nearest town, ‘I put you in the blue room on purpose last night; the bed’s headboard is fitted with a receptor system.’ He smiled over at her.

  They had the sunlight-powered car’s top off; the wind whistled round their ears. (‘Ruins the efficiency,’ Pieter had told her, ‘but it’s much more fun.’ He wore goggles and a tie-down hat, and had given her similar equipment. She wore loose trousers, a blouse and a light jacket.) ‘I thought you might be able to avail yourself of the facilities. If you hadn’t, well then, no harm done.’

  Asura held onto her hat and smiled broadly at him. Then she frowned, and said, ‘The bed made me dream?’

  ‘Not exactly, but it let you dream ... in concert, shall we say? Though you must have a remarkable gift to adapt so quickly and so easily.’

  They drove on through the morning, between wild fruit-forests of banana and orange. Asura was enjoying the drive.

  ‘Ah, Asura?’ Pieter said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘That is not regarded as acceptable in polite society. Or, come to think of it, in almost any society, normally.’

  ‘What? This?’

  ‘Yes. That.’

  ‘No? But it feels good. It is beginning with car shaking.’

  ‘I don’t doubt. Nevertheless. One does that sort of thing in private, I think you’ll find.’

  ‘Oh, all right.’ Asura looked mildly puzzled, then adjusted her hands and sat with them clasped demurely in her lap.

  ‘There’s the town,’ Pieter said, nodding ahead to where a collection of white spires and towers were rising above the greenery. He glanced at his young passenger and shook his head. ‘Serehfa. Good grief. I hope I’m doing the right thing ...’

  2

  Chief Scientist Gadfium sat in the whirlbath with the High Sortileger Xemetrio; the pumps hummed, water frothed and bubbled, steam hissed from wall pipes and wrapped them in its hot, dense fog, and music played loudly.

  They sat side by side facing each other, each whispering into the other’s ear.

  ‘They sound half mad, or it sounds half mad,’ Xemetrio said, snorting. ‘What is all this nonsense about “Love is god” and the “Hallowed centre”?’

  ‘It sounds formalised,’ Gadfium whispered. ‘I don’t think it really means anything.’

  Xemetrio drew back a little in the swirling steam; it was so thick Gadfium could not see the walls of the bathroom. ‘My dear,’ Xemetrio whispered urbanely once his mouth was alongside her ear again. ‘I am the High Sortileger; everything means something.’

  ‘You see; that is your faith, even though you wouldn’t call it such; theirs is expressed in this quasi-religious—’

  ‘It isn’t quasi-religious, it’s completely religious.’

  ‘Even so.’

  ‘And Sortilegy boils down to a matter of statistics,’ Xemetrio said, sounding genuinely offended. ‘Anything less spiritual is difficult to—’

  ‘We’re moving off the point. If we ignore the religious trappings and concentrate on the information itself—’

  ‘Context matters,’ the Sortileger insisted.

  ‘Let us assume the rest of the signal is true.’

  ‘If you insist.’

  ‘Abstract: they confirm our fears concerning the cloud and the lack of any communication from the Diaspora, and they know of our attempt to construct rockets. They know about this idiotic war between Adijine and the Engineers and that it isn’t going to lead anywhere, and they seem concerned about some “workings
” going on in the level-five south-western solar affecting the fabric - we assume they mean the fabric of the castle mega-structure itself.’ Gadfium wiped beads of moisture from her brow. ‘Do we know any more about what’s going on there?’

  ‘There’s a full Army unit there and they have a lot of heavy equipment, including something they dug out of the southern revetment last year,’ Xemetrio told her. ‘It’s all being kept very quiet.’ He leant back and adjusted a control by the side of the tub. ‘They built a new hydrovator into the Southern Volcano Room just to supply the garrison. That was where Sessine was heading when he was killed.’

  ‘Sessine was always reckoned one of those who might have been sympathetic to us; do you think—?’

  ‘Impossible to say. There was nothing to link us and him, though it is feasible he was assassinated for political reasons.’ Xemetrio shrugged. ‘Or personal ones.’

  ‘The signal spoke of “workings”,’ Gadfium said. ‘Mine workings, perhaps? What is beneath that room?’

  ‘The floor is unpierced; it cannot signify.’

  ‘But if the device found in the southern revetment ...’

  ‘If somebody had finally found a machine able to create new holes in the mega-structure and made it work and dragged it all the way up here, they’d be burrowing into the ceiling of the sacristy, in no-man’s land between the King’s forces and the Engineers of the Chapel.’

  ‘But the signal spoke of their concern over the fabric. If that is what they meant—’

  ‘Then,’ the Sortileger said, sounding exasperated, ‘there’s nothing we can do for now, unless we are to confess all to the King and his Security people. What else have you decided we can tell from your mysterious signal, assuming it’s not all some bizarre self-delusion on the part of the mad people who watch stones slide and call it science?’

  ‘I trust them.’

  ‘Like you trust the signal itself,’ Xemetrio said sourly. ‘We are conspirators, Gadfium; we cannot afford so much trust.’

  ‘We are not yet acting upon such trust and so risk nothing.’