Feersum Endjinn

by Iain M. Banks

  ‘Yet,’ scoffed the Sortileger, cupping water over his shoulders.

  ‘Whoever sent the signal,’ Gadfium went on, ‘believes the answer lies in the Cryptosphere.’

  ‘I’m sure the true answer does, along with every possible false answer and no way to distinguish between them.’

  ‘They appear to believe that, as we have always suspected, there is a conspiracy to thwart all efforts to avoid the catastrophe.’

  ‘Though why the King and his cronies should particularly want to die when the sun blows up is of course a trifle difficult to fathom. We’re back to speculating about ultra-secret survival projects or some bizarre fatalism.’

  ‘Neither of which is utterly unfeasible, but the act of the conspiracy is all that matters for now, not its origin. Lastly, the signal-senders confirm both that there is, or may be, an already designed-in method of escape—’

  ‘What, though? Switch on some galactic vacuum-cleaner? Move the planet?’

  ‘You’re the Sortileger, Xemetrio ...’

  ‘Huh. We daren’t run that question through the system, but if I had to guess, I’d stick with the obvious answer; there’s some part of Serehfa which conceals an escape device. That may be what the war with the Chapel is really about. Maybe the Engineers have access to it and Adijine doesn’t.’

  ‘Whatever. The signal also suggests that the data corpus itself may hold the solution and be attempting to access it.’

  ‘The mythical asura,’ the Sortileger said, shaking his head.

  ‘Such a method would make sense, given the chaotic nature of the crypt,’ Gadfium whispered. ‘The possibility of the data corpus’ corruption may have been foreseen—’

  ‘Amazing Sortilegy,’ Xemetrio muttered.

  ‘- just as was the possibility of a threat to the Earth that could not be dealt with by automatic space defence mechanisms. Physical separation of the information required to activate the escape device would ensure that no matter the delay it could never be corrupted by the crypt.’

  ‘Though it still has to be initiated,’ Xemetrio said. ‘But let’s not lose sight of the fact that all this supposition is built on the word of some historically, how shall I put it? ... eccentric observers of sliding stones, and that even if they are to be trusted, what we’ve actually got is an intellectually suspect, semi-garbled message originating from somewhere within the top ten kilometres of the fast-tower; we still have no idea who or what is up there and what their motives are.’

  ‘We also have little time to squander, Xemetrio. We have to decide what to do and how to reply. You’re sure you can get this signal and our appraisal to the others safely?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ the High Sortileger snapped; Gadfium asked this question virtually every time they had information they had to spread around their network, and each time Xemetrio had to reassure that as High Sortileger he could move data within the data corpus without Security knowing all about it.

  ‘Good,’ Gadfium said, apparently relieved afresh. ‘Clispeir is going to heliograph an acknowledgment to the fast-tower’s signal and a request for more information, but we must make up our minds; do we act now, merely get ready to act, or go on as before, waiting?’

  The High Sortileger looked sadly at the glistening mountains of foam bobbing around him. ‘I vote we wait for more information. Meantime, I’ll start a quiet search for your asura.’ He shook his head. ‘Besides, what could we do?’

  ‘We could find out what’s going on in the fifth-level south-western solar; that would be a start.’

  ‘I’ve tried that; most of the military don’t know.’

  ‘Perhaps the shade of Count Sessine could answer the question,’ Gadfium suggested.

  Xemetrio looked sceptical. ‘I doubt it. And what if he remains loyal to the King? Quite possibly he is part of their big bad conspiracy and would report our little one to Security.’

  ‘A way might be found to talk to him without giving too much away.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Xemetrio said, looking uncomfortable, ‘but I’m not doing it.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Gadfium told him.

  Uris Tenblen raised his face to the cold, thin wind cutting across the frozen plain, blinked red-rimmed eyes, cocked his grey-skinned shaven head to one side and listened to the song in his skull.

  It was different again today. It was different every day, if he remembered correctly. He wasn’t at all sure that he did remember everything correctly. He wasn’t sure he remembered anything correctly. But the song in his heart said that it didn’t matter.

  The wind blew in through the vast windows two kilometres away across the plain. The windows were floor-to-ceiling, and broad; sometimes it seemed to Tenblen that it was better to think of three skinny pillars holding up that side of the next storey, not four broad windows in a wall. Above here there was only a broad piazza, open to the skies. Tenblen turned round and looked towards the other wall, where four similar apertures, also two kilometres away, let the wind straight back out again. Both sets of windows looked out onto a sea of white cloud.

  He turned back; the wind brought hard powdery snow with it, probably not fresh but dislodged from part of the castle above here. The wind-blown granules stung the exposed skin of his face, neck, wrists and hands. He forced the visor and helmet over his head, fumbling raw-fingered with the straps. Chill weather, he told himself, but the song in his head kept him warm, or told him it did, which was just as good.

  His dorm was at the edge of the camp; it was a shining aluminium box almost identical to the forty or so others which ringed the workings. This close, the workings themselves were just a huge sloped wall of rubble; from further away across the frozen marshes and low hills of the plain they appeared as a small, steep-sided crater.

  From above they would just look like a hole; a dark pit, usually filled with yellow-grey mists, like a giant weeping wound.

  Tenblen trudged through the rimed puddles on the rutted path leading towards the workings, fastening his tunic. His boots crunched through brittle white surfaces of ice into the hard brown hollows of the puddles.

  The song in his head rose to a sweet crescendo just then and he gave a thin, grim smile, then made a small, involuntary ducking motion and looked nervously up at the ceiling a thousand metres above him.

  He passed the bomb caissons, great closed iron cylinders coated with snow, their wheels sunk a little way into the cracked surface of frozen mud. Thus far, they had only two caissons, six small bombs and one large one. A new convoy was on its way, bringing fresh matériel. He saluted an officer who passed him on the path. He knew he ought to know the officer’s name, but he could not remember it. That didn’t matter; if he needed to talk to the officer or take him some message or order, the song in his head would remind him of his name. The officer nodded as he walked past, his gaze fastened straight ahead and his expression fixed in a broad and somehow desperate grin.

  Tenblen climbed the steps by the side of the inclined plain. He ascended them in time to the song, and as he climbed he imagined that the King was looking through his eyes.

  (Adijine, who was doing exactly that, experienced only very mild surprise at this point, and almost immediately felt oddly cheated that he hadn’t sustained some profound sense of alienation or momentary loss-of-identity.)

  The King would look through his eyes and hear the song in his head; the song of loyalty, of obedience, of joy to have this part to play, and know that he was glad to be loyal, glad to be obedient and glad to be joyful. He could think of nothing more pleasant than to be transparent in exactly that manner, and to be seen to be the King’s loyal soldier. He got to the top of the crater-wall of rubble and started down the other side, towards the pit.

  The fumes were already quite bad. The steam came drifting up the brecciated slope from the hole, wrapping itself around the scattered cisterns, pipes, valveheads, winches and gantries littering the incline. Sometimes the smell of the gases came with the steam, and you thought the cloud enveloping
you would be pure fume and you almost panicked with only the song in your head telling you it was all right; other times the steam was far away when you picked up the stink and your eyes watered and your nose and the back of your throat felt rasped and burned.

  He stopped at the quartermaster’s office. There was a ghost outside.

  The ghost was dressed as some ancient judge or holy man. He tried to get in Tenblen’s way and shout something at him, but Uris just put his hand through the ghost and made as though to wave it out of the way as he stepped through it. The song in his head drowned out the ghost’s voice.

  ‘Bit nippy today,’ he shouted to the quartermaster. It helped to shout, over the noise of the song. The quartermaster was a large, red-faced man. He nodded as he issued Tenblen with his gloves, mask and respirator.

  ‘Wind’s shifted,’ he said loudly, coughing. ‘I’ve asked them to move me further up the slope but of course they haven’t done anything yet.’

  ‘Perhaps you should be right at the top.’

  ‘Perhaps I should. Or even on the far slope.’

  ‘You might be better off at the bottom of the slope on the other side.’

  ‘Yes, I might.’

  ‘Well, see you later.’

  ‘Goodbye.’

  Tenblen put his mask and respirator on before he left the quartermaster’s office. He felt hoarse and his throat was sore already. He could remember being able to talk without talking; being able to think something and somebody else understanding what it was you had thought; he could remember a long time ago when the song had started, thinking how odd it felt having to physically talk any time you wanted to tell somebody something. Promotion, people had joked at the time, at first.

  The song had been young then and they had all been charmed by it. He could remember even longer ago when he’d not been a soldier and had been able to talk to anybody. He felt sad about that, sometimes. The song lifted his spirits, though. It could turn the sadness to joy. After all, you cried when you were happy sometimes, too.

  He stepped outside into the slow whorls of drifting, rising steam, and continued down into the workings. His own breath sounded loud within the mask and he could hear valves clicking and hissing. He could feel the fumes on his neck, already chafing against his collar. A little of the fume-smell leaked in round the edges of the mask, and he tried to clamp the mask down harder. He tramped deeper into the steam, down a concrete path lit by tall poles tipped with small lamps and strung with a hand-rope at hip level.

  The song sang majestically as he descended into the darkness ...

  (The song the song the song while he seemed to pass venting pipes and arrive at a platform in a broad tunnel where a small train waited full of coughing men but the song said no no no stuck in a breath-holding loop that said time is not passing this is not happening and sang higher sweeter fuller as the train ground and screeched its way over points and into a narrow tunnel and accelerated in utter darkness the wind in his face journeying for, a time then passing through a dimly lit hole where guards with fixed stares stood then another tunnel and then the fume smell again and the steam and he started to relax as though he’d been holding his breath all that time and then out of the train with the others and down the steps relieved and even glad to be here while the song sang resuming.)

  ... The workings surface was a chaotic ballet from some primitive’s hell; it was filled with a loud, fume-laden darkness pierced sporadically by flashes of intense, scarifying light, and permeated with a furious hissing sound punctuated by sudden screams and explosions. Through this havoc drifted a population of terrifying beasts, monstrously deformed human shapes wielding strange instruments designed to puncture, flay and burn, and the wailing, beseeching figures of ghosts.

  Tenblen pulled on a harness and hitched himself to the roof struts. An officer came up to him and told him to return to his quarters, but the song in his head told him this wasn’t a real officer; it was a ghost and to be ignored.

  Tenblen found a pair of boots that didn’t look too badly scarred and started down the steps to the mine surface. A chimeric oxephant hauling a vat of acid loomed out of the mist, making him pause. He found himself automatically checking its harness and restrainer straps; they all seemed to be in place, the harness tight and the straps disappearing up into the steam clouds towards the grid of struts barely visible against the dark roof above (and some part of him looked at that darkness above thinking, But—... but then the song swelled, drowning out the sound of his recalcitrant thoughts).

  He walked towards the eastern part of the floor. He glanced down as he walked. The surface. The song in his head welled up again, telling him to rejoice at the task they had undertaken, at its daring, its technological sophistication, at its audacity and its uniqueness. It was a wonderful and beautiful thing they were doing; they were reclaiming the structure, the whole castle, not just for their cause and the King but for all people. They were no longer at its mercy, it was at theirs.

  A beautiful woman appeared out of the mists, her skin black, her clothes whiter and wispier than the mists, her body full and firm and voluptuous. Tenblen knew she was a ghost but he stood and stared for a while as she walked round him with a half-coy, half-welcoming smile. Then the song rose again, racketing in his head and setting his teeth on edge. It was still pleasant, like being tickled, but he could not take it for very long. He hurried on, away from the woman.

  He came to the latest workings. Acid fumed, arc-light sparkled, power tools hammered. Men dressed in full protective suits stumbled round. Chimerics pawed the ground, pulled with harness hooks and bellowed.

  Tenblen tried to breathe easily and shallowly through his mouth, ignoring the rasp of fumes in his throat as he walked amongst the men and beasts, checking their harness connections and restraining straps. Under his feet, the surface of the workings was smoking and peeling and blistering, constantly sprayed by the rusting agent and then further attacked with scab-hooks, welding arcs, lasers and a selection of acids, mostly sulphuric and hydrochloric. The surface was constantly attempting to repair itself, flowing back to fill holes and rearranging the large-scale fibres and scales which it was composed of. You could never be certain which sections would be susceptible to which removing agent; there was no alternative but to try everything and see what worked at that point at that time.

  He stood for a moment, ignoring the ghost of a small baby at his feet, writhing and screaming on the ground amongst the acid pools. The surface here looked thin somehow. Perhaps they’d do it here (the baby looked up at him, eyes huge, while smoke curled up around its blistering skin. The song sang high and sweet while Tenblen’s eyes filled with tears. He gently put his boot out, through the apparition of the baby, then when it moved out of his way, suddenly screamed in frustration and brought his boot down on it as though trying to crush the infant. It disappeared. His boot heel met the surface and the shock resounded through him, then the ground too seemed to disappear and he was looking -

  - down. The circular hole started at his feet and was almost instantly ten metres wide around him.

  He dropped through, screaming, in a haze of acid spray. The city was a sparkling jewel two kilometres below him. His harness tightened around him like a bony fist and the restraining straps bounced him up and down like some child in a walking yoke. The song burned in his head, exultant. He kept on screaming despite the song, and soiled himself.

  On a warm marble table in the Palace baths, the King opened his eyes and looked up as the masseuse kneaded his back. He smiled broadly and said, ‘Yes!’

  He winked at the masseuse and lowered his head again, within range of the receptor devices buried in the marble table.

  He skipped back into Uris Tenblen’s head just in time to watch with him as the edges of the hole above him wobbled liquidly like grey-black circular lips, then snapped back closed with a whiplash crack, rebounding a little so that a metre-diameter hole existed for a moment before that too irised shut like an eye blinking.
>
  The first closure had instantly severed the straps on Tenblen’s harness.

  He plummeted - gesticulating frantically, screaming hoarsely - towards the glittering spires of the city two thousand metres below.

  The link sizzled and cut out.

  Adijine raised his head. ‘Shhhit,’ he said softly.

  3

  ‘Very well, Alan, who is trying to kill me?’ Sessine asked, smiling a little at the image of his earlier self.

  The younger Sessine looked around. The engine’s thrashing heart was all fury and noise; pipes roaring, connecting rods flashing to and fro. He took up the portable chess board and put it down the bib front of his engineer’s overalls, then stood.

  Sessine did not get up, but sat on the little stool, still smiling up at the construct of his younger self, who laughed.

  ‘Please, Count; come with me.’

  Sessine stood slowly, and nodded.

  They were standing in a clearing within the high forest at the foot of the fastness walls. Sessine looked up through the sighing tops of the trees to the curtain-wall towering above. A tower a few kilometres away rose still higher, but the rest of the structure was hidden by the walls, a rosy cliff fifteen hundred metres high and festooned with variegated babilia. The wind soughed briefly in the trees, then died away.

  ‘Here,’ Alan said. Sessine turned, and the younger man took his hand.

  /They stood in a vast circular space with a floor of gleaming gold, a velvet-black ceiling and what appeared to be a single all-round window looking out onto a whitely shining surface and a purple-black sky where stars shone steadily. Above them, suspended as though on nothing, hung a massive orrery; a model of the solar system with a brilliant yellow-white ball of light in the middle and the various planets shown as glassy globes of the appropriate appearance all fixed by slender poles and shafts to thin hoops of blackly shining metal like wet jet.

  Under the representation of the sun, there was a brightly lit circular construction like a half-built room. They walked there across the glistening floor.