Surface Detail

by Iain M. Banks

  “My name is Jolicci, avatar of the Armchair Traveller,” Jolicci told the single small drone floating by the ship’s closed lower hatchway. “I think you know who I’ve come to see. Please let him know.”

  “I’m doing so,” the boxy little drone said.

  The ship was called the Hidden Income. It was maybe a hundred metres in length. Looking round, squinting into the gloomily cavernous depths of the Bay, Lededje reckoned the Smallbay could have squeezed in at least another three ships the same size without them touching fins or engine pods or whatever all the various bits were. Small was obviously a relative term when it came to ships and the vast hangars required to accommodate them.

  Lededje looked at the little drone, hanging in front of them at head height. Well, this was a new experience, she thought. Whenever she’d been taken somewhere by Veppers – the most expensive new restaurant, the most exclusive new club, bar or venue – he and his entourage had always been ushered straight in, whether he’d had a reservation made or not, even to the ones which he didn’t own. How odd to have to come to the reputedly obsessively egalitarian Culture finally to experience the phenomenon of hanging around outside a club waiting to see if she’d be allowed in.

  The hatchway dropped without warning, immediately behind the little drone. It fell so fast she expected a clang when it met the finely ridged floor of the Bay, but it seemed to cushion its descent at the last moment and landed silently.

  The drone said nothing but it floated out of their way.

  “Thank you,” Jolicci said as they stepped on.

  Jolicci held her arm as the hatch rose smoothly up towards a small, barely lit hangar volume inside the Hidden Income. “Demeisen is a little odd,” he told her. “Even by ship avatar standards. Just be honest with him. Or her. Or it.”

  “You’re not sure?”

  “We haven’t met for a while. The Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints changes avatars fairly frequently.”

  “What is this place anyway?”

  Jolicci looked awkward. “War porn club, I think.”

  Lededje would have asked more but they were met by another small drone and escorted into the place.

  “Demeisen, may I present Ms. Lededje Y’breq,” Jolicci said to the man sitting at the table near the middle of the room.

  The place looked like a sort of strange restaurant with substantial round tables scattered about, each featuring at their centre a trio or more of screens or a tankless holo display. A variety of people, mostly human, sat or lounged around the tables. In front of most of them, drug bowls, drinks glasses, chill pipes and small trays of food lay arranged, scattered or abandoned. The screens and holos all showed scenes of warfare. At first Lededje assumed they were screen; just movies; but after a few moments, and a few grisly sequences, she decided they might be real.

  Most of the people in the room weren’t looking at the screens and holos; they were looking at her and Jolicci. The man Jolicci had addressed was at a table with several other young men, all of them with that air that implied they were, within their own subset of pan-human physiognomy, quite strikingly handsome.

  Demeisen stood. He looked cadaverous, hollow-cheeked. Dark eyes with no whites, two ridges instead of eyebrows, a flat nose and mid-dark skin, scarred in places. He was only medium tall but his height was emphasised by his thinness. If his physiology was the same as a Sichultian’s then the slight bagginess about his face implied the weight loss had been recent and rapid. His clothes were dark, perhaps black: skinny trews and a tight-fitting shirt or jacket, partially closed at the neck by a thumb-sized, blood-red glittering jewel on a loosened choker.

  Lededje saw him look at her right hand and so put it out to him. His hand clasped her hand, fingers with too many joints closing around like a bony cage. His touch felt very warm, almost feverish, though perfectly dry, like paper. She saw him wince and noticed that two of his fingers were crudely splinted together with a small piece of wood or plastic and what looked like a piece of knotted rag. Somehow the wince didn’t travel all the way to his face, which regarded her without obvious expression.

  “Good evening,” Lededje said.

  “Ms. Y’breq.” His voice sounded dry and cold. He nodded at Jolicci then indicated the seats on either side of him. “Wheloube, Emmis. If you would.”

  The two young men seemed about to protest, but then did not. They rose together with a sort of brisk contempt and walked proudly away. She and Jolicci took their places. The other handsome young men stared at them. Demeisen waved one hand; the table’s holo display, which had been depicting a gruesomely realistic skirmish between some horsemen and a larger force of archers and other foot-soldiers, faded to blank.

  “A rare privilege,” Demeisen murmured to Jolicci. “How goes the business of General Contacting?”

  “Generally well. How’s life as a security guard?”

  Demeisen smiled. “Night watching is unfailingly illuminating.”

  There was a small gold tube in front of him which Lededje had assumed was the mouthpiece of an under-table chill or water pipe – there were several other mouthpieces lying or cradled on the table – but which proved to be a stick with a glowing end, un -attached to anything else. Demeisen put it to his lips and sucked hard. The golden tube crackled, shortened and left a fiery glowing tip beneath a lofting of silky grey smoke.

  Demeisen saw her looking and offered the stick to her. “A drug. From Sudalle. Called narthaque. The effect is similar to winnow, though harsher, less pleasant. The hangover can be severe.”

  “‘Winnow’?” Lededje asked. She got the impression she’d been expected to know what this was.

  Demeisen looked both surprised and unimpressed.

  “Ms. Y’breq does not possess drug glands,” Jolicci explained.

  “Really?” Demeisen said. He frowned at her. “Are you suffering some form of punishment, Ms. Y’breq? Or are you of that demented persuasion that believes enlightenment is to be found in the shadows?”

  “Neither,” Lededje told him. “I am more of a barely legal alien.” She had hoped this might be amusing, but if it was, nobody round the table seemed to find it so. Maybe her understanding of Marain wasn’t as flawless as she’d been assuming.

  Demeisen looked at Jolicci. “I’m told the young lady looks for passage.”

  “She does,” Jolicci said.

  Demeisen gestured with both hands, sending loops of smoke into the air from the hand holding the golden stick. “Well, Jolicci, for once you have the better of me. What on earth gives you the idea that I have turned into a taxi? Do tell. Can’t wait to hear.”

  Jolicci just smiled. “There is a little more to the matter, I believe. Ms. Y’breq,” he said to her. “Over to you.”

  She looked at Demeisen. “I need to get home, sir.”

  Demeisen glanced at Jolicci. “Very taxi-sounding so far.” He turned back to her. “Go on, Ms. Y’breq. I cannot wait for this to achieve escape velocity from the mundanity well.”

  “I intend to kill a man.”

  “That’s a little more uncommon. Again though, one imagines a taxi would suffice, unless the gentleman concerned can only be dispatched using a warship. A state-of-the-art Culture warship, at that, if I may make so immodest. For some reason the word ‘overkill’ leaps to mind.” He smiled icily at her. “You may not be doing quite as well here as you thought you might at this point.”

  “I’ve been told that I’ll be slap-droned.”

  “So you were stupid enough to let slip that you intend to kill this man.” He frowned. “Oh dear. Might I suggest that this does not bode terribly well should your murderous plans include more than the absolute minimum of guile, subterfuge or, dare I say it, intelligence? My – trust me – highly limited empathic capacities remain resolutely un-engaged.” He turned to Jolicci again. “Have you quite finished humiliating yourself here, Jolicci, or do you really require me to—?”

  “The man I intend to kill is the richest man in the world, the r
ichest and most powerful man in my whole civilisation,” Lededje said. Even she could hear the edge of desperation creeping into her voice.

  Demeisen looked at her, one eye-crease raised. “Which civilisation?”

  “The Enablement,” she told him.

  “The Sichultian Enablement,” Jolicci said.

  Demeisen snorted. “Again,” he told Lededje, “not saying as much as you might think.”

  “He killed me,” she told him, doing all she could to keep her voice under control. “Murdered me with his own hands. We have no soul-keeping technology but I was saved because a Culture ship called the Me, I’m Counting put a neural lace in my head ten years ago. I was revented here only today.”

  Demeisen sighed. “All very melodramatic. Your feud may inspire a not terribly good screen presentation at some point in the future, hopefully distant. I look forward to missing it.” He smiled thinly again. “Now, if you wouldn’t mind excusing yourselves?” He nodded to the two young men who’d vacated their seats for Lededje and Jolicci earlier. They were standing nearby now, looking on, quietly triumphant.

  Jolicci sighed. “I’m sorry I wasted your time,” he said as he rose.

  “Still, I hope to make you sorrier,” Demeisen said with an insincere smile.

  “I was talking to Ms. Y’breq.”

  “And I was not,” Demeisen said, standing as Lededje did. He turned to her, put the gold smoking stick to his pale lips and pulled hard. He looked at her and said, “Best of luck finding a ride,” as he exhaled.

  He smiled more broadly and ground the yellow-red glowing tip of the stick into the open palm of his other hand. There was a distinct sizzling noise. Again, his body seemed to flinch, though his face remained serene.

  “What, this?” he said, looking down at the ash-dark burn on his skin as Lededje stared at it, openly aghast. “Don’t worry; I don’t feel a thing.” He laughed. “The idiot inside here does though.” He tapped the side of his head, smiled again. “Poor fool won some sort of competition to replace a ship’s avatar for a hundred days or a year or something similar. No control over either body or ship whatsoever, obviously, but the full experience in other respects – sensations, for example. I’m told he practically came in his pants when he learned an up-to-date warship had volunteered to accept his offer of body host.” The smile became broader, more of a grin. “Obviously not the most zealous student of ship psychology, then. So,” Demeisen said, holding up his hand with the splinted finger and studying it, “I torment the poor fool.” He put his other hand to the one with the splinted fingers, waggled them. His body shuddered as he did so. Lededje found herself wincing with vicarious pain. “See? Powerless to stop me,” Demeisen said cheerily. “He suffers his pain and learns his lesson while I … well, I gain some small amusement.”

  He looked at Jolicci and Lededje. “Jolicci,” he said with obviously feigned concern, “you look offended.” He nodded, creased his eyes. “It’s a good look, trust me. Sour opprobrium: suits you.”

  Jolicci said nothing.

  Wheloube and Emmis resumed their seats. Standing there, Demeisen put out both hands and stroked the hair of one and the shaved head of the other, then cradled the finely chiselled chin of the one with the shaved head using his unsplinted hand. “And fascinatingly, the fellow” – he used his splinted fingers to tap the side of his head again, hard – “is quite defiantly heterosexual, with a fear of bodily violation that borders on outright homophobia.”

  He looked round the table of young men, winking at one of them, then gazed radiantly at Jolicci and Lededje.

  Lededje stamped across the floor of the dimly lit Smallbay. “There must be other SC ships,” she said furiously.

  “None that will talk to you,” Jolicci said, hurrying after her.

  “And the only one that would seemed solely to want to shock and demean me.”

  Jolicci shrugged. “The Abominator class of General Offensive Unit, to which our friend belongs, is not known for its mildness or sociability. Probably specced when the Culture was going through one of its periods of feeling that nobody was taking it seriously because it was somehow too nice. Even amongst those, though, that particular ship is known as something of an outlier. Most SC ships conceal their claws and keep the psychopathy switched to Full Off except when it’s judged to be absolutely necessary.”

  In the traveltube, deflated but calmer, Lededje said, “Well, thank

  you for trying.”

  “You are welcome. Was all that you said in there true?”

  “Every word.” She looked at him. “I trust you’ll treat what you heard just now as in confidence.”

  “Well, that is something you might have thought to say before-hand, but, all right, I promise what you said will go no further.” The fat little avatar looked thoughtful. “I realise it might not feel like it, but you may have just had a narrow escape, Ms. Y’breq.”

  She looked coldly at him. “Then that makes two this evening, doesn’t it?”

  Jolicci appeared unconcerned. If anything he looked amused. “As I said, I was never going to let you fall. What I did was a stunt. What you just saw in there was real.”

  “The ship would really be allowed to treat a human like that?”

  “If it was done voluntarily, if the bargain was struck with eyes open, as it were, yes.” Jolicci made an expansive gesture with both hands. “It’s what can happen if you put yourself in harm’s way by treating with SC.” The fat little avatar appeared to think for a moment. “Perhaps a rather extreme example, admittedly.”

  Lededje took a deep breath, let it out. “I have no terminal. May I use you as one?”

  “Feel free. Who would you like to contact?”

  “The GSV. To tell it I’ll take its suggested ship tomorrow.”

  “No need. It’ll be assuming so anyway. Anybody else?”

  “Admile?” she said, her voice small.

  There was a pause, then Jolicci shook his head regretfully. “I’m afraid he is otherwise engaged.”

  Lededje sighed. She looked at Jolicci. “I desire a meaningless sexual encounter with a male, preferably one as good-looking as one of those young men round Demeisen’s table.”

  Jolicci smiled, then sighed. “Well, the night is yet middle-aged.”

  Yime Nsokyi lay awake in the darkness of her small cabin, waiting for sleep. She would give it another few minutes and then gland softnow to bring it on not-entirely-naturally. She possessed the same suite of drug glands as most Culture humans, the default set that you tended to be born with, but she preferred not to use them unless genuinely necessary, and almost never for pleasure, only to accomplish something of practical value.

  She might have got rid of them completely, she supposed, just told them all to wither away and be absorbed into her body, but she had chosen not to. She knew of some within Quietus who had gone through with this, in some spirit of denial and asceticism that she thought was taking matters too far. Also, it was arguably more disciplined still to possess the glands but not to use them than it was to remove them and their temptations altogether.

  But then the same might be said of her choice to become neuter. She put one hand down between her legs, to feel the tiny slotted bud – like a third, bizarrely placed nipple – which was all that was left of her genitals. When she had been younger, when her drug glands had still been maturing, that too had been a way of bringing on sleep: masturbate and then drift off in the rosy afterglow.

  She rubbed the tiny bud absently, remembering. There was no hint of pleasure in touching herself there any more; she might as well have caressed a knuckle or an ear lobe. In fact there was more sensuality to be found in her ear lobes. The nipples of her reduced, near-flat breasts were similarly unresponsive.

  Oh well, she thought, clasping her hands over her chest; it had been her choice. A way of making real to herself her dedication to Quietus. Nun-like, she supposed. On that reckoning, there were a lot of nuns and monks within Quietus. And, of course, the decision wa
s entirely reversible. She wondered about changing back, becoming properly female again. She still thought of herself as female, always had.

  Or she might become male; she was exactly poised between the two standard genders. She touched the little bud at her groin again. Just as much like a tiny penis as a relocated nipple, she supposed.

  She clasped her hands over her chest once more, then sighed, turned on her side.

  “Ms. Nsokyi?” the ship’s voice said quietly.

  “Yes?”

  “My apologies. I sensed you were still some way from sleep.”

  “You sensed correctly. What?”

  “I have been asked by a number of my colleagues whether your earlier comment regarding informing Special Circumstances about the matter in hand represented what one might call a formal suggestion or request.”

  She waited a moment before replying. “No,” she said. “It did not.”

  “I see. Thank you. That’s all. Good night. Sleep well.”

  “Good night.”

  Yime wondered whether she ship would even have bothered to ask had she not had the history she did with SC.

  She had been drawn to Quietus even when she’d been a little girl. A serious, reserved, slightly withdrawn little girl who had been interested in dead things found in the woods and keeping insects in terraria. A serious, reserved, slightly withdrawn little girl who knew that she was easily capable of joining Special Circumstances if she wanted to, but who had only ever wanted to be part of the Quietudinal Service.

  Even then she had known that Quietus – like Restoria and the third of Contact’s relatively recently specialist services, Numina, which dealt with the Sublimed – was seen by many people and machines as being second best to Special Circumstances.

  SC was the pinnacle, the service that attracted the absolutely best and brightest of the Culture; in a society that held few positions of individual power, SC represented the ultimate goal for those both blessed and cursed with the sort of vaunting, hungry ambition to succeed in the Real that could not be bought off by the convincing but ultimately artificial attractions of VR. If you genuinely wanted to prove yourself, there was no question that SC was where you wanted to be.