Surface Detail

by Iain M. Banks

  The woman waved one arm languidly towards them. “Mr. Veppers, may I present Av Demeisen, representative of the Culture ship Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints, and guest. Ship: Mr. Joiler Veppers, Mr. Hibin Jasken, the drone Trachelmatis Olfes-Hresh Stidikren-tra Muoltz—”

  “Though I answer to ‘Olf’,” the drone said, with a sort of side-ways bow. “Too much spittle ruins these floors.”

  “And this is my son Liss,” the woman continued, smiling, ruffling the blond hair of the young child on her knee. He was biting on a biscuit, but spared the time to wave. Then he patted his hair back down. “I’m Buoyte-Pfaldsa Kreit Lei Huen da’ Motri,” the woman went on. “Culture ambassador to the Enablement.” She waved her arm again, towards a couch across from her, at right angles to the one that Veppers and Jasken sat on. “Please; sit down.”

  “Hello, all,” Demeisen said loudly, radiating bonhomie.

  Lededje watched Veppers watching her as she and the avatar approached the seating area. He looked pretty much as he had. Hair and skin as full and luxuriant as ever. Dressed more casually and soberly than he usually was when in the city; almost dully, as though he was trying to blend in for once. Nose a little pink and thin at the tip. She met his gaze only briefly, tried to look unconcerned. He was smiling at her. She recognised that particular smile. It was the one that acknowledged beauty but hinted at vulnerability, the one that was meant to say “I may be the richest man in the world but I can still be a little unsure of myself around beautiful women like yourself.” She was aware that Jasken was also looking at her, but she ignored him.

  She took a couple of quick steps just before they got to the seats, so that she sat closer to Veppers than Demeisen seemed to have intended. The avatar was to her right, Veppers at an angle, left and in front. The low table held what looked like the remains of a small picnic: pots, small trays, unfolded take-away plates, cups, saucers and some scattered cutlery.

  “Won’t you introduce your guest, Demeisen?” the ambassador said.

  “Tsk!” the avatar said, slapping his forehead. “My manners, eh?” Demeisen waved one arm from Lededje to Veppers. “Doll, this is your rapist and murderer. Veppers, you ghastly cunt, this is Lededje Y’breq, back from the dead.”

  There was a tiny pause. Lededje took only that moment to register what had just happened. Then she bounced out of the couch she had barely sat down on, scooped up the sharpest-looking knife on the table and threw herself at Veppers.

  It was only later she understood how little chance she’d really had. The knife disappeared from her grip, plucked away by Demeisen, despite the fact he was on her far side from Veppers.

  Jasken moved less quickly, seeming almost to hesitate for a fraction of a second, but even as Lededje got one hand on Veppers’ throat – he was shrinking back, eyes widening, as she threw herself forward – Jasken suddenly had her wrist in a grip like steel.

  Meanwhile the drone Olfes-Hresh had snapped through the air to her other side, whipping a blue-glowing force field between her torso and Veppers’ and gripping her left arm, keeping that hand held up and away. Lededje heard herself make an anguished, strangling noise as she tried to close her fingers round Veppers’ throat.

  She heard a brief, deep humming noise and experienced a sort of coldness wash over her, making her skin crawl, then – her hand still clutching at Veppers’ throat as he thudded back into the back of the couch – she felt herself being grabbed round the waist. She tried to kick, but her legs seemed to have lost contact with her brain; she felt hopelessly, childishly dizzy, her hand was forced back, and she was pulled away across the low table in a further scatter of food, crockery and cutlery to be plonked down on the couch, not where she had been but with Demeisen between her and Veppers, who was sitting back up now and rubbing his throat.

  Demeisen had an arm across Lededje’s upper chest, pinning her against some flattened cushions. One of his legs was trapping both her legs under the couch.

  “Gasslikunt!” said a small voice.

  Kreit Huen glared at the avatar. “See what you’ve done?” she muttered. She cuddled the boy to her, patting the nape of his neck and back of his head with her hand.

  “Motherf—!” Lededje began, struggling mightily to get out from under Demeisen’s limbs, then trying to reach the avatar’s face with her fingers, to tear his eyes out or scratch him or do anything at all to hurt him.

  “Spirited little thing, isn’t she?” Veppers said calmly, waving Jasken away as the other man tried to fuss over him.

  “Behave,” Demeisen said quietly, levelly to Lededje.

  “I’ll f … !” she spat, heaving herself towards him. She got her back about a centimetre away from the couch before she was thrown against it again.

  “Led,” the avatar said, a small smile on his face, “you were never going to get a clear shot at him. Now sit still and behave yourself or I will have to stun you again, and more than just your legs this time.” He loosened his grip on her a little, tentatively.

  She sat still, looked at him with an expression of cold loathing. “You unmitigated piece of ordure in human shape,” she said, very quietly. “Why did you lead me on? Why did you give me any hope at all?”

  “Things change, Lededje,” the avatar told her, sounding reasonable. He withdrew the arm and leg that had been restraining her. “Circumstances, and likely consequences. That’s just the way it is.”

  Lededje glanced at Huen and her child. “Go and stuprate your-self,” she whispered to the avatar. He shook his head, made a tsk sound again.

  Veppers looked at Huen. “Why is this psychotically rude man trying to convince me that this even more berserk young woman is the late, lamented Ms. Y’breq, and why are they even here?”

  “He may believe that she is Ms. Y’breq,” Huen told him. She turned to the drone, handing the child up to it. “Olf, please take Liss to the playroom. This was a mistake. I’m an idiot.”

  “Gasslikunt!” Liss repeated, cradled in ruby-red fields as the drone took the child and swept away towards the doors.

  Huen smiled as she gazed after the boy, waving.

  When the doors closed she turned back to Veppers. “I am not entirely sure why Av Demeisen thought to bring this young lady with him, but I wanted him here because he represents the most powerful vessel in the vicinity, with the power to overturn any agreement we might make if he doesn’t concur. We need him on-side, Joiler.”

  Veppers had a sort of calculating look about him, Demeisen thought. He was also – going on heart-rate, capillary contraction and skin moisture readings – profoundly rattled, though hiding it extremely well. The man’s gaze shifted, eyes hooded a little, from the ambassador to Lededje. “But I’m still being asked to believe that this person is some sort of reincarnated version of Ms. Y’breq,” he said, as his gaze alighted on Demeisen, “and this … offensively rude, lying young man, allegedly representing a powerful Culture spacecraft, is allowed to make outrageous and obscene accusations without, I presume, being subject to any of the legal sanctions I would seek to impose on anybody else saying anything so utterly mendacious and, potentially – if anybody else was sufficiently demented to take his ravings seriously – so horrendously damaging to my reputation, is that right?”

  “About the size of it,” Demeisen agreed cheerily, clearing up some of the mess Lededje’s lunge across the table had caused. Jasken, still with one wary eye on the girl, was sorting some of the debris on his side.

  “You like to take your women from behind,” Lededje said quietly, staring at Veppers. “Usually while facing a mirror. Sometimes, especially when you are drunk, you like to lean forward and bite the right shoulder blade of the woman you are fucking. Always the right, never the left. I have no idea why. You mutter, ‘Ah, yesss, fucking take it,’ sometimes, when you orgasm. You have a small black mole just under the fold of your right armpit, which is the only blemish you have allowed to remain on your body, purely for the purposes of identification. You scratch the righ
t corner of your mouth when you are worried and trying to decide what course of action to take. You secretly despise Peschl, your lawyer, because he is gay, but keep him on because he is very good at his job and it is important to you to make people think that you are not homophobic. I think you may have had some sort of homosexual experience at school with your friend Sapultride. You think the screen director Kostrle is ‘grotesquely over-rated’, though you fund his works and advance him at every opportunity because he seems fashionable and you desire his—”

  “Yes yes yes,” Veppers said. “You’ve done your research; well done. Clever girl.” (Still, Demeisen noticed, Veppers’ involuntary stress signs had peaked again, and Jasken was suddenly trying hard not to stare at either his master or Lededje.) Veppers turned to Huen. “Madam. Can we get to the point of things here?”

  Demeisen turned quickly to Lededje. “Are you mad?” he asked her quietly.

  “Burning my boats, you treacherous fuck,” she said, her voice sounding quiet and hollow. “If I can’t kill the bastard maybe I can unsettle him a little. It’s all you’ve left me.” She barely looked at the avatar as she said this.

  “Av Demeisen,” the ambassador said, sitting up straight and brushing some crumbs from her fingers, “you need to listen to this.” She nodded to Veppers.

  Veppers looked at the avatar. He took in a breath, then expelled it, glanced at Huen. “This … person really does represent a Culture ship? You’re sure?”

  “Yes,”the ambassador said, watching Demeisen rather than looking at Veppers as she addressed him. “Get on with it.”

  Veppers shook his head. “Oh well.” He smiled insincerely at the avatar, who smiled just as insincerely back. “The smatter is a diversion,” Veppers told him. “I made one agreement with the Flekke and NR, to stay out of any conflict regarding the Hells. Smokescreen. I never intended to keep it. I made another agreement with the GFCF to provide them with targets for a fleet of ships they would build in the Tsungarial Disk while the Culture and anybody else who might have interfered was tied up with the smatter outbreak. That is the agreement that I intend to keep, so long as nothing untoward befalls me. Those targets are the Hells–well, the substrates running them; the vast majority of them at any rate. All the important ones.”

  “And they are here,” Huen said. “On Sichult, is that right?”

  Veppers smiled at her. “Here or hereabouts.”

  Huen nodded slowly. “The latest reports I have indicate that a substantial number of the Disk- built ships have, surprisingly, escaped the confines of the Tsung system, possibly powered by unexpected amounts of power no one thought they might possess, and are headed this way,” she said, glancing at Demeisen. “To Sichult.”

  “Sudden rush of anti-matter to the engines,” the avatar said, nodding vigorously. “I’ve an element or two running them down, but a number will likely get through.”

  “Their targets are in or around Sichult,” Veppers said. “I’ll call in the exact locations when they’re closer.”

  Demeisen’s eyes narrowed. “Really? That’s cutting it awfully fine, isn’t it?”

  “Timing is everything,” Veppers said, smiling. “The point is,” he said, sitting forward on his couch, towards Demeisen – who sensed Lededje tensing, and, without looking, put one arm out and behind him, across her chest, preventing her from moving – “that I’m on your side, sailor boy.” Veppers directed another perfectly insincere smile at the avatar, who this time did not reciprocate. “On my say-so,” Veppers continued, “if I’m around to give it, and enough ships get through to deliver the killer blows, all those nasty, horrible Hells will get wasted and all the poor tortured souls will be released from their torment.” Veppers tipped his head to one side, interrogatively. “So what we need from you is some sort of guarantee that you won’t interfere with any of this. Maybe you’ll even help the ships get through, or at least stop anybody else – the NR, say – from interfering with them.” Veppers glanced at Lededje before looking back to the avatar. “Deal?”

  “Good grief, yes!” Demeisen said, reaching across the table to the Sichultian. “Deal!” He nodded vigorously. “Sorry for any earlier remarks! Nothing personal!” He kept his hand stuck out, and nodded at it. Veppers looked at Demeisen’s open, waiting hand.

  “You’ll forgive me,” he told the avatar. “I prefer not to shake hands. One never knows where other people’s have been.”

  “Totally understand,” Demeisen said, withdrawing his hand without any apparent self-consciousness.

  “I have your word?” Veppers said, looking from Huen to Demeisen. “Both of you; I have your word, your personal and representational guarantee that I’ll come to no harm, yes?”

  “Absolutely,” ambassador Huen said. “Given.”

  “A deal is a fucking deal!” Demeisen agreed. “You’ll suffer no harm from me, I swear.” The avatar looked round at Lededje, sitting simmering on the couch behind him. “Or my little pal here!” He took her by the shoulders with one arm, shook her.

  She looked into his eyes. “Liar,” she said softly.

  Demeisen appeared not to hear. He sat back, grinning.

  Veppers found some un-spilled infusion in an insulated pot, poured a little into his cup and sat back sipping it, gazing levelly at Lededje. He smiled at her, shrugged.

  “Oh, come on, whoever you are. This is just how things are done. Those of us with advantage will always seek to increase it, and those wishing to make deals will always find somebody like me on the other side of the table. Who else would you expect?” Veppers gave a small, nasal laugh like a single half-snorted breath through his healing nose. “Life, frankly, is mostly meetings, young lady,” he told her. He favoured her with a more relaxed smile. “Lededje, I should say, if that really is you.” He frowned, looked at Huen. “Of course, if she really is who she says she is, she does rather belong to me.”

  Huen shook her head. “No, she doesn’t,” she said.

  Veppers blew unnecessarily on his infusion. “Really, my dear ambassador? That may have to be settled through the courts, I’m afraid.”

  “No, it won’t,” Demeisen told him, grinning.

  Veppers looked at Lededje. Before he could say whatever it was he had been going to say, Lededje said, “Your last words to me were, ‘I was supposed to appear in public this evening.’ Remember?”

  Veppers’ smile faltered only briefly. “Were they now?” He glanced at Jasken, who quickly looked down. “How amazing.” He pulled an old-fashioned watch from one pocket. “Heavens, is that the time?”

  “Those ships are just about upon us,” Huen said.

  “I know,” Veppers said brightly. “And where better to be when they arrive than with the Culture ambassador, under the protection of a Culture warship?” He gestured from Huen to Demeisen, who nodded.

  “Few hundred got through,” Demeisen said. “Inner System and Outer Planetary defences somewhat struggling to cope. Modicum of panic amongst the clued-up societal strata, thinking this might be The End. Masses happily ignorant. Danger will have passed by the time they find out about it.” Demeisen nodded, seemingly with approval. “Well,” he said, “apart from that second wave of ships, obviously. That might cause some excitement later.”

  “Isn’t it about time you told them where their targets are?” Huen said.

  Veppers appeared to consider this. “There are two waves,” he said.

  “Sensing some rather premature glitterage from the city, there,” Demeisen muttered, waving towards the buildings across the park. The wall screen was cycling through some blank, hazed, static-filled channels now. The rest were still concentrating on graphics and talking heads.

  Displays of sparks like daylight fireworks, and some thin beams of light directed straight up, seemed to be issuing from the summits of some of the higher skyscrapers in Ubruater’s Central Business District.

  Huen looked sceptically at Demeisen. “‘Glitterage’?” she asked.

  The avatar shrugged.
<
br />   Veppers looked at his antique watch again, then at Jasken, who nodded briefly. Veppers stood. “Well; things to do, time to go,” he announced. “Madam,” he said, nodding at the ambassador. “Fascinating to meet you,” he said to Demeisen. He looked at Lededje. “I wish you … peace, young lady.” He smiled broadly.“At any rate; a pleasure.”

  He and Jasken, who nodded a trio of his own goodbyes, made their way to towards the doors. The drone Olfes-Hresh floated nearby, having reappeared earlier without anybody noticing. “Thing,” Veppers said to it as he passed.

  The two men passed beyond the doors.

  Moments later sudden bursts of light stuttered in the evening sky beyond the city. The wall screen flickered, hazed, then went to stand-by.

  “Hmm,” Demeisen said. “His own estate.” He looked at Huen. “Surprise to you too?”

  “Profoundly,” she said.

  Demeisen glanced at Lededje. He flicked her nearest knee with one finger. “Snap out of it, babe. It’s not about your little revenge trip; we’re getting Hells destroyed. For free! Not even on our conscience! Seriously: who do you really think matters most, here? You, or a trillion people suffering? Fucking get grown-up about it, won’t you? Your man Veppers skipping off with a jaunty smile on his admittedly eminently punchable face is a small price to pay.”

  A roar from overhead announced Veppers’ flier departing. Demeisen looked round at Lededje.

  “You lying, inconstant, philandering fuck,” she told him.