Consider Phlebas

by Iain M. Banks

  He leant forward. Some shards of glass had fallen from the roof, where it had been hit by the monk’s gun, and his suited knee crunched on the debris. Before he could open his mouth to shout down into the hall, he heard noises from beneath – a high-pitched voice speaking a language of squeaks and clicks. He went still, said nothing. It might just have been Dorolow’s voice, he supposed, but why would she talk in anything other than Marain? The voice called again. He thought he heard another, but then laser and projectile fire erupted briefly from the opposite end of the hall from the altar. He ducked and in the lull heard something click behind him.

  He spun round, tightening his finger on the trigger, but there was nobody there. Instead, a small round thing, about the size of a child’s clenched fist, wobbled on the top of the balustrade and plonked down onto the moss about a metre away. He kicked at it with his foot and dived across the body of the dead monk.

  The grenade detonated in mid-air, just under the balcony.

  Horza jumped up while the echoes were still cracking back from the altar. He leapt into the doorway at the far end of the balcony, putting out one hand and grabbing the soft corner of the wall as he went past, spinning himself round as he fell to his knees. He reached out and grabbed the dead monk’s gun from the corpse’s slack grip, just as the balcony started to come away from the wall with a glassy, grinding noise. Horza shoved himself back into the corridor behind him. The balcony tipped bodily away into the empty space of the hall in a dully glittering cloud of fragments and fell with a great, shattering crash onto the floor below, taking the shadowy form of the dead monk fluttering with it.

  Horza saw more of the shapes scatter in the darkness beneath him, and fired down with the gun he had just acquired. Then he turned and looked down the corridor he was now in, wondering if there was some way down to the hall floor, or even back outside. He checked the gun he had taken; it looked better than his own. He crouched and ran away from the doorway looking over the hall, putting his old rifle over his shoulder. The dimly lit corridor curved right. Horza straightened gradually as he left the doorway behind, and stopped worrying about grenades. Then it all started to happen in the hall behind him.

  The first thing he knew was that his shadow was being thrown in front of him, flickering and dancing on the curving wall of the passage. Then a cacophony of noise and a stuttering burst of blast waves rocked him on his feet and assaulted his ears. He brought the helmet visor down quickly and crouched again as he turned back towards the hall and the bright flashes of light. Even through the helmet, he thought he could hear screams mixed in with the gunfire and explosions. He ran back and threw himself down where he had been before, lying looking out into the hall.

  He put his head down as fast as he could and used his elbows to lever himself back the instant he realised what was happening. He wanted to run, but he lay where he was, stuck the dead monk’s rifle round the corner of the doorway and sprayed fire in the general direction of the altar until the weapon stopped firing, keeping his helmet as far back from the doorway as possible, visor turned away. When that gun stopped he threw it away and used his own, until it jammed. He slid himself away after that, and ran off down the corridor, away from the opening of the hall. He didn’t doubt that the rest of the Company would be doing the same thing, those that could.

  What he had seen ought to have been incredible, but although he had looked only long enough for a single, hardly moving image to form on his retinas, he knew what he was seeing and what was happening. As he ran he tried to work out why the hell the Temple of Light had been laserproofed. When he came to a T-junction in the corridor he stopped.

  He swung his rifle butt at the corner of the wall, through the moss; the metal connected, doubtless denting, but he felt something else give too. Using the weak light from the suit torch cells on either side of the visor, he looked at what lay underneath the moss.

  ‘Oh God . . .’ he breathed to himself. He struck at another part of the wall and looked again. He remembered the glint of what he’d thought was glass under the moss on the stairs, when he’d jarred his arm, and the crunching feeling under his knee on the balcony. He leant against the soft wall, feeling sick.

  Nobody had gone to the extraordinary lengths of laserproofing an entire temple, or even one large hall. It would have been horrendously expensive and surely unnecessary on a stage-three planet anyway. No; probably the whole interior of the temple (he recalled the sandstone to which the outer door had been attached) had been built from blocks of crystal, and that was what was buried under all the moss. Hit it with a laser and the moss would vaporise in an instant, leaving the interior surfaces of the crystal beneath to reflect the rest of that pulse and any subsequent shots falling on the same place. He looked again at the second place he’d struck with the gun, looked deep into the transparent surface beyond, and saw his own suit lights shining dully back at him from a mirrored boundary somewhere inside. He pushed himself away and ran down the right-hand branch of the corridor, past heavy wooden doors, then down some curved steps towards a splash of light.

  What he had seen in the hall was chaos, lit with lasers. A single glimpse, coinciding with several flashes, had burned an image into his eyes he thought he could still half see. At one end of the hall, on the altar, monks were crouched, guns firing, their own guns flashing with chemical-explosive fire; around them burst dark explosions of smoke as moss vaporised. At the other end of the hall several of the Company stood or lay or staggered, their own shadows huge on the wall behind them. They were loosing off with everything they had, rifles strobing pulses off the far wall, and they were being hit by their own shots slamming back from the internal surfaces of crystal blocks they didn’t even realise they were aiming at. At least two were blind already, judging by the way they were caught in poses of sightless blundering, arms out in front of them, guns firing from one hand.

  Horza knew too well that his own suit, his visor especially, was not capable of stopping a laser hit, from either visible wavelength guns or X-rays. All he could do was get his head out of the way and loose off with what projectiles he had, hoping to get a few of the priests or their guards. He had probably been lucky he hadn’t been hit even in the brief length of time he’d looked into the hall; now all he could do was get out. He tried shouting into the helmet mike, but the communicator was dead; his voice sounded hollow in the suit and he couldn’t hear himself through the ear speaker.

  He saw another shadowy shape ahead, a dim silhouette crouched low against the wall in the pool of daylight coming from another corridor. Horza threw himself into a doorway. The figure didn’t move.

  He tried his rifle; its knocks on the crystal walls seemed to have unjammed it. A burst of fire made the figure collapse slackly to the floor. Horza stepped out of the doorway and walked to it.

  It was another monk, dead hand gripped round a pistol. His white face was visible in the light which came down another passageway. On the wall behind the monk there were the pockmarks of burned-off moss; clear, undamaged crystal showed through beneath. As well as the holes produced by Horza’s burst of fire, the monk’s tunic, now seeping with bright red blood, was covered with laser burns. Horza stuck his head round the corner, looking into the light.

  Against the morning glow, framed in a slanting doorway, a suited form lay on the mossy floor, gun extended at the end of one hand so that it pointed down the passageway towards Horza. A heavy door lay at an angle behind, just hanging by one twisted hinge. It’s Gow, Horza thought. Then he looked at the door again, thinking it looked wrong somehow. The door and the walls leading to it were scarred with laser burns.

  He went up the corridor to the fallen figure and rolled it over so that he could see the face. His head swam for a second as he looked. It wasn’t Gow; it was her friend, kee-Alsorofus, who had died here. Her blackened, cracked face stared out, dry-eyed, through the still clear visor of her helmet. He looked at the door and at the corridor. Of course: he was in another part of the temple. Same sit
uation, but a different set of passageways, and a different person . . .

  The woman’s suit was holed, centimetres deep, in a few places; the smell of burned flesh leaked into Horza’s ill-fitting suit, making him gag. He stood up, took kee-Alsorofus’s laser, stepped over the slanted door and went out onto the wall-walk. He ran along it, round a corner, ducking once as a Microhowitzer shell landed too close to the temple’s sloping walls and sent up a shower of flashing crystal fragments and ruddy chunks of sandstone. The plasma cannons were still firing from the forest, too, but Horza couldn’t see any flying figures. He was looking for them when he suddenly sensed the suit to one side of him, standing in the angle of the wall. He stopped, recognising Gow’s suit, and stood about three metres from her while she looked at him. She pushed the visor on her helmet up slowly. Her grey face and black, pit-like eyes fixed on the laser rifle he was carrying. The look on her face made him wish he had checked the gun was still switched on. He looked down at the gun in his hand, then at the woman, who was still staring at it.

  ‘I—’ He was going to explain.

  ‘She killed, yeah?’ The woman’s voice sounded flat. She seemed to sigh. Horza drew in a breath, was about to start talking again, but Gow spoke in the same monotone. ‘I thought I hear she.’

  Suddenly she brought her gun hand up, flashing in the blue and pink of the morning sky. Horza saw what she was doing and started forward, reaching out instantly with one hand even though he knew he was too far away and too late to do anything.

  ‘Don’t!’ he had time to shout, but the gun was already in the woman’s mouth and an instant later, as Horza started to duck and his eyes closed instinctively, the back of Gow’s helmet blew out in a single pulse of unseen light, throwing a sudden red cloud over the mossy wall behind.

  Horza sat down on his haunches, hands closed round the gun barrel in front of him, eyes staring out at the distant jungle. What a mess, he thought, what a fucking, obscene, stupid mess. He hadn’t been thinking of what Gow had just done to herself, but he looked round at the red stain on the angled wall and the collapsed shape of Gow’s suit, and thought it again.

  He was about to start back down the outer wall of the temple when something moved in the air above him. He turned and saw Yalson landing on the wall-walk. She looked at Gow’s body once, then they exchanged what they both knew of the situation – what she had heard over the open communicator channel, what Horza had seen in the hall – and decided they would stay put until some of the others came out, or they gave up hope. According to Yalson only Rava Gamdol and Tzbalik Odraye were definitely dead after the fire-fight in the hall, but all three Bratsilakins had been there too, and nobody had heard anything from them after the open channel had become intelligible again and most of the screaming had stopped.

  Kraiklyn was alive and well but lost; Dorolow lost too, sitting crying, maybe blinded; and Lenipobra, against all advice and Kraiklyn’s orders, had entered the temple through a roof door and was heading down to try to rescue anybody he could, using only a small projectile pistol he’d been carrying.

  Yalson and Horza sat back to back on the wall-walk, Yalson keeping the Changer informed on how things were going in the temple. Lamm flew overhead, heading for the jungle where he took one of the plasma cannons from the protesting Wubslin. He had just landed near by when Lenipobra announced proudly he had found Dorolow, and Kraiklyn reported he could see daylight. There was still no sound from the Bratsilakins. Kraiklyn appeared round a corner of the wall-walk; Lenipobra leapt into view, clutching Dorolow to his suit and bounding down over the walls in a series of great slow jumps as his AG struggled to lift both him and the woman.

  They set off back to the shuttle. Jandraligeli could see movement on the road beyond the temple, and there was sniper fire coming from the jungle on either side. Lamm wanted to tear into the temple with the plasma cannon and vaporise a few monks, but Kraiklyn ordered the retreat. Lamm threw the plasma gun down and sailed off towards the shuttle alone, swearing loudly over the open channel on which Yalson was still trying to call the Bratsilakins.

  They waded through the tall cane grass and bushes under the whooshing trails of plasma bolts, as Jandraligeli gave them cover. They had to duck occasionally as small-bore projectile fire tore through the greenery around them.

  They sprawled in the hangar of the Clear Air Turbulence, beside the still warm shuttle as it clicked and creaked, cooling down again after its high-speed climb through the atmosphere.

  Nobody wanted to talk. They just sat or lay on the deck, some with their backs against the side of the warm shuttle. Those who had been inside the temple were the most obviously affected, but even the others, who had only heard the mayhem over their suit communicators, seemed in a state of mild shock. Helmets and guns lay scattered about them.

  ‘ “Temple of Light”,’ Jandraligeli said eventually, and gave what sounded like a mixture of laugh and snort.

  ‘Temple of fucking Light,’ Lamm agreed.

  ‘Mipp,’ Kraiklyn said in a tired voice to his helmet, ‘any signals from the Bratsilakins?’

  Mipp, still on the CAT’s small bridge, reported that there was nothing.

  ‘We ought to bomb that place to fuck,’ Lamm said. ‘Nuke the bastards.’ Nobody replied. Yalson got up slowly and left the hangar, walking tiredly up the steps to the upper deck, helmet dangling from one arm, gun from the other, her head down.

  ‘I’m afraid we’ve lost that radar.’ Wubslin closed an inspection hatch and rolled out from underneath the nose of the shuttle. ‘That first bit of hostile fire . . .’ His voice trailed off.

  ‘Least nobody’s injured,’ Neisin said. He looked at Dorolow. ‘Your eyes better?’ The woman nodded but kept her eyes closed. Neisin nodded, too. ‘Actually worse, when people are injured. We were lucky.’ He dug into a small pack on the front of his suit and produced a little metal container. He sucked at a nipple at the top and grimaced, shaking his head. ‘Yeah, we were lucky. And it was fairly quick for them, too.’ He nodded to himself, not looking at anybody, not caring that nobody seemed to be listening to him. ‘See how everybody we’ve lost all shared the same . . . I mean they went in pairs . . . or threes . . . huh?’ He took another slug and shook his head. Dorolow was near by; she reached over and held out her hand. Neisin looked at her in surprise, then handed the small flask to her. She took a swig and passed it back. Neisin looked around, but no one else wanted any.

  Horza sat and said nothing. He was staring at the cold lights of the hangar, trying not to see the scene he had witnessed in the hall of the dark temple.

  The Clear Air Turbulence broke orbit on fusion drive and headed for the outer edge of Marjoin’s gravity well, where it could engage its warp motors. It didn’t pick up any signals from the Bratsilakins and it didn’t bomb the Temple of Light. It set a course for the Vavatch Orbital.

  From radio transmissions they had picked up from the planet they worked out what had happened to the place, what had caused the monks and priests in the temple to be so well armed. Two nation states on the world of Marjoin were at war, and the temple was near the frontier between the two countries, constantly ready for attack. One of the states was vaguely socialist; the other was religiously inspired, the priests in the Temple of Light representing one sect of that militant faith. The war was partly caused by the greater, galactic conflict taking place around it, as well as being a tiny and approximate image of it. It was that reflection, Horza realised, which had killed the members of the Company, as much as any bounced laserflash.

  Horza wasn’t sure how he would sleep that night. He lay awake for a few hours, listening to Wubslin having quiet nightmares. Then the cabin door was tapped lightly. Yalson came in and sat on Horza’s bunk. She put her head on his shoulder and they held each other. After a while she took his hand and led him quietly down the companionway, away from the mess – where a splash of light and distant music witnessed that the unsleeping Kraiklyn was unwinding with a drug flask and a holosound tape – down
to the cabin which had been Gow’s and kee-Alsorofus’s.

  In the darkness of the cabin, on a small bed full of strange scents and new textures, they performed the same old act, theirs – they both knew – an almost inevitably barren cross-matching of species and cultures thousands of light-years apart. Then they slept.

  State of play: one

  Fal ’Ngeestra watched the shadows of the clouds move on the distant plain, ten kilometres away horizontally and one vertically, and then, with a sigh, lifted her gaze to the line of snow-capped mountains on the far side of the open grassland. The mountain range was fully thirty kilometres from her eyes, but the peaks were sharp and distinct in the thin air which they invaded with their rock and brilliant icy whiteness. Even at that distance, through that much atmosphere, their glare startled the eye.

  She turned away, walking along the broad flagstones of the lodge terrace with a stiff-legged gait unsuited to her lack of years. The trelliswork above her head was covered in bright red and white flowers and cast a regular pattern of shadows over the terrace beneath; she walked through light and shade, her hair dim then shining gold in turn as each halting step moved her from shadow to sunlight.