Consider Phlebas

by Iain M. Banks

  ‘If we’d waited we could have put the shuttle down where we wanted to in the first place,’ he said with his own visor open. Horza agreed.

  ‘Stupid little bastard,’ Lamm said.

  ‘Who?’ asked Horza.

  ‘That kid. Jumping off the goddamned platform.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘Know what I’m going to do?’ Lamm looked at the Changer.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m going to cut that stupid little bastard’s tongue out, that’s what I’m going to do. A tattooed tongue should be worth something, shouldn’t it? Little bastard owed me money anyway. What do you think? How much do you think it’d be worth?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Little bastard . . .’ Lamm muttered.

  The two men tramped along the deck, angling away from the dead-ahead line they had taken previously. It was difficult to tell where exactly they were heading, but according to Kraiklyn it was towards one of the side prows, which stuck out like enormous outriggers attached to the Olmedreca and formed harbours for the liners which had shuttled to and from the Megaship in its heyday, on excursions, or working as tenders.

  They passed where there had evidently been a recent fire-fight; laser burns, smashed glass and torn metal littered an accommodation section of the ship, and torn curtains and wall hangings flapped in the steady breeze of the great ship’s progress. Two of the small wheeled vehicles lay smashed on their sides nearby. They crunched over the debris and kept walking. The other two groups were heading forward, too, making reasonable progress according to their reports and chatter. Ahead of them there still lay the enormous bank of cloud they had seen earlier; it wasn’t growing any thinner or lower, and they could only be a couple of kilometres from it now, though distances were hard to estimate.

  ‘We’re here,’ Kraiklyn said eventually, his voice crackling in Horza’s ear. Lamm turned his transmit channel on.

  ‘What?’ He looked, mystified, at Horza, who shrugged.

  ‘What’s keeping you two?’ Kraiklyn said. ‘We had further to walk. We’re at the main bows. They stick further out than the bit you’re on.’

  ‘The hell you are, Kraiklyn,’ Yalson broke in from the other team, which was supposed to be heading for the opposite set of side prows.

  ‘What?’ Kraiklyn said. Lamm and Horza stopped to listen to the exchange over their communicators. Yalson spoke again:

  ‘We’ve just come to the edge of the ship. In fact I think we’re a bit out from the main side . . . on some sort of wing or buttress . . . Anyway, there’s no side prow around here. You’ve sent us in the wrong direction.’

  ‘But you . . .’ Kraiklyn began. His voice died away.

  ‘Kraiklyn, dammit, you’ve sent us towards the bow and you’re on a side prow!’ Lamm yelled into his helmet mike. Horza had been coming to the same conclusion. That was why they were still walking and Kraiklyn’s team had reached the bows. There was silence from the Clear Air Turbulence’s captain for a few seconds, then he said:

  ‘Shit, you must be right.’ They could hear him sigh. ‘I guess you and Horza had better keep going. I’ll send somebody down in your direction once we’ve had a quick look round here. I think I can see some sort of gallery with a lot of transparent blisters where there might be some lasers. Yalson, you head back to where we split up and tell me when you get there. We’ll see who comes up with something useful first.’

  ‘Fucking marvellous,’ Lamm said, stamping off into the mist. Horza followed, wishing the ill-fitting suit didn’t rub so much.

  The two men walked on. Lamm stopped to investigate some staterooms which had already been looted. Fine materials snagged on broken glass floated like the cloud around them. In one apartment they saw rich wooden furniture, a holosphere lying broken in a corner and a glass-sided water tank the size of a room, full of rotting, brilliantly coloured fish and fine clothes, floating together on the surface like exotic weeds.

  Over their communicators Horza and Lamm heard the others in Kraiklyn’s group find what they thought was a door leading to the gallery where – they hoped – they would find lasers behind the transparent bubbles they had seen earlier. Horza told Lamm they had best not waste their time, and so they left the state rooms and went back out onto the deck to continue heading forward.

  ‘Hey, Horza,’ Kraiklyn said, as the Changer and Lamm walked along the deck and into a long tunnel lit by dim sunlight coming through mist and opaque ceiling panels. ‘This needle radar’s not working properly.’

  Horza answered as they walked. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘It isn’t going through cloud, that’s what’s wrong.’

  ‘I never really got a chance to . . . What do you mean?’ Horza stopped in the corridor. He felt something wrong in his guts. Lamm kept walking, away from him, down the corridor.

  ‘It’s giving me a reading off that big cloud in front, right the way along and about half a K up.’ Kraiklyn laughed. ‘It isn’t the Edgewall, that’s for sure, and I can see that’s a cloud, and it’s closer than the needle says it is.’

  ‘Where are you now?’ Dorolow broke in. ‘Did you find any lasers? What about that door?’

  ‘No, just a sort of sun lounge or something,’ Kraiklyn said.

  ‘Kraiklyn!’ Horza shouted. ‘Are you sure about that reading?’

  ‘I’m sure. The needle says—’

  ‘Sure isn’t much fucking sun to lounge—’ somebody broke in, though it sounded as if it was accidental and they didn’t know their transmit was on. Horza felt sweat start out on his brow. Something was wrong.

  ‘Lamm!’ he shouted. Lamm, thirty metres away down the corridor, turned as he walked and looked back. ‘Come back!’ Horza shouted. Lamm stopped.

  ‘Horza, there can’t be anything—’

  ‘Kraiklyn!’ This time it was Mipp’s voice, calling from the shuttle. ‘There was somebody else here. I just saw another craft take off somewhere behind where we landed; they’ve gone now.’

  ‘OK, thanks Mipp,’ Kraiklyn said, his voice calm. ‘Listen, Horza, from what I can see from here, the bows where you are have just gone into the cloud, so it is a cloud . . . Shit, we can all see it’s a goddamn cloud. Don’t—’

  The ship shuddered under Horza’s feet. He rocked. Lamm looked at him, puzzled. ‘Did you feel that?’ Horza shouted.

  ‘Feel what?’ Kraiklyn said.

  ‘Kraiklyn?’ It was Mipp again. ‘I can see something . . .’

  ‘Lamm, get back here!’ Horza shouted, through the air and into his helmet mike together. Lamm looked around him. Horza thought he could feel a continuing tremor in the deck below.

  ‘What did you feel?’ Kraiklyn said. He was starting to get annoyed.

  Yalson chipped in, ‘I thought I felt something. Nothing much. But listen, these things aren’t supposed to . . . they aren’t supposed to—’

  ‘Kraiklyn,’ Mipp said more urgently, ‘I think I can see—’

  ‘Lamm!’ Horza was backing off now, back down the long tunnel of corridor. Lamm stayed where he was, looking hesitant.

  Horza could hear something, a curious growling noise; it reminded him of a jet engine or a fusion motor heard from a very long distance away, but it wasn’t either. He could feel something under his feet, too – that tremor, and there was some sort of pull, a tug that seemed to be dragging him forward, towards Lamm, towards the bows, as though he was in a weak field, or—

  ‘Kraiklyn!’ Mipp yelled. ‘I can! There is! I – you – I’m—’ he spluttered.

  ‘Look, will you all just calm down?’

  ‘I can feel something . . .’ Yalson began.

  Horza started running, pounding back down the corridor. Lamm, who had started to walk back, stopped and put his hands on his hips when he saw the other man running, away from him. There was a distant roaring noise in the air, like a big waterfall heard from far down a gorge.

  ‘I can feel something too, it’s as if—’

  ‘What was Mipp yelling about?’
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  ‘We’re crashing!’ Horza shouted as he ran. The roaring was coming closer, growing stronger all the time.

  ‘Ice!’ It was Mipp. ‘I’m bringing the shuttle! Run! It’s a wall of ice! Neisin! Where are you? Neisin! I’ve got—’

  ‘What!’

  ‘ICE?’

  The roaring noise grew; the corridor around Horza started to groan. Several of the opaque roof panels fractured and fell to the floor in front of him. A section of wall suddenly sprang out like an opening door and he just avoided running into it. The noise filled his ears.

  Lamm looked round, and saw the end of the corridor coming towards him; the whole end section was closing off steadily with a grinding roar, advancing towards him at about running speed. He fired at it but it didn’t stop; smoke poured into the corridor. He swore, turned and ran, following Horza.

  People were yelling and shouting from all over now. There was a babble of tiny voices in both Horza’s ears, but all he could really hear was the thundering noise behind him. The deck beneath his feet bucked and trembled, as though the whole gigantic ship was a building caught in an earthquake. The plates and panels which made up the corridor walls were buckling; the floor rose up in places; more roof panels shattered and fell. All the time the same sapping force was pulling him back, slowing him down as though he was in a dream. He ran out into daylight, heard Lamm not far behind.

  ‘Kraiklyn, you stupid motherfucking son of a bitch’s bastard!’ Lamm screamed.

  The voices yammered in his ear; his heart pounded. He threw each foot forward with all his might, but the roaring was coming closer, growing stronger. He ran past the empty state rooms where the soft materials blew, the roof was starting to fold in on the apartments and the deck was tilting; the holosphere they had seen earlier came rolling and bouncing out of the collapsing windows. A hatch near Horza blew out in a gust of pressured air and flying debris; he ducked as he ran, felt splinters strike his suit. He skidded as the deck under him banged and leapt. Lamm’s steps came pounding behind him. Lamm continued to scream abuse at Kraiklyn over the intercom.

  The noise behind him was like a gigantic waterfall, a big rock-slide, like a continuous explosion, a volcano. His ears ached and his mind reeled, stunned by the volume of the racket. A line of windows set in the wall ahead of him went white, then exploded towards him, throwing particles at his suit in a series of small hard clouds. He put his head down again, he headed for the doorway.

  ‘Bastard bastard bastard!’ Lamm bellowed.

  ‘—not stopping!’

  ‘—over here!’

  ‘Shut up, Lamm.’

  ‘Horzaaa . . . !’

  Voices screamed in his ear. He was running on carpet now, inside a broad corridor; open doors were flapping, light fittings on the ceiling were vibrating. Suddenly a deluge of water swept across the corridor in front of him, twenty metres away, and for a second he thought he was at sea level, but knew he couldn’t be; when he ran over the place where the water had been he could see and hear it frothing and gurgling down a broad spiral stairwell, and only a few dribbles were falling from overhead. The tugging of the slowly decelerating ship seemed less now, but the roar of noise was still all around him. He was weakening, running in a daze, trying to keep his balance as the long corridor vibrated and twisted around him. Now a rush of air was flowing past him; some sheets of paper and plastic flapped past him like coloured birds.

  ‘—bastard bastard bastard—’

  ‘Lamm—’

  There was daylight ahead, through a glassed-over sun deck of broad windows. He jumped through some big-leaved plants growing in large pots and landed in a group of flimsy chairs set round a small table, demolishing them.

  ‘—fucking stupid bast—’

  ‘Lamm, shut up!’ Kraiklyn’s voice broke in. ‘We can’t hear—’

  The line of windows ahead went white, cracking like ice then bursting out; he dived through the space, to skid over the fragments scattered on the deck beyond. Behind him, the top and bottom of the shattered windows started to close slowly, like a huge mouth.

  ‘You bastard! You motherfu—’

  ‘Dammit, change channels! Go to—’

  He slipped on the shards of glass, almost falling.

  Only Lamm’s voice sounded through his helmet now, filling his ears with oaths which were mostly drowned in the smothering roar of the endless wreck behind. He looked back, just for a second, to see Lamm throwing himself between the jaws of the crumpling windows; he careened over the deck, falling and rolling, then rising again, still holding his gun, as Horza looked away. It was only at that point he realised he no longer had his own gun; he must have dropped it, but he couldn’t remember where or when.

  Horza was slowing down. He was fit and strong, but the above-standard pull of Vavatch’s false gravity and the badly fitting suit were taking their toll.

  He tried, as he ran in something like a trance, as his breath streamed back and forth through his wide-open mouth, to imagine how close they had been to the bows, for how long that immense weight of ship behind would be able to compress its front section as its billion-tonne mass rammed into what must – if it had filled the cloud bank they had seen earlier – be a massive tabular iceberg.

  As though in a dream, Horza could see the ship about him, still wrapped in clouds and mist but lit from above by the wash of golden sunlight. The towers and spires seemed unaffected, the whole vast structure still sliding forward towards the ice as the kilometres of Megaship behind them pressed forward with the vessel’s own titanic momentum. He ran by game courts, past tents of billowing silver, through a pile of musical instruments. Ahead there was a huge tiered wall of more decks, and above him were bridges, swaying and thrashing as their bow-ward supports, out of sight behind him, came closer to the advancing wave of wreckage and were consumed. He saw the deck to one side drop away into airy, hazy nothing. The deck under his feet started to rise, slowly, but for fifteen metres or more in front of him; he was fighting his way up a slope growing steeper all the time. A suspension bridge to his left collapsed, wires flailing; it disappeared into the golden mist, the noise of its fall lost in the crushing din assaulting his ears. His feet started to slide on the tilt of deck. He fell, landed heavily on his back and turned, looking behind him.

  Against a wall of pure white towering higher than the Olmedreca’s tallest spire, the Megaship was throwing itself to destruction in a froth of debris and ice. It was like the biggest wave in the universe, rendered in scrap metal, sculpted in grinding junk; and beyond and about it, over and through, cascades of flashing, glittering ice and snow swept down in great slow veils from the cliff of frozen water beyond. Horza stared at it, then started to slide down towards it as the deck tilted him. To his left a huge tower was collapsing slowly, bowing to the breaking wave of compacted wreckage like a slave before a master. Horza felt a scream start in his throat as he saw decks and railings, walls and bulkheads and frames he had only just run past start to crumple and smash and come towards him.

  He rolled over sliding shards and skidding fragments to the buckling rail at the edge of the deck, grabbed at the rails, caught them, heaved with both arms, kicked with one foot, and threw himself over the side.

  He fell only one deck, crashing into sloped metal, winding himself. He got to his feet as fast as he could, sucking air through his mouth and swallowing as he tried to get his lungs to work. The narrow deck he was on was also buckling, but the fold-point was between him and the wall of towering, grinding wreckage; he slipped and slid away from it down the sloping surface as the deck behind him rose into a peak. Metal tore, and girders crashed out of the deck above like broken bones through skin. A set of steps faced him, leading to the deck he’d just jumped from, but to an area that was still level. He scrambled up to the level deck, which only then started to tip, canting away from the wave front of debris as its front edge lifted, crumpling.

  He ran down the increasing slope, water from shallow ornamental pools cascad
ing around him. More steps: he hauled himself towards the next deck.

  His chest and throat seemed filled with hot coals, his legs with molten lead, and all the time that awful, nightmarish pull came from behind, dragging him back towards the wreckage. He stumbled and gasped his way from the top of the steps past the side of a broken, drained swimming pool.

  ‘Horza!’ a voice yelled. ‘Is that you? Horza! It’s Mipp! Look up!’

  Horza lifted his head. In the mist, thirty metres above him, was the CAT’s shuttle. He waved weakly at it, staggering as he did so. The shuttle lowered itself through the mist ahead of him, its rear doors opening, until it was hovering just over the next deck above.

  ‘I’ve opened the doors! Jump in!’ Mipp shouted. Horza tried to reply, but could produce no sound apart from a sort of rasping wheeze; he staggered on, feeling as though the bones in his legs had turned to jelly. The heavy suit bumped and crashed around him, his feet slipped on the broken glass which covered the thrumming deck under his boots. Yet more steps towered ahead, leading to the deck where the shuttle waited. ‘Hurry up, Horza! I can’t wait much longer!’

  He threw himself at the steps, hauled himself up. The shuttle wavered in the air, swivelling, its open rear ramp pointing at him, then away. The steps beneath him shuddered; the noise around him roared, full of screams and crashes. Another voice was shouting in his ears but he couldn’t make out the words. He fell onto the upper deck, lunged forward for the shuttle ramp a few metres away; he could see the seats and lights inside, Lenipobra’s suited body slumped in one corner.

  ‘I can’t wait! I’ve—’ Mipp shouted above the scream of the wreckage and the other shouting voice. The shuttle started to rise. Horza threw himself at it.

  His hands caught the lip of the ramp just as it rose level with his chest. He was hoisted from the deck, swinging under outstretched arms and looking forward under the shuttle’s fuselage belly as the craft forced its way up into the air.

  ‘Horza! Horza! I’m sorry,’ Mipp sobbed.