Use of Weapons

by Iain M. Banks

  Darckense got the armoury guard to help her with a door that was stuck, along the corridor, just round the corner. Cheradenine slipped in and took the autorifle Elethiomel had described. He got back out, covering the gun in a cape, and heard Darckense thanking the guard profusely. They all met up in the rear hall cloakroom, where they whispered excitedly in the comforting smell of wet cloth and floor polish, and took turns holding the gun. It was very heavy.

  'There's only one magazine!'

  'I couldn't see the others.'

  'God you're blind, Zak. Have to do, I suppose.'

  'Ugh; it's oily,' Darckense said.

  'That stops rust,' Cheradenine explained.

  'Where are we supposed to let it off?' Livueta asked.

  'We'll hide it here and then get out after dinner,' Elethiomel said, taking the weapon from Darckense. 'It's Big-nose for studies and he always sleeps right through anyway. Mother and father will be entertaining that colonel; we can get out of the house and into the woods and fire - not "let off", actually - fire the gun there.'

  'We'll probably get killed,' Livueta said. 'The guards will think we're terrorists.'

  Elethiomel shook his head patiently. 'Livvy, you are stupid.' He pointed the gun at her. 'It's got a silencer; what do you think this bit is?'

  'Huh,' Livueta said, pushing the point away from her. 'Has it got a safety catch?'

  Elethiomel looked uncertain for just a moment. 'Of course,' he said, loudly, then flinched a little and glanced at the closed door to the hall. 'Of course,' he whispered. 'Come on; we'll hide it here and come back for it when we've got away from Big-nose.'

  'You can't hide it here,' Livueta said.

  'Bet I can.'

  'It smells too much,' Livueta said. 'The oil smells; you'd smell it as soon as you walked in here. What if father decides to go for a walk?'

  Elethiomel looked worried. Livueta moved past him, opened a small high window.

  'How about hiding it on the stone boat?' Cheradenine suggested. 'Nobody ever goes there at this time of year.'

  Elethiomel thought about this. He grabbed the cloak Cheradenine had wrapped the gun in originally and covered the weapon again. 'All right. You take it.'

  Still not far enough back, or not far enough forward... he wasn't sure. The right place; that was what he was looking for. The right place. Place was all important, place meant everything. Take this rock...

  'Take you, rock,' he said. He squinted at it.

  Ah yes, here we have the nasty big flat rock, sitting doing nothing, just amoral and dull, and it sits like an island in the polluted pool. The pool is a tiny lake on the little island, and the island is in a drowned crater. The crater is a volcanic crater, the volcano forms part of an island in a big inland sea. The inland sea is like a giant lake on a continent and the continent is like an island sitting in the seas of the planet. The planet is like an island in the sea of space within its system, and the system floats within the cluster, which is like an island in the sea of the galaxy, which is like an island in the archipelago of its local group, which is an island within the universe; the universe is like an island floating in a sea of space in the Continua, and they float like islands in the Reality, and...

  But down through the Continua, the Universe, the Local Group, the Galaxy, the Cluster, the System, the Planet, the Continent, the Island, the Lake, the Island... the rock remained. AND THAT MEANT THE ROCK, THE CRAPPY AWFUL ROCK HERE WAS THE CENTRE OF THE UNIVERSE, THE CONTINUA, THE WHOLE REALITY!

  The word was caldera. The lake was in a drowned caldera. He raised his head, looked out over the still, yellowish water towards the crater cliffs, and seemed to see a boat made of stone.

  'Scream,' he said.

  'Piss off,' he heard the sky say, unconvinced.

  The sky was full of cloud and it was getting dark early; their language tutor took longer than usual to fall asleep behind his high desk, and they almost decided to abandon the whole plan until tomorrow, but couldn't bear to. They crept out of the classroom, then walked as normally as they could, down to the rear hall, where they picked up their boots and jackets.

  'See,' Livueta whispered. 'It smells a bit of gun-oil anyway.'

  'I can't smell any,' Elethiomel lied.

  The banqueting rooms - where a visiting Colonel and his staff were being wined and dined that evening - faced the parks to the front of the house; the lake with the stone boat was at the rear.

  'Just going to walk round the lake, Sergeant,' Cheradenine told the guard who stopped them on the gravel path towards the stone boat. The sergeant nodded, told them to walk quickly; it would soon be dark.

  They sneaked onto the boat, found the rifle where Cheradenine had hidden it, under a stone bench on the upper deck.

  As he lifted it from the flagstone deck, Elethiomel knocked the gun against the side of the bench.

  There was a snapping noise, and the magazine fell off; then there was a noise like a spring, and bullets clicked and clattered over the stones.

  'Idiot!' Cheradenine said.

  'Shut up!'

  'Oh no,' Livueta said, bending down and scooping up some of the rounds.

  'Let's go back,' Darckense whispered. 'I'm frightened.'

  'Don't worry,' Cheradenine said, patting her hand. 'Come on; look for the bullets.'

  It seemed to take ages to find them and clean them and press them back into the magazine. Even then, they thought there were probably a few missing. By the time they'd finished and got the magazine slotted back into place, it was almost night.

  'It's far too dark,' Livueta said. They were all crouched down at the balustrade, looking out over the lake to the house. Elethiomel held the gun.

  'No!' he said. 'We can still see.'

  'No we can't, not properly,' Cheradenine told him.

  'Let's leave it till tomorrow,' Livueta said.

  'They'll notice we're gone soon,' Cheradenine whispered. 'We haven't got the time!'

  'No!' Elethiomel said, looking out to where the guard walked slowly past the end of the causeway. Livueta looked too; it was the sergeant who'd talked to them.

  'You're being an idiot!' Cheradenine said, and put one hand out, taking hold of the gun. Elethiomel pulled away.

  'It's mine; leave it!'

  'It is not yours!' Cheradenine hissed. 'It's ours; it belongs to our family, not yours!' He got both hands on the gun. Elethiomel pulled back again.

  'Stop it!' Darckense said, her voice tiny.

  'Don't be so...' Livueta started to say.

  She looked over the edge of the parapet, to where she thought she'd heard a noise.

  'Give it here!'

  'Let it go!'

  'Please stop; please stop. Let's go back in, please...'

  Livueta didn't hear them. She was staring, wide-eyed, dry-mouthed, over the stone parapet. A black-covered man picked up the rifle the guard sergeant had dropped. The guard sear-geant himself lay on the gravel. Something glittered in the black-dressed man's hand, reflecting the lights of the house. The man pushed the slack form of the sergeant off the gravel, into the lake.

  Her breath caught in her throat. Livueta ducked down. She flapped her hands at the two boys. 'St...' she said. They still struggled.

  'St...'

  'Mine!'

  'Let go!'

  'Stop!' she hissed, and struck them both on the head. They both stared at her. 'Somebody just killed that sergeant; just out there.'

  'What?' Both boys looked over the parapet. Elethiomel still held the gun.

  Darckense squatted down and started to cry.

  'Where?'

  'There; that's his body! There in the water!'

  'Sure,' Elethiomel said in a whispered drawl. 'And who...'

  The three of them saw one shadowy figure move towards the house, keeping in the shade of the bushes bordering the path. A dozen or so men - just patches of darkness on the gravel - moved along the side of the lake, where there was a narrow strip of grass.

  'Terrorists!' Elethiomel
said excitedly, as the three all ducked back behind the balustrade, where Darckense wept quietly.

  'Tell the house,' Livueta said. 'Fire the gun.'

  'Take the silencer off first,' Cheradenine said.

  Elethiomel struggled with the end of the barrel. 'It's stuck!'

  'Let me try!' All three tried.

  'Fire it anyway,' Cheradenine said.

  'Yeah!' Elethiomel whispered. He shook the gun, hefted it. 'Yeah!' he said. He knelt, put the gun on the stone bulwark, sighted.

  'Be careful,' Livueta said.

  Elethiomel aimed at the dark men, crossing the path towards the house. He pulled the trigger.

  The gun seemed to explode. The whole deck of the stone boat lit up. The noise was tremendous; Elethiomel was thrown back, gun still firing, blasting tracer into the night sky. He crashed into the bench. Darckense shrieked at the top of her lungs. She leapt up; firing sounded from near the house.

  'Darkle; get down!' Livueta screamed. Lines of light flickered and cracked above the stone boat.

  Darckense stood screaming, then started to run for the stairs. Elethiomel shook his head, looked up as the girl ran past him. Livueta grabbed at her and missed. Cheradenine tried to tackle her.

  The lines of light lowered, detonating chips of rock off the stones all around them in tiny clouds of dust, at the same time as Darckense, still screaming, stumbled to the stairs.

  The bullet entered Darckense through the hip: the other three heard - quite distinctly - the noise that it made, above the gunfire and the girl's scream.

  He was hit too, though he didn't know by what at the time.

  The attack on the house was beaten off. Darckense lived. She almost died, from loss of blood, and shock; but she lived. The best surgeons in the land fought to rebuild her pelvis, shattered into a dozen major pieces and a hundred splinters by the impact of the round.

  Bits of bone had travelled her body; they found fragments in her legs, in one arm, in her internal organs, even a piece in her chin. The army surgeons were fairly used to dealing with that sort of injury, and they had the time (because the war hadn't yet started then) and the incentive (for her father was a very important man) to put her back together as best they could. Still, she would walk awkwardly until she stopped growing, at least.

  One of the bone shards travelled further than her own body; it entered his. Just above the heart.

  The army surgeons said it would be too dangerous to operate. In time, they said, his body would reject the fragment of bone.

  But it never did.

  He started to crawl round the pool again.

  Caldera! That was the word, the name.

  (Such signals were important, and he'd found the one he'd been looking for.)

  Victory, he said to himself, as he hauled himself round, scattering a last few of the bird-droppings out of his way, and apologising to the insects. Everything was going to be just fine, he decided. He knew that, now, and knew that in the end you always won, and that even when you lost, you never knew, and there was only one fight, and he was at the centre of the whole ridiculous thing any way, and Caldera was the word, and Zakalwe was the word, and Staberinde was the word, and -

  They came for him; they came down with a big beautiful ship, and they took him up and away and they made him all better again...

  'They never learn,' the sky sighed, quite distinctly.

  'Fuck you,' he said.

  It was years later that Cheradenine - returned from the military academy and looking for Darckense, and sent in that direction by a monosyllabic gardener - walked up the soft carpet of leaves to the door of the little summerhouse.

  He heard a scream from inside. Darckense.

  He dashed up the steps, drawing his pistol, and kicked the door open.

  Darckense's startled face twisted over her shoulder, regarding him. Her hands were still clasped round Elethiomel's neck. Elethiomel sat, trousers round his ankles, hands on Darckense's naked hips under her bunched-up dress, and looked calmly at him.

  Elethiomel was sitting on the little chair that Livueta had made in her carpentry class, long ago.

  'Hi there, old chap,' he said to the young man holding the pistol.

  Cheradenine looked into Elethiomel's eyes for a moment, then turned away, holstering the pistol and buttoning the holster and walking out, closing the door behind him.

  Behind him he heard Darckense crying, and Elethiomel laughing.

  The island in the centre of the caldera became quiet again. Some birds flew back to it.

  The island had changed, thanks to the man. Scraped in a circle all round the central depression of the islet, drawn in a pathway of black bird droppings cleared away from the pale rock, and with the appropriate tail of just the right length leading off to one side (its other end pointing at the rock, which was the central dot), the island seemed to have a letter or simple pictogram printed on it, white on black.

  It was the local signal for 'Help me!', and you would only have seen it from an aircraft, or from space.

  A few years after the scene in the summerhouse, one night while the forests burned and the distant artillery thundered, a young army major jumped up onto one of the tanks under his command, and ordered the driver to take the machine through the woods, following a path which wound between the old trees.

  They left behind the shell of the recaptured mansion and the glowing red fires which lit its once grand interior (the fires reflected on the waters of an ornamental lake, by the wreckage of a demolished boat made of stone).

  The tank ripped through the woods, demolishing small trees and little bridges over streams.

  He saw the clearing with the summerhouse through the trees; it was lit by a flickering white light, as though by God.

  They got to the clearing; a star-shell had fallen into the trees above, its parachute entangled in the branches. It sizzled and sputtered and shed a pure, sharp, extreme light all over the clearing.

  Inside the summerhouse, the little wooden chair was quite visible. The tank's gun was pointing straight at the small building.

  'Sir?' the tank commander said, peering worriedly from the hatch beneath.

  Major Zakalwe looked down at him.

  'Fire,' he said.

  Eight

  The first snow of the year settled over the upper slopes of the cleft city; it floated out of the grey-brown sky and fitted itself over the streets and the buildings like a sheet thrown over a corpse.

  He dined alone at a large table. The screen he had wheeled into the middle of the brightly lit room flickered with the images of released prisoners from some other planet. The balcony doors were lying open, and through them drifted small examples of the falling snow. The rich carpet of the room was frosted white where the snow had settled, and stained dark further in where the heat of the room had melted the crystals back into water again. Outside, the city was a mass of half-unseen grey shapes. Ordered lights ran in lines and curls, dimmed by distance and passing flurries.

  Darkness came like a black flag waved over the canyon, drawing back the greyness from the shores of the city, then pushing forward the individual specks of street and building lights as though in recompense.

  The silent screen and silent snow conspired; light flung a path into the silent chaos of the fall beyond the window. He got up and closed the doors, the shutters and the curtains.

  The next day was bright and clear, and the city could be seen sharply as far as the canyon's broad curve would allow; buildings and lines of roads and aqueducts stood out as though freshly drawn, gleaming like new paint, while cold, keen sunlight rubbed a shine into the dullest grey stone. The snow lay over the top half of the city; below, where the temperature stayed more level, the snow had fallen as rain. There too the precise new day was displayed; he looked down from the car and studied the sight. Every detail delighted him; he counted arches and cars and traced the lines of water and road and flue and track through all their convolutions and hidings; he inspected every flash o
f reflected sunlight, squinted at every dot of wheeling bird and noted every broken window, through the very dark glasses.

  The car was the longest and sleekest of all those he'd bought or hired; it was an eight seater with a huge inefficient rotary engine driving both rear axles, and he had its collapsible slatted hood down. He sat in the back and enjoyed the feel of the cold air on his face.

  The terminal earring beeped. 'Zakalwe?'

  'Yes, Diziet?' he said. Talking quietly, he didn't think the driver would hear him over the wind-roar. He raised the screen between them anyway.

  'Hello. Good. Very slight time delay from here, but not much. How's it going?'

  'Nothing yet. I'm called Staberinde and I'm causing a fuss. I own Staberinde Airlines, there's a Staberinde Street, a Staberinde Store, a Staberinde Railway, Staberinde Local Broadcasts... there's even a cruise liner called the Staberinde. I've spent money like hydrogen, established within a week a business empire most people would take a lifetime to set up, and I'm instantly one of the most talked-about people on the planet, maybe in the Cluster...'

  'Yes. But, Cher...'

  'Had to take a service tunnel and leave the hotel by an annexe this morning; the courtyard's crammed with press.' He glanced over his shoulder. 'I'm amazed we really seem to have shaken the hounds off.'

  'Yes, Che...'

  'Dammit, I'm probably putting the war off all by myself just by being this crazy; people would rather see what I'm going to squander my money on next than fight.'

  'Zakalwe; Zakalwe,' Sma said. 'Fine; great. But what is all this supposed to do?'

  He sighed, looked out at the derelict buildings speeding by to one side, not far under the rimrock. 'It's supposed to get the name Staberinde into the media, so that even a recluse studying ancient documents will get to hear the name.'

  '... And?'

  '... And there was something we did in the war, Beychae and I; a particular stratagem. We called it the Staberinde strategy. But only between ourselves. Strictly between ourselves; it only meant anything to Beychae because I explained about its... origin. If he hears that word he must wonder what's going on.'