Against a Dark Background

by Iain M. Banks

  “Good morning,” she said.

  “Yes,” he replied, and beckoned them to enter. Zefla and Sharrow stepped over the high sill into a dull but not dark space looking onto a small courtyard, partially shielded from them by a sheet hanging from the floor above. The air smelled of sweat and cooked fats. A grunting, wheezing male-sounding noise came from the other side of the grubby sheet. Zefla glanced at Sharrow, who shrugged.

  “I hope you’re hearing that too,” she told Zefla, “or I’m more tired than I thought and flashing-back to last night.”

  The gray-bearded man went on before them, still hitching up his trousers and tucking in the last few folds of his creased shirt as he bustled forward round the edge of the hanging sheet. They followed. The courtyard was small and cluttered; balconies ran round the two floors above, giving access to other rooms. A light covering of membrane made a gauzy roof above.

  The floor of the atrium was covered with carpets and mats on which stood half a dozen over-stuffed bookshelves and a couple of tables covered with layers and rolls of paper. Exercise equipment in the shape of dumbbells, weights, heavy clubs and flexible bars lay strewn amongst the stuff of ancient scholarship.

  In the center of it all stood the tallish, gaunt figure of an almost naked elderly man with a white mat of hair on his chest and a shock of thick black hair on his head. He was clad in a grubby loincloth and clutched a pair of hand-weights which he was raising alternately, breathing heavily and grunting with each lift. There was sweat on his lined, tanned face. Zefla reckoned he was seventy at least, though his figure was relatively youthful; only the white chest-hair and a certain slackness round his belly revealed his age. “Ha; good morning, lovely ladies!” he said in a deep voice. “Ivexton Travapeth at your service.”

  He thumped the hand-weights down on a massive book that seemed to be holding down one corner of an age-brown chart, raising dust and making the table beneath shudder. “And how may this humble and undeserving scholar help two such radiantly pulchritudinous gentle-ladies?” He stood, arms crossed, biceps bulging, on the balls of his feet, facing them, still breathing heavily. His expression was somewhere between mischievous and lecherous.

  “Good morning, Mister Travapeth,” Zefla said, nodding as she stepped forward and put out her hand. They shook. “My name is Ms. Franck; this is my assistant, Ms. Demri.”

  Sharrow nodded as Travapeth glanced, smiling, at her. “We’re researchers for an independent screen production company, MGK Productions. Our card.” Zefla handed him a card from one of Miz’s many front companies.

  Travapeth squinted at the card. “Ah, you are from Golter. I thought so from your accent, of course. How may Travapeth help you, my saxicolous damsels?”

  Zefla smiled. “We’d like to talk to you about a place called Pharpech.”

  Ivexton Travapeth rocked back on his heels a little. “Indeed?” he said.

  At that point the little man rushed out of the shadows behind the scholar, holding open a long gray gown. He jumped up and tried to put the gown over the tall man’s shoulders. He failed, and tried several more times while Travapeth boomed:

  “Pharpech! Ah, dear, belovable lady, you utter a word—an almost magical word—which summons up such a welter of emotions in this well-traveled breast—” There was a hollow thud as Travapeth struck his white-haired chest with one fist. “—I scarcely know where or how to begin to respond.”

  The little man put the gown over one forearm and pulled a chair from beneath a table, stationing it behind Travapeth. He climbed up onto the chair and went to put the gown over the scholar’s shoulders just as Travapeth moved away toward a chest-high wooden stand holding a set of dumbbells. The little gray-haired man fell to the floor with a squeal.

  Travapeth lifted the dumbbells from the stand, grunting.

  “You say screen production company?” he said, straining to lift the dumbbells to his chin. The little man picked himself up and dusted himself down, retrieved the gown from the carpet and looked sulkily at Travapeth. Sharrow had her lips tightly closed.

  “That’s right,” Zefla smiled.

  The little gray-haired man scowled at Travapeth, then left the gown draped over the chair and returned to the shadows, muttering incoherently and shaking his head.

  “Hmm,” Travapeth said, finally heaving the dumbbells level with the top of his shoulders and standing there panting for a moment. He swallowed. “I happen to know His Majesty King Tard the Seventeenth rather well,” he boomed. He smiled at the two women with a sort of radiant humility. “I was present at his coronation, you know, back when you two beautiful ladies were still suckling at the generous globes of your mothers’ breasts, I imagine.” He sighed contemplatively, perhaps sadly, then looked more serious as he strained at the dumbbells, and after a while relaxed. “And I have to say,” he panted, “His Majesty has shown…a consistent reluctance…to allow any sort of pictographic record…to be taken of his realm…which the modern world seems to regard as…bordering on the pathological.”

  “We understand that,” Zefla said. “Nevertheless, Pharpech appears to be a fascinating and even romantic place, from what one reads about it, and we do feel that it would be worth some time and effort—by an experienced and highly talented team of individuals widely respected in their respective fields—to produce a true, factual and faithful account of life in what represents one of the last vestiges of a time gone by, miraculously still surviving into the present day.”

  Travapeth seemed to strain again. Then he grunted; he put the dumbbells back on their stand and reached with a shaking hand for a stained towel lying crumpled on top of a bookcase.

  “Quite so,” he said, shaking the towel until it uncrumpled. “But try explaining that to His Majesty.”

  “Let me be candid,” Zefla said as Travapeth wiped under his armpits, and then his face. (Sharrow looked away.) “Our intention is to go there initially without any equipment—without even still cameras, if that’s what it takes—and perhaps, with your good offices, if that proves agreeable to you, establish some sort of understanding with whatever authorities control the sort of very limited access rights we’d require for the extremely respectful and tasteful prestige documentary production we have in mind.”

  Travapeth nodded, blew his nose noisily into the towel and put it back on top of the bookcase. Sharrow coughed and studied the upper balcony. Zefla glided smoothly on. “We do of course recognize the difficulties involved, and we hope that—as a highly respected scholar and the foremost expert on Pharpech in the entire system—you would agree to act as our historical and anthropological consultant.”

  Travapeth’s brows knitted together as he flexed his shoulders and went to a sit-up bench, lying on it and jamming his feet under the bars.

  “Yes, I see,” he said, clasping his hands behind his neck.

  “Should you agree to this,” Zefla continued, “we would of course credit you on screen.”

  “ Mm-hmm,” Travapeth said, grunting as he did a sit-up.

  “And, naturally,” Zefla said, “there would be a substantial fee involved, reflecting both the added academic weight your involvement in this prestigious project would contribute and the worth of your valuable time.”

  Travapeth sat back on the narrow padding of the sit-up bench with a sigh. He stared up at the courtyard’s membrane ceiling.

  “Of course,” he said, “financial matters are hardly my first concern.”

  “Of course,” Zefla agreed. “I can well imagine.”

  “ But—just to give me a rough idea…?” He performed another sit-up then twisted, touching both elbows off his knees in turn.

  “Might we suggest ten thousand, inclusive?” Zefla said.

  The scholar paused, touching elbow to knee.

  “Four immediately,” Zefla said, “should you be prepared to help us, then three on the first day of principal photography and three on transmission.”

  “Repeat fees?” Travapeth grunted, still swinging from side to side
.

  “Industry Prestige Documentary Production standard.”

  “Single screen credit?”

  “Same size, half the duration of the director’s.”

  “Call it fifteen.”

  Zefla sucked her breath in and sounded apologetic. “I’m not really authorized to exceed twelve thousand for any single individual.”

  Travapeth sat back panting heavily. “Butler!” he shouted into the air, his voice resounding round the atrium. His sweat-streaked face looked upside-down at Zefla. “My dear girl,” he breathed, “you won’t need any other individual. I am all that you require; all that you could possibly ask for.” He leered.

  From the corner of her eye Zefla caught Sharrow turning away with a hand stuffed in her mouth, just as the little man appeared from the shadows again, struggling to carry a huge hide bucket full of water.

  “Fifteen,” Travapeth repeated, closing his eyes. “Six, five four.”

  Zefla looked down, shaking her head and rubbing her chin.

  “Well, then,” Travapeth sighed. “In three equal tranches; I can’t say fairer than that.”

  The little man grabbed the chair with the gown draped over it and dragged it with him as he staggered up to where Travapeth lay panting on the sit-up bench; he climbed up onto the chair, heaved the bucket up level with his chest, then dumped the water over Travapeth’s deep-breathing, nine-tenths naked frame. Zefla stepped back quickly from the splash.

  The scholar shuddered mightily as the water poured off him onto the mat beneath. He spluttered and blinked his eyes as his butler climbed down from the seat and walked away.

  Travapeth smiled wetly at Zefla. “Do we have a deal, dear girl?”

  Zefla glanced at Sharrow, who nodded almost imperceptibly.

  “Ugh! Fate! Did you see his loincloth going clingy and see-through after the little guy poured the water over him? Yech!”

  “Thankfully, my eyes were averted at that point.”

  “And that stuff about ‘the generous globes of your mothers’ breasts’!” Zefla said in a booming voice, then squealed, hand over her mouth as they walked laughing down Imagery Lane through units and packs of students moving between lectures.

  “I thought I was going to throw up,” Sharrow said.

  “Well you shouldn’t have tried to put your whole hand into your mouth,” Zefla told her.

  “It was that or howl.”

  “Still, at least he seems to know what he’s talking about.”

  “Hmm,” Sharrow said. “So far so plausible; we’ll see if Cenuij is impressed.” She nodded down the street to their right. “Let’s go down here. There’s a place I remember.”

  “Okay,” Zefla said. They turned down Structuralist Street.

  “Down here somewhere,” Sharrow said, looking around. The street was busy and edged with cafés and estaminets.

  “Actually,” Zefla said, putting her arm through Sharrow’s again, and looking up at the high membrane waving slowly two kilometers above. “Now I think about it, maybe I do kind of admire his brazenness.”

  Sharrow glared at Zefla. “You really can’t hate anybody for more than about three seconds, can you?”

  Zefla smiled guiltily. “Ah, he wasn’t that bad.” She shrugged. “He’s a character.”

  “Let’s hope he stays a minor one,” Sharrow muttered.

  Zefla laughed. “What’s the aim of this sentimental journey, anyway?” She looked along the crowded street. “Where are we heading for now?”

  “The Bistro Onomatopoeia,” Sharrow told her.

  “Oh, I remember that place,” Zefla said. She peered into the distance, a pretend frown on her face. “How do you spell it again?” she asked.

  “Oh,” they chanted together, “just the way it sounds.”

  She kept her cap down over her eyes and her boots on the rickety seat opposite. Her uniform jacket hung over the back of her own chair.

  “Schlotch,” she said, and took another drink of the trax spirit.

  “Schlotch?” Miz asked.

  “Schlotch,” she confirmed.

  “Mud scraped off a boot,” Dloan said, tapping her boot with the toe of his own.

  She shook her head slowly, looking down at her hands where they were clasped between her uniformed thighs. She belched. “Nup,” she said.

  Next round the table was Cenuij.

  “A turd dropping into a toilet bowl,” he suggested, his gaze shining out from two black eyes he’d collected a couple of nights earlier. “From ten thousand meters.”

  “Close,” she said, then giggled, waving one hand as the others started to heckle. “Na; na, not close at all. I lied. I lied. Ha ha ha.”

  “The noise a—hic! shit—sock full of pickled jelly-bird brains makes when swung vigorously against an Excise Clipper escape hatch by a dwarf wearing a jump-girdle on his head.”

  Sharrow glanced up at Zefla and shook her head quickly. “Too prosaic.”

  Zefla shrugged. “Fair enough.”

  Cara cleared his throat carefully. “The noise a speckle bug makes—” he began patiently.

  They all pulled off their caps and started throwing them at him and shouting, “No!” “Choose another track!” “No, no, no!” “Fuck this goddamn speckle bug!” “Think of something else!”

  Cara flinched, grinning under the barrage of caps, putting his arms out over the table so that his drink wasn’t spilled. “But,” he said, sounding reasonable. “It’s got to be right eventually…”

  “Na, wrong again,” Sharrow said. She took some more trax. She felt drunker than she ought to feel. Could it be because it was on an empty stomach? They’d come to the Onomatopoeia for hangover cures and lunch, but somehow—it being their last day before another tour unless peace broke out—it had turned all too easily into another drinking bout.

  Had she had breakfast? She accepted her cap back from somebody, and put it on over her crew-cut scalp. No, she couldn’t remember whether she’d had breakfast or not.

  She drained the trax, said, “Next!” quite loudly, and put her glass down and pointed at Miz at the same time. Somebody refilled her glass.

  Miz looked thoughtful. Then his thin, bright face lit up. “A Tax cruiser hitting another asteroid at half the speed of—”

  They all started shouting and throwing their caps at him.

  “This is getting too silly,” Froterin said, as Miz started to retrieve the caps. Froterin looked massively round them all. “Everybody’s starting to repeat themselves.”

  “What was that?” “Pardon?” “Eh?”

  Froterin stood shakily, his seat scraping back across the pavement, teetering and almost falling into the street. He put his hand onto his broad chest, over his heart. “But now,” he rumbled, “I think it’s time for a little song…” He started to sing: “Oh, Caltasp, oh Caaaltasp…”

  “Oh, Fate….” “My cap!” “Give me my cap!” “Mine first! I’m less drunk and I aim better anyway!” “Throw something else!” “I know!” “Not my drink, you cretin; use his!”

  “Oh CAAALtasp, oh CAAALtasp—”

  “My ears! My ears!” “It’s no good, sir; caps just bounce off it!” “Oh no! His glass is empty!”

  Vleit got out of her seat and tiptoed round to Sharrow while the rest tried to stop Froterin singing. Vleit had a wicked grin on her face, and when she got to Sharrow she crouched down and whispered in her ear.

  Sharrow nodded vigorously and they both dissolved into fits of giggles and then throaty, coughing laughter. “Yes!” Sharrow nodded, crying with laughter. “Yes!”

  “Oh CAAAALtasp, oh CAAAAAAALtasp, oh thank you very much,” Froterin said, and sat down with the mug of mullbeer Miz had brought him. He sat supping happily.

  “She got it! Vleit—hic! shit—got it!”

  “What?” “What was it?” “Come on!”

  Sharrow sat shaking her head and drying her eyes on her shirt sleeve while Vleit got up from the café pavement, holding her stomach and still laughing.
/>   “What?” “That’s cheating!” “What was the answer?”

  “Not telling,” Sharrow laughed.

  “You got to tell,” Miz protested. “Otherwise how do we know Vleit’s really won?”

  Sharrow put her cap back on again and glanced at Vleit; they both started giggling again, then guffawing. “You want to tell them?” Sharrow said.

  “Not me, Commander.” Vleit shook her head, still giggling. “You tell them. Rank Has Its Problems; remember?”

  “Yeah!” “What was it?” “Yeah; come on; tell us!”

  “All right, all right,” Sharrow said, sitting up properly in her seat. Then, suddenly, she looked worried; her smooth brow furrowed. “Shit,” she said. “I’ve forgotten what the fucking word was.” She shook her head.

  She put her head down on the table and pretended to cry. At least two caps bounced off her before Cenuij roared, “Schlotch!”

  Sharrow looked up quickly. “You sure?”

  “Positive,” Cenuij said precisely.

  Sharrow sighed. “Yeah; schlotch.”

  “So?” Miz said, arms wide. “What’s schlotch onomatopoeic for or with or whatever?”

  “It’s the sound,” Sharrow said, leaning conspiratorially over the table, and glancing up and down the street. “Of…” She shook her head. “It’s no good,” she said with feigned regret. “I’m just not drunk enough yet to tell you.”

  “WHAT?” “Sharrow!” “Oh, come on…” “Don’t be ridiculous.” “Vleit; what the hell was it?” “Sharrow; you said you’d tell; what is it?”

  Sharrow grinned, fended off a flung cap then put her head back and laughed loudly while the others protested.

  A timid-looking waiter approached from out of the bistro, holding a tray nervously to his chest as though it was a shield. He came up to Sharrow; she smiled at the young waiter and adjusted her cap.

  The waiter coughed. “Um, Commander Sharrow?” he said.