"Eh? A bet?" Genar-Hofoen said, quickly replaying in his head what the Affronter had been saying.
"Fifty sucks on the next from the red door!" Fivetide roared, glancing at his fellow officers on both sides.
Genar-Hofoen slapped the table with his hand. "Not enough!" he shouted, and felt the suit amplify his translated voice accordingly. Several eye stalks turned in his direction. "Two hundred on the blue hound!"
Fivetide, who was from a family of the sort that would describe itself as comfortably off rather than rich, and to whom fifty suckers was half a month's disposable income, flinched microscopically, then slapped another tentacle down on top of the first one. "Scumpouch alien!" he shouted theatrically. "You imply that a measly two hundred is a fit bet for an officer of my standing? Two-fifty!"
"Five hundred!" Genar-Hofoen yelled, slapping down his other arm.
"Six hundred!" Fivetide hollered, thumping down a third limb. He looked at the others, exchanging knowing looks and sharing in the general laughter; the human had been out-limbed.
Genar-Hofoen twisted in his seat and brought his left leg up to stamp its booted heel onto the table surface. "A thousand, damn your cheap hide!"
Fivetide flicked a fourth tentacle onto the limbs already on the table in front of Genar-Hofoen, which was starting to look crowded. "Done!" the Affronter roared. "And think yourself lucky I took pity on you to the extent of not upping the bet again and having you unseat yourself into the debris-pit, you microscopic cripple!" Fivetide laughed louder and looked round the other officers near by. They laughed too, some of the juniors dutifully, some of the others — friends and close colleagues of Fivetide's — overloudly, with a sort of vicarious desperation; the bet was of a size that could get the average fellow into terrible trouble with his mess, his bank, his parents, or all three. Others again looked on with the sort of expression Genar-Hofoen had learned to recognise as a smirk.
Fivetide enthusiastically refilled every nearby drinking bulb and started the whole table signing the Let's-bake-the-pit-master-over-a-slow-fire-if-he-doesn't-get-a-move-on song.
— Right, Genar-Hofoen thought. ~ Module; you were saying?
— That was a rather intemperate bet, if I may say so, Genar-Hofoen. A thousand! Fivetide can't afford that sort of money if he loses, and we don't want to be seen to be too profligate with our funds if he wins.
Genar-Hofoen permitted himself a small grin. What a perfect way of annoying everybody. - Tough, he thought. So; the message?
— I think I can squirt it through to what passes as a brain in your suit-
— I heard that, said the suit.
— without our friends picking it up, Genar-Hofoen, the module told him. ~ Ramp up on some quicken and-
— Excuse me, said the suit. ~ I think Byr Genar-Hofoen may want to think twice before glanding a drug as strong as quicken in the present circumstances. He is my responsibility when he's out of your immediate locality, after all, Scopell-Afranqui. I mean, be fair. It's all very well you sitting up there-
— Keep out of this, you vacuous membrane, the module told the suit.
— What? How dare you!
— Will you two shut up! Genar-Hofoen told them, having to stop himself from shouting out loud. Fivetide was saying something about the Culture to him and he'd already missed the first part of it while the two machines were filling his head with their squabble.
"… can be as exciting as this, eh, Genar-Hofoen?"
"Indeed not," he shouted over the noise of the song. He lowered the gelfield utensil into one of the food containers and raised the food to his lips. He smiled and made a show of bulging his cheeks out while he ate. Fivetide belched, shoved a piece of meat half the size of a human head into his beak and turned back to the fun in the animal pit, where the fresh pair of scratchounds were still circling warily, sizing each other up. They looked pretty evenly matched, Genar-Hofoen thought.
— May I speak now? said the module.
— Yes, Genar-Hofoen thought. ~ Now, what is it?
— As I said, an urgent message.
— From?
— The GSV Death And Gravity.
— Oh? Genar-Hofoen was mildly impressed. ~ I thought the old scoundrel wasn't talking to me.
— As did we all. Apparently it is. Look, do you want this message or not?
— All right, but why do I have to gland quicken?
— Because it's a long message, of course… in fact it's an interactive message; an entire semantic-context signal-set with attached mind-state abstract capable of replying to your questions, and if you listened to the whole thing in real time you'd still be sitting there with a vacant expression on your face by the time your jovial hosts got to the hunt-the-waiter course. And I did say it was urgent. Genar-Hofoen, are you paying attention here?
— I'm paying fucking attention. But come on; can't you just tell me what the message is? Précis it.
— The message is for you, not me, Genar-Hofoen. I haven't looked at it; it'll be stream-deciphered as I transmit it.
~ Okay, okay, I'm glanded up; shoot.
— I still say it's a bad idea… muttered the gelfield suit.
— Shut UP! the module said. ~ Sorry, Genar-Hofoen. Here is the text of the message:
— from GSV Death And Gravity to Seddun-Braijsa Byr Fruel Genar-Hofoen dam Ois, message begins, the module said in its Official voice. Then another voice took over:
— Genar-Hofoen, I won't pretend I'm happy to be communicating with you again; however, I have been asked to do so by certain of those whose opinions and judgement I respect and admire and hence deem the situation to be such that I would be derelict in my duties if I did not oblige to the utmost of my abilities.
Genar-Hofoen performed the mental equivalent of sighing and putting his chin in his hands while — thanks to the quicken now coursing through his central nervous system — everything around him seemed to happen in slow motion. The General Systems Vehicle Death and Gravity had been a long-winded old bore when he'd known it and it sounded like nothing had happened in the interim to alter its conversational style. Even its voice still sounded the same; pompous and monotonous at the same time.
— Accordingly, and with due recognition of your habitually contrary, argumentative and wilfully perverse nature I am communicating with you by sending this message in the form of an interactive signal. I see you are currently one of our ambassadors to that childishly cruel band of upstart ruffians known as the Affront; I have the unhappy feeling that while this may have been envisaged as a kind of subtle punishment for you, you will in fact have adapted with some relish to the environment if not the task, which I assume you will dispatch with your usual mixture of off-handed carelessness and casual self-interest-
— If this signal is interactive, interrupted Genar-Hofoen, ~ can I ask you to get to the fucking point?
He watched the two scratchounds tense together in slo-mo on either side of the pit.
— The point is that your hosts will have to be asked to deprive themselves of your company for a while.
— What? Why? Genar-Hofoen thought, immediately suspicious.
— The decision has been made — and I hasten to establish that I had no part in this — that your services are required elsewhere.
~ Where? For how long?
— I can't tell you where exactly, or for how long.
— Make a stab at it.
— I cannot and will not.
— Module, end this message.
— Are you sure? asked Scopell-Afranqui.
— Wait!, said the voice of the GSV. ~ Will it satisfy you if I say that we may need about eighty days of your time?
— No it won't. I'm quite happy here. I've been bounced into all sorts of Special Circumstances shit in the past on the strength of a Hey-come-and-do-one-little-job-for-us come-on line. (This was not in fact perfectly true; Genar-Hofoen had only ever acted for SC once before, but he'd known — or at least heard of — plenty of people who'd got more than
they'd expected when they'd worked for what was in effect the Contact section's espionage and dirty tricks department.)
— I did not -
— Plus I've got a job to do here, Genar-Hofoen interrupted. ~ I've got another audience with the Grand Council in a month to tell them to be nicer to their neighbours or we're going to think about slapping their paddles. I want details of this exciting new opportunity or you can shove it.
— I did not say that I am speaking on behalf of Special Circumstances.
— Are you denying that you are?
— Not as such, but -
— So stop fucking around. Who the hell else is going to start hauling a gifted and highly effective ambassador off — ?
— Genar-Hofoen, we are wasting time here.
— We?, Genar-Hofoen thought, watching the two scratchounds launch themselves at each other slowly. ~ Never mind. Go on.
— The task required of you is, apparently, a delicate one, which is why I personally regard you as being utterly unsuited to it, and as such it would be foolish to entrust the full details either to myself, to your module, your suit or indeed to you until all these details are required.
— There you are; that's exactly what you can shove; all that SC need-to-know crap. I don't care how fucking delicate the task is, I'm not even going to consider it until I know what's involved.
The scratchounds were in mid-pounce now, both of them twisting as they leapt. Shit, thought Genar-Hofoen; this might be one of those scratchound bouts where the whole thing was decided on the initial lunge, depending entirely on which beast got its teeth into the neck of the other first.
— What is required, said the message, with a fair approximation of the way the Death And Gravity had always sounded when it was exasperated, is eighty days of your time, ninety-nine to ninety-nine point nine-plus percent of which you will spend doing nothing more onerous or demanding than being carried from point A to point B; the first part of your journey will be spent travelling, in considerable comfort, I imagine, aboard the Affronter ship which we will ask (or rather pay, probably) them to put at your disposal, the second part will be spent in guaranteed comfort aboard a Culture GCU and will be followed by a short visit aboard another Culture vessel whereupon the task we would ask of you will actually be accomplished — and when I say a short visit, I mean that it may be possible for you to carry out what is required of you within an hour, and that certainly the assignment should take no longer than a day. Then you will make the return journey to take up wherever you left off with our dear friends and allies the Affront. I take it all that doesn't sound too much like hard work, does it?
The scratchounds were meeting in the air a metre above the centre of the bait-pit, their jaws aimed as best they could at each other's throats. It was still a little hard to tell, but Genar-Hofoen didn't think it was looking too good for Fivetide's animal.
— Yeah yeah yeah, well I've heard all this sort of thing before, D and G. What's in it for me? Why the hell should I-? Oh, fuck…
— What? said the Death And Gravity's message.
But Genar-Hofoen's attention was elsewhere.
The two scratchounds met and locked, falling to the floor of the bait-pit in a tangle of slowly thrashing limbs. The blue-collared animal had its jaws clamped around the throat of the red-collared one. Most of the Affronters were starting to cheer. Fivetide and his supporters were screaming.
Shit.
— Suit? Genar-Hofoen thought.
— What is it? said the gelfield. ~ I thought you were talking to-?
— Never mind that now. See that blue scratchound?
— Can't take my or your eyes off the damn thing.
— Effectorise the fucker; get it off the other one.
— I can't do that! That would be cheating!
~ Fivetide's arse is hanging way out the merry-go-round on this, suit. Do it now or take personal responsibility for a major diplomatic incident. Up to you.
— What? But-!
~ Effectorise it now, suit. Come on; I know that last upgrade let you sneak it under their monitors. Oh! Look at that. Ow! Can't you just feel those prosthetics round your neck? Fivetide must be kissing his diplomatic career goodbye right now; probably already working out a way to challenge me to a duel. After that, doesn't really matter if I kill him or he kills me; probably come to war between-
— All right! All right! There!
There was a buzzing sensation on top of Genar-Hofoen's right shoulder. The red scratchound jerked, the blue one doubled up around its midriff and loosened its grip. The red-collared beast wriggled out from underneath the other and, twisting, turned on the other beast and immediately reversed the situation, fastening its prosthetic jaws around the throat of the blue-collared animal. At Genar-Hofoen's side, still in slow motion, Fivetide was starting to rise into the air.
— Right, D and G, what were you saying?
— What was the delay? What were you doing?
— Never mind. Like you said, time's a wasting. Get on with it.
— I assume it is reward you seek. What do you want?
— Golly, let me think. Can I have my own ship?
— I understand that to be negotiable.
— I'll bet.
— You may have whatever you want. There. Will that do?
— Oh, of course.
— Genar-Hofoen, please. I beg you; say you will do this thing.
— D and G, you're begging me? Genar-Hofoen asked with a laugh in his thought, as the blue-collared scratchound writhed hopelessly in the other beast's jaws and Fivetide started to turn to him.
— Yes, I am! Now will you agree? Time is of the essence!
From the corner of one eye, Genar-Hofoen watched one of Fivetide's limbs begin to flip towards him. He readied his slow-reacting body for the blow.
— I'll think about it.
— But-!
— Quit that signal, suit. Tell the module not to wait up. Now, suit — command instruction: take yourself off-line until I call on you.
Genar-Hofoen halted the effects of the quicken. He smiled and sighed a happy sigh as Fivetide's celebratory blow landed with a teeth-rattling thud on his back and the Culture lost a thousand suckers. Could be a fun evening.
IV
The horror came for the commandant again that night, in the grey area that was the half-light from a full moon. It was worse this time.
In the dream, he rose from his camp bed in the pale light of dawn. Down the valley, the chimneys above the charnel wagons belched dark smoke. Nothing else in the camp was moving. He walked between the silent tents and under the guard towers to the funicular, which took him up through the forests to the glaciers.
The light was blinding white and the cold, thin air rasped the back of his throat. The wind buffeted him, raising veils of snow and ice that shifted across the fractured surface of the great river of ice, contained between the jagged banks of the rock-black and snow-white mountains.
The commandant looked around. They were quarrying the deep western face now; it was the first time he had seen this latest site. The face itself lay inside a great bowl they had blasted in the glacier; men, machines and drag-lines moved like insects in the bottom of the vast cup of shining ice. The face was pure white except for a speckling of black dots which from this distance appeared just like boulders. It looked dangerously steep, he thought, but cutting it at a shallower angle would have taken longer, and they were forever being hurried along by headquarters…
At the top of the inclined ramp where the drag lines released their hooked cargoes, a train waited, smoke drifting blackly across the blindingly white landscape. Guards stamped their feet, engineers stood in animated discussion by the winch engine and a caravan shack disgorged another shift of stackers fresh from a break. A sledge full of face-workers was being lowered down the huge gash in the ice; he could make out the sullen, pinched faces of the men, bundled in uniforms and clothes that were little better than rags.
There
was a rumble, and a vibration beneath his feet.
He looked round to the ice face again to see the entire eastern half of it crumbling away, collapsing and falling with majestic slowness in billowing clouds of whiteness onto the tiny black dots of the workers and guards below. He watched the little figures turn and run from the rushing avalanche of ice as it pressed down through the air and along the surface towards them.
A few made it. Most did not, disappearing under the huge white wave, rubbed out amongst that chalky, glittering turmoil. The noise was a roar so deep he felt it in his chest.
He ran along the lip of the face-cut to the top of the inclined plane; everybody was shouting and running around. The entire bottom of the bowl was filling with the white mist of the kicked-up snow and pulverised ice, obscuring the still-running survivors just as the ice-fall itself had those it had buried.
The winch engine laboured, making a high, screeching noise. The drag lines had stopped. He ran on to the knot of people gathering near the inclined plane.
I know what happens here, he thought. I know what happens to me. I remember the pain. I see the girl. I know this bit. I know what happens. I must stop running. Why don't I stop running? Why can't I stop? Why can't I wake up?
As he got to the others, the strain on the trapped drag line — still being pulled by the winch engine — proved too much. The steel hawser parted somewhere down inside the bowl of mist with a noise like a shot. The steel cable came hissing and sizzing up through the air, snaking and wriggling as it ripped up the slope towards the lip, loosing most of its grisly cargo from its hooks as it came, like drops of ice off a whip.
He screamed to the men at the top of the inclined plane, and tripped, falling onto his face in the snow.
Only one of the engineers dropped in time.
Most of the rest were cut neatly in half by the scything hawser, falling slowly to the snow in bloody sprays. Loops of the hawser smacked off the railway engine with a thunderous clanging noise and wrapped themselves around the winch housing as though with relief; other coils thumped heavily to the snow.
Something hit his upper leg with the force of a fully swung sledgehammer, breaking his bones in a cataclysm of pain. The impact rolled him over and over in the snow while the bones ground and dug and pierced; it went on for what felt like half a day. He came to rest in the snow, screaming. He was face-to-face with the thing that had hit him.
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