The Hydrogen Sonata

by Iain M. Banks

  ~Debris approaching you, the missile sent. ~Medium sub-sonic. It sidled back through the dust and smoke choking the debris-littered access tunnel to inspect the control unit. ~Target unharmed.

  It’s a ship, Berdle thought. The unit’s being effectorised by a ship, or a unit as strong as one a warship would carry.

  ~Pause, he told the missile. ~Prepare full personal destruct, immediately under unit.

  “Wh—?” Cossont had time to say, before a series of titanic claps shook the elevator car from above. Her helmet had inflated itself and gone to triple layer above the crown of her head. Berdle watched the lift’s ceiling dent in a couple of places.

  Fifty metres above, still in a storm of smoke and dust and a faint snowfall of ceramic flakes filtering from the shaft’s summit, the missile positioned itself carefully.

  The voice of Colonel Agansu, from the grille, did a little better than Cossont, getting out the whole of “What—?” before matters proceeded.

  ~That’s a scout missile? Parinherm asked Berdle. ~Really?

  ~No, that’s a knife missile, Berdle replied. ~And expendable, as it turns out.

  The roof/ceiling above would take more, the avatar decided, and the elevator car appeared structurally sound.

  Alarms were warbling in the distance, and the local networks, where not under attack, were buzzing with sudden traffic. The Incast facility was not without protection or resources, and was fighting back as best as its automatics knew how against the effector onslaught from outside and inside its walls. That the other side had such powerful assets in place so quickly was not a good sign though, the avatar knew.

  ~We’ll need to protect Ms Cossont physically now, from above, Berdle told Parinherm, double- and then treble-checking the state of the missile’s anti-matter battery before – to the missile – sending the signal,~At 35 per cent AM yield; prepare, confirm.

  ~Copy 35 per cent AM yield.

  ~Enact.

  The knife missile blew itself up.

  Cossont felt herself go utterly limp, from the outside in, somehow. Had she had the time, she’d have worried about her bowels relaxing, but instead she was fascinated to find that she now had no control whatsoever over any of her major muscles, which, having been lost to her, now seemed to have developed minds of their own and taken the decision to roll her up into a foetal ball, while Parinherm and Berdle, perhaps similarly afflicted, were arching over the top of her. If she’d seen this done on stage, she thought, it might have looked quite an elegant ballet move.

  “Blast-from-above-coming-apologies,” Berdle said in her earbud, talking very fast and clipped.

  There was an almighty crack of sound, she felt briefly weightless, though still held down by the two bodies spread over her, and then the floor came smacking up towards her, slapping her feet, creaking her bones and making her insides feel bruised. Her chin, on her tight-together knees, tried to bury itself between her calves. The shoulder bag with the cube in it pressed painfully into her back. It all went very dark. She expected to find her ears ringing but they weren’t. Something cracked above her, making the whole lift shudder.

  “Okay?” Berdle asked her, as the avatar and the android pulled up away from her and her suit started bringing her quickly to her feet. Standing, she suddenly found she had control of her body again. There was a haze of dust in the car, and the centre of the roof had caved in to the extent that the three of them had to stand back near the walls.

  “Yeah,” she said. “What was—?”

  “Knife missile self-destructing directly above us,” Berdle said. “Excuse me.” The avatar squatted, his hands seemed to sink into the surface of the soft plastic floor, and then he pulled back. There was the sound of tearing, protesting metal, and Berdle’s feet sank deep enough into the plastic tiles to cause ripples round the soles of his shoes, which themselves seemed to be deforming. Parinherm jerked suddenly, seemed to stagger.

  Cossont stared at it. “You okay?”

  ~I just tried activating some AG, Parinherm sent to Berdle. ~I think I got targeted; non-viable. “Fine!” it told Cossont brightly, at the same time.

  ~Our adversaries are able to manipulate the topography of the local gravitational environment, when we give them a target, Berdle told the android.

  Parinherm thought about this. ~Neat, he sent.

  ~The other Displaced components are experiencing the same problems, Berdle told the android, ~only the knife missiles are unaffected. AG is a little subtle for their purposes; they just use naked force fields.

  Pulled by the avatar, a giant flap of metal and plastic came peeling and screeching back from the floor, showing the shaft underneath, sinking away into darkness several hundred metres below.

  Berdle dropped head-first into it, his feet remaining hooked onto the floor.

  ~Parinherm, the avatar sent, along with a simple diagram of what it wanted the android to do. ~If you would.

  ~Certainly, Parinherm replied, and dropped through the hole too, also head-first, feeling Berdle catch his ankles as he fell past and then cooperating in a swinging motion that within two oscillations allowed his hands to reach the upper edge of an open doorway where a tiny missile the size of a human thumb was floating, two delicate-looking outstretched field components fending off the twin doors, which were sliding back and forth continually, trying to close.

  “Vyr,” Berdle shouted. “Make sure the cube is secure within your bag, then climb down my body. Lie on my back and hold on very tightly. The suit will help.”

  “What?” Cossont said, kneeling by the side of the hole in the lift floor and staring down the bottomless-looking shaft. Berdle was stretched across the shaft at forty-five degrees; she couldn’t see Parinherm at all.

  “Climb down me first,” Berdle said reasonably. “We’ll tackle the rest as we go.”

  Quaking, Cossont checked the shoulder bag was fastened, then lowered herself down the body of the avatar, feet first, holding on to his legs, then turned round on her knees on the slope of Berdle’s back. She had never been more thankful for having four arms. Also, the suit did seem to be helping, but not as much as she’d have liked. She lowered herself to lie on his back, shaking, blood pounding in her ears. The bag slid round her shoulder, hitting Berdle on the head. Her hand was shaking as she went to grab it.

  “Sorry!” she yelled.

  “No, I’m sorry,” Berdle said. “Are you afraid of heights?”

  “No,” she said through clenched teeth, “just of dying generally.” She put the bag over her shoulder again and hugged the avatar from behind, so hard that had he been human she’d have worried about cracking his ribs.

  ~Okay? Berdle sent to Parinherm.

  ~Ready.

  The little missile floating between the doors on its gyre of fields withdrew, letting the doors start to close as Parinherm let go of the top lip of the doorway and immediately flicked his hands around to grasp the edges of the closing doors.

  ~Secure hold, the android sent as the doors pressed into his fingers.

  “Really tight now, Vyr,” Berdle said quietly, then brought his feet together, letting him and Cossont fall from the under-surface of the elevator car. They pendulumed in the air, their combined mass sending them both swinging thudding into the shaft wall. The avatar took most of the impact and the suit’s gloves protected Cossont’s hands, but it still hurt.

  Parinherm, fingers jammed, now had his own weight and that of the two people clinging to him on his arms, hands and fingers, which were being forced to slide down the narrow gap between the almost fully closed doors. Even in a fairly optimistic, human-flattering virtuality, Parinherm thought, a real human would be screaming head-over-heels down the shaft at this point, the bloody stumps of their fingers still trapped between the doors.

  Happily, I am not human, Parinherm thought, and this is only a simulation.

  ~Climbing, Berdle sent, and quickly hauled himself up the android’s body, hand over hand, taking Cossont with him. He stood braced on the low
er lip of the doorway and swept the doors open – Parinherm dropped a metre but held on to the lower lip easily enough – stepped forward and turned to let Cossont jump off his back and then stooped to grasp the android’s hand just as, with a creak and a sudden rush of air, the elevator car dropped down the shaft in front of the open doors, hit and severed Parinherm’s fingers and then shuddered on downwards to sweep the rest of his body away.

  ~Damn, the android sent. ~I was enjoying that!

  Cossont caught her breath, started forward towards the open shaft, looking down at the fast-retreating roof of the battered lift as air sucked out all around her.

  Berdle reached, pulled her backwards, away from the shaft. “You know,” the avatar said, stepping round her and looking out from the alcove where the lift doors were set, then taking another step out into the gently bowed corridor, “Parinherm will probably be okay, but we have to—”

  Something seemed to strike the avatar full in the upper abdomen; Berdle was jerked backwards as a blinding light burst out all around him and something exploded further down the broad curve of corridor; Cossont was sent flying back towards the open doors and the shaft, staggering and skidding right to the edge, all four arms windmilling desperately as she stood teetering, heels-on to the drop. Her eyes were going crazy, reacting mostly too late to the star-burst of light that had erupted from the avatar, filling her vision with black dots. Berdle still seemed to be there, in front of her, his body shuddering, wrapped in flames.

  She felt herself start to tip backwards, into the void.

  “Oh, fuck,” she heard herself say, and thought what pathetic words those were. And not even remotely original and unique, she thought, as she canted backwards, arms still hopelessly wheeling.

  Berdle, enveloped in fire, stepped forward and caught the strap of her shoulder bag one-handed. He stopped her, held her, then grabbed her round the waist with his other hand and pulled her forward, back into the alcove.

  “Best get down,” he said, kneeling within the alcove. She dropped to her haunches, taking cover behind the metre of wall between the jammed-opened doors and the corridor. Berdle stripped the remains of his burning clothes off and threw them down the elevator shaft. His skin had gone silvery. There was no mark on his back at all; she’d have expected an exit wound. Actually, she’d have expected him to be blown in half.

  “What the fuck?” she asked. She was trying hard not to shriek.

  “Didn’t quite see that coming in time,” Berdle said, turning and grinning at her. “Managed to …” a hole appeared, instantly, in his back; she could see straight through his body to his silvery thighs. The hole was big enough for her to have put her fist in. The smooth hole closed up again, just as quickly. “… but not quite fast enough; caught some round the edges. Sorry about that.” He nodded at the floor. “Lost the scout missile.” Cossont looked at the floor, where half of the little scout missile that had been holding the doors open earlier lay, gently smoking.

  The avatar put one finger to the edge of the alcove, flicked it out and brought it back just as another bright beam came lancing past where his finger had been an instant earlier. The edge of wall flared and a heavy detonation came from somewhere past them down the corridor; a blast of light followed by a body-shaking tremble beneath their feet and a pulse of blast, forcing Cossont to lower her head briefly. Grey smoke was drifting along the ceiling and a whole spectrum of alarms went squawking, warbling and howling all around them.

  Then there was a dull, seemingly very distant thud, almost infra-sound deep. The ribbon of dark smoke in the lift shaft, extending from the burning clothes Berdle had discarded, trembled in the column of air.

  ~Oof! Hit bottom, Parinherm sent. ~95 per cent disabled, but still alive! End-run, I’m guessing. Nice working with you. Powering dow—

  “Parinherm is still alive,” Berdle told Cossont. “We are being fired at by some sort of military arbite stationed just at the line-of-sight curve-limit of the corridor to the right. To the left, eighty metres away, one corridor higher, advancing this way at jogging speed, is a Gzilt person in a full battle suit armed with a laser assault rifle. This may be the Colonel Agansu person who contacted us earlier. I have two knife missiles to the left, within this corridor. They are holding fire while Gzilt civilians on a tour are evac— Wait. I’m being contacted. Excuse me.”

  ~Android/avatar entity, this is Colonel Agansu. Do you read? Come in.

  “Colonel Agansu wishes to talk,” Berdle told Cossont. “Given our situation and the time we have to wait for the ship to return, I believe keeping him talking is to be preferred to having him or his adjuncts shooting at us.”

  “The ship,” Cossont said. Her teeth wanted to chatter. She tried to stop them. “How long? It was still two-thirds of an hour away—”

  “It is returning a little faster now,” the avatar said. “Though we still need to stall the Colonel. I intend, therefore, to engage him in conversation.”

  “You engage away,” she told him.

  ~Android/avatar entity, in the corridor, this is Colonel Agansu. Do you read? Come in.

  ~Colonel Agansu, Berdle sent. ~To what do we owe such destructive attention?

  ~Ah. And who might I have the pleasure of addressing?

  ~You knowing my name; is that really necessary, Colonel?

  ~My knowing it is strictly speaking unnecessary, I’ll grant, Agansu sent. ~However, purely for form’s sake, we might as well exchange names; sobriquets, at least.

  ~I fail to see how this will make any material difference to our exchanges, of information or fire.

  ~I don’t mean to imply we are at all likely to become friends, sir. But a degree of civilised politeness should not prevent us discharging our duties.

  ~Or our weapons.

  ~Of which you seem to possess rather few, following the destruction of your knife missile, not to mention the demise of your fellow at the bottom of the elevator shaft. I am somewhat tempted to send the arbite up the corridor towards you, just to see what you are able to put in its way to stop it; however, I am aware that Ms Cossont is relatively vulnerable compared to your good self, and may come to some harm in any resulting fire-fight, even while you might remain quite hale and hearty. The arbite is already in a state of some confusion following what it thought was a centre-body 100 per cent kill-shot which you seem, nevertheless, to have survived. Is Ms Cossont well?

  ~Well enough.

  ~You know, I think I am going to—

  ~My name is Berdle, Colonel Agansu. Interesting to make your acquaintance.

  ~Likewise, Berdle.

  ~I did ask, earlier, to what we might owe such destructive attention, if you recall?

  ~Indeed you did, Agansu sent. ~Well then, Berdle, the answer would be: to Ms Cossont, and possibly the device which the facility’s records show she recovered a few minutes ago. As I said earlier, I would like to talk to Ms Cossont. Face to face; human to human. Also, I think it might be germane if I were to be allowed to inspect the device she retrieved. I strongly suspect you will have to accede to my requests in time, Berdle. We do rather have you at a disadvantage, wouldn’t you say? There was a pause, and then the colonel sent, ~I certainly would.

  Berdle looked at Cossont, glanced at the ceiling and said quietly, “The person in full battle gear – who I’m assuming is Colonel Agansu – is now almost overhead, possibly ready to make ingress here, either down the shaft behind you or straight through the floor. The tour party near the combat arbite’s position is still not quite clear of the likely destruction volume, were I to let the two knife missiles off the leash. Excuse me; I must let Colonel Agansu talk at me some more.”

  ~You might benefit from being a little more cautious, Colonel, Berdle sent. ~We are less at a loss than you appear to imagine.

  ~Are you really? The colonel sounded amused.

  ~We are. We are currently mustering and preparing our forces, Colonel. You have my word.

  ~I’m sure I do, Agansu said, with mock seriousness.
~And that it is worth everything in the current situation, I feel certain. Nevertheless, the fact remains that you do not benefit from the presence of a friendly ship nearby, whereas I do. As well as, as you may have noticed, a very capable combat arbite.

  ~Yes. I trust the combat arbite is not in any way … precious to you, Colonel?

  Berdle heard the colonel laugh. ~Ah, dear. How fine the line is between acceptably defiant bravado and hopelessly delusional boasting. You were doing so terribly well up until that point.

  ~I am sorry to be such a disappointment to you, Colonel Agansu.

  Berdle glanced at Cossont again. “The tour party near the combat arbite’s position is now clear of the likely destruction volume and the knife missiles are cleared to fire,” the avatar told her. “Due to the nature of the munitions being used, the corridor is about to become extremely bright. We are trying to keep damage to a minimum, but – ah; here we go …”

  The air in the corridor seemed to fill and streak with fanned white light, intensely bright; it almost looked like the smoke-hazed air was being lit by lasers, but something about the quality of the light itself and the way the smoke in the corridor was tugged after whatever it was that was making its way down the corridor argued against this. Cossont had never paid all the attention she might have in weaponry identification or whatever they’d called it back in military academy.

  It really was astoundingly bright; it was as though part of the surface of a blue-white sun had suddenly appeared in the corridor, searing, bleaching everything. The light cut off; what had seemed like a brightly lit space in front of them suddenly looked dull.

  An instant later a series of colossal, still greater outbursts of light – just barely distinguishable as being made up of hundreds of small, searingly bright flares rather than being a single massive eruption – made a white sun of the end of the corridor to their right. In the instant between the light and the trailing sound of the fusillade, what probably was laser light came flicking through the hazed air, filling the patch of corridor Cossont could see with sparkling bars of cerise light.