The Algebraist

by Iain M. Banks

  The flier's comms reception - even the distorted, jammed signal that they'd experienced outside - had just faded away almost as soon as they'd entered the wreck. For something supposed to pull in a signal through tens of klicks of solid rock, this was remarkable. The air inside the vast cave of the ruined craft felt cold and smelled of nothing. Knowing they were inside, the fact that their voices did not echo in the huge space was oddly disturbing, giving the sound a strange, hollow quality. The interior and running lights of the flier put them in a tiny pool of luminescence, emphasising their insignificance within the ancient fallen ship.

  'Some dispute about exactly whose it might be,' Saluus said, also quietly, and also gazing upwards at the smoothly ribbed ceiling of the vessel, arching a third of a kilometre above them and still just visible in the gloaming. 'Marked down as a Sceuri wreck - they sent their War Graves people to clean it out - but if it was then it must have been requisitioned or captured. And they reckon it had a highly mixed crew, though mostly swim­mers: waterworlders. Could be Oerileithe originally, oddly enough. Has the design of a dweller-with-a-small-d ship. But some sort of war craft, certainly.'

  Taince snorted. Sal looked at her. 'Yes?'

  'What it isn't,' she said, 'is a needle ship.'

  'Did I say it was?' Sal asked.

  'Rather a fat needle, if it was,' Fassin said, swivelling on his heel to follow the downward curve of the wrecked ship's inte­rior towards its crumpled, partially buried nose, over a kilo­metre away in the darkness.

  'It's not a needle ship,' Sal protested. 'I didn't call it a needle ship.'

  'See?' Taince said. 'Now you've confused people.' 'Anyway,' Sal said, ignoring this, 'there's a rumour they pulled a couple of Voehn bodies out of here, and that really does make it more interesting.'

  'Voehn?' Taince burst out laughing. 'Spiner stiffs?' Her voice dripped scorn. She was even smiling, which Fassin knew wasn't something you saw every day. Pity, because her smooth, slightly square face - under a regulation military bald - looked kind of impishly attractive when she smiled. Come to think of it, that was probably why she didn't do it often. Actually Fassin thought Taince looked pretty good anyway, in her off-duty fatigues. (The rest of them just wore standard hikingoutdoorsy gear, though naturally Sal's was subtly but noticeably superior and doubtless wildly more expensive.) Tain's fatigues kind of bagged out in odd locations but came back in at the right places to leave no doubt that she was definitely a milgirl, not a milboy.

  They'd turned shadow-matt and dark in the surrounding gloom, too. Apparently even the NavMil's off-duty fatigues for trainees came with active camo.

  She was shaking her head, as though she couldn't believe what she was hearing. Even Fassin, who'd pretty much shucked off the whole boy thing of obsessive interest in all things military and alien not long after the onset of puberty, knew about the Voehn. They were usually described in the media as living legends or near-mythical warriors, which kind of blanded what they really were; the crack troops and personal guards of the new galactic masters.

  The Voehn were the calmly relentless, highly intelligent, omni-competent, near-indestructible, all-environments-capable, undefeated uber-soldiers of the last nine or so millennia. They were the martial pin-ups of the age, the speckless species peak of military perfection, but they were rare, few and far between. Where the new masters, the Culmina, were, the Voehn were too, but not in all that many other places, and - as far as anybody knew, Fassin had been given to understand - in all those millennia not one had even entered the Ulubis system to visit Sepekte, the principal planet, let alone come near Nasqueron, or deigned to have anything to do with its little planet-moon 'glantine, even in death.

  There was, of course, a further resonance for humans in the Voehn name and reputation, whether one was aHuman or rHuman. It had been the actions of a single Voehn ship nearly eight thousand years earlier which had made the distinction and the two prefixes necessary in the first place.

  'Voehn,' Sal said defiantly to Taince. 'Voehn remains. That's the rumour.'

  Taince narrowed her eyes and drew herself up in her NavMil-issue fatigues. 'Not one I've heard.'

  'Yes,' Sal said, 'well, my contacts are a few levels above the boot locker.'

  Fassin gulped. ‘I thought they all got smeared in this thing, anyway,' he said quickly, before Taince could reply. 'Just paste, gas and stuff.'

  'They were,' Taince said through her teeth, looking at Sal, not him.

  'Indeed they were,' Sal agreed. 'But Voehn are real toughies, aren't they, Tain?'

  'Shit, yeah,' Taince said quietly, levelly. 'Real fucking toughies.'

  'Takes a lot to kill one, takes even more to paste it,' Sal said, seemingly oblivious to Taince's signals.

  'Notoriously resistant to fate and the enemy's various unpleasantnesses,' Taince said coldly. Fassin had the feeling she was quoting. The gossip was that she and Sal were some sort of couple, or at least fucked now and again. But Fassin thought that, given the look in her eyes right now, that particular side of their relationship, if it had ever existed, might be in some danger of being pasted itself. He looked for Ilen, to catch her expression.

  She wasn't where she'd been, on the far side of the flier. He looked around some more. She wasn't anywhere he could see. 'Ilen?' he said. He glanced at the other two. 'Where's Ilen?' Sal tapped his ear stud. 'Ilen?' he said. 'Hey, Len?' Fassin peered into the shadows. He had night vision as good as most people, but with barely any starlight and only the soft conserve-level lights of the flier resting in its declivity, there wasn't much to work with. Infrared showed next to nothing too, not even fading footstep-traces on whatever this strange material was.

  'Ilen?' Sal said again. He looked at Taince, who was also scan­ning the area. 'I can't see shit and my phone's out,' he told her. 'You able to see any better than us?'

  Taince shook her head. 'Get those eyes in fourth year.' Shit, thought Fassin. He wondered if anybody had a torch. Probably not. Few people did these days. He checked his own earphone, but it was dead too; not even local reception. Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck. When did the archetype of this story­line date from? Four kids getting the use of dad's chariot and losing a wheel just before nightfall near the old deserted Neanderthal cave? Something like that. Just wander off into the dark and get killed horribly, one by one.

  'I'll turn up the flier lights,' Sal said, reaching for the inte­rior. 'If ness, we can lift off and—'

  'ILEN!' Taince shouted at the top of her lungs. Fassin jumped. He hoped the others hadn't noticed.

  '... Over here.' lien's voice came, very distantly, from further inside the wreck.

  'Wandering off!' Sal shouted in the general direction Ilen's voice had come from. 'Not good idea! In fact, very bad idea! Suggest return immediately!'

  'Peeing in front of peers problem,' the reply drifted back. 'Bashful bladder syndrome. Relieved, returning. Speak normal now, or Len get Tain poke Sal eye out.'

  Taince grinned. Fassin had to turn away. Sometimes, through all the almost wilfully unjustified reticence and uncertainty, and often at moments like this when you might least expect it, Ilen surprised him by doing or saying something like this. She made his insides hurt. Oh, don't let me start to fall in love with her, he thought. That would just be too much to bear.

  Sal laughed. A vaguely Hen-shaped blob appeared in IR sense fifty metres away, head first over a fold in the rippled floor like a shallow hill. 'There. She's fine,' Sal announced, as though he'd rescued her personally.

  Ilen rejoined them, smiling and blinking in the soft lights of the flier, her white-gold hair shining. She nodded. 'Evening,' she said, and grinned at them.

  'Welcome back,' Sal told her, and hauled a pack out of one of the flier's storage lockers. He swung the bag onto his back.

  Taince glared at the pack, then at Sal's face. 'What the fuck are you doing?'

  Sal looked innocent. 'Going to take a look round. You can join me if—'

  'Like fuck you are.'

  'T
ain, child,' he laughed. 'I don't need your permission.'

  'I'm not a fucking child and yes, you fucking do.'

  'And will you please stop swearing quite so much? There's really no need to flaunt your newly acquired gruff military manner quite so conspicuously.'

  'We stay here,' she told him, using the cold voice again. 'Close to the flier. We don't go wandering off into a prohibited alien shipwreck in the middle of the night with an enemy craft cruising overhead.'

  'Why not?' Sal protested. 'For one thing it's probably on the other side of the planet by now or maybe even destroyed. And anyway, if this Beyonder ship, or battlesat, or drone, or what­ever it is can see inside here, which I seriously doubt, it's going to target the flier, not a few human warm-bods, so we're safer away from the thing.'

  'You stay with the craft, always,' Taince said, her jaw set.

  'For how long?' Sal asked. 'How long do these nuisance raids, these attacklets, usually last?' Taince just glared at him. 'Half a day, average,' Sal told her. 'Overnight, probably, in this case. Meantime we're somewhere it's not normally possible to be, through no fault of our own, with time to kill. . . why the hell not take a look round?'

  'Because it's Prohibited,' Taince said. 'That's why.' Fassin and Ilen exchanged looks, concerned but still amused. 'Taince!' Sal said, waving his arms. 'Life is risk. That's busi­ness. Come on!'

  'You stay with the craft,' Taince repeated grimly. 'Will you step out of your programming just for a second?' Sal asked her, sounding genuinely annoyed and looking at the other two for support. 'Can any of us think of one good reason why this place is prohibited, apart from standard authoritarian, bureaucratic, overreacting, territory-marking militaristic bull­shit?'

  'Maybe they know stuff we don't,' Taince said.

  'Oh, come on!’ Sal protested. 'They always claim that!'

  'Listen,' Taince said levelly. 'Your point is taken regarding the likelihood of the flier's systems being targeted by hostiles, and therefore I volunteer to walk out, every hour on the hour, to near the gap in the hull where a phone might work once the jamming sub-sats have been neutralised, to check for the all-clear.'

  'Fine,' Sal said, digging into another of the flier's lockers. 'You do that. I'm seizing the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take a look round an intrinsically fascinating alien artefact. If you hear me screaming horribly it'll just be me falling into the claws, suckers or ... beaks of some unspeakable space-alien monster every single wreck-clearing team missed and which has chosen just this evening out of the last seven millennia to wake up and feel hungry.'

  Taince took a deep breath, stepped back from the flier and said, 'Okay, seems this must qualify as an emergency.' She dug into her black fatigues and when her hand reappeared it held a small dark grey device.

  Sal stared at her, incredulous. 'What the hell is that? A gun? You're not planning to shoot me, are you, Taince?'

  She shook her head and thumbed something on the side of the device. There was a pause, then Taince frowned and looked closely at the thing in her hand. 'Actually,' she said, 'at the moment I'm not even threatening to report you to the local Guard, not in real-time, anyway.' Sal relaxed a little, but didn't pull whatever it was he'd been looking for out of the locker. Taince shook her head and looked up into the black spaces of the cavernous craft around them. She held the little grey device up to show the others. 'This baby,' she said, 'should be able to punch me through to a kid's disposable on the far side of the planet, but it's still searching for cosmic background.' She sounded more puzzled than embarrassed or angry, Fassin thought. (In similar circumstances, he'd have been mortified, and it would have shown.) Taince nodded, still staring upwards. 'Impressive.' She put the hand-held away again.

  Sal cleared his throat. 'Taince, do you have a gun? It's just that I'm about to pull one out of this locker and you looked kind of scary and trigger-happy just there.'

  'Yes, I do have a gun,' she told him. 'Promise I won't shoot you.' She gave a smile that wasn't really. 'And if you are intent on traipsing into the bowels of this thing, I'm not going to try and stop you. You're a big boy now. Your responsibility.'

  'Finally,' Sal said with satisfaction, pulling a plain but busi­nesslike-looking CR pistol out of the locker and attaching it to his belt. 'There's food and water and bedrolls and extra clothes and stuff in the rear lockers,' he told them, slapping a couple of low-light illuminator patches onto his jacket shoulders. 'I'll be back about dawn.' He multiple-tapped his ear stud, then smiled. 'Yep, internal clock still working.' He glanced at each of them in turn. 'Hey, there's probably nothing to see; I could be back in an hour for all I know.' They all just looked at him. 'Nobody else coming along, huh?' he asked. Ilen and Fassin glanced at each other. Taince was watching Sal, who said, 'Well, don't wait up,' and turned to go.

  'You're very well prepared for this,' Taince said quietly.

  Sal hesitated, then turned towards her, open-mouthed. He looked at Fassin and Ilen, then stared with wide eyes at Taince. He gestured towards the distant hull gap, upwards as though to space, then shook his head. 'Taince, Taince,' he breathed. He pushed one hand through his thick black hair. 'Just how para­noid and suspicious do they insist you be in the military?'

  'Your father's company makes our battlecraft, Saluus,' she told him. 'Wariness is a survival strategy.'

  'Oh, cheap shot, Taince.' Sal looked mildly insulted. 'But I mean, really. Seriously. Come on.' He slapped his backpack, exasperated. 'Hell's teeth, woman, if I hadn't made sure the flier was equipped with emergency gear you'd have chewed my ear for making a deep-desert flight without the necessary supplies!' Taince stood looking at him, near-expressionless, for a few moments longer. 'Mind how you go, Sal.'

  He nodded, relaxing. 'You too,' he said. 'See you all soon.' He looked round them all one more time, grinning. 'Nothing I wouldn't do, and all that.' He waved his hand and tramped off.

  'Hold on,' Ilen said. Sal turned back. Ilen pulled her little day-pack out of the flier. 'I'll come with you, Sal.'

  Fassin stared, horrified. 'What?' he said, in a small, shocked, little boy's voice. Nobody seemed to hear. For once he was glad. Taince said nothing.

  Sal smiled. 'You sure?' he asked the girl. 'If you don't mind,' Ilen said. 'Fine by me,' Sal said quietly. 'Sure you don't mind?' 'Of course I don't mind.'

  'Well, you're not supposed to go off exploring in dubious situations individually, are you?' Ilen said. 'Isn't that right?' She looked at Taince, who nodded. 'You take care.' Ilen kissed Fassin's cheek, winked at Taince and strode up the shallow slope to Sal. They waved and walked off. Fassin watched their foot­step-traces in IR, each faint patch of brightness on the ground behind them fading after less than a second.

  'Never understand that girl,' Taince said, sounding uncon­cerned. She and Fassin looked at each other. 'Suggest you take a snooze now,' Taince told him, nodding at the flier. She picked her nose and inspected her finger. 'I'll wake you before I head out to the hull gap to check for signal.'

  *

  A fragrance bud popped somewhere in the darkened room, and - after a few moments - he smelled Orchidia Noctisia, a Madebloom scent he would always associate with the Autumn House. There was little air movement in the quiet chamber so the bud must have been floating nearby. He lifted his head gently and saw a tiny shape like a slim, translucent flower falling chiffon-soft through the air between the bed and the trolley which had brought their supper. He lowered his head to Jaal's shoulder again.

  'Mmm?' she said drowsily.

  'Meet any friends in town?' Fassin asked, winding a long golden coil of Jaal Tonderon's hair around one finger, then bringing his nose forward to nuzzle the nape of her brown-red neck, breathing in the smell of her. She shifted against him, moving her hips in a sort of stirring motion. He had slipped out of her some time ago, but it was still a good feeling.

  'Ree and Grey and Sa,' she said, her voice starting out a little sleepy. 'Shopping was accomplished. Then we met up with Djen and Sohn. And Dayd, Dayd Eslaus. Oh
, and Yoaz. You remember Yoaz Irmin, don't you?'

  He nipped her neck and was rewarded with a flinch and a yelp. 'That was a long time ago,' he told her.

  She reached one hand behind her and stroked his exposed flank, then patted his behind. 'I'm sure the memory is still vivid for her, dear.'

  'Ha!' he said. 'So am I.' This drew a slap. Then they settled in against each other once more; she did that thing with her hips again and he wondered if there would be time for more sex before he had to go.

  She turned to face him. Jaal Tonderon's face was round and wide and only just very beautiful. For two thousand years or so, rHuman faces had looked pretty much how the owners wanted them to look, displaying either satisfaction with or indifference to whatever womb-grown comeliness they had been born with, or the particular, amended look their owners had subsequently specified. The only ugly people were those making a statement.

  In an age when everyone could be beautiful, andor look like famous historical figures (there were now laws about looking too much like famous contemporary figures), the truly inter­esting faces and bodies were those which sailed as close to the wind of being plain or even unattractive as possible, and yet just got away with it. People talked about faces that looked good in the flesh but not in images, or good in lifelike paint­ings but not on a screen, or faces that looked unattractive in repose but quite stunning when animated, or merely plain until the person smiled.

  Jaal had been born with a face that looked - she said herself - committee design: unharmonious, stuck together, nothing quite matching. Yet to almost everybody who had ever met her, she seemed outrageously attractive, thanks to some alchemy of physiognomy, personality and expression. Fassin's private estimation was that Jaal's was a face still waiting to be grown into, and that she would be more beautiful when she was middle-aged than she was now. It was one reason he had asked her to marry him.