“And the War Conduct Agreement does not apply outside the mutually agreed limits of the confliction itself.”
“What?” he said. Suddenly the wingsuit around him turned to tatters as if slashed by a hundred razor-sharp knives. He fell out of the sky, tumbling helplessly, screaming. The air and clouds and sky all turned dark, and in the space of one clawing, flapping somersault the impossible tree became a vast, blasted leafless thing, studded with fires, wreathed in smoke, most of its twigs and branches broken off or hanging twisting in the shrivelling wind like limp and broken limbs.
He plummeted, unstoppable, the shredded wingsuit flapping madly around him, the tatters of torn material like cold black flames whipping at his limbs.
He screamed, grew hoarse, gathered more air and screamed again.
The dark angel that had been Dr. Miejeyar flowed smoothly down from above; as calm, measured and elegant as he was terror-stricken and out of control. She was very beautiful now, with arms that became great black wings, streaming dark hair and a brief, minimal costume that revealed most of her voluptuously glossy brown body.
“What you did was hack, Colonel,” she told him. “That is against the rules of the war and so leaves you unprotected by those same rules. It is tantamount to spying, and spies are accorded no mercy. Look down.”
He looked down to see a landscape filled with smoke and fire and torture: pits of flame, rivers of acid and forests of barbed spikes, some already tipped with writhing bodies. They were coming up fast towards him, just seconds away.
He screamed again.
Everything froze. He was still staring at the horrific scene beneath, but it had stopped coming closer. He tried to look away but couldn’t.
The dark angel’s voice said, “We wouldn’t waste it on you.” She make a clicking sound with her mouth and he died.
Vatueil sat on the trapeze, in Trapeze space, swaying slowly to and fro, humming to himself, waiting.
The others appeared one by one. You could have told who were his friends and who were his enemies by whether they did or did not meet his gaze. The ones who had always thought the hacking attempts were a waste of valuable time and little more than a cack-handed way of telling their enemies that they were getting desperate looked at him and smiled, happy to look him in the eye. Those who had agreed with him afforded him a quick nod and a fleeting glance at most, looking away when he tried to look at them, pursing their lips, scratching their fur, picking at their toenails and so on.
“It didn’t work,” yellow said.
So much for preamble, Vatueil thought. Oh well; it wasn’t as though they kept minutes.
“It did not,” he agreed. He picked at a little knotted tuft of red fur on his belly.
“I think we all know what the next level, the last resort is,” purple said. They all looked at each other, a sort of formal symmetry to their sequential one-to-one glances, nods and muttered words.
“Let us be clear about this,” Vatueil said after a few moments. “We are talking about taking the war into the Real. We are talking about disobeying the rules we freely agreed to abide by right at the start of all this. We are talking about going back on the commitments and undertakings we took so solemnly so long ago and have lived and fought by from then until now. We are talking about making the whole confliction to which we have dedicated three decades of our lives irrelevant and pointless.” He paused, looked round them all. “And this is the Real we are talking about. There are no resets, and while there might be extra lives for some, not everybody will be so blessed: the deaths and the suffering we cause will be real, and so will the blame we attract. Are we really prepared to go through with this?” He looked round them all again. He shrugged. “I know I am,” he told them. “But are you?”
“We have been through all this,” green said. “We all—”
“I know, but—”
“Shouldn’t—?”
“Can’t we—?”
Vatueil talked over them. “Let’s just vote and get it over with, shall we?”
“Yes, let’s not waste any more time,” purple said, looking pointedly at Vatueil.
They took the vote.
They sat, still or gently swinging on their trapezes for a while. Nobody said anything. Then:
“Let havoc be unleashed,” yellow said resignedly. “The war against the Hells brings hell to the Real.”
Green sighed. “If we get this wrong,” he said, “they won’t forgive us for ten thousand years.”
Purple snorted. “A lot of them won’t forgive us for a million years even if we get it right.”
Vatueil sighed, shook his head slowly. He said, “Fate help us all.”
Eighteen
There was nothing worse, Veppers thought, than a loser who’d made it. It was just part of the way things worked – part of the complexity of life, he supposed – that sometimes somebody who absolutely deserved nothing more than to be one of the down-trodden, the oppressed, the dregs of society, lucked out into a position of wealth, power and admiration.
At least people who were natural winners knew how to carry themselves in their pomp, whether their ascendancy had come through the luck of being born rich and powerful or the luck of being born ambitious and capable. Losers who’d made it always let the side down. Veppers was all for arrogance – he possessed the quality in full measure himself, as he’d often been informed – but it had to be deserved, you had to have worked for it. Or at the very least, an ancestor had to have worked for it.
Arrogance without cause, arrogance without achievement – or that mistook sheer luck for true achievement – was an abomination. Losers made everybody look bad. Worse, they made the whole thing – the great game that was life – appear arbitrary, almost meaningless. Their only use, Veppers had long since decided, was as examples to be held up to those who complained about their lack of status or money or control over their lives: look, if this idiot can achieve something, so can anybody, so can you. So stop whining about being exploited and work harder.
Still, at least individual losers were quite obviously statistical freaks. You could allow for that, you could tolerate that, albeit with gritted teeth. What he would not have believed was that you could find an entire society – an entire civilisation– of losers who’d made it. And the Culture was exactly that.
Veppers hated the Culture. He hated it for existing and he hated it for – for far too damned many credulous idiots – setting the standard for what a decent society ought to look like and so what other peoples ought to aspire to. It wasn’t what other peoples ought to aspire to; it was what machines had aspired to, and created, for their own inhuman purposes.
It was another of Veppers’ deeply held personal beliefs that when you were besieged or felt cornered, you should attack.
He marched into the Culture ambassador’s office in Ubruater and threw the remains of the neural lace down on her desk.
“What the fuck is this?” he demanded.
The Culture ambassador was called Kreit Huen. She was a tall, statuesque woman, slightly oddly proportioned for a Sichultian but still attractive in a haughty, formidable sort of way. It had crossed Veppers’ mind on more than one occasion to have one of his impersonator girls change to look just like the Culture woman, so he could fuck her conceited brains out, but in the end he couldn’t bring himself to; he had his pride.
When Veppers burst in she was standing at a window of her generously proportioned penthouse office looking out over the city to where, in the hazy sunlight of early afternoon, a large, dark, sleek ship was hovering over the massive Veprine Corporation tower, at the heart of Ubruater’s central business district. She was drinking something steaming from a cup and was dressed like an office cleaner; a barefoot office cleaner. She turned and looked, blinking, at the tangle of silvery-blue wires lying on her desk.
“Afternoon to you too,” she said quietly. She walked over, peered more closely at the thing. “It’s a neural lace,” she told him. “How bad are your te
chs getting?” She looked at the other man just entering the room. “Good afternoon, Jasken.”
Jasken nodded. Behind him, floating in the doorway, was the drone which had chosen not to get in Veppers’ way when he’d come storming through. They’d known Veppers was heading in their direction for about three minutes, as soon as his flier had left the Justice Ministry and set course for their building, so she had had plenty of time to decide exactly how to appear when he arrived.
“Ki-chaow! Ki-chaow!” a reedy voice sang out from behind one of the room’s larger couches. Veppers looked and saw a small blond head duck back down.
“And what is that?” he asked.
“That is a child, Veppers,” Huen said, pulling her chair out from the desk. “Really, what next?” She pointed at the window. “Sky. Clouds. Oh look; a birdy.” She sat down, picked up the lace. The drone – a briefcase-sized lozenge – floated nearby. Huen frowned. “How did you come by this?”
“It’s been in a fire,” the drone muttered. The machine had been Huen’s servant (or master – who knew!) for the three years she had been there. It was supposed to have a name or a title or some thing and Veppers had been “introduced” to it but he refused to remember whatever it was supposed to be called.
“Ki-chaow!”
The blond child was standing behind the couch, only its head and one hand – formed into a pretend gun – showing. The gun was pointing at Jasken, who had brought his Oculenses down from over his head and was frowning like a stage villain and pointing his own finger at the child, sighting carefully down it. He jerked his hand back suddenly, as though in recoil. “Urk!” the child said, and disappeared, flopping onto the couch with a small thud. Veppers knew Huen had a child; he hadn’t expected to find the brat in her office.
“It was found in the ashes of one of my staff,” Veppers told Huen, knuckles on her desk, arms spread, leaning over her. “And my extremely able techs reckon it’s one of yours, so my next question is, what the fuck is the Culture doing putting illegal espionage equipment into the heads of my people? You are not supposed to spy on us, remember?”
“Haven’t the foggiest idea what it was doing there,” Huen said, handing the lace to the outstretched maniple field of the drone, which teased it out to its maximum extent. The remains of the lace took on the rough shape of a brain. Veppers caught a glimpse and found the sight oddly unsettling. He slammed one palm on Huen’s desk.
“What the hell do you think gives you the right to do something like this?” He waved one hand at the lace as it glowed in the drone’s immaterial grasp. “I have every right to take this to court. This is a violation of our rights and the Mutual Contact Agreement we signed in good faith when you communist bastards first arrived.”
“Who had it in their head anyway?” Huen asked, sitting back in her seat and putting her hands behind her head, one shoeless foot over her other knee. “What happened to them?”
“Don’t evade the question!” Veppers slammed the desk again.
Huen shrugged. “All right. Nothing in particular gives us – whoever ‘us’ might be here – the right to do something like this.” She frowned. “Whose head was it in?”
The drone made a throat-clearing noise. “Whoever they were they either died in a fire or were cremated,” it said. “Probably the latter; high-temperature combustion, probably few impurities. Hard to tell – this has been cleaned and analysed. At first quite crudely and then only a little clumsily.” The machine swivelled in the air as though looking at Veppers. “By Mr. Veppers’ techs and then by our Jhlupian friends, I’d guess.” The barely visible haze around the machine had turned vaguely pink. Veppers ignored it.
“Don’t try to wriggle out of it,” he said, pointing one finger at Huen. (“Ki-chaow!” said a small voice from the other side of the room.) “Who cares who ‘us’ is? ‘Us’ is you; ‘us’ is the Culture. This thing is yours so you’re responsible. Don’t try to deny it.”
“Mr. Veppers has a point,” the drone said reasonably. “This is our tech – quite, ah, high tech – if you know what I mean, and I imagine it – or the seed that became it, as it were – was emplaced by somebody or something who might reasonably be described as belonging to the Culture.”
Veppers glared at the machine. “Fuck off,” he told it.
The drone seemed unruffled. “I was agreeing with you, Mr. Veppers.”
“I don’t need this thing’s agreement,” Veppers told Huen. “I need to know what you intend to do about this violation of the terms of the agreement that lets you stay here.”
Huen smiled. “Leave it with me. I’ll see what I can do.”
“That’s not good enough. And that thing leaves with me,” he said, pointing at the lace. “I don’t want it conveniently disappearing.” He hesitated, then snatched it from the drone’s grasp. The sensation was unsettling, like plunging one’s hand into a warm, cloying foam.
“Seriously,” Huen said. “Whose head was it in? It’ll help with our investigations if we know.”
Veppers pushed himself upright with one fist, folded his arms. “Her name was L. Y’breq,” he told the Culture woman. “A court authorised ward of mine and the subject of a commercial Generational Reparation Order under the Indented Intagliate Act.”
Huen frowned, then sat forward, looked away for a moment. “Ah, the Marked woman? … Lededje? I remember her. Talked to her, a few times.”
“I’m sure you did,” Veppers said.
“She was … okay. Troubled, but all right. I liked her.” She looked at Veppers with what he felt sure was meant to be profound sincerity. “She’s dead?”
“Extremely.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that. Please pass on my condolences to her family and loved ones.”
Veppers smiled thinly. “Myself, in other words.”
“I’m so sorry. How did she die?”
“She took her own life.”
“Oh …” Huen said, her expression pained. She looked down. Veppers wanted to smack her in the teeth with something heavy. She took a deep breath, stared at the surface of the desk. “That is … ”
Veppers took over before it got too sentimental. “I expect some sort of report, an accounting for this. I’m going to be away for the next few days—”
“Yes,” the drone said, pivoting to point towards the view, specifically at where the sleek shape of the ship stationed over the Veprine Corporation tower threw a slanted grey shadow over part of the city, “we saw your ride arrive.”
Veppers ignored it. He pointed at Huen again. (“Ki-chaow!” said the voice from the couch.) “And by the time I get back I expect to hear some sort of explanation. If not, there will be consequences. Legal and diplomatic consequences.”
“Did she leave a note?” Huen asked.
“What?” Veppers said.
“Did she leave a note?” Huen repeated. “Often when people kill themselves, they leave a note. Something to explain why they did it. Did Lededje?”
Veppers allowed his mouth to hang open a little, to attempt to express just how grotesquely insulting and irrelevant this piece of meddling effrontery was. He shook his head.
“You have six days,” he told the woman. He turned and walked to the door. “Answer any further questions she has,” he told Jasken as he passed him. “I’ll be in the flier. Don’t take too long.” He left.
“That man had a funny nose,” said the little voice from behind the couch.
“So, Jasken,” Huen said, smiling a little for a moment. “Did she leave a note?”
Jasken cradled his good hand in the sling. “No note was left, ma’am,” he told her.
She looked at him for a moment. “And was it suicide?”
Jasken’s expression remained just as it had been. “Of course, ma’am.”
“And you have no idea how the lace came to be in her head?”
“None, ma’am.”
She nodded slowly, took a breath, sat forward. “How’s the arm?”
“This??
?? he moved the arm in the cast out from his body a little. “Fine. Healing. Feels good as new.”
“I’m glad.” Huen smiled. She got up from the chair behind the desk and nodded. “Thank you, Jasken.”
“Ma’am,” he said, with a short bow.
Huen held her child in her arms as she and the drone watched Veppers’ wide-bodied flier depart from overhead, its rotund mirrored rear glinting in the golden sunshine as it banked. The craft straightened and headed directly towards the Veprine Corporation tower and the ship – barely smaller than the tower itself – poised immediately above it.
The drone’s name was Olfes-Hresh. “Well,” it said, “the nose injury’s real enough, but it was never done with a blade, and not a bone in Jasken’s arm has ever been broken. His arm is perfectly healthy save for about twenty days’ worth of minor atrophy due to partial immobility. Also? That cast has concealed hinges to let it come off easily.”
“Did you get a full reading on the lace?”
“As good as though he’d left it.”
She glanced at the machine. “And?”
The drone wobbled, its equivalent of a shrug. “SC tech, or good as.”
Huen nodded, staring at the Jhlupian ship as Veppers’ aircraft flew towards it. She patted her child’s back softly. “That’s interesting.”
Chay found herself in the Refuge. The Refuge took up the entire summit of a finger of rock which thrust up from the scrubby desert. The remains of a natural arch lay in great piles of sand blown stone between the Refuge mesa and the nearby plateau. The only access to the Refuge was by a rope and cane basket, lowered the thirty metres from the Refuge to the desert floor by pulleys worked by muscle power. The Refuge had expanded over the years to rise to six or seven storeys of cluttered wood and adobe buildings, and spilled over the side of the mesa itself via tree-trunk-propped platforms supporting further precariously poised architecture.
Only females were allowed in the Refuge. The more senior females copied things called manuscripts. She was treated, if not exactly as a servant, then certainly as somebody who was junior, whose opinions did not really matter, whose importance came solely from the menial tasks that she performed.