'Never question the high command,' Bar said. He handed over the umbrella. 'You take this. I'll take her.' He looked reassuringly at the woman, tipped his cap. 'Only literally, ma'am.'
The woman let out a piercing shriek.
Rogtam-Bar winced. 'Does she do that a lot?' he asked.
'Yes; and watch her head when you pick her up; near busted my nose.'
'When it's such an attractive shape already. See you in the Amph, sir.'
'Right you are,' he said, manoeuvering the umbrella through the doorway, and walking down the concrete slope, whistling.
'Bastard infidel!' the woman in the chair screamed, as Rogtam-Bar approached her and the chair from behind, cautiously.
'You're in luck,' he told her. 'I don't normally stop for hitchers.'
He picked up the chair with the woman in it and took them both down to the vehicle, where he dumped them in the back.
She screamed the whole way.
'Was she this noisy all the time?' Rogtam-Bar asked, as he reversed the machine back out into the flood. 'Mostly.'
'I'm surprised you could hear yourself think.' He looked out into the pouring rain, smiling ruefully.
In the ensuing peace, he was demoted, and stripped of several medals. He left later that year, and the Culture didn't seem in the least displeased with how he'd done.
Seven
The city was built inside a canyon two kilometres deep and ten across; the canyon wound through the desert for eight hundred kilometres, a jagged gash in the crust of the planet. The city took up only thirty of those kilometres.
He stood on the rimrock, looking inwards, and was confronted by a staggered confusion of buildings and houses and streets and steps and storm drains and railway lines, all grey and misty in filmy layers under a foggy-red setting sun.
Like slow waters from a broken dam, nebulous rollers of cloud swung down the canyon; they foundered persistently among the juts and cracks of the architecture, and seeped away like tired thoughts.
In a very few places, the topmost buildings had over-reached the rimrock and spilled onto the desert, but the rest of the city gave the impression that it lacked the energy or the momentum to proceed that far, and so had kept within the canyon, sheltered from the winds and kept temperate by the canyon's own natural microclimate.
The city, speckled with dim lights, seemed strangely silent and motionless. He listened hard, and finally caught what sounded like the high howl of some animal, from deep inside some misty suburb. Searching the skies, he could see the far specks of circling birds, wheeling in the still and coldly heavy air. Gliding in the deep distance over the cluttered terraces, stepped streets and zig-zagging roads, they were the source of a far, hoarse crying.
Further down, he saw some silent trains, thin lines of light, slowly crossing between tunnels. Water showed as black lines, in aqueducts and canals. Roads ran everywhere, and vehicles crawled along them, lights like sparks as they scuttled like the tiny prey of the wheeling birds.
It was a cold autumn evening, and the air was bitter. He'd taken off the combat suit and left it in the capsule, which had buried itself in a sandy hollow. Now he wore the baggy clothes that were popular here again; they had been in fashion when he'd worked here last time, and he felt oddly pleased that he'd been away long enough for the style to cycle round again. He was not superstitious, but the coincidence amused him.
He squatted down and touched the rimrock. He lifted a handful of pebbles and topweeds, then let them sift through his fingers. He sighed and got to his feet, pulling on gloves, putting on a hat.
The city was called Solotol, and Tsoldrin Beychae was here.
He dusted a little sand from his coat - an old raincoat from far away, and of purely sentimental value - placed a pair of very dark glasses on his nose, picked up a modest case, and went down into the city.
'Good afternoon, sir. How may I help you?'
'I'd like your two top floors, please.'
The clerk looked confused, then leaned forward. 'I'm sorry, sir?'
'The two top floors of the hotel; I'd like them.' He smiled. 'I haven't made a reservation; sorry.'
'Aah...' the clerk said. He appeared a little worried as he looked at his reflection in the dark glasses. 'The two...?'
'Not a room, not a suite, not a floor, but two floors, and not any two floors; the two top floors. If you have any guests presently occupying any of the rooms in the top two floors, I suggest you ask them politely to accept a room on another floor; I'll pay their bills up till now.'
'I see...' the hotel clerk said. He seemed unsure whether to take all this seriously or not. 'And... how long was sir thinking of staying?'
'Indefinitely. I'll pay for a month, in advance. My lawyers will cable the funds by lunchtime tomorrow.' He opened the case and took out a wad of paper money, placing it on the desk. I'll pay for one night in cash, if you like.'
'I see,' the clerk said, eyes fixed on the money. 'Well, if sir would like to fill in this form...'
'Thank you. Also, I'll want an elevator for my personal use, and access to the roof. I expect a pass key will be the best solution.'
'Aah. Indeed. I see. Excuse me just a moment, sir.' The clerk went off to get the manager.
He negotiated a bulk discount for the two floors, then agreed a fee for the use of the lift and the roof that brought the deal back to what it had been in the first place. He just liked haggling.
'And sir's name?'
'I'm called Staberinde,' he said.
He chose a suite on the top floor, on a corner which looked out into the great depth of canyon city. He unlocked all the cupboards and closets and doors, window shutters, balcony covers and drug cabinets, and left everything open. He tested the bath in the suite; the water ran hot. He took a couple of small chairs out of the bedroom, and another set of four from the lounge, and put them in another suite alongside. He turned all the lights on, looking at everything.
He looked at patterns of coverings and curtains and hangings and carpets, at the murals and paintings on the walls, and at the design of the furniture. He rang for some food to be delivered, and when it came, on a small trolley, he pushed the trolley in front of him from room to room, eating on the move while he wandered through the quiet spaces of the hotel, gazing all about, and occasionally looking at a tiny sensor which was supposed to tell him if there were any surveillance devices around. There weren't.
He paused at a window, looking out, and rubbed absently at a small puckered mark on his chest that was not there any more.
'Zakalwe?' said a tiny voice from his breast. He looked down, took a thing like a bead out of a shirt pocket. He clipped it to one ear, taking off his dark glasses and putting them in the pocket instead.
'Hello.'
'It's me; Diziet. You all right?'
'Yeah. I found a place to stay.'
'Great. Listen; we've found something. It's perfect!'
'What?' he said, smiling at the excitement in Sma's voice. He pressed a button to close the curtains.
'Three thousand years ago here there was a guy who became a famous poet; wrote on wax tablets set in wooden frames. He did a group of one hundred short poems he always maintained were the best things he ever wrote. But he couldn't get them published, and he decided to become a sculptor instead; he melted the wax from ninety-eight of the tablets - keeping numbers one and one hundred - to carve a wax model, made a sand mould around it, and cast a bronze figure which still exists.'
'Sma, is this leading anywhere?' he said, pressing another button to open the curtains again. He rather liked the way they swished.
'Wait! When we first found Voerenhutz and did the standard total scan of each planet, we naturally took a holo of the bronze statue; found some traces of the original casting sand and the wax in a cranny.
'And it wasn't the right wax!
'It didn't match the two surviving tablets! So the GCU waited till it had finished the total scan and then did some detective work. The guy who di
d the bronze, and who had done the poems, later became a monk, and ended up an abbot of a monastery. There was one building added while he was head man; legend has it he used to go there and contemplate the vanished ninety-eight poems. The building has a double wall.' Sma's voice rose triumphantly; 'Guess what's in the cavity!'
'Walled-in disobedient monks?'
'The poems! The waxes!' Sma yelled. Then her voice dropped a little. 'Well, most of them. The monastery was abandoned a couple of hundred years ago, and it looks like some shepherd lit a fire against a wall sometime and melted three or four of them... but the rest are there!'
'Is that good?'
'Zakalwe; they're one of the great lost literary treasures of the planet! The university of Jarnsaromol, where your pal Beychae's hanging out, has most of the guy's parchment manuscripts, the other two tablets and the famous bronze. They'd give anything to get their hands on those tablets! Don't you see? It's perfect!'
'Sounds all right, I suppose.'
'Damn you, Zakalwe! Is that all you can say?'
'Dizzy, luck this good never lasts long; it'll average out.'
'Don't be so pessimistic, Zakalwe.'
'Okay, I won't,' he sighed, closing the curtains again.
There was a noise of exasperation from Diziet Sma. 'Well; I just thought I'd tell you. We'll be going soon. Sleep well.'
The channel beeped closed. He smiled ruefully. He left the little terminal where it was, like an earring.
He gave orders he was not to be disturbed, and as the night deepened, he turned all the heating up full and opened all the windows. He spent some time testing the balconies and drainage pipes around the outer walls; he climbed nearly to the ground and all the way round the facade as he tested ledges and pipes and sills and cornices for their strength. He saw lights in less than a dozen other guest rooms. When he was satisfied he knew the outside of the hotel, he returned to his floor.
He leant on the balcony, a smoky bowl cradled in his hand. Occasionally he lifted the bowl to his face and inhaled deeply; the rest of the time he looked out over the sparkling city, whistling.
Watching the light-speckled view, he thought while most cities looked like canvases, spread flat and thin, Solotol was like a half-open book; a rippling sculptured V sinking deep into the planet's geological past. Above, the clouds over the canyon and the desert glowed with orange-red light, reflecting the channelled flare of the city.
He imagined that from the other side of the city, the hotel must look rather strange, with its topmost floor fully lit, the others practically black.
He supposed he had forgotten how different the setting of the canyon made the city, compared to others. Still, this too is similar, he thought. All is similar.
He had been to so many different places and seen so much the same and so much utterly different that he was amazed by both phenomena... but it was true; this city was not so different from many others he'd known.
Everywhere they found themselves, the galaxy bubbled with life and its basic foods kept on speaking back to it, just like he'd told Shias Engin (and, thinking of her, felt again the texture of her skin and the sound of her voice). Still, he suspected if the Culture had really wanted to, it could have found far more spectacularly different and exotic places for him to visit. Their excuse was that he was a limited creature, adapted to certain sorts of planets and societies and types of warfare. A martial niche, Sma had called it.
He smiled a little grimly, and took another deep breath from the drug bowl.
The man walked past empty arcades and deserted flights of steps. He wore an old raincoat of a style unknown but still somehow old-fashioned looking; he wore very dark glasses. His walk was economical. He appeared to have no mannerisms.
He entered the courtyard of a large hotel which contrived to look expensive and slightly run-down at the same time. Dully-dressed gardeners, raking leaves from the surface of an old swimming pool, stared at the man as though he had no right to be there.
Men were painting the interior of the porch outside the lobby, and he had to work his way round them to get in. The painters were using specially inferior paint made to very old recipes; it was guaranteed to fade and crack and peel in a most authentic manner within a year or two.
The foyer was rich with decoration. The man pulled a thick purple rope near one corner of the reception desk. The clerk appeared, smiling.
'Good morning, Mr Staberinde. A pleasant walk?'
'Yes, thank you. Have breakfast sent up, will you?'
'Immediately, sir.'
'Solotol is a city of arches and bridges, where steps and pavements wind past tall buildings and lance out over steep rivers and gullies on slender suspension bridges and fragile stone arches. Roadways flow along the banks of water courses, looping and twisting over and under them; railways splay out in a tangle of lines and levels, swirling through a network of tunnels and caverns where underground reservoirs and roads converge, and from a speeding train passengers can look out to see galaxies of lights reflecting on stretches of dark water crossed by the slants of underground funiculars and the piers and ways of subterranean roads.'
He was sitting in the bed, dark glasses on the other pillow, eating breakfast and watching the hotel's own introductory tape on the suite screen. He switched the sound down when the antique telephone beeped.
'Hello?'
'Zakalwe?' It was Sma's voice.
'Good grief; you still here?'
'We're about to break orbit.'
'Well, don't wait on my account.' He felt inside a shirt pocket and fished out the terminal bead. 'Why the phone? This transceiver packed up?'
'No; just making sure there are no problems patching into the phone system.'
'Fine. That all?'
'No. We've located Beychae more exactly; still in Jarnsaromol University, but he's in library annexe four. That's a hundred metres under the city; the university's safest safe store. Quite secure at the best of times, and they have extra guards, though no real military.'
'But where does he live; where does he sleep?'
'The curator's apartments; they're attached to the library.'
'He ever come to the surface?'
'Not that we can find out.'
He whistled. 'Well, that might or might not be a problem.'
'How are things at your end?'
'Fine,' he said, biting into a sweetmeat. 'Just waiting for the offices to open; I've left a message with the lawyers to phone me. Then I start causing a fuss.'
'All right. There shouldn't be any problems there; the necessary instructions have been issued, and you should get anything you want. Any problems, get in touch and we'll fire off an indignant cable.'
'Yeah, Sma, I've been thinking; just how big is this Culture commercial empire, this Vanguard Corporation?'
'Vanguard Foundation. It's big enough.'
'Yeah, but how big? How far can I go?'
'Well, don't buy anything bigger than a country. Look, Cheradenine; be as extravagant as you want in creating your fuss. Just get Beychae for us. Quickly.'
'Yeah, yeah; okay.'
'We're heading off now, but we'll keep in touch. Remember; we're here to help if you need it.'
'Yeah. Bye.' He put the phone down and turned the screen sound up again.
'Caves, natural and artificial, are scattered through the rock of the canyon walls in almost as great a profusion as the buildings on the sloping surface. Many of the city's old hydroelectric sources are there, hollowed out into rock and humming; and a few small factories and workshops still survive, hidden away beneath the cliffs and shale, with only their stubby chimneys on the desert surface to show their position. This upward river of warm fumes counterpoints the network of sewage and drainage pipes, which also shows on the surface on occasion, and presents a complex pattern of tracery through the fabric of the city.'
The phone beeped.
'Hello?'
'Mr... Staberinde?'
'Yes.'
'Ah, y
es; good morning. My name is Kiaplor, of...'
'Ah; the lawyers.'
'Yes. Thank you for your message. I have here a cable granting you full access to the income and securities of the Vanguard Foundation.'
'I know. Are you quite happy with this, Mr Kiaplor?'
'Umm... I... yes; the cable makes the position quite clear... though it is an unprecedented degree of individual discretion, given the size of the account. Not that the Vanguard Foundation has ever behaved exactly conventionally at any time.'
'Good. The first thing I'd like is to have funds sufficient to cover a month's hire of two floors of the Excelsior transferred to the hotel's account, immediately. Then I want to start buying a few things.'
'Ah... yes. Such as?'
He dabbed at his lips with a napkin. 'Well, for a start, a street.'
'A street?'
'Yes. Nothing too ostentatious, and it doesn't have to be very long, but I want a whole street, somewhere near the city centre. Do you think you can look for a suitable one, immediately?'
'Ah... well, yes, we can certainly start looking. I...'
'Good. I'll call at your offices in two hours; I'd like to be in a position to come to a decision then.'
'Two...? Umm... well, ah...'
'Speed is essential, Mr Kiaplor. Put your best people on it.'
'Yes. Very well.'
'Good. I'll see you in a couple of hours.'
'Yes. Right. Goodbye.' He turned the screen sound back up again.
'Very little new building has been done for hundreds of years; Solotol is a monument, an institution; a museum. The factories, like the people, are mostly gone. Three universities lend areas of the city some life, during part of the year, but the general air is said by many people to be archaic, even stultified, though some people enjoy the feel of living in what is, in effect, the past. Solotol has no sky-lighting; the trains still run on metal rails, and the ground vehicles must remain on the ground, because flying within the city or immediately above it is banned. A sad old place, in many ways; large sections of the city are uninhabited or only occupied for part of the year. The city is still a capital in name, but it does not represent the culture to which it belongs; it is an exhibit, and while many come to visit it, few choose to stay.'