Against A Dark Background

by Iain M. Banks

Genres: Science Fiction

Synopsis

Sharrow was once the leader of a personality-attuned combat team in one of the sporadic little commercial wars in the civilisation based around the planet Golter. Now she is hunted by the Huhsz, a religious cult which believes that she is the last obstacle before the faith's apotheosis, and her only hope of escape is to find the last of the apocalyptically powerful Lazy Guns before the Huhsz find her. Her journey through the exotic Golterian system is a destructive and savage odyssey into her past, and that of her family and of the system itself.

Release date: June 11, 2009

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 640

Sample

She put her chin on the wood below the window. The wood was cold and shiny and smelled. She kneeled on the seat; it smelled too, but different. The seat was wide and red like the sunset and had little buttons that made deep lines in it and made it look like somebody’s tummy. It was dull outside and the lights were on in the cable car. There were people skiing on the steep slopes beneath. She could see her own face looking back at her in the glass; she started to make faces at herself.

After a while the glass in front of her face went misty. She reached up and wiped it. Somebody in another car, going down the hill, waved at her. She ignored them. The hills and the white trees tipped slowly back and forward.

The cable car swung gently as it rose through the mountain air toward the cloudbase. The trees and runs on the slopes beneath were equally white; a fresh snowfall and freezing fog blowing up the valley overnight had coated the branches and needles of the trees with a crisp white wrap of crystals. Skiers cut and scythed through the new plumpness of the fall, engraving a carved text of blue-white lines onto the bulging fresh page of snow.

She watched the child for a moment. She was kneeling on the button-hide seat, looking out. Her ski-suit was garish pink, fur trimmed. Her gloves, hanging from her sleeves on lengths of cord, were a clashing mauve. Her little boots were orange. It was a foul-looking combination (especially so here in Frelle, Northern Caltasp’s supposedly most exclusive and certainly its most snobbish resort), but—she suspected—probably less psyche-damaging than the tantrum and sulk which would inevitably have resulted had her daughter not been allowed to choose her own skiing outfit. The girl wiped at the window, frowning.

She wondered what the child was frowning at, and turned to see another cable car passing them on the way down, twenty meters or so away. She put her hand out and moved it through the girl’s black hair, pulling some of the curls away from her face. She didn’t seem to notice; she just kept gazing out of the window. Such a serious face for a little girl.

She smiled, remembering when she had been that age. She could recall being five; she had memories from about as far back as three, but they were vague and inchoate; flashes of memory illuminating a dark landscape of forgotten past.

But she could remember being conscious of being five; even remember her fifth birthday party and the fireworks over the lake.

How she had wanted to be older then; to be grown up and stay up late and go to dances. She had hated being young, hated always being told what to do, hated the way adults didn’t tell you everything. And hated, too, some of the stupid things they did tell you, like, “These are the best days of your life.” You could never believe at the time that adults had any idea—beyond mischief—what they were talking about. You had to be an adult, with all the cares and responsibilities it brought, before you could appreciate the struggling ignorance adults termed innocence, and—usually forgetting the way they too had felt at the time—call the captivity of childhood, however caring, freedom.

It was a very ordinary tragedy, she supposed, but no less a cause for regret because it was so common. Like a hint, a foretaste of grief, it was an original, even unique experience for everyone it affected, no matter how often it had happened in the past to others.

And how did you avoid it? She had tried so hard not to make the same mistakes with her own daughter that she felt her parents had made with her, but sometimes she heard herself scolding the girl and thought, That’s what my mother said to me.

Her husband didn’t feel the same way, but then he had been brought up differently, and anyway didn’t really have that much to do with the child’s upbringing. These old families. Hers had been rich and influential and probably quite unbearable in its own power-deranged way, but it had never displayed quite the degree of almost willful eccentricity Kryf’s had down the generations.

She looked at her wrist-screen and turned down the heating in her boots, which were quite cozy now. Midday. Kryf would probably just be getting up, ringing for breakfast and having his butler read him the news while a footman proffered a selection of clothes from which to choose that afternoon’s attire. She smiled, thinking of him, then realized that she was looking across the car at Xellpher. The bodyguard—the only other occupant of the car—was solid and dark as some old-fashioned stove, and smiling a little too.

She gave a small laugh and put her hand to her mouth.

“M’lady?” Xellpher said.

She shook her head. Outside, behind Xellpher, an outcrop of rocks ridged above the trees, caked in whiteness but streaked with naked black rock, a dark foreign body amongst the sheets and pillows of the snow. The cable car rose to meet the clouds and was enveloped by them.

A mast went past, gray and quick outside, and the cable car whirred and bumped on its wheels for a second or so, then continued its silent, burringly smooth ascent, seemingly nodding to itself as it was hauled on upward past ranks of trees like the ghosts of some great descending army.

It went all gray. A gray post went by and the car rocked. The view stayed gray. There were some trees and she could see the other cable, but that was all. She looked round, annoyed. Xellpher smiled at her. She didn’t smile back. There was a cliff behind him, black bits in the white snow.

She turned back to the window and rubbed, hoping to see better. She watched a cable car appear out of the mists above, coming down to meet them on the other cable.

The cable car began to slow down.

The car slowed and stopped.

“Oh dear,” she said, looking up at the varnished ceiling of the car.

Xellpher stood up, frowning. He looked at the cable car on the descending cable, which had stopped almost level with them. She looked at it too. The car hung, swaying, just as theirs was. It appeared to be empty. Xellpher turned and looked at the cliff on the other side, visible through the mist thirty or forty meters away. She saw his eyes narrow and experienced the first faint twinge of fear as she followed his gaze to the cliff.

There was an impression—perhaps imagined—of movement amongst some trees at the top of the cliff. Xellpher glanced back at the cable car hanging across from them and took a pair of multi-sights from his skiing jacket. She was still watching the cliff, like him. Something did move amongst the trees, roughly level with them. Xellpher adjusted a control on the side of the sights.

She stuck her nose against the window. It was very cold. Mummy had told her once that a bad little girl had stuck her nose against a very cold window one day and it had stuck there; frozen! Stupid girl. The car on the other cable stopped rocking. She saw somebody in it. They peeked up, holding something long and dark, then they ducked down again so she couldn’t see them anymore.

Xellpher crouched down, putting the sights away and reaching out to take both her hands and pull her toward him. He glanced at the child as he said, “I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about, my lady, but it might be best to sit down here on the floor, just for a moment.”

She squatted down on the scuffed boards of the car, her head below the level of the car windows. She reached up and gently pulled the child off the seat. She struggled for a second, said, “Mummy…” in her Demanding voice.

“Ssh,” she told her, cuddling her against her chest.

Still squatting, Xellpher waddled over toward the car’s doors, taking his communicator out of his pocket as he did so.

All the windows burst at once, spraying them with glass. The car shuddered.

She heard herself scream, clutching the child to her and falling down to the floor of the car. She bit the scream off. The car shook as more shots slammed into it. In the sudden silence, Xellpher muttered something; then there was a series of sharp concussions. She looked up to see Xellpher firing his hand gun out the shattered window toward the cliff. More shots cracked into the car, blasting splinters of wood into the air and puffing dust and little bits of foam from the hide seat coverings.

Xellpher ducked, then jumped up, firing back for a moment then diving to the floor and changing the clip in his gun. Shots tore into the car, smacking the metal and making it hum. She could taste the odor produced by Xellpher’s gun, acrid and burnt at the back of her throat. She glanced down at the child, wide-eyed but unharmed beneath her.

“Code zero, repeat, code zero,” Xellpher said into the communicator during a brief lull in the firing. He slipped the machine back into his pocket. “I’ll open the door on the lee side,” he told her loudly but calmly over the noise of puncturing metal and whining ricochets. “The drop is only ten meters onto snow. It might be safer to jump than stay here.” The firing thrummed against the car, juddering it. Xellpher grimaced and lowered his head as a cloud of wood fragments sprayed off the wall by one smashed window. “When I open the door,” he told her, “throw the child out first, then drop yourself. Do you understand?”

She nodded, afraid to try speaking. The taste at the back of her throat was not the smoke from his gun; it was fear.

He pushed himself back across the wooden slats to the door; the firing went on, sporadic gusts of furious noise and vibration. Xellpher smashed something, reached and pulled; the door swung in and along the wall. She could see their skis in their bins on the outside of the car, chopped off at window level by the gunfire. Xellpher looked out.

His head burst open; it was as though his body had been hit by some invisible cannon ball, throwing it back from the opened door and thumping against the other wall of the cable car.

She couldn’t see properly. She only started screaming as she realized the warm sticky stuff in her eyes was his blood.

Another shot from that side tore some of the seats out and sent them bouncing to the floor; the whole car shook and swayed. She cuddled the child, hearing her scream and hearing her own screams, then she looked up as another blast set the car rocking from side to side again. She crawled toward the door.

The blow was astonishing, beyond comprehension. It was as though she had been hit by a train, by a power-hammer, by a comet. It hit somewhere below her chest; she had no idea where. She couldn’t move. In an instant she knew she was dead; she could have believed she had been torn in half.

The child was screaming beneath her. Almost at the door. She knew the girl was screaming because of her mouth, her face, but she couldn’t hear anything. Everything seemed to be getting very dark. The door was so close but she couldn’t move. The child dragged herself from under her, and she had to struggle to keep her head up, using one of her arms to support herself.

Child stood there, shouting something, face puffed and tear-streaked. So close to the door, but she couldn’t move. Ending now. No way to bring up a child. Silly, stupid, cruel people; like children, like poor children. Forgive them. No idea what’s next, if anything. Nor they. But forgive. Poor children. All of us, poor frightened children. Fate, nothing in your grubby creed’s worth this…

The grenade flew through the door, hit Xellpher’s body and landed clicking on the slatted floor behind the child. The child hadn’t seen it. She wanted to tell her to pick it up and throw it away, but she couldn’t get her mouth to work. The child kept screaming at her, bending down and screaming at her.

She reached up and with the last of her strength pushed the screaming child out of the door, a second before the grenade exploded.

Sharrow fell howling to the snow.

La, la, la, la-la;

Can you see-ee any clearer from a glass shore?

Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm-hmm…

One line was all that came back to her. She stood on a fused beach with her arms folded, her boot heels scuffing the grainy, scratch-dulled surface, her gaze sweeping the flat horizons, and she half-whispered, half-sang that one remembered line.

It was the slack-water of the atmosphere, when the day winds blowing onto the land had died, and the night-breeze, delayed by a warmth-lidding overcast, had yet to be born from the inertia of archipelagic air.

Seaward, at the edge of a dark canopy of overhanging cloud, the sun was setting. Red-tinged waves fell toward the glass beach and surf frothed on the scoured slope, to be blown away along the curved blade of shore toward a distant line of dully glinting dunes. A smell of brine saturated the air; she breathed deeply, then started to walk along the beach.

She was a little above average height. Her trousered legs looked slim beneath her thin jacket; black hair spilled thick and heavy down her back. When she turned her head a little, the red light of the sunset made one side of her face look flushed. Her heavy, knee-length boots made rasping noises as she walked. And as she walked, she limped; a soft bias in her tread like weakness.

“. . . see-ee any clearer…” She sang softly to herself, pacing along the glass shore of Issier, wondering why she’d been summoned here, and why she had agreed to come.

She took out an antique watch and looked at the time, then made a tutting noise and stuffed the watch back in her pocket. She hated waiting.

She kept walking, heading along the tipped shelf of fused sand toward the hydrofoil. She’d left the ageing, secondhand craft moored—maybe a little dubiously, now she thought about it—to some indecipherable piece of junk a hundred paces or so along that unlikely shore. The hydrofoil, its arrowhead shape just a smudge in the dimness, glittered suddenly as it rocked in the small waves hitting the beach, chrome lines reflecting the ruddy glare of the day’s dying light.

She stopped and looked down at the motley red-brown glass surface, wondering just how thick the layer of fused silicate was. She kicked at it with the toe of one boot. The blow hurt her toes and the glass looked undamaged. She shrugged, then turned round and walked the other way.

Her face, seen from a distance, looked calm; only somebody who knew her well would have detected a certain ominousness about that placidity. Her skin was pale under the sunset’s red reflection. Her brows were black curves under a wide forehead and a crescent of swept-back hair, her eyes large and dark, and her nose long and straight; a column to support the dark arches of those brows. Her mouth—set in a tight, compressed line—was narrow. Wide cheek bones helped balance a proud jaw.

She sighed once more, and sang the line from the song again under her breath. The tight line of her mouth relaxed then, becoming small, full lips.

Ahead of her, a couple of hundred paces up the beach, she could see the tall, boxy shape of an old automatic beachcomber. She walked toward it, eyeing the ancient machine suspiciously. It sat, silent and dark on its rubber tracks, apparently deactivated for lack of flotsam, waiting for the next tide to provide it with fresh stimulus. Its battered, decrepit casing was streaked with seabird droppings glowing pink in the sunset light, and while she watched, a foam-white bird landed briefly on the flat top of the machine, sat for a moment then flew away inland.

She took out the old watch again, inspected it and made a little growling noise at the back of her throat. The waves beat at the margin of the land, hissing like static.

She would walk, she decided, almost as far as the beach-comber, then she would turn round, head back to the hydrofoil, and go. Whoever had set up the rendezvous probably wasn’t coming after all. It might even be a trap, she thought, glancing round at the line of dunes, old fears returning. Or a hoax; somebody’s idea of a joke.

She got within twenty paces of the old beachcombing machine, then turned, walking away with her just-a-little crippled walk and singing her little, monotonous tune, relic of some-or-other post-atomic.

The rider appeared suddenly on the crest of a large dune, fifty meters to her right. She stopped and stared.

The sand-colored animal was man-high at its broad, muscled shoulders; its narrow waist held a glittering saddle and its massive rump was covered in a silvery cloth. It put its great wide tawny head back, reins jingling; it snorted and stamped its front paws. Its rider, dark on dark against the dull weight of cloud, nudged the big animal forward. It put its head down and snorted again, testing the shard-fringe where the sand at the top of the dune became glass. The beast shook its head, then trod carefully down the edge of sand to the hollow between two dunes at the urging of its rider; his cloak billowed out behind him as though hardly lighter than the air he moved through.

The man muttered something, stuck his heels into the beast’s flanks; the animal flinched as the spur terminals connected and sent little involuntary shivers of muscle movement up its great haunches. It put one broad paw tentatively onto the glass, then two; its rider made encouraging noises. Still snorting nervously, the animal took a couple of steps on the inclined deck of the shore, then—with a noise like an enormous whimper—it skidded, tottered, and sat heavily on its rump, almost unseating its rider. The animal put its head back and roared.

The man jumped quickly from the animal; his long cloak snagged briefly on the high saddle, and he landed awkwardly on the glass surface, almost falling. His mount was making sudden lurching attempts to get back up, paws skittering over the slick surface. The man collected his cloak about him and strode purposefully to the woman who was standing with one hand under the opposite armpit, the other hand up at her forehead, as though shading her eyes while she looked down at the beach. She was shaking her head.

The man was tall, thin beneath his riding breeches and tight jacket, and had a pale, narrow face, topped with black curls and edged with a neatly trimmed black beard. He walked up to her. He looked, perhaps, a few years older than she was.

“Sharrow,” he said, smiling. “Cousin; thank you for coming.” It was a cultured, refined voice, and quiet but nevertheless assured. He put his hands out to hers, squeezing them briefly then letting go.

“Geis,” she said, looking over his shoulder at the bellowing mount as it finally got shakily to its feet. “What are you doing with that animal?”

Geis glanced back at the beast. “Breaking it in,” he said with a grin that slowly faded. “But really it’s just a way of getting here to tell you…” He shrugged and gave a small, regretful laugh. “Hell, Sharrow, it’s a melodramatic message; you’re in danger.”

“Perhaps a phone call would have been quicker, then.”

“I had to see you, Sharrow; it’s more important than some phone call.”

She looked at the saddled animal, sniffing experimentally at the anchor-grass lining the nearest dune. “A taxi, then,” she suggested. Her voice was soft, and possessed a heavy smoothness.

Geis smiled. “Taxis are so…vulgar, don’t you find?” he said with a trace of irony.

“Hmm, but why the…” She gestured at the animal.

“It’s a bandamyion. Fine animal.”

“Yes, well; why the bandamyion?”

Geis shrugged. “I just bought it. Like I say, I’m breaking it in.” He made a dismissive gesture with a gauntleted hand. “Look, never mind the animal. This is more than mildly urgent.”

She sighed. “Okay; what?”

He took a deep breath, then breathed, “The Huhsz.”

She was silent for a moment, then she shrugged and looked away. “Oh, them.” She scratched at the glass beach with the toe of her boot.

“Yes,” Geis said quietly. “My people at the World Court say there’s a deal being arranged that means they’ll get their…their Hunting Passports, probably very soon. In a matter of days, perhaps.”

Sharrow nodded, not looking at her cousin. She crossed her arms and started to walk slowly along the beach. Geis took off his gauntlets and—after a glance at the ruminating bandamyion—followed her.

“Sorry I have to be the one to tell you, Sharrow.”

“That’s all right,” she said.

“I don’t think there’s any more we can do. I’ve got the family lawyers working on an appeal, and my corporate people are giving all the help they can—there’s a chance we can injunct on grounds of due notice—but it looks like the Stehrins have dropped their objections and the Nul Church Council is withdrawing its demurrance action. The rumor is the Huhsz have done a land deal in Stehrin, carving up some enclave, and the Church has been bought off, either with straight credit or the offer of a relic.”

Sharrow said nothing; she kept walking along the beach, staring down. Geis made a resigned gesture with his hands. “It’s all blown up so suddenly; I thought we had those assholes tied up for years, but the Court’s fast-tracked the whole matter, sidelined cases that have waited generations.” He sighed. “And of course it’s Llocaran’s turn to provide the Court President this session. Their nominee is actually from Lip City.”

“Yes, Lip City,” Sharrow said, “I imagine they are still upset about that damn Lazy Gun.” She gazed ahead to the dimly glinting shape of her distant hydrofoil.

(And in her mind saw again the line of desert hills beyond the stone balustrade of the hotel room balcony, and the faint crease of dawn-light above, suddenly swamped by the stuttering pulses of silent fire from beyond the horizon. She had watched—dazed and dazzled and wondering—as that distant eruption of annihilation had lit up the face of her lover.)

Geis’s voice sounded tired as he said, “Actually, I think the Huhsz must have got to one of the justiciaries. There’s been talk of one of the old guys being found in a snuff parlor a few days ago. I wouldn’t put it past the Huhsz to have set the whole thing up just to pocket a judge.”

“My,” Sharrow said, pulling a hand through her thick hair (Geis watched, eyes following those pale fingers as they plowed that black field). “What energy and enterprise those Huhsz boys display.”

Geis nodded. “They’ve been lucky with their recruitment and investments recently, too,” he said. “Highly fluid; probably the most profitable order on Golter just now. It’s all helped them get their war chest together.” His brows furrowed. “I’m sorry, Sharrow. I feel I’ve let you down.”

She shrugged. “Had to happen sooner or later. You’ve done all you can. Thanks.” She looked at him, then briefly put a hand out to touch his forearm. “I appreciate it, Geis.”

“Let me hide you, Sharrow,” he said suddenly.

She shook her head. “Geis—”

“I have interests they can’t—”

“Geis, no; I—”

“No; listen; I’ve places nobody—”

“No, I—”

“Safe houses; offices; whole estates that don’t appear on any inventory, here and on other planets; cascade-owned companies my own chief execs don’t know about…”

“I appreciate the offer, Geis, but—”

“Habitats; whole asteroids; mines on Fian and Speyr; island barges on Trontsephori—”

“Geis,” she said, stopping and turning to him, taking his hands in hers for a moment. His thin face shone palely in the deepening red light. “Geis; I can’t.” She forced herself to smile. “You know they’d track me down eventually and you’d only get into trouble for Harboring. They’ll use the Passports. If they wanted to—if they had the excuse that they thought you were sheltering me—they could tear you apart, Geis.”

“I can look after myself.”

“I don’t mean you personally, Geis; I mean this commercial empire you’ve been so busy constructing. I watch the news; the antitrust people are crawling all over you already.”

Geis waved one hand. “Bureaucrats. I can deal with them.”

“Not if the Huhsz use the Passports to open your data banks and search your files. All these precious companies, all these…interests; you could lose them all.”

Geis stood, staring at her. “I’d risk that,” he said quietly.

She shook her head.

“I would,” he insisted. “For you. If you’d let me, I’d do anything—”

“Geis, please,” she said, turning from him and walking in the other direction, toward the distant shape of the ancient beachcombing machine. Geis paced after her.

“Sharrow, you know how I feel about you; just let—”

“Geis!” she said sharply, barely glancing back at him.

He stopped, looked down at his feet, then walked quickly after her.

“All right,” he said when he was level with her again. “I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have said anything. Didn’t mean to embarrass you.” He took a breath. “But I won’t see you hounded like this. I can fight dirty, too. I have people in places you wouldn’t expect; in places nobody expects. I won’t let those religious maniacs get you.”

“I’m not going to let them get me,” she said. “Don’t worry.”

He gave a bitter laugh. “How can I not worry?”

She stopped and looked at him. “Just try. And don’t do anything that’s going to land both of us in even more trouble.” She tipped her head to one side, staring at him.

Eventually he looked away. “All right,” he said.

They resumed their walk.

“So,” he said. “What will you do?”

She shrugged. “Run,” she said. “They’ve only got a year; and—”

“A year and a day if we’re going to be precise about it.”

“Yes. Well, I’ll just have to try and keep a step or two ahead of them for a year…and a day.” She kicked at the glass surface beneath their feet. “And I suppose I have to try and find that last Lazy Gun. The one the Huhsz want. It’s the only other way to end this.”

“Will you get the team back together?” Geis asked, his voice neutral.

“I’ll need them if I’m going to find that damn Gun,” she told him. “And I’ll have to try, anyway. If the Huhsz get hold of one of them…it would make it easier to find me.”

“Ah. Then it really doesn’t wear off?”

“SNB? No, Geis, it doesn’t wear off. Like certain exotic diseases, and unlike love, synchroneurobonding is for life.”

Geis lowered his eyes. “You weren’t always so cynical about love.”

“As they say; ignorance pays.”

Geis looked as though he was about to say something else, but then shook his head. “You’ll need money, then,” he said. “Let me—”

“I’m not destitute, Geis,” she told him. “And who knows, perhaps there are still Antiquities contracts outstanding.” She clasped her hands together, kneading them without realizing it. “If the family lore is right, the way to find the Lazy Gun is to find the Universal Principles first.”

“Yes, if the lore is right,” Geis said skeptically. “I’ve tried tracking that rumor down myself and nobody knows how it started.”

“It’s all there is, Geis.”

“Well, if you need any help finding the other people in the team…”

“Last I heard, Miz was being entrepreneurial in the Log-Jam, the Francks were raising sarflet litters in Regioner, and Cenuij had gone to ground somewhere in Caltasp Minor; Udeste, maybe. I’ll find him.”

Geis took a deep breath. “Well, according to my sources, yes, Cenuij Mu is in Caltasp, but it’s a bit further north than Udeste.”

Sharrow cocked her head.