Consider Phlebas (33 page)

Horza frowned over at the man. ‘What?’

‘People! Those are people! They must be in AG harnesses! We’re going to go right through them!’

Horza looked briefly over at Wubslin’s repeater screen. It was true; the black cloud which almost filled the screen was made up of humans, flying slowly about in suits or ordinary clothes. There were thousands of them, Horza saw, less than a kilometre ahead, and closing quickly. Wubslin was staring at the screen, waving his hand at the people. ‘Get out the way! Get out the way!’ he was shouting.

Horza couldn’t see a way round, over or beneath the mass of flying people. Whether they were playing some curious mass aerial game or were just enjoying themselves, they were too many, too close, too widespread. ‘Shit!’ Horza said. He got ready to cut the rear plasma motors before the Clear Air Turbulence went into the cloud of humans. With luck they might make it through before they had to relight them, and so not incinerate too many people.

‘No!’ Wubslin screamed. He threw the restraining straps off, leapt across towards Horza and dived at the controls. Horza tried to fend the bulky engineer off, but failed. The controls were wrenched from his hands, and the view on the main screen tipped and swirled, pointing the nose of the speeding ship away from the black square of the GSV exit, away from the huge cloud of airborne people, and towards the cliff of brightly lit Mainbay entrances. Horza clouted Wubslin across the head with his arm, sending the man falling to the floor, stunned. He grabbed the controls back from the relaxing fingers of the engineer, but it was too late to turn away. Horza steadied and aimed. The Clear Air Turbulence darted for an open Mainbay; it flashed through the open entrance and swept over the skeleton of a starship being rebuilt in the bay, the light from the CAT’s motors starting fires, singeing hair, smouldering clothes and blinding unprotected eyes.

Horza saw Wubslin lying unconscious on the floor out of the corner of his eye, rocking gently as the CAT careered through the half kilometre length of Mainbay. The doors to the next bay were open, and the next and the next. They were flying through a two kilometre tunnel, racing over the repair and docking facilities of one of Evanauth’s displaced shipbuilders. Horza didn’t know what was at the far end, but he could see that before they got there they would have to fly over the top of a large spaceship which almost filled the third bay along. Horza vectored the fusion fire ahead so that they started to slow. Twin beams of fire flashed on either side of the main screen as the fusion power kicked forward. Wubslin’s unrestrained body slid forward on the floor of the bridge, wedging under the console and his own seat. Horza lifted the CAT’s nose as the blunt snout of the parked spacecraft sitting in the bay ahead approached.

The Clear Air Turbulence zoomed towards the ceiling of the Mainbay, flashed between it and the top surface of the ship, then fell on the other side and, although still slowing, shot through the final Mainbay and into another corridor of free air space. It was too narrow. Horza dived the craft again, saw the floor coming up and fired the lasers. The CAT burst through a rising cloud of glowing wreckage, bumping and shaking, Wubslin’s squat frame sliding out from under the console and floating back up towards the rear door of the bridge.

At first Horza thought they were out at last, but they weren’t; they were in what the Culture called a General bay.

The CAT fell once more, then levelled out again. It was in a space which seemed even larger than the main interior of the GSV. It was flying through the bay they had stored the Megaship in: the same Megaship Horza had seen on the screen earlier being lifted out of the water by a hundred or so ancient Culture lifter craft.

Horza had time to look around. There was plenty of space, lots of room and time. The Megaship lay on the floor of the giant bay, looking for all the world like a small city sitting on a great slab of metal. The Clear Air Turbulence flew past the stern of the Megaship, past tunnels full of propeller blades tens of metres across, round the side of its rearmost outrigger, where beached pleasure craft waited for a return to water, over the towers and spires of its superstructure, then out over its bows. Horza looked forward. The doors, if they were doors, of the General bay faced him, two kilometres away. They were that same distance from top to bottom, and twice that across. Horza shrugged and checked the laser again. He was becoming, he realised, almost blasé about the whole thing. What the hell? he thought.

The lasers picked a hole in the wall of material ahead, punching a slowly widening gap which Horza aimed straight for. A vortex of swirling air was starting to form around the hole; as the CAT rushed closer, it was caught in a small horizontal cyclone of air and started to twist. Then it was through, and in space.

In a quickly dispersing bubble of air and crystals of ice, the craft burst from the body of the General Systems Vehicle, swooping into vacuum and star-washed darkness at last. Behind it, a force field slammed across the hole its passage had created in the doors of the General bay. Horza felt the plasma motors stutter as their supply of outside air disappeared, then the internal tanks took up the slack. He was about to cut them and slide gently into the start-up procedure for the craft’s warp engines when the speakers in his headrest crackled.

‘This is Evanauth port police. All right, you son of a bitch, just keep on that heading and slow right down. Evanauth port police to rogue craft: halt on that heading. A - ‘

Horza pulled on the controls, taking the CAT on a huge accelerating arc up over the stern of the GSV, flashing past the outside of the kilometre-square exit he had been heading for earlier. Wubslin, moaning now, bumped around the inside of the bridge as the CAT lifted its nose to head straight up, towards the maze of abandoned docks and gantries that was Evanauth port. As it went it turned, still twisting slightly from the spin it had picked up from the vortex of air bursting from the General bay. Horza let it twist, steadying it only as they approached the top of the loop, the port facilities coming up fast then sliding underneath as the craft levelled out.

‘Rogue ship! This is your last warning!’ the speakers blared. ‘Stop now or we’ll blow you out of the sky! God, he’s heading for - ‘ The transmission cut off. Horza grinned to himself. He was indeed heading for the gap between the underside of the port and the top of the GSY. The Clear Air Turbulence flashed through spaces between traveltube connections, elevator shafts, graving dock gantries, transit areas, arriving shuttle craft and crane towers. Horza guided the ship through the maze with the fusion motors still blazing at maximum boost, throwing the small craft through the few hundred metres of crowded space between the Orbital and the General Systems Vehicle. The rear radar pinged, picking up following echoes.

Two towers, hanging under the Orbital like upside-down sky-scrapers, between which Horza was aiming the CAT, suddenly blossomed with light, scattering wreckage. Horza cringed in his seat as he corkscrewed the ship into the space between the two clouds of debris.

‘Those were across the bows,’ crackled the speakers again. ‘The next ones will be straight up your ass, boy racer.’ The CAT shot out over the dull grey plain of slanting material that was the start of the Ends’ nose. Horza turned the CAT over and dived down, following the slope of the vast craft’s bows. The rear radar signal stopped briefly, then reappeared.

He flipped the ship over again. Wubslin, his arms and legs waving weakly, was dumped onto the CAT’s bridge ceiling and stuck there like a fly while Horza did a section of an outside loop.

The ship was racing, powering away from the Orbital port area and the big GSV, heading for space. Horza remembered about Balveda’s gear, and quickly reached over to the console, closing the vactube circuit from there. A screen showed that all the vactubes had been rotated. The rear screen showed something flame inside the twin plumes of plasma fire. The rear radar pinged insistently.

‘Goodbye, stupid!’ the voice in the headrest speakers said. Horza threw the ship to one side.

The rear screen went white, then black. The main screen pulsated with colours and broken lines. The speakers in Horza’s helmet, as well as the speakers set into the seat, howled. Every instrument on the console flashed and wavered.

Horza thought for a second they had been hit, but the motors were still blasting, the main screen was starting to clear, and the other instruments were recovering, too. The radiation meters were bleeping and flashing. The rear screen stayed blank. A damage monitor indicated that the sensors had been knocked out by a very strong pulse of radiation.

Horza started to realise what had happened when the rear radar didn’t start pinging again after it recovered. He threw back his head and laughed.

There had indeed been a bomb in Balveda’s kitbag. Whether it had gone off because it was caught in the CAT’s plasma exhaust or because somebody - whoever had been trying to keep the ship on board the GSV in the first place - had detonated it remotely the instant the fleeing craft was far enough away from the Ends not to cause too much damage, Horza didn’t know. Whatever; the explosion seemed to have caught the pursuing police vessels.

Laughing uproariously, Horza angled the CAT further away from the great circle of brilliantly lit Orbital, heading straight out towards the stars and readying the warp engines to take over from the plasma motors. Wubslin, back on the deck, one leg caught on the arm of his own chair, moaned distantly.

‘Mother,’ he said. ‘Mother, say it’s only a dream . . . ‘

Horza laughed louder.

‘You lunatic,’ breathed Yalson, shaking her head. Her eyes were wide. ‘That was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen you do. You’re mad, Kraiklyn. I’m leaving. I resign as of now . . . Shit! I wish I’d gone with Jandraligeli, to Ghalssel . . . You can just drop me off first place we get to.’

Horza sat down wearily in the seat at the head of the mess-room table. Yalson was at the far end, under the screen, which was switched into the bridge main screen. The CAT was proceeding under full warp, two hours out on its journey from Vavatch. There had been no further pursuit following the destruction of the police craft, and now the CAT was gradually coming round to the course Horza had set, into the war zone, towards the edge of the Glittercliff, towards Schar’s World.

Dorolow and Aviger were sitting, plainly still shaken, to one side of Yalson. The woman and the elderly man were both staring at Horza as though he was pointing a gun at them. Their mouths were open, their eyes were glazed. On the other side of Yalson the slack form of Perosteck Balveda was leaning forward, head down, her body pulling against the restraining straps of the seat.

The mess room was chaotic. The CAT hadn’t been readied for violent manoeuvring, and nothing had been stowed away. Plates and containers, a couple of shoes, a glove, some half-unravelled tapes and spools and various other bits and pieces now lay strewn about the floor of the mess. Yalson had been hit by something, and a small trickle of blood had dried on her forehead. Horza hadn’t let anybody move, apart from brief visits to the heads, for the last two hours; he’d told everybody to stay where they were over the ship PA while the CAT headed away from Vavatch on a twisting, erratic course. He had kept the plasma motors and laser warm and ready, but no further pursuit came. Now he reckoned they were safe and far enough away to warp straight.

He had left Wubslin on the bridge, nursing the battered and abused systems of the Clear Air Turbulence as best he could. The engineer had apologised for grabbing at the controls and had become very subdued, not meeting Horza’s eyes but tidying up one or two bits of loose debris on the bridge and stuffing some of the loose wires back under the console. Horza told Wubslin he had nearly killed them all, but on the other hand so had he, so they would forget it this time; they’d escaped intact. Wubslin nodded and said he didn’t know how; he couldn’t believe the ship was virtually undamaged. Wubslin wasn’t undamaged; he had bruises everywhere.

‘I’m afraid,’ Horza said to Yalson once he had sat down and put his feet up, ‘our first port of call is rather bleak and underpopulated. I’m not sure you’ll want to be dropped off there.’

Yalson put the heavy stun pistol down onto the table surface. ‘And just where the hell are we going? What’s going on, Kraiklyn? What was all that craziness back on the GSV? What’s she doing here? Why is the Culture involved?’ Yalson nodded at Balveda during this speech, and Horza kept looking at the unconscious Culture agent when Yalson stopped, waiting for an answer. Aviger and Dorolow were looking at him expectantly, too.

Before Horza could answer, the small drone appeared from the corridor leading from the accommodation section. It floated in, looked round the mess room, then sat itself bodily on the table in the middle. ‘Did I hear something about it being explanation time?’ it said. It was facing Horza.

Horza looked away from Balveda, to Aviger and Dorolow, then to Yalson and the drone. ‘Well, you might as well all know that we are now heading for a place called Schar’s World. It’s a Planet of the Dead.’

Yalson looked puzzled. Aviger said, ‘I’ve heard of those. But we won’t be allowed in.’

‘This is getting worse,’ the drone said. ‘If I were you, Captain Kraiklyn, I would turn back to The Ends of Invention and surrender yourself there. I’m sure you’d get a fair trial.’

Horza ignored the machine. He sighed, looking round at the mess, stretched his legs and yawned. ‘I’m sorry you’re all being taken, perhaps against your will, but I’ve got to get there, and I can’t afford to stop anywhere to let you off. You’ve all got to come.’

‘Oh we do, do we?’ said the small drone.

‘Yes,’ Horza said, looking at it, ‘I’m afraid so.’

‘But we won’t be able to get anywhere near this place,’ Aviger protested. ‘They don’t let anybody in. There’s some sort of zone around them they don’t let people into.’

‘We’ll see about that when we get there.’ Horza smiled.

‘You’re not answering my questions,’ Yalson said. She looked at Balveda again, then down at the gun lying on the table. ‘I’ve been zapping this poor bitch every time she flicks an eyelid, and I want to know why I’ve been doing it.’