Iain Banks - Against a Dark Background

“No. Let me in. Please let me in. It’s very important.”

“What? No appointment? This is disgraceful. Certainly not, go away. And if that’s your car, you can’t park there.”

“Stand away from the door,” she said, stepping slowly backwards.

“What?” said the small, scratchy voice.

“Stand well away from the door if you want to live,” she called, still walking backwards. “Stand back!”

She turned and ran, waved to the android in the monowheel, then dived to the causeway’s flagstones, her arms over her head.

The monowheel’s cannon boomed eight times in quick succession; immediately following the first blast there began an answering sequence of eight thunderous explosions. After the last, she got up and ran to the monowheel, which was already moving towards her. Feril put out a hand and hauled her easily into the cockpit.

She took the controls as Feril leant back, sending the monowheel curving down the causeway while debris was still falling from the wrecked gatehouse. As the monowheel splashed into the shallow pools among the weed at the bottom of the causeway, the Sea House’s great iron door fell forward in one vast, dusty, smoking piece and slammed into the slope, cracking the causeway and throwing flagstones and cobbles into the air. The rest of the gatehouse’s facade crumbled and slid, collapsing into a smoking pile around the fallen door and leaving a huge broil of dust above a ramp of rubble and a dark, gaping breach.

The monowheel sped away, charging round the curve of the bay in front of the Sea House’s curtain wall and into the slack retreating waters of the old tide, wading to a point in the towering walls a third of the way round the structure from the wrecked gatehouse.

“There,” Feril said.

She turned the vehicle towards the scooped trench of a weed-draped tunnel in the towering granite walls.

The monowheel crept up the stinking sewage outfall to a portcullis of corroded iron bars. A torrent of dirty water fell from a level half-way up the two-metre diameter grille. She picked up the laser.

“It looks very rusty,” Feril said. “Try nudging it.”

She sent the monowheel forward; the iron frame creaked then shifted. She reversed the monowheel quickly. The portcullis fell forward, splashing into the tunnel and releasing the dammed-up pond of sewage behind. She heard it flowing past them, and almost passed out with the smell.

They travelled another twenty metres up the sewer before reaching a junction beyond which the pipes became too narrow for the monowheel. They looked up; grey light filtered down through a grating. Feril stood on the top of the vehicle and pushed the grating up and back.

The android climbed out; she passed it the Lazy Gun, then Feril pulled her up to join it. She strapped the Gun to herself while Feril replaced the grating. She handed Feril the laser rifle anal kept the pistol for herself.

They were in a broad, damp gallery; tall windows on one side contained not a single intact pane. Rain gusted in. Moss grew on dulled mosaics underfoot as the woman and the android jogged along to the darkness of a doorway. They turned a corner and ran right into a small monk walking towards them, one iron-manacled hand chained to the wall at his side, his gaze fixed on the steaming bowl he was carrying.

Sharrow bumped into the monk, splashing the gruel over his habit and the wall at his side. He looked angry for a moment, then his mouth fell open as he saw the android. His brows furrowed as he looked at their chainless hands. He had time to look frightened, briefly, before Sharrow cracked his head off the stones above his chain track; he slid unconscious down the wall.

Feril looked back at the prone figure as they ran on.

They climbed what seemed a never-ending spiral of steps rising out of a vast gallery, exiting at the top of a massive stone tower and crossing to the main House over a thin stone bridge, high over an ancient deserted dock where dilapidated cranes stood pierced with rust and coated with moss. Thigh-thick lengths of rope lay coiled on the rotting dock-sides like enormous worm-casts.

They followed the chain system through draughty corridors and dark halls, turning each time the number of rails decreased. They had to hide twice as monks passed them in gloomy corridors. The second group carried rifles and were running in the direction of the distant gatehouse.

The chain system’s inset hierarchy took them constantly upwards and inwards, ascending broad, shadowy flights of steps, ramps that spiralled and zigged and zagged higher and higher into the middle then upper levels of the House. Halls and balconies, tunnels and corridors filled the stone-space; their feet sounded off paving-slabs, wooden planks, ceramic tiles and pierced metal. The tracks on the walls were reduced to two, then one as they penetrated the vast building.

Finally they found a corridor whose walls were quite smooth, with no rails whatsoever. They walked cautiously into a small, walled courtyard ceilinged with chill grey mist where bedraggled plants lay beaded and heavy with moisture. What appeared to be a well in the centre of the courtyard looked down into a vast hall where they saw tiny figures moving to and fro. A rancid draught of air rose from the well, bringing the noise of small, alarmed voices.

They looked round the windows facing onto the hidden garden. Feril nodded at a door in one corner.

It wasn’t locked. They walked into a short corridor lined with pornographic holos. Feril stopped outside a door. She could hear voices now, too.

They burst in. The girl in the bed gave a shriek and ducked under the bedclothes. The fat, naked man sitting at the screen whirled round, his eyes wide. A senior brother’s habit lay folded on a chair. She lasered the screen; it had been on sound only. The naked man put his arms up, sheltering himself from the debris of the exploded screen.

“You have five minutes,” she told him, “to take us straight to any ‘Honoured Guests’ who’ve arrived here in the last three days.” She looked at Feril. “Start counting.”

The fat man sat up, trying to muster his dignity. He took a breath.

“And you had better fucking know who I mean,” she told him, before he could speak, “or you’re cooked meat.”

“Daughter,” the man said, standing, his voice confident and controlled. He pointed to the habit on the chair. “At least allow-”

“Oh, at least nothing,” she said, suddenly angry. She fired the gun at the floor between his feet. Splinters burst from the varnished wood. There was a yelp from beneath the bedclothes and the fat man hopped on one foot, holding the other. His eyes had gone wide again. “Move!” Sharrow yelled.

They walked through the apartments; the fat brother limped, leaving a trail of blood. She limped after him, frowning at the red spots they were leaving in a trail behind them. She kept looking back. They climbed steps, crossed a terrace underneath a roof of stained glass, and then the fat man pointed a shaking hand at a door.

She stationed him two metres back from the door, a finger to her lips. “Keep him there,” she told Feril quietly. The android stood behind the naked man, gripping his quivering shoulders. She went to the wall at the side of the door and tested the handle. It turned and she pushed; the door swung open.

“No!” the fat man screamed, an instant before his torso exploded open through a giant red crater in his midriff. Blood gushed from his mouth as his eyes rolled back and his entrails flooded out. She ducked and rolled across the bottom of the door, firing.

Feril let go of the man and stepped to the side.

Sharrow jumped up and stuck her head round the side of the door; Molgarin lay on the floor inside, screaming.