Iain Banks - Against a Dark Background

Sharrow looked like she was trying to control herself, then suddenly sat forward again. “Nothing to do with me? So why are you fucking the only whore in Lip City who could pass for my clone?”

“I don’t fuck her, Sharrow,” Cenuij said, looking genuinely surprised. “I just enjoy humiliating her!” He laughed. “And anyway, she’s rather better looking than you are.” He smiled. “Apart from that unfortunate eight-year-old radiation burn. I wonder how the poor girl got that ?”

“Cenuij-”

“And where’s she? The real girl? What have you done with her?”

Sharrow waved one hand. “Teel’s fine; she’s spaced on Zonk watching screen from the whirlbath in a hotel suite. She’s having a great night.”

“She’d better be,” Cenuij said.

“Oh! You enjoy humiliating her but now you’re all concerned for her well-being.” She sneered back. “Make sense, Cenuij.”

He smiled. “I am. But you wouldn’t understand.”

“And what sort of weird kick do you get from humiliating her anyway?”

Cenuij shrugged languidly. “Call it revenge.”

Sharrow sat back again, shaking her head. “Shit, you’re sick.”

“ I’m sick?” Cenuij laughed. He crossed his arms and gazed up at the car’s ceiling lining. “She murders four hundred and sixty-eight thousand people and she calls me sick!”

“Oh, for the last fucking time,” she shouted. “I didn’t know they were going to start hacking the Gun to bits in the goddamn city!”

“You should have known!” he shouted back. “That’s where their labs were! That’s where they announced they were going to dismantle the damn thing!”

“I thought they meant the lab in the desert! I didn’t know they’d do it in the city!”

“You should have guessed!”

“I couldn’t believe anybody would be that stupid!”

“When have they ever been anything else?” Cenuij roared. “You should have guessed!”

“Well, I just fucking didn’t!” Sharrow yelled. She sat back, sniffing mightily.

Cenuij sat silently, massaging his legs.

Eventually Sharrow said, “That was probably some contract hunter with the net-gun tonight. If they’d succeeded you’d be in a Huhsz satrapy by dawn, all wired and juiced up so you’d have no fucking choice but to tell them what I was going to do next.”

“So I’ll stop talking to strangers,” Cenuij said. He tested one leg, flexing it. He sat forward suddenly. “Where are my shoes?” he demanded.

Sharrow dug under her seat, threw them over to him. He slipped them on and fastened them.

“Have you heard from Breyguhn recently?” she asked.

He stopped tightening a heel strap and glanced at her. “No. The good Brothers have what one might call a playful attitude to mail. I expect I’ll get another letter in a month or so.”

“I saw her four days ago.”

Cenuij looked wary. “Mm-hmm,” he said, sitting back. “And how… how is she?”

Sharrow looked away. “Not too good. I mean, surviving physically, but…”

“She didn’t give you… a letter or anything for me?” Cenuij asked.

“No.” Sharrow shook her head. “Look,” she said. “If we find the Universal Principles we can get her out. I only need the message in it; we can give the Brothers the book itself.”

Cenuij looked troubled, then sat back, sneering. “You say,” he said. His cloak lay on the seat beside him; he put it over his shoulders and fastened it, laughing. “Some piece of utterly unattributable Dascen family folklore has it that your grandpa somehow left a message in a book nobody’s set eyes on for a millennium and which there is no indication he even started to look for, and you believe it?” He shook his head.

“Dammit, Cenuij, it’s the best we’ve got to go on.”

“And what if this rumour is-by some miracle-only half wrong and you do need the book itself?” Cenuij asked.

“We’ll do all we can,” Sharrow said, sighing. “I promised.”

“You promised,” Cenuij sat still for awhile. He flexed both legs. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll think about it.” He put one hand to the door of the vehicle.

Sharrow put her hand over his. He looked into her eyes but she wouldn’t take her hand away. “Cenuij,” she said. “Please, come now. They’ll take you if you try to stay. I’m telling the truth, I swear.”

He looked at her hand. She took it away. He opened the door and climbed down out of the All-Terrain. He stood holding the door for a moment, checking that his legs were going to hold him when he tried to walk.

“Sharrow,” he said, looking up at her. “I’m only just starting to think that maybe you really are telling the truth about what happened to the Lazy Gun and Lip City.” He gave a sort of half-laugh. “But that’s taken eight years; let’s not rush things, shall we?”

She leant forward, imploring. “Cenuij; we need you; please… in the name of…” Her voice died away.

“Yes, Sharrow,” he smiled. “In the name of what?” She just stared at him. He shook his head. “There’s not really anything you respect or care about enough to use as an oath, is there?” He smiled. “Except perhaps yourself, and that wouldn’t sound right, would it?” He took a step backwards, letting go of the door. “Like I said, I’ll think about it.” He pulled his cloak closed. “Where can I contact you?”

She closed her eyes with a look of despair. “The Log-Jam, with Miz,” she said.

“Ah, of course.” He turned to go, facing the giant open-cast mine on the dark hillside. Then he stopped and turned back, the rain blowing about him. He nodded behind him at the mine. “See that, Sharrow? The open-cast? Mining an ancient spoil heap; sifting the already discarded, looking for treasure in what was rubbish… maybe not even for the first time, either. We live in the dust of our forebears; insects crawling in their dung. Splendid, isn’t it?”

He turned and walked away along the bank of an old tailings pond. He’d gone another few paces when he turned once more and called out, “By the way; you were very convincing about one thing… until you took the radiation scar off.”

He laughed and strode off towards the half-consumed spoil heap.

Like a lot of Golterian oddities, the Log-Jam was basically a tax dodge.

Jonolrey, Golter’s second largest continent, lay across Phirar from Caltasp. The same root word in a long-lost language that had provided the name for the ocean of Phirar had also given the region of Piphram its name. Once Piphram had been a powerful state, the greatest trading nation on the planet, practically running the world’s entire merchant marine. But that had been long ago; now it was just another entangledly autonomous patchwork Free Area, no less prosperous or gaudy than any other part of the world.

The administrative capital of Piphram, which by sheer coincidence happened actually to lie within the area its contract covered, was the Log-Jam.

Sunlit land slid under the small jet, flowing green and brown beneath its forward-weed wings as it throttled back and adjusted its position in the centre of the conical glide-path.

Sharrow watched Dloan at the plane’s controls; he sat in the pilot’s seat of the hired aircraft, studying its instrument screens. He’d flown the plane manually for take-off and ascent from Regioner, and had wanted to land it too, but the Log-Jam had had too many bad experiences with people trying to land on Carrier Field, and insisted on autolandings. Dloan was going to make sure it went all right.

Zefla, in a seat across from Sharrow, was fiddling with the small cabin’s screen controls; channel-hopping to produce a confused succession of images and background sound bursts.