Iain Banks - Against a Dark Background

“Indisposed, I believe,” Lebmellin said smoothly.

“Yes, sir. Unavailable, sir, so we contacted you.”

“Very good, chief,” Lebmellin said. “Please return to your post.”

The Module broke through into the central vault in a cloud of smoke, its carapace glowing red hot. A machine gun opened up, sprinkling the Module with fire; it lumbered on regardless, dragging a wrecked track behind it. One of its arms had been torn off and its casing had been dented and scarred in various places.

Gas gushed into the circular space, filling it with unseen fumes that would have killed a human in seconds. The machine trundled and squeaked to the centre of the chamber where a titanium sleeve had descended from the ceiling to cover the transparent crystal casing around the Addendum itself.

The Module mortared a shaped-charge fusing pin at the point where the titanium sleeve disappeared into the ceiling, piercing the armour and jamming the sleeve in position. A pulse weapon fired, filling the hazy, gas-choked chamber with sparks but failing to scramble the Module’s photonic circuitry.

The machine extracted what looked like a very thick rug about a metre wide from an armoured compartment under its carapace, wrapped the rug clumsily round the titanium column using its one functioning heavy arm, then sent the light pulse triggering the pre-patterned close-cutter; the charge blasted four microscopically thin crevices through the metal, and a metre of the titanium sleeve fell apart to reveal the undamaged crystal dome within holding the Crownstar Addendum, like a seed cluster within a halved fruit.

The Module loosed its most delicate arm from a slot on its side and reached towards the crystal dome, a hypersonic cutter humming on the end of the spindly arm. It made an incision round the base of the thick crystal dome, lifted it carefully off and placed it to one side, then reached in for the Addendum, lying on a neck-shaped slope of plain black cloth.

The three multi-jointed digits closed in on the necklace, swivelling and adjusting as they neared, as if uncertain how to pick it up.

Then they slowed, and stopped.

The Module made a gasping, grinding noise and seemed to collapse on its tracks. The arm reaching for the Addendum sagged, lopsided, its metal and plastic fingers still a couple of centimetres away from its goal. The fingers trembled, flexed for one last time, then drooped.

Smoke leaked from the carapace of the Module, joining the gas and the fumes and smoke already filling the chamber. A noise like a groan came from the battered machine.

It was quarter of an hour before the emergency motors were able to grind and force the vault round so that its door and the magazine sleeve door were aligned, and before the central chamber was cool and gas-free enough for Lebmellin, the security chief and the other guards to enter.

They wore gas-masks; they stepped in, over pieces of wreckage still glowing, and found the Module where it had stopped, its thin metallic arm stretched out grasping for the Addendum. The guards eyed it warily; their chief looked round the wrecked chamber with a look of disbelieving fury.

Lebmellin stepped gingerly over a lump of sliced titanium, holding his robes up off the debris-scattered deck. “Perhaps we ought to rename the ship the Devastated , eh, chief?” he said, and chuckled behind his mask.

The security chief gave him a bleak smile.

Lebmellin went to the necklace, staring intently at it without touching it.

“Best be careful, sir,” the security chief said, his voice muffled by the mask. “We don’t know that thing’s really dead yet.”

“Hmm,” Lebmellin said. He looked round, then nodded at the security chief, who motioned the guards out of the chamber.

The two men went to a metal fire-hose cabinet on the wan and each inserted a small key into what looked like an ordinary, non-locking handle. The dented mild steel cabinet swung open and Lebmellin reached in under the remains of the ancient canvas hose for a thin package wrapped in clean rags.

Lebmellin peeled back the rags to reveal the real Crownstar Addendum, which of course was far too valuable to leave the vault or ever be left exactly where people thought it was. The two men took magnifiers from their pockets and stared at the necklace. They both sighed at the same time.

“Well, chief,” Lebmellin said. He reached inside his robe with the hand not holding the Addendum and rubbed his chest. “It’s here, but we are going to have to fill out an awful lot of forms, and probably in triplicate.”

At exactly that point, the Module made a noise like a shot, and moved briefly on its tracks before falling silent again. The security chief spun round, eyes wide, a cry starting in his throat. After a moment he turned back. “Probably just cooling,” he said, smiling shamefacedly.

The Vice Invigilator looked unimpressed. “Yes, chief.” He covered the necklace in his hand with the rags and put it back in the fire-hose cupboard; they locked it together.

Lebmellin nodded at the machine. “Have the men force that thing back out the way it came,” he said. “Let the units under the ship take it away; we don’t want it doing anything awkward like self-destructing now, do we?”

“No, sir,” the security chief looked pained. “Of course it may do just that if we try to move it.”

Lebmellin looked meaningfully at the fire-hose cupboard. “Only the Chief Invigilator and five members of the City Board may move what’s in there; for tonight, we have no choice. Dump that damned thing down the hole it came through, and make sure this place is extremely well guarded.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now do let’s leave; there’s a terribly regrettable smell in here, even with this mask, and my hair is going to stink for absolutely days. Call the guards back in.”

“Sir.”

They supervised the removal of the necklace the Module had been about to grasp; Lebmellin went with the fifty fully armed Marines who escorted two nervous-looking bank vice-presidents to the Jam’s second most secure vault, in the Log-Jam branch of the First International Bank, on a purpose-built concrete barge modelled on an ancient oil-production platform.

Lebmellin left the bank on his official ACV with his aides. The security chief called from the Devastator. The Module had been levered and hoisted back down through the ship without incident and was now being dragged away from beneath the hull by a Marine crawler.

“Very good,” Lebmellin said, staring up through the cockpit canopy at the junklit clouds above. He smiled at his comm aide and official secretary, wondering which one was in Kuma’s employ. Possibly both.

He took a deep breath, holding one hand over his chest as he did so, as though breathless. He smiled beatifically. “I believe Mister Kuma was throwing a party after the reception; let’s see what’s left of it, shall we? You needn’t stay; you may all then depart for some well-earned sleep.”

“Sir.”

Miz Gattse Kuma’s party on the old mixed-traffic ferry was just starting to lose momentum. The upper car-deck of the ferry held a dance floor; the lower train-deck held half a dozen train carriages fitted out with snug bars. The ferry was a recent acquisition moored on the outer fringe of the Log-Jam, facing out to the lagoon sandbar and the sea beyond and only attached to the rest of the city by ordinary gangplanks. Using its stabilisers the ship was able to rock itself from side to side and so simulate a moderate ocean swell, which all but the most sensitively constituted party-goers had thought highly amusing.

Lebmellin climbed to the bridge of the old ferry, ignoring the dispersing party and nodding to the burly men who made up Kuma’s security team. His mouth was dry and he found that he was trembling, partly in delayed response to the theft of the Addendum itself, and partly in anticipation of what was going to happen now.