Iain Banks - Against a Dark Background

“I used,” the man offered, frowning, “to be called Elson Roa.” He was tall and spindly and he sat very still with a look of faint surprise on his face. His fair hair stuck up from his forehead, adding to the impression of slight bewilderment.

“Elson Roa,” she repeated.

“But then I became God,” he nodded. “Or rather realised that I always had been God. God in the monotheistic sense that I am all that really exists.” He was silent for a moment. “I can see you are an apparence who is going to need an explanation.”

“An explanation,” she said. “Yes. That might be a good idea.”

She ate the reconstituted E-rations from the heated aluminium tray as though they were the finest banquet ever set before woman. The girl who had brought the food was the same one who’d escorted her to the toilet; she was dressed in brown and yellow and she sat in the cabin’s little plastic seat watching with fascination as Sharrow squeezed the last dregs from the sweet pouch, licked her lips and handed the tray back to her and said. “Delicious; could I have another one of those, please?”

The girl left to get some more food, locking the door behind her. The old hovercraft droned on, pitching rhythmically for a few moments as it traversed taller-than-average waves.

Sharrow had been captured by Solipsists.

They were a fifty-or-so-strong band of licensed privateers incorporated under the laws of Shaphet and dedicated to selffulfilment, union-rate security provision, and-where possible robbing the rich. Mostly, however, they were hired by insurance and finance companies to frighten reluctant clients and repossess unpaid-for material. Their ACV-a third-hand war-surplus marsh patrol vessel from the Security Franchise-had itself been a repo job; the Solipsists had taken over the payments and renamed it the Solo .

Their attack on the fringe of the Log-Jam had not been an unqualified success. They had heard there was a convention of circus performers taking place on a hotel-ship in the jam, and so disguised themselves as a troop of three-legged mutants, with their guns inside their hollow legs-hence the artificial limb Sharrow had been shot with. But they’d got their dates wrong; the convention wasn’t for another month.

They had attempted to gate-crash Miz’s party on board the ferry but found there was too much security, so they’d split up and gone in search of stray guests wandering away from the party, hoping to surprise and rob them; instead several of the Solipsists had been surprised and captured by the jam’s own security services after the fracas on the ferry, and a couple had been shot and wounded by Marines. The rest had only just got away, taking the big ACV charging along the lagoon sandbar in its own dawn-lit sandstorm while the Marines and Navy argued over who had jurisdiction to put a shot across their bows.

Apart from a few credit and debit cards, a handful of passports and a small amount of jewellery, Sharrow had been their only real prize; they’d probably have left her too, but for the fact she’d been carrying a major house passport.

The Solipsists had let her see a news sheet which mentioned the deaths of the Log-jam’s Vice and Chief Invigilators and a few security personnel injuries, but which did not talk about finding any bodies gassed in the tanks of old oil tankers.

They wouldn’t let her call anybody; they intended to take her far north, to the Free City and traditional hostage-transfer point of Ifagea on the Pilla Sea to see if they could ransom her back to her family from there.

“I don’t have any immediate family,” she told Roa.

“There must be somebody who would pay for you,” Roa said, looking puzzled. “Or you must have your own money.”

“Not much of that. I’ve a cousin who might pay a ransom. I don’t know…”

“Well, perhaps we can sort that out later,” Roa said, staring at a finger nail.

“I know,” Sharrow said. “Take me to Aïs in Nasahapley, not Ifagea.”

Rows brows knitted. “Why?” he said.

“Well, I think I’m meeting some friends there. They’ll bring some money.”

Roa looked dubious. “How much?”

“How much do you want?” she asked.

“How much would you suggest?” Roa countered.

She looked at him. “I’ve no idea. Haven’t you done this before?”

“Not as such,” Roa admitted.

“How about a hundred Thrial?” she joked.

Roa considered this. He put one boot on the other knee and tried to dig mud out from between the grips. “There are forty-six other apparences aboard,” he said, sounding embarrassed and refusing to meet her gaze. “Make it forty-six hundred… I mean, forty-seven.”

She stared at him, then decided he was serious. The sum was less than the average yearly income on Golter.

“Oh, what the heck,” she said. “Let’s call it five k.”

Roa shook his head. “That might cause difficulties.”

“Just the forty-seven hundred?”

“Yes,” Roa nodded emphatically.

“It’s a deal,” she said. “Net-call a chap called Miz Gattse Kuma and tell him I’ll meet him in Nis, soon as you can get there.”

Roa mumbled something.

“Pardon?” she said.

“We’ll have to think about that,” Roa said, clearing his throat. “The last time we were in Aïs we had some problems with certain-apparent-small craft which were damaged in the harbour.”

“Well,” Sharrow said. “See what you can do.”

“I shall tell my apparences,” Roa said, standing up and looking determined.

He left, locking the door. Sharrow lay back on the narrow cot, shaking her head.

At least Aïs was closer than Ifagea. She hoped they got there before the-apparently-not terribly well-informed Solipsists heard she would soon be fair game for the Huhsz hunting mission, and worth a lot more than forty-seven hundred.

The creaking, salt-encrusted, rust-streaked hovercraft Solo had headed north from the Log-Jam up the coast of Piphram, its holed exhausts blattering, its route marked by twin lines of smoke from its alcohol-powered rotary engines, stirred into wide helices by its dented, vibrating propellers. It refuelled from a commercial tanker in the Omequeth estuary and crossed the Shiyl peninsula over the Omequeth Corridor, still heading north towards the savanna south of Nasahapley.

“But if you’re God,” Sharrow said to Elson Roa, “why do you need the others?”

“What others?” Roa said.

Sharrow looked exasperated. “Oh, come on.”

Elson Roa shrugged. “My apparences? They are the sign that my will is not yet strong enough to support my existence without extraneous help. I am working on this.” Roa coughed. “It is, indeed, in a very real sense, an encouraging sign that we lost six of our number at the Log-Jam, as this indicates my will is becoming stronger.”

“I see,” Sharrow said, nodding thoughtfully. This was her third day aboard, the second after she’d woken up following her over-enthusiastically applied nerve-blast on the deck of the Log-Jam tanker. It was her third talk with the lanky, serious, very still and staidly eccentric Solipsist leader.

They were due to arrive in Aïs tomorrow.

The Solo ’s route north and west had been a circuitous one, determined by estuaries, land corridors, seas, lakes and arguments amongst Roa and his apparences concerning the reality or otherwise of apparent obstacles such as islands and small craft. They were, anyway, making slow progress at least partly because the Solipsists seemed unable to work the ACV’s major sensory and navigational apparatus, and so could not travel at night or in mist and fog.

“So,” she said. “Are you immortal?”

Roa looked thoughtful. “I’m not sure,” he said. “The idea may not be relevant; time itself may be a redundant concept. What do you think? I may have created you as a platform for part of just such an answer.”