Iain Banks - The Algebraist

Sal cleared his throat. “Taince, do you have a gun? It’s just that I’m about to pull one out of this locker and you looked kind of scary and trigger-happy just there.”

“Yes, I do have a gun,” she told him. “Promise I won’t shoot you.” She gave a smile that wasn’t really. “And if you are intent on traipsing into the bowels of this thing, I’m not going to try and stop you. You’re a big boy now. Your responsibility.”

“Finally,” Sal said with satisfaction, pulling a plain but businesslike-looking CR pistol out of the locker and attaching it to his belt. “There’s food and water and bedrolls and extra clothes and stuff in the rear lockers,” he told them, slapping a couple of low-light illuminator patches onto his jacket shoulders. “I’ll be back about dawn.” He multiple-tapped his ear stud, then smiled. “Yep, internal clock still working.” He glanced at each of them in turn. “Hey, there’s probably nothing to see; I could be back in an hour for all I know.” They all just looked at him. “Nobody else coming along, huh?” he asked. Ilen and Fassin glanced at each other. Taince was watching Sal, who said, “Well, don’t wait up,” and turned to go.

“You’re very well prepared for this,” Taince said quietly.

Sal hesitated, then turned towards her, open-mouthed. He looked at Fassin and Ilen, then stared with wide eyes at Taince. He gestured towards the distant hull gap, upwards as though to space, then shook his head. “Taince, Taince,” he breathed. He pushed one hand through his thick black hair. “Just how paranoid and suspicious do they insist you be in the military?”

“Your father’s company makes our battlecraft, Saluus,” she told him. “Wariness is a survival strategy.”

“Oh, cheap shot, Taince.” Sal looked mildly insulted. “But I mean, really. Seriously. Come on.” He slapped his backpack, exasperated. “Hell’s teeth, woman, if I hadn’t made sure the flier was equipped with emergency gear you’d have chewed my ear for making a deep-desert flight without the necessary supplies!” Taince stood looking at him, near-expressionless, for a few moments longer. “Mind how you go, Sal.”

He nodded, relaxing. “You too,” he said. “See you all soon.” He looked round them all one more time, grinning. “Nothing I wouldn’t do, and all that.” He waved his hand and tramped off.

“Hold on,” Ilen said. Sal turned back. Ilen pulled her little day-pack out of the flier. “I’ll come with you, Sal.”

Fassin stared, horrified. “What?” he said, in a small, shocked, little boy’s voice. Nobody seemed to hear. For once he was glad. Taince said nothing.

Sal smiled. “You sure?” he asked the girl. “If you don’t mind,” Ilen said. “Fine by me,” Sal said quietly. “Sure you don’t mind?”

“Of course I don’t mind.”

“Well, you’re not supposed to go off exploring in dubious situations individually, are you?” Ilen said. “Isn’t that right?” She looked at Taince, who nodded. “You take care.” Ilen kissed Fassin’s cheek, winked at Taince and strode up the shallow slope to Sal. They waved and walked off. Fassin watched their footstep-traces in IR, each faint patch of brightness on the ground behind them fading after less than a second.

“Never understand that girl,” Taince said, sounding unconcerned. She and Fassin looked at each other. “Suggest you take a snooze now,” Taince told him, nodding at the flier. She picked her nose and inspected her finger. “I’ll wake you before I head out to the hull gap to check for signal.”

A fragrance bud popped somewhere in the darkened room, and — after a few moments — he smelled Orchidia Noctisia, a Madebloom scent he would always associate with the Autumn House. There was little air movement in the quiet chamber so the bud must have been floating nearby. He lifted his head gently and saw a tiny shape like a slim, translucent flower falling chiffon-soft through the air between the bed and the trolley which had brought their supper. He lowered his head to Jaal’s shoulder again.

“Mmm?” she said drowsily.

“Meet any friends in town?” Fassin asked, winding a long golden coil of Jaal Tonderon’s hair around one finger, then bringing his nose forward to nuzzle the nape of her brown-red neck, breathing in the smell of her. She shifted against him, moving her hips in a sort of stirring motion. He had slipped out of her some time ago, but it was still a good feeling.

“Ree and Grey and Sa,” she said, her voice starting out a little sleepy. “Shopping was accomplished. Then we met up with Djen and Sohn. And Dayd, Dayd Eslaus. Oh, and Yoaz. You remember Yoaz Irmin, don’t you?”

He nipped her neck and was rewarded with a flinch and a yelp. “That was a long time ago,” he told her.

She reached one hand behind her and stroked his exposed flank, then patted his behind. “I’m sure the memory is still vivid for her, dear.”

“Ha!” he said. “So am I.” This drew a slap. Then they settled in against each other once more; she did that thing with her hips again and he wondered if there would be time for more sex before he had to go.

She turned to face him. Jaal Tonderon’s face was round and wide and only just very beautiful. For two thousand years or so, rHuman faces had looked pretty much how the owners wanted them to look, displaying either satisfaction with or indifference to whatever womb-grown comeliness they had been born with, or the particular, amended look their owners had subsequently specified. The only ugly people were those making a statement.

In an age when everyone could be beautiful, and\or look like famous historical figures (there were now laws about looking too much like famous contemporary figures), the truly interesting faces and bodies were those which sailed as close to the wind of being plain or even unattractive as possible, and yet just got away with it. People talked about faces that looked good in the flesh but not in images, or good in lifelike paintings but not on a screen, or faces that looked unattractive in repose but quite stunning when animated, or merely plain until the person smiled.

Jaal had been born with a face that looked — she said herself — committee design: unharmonious, stuck together, nothing quite matching. Yet to almost everybody who had ever met her, she seemed outrageously attractive, thanks to some alchemy of physiognomy, personality and expression. Fassin’s private estimation was that Jaal’s was a face still waiting to be grown into, and that she would be more beautiful when she was middle-aged than she was now. It was one reason he had asked her to marry him.

They could look forward, Fassin had every reason to believe, to a long life together, and just as it had been sensible to marry within his profession — and to make a match that would meet with the enthusiastic approval of their respective Septs, strengthening the bonds between two of the most important Seer houses — so it had been only prudent to take that likely longevity into account.

Of course, as Slow Seers Fassin and Jaal’s shared future would be absolutely if not relatively longer than that of most of their contemporaries, and radically different; in the slow-time of a long delve, Seers aged very slowly indeed, and Uncle Slovius’s fourteen centuries, while short of the record and not yet (thankfully, naturally) his limit, should not be difficult to surpass. Seer spouses and loved ones had to schedule their slow-time and normal life carefully so as not to get too out of synch with each other, lest the protagonists lose touch emotionally. The life of Tchayan Olmey, Fassin’s old mentor and tutor, had hinged on just such an unforeseen discontinuity, leaving her stranded from an old love. “Anything wrong?” Jaal asked him.