Iain Banks: The Hydrogen Sonata

“I mean, look at you!”

She looked at herself; first just down, then at her reflection in the black mirror formed by the blanked-out glass wall of the main bedroom unit. She shrugged. This was a particularly graceful movement when you had four arms, she thought. “What?” she asked her mother, frowning.

Warib just looked at her daughter. Vyr checked her own reflection again. What she could see was a tallish Gzilt girl dressed in neat fatigues; dark grey skin with shoulder-length pale hair above broader than normal — but hardly grotesque — shoulders. Top set of arms a little longer and better defined than the additional set, a healthily substantial chest, a fashionably defined waist and the broad hips of a non-mammalian humanoid. Her legs were a little shorter and her back a little longer than the conventional image of Gzilt perfection, but who cared? Arguably, the four-arm look was all the better for that; it sort of balanced.

Her mother made an exasperated noise.

Vyr squinted. Was there some detail she was missing? She was in her mum’s apartment and so in relatively unfamiliar territory, but she knew there would be a proper mirror-reverser unit around somewhere, probably in the blacked-out bedroom unit, where Warib’s latest lover was apparently still asleep.

Vyr looked at her mother. “What?” she said again, mystified.

Warib spoke through clenched teeth. “You know perfectly well,” she said.

Warib was dressed in a long and elegantly gauzy morning gown that looked impractical enough to be genuinely expensive. She was a more willowy version of her daughter with longer and thicker hair; physically she was effectively ageing backwards and would do so until they all Sublimed. Her daughter had already passed the age when people usually started to control their appearance, but only by a few years, and Vyr had anyway decided some time ago that she would just get older naturally for the time that she had left, given that the big kablooey of transcendent smashingness that was the Subliming would be along soon to make this life and everything in it seem irrelevant and feeble and so on and such like.

She’d been mildly astonished that her mother seemed to take her daughter looking older than she did as some sort of rebuke. It had been the same when she’d become a Lieutenant Commander. She’d thought Warib would be proud of her; instead she was upset that — however technically, and regardless of the fact it didn’t really mean anything — her own daughter now outranked her.

“Is it the arms?” she said, waving all four. Beyond Warib, the view through the windows of the apartment showed sea sliding slowly past. Her mother lived on a klicks-long superliner endlessly circling the enclosed coast of the Pinicoln Sea, within Land, the single vast continent that made up most of Zyse.

“Of course it’s the arms!” Warib told her. She grimaced as though she’d just tasted something bitter, and shook her head. “And don’t try to be funny, Vyr, it’s not within your reach.”

Vyr smiled. “Well, I wasn’t, though that is almost—”

“You’ve always got to try to be different , haven’t you, Vyr?” her mother said, though it wasn’t really pitched as a question. “‘Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!’” she sang with what was probably meant to be sarcasm, wobbling her head and doing a little dance.

“Well—”

“You’ve taken great delight in trying to embarrass me ever since you were little.”

Vyr frowned. “I’m not sure I ever formulated that as a specific ambi—”

“You started trying to make my life hell when you were still wetting your pants.”

“… probably more of a happy acci—”

“That’s what you used to do, in fact; take your knickers down and pee in front of my guests. How do you think that made me look? At parties . In front of some very important people!”

“So you’ve said, more than once, but remember I checked the house records and—”

“Your father and I deleted those, they were so embarrassing.”

“Hmm. But the amendments files—”

“How can you disbelieve your own mother?” Warib wailed, putting her elegantly manicured hands up to her glossily perfect face and letting her head drop forward. The tone of voice and gesture were both cues that she would shortly start to screech and sob were the point not conceded.

“Anyway,” Vyr said patiently. “The point now is—”

“That how can I invite you to my party when you look like that !” Warib said, flinging one arm out towards her daughter and almost shrieking the last word. “A freak!”

“The arms?” Vyr said, just to be sure.

“Of course the fucking arms!” her mother roared.

Vyr scratched her head. “Well, so, don’t invite me,” she said, trying to sound reasonable.

Warib took a deep, measured breath. “How,” she said, her voice lowered to the sort of whispered, husky tone that indicated Vyr’s last question had been so idiotic it had scarcely been worth wasting breath on at all, “can I not invite you when you’re my daughter and I’m supposed to be proud of you?” Her voice started to rise again. “What will people think then? What? ”

“So I have four arms,” Vyr said, gesturing with all of them. “People used to have two heads, or look like octolegs or tumblebush, or—”

“That was in the past!” Warib told her acidly. “Ancient days. No one cares.”

“I don’t know,” Vyr told her, shaking her head. “I saw a screen thing about that travelling ultimate last party outfit on Xown and there were people there that—”

“Vyr!” her mother wailed. “Will you listen ?”

“…big airship thing, inside…” Vyr found herself silenced by a flash of her mother’s eyes.

“Nobody,” Warib told her, “who is anybody does that sort of thing any more!” She drew in a breath and said carefully, “It’s infantile, Vyr. Don’t you pay any attention to—?”

“Mum, I’m just trying to—”

“Oh, dear God, don’t call me ‘mum’,” Warib said, eyelids fluttering closed.

“…say goodbye and see-you-soon to everybody, and play this piece—”

“ Everybody ,” her mother shouted at her, “is reverting to classic ! Don’t you even know that? Amendments…” Warib hesitated. “Obvious amendments… are out . Nobody’s doing it any more. Everyone’s going for human basic as a mark of respect for all the millions of generations that helped get us to this point.”

Warib stared at the floor and slapped herself gently on the forehead, a gesture that — as far as Vyr knew — was a genuine innovation within the repertoire and so might actually be unchoreographed, perhaps even spontaneous. This was so surprising Vyr came extremely close to feeling concern.

“Dear suffering Scribe, Vyr,” her mother whispered, “some people are even going back to their natural hair colour.” She looked up, eyes moist, nodding.

Vyr stared at her mother. Outside, sea slid past; still. Eventually she raised all four of her arms. “So am I invited to the fucking party or not?”

Warib rolled her eyes, glanced behind, then fell backwards dramatically onto a plush white couch positioned in front of the stateroom’s main picture window. She lay there and kept her eyes closed while one hand went to her throat and the tiny copy of the Book of Truth encased in a locket on a thin chain there. Her fingers patted the flat little piece of jewellery as though taking comfort from it. Cossont — taking a couple of quiet steps backwards while her mother’s eyes were closed — had noticed Warib had grown noticeably more religious as the Subliming had approached. The best you could say of this was that she was not alone.