Iain Banks - Surface Detail

Nolyen had greeted them joyfully as they’d left the flier and somebody had shouted a glad-you’re-safe-sir or something similar from the roof as they’d walked across the courtyard, but that was about it. “Ingrates,” Veppers had muttered as they made their way to the gallery with the most expensive paintings.

“Four minutes and I’ll see you at the Number Three Strongroom!” Veppers called after Jasken, who, arms full of paintings, just turned and nodded. Veppers supposed they could have cut the paintings from the frames, like thieves did, but that had seemed wrong somehow.

Veppers jogged along the gallery, down a radial corridor towards some splendidly tall windows — my, there was a lot of smoke and even some flame out there, and it was far too dark for the time of evening — and let himself into his study. He sat at his desk.

The study was dark in the patchy emergency lighting. He allowed himself the poignant luxury of one last look round the place, thinking how sad, and yet also how oddly exciting it was that it might all soon be gone, then he started opening drawers and compartments. The desk — self-powered, identifying him by his smell as well as by his palm and fingerprints — made soft, sighing, snicking noises as it obeyed him; a little familiar oasis of calm and reassurance in all the chaos. He filled a small hide carrybag with all the most precious and useful things he could think of. The last thing he lifted, after a slight hesitation, was a pair of knives, sheathed in skin-soft hide, that had belonged to his grand-father and, before that, to somebody else’s.

A wind seemed to be getting up, judging from the way smoke was moving on the far side of the barely visible formal gardens; however, despite all the commotion outside, little sound got through the multiply glazed and bullet-proof windows. He was just closing the last drawer, ready to go, when he heard a noise like a faint “pop”.

He looked up and saw a tall, dark alien figure standing looking at him from near the closed doors. For a moment he thought it might be ambassador Huen, but it was somebody else; thin, with a too-straight, contorted-looking back. Dressed in different shades of dark grey.

“Can I help you?” he said, putting the still-open hide bag down at his feet where he sat, and dipping one hand into it, feeling around. He made a waving, distracting gesture with his other hand. “For example, with your manners? We tend to knock first, here.”

“Mr. Joiler Veppers, my name is Prebeign-Frultesa Yime Leutze Nsokyi dam Volsh,” the figure said in an oddly accented voice that might have been female but that definitely didn’t appear to be entirely in synch with its lip-movements. “I am a citizen of the Culture. I am here to apprehend you on suspicion of murder. Will you come with me?”

“How can I put this?” he said, raising and firing the alien-tech gun in the same movement. The gun made a loud snapping noise, light flared in the dim study and the alien disappeared in a silvery shimmer. The doors immediately behind where it had been standing burst open against their hinges, swinging broken and hanging into the corridor beyond in a flurry of black dust, a semi-circular hole punched in each, circumferenced with glowing yellow-white sparks. Veppers looked at the gun — a present from the Jhlupian Xingre, long ago — then at the still-swinging, smoking doors, and finally at the patch of rug where the figure had been standing. “Hmm,” he said.

He shrugged, stood, stuffed the gun into his waistband, snapped the hide bag shut and waved some of the noxious fumes away from his face as he exited through the wrecked doors, which were starting to burn.

“Jasken.”

He heard the female voice pronounce his name behind him, and knew it was her. He placed the paintings carefully on the floor of the flier and turned. Nolyen had stopped in the doorway of the flier. He was staring over the top of the paintings he held at the young woman standing by the door to the flight deck. Perhaps he was intimidated by the scroll-work of faint, tattooed lines covering her face.

“Miss,” Jasken said, nodding to her.

“It is me, Jasken.”

“I know,” he said. He turned his head deliberately, nodding to Nolyen. “Leave those, Nolyen; never mind anything else. Just leave; get well away from the house.”

Nolyen set the paintings down. He hesitated.

“Get away, Nolyen,” Jasken said.

“Sir,” the young man said, then turned and left.

Lededje watched him go, then turned back to Jasken.

“You let him kill me, Hib.”

Jasken sighed. “No, I tried to stop him. But, in the end, all right; I could have done more. And I suppose I could have killed him after he killed you. So I’m as bad as he is. Hate me if you like. I don’t claim to be a particularly good person, Led. And there is such a thing as duty.”

“I know. I thought you might feel some towards me.”

“My first is towards him, whether either of us likes it or not.”

“Because he pays your wages and all I did was let you fuck me?”

“No; because I pledged myself to his service. I never said anything to you that contradicted that.”

“No, you didn’t, did you?” She gave a wan smile. “I suppose I should have spotted that. How very correct of you, even while you were… despoiling his property. All those little whispered words of tenderness, about how much I meant, what we might hope for in the future. Were you always reviewing them as you said them? Running them past some lawyer bit in your brain, looking for inconsistencies?”

“Something like that,” Jasken told her, meeting her gaze. He shook his head. “We never had a future, Led. Not the sort you wanted to imagine. More quick couplings while his back was turned, hidden from everyone, until one of us got bored, or he found out. You belonged to him for ever, didn’t you ever under-stand that? We were never going to be able to run away together.” He looked down, then back up into her eyes again. “Or are you going to tell me you loved me? Because I always thought you took me as a lover just to get back at him and have me on-side for the next time you tried to escape.”

“Didn’t fucking work, did it?” she said bitterly. “You helped him hunt me down.”

“I had no choice. You didn’t have to run. As—”

“Really? That’s not how it felt to me.”

“As soon as you did, I had to do what my duty to him demanded.”

“So, none of it meant anything.” She was crying a little now, but quickly wiped both cheeks with the back of her wrists, tears smeared across the tattoo lines. “More fool me. Because I didn’t come back just to kill Veppers. I needed to ask how…” She stopped, swallowed. “Did it mean nothing to you?”

Jasken sighed. “Of course it meant something. A sweetness. Moments I’ll never forget. It just couldn’t mean what you wanted it to mean.”

She laughed, without hope or humour. “Then I am a fool, am I not?” she said, shaking her head. “I really did think you might love me.”

He gave the smallest of smiles. “Oh, I loved you with all my heart, from the very first.”

She glared at him.

He stared at her, eyes bright. “It’s just that love is not enough, Led. Not always. Not these days; maybe not ever. And never around people like Joiler Veppers.”

She looked down at the floor of the flier, brought her arms up and hugged herself. Jasken glanced at the time display on the flier’s bulkhead.

“Could be as little as a quarter of an hour till the second wave arrives,” he said. His tone was concerned, even kind. “You seemed to get here pretty fast. Can you get away again just as quickly?”

She nodded. She sniffed back her tears, wiped her cheeks and eyes again. “Do one thing for me,” she said.