Iain Banks: Surface Detail

She had discovered that she had no desire to come back to the Real. She had become whatever the Virtual equivalent of institutionalised was, and there could be no returning. Another Chay already lived in the Real who had never been through all that she had, and in many ways that person was the real Chay; she herself had become something entirely different. She still felt something for Prin, and wished him well, but she had no need to be part of his life. Prin eventually established a happy, lasting relationship with Representative Filhyn and Chay was glad that he was content.

By then she’d found her new role. She would remain a creature of ending and release in the Virtual; the angel of death who came for people who lived in happy, congenial Afterlives and who — tired even of their many lifetimes lived after biological death — were ready to dissolve themselves into the generality of consciousness that underlay Heaven, or who were ready simply to cease to be altogether.

That was when she met Prin for the second time, subjective centuries later.

They barely recognised one another.

Surprisingly quickly, given the bizarre and volatile variety of peoples, beings and endemic moralities involved, the culture of Hells — already irredeemably reduced following the events on Sichult and the testimony of people like Prin — became something of an anathema pretty much throughout the civilised galaxy, and indeed within a single average bio-generation their very absence became accepted almost without question as part of what constituted being civilised in the first place.

This made the Culture very happy.

Lededje Y’breq — Quyn-Sichultsa Lededje Samwaf Y’breq d’Espersium, to give her the Full Name she assumed on becoming a properly established Culture citizen — took up residence first on the GSV Sense Amid Madness, Wit Amidst Folly , on what was in effect an extended cruise to see the galaxy, then, twenty years later, settled on the Orbital called Hursklip where, in her middle-to-old age, she built, largely by hand, a full-size replica of the battleship grounds that she had known as the water maze, complete with working miniature battleships. They could be human-powered, but each incorporated a well-armoured survival pod which kept their occupant safe no matter what. The feature became an enduring tourist attraction.

She never did return to Sichult, or meet Jasken again, though he tried to get in touch.

She had five children by as many different fathers and ended up with over thirty great-great-great-grandchildren, which by Culture standards was almost disgraceful.

Vatueil, revented once more and back to using what he liked to think of as his original name — even though it wasn’t — sipped his aperitif on the restaurant terrace. He watched the sun set across the dark lake and listened to the crick and chirp of insects hidden in the bushes and vines nearby.

He checked the time. She was late, as usual. What was it about poets?

What a long, terrible war that had been, he thought, idly.

He really had been a traitor, of course. He’d been planted in the anti-Hell side long ago by those who wished to see the Hells continue for ever, a cause he’d supported at the time partly out of sheer contrarianism and partly out of that despair he felt some-times, periodically — during this long, long life — at the sheer self-hurtful idiocy and destructiveness of so many types of sentient life, especially the meta-type known as pan-human, to which he had always had the dubious honour of belonging. You want suffering, pain and horror? I’ll give you suffering, pain and horror…

But then, over time, fighting away, again and again, yet again, he’d changed his mind. Cruelty and the urge to dominate and oppress started to seem childish and pathetic once more, the way he’d accepted they were, long ago, but had somehow turned away from in the meantime.

So he’d spilled all the beans, implicated all those he knew about who deserved to be implicated, and had been quite pleased to see so much of what he had pledged to fight for crumble away into disgraced and piecemeal nothing. Hell mend them.

There would be people who would never forgive him for betraying them, but that was just too bad. They ought to have guessed, of course, but people never did.

That was the thing about traitors: they were people who’d already changed their minds at least once.

He made a mental note never again to insist on working his way up through the ranks. He’d finally convinced himself he’d learned all the relevant lessons already, probably many times over, and the process was starting to smack too much of outright masochism.

The sun brightened slowly as it settled against the horizon, subsiding beneath a long sinuous line of intervening cloud to blaze through a channel of clear air with a languid, dying glory, hazy orange-red against a thin yellow arc of sky. He watched the star’s disk as it started to fall behind a line of dark, distant hills, far across the plains. Closer to him, fringed by its still hush of trees, the lake had gone dark as ink.

He drank in the sunlight’s slow dwindling.

From the first glint of dawn, and for the rest of the day, the sun was too bright to look at, he thought; you could only gaze steadily upon it, only truly see it, regard it, inspect and properly admire it, when it was at its most filtered — half hidden by the thickness of the atmosphere, with its cargo of the day’s dust — and just about to slip away altogether. He must have experienced this on a hundred planets, but was only really noticing it now.

He wondered if this counted as a poetic insight. Probably not. Or if it did it had already occurred to countless poets. Still, he’d mention it to her when she arrived. Likely, she’d snort, though it would depend or her mood; instead she might assume that wry, amused expression that told him he was impinging, clumsily if charmingly, upon her territory. Tiny crinkles of skin formed under her eyes when she had that look. It would be worth it for that alone.

He heard steps. The maître d’ crossed the terrace, arrived at his side, bowed fractionally and clicked his heels.

“Your table is ready, Mr. Zakalwe.”