Iain Banks: The State of The Art

No, I couldn’t do it. I left the Culture because it bored me, but also because the evangelical, interventionist morality of Contact sometimes meant doing just the sort of thing we were supposed to prevent others doing; starting wars, assassinating… all of it, all the bad things… I was never involved with Special Circumstances directly, but I knew what went on (Special Circumstances; Dirty Tricks, in other words. The Culture’s tellingly unique euphemism). I refused to live with such hypocrisy and chose instead this honestly selfish and avaricious society, which doesn’t pretend to be good, just ambitious.

But I have lived here as I lived there, trying not to hurt others, trying just to be myself; and I cannot be myself by destroying a ship full of people, even if they are some of the rulers of this cruel and callous society. I can’t use the gun; I can’t let Kaddus and Cruizell find me. And I will not go back, head bowed, to the Culture.

I finished the glass of jahl.

I had to get out. There were other cities, other planets, besides Vreccis; I’d just had to run; run and hide. Would Maust come with me though? I looked at the time again; he was half an hour late. Not like him. Why was he late? I went to the window, looking down to the street, searching for him.

A police APC rumbled through the traffic. Just a routine cruise; siren off, guns stowed. It was heading for the Outworlder’s Quarter, where the police had been making shows of strength recently. No sign of Maust’s svelte shape swinging through the crowds.

Always the worry. That he might be run over, that the police might arrest him at the club (indecency, corrupting public morals, and homosexuality; that great crime, even worse than not making your pay-off!), and, of course, the worry that he might meet somebody else.

Maust. Come home safely, come home to me.

I remember feeling cheated when I discovered, towards the end of my regendering, that I still felt drawn to men. That was long ago, when I was happy in the Culture, and like many people I had wondered what it would be like to love those of my own original sex; it seemed terribly unfair that my desires did not alter with my physiology. It took Maust to make me feel I had not been cheated. Maust made everything better. Maust was my breath of life.

Anyway, I would not be a woman in this society.

I decided I needed a refill. I walked past the table.

'… will not affect the line-stability of the weapon, though recoil will be increased on power-priority, or power decreased—'

'Shut up!' I shouted at the gun, and made a clumsy attempt to hit its Off button; my hand hit the pistol’s stubby barrel. The gun skidded across the table and fell to the floor.

'Warning!' The gun shouted. 'There are no user-serviceable parts inside! Irreversible deactivation will result if any attempt is made to dismantle or—'

'Quiet, you little bastard,' I said (and it did go quiet). I picked it up and put it in the pocket of a jacket hanging over a chair. Damn the Culture; damn all guns. I went to get more drink, a heaviness inside me as I looked at the time again. Come home, please come home… and then come away, come away with me…

I fell asleep in front of the screen, a knot of dull panic in my belly competing with the spinning sensation in my head as I watched the news and worried about Maust, trying not to think of too many things. The news was full of executed terrorists and famous victories in small, distant wars against aliens, out-worlders, subhumans. The last report I remember was about a riot in a city on another planet; there was no mention of civilian deaths, but I remember a shot of a broad street littered with crumpled shoes. The item closed with an injured policeman being interviewed in hospital.

I had my recurring nightmare, reliving the demonstration I was caught up in three years ago; looking, horrified, at a wall of drifting, sun-struck stun gas and seeing a line of police mounts come charging out of it, somehow more appalling than armoured cars or even tanks, not because of the visored riders with their long shock-batons, but because the tall animals were also armoured and gas-masked; monsters from a ready-made, mass-produced dream; terrorizing.

Maust found me there hours later, when he got back. The club had been raided and he hadn’t been allowed to contact me. He held me as I cried, shushing me back to sleep.

'Wrobik, I can’t. Risaret’s putting on a new show next season and he’s looking for new faces; it’ll be big-time, straight stuff. A High City deal. I can’t leave now; I’ve got my foot in the door. Please understand.' He reached over the table to take my hand. I pulled it away.

'I can’t do what they’re asking me to do. I can’t stay. So I have to go; there’s nothing else I can do.' My voice was dull. Maust started to clear away the plates and containers, shaking his long, graceful head. I hadn’t eaten much; partly hangover, partly nerves. It was a muggy, enervating mid-morning; the tenement’s conditioning plant had broken down again.

'Is what they’re asking really so terrible?' Maust pulled his robe tighter, balancing plates expertly. I watched his slim back as he moved to the kitchen. 'I mean, you won’t even tell me. Don’t you trust me?' His voice echoed.

What could I say? That I didn’t know if I did trust him? That I loved him but: only he had known I was an outworlder. That had been my secret, and I’d told only him. So how did Kaddus and Cruizell know? How did Bright Path know? My sinuous, erotic, faithless dancer. Did you think because I always remained silent that I didn’t know of all the times you deceived me?

'Maust, please; it’s better that you don’t know.'

'Oh,' Maust laughed distantly; that aching, beautiful sound, tearing at me. 'How terribly dramatic. You’re protecting me. How awfully gallant.'

'Maust, this is serious. These people want me to do something I just can’t do. If I don’t do it they’ll… they’ll at least hurt me, badly. I don’t know what they’ll do. They… they might even try to hurt me through you. That was why I was so worried when you were late; I thought maybe they’d taken you.'

'My dear, poor Wrobbie,' Maust said, looking out from the kitchen, 'it has been a long day; I think I pulled a muscle during my last number, we may not get paid after the raid — Stelmer’s sure to use that as an excuse even if the filth didn’t swipe the takings — and my ass is still sore from having one of those queer-bashing pigs poking his finger around inside me. Not as romantic as your dealings with gangsters and baddies, but important to me. I’ve enough to worry about. You’re overreacting. Take a pill or something; go back to sleep; it’ll look better later.' He winked at me, disappeared. I listened to him moving about in the kitchen. A police siren moaned overhead. Music filtered through from the apartment below.

I went to the door of the kitchen. Maust was drying his hands. 'They want me to shoot down the starship bringing the Admiral of the Fleet back on Ninthday,' I told him. Maust looked blank for a second, then sniggered. He came up to me, held me by the shoulders.

'Really? And then what? Climb the outside of the Lev and fly to the sun on your magic bicycle?' He smiled tolerantly, amused. I put my hands on his and removed them slowly from my shoulders.

'No. I just have to shoot down the ship, that’s all. I have… they gave me a gun that can do it.' I took the gun from the jacket. He frowned, shaking his head, looked puzzled from a second, then laughed again.

'With that, my love? I doubt you could stop a motorized pogo-stick with that little—'

'Maust, please; believe me. This can do it. My people made it and the ship… the state has no defence against something like this.'